Motorola launches triple-SIM MOTOKEY 3-CHIP for Brazil

Motorola has just unveiled a new addition to its mobile phone portfolio and it's a pretty strange device. The new handset is a featurephone called Motorola MOTOKEY 3-CHIP and has 3 SIM card slots as its key selling point.

The other highlights of the MOTOKEY 3-CHIP are a full physical QWERTY keyboard a 2 MP camera, an FM radio receiver and a microSD card slot. The handset will have a 2GB microSD card included in its retail package.

Motorola MOTOKEY 3-CHIP

Being a simple featurephone, the Motorola MOTOKEY 3-CHIP doesn't even offer a touch-enabled display. Also just one of its SIMs may be used for transferring data at a time, with the other two available only for telephony and messaging.

The MOTOKEY 3-CHIP will only be available on the Brazilian market from the first week of June. The suggested retail price of the handset is 349 BRL (around $171).

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Sony Xperia P review: Ironclad

Introduction

Sealed in an aluminum unibody but still oozing the new NXT series style, the Sony Xperia P joins an elite club of metal-clad phones. And then there's the WhiteMagic screen to make it unique in the mobile world. In short, the Xperia P is one of the most advanced midrange phones out there.

Sony Xperia P official photos

The Reality display on the Sony Xperia P spans 4 inches and has qHD resolution, featuring the traditional for the Xperia series Mobile BRAVIA Engine. What's unique to the Xperia P is the WhiteMagic technology - an extra white subpixel to the usual RGB setup pushes brightness up to extra high levels while reducing power consumption. Specialized software aims to keep both power usage and color rendering optimal at all times.

The other standout feature is the aluminum unibody - if you like the solid feel of metal, there aren't too many phones that can deliver. The build of the Xperia P isn't just about the metal though - the phone is part of Sony's GreenHeart program and uses nature-friendly recycled plastics and waterborne paint.

Here's the cheat sheet on the Sony Xperia P:

Key features

• Aluminum unibody
• Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• Bright 4" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit LCD touchscreen of qHD resolution (540 x 960 pixels) with Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine and WhiteMagic (fourth white subpixel); Scratch-resistant glass
• Android OS v2.3.7 Gingerbread, planned Android 4.0 ICS update
• Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, 1 GB RAM, Mali-400 GPU, NovaThor U8500 chipset
• 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geotagging, Multi Angle shot
• 1080p video recording @ 30fps with continuous autofocus and stereo sound
• VGA front-facing camera
• Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
• Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS
• NFC connectivity
• 16GB built-in storage (13GB user accessible)
• microHDMI port, dedicated TV launcher
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Voice dialing
• Adobe Flash 11 support
• Deep Facebook integration
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor

Main disadvantages

• No Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box
• Display has poor blacks, high brightness levels result in poor color rendering and loss of contrast
• No memory card slot
• microSIM only
• Modest battery capacity of only 1305mAh results in mediocre battery life

While it was the outside of the Sony Xperia P that grabbed our attention, a dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and Mali-400 GPU should easily be able to keep it. We just wish Sony would get over the ICS hurdle once and for all (the update is expected in Q3).

Some users will certainly appreciate the standard microHDMI port and hardware shutter key - two things that are just about going extinct in the mobile world, even though virtual shutter keys aren't as comfortable and MHL ports require you to carry (and pay for) additional adapters.

Sony Xperia P live pictures

With all this buildup, the Xperia P is starting to sound like the Sony phone that people "in the know" will buy. You know, not the top of the product line, but the one that offers the best set of features for a fair price.

Samsung releases source code for the Galaxy S III

When it comes to pleasing the Android developer community, Samsung has been ahead of the pack for a while now by giving out sample units to developers and making their phones generally easy to mess around with. They are also known for releasing the source code of their phones in a timely fashion and keeping with that tradition they have released the source code for the recently launched Galaxy S III.

The source code for the Galaxy S III is now available for download on Samsung's website. For now, they have only provided the code for the GSM international I9300 model but we're sure code for the other models will be made available once they go on sale.

To download the source code for the Galaxy S III, click here.

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Samsung Galaxy S II sales reach 28M, Galaxy Note scores 7M

The Galaxy series have been a huge hit for Samsung - the Koreans recently announced that the line of Android smartphones has surpassed 50 million sales globally. What's even more impressive, the bulk of that is from the flagship devices.

The first one, the Samsung Galaxy S scored over 24 million sales in two years. Its successor, the Galaxy S II sold much faster - it reached 28 million sales in just 13 months, which made it the fastest selling device for Samsung. That's 8 million more sales since late February this year.

The half-smartphone, half-tablet Samsung Galaxy Note did very well for itself too - since it went on sale in October last year, 7 million Notes have been sold. That number was 5 million in late March.

Other Galaxy droids didnt make the statistic, which is a shame - we're really curious about how well entry-level phones like the Galaxy Ace and Galaxy Y sold. Also, we'll keep an eye on the Galaxy S III sales - it got 9 million pre-orders so we assume it's going to break quite a few of the company's records itself.

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HTC launches One S in Taiwan with 1.7GHz processor

HTC has launched the One S in its home country Taiwan but it is not the same phone being launched elsewhere. HTC has swapped the processor on this model and it now features a dual-core overclocked 1.7GHz MSM8260 Snapdragon S3 instead of the 1.5Ghz MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 on the international model.

The reason for this could be the shortage of the Snapdragon S4 processor, which has been a cause for concern for several OEMs, eventually forcing them to choose from other chip makers. This is why HTC could have gone with the older generation processor. Obviously, to match the performance of the newer S4, HTC also had to overclock the S3 to 1.7GHz. ePrice who managed to run a few benchmarks on this new model noted the AnTuTu score to be on par with the international model.

HTC has been careful enough to not mention this change in their specifications, choosing to go with only "dual-core" on their spec page. We are interested to know how this overclocked processor based on the older (and less efficient) 45nm technology affects the battery life but apparently HTC says it is on par with the international model, even though the actual battery capacity is the same.

You can check out some hands-on pictures in the source link below.

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Sony Xperia neo L escapes China borders, to launch globally soon

Sony Xperia neo L was announced back in March but back then it was expected to be a Chinese market exclusive. Well, not anymore.

The Xperia neo L popped up on the Sonys global website, which means it should be out worldwide soon. No pricing and availability are revealed just yet, though.

In case you need a refresh, the neo L is Sonys first smartphone to run ICS out of the box. It packs a 4-inch IPS LCD FWVGA display, a 5MP snapper with 720p video recording and is based on the same Snapdragon chipset as the previous neo phones. The Qualcomm MSM8255 features a single-core 1GHz Scorpion processor and Adreno 205 graphics.

The only differences between this one and the neo V are the bigger screen, longer but thinner body and the slightly different design. And the Ice Cream Sandwich, of course.

A hat tip to Carlo who sent this in!

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Samsung Galaxy S III Canadian availability is now official

It was a rumor a few days ago, and now it is official. Samsung Galaxy S III will be available in Canada on June 20. There will be two versions of the Android powerhouse - the LTE sporting SGH-i747 and the 42 Mbps HSPA+ flavored SGH-iT999. The former will hit Bell Mobility, Virgin Mobile, SaskTel, TELUS and Rogers Wireless, while the iT999 will be available on Videotron, Wind and Mobilicity. Pricing is yet to be announced.

As we suspected, the handset has gone through a slight change of character in order to play nice with the speedy networks across the Atlantic. Both Galaxy S III versions will pack a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 Chipset with two Krait CPU cores, clocked at 1.5GHz. RAM memory has been bumped up to two gigs as well - just like in the case of the Japanese version for NTT Docomo. The LTE version will come with a choice of 16 or 32 gigabytes of built-in memory, while the HSPA+ one will have to make do with a 16GB flavor only. The rest of the specs are identical to the ones found in the I9300.

Given Samsung's previous record of North American launches, we can reasonably expect that the US variations of the smartphone will have similar specifications. We are still to hear about them though.

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ZTE Athena appears in spy shots, squeezes ICS in 6.2mm package

Some posts on social network Weibo point to an ultra-thin Android phone from ZTE in the works, codenamed Athena. The device readily beats the Motorola DROID RAZR (7.1mm) and the Huawei Ascend P1 S (6.7mm), having a profile of just 6.2mm. You'll also notice the Kevlar back of the Athena that is visible in one of the leaked photos.

The ZTE Athena should also surpass those two in processing power with its (presumably dual-core) Cortex-A15 CPU. The phone will be running Android 4.0 ICS with a custom "Miflavor UI" skin on top. The built storage is said to go up to 64GB.

ZTE Athena spy shots, Instagram style

The screen on the slender droid is reported as True HD, but there's no info on the screen size. The ZTE Athena has capacitive keys under its screen.

That's all the info available on the smartphone right now, but if anything else comes up we'll keep you updated. So, what do you think - is there a point to this race for the thinnest phone or would you rather have a juicier battery instead?

Source 1 Source 2 (in Chinese) | Via

Sony announces the water-proof Xperia go and Xperia acro S

Sony just went ahead and announced the latest additions to its Xperia lineup. The new Xperia acro S and Xperia go phones are water-proof and have increased protection against the elements, which includes a scratch-proof mineral glass on top of the displays.

Xperia acro S

The Sony Xperia acro S boasts a 4.3 HD Reality display with 720p resolution. The camera on the back uses a 12MP Exmor R sensor and has a f/2.4 aperture and records 1080p FullHD video. A 720p 1.3MP camera is on the front.

Sony Xperia acro S

The display of the Xperia acro S is covered by a reportedly shatter-proof, scratch resistant glass of unknown make and it supports the wet finger tracking technology, similar to what we saw on the Xperia active.

Furthermore, the Sony Xperia acro S covers the IP57 rating requirements for dust and water resistance. If you don't have your IP certification manual on you, we'll just remind you that these certify the phone is protected against most dust and that it's good for short immersions (up to 30 min) in shallow water (up to 1m).

On the inside, the Xperia acro S has a 1.5Ghz dual core Snapdragon chipset and Ice Cream Sandwich will be on board right from the launch. There's 1 gig worth of RAM and 16GB of on-board storage (up to 11 GB user-accessible).

The location services offered by the smartphone's GPS are additionally augmented with support for the GLONASS satellite positioning system. The Xperia acro S also has an HDMI port and NFC support.

The Xperia acro S will be available in black, white and pink colors.

Sony Xperia go

The Sony Xperia go, or the Xperia advance as it will be known on the US market, has a 3.5 Reality display of 480 x 320 pixel resolution and a 5MP camera with 720p video recording.

Inside, there's a 1 GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage (up to 4 GB are user-accessible however).

The Sony Xperia go meets the IP67 rating, making it a real survivor of a phone. It offers the same protection against water immersion as the Xperia acro, but ups the protection by being totally dust tight.

The software on this one is Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) but it should be upgradeable to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) later on.

The Xperia go will be available in black, white and yellow colors.

The Xperia go and Xperia acro S will be available worldwide from Q3 2012. Check out the official promo videos of the two devices over at our blog.

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All HTC droids have now cleared US customs

Earlier this month, some HTC phones got held up at the US customs due to patent complaints from Apple, but now the Taiwanese corporation has resolved the issue.

The HTC One X and the HTC EVO 4G LTE were affected by these proceedings, but the review process of the US customs is now done and the droids are free to enter the country.

Here's the note from HTC that announced the end of the import ban:

HTC devices have been released by US Customs as they are in compliance with the ITC's ruling. HTC has completed the review process with US Customs and HTC devices have been released, as they are in compliance with the ITC's ruling. Future shipments should continue to enter the US and we are confident that we will soon be able to meet the demand for our products.

So, US customers who were waiting for a new HTC droid will finally be able to actually get them.

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LG Optimus LTE, Vu, and LTE Tag will get the ICS treament in June

June is bound to be a good month for the owners of LG Optimus LTE, Optimus Vu, and Optimus LTE Tag. The Korean giant has announced that it will kick off the update of the smartphone trio to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on June 4, which is less than a week away.

Quite expectedly, the ICS update will include LG's latest version 3.0 of its proprietary UI. You are welcome to get a sneak peak of it in our hands-on of LG Optimus L7 over here.

Compared to its siblings, the LG Optimus Vu will get some additional software tricks utilizing its 4:3 aspect display.

Source (in Korean) | Via

ICS update now rolling out for the Sony Xperia arc and Xperia Neo

Two more members of the Xperia family are joining the Ice Cream Sandwich club - congratulations to the Sony Ericsson (well, technically Sony now) Xperia arc and Xperia neo.

What they're getting is Android 4.0.4 - the latest available from Google - but they're sticking with an older kernel - 2.6.32. The update is being rolled out in stages, so it might not be available for your unit just yet.

Owners of an Xperia arc can check this page to see if the ICS update is available for their unit (you need to check the phone's SI number printed under the battery) and Xperia neo owners can have a look here.

The remaining Xperia phones from the 2011 lineup - Xperia mini, Xperia mini pro, Xperia pro, Xperia active and Live with Walkman - are also to get the 4.0.4 update starting some time this week, though we havent seen reports of updated phones yet (post in the comments if you do get the update). The Xperia PLAY will not be updated as previously reported.

Xperia phones that already got the ICS update (arc S, neo V and ray) will also be getting the Android 4.0.4 treatnebt soon (what they received was 4.0.3).

The NXT series will take a bite of the Ice Cream Sandwich starting with the Sony Xperia S (update expected in late June), with the Xperia P and Xperia U following in Q3.

Source 1 Source 2

Carphone Warehouse UK recalling HTC One X units?

We received a tip that HTC One X phones have been recalled from Carphone Warehouse stores in the UK due to software issues. This was reportedly triggered by customers returning phones with complaints.

The exact nature of the software issues isn't clear but the phones will be flashed with an update that fixes the issue, after which the phones will be shipped back to the stores. There's no official confirmation from Carphone Warehouse that One X phones are indeed recalled, though, so take this with a pinch of salt.

If you bought an HTC One X from Carphone Warehouse, you can drop us a line, mentioning any problems you had or if everything went smoothly.

If you do have issues, you should check that you have received the OTA update that HTC released at the beginning of this month. It addresses things like power management, camera improvements, faster alerts for incoming calls and reportedly fixes screen flicker issues (though this isn't on the official changelog).

Thanks to our anonymous tipster!

Some Samsung Galaxy S III stock delayed in the UK

It appears that some Samsung Galaxy S III units won't make it in time to the UK.

Clove has informed preorders of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S III will be delayed until June 1st, rather than the announced May 30th release date. The blue variant is expected to be delayed even further, with supplies set to be available on June 5th, although that date is tentative.

Crosstown retailer Vodafone has stated that the 16GB version of the white S III will be available on tomorrows launch date, while the 32GB version will face an unspecified shipping delay. This same delay applies to both the 16GB and 32GB blue variants of the device.

Delays to the Pebble Blue version were expected as early as last week, with an alleged several hundred thousand blue cases being scrapped by Samsung due to unspecified manufacturing issues.

The Galaxy S III is one of the most anticipated in recent memory. You can get answers on all your questions about the device in our full review.

Update: Samsung have confirmed that the Pebble Blue variant of the S III could be in "short supply in some regions in the next 2-3 weeks."

Whether "some regions" means the UK, or "short supply" indicates a flat out delay can only be speculated on. Although Samsung have not commented on problems with the manufacturing process, the rumors of issues they were having with the hyperglaze material on the blue S III sound much more legitimate.

Source 1 | Source 2 | Update: Source 3

Facebook allegedly planning on releasing a phone next year

Once again, we are hearing reports of Facebook working on making their own mobile phone. The latest one comes from The New York Times, who have spoken to several Facebook employees and engineers who have been briefed on the plans.

According to these people, Facebook is currently working on a Facebook phone, which it plans to launch next year and this time it is going to be more than just a button to launch the app. For this the company has also hired more than half a dozen software and hardware engineers who formerly worked at Apple on the iPhone and iPad.

This is Facebook's third attempt at making a Facebook phone, with the first one being abandoned back in 2010 and last year they worked with HTC to create a smartphone, codenamed 'Buffy', but the only thing that actually reached the retail stores were the two phones, ChaCha and Salsa, with just a Facebook button on them. However, it is said that the Buffy project is still being worked upon and the phone that is supposed to launch next year could be the culmination of that project.

According to one of the employees with whom the NYT spoke to, Zuckerberg feels that Facebook should make its own phone or it will end up being just an app. Having their own phone will also serve as a source of revenue, something that the free apps cannot achieve.

There is no information on what OS the phone will be running on but if we have to guess we'd say Facebook would go with a forked version of Android, the way Amazon did with the Kindle Fire. We also think that it would only allow access to the apps on the recently announced Facebook Store instead of Google's Play Store. This should allow Facebook tighter control over the kind of apps people install on their phones, including preventing installing apps for other social networks such as Twitter.

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ICS-running Xperia S leaks on video

The Sony Xperia S is scheduled to receive ICS at the end of the month but thanks to SonyXP we get to see the Sony flagship running the latest Android version early.

Sony has preserved their custom launcher on Android 4.0.4 and has even added a couple of new tricks to it. There's a new Walkman music player and a new Gallery, which looks great and supports gestures for increasing and reducing thumbnail size (much like Control and the mouse wheel do on Windows).

The original video was taken down, which gives it more credibility. Here's a copy of it, though.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Via

Motorola releases demo videos for Android 4.0 update

Motorola has released a bunch of videos on its Japanese site detailing the upcoming Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for its phones.

The videos are meant to highlight the changes between the current Gingerbread ROM and the new ICS ROM. We must say we are very impressed with what Motorola has to show here. While most of the other OEMs are busy slapping heavy layers of custom skin on top of stock Android, Motorola's is practically stock.

Some of the additions Motorola has made include a new lockscreen. While stock ICS only offers you two option, Unlock and Camera, the Motorola ROM also adds the option to launch the dialler and the messaging app. Other changes include Motorola's standard set of icons that are unchanged from the current Gingerbread build. The Camera app resembles the current Gingerbread camera app but includes the options added in ICS such as timelapse mode.

Motorola has also included its Webtop mode, which will available on select phones. Once you connect the phone to a TV or a display in Webtop mode, the screen UI resembles that of ICS' tablet mode and you can use your phone's display as a trackpad to control an on-screen pointer.

Then there are also the usual ICS features such as homescreen folder support, Face Unlock, screenshot capture facility, resizable widgets, etc.

You can catch some of the new features in the videos below but for the full set of videos click on the source link below.

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Galaxy S III expected to go on sale in Canada and US by June 20

According to a leaked screenshot by the MobileSyrup.com, the Samsung Galaxy S III is expected to go on sale in Canada on June 20. The screenshot says 'Pre-order today', although there is no way to tell when exactly 'today' is.

We can also see names of the four major Canadian carries, including Rogers, Bell, Telus and Virgin Mobile who will be selling the phone on launch day.

But it seems Canada won't be alone in getting the phone on June 20. TMoNews is reporting that T-Mobile in the US will also be getting the Pebble Blue variant on the same day, with the Marble White version arriving on July 11 and only in 16GB variant.

All of these are just rumors at this point and it's best not to dwell too much on them. We'll let you know when we hear something concrete.

Source 1 Source 2