Author: khellan

Source code for the HTC One, One X and Droid DNA – CM HTC One?

Along with delivering a developer edition of the HTC One uberphone (yes, its the 64Gb version; yes, there’s only a U.S. site currently up for buying one; no, the UK HTC site hasn’t got it, and yes, the developer edition can only be bought in dollars from when …

Viber beta for BlackBerry – free VoIP calling

It’s true – in this day and age, there is actually a company who keeps their word. When Viber announced free calling between its users for iOS and Android, they did say Blackberry 7 users would also receive the update at some point. We weren’t sure about that, …

Google Babel – one tool to rule them all – opinion

Anyone who’s been more than an occasional Google services user on their phone will recognise the problem.  You send an email to a friend through Gmail, follow up with a google talk chat session, send a post through Google+ to illustrate your point and may also have a …

Google Play gets facelift and a makeover

You may not see it on your device immediately, but you will, and it’ll thank you for it. The Google Play marketplace has gone through another iteration (one of our colleagues called it Google Play 4 due to the APK being 4.0.25). The formerly-named Market more has a …

HTC profits slump even further

If you thought the One would be… One handset to turn HTC’s profits around, you’d be wrong so far. Bloomberg has recently reported that the Taiwanese companies woes still haven’t ended with a new record low of NT$85 million (£1.83 million). Just to put things into perspective, this is its …

BlackBerry Q10 pricing and release date (ish)

Yes, the moment hardcore keyboard BlackBerry users have been waiting for inches ever closer. After rumours that the company had temporarily refocused on bringing BB10 to its 7 inch PlayBook, some sort of delay has seemed inevitable. Thankfully this won’t happen as Clove has posted that the release …

No Exynos 5 Octa-core love for UK Galaxy S4

The marvel of engineering that Samsung proclaimed as its octa-core chip will not be making it to Galaxy S4 handsets in the UK. Recombu has received a statement from Samsung reiterating…. The Samsung Galaxy S4 is equipped with a 1.9GHz Quad-core AP or a 1.6GHz Octa-core AP. The …

Foursquare for BlackBerry 10 updated: brings feature parity

About time that Blackberry is getting some love from Foursquare – it’s been a staple of blackberry users from its announcement on the original platform, now BB10 devices are getting the same love that Foursquare has splashed on iOS owners. Along with the usual smattering of bug fixes …

10 inch playbook – and 6 more devices on the way

It isn’t a leak when it’s announced by your director of product management at BlackBerry Middle East, who announced the existence and likely shipping date of the 10 inch BlackBerry PlayBook. Mike Al Mefleh made the comments during the BlackBerry users forum in Dubai, stating “We have a …

The rise and fall of HTC: Android gains wiped out

It was the mobile manufacturer success story. HTC, the company which started life as an ODM supplying low-cost network branded handsets, has now lost all the revenue it gained from being an early adopter of Android. Since it brought us the G1 back in 2008, it has been …

New firmware for Note II available on Three

Three have rolled out a firmware update for the Samsung Galaxy Note II, which is said to bring with it a number of bug fixes and enhancements. This went under the radar mostly because it brings device stability to Samsungs other flagship handset rather than a large number …

Thoughts – Round one of LTE auction now over

There’s still no guarantee when LTE will be available on all networks, but the UK is one step closer to getting ubiquitous “4G” data. The first round of the auction has now closed  and we now know what the allocation is.   Spectrum: For those who haven’t been …

Spotify beta client now showing at a Windows Phone 8 near you

It has been a while in coming, but Spotify have finally released a client for the updated Windows Phone 8. The functionality for an offline mode and syncing on mobile data is still in place, but it has been reported that as Spotify had an exception from MS, …

New version of Truphone App to hit BlackBerry 10 OS

Before the term ‘smartphone’ really meant anything to the mainstream other than using an S60 device and long before Skype or WhatsApp were the forces that they are today, this company Truphone was launched. The fact they’ve stayed true and consistently put out apps for BlackBerrys made me …

Put it up: Vodafone gets signal in The Shard

It’s a common problem – you hit a certain floor and all of a sudden, you’re finding it hard to get signal on your phone. Imagine you’re in The Shard, the tallest non-natural structure in Western Europe. It’s a lovely sunny day (I did say use your imagination), …

3G spectrum refarming for LTE?

It was all so easy for the network operators this year. Everyone bar EE bids for spectrum and then they can roll out LTE. However, OFCOM has released a consultation paper that prospectively will allow the other operators to re-use their existing 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2100Mhz spectrum and …

My 2013 wishlist – Khellan

Continuing the theme of our wishlists for 2013 here is my list of things I’d like to see in then next few months. 1. This is easy. Its at the top of the list: battery life. I’m really tired of being given decent handsets that don’t last the …

A week with…

  I’ve always been a two handset user whenever possible for more years than I’d like to think about. It helped me balance any deficiencies in any one handset, and whilst I’ve had a preference for one type of handset over the other for certain things, there was never a …

New BlackBerry phone pics spied in the wild

  We picked up the news on Christmas eve, but some of us weren’t able to post up in a timely fashion (I was busy doing Christmas things, my bad). However the BlackBerry has been spied and that traditional blurrycam has the pictures to prove it. As an …

Seven Bidders Announced for LTE spectrum auction

We knew the auction for LTE Spectrum was due to start in January 2013, but we didn’t know who would be bidding. Until now. 7 Bidders have finally been announced by Ofcom as qualified to offer us our lovely high speed, long distance cellular goodness. The bidders will …

Rogers: RIM touchscreen preorders now up

It won’t even be officially announced until the end of January, but preorders are already up for BB10 devices. Unfortunately for us in Blighty, its for the Rogers network in Canada, so they’re likely to be the CDMA variant of the handset, but at least there’s one network …

Coolsmartphone Xmas Gift Guide – Part 4

Some of the other writers are probably going to suggest something flashy, or at the least something you’ll be able to show off to your friends… But my recommendation for the one you love is proof that good things come in small packages. Since most still take micro …

Samsung Ativ S to hit Vodafone courtesy of Phones4U

A lot of us have been waiting for a chance to check out the new hotness that should be Windows Phone and now we’re one step closer. Phones4U has the Samsung Ativ S up on its coming soon page. Having a quick look around on the site, the …

Lumia 820 on pre-order for less than £21/mo

Whilst the marquee Windows Phone 8 devices of the HTC 8X and the Lumia 920 are going head to head in the claim for king of the Microsoft hill, the Nokia’s little brother has been announced for £20.50 in the Orange/T-Mobile co-branded EE stores. Not to be left …

Better batteries on the way?

We’ve all felt the pain. That feeling when you look at your phone and the battery level is all the way into the red, when you start thinking “This never happened with my old Nokia/Samsung/Sony Ericsson a couple of years ago”. So when I read that a Massachusetts-based …

Surface Shipping – So we can see them soon.. ish

  We hadn’t mentioned it earlier, but Microsoft UK managed to sell out of the stock it had available for pre-orders of the 32Gb Surface. So out of the three options (32Gb, 32Gb with touch cover, and 64Gb with touch cover), the first two options are off the …

Nexus 4 user guide published ahead of Google event

We won’t lie. Sometimes you get it wrong, but sometimes, you get it right – and releasing the user manual of the LG E960 aka the Google Nexus 4 before the phone has been announced can be taken as a little of both. Right for us, anyway. The …

iPad mini finally announced. Smaller… yet larger than Nexus 7

Apple finally announced the second worst kept secret in the mobile industry this evening along with a number of other new products. Amongst the updated iMacs at 21.5 and 27 inches, they also revealed their 13 inch MacBook pro, the 4th generation iPad (and changed the name of …

LG Optimus Nexus 4 existence confirmed

  We were amazed surprised happy to finally see the Nexus version of the LG Optimus G formally pre-announced by Amit Gujral, Head of Mobile Product Planning. In a reported announcement to IBNLive, Amit finally teased us with the technical specs of a 1.5 Ghz quad core processor …

iPad mini German pricing revealed – Rumour

The Apple rumour mill has been given more information to add to the rapidly increasing and still growing pile – this time possible prices and model versions have been spotted on a German bloggers site known as Flo’s Weblog. He’s posted a screenshot showing you could possibly get a total …

LG Optimus G previewed on YouTube

It’s not quite the next rumoured pure Google variant after the Galaxy Nexus, but the full manufacturer version currently called the LG Optimus G which you can now see on YouTube. There’s an almost marmite-level contrast of opinions on this phone from our team. Some of our team …

Time to steal the time? Apple borrows Swiss Clock’s image [updated]

There’s been a lot of interpretation of Steve Jobs when he referenced Picasso and his quote of “good artists copy, great artists steal”. Its been discussed before on our podcast (which by now most of you are listening to), and the general sentiment is that Jobs meant take …

HulloMail announces Alloha! Group Call Application

Hullomail, the fantastic cross-OS visual voicemail application has announced its new Group Calling proposition Hulloha! for Android. If this were an enterprise application, this would be called a conference call app, and the idea is the same. There are no hidden calling charges as the group calling number …

iPhone 5 delays for up to 4 weeks

It’s the 6th generation of the handset (iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5), its probably generated more column inches than any other phone this year, and to cap it off, the online Apple store has announced a delay of up 3-4 weeks. That’s …

Nexus 7 Storage Size Steps Up?

There’s been rumblings of a new Nexus 7 showing up on the interwebs recently. Currently the only two models available are 8Gb and 16Gb models, but Droid Life managed to grab a screen shot from the Carphone Warehouse inventory system which displayed a forthcoming 32Gb option. The information …

But how much? T-Mobile 4G confusion

As I’m due for an upgrade on T-Mobile, I started taking a look at the new LTE phones. Once you get to the T-Mobile site, I drilled into the handset details to find what the differences are –  and even if there actually are any between the Samsung …

Shut your mouth! Blackberry 10 time shifting on the camera

Not that all you Android and iPhone afficionado’s out there will notice or care, but the Blackberry Jam: America’s conference is underway, and along with the traditional sneak peeks at up-and-coming goodies, they promo’d their latest OS developments. Its been a while since we’ve had some truly simple …

Ofcom, Govt, telecoms LTE talks still not resolved

  We’d all like to see 4G rolled out throughout the country sooner rather than later. The latest report are that the talks designed to move the auction timetable up and to find ways of clearing out the spectrum to be under strain as it enters the final …

RIM rocks on with Blackberry 10

  “Because sometimes it just has to be said through music”. We suspect someone in RIM uttered those words, and to show the world that the RIM execs have a sense of humour, a music video was born and posted on youtube. One of the most amusing thing has …