Hardware > Earlier Phones
Galaxy S4 radiant, but has black holes
First Look Samsung's Galaxy S4 is as wonderfully polished as you would expect from the Korean manufacturer's latest flagship, but the software the company says turns it into a “life companion” will be an acquired taste for many.
Samsung yesterday officially launched the S4 for Australians at a lavish event staged at Sydney's Opera House. …
Huawei preps new mobes to overhaul Apple
Huawei says it’s on track to almost double its smartphone sales this year with a target of 60 million units shifted, as it looks to peg back “superheroes” Samsung and Apple, but admitted its brand image is still holding it back from world domination.
Speaking to media at the firm’s annual global analyst event in Shenzhen on …
First batch of Firefox OS phones sells out in hours
The first batch of phones based on the Mozilla Foundation's open source Firefox OS has sold out, mere hours after they were announced for sale.
As we press the big, red Publish button on this story, Geeksphone, the Spanish startup that designed and built the devices, has shut down its online store, replacing it with a notice …
Yelling at mobes while driving just as bad as texting
Using voice-to-text tech to send messages while driving is just as dangerous as regular texting, a new study has found.
Drivers' response times doubled regardless of whether they were speaking or typing their messages, compared to when they weren't texting, the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University said.
The …
Review: Nokia Lumia 720
Nokia completed its Windows 8 range with two new models recently, including this midrange offering the 720. With a choice of five Lumias it's now clearer to see what Nokia hopes to achieve.
The 720 strikes me as the Ford Cortina of the Lumias, a well made mass market compact. The 720 has everything going for it except, perhaps, …
Turn off the mic: Nokia gets injunction on 'key' HTC One component
Nokia has said it bagged a court injunction in Amsterdam that effectively prevents HTC from using the microphones that are a "key" component of its HTC One smartphone.
The Finnish phone maker won a preliminary ban on the mikes, made by ST Microelectronics, stopping the firm from selling them on to HTC or anyone else.
"In its …
First Firefox OS developer phones to launch on Tuesday
Developers who are interested in building apps for the Mozilla Foundation's web standards–based Firefox OS will be able to get their hands on the first handsets running the open source platform beginning on Tuesday.
As The Reg has previously reported, the phones will be manufactured by Spanish startup Geeksphone and will be …
Report: Apple returned 8M shoddy iPhones to Foxconn
Foxconn has apparently botched a batch of iPhones, which Apple returned to the contract manufacturer because they were not fit for sale.
Details of just what went wrong are sketchy, as the source for this tale is an anonymous Foxconn staffer chatting to China Business. That report, after being forced through a couple of …
Review: Asus PadFone 2 phone-tablet combo
I thought the first Asus PadFone was a jolly good idea the moment I clapped eyes on it. Sadly it never made it to these shores but the PadFone 2 has. In a nutshell, what we have here is an Android smartphone that can be docked into a dumb tablet giving you not only a choice of two screen sizes but also the convenience of one …
Huawei Ascend Mate lands in Australia
Huawei is clearly hoping that 2013 will be the year that it shakes off the “cheap” image, but its Ascend Mate, first seen earlier this year at CES, still sports a notable $AU429 price tag.
But a second agenda is at work, with the 1280x720 resolution, 6.1-inch Ascend Mate based on Huawei's own silicon and a custom UI – both of …
Apple alert as half China's fanbois consider switch to Galaxy S4
It could be sweaty palm time at Cupertino after new research revealed that more than half of China’s loyal fanbois are thinking of switching their iPhones to a Samsung Galaxy S4, according to new data from market watcher TrendForce.
The Taiwanese firm’s research arm Avanti interviewed a representative sample of 3,000 smartphone …
Apple the victim after Chinese scammers exploit returns policy
The on-going saga over Apple’s “unfair” after-sales service in China has taken another twist after it was revealed that scammers exploited its returns policy to exchange fake parts for real ones, enabling them to build and sell new devices.
Five employees at an electronics store selling Apple goods were arrested in the Chinese …
BlackBerry slams Z10 returns report as 'false and misleading'
BlackBerry president and CEO Thorsten Heins has fired back at an article in The Wall Street Journal which cites a report that returns of the Z10 are outnumbering sales – and that report was just the latest bad news for the beleaguered smartphone manufacturer.
"Return rate statistics show that we are at or below our forecasts and …
Moist iPhone fanbois tempted with golden Apple shower offer
Apple has reportedly agreed to shake $53m (£35m) in change out of its pockets to settle a lawsuit accusing it of wriggling out of gadget warranties using a water-detecting tool.
Fanbois who brought their busted iPhones and iPods into Apple Stores for repair watched employees check the status of a Liquid Contact Indicator - which …
The Man Who Fell to Earth: Plane plummet plod probe phone
The man who spread himself across a street in Mortlake, London, after falling from an aircraft undercarriage has been identified. Police finally managed to crack open the SIM in his pocket and study it to discover who he was.
Jose Matada was the chap's name and he was 30 years old, the BBC tells us. He landed on Portman Avenue …
WTF is... H.265 aka HEVC?
Feature When Samsung unveiled its next-generation smartphone, the Galaxy S4, in March this year, most of the Korean giant’s fans focused their attention on the device’s big 5-inch, 1920 x 1080 screen, its quad-core processor and its 13Mp camera. All impressive of course, but incremental steps in the ongoing evolution of the smartphone. …
The gloves are on: Nokia emits super-sensitive £99 Windows Phone
Nokia's sub-£100 Lumia 520 has rolled out in the UK this week, alongside a keenly priced and attractive unibody sibling, the Lumia 720. Both were announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.
The Lumia 620 put a modern Nokia at a price point under £150, but now the slightly larger size has made it even cheaper. …
Android's US market share continues to slip
Apple may be taking its lumps these days – what with a falling share price, pesky activist investors, troubles in China, and the like – but there's one important area in which Cupertino is steadily gaining ground: US smartphone sales.
For the past 100 months, the stat-happy analysts at comScore have been tracking mobile-device …
Microsoft: 'Facebook Home just copies Windows Phone'
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg might think his company broke new ground by building its Facebook Home skin for Android around the idea of "people first," but according to Microsoft, all the social network has done is borrow a page from Redmond's playbook.
In a post to the company's official blog on Friday, Microsoft mouthpiece Frank …
Holden bakes Siri into Barinas
General Motors' antipodean outpost, Holden, is trying to put a bit of cool into its four-cylinder shopping trolley, the Barina, by integrating Siri into its electronics.
Well, not just cool: with a suitable iPhone running iOS 6 connected to its electronic innards, Siri will let drivers make “eyes-free” calls, and to avoid …
Steve Jobs to supervise iPhone 6 FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
Apple designed the next two versions of the iPhone while Steve Jobs was alive, it has been claimed.
San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón was told by an Apple representative that the next two iPhone models "preceded Tim Cook", according to a report in The Examiner.
He met with Apple’s government liaison Michael Foulkes …
Review: Jabra Revo Wireless headphones
I’ve tried a fair few wireless headphones over the past ten years, almost all of them unsatisfactory in one way or another. Many of the early ones were over-the-ear jobs with those round-the-back-of-your-head bands, but all suffered from either excessive weight - thanks to the on-board battery - or simply didn’t play for long. …
Facebook prepares to dominate Android
Facebook's upcoming Android announcement could see Zuckerberg & Co. take over smartphone homescreens, making the social network an ever-present companion for people with a thirst for e-validation.
The company will announce on Thursday an HTC phone that comes loaded with a Facebook app that supplants the traditional smartphone …
Smartphone running 'Facebook OS' said to debut this week
Facebook has sent out invitations to an event at its Menlo Park headquarters this week that many believe will see the launch of a new, Facebook-branded smartphone – and an Amazon phone may not be far behind.
Facebook's invites themselves were fairly cryptic. "Come See Our New Home on Android" was all they said, along with the …
I am NOT a PC repair man. I will NOT get your iPad working
Something for the Weekend, Sir? “My nephew bought me one of those iPad things for my birthday.”
My heart sinks – I can already tell where this is going.
I’m at a neighbour’s house party, the time is last summer, and one of the older partygoers is about to tell me that some new-fangled technology is too much for him to cope with now that he has reached the age …
Apple files patent for iPhone with wraparound display
Apple, whose iPhone has been criticized for having a display that's relatively small when compared with smartphones such as the Samsung S4 and HTC One, has filed a patent application that proposes a novel solution: a display that wraps around the entire handset.
Well, not "wraps around," per se, but rather "wraps within." Patent …
Review: HTC One
A year ago, I finished off my review of HTC’s One X by predicting great things for it and its maker. And then Samsung’s Galaxy S3 merrily outsold it ten to one. Thing is, that wasn’t a case of me being a colossal twit. The One X is the better phone - it’s better made, better looking and better to use.
Luckily for HTC, the new …
Another iPhone passcode bypass spell revealed
Apple's recent release of iOS 6.1.3, complete with fix for the weird keypress sequence that allowed access to and export of iPhone address books, seems to have been just a little bit futile after a new bug with the same effects emerged.
The source of the new method is someone or something called Vbarraquito, whose youTube …
Samsung: We're doing smart watches too
It's Cupertino's turn to capture a flag planted by Samsung: while Apple has been content to allow leaks to fuel rumours about its “smart watch” plans, its Korean nemesis/rival/copycat has gone public with its project.
In a discussion that will probably warm the hearts of patent lawyers worldwide, Samsung's Lee Young Hee, …
Review: Sony Xperia Z
How it must gall Sony to find that along with the likes of HTC, ZTE and LG it is now firmly in the second division of Android phone makers, floundering in the spume and wake of the global sales monster that is Samsung.
Sony Xperia Z Xperia Z: a bit of a slab
Personally I blame a ludicrously complex model portfolio as much as …
BlackBerry CEO: iPhone past its prime
From BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins' point of view, Apple's iPhone is growing rather long in the tooth.
"The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about, is now five years old," Heins told The Australian Financial Review.
Not that Heins has no respect for the iPhone – it's more that …
SanDisk cops to malfunctioning Micro SDs in Galaxy S3s
Certain Samsung Galaxy S3 users will barely have noticed the rollout of the S4 uberphone, they've been too busy concentrating on the flash card problems in their current smartmobes. Flash-card shuffler SanDisk, meanwhile, has told El Reg that it has issued a fix.
User paulnptld talked about this on the Android Central Samsung …
BlackBerry CEO: Our vibrating devices will satisfy most needs
BlackBerry CEO and President Thorsten Heins has declared the organisation he leads is “not a phone company” but a mobile computing company whose networks and operating system can be used to connect a wide range of devices.
Speaking in Sydney, Australia, at the formal local launch of the new Z10 handset, Heins bridled at …
Windows Phone 8 support to end in 2014
If you're shopping for a new mobe on a two year contract and like the look of a Windows Phone, chances are you'll be compelled to undergo an OS upgrade or face using a handset that's not supported by the end of your deal.
The Reg offers this advice with a tip of the hat to Italian site Plaffo, which pointed out a Microsoft …
Samsung's new co-CEO: 'Windows isn't selling very well'
Samsung says it will continue to produce Android phones even as it puts its weight behind the competing Tizen OS, but there's one software partner the South Korean mobile maker isn't so bullish on: Microsoft.
"Smartphones and tablets based on Microsoft's Windows operating system aren't selling very well," Samsung mobile chief J. …
Samsung Galaxy S 4: A slim stripper with palms hovering over its body
Modern smartphones are little more than promotional vehicles for manufacturer services, and the Galaxy S4 is a perfect example, arriving heavily laden with all the things Samsung thinks we should be doing with them.
Like a respectable lapdancer, the Galaxy S4 responds to a roving eye and fingertips hovering over its slim body. …
LG: Oi! Samsung's not the only one with eyeball-tracking smartphones
LG announced that its Optimus G Pro smartphone will pause video playback when it detects that its owner has stopped looking at it - just hours before Samsung unveiled the same feature for the Galaxy S4.
Eyeball tracking, using the mobile's built-in camera to scroll pages and notice when the user is no longer staring, is set to …
Samsung's new Galaxy S 4: iPhone assassin or Android also-ran?
After weeks of hypegasmic drum-beating at a level unusual for the South Korean consumer-electronics giant, Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S 4 at an embarassingly over-the-top, show-biz–infused gala on Thursday evening.
Held in New York City, the extravaganza overshadowed the fact that the Galaxy S 4 appears to be a fine Android …
Apple's marketing honcho Schiller attacks Android, Samsung
When a company says that it's not worried about a competitor, it's a safe bet that it's worried about a competitor. And when that company is the notoriously close-mouthed Apple and its competitor, Samsung, is about to release a new version of its successful Galaxy S smartphone, you can double-down on that bet.
"At Apple we know …
First Samsung Galaxy S4 review leak: Stop FONDLING, start FINGERING
Samsung's new Galaxy S4 smartphone isn't being launched until 2300 GMT today - but the first review is already online with technical specifications and videos of it in action.
And it suggests there's no need to touch the mobile's touchscreen to make it work.
A few journalists bagged early access to the new handset on condition …
Medicos hack iPhone into lab 'scope
Take an iPhone, a cheap camera lens, double-sided tape and lab slides and what do you get? In Tanzania, a device that helps diagnose intestinal worms.
While it may sound trivial, the medicos say that there are infections in around two billion people worldwide, mostly children, and they can cause malnutrition. It's easy to …
Enormo-display Apple iPhone prototype surfaces
For you iPhone users who drool over the large displays of such Android handsets as ZTE's 5.7-inch Grand Memo or Samsung's 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II, cast your eyes on what could have been:
Early iPhone prototype
The iPhone that could have kept RS-232 relevant for another decade (source: Ars Technica; click to enlarge)
The …
