Samsung announces Galaxy Ace 2 and Galaxy Mini 2

Samsung has announced two new Android smartphones just a before the Mobile World Congress begins next week.

Galaxy mini 2

The first one is the Galaxy Ace 2, which will have a 3.8-inch, 800 x 480 resolution display, 800MHz dual-core processor, 768MB RAM, 4GB internal memory, 5 megapixel rear camera with 720p video recording, VGA front camera, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, GPS/GLONASS and a 1,500mAh battery.

Ace 2

Next up is the Galaxy Mini 2. It has a 3.27-inch, 480 x 320 resolution display, 800MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB internal memory, 3 megapixel fixed-focus rear camera with VGA video recording, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with DLNA, A-GPS and a 1,300mAh battery.

Both the phones will be running Samsung's TouchWiz on top of Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The Galaxy Ace 2 will launch in UK in April whereas the Galaxy Mini 2 will go on sale in France in March.

Read More

LG announces L7, L5 and L3 - will be shown at MWC 2012

The three Optimus L smartphones will feature square, thin metallic design with a textured leather-like panel on the back. They will also offer what LG calls "floating mass display" - a display closer to the surface, which should appear as if it is floating on it.

The Optimus L7 features a 4.3" display and will run on Android ICS out of the box. The Optimus L5 will offer ICS and a 4" display. Both are expected to hit the shelves in Europe in the first half of the year.

The more compact LG Optimus L3 has a 3.2" display and will run Android Gingerbread (2.3) at launch. Its availability in Europe should start in March.

We'll be getting to know the LG L7, L5 and L3 better at the MWC next week, so stay tuned for lots of photos, videos and hands-on impressions.

Read More

Panasonic uncovers Eluga specs, live hands-on photos pop up

As promised, Panasonic unveiled the specifications of their Android smartphone dubbed the Eluga, expected to debut on the European market this March.

The poorly named Eluga is powered by a dual-core 1GHz TI OMAP 4430 processor and 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory, which we have come to expect from high-end droids these days. At the front we find a 4.3-inch OLED display with qHD 960 x 540 pixels resolution.

It's also water- and dust-proof with NFC on-board. Remarkably, this hasn't made the device as thick as one might expect. The Eluga is just 7.8mm thick and weighs only 103grams, which, to bring it in a perspective, beats the Galaxy S II hands-down.

The reason for the phone's little hump at the back is the 8MP auto-focus snapper with image stabilization. Speaking of the back, underneath the back cover resides 1,150 mAh battery good for 300h of standby and 240 minutes of talk time.

The Eluga will run Android Gingerbread 2.3.5 when initially sold with Ice Cream Sandwich coming in the Spring of this year, or at least that's what Panasonic promises.

Pocket-lint.com have obviously managed to get their hands on the Eluga recently at the Panasonic Convention 2012 in Hamburg.

Read More

Qualcomm S4 chipset benchmarks promise amazing performance

A fresh batch of benchmarks of Qualcomm's S4 platform show just how powerful the new Krait cores are. The tests were run on a reference platform, but since we don't care about the rest of the hardware (screen, camera, etc.), just the chipset performance, these result are a good indication of what to expect.

Qualcomm S4 uses Krait cores, two running at 1.5GHz in the case of the MSM8960 that was used in the reference platform. Krait is better in almost every respect than the old Scorpion cores and as a result performance has skyrocketed in both single and multi threaded tests.

Linpack reports a whopping 106.8 MFLOPS in single-threaded mode and 218.2 MFLOPS in multithreaded mode. For comparison, a Tegra 3 chipset with four Cortex-A9 cores at 1.3GHz score 135.9 MFLOPS in the multi-threaded benchmark.

SunSpider and BrowserMark results top even the highly optimized Samsung Galaxy Nexus, though not by as much as we would have expected.

The GPU inside the Qualcomm MSM8960 is an Adreno 225, even though S4 chipsets are supposed to use Adreno 3xx GPUs. Still, on paper the 225 matches the PowerVR SGX543MP2, a.k.a. the GPU found inside the iPhone 4S.

GLBenchmark however tells a different story - when run in offscreen mode (so that it can be forced to render graphics at 720p resolution, regardless of the actual screen res), the Adreno 225 beats the Mali-400MP4 inside the Galaxy S II (but not by much) and falls quite short of the SGX543MP2. It lags behind the Tegra 3's GPU too.

Hit the source link to check out more benchmark results and an in-depth analysis of the MSM8960-based reference platform over at AnandTech.

Read More

Use of Waterproof Technology by iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3

The iPhone 4S was one of the most wanted headsets last year and reportedly this year as well. But, even for the iPhone 4S with all of its brilliant features, the competition to dominate the market was tough. Apple’s iPhone 4S’ toughest rival came in the form of Samsung Galaxy SII. The two very successful handsets became so famous, that rumors regarding new updates for the phones and about their successors started appearing in the Internet very soon after their launch.

There is a saying that there won’t be any smoke unless there is fire. There will be some truth behind most rumors. The rumored appearance of iPhone 5 and Galaxy SIII – the successors of iPhone 4S and Galaxy SII respectively, have been confirmed, although they haven’t been officially unveiled yet. The iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy SIII are high end handsets reportedly, with some cool features to best one another. Lately, a rumor concerned with a technology displayed at the CES 2012 came out.

The rumor claimed that iPhone 5 will feature the Liquipel Waterproof technology which was demonstrated at the CES 2012. The Liquipel is actually a waterproof coating for mobile devices and it does an impressive job. The report or rumor or whatever, came from a tipster, who works in a high post in one of U.K’s top independent Mobile retailers. If this report turns out to be true, then iPhone 5 will be one of the first handsets which would feature Liquipel technology. Reportedly, Samsung Galaxy SIII will also feature the same technology, according to the tipster.

We can’t just consider them as rumors. Considering a few facts, we would see that there is a possibility. Most mobile phone insurance claims are because of liquid damage. So obviously, mobile manufacturing firms would think about doing something about it and their best bet is Liquipel Technology apparently. So the iPhone 5 and Galaxy SIII might actually come with this technology.

Liquipel Waterproof coating technology is not the only one around. A firm named HzO is reportedly on talks with Apple and Samsung for integrating their new waterproof technology in the Apple and Samsung smartphones reportedly. As per the reports, Samsung was quite impressed by HzO’s waterproof technology.

Those who were lucky enough to witness the Liquipel demo live at CES would definitely vouch for the technology to be included in smartphones in the future. HzO’s waterproof technology isn’t far behind either.

But it still needs to be confirmed by Apple and Samsung. We can only guess which waterproof technology the iPhone 5 and Galaxy SIII will opt – Liquipel or HzO?

Read More