Cell Phone News
Nokia Lumia 720, 520 and 620
The Nokia Lumia 720 and Lumia 520 were announced at the MWC event in Barcelona yesterday and, while the Lumia 620 isn’t really ‘news’, we haven’t given it too much love either so we thought that now was a good time to rectify that. The Lumia series has been doing fairly well overall and, since the launch of Windows Phone 8 (WP8), we’ve noticed a marked increase in our personal observations of people walking around with a brightly colored Lumia in public and even in the general public’s awareness of Nokia’s growing presence as a brand.
Virgin Mobile & Boost Offer 4G LTE
Both Virgin Mobile and Boost have just released new 4G LTE coverage via the Sprint network and new phones which can access the 4G LTE speeds. Both the brands had previously offered 4G via WiMax with the flagship phone being the Galaxy S2 4G. Sprint, which owns both Virgin Mobile and Boost, is likely to use these brands to leverage even more super-fast devices on 4G LTE at a price discount to T-Mobile and to better go head to head with other pre-paid carriers Cricket and MetroPCS.
Google Glass Coming in 2013?
Google has released a new video demonstrating a more realistic look at what Google Glass could end up offering as a user experience. Less focused on providing a crazy heads-up display (HUD) for your life, the new Google Glass video is more focused on recording your life, accessing and referring to information easily and sharing pics, videos and experiences while keeping your hands free.
HTC One Launch Event
It’s a constant of the tech industry that no matter how many spec sheets, reviews and opinion pieces you read you’ll never really get a proper feel for a device until you hold it in your hands and use its key features. Fortunately for us, HTC held a belated HTC One launch in Sydney last night and we got to do just that.
HTC One Finally Officially Announced
The HTC One, formerly known as the HTC M7, has been officially unveiled at media events in the UK and New York. The powerful new flagship for HTC looks to be a real contender, offering up impressive hardware and some cool-sounding new features. Of course HTC has released great phones before, but has always seemed to be overshadowed by Samsung and Apple. This time round, if the HTC One makes good on its promises it just may find some of that market share that HTC so desperately wants.
Susan Crawford on Internet Inequality
Susan Crawford, author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age has been making tech headlines recently with her take on the current climate of America’s broadband infrastructure and market. Of particular interest to us are Susan’s comments on a US trend towards cultural inequality, with broadband access becoming a wedge between people of different income levels.
Nokia Obtains Graphene Grant
If you haven’t heard of graphene yet then you’re in for a bit of a surprise. Graphene is a material, first discovered in Manchester in 2004, that is so useful it’s been described as “ubiquitous” in application. Graphene is estimated to be between 100x and 300x the strength of steel, making if the strongest material yet discovered, it is the best transmitter of electricity yet discovered, the best transmitter of heat yet discovered, is transparent, is highly resistive to corrosion and even apparently lets nothing other than pure water molecules pass through it, making it potentially the best and most simple water filter yet discovered.
BlackBerry Q10 Preview
The BlackBerry Q10 comes in alongside, although perhaps will see a bit of a later release than, the touch-centric BlackBerry Z10. The Q10, as one may guess from its moniker, is a the QWERTY flagship for BlackBerry’s new BB10 operating system (OS). BlackBerry/RIM certainly hasn’t forgot its die-hard fans and the reason it saw such success in the business market for so long. BlackBerry devices really do sport some of the best, if not the best hardware keyboards of any smartphone and, while many users shy away from that route these days in favor of a larger screen, hardcore emailers and texters still find hardware QWERTY keyboards very useful.
BlackBerry BB10 Officially Unveiled
First things first: RIM is no more. The iconic creators of the BlackBerry handset line have done away with their traditional title and simply renamed the entire company “BlackBerry”, which makes perfect sense, really. The BlackBerry range of handsets has been RIM’s sole focus for a long time now, so the renaming should not only make things simpler, but also make the brand name seem more accessible to potentially new customers who won’t look silly in assuming that the company is named after the product or vice versa.
BlackBerry Z10 Preview
The BlackBerry Z10 is the first all-touchscreen flagship of the new BB10 OS. Unlike other attempts at touch-centric devices we’ve seen from BlackBerry in the past, the Z10 has solid specs on paper and even sports a modern, sleek design. The new BB10 UI will go far in deciding the popularity to which the Z10 will, or won’t, rise, but the phone itself still deserves attention. Set to be launched in March in the US, this week in the UK and next week in Canada, BB10 and the Z10 are finally within reach of the public.
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