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.

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.

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.

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

Following yesterday's "L" teaser LG has officially announced three new droids - the L7, L5 and L3. All three devices will be shown at the MWC next week.

The Optimus L3, L5 and L7

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.

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

As promised yesterday, 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.

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.

   
Linpack benchmark results for Qualcomm S4 MSM8960 and Tegra 3 (single and multithreaded)

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.

How The Pirate Bay was reduced to just 90MB of data

Famed for its vast array of torrents and infamous within the film, television and music industries, The Pirate Bay has become one of the most well known and infamous torrent sites on the web.

Following its recent switch to the using magnet links however, its also become far more space efficient. So much so, one user decided to take the entire library of Pirate Bay torrent links and condense them onto a single USB flash drive.

With over 1.6 million torrents, it’s easy to see the appeal for those who are fans of file sharing and depending on the files in question, easy to understand why such a site would be likely to come under fire from big content creators.

Carbon app for Twitter now available on Windows Marketplace

Twitter users using Windows Phone 7 devices have been waiting for this one for quite some time now and it has finally released. The Carbon app is now available on the Windows Marketplace and can be purchased for $1.99.

Although it is a bit unusual for a Twitter client to charge money for you to use it, this one promises to be well worth the price. Carbon makes great use of the Metro UI to create a visually brilliant interface. But it’s not just a pretty app and comes with all the important features built-in, such as multi-account support, Read Later, image upload, custom URL shortening, threaded direct messages and image & video previews.

Nokia Public Transport drops its beta moniker, wants to show you the way on your Belle device

First introduced as a beta several months ago, Nokia Public Transport has made its way into a commercial release. As its name suggests, the Nokia Belle app is ready to help you navigate your way around the transportation systems of about 80 cities and urban areas.

The application lets you search for any address in the supported locations. It also gives you the opportunity to find different points of interest such as hotels or restaurants. You can save your favorite locations on the application’s home screen for easy access.

In case you are a Nokia Lumia user and feel a bit jealous about the app being available only for Belle users, don’t despair. A Windows Phone version of Nokia Public Transport is already in the works.

You can download the application on your Nokia Belle device here. Feel free to drop us a line with your impressions in the comments section below.

Source

Here's a 1080p sample video from the LG Prada 3.0

UK online retailer Clove has uploaded a 1080p sample video from the LG Prada 3.0 on its blog. The video gives us a look at what the 8 megapixel camera on the Prada 3.0 is capable of.

As you can see from the video above, the quality seems quite decent. We did notice some blurring around edges, though, as the camera was panned around. Also, the dynamic range of the camera isn't particularly great, which resulted in the sky being consistently washed out in the video. The details, however, seemed quite good.

Unfortunately, we couldn't see how the camera copes with moving images, or what the audio quality is like or how it performs under low light. For that, we will just have to wait till we get our hands on the phone ourselves.

Source

Instagram update brings new photo-enhancing effect, new filter and updated UI

The highly popular Instagram app was recently updated and brought a handful of new features and changes. First of all is the new Lux effect, which brings out more detail in your images. It works a bit similar to the HDR function built-into the iPhone’s camera and brings out the details in the dark as well as light areas of the picture. This effect can then also be accompanied by a filter.

Other changes include the addition of a new filter called ‘Sierra’ and a redesigned interface that uses an updated header and menu buttons for a simpler and more refined look. Instagram has also added tappable notifications, where tapping on a notification will take you to the relevant image, comment or profile page in the app.

Finally, a less advertised addition is one where the app now asks you before it uploads your contacts to its servers to find your friends who may also be using the service. This was probably done after the recent controversy with the Path app, where it would upload your entire contact list to its servers without your permission.

Sony looking into porting Vita OS to smartphones and tablets, smartphones apps to Vita platform

If you thought the OS on the PlayStation Vita would be limited to that device, think again. It seems Sony is looking into porting the Vita OS onto smartphones and tablets. This OS has apparently been designed by Sony to be expandable and can be used for powering smartphones and tablets. They may not be in a hurry to port it over on to other platforms right now but it is certainly something they could do down the line.

Another thing of note is that Sony is also going to port smartphone apps over to the PSVita. Sony’s deputy president Kunimasa Suzuki said that they will be putting in energy in building up the PlayStation Suite for this very purpose. Unfortunately, no word on whether PSVita games will appear on other platforms, although that does seem highly unlikely.