Disney’s Toy Story smashes its way to Google Play [video]

Have you ever wondered what Angry Birds would look like if it had been starred by the gang from Toy Story instead? Well, wonder no more, as that seems to be the basic idea behind Disney’s latest game, Toy Story: Smash It! – albeit with an added 3D twist.

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Alien VS Predator: Evolution is now available via Google Play

Trouble between aliens and predators has been brewing since August of last year, and it quickly escalated to epic levels last month. Instead of leaving it to fate, you get to decide which extra-terrestrial species will come out on top in this bloody battles.

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Good news for Samsung: Judge Lucy Koh cuts fine for Apple patent infringement from $1B to $599M

This will be good news for Samsung and its stakeholders — including investors and Samsung device users. Judge Lucy Koh, who presided over the Apple vs. Samsung patent lawsuit that was decided in favor of Apple in August of 2012, has cut down the damages that Samsung was ordered to pay.

Originally, the jury found Samsung guilty of patent infringement and ordered it to pay Apple US$1.049 billion in damages. However, Judge Koh said the jury made a mistake in computing for damage. Specifically, they made two errors.

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Sony to launch the Xperia Z in India on March 6, pre-order is now live in Indonesia

We told you last month that Sony’s behemoth of a phone, the Xperia Z, is likely to come to India. If you’re still wondering whether it’ll ever see the light of day, here’s some encouraging news that will put your doubt to rest.

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The Chromebook Pixel project: hardware review

The Chromebook Pixel is the new darling of the Chrome world, meant specifically for developers and those who are in the market for a high-end device. In engaging in this project, I made the Pixel my only device. After five days of extensive testing, it’s time for a full hardware review. Is it worth the steep price tag, or should you leave this one alone?

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Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8.0 gets renamed as Galaxy Note 510 in India

Fresh from its official unveiling at the Mobile World Congress 2013, where we had the pleasure of taking the Galaxy Note 8.0 for a quick ride, the latest member of the Note family was also introduced by Samsung in India, but not without first making some changes to its name.

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Sprint releases the “Force” handset for $49.99

There are a great numer of smartphones I could recommend in the low to mid-end category, but does Sprint’s new handset, manufactured by ZTE, offer anything to set it apart from the competition?

Well quite frankly it’s nothing special; this smartphone is fairly standard when it comes to mid-range hardware and doesn’t offer anything that you can’t find for cheaper elsewhere.

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ZTE Grand Memo, Grand S, LG Optimus L II, Galaxy Note 8 and more get priced in Germany

Germany. The land of poets and thinkers, schnauzers and bratwursts, aspirin, Adolf Hitler and… Claudia Schiffer. And now the land where some of the most highly anticipated Android devices of the early 2013 have been priced.

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Type Hindi text faster with Google’s new Hindi Input app

As anyone who has to regularly type in two or more languages can tell you, switching between languages or even typing apps is a major pain in the butt. The hassle is especially aggravating when the two languages don’t share the same script.

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Flexible displays are still three years away, according to Corning

If you were looking forward to some futuristic bendy computer built from one of those flexible displays, that we’ve been hearing about on and off for the past year, then you will be waiting a little longer I’m afraid. Sadly Corning has said that it still thinks the technology is years away from being released, at least in the form of bendable displays.

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Archos unveils 13-inch FamilyPad 2 tablet with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

Archos has a very balanced and diverse budget-friendly tablet offering, including a couple of undervalued greats like the Gamepad and 101 XS. But one of the most eccentric gadgets released by Archos lately is definitely the FamilyPad.
The thing is more like a (barely) portable TV set than a tablet, sporting a beastly 13.3-inch display. It wasn’t the first of its kind, following on the footsteps of the herculean Toshiba Excite 13, but, believe it or not, it’s the first to warrant a follow-up.

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AT&T’s Xperia TL gets Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update

Sony’s Jelly Bean counter, which has been especially set up for Xperia T owners, has been serving satisfied customers all over the world for a month now, except those in the US.
If you own the Xperia TL, the AT&T variant of the phone, no longer will you have to look at your international cousins with envy, as the carrier has started rolling out the Android 4.1.2 software update for the handset.

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Google patent hints at tablet UI that adapts to the way you hold the device

With legal wars escalating and patent trolls running amok, technology companies often recourse to patenting even the most outlandish ideas, in a bid to gather as much intellectual property as possible.
In many cases, the applicant is not even close to turning the idea into reality, so we can’t rely on patent applications to predict future products. But from time to time, we can get a tantalizing glimpse of what’s to come.

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FCC to investigate the ban on cellphone unlocking

Back in January it became illegal to unlock your cellphone in the United States without the express consent of your carrier, preventing law abiding users from switching networks without having to buy a new handset.
The decision was made after it was ruled that software used in smartphones and other devices is the intellectual property of the developer, therefore as users don’t own the software they have no right to break network locks.

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ZTE U9810 smartphone leaks with dual-core CPU and 4 GB of RAM (?!?)

We’ve been picking up plenty of bonkers stories lately from China, including one about a phablet with a 32 MP camera (!), but nothing could ever beat today’s report.
According to GizChina, ZTE is working on a U9810 phone that’s going to pack 4 GB of RAM. Uhm, what?!? Four? Why not 14? Or 40? It would sound equally as insane, and, to be frank, as useless and idiotic.

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Verizon: Galaxy Nexus to receive a software update soon

Back in November, we wondered out loud about why Verizon’s Galaxy Nexus was still stuck on Android 4.1.1, even though the GSM variant was already sporting Android 4.2.1. Four months on, not only has the Galaxy Nexus reached its end-of-life status on Big Red, but the once flagship device is still stuck on the same version of Jelly Bean.

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OUYA shipping out to Kickstarter backers on March 28th

If you’ve been eagerly twiddling your thumbs waiting for your OUYA to arrive then there’s now less than a month left to go, providing you backed the project on kickstarter that is. Over 10,000 backers will receive their OUYA come the end of the month, but the rest of us will still have to wait until June for the full retail launch.

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iFixit: Kindle Fire is the easiest to repair Android tablet, iPads and Surface Pro toughest overall

There are probably hundreds of ways you can rank the best and worst tablets around. Most of you do it by display size and crispness, performance or build quality, but how about repairability?
True, tearing a tab apart and then putting it together with your bare hands and a Phillips screwdriver are not the first things to come to mind when scouring the online stores for the best deal. But wouldn’t it be nice to know that you could easily do that if you really needed to?

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Sony C670X leaks, new Xperia Z brother: 4.8-inch display, Snapdragon 600, Android 4.2 Jelly Bea

The recently announced Xperia Z is off to a good start when it comes to sales, although Sony isn’t ready to announce millions of shipments yet, and the Xperia ZL will also hit various markets as well. But these aren’t the only new Xperia models you should keep an eye out for this year.
Xperia Blog reports that a Sony C670X is in the works, a 4.8-inch handset that’s supposed to be similar to the Xperia Z (codenamed C660X). The new phone should be launched in mid 2013 and is said to feature a Full HD resolution display (1920 x 1080,) which means it will offer a higher Pixel Per Inch (PPI) density since it’ll sport a slightly smaller display.

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Samsung Galaxy S4 to come in two colors, three capacities, new report says

Samsung is getting ready to unveil its fourth-gen Galaxy S model, with the special event set to take place on March 14 in New York – where we’ll be present to cover the whole show for you – but meanwhile we get to look at more Galaxy S4 rumors.
Sam Mobile writes that the Android maker will sell six Galaxy S4 versions later this year. We’re looking at two colors, black and white, and three capacities, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB:

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DigiTimes: Samsung wants to sell 1 million Galaxy Note 8.0 units per month

Now that Mobile World Congress is over, it’s time to digest the news and see what happens over the next 12 months. Will LG’s massive portfolio of smartphones fly off store shelves? Will HTC’s One flop? Will Sony’s experiment with Firefox OS turn into something that’s actually desirable? And let’s not forget about Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8.0, will people buy it?

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Samsung drops Jelly Bean source code for international Galaxy Note

If you own the international variant of the Galaxy Note, you’re more than likely already enjoying Jelly Bean and the plethora of new features that it comes with, seeing that Samsung pushed out the software update last month.
Especially for developers and tinkerers, the company has another treat up its sleeve, as it has made the source code for the new software available to download for all.

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Here are the best 5 smartphones we’ve seen at MWC 2013

Aaand it’s over. Too soon, too uneventful, but what can you do? After all, it’s not like we expected MWC 2013 to blow our socks off. And it didn’t. Not in the least. In fact, I challenge you to name three super-awesome devices you saw in Barcelona for the first time. You got ten seconds.

What, you can’t even name two? How about one? That’s bad, but we shouldn’t make a huge fuss of it. It’s not like there weren’t uber-cool gadgets on display. There were, only they weren’t there exclusively or for the first time ever.

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Google’s CFO says the next few phones from Motorola aren’t going to impress you

Google’s Chief Financial Officer, the guy who is responsible for balancing the company’s checkbook, just told a room full of analysts at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference that the next few phones from Motorola are going to blow. He didn’t exactly use the word “blow”, but he did say that the as yet to be announced devices will not be up to Google’s standards.

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Google Play users in Taiwan can now purchase paid apps again

In 2011, Google decided to pull all of its paid apps from the Taiwan Google Play store as a response to the Taiwanese government’s decision to place a fine of NT$1 million or about $33,800 USD following claims of Google’s failure to comply with the country’s consumer protection law. This rendered Taiwan-based Android device users unable to purchase any apps at all from the one official source of Android apps in the world.

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Bell and Virgin HTC One S users get Android 4.1 Jelly Bean upgrade

Last month, we told you about the forthcoming Jelly Bean upgrade for users of the HTC One S under Telus. And a few weeks ago, we published a similar news story, only for users of the same phone under Three UK. Guess who’s going to get their hands on the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean upgrade software next?

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Android VP of Engineering: Google treats Motorola “just like HTC or Samsung”

Google has just told the press, yet again, that they treat Motorola like a separate company. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Vice President of Engineering for Android at Google (pictured above), told C|Net that Google treats Motorola like they’re just another partner. That there’s a firewall between the two companies. That the Nexus program is still open to everyone.

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Samsung patent claim against Apple rejected by Japanese court

As Samsung gets ready to launch what is arguably the world’s most highly-awaited Android smartphone right now, that is the Samsung Galaxy S4, it’s also busy with its numerous patent claims filed all over the world against one of its biggest competitors — Apple. It’s been years since the Korean company first started battling with Apple over patents, and the end still doesn’t seem to be in sight. Today, Samsung suffered a new loss when a Tokyo District Court rejected its allegations that Apple violated some of its patents in certain models of the iPhone.

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HTC Zoe Share goes live, hosts shared media captured through HTC One

If you’ve followed the news surrounding HTC’s latest Android-powered flagship smartphone called the HTC One, then I’m sure that you already know about one of its most interesting camera-related features, which is called HTC Zoe. Yes, it’s the feature that lets users take pictures and record snippets of high-definition video simultaneously. It’s one of the main features of the HTC One.

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Aptina’s new camera sensors capture video in 4K at 30 FPS, 1080p at 96 FPS

The megapixel race, according to HTC, is stupid. Don’t tell that to Aptina though, who just announced two new camera sensors, the AR1230 and the AR1330. The former is a 12 megapixel sensor, while the latter is a 13 megapixel part. Both can capture 1080p video at 96 frames per second; more importantly, both also capture 4K video at 30 frames per second.

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Leak: LG Optimus LTE III: 720p HD screen, 4G LTE, and Samsung design

How many phones did LG announce at Mobile World Congress this year? It’s OK if you don’t know the answer, because let’s be honest with each other for a second, nothing in LG’s portfolio really stands out. Despite that, let’s try and run through everything: You’ve got the new L series II devices, the L3II, L5II, and L7II, then you have the two F phones, the F5 and the F7, and let’s also not forget about the LG Optimus G Pro, which was announced once in Japan, once in America, and now yet another time in Europe.

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Real Racing 3 arrives in some countries, requires in-app purchases to be enjoyable

Electronic Art’s Real Racing 3 is finally here via the Play Store, at least for international Android users. The North American listing doesn’t work just yet, but with EA freemium approach for the game, you might not be missing much.

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Strand-1 and Google Nexus have successfully been fired into space

Earlier this month we reported that the Nexus One would soon become the first smartphone to be launched into space, attached to the Strand-1 nanosatellite. The Strand-1 satellite has now left our planet as scheduled, with the Nexus One in tow.

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Alcatel One Touch Snap and One Touch Snap LTE unveiled at MWC

We’ve seen the Alcatel One Touch Idol X and even an Alcatel Firefox OS-based handset at MWC, but the company isn’t done yet. Alcatel has now unveiled two more handsets, the One Touch Snap and One Touch Snap LTE.

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T-Mobile 4G LTE network complete in Las Vegas and Kansas City

T-Mobile’s 4th quarter earnings report is in, with revenues of $4.9 billion marking the carrier’s second consecutive quarter of sequential growth. Alongside the company’s earnings report also comes some new information about the T-Mobile’s 4G LTE plans going forward.

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Going green: the paper nano-SIM

Businesses are going green in an attempt to become more environmentally responsible. You read stories about designing green buildings, streamlining operations and even finding alternative energy sources, if only to reduce the carbon footprint. But sometimes it’s in the simple things that we can make a change. Take for example your mobile phone’s SIM card.

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Storage Options intros £110 Scroll Excel 3 tab with JB and 1.6 GHz dual-core CPU

Asus and Google’s Nexus 7 provides arguably the best bang for the buck in the 7-inch tablet niche, but what if you want something a little cheaper? The Acer Iconia B1 is definitely a good choice, but let’s face it – it doesn’t even come close to the N7 hardware-wise.
How about the Scroll Excel 3 from Storage Options? What do you mean, you’ve never heard of Storage Options? They’re the guys that brought the £120 Scroll Evoke back in December 2012.

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Rogers HTC One to cost $149.99 on a new three-year contract

Canadian carrier Rogers on Wednesday made its HTC One available for pre-order via its Online Reservation System. Those that are eager to snag a HTC One from Rogers will have to make a down payment of $40 to secure their purchase.

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HTC One X, One X+, One S, and Butterfly to get Sense 5 in “a few months”

Love it or hate it – Sense is an inseparable part of HTC’s Android offerings, and it’s not going anywhere soon. While past Sense iterations have been pretty cartoonish, the latest version of the UI overlay, Sense 5, which can be found on the HTC One, has been majorly simplified.

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Ex-Apple marketing guru Guy Kawasaki now advising Motorola

Apple’s former chief technology evangelist Guy Kawasaki has taken a job as an advisor to Motorola. His remit at Motorola includes product design, user interface, marketing, and social media. One of his first social media tasks has been to setup the Mobile Devices Google+ community.

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Sony unleashes the Xperia Z in more European countries

Earlier in the week, Sony’s head honcho Kaz Hirai said that the company’s flagship handset, the Xperia Z, will be up for grabs in 60 countries very, very soon. If you live in Europe, today marks the day when the device is finally hitting more store shelves across the continent.

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Vodafone UK opens HTC One pre-orders, only on-contract for now

The stakes are higher than ever for HTC’s flagship, confirmed to be the One and only of its kind, but so far the 4.7-incher looks like it can handle the pressure. Expected to land on 185 networks and retailers by the end of March, the One is closing in on its UK release.

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Amazon starts taking pre-order for the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 in Japan

Back in October of last year, Amazon packed the new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD – the 7-inch model only — into its suitcase en route to Japan, where the online retailer giant also launched its Kindle Store.

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Entry-level Huawei Ascend Plus smartphone leaked en route to TracFone

Anyone keeping count of all of Huawei’s new Ascend phones? Well, you can add one more to the list. This new guy is simply called the Ascend Plus, although nothing about it feels like a “plus” over Huawei devices released this year. Or last year, for that reason.

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Samsung wants to make a splash with the Galaxy S4, invites people in Times Square for launch

Yesterday, Samsung kicked off the tease campaign that is preceding the launch of the Galaxy S4, and just as I expected, the hints about the new superphone are beginning to trickle in.
Samsung Mobile took to Twitter to invite the public to New York’s iconic Times Square for the launch of the new Galaxy S4. The invitation mentions that attendants will get to watch the livestream of the event and “experience Samsung’s new flagship smartphone”.

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Huawei’s 5-inch Ascend G710 smartphone gets outed online

We’ve seen Huawei introduced several new devices at MWC 2013, but it seems the phone maker has forgotten to take the Ascend G710 to the big event. Thanks to the eagle eye of @evleaks, we have some information of the device’s innards, picture included.

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Galaxy S4 tops Browsermark 2.0 browser benchmark well ahead of its launch

The Galaxy S4 is not even official and it looks like it has already crawled atop of the Browsermark 2.0 browser benchmark.
According to RightWare, a GT-I9500 device – which everyone seems to agree it’s the model number of the Galaxy S4 – running Build JOP40D (or Android 4.2.1) and Mobile Google Chrome 25 managed to score 2710 in testing thus beating all other smartphones out there:

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Could Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie be based on Linux 3.8 kernel?

Google is apparently working on the recently released Linux 3.8 kernel, a new report reveals, and we’re certainly going to wonder whether Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie will be based on the new kernel.

Phoronix speculates that it may be too early to release a Key Lime Pie OS based on Linux 3.8 given that Android 5.0 is expected to be unveiled in less than three months from now, at Google’s 2013 I/O event. But while “the work is labeled as ‘experimental,’” it seems “to be evolving fast,” which sounds interesting, although we have no way of confirming what Key Lime Pie will be based on at this time.

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LG Optimus F5 MWC hands-on preview [video]

With one foot on the plane home, our own Joshua Vergara is putting his finishing touches on the most epic MWC 2013 coverage on the web with a hands-on video preview of the LG Optimus F5.
The F5 is not to be mistaken with its bigger brother, the F7, or with its distant cousins in the L II clan, the L3, L5 and L7 II. Confusing stuff, we know, but bear with us for a second, will you?

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LG Optimus L7 II first look and hands-on preview [video]

We’re just about ready to wrap up our epic coverage of what’s definitely been an un-epic MWC 2013, but not before offering you a couple of extra hands-on video previews from Barcelona.
We’ve taken quick looks at the LG Optimus G Pro, Samsung Galaxy Note 8, Asus Padfone Infinity, HP Slate 7, Asus Fonepad, Sony Xperia Tablet Z, ZTE Grand Memo, Huawei Ascend P2, LG Optimus F7 and Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 so far, but we’re not done yet. What, you thought our “Eat, Sleep, Android” motto was a joke?

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