Sony Xperia Z gets official pricing in China, ETA in New Zealand

Sony’s Xperia Z seems to be the most sought-after Android smartphone around (okay, maybe the second most), but we’re still waiting for actual shipments to start. Japan is likely to kick the festivities into gear in about a week, but before that can happen we should get some ETA and pricing updates in a few other key markets across the globe.

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Nexus 4 Wireless Charging Orb costs $59.99, not that it’s in stock yet

3D-print it out yourself (and add the appropriate electrical wiring) or buy it from a regular electronics retailer, the Nexus 4 Wireless Charging Orb will do its job, charge the Nexus 4 without any wires.
However, the accessory is not exactly available to Nexus 4 owners. Electronics retailer Pure Mobile is going to sell the Wireless Charging Orb for $59.99 to anyone interested, but the gadget is not exactly in stock at this time. So for now, all the store does is list the device.

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Sony’s Music Unlimited service now supports 320kbps streaming playback

Feeling the heat from the competition, Sony Network Entertainment International has announced that high quality streaming is now available on its Music Unlimited service.
If you don’t mind burning your data plan faster, you can turn on the high quality streaming option in the service’s settings. By high quality, it means you can enjoy listening to the songs in 320 kbps AAC format. While this might be old news for Spotify customers, it’s quite an upgrade for Sony’s, as it previously only supported 48 kbps streams.

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Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition for Android gets delayed indefinitely

Have you been waiting for the release of Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition for Android? A lot of people have, and many still are. Unfortunately, each and every one of those people are going to have to keep waiting a little longer for the app to be released, as the developers behind it have hit an inconvenient snag that has something to do with the final ship panel APK files. This is according to a tweet from the game’s creative director Trent Osner which first got posted earlier this month.

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Write once run everywhere: Codename One kit hits 100k downloads, exits beta

The native mobile app development kits of today are all vastly improved versions of the ones that came before them. With that being said, however, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done if they are to be used exclusively by experienced and novice app developers alike.

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5.3-inch Spice Stellar Pinnacle Mi-530 coming to India with 5MP front camera

There has been a steady stream of Android-flavored 5-inch handset announcements in India this year, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop any time soon. The latest supersized model to join the club is called the Spice Stellar Pinnacle Mi-530, and its highlight features include a 5.3-inch qHD screen, dual-SIM support, and a 5-megapixel front facing camera that’s billed as making it the first of its kind — at least in India. While it isn’t the first model in the world to feature a 5MP self-portrait snapper, it’s definitely helping to spread this seemingly ongoing trend.

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Google Play Music updated to version 4.5, gets new features, bugs squashed

Are you enjoying the built-in music player that comes pre-loaded on all new devices that are running the Android mobile operating system? If you are, then you’ll be glad to know that this app, dubbed officially as Google Play Music, has just been updated by Google once again. The latest update rolled in today, and it is now on version 4.5.9. So what exactly has been added — or removed — from the Google Play Music app as part of this recent update? A few new features and necessary bug fixes.

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Google throws Microsoft a bone, extends WP Exchange support until July 31st

Microsoft has a proprietary technology called Exchange Active Sync that they use for making sure your emails, contacts, and calendar entries are syned up across all your devices. Microsoft, being a company who wants to make money, charges other companies to use EAS. The open source community, who hates Microsoft almost as much as they hate paying for things, came up with some free standards that do the exact same thing as EAS. Android uses these standards, which are known as IMAP, CalDAV, and CardDAV.

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HTC doesn’t declare any war to the Android dev community after all but HTCRuu.com still not safe

A few days ago, a new report suggested that HTC is making a move against developers by taking down ROM websites that offer HTC firmwares for various devices, with one of such site being HTCRuu.com, which was approached by HTC and asked to remove custom ROMs.

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Leak: Vertu Ti: This is the hideous over priced Android phone oil barons want

Yesterday we filed a report that said Vertu, Nokia’s old luxury phone unit, was going to announce an Android powered smartphone at some point in February. We didn’t know what the device was going to be called, nor did we have any photos of it. Today that changes thanks to the Japanese website Blog of Mobile. What you’re looking at above is the Vertu Ti. It’s going to ship with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, it’ll have a dual core Snapdragon S4, the display is sadly limited to just 800 x 480 pixels, and worst of all is the battery: 1,250 mAh.

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