19
Nov
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HTC One X+ Review: A Mid-Cycle Refresh Makes A Great Phone Even Better

Posted by in AT&T, News, One X+, Phone Reviews

The HTC One X was (and still is) a fantastic device thanks to its solid hardware, excellent build quality, and stunning display. But it's a little long in the tooth, partially because the newest high-end smartphones have both quad-core CPUs and LTE, and partially because in the smartphone world, anything that's 7 months old is (unfortunately) outdated.

That brings us to the HTC One X+, which is more of a mid-cycle refresh than an all-new model. It keeps the same basic frame and the outstanding display, but packs a more powerful version of NVIDIA's quad-core Tegra 3 CPU, and the AT&T variant even comes with LTE.

25
Oct
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Jelly Bean Updates Arrive To Unbranded Galaxy S IIIs In Nordic, Middle Eastern, And GME Countries

Posted by in Galaxy S III, Jelly Bean 4.1, News, Samsung

Samsung is definitely on a roll with the Galaxy S III updates - not a day goes by without a massive rollout of Jelly Bean to devices all over Europe, and now the Middle East as well. The company began sending Android 4.1.1 OTAs to the following territories:

Branded

  • Austria (T-Mobile)
  • Germany (O2, T-Mobile)

Unbranded

  • Middle East: Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, UAE
  • Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Mauritania, Pakistan
  • Nordic countries (NEE): Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greenland, Iceland

image Eivind

Thanks to Eivind for the screenshot

Here's the history of the Jelly Bean updates for the Galaxy S III so far:

24
Oct
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Jelly Bean Updates Roll Out To Unbranded UK, Switzerland, Luxemburg Galaxy S IIIs And Branded Ones In 8 Other Countries

Posted by in Galaxy S III, Jelly Bean 4.1, News, Samsung

The pace at which Samsung is pushing out Galaxy S III Jelly Bean updates is picking up steam in Europe with the much anticipated arrival of Android 4.1.1 for unbranded UK handsets. The Brits aren't the only ones getting it today - in fact, the list is quite sizeable. Here, check it out:

  • UK unbranded
  • Switzerland unbranded
  • Luxemburg unbranded (update: supposedly, Belgian S IIIs use the same version too)
  • Denmark (Three)
  • Bulgaria (Mobiltel)
  • Romania (Cosmote)
  • Ireland (Meteor, Vodafone)
  • Czech Republic (O2)
  • Sweden (Tre)
  • Croatia (Vipnet)

Not bad at all - looks like the next platform distribution update won't be as depressing.

22
Oct
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Samsung Pushes Out Jelly Bean To Unbranded Galaxy S IIIs In Germany And France (As Well As Bouygues)

Posted by in Galaxy S III, Jelly Bean 4.1, News, Samsung

Samsung continued the European rollout of Android 4.1.1 to Galaxy S IIIs today with updates going live for carrier unbranded handsets in France and Germany. Jelly Bean is also hitting SGS III devices on France's third largest mobile operator called Bouygues.

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Image via androidromupdate

To recap, here is how the JB update got pushed out all over Europe in recent weeks:

  • October 22: O2 in UK and Ireland; Vodafone in UK, Italy, Czech Republic, and Germany.
  • October 18: Hutchison Whampoa companies (Three, 3, H3G) in Italy, UK, Ireland, and Austria; Swisscom in Switzerland.
  • October 17: SFR in France; Vodafone in Spain and Romania; A1 in Austria; unbranded in Spain
  • October 15: Sweden (unbranded or Telenor, it's not clear - the CSC for the release is VDS)
  • September 24: unbranded in Poland

As always, check your update notifications, pull via Kies, or download from unofficial ROM sites SamMobile or Samsung-Updates.

22
Oct
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Jelly Bean Update For The Samsung Galaxy S III Goes Live On Vodafone And O2 After Brief Delays

Posted by in Galaxy S III, Jelly Bean 4.1, News, Samsung

European O2 and Vodafone Galaxy S III owners, it's finally your turn to check out Jelly Bean first hand. Following last week's updates on Hutchison Whampoa networks (Three/3/H3G), now O2 and Vodafone joined the party and started pushing out Android 4.1.1 to Galaxy S IIIs in at least the following locations:

  • O2: United Kingdom, Ireland
  • Vodafone: United Kingdom, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany

The Vodafone launch started today right on schedule, as per this post from a few days ago.

The O2 rollout was scheduled to begin on the 19th of October, but was delayed until today, the 22nd, as confirmed by several updates to this blog post on O2's forums:

image sgs3

Watch out for the update notification in the next few days or load up Kies for instant gratification.

02
Oct
OneXOneS

HTC Promises Jelly Bean For One X And One S To Begin Rolling Out In October

Posted by in Jelly Bean 4.1, News, One S (Ville), One X (Endeavor)

Tucked away in HTC's press release about the HTC One X+ and Sense 4+ was one tidbit that should make quite a few people happy:

The Android Jelly Bean with HTC™ Sense 4+ update is scheduled to begin rolling out for the HTC One™ S and HTC One™ X from October.

As most of you probably already know, Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) is the most polished version of Android yet. Coupled with some of the "enhancements" in Sense 4+ - namely, the improved camera software and the Get Started functionality - it should be quite a nice update. With the rollout scheduled to begin "from October," it seems safe to assume it should be out en masse by the end of the year.

16
Aug
2012-08-16_07h14_12

Xiaomi Phone 2 Announced, Packs Quad-Core S4 CPU, 4.3" 720p Display, MIUI, And A $310 Price Tag

Posted by in News, Xiaomi / MIUI

Chinese company Xiaomi (known for their popular ROM MIUI) has just announced a new phone, and this one looks to be every bit as impressive today as the original was when it was announced a year ago. The specs on the cleverly named Xiaomi Phone 2 stand out even in the world of quad-core superphones, and the company has managed to do so while maintaining a price point of just $310 USD.

  • 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 CPU (Adreno 320 GPU, 28nm)
  • 2GB RAM
  • 16GB memory
  • Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean)
  • 4.3" 720p IPS display
  • 2,000mAh battery
  • 8MP rear camera, 2MP front
  • 10.2mm thick
  • MIUI ROM
  • $310 USD
  • Launching in China in October

2012-08-16_07h03_00 2012-08-16_07h03_25 2012-08-16_07h03_51

The company claims some ultra-impressive benchmark results (above left), and we're inclined to believe them.

18
Jul
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Verizon 4G LTE Coming To 33 New Markets And Expanding in 32 Existing Markets On July 19th

Posted by in 4G, News, Verizon Wireless

You know what time it is: time for Big Red to light up some new areas with its hyperfast 4G LTE network. The lucky ones this month:

  • El Dorado/Magnolia and Russellville, Ark.
  • New London County, Conn.
  • Fort Pierce/Vero Beach and Melbourne/Titusville, Fla.
  • Columbus and Rome, Ga.
  • Burley, Idaho; Mattoon, Ill.
  • Anderson and Muncie, Ind.
  • Manhattan/Junction City and McPherson, Kan.
  • Lafayette/New Iberia, La.
  • St. Joseph, Mo.; Bozeman/Livingston, Kalispell and Missoula, Mont.
  • Goldsboro/Kinston, Roanoke Rapids and Rocky Mount/Wilson, N.C.
  • Zanesville, Ohio
  • Meadville and Punxsutawney/DuBois/Clearfield, Pa.
  • Orangeburg, S.C.
  • Sherman/Denison, Texas
  • Cedar City and Logan, Utah
  • Rutland/Bennington, Vt.
  • Lynchburg and Winchester, Va.
  • Bellingham, Wash.
  • Beckley, W.Va.

02
Jul
dist070212

Android Platform Distribution Updated: 10.9% On Android 4.0, 22.7% Still On 2.2 And Below

Posted by in Android OS, News
Last Updated: August 1st, 2012

Depending on how fanboyish you want to be you want to look at it, things are either getting better by the day, or still dismal as can be. First, the charts:

2012-07-02_22h19_09

Obviously, the good news is that in the past month, Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0+) has moved up from 7.1% to 10.9% - and considering there are hundreds of millions of devices running Android, that seemingly meager 3.8% is actually quite a few devices.

And then there's the bad news. First, the fact that ICS is the latest (and by far the best) version of Android and yet we're happy to see it on just under 11% of devices is sad; it's even worse that it's literally 8.5 months old.

01
Jul
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[Weekend Poll] Are You Happy With The Improvements Made In Jelly Bean?

Posted by in Jelly Bean 4.1, Polls
Last Updated: July 7th, 2012

This is the latest in our Weekend Poll series. For last week's, see Do You Regularly Rent Moves Through Google Play?

Jelly Bean isn't a huge evolution of Android like previous updates have been, but that's understandable given just how polished the OS has become. Still, as the company showed us on day 1 of I/O, things certainly have moved forward in quite a few ways (Ron provided a deeper look at some of them in his first Getting To Know Android 4.1 post). Probably the 2 biggest changes: massive optimizations and tweaks to make things very fast and smooth, and the addition of Google Now.

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