Samsung Galaxy Note II US review: The Beast Unleashed

Following closely the footsteps of its international sibling, the US Samsung Galaxy Note II takes on our review course. Just like its smaller brother, the Galaxy S III, the Samsung Galaxy Note II is launching across all major carriers.

Samsung Galaxy Note II US version official photos
The US launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note II represents a major shift in the company's product lineup across the Atlantic. Unlike the first generation Galaxy Note and, more recently the Galaxy S III, the second generation of the popular phablet didn't need a chipset transplant to swim across the pond. This means that users in the United States will have the pleasure of using the same hardware as the rest of the world. In the case of the Samsung Galaxy Note II we are talking an Exynos 4412 Quad chipset with four Cortex-A9 CPU cores.
Here goes the Samsung Galaxy Note II's full list of talents.

Sony Xperia Odin surfaces, looks like previous leak

Sony's alleged next flagship droid has leaked anew this time with an official photo. The Sony Xperia C650X Odin official photo is a render, which looks pretty close to the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 and slightly resembles a Motorola RAZR with its beveled edges and use of metal in the frame.
The render is very close to the previous live picture we saw of the Xperia Odin.

Sony Xperia Odin render (click for larger image)
The Xperia C650X Odin is rumored to feature a 5" screen with the impressive 1080p resolution, resulting in an mind-blowing density of 440 ppi, a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor with four 1.5 GHz Krait cores, a 13 MP snapper on the back, 2 GB of RAM and 32 gigs of internal storage.
Judging by the specs the Sony Xperia Odin should give the HTC J butterfly a run for its money.
Still the render could turn out to be a well made hoax and all the rumored specs are subject to change.

Samsung announces the I9260 Galaxy Premier

Samsung has announced the new I9260 Galaxy Premier. This phone is essentially the Galaxy Nexus with slightly updated hardware and running Samsung's proprietary TouchWiz interface on top of Android 4.1.

The Galaxy Premier has a 4.65-inch, 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED display, 8 megapixel rear camera with 1080p video recording, 1.9 megapixel front facing camera, 1GB RAM, 8 or 16GB internal memory with microSD card slot, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC and a 2,100mAh battery.
We don't know the exact SoC inside this phone but from what we have seen in the leaked benchmark scores the Galaxy Premier runs on a TI OMAP4470 with a dual-core 1.5GHz ARM Cortex A9 CPU and PowerVR SGX544 GPU.
As mentioned before, the Galaxy Premier runs on Samsung's Android skin and comes with all the usual bells and whistles you expect such as S Voice, S Beam, Smart Stay, Pop-up Play, etc.
The Galaxy Premier will go on sale starting next month and in Ukraine in December for around 5,555UAH ($680).

Samsung Galaxy S III mini hits the UK on November 8

Samsung announced today that the Galaxy S III mini is heading to the UK as early as November 8, which aligns with earlier expectations.

As usual, the mini version of the company's Android flagship will be available both on contract and SIM-free. CarphoneWarehouse is listing the S III mini with a price of £299.95, while Phones4U offers the device for free with monthly plans starting from £25 and up.
The Samsung Galaxy S III mini packs a 4-inch WVGA Super AMOLED display and runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on a 1GHz dual-core NovaThor 8420 processor. Additionally, with every device Samsung is giving away 50GB of free Dropbox storage for 2 years.

HTC Windows Phone 8X Review

Introduction:

Out of the woodworks, Microsoft is about to embark in yet another chapter in its mobile platform story. Rightfully so, they have a lot of support from longtime smartphone manufacturers who believe that there is a budding growth worth investing with Windows Phones. In fact, we all know way too well how there has always been a symbiotic relationship between the Redmond based company and Taiwanese handset maker HTC.

Would you believe that it has been over six months since our eyes last feasted upon a Windows Phone device from HTC? For those of you who might’ve forgotten, which shouldn’t be too surprising considering Window Phone device releases have been non-existent of late, it was none other than the HTC Titan II. Now that Windows Phone 8 is making a big push, the Taiwan based company is banking to see its HTC 8X being the premier smartphone for the platform out of the gate. Indeed, it’s treading a different path with its out-of-character design, but will it be enough to compete in the ring with some of today’s heavy hitters in the business?

Nokia Lumia 920 lock screen get real-time updates from the Facebook live app in nokia 920

Windows Phone 8 comes with one of those features for which Apple's Scott Forstall and Google's Matias Duarte might be slapping their foreheads and exclaiming "How didn't I introduce it first!", and it is Live Apps pushing real-time updates to your lock screen wallpaper.

Well, Scott Forstall is gone now, and we exaggerate, but the idea is pretty neat, and you can set the lock screen now to display your most needed info before you have even entered the phone - real-time Facebook updates, scores from the Sports app, news, weather, and other notifications that 3rd party apps come up with.

Google Nexus 10 specs review

UPDATE: Two separate reports say Google itself has called the screen "True RGB Real Stripe PLS", and Samsung also lists PLS in one of its official specs listings, thus the display part has been altered to reflect those specs.

If Google aimed to disturb Microsoft's big Windows Phone 8 launch event yesterday, the hurricane Sandy-induced cancellation of its own Nexus fiesta didn't prevent it from indeed doing so. It dumped the revelations about Android 4.2, Nexus 4, 7 and 10 minutes before the WP8 launch, making us all ADD kids go nuts for a good while where to focus first.

One release stood out, though, and this is Google's Nexus 10 tablet. While we knew everything about the Nexus 4, the mythical Samsung tablet with record resolution was more of a mystery. Apparently a direct reply to what Apple and Microsoft came up with in the tablet space going into the new holiday shopping season, Google saved its best for last - a 10" tablet built by Samsung with class-beating resolution and processor at a 25% discount to the competitors. Let's take a tour of the specs to gauge what can we expect from this tiger.