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Sony teases Honami power button on Twitter

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Sony has gone to Twitter to tease its upcoming Honami smartphone. Accompanied by the hashtag #bestofSony comes an image of Sony's signature power button, complete with Sony's claims of precision engineering. Sony makes it pretty clear we're seeing the Honami power button with the caption "It's the smartphone everyone's been talking about... not long now". Sony teaser image Not long now is almost certainly referring to the September 4 IFA presentation Sony's already invited us to. We've already seen images of the Honami in the wild and this is the second time that power button has come to our attention. We know the device will come in white, purple and black and we've even seen some camera samples from it. Rumored to premiere as the Sony Xperia Z1, the Honami should have a 20.7 MP camera, Snapdragon 800 chipset with 2 GB of RAM and four Krait 400 cores clocked at 2.2 GHz.

Samsung Galaxy Golden goes official with dual screen

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Fresh off the press image leaks and the announcement of the Hennessy flip-phone Samsung has announced the Galaxy Golden. It employs the rare clamshell design and offers two 3.7" Super AMOLEDs along with a numpad. The device will cost KRW790,000 which amounts to around $700 - quite pricey considering the feature set. Samsung Galaxy Golden Powering the Galaxy Golden is a dual-core 1.7 GHz processor. There are also an FM Radio and 8 MP snapper on board. Samsung's easy mode is preinstalled - it gives a simplified UI so that core functions are easier to access. There's also a pedometer on board, which nicely matches with Samsung's S Health app. Finally there's business card recognition. Information on availability is still unavailable.

Leaked Nokia RM-940 certified, might have a S800 chipset, 1080p screen

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                      The stars are slowly aligning for a 6" 1080p Nokia phablet with Snapdragon 800 power. The information is pretty circumstantial, but it's there – in a Bluetooth SIG filing and from data collected by AdDuplex. AdDuplex collects stats on Windows Phone handsets and found in its logs a few unofficial Nokia devices like the RM-937, RM-927 and RM-940. RM-937 reported a scale factor (a measurement showing the relation between screen resolution and size) of 150, which is what 720p phones report. However, Nokia doesn’t have 720p devices, only WXGA (1280 x 768 instead of 1280 x 720). So, either Nokia is making a device called RM-937 with a 720p screen, or this is a 1080p device with a larger screen diagonal. Again, it's pretty circumstantial. The RM-940 was apparently the same device running on AT&T's netwok and the RM-927 was on Verizon.          It was the RM-940 that showed up in ...

Nokia planning an event for August 28th in Moscow

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        It looks like Nokia isn't done with its announcements. The company has said that it would be making major announcements every quarter this year, and we may have the time and place for the next major announcement. Nokia has started to send out press invites for an event that will be held on August 28th in Moscow, Russia. Unfortunately, we have no idea what this announcement may be. The reports are saying that Nokia is going to announce a "major new smartphone". But, that seems unlikely, because the biggest thing in the Nokia rumor mill right now is the Windows RT tablet, but that won't be released until October, so Nokia's September event makes more sense for that announcement.           On the smartphone side, we still haven't seen the announcement for the Nokia Lumia 729, but that would be a Verizon phone, and it would make little sense to announce a Verizon phone in Moscow. And, of course there is the rumored Nokia phablet, b...

Oppo launches smartphone with the option to run stock Android

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One of the top requests from Android power-users is for manufacturers to give the option to turn off any custom skin that has been put on the Android software and run pure stock Android. That's why the recent Google Edition devices have been so positively received: you can get the hardware you want, without the software you don't. Well, it looks like Oppo has been listening as well, because the company just announced the launch of a new smartphone that gives you the option to run pure stock Android. The device is the Oppo R819, and while the choice of reverting to stock may impress power-users, the specs on the device won't. The Oppo R819 has a 4.7-inch 720p IPS display, a MediaTek quad-core 1.2GHz chipset, 1 GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, an 8MP Sony Exmor BSI rear camera, a 2MP front camera, a 2000mAh battery, and oddly, Android 4.2.1, rather than the usual 4.2 bump of 4.2.2. The Oppo R819 will be pretty thin and extremely light at 7.3mm and 110g, which makes it a bit...

Movie review on 'Jobs' biopic in opening weekend

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          Failing worse than the Newton handheld PDA, the biopic Jobs opened this weekend on 2381 screens, bringing in an estimated $6.7 million. The movie's distributor, Open Road Films, was hoping to sell $8 million to $9 million in tickets for the opening weekend. But with Steve Wozniak criticizing the truthfulness of the story, it would seem that even Apple fans stayed away from the movie. Starring Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs and Josh Gad as the Woz, Jobs garnered a aggregate score of 25% from the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. But even with the poor turnout at the theaters, Jobs still could turn a profit since the budget for the movie came in at $12 million. After DVD sales and television rights, the movie should surpass its budget. Another movie about the late Apple co-founder is in the works, written by Aaron Sorkin and produced by Sony. This film is expected to be in three acts with each act showing Jobs backstage before the introduction of an Appl...

Nokia Windows RT tablet pictured in red, carries Verizon logo

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            For quite a while now we've been hearing rumors about Nokia possibly working on a Windows RT tablet. Well, these rumors may be on the right track as we're now looking at what might be device in question. The spy photo you see below was leaked on a Chinese Twitter-like web site, depicting a slate bearing three branding logos. One of them is clearly Nokia's and below it we see a "Windows RT" label indicating the OS running on this colorful tablet. But what makes this leak particularly interesting is the presence of a Verizon logo and 4G LTE label. This may be a Nokia Windows RT tablet for Verizon So yeah, if this leak truly holds water, then we might soon see a Windows RT tablet by Nokia riding on Verizon's 4G LTE airwaves. We think it is a safe bet to assume that a Wi-Fi-only variant of the device will be offered as well. The colorful shell of the slate is a clue, leading us to believe that Nokia's tablet will come in multiple fresh co...