Samsung announces global launch of its Galaxy S7/S7 edge flagship smartphones

While it was already confirmed that Samsung's newest flagship smartphones - the Galaxy S7and S7 edge - will officially go on sale starting March 11, the company has now made a formal announcement in this regard.

Samsung Electronics today announced the commercial launch of its new Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge around the globe including US, Europe, Singapore, Australia and Korea, starting from today," the South Korean tech giant said in a post on its website today.

In case you missed, Samsung's mobile chief Koh Dong-jin has already confirmed that the handsets will be available in 60 countries in the first wave of their global launch. Just yesterday, he revealed that pre-orders for the devices have been stronger than what the company was expecting.

Sony Xperia X series is here - Xperia X, X Performance and XA

Sony kept it short and sweet - it launched a new phone line, the Xperia X, and the first three phones in it. Meet the Xperia X, XA and X Performance.

Sony Xperia X

All three phones have 5" screens, Sony didn't announce phablets nor minis. Sony's traditional sleek design has been changed up a bit with a metal back. The phone has been painted with a "tone-on-tone approach," so the front and back are a single, continuous color. Color options include Graphite black, White, Lime Gold or Rose Gold.

The "future-focused" Smart Capture camera features Sony's Predictive Hybrid Autofocus, which lets you pick a target and tracks it. The 23MP main camera can launch and snap a photo all in 0.6 seconds. The Xperia X has a 13MP selfie camera.

The phone promises to bring Sony's awesome battery life - two days of use between charges (the battery is 2,620mAh). The other Sony trademark, great sound - stereo speakers outside, Hi-Res Audio and DNC inside.

If you need more power, the Sony Xperia X Performance gets you a Snapdragon 820 chipset (3GB RAM, 32GB storage). This one is waterproof too, IP68, while the other two are not.

Other than that it has a 5" 1080p display as before and a seamless metal back painted in a continuous color. The Graphite Black and White options feature an exclusive hairline finish.

You get the same 23MP camera with Hybrid AF and a 13MP selfie cam. The main camera can record 4K video and can boost ISO up to 12,800.

Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini goes up for pre-order in the UK

The Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini became official just a couple of days ago, and now you can already pre-order one if you're in the UK.

So far, only one retailer has announced a price for the handset. So if you absolutely must pre-order a Galaxy S5 Mini right now, Mobile Fun will let you do just that.

The smartphone can be yours for £369, and it's available in white or blue.

Windows Phone store passes 255,000 apps

After having reached the 200,000 mark in December of last year, the Windows Phone store now boasts over 255,000 apps and games, according to a report from Australia.

That's neatly more than what Amazon recently reported for its Android app store, but obviously is nowhere near Google Play or the iOS App Store in terms of sheer number of apps listed. Both of the biggest mobile stores are now way past the 1 million app mark.

Still, Microsoft says its offering is growing at a faster pace compared to the competition, which sounds right when you factor in that it's growing from a smaller baseline.
The Windows Phone store is now seeing 10 million downloads per day, and it's adding around 500 new apps every 24 hours.

The number of registered developers has reached a whopping 510,000, so you should probably expect many more apps to arrive in the near future.

Rumored Galaxy S5 Prime spotted in India

There have been some murmurs that Samsung, in an effort to grab some of HTC's premium phone market share (and undoubtedly the upcoming iPhone 6's).

Release a high-end version of their Galaxy S5 phone, called the S5 Prime. 

The upgraded version of the Korean manufacturer's latest flagship is supposed to have an aluminum encasing, 2K screen, and 3GB RAM.

The latest development is an Indian shipping manifest that shows a device with a code number SM-G906S, which is supposed to be a regional version of the Galaxy S5 Prime.

The G906S has also shown up on GFXBench, with the following specs detailed:

•5.2-inch 2560×1440 display

•2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 quad-core processor •with Adreno 420 GPU

•3GB of RAM

•32GB of storage

•16 MP rear/ 2MP front-facing camera

•Android 4.4.2 KitKat

Jolla phone

Official specs of Jolla phone surface, will ship by end of 2013

Ever since Jolla announced its first-generation smartphone, which was simply called Jolla, it has created a buzz among the tech enthusiasts with its simplicity. Back then, the company did not announce the specifications of the device, but these are no longer a mystery as Jolla has officially announced what's under the hood in its smartphone.

Accordingly, the device will sport a 4.5-inch "Estrade" display with a resolution of 540x960px. The smartphone will pack a punch with a 1.4 GHz dual-core Qualcomm snapdragon processor along with 1 GB of RAM. The Jolla will also features an 8 megapixel AF camera with LED flash, 2 megapixel front facing shooter and 16 GB of internal memory with the ability to expand via microSD card slot.

As we already know, the Jolla smartphone will run on gesture based Sailfish OS and the juice for the device will be provided by a user-replaceable 2,100mAh battery. The smartphone's OS will also be optimized to support Android applications.

The Jolla is currently priced at €399 (about $540) and the company hopes to start shipping the device by the end of the year.

Nokia Android prototype

Nokia Android prototype reportedly is still into production

 

Last week the New York Times revealed that Nokia has indeed worked on an Android smartphone as an alternative to the Microsoft partnership prior to the acquisition announcement. As it turns out, the Finns haven't completely scraped the Android project and are still working on an Android smartphone.

The report comes from a Weibo account CTechnology, which has generally been a reputable source of leaks from China. we are mentioning China, because this where Nokia has based the R&D of its Android smartphoneр dubbed "Mountain View", more specifically in the Beijing offices of the company.

As for the "Mountain View" prototype itself, Nokia has based it on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 8225Q chip with the sole intention of the Android smartphone to be affordable. No more information regarding further specifications is available at this point. We wouldn't be surprised if we some of these prototypes leak when, and if, the project gets cancelled.

The Microsoft and Nokia deal, however, is likely to pass and the company's Android initiative is likely to go bite the dust by the end of the year. Here's hoping we at least get to see how the "Mountain View" prototype looks like if the project really does go south.