HTC Windows Phone 8X Arrives at Vodafone Australia

Starting December 5, Australian wireless carrier Vodafone has two Windows Phone 8 devices to offer to its users, including the Windows Phone 8X by HTC. As mentioned in a previous article, the carrier also launched Nokia’s Lumia 820 smartphone on its network. The Windows Phone 8X by HTC is already available for purchase on Vodafone’s website, for $0 upfront on Vodafone’s A$60 Plan, over 24 months (total min cost A$1440, which is approximately USD$1508 / 1153 Euro). It is the flagship Windows Phone 8 device that HTC made official this year, packing a 4.3-inch HD touchscreen display and a powerful 1.5GHz dual-core processor inside. Weighing only 130 grams, the new device provides users with an appealing design, Built-in...

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Samsung Galaxy S IIIα SC-03E Now Available at NTT DOCOMO

Japanese wireless carrier NTT DOCOMO has made the Samsung Galaxy S IIIα SC-03E smartphone available for purchase on its network today. The smartphone was made official back in October with an Exynos 4412 1.6GHz quad-core processor inside and with 2GB of RAM. The rest of the phone’s specs are similar with those packed inside the original model, including the 4.8-inch touchscreen display on the front, the 8-megapixel camera on the back, and the 32GB internal storage, complemented by a microSD memory card slot. The phone also comes with Wi-Fi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, NFC, 4G capabilities, and support for various local wireless services in Japan. Running under Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, the handset was made...

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Qualcomm MSM8226 and MSM8626 Snapdragon S4 Chips

Chip maker Qualcomm has two new chipsets available in the Snapdragon S4 family of mobile processors, namely the MSM8226 and MSM8626 CPUs. Both of them were made official along with their Reference Design versions and offer the Adreno 305 GPU, 1080p capture and playback capabilities, as well as support for photo snappers of up to 13 megapixels. The company announced the new chips for high-volume 3G handsets and promised long battery life for devices powered by them. Both arrive with support for UMTS, CDMA and TD-SCDMA, and should become available for customer sampling starting with the second quarter of the next year. Based on previous quad-core chips from Qualcomm, the new processors are built using 28nm technology node...

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Xperia E and Xperia E Dual Full Specs

On Wednesday, Sony Mobile unveiled to the world two new affordable devices running under Google’s Android operating system, namely the Xperia E and Xperia E dual, both of which are expected to arrive on shelves in the first quarter of the next year. The two devices pack similar specs, yet the main difference between them is the fact that Xperia E dual offers support for two SIM cards at the same time. Sony announced the Xperia E with a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7227A processor inside, as well as with 512 MB of RAM and with 4 GB of internal memory, expandable via a microSD memory card slot. The handset also sports a 3.5” HVGA touchscreen display, along with a 3.2-megapixel photo snapper on the back, and a front camera...

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Jolla Sailfish SDK to be Available in Q1 2013

Finnish startup Jolla is expected to make the software development kit for its newly unveiled Sailfish OS available for download as soon as the first quarter of the next year. The company has already provided some info on the SDK, and has updated its wiki page to inform developers interested in coming up with apps for the new platform on the latest changes. With the toolkit available for download, developers will be able to start building applications that will take full advantage of the platform’s features, including the new, modern UI that Jolla touted last month. For the time being, however, no specific info on when devices powered by the platform will become available for purchase has been provided, yet it might not be too long before that happens as well, so stay tuned. Jolla's...

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Nokia Lumia 505 Emerges Online at Guerrero Móvil Facebook Page in Mexico

Nokia appears indeed set to bring to the market a new range of entry-level devices, just as previously reported, and Lumia 505 is one of these handsets, it seems. Following the launch of Lumia 620, the new cheap Windows Phone device from the company has emerged, based on the previously launched Lumia 510 and expected to arrive on shelves in Mexico. The Lumia 505 is said to have already received Wi-Fi certification and will arrive on shelves with an 800MHz single-core processor, 256MB RAM and 4GB of internal memory, while packing an 8MP camera on the back, it seems. The handset is expected to be launched with Windows Phone 7.8 loaded on it, yet no specific info on the matter has been provided as of yet. Nokia Lumia 505...

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BlackBerry 10 Devices Won’t Accept Around 106 of Specific Passwords

Research In Motion is well known for the security features of its mobile platform, which made it highly popular among enterprise users, and it seems that the company doesn’t want its reputation to fade out with the launch of BlackBerry 10 either. In fact, the company is expected to tighten up the security of the platform in the upcoming release, and is now said to forbid specific combinations of numbers and letters from being used as passwords for user accounts. Apparently, the BlackBerry 10 OS already has a list of 106 passwords that people cannot use to secure their accounts. According to rapidberry, some of these would be: 123456; 12345678; 123abc; a1b2c3; aaaaaa; abc123; abcdef; amanda; andrew; angel; asdfgh; august;...

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Gigabyte Preparing New WindForce 2X GeForce GTX 660 Graphics Card

nVidia GeForce GTX 660 graphics card is strong enough to warrant custom cooled revisions, which is why Gigabyte is getting ready to launch one such item. Called GV-N660WF2-2GD, it is a GeForce GTX 660 graphics card equipped with the WindForce 2X cooler, which has a parallel-inclined fin design, two PWM fans and two copper heatpipes. Adding to the board stability and lifespan is the Ultra Durable construction, which implies solid capacitors and other PC components of high endurance. As for the specifications, they are the same as on the standard video card: a GPU with 960 CUDA cores, clock speeds of 980/1046 MHz (GPU base/boost), 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM (6,008 MHz frequency) and three video outputs (DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI). Unfortunately,...

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First iPhone 5S Photos Emerge, Enclosure Leaked

The first iPhone 5S images are beginning to emerge on the web as reports from Taiwan claim that Apple has already begun trial production of its seventh-generation handset. A comparison of the alleged iPhone 5S rear shell and the one housing the parts of a genuine iPhone 5 shows differences between the logic board screw holes (boxed in red), as well as other slight discrepancies. The back markings using “X” designations indicate that this is prototype hardware, though not necessarily new. The casing shown off by parts company ETrade Supply could well be an old prototype shell for the initial iPhone 5 testing batch which has only surfaced now. The part does look genuine enough to pass for real Apple hardware. The media calls...

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Prolimatech PT14015, Very Thin 140mm CPU Cooling Fan

Fans with a diameter of 140mm seldom end up in other types of desktop PCs besides high-end towers, but Prolimatech may just break that routine. Sure, the company used very suggestive press photos involving a motherboard and a very tall CPU cooler, but that didn't prevent us from noticing something very important: the PT14015 fan is only 15 mm thick (0.59 inches). That means it could easily fit inside small form factor PC cases if it were to lie horizontally, on top of a low profile heatsink. This placement would imply the added benefit of active cooling for the memory and motherboard itself too. Unfortunately, Prolimatech decided against revealing key facts like fan speed, speed control method, airflow and pricing. Then...

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