RIM Sends Press Invites for BlackBerry 10 Launch on January 30, 2013

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion has confirmed a while ago plans to officially unveil its BlackBerry 10 operating system and the first devices running under it on January 30, 2013, and the company has already sent out press invites for the event.

According to the invitation that MobileSyrup received, “The BlackBerry Experience” has been “Re-Designed. Re-engineered. Re-invented.” The event will take place in Toronto, Canada, but RIM is also said to be planning a global unveiling of the platform on that day, and will hold similar events in New York City, London, Paris, Johannesburg and Dubai too.

We have already had the chance to take a look at what the upcoming mobile operating system will have to offer to its users, yet it remains to be seen how well devices running under it will fare in the increasingly competitive smartphone market.

RIM sends out invites to BlackBerry 10 launch event
Images credits to MobileSyrup

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BlackBerry 10 UI Screenshots

Research In Motion’s BlackBerry 10 operating system will be officially launched in less than a month and a half, and some more info on what it will be able to provide users with is now available online.

We already had the chance to admire RIM’s first BB10 smartphone in a series of leaked photos last week, as well as in a hands-on video coming from Tinhte, and screenshots with the platform’s apps and other features are now available online courtesy of the Vietnamese website. Those of you who would like to have a closer look at the BlackBerry 10’s Facebook application, or would like to see what the much-praised BlackBerry Hub will have to offer, should check out the gallery embedded below.

We already looked at the native Twitter client that RIM will include in the platform, and more images are available at Tinhte.

BlackBerry 10 screenshots
Images credits to tinhte.vn

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Nokia Juggernaut Spotted Next to Lumia 820 in Video

Juggernaut is one of the names that emerged online a few times before in relation to Nokia’s plans for the Windows Phone 8 platform, and which has been attached to a device that can be seen in the video below at the 8:15 mark.

The device is running under Microsoft’s latest mobile operating system flavor, though it seems that it will never be launched on the market. The reason for that is a very simple one, according to Igor Shastitko from Microsoft Ukraine, who presents Nokia’s devices in the video. Apparently, Juggernaut was the codename for Lumia 820 while it was in the development phase, and was never planned for an official launch. As can be seen in the video, Juggernaut is much larger than the Lumia 820, apparently due to the fact that Nokia wanted to hide its actual size from the public. The prototype appears to have a 4.7-inch or larger screen, but it would boast the same 800 x 480 pixel resolution as the Lumia 820, which would not make it a great display, that’s for sure.

The phone also shows prototype marker on the side, as well as the same older Windows Phone logo and large bezel that were spotted in a leaked photo only last week. This further confirms that it was only a development unit, and that Nokia will never bring it to shelves, just as Igor Shastitko reportedly says in the video. However, this does not mean that Nokia might not plan the release of smartphones with larger touchscreen displays than Lumia 920’ 4.5-inch panel. The company is committed to prove that it can deliver great devices to its users, and it might be set to pack future Windows Phone 8 handsets with specs and capabilities that would rival with what Android phones have to offer at the moment in terms of hardware specs.

Nokia Juggernaut next to Lumia 820
Image credits to Youtube

http://youtu.be/E-DH_bbW444
Video credits to iwalker2000

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ASUS VivoBook U38DT with AMD Radeon HD 8550M Leaked

Even though the ASUS VivoBook U38DT will use an AMD A8-4555M quad-core accelerated processing unit, a discrete graphics adapter will be part of the product as well.

We've covered the Solar System series of mobile GPUs and, now, we can see one of the few processors in the series, thanks to ASUS. The ASUS Vivobook U38DT has been listed on German retailer Cyberport. According to the specs there, the Radoen HD 8550M lies within. Shipments will begin on December 27, at which point we will get to see how good the chip is and if it can enter CrossFireX with the integrated GPU in the APU.

We aren't totally confident that the multi-GPU technology will work here, even if the GPU does turn out to be a rebrand instead of a new-generation processor. If nothing else, the former possibility would justify the lack of big product announcements on AMD's part.

ASUS VivoBook U38DT
Image credits to Cyberport

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Nokia Lumia 920 PR1.1 Update to Resolve Camera Issues

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia is reportedly preparing a new software update for its high-end Lumia 920 smartphone, in an attempt to resolve some of the issues that the device has been reportedly affected by.

The update, said to land on the smartphone as PR1.1, is expected to resolve the camera fuzziness issues that Lumia 920 has shown since launch, it seems. When it announced the Windows Phone 8 flagship device, Nokia stressed a lot on the phone’s high-end camera capabilities, including its ability to snap great photos in low-light conditions. However, it seems that, although the Optical Image Stabilization technology packed inside the device worked like a charm, photos taken with the phone still showed a lack of details that disappointed some users. This fuzziness / softness will be resolved in the next software update for the device, Engadget notes in a recent article.

Nokia Care themselves have already confirmed the fact that Microsoft would release a new firmware for Windows Phone 8 devices before the end of this month, yet no further details on the matter have been provided. Apparently, said issue will be indeed resolved in the upcoming PR1.1 update; at least this is what photos that Engadget managed to get ahold of show. Even so, the news site reports that there will still be a series of issues with the white balance that the new firmware won’t be able to resolve. In addition to camera enhancements, the update is said to bring along stability, LTE and web browsing improvements, along with a series of platform tweaks from Microsoft themselves.

Nokia did say a while ago that it planned on delivering several enhancements to Lumia 920’s camera capabilities, although it did not confirm specifics on the aforementioned issues, nor on other improvements that were planned for the device. Stay tuned to learn more on the matter.

Nokia Lumia 920
Image credits to Nokia

Nokia Lumia 920 camera samples
Image credits to Engadget

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BlackBerry 10 Native Twitter Client

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is moving closer to the release of its next-generation mobile operating system, the BlackBerry 10 platform, and seems set to pack it with a nice range of new, appealing applications.

Among them, we should see a native Twitter client said to be based completely on the web, and which should look as pictured in the photos attached to this post. These images come from tinhte.vn, which managed to get ahold of a BlackBerry 10 device a few days ago, and which is providing details on what to expect from it.

However, it should be noted that the phone is still running under a beta flavor of the BlackBerry 10 platform, which means that the final release might be different and so might be the Twitter app. RIM is set to make the BlackBerry 10 platform official on January 30, 2013.

Twitter in BlackBerry 10
Images credits to tinhte.vn

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Sony Xperia Yuga C6603 Live Photos Emerges

Japanese mobile phone maker Sony Mobile has been long rumored to plan the release of a 5-inch high-end Android smartphone next year, and the device appears to have already emerged in live photos online.

A prototype of the phone, said to feature a full HD touchscreen and to prove Sony’s flagship for the next year, has landed in the hands of people over at Mobile-Review, who published a few shots with it. The smartphone will land on shelves with a Qualcomm processor inside, most probably the latest generation, and is said to be very fast. Unfortunately, it is also said to be quite hot, mainly due to the powerful chipset inside it.

The smartphone is expected to become official in early January at CES 2013 in Las Vegas with a 13-megapixel photo snapper on the back.

Sony Xperia Yuga C6603
Images credits to Mobile-Review

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