Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Unofficially Revealed, May Launch in June/July

It's been less than two weeks since Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy S4 and rumors on an unannounced mini version of the flagship smartphone.

Although the Galaxy S4 won't be available on the market until late April, and in some regions early May, Samsung seems to be planning to offers a budget variant of the superphone. Just like it did with the Galaxy S III, Samsung will be launching a Galaxy S4 mini devices some time this summer. According to SamMobile, Samsung Galaxy S4 mini is expected to hit shelves in June / July, but there's no telling whether or not the timeframe is correct. By the time Samsung will launch the smaller version of Galaxy S4, Google will announce the next version of Android mobile operating system. However, Galaxy S4 mini will not come with Android 5.0, but an upgrade is not out of the question.

Rumor has it Samsung Galaxy S4 mini will ship with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean operating system out of the box, the same version of the platform as its larger counterpart. It will also integrate TouchWiz Nature UX 2.0 and will pack a much smaller display. SamMobile's insider claims the Galaxy S4 mini sports a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD capacitive touchscreen display that supports 540 x 960 pixels resolution and 256ppi. On the inside, the smartphone will be equipped with a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor, but there are no details on the amount of memory, storage and graphics processing unit yet. The phone has already been caught on camera and looks like a small replica of the Samsung Galaxy S4. It is also worth mentioning the Galaxy S4 mini is also known as Samsung GT-I9190, so we will be looking for this codename in future leaks.

Samsung Galaxy S4 and Galaxy S4 Mini
Image credits to SamMobile

Galaxy S4 Mini
Image credits to SamMobile

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NVIDIA Chimera Camera Technology Demonstrated [Video]

NVIDIA held a demo at the GTC 2013 event (GPU Technology Conference) for a certain asset that was not available before Tegra 4 came along.

Not long after NVIDIA formally released the Tegra 4i smartphone platform, the Chimera camera technology was launched. It gives Tegra 4-based devices the ability to edit pictures and videos in ways that was not possible before. The video embedded above is a short one about the always-on HDR feature by NVIDIA.

Live preview through a camera's display can be done on a smartphone or tablet. Moving objects can also be captured better, instead of ending up with blurs. Several HDR shots can be snapped in quick succession even in burst camera mode. HDR video is supported too. Now we just have to wait for Tegra 4/Tegra 4i devices to sell worldwide.

A quick demo at GTC 2013 showing NVIDIA's brand new Always-on HDR camera technology, called Chimera, for Tegra 4 smartphones and tablets.
Video credits to SlashGear

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Nokia N9 Mini in the Works, Possibly Coming as an Asha Series

It's been quite some time since Nokia launched the evolutionary N9 smartphone. One of the first handsets to be powered by innovative MeeGo Harmattan operating system, the N9 has fallen from Nokia's grace since the company decided to stop supporting the device.

However, there have been many rumors suggesting the Finnish company may bring back the swipe-based MeeGo platform under a different brand sometime in the future. Well, according to the latest hearsay, we're very close to that “future.” The guys over at MyNokiaBlog have been tipped on an unannounced Nokia N9 Mini. The name of the device has been mentioned a few times over the last couple of months, in the hopes that Nokia might revive the long forgotten N9. According to MyNokiaBlog's tipster the Finnish company works on a device that might go as the smaller version of Nokia N9.

I will not make any comments on the accuracy of the information, so just read below the statement of the insider who claims to have seen this prototype: "The phone design looks beautiful and you can say it’s new Nokia N9 Mini version".

New features are as following:

Phone has 3 different screen.

1. Menu Screen
2. Notification Screen.
3. Application screen.

You can switch to different screen with swipe gesture. And it’s not like previous Asha phones, it’s real swipe like we have seen in N9

1. Single hardware button at front.
2. User Interface is inspired from N9 in all apps. (like clock, calendar, settings etc.)
3. Screen resolution is 240×320
4. Various controls for Touch Screen Brightness, Double Tap to Unlock.
5. In notification screen you can see notifications from various apps from like facebook, twitter etc.
6. Dual SIM, 3G, Wifi etc.

Phone runs so smoothly and fast and also play animations and transitions like we have seen in Lumia Range. The sad thing is that the phone still do not run multiple apps.

Nokia N9
Image credits to Nokia

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