Sony Launches Xperia A Hatsune Miku Edition in Japan

Japanese mobile phone maker Sony Mobile has launched a limited edition flavor of its Xperia A smartphone on the network of NTT DOCOMO in its homeland market, namely the SO-04E Xperia feat. Hatsune Miku.

Set to arrive on shelves in late September this year, the handset will feature the popular humanoid based on the singing voice synthesizer Vocaloid, the company unveiled. The Xperia feat. HATSUNE MIKU SO-04E has been built in collaboration with Hatsune Miku developer Crypton Future Media, INC., and will arrive on shelves in only 39,000 units. The new Xperia model will sport a body decorated with graphics featuring the Hatsune Miku character, while also packing exclusive content such as wallpapers and an original widget for listening to Hatsune Miku music. Furthermore, the mobile phone will arrive on shelves with a matching “Miku color” NFC-compatible Bluetooth wireless headset. “In a pre-launch campaign from today to July 31, consumers are being asked to submit music clips for use as ringtones or application alerts and Hatsune Miku illustrations for use as phone content. Selected submissions will be posted on the site and made available for download into the phone,” Sony announced.

As mentioned above, the new SO-04E Xperia A feat. Hatsune Miku will arrive on shelves in late September, yet NTT DOCOMO is set to kick off the pre-order period for it in late August on its website. The handset will be available for reservations in stores as well, starting with early September. The limited edition handset should arrive on shelves with the same hardware specifications as the original smartphone, including its 4.6-inch HD (720 x 1280 pixels) screen, a 1.5GHz quad-core processor inside, and 2GB of RAM. The mobile phone also features 32GB of internal memory, and runs under Google’s Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system. As unleashthephones reports, it measures 131 x 67 x 10.5 mm and weighs 141 grams.

Sony Xperia feat. HATSUNE MIKU SO-04E
Image credits to UnleashThePhones

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Native exFAT Support Finally Arrives on Linux

If you've watched the news lately, you know that last week a Linux developer has released the first ever native Linux kernel module for Microsoft's exFAT filesystem.

Well, that's not great news... that's wonderful news, for all Linux users, as previous implementations of the exFAT filesystem in the Linux kernel were done via FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace). Originally ported from Android's Linux kernel 3.0, this is the first Linux "non-FUSE" kernel driver that supports both reading and writing for the exFAT filesystem developed by the Microsoft Corporation. In other words, you will be able to read from and write on exFAT partitions inside you Linux powered box. At the moment, the exFAT Linux kernel module lives in GitHub and it's updated on a regular basis. It was tested and works against Linux kernel versions 3.8 and 3.9. As Linux kernel 3.10 was just released at the beginning of this month, we strongly believe that the developers will update the exFAT module to support it as well.

Thanks to Patryk Kowalczyk, Arch Linux users can already install this native Linux kernel module for the exFAT filesystem, starting today, in their current installations, using an AUR helper. For more details go here. To manually install it in any other distro, you need to clone the Git source, enter the directory and execute the make and sudo make install commands, followed by the modprobe exfat_fs command, to manually load the driver, as root. As an ending note, we would like to remind everyone who's reading this piece of news that the exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) file system created by Microsoft is optimized for flash drives. It has a file size limit of 16 EiB (Exbibyte) and a cluster size up to 32 MiB (Mebibyte).

exFAT logo
Image credits to 2.bp.blogspot.com

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Nokia EOS/Lumia 1020 New Leaked Press Shot

Earlier today, the first alleged press shot of the Nokia EOS smartphone (which should land on the market as the Lumia 1020) has emerged online, showing the front of the device, and now another similar photo is available, presenting the phone’s back.

We have already had the chance to take a look at photos that allegedly showed the upcoming smartphone from the behind, where one can see a large camera bump, yet no official confirmation on the authenticity of said images has emerged until now. The newly leaked press shot, available courtesy of @evleaks, appears to confirm that Nokia will indeed include a 41-megapixel PureView camera on the back of the device, thus providing users with great imaging capabilities while on the go.

According to previous rumors on the matter, the Nokia Lumia 1020 should become official as soon as the next week, so stay tuned for more on this.

Nokia EOS / Nokia Lumia 1020
Image credits to @evleaks on Twitter

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Samsung to Launch Only One Tizen OS Smartphone

Tizen OS, the mobile operating system that Samsung has been working on for quite some time now, the successor of bada, will live only a short life, recent reports on the matter suggest.

The South Korean vendor was recently said to have delayed the launch of its first Tizen smartphone, but it seems that things might actually be worse than that. “Tizen is almost dead. It isn't delay. That's cancel of the whole project. I doubt that samsung will launch more than one device for 2014,” mobile-review’s Eldar Murtazin states in a recent tweet.

Apparently, the lack of a powerful app ecosystem for this mobile OS could have determined Samsung to drop it altogether, though at least one device powered by it will still arrive on the market, it seems.  However, the above is only speculation at the moment, with no official confirmation on the matter available.

Tizen OS
Image credits to SamMobile

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