Samsung W2014 Clamshell with Snapdragon 800 CPU Leaked and Android 4.3

Clamshell smartphones are a rare breed and those that are available outside Asia are even rarer. Samsung W2014 is such a device, so Android enthusiasts shouldn’t get their hopes high unless they’re living in China.

GSMArena reports that Samsung W2014 has been spotted at TENAA, the Chinese regulatory commission. The smartphone is said to ship with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system out of the box and a powerful 2.3 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. Aside from its unusual (for a smartphone) clamshell form factor, Samsung W2014 features 3.67-inch dual Super AMOLED 3.67-inch capacitive touchscreen display that supports 800 x 480 pixels resolution.

It is also worth mentioning that Samsung W2014 comes with 2GB of RAM, 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls. Most likely, Samsung W2014 will be limited to China, but there’s a slim chance that a few more Asian countries might get it as well.

Samsung W2014
Image credits to TENAA

Read more »

Nokia Lumia 1320 Photo Leaked

One of the smartphones that Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has been recently rumored to plan on bringing to the market is the Nokia Lumia 1320, which can allegedly be seen in the photo attached to this post.

The photo emerged on Twitter via @Ctechcn and shows Verizon Wireless’ logo on the front of the device, though rumor has it that the phone won’t be launched at this carrier. In fact, MyNokiaBlog notes that Lumia 1320 might prove to be the international version of the Lumia 929 that was spotted online a while back, which would explain the aforementioned carrier branding on it.

Furthermore, the two devices appear to be identical, though there are some UI changes in Lumia 1320 when compared to Lumia 929. Hopefully, Nokia will offer some more info on this soon, so keep an eye on this space for additional details.

Allegedly leaked Lumia 1320 photo
@ctechcn on Twitter

Read more »

Windows Phone 8.1 to Remove the Back Button, Support Larger Screens

Next year, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft is expected to release another update to its Windows Phone operating system, one that has leaked online a few times before under the codename of Blue, and which will bring some welcomed changes to devices, it seems.

Among these, we can count the removal of the Back button, which will no longer be included in the hardware specifications of devices powered by the OS (supposedly set to arrive as Windows Phone 8.1). Basically, users will be using the home button to exit an app, just as they can do on iOS devices at the moment, winsupersite explains. Additionally, Windows Phone 8.1 is expected to improve the multi-tasking capabilities of the platform, after GDR3 brings some improvements to the matter as well. One other interesting enhancement in the upcoming platform release will be the inclusion of support for screens larger than 7 inches, going all the way up to 10 inches. Windows Phone 8 GDR3 has been long rumored to come with support for screens of up to 6 inches, and the next OS release appears set to move beyond that.

This also confirms the fact that Microsoft is slowly bringing Windows Phone and Windows RT together, which means that there will be a single OS powering both smartphones and tablet PCs in the end. At the moment, Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT are said to share a 33 percent API unity, but Windows Phone 8.1 will increase the percentage to 77, it seems. This will also allow developers to target multiple devices with their applications. Additionally, winsupersite notes that Microsoft is aiming at turning Windows Phone into a high-end platform, despite the fact that it currently enjoys enormous success at the entry level of the market. However, it remains to be seen what exactly the company will do in this regard, especially given that it has recently been said to plan on focusing on lower-end Windows Phone handsets for the next 12 months or so.

Windows Phone 8
Image credits to Microsoft

Read more »

AMD Hawaii Radeon R9 290X, a Card with 64 ROPs

You've got to love company slides. They tend to leak to the Internet days, sometimes even weeks, before they're supposed to. And AMD's Radeon R9 290X graphics card will only debut on October 15.

The folks at WCCFTech were able to procure the presentation slide that shows how many ROPs (raster operations units) the video board has. Or rather, how many it has compared to the Radeon HD 7970. And since the HD 7970 has 32, that means the R9 290X boasts 64. The other important detail is the 1.4 times greater number of stream processors, which means 2,816 (Tahiti has 2,048).

The rest of the specs are the ones that reports have uncovered before: 4 GB GDDR5 memory at 5 GHz, 512-bit interface, and 1 GHz GPU clock. It's still possible that AMD won't release the video card on October 15, but reviews should surface around mid-October anyway.

AMD Hawaii presentation slide
Image credits to WCCFtech

Read more »