If you pre-ordered a Galaxy S4 and your in the UK you may be in for a surprise today. The first batch of S4′s are starting to ship to people smart enough to pre-order the new flagship and they are showing up on peoples doorsteps.

The S4 in the picture is mine (lucky me) so expect a first impressions post within the next few days.

Last week Facebook released their new app which is essentially a launcher for Android to the general public. If you wanted to participate in the downloading of the app, first you’d have to meet the criteria, have one of a handful of the supported phones and be a resident of the US. If you don’t meet any of the criteria Paul O’Brien of MoDaCo has a work around for you.

Head to the source link for installation instructions

Via: Engadget

Source: MoDaCo

So far the One has been a good phone to live with.

The design and build quality is top notch, better looking than the iPhone 5 and build quality at least matching if not surpassing it. The One is quite a tall phone so it can be a stretch to reach the power button which is placed at the top of the phone, but the power button is placed there because it also functions as an IR blaster (in other words it functions as a remote control for your tele and cable box)

The curvature of the back of the phone paired with the rounded edges gives the phone a superb in the hand feel. It feels much nicer to hold than the Sony Xperia Z which is overall a larger phone but has sharp edges which can be uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time.

Lets get to the screen.

There’s no doubt the One has the best screen on the market today, colours are true to life and contrast is nearly spot on. What i’m not to sure on is the resolution. Yes its a 1920 x 1280 display with the highest pixel density of any phone but to me it just looks like a very good screen, if I had to go back to using my HTC One X’s 720p display from last year it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

The most surprising part of the phone has to be the quality of the speakers. The HTC One has front facing stereo speakers that have fantastic sound reproduction and bass. If you have your notification volume level set to even 50% you may jump if you get an unexpected notification, especially if the phone is close to your face. Yesterday I watched a YouTube video on my Nexus 4 and instantly noticed the difference in sound quality. In comparison to the One the Nexus 4 sounded terrible, because the Nexus 4 is new and still has the plastic on I had to check the plastic wasn’t covering the speaker, the sound was just low and tinny.

Lastly lets get on to the software.

The HTC One is running Android 4.1.2 with Sense 5 on top. To be honest Sense isn’t too bad, as long as you move Blink Feed to the left, change the app drawer grid size to show a 4×5 row of icons instead of 3×4 and the arrange your apps in alphabetical order Sense is pretty much easy to live with. I do have a few gripes though the first of which is not being able to arrange your home screens. You can set any of screens to be your default home screen but you cannot position them where you want, adding a screen will just place it furthest to the right and you cannot pick up and move home screens only remove them. When you want to swap out an app in your dock you have to be in the app drawer and drag the app from the dock back into the drawer, if you try and drag an app from the dock on while your on the home screen the app you want to remove will stay in the dock and will be replicated on your home screen so you end up with two or more of the same icon.

Over the next couple of days i’ll be testing out the camera, HTC are making a big deal about the Ultra Pixel camera and HTC Zoe’s and i’ll also be focusing on the performance and battery life

Not content with the size of the Galaxy Note ll, Samsung announce two more gigantic Mega sized phones. Dubbed the Mega 5.8 and 6.3 these two phones take large Android phone to a whole new level.

The larger of the two handsets, the Mega 6.3 will as its name suggests have a 6.3-inch 720p LCD display, LTE, 1.7GHz dual-core processor and come running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS are all included, the rear and front cameras are 8-megapixel and 1.9-megapixels respectivley and storage sizes come in 8GB and 16GB with 1.5GB of RAM and a 3,200mAh battery.

The lesser Galaxy Mega 5.8 has a 5.8-inch QHD display with only a HSPA+ radio. The processor is clocked at 1.4GHz with 1.5GB of RAM. Storage is also 8GB/16GB expandable through a MicroSD card and it comes with a 2,600mAh battery.

Both Mega phones are due to ship next month.

Via: Engadget

Source: Samsung

Its no secret that the HTC One is the phone of the moment, or at least the Android phone of the moment but with all the hype surrounding it comes a certain level of expectation.

I recently got the HTC One and over the next few days and weeks i’ll be posting updates on what the One is like to live with and if it lives up to the hype.

Stay tuned for more on the HTC One.

After Google updated their Chrome app for iOS yesterday, reports starting coming in from users that the app would immediately crash after launch.

it seems that it is only affecting jailbroken iOS devices at the moment but fear not there is a simple fix that will get Chrome working again.

Simply uninstall and then re-install the Chrome app, launch the app and then tick the check box that allows usage statistics and crash reports to be automatically sent to Google. Press the accept and continue button before the app crashes and then Chrome should be fine after that.

With Samsung’s 2013 Unpacked event only just over a week away, Sammy felt it necessary to release a teaser video for the Galaxy S4. Like a good teaser video does, it doesn’t show us what the device looks like or reveal any information about it.

The wait will soon be over because Samsung plan to officially announce the Galaxy S4 on March 14th.

Anyone on Sprint wanting the BlackBerry Z10 will be left out in the cold as the carrier wont be offering the newest BlackBerry 10 phone. It seems a weird move for Sprint not to carry the Z10, especially as the CEO of BlackBerry expects the full touch screen Z10 to sell three times better than the QWERTY keyboard enabled Q10.

The Z10 has been selling reasonable well in the UK and Canada but has yet to be released in the US. The remaining big three carries, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile will have have the Z10 up for sale sometime later this month.

Via: CrackBerry

Source: Bloomberg

JK Shin, head of Samsung Mobile has confirmed that the next flagship Galaxy S phone will be unveiled on March 14th. Samsung is sticking to the tradition of announcing the Galaxy S phones at their ‘Unpacked’ event which will be held in New York city and will be live streamed on YouTube.

Just like the Galaxy S3, we don’t know much about the S4, although we are expecting it to have a 5-inch display.

Via: The Verge, Samsung (Twitter)

Source: EDAILY

Earlier in the week HTC unveiled their new not so secret weapon to take on Samsung in 2013, the HTC One. As you can expect all the major networks will pick this up but if your in the Uk and you just have to the HTC One on a 4G network then you’ll need to get it on EE.

At the moment EE is the only network to provide UK residents with LTE and because of this you will be charged a premium for the service. £31 a month will get you a poultry 500MB which will last you all of a day but you also get unlimited texts and minutes but you will have to cough up a one off payment of £240 for the phone. If your willing to pay £46, £51, £56 or £61 a month your data allowance will be increased to 3GB, 5GB, 8GB and 20GB per month respectively and you will get your one off payment knocked down to £30.

No firm release date has been given for the HTC One but we’re anticipating a release around mid-March.

Source: EE