Samsung Galaxy A5 – 5-inch display and 5MP front camera

Samsung’s just announced a new series of mobiles, revealing the Galaxy A3 and A5. The announcement GOES BIG in the word “selfie,” with Samsung sticking 5megapixel front-facing cameras in both models. The A5 has a 13MP main unit and the A3 comes with an 8MP proper camera. Both phones are powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core chipset, with 2GB of RAM in the A5 and 1GB of working memory in the A3. Android 4.4 is the initial OS.

And they might be a big cheaper than the Galaxy S range. They look like this:

Pleasingly angular. Here’s the thing, which says they’re both likely to hit the UK at some point and spells “social media” as socialmedia:

SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS’ ULTRA SLIM GALAXY A5 AND GALAXY A3 OPTIMISED FOR SOCIAL NETWORKING

New Samsung Galaxy devices designed for the social networking generation

London, UK – 31^stOctober 2014 – Samsung Electronics today unveiled the Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A3, offering a sleek, high fashion design and advanced functions that make social networking. Available in a variety of colours and sizes, both devices are designed to allow social networking fans to quickly and easily capture meaningful moments, connect to socialmedia and share their daily lives. Read the full article »

1 Comment by Eurodroid / October 31, 2014 / Posted in: Uncategorized

Huawei Honor 6 is mid-to-high-end Android for £249

Huawei’s taken a new approach with the launch of its latest Honor [sic] smartphone, with the Honor 6 being sold direct through Amazon right now for £249 — cutting out the usual network partner approach. For that kind of money the latest Honor is quite impressive, offering a 5.0-inch screen running at 1080p resolution, 13MP rear and 5MP front cameras, a 3,100mAh capacity battery and 3GB of RAM.

The only real unknown is the chipset, with the Honor 6 powered by Hisilicon Kirin 920 Octa-Core processor. Which may be awesome or not. Here it is, looking quite generic but otherwise perfectly serviceable, with Huawei’s own Emotion UI clearly visible:

Check out Huawei’s official stuff about the Honor 6 here, or head over to Amazon to buy one if you are the sort of person for whom £250 is an impulse-level of expenditure.

No Comments by Eurodroid / October 29, 2014 / Posted in: Uncategorized

Asda opts for Samsung Galaxy Tab Lite exclusive

Asda is sort of starting a new tablet war with Tesco and its stonkingly popular Hudl, thanks to a deal to sell an exclusive version of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Lite in store and online.

For just £89 you can have one, although with just a 2MP camera and dual-core chipset, don’t go expecting lightning performance in any particular area from the Asda option.

Get it here if you are in the market for something cheap and probably not that cheerful.

No Comments by Eurodroid / October 27, 2014 / Posted in: Uncategorized

Amazon Fire Phone hits the UK — with one year's free Prime membership

The Amazon Fire phone, which seemed exciting but then got announced and suddenly wasn’t, is coming to the UK. Network O2 has acquired it exclusively, and will begin selling it for “free” on £33 a month contracts.

One interesting promotional carrot sees Amazon offering one year of free Amazon Prime membership to initial O2 subscribers, which is quite a handy thing if you like torturing your postie by making him carry your groceries in every day. Here it is:

The Fire Phone is a powerful thing, right enough, with a 2.2GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM, but the Amazon Fire OS and bewildering “Dynamic Perspective” home UI caused US reviewers to scratch their heads a little when it was launched over there earlier in the summer.

Check out the Amazon UK listing for more info. Weird to see it selling phone contracts. Here’s the ridiculously enormous centre-aligned press release:

Fire, the First Smartphone Designed by Amazon, Now Available in the

United Kingdom

Fire offered at a remarkable price on O2 Refresh—£0 upfront on the £33 tariff, only on O2

For a limited time, customers will receive a full year of Amazon Prime membership included—that’s Prime Instant Video, Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and unlimited one-day shipping on 7 million items

Seamless integration with Amazon’s vast ecosystem—over 33 million songs, apps, games, movies,

TV shows, books and more

Read the full article »

No Comments by Eurodroid / September 8, 2014 / Posted in: Deals, Handsets, News

The New Moto G – 5-inch display and launching today for £144.99

Motorola UK has kicked things up a gear today, announcing that an updated Moto G, a refreshed Moto X and the long awaited Moto Maker customisation tool are all heading to the UK.

The new Moto G, which Motorola seems to be calling just The New Moto G, comes with a 5-inch 720p display, powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor. There’s the same 1GB of RAM inside as last year’s G-Unit, although cameras have been upgraded to 8MP and 2MP.

Motorola says the new Moto G will go on sale via Amazon on September 5 for £144.99. A series of coloured Moto Shells for the G will arrive later in October.

The new Moto X, meanwhile, comes with a 1080p 5.2-inch display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset, and arrives at the end of September along with the Moto Maker customisation tool. The prices start at £419.99 for a custom Moto X, rising to £439 for the desirable wood and leather finishes.

Motorola also said something about a watch.

1 Comment by Eurodroid / September 5, 2014 / Posted in: Handsets, News

Freesat Android app launched

Freesat, the vague organisation behind those TV tuners that let you get satellite TV without paying Sky any money, now has an official Android app. On a basic level it’s an EPG to tell you what’s on over the next seven days, although viewers with one of the more recent Freetime set-top boxes can pair it with their tuners and use their phones and tablets as remote controls — also triggering recordings from afar.

It is therefore quite useful if you can get it to sync and work. Check out the Freesat app here.

1 Comment by Eurodroid / July 17, 2014 / Posted in: Apps, News, Opinion

Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini – 4.5-inch display, 1.4GHz quad-core processor

Samsung has unveiled one of 2014’s predictable banker models — the Galaxy S5 Mini. It’s your usual compromise that still ought to perform extremely well, teaming a 1.5GHz quad-core chipset with 1.5GB of RAM, outputting Samsung’s take on Android 4.4 to a 4.5-inch display running at 720 x 1280 resolution.

There’s also two cameras (8MP and 2.1MP), plus a 2,100mAh capacity battery that ought to be adequate to run tings given the small-ish screen onboard. Here it is:

Chunky. Some regions will see the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini on sale as early as July. And here’s the thing:

SAMSUNG LAUNCHES COMPACT AND STYLISH GALAXY S5 MINI

Third generation mini device packs strong performance in a compact and stylish design

London, UK – July 1, 2014 – Samsung Electronics today announced the Galaxy S5 mini, a compact version of Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5. The Galaxy S5 mini delivers powerful performance, as well as the same dedicated fitness tools and enhanced device protection features found in the Galaxy S5.

Read the full article »

No Comments by Eurodroid / July 1, 2014 / Posted in: Handsets, News

Android stomps across Europe with 73.3% of key market smartphone sales

The latest breakdown of the European smartphone scene via analyst Kantar has arrived, revealing that in the five key EU markets — UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain — Android-powered devices accounted for a staggering 73.3% of all smartphone sales in the 12-week period up to the end of May.

Apple is second on a 16.6% share, with Microsoft’s Windows Phone third with just an 8.1% piece of the statistical smartphone sales pie.

The centrepiece of its latest report was the performance of the newly-launched Samsung Galaxy S5, though, a phone that Kantar says was the third best-selling device in the UK in the month of May, behind the iPhone 5S and 5C.

No Comments by Eurodroid / June 30, 2014 / Posted in: Handsets, News

LG G Watch priced at £159 in the UK, Samsung Gear Live £169

THEY’RE COMING! THE SMARTWATCH INVASION IS UNDER WAY! Today, or perhaps very late last night after we stopped refreshing the page, saw Google begin direct-selling two of the new Android Wear smartwatches via Google Play, with the LG G Watch yours for just £159.

Samsung’s Gear Live is also now on sale, costing £10 more. Both should ship around the first week of July, so there’s around two extra weeks of living in the past to get out of the way before the FUTURE ARRIVES in a surprisingly BULKY FORMAT.

The only way I’ll be wearing one is if there’s some sort of mix-up at the mortuary, though. If you’re keen, check out the Google Play Android Wear hub here.

1 Comment by Eurodroid / June 26, 2014 / Posted in: Deals, Handsets, News

Google: Android had one billion active users last month

Google’s Sundar Pichai gave us some stats around Android at this year’s Google I/O developer event today, revealing that the mobile OS saw over one billion individual active users over the last 30 days. Here’s a chart:

This new stat replaces the previous device activations numbers, which we tracked over the past few years to a last-reported high of 900 million device activations back in 2013.

And there’s more amazing growth news too, with Pichai revealing that Google now has a tablet market share of 62 percent.

And THAT’S NOT IT. To further grow this, Pichai introduced the Android One initiative, to launch a cheaper, sub-$100 stock Android experience to bring more affordable smartphones to developing countries.

No Comments by Eurodroid / June 25, 2014 / Posted in: Firmware, News

Reviews
- Sony Xperia Z2 review
  This is Sony’s latest go at producing a high-spec Android flagship model, with the Xperia Z2 ticking every one of 2014’s must-have tech bullet points. It has a large 5.2-inch 1080p display. It has the hot new Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset inside. It has a massive 3GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. It’s […]
- LG/Google Nexus 5 review
  It’s smooth to use, the 1080p display is sharp, clear and bright, the device is extremely light and thin and therefore very pocketable and portable — much more so than other 5-inch phones we’ve used. And yet… we’re a bit unimpressed by the overall package…
- Vodafone Huawei Ascend G510 review
  A relatively high-spec smartphone, with a 4.5″ display running at 480 x 854 resolution and powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, plus the Ascend G510 arrives running Android 4.1.1 — albeit potentially hindered by Huawei only sticking 512MB of RAM inside it..
- Kogan Agora 5.0" Dual-core Smartphone review
  We bought one of these using our actual money. We couldn’t quite believe that budget hardware maker Kogan was able to sell a 5″ Android phone for £119 plus delivery from Hong Kong so had to get one to have a look at the thing under our usual LABORATORY CONDITIONS. First impressions of the Kogan Agora […]
- Panasonic Eluga review
  The Panasonic Eluga marks the company’s return to the European mobile phone scene years after several years of absence, and it’s come back to us with a moderately high-spec Android model that features a rather stylish, slim case.
- HTC One V review
  The HTC One V is HTC’s third entry in its high-profile new HTC One range, offering a smaller 3.7″ display running on a single-core 1GHz processor. It is is very much the “affordable” option in HTC’s newest Android series, but it still arrives running the same HTC Sense 4 interface we saw in the excellent […]
- HTC One S review
  The HTC One S is the piggy in the middle of HTC’s 2012 line-up, offering a 4.3″ AMOLED display inside a very slim and stylish aluminium chassis. You get the same ImageSense camera technology as employed to such great effect in the HTC One X, along with Android 4.0.3 and the very latest HTC Sense […]
- HTC One X review
  Here it is then, HTC’s new quad-core monster, the 4.7″ flagship for 2012 that introduces the Tegra 3 processor to mobile phones, updates HTC’s range to Android 4.0 and brings us the supposedly streamlined version 4.0 of HTC’s Sense user interface. You also get a fantastic 8megapixel camera that we’ve previously examined in great detail, […]
- HTC One X review: Camera, photo and video samples
  HTC’s new quad-core flagship phone doesn’t just feature Android 4.0, a 4.7″ display and Nvidia’s newest Tegra 3 chipset – there’s also an entirely new 8megapixel camera in the phone, powered by a system HTC is calling ImageSense. And this camera is one of the many highlights of the new Android phone, offering the perfect […]
- Sony Xperia S review
  Sony returns with an all-new mobile design for 2012, pairing a dual-core processor with a 720p display. It’s a lovely phone, but is it enough to end our Samsung and HTC obsession?
- Sony Xperia S review: Camera, photo and video samples
  We’ve spent most of the last week captivated by the staggeringly sharp screen of the new Sony Xperia S, while putting together what will hopefully be something resembling a review for you all to read very shortly. In the meantime, to be getting on with, here are a few sample photos and videos, taken using […]
- LG Prada 3.0 review
  LG’s updated Prada phone comes with an absolutely crazy black & white theme, but is it just for fashionable suit wearers who want to make themselves look a bit more interesting?
- ACCESSORY REVIEW: Case-Mate Tough Case for Galaxy Nexus
  £30? For a phone case? It had better be good.
- ACCESSORY REVIEW: Samsung Official Mesh Vent Case for Galaxy Nexus
  Samsung’s official Galaxy Nexus case. Costs a lot. Has a glittery little logo.
- ACCESSORY REVIEW: Case-Mate Barely There for Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  Fresh from reviewing the cheap and cheerful FlexiShield case for the Galaxy Nexus, we’re back with another protective offering from industry veteran Case-Mate. Although this particular product retails for around the same price as FlexiShield’s TPU option, it’s quite a different proposition. Review submitted by extremely patient retro gaming advisor Damo. As the name suggests, […]
- ACCESSORY REVIEW: FlexiShield Case for Galaxy Nexus
  Seeing as we’ve just reviewed the brand spanking new Galaxy Nexus, we’re in the mood for some accessorising – and we don’t mean earnings and handbags. To that end, we’ll be covering a few Galaxy Nexus-themed items over the next few weeks, starting with the FlexiShield Case. Review submitted by reader, writer, gamer and occasional […]