Hasta La Gadget!

HTC isn’t just relying on the One to turn its 2013 around: the company has the HTC One mini to help with that, a new 4.3-inch version of the aluminum smartphone. Slimming the flagship down – as well as some of the core specifications – the One mini is fronted by a 720p touchscreen where the One has 1080p, but still keeps the UltraPixel camera and Zoe photography system, among other things. We caught up with the new smartphone to see if the One’s undoubtable charms have been distilled down to a more hand-friendly size.

We made no bones about how appealing we found the original One, and in many ways the One mini is the same phone. At first glance you could mistake them for each other – at 132 x 63.2 x 9.25 mm and 122g the actual difference between the two unibody aluminum casings is surprisingly small – and the 4.3-inch screen isn’t far off the 4.7-inch of the first One.

Nonetheless, there are aesthetic changes, most noticeably the plastic frame that runs around the One mini. It combines both matte finishes – on the back – and gloss – on the edges – which is something HTC tells us prompted no small amount of discussion internally. We’re not quite convinced by it, however; considering it’s where your fingertips generally land when you’re holding the phone (which is, otherwise, nicely sized for the palm and shows exemplary build quality), it feels a little cheap, certainly in comparison to the smooth aluminum back and the toughened glass fascia.

HTC One mini gallery:

It’s a rare blip in the design, however, and in comparison to the Galaxy S4 mini for instance, the One mini is still leagues ahead in aesthetics. With the smaller size, though, you get a shrinking of power: the processor is now a 1.4GHz dualcore Snapdragon 400, paired with 1GB of RAM (versus the 2GB and quadcore of the full-sized One), and there’s just 16GB of storage with no microSD expansion.

There’s LTE and HSPA – complete with a 4G version suitable for AT&T’s bands in the US – along with WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX support, but no NFC since, HTC tells us, there simply wasn’t room for the necessary antenna. HTC BoomSound is accommodated, though, with the stereo speakers upfront, flanking the 341ppi Super LCD display, though the front camera is now down to 1.6-megapixels, and there’s no clever IR blaster integrated into the power button.

HTC One mini hands-on:

Thankfully, there’s still HTC’s UltraPixel technology, which trades megapixels for low-light performance. On paper, the 4-megapixel resolution should be underwhelming, but in practice the physically larger pixels themselves make for an impressive camera; the One mini gets the same f/2.0 aperture and dedicated ImageChip 2 processor, along with 1080p Full HD video recording and HDR video support. What you don’t get is optical image stabilization, which is a disappointment.

There’s also HTC Zoe, the company’s photography system which snaps both twenty full-resolution stills and a 3.6s Full HD video simultaneously. The HTC One mini gets the new Zoe highlight video presets included for the original One in the recent Android 4.2.2 update – in fact, it runs v4.2.2 out of the box – as well as the ability to use 30s of music from a track of your own choosing for the backing. If you opt for your own music, Zoe automatically beat-matches the transitions to the audio.

The obvious comparison, perhaps, is the iPhone 5 – something many smartphone users point to when they request a smaller device without compromising on specifications. The HTC One mini is still bigger than Apple’s phone, though (plastic ring aside) it feels on a par with its premium construction. Of course, HTC has diluted the specs somewhat, though the One mini still feels swift, with only minimal slow-down when processing the Zoe highlight reels.

HTC One vs iPhone 5:

There’ll also be various accessories to go with the One mini, ranging from flip-cases (with brightly colored internal lining) to a car kit. That works with the phone’s in-car interface, complete with larger buttons offering access to common features like hands-free calling, navigation, and media playback.

HTC One mini car-kit:

HTC tells us that the One mini is expected to begin its global roll-out in August 2013, in silver and black. There’s no word on which carriers will get the handset – nor which specific countries – though HTC tells us that North American partners will be “announced soon”. Pricing is also unconfirmed, though HTC told us it expects the One mini to come in “two price points below” the original One.

HTC One mini vs HTC One:

HTC One mini hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Heading back to school can be a stressful time, but getting up to speed with your technology choices needn’t cause you sleepless nights. SlashGear has picked out the key technology to get you up and running when you’re headed back to your dorm room, including options for the student on a tighter budget. Read on for our run-down on what should be in your bag, on your ears, and helping you avoid the dreaded “freshman 15″.

Laptops

No student’s bag is right without a laptop inside, and there’s a huge range to choose from depending on what size screen you want and how much you might move around.

At the small end of the scale there’s the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, a 13.3-inch ultrabook running Windows 8 with an unusual hinge that allows it to convert between a notebook and a tablet. The distinctive form-factor makes it great for those moving regularly between desks but wanting to keep working as they go. It’s priced from $879.99.

Those wanting a bigger display while still keeping touch will probably find the Samsung ATIV Book 8 fits the bill, from $1,199.99. Running Windows 8 on a fast Core i7, and including standalone graphics, it’s a powerhouse upgrade to the ATIV Book 6 that so impressed us, and still manages to be portable despite games – as well as homework – looking great on its Full HD display.

Meanwhile, there’s long battery life to be had on Apple’s MacBook Air, with the 13-inch model lasting more than 12 hours in our testing. It’s priced from $1,099 for the 13-inch, though lacks a touchscreen.

Tablets

Gaming, taking notes in class, quickly checking your email and schedule, and reading through textbooks: there are plenty of reasons to have a tablet to hand.

Microsoft’s own Surface RT is well made and has a great 10.6-inch screen, and with a recent price cut to $349 it’s very competitive. Windows 8 makes its most compact play so far on the Acer Iconia W3, the world’s first 8.1-inch tablet running Microsoft’s OS, priced from $349.99. Both can be fitted with optional keyboards for easier text entry.

Apple’s iPad mini offers the familiar interface of the iPhone in a compact, 7.9-inch form factor, priced from $329.99. It also offers an LTE version, from $459.99, both with access to Apple’s App Store.

Android is the other OS in the room, and the $379.99 Galaxy Note 8.0 stands out with its stylus for easy note-taking.

If you can’t quite give up your easy text entry, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11S – the 11.6-inch version of the Yoga 13 above – arguably offers the best of both worlds. Windows 8 on a convertible that can be quickly flipped between easily-carried tablet and notebook modes, it starts at $729.99.

Phones

Staying connected is key, especially when you’re juggling deadlines, study groups, and a busy social life. Today’s smartphones take work and play in their stride.

Nokia’s Lumia 928, from $99.99 on Verizon Wireless, runs Windows Phone 8 and pairs it with an excellent 8-megapixel PureView camera with a proper Xenon flash, making it one of our top picks for 4G handsets. If you’re on a budget, T-Mobile’s Nokia Lumia 521 keeps the 4G but brings the price down to $29.99 on contract or an impressive $149.99 without service.

In Android, the HTC One (from $99.99 with a new agreement) and the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active (from $199.99) are our current favorites. The HTC One offers excellent low-light performance with its UltraPixel camera, while the Galaxy S4 Active offers waterproofing without the usual size compromise.

Apple’s iPhone 5, from $199.99 with a new agreement, remains a capable choice. It has a good range of applications and is likely to get a new lease of life when iOS 7 arrives this fall.

Accessories

Whether you’re working in the library, burning the midnight oil without disturbing your roommate, or just want to check out the latest YouTube sensation while waiting for the bus, a pair of great headphones is a must. Logitech’s G430 are a relative bargain at $79.99, delivering great audio quality that belies the pricing, and while they’re billed as gaming headphones the microphone makes them ideal for Skype calls home, too.

Parrot’s ZIK Bluetooth headphones are more expensive, at $399.99, but they’re beautifully made, sound great, and have the convenience of going cable-free. Should you have a phone with NFC, you can even pair them up simply by tapping them together.

If you’re keen to avoid the “freshman 15″, a fitness tracker could be the right way to do it. Fitbit’s Flex ($99.99) connects wirelessly to your smartphone and gives you regular updates on how much you’re walking, while Jawbone’s UP ($129.99) is more expensive but also tracks sleep patterns.

Got any good suggestions for what every student should be headed back to the classroom with? Let us know in the comments!

Back to School Tech Guide 2013 is written by Ewdison Then & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

There’s little difference between the experience you’ll have when you’ve reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 wi-fi edition and aim to connect to the 4G LTE internet with AT&T’s iteration. Of course if you’re aiming to connect to the web anywhere inside AT&T’s mobile data coverage area inside the USA, there’s a very big different – data speeds and all. There’s also a few key AT&T-added apps, of course, and the rest of the Galaxy Note 2013 family of features as well.

You’ll find the same hovering bits and pieces here – hold the S-Pen above an image in Flipboard and it’ll expand to show a preview of the story it represents. Hover, that is, with the same sort of feature you’ve got with your finger in the Samsung Galaxy S 4.* Here you’re also able to tap the capacitive buttons below the display with the S-Pen where every Galaxy Note before this one was limited to the display itself.

*Have a peek at the Samsung Galaxy S 4 in Aurora Red from AT&T while you’re at it.

This device is made to be the one other display size outside the pocket-sized Galaxy Note I, II, and eventually III, and of course the 10.1-inch full-sized tablet out there in the wild as well. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 was introduced at Mobile World Congress 2013 at an event which saw the machine play hero for the entire convention from Samsung.

Where previous appearances by Samsung at said Barcelona-based event series saw hero devices like the Samsung Galaxy S II, here the company’s showing with this single device showed two things:

1. Events such as Mobile World Congress these are evolving, with established lines of devices finding their way to 3rd part events. The Samsung Galaxy Premiere event showed us here in 2013 that Samsung may well be out of worldwide events like CES and CTIA by the time 2014 rolls around.

2. The Galaxy Note 8.0 was important enough to hold up Samsung in one of the most important multi-brand events in the world, MWC, specifically tuned for the mobile landscape.

The Samsung Galaxy Note brings with it the style of the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and the abilities of that machine as well, just so long as you’re using this machine’s S-Pen. The S-Pen brings with it a collection of abilities unrivaled at the moment. Not until the Samsung Galaxy Note III rolls around. Soon enough!

AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 Hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The next Motorola smartphone launch, the Moto X, is going to be massive. There’s very little we haven’t heard – or cannot guess – about the machine that’s just this week appeared in the hand of Google’s own Eric Schmidt. While we’ll be going over the suspected specifications of this device here in this article soon, right now the most important bit of information for you is this: Google will be backing this machine from start to finish.

With Google supporting the release of this machine, several things will certainly be true. The first is that Motorola will have a level of support and visibility in the market that they’ve not had since the height of Verizon’s “DROID” line. And what’s more, while Verizon had a contract with Motorola for that release and continue to have a licensing agreement with Lucasfilm for that name, Google owns the operating system inside the Moto X.

So Google owns the software as well as the hardware, having secured their ownership of Motorola long enough ago that they’re through with their scheduled creations still needing to be completed before Google could have a real hand in the process.

Though Motorola and Google operate separately, and indeed one does not communicate on every single level with the other, Google will be supporting the launch of this phone. This device will have a backing unlike any Android phone has had before it – unless you count Samsung, of course.

But even Samsung, with their Galaxy line of smartphones – the most popular line of Android devices in the world – still have a barrier that a company like Apple does not. Apple owns the software and the hardware in the iPhone. Now that Google owns the smartphone hardware manufacturing process with Motorola and the software that runs in it, we’ll get to see what it’s like for Apple to finally have an opponent attacking from the same angle – more or less.

The Moto X itself will be appearing with modest specifications. According to an amalgamated set of rumors, tips, and inferred truths from the leaked images of the machine that’ve appeared thus far have shared, the Moto X will exist as follows:

• 4.3 OR 4.7-inch display with 720p resolution
• Customizable Body
• Bluetooth 4.0 + EDR
• 4G LTE for multiple carriers (Verizon, AT&T, possibly T-Mobile)
• Wi-fi 802.11ac
• Stock or near-stock Android (with minimal carrier-added software, if any)

The styling of this device will be – is – guaranteed – to match that of the first image in this post. It’s a photo of Eric Schmidt, co-founder of Google, and it matches leak after leak of the device as it’s appeared from factory floor photos in multiple colors. We’ve seen green, bright pink, light purple, and both black and white up front.

The full “taste the rainbow” collection will likely be based – at least lightly – on the Motorola logo updated earlier this month. There you’ll not be seeing black, white, or gray, but they’re rather good bets if you’re betting.

The machine is coming in both a flat, solid bit of soft plastic and a more textured edition as you’ll see Schmidt carrying above. Exceedingly thin, this machine will be aimed – as most Motorola phones are – at being robust, as well. You wont be complaining about scratches to this device any time soon (at last to the back panel), while the front will still need to be made with some form of reinforced glass or the other.

The actual final release of this machine will likely be coming somewhere in the latter half of August. According to a Verizon roadmap, the big red version of the machine will be appearing on the 23rd of August, while the announcement for the phone could take place far closer to the end of the month we’re in right this minute.

Sound like a solid release, based on what you’ve read? Are you ready to pick a color and texture – not to mention engraving – for the back and front of your phone yet, or are you still deciding if it makes sense to move away from a top-tier smartphone to join the Moto X party? Or could it be that this machine isn’t aimed at early adopters, but the everyman instead?

Moto X and the details you need for an ideal launch is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Today we’ve had our first look at the Nokia Lumia 1020 – a device with a 41-megapixel back-facing camera more than ready to take on the already revealed Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom. Where not too many years ago it was considered amazing to see a camera present in a cellphone, here in 2013 we’ve got not just cellphones, but smartphones, bringing on camera constructs far more powerful than most standard pocket-friendly point-and-shoots! Now both Nokia and Samsung have machines with as much focus on the smartphone as on the photography power they possess – so what’s the difference?

Camera

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom works with a 16-megapixel CMOS sensor with an f/3.1-f/6.3 24-240mm 10x zoom lens. This produces results that we’ve just begun to test in our first Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom hands-on with photo examples posted this week. It’s appearing here to be an extremely well-balanced shooter with the ability to take fine photos on its back as well as its front (where a 2 megapixel shooter sits).

Meanwhile the Nokia Lumia 1020 works with a 41-megapixel sensor branded PureView by the company working with an f/2.2 ZEISS lens. The Nokia device works with an up-to 6x digital zoom setup, but claims said zoom will result in no loss of quality due to the machine’s ability to collect so much more image information in the first place.

You’ll have to check out our SlashGear 101: Nokia Lumia 1020 Oversampling and the 5MP “Sweet Spot” until we can get some photo experience with the machine out in the wild. We’re expecting results at least as fine as those produced with the original Nokia 41MP machine, the Nokia 808 PureView.

Size

The physical shape of each of these machines puts the line between camera and phone at a new level of blurry, each in their own way. While the Nokia machine literally has the back-facing lens set in landscape, letting you know that the back side is not a portrait-facing sort of situation, the Samsung device has a similar aim – the Samsung logo may be set in portrait, but the rest of the back is clearly a standard camera and lens looking aesthetic.

The fronts of both machines, too, are set to look like smartphones on their own. The Samsung Galaxy S4′s final size comes in at 125.5 x 63.5 x 15.4 mm while the Nokia Lumia 1020 is thinner – yet taller and wider 130.4 x 71.4 x 10.4 mm in total. NOTE: You’re seeing the Samsung machine here next to the Nokia 808 PureView here, the 808 resting atop the comparably thin Nokia Lumia 1020.

Internal Storage

You’ll need a lot of space for all the photos and video you’re going to be capturing. For the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom you’ve got a rather modest 8GB of space built-in, but you’ve got a microSD card slot capable of working with up to 32GB cards. Meanwhile the Nokia Lumia 1020 works with 32GB of internal storage right out of the box, but has no microSD card slot. It’s a tradeoff or a bonus either way – depending on your perspective!

Operating System

The key factor in deciding between these two machines for you may very well come down to the operating system that backs them up. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom works with the newest version of Android, Jelly Bean 4.2.2, while the Nokia machine has Windows Phone 8. Both machines have a rather healthy amount of backup from their respective manufacturers as both machines are heavily invested in the operating systems they roll with, and both work with extremely unique systems under the hood.

While we’ve gotten our first taste of what the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom is working with thanks to our first hands-on on the review bench (as linked above) and through our original Galaxy S4 Zoom hands-on, it’ll be a bit before we get as involved with the 1020 as we want to be before we make any judgements on the Nokia machine. For now you’ll have to take a peek at our first Nokia Lumia 1020 hands-on to see what you make of it!

Nokia Lumia 1020 vs Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom: war of the camera phones is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.