Hasta La Gadget!

HTC has sold approximately five million of its HTC One flagship smartphones, an executive at the company has confirmed, with demand for the phone still apparently outstripping supply. The sales statistics – which HTC is yet to officially endorse – come amid concerns that the company is losing key executives and struggling to raise the profile of the One against the Samsung Galaxy S 4. Despite the fears, an unnamed HTC executive tells the WSJ, sales have in fact been strong.

As HTC has complained about before, it’s getting sufficient stock that is primarily holding the One back, the executive continues. “Orders are pretty good so far and are still more than what we can supply” the source suggests. “This is partly due to the shortage of components. When the issue is resolved next month, we will have a better idea if it’s doing really well or not.”

Production is set to double this month HTC has already claimed, and April sales figures showed a reassuring upward turn, believed to be primarily down to One performance. The phone was originally intended to release in eighty countries by the end of Q1 2013, but issues sourcing components for the “UltraPixel” camera, among other things, saw that limited to just a handful of locations.

That hasn’t stopped HTC from making bold predictions for Q2. Revenue for the current quarter is expected to reach around NT$70bn ($2.4bn), the company has said, an increase of almost a billion US dollars.

Still, the 5m figure pales somewhat compared to Samsung’s sales figures for its Galaxy S 4. Earlier today, Samsung confirmed that 10m of the latest Galaxy flagships had been sold – though it’s worth noting that Samsung’s numbers count sales to operators and retailers, not to end-users – in the first month of the device’s availability.

Meanwhile, the other phone HTC had high hopes for, the HTC First, has not seen the success expected. Sales are said to have underwhelmed, and sources have even claimed that the First – which runs Facebook Home, a replacement Android launcher focused on information from the social network – was scuppered by Facebook itself, after a last-minute change in strategy that saw the launcher released free in the Google Play market in the same week that the smartphone arrived on AT&T.

5m HTC One sales tips exec with demand still exceeding supply is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As was the case with another LG device recently, the Optimus F3 is making an appearance before going official. Today we’re getting an early look at what appears to be an entry-level member of the Optimus family, courtesy of @eveleaks, and one which will reportedly join Sprint’s smartphone lineup pretty soon. Among the alleged specs said are a 4-inch WVGA display, 2,460mAh battery, LTE capabilities and one of the latest versions of Android — Jelly Bean (4.1.2). Meanwhile, precise availability and pricing deets are still unknown, but, if all goes according to Phone Arena, we’ll find all that out here “in the next few weeks.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, LG

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Source: Phone Arena

Mobile payments provider Square has launched an PayPal rival, Square Cash, offering a straightforward way for individuals to exchange small sums direct to each others’ debit cards. The invite-only beta, which Square has confirmed is rolling out gradually, attempts to make sending a payment as straightforward as filling in recipient details, an amount, and a message.

The demo animation on the sparse Square Cash site shows an example transaction, with one person sending a $25 payment to a friend in return for drinks at dinner. The concept appears to be a more individual approach to mobile money than the business Square is best known for, where an iPhone or iPad dongle is used to swipe credit or debit cards, and intended for merchants to process payments from general customers.

Instead, Square Cash appears to work more like PayPal or Cenmo, or indeed Google’s recent integration of Google Wallet into Gmail. There, Gmail users can send payments to friends by simply clicking a button in their email inbox.

Just as with those other services, Square Cash requires that both users be signed up to begin with. Then, transactions are sent directly between debit cards; the sender uses their regular email account to send a message with the sum involved in the subject line, and as long as they CC Square Cash in the email, the money is exchanged.

The recipient gets a similar email, with a link they can click to approve the exchange. Until that link is clicked, the sender can cancel the payment; there’s a $0.50 cost per payment, charged to the sender.

That’s slightly higher than Google’s minimum fee of $0.30 – based on a 2.9-percent processing fee – but if you’re sending more than around $17.58 then Square’s set cost works out cheaper.

There’s no telling when Square Cash will launch publicly, and the company itself is giving little away.

VIA: TechCrunch

Square Cash tipped to make splitting the check email-simple is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A stock GS4 may look virtually indistinguishable from its predecessor, but it looks like Samsung’s got a new variant of its flagship phone that’ll bring it some much-needed visual flair. The folks at GSM Arena unearthed photos of a GT-I9295 model (allegedly called the GS4 Active) sporting a bright red shell with black inserts at the top and bottom and a trio of physical buttons on its chin. If the results returned by the AnTuTu benchmark are to be believed, the phone’s equipped with standard GS4 fixins: a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.9Ghz and an Adreno 320 GPU (aka, a Snapdragon 600 SoC) and a 1920 x 1080 display. Naturally, there’s no word on pricing, carrier support or an arrival date, but there are a couple more photos of the handset at the source.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: GSM Arena

A new variation on Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 has leaked, the Samsung Galaxy S 4 Active, with the quadcore 1.9GHz smartphone cropping up in Croatia ahead of an official release. The slightly aesthetically-redesigned phone, which apparently has physical menu and back buttons as well as what looks to be a more rugged rear casing, has turned up at GSMArena, having been previewed on a Samsung WhatON app update first, complete with some other new twists on the Samsung flagship.

That update – to the remote control software Samsung uses to turn its phones and tablets into universal remotes – name-checked not only the Galaxy S 4 Active but two other handsets. Version 5.0.4 of the software now has support for the S4 Mega and S4 mini, according to this screenshot from SamMobile; Samsung since updated the changelog to remove any mention of the unannounced phones.

Judging by the AnTuTu benchmarking results run on the Galaxy S 4 Active (GT-I9295) handset in the wild, the phone sticks closely to the pattern already set by the Galaxy S 4. There’s a 1920 x 1080 Full HD display running at 480 dpi along with Adreno 320 graphics; according to the person who shot the photos, it’s a 5-inch device, too.

In fact, the big change is expected to be in how the phone is put together. Rather than the much-criticized plastic casing of the existing Galaxy S 4, the Active version is believed to use metal. There’s also talk of a special waterproof coating to protect against splashes, with Samsung tipped to be relying on the P2i nano-coating which makes even the circuitboards water-resilient.

As for the S4 mini, a good guess would be a smaller version – likely with pared back specifications – of the regular S4. Samsung has already tried this once before, with the Galaxy S III Mini, though the underwhelming specifications made it more of a name cash-in rather than a true shrunken version of the flagship.

Finally, the S4 Mega presumably sees the regular S4 head in the other direction, getting even bigger. That could mean a bigger display – though that would be getting close to the size of the Galaxy Note II, which itself may be getting larger in its third generation expected to launch later in the year – or it might mean a larger battery. Alternatively, Samsung might step up to 5.5-inches and, since it would presumably lack a stylus, more closely compete with the LG Optimus G Pro.

Samsung Galaxy S 4 Active caught in wild as S4 Mini and S4 Mega lurk is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.