Hasta La Gadget!

For a while, it looked like Sony was going to work its way up and down the alphabet with each new phone. More recently, however, it’s settled on one letter — for its flagships at least — and the ultimate letter at that. Following the lead of other OEM’s, Sony appears to be easing off the fragmented releases, instead training us that Z means business, Z Ultra means bigness, and the freshly announced Z1? Well that we’ll soon find out. The oft-leaked, officially teased and newest member of the Z-family comes with a few distinct features, not the least of which is that Nokia-bating 20.7-megapixel camera. In addition to the show-stopping features, there are a few more that Sony is fast making its own (such as waterproofing). Does it all add up to a new masterpiece, or is it an incremental update? We spent some time with it to try and find out.%Gallery-slideshow79370%

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Bored, BlackBerry toters? Flipboard is now on BlackBerry World to save your commute, but wait: there’s a rather big catch. It’ll only work with BlackBerry 10.2 OS (since it’s an Android port), and that version isn’t out yet, unless you’re okay with a leaked copy. If so, you’ll be able to use its magazine-style interface to share on up to 12 social networks, save stories for later perusing, curate your own editions (with help from your friends) and more. There are also customized versions for 15 countries, including the UK, Australia and Canada. If and when you get the right OS, you can grab it at the source and starting maxing out on content — including this very tech site.

Update: It turns out the app — while a fully-functioning Android version — was in fact a counterfeit, according to N4BB. That means an illegitimate company managed to slip the version past BlackBerry World gatekeepers, and Flipboard had nothing to do with it. That seems like a rather large oversight on BlackBerry’s part, considering the stature of such an app, but it’s now been pulled from the store. If you managed to grab it, it goes without saying that it’s not a good idea to install it on your device.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Blackberry

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Via: N4BB

Source: Blackberry World

As reported in the Nikkei, Panasonic will today pull out of smartphone market in Japan, and change to outsourced production (offering its brand to other manufacturers) in emerging markets like India. Company president, Kazuhiro Tsuga, has set strict guidelines to turnaround the company, threatening any division that missed a 5 percent operating margin goal within three years. The mobile arm is forecast to lose more than 1.1 billion yen ($11 million) for the incoming fiscal year — losses were 8.1 billion yen ($81 million) the year before. It joins NEC, which also dropped its smartphone arm in July. Times are tough everywhere.

“It’s not acceptable for the company to be bleeding red ink like this, so we have to think about ways to develop assets that we do have in a more effective direction”, Tsuga said. Panasonic is not stopping completely with phones, however, and plans to expand on its Toughbook laptop series with smartphones for rough-and-tough business use.

Panasonic attempted to break back into the western phone market in 2011, launching the water-resistant Eluga but failed to pick up any carrier support in Europe or the US. According to Reuters, Panasonic was once the second-largest phone maker in Japan, and had over 19 percent of the market in 2001. Last year, this dropped to seven percent — far behind the iPhone’s 24 percent pole-position. This year, Japan’s biggest carrier (and currently one of the only major carriers in the world not selling the iPhone) NTT DoCoMo, said it would be promoting only Sony’s Xperia A and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 during its “Top Two” summer advertising. At least now, Tsuga-san will have more time to plug those premature TV leaks.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Reuters

The latest development on the recent HTC saga reveals that Thomas Chien, the arrested ex-VP of Product Design, was possibly lured by the Chengdu municipal government to set up a phone company in China. According to Taiwan’s Next Magazine (pictured above by sister publication Apple Daily), Chien flew to Chengdu several times in the first half of this year, which got HTC suspicious since it doesn’t have any direct business there.

The alleged offer was that if Chien left HTC with some of the technology plus some money, then the municipal government would — through another company it set up — take care of the remaining costs for opening the factory, production and marketing. Previous reports say while still at HTC, the ex-exec had e-mailed some confidential Sense 6.0 files to external contacts, but there’s no confirmation on whether those people are linked to the Chengdu government.

Filed under: Misc, Mobile, HTC

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Via: Reuters

Source: Apple Daily (Chinese), UDN (Chinese), ET Today (Chinese)

Didn’t realize that Acer, the PC and tablet maker based out of Taiwan, actually makes smartphones? Chances are you’re in the majority, but the manufacturer is very interested in changing that. We sat down with Acer’s smartphone guru, ST Liew, to discuss the launch of the Liquid S2, the company’s 6-inch Android flagship. This is the company’s second major foray into this particular segment of the industry (the S1 being the first), so it certainly seems to be one of the most competitive arenas for smartphone consumers out there. Liew discusses the market need for such a device, though he admits that there are limits for a phone’s physical size; “six inches is just about the threshold,” he told us, though this may very well change as companies continue to innovate in design, trimming down handset size while the display gets bigger.

We dig into the company’s desire to be the first in recording 4K video footage, Acer’s product strategy for the US, Europe and Asia and the challenges Acer faces in becoming a major player in the mobile sphere, so tune in after the break for video of our full interview!

Follow all of our IFA 2013 coverage by heading to our event hub!

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Acer

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