Hasta La Gadget!

When Sony and Box came together last year to offer Xperia owners a tantalizing deal of 50GB of free storage for life, the promotion was only set to run for a year. Now that shopping season is upon us once more, however, the holiday spirit must’ve moved them to extend the partnership for yet another year — that, or Sony needs any edge it can to move those Xperia devices to consumer hands. Just as with the prior promo, Xperia and Sony tablet users can snag 50 gigs of cloud storage completely gratis just by signing up or tapping into existing Box accounts on their devices before December 31st 2013. However, do note that the offer doesn’t extend to the Xperia X10 mini, the X10 mini pro and anything that has firmware older than Android 2.1. Now that Sony has this going for two years straight, maybe they should extend this to a lifetime scenario, or as long as Box sticks around to offer up that sweet storage in the sky.

Continue reading Sony and Box extend BFF status, offer 50GB free storage to Xperia owners through 2013

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Sony

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Via: MobileBurn

Source: Sony

Now that Verizon’s most recent Droid RAZR family has had its taste of Jelly Bean, it’s time for Motorola to shift focus to the rest of the devices that have made the cut for the upgrade — and it’s doing just that with an updated timetable for the rollout. Among those phones and tablets that aren’t already on Android 4.1, only the Atrix HD and Asia-Pacific RAZR HD models should get the refresh before 2012 bows out. A larger contingent that includes the Electrify M, the LTE-equipped Xoom and some international models like the European RAZR i will have to wait until the first quarter of 2013 for their turn. Other devices like the Droid Bionic, original RAZR and Photon Q are still on deck, but don’t yet have a schedule. That’s not a comforting sign when we could see a version of Android beyond 4.2 in the spring, so we’re hoping that Motorola is trying to underpromise now and overdeliver later.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google

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Via: Android Central

Source: Motorola

HTC isn’t going to let Nokia keep the Chinese limelight for long: the phone maker has just launched three variants of its late 2012 flagship phones for China’s mainland, all of which should reach local stores by mid-December. Those looking for sheer brawn will want the Butterfly. While it’s ultimately a slight variant on the J Butterfly (Droid DNA to Americans) that should reach China Unicom, the 1080p smartphone should come to the country in rarer brown and white hues alongside the black we’ve already seen in the US. Localized models of the Windows Phone 8X and 8S are similarly inbound, but their aces in the hole should be sheer ubiquity — variants are on the way for WCDMA (China Unicom), CDMA2000 (China Telecom) and TD-SCDMA (China Mobile) networks. We don’t immediately have pricing for the two Windows Phone 8 handsets, but the Butterfly should cost a suitably large ¥4,799 ($771) contract-free.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC

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Via: Engadget Chinese (translated)

Source: HTC (translated), Sina Weibo (translated)

Not all Kickstarter projects take flight, to say the least, so it’s nice to see one like GoPano Micro that not only went somewhere but is continuing to evolve. The company has just put a new version of the 360 degree camera lens adapter on pre-order, this time for the iPhone 5. The tiny lens is mounted to a case for Apple’s latest smartphone, and lets you film while panning in any direction by swiping the screen left or right — as shown in the video for the last model, after the break. It even lets you scroll around the video after its been recorded, since it films the entire circular panorama at once. It’ll run you $69 to grab one, including a second case for the iPhone 4/4S, so if you’re looking add to your bag of cinematic tricks, click on the source.

Continue reading GoPano Micro brings 360 degree video to iPhone 5, now on pre-order for $69

Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Mobile

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Source: GoPano Store

Windows Phone 8 is a roaring success! That is if you ask the platform’s Senior Director, Todd Brix, who tweeted today that developer revenues and downloads have doubled since its launch in November. While this sounds all good, what does it really mean? Back in June, the former Windows Phone Marketplace surpassed 100,000 published apps. To further gauge the platform’s progress, Nokia recently announced that the Windows Phone Store now has over 120,000 apps, with 46 of the top 50 iOS and Android applications being available for WP8.

While today’s vague declaration of success didn’t reveal any specific numbers, a 20 percent software increase in under six months is definitely something to smile about. As much as we’d like to slap Microsoft a high-five, we’ll have to save our jubilation until we get a little something more concrete — hopefully a set of official statistics will Surface sooner than later.

Filed under: Software, Mobile, Microsoft

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Source: Todd Brix (Twitter), Nokia