Hasta La Gadget!

After publishing a self-promoting infographic that takes a look at the history of photography, it’s pretty obvious that HTC has something up its sleeve concerning smartphone cameras. While the company didn’t carve out clear cut details of what it has in store, the popular Taiwanese phone maker did give a vague idea of when things will transpire. The final entry in the company’s little history lesson concludes in current times with an entry stating “HTC kicks off a new sound and camera experience in 2013.” While we’re really not into playing guessing games, we can’t help but wonder if the firm’s exclusive relationship with Beats will have an impact on the audio portion of its plans. Hopefully HTC’s pre-MWC festivities will shed a bit of light on what the company has been working on.

Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Mobile, HTC

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Source: HTC

Huawei may have its 6.1-inch Ascend Mate for the convenience of hiding your face, but ZTE’s also prepping its very own tabletphone to go head to head with its main rival. Dubbed the Grand Memo (V9815), this 5.7-inch 720p device made a surprise appearance at a ZTE event in Hong Kong today, and we got to snap some photos of it. The device looks identical to the P945 leaked earlier this month but packs some slightly different specs: 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro (same as the more premium Grand S), 13-megapixel camera, 8mm-thick body and Android 4.1.2.

While the specs aren’t too shabby, our colleague Stone Ip said the choice of finish on the body didn’t feel as nice as the Grand S’, and the silver bezel made the Grand Memo look worse, but in ZTE’s defense it was a prototype and the design may improve in the retail version. On a more positive note, the new phone does include a microSD slot despite its slimness, and it comes with a “one-hand” T9 keyboard that can stick to either side of the screen for better single-handed typing, just too bad we were asked not to take a video of the device at the time. That said, the Grand Memo will be officially unveiled at MWC next month, so stay tuned for more.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Engadget Chinese

Well, it certainly seems like a good time to be in the market for an Android tablet — Sony has just announced its attractive new Tablet Z, and it seems that Samsung really does have another Note tab up its sleeves.

According to Korean news outlet iNews 24, Samsung Mobile chief JK Shin has confirmed that the company’s rumored 8-inch Galaxy Note tablet will indeed be making an appearance at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

At this point there’s still no official word on what kind of internals we can expect from the 8-inch version, but that hasn’t kept the rumor mill from churning as it always does. Should you believe the reports floating around out there, the new Note tablet could ship with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, 2GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear camera and a 1.3 megapixel front-facer. Curiously, there’s been very little chatter about what sort of processor will drive this package, but it shouldn’t be long before all those details are made available for us to chew on more thoughtfully.

Still, this is a welcome morsel of news from Samsung — it had its share of shortcomings, but I was generally very fond of the Samsung’s 10-inch Galaxy Note — to me, it remains one of the most thoughtful implementations of the Note concept (and its string of recent software updates haven’t hurt either). That said, scaling down that S-Pen-friendly display to a more portable 8 inches is a smart (if not unexpected) move, and could help Samsung fight back not only against Apple’s iPad mini, but popular devices like the Nexus 7 as well.

That report also goes on to say that people shouldn’t expect to see Samsung’s oft-rumored Galaxy S IV on display in Barcelona, which isn’t exactly a shocker considering Samsung’s recent track record. The Korean consumer electronics giant showed off the 10.1-inch Galaxy Note tablet last year in lieu of any flagship smartphones at MWC last year (though the team ultimately went back to the drawing board for a few months before actually releasing the thing), and saved its Galaxy S III for a lavish spectacle in London later in the year. I wouldn’t expect Samsung to buck that trend any time soon, but that’s just fine by me — if some persistent murmurs are any indication, the GSIV will make for a hell of show once the time is right.

HTC had a disappointing year last year, despite early success with the One X and solid hardware releases in general. This year, it looks like it will be kicking things off in style with the launch of a new flagship device, called the HTC M7, a phone rumored for likely launch at MWC in Barcelona next month. The phone was supposedly depicted in a render leaked last week, but now, very different-looking hardware has turned up in photos obtained by Android Police.

At first glance, the M7 leak spotted by AP looks a lot more like what we’d expect from HTC. It has the company’s trademark look, with rounded corners and front glass that looks to taper slightly at the edges of the screen. The rear of the phone likewise looks like HTC signature style, with a matte black finish on what looks like a rubberized surface, with a centrally-positioned rear camera and speaker grill near the bottom of the device.

Rumored specs for this phone include a 4.7-inch display with 1080p resolution (making for a mind-boggling 468ppi pixel density) and a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm processor. In the new leaked images, it is depicted as running Sense 5.0, the next generation of HTC’s own OEM-specific custom Android skin. Sense looks to bring some considerable aesthetic changes to the mix for the UI, including a clock that embraces a digital look in favor of the flip-clock style one that HTC has been using as its own iconic take on Android for quite a while now.

Another noteworthy feature are the new info pane widgets, which look to provide information streams from various sources kind of like in an Android approximation of what Microsoft’s live tiles offer. Those aren’t populated yet in the screenshots, though, so we’ll have to wait and see what they actually look like in practice, should these leaks prove accurate.

HTC needs to come out of the gate swinging in 2013 to boost the brand and win back consumer confidence, but its recent Droid DNA and Butterfly phones have shown some dramatic steps in that direction. The M7, which should combine an industry leading display with a form factor that’s probably more battery and user-friendly than a giant-sized device, could be just what the doctor ordered.