HTC

As you might expect, Taiwan's HTC didn't just bring a new tablet to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. A brood of five new phones also managed to break away from the nest, including a couple with one-touch Facebook access. The company's popular Desire, Wildfire and Incredible models also get a new lease on life.  Read More

Taiwan-based smartphone manufacturer HTC has joined the increasingly crowded tablet market with a 7-inch tablet called the Flyer. The device features a 1.5GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM and 32GB of flash storage packed inside an aluminum unibody case. The 7-inch LCD multi-touchscreen sports 1024 x 600 pixels with a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera and 5-megapixel rear-facing camera. Instead of opting for Google’s tablet-centric Android 3.0 (Gingerbread), HTC has gone with a tablet-focused Sense UI over the top of Android 2.4 (Gingerbread) providing a 3D home screen and widgets carousel.  Read More

Not long ago, there was informed debate on whether a purpose-built computer would ever beat a chess master. Now mobile phones have achieved Grand Master status. Computers continue to get exponentially faster, not to mention considerably smarter through improved software, whereas humans are effectively nearing their limits. Hence, it’s arguably only a matter of time and R&D focus before computers (plus improved sensors and software) surpass any specific human capability. This week Audi revealed that its Autonomous TTS research car had completed the 12.42-mile Pike’s Peak mountain course in 27 minutes. An expert driver in the same car would take around 17 minutes – now we have a benchmark, the race is on, and it's almost inevitable that a computer will one day outdrive the best of our species, and it may be sooner than you think.  Read More

At this year's CEATEC conference in Chiba, Japan, Docomo previewed the AR Walker augmented reality application that uses a tiny display screen mounted on a pair of glasses, rather than on a mobile phone screen like Layar or other AR apps. While the AR Walker application is not by itself anything new, being able to see annotations of the world around you without having to view it through a mobile phone's camera display is. Docomo has come one step closer to the fictional augmented reality glasses that anime fans might remember from the TV series Dennou Coil, where children wore glasses to view virtual objects superimposed over the real world.  Read More

Just as a successful TV show can yield spin-offs, apparently so it is with mobile phones. Looking to capitalize on the success of its HTC Desire, which launched earlier this year to positive reviews, HTC has unveiled the Desire HD and Desire Z. The Desire HD features a larger 4.3” display and is the first phone to be powered by the new 1GHz Qualcomm 8255 Snapdragon processor. Meanwhile, the Desire Z is a QWERTY slider and is the first to be powered by the 800MHz Qualcomm 7230 processor. In addition to the new hardware, HTC also announced an enhanced HTC Sense experience centered around a new HTCSense.com service that lets users backup, lock, locate and wipe data from their phone remotely.  Read More

The follow-up to the Google sanctioned G1 smartphone is on the way and T-Mobile has released official details. The T-Mobile G2 gets Android 2.2, an 800 MHz Snapdragon MSM7230 CPU, applications like Google Voice Actions built-in and 4G speeds via the carrier's HSPA+ network2. The HTC-designed handset also includes a 3.7-inch multi-touch screen, an optical trackpad, a new hinge design for the full QWERTY keyboard and a 5-megapixel camera with 720p video capture.  Read More

What do get when you combine a Leica M8, a universal shelving system and a Braun radio designed by Dieter Rams, some Illy ground coffee tins and an Ikepod Solaris watch? Probably not much but thankfully 18-year-old Andrew Seunghyun Kim has used design influences from those very items to produce a gorgeous mobile phone concept he's decided to call the "HTC 1" (though he has no affiliation with HTC). From the slight curve to the touchscreen display to its metallic construction and simple but functional user interface – it's a pretty slick design.  Read More

It wasn't too long ago that choosing an Android phone came down to whether you wanted a physical keyboard (HTC G1/Dream) or not (HTC Magic). With increasing Android adoption from carriers and handset manufacturers, making the same decision in 2010 is a lot harder. We've put two of the latest Android phones, the HTC Desire and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, head to head in our latest versus review - read on for the details.  Read More

After a gradual build-up throughout 2009 the roll-out of Android mobile phone handsets is really starting to snowball - and that means more choice for consumers. If the iDEN Motorola i1 and the WiMAX HTC EVO 4G aren't your thing (or your network), you might want to take a look at the multimedia-savvy Samsung Galaxy S, the Dell Aero and the budget-friendly Kyocera Zio. If the waiting game isn't your thing, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and the HTC Desire are just about to drop in the UK and will arrive shortly in the US.  Read More