ZTE coming with 8 phones to MWC, quad-core flagship included

It's going to be a busy few days once the MWC starts - ZTE plans to introduce eight new devices at the Congress. The mix includes Android and Windows Phone smartphones, LTE and even a quad-core phone of their own.

The new mobiles will be unveiled Monday, February 27. They didn?t give out much detail about the upcoming announcements (like how many of the 8 phones will run Android), but they threw around phrases like "quad-core flagship handset" and "LTE-Advanced", which do pique our interest.

They've already announced the ZTE Mimosa X, which had the distinction of being the first smartphone to use chips by NVIDIA exclusively. Also out in the open are two ICS-running droids. We're not sure if thse three count towards the 8 phones to be shown at the MWC or not.

ZTE say they put back 10% of their revenue and hope to become the third biggest phone maker worldwide by 2015. They have quite a challenge ahead of them though, according to Gartner they were fifth in 2011.

Source

View the original article here

Nokia Carla smartphones to ship in Q3, updates coming in Q4

More details on the upcoming Nokia Carla release came in. The platform previously known as Symbian will get its next update in Q3 of this year, when the first smartphones running Nokia Carla will hit the shelves.

According to the latest rumors, second-gen Belle smartphone, including Nokia 603, 700 and 701 will start shipping with the new version of their OS first. Later on, the rest of the Belle-running smartphones in the Nokia portfolio will get Carla as an update. Scheduled for Q4, the update should cover N8,C7,E7,X7,E6,C6-01.

Despite what previous rumors were saying, Carla will be distributed to all smartphones currently on Belle. However, those that lack NFC capabilities and 1GHz processors will get a trimmed down version of the update to avoid performance hiccups.

Finally, we learned that the Nokia N8 successor, which should be unveiled on Monday at the Nokia MWC press conference won't be the last device to run on Carla. There are at least two more Carla smartphones in works - they should both come out this year.

It would be best if you take those rumors with a pinch of salt, but the source has a decent record for these things and there are few things that sound unreasonable, so it's probably quite close to the truth.

Thanks, KF, for sending this in.

Source

View the original article here

Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G for T-Mo USA coming in late March

Samsung and T-Mobile USA announced the Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G in early January, but it took them this long to announce the launch date (more frustratingly, they haven?t announced all the specs just yet).

The Blaze 4G has a 3.97" Super AMOLED screen, is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU in a Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 chipset and runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread. It has two cameras - 5MP camera with 720p video recording to replace your point-and-shoot camera and a 1.3MP front-facing camera for video chatting purposes.

The phone will also come with TeleNav GPS Navigator preloaded, which provides voice-guided navigation, although the press release doesn?t make it clear if it's free and for how long.

Samsung and T-Mobile have stuffed the Galaxy S Blaze 4G with all that because according to their studies, nearly 80% of smartphone are less likely to carry other devices (cameras, GPS units, etc.) with them.

The 4G stands for 42Mbps HSPA+ by the way, not LTE.

Anyway, you'll be able to grab a Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G from T-Mobile USA stores, dealers and retailers starting in late March. With a 2-year contract (on the Classic plan), it will set you back $150 after $50 mail-in rebate.

Source

View the original article here