Israel Samsung Galaxy S II users getting Android 4.0 on March 15

As we keep waiting for manufacturers to update our devices, Samsung's Israeli division has brought a little light to our darkness. The company has posted, on its official Facebook page, that Galaxy S II users would be getting an Ice Cream Sandwich update come March 15th. The Android 4.0 upgrade is said to come to both carrier-locked and SIM-free versions. This is leading us to believe that there is a slight possibility that the update could be coming to the international version soon, as well. Details about the matter are scarce, though. Regardless, this probably means that other countries will get it soon, as well. Except for the US, which has carrier-specific Galaxy S II versions. The process should take a bit longer for American Galaxy S II devices. Let's just stay tuned and wait until we hear more about this. You can be sure that we will be here to tell you about it.

SmartDock Docking Station For Sony Ericsson Xperia P

Sony Ericsson has unveiled the SmartDock docking station for the Sony Ericsson Xperia P smartphone. The SmartDock provides a pair of USB ports and an HDMI port, allowing you to hook up the docking station to your HDTV. If you have an HDMI-CEC compatible HDTV, you can also control the docked Sony Ericsson Xperia P using a TV remote. Unfortunately, there is no info on pricing at this time. [Ubergizmo]

Halcyon Dual SIM Android Smartphone

Here we have another dual SIM Android smartphone from Chinavasion, the Halcyon. Priced at just $78.28 fully unlocked, the handset packs a 2.6-inch 320 x 240 resistive touchscreen display, a 416MHz processor, a 271MB RAM, a 256MB of internal memory, a microSD card slot (up to 16GB), dual GSM SIM card slots, a convenient numeric keypad, a 0.3MP front-facing camera, a 0.3MP rear-facing camera, WiFi, a 1000mAh battery and runs on Android 2.2 OS. [Product Page]

Samsung Galaxy S2 to get Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update

Samsung did promise that one of their best selling smartphones to date, the Galaxy S2, would be on the receiving end of the latest Android operating system, which is the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update, sometime in the first quarter of the year. Well, the first quarter is definitely a very vague form of description, so you would be hard pressed to tell just when exactly – and where, that will happen. We now have a slightly clearer picture of the situation, although it does seem as though only folks living in Israel will benefit from the Ice Cream Sandwich release. After all, a Facebook post by Samsung Israel claims that March 15th is when Ice Cream Sandwich will roll out, although history does seem to suggest that other European markets might just be on the receiving end of the update slightly earlier. Whatever it is, patience is a virtue worth practicing at this moment, unless you don't mind purchasing a smartphone that already has Ice Cream Sandwich preloaded.

AT&T HTC One X hands-on

Are you salivating after seeing HTC's One X? We don't blame you, it's a stunning piece of hardware with a set of rather lust-worthy specs. But, how does the AT&T version stack up to its international cousin? We're happy to say, quite well. Yes, the quad-core Tegra 3 was given the boot in favor of a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 and an LTE radio was crammed inside, but otherwise this is pretty much the same device we saw on the floor in Barcelona. The only piece of carrier branding is an AT&T logo above the gorgeous 4.7-inch 720p display. Thankfully, the design was left largely unmolested. At least at this early stage it's also blissfully free of bloatware and carrier apps, but we'd expect that to change before launch. Sadly, none of the demo units on hand at the New York showroom had SIMs in them, so we couldn't test LTE reception, and the devices weren't logged into the Market so we couldn't pull down benchmarks or a taxing 3D game. That being said, Sense 4.0 and ICS were plenty responsive and pages rendered very quickly - even without those two extra cores.

Nokia 808 PureView Hands-On

[MWC 2012] I got some hands-on time with the Nokia 808 Symbian smartphone, and of course, the first (and only) thing that I wanted to look at was the 41 Megapixel camera that can capture photos as high-res as 38 Megapixels (only in 4:3 ratio). The demo was extremely interesting as the effective Megapixels of the phone could be used in a couple of different ways. Basically you can choose between the super-high resolution, or to have the Nokia software crunch all the pixels into a more Manageable 8 (or less) Megapixel image. Of course, Nokia says that it doesn't "just shrink" the image, but that its internal software processes the image so that it can extract and use as much information as possible from the original 41 Megapixel data from the sensor. From my perspective, this has great potential, and the demo images from Nokia (captured with the phone of course) were very convincing. Now, we really need to get in the field with one of those and capture a few photos to see how the average user (who just cares about point and shoot) can exploit this new capability. Anyhow, this is very promising, and although I'm not really a Symbian user, I hope that this feature -if it is as good in the field as it is on the show floor- will bleed out to non-Symbian devices. Now, there's quite a bit of software to port, so this may not make it into the Windows Phone line-up until Tango, as it has C++ support....

HTC One X/S/V Enjoy Extra Camera Love Thanks To Android/Sense 4.0 [VIDEO]

HTC’s first three Android 4.0 based devices – the HTC One X, One S, and One V – also have HTC Sense 4.0. Much of the design and feel remains true to the original HTC Sense vision, but it’s the camera UI and functionality that gets the biggest boost in the latest rendition of the manufacturer’s custom UI.  See exactly what we mean in the video below: If (like me) you often struggle internally when deciding whether to take video or still images at that crucial moment, you’ll enjoy Sense 4.0′s multiple recording methods. You can actually take video and, while still recording video, press the camera capture button to take individual pictures while the video continues to record. When you think about it, all you’re really doing is selecting one of the still images out of your video, but Sense 4.0 allows you to refocus the image before the picture snaps. The rear camera itself is 8MP but when recording video and taking pictures using this feature, the maximum quality is 5MP images. Similarly, you might want to take a timely picture, but have some hesitation about snapping a picture at the precise perfect nanosecond, causing you to narrowly miss the Kodak HTC moment. Now you can simply hold down the shutter button for rapid-fire picture taking. By default it’s set to take 20 pictures in a row but you can raise this amount all the way to 99 if you prefer. HTC also included a very intuitive interface for deleting numerous photos at once so that you’re not overloaded in the aftermath. Capturing that candid smile just got easier and the irritation of picture blinks just got lighter. A few other nice features include greatly improved auto-focus time (.2 seconds), a straight to camera unlock feature, and an improved lighting sensor for use with the camera’s flash. Most camera phone’s have 1 light setting on the flash, meaning your pictures often end up washed out and ridiculous looking. The HTC One devices, and other Sense 4.0+ phones, have a feature that detects how much light will be needed to illuminate the object being focused upon and attempt to provide the right amount of lighting for that instance. We didn’t get to test this feature, but it sounds incredibly helpful in theory.

ZTE Orbit Windows Phone announced

The ZTE Orbit will come with the latest version of Windows Phone preinstalled along with 4GB of internal storage, HD Voice, and a 5MP rear-facing camera with LED flash. It will be powered by a 1GHz single-core Qualcomm processor with 512MB of RAM, a 4" WVGA 800×480 display and GPS capabilities. It will also come with a variety of connectivity options, such as WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, DLNA, and NFC. The ZTE Orbit is expected to be made available in Q2 later this year, but no specific dates were mentioned, so check back with us at a later date for further details. [Press release]

ZTE Era flagship phone brings Tegra 3, 4.3-inch qHD display, 7.8mm chassis

We're just about to get hands-on with ZTE's latest high-spec ICS phone, the Era, but in the meantime here's a heads-up on the main credentials. The guts are all NVIDIA, with a Tegra 3 quad-core processor and an Icera HSPA+ modem. The display has 960 x 540 pixels spread over 4.3-inches of real estate, housed in a razor-like 7.8mm-thick (0.31-inch) slab. The 8GB of onboard memory is expandable via microSD, while there's also HD Voice and Dolby sound processing. ZTE will be looking to release the Era in the second half of this year, and says it's counting on the handset to help it become a "top three handset provider by 2015."

Nokia 808 PureView 41 MP camera sensor, 3x lossless zoom, other crazy imaging stuff to blow your mind

How crazy is Nokia 808 PureView camerphone with 41 megapixel sensor? I wasn't expecting much from Nokia during this Mobile World Congress. And I was expecting even less from the the successor to N8 - previous imaging flagship. We knew for months that the N8 successor is in the works, we even heard about the optical zoom, big camera sensor and other cool imaging stuff. But we also knew that it will still run on Symbian. No matter how good a camera they can put into this thing - I couldn't imagine any reason my aging N8 wouldn't be good enough until the same tech comes to Nokia Windows Phones. But as soon as they put the first Nokia 808 PureView slide on the screen at Nokia MWC launch event, I sat up, hardly believing my eyes. “Carl Zeiss 41 MP sensor“, the label below the camera said... What the heck?! How could they have fit 41 megapixel camera sensor in to this thing? And why do we even need 41 megapixels - the size of the image files will be enormous. Then Nokia got to explaining things, and PureView 808 got even more interesting. Here's a short feature overview video: I hardly know anything about cameras, so do not ask me to explain all the details. If you interested - there is a pretty detailed white paper about all the cool stuff inside Nokia PureView 808. You can download it here (*.pdf). Here's some info from the paper on how PureView works: The starting point is a super-high-resolution sensor. This has an active area of 7728 x 5368 pixels, totalling over 41Mpix. Depending on the aspect ratio you choose, it will use 7728 x 4354 pixels for 16:9 images/videos, or 7152 x 5368 pixels for 4:3 images/videos ... When you zoom with the Nokia 808 PureView, in effect you are just selecting the relevant area of the sensor. So with no zoom, the full area of the sensor corresponding to the aspect ratio is used. The limit of the zoom (regardless of the resolution setting for stills or video) is reached when the selected output resolution becomes the same as the input resolution.. For example, with the default setting of 5Mpix (3072 x 1728), once the area of the sensor reaches 3072 x 1728, you've hit the zoom limit. This means the zoom is always true to the image you want… The way Nokia PureView Pro zoom works gives you many benefits. But the main one is undoubtedly 'pixel oversampling'. Pixel oversampling combines many pixels to create a single (super) pixel. When this happens, you keep virtually all the detail, but filter away visual noise from the image. The speckled, grainy look you tend to get in low-lighting conditions is greatly reduced. And in good light, visual noise is virtually non-existent. Which means the images you can take are more natural and beautiful than ever. They are purer, perhaps a more accurate representation of the original subject than has ever been achieved before. Key specs for Nokia 808 Pureview imaging/sensor part: Video camera: Other specs: Recommended retail price before taxes and subsidies for Nokia 808 Pureview is 450 Euro. Which is higher than a for a  previous imaging flagship - N8 - at launch. But for this kind of leap ahead in camera tech - it sounds worth it. In the end, the only thing I can say is - Wow, Nokia! I thought it was impossible to get me interested in another Symbian phone, but you went ahead and did it. After Pureview - is there any point to buy a stand alone point&shooter? For Symbian - that's what I call going out with a bang. What a way to wave goodbye...