The HTC One Mini has not escaped us at all over the past week (UA Profiles and such), no sir, and we do know that it has been confirmed to be the HTC M4 all this while. Well, there were whispers going around that the HTC One Mini could very well make its way to the folks over at T-Mobile, but it seems that AT&T could very well be its final destination at the moment, at least according to a source that remains close to HTC. The thing is, this anonymous source did not have the details concerning the HTC One Mini’s launch date, but we have heard previous whispers that it could very well make its debut later this August.

Just what kind of hardware can we find in the HTC One Mini? For starters, it is tipped to arrive with a 4.3” display (that certainly more or less rules the “Mini” bit out in its name, no?), making it larger than the iPhone, while carrying a decent resolution count of 720 x 1280 pixels, running on a dual-core processor with an UltraPixel camera thrown into the mix to boot. Are you stoked to see whether the HTC One Mini will be able to live up to its reputation, and will it change the way Samsung does their Mini range in the future, too?

It looks like the higher social classes, especially those folks who indulge in fine dining experiences, travel by First Class wherever they go, and are chauffeured from door to door, have a totally different level of “toys” to play with. Kids born with a silver spoon in their mouths would soon be able to drive their very own Porsche without having to wait until they have received their driving license – thanks to a recently released pedal-powered go-kart that will target those who are aged at least five until, er, your butt can no longer cram into the bucket seat.

Specially designed for children who weigh up to 110 pounds, the Porsche Go-Kart will boast of a tubular steel frame, low-profile inflatable tires, sports seat, composite rims and a rear braking system. Hmmm, this sounds pretty much like one of those rides to roll off the production lines in Stuttgart, except that you won’t be able to clock insane speeds on this Go-Kart. Those who are mulling over what to get for their little ones later this Christmas can start shopping around early, as the Porsche Go-Kart retails for $900 a pop.

It was last year when the Curiosity Rover finally made its long awaited landing over on the Red Planet, Mars, and you can be sure that it did have its fair share of photo-shooting moments over there, sending back 360-degree panoramic shots of a planet that has yet to be stepped on by any human. Well, for those who wish that they could have a toy of the Curiosity Rover, your wish has been somewhat fulfilled with the LEGO Mars Curiosity Rover having been announced to be the next fan-backed idea which will be transformed into an actual project.

LEGO is a company that is always on the move, and they do solicit ideas for new models from time to time using its Cuusoo website, where fans will then drop votes for their favorite projects that they want to see transformed into the real deal. Should any proposal receive more than 10,000 votes, LEGO will take that project into consideration, so we are pleased to hear that the LEGO Mars Curiosity Rover has surpassed that magical mark. Up next, a LEGO model of the Red Planet itself, perhaps?

When it comes to renewable energy sources, most of would automatically think of the likes of solar energy, wind power and perhaps hydro-electric dams. Here is a Kickstarter project known as the SunnyBot which works in somewhat the same manner as Kal-El – it is powered by the sun itself. A microcomputer lies at the heart of things, where this robot is able to continually tracks the position of the sun, changing its on-board mirror’s position all the time in order to have it reflect the sun’s rays onto a fixed point of your choice. The whole idea of SunnyBot would be to gather solar energy and use it as indoor light-source, especially in rooms that seem to be perpetually shaded.

Solenica is the Italian startup of SunnyBot, and according to them, this bot is capable of improving solar charging performance by concentrating the sun’s energy. It has been touted that a single SunnyBot will be able to redirect up to 7,000 lumens to the location of your choice, and just to get a better idea on how that works in real life, it would be the rough equivalent of a single 500W halogen lamp. The SunnyBot carries a reflective range of up to 200 metres away, coupled with an accuracy error margin of as little as 0.1 meter across 30 meters. It needs to raise a whopping £200,000 over on Kickstarter before it can materialize as an actual device, so you might be interested to check it out.

Earlier this morning, we saw a teaser on the Sony Xperia Z that will arrive at T-Mobile soon, where our eyes were treated to a YouTube video that sported the water-resistant performance of the Xperia Z. Having said that, it did not take too long before the folks over at T-Mobile stepped forward to make an official announcement of the Sony Xperia Z, and when they do, they will be the only carrier in the US to offer the water-resistant Android-powered flagship smartphone from Sony Mobile.

T-Mobile said that their claims to exclusivity on the Sony Xperia Z will be the same as that of the international model, with the only difference being support for T-Mobile’s spanking new LTE network. We do know that the Xperia Z is no slouch when it comes to performance, running on a quad-core 1.5GHz processor with a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC, boast of a 5″ 1080p display, carries a 13-megapixel Exmor RS camera sensor, and Android Jelly Bean as the operating system of choice. You will need to align yourself to T-Mobile’s Simple Choice plans if you want to bring home the Xperia Z with you, although details on pricing and the exact availability date have yet to be confirmed. [Press Release]

The Moto X is a smartphone that looks set to occupy the mid-range scheme of things comfortably where smartphones are concerned, where the most recent rumors of the handset talked about how it will be equipped with a 720p display instead of the Full HD resolution display that many of the newer smartphones come with these days. In fact, it has been quite a long time since Motorola rolled out a new smartphone in the US – we are talking about having the last release dated all the way back to 2012.

Here we are with word that US Cellular’s version of the Moto X, known as the XT1055, is set to arrive soon. We do know from previously leaked details that Verizon’s version of the Motorola X would be the XT1060, while the AT&T version is known as the XT1058, with the Sprint version being called the XT1056. The XT1055 recently picked up the FCC’s stamp of approval, and boasts of US Cellular-friendly LTE connectivity. Are you looking forward to this smartphone hitting a wide array of mobile carriers?

It was just yesterday when we brought you news on how Sprint has decided to bring DISH Networks to court, in addition to Clearwire as well concerning DISH Networks’ potential acquisition of Clearwire in what Sprint deems to be an illegal move. Having said that, DISH Networks has issued a statement concerning the Sprint lawsuit as you can read verbatim below.

“Sprint’s lawsuit is a transparent attempt to divert attention from its failure to deal fairly with Clearwire’s shareholders, as well as to exploit its majority position to block Clearwire’s shareholders from receiving a fair price for their shares. DISH is confident that its superior offer, which has been unanimously recommended by the Clearwire Board, including the majority appointed by Sprint, will be upheld and Clearwire shareholders will be free to realize the 29 percent premium represented by the DISH offer.”

Who do you think will be able to come out tops with this lawsuit? We do hope that the entire situation will clear up sooner rather than later, so that consumers will be able to get on with the rest of their lives.

As we are heading into the final two quarters of 2013 during which a new generation of mobile devices is going to be launched, and many of them will be undoubtedly powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 chip. We knew this was coming and Qualcomm gave us some performance hints at CES, saying that Snapdragon 800 will provide 50% higher graphics performance when compared to Snapdragon 600, which is currently used in nearly all the most popular Android devices like the Galaxy S4 (except for some regions), the HTC One or the LG Optimus G Pro.

Today, we had an opportunity to play with MDP development smartphones and tablets, and we jumped on the chance to run some performance numbers. Since there’s no “design” or device “body” to review, all our attention went to “how fast” sub-components are.

It should be reminded that none of the synthetic benchmarks will provide a proper picture of the final “user experience”, but it is clear that there is a strong correlation between how powerful computers are and how good of an experience they can enable. The raw numbers below, but first here’s a quick overview of the specs.:

Snapdragon 800 Specifications

Inside, there are four Krait 400 CPU cores (2.3GHZ max) that work alongside an Adreno 330 GPU and and Hexagon QDSP6 DSP. Instead of using small cores (BIG.Little style), Qualcomm has chosen to use a dynamic CPU power control that lets it tune the power consumption/performance ratio in an finer fashion than core-switching would allow. This and the LPDDR3 memory are the main sub-systems that are going to be stressed in typical benchmarks.

The numbers are in!

Geekbench 2 is a math-oriented benchmark is that used to show how fast CPU cores can solve math problems. This is really a crunching-number game that does not really mimic real-world applications, but it is usually a decent indicator of how fast CPU cores are.

Interestingly, the Snapdragon 800 and NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 are running neck to neck. Although the numbers we got show a tiny advantage for the Tegra 4 reference platform, the difference is within the typical margin of error, so we’ll call this one even. It can be surprising that Qualcomm scores so well against ARM’s mighty A15 design, and this is a testament to how good Qualcomm at designing CPU cores. We would love to see which architecture consumes more power at peak performance, but this remains uncertain for now.

Antutu 3.x is a system benchmark that tries to assign an overall score to the whole machine. It does this  by running a number of sub-benchmarks and computes a global score. Here, the speed of the storage and memory sub-systems do play an important role, so it is critical to test this again on actual products when they come out. In the battle of reference designs, Tegra 4 comes out slightly on top in the global score and cracks the 35000 points, which is impressive.

Next, we’re testing the graphics capabilities of the Snapdragon 800, and just like Qualcomm predicted, it offers about 50% more performance than today’s fastest smartphones (!). Many will be surprised that Snapdragon 800 scores a clear win against NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 in GLBenchmark 2.5 and I suspect that it is a slightly better triangle setup rate, but we will revisit that when we get our hands on a production unit of SHIELD. We didn’t have a Tegra 4 device on hand to test BaseMark X, but it is probable the outcome would be comparable. In terms of graphics speed, Snapdragon 800 takes the lead in those tests.

Conclusion

Qualcomm had the Snapdragon 800 design up-and-running for a while, but the company wanted to have all its software development tools and SDKs ready before it starts to reveal the raw performance numbers. Qualcomm points out that it’s the “whole system” that counts and it many ways, they are completely right. Still, raw synthetic numbers show us what the “speed of light” is and hopefully software developers will be able to extract all that power, at least, that’s what every one of us expect from the apps we buy.

When actual devices will come out, it looks like Snapdragon 800 will fare very well performance-wise -especially for gaming-, but the most important parts is that it comes with an integrated 4G LTE modem that has been qualified by the biggest carriers, and this is an undeniable business advantage over the competition. If you have been waiting for Q3/Q4 to upgrade your smartphone, you can smile, because this is very good…

Rockstar Games has announced via Twitter that Max Payne 3, developed by Rockstar Studios, is going to be released on June 20th for Mac. This is the third game in Max Payne franchise, the third iteration was first released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in May last year. A month after that, it was released for Windows. Now almost a year down the road, they’re finally released it for Mac users. The story line revolves obviously around Max Payne, the character that players will assume, as he tried to escape his troubled past by moving to São Paulo to protect a wealthy family.

Max Payne 3 for Mac will require Mac OS X 10.7.5, an Intel dualcore Xeon or Core i series processor of 2.4GHz or higher, NVIDIA 8800GT 512MB VRAM or AMD Radeon HD 4870 512VRAM, 32GB of space on the hard disk and 4GB of RAM. Rockstar says that the game features “advanced new Bullet Time and Shootdodge effects, full integration of Natural Motion’s Euphoria Character Behavior system for like-like movement” apart from a “dark and twisted story.” The price tag of Max Payne 3 for Mac has not been disclosed yet.

We’ve seen a lot of alleged iPhone 5S components being leaked over the past few months. Today we pick up on pictures of what is apparently the display assembly of iPhone 5S, it has been leaked merely a day after we saw a purported iPhone 5S logic board online. Now many believe that these leaks are signs pointing towards ongoing production on Apple’s next generation iPhone, that seems plausible, considering that this device is expected to be unveiled this September.

This components adds substance to the rumors that iPhone 5S will not have any major design changes. While it has been rumored that this smartphone may come with a larger display, perhaps a 5 inch one, but this alleged display assembly tells a completely different story. This part also reportedly fits the logic board we featured yesterday, which hinted that there might be minor changes made to the internal hardware. All of this is pure speculation, there’s no way of telling if these components actually belong to Apple’s upcoming iPhone. We’ll know for sure only when Apple makes the official iPhone 5S announcement. [Image via Macrumors]