The Financial Times of London is reporting that Huawei has said it is open to the idea of acquiring Nokia. These comments were reportedly made by chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, Richard Yu, at the Huawei Ascend P6 launch event. Richard says that the company is considering acquisitions of this sort, but it all depends on the “willingness” of Nokia. Having the Finnish manufacturer under its belt would greatly improve Huawei’s chances of making a dent in the European and North American market.

Obviously an acquisition can not go through unless the other party is interested as well, there’s no chatter about Nokia taking part in talks related to this topic, and Nokia denies commenting on market speculation. So we don’t know if Nokia is even sitting at the table with Huawei. Last year it was speculated that Nokia was going to be acquired, possible candidates were rumored to be Microsoft, Intel and even Lenovo, but nothing of the sort materialized. The market seems to have responded well to these rumors, analysts report that Nokia’s stock has risen by almost 11% on the back of these acquisition rumors. Would Nokia willingly consider being acquired by a Chinese company or would Huawei do a hostile takeover by making this offer directly to Nokia’s shareholders? To bit too soon to say that for sure.

Toshiba today announced the Canvio Slim II portable external hardware. Measuring only 12.5 mm thick and with storage capacity of up to 1 terabyte, Toshiba claims that the Canvio Slim II is one of the thinnest and smallest portable hard drives available on the market. Users will also have the ability to access and share data straight from the device itself.

The Canvio Slim II supports both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, and as long as it is active and connected to an internet enabled PC, users will be able to access all of their music, movies, files and photos from any device in any where on the planet. Toshiba is also giving away 10GB of free cloud storage with each portable hard drive for storing “always available” copies of important files, as well as quick sharing of large folders and files. The Canvio Slim II also allows users to directly back up their photos and videos from their smartphones and tablets through the dedicated iOS and Android apps.  The drive is pre-formatted NTFS for Windows and comes with a NTFS driver for Mac. The 500GB model is priced at $114.99 and the 1TB model at $149.99. Both models will be available from select retailers and on Toshiba’s website later this month.

BlackBerry released its first BlackBerry 10 device earlier this year once its Z10 was made available across a number of U.S. carriers, but hardcore BlackBerry fans had to seriously consider whether or not they really wanted to pick it up since it didn’t have a physical keyboard. Sure – the BlackBerry Z10 does have a 4.2-inch touchscreen, but BlackBerry owners know it’s all about the QWERTY keyboard, which is why the release of the Q10 is probably a bit more anticipated than the Z10 was.

We were able to get our hands on the BlackBerry Q10 earlier this year when BlackBerry announced both it and the Z10 would launch the BlackBerry 10 platform, and at the time we were impressed with how well the QWERTY keyboard performed through our limited time with the device. The BlackBerry Q10 will soon be made available in the U.S., which means it’s about time we get our hands on the device and put it through its paces to let you know whether or not you should pick it up when it’s made available on your preferred carrier. So without further ado, let’s get into the BlackBerry Q10.
Read full post →BlackBerry Q10 Review

Virgin Mobile has announced today that it will be offering the Samsung Galaxy Ring smartphone to its customers. This Galaxy device has a 4 inch display and mid-range specifications. Powered by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the Samsung Galaxy Ring has a 1.4GHz quadcore processor, 1GB RAM, a 5 megapixel rear camera with LED flash, 4GB internal memory expandable up to 64GB via microSD card. It is also capable of running on Virgin Mobile’s 3G network.

The Samsung Galaxy Ring retails for $179 without any contractual obligations. It’s just a budget friendly Android smartphone that is available at a relatively low price. Power for this device is provided by a 1,750 mAh battery which promises up to 8 hours of talk time and 7 days of standby time. Apart from 3G capability, the Samsung Galaxy Ring has Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi. Virgin Mobile will also load pre-packaged apps, wallpapers and more content on the device so that the user can customize it. At $179, the device seems reasonable enough if you don’t want to get tied down to a carrier contract, because in this price range one can get a decent high-end smartphone albeit with a contract.

Do you think that the world of Tizen-powered smartphones will be able to make a positive impact in the market when it finally arrives in droves? Certain parties definitely think that way, where one analyst even went so far as to claim that Tizen could very well overtake Apple’s iOS in a matter of years. Sounds impossible at the moment, but stranger things have happened in the world of technology that we adhere to the secret mantra, “never say never”. Samsung themselves believe that the first Tizen powered smartphone would arrive sometime in the third quarter of the year, and here we are with a possible image of what the final device would be like – running on an Exynos 4 chipset with a 720p display.

Apparently, only a couple of chipsets seem to be supported at this point in time, and they are the Exynos 4212 and Exynos 4412, with the former being a revamped version of what can be found in the Samsung Galaxy S2, while the other is the Galaxy S3 chipset.

You know what they say – two’s company, three’s a crowd. Is the smartphone market getting really crowded? I would like to say so in the affirmative, especially when you have tons of Android-powered devices tussling it out with one another and the iPhone from Apple, while BlackBerry users and Windows Phone 8 fans continue to switch third and four placed positions in their respective markets. Is there room for one more player when it comes to phone manufacturing? A bunch of ex-HTC employees certainly think so, having left the company and kicking off a new smartphone company that they have called Kazam.

Michael Coombes, former head of sales at HTC, will be the CEO of Kazam, while James Atkins, former U.K. marketing head for the company, will remain in this position, albeit for a brand new employer now. Kazam intends to churn out smartphones which are all about “stunning design, robust hardware, and intuitive technology, underpinned with improved customer service.” We do want to wish them the very best in their endeavors for sure.

Sure, we have seen our fair share of robot bands in the past, and as you know, robots are not really at the epitome of creativity but rather, they obey instructions extremely well. Having said that, if you have always wanted to form a band of your own but somehow or rather, the circumstances do not seem to fall in your favor, there is always a backup plan – by relying on a robot band, of course. Another benefit of a robot band is this – they will not be high on drugs during the most crucial moments, and they let you take every single cent that people throw their way in your direction. The Zima robot did not really make its mark in the US, but it has proven to be quite the hit at clubs in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Z-Machines, where its “Z” stands for Zima, will comprise of three metallic musicians, including a guitar-playing frontman alongside vocals, a six-armed drummer, and a robot that remains immobile throughout the performance, although it flashes light as the other two robots perform. You can “feed” it with your own composed tunes, and hear whether they will make or break your song.

Just a couple of days ago, we did bring you word of a leaked device from the folks over at HTC, where it is known as the HTC Desire 200. Having said that, it did not take too long for HTC to officially unveil this entry level smartphone which runs on the Android operating system, although no additional details concerning its pricing and availability were made known. Still, there is the family resemblance of the HTC Desire 200 as it shares some design cues from the flagship HTC One model.

When you take a peek at the HTC Desire 200’s chassis to know what can be found inside, you would realize that it comes with a 3.5” touchscreen display at 480 x 320 resolution, while the back itself carries a 5-megapixel shooter. A 1GHz Snapdragon S1 processor will do all the number crunching as and when required, while 4GB of internal memory should fill up rather quickly, which is why the provision for a microSD memory card slot is a positive thing indeed. 512MB RAM, 7.2Mbps HSPA connectivity, and a 1,230mAh battery powers makes up the HTC Desire 200. [Product Page]

Samsung is known for manufacturing a wide variety of products, although we’re sure you’re extremely familiar with the company’s mobile devices, computers and HDTVs. Samsung’s line of printers may not be as well known as some of their other products, but the company is announcing some pretty nice features for some of its upcoming laster and multi-functional printers.

Samsung is introducing its line of NFC-enabled color laser and multi-functional printers that will allow users to print high-quality photos and documents directly from their smartphones with ease. The Samsung Xpress C410W series, which includes the C410W color laser printer, the C460W color laser multi-functional printer with print, copy and scan functionality and the C460W color laser multifunctional printer which adds fax capabilities to the C460W.

The three printers being introduced were built with the home and small office user in mind as incorporating NFC into these printers will allow for users to print content directly from their smartphones just by tapping their NFC-enabled device with the printer. All three models can print up to 18 pages per minute in black and white and four pages per minute in color.

Driving an electric car is very different from using a smartphone which runs on batteries. Of course, for handsets that have a removable battery, whenever your existing battery dies out, all you need to do is remove the back battery cover, and replace the dead battery with a fully charged one. One the other hand, an electric car is far more tricky, since you cannot simply pull over to the side and perform a battery swap, considering the amount of engineering knowledge required. Well, Tesla, a pioneer in electric cars, intends to show off their electric vehicle battery swap technology for the Model S later this week.

The whole idea of a battery swap would be to provide an alternative to electric vehicle (EV) charging, and it basically involves one easy motion of removing the battery and replacing it with a fully charged one, much like how you would do to a smartphone. This does away with the need to remember to charge up your battery before traveling, now how about that?