Nokia N8 is the current best phone camcorder, but it has its title seriously contested by the Optimus 2X, which ups the game at Full HD 1080p. We gave you a sample video captured with the Optimus 2X not long ago, and now we have this mini shootout to show how good it really is. And there’s even a nice surprise for you if you stick with us after the jump.

It turns out that the Optimus 2X field of view is even wider than that of the Nokia N8, which has a 28mm lens. It’s rather strange that LG didn’t brag about it when announcing the dual-core smartphone, because a wide angle lens like that is a nice thing to have.

Now to the first part of the promised video shootout. First we have both handsets compared at their best settings – 1080p for the Optimus 2X and 720p for the Nokia N8. Don’t forget to switch to fullscreen!





To make the resolution advantage of the Optimus 2X easier to see, here is a couple of 100% crops, one from each video. We’ve upsized the Nokia sample to make them easier to compare. We can’t say the advantage is huge, but it’s definitely there.



On the other hand the Nokia N8 seems to have an advantage in terms of framerate here as its videos generally look smoother than the Optimus 2X output. We should bear in mind though that the Optimus 2x is a pre-production unit and it may do better when it officially hits the shelves.

Moving down to the direct 720p-vs.-720p comparison we are pleased to see that the Optimus 2X is now the smoother of the two contestants. Again, don’t forget to click that fullscreen button.





As you’ll see, it’s hard to pick a winner based on the resolved detail.



Of course, video-recording is not all about resolution and resolved detail. Things like dynamic range (where the N8 is still the king), adaptability, color balance and autofocus accuracy (if video AF is at all present) play equally important parts in capturing high-quality clips.

Still it looks like the Optimus 2X will be one of the strongest contestants of the year in the video recording category.

HTC HD2 turned quite capable device and its loyal users seem to have no intention of abandoning it any time soon. The latest achievement HD2 has accomplished is dual-booting Android and Windows Phone 7, both of them installed on the same memory card. Pretty intriguing, right?

After porting Android and Windows Phone 7, triple-booting Android, Windows Mobile and Ubuntu, the guys at the XDA Developers have outdone themselves once again. The HD2 users are now capable of booting two of the hottest mobile operating systems straight from a single SD card.

Here is the full tutorial video. Watch it carefully and if you decide going this way, be prepared of losing information, operating system, warranty, etc.



The process requires some work and is not that easy, but you’ve done similar hacks beforeр you shouldn’t have any problems.

You can find the complete tutorial here.

Line Phone concept uses extra-clever gestures thanks to its touch-sensitive rim

Judging by some of the newly announced phones, you might get the idea that we’re living in the future. But every once in a while, a concept of a phone comes along that makes it very clear that it’s not the future yet.

The Line Phone, which won the 2010 Furong Cup in ‘Digital Product and Service Design Competition’ in China, is one such concept...

The Line Phone is a full touch phone in the extreme – the front is a touchscreen edge to edge. Also, the defining feature of the concept is the touch sensitive rim, which plays a key role in controlling the user interface.

Watch this awesome video to get a better idea of what I’m talking about:



This rim serves a double purpose – it has a dynamic backlight, which is used as an indicator, but it’s also used for gestures. From simple scrolling to more complex gestures like changing the volume, skipping songs, image rotation and even going back to edit a text before it has been sent. All based on where and how you touch the rim and the currently active app.

The touchscreen also boasts a variety of multitouch gestures – who needs physical buttons when you have a well thought-out touch UI, right?

Anyway, it’s a great concept though there are some things I’m not quite certain about (the whole front face of the phone is a touchscreen, so where’s the earpiece?). Not that it matters – avantgard concepts like this rarely see the light of day as an actual product.

The Synaptic Fuse concept has a similar touch-enabled rim, have a look at that too. It even has pressure-sensitive sides that react to a squeeze as well.

You’ve probably heard of the LG Optimus 2X. It’s the first smartphone utilizing the Nvidia Tegra 2 platform. Another first is the 1080p video recording that you may have missed on its lengthy specs sheet.

You can bet I have a real camera sample for you.

Now we don’t have the LG Optimus 2X in our hands yet but that can’t stop us from following its adventures in the hands of lucky early reviewers around the world. This time it’s the camcorder that’s in focus – and more specifically the 1080p video recording.

When you watch the sample below, don’t forget to select the 1080p quality setting and go full screen to really appreciate it.



The author of the original video (it’s about 200MB) has uploaded it to Hotfile and Mediafire in case you’d like to see it in its full high-resolution glory.

BlackBerry news are endless today, as Vodafone announced that they’ll launch a white BlackBerry Torch in their network. And as you can see from the picture bellow it looks dead gorgeous in white.

Vodafone brags that it will be the only carrier offering the white version of the Torch in the UK. However the exact launch schedule for the cool white slider is yet unclear.

The white Torch 9800 is the same as the ordinary sleek black edition as far as specifications are concerned. You can check them out on our BlackBerry Torch 9800 specifications page.

The Motorola ATRIX was among the most interesting announcements at this year’s CES. Not only because it’s among the few Android smartphone powered by the powerful Tegra 2 platform but also because it come with a bunch of docking accessories, which can turn the device from a TV video player with its own remote to a slim netbook (or smartbook) with a proper screen and a hardware keyboard.

The Motorola ATRIX have some other noteworthy features too, such as 1GB of RAM and the qHD screen (540 x 960 pixels). There’s also the on-board fingerprint reader, the Gorilla Glass display, the 16GB of storage, the FullHD 1080p video playback, and the HDMI port. The Atrix also has a 5 megapixel camera with 720p video recording and but so far is stuck at Android 2.2 Froyo (as opposed to getting the most recent ver. 2.3 Gingerbread).

In March the Motorola ATRIX will be available in Europe (Orange UK first) and in the US (as the ATRIX 4G for AT&T). So far no projected prising is revealed.

So back to the topic of the day. I do have a video ad for the Motorola Atrix but it’s not only that. I’ve got you a whole Atrix playlist with 10 videos in queue. The total running time is 3 minutes. The clips are really short. And yes, most of them don’t have audio – only the first and the last one have one.



I guess we’ll see a lot more of the Motorola ATRIX before its official market launch.

According to 27% of the people that took part in the latest Nielsen survey 4G is what the latest iPhone is called. True story!

With American carriers all keen to boast about their 4G networks to anyone who would listen, Nielsen decided to check how much people really know about 4G wireless tech. As it turned out 17% of the participants have never heard of it, while only 51% of the rest claimed to know what it means. Now that speaks volumes of the efficiency of those multi-million ad campaigns, doesn’t it?

And back to where we started, some 27% of the interviewed claimed that it was the name of the current iteration of the Apple iPhone. A new Android phone from T-Mobile was the answer of every 7th participant. Another 43% thought 4G stands for new devices that process data faster.



Still there were 54% that said 4G was a network supposed to allow data transfer speeds of at least 100 Mbps, while 16% went for either LTE or WiMax. The other answers that I’m willing to rate as close enough are wireless internet at broadband speeds (49%) and mobile network upgrade for high-quality video streaming (45%).

It was just yesterday that we met the Tegra2-powered Motorola Atrix 4G headed for AT&T. Today Motorola has announced another powerful Droid, this time for Verizon.

DROID BIONIC is also based on the Tegra2 platform and utilizes a dual-core 1GHz processor, but it packs "only" 512MB RAM.

The rest of the specs include a 4.3-inch qHD (540×960 pixels) capacitive touchscreen, an 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and 1080p video recording, Wi-Fi b/g/n, 4G LTE support, GPS, HDMI port, 3.5mm audio jack and microSD card slot.



Motorola DROID BIONIC runs on the latest Android v2.3 Gingerbread and is expected to hit the Verizon stores in the end of Q1 this year.

As the name suggests, Nokia’s latest Big Screen app offers optimized multimedia interface for the biggest screen in your home over a HDMI connection. Of course, to use it, you need an HDMI-equipped Nokia smartphone such as the N8 and the E7.

Once the Nokia Big Screen is installed and you’ve hooked the HDMI cable to your phone and TV, the app starts automatically. It even allows you to connect a Bluetooth keyboard or a Wii Remote to your phone. Here’s more info how to do this.



After you’re done, the application allows you to display your videos, play some music while viewing your photos and even get song lyrics and initiate karaoke mode for the ultimate home party fun. It will also allow you to watch a movie with subtitles, if they are included.

The app can be obtained from the source link bellow.

The civil GPS receivers nowadays are good for almost all purposes practical, but there are still some areas, where the 10m accuracy just doesn’t suffice. Luckily Mitsubishi and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency come to the rescue, introducing a new system that betters this achievement about 333 times.

During a recent public test a conventional GPS receiver using complementary data from the Michibiki satellite successfully offered pinpoint accuracy with deviations going as far as only 3cm. The test was conducted on a car going at 20 kph (12 mph), but Mitsubishi says that the same surgical accuracy can be maintained at speeds of up to 80 kph (50 mph).

The new system relies on some additional satellites in the sky and to be operational 24/7 it will need a couple of extra satellites. The currently available number of satellites is only good for 8 hours a day for a any given place on the Earth.

Today HTC announced a new addition to their CDMA smartphone lineup, the EVO Shift 4G. The full QWERTY-packing Android smartphone comes with a 3.6” LCD screen of WVGA resolution. The 4G moniker and the Sprint allegiance give away the EVO Shift WiMax radio, but you should know that there’s also EV-DO support for when the new generation networks aren’t available.

The HTC EVO Shift 4G packs a Qualcomm MSM7630 CPU, clocked at 800 MHz and a 5 megapixel camera capable of HD video recording. The rest of its key features include 3.5mm audio jack, Wi-Fi, GPS and a microSD card slot. The EVO Shift 4G will ship with Android 2.2 (Froyo) an there’s no information yet whether a 2.3 (Gingerbread) update will come.

The bad news is that the HTC EVO Shift 4G is a Sprint-exclusive so your only chance of getting it involves living in the US and being fine with signing a long-term contract costing north of $70 per month. The price of the handset itself is $150 after a $100 mail-in rebate.

The MWC 2011 in Barcelona is only a couple of months away and quite expectedly all kind of rumors have started popping up. The latest one claims Samsung will announce the next generation Galaxy phone on the MWC 2011.

Of course, the announcement of a new Galaxy phone seems quite logical. The 2010’s MWC was disappointing with very few new phones and almost no innovations. So the expectations of the upcoming Congress are quite high.

The new Galaxy is rumored to run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread and pack a dual-core processor, gyroscope and NFC support. If all of this comes true, perhaps we could expect 1080p video recording.

Anyway, now when the dual-core processors are ready for mass production and integration within the mobile phones we could expect most of the high-end phones to be capable of 1080p video encoding/decoding and even better graphics.

The MWC 2011 starts on 14 February, but Sony Ericsson will try to steal the spotlight with new XPERIA announcements a day earlier. It should be an interesting event indeed.

An interesting under-the-hood change has come with Android 2.3 Gingerbread – a new file system called ext4. You may have heard of it, it’s fairly common among Linux distributions. Ext4 is already running in Google’s massive data centers and it will slowly be making its way to their mobile OS, starting with the Google Nexus S...

The reason why Google chose ext4 for their data centers has mostly to do with the file system’s improved support and performance when dealing with large files and large storage drives. That isn’t a problem on mobile phones but there are other benefits for the mobile.

Most Android devices out there are using YAFFS, which is a file system specifically designed for flash storage. Its problem is that it’s single-threaded – that is, it won’t see a performance boost on those rumored dual-core droids that so often grace our news section lately.

Ext4 will offer a performance boost even on single core CPUs but with two cores the difference will be even more pronounced.

On the bad side, there are some concerns that ext4 will increase the chances of data loss. However, Theodore T’so (a key ext4 dev and current Google employee) says that users shouldn’t worry – vendors do extensive testing before shipping a product and a well programmed app shouldn’t have problems anyway (unless something drastic happens, like the user removing the battery while the app is running).

Check out the Android Developers blog post and a couple of Theodore T’so blog posts for more details (warning: programmer talk ahead).

The more adventurous, tech savvy users can check out the XDA-Developers forums – they have custom ROMs (including the popular Cyanogen ROM) for various phones that enable ext4.

Capacitive displays are great but gloves are their kryptonite – and let’s face it, in the winter months using gloves is quite common. The thing about capacitive displays is that they react to skin contact and while your fingers are probably wrapped up in warm gloves, your nose isn’t.

That’s right, if you have an iPhone and a nose handy, there’s a solution to your gloved-dialing problems...

The app called NoseDial (what else?) features a large, customizable UI, which makes it easy to operate with your decidedly un-dexterous nose. You have the option to scroll through the contact list by just tilting the iPhone and then tap the desired contact with your nose, minimizing the chance you’ll get strange looks by passersby.

The app supports “difficulty levels” so you can start off easily or just set it to the most difficult (and functional) mode and use it with your fingers, if you like the skinnable UI with contact photos.

The app costs $0.99 and is compatible with iOS 3.2 and higher.

The Download Squad have a video of NoseDial in action – check it out and carefully consider if you can do that in public.

Microsoft has finally released the official sales figures for the Windows Phone 7 smartphones. At 1.5 million units to date those aren’t as impressive as the iPhone’s, but sure sounds encouraging.

In a short interview Achim Berg, a corporate vice president at Microsoft, unveiled that the WP7-powered devices are selling well enough, reaching 1.5 million sold devices worldwide in just a few weeks. Take that KIN One. You too, KIN Two!

Another interesting detail concerning the Windows Phone 7 platform is the number of apps currently available in the Windows Marketplace.

There are some 4000 apps at your disposal and a team of 18 000 developers is working on exciting new ones as we speak. To read the full interview, just follow the source link below.

The XDA-Developers forums have finished baking a Gingerbread ROM for the HTC Droid Incredible. The OMGB-4 ROM is not completely bug-free yet, but it’s the first relatively stable Gingerbread port for a phone other than the Nexus S...

If you’ve been keeping track of the OMGB port here’s what changed since version 3 – the 8MP camera now works, Facebook sync has been fixed, the default kernel has been changed to Invisiblek #21 and MIUI Music App has been added.

There are four things left to fix – the two major items on the To Do list are the Camcorder and GPS and there are two other minor things. There’s no Setup Wizard (so you need to add the account through the Settings menu) and the microSD card need to be mounted as mass storage using scripts rather than the usual way (the scripts are included, you just run them).



You can read up more on OMGB 4 and download it (ROM Manager is supported) over at the XDA-Developers forum.

The capable cameraphone Nokia N8 is about to get its first firmware update. According to Nokia India this will happen sometime in January next year.

There is no more info in the Nokia India tweet, so I can’t tell you what the update might bring to your device. I hope it’s the one that brings the improved text entry and the new web browser.

I guess we’ll know more in January.

The December issue of the South African PiX photographic magazine is a special one. You can’t see why just by looking at it, but when you learn how it was shot you’ll know it deserves a big credit.

Nokia N8, the highly acclaimed cameraphone, took the cover photo. In fact, the phone did all the shots from which the cover shot was picked.

It’s another first for the N8. After the short movie shot exclusively on the Nokia N8, now it’s the still camera turn.

The purpose of those shots, according to the editor of PiX magazine, is:

"More specifically, we try to get the message across that it is not the hardware that makes a great photographer, but the individual’s understanding of photographic principles."

It seems he really managed to make a point here.

Here is the behind-the-scenes video:



Despite I don’t find the cover impressive artistically speaking, I admit it looks really good and can’t tell it was shot with a cameraphone.

This is the gadget equivalent of slasher film – some young, hot cheerleader faces inevitable demise at the hands of a persistent antagonist. In this case, Google’s cheerleader / flagship phone – the Nexus S – got torn down by the guys over at iFixit, who can’t help themselves but take apart every gadget they get their hands on.

And they have an important clarification about the display...

But before I give away the ending, here’s something else that’s interesting – the NFC module in the Google Nexus S is attached to the back cover.




The NFC module is attached to the battery cover • what the Nexus S is made of

Now for the plot twist. The “curved glass display” of the Nexus S isn’t quite what it sounds like – the glass is curved, the rest of the display isn’t. The SuperAMOLED unit below is as flat as it is in the Galaxy S.


The curved glass over the flat display of the Nexus S

Still, the curved glass and the screen are fused together, so both will have to be replaced in case you break the front glass. Still, the Nexus S scored a strong 7 out of 10 in iFixit’s Repairability Score.