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This high-tech, high-fashion phone isn’t too far away. Sporting all of the latest advances in smartphone innovation, the Xperia S is a crushingly powerful phone that combines a 4.3” HD display, a dual core processor running at 1.5 GHz and a 12 MP rear camera. There are also some great extras as well, like NFC capabilities and PlayStation certification.

That 12 megapixel rear camera is one of the most powerful ever attached to a smartphone, and the front-facing camera is a powerful 720p unit as well. That’ll translate into excellent image quality, whichever end you’re on. The phone also shoots quickly, with a sleep to shot time of 1.5 seconds and a shot to shot time of just one second. There’s even a clever 3D sweep panorama feature that’ll provide excellent wide angle shots.

While the phone runs Android Gingerbread, Sony have publically committed to upgrading the phone to Ice Cream Sandwich by summer. With this in place, the Xperia S should be the highest-specification phone on the market. With 16 GB of storage space, a full gigabyte of RAM and access to the PlayStation and Android markets, the Sony Xperia S unlocked should be able to run a wide range of apps.

As well as the Sony Xperia S sim-free handset, we’ll have a full range of Sony Xperia S accessories. To protect your shiny new phone, we’ve got Sony Xperia S cases and Sony Xperia S screen protectors, ensuring you’ll enjoy your phone for years to come. We’ve also got what you need to make the full use of your phone in the car, with Sony Xperia S car holders and car chargers.

For more information on the Sony Xperia S, check out the unlocked Sony Xperia S product page.

Tags: Sony Xperia S,

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Tags: HTC Explorer, HTC Sensation Xl, Motorola RAZR, Nokia Lumia 800, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Galaxy Note, Sony Xperia Active,

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Reactions were mixed to Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 4S on Tuesday, with many Apple fans disappointed with the incremental changes shown in the new release. With no new design, merely upgraded components and software, the iPhone 4S isn’t an essential purchase. If you’ve already got an iPhone 4, then it may be quite tempting to wait until the next release cycle, when the iPhone 5 is expected.

With the success of the 4.3″ Samsung Galaxy S2 and 4.3″ HTC Sensation, and the forthcoming release of several Android handsets with 720p HD displays, Apple users may be tempted to switch to Android to realise the hardware changes they’re looking for. There’s one phone in particular that looks certain to steal the spotlight from Apple, and that’s the upcoming flagship Google handset, the Samsung Nexus Prime.

What do we know about this upcoming super phone?

Well, it’ll be the first phone to run with the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich. The phone serves as a reference model for other handset manufacturers, showing off what the latest version of Android is capable of. Reference phones also usually shows off the latest and greatest hardware of the time; the Nexus Prime is no different in this respect and has the following exciting specs:

• 4.65 inch Super AMOLED screen, at 1280 x 720p resolution
• 1.5 GHz dual core processor with 1 GB of RAM
• 16 GB of internal storage
• No physical buttons

Here’s how these stats compare to the iPhone 4S:

As you can see, there’s quite a difference.

The biggest discrepancy between the two devices is their screens. Both achieve similar pixel densities, but the larger Nexus Prime screen can support 720p video at its native resolution. This is a great achievement, and a practical one thanks to the proliferation of HD video on YouTube and elsewhere. The switch to a 16:9 aspect ratio is also important, and means that watching video on your phone won’t require a lengthy conversion process that results in cut off edges or black borders anyway.

The processor also looks to dwarf the dual core chip found in the iPhone 4S, and will definitely come in handy for playing the aforementioned HD video. The removal of physical buttons from the face of the device also furthers this goal, as they can fade away to turn what would have been button space into more screen space. It’s a good example of single-minded, targeted design that should translate into an unmatched video experience.

The primary advantage the iPhone 4S has is in software, in the new iOS 5. This was definitely the high point of the Apple presentation, with plenty of new features announced, including the potentially amazing Siri AI. In most other areas, it looks like the Nexus Prime will have the advantage — and we haven’t really seen what Ice Cream Sandwich has brought to the party – yet.

The Samsung Nexus Prime and Android Ice Cream Sandwich with it will be revealed at the Samsung and Google press event on Tuesday, the 11th of October.

In anticipation of the launch, Samsung posted this video which officially shows off the look of the device for the first time. The final shot shows the Nexus Prime in profile, highlighting its rather substantial curve and promising ‘another perfect combination’: Samsung and Google.

With a cool curved body, a single-minded focus on achieving mobile 720p video and the latest flavour of Android, the Samsung Nexus Prime could be the phone that could turn Apple fans towards Android. We won’t know for sure until Tuesday, but if I were Apple I’d be quaking in my boots.

What do you think, is the Nexus Prime capable of taking down the iPhone 4S?

If you’re rooting for the Nexus Prime, check back for the latest Nexus Prime accessories. If you’re coming down on Apple’s side, then you’ll definitely want to check out our range of compatible iPhone 4S accessories including screen protectors, iPhone 4S cases and iPhone 4S covers. Let me know on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus.

• Reach me on our Facebook page at Love Your Mobile
• Talk to me on the Mobile Fun Twitter
• Reach me personally on Google Plus

Tags: iPhone 4S, iPhone 4S accessories, iPhone 4S case, iPhone 4S cases, iPhone 4S cover, iPhone 4S covers, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Nexus Prime,

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19:40 GMT

It’s over. No iPhone 5. Aww. Looks like that’s it folks.

19:35 GMT

Fastest release ever, October 14th. Other countries soon. The announcement is wrapping up; hopefully there’s a ‘one more thing.’

19:30 GMT

English, French and German are all covered, more to be added over time. Now showing a white iPhone 4S. Yay. No iPhone 5 though

19:25 GMT

Reminders are now location-based. I remember reading a paper about this from ages ago, glad to see it working in a new place. You can also do instant Wikipedia and instant Wolfram Alpha. ‘Define mitosis.’ This is like a Star Trek computer, it’s pretty cool! All of this is adding up into a look of cool stuff that Android will have to replicate, instead of it being the other way around for once. Wolfram Alpha is definitely a great catch, should be brilliant for cheating on exams.

19:20 GMT

In Android there’s a voice input command on the keyboard that shows up on every app. Hopefully Siri is comparably universal. “What is the time in Paris?” Yeah. It can do all kinds of things, rates restaurants, and generally is quite helpful. Looks very very sophisticated. Cool! You can ask it to read your messages. Very awesome. It remembers who you’re talking to as well.

19:15 GMT

‘What we really want to do is just talk to our device!” Assistant time. Let’s see what it’s actually capable of… They are calling it Siri, surprisingly. You can ask it real life questions… “Is the iPhone 5 coming out today?” We can only hope.

19:10 GMT

They’re talking about squirrel pictures. The iPhone 4S will be good for nature photographers, apparently. 1080p video recording. Real time video image stabilisation, noise reduction. Airplay wireless mirroring, so you can watch your phone on the HDTV. Without a cable.

19:05 GMT

They’ve apparently improved the battery life. 8 hours of talk time. Also, it’s got two antennaes, can switch between the two intelligently, and works on both networks. ‘World phone.’ One very cool feature: Use both antennae at once to download things twice as fast, as fast or faster than 4G. That’s really cool. 8 megapixel camera, hurrah. Backlit illuminated sensor. Hurrah. Apparently it’s an f2.4, really wide and excellent for low light sensors. Takes pictures 2 to 3 faster, 0.5 seconds for the second picture, faster than anything else apparently.

19:00 GMT

iPhone 4S. We knew it. It’s the same looking. ‘Design is the same.’  Retina display again, dual core CPU as we predicted, dual core graphics. Games demo starting now. Infinity Blade 2 demo, amazing graphics Apple say. Infinity Blade 2 available December 1st. Yay… but not what we’re here for.

18:55 GMT

Number one portable game player: iPod Touch. iMessage and Game Center are included. iOS 5, of course. There’s a white iPod Touch coming, coo. Available October 12th in 32 GB and 64 GB versions. Next, iPhone.

18:50 GMT

The iPod Nano is apparently being updated. Multi-touch display has been made easier to navigate because it’s got bigger icons. Also, it can now sense fitness activities without external sensors. I actually did some research on that topic, it’s quite fun using your feet to control things. Now they’re saying they’re adding new clock faces to the iPhone Nano. iPod Nano is 8GB for $129, 16GB for $149. Now, iPod Touch.

18:45 GMT

The iCloud page is now up on the Apple site: http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/

Now iTunes Match. Apparently releasing at the end of the month for the US, $24.99 a year with 5 GB of storage.

There’s now a video. Something I didn’t post yet: In the US, Apple can send a real-life snail-mail postcard for $2.99, complete with tracking, all handled by Apple.

18:40 GMT

iOS 5 will be released on October 12th. Huzzah. Now someone to talk about iCloud. iTunes in iCloud, Photo Stream (Photos in iCloud). Documents in iCloud. Daily backups. iCloud will be available from October 12th as well. Awesome.

Now there’s a stalker app, similar to Google Latitude. Great. Foursquare app clone as well: Family and Friends.

18:35 GMT

Tabbed browsing in mobile Safari, good to see that they’re catching up to mobile Opera and other enhanced web browsers for iOS. Game Centre is also big, and apparently achievements are being added soon… it worked for Microsoft!

Apparently you can also use the iPhone without a computer now, e.g. no need to connect to iTunes to activate. Good.

18:30 GMT

New notifications, as we discussed before. Twitter integration, ditto. You can now control the camera from the lock screen as well, instead of having to get to the camera app. Also, you can add grid lines, pinch to zoom and auto focus to lock. Pretty standard stuff really.

iMessage was also announced; basically a BlackBerry-alike that sends messages between iPhone users, including text, video and photos. That’s pretty big, actually.

18:25 GMT

250 million devices. Now for iOS 5, hurrah.

18:20 GMT

Now they’re talking about the iPhone… they’re bragging about the iPhone 4 and its sales. 93% of Fortune 500 companies are testing or deploying the iPhone. They talk a bit about it, then say ‘more on that later.’ Aww. Now they’re talking about the iPad.

18:15 GMT

They’re talking about the new Apple stores in China… Now OS X Lion’s being talked about. 23% market share in the US, that’s pretty impressive.

18:00 GMT (10:00 PST)

And it begins… here it goes.

17:55 GMT (9:55 PST)

So it does look pretty likely that the iPhone 4S will be the only phone announced today, as we’ve heard suspiciously little about the iPhone 5.

17:45 GMT (9:45 PST)

The Japanese iPhone site is listing the iPhone 4S for sale on October 14th. Nice.

17:30 GMT (9:30 PST)

This is our coverage of Apple’s ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ event, where I’ll be posting the latest details on the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S and all the rest as it comes. The keynote is due to start in 45 minutes.

I’ve written posts earlier today detailing what I expect to be announced: an iPhone 4S rumour roundup and the iPhone 5 rumour roundup. Essentially, we’re looking for two devices running iOS 5: the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5.

The iPhone 4S will be essentially an upgraded version of the iPhone 4, with a faster processor, more RAM and a better camera. The iPhone 5 looks like it might be released later, but contains much more radical upgrades, including a more expansive screen, curved back and so forth.

We’ve already got iPhone 4S accessories ready to go, and they’ll be announced as soon as that phone is confirmed. iPhone 5 accessories are more of a mystery, but we’ll likely be updating our stock shortly after the presentation as well, including iPhone 5 cases and iPhone 5 covers.

Check back here as we continue to cover the new announcements, which will appear at the top of the page every five minutes (although you will have to refresh, sorry.)

Tags: iPhone 4S, iPhone 5,

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As we all await the announcement of the next iPhone later today at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, new rumours and leaks are still being made, about both the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4S. Let’s go over what’s been said so far:

Form Factor: The iPhone 5′s form factor is due to see quite a few changes, based on iPhone 5 case designs that we leaked back in July. MacRumors.com ran with our design documents and had the photo below mocked up, which included the changes we highlighted.

Display: The iPhone 5 display looks to be expanding to stretch from edge-to-edge, granting up to 4″ of screen size to compete against larger-screened Android phones. It seems unlikely that the resolution of the iPhone will change as this would necessitate changes to all apps published on the iOS platform; Apple rather deliberately doubled the resolution from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4 to ensure that old content just appeared at half-resolution instead of some less round fraction.

If Apple doesn’t up the pixel count, they may fall short of the ‘magic number’ which their ‘Retina Display’ marketing relied so heavily upon. The expanded display might be slightly increased, but use the extra space for edge-of-screen notifications. These were hinted at in a patent last year, but they haven’t materialised in developer builds of iOS 5 so it seems unlikely that they’ll turn up.

Buttons: The home button may serve as a touch-sensitive area, allowing the use of multi-touch gestures here. The hardware button might remain, with the new functionality laid on top, or might be eliminated altogether so that the area is solely a touch point.

There are changes elsewhere too — we know from earlier case design leaks (including from Case-Mate itself) that the iPhone 5′s lock button will switch sides. Other side buttons seem to remain in the same place, but the volume buttons seem to have changed back to the rocker concept found in 3G iPhones rather than the iPhone 4′s dedicated up and down buttons.

Back: The back cover of the iPhone 5 looks to be returning to its old roots as well, with a curved back in evidence that resembles the one used by the 3G iPhones. The back also looks to be metal clad once again, perhaps due to problems with produced curved glass.

Some sites are also suggesting that the phone will be wider at the top than at the bottom, producing a ‘teardrop’ design that angles the phone for easier desktop use. This seems unlikely however, given that it would cause the iPhone to tilt to one side when used in landscape mode.

Processor: The new iPhone 5 will almost certainly offer a faster dual core processor to remain competitive against the marauding Android handsets. Apple already uses a dual core ARM A5 chip in their iPad, so including this in the next iPhone seems like an inevitability.

If the iPhone 5 launches next year, expect a different chip clocked to a higher frequency to stay competitive (somewhere in the region of 1.5GHz seems likely).

RAM: The iPhone 5 is due to receive an upgrade to 1 GB of RAM, doubling its previous amount.

Internal Storage: We’ve received word from a Vodafone executive that the new iPhone will include options of up to 64 GB of flash storage. These are corroborated by screenshots taken of the Vodafone Germany website, where iPhone 4S in Black and White were offered with 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB for a few minutes. Expect the iPhone 5 in these sizes as well.

Camera: We’ve received quite a few words on this upgraded component, including photos of the camera assembly itself via Chinese manufacturers. The camera looks to be upgraded to 8 megapixels and is said to include a back-lit sensor to improve low-light image quality.

There are also references to panoramic photos in the iOS 5 documentation, so expect this feature to be standard. If the iPhone 5 does launch next year, it’ll face stiff competition from the Samsung Galaxy S III which is said to boast a 16 megapixel sensor.

iOS5: There are software changes too, which developers have seen firsthand with the iOS 5 developer preview. The most obvious change is that iCloud cloud storage has been integrated in a big way. There’s also improvements to notifications, making them for akin to the Android notification system. Several apps will also see updates, including Mail and Safari. Twitter integration is another plus, with many apps now offering the option to post content to Twitter.

Speech: Ever since Apple acquired personal assistant app developer Siri last year, insiders have expected improved voice control to the iPhone. This looks to be coming together nicely, with reports of a new application called Assistant which will be capable of performing a number of speech recognition and speech synthesis tasks, including transcribing dictated messages and performing more voice-activated commands than ever before.

Whilst the iPhone 4 already contains voice control, the level of integration is said to be ‘world changing’ according to Siri co-founder Norman Winarsky, who heralds it as the first ‘real AI with real market use’. Assistant will reportedly only be available on the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, as it requires the RAM and CPU upgrades that both will include.

Release Date: The iPhone 5′s release date is still a matter of speculation. Due to the various slowdowns that Apple have experienced in manufacturing the device, I expect that the iPhone 5 will be released in 2012, although Apple has surprised us before with quicker-than-expected product releases. The earliest possible date will be October 14th.

We’ll have to see which of these rumours are true once the announcement is actually made — here at Mobile Fun we’ll be covering the launch and offering iPhone 5 accessories as soon as ever we can afterwards — including iPhone 5 cases and iPhone 5 screen protectors. Feel free to check out our iPhone 4S rumour roundup too.

Let me know what you think via social media channels as usual, or via the comments section.

• Reach me on our Facebook page at Love Your Mobile
• Talk to me on the Mobile Fun Twitter
• Reach me personally on Google Plus

Tags: iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5 accessories, iPhone 5 case, iPhone 5 cases, iPhone 5 images, iPhone 5 leak, iPhone 5 release date, iPhone 5 roundup, iPhone 5 rumours, iPhone 5 scree, iPhone 5 screen protectors,

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