Sony Xperia Z1 vs Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom Hands on

The Sony Xperia Z1 is the latest flagship device announced by the Japanese smartphone manufacturer. We’ve already gone hands on with it and brought to you all the latest details of the phone. Given the camera centric pedigree of the phone, we found it apt to compare with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom. Here’s a quick comparison between the two.

Sony-Xperia-Z1-Samsung-Galaxy-S4-2

The front of the Xperia Z1 has a 5inch Full HD display with the company’s triluminous display built in while the Galaxy S4 Zoom makes do with a 4.3″ Super AMOLED qHD panel. The Z1 has no capacitive buttons and makes do with onscreen controls. The S4 Zoom on the other hand has a hardware home key right below the display with capacitive buttons on either side of it.

Video Demo:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdjVCNEIHEU

Continue reading “Sony Xperia Z1 vs Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom Hands on”

How Samsung Became the Only Company with Two Successful Flagship Smartphones

samsung-galaxy-note-3

The IFA event at Berlin, one of the increasingly important consumer electronic trade shows, just started, but tons of devices have already been launched. Amongst them, standing out from the crowd, is the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, unveiled with much excitement and fervor, as leaks failed to provide proper information before launch. The Note 3 is the third iteration of the very popular Note series of devices Samsung made popular. The range, infamously held responsible for creating the phablet phenomenon, also created a paradigm shift in the company, for its portfolio.

Continue reading “How Samsung Became the Only Company with Two Successful Flagship Smartphones”

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Photo Gallery

samsung-galaxy-note3-9006

Samsung today unveiled the next chapter of its Galaxy Note line of devices. With an even larger display stuck inside a shell that is the same size as before, Samsung has some interesting industrial design going here. Over at the back is a faux leather material that makes it a bit more comfortable to hold.  Continue reading “Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Photo Gallery”

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 vs Sony Xperia Z Ultra Hands on Comparison

sony-xperia-z-ultra-vs-samsung-galaxy-note-3

Samsung just unveiled the highly anticipated Galaxy Note 3 at their IFA unpacked event today. Boasting a beautiful 5.7 inch full HD Super AMOLED display with a 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 800 Processor and 3 GB of RAM, it is easily one of the most powerful devices that have launched till date. But there was also another Snapdragon 800 device that impressed us with its performance and that was the Xperia Z Ultra, the first 6.44 inch device from Sony. How do both these phablets look side by side, and how do they fare in a quick comparison? We shot a video to show you how –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZZMJEHnoHY

Continue reading “Samsung Galaxy Note 3 vs Sony Xperia Z Ultra Hands on Comparison”

Samsung Galaxy Gear Hands On

samsung-galaxy-gear-6089

Much has been leaked about Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch. Today at the Unpacked Event in Berlin, we finally got a chance to see for ourselves if the Korean giant’s first efforts to enter into the world of wearables would be something special and here are our first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy Gear. Shaped like a conventional watch, the Gear is chunky to say the least. It might not be the most visually appealing smartwatch but it’s not an eye sore either. The front is essentially a 1.63 inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 320 x 320. Continue reading “Samsung Galaxy Gear Hands On”

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear launch event at IFA 2013 Live Blog

Samsung IFA 2013 Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear Live blog

FoneArena is at IFA in Berlin, Germany and we are going to be covering the Samsung and Sony press conferences which are set for today September 4th 2013.If you are looking forward to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 or the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch do stay tuned to FoneArena’s live coverage of the Samsung unpacked press conference from Berlin.Follow the live blog below for minute by minute updates from the launch event.The actual event is supposed to start at 7PM Germany time or about 10:30PM India time, so on your browser.

Continue reading “Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear launch event at IFA 2013 Live Blog”

Samsung S-View Cover on the Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition, it works

samsung-galaxy-s4-gpe-s-view-cover-1

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition was launched with much anticipation, as to how it will work and how the updates will roll out. While the immediate roll out of 4.3 inspired confidence there was always a worry that buying the S4 Google Play Edition will strip out all the important features of TouchWiz. While that still stands true, we found that one neat feature of the TouchWiz enabled S4 still works for the Google Play Edition, and that is the S4 View Cover functionality. We snapped the S4’s S-View Cover on to the S4 GPE and shot a quick demo of it for you –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVMK2JC7z5Y

Continue reading “Samsung S-View Cover on the Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition, it works”

Samsung Gear Manager screenshots leak ahead of Galaxy Gear smartwatch launch

It is no secret that Samsung plans to introduce a smartwatch at its upcoming event at IFA. Ahead of the launch, prolific leaker of upcoming devices ie evleaks has posted screenshots of the application that will interface with the watch.

Screen Shot 2013-08-30 at 2.45.37 AM

The images confirm that the watch will be using NFC for pairing with smartphones but will also employ regular bluetooth based connectivity. The watch that is named SM-V700 will have a variety of apps including clock faces and several Samsung specific applications. A My Apps section can also be seen in the software but it remains to be seen what is included here. A find my watch function will presumably trigger an alarm and/or vibration feedback to help you locate your watch. We’ll be reporting live from IFA next week where we’ll have the complete low down on the Samsung Galaxy Gear, the Note III and all other devices announced. Excited about Samsung’s smartwatch? Let us know why in the comments below!

[Via – Evleaks]

Micromax and Karbonn take top positions as the Indian Smartphone market surges ahead with the Phablet revolution

IDC-Indian-Smartphone-MarketShare-Q2-2013

You might have seen us reporting on various marketshare reports each month coming from a company called IDC. Usually, the company provides a wider perspective of the global market for mobile phones as well as smartphones, but this time, they have focused on the second fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, India. We saw in June that the overall shipments of Smartphones in India was at just 6.1 million devices, but in a quarter, it has risen to 9.3 million shipments, according to IDC. And over half of the shipments were from local players like Micromax, Karbonn and the others, with the former taking the no. 2 and 3 positions of the Top 5 Smartphone vendors in the Indian market respectively.

Continue reading “Micromax and Karbonn take top positions as the Indian Smartphone market surges ahead with the Phablet revolution”

Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 311 Benchmarks

Samsung-Galaxy-Tab-311-1

Samsung launched the Galaxy Tab 311 last month in India. We’ve brought you the review and here are the complete benchmarks of the device. The tablet is powered by a 1.5Ghz dual core Exynos 4212 processor that is paired with 1.5GB of RAM. About 442 MB of free RAM is available at launch. Let’s check out how the tablet performs in various benchmark tests. Continue reading “Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 311 Benchmarks”

Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 311 Review

Samsung-Galaxy-Tab-311-1

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab range of products have been immensely popular due to their successful marriage of price and specifications. While Samsung’s 7 inch tablet has been the highlight, 8 inches is fast becoming the sweet spot in terms of screen size. With that in mind, Samsung introduced their 8 inch tablet, the Galaxy Tab 3 311 in India sometime back. We’ve already brought you our first impressions. Check out the complete review of the Samsug Galaxy Tab 311, below. Continue reading “Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 311 Review”

Country wise distribution list for Samsung Galaxy Note III leaked

Curious to know whether you’ll be getting the Exynos Octa Core powered variant of Samsung’s next top of the range phablet or will you be using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 powered variant ? SamMobile claim to have got their hands on a country wise distribution list of said handset that will inform you exactly which variant you’ll be getting.

note2

The report goes on to state that the LTE variant of the handset ie SM-N9005 will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 (MSM8974) processor clocked at 2.3Ghz and will be paired with an Adreno 330 GPU. It will feature 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM. While this will carry on in the 3G variant as well, the processor will be switched with the Samsung Exynos 5420 Octa Core CPU and will be paired with the Mali-T628 MP6 GPU. China will also be getting a dual SIM version of the handset that will also have the Exynos 5420 Octa Core CPU. We’ve embedded the entire distribution list below for your perusal.  Continue reading “Country wise distribution list for Samsung Galaxy Note III leaked”

Samsung Galaxy Smartphones and Tablets to get support for 9 Indian languages

Samsung Galaxy Grand Indian Language support

Samsung today announced support for 9 Indian languages for their Galaxy smartphones and tablets. This would let the Samsung smartphone users to access the user interface and content in these languages. The 9 Indian languages include, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Gujarati. These Indian languages will be supported on Galaxy Grand, Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy Tab 3 starting from today. Continue reading “Samsung Galaxy Smartphones and Tablets to get support for 9 Indian languages”

Apple loses marketshare as Android tablet sales surge – IDC

idc-tablet-marketshare

What started with Kindle Fire is now the leading form factor in the tablet space. Yes, thanks to the booming small tablet market, Android is surging ahead at no. 1 spot in the tablet space too, with Apple losing marketshare and not growing along with the market. IDC had released its Smartphone marketshare analysis recently, which saw Apple growing at a slower pace than the others and that seems to be the case in tablets too.

Continue reading “Apple loses marketshare as Android tablet sales surge – IDC”

Samsung to offer BBM in Samsung App Store on Galaxy devices in Africa

Samsung today announced its plans to offer BBM on its self branded application store that comes pre-installed on its Galaxy range of Android devices. The move will start off first in Africa which is still a heavy user of BBM services. We expect the application to be available on their app store in other territories as well.

Continue reading “Samsung to offer BBM in Samsung App Store on Galaxy devices in Africa”