Vodafone will launch 4g service in Uk on 29 August 2013

 Vodafone has revealed that it will launch its 4G service on 29 August to customers in London after investing £900m in the network.

It will roll out to 12 other cities including Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield by the end of the year, the firm said.

Prices for customers will begin at £26 per month for a SIM only deal with a 12-month contract.

Last week O2 announced plans to launch its own 4G service on the same day.

O2's lowest tariff is also £26 per month. EE, the first network to offer the faster mobile internet service, has a base tariff of £21 per month.

Three has said it plans to launch a fourth 4G network before the end of the year.

Bundled content
Vodafone has partnered with the music service Spotify and TV channel Sky Sport for its launch, to offer additional content to its 4G customers.

It is also providing unlimited data-use within the UK for the first three months of contracts, but otherwise imposes the maximum of an eight gigabyte cap. Vodafone said this would help customers pick the right data plan.

Consumer groups have been critical about the fact that only Three has committed itself to offering unlimited data as a long-term option.

All the networks took part in an auction run by regulator Ofcom to buy parts of the 4G spectrum earlier this year.

At the time Ofcom's chief executive Ed Richards described the sale as "a positive outcome for competition" in the UK.

"4G coverage will extend far beyond that of existing 3G services, covering 98% of the UK population indoors - and even more when outdoors - which is good news for parts of the country currently underserved by mobile broadband," he said.

Both EE and Vodafone purchased bands in the 2.6GHz range as well as the 800MHz part of the radio spectrum. O2 only bought bands in the lower range.

The 2.6GHz bands delivers faster speeds but across smaller distances. The 800MHz bands - previously used by the TV signals - are best for providing long-distance 4G services and indoor coverage.

"It's not just about speed issue but also capacity," Matthew Howett, an analyst at the telecoms consultancy Ovum, told the BBC earlier.

"The higher frequency spectrum effectively has fatter pipes - you can get more data through them.

"When lots of people are using 4G to do things like streaming high definition video, it's important not just to have the availability of the signal but also that the pipe is wide enough to carry all that traffic."

Best Comparison Between Android 4.3 and Android 4.2.2

Well, virtually out of nowhere, Android 4.3 surfaced in the past week in the form of a ROM for the Google Edition Samsung Galaxy S4. But when we take a look at it, what’s really changed from Android 4.2? Here’s a little summary of what we’ve found so far.
 The version of the ROM that Android Police have had on their hands for the Galaxy S4 still has a few bugs (always on Wi-Fi? Ugh), but it’s given us some good insight into what we can look forward to when Android 4.3 does finally drop for other devices.  While it will still fall under the same nomenclature of Jelly Bean, 4.3 will have an API version of 18, compared to an API version of 17 for Android 4.2 This means that there will be most likely new interfaces and interactions available for developers to play around with.
Wi-Fi issues
While poking around in the source code, Android Police have discovered some changes to the wireless settings. Even if your slider for Wi-Fi is set to “Off”, the device will still scan the background. Google has indicated in the past that Wi-Fi is not only used for a determination of your devices location, but also for “other purposes. Android Police has therefor speculated that data is still being sent back to Google to expand its own Wi-Fi cards (a composite of Wi-Fi networks in your area).
There is a way to currently shut it off, but you need to do some searching in Advanced Settings.  Once this is done, the device will rely on GPS for location determination, however, it will consume more battery than just using the Wi-Fi option.
Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto
First introduced in Android 4.0, Roboto is the system font that Android uses and was designed specifically for ease of readability on smaller displays.  Some minor improvements to this font family have been added in Android 4.3, most notably making the letters slimmer and having more rounded edges.

android 43 robotoThe changes, while small, should be noticeable to users when reading on smaller screens. Roboto on 4.2 in black and Roboto on 4.3 in red.

While the changes are only visible when you do a direct comparison between the old and new Roboto fonts, the overall readability of text on your smartphone device or Android tablet should improve with this change.
Notifications, we meet again
I guess with the update to 4.3, Google has also planned some pretty major changes the Android notification service. It seems that it will be possible for third-party apps to access notifications and interact directly through them and also display a history of notifications that you have received. The former will allow apps a new range of interactions through the notification center, such as deleting e-mail messages without having to open your e-mail app. The latter will be handy should you ever drop out of Wi-Fi or cell reception areas and then come back to find yourself inundated with a plethora of notifications.


notification service android 43Some changes to the notification center is expected, allowing more access for apps.

While it might seem not too ground-breaking, these changes would allows devices (such as a Pebble Smartwatch) more controllability when it comes to notifications and what you can do with them, allowing a more seamless experience and reducing the amount of “double” notifications that you get across devices.
Other features
Some more changes in Android 4.3, as noted by Android Central, have been listed below:

    The camera app has been redesigned with a new UI
    Support for Bluetooth Low Energy
    New Developer Tools (Debugging for non-rectangular clipping, Experimental WebView repeal of USB debugging authorizations)
    In the phone app pauses and waits can be inserted in the dialing string (using the comma and semicolon)
    Also in the Phone App: autocomplete in variable length of tone dialing and DTMF (Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency)
    For screenshots that are shared via email, the date and time of recordings are automatically packed into the subject

And so, that’s it. And while most of it relates to the version of Android found on the Galaxy, it’s most likely these features will also be available in versions across other devices. No date has been given for an official release (or even announcement) but with the release of more information about the Moto X on July 10th, we could be in for a big surprise.

LG Optimus G Pro Review: The Fastest Big Phone Out There

Fun fact: In a sprint, the hippo is one of the fastest land mammals, despite also being one of the largest. Similarly, the LG Optimus G Pro is unquestionably one humungoid phone, but it runs about as fast as the top speedsters out there. Whether or not you should consider buying it, however, is up to the elasticity of your fingers.

What Is It?

It's a bigass phone made by LG to compete with Samsung's bigass phone, the Galaxy Note II. It has a 5.5-inch 1080p HD screen, it's running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), and it has Qualcomm's screaming fast quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor clocked at 1.7GHz.
Who's It For?

People who want a lot of screen real-estate. People with big hands, or people with small hands who don't mind using two hands on their phones.
LG Optimus G Pro Review: The Fastest Big Phone Out There
Design

It is, frankly, so much like Samsung's Note II that the two could play a Freaky Friday-style prank on their owners.. It's got Samsung's classic rounded, glossy, plastic back. Up front there's a home button that you physically press down, which is flanked by a menu button and a back button. There is a very thin bezel up front, which is a nice look. The biggest difference between it and the Note II is the lack of a built-in stylus. (Above, from left to right: Galaxy Note II, Optimus G Pro, and the Galaxy S4.)
Using It

While the phone is decidedly quick, there's just no getting around how unwieldy it is. One-handing it is a difficult proposition. I have larger-than-average hands, and it's a real strain to get into a position where my thumb can reach both the top and bottom of the screen. It was possible for me, but just barely. It also feels extremely prominent in your pants pocket. Every time I bent down to tie my shoes I was wondering if the screen or my pocket would break.

To be fair to the the Optimus G Pro, these issues aren't unique to this phone. It's a big-phone problem, and one that hasn't stopped people from buying the Galaxy Note or Note II.

The Best Part

It is very, very fast. Right up there with the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4. It flies though home screens, app drawers, and opening applications. HD games (such as Dead Trigger) play like butter. It actually feels a little faster than the S4, and just slightly slower than the One.

Tragic Flaw

Good God, LG really needs to smarten up its software or (more preferably) just give up and let Android do its thing. LG's skin is exceptionally unintuitive and bad. Example: The app drawer is just a clutter mass of apps without any order by default. Luckily, you can choose to sort them alphabetically. Unluckily, any new apps you install still get stuck at the back, regardless of alphabetical order. This is dumb. The menu system's layout is perplexing, and the remote control app (it has an IR blaster) is about as good as the app on the HTC One or S4, which is to say, not good.

There's a whole quick menu in the notification panel (boosted from Samsung), quick apps which can hover over your other apps (boosted from Samsung), and even an option that can tell when you're looking at it so the screen stays on (again, boosted from Samsung). What it can't do is something simple like auto-adjust your screen's brightness to the ambient lighting. The option is there, it just doesn't work. At all. The Optimus G Pro's keyboard has the worst auto-correct on any mobile device I've ever used. The one positive is that LG's bad software somehow manages not to slow the phone down at all (can't say the same for Samsung's TouchWiz), but it's still awful. Replacing the homescreen with Nova Launcher and replacing the keyboard with SwiftKey 4 solves some, but not all, of these problems.
This Is Weird...

The phone has a physical button on the upper left side called the QuickButton. By default it's set to take a screen cap of whatever is on screen so you can then draw notes on it with your finger. Pretty much useless. Luckily, you can remap it in the settings so it opens up your camera application, and while it will work as a shutter button, technically, it doesn't have a two-stage press to it, so it doesn't work very well.
Test Notes

    We tested the Optimus G Pro on AT&T's LTE network in NYC and the SF Bay Area, and in both locations it got better than average reception, and solid data speeds when it was on the LTE network. We got 25Mbps downloads and 15Mbps uploads when we had a strong signal.
    The screen is very nice. Text looks great on it, as do videos. It's not as good as the screen on the One or the S4, but it's certainly better than the screen on the Note II, which isn't a surprise given that it's 1080p vs 720p, both at 5.5 inches.
    Despite the king-sized 3140mAh battery, the phone's battery life is fairly middle-of-the-road. That screen sucks up a lot of juice. On days of heavier use, I'd only make it to about 6pm. When I used it less, it'd go well past midnight. Your mileage may vary.
    Despite the 13MP camera in tow, photos are just okay. Shots are reasonably sharp, but colors tend to be washed out, and it really struggles with contrast. It does a better job in low light than the Galaxy S4, but it doesn't come anywhere near the HTC One or Nokia Lumia 900. (Some samples.)

Should I Buy It?
If you're absolutely sold on owning a phone this big, well, it's the best giant phone presently out there. That said, Samsung is bound to release a Galaxy Note III in the months to come, and HTC is rumored to be unveiling a big one, too, so if you can wait, do. Or just get an HTC One or a Galaxy S4. Their screens aren't that much smaller and both phones are infinitely more useable because of simple ergonomics. We'd definitely recommend either of those phones (and the Nexus 4, and the iPhone 5) over the Optimus G Pro. That said, if you want something with size and speed and you want it right now, have at it. [LG]

    LG Optimus G Pro Specs

    Network: AT&T
    OS: Android 4.1 with LG's skin
    CPU: 1.7 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600
    Screen: 5.5-inch 1920x1080 IPS LCD (401PPI)
    RAM: 2GB
    Storage: 32GB + micro SD up to 64GB
    Camera: 13MP rear / 2MP front
    Battery: 3149 mAh
    Dimensions: 5.91 x 3.00 x 0.37 inches
    Weight: 5.64 ounces
    Price: Starts at $200 with a two-year contract

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review: Better, But Not Best (Updated)

Since it arrived last year, the Galaxy S III has been the world's best-selling smartphone that wasn't born in Cupertino. An impressive feat, but one that-along with Samsung's Megatron-sized hype-machine-has made for sky-high expectations for the sequel.

Our first impressions of the S4 left us a little cold, but we've now spent a full week getting to know it better. It's definitely one of the best phones you can buy. It's just shame it couldn't stay out of its own way.
What Is It?

Samsung's next great hope of a superphone. It's got a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED screen, a superfast quad-core 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 processor, 2GB RAM, LTE, NFC, and a 13MP camera. It also has a beefy 2600mAh battery, and an IR blaster for controlling your home entertainment system. It comes running Android 4.2.2 with Samsung's heavy TouchWiz skin on top of it. It should be available on every major U.S. wireless carrier in the next few weeks.
Design

If you're familiar with the Galaxy S III, the S4 will look strikingly familiar. It retains the same rounded-rectangle look, with metal edges and a slippery, finger-print-trapping plastic back that looks like it belongs on a far more downmarket phone. It's at least functional, though; the back is removable, so you can swap out the battery or expand your storage capabilities with a micro SD card. A lot of people prefer that added utility over the more solid-feeling, and more beautiful unibody design of, say, the HTC One.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review: Better, But Not Best (Updated)


One place Samsung does manage to score design points is growing the screen from 4.8 inches on the Galaxy S III to a full 5.0 inches on the S4, while still making the phone thinner, narrower, and easier to grip. The side bezels are shrunk down to nearly nothing, and the screen takes up almost the entire front of the device. Speaking of the screen, it is easily the nicest Samsung has ever made. The colors (especially blues and greens) really pop, and the 441 pixels per inch ensure that text is super-clear. It's also bright enough to be clearly readable on a bright, sunny day, and the Super AMOLED screen makes the blacks like staring into the abyss.

That being said, we still slightly prefer the screen on the HTC One. There's something about it that looks matte, like a magazine, and colors are more accurate.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review: Better, But Not Best (Updated)

While Nexus phones are moving away from physical buttons for navigation, Samsung has opted to include three of them here. The S4 has capacitive buttons for Menu and Back, and a physical, clickable button for Home. It's wasted space. But worse, the capacitive buttons don't light up until you actually touch them, so if you forget which side is Menu and which is Back you might end up closing out of something unintentionally. Annoying!

The final touch: on top of the device is a super tiny IR blaster for controlling your TV. You'd never even notice it if you weren't looking for it, and you won't look for it.


Using It

As we noted in our original hands-on, the S4 comes packed full of ""features."" There's Air View, which allows you to hover your finger over the screen to see some information without actually clicking. There's Air Gestures, which allows you to wave your hand over the phone to change between tabs or photos. There's Smart Scroll, with which you tilt your device to scroll, instead of using your finger. There's Smart Pause, which will pause a video when you look away from the screen. And there's Group Play, which lets you play a handful of selected video games with friends on the same Wi-Fi network, or use several S4 phones as Sonos-like speakers.

The most important thing you need to know about these features is that you will never use any of them. Ever. Never ever. The end.

Why not? Oh, lots of reasons. Air View only works with Samsung's customized apps-not Gmail, not Chrome-and even then it doesn't work very well. Air Gestures are less accurate and less convenient than just touching the screen. Smart Scroll is totally unreliable, and Smart Pause is totally useless. The only, only justification for any of these features is that you can wave your hand over the phone to answer a call while driving, or, again, maybe if you're addicted to buffalo wings and have an aversion to moist towelettes.

Make no mistake. These ""features"" are nothing more than gimmicks, case studies in why different doesn't always mean better, and can often be worse.

The good news is that you can turn off and/or totally ignore most of these extraneous ""features,"" and when you do, there's a very good phone underneath. It's generally very fast, and HD games like Temple Run: Oz, Inertia HD, and Naught all ran smoothly. The pre-installed sliding keyboard is better than most manufacturer keyboards (looking at you, HTC), with plenty of space between keys and a dedicated number row, but auto-correct has a lot of issues, and we still prefer the keyboard on stock Jelly Bean or SwiftKey 4. The unit we tested was on T-Mobile's HSPA+ 42 network (no T-Mobile LTE in NYC, yet, though this phone will work with it when it rolls out); data speeds were good, and it connected reliably.

There will be a cadre of S4 accessories available (TV adapters and such) at some point, but the only one available at launch is the S View Flip Cover. It's a good-looking cover that adds almost no thickness to your phone by completely replacing the back. The phone can sense when the cover is closed, and it will only light up one little (plastic) window on the front, which should save you a little battery power (when an AMOLED pixel is black it doesn't use any power). You can swipe to accept or dismiss calls even when the cover is closed.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review: Better, But Not Best (Updated)

All of which sounds handy, but it makes the phone more cumbersome to use. It means you have to use two hands when you first pull your phone out, and when it's folded back, there's an extra piece of plastic your camera has to shoot through. It also makes the volume rocker way harder to access. In general, not worth it. Especially for the $60 price tag.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review: Better, But Not Best (Updated)

Camera

In decent lighting, the camera is among the best shooters out there. Images are very sharp and there's a surprising amount of depth of field. Colors are rich, though they border on over-saturation, and video quality is excellent. You can check out plenty of our sample shots here.

We've also included a few comparison images below to give you a sense of how the S4's shooter performs relative to the competition:

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review: Better, But Not Best (Updated)

With Flash

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review: Better, But Not Best (Updated)

No Flash

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review: Better, But Not Best (Updated)

Outside

The camera app's mode selection wheel, which was lifted from Samsung's own Galaxy Camera, is the most intuitive method for switching between shooting modes on any smartphone we've tested. It has photos showing you exactly what you're getting, underneath clear text, which eliminates any guesswork.
Like

Battery performance on the S4 is among the best we've seen from smartphones this year, though it's still not anywhere near as everlasting as the RAZR MAXX HD. It's important to note, though, that our testing took place on T-Mobile's HSPA+ network, and not the more power-hungry LTE of Verizon and AT&T (Update: See below for test notes with LTE). With that advantage, it slightly edged out the HTC One by an hour or so on average (which itself does pretty decently).

The S4 did, though, make it to the end of the night without additional charging fairly often, thanks to both the larger battery (2600mAh vs. 2300mAh on the One) and the more economical AMOLED screen, though the processor's higher clock speed taxed it somewhat.

Speaking of which: that screen really is leaps and bounds better than the one on last year's S III. It's very sharp, pretty, and easy to read. The camera app is laid out very nicely, and the included OCR (optical character recognition) software, which can translate written words on the fly, are both examples of app actually done right. Overall, the S4 is definitely a sizable upgrade over the S III. But it's still got its issues.

 Samsung Galaxy S4 Specs

Network: All major U.S. carriers
OS: Android 4.2.2 with TouchWiz UI
CPU: 1.9 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600
Screen: 5-inch 1920x1080 Super AMOLED (441PPI)
RAM: 2GB
Storage: 16 or 32GB + micro SD up to 64GB
Camera: 13MP rear / 2MP front
Battery: 2600 mAh Li-Ion
Dimensions: 5.38 x 2.75 x 0.31 inches
Weight: 4.59 ounces
Price: Starts at $200 with a two-year contract

Leaked Images of BlackBerry's New A10

 BlackBerry's rumored big shiny new A10 has cropped up in a series of leaked high-res images and it looks... actually kinda nice.

The new phone is rumored to be a bigger and faster flagship smartphone for the company, and these images show the device in more detail than before. It's not dissimilar in style to Samsung's Galaxy S4, though the bottom of the phone also resembles the HTC One with it chrome chin.

The Vietnamese site Tinhte-which often manages to get its paws on phones ahead of launch-has also released a video of the same handset, too. Watch it below.

The A10 is rumored to pack a 5-inch AMOLED display, a dual-core processor, and 2GB of RAM, and there's been suggestion that it could arrive some time before the end of 2013. The accuracy of all this is clearly up for debate-as is whether it can actually help BlackBerry out if its hole. Let's wait and see. [hightechmate]

New Nexus 7 Leaks Spills Almost All the Details

 We didn't get any new hardware back at Google I/O, but we've heard plenty about a new Nexus 7 on course to be announced sometime this month. Time is running out, but now Engadget has gotten some leaked details that confirm almost everything we've heard so far.

According to the leaked spec sheet screenshot, the new 7's will come with (obviously) a 7-inch screen, a quad-core 1.5GHz CPU, front-facing and external cameras, Android 4.3, wireless charging, and a Slim Port for throwing 1080p content up on your TV.

That mostly lines up with the other rumors we've seen, including the actual updated model that made its way out into the wild the other day. Apparently the new versions will be a little more expensive, at $230 (16GB) and $270 (32GB) a pop, and the only missing peice is whether or not there's a resolution bump to help ease that little hike. Google's got an event coming on the 24th though. You can bet we'll find out soon. [Engadget]

The Moto X Might Have a 4.5-inch Screen and a Back Made from Kevlar

Motorola and Google both don't even care about keeping the Moto X a secret, plastering it on its August 1st announcement invitation and letting Eric Schmidt bandy around with the thing, so hey, don't be surprised if a few details of the phone leaks. The Verge and @evleaks are reporting that the Moto X will have a 4.5-inch display, dual-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon processor, 2GB of RAM and a 10-megapixel camera. Oh, and a back shell made from Kevlar.

The Verge also adds that the Moto X will only have 1500mAh of battery oomph and that the 'always listening' feature must be enabled to work. The camera will apparently open upon a flick of the wrist (we'll have to see how well that works in real life before casting judgement).

Are these rumored specs enough to get you excited? [hightechmate]