Best Buy to trim $50 off all iPhones

(Credit: Gursharan) 

 

Consumers looking for an iPhone could shave $50 off the price through a new sale from Best Buy.
From Sunday, February 16, through Saturday, February 22, Best Buy will slash $50 off the price of all iPhones bought via the usual two-year contract with AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon Wireless. As just a few examples, the 16GB iPhone 5 will be free, the 16GB 5C will sell for $50, and the 16GB 5S can be had for $150.

Additionally, customers who reserve a new phone purchase with Best Buy by February 15 can receive a $50 gift card. That card can then be applied to the price of any phone you buy before the end of the year.
Looking for an Android device instead? Also from Sunday through Saturday, Best Buy will trim $100 off the cost of a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 for a final price of $199. The deal requires a two-year agreement with AT&T or Verizon.
Fans of "Game of Thrones" can also save money on a new phone. Consumers who buy the HTC One and "Game of Thrones: Season 3" will get $50 of the price of the phone, making it $49. Those who shop online will receive a $50 gift card.
Finally, tablet buyers can score a few deals at Best Buy, but these won't be around long.
Through
Saturday, February 15, buyers of the Retina Display iPad Mini can save $50 on the price. Also through Saturday, anyone who trades in a working iPad will receive a Best Buy gift card worth up to $200 depending on the model and condition.
And in a deal good this Saturday through Monday, Best Buy customers who buy the 16GB, 32GB, or 32GB LTE Nexus 7 will get a $30 discount off the full price.

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Apple's Arizona plant could make 'unprecedented' amounts of sapphire

Apple's iPhone 5S.

(Creidt By : Gursharan )

Apple's new Arizona factory could manufacture "unprecedented" amounts of synthetic sapphire used to make stronger iPhone screens, according to a report. The factory will make as much as double the current global capacity of sapphire, according to Yole Developpement analyst Eric Virey, via Bloomberg. That's enough for 80 million to 100 million iPhones a year, the report said.

 Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in November announced that Apple was building a factory in Mesa, Arizona, to manufacture sapphire materials. And Apple late last year signed a contract with GT Advanced to produce sapphire-based materials at Apple's new facility in Arizona. The plant should open later this month with 700 full-time workers and 1,200 temporary construction jobs, Bloomberg said.


Apple has already used sapphire for the surface of the rear camera lens for the iPhone 5 and the ID fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5S. The company is now believed to be planning massive production of synthetic sapphire displays for use in its various gadgets. A future iPhone with a display made out of the material could render it scratch-resistant and nearly unbreakable.
Synthetic sapphire is made using furnaces that cause cylinders of sapphire to grow in about a month. The cylinders are then sliced to less than a millimeter thick, Bloomberg said. Because the process is so complex, it requires a small and well-trained workforce, unlike the factories run by Foxconn to assemble Apple's gadgets by hand.


The sapphire plant is Apple's latest effort to control every part of the process for making its gadgets. Along with now building sapphire for strong screens, the company also designs the processors powering its iPhones and iPads. Controlling more of the process allows the devices to work exactly as Apple wants, and it also allows the company to keep its plans more secret.

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Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed appears on iOS for $5

(Credit: Sega) 

 

Sonic the Hedgehog, the longstanding Sega mascot, has driven to iOS.

Related posts

Sega on Thursday announced the launch of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed for iOS. The game, which has been available on traditional game platforms, including the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, since 2012, has been modified to work with Apple's iPhone and iPad.

Like the console version, the game allows users to control Sonic or other Sega characters as they race through different tracks. The "Transformed" comes into play during a race when vehicles can be modified into a car, boat, or plane. The game also supports both online and local multiplayer.
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is available now for $5.

By :  cnet.com

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iPhone does well in post-holiday Web traffic; iPad not so much

 

 The iPhone beat other rivals in Web traffic following the holidays, but the iPad was outpaced by the competition, says Chitika.

 

(Credit: Chitika)  

Apple's iPhone saw the highest gains in post-holiday online traffic among the major smartphones, online ad network Chitika said on Thursday.
Measuring the online ad impressions generated on the major smartphones and tablets across North America, Chitika found that iPhone use grew by 1.8 percent from Christmas Day through December 29. In contrast, Google-branded smartphones eked out a gain of just 0.7 percent, while the rest of the pack -- Motorola, HTC, LG, and Samsung -- saw their respective shares of online traffic drop.
The iPhone also remains the top smartphone, according to Chitika's stats, with a 54.3 percent share of smartphone Web traffic. Samsung is in second place with a 23.7 percent share.
But the picture was quite a bit different on the tablet side. Here, Apple fared the worst of all the tablet vendors measured, losing 1.3 percent of its share of online traffic after the holidays. Amazon was the winner with a 0.6 percent gain, followed by Microsoft with a 0.5 percent increase, and Samsung inching up by 0.3 percent.
The iPad's decline could partially be the result of its higher price tag, according to Chitika.
Gift buyers looking to save money may have opted for less-costly tablets from Amazon, Samsung, Google, and even Microsoft. The 16GB Wi-Fi-only iPad Air costs $499, while the Surface 2 undercuts that to $449. But among 7-inch tablets, the new Retina iPad Mini starts at $399, while the smaller offerings from Amazon and other vendors start around $200.
The iPad still holds the highest share of online tablet traffic at 76.1 percent. Amazon is second with 9.4 percent, followed by Samsung with 5.9 percent.
Chitika's data was based on a sampling of tens of millions of smartphone and tablet ad impressions in the US and Canada. Pre-Christmas information was collected from December 20 to 24, while post-Christmas stats were taken from December 25 to 29.

By : cnet.com

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Wu: Apple iPad mini will take business from Windows 8 this holiday season

Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu is no stranger to these pages, and sometimes his pronouncements have been dead wrong. For example, a bit more than two years ago the analyst, then working for Kaufman Brothers, predicted that Apple was about to launch two versions of the Apple iPhone. One model was to have the usual (for back then) 3.5 inch screen while the other would be an entry-level model with a smaller display. On the other hand, he was right on with his multiple predictions calling for Verizon to get the Apple iPhone.

One of the first Apple iPad mini units sold in New Zealand

Now working for Sterne Agee, Wu is predicting that the just released Apple iPad mini will take business away from Windows 8 devices this holiday season. Wu says that the Apple iPad mini's main competition is the Microsoft Surface tablet and Windows 8 PCs. That might be upsetting to Apple to hear that the competition for the mini is a $500 tablet and even higher priced PC models. If Wu is correct, that would mean that those low priced 7 inch Android models could be outselling the Apple iPad mini during the holiday season.

Apple's original intent was to create a smaller tablet that would compete with the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the 16 GB Google Nexus 7, both priced at $199. But at $329, Apple just might have priced itself right out of that market, which is apparently why Wu made his comment. But it would seem more likely that the fourth generation Apple iPad would be the device going up against the Microsoft Surface tablet. Look at it this way, if you're looking at a Microsoft Surface RT with its 10.6 inch display and quad-core processor, would you also look at a device with a 7.9 inch screen and a dual-core 1GHz processor, or would you consider the device with a 9.7 inch screen and a powerful A6X processor?

source: Fortune

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Smaller lines spotted for the launch of the Apple iPad mini

We've already noticed some of the cracks in the facade at Apple including a stock price that has come down 15% from the peak set on the day that the Apple iPhone 5 was launched. But with most reviews of the Apple iPad mini positive, save for the low-resolution screen, you would expect the usual long line of Apple fans to be waiting outside Apple Stores globally for the chance to pick up the device, which went on sale today. Hong Kong was the first of 34 countries to launch the Apple iPad mini on Friday. By midday, the number of people waiting on line to pick up a reserved unit at Apple's flagship store was five, a sharp drop from the throng that waited on a long line last year to pick up the Apple iPad 2. In Australia and Japan, the local media in those countries also reported shorter lines than usual for an Apple product launch.

In Tokyo, Apple iPAd mini buyers show off their new purchase

The shorter lines could have been planned on purpose by Apple, which required buyers to pre-order the device and pick it up at a reserved time. Apple may have wanted to prevent a repeat of what happened last year in Beijing when a delay in opening an Apple Store for the launch of the Apple iPhone 4S led to violence by the long lines of people waiting to buy the phone. Rocks were thrown, fights broke out and Apple halted the sale of the Apple iPhone 4S in its stores throughout the region.

In the U.S., lines were also shorter than in the past, but some of that could be related to Hurricane Sandy. Outside Apple's Fifth Avenue store in the Big Apple (natch!), 750 people braved the aftermath of Sandy to wait outside the Apple Store for the the iPad mini. Unlike other launches of Apple products, the Apple iPad mini really doesn't bring anything new to the table as Apple felt compelled to produce the tablet to compete against the low-priced 7 inch Android tablets like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the 16GB Google Nexus 7, both priced at $199. At $329, buyers are being asked to pay something of a premium for the Apple iPad mini at a time when iOS is seen as being old and static.

Apple would not reveal how many units of the Apple iPad mini were pre-ordered, but the tablet did sell out the inventory set aside for pre-orders, across the board. Still, with the stock price down, problems in the boardroom, and the appearance that it needed to play catch-up to compete with those smaller and less expensive Android tablets, Apple appears to be at some level of disarray for the first time since Steve Jobs started to turn around the company with the iMac.

source: CNN

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Apple pulls hypocritical 'apology' to Samsung, replaces it with matter-of-fact statement

Yesterday, we heard about the dumbfounded reaction of the U.K. Court of Appeal in London after it learned Apple hypocritically paid lip service instead of posting the matter-of-fact note required to inform the public about the court’s decision that Samsung with its tablets did not infringe on Apple patents.

Judge Robin Jacob was “at a loss” seeing a company the magnitude of Apple breach order.

Now, after the court gave Apple 24 hours to remove the notice that felt more like a prank for the U.K. judicial system, the Cupertino-based company has finally taken it down.

We can’t see the new note anywhere on its UK website yet, but it is already in the newspapers. Apple has published it already In today’s morning Guardian. The new statement is rather dry, saying clearly that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, 8.9 and 7.7 did not infringe on Apple patents. It also clarifies that the decision has effect across the European Union. It’s printed in 14pt Arial font, concurring with the court decision.

And this dry technicality is about exactly what the judge had ordered. We are yet to see Apple publish it on its website, but it should soon. And this should finally seal this unnecessary long story. Hopefully.

source: The Next Web

Image courtesy of Tim Acheson

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Apple has lost their legal claim to the iPhone name in Mexico

Apple may have solved their trademark problems in China, but it appears they may have a bigger problem on its hands south of the U.S. border, as a court in Mexico City has denied an injunction that would have allowed Apple to continue to sell under the iPhone brand because it violates the trademarks of iFone, a Mexican telecommunications company. The ruling could have a major impact on Apple’s phone sales in Mexico, as well as affecting the marketing and sales plans of several wireless service providers in the country, some of which were gearing up to offer the iPhone 5 to customers this weekend.

It’s not actually clear what Apple was thinking this time around – the iFone trademark was filed in Mexico in 2003, a full four years before Apple filed to trademark the iPhone. Despite the rather obvious priority issue, Apple decided to sue iFone in 2009 in an attempt to invalidate the company’s name for being too similar to the iPhone. The predictable response was a countersuit by iFone, and the court battles have been swinging in iFone’s favor ever since.

The move could prove costly to Apple in more ways than one. In addition to losing the ability to sell devices under the iPhone trademark in Mexico, iFone is also suing for damages for past infringement, asking for a minimum of 40% of all iPhone sales to date in the Mexican market. While those numbers aren’t nearly as large as they are in the U.S., it still would represent a substantial payment. It's not yet clear whether the embargo on using the iPhone name will go into effect before sales of the iPhone 5 start on Friday, or if this will trigger Apple to loosen the purse strings to negotiate a settlement with iFone, but given the circumstances it would seem that Apple has precious little leverage this time around.

Clearly lawsuits can be a double-edged sword.

source: El Universal via Electronista

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Apple's 'apology' to Samsung leaves U.K. judge "at loss"

Apple might have won some cases against Samsung in the United States, but when it comes to the UK, that is not the case. Apple lost the case as the judge decided that Samsung did not copy the iPad in its tablets, and a couple of weeks ago the company from Cupertino was ordered to put out a notice on its website that would make it clear that Samsung did not copy.

What followed was quite funny for a company the size of Apple. The notice that ended up on the website contained more references to court decisions outside the case. Overall, the message was so diluted it felt like Apple played a joke on the UK judicial system.

Now, the U.K. Court of Appeal in London reacts and it is clearly unhappy with the “untrue” and “incorrect” notice Apple posted.

“I’m at a loss that a company such as Apple would do this,” Judge Robin Jacob said. “That is a plain breach of the order.”
The U.K. Court of Appeal ordered Apple to take down the statement within 24 hours and replace it with a new notice that would take into account the earlier incorrect comments.

Funnily, Apple requested 14 days to make those changes on its own website. That request was rejected. You can check out the original notice Apple posted on its web page below.

source: Bloomberg

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Apple iPad mini torn down: stereo speakers, screen from Samsung

If you wanted to see the Apple iPad mini from the inside you are not alone, and what’s more important - now you can. Device surgeons from iFixit have gotten their hands on the 7.9-inch iPad and are posting the teardown live.

They are almost done, and it seems the iPad mini is not extremely tough to repair. For once the LCD and front glass are separate, so you can replace just one of them. Additionally, somewhat surprisingly Apple has used a Samsung-made LCD. This contradicts rumors about Apple trying to cut its ties with Samsung, but it could also be the case that Samsung is not the only company making screens for the iPad mini.

Good news is - as we’ve recently learned - that the iPad mini features stereo speakers in an improvement over earlier iPads. This is one of the benefits from the smaller Lightning connector, and you thought there weren’t any!

Check it all out at the source below.

source: iFixit

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iPhone sales could reach 200 million over the next year

Despite Apple’s mixed results at the company’s earnings call last week (record profit, yet missed targets), and dramatic shift with its board of directors, the iPhone 5 is forecast to set new sales records for fiscal year 2013 which has just begun.

The iPhone 5 has already had a stellar sales debut, with more than 5 million sold during the first weekend. For what was left of the financial quarter, an additional 27 million iPhones were sold. Michael Walkley, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity, believes that Apple will move 194 million handsets for this fiscal year, achieving quarterly sales goals that will shatter last year’s sales. The holiday quarter of 2011 was Apple’s strongest period, selling 37 million iPhones. For FY2013, sales are expected to reach 48.5 million.

In comparison, Samsung will likely move over 300 million handsets, but take into account that Samsung manufacturers a wide array of products whereas, Apple essentially makes one, plus a lower volume of legacy iPhones. iPad sales will be helped by the new iPad mini, with overall sales possibly topping 100 million units in the coming year.

Between the two giants, they are squaring off in a market by selling multiple-millions of devices each day around the world. That is not too bad for a day’s work.

source: BGR

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Company with one patent to its name sues Apple over FaceTime and more

The problem with business in America these days is that owning a patent is looked at as holding a lottery ticket by many patent trolls firms. Take Intercarrier Communications, out of Texas. With an intellectual property portfolio consisting of one patent for something that they didn't even invent, ICC is taking a number of major corporations to court including Apple. The patent was granted in 2006 for "an inter-carrier messaging service providing phone number only experience," and was assigned to ICC just for the express purpose of filing the law suit against Apple and the other firms.

Speaking of the other firms, the list of defendants includes Apple, Broadsoft, Inerop Technologies, Iris Wireles, Mobiweb and others. The suit was filed in eastern Virginia district court and Judge John A. Gibney will be presiding. As one of the most valuable companies in the world, and with more money in the vault than Scrooge McDuck, Apple is a natural target for patent trolls like ICC. The latter claims that Apple's FaceTime infringes on its '748 patent.

Will Apple pay ICC to go away? Somehow, we doubt it. Paying off ICC would invite every patent troll in the world to line up for a big pay day. For the legally inclined, you can read the lawsuit below.

source: Scribd via electronista

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Android remains the world’s most popular operating system in Q3, iPhone 5 gives it heat in the States

Android has grown its share almost all over the globe and remains the world’s most popular operating system, according to the latest report by UK-based analysts from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

The Kantar report focuses on the state of the mobile market in the United States, the UK and Europe as a whole in the third quarter of 2012.

So what are the numbers? Android leads in the United States, but with less. Its commanding 66.4% share has shrunken down to 57.5%, cannibalized by the growth of the iPhone which now has a 35.7% share. Interestingly, RIM has now become less popular than Windows Phone, but both have a very marginal sub-3% representation in the States.

Jumping outside the States, Android is confidently the market leader growing share. In Great Britain, Android controls 58.2% of the market, followed by the iPhone with 28%.

In Europe, Android jumped to an even more impressive 67.1% while the iPhone is a distant second with 16.5%.

Interestingly, Kantar thinks that for the week or so of availability, the iPhone 5 has swung the stakes in favor of Apple:

“We can see that in markets with a large number of existing Apple customers, sales have already seen a significant boost. We expect this momentum to be fully realized in the next set of results,“ Kantar analyst Dominic Sunnebo said.

source: Kantar

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Need For Speed Most Wanted now available for iPhone and iPad

Right on schedule, Need for Speed Most Wanted has been released for the iPhone and the iPad. The latest installment of the popular franchise follows in the footsteps of previous releases and offers challenging races against police cars, rival AI street racers and real human opponents, resulting in what Electronic Arts calls the "most dangerous Need for Speed yet."
There are over 35 unique cars available in Need for Speed Most Wanted, ranging from the SRT Viper GTS and Porsche 911 Carrera S to the Hummer H1 Alpha and many more. Moreover, full-car damage has been implemented for an extra dose of realism, which is a first as far as mobile racing games are concerned. Features like car upgrades and modifications are also available, as is now tradition with Need For Speed games.

The iOS version of Need for Speed Most Wanted is priced at $9.99, which is quite on the hefty side, but die-hard fans of the series will probably be eager to try it out anyway. As for as the Android version of the game, we are expecting it to land in the Play Store pretty soon.

source: iTunes via 9to5Mac

Need for Speed Most Wanted is out for iOS

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Forstall ousted for refusing to sign Apple Maps apology, Jony Ive takes over all Apple design: what does this mean for Apple?

Apple might just have stolen the spotlight from Google’s humongous Nexus unveiling, and the Windows Phone 8 launch by announcing that... iOS head Scott Forstall is leaving the company.

In a brief press release, Apple said it will shake up its top management hugely. Forstall is down, chief designer Jony Ive goes up. Interestingly, there were no kind words in the press release to bid farewell to the iOS head.

Forstall, the executive responsible for Apple Maps, and iOS development in general, is said to have become one of the most polarizing figures in the company. Once sharing common ideas with ex-Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, and largely seen as Steve’s man, Forstall has now obviously lost that protection. And when Jobs was already not there to keep the character of Apple’s top manager in check, that personality of conflict rather than collaboration seems to have started getting in the way.

The relationship between Forstall and Ive collapsed to a point where the two would not sit in the same meeting room together

The main reason for Forstall’s removal (and it sound much more like a removal, rather than a voluntary quitting) should have been Apple Maps. The application was criticized sharply for lacking in data, features and even accurate representation of key landmarks.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook issued an official excuse, and it all escalated around then when Scott Forstall refused to sign the apology.

Skeuomorphism in Apple apps.

The iOS head also pushed skeuomorphic designs into iOS apps. Basically, this approach of designing apps to look like quaint textures and objects in real life contrasted starkly with the modernistic simplified design ideas of Apple’s chief draftsman Jony Ive.

People in the know say quoted by the NY Times say the relationship between Forstall and Ive collapsed to a point where the two would not sit in the same meeting room together.

Forstall is an Apple veteran, first joining NeXT in the early nineties with roles in developing NeXTStep, Mac OS X, and iOS. He is widely seen to be one of the people that pushed for iOS to become more than just a souped up feature phone platform in the iPhone and opted for a close similarity with Apple’s desktop OS X. And there is no denying that the iOS platform has been hugely successful under him so far.

The tradeoff is clear: Forstall loses his positions, while Jony Ive takes over all product design questions, hardware to software. This is huge news as no one at Apple had ever assumed such responsibilities except for Steve Jobs. And that’s telling.

source: NY Times, John Gruber

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HTC 8X beats the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S III in SunSpider browser test

Microsoft said it has put a lot of effort optimizing the browser section of Windows Phone 8, and it has seemingly paid off.

A SunSpider test, where lower score is the better one, measured the JavaScript performance on three high-end phones - the HTC 8X, iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S III - and the results are nothing short of astonishing for the Internet Explorer browser.

Well, the HTC 8X came out on top, beating the famed A6 processor rendering of the iPhone 5 by a whiff, and staying ahead of the Galaxy S III by a huge margin.

This goes to show that with the IE optimizations in Windows Phone 8, and the dual-core Snapdragon S4 processors, the WP8 flagships are up with the best for browsing - if you don't come across an Adobe Flash-laden site you need to check out, of course, but this holds true for iOS, too, and for the latest iterations of Android as well.

via WMPU

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Apple shakes up board, removes Scott Forstall and John Broweet

In a day full of news from Google and Microsoft, Apple might have crashed the headlines with the biggest news of all. Longtime software head Scott Forstall and head of retail John Broweet have both been removed from the company's board of directors and each will leave Apple. Jony Ive, head of industrial design has been given the top spot of a new department called Human Interface while Eddy Cue gets to be in charge of Siri and Apple Maps. The rest of Forstall's former responsibilities, iOS and OS X, will be turned over to Craig Federighi.

All of Apple's wireless teams will be under the new Technologies group which will be under the control of Bob Mansfield, who had left Apple earlier in 2012 and has now returned. This group will also include the semiconductor teams.

In happier times,  Scott Forstall

The talk around the water cooler is that Forstall is being punished for the debacle that is Apple Maps. Apple's mapping application launched with the release of iOS 6 and had a number of serious problems that are still being worked out. It had to be seriously embarrassing to Apple CEO Tim Cook to have to recommend that iOS 6 users try non-Apple mapping apps until the problems with Apple Maps are corrected. Additionally, Forstall took no part in the recent introduction of the Apple iPad mini while those at the event characterized him as looking lost, doing nothing but offering support. Until he leaves the company next year, Forstall will serve as an advisor to Cook.

Meanwhile, Apple has previously said that it was looking for a new head of retail, somewhat surprising since Broweet joined the Cupertino based firm only 10 months ago, coming over from U.K. retailer Dixons, At this time, it is unclear how being sacked will affect Broweet's huge stock award consisting of 100,000 restricted stock units. The award, valued at over $60 million, won't fully vest if the executive leaves soon. The first 5,000 shares vested on October 20th with another 15,000 scheduled to vest on April 20th, the one year anniversary of the start of his short-lived employment at Apple.

source: PocketLint

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Pre-paid Apple iPhone 5 hard to keep in stock says Leap Executive

It is one thing to be a Tier 1 carrier like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint and be first in line to receive the latest shipment of the Apple iPhone 5, receiving a large number of handsets to fulfill demand. It is another thing entirely when you're a pre-paid carrier like Leap Wireless. Leap CEO Doug Hutcheson says that his firm is on allocation and never knows just how many units of the Apple iPhone 5 it will receive at any given time. The units they have received have been selling "very well," he notes.

The Apple iPhone 5

The carrier started receiving the Apple iPhone 5 on September 28th, a week after they had already gone on sale at the major U.S. wireless operators. Besides Leap, C Spire Wireless, Cellcom, Appalachian Wireless, Alaska Communications and GCI of Alaska and nTelos Wireless all started offering the latest version of Apple's iconic smartphone on September 28th. Unfortunately for Leap customers, the current CDMA version of the Apple iPhone 5 doesn't support the carrier's LTE pipeline and while Qualcomm does plan on supporting it in future versions of its chips, Leap doesn't know what Apple's plans entail.

Because Leap doesn't tie up its customers with two-year contracts, it doesn't subsidize the price of the Apple iPhone which means the device costs $300 more at Leap than the $199.99 price that customers of  the major U.S. carriers pay for it. On the other hand, at $55, Leap's pre-paid monthly service plan is cheaper than those offered by the post-paid operators.

Last June, when Leap announced a three-year $900 million deal with Apple for the iPhone, the carrier said the model would account for less than 10% of its handset sales. The Apple iPhone name might not be as magical with pre-paid customers as it is with customers willing to be tied up with a contract. Still, pre-paid customers seem more willing to open up their wallets to buy a top-line model than they were just a few years ago when the pre-paid operators offered featurephones or low-end smartphones to its customers. Ironically, it was the sale of higher-priced Android models to pre-paid users that showed these carriers and Apple itself that there was demand for the Apple iPhone from carriers like Leap.

"We are on allocation on that. So we don't really know where the volume on the [iPhone] 5 is going to go for us. So the units that we get seem to move very well."-Doug Hutcheson, CEO, Leap Wireless

source: FierceWireless

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Nokia Lumia 920 low light shots vs iPhone 5 vs Galaxy S III vs HTC One X vs 808 PureView

We've seen one comprehensive prototype Nokia Lumia 920 camera comparison with the main competitors, and a few sporadic ones, but now we have one of what is probably much closer to a production version, and the low-light results are indeed something.

The Nokia Lumia 920 was pitted against the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S III, HTC One X, and the 41 MP Nokia PureView 808 photographic juggernaut. The improvised testing was done on the streets of Helsinki, and the authors used every trick the phones had, shooting in normal, HDR and low light modes, if the phones had them, then posting the best result for comparison.

Thus the Lumia 920 is with its low light mode turned on, which lets much more luminance in, and when you couple that with the optical image stabilization system inside, its photos look much brighter than the rest of the gang, almost unnaturally so, thus if you want more night-ish photos from the Lumia 920, you'd apparently be better off shooting in the normal regime.

Have a look at the comparison shots in the slideshow below, and be patient while the full sizes load, there are also three bonus pictures from the Lumia 920 at the end on the streets of Helsinki.

source: Test-Mobile.fr via WPCentral

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Stories you shouldn't have missed this week

Can you guess which was the week's highlight event? The unveiling ot the latest gadgets from Apple, of course, most notably the fourth-generation iPad and its little brother, the iPad mini. In case you missed the news about the two tablets' arrival, read all about it below!

Another tablet that made quite a few headlines over the past few days was the Microsoft Surface, and some have already had the chance to check it out in detail. The Windows RT variant can already be purchased for a starting price of $499, yet there are a few things you should know about the apps that it runs. More info below!

And if that isn't enough tablet news for you, more details about the yet-unannounced Google Nexus 10 tablet have been reavealed. The device was supposed to be unveiled officially on Monday, October 29, but because of hurricane Sandy approaching, the announcement wil be made at a later date.

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