Verizon DROID RAZR HD to feature an 8 MP camera

               

Despite earlier reports, the upcoming DROID RAZR HD will not feature the extended battery capacity of its RAZR MAXX counterpart. This is disappointing, as there was talk that the undisputed king of our battery life test may finally have met its match. The camera will also be of the 8MP variety – down from the 13MP mentioned earlier.

Either way, the RAZR HD is quite the looker, with a full Kevlar back panel and 4.6" HD display. Inside, you'll find a Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 chipset, sporting a dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait processor and while we don't know how much internal storage the RAZR HD will have, it is set to feature a microSD card slot.

The RAZR HD will come running ICS out of box, with a Jelly Bean update rumored to come sometime in 2013.

The battery included will have a respectable 2530 mAh capacity, although that's a far cry from the 3300 mAh behemoth found in the RAZR MAXX.

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HTC, Samsung and Sony smartphones grab EISA awards

HTC, Samsung and Sony have a reason to celebrate today - their smartphones picked several EISA (European Imaging and Sound Association) awards in different categories.

And if you're wondering what EISA is, it's an industry body representing 50 tech-focused magazines from 19 European countries and it gathers every year to award the best devices in different categories.

Samsung scooped four awards, one of which was for its Android flagship, the Galaxy S III. The Samsung I9300 landed the EISA award for best European mobile phone. Sony got the Green Award for the second time in a row. In 2011, the Xperia mini and Xperia arc received the Green Award, and this year it's the Xperia P.

HTC didn't leave empty-handed either. The One S got the Social Award for its best-in-class social features in the Sense 4.0.

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This might be the screen glass of an upcoming Nokia WP8 phone

As Nokia is gearing up for the upcoming launch of its new Windows Phone 8 handsets (which should happen at Nokia World in September), it's practically inevitable that a part or two - and hopefully even a whole phone - would leak.

Today's item was originally posted on CNBeta but the page has since been taken down. It is supposedly the display glass of a Nokia WP8 phone. It's big enough to fit a 4.3" screen and it's curvier than current Lumia designs. The aspect ratio corresponds to 480 x 800 - the lowest of the three resolutions that the new OS supports.

Update: actually, it looks like 768 x 1280 (the highest) fits pretty well too. In the first case, the pixel density will be 217ppi and 347ppi in the second.

Note the new Windows logo and the positioning of the Nokia logo - they are different than the previous leak that claimed to show a whole Windows Phone 8 (or 7.8) device. So, they aren't showing one and the same device. It's entirely possible that one or both of them are fake too, or at least showing something different from what the rumors claim it to be.

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Black Galaxy S III spotted on T-Mobile's website

The mythical black Galaxy S III has been spotted couple of times in the past, the first time in Samsung's own Facebook pictures and the second time on a UK retailer's website.

Now the phone has been discovered spinning on T-Mobile's website among other phones that the carrier has to offer in the same shade of black. This one looks a bit different and has a finish akin to the white Galaxy S III instead of the fake brushed metal finish of the blue version. Then again, this is a render and shouldn't be representative of the final product.

You will find the phone in the link below. Just skip the intro video that appears in the beginning.

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Apple Removed YouTube player app in iOS 6 Beta

Those who downloaded the latest iOS 6 beta 4 yesterday were in for a bit of a surprise when they found out the YouTube app was no longer part of the OS.

Turns out, Apple will no longer be including the YouTube player app in iOS 6 because their license has expired. However, those using iOS 5 and older versions can continue to use this application as long as they don't upgrade to iOS 6.

Apple has also revealed that Google is working on its own separate YouTube app for iOS, which will be released on the App Store some time in future, hopefully by the time iOS 6 is released to the public.

In case you are wondering how you will watch YouTube videos without the player, there is no need to worry as the videos can easily be played within Safari. You can also access your subscriptions and favorites by logging into the YouTube mobile website from your iOS device, which works similarly to the iOS app.

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Adobe Flash Player to drop out of the Google Play Store today

Adobe announced last year in November that it is going to stop developing the mobile version of the Flash Player for Android but the app will continue to be provided through the (then) Android Market.

A couple of months ago, Adobe saw the pointlessness of having the Flash Player at all on the Play Store and said that it will be removed from the store on August 15.

Well, the day has arrived and a few hours from now the Flash Player will finally be removed completely from the Play Store. Only those who have it installed will be able to use and see it on the store but no new updates will be provided.

The decline of the Flash Player can be traced back to the launch of the first iPhone, where Apple famously decided to forgo having the ability to play a vast majority of multimedia and interactive content on their device in favor of stability, user experience and battery life. It was considered a major drawback back then but that did not stop people from buying the phone.

Eventually, the iPhone grew more and more popular and Apple also released another device without Flash support - the iPad - which also went on to become a hit. Apple went as far as to remove Flash Player from their Macs, which used to come pre-installed.

Being locked out of one of the world's most popular platform, Adobe had no choice but to turn to Android. For a while, the Flash support was touted as one of the selling point for Android devices, especially the tablets. But that did not help Adobe, as very few Android devices were actually capable of running Flash properly. Not to mention that most of the content on the Web is not optimized for a touchscreen at all, thus providing a poor user experience. Then there was also the higher power consumption. Basically, all the reasons Apple gave for not including Flash support on iOS.

Eventually, Adobe chose to stop developing Flash Player for Android completely, instead concentrating its efforts into developing new and better technologies such as HTML5. Google, sensing this change, chose not to include support for Flash Player at all in their Chrome for Android, which was perhaps the final nail in the coffin.

After that, Adobe announced it will be removing the Flash Player from the Play Store on August 15 and here we are today.

As we said before, this is a good thing for the web as a whole. We will be moving from a third-party, proprietary plugin for enabling multimedia content on our browsers to something that is built-in and freely available to all. Yes, we are talking HTML5 here. Sure, it's still in its infancy right now but as long as Flash on the web exists, HTML5 cannot develop. It will take a while but things can only get better from here.

Alleged Samsung N7100 Galaxy Note II official photo surfaces

The official announcement of the Samsung N7100 Galaxy Note II is just a couple of weeks away now, but only now we see what the new phoneblet might actually look like. We just got an alleged photo of the upcoming device, which reveals its front panel.

Now we wouldn't bet the house on this turning out to be an official image as even our tipster wasn't able to confirm its origin. Still, the image aligns nicely with previous rumors that suggested that the Samsung N7100 Galaxy Note II will have a Galaxy S III-inspired design, so even if the image is fan-made, it shouldn't be too far from the truth.

Along with the link to the alleged Samsung Galaxy Note II photo, our tipster also sent us some of the specs of the phoneblet. As expected, the 1280 x 800 pixel Super AMOLED screen will measure 5.5" and will utilize a regular RGB matrix. As for those FullHD screen rumors - according to the tip, it did indeed undergo testing, but it was found to be putting too much strain on the battery to make it to the final device.

The chipset inside was once again tipped to be Exynos 4 Quad, with quad-core CPU clocked at 1.5GHz. while the camera will use the same 8MP sensor as the Galaxy S III.

The Jelly Bean update for the Galaxy Note II is still being developed, so it's likely that the hybrid droid will launch with Android 4.0 ICS. There is an outside chance that Jelly Bean will be ready in time for the announcement, but it's more likely to come out later on.

Finally, some good news for the Galaxy S III users out there. The Jelly Bean update for the flagship smartphone is almost ready and will be released alongside the Galaxy Note II at the Samsung press conference on August 29.

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