HTC is holding its pre-MWC event tomorrow at 8PM in Barcelona, but that doesn't mean the leaks have any intention of stopping in the meantime. After we caught a glimpse on the HTC One S smartphone (4.3” AMOLED display, dual-core chipset, 8MP camera), it now looks to be the turn of the One X.

   
HTC One X

The One X should have 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. There's no microSD slot available, but HTC will try and make up for that by providing 25GB of Dropbox online storage for two years for free.

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Hello from Barcelona! We’re already in position in the capital of Catalonia and we are eagerly expecting for the MWC to kick off. The main event officially starts on Monday, but Huawei, Sony and HTC will have their press conferences tomorrow evening.

   
Taking a walk around Barcelona ahead of the MWC

This year we got plenty of announcements in advance with Samsung and LG both revealing their lineups for the event the previous two weeks. Still, tomorrow is quite a big day – Huawei looks to build on the success it had at CES with an even more successful MWC, while HTC will try to get back to the profitable ways by releasing the most powerful phone they have ever produced. Sony showed that it still has it with the Xperia S and they will certainly want to keep the fans happy by announcing even more impressive smartphones here.

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Nokia to unveil cheaper Windows Phones at MWC

We all know that Nokia is the king of entry level devices, and it seems they're keen on retaining that title as their upcoming press conference at MWC will supposedly reveal several new midrange WP-powered devices, alongside the new Lumia 610 and the worldwide version of the Lumia 900.

This also comes alongside news that Nokia has become the largest Windows Phone manufacturer, beating out HTC. This is truly an impressive achievement, considering Nokia has only been selling Windows Phone since the start of Q4 2011.

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Samsung shows quad-core Exynos chipset

Samsung officially showed off a new Exynos chipset with four Cortex-A9 cores and a new GPU at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference. The new chip boasts both performance and battery improvements.

It's built using a 32nm process rather than the 45nm process used for current Exynos chipsets. Each CPU core can be switched off and even half of the 1MB L2 cache can be disabled to preserve power.

According to Samsung, this results in 26% performance boost compared to their current Exynos chipsets. Energy saving for CPU-bound tasks goes up to 45%, while rendering 3D takes up to 48% less energy.

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Nokia Carla smartphones to ship in Q3, updates coming in Q4

More details on the upcoming Nokia Carla release came in. The platform previously known as Symbian will get its next update in Q3 of this year, when the first smartphones running Nokia Carla will hit the shelves.

According to the latest rumors, second-gen Belle smartphone, including Nokia 603, 700 and 701 will start shipping with the new version of their OS first. Later on, the rest of the Belle-running smartphones in the Nokia portfolio will get Carla as an update. Scheduled for Q4, the update should cover N8,C7,E7,X7,E6,C6-01.

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Panasonic uncovers Eluga specs, live hands-on photos pop up

As promised yesterday, Panasonic unveiled the specifications of their Android smartphone dubbed the Eluga, expected to debut on the European market this March.

The poorly named Eluga is powered by a dual-core 1GHz TI OMAP 4430 processor and 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory, which we have come to expect from high-end droids these days. At the front we find a 4.3-inch OLED display with qHD 960 x 540 pixels resolution.

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Huawei MediaPad review: On the rise

Introduction

Huawei have been flexing their mobile manufacturing muscle lately and one of their latest creations, the 7" MediaPad Android tablet, is getting its high-res screen and aluminum unibody ready to take on the big boys.

  
Huawei MediaPad official pictures

The Huawei MediaPad skimps on almost no ingredient in a bid to challenge the best 7" tablets out there. Sure, it would have been great to have Android ICS out of the box, but the screen has WXGA resolution and 216ppi pixel density - almost as high as the 10.1" Asus Transformer Prime TF700T and its 224ppi 1920x1200 screen.

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LG Optimus 3D Max is official, gives you more 3D enhancements

LG just unveiled the glasses-free 3D smartphone Optimus 3D Max. The announcements comes hot on the heels of the Optimus 3D Cube and the two smartphones are almost identical in terms of specs.

Differences come from the 3D Max's screen, which is a conventional WVGA 4.3 LCD, rather than Cube's 4.3-inch NOVA display and the internal memory, which is only 8GB for the Max.

   

LG Optimus 3D Max

The LG Optimus 3D Max sports the same 1.2GHz dual-core processor, dual 5MP camera, NFC capabilities and even Android 2.3 Gingerbread out of the box. ICS updates for both should come right after they launch.

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Future iOS versions to ask users before uploading contact data

Recently, social networking application Path came under fire for anonymously uploading contact data to its servers without the user's permission. This is a common practice among a lot of popular apps such as Instagram, Facebook, Foursquare, etc., which use this data to find other people you know who may also be using that service.

But even though Path later apologized and deleted the data from their servers, and also issued an update that explicitly asks for your permission before uploading your contacts, the issue continued to escalate, until it eventually reached Apple.

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Android 5.0 Jelly Bean to arrive in Q2 with Chrome OS dual-boot

Ice Cream Sandwich only has a single percent of market share, but Google seems to be on the verge of releasing its successor. Latest rumors have it that Android's next release - 5.0 Jelly Bean - will be unveiled in the second quarter of this year.

According to the often reliable DigiTimes, who quote Taiwan-based supply chain makers, Android 5.0 Jelly Bean will bring further optimizations for larger screen devices - tablets and netbook computers.

One of the key features of the upcoming Android release will be its ability to dual-boot Chrome OS. The cloud-based platform still struggles to make an impact and Google is obviously planning on using the wildly popular Android to change that.

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Panasonic officially announces the Eluga for the European market

Panasonic has officially lifted the curtains off the Eluga - an Android smartphone bound to launch in Europe. The Eluga isn't particularly breaking news, as it was unveiled in December last year as a prototype.

The company hasn't unveiled much more new information about the Eluga since the last time we heard about it. At the front it features a 4.3-inch OLED display, pumping out 960x540 pixels of resolution. On top of that, the Eluga will also be dust- and water-proof. Judging from the renders above, this won't come at the price of thickness.

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LG teases with the letter L, will give us the answer tomorrow

LG Mobile has suddenly become very obsessed with the letter L - it's all over their Facebook page. What's all this about? LG is clearly about to announce some sort of a mobile device, but beyond that we don't know anything else.

The first clue came about five days ago - it's a nature scene from the Academy Award-wining movie A River Runs Through It, which won one for Best Cinematography. So, is it a phone with a high-end camera? All LG's post says is that they'll "show you what brings 'timeLess fulfillment' to Life." (note the capitalized L's).

The next clue is a clip from a UNESCO documentary on Chinese architecture with a note "you'LL see how attention to detaiL makes aLL the difference". After that comes a trailer for the Bicentennial Man, because "future wiLL combine extraordinary technoLogy with a "genuineLy compassionate" heart".

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LG Optimus LTE Tag announced, comes with NFC tags

We're a week away from the MWC but the announcements of new phones keep flooding in - the latest is the LG Optimus LTE Tag, an LTE-enabled droid. Its other highlight is the NFC technology and accompanying tags.

LG calls them Tag Plus and several will be available with the Optimus LTE Tag. The phone will detect these NFC tags and perform some customizable action - e.g. launch the SatNav app when it sees the car tag, turn on the Wi-Fi in your office, set up tomorrow's alarm when you put it on the nightstand and so on.

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Nokia Lumia 610 and Asha 305 get Indonesian certification

Indonesia's FCC counterpart, Postel, is proving to be an interesting source of info on new phones. Their database contains two Nokias that aren’t official yet - the rumored Nokia Lumia 610 and a Nokia 305, which was unheard of until now.

Now, the database lists only the most basic info on the phone (if even that) but with rumors floating around that Nokia will announce three smartphones and three feature phones at the MWC, these numbers give us a glimpse of what will be announced.

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Updating the smartphone software for Android phones

How can I update my smartphone software to the latest version?

The software of the smartphone can be updated to fix specific issues, update applications or to update the used version of Android. Running the latest software will allow you to get the best from your smartphone.

PRECAUTION

During the update process, all data stored on your smartphone will be overwritten. This means all information, such as contacts, email and appointments, as well as software you installed yourself will be erased.

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