AppleCare + customers were the only customers who had their screens replaced by Apple. All other screens are fixed by a third party. There has been no official announcement from Apple but rumours appear to very strong.

One thing for U.K customers is that this doesn’t appear to be rolling here any time soon. The Apple screen though has been proven to be sturdy than its rival Samsung Galaxy S3. Tests where both phones were dropped from a certain height showed that the Samsung phone screen smashed while the iphone had just scratches.

It also can play music for 56 hours ‘The new Nokia Asha 501 raises the bar for what is possible in affordable smartphone design and optimisation,’ said Timo Toikkanen, executive vice president, Mobile Phones, Nokia.

‘The synergy between the physical design and the engine that is the new Asha platform has created a smartphone with both style and substance at a great price.’ 

With Apple sure to be releasing a budgets version of iPhone later this year, Nokia has stole a march on the rivals. The phone will have a 3 inch multi touch screen , a 3.3 Mega Pixel camera, MicroSD memory option.

The downside to the phone is that it will not be 3G or 4G. However the new Xpress browser by Nokia will be available on the phone. The browser condenses data by up to 90& hence making it compatible with the phone.

The apps available include  Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, CNN, ESPN, The Weather Channel and Twitter.  ‘The collaboration with Nokia is in line with our strategy of enabling people to access data in Africa as we seek to bridge the digital divide across the continent,’ Andre Beyers, Airtel Africa’s chief marketing officer, said in statement about the partnership.

‘The provision of free Facebook access is an excellent proposition to the millions of Airtel consumers.’

The Asha 501 will be available in Asia Pacific, India, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe starting June 2013 for an unsubsidized cost of £65  ($99), a Nokia spokesperson told ABC News.

This paper thin mobile is not just amazing because if its weight and shape but also for something else. The phone shift shape when it is called or text. The phone curls up to let the owner know that they have been contacted. The handset has been dubbed the morephone and was made by a team in Canada.

‘This is another step in the direction of radically new interaction techniques afforded by smartphones based on thin film, flexible display technologies’ says Roel Vertegaal, director of the human media lab at Queen’s University, who developed the system. ‘Users are familiar with hearing their phone ring or feeling it vibrate in silent mode. One of the problems with current silent forms of notification is that users often miss notifications when not holding their phone.’

Dr. Vertegaal believe that this is the future and these types of handsets will be available to consumers within the next 5-10 years.  ‘With morephone, they can leave their smartphone on the table and observe visual shape changes when someone is trying to contact them.’

The morephone can also be bespoked, meaning it can be curled up at corner points. So if you receive a text the bottom left can curl up and for a call the top right.  The morephone is made of a thin, flexible electrophoretic display manufactured by Plastic Logic – a British company and a world leader in plastic electronics.

The phone is called Q10 and will be on sale for £579 next week but don’t expect to pay that cost once the main retailers start to subsidise the cost of it. This is seen as the last change for Blackberry to move into the touchscreen market after its new Z10 phone failed to make the impact it had wanted.

Reviews of the handset are not great. ‘Anyone who doesn’t need a physical keyboard should skip it,’ said Cnet, while Ars Technica said ‘ For most buyers, though, it’s going to feel like a throwback, and we don’t mean that in a good way.’ The launch of the phone will be exclusive to Selfridge stores tomorrow and it will be the only place to purchase the phone in Europe online and in stores until 29th May.

Julian Slim, Head of Home and Lifestyle at Selfridges said: ‘Following the very successful Z10 launch we are thrilled to be hosting the European Exclusive of the highly anticipated BlackBerry Q10. This is the product all core BlackBerry users have been waiting for. We pride ourselves in being the destination for all the latest gadgets and technology and BlackBerry is no exception’.

Blackberry had this to say about its latest phone: ‘Built with precision and offering premium performance in a timeless design, the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone combines BlackBerry’s best physical keyboard and a touch screen with the power of the BlackBerry 10 platform,’ it says.

Tech giant Samsung is exploring ways to control a tablet by using your brain. The idea is to help people with mobility impairments to speak and function with society. Samsung want to ensure they look at all ways in which interaction with technology can be changed and enhanced.

There are currently tests being conducted by Samsung in which people are using their thoughts to open applications, send messages and even just select songs etc. Assistant professor Roozeh Jafari of the electrical engineering dept. at University of Texas is also helping with the project. As you can see from the picture users will be required to wear a plastic but this is the infancy stages and may change.

Insoo Kin is Samsung’s lead researcher and he said ‘Several years ago, a small keypad was the only input modality to control the phone, but nowadays the user can use voice, touch, gesture, and eye movement to control and interact with mobile devices.  Adding more input modalities will provide us with more convenient and richer ways of interacting with mobile devices.’

Tests carried out so far show that a person has been able to make an accurate selection 80-95% of the time and it takes them an average of 5 seconds to do this. So watch this space as to what might be hitting your homes soon!

Scientists at the University of Illinois have developed a battery that is 1000 times stronger than batteries that are normally in smart phones. This could mean that your phone could be charged in literally 1 second. ‘This is a whole new way to think about batteries,’ said lead researcher William King.

‘A battery can deliver far more power than anybody ever thought’, he said. ‘In recent decades, electronics have gotten small. The thinking parts of computers have gotten small and the battery has lagged far behind. This is a micro technology that could change all of that. Now the power source is as high-performance as the rest of it.’

The batteries are also rechargeable, ‘Any kind of electronic device is limited by the size of the battery – until now,’ King said. Consider personal medical devices and implants, where the battery is an enormous brick, and it’s connected to itty-bitty electronics and tiny wires. Now the battery is also tiny.’

Rumours have surfaced on Twitter and spread like wildfire, stating that the iPhone 5 will cost $800. The upcoming mobile device from Apple had the two highest trending topics on the social media platform with “#800dollarsforaniPhone” and “iPhone 5 $800″. Apple has yet to officially confirm pricing details on the mobile gadget. Below are some tweets from users:

iPhone 5 $800? It better be bulletproof, waterproof, damage proof, dirt proof and also fireproof. Siri better twerk on demand too.

02/08/2012 11:08 via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@JAMESSEEKINGS_

JAMES SEEKINGS ✞

iPhone 5 $800? Siri better turn into a jet pack when I put it on Airplane Mode.

02/08/2012 09:52 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@TheDanielSean

DΛNIEL

#800DollarsForAniPhone It better turn into a Jet when I put it in "Airplane Mode" !

02/08/2012 09:18 via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@TrueLunar

Oliver North

#800DollarsForAnIphone that bit better give me 800 ways to get my 800$ bck

02/08/2012 09:38 via Plume for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@mynmeholdweight

JohnJohn

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Oscar-winning film director Martin Scorsese stars in the latest iPhone advert showing off Siri. He is seen in the back of a cab in Manhattan, New York using the propular app following on from previous efforts in the campaign by Samuel L. Jackson and Zooey Deschanel.

It happened yesterday afternoon when thousands of O2 customers experienced problems with their network. Users of the mobile network were unable to receive calls or send texts and the most shocking part was that it said it did not know when the problem would be fixed. This coming from the second largest mobile phone provider in the U.K

O2 said; ‘The problem is an issue within part of our core network that is preventing some mobile phones from successfully connecting. The problem is not location-specific. All possible resources across our and our suppliers engineering teams are being deployed to restore service as soon as possible.’

A spokeswoman said: ‘We are currently seeing a problem on our network affecting some of our customers, who will have difficulty making or receiving calls, sending texts or using data. We apologise to those customers who are inconvenienced by this. Our engineers are dealing with the problem as a priority and we hope to restore full service as soon as possible.’

This is not the first time that an incident with mobile phone outage has occurred. Blackberry also had an outage that last for 3 days and quickly spread globally in a fiasco that ruined its reputation. O2 will be hoping they can fix this problem as soon as possible to stop any brand damage.

Kodak was the big casualty in the digital camera war. They failed to change their direction away from film to digital. Kodak have even announced that their Kodak Gallery site is about to be closed meaning many families will lose al their picutres. It seems now though a change could be about to happen again with digital camera sales falling by nearly 30% in the past 5 years.

The simple reason for this happening is that smartphones now have cameras that are so advanced it makes most digital cameras not worth purchasing.. Apple’s iPhone and more recently the Samsung Galaxy series have cameras that are just as good as certain digital ones.

Retail analysts Mintel said that the digital camera market was worth £843 million 5 years ago but last year it had fallen quite dramatically to just £598 million. Sales of camcorders have also not escaped the downturn with a 21% fall in the last 5 years. The figures also showed that a huge 45% of people rely on their smart phone to take pics where as 40% use a digicam.

Samuel Gee, Mintel’s technology analyst, said: ‘Camera manufacturers must choose to either invest in a web service that complements captured photos or video, or to focus on including new, innovative hardware capabilities and modifications, to retain consumer interest.’

‘Although smartphone cameras do not typically match the quality of output of dedicated devices, the technology is consistently improving, as the quality of camera image output becomes too high for consumers to reliably distinguish between competitors.  As newer technology continues to improve the specifications of top-end equipment, measurements like megapixel density or the top level of optical zoom possible will become meaningless to consumers best served by less expensive, middle-of-the-field devices.’

We think manufacturer need to change with the times and offer more functionality and make them more appealing to make consumer want to go out and purchase one. Some example would be devices capable of taking 3-D still and videos.