Sony Xperia S hits UK, carrier Three is the first to get it

The Sony Xperia S finally completed its journey to the UK and is now available for purchase. The first smartphone to ship with the Sony branding, rather than Sony Ericsson, is already offered by Three both on a contract and on a pay-as-you-go basis.

You can have the Sony Xperia S for free if you are willing to sign a contract on The One Plan worth £30/month or £36/month. That would give you all-you-can-eat data, 2,000 minutes and 5,000 texts and, of course, the chance to own the latest and greatest in the Xperia world.

Alternatively, the Sony Xperia S can be had with a pre-paid card, but you’ll need to pay £369.99 upfront. You’d need to spend £15 or £25 extra for either an All in One 15 or All in One 30 package, but you won’t have to commit to Three long term.

Sadly, the Sony Xperia S is still unavailable at the Three UK online store, so you’ll have to visit one of their brick and mortar stores if you want to get it, or just wait for a few days until it comes up.

The other major UK carriers are all expected to start offering the Sony Xperia S in the following weeks, but we are yet to learn more about the specific conditions each of them is going to be offering.

Source | Via

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HTC One S and One X displays detailed

One of the best bits about the HTC newly unveiled smartphone lineup that we saw at the MWC is undoubtedly the screens of the One S and the One X. The displays of both new flagship droids of the Taiwanese company represent a major step forward, compared to their predecessors and we imagine you are as curious as we are to learn more about the underlying technology.

Fortunately, the guys from BestBoyZ managed to get their hands on the two and put them under a microscope to examine what was going on beneath the surface. There were a couple of interesting findings to be noted.

HTC One X SLCD2 matrix (left) vs LG Optimus 4X HD AH-IPS matrix (right)

It turns out the HTC One X HD SLCD2 uses virtually identical matrix to the one found on the LG Optimus 4X HD. That’s the same AH-IPS screen we loved so much on the LG Optimus LTE and it’s hardly a surprise it led to some great results on the One X. The curious omission of the IPS technology from the One X official specs sheet was explained with trademark reasons.

As for the HTC One S – we got confirmation that its qHD Super AMOLED uses a PenTile RGBG matrix, instead of a conventional RGB matrix. This will probably lead to the familiar dottiness in some images, but it seems HTC has designed its interface cleverly enough to make that less apparent.

HTC One S PenTile matrix

We spent quite some time with the One S at the MWC in Barcelona and we weren’t bothered by the missing sub-pixels at all. Here’s hoping this won’t change when we get the smartphone for a full review.

Source

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Nokia 808 PureView wins Best New Device at MWC

The winner for one last category of the Global Mobile Awards – the Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet at Mobile World Congress 2012 award – was left to be announced and looking at the photo of smiling Nokia execs makes it easy to guess which device took that award home.

The Nokia 808 PureView, which arguably caused the biggest splash with its 41MP camera sensor, was voted worthy of the award by a panel of journalists and analysts attending the show.

Here’s what Jo Harlow, Executive Vice President of smart devices at Nokia, had to say about the award:

It’s a fantastic award because it signifies that consumer experience counts. It’s about tech, but it’s about how tech is used to make a consumer have a fantastic experience. The imaging is fantastic; the audio is fantastic; the navigation technology is fantastic.

These are first signals that we are executing against our strategy. That we’re back. That we’re bringing great products to our consumers – and that this is just the beginning. There’s lot more to come.

We have a lot of work ahead of us. We’re still a challenger, and we are going to operate as we have done in this last year to deliver these great results.

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LG Optimus 3D 2 photo surfaces, some specs in tow

The LG Optimus 3D was the star on the LG booth on last year’s MWC and it appears its successor will be the key announcement this year. We just got the first photo of the LG Optimus 3D 2 and it’s even garnished with some specs.

The LG Optimus 3D 2 will, reportedly, be using a higher resolution IPS screen than its predecessor. Given that this will be the company’s next flagship, we are almost certain that it will feature the HD AH-IPS display we know from the LG Optimus LTE.

The Optimus 3D 2 is also said to be considerably slimmer than its predecessor at 9.8mm and at least 20 g lighter. Given that its chubby body was one of the main issues with the original Optimus 3D, this can only be good news for the LG Optimus 3D 2.

The MWC kicks off in exactly two weeks, so we should soon find out if those rumors are true soon enough.

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