One S – Middle Child in ONE Family

The HTC One S (codenamed Ville) is a smartphone designed and manufactured by HTC as part of the HTC One series which runs the Android mobile operating system with HTC Sense. It was Officially announced by HTC on 26 February 2012.

The One S is HTC’s thinnest phone to date, at 0.31 inches (7.87 mm) at its thinnest point. The phone uses an aluminum unibody shell, with two finishes available – a black micro arc oxidized finish, and a light-blue to dark-blue gradient anodized finish (currently the only finish available through T-Mobile USA). HTC states that the micro arc oxidized finish makes the body five times stronger than the bare aluminum, although some users claim that the finish chips easily.The phone has a power/lock button and a 3.5 mm headphone jack at the top, a volume rocker on the upper right side, and a MHL/Micro USB port on the upper left. Three capacitive buttons (back, home, and task switcher) are located on the front of the phone, below the display. There are two speakers, one on the front (serving as the earpiece) and one on the back. A two-color (amber and green) notification LED sits under the earpiece grille.

Key features

• Stunningly thin at 7.8mm, ceramic or anodized aluminum finish
• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 4.3″ 16M-color capacitive Super AMOLED touchscreen of qHD resolution (540 x 960 pixels); Gorilla glass
• Android OS v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC Sense 4.0
• 1.5 GHz dual core Krait CPU, Adreno 225 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260A chipset
• 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage
• Beats audio enhancement
• 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash; face detection, geotagging and continuous shooting
• 1080p video recording @ 30fps; Snapping photos while recording video
• Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity and ambient light sensors
• Front facing camera with video calls
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v4.0
• MHL TV-out (requires a MHL-to-HDMI adapter)
• Smart dialing, voice dialing
• DivX/XviD video support
• HTC Locations app
• HTCSense.com integration
• HTC Portable Hotspot
• Splendid audio quality
• Office document editor
• 1650mAh battery
• 25GB of free Dropbox storage for the first two years

For now unfortunately, HTC is shipping the Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 Scorpion-equipped HTC One S to India, with a less power-efficient 1.7GHz dual-core processor, instead of the current-gen dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Krait processor. This is due to the shortage of Snapdragon S4 Krait processors, for which Qualcomm is facing high demand. The situation will reportedly resolve itself soon however.

Source : GSMArena, Thinkdigit.

HTC Edge: First Quad-Core Phone Revealed

Meet the HTC Edge: reportedly the company’s first — and probably one of the world’s first — cellphone powered by a quad-core processor. Information from a reliable source paints Edge as a premium handset incorporating the latest mobile technologies — for the most part.

The 4.7-inch Edge will allegedly be slightly over ten millimeters thick, and appears to be very much the successor to the just-unveiled Rezound/Vigor, as it should feature the same 720p resolution, 1GB of RAM, and backlit eight-megapixel camera with 28-millimeter, f/2.2 lens. The major improvement, then, would be Edge’s supposed AP30 Tegra 3 CPU from Nvidia, which offers four 1.5GHz cores to Rezound’s two. Internal storage will likely be bumped to 32GB, while the Bluetooth radio should hit version 4.0. Naturally, Beats Audio enhancements would be part of the package.

Edge may also see the rollout of new or improved HTC content services, such as the previously tipped HTC Listen music store, HTC Read bookstore, and HTC Play gaming hub; the HTC Watch movie portal will reportedly begin to offer HD fare. Additionally, Edge could be one of the first Sense 4.0 devices.

One thing that wasn’t mentioned was LTE capability, with Edge only said to support 21Mbps HSDPA; it’s possible that carrier-specific variants will still offer this highly-desired functionality. Also absent was mention of a specific version of Android, although if it doesn’t ship with Ice Cream Sandwich (fairly unlikely), an upgrade would surely be deployed in short order.

We’re expecting Edge to arrive in late Q1/early Q2 of next year.

By Evan Blass From PocketNow.

Coolest Android Ice Cream Sandwich features

Last week Google and Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Nexus, the first phone designed specifically with Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich) in mind. Ice Cream Sandwich will, naturally, make its way to other handsets when it’s released to the public sometime in November. As such, we’re taking a look at the latest Google Android mobile operating system.

Face Unlock
Is swiping the home screen to unlock your phone growing a bit tiresome? Ice Cream Sandwich’s new Face Unlock feature taps a phone’s camera so that users can log in by simply looking at the handset. Don’t worry, if you don’t want to use your grill, you can still use a code number (or a drawing interface) to unlock the handset.

Android Beam
Ice Cream Sandwich leverages NFC (near-field communication) technology that lets users share apps, websites, YouTube videos, maps, directions, and more by simply tapping two Android 4.0 phones together, much like iOS’s Bump It app.

New Browser Functionality
Android 4.0′s Web browser has evolved to closely match the desktop Chrome browser. Ice Cream Sandwich includes Chrome sync (which keeps bookmarks synced between your handset and desktop browsers), a “full site” button (which let users switch between desktop and mobile views), tabs, and a new Incognito tab.

New Contacts and Social Networking Features
Ice Cream Sandwich’s “People” streamlines the way that contacts are displayed. Contact information is culled from your social networking connections, plus any other custom info that you’d like to manually add. This data is displayed on cards (similar to Windows Phone 7.5′s tiles) that are updated when the contact updates his or her social networking information.

Data Management
Bundled with Android 4.0 is a stock app that lets you control network activity and view a specific app’s data usage. What’s the benefit of this? You can now set up warnings (for when you begin to approach certain data thresholds), and hard caps to avoid an overage-fee pummeling.

New User Interface
Taking a cue from the Honeycomb tablet operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich sports a sleek futuristic design that more closely aligns the phone and slate OSes. Android 4.0 also has a multitasking icon that calls up your recently used apps, and eliminates the need for physical keys, as it features adaptable software buttons.

New Camera Capabilities
Have you ever wanted to take a photo with your phone, but lost the moment due to the relatively lengthy snap time? Ice Cream Sandwich aims to eliminate that with swift, multiple shot shooting that plays catch up with the recently released Apple iOS 5. Android 4.0 also packs a new filter-filled photo editor, and a particularly cool sounding feature: an image rotator that spins the photo based on where your eyes are looking.

Speech
Does Apple iOS 5′s Siri have voice control competition in Ice Cream Sandwich? That remains to be seen, but Android 4.0’s live voice-to-speech feature lets smartphone users create e-mail, texts, and perform other functions simply by speaking. This should (hopefully) make dictation and messaging a swifter, more streamlined affair.

Simple Screenshots
Android finally lets you take screenshots without requiring users to install apps, pull hair, or gnash teeth. How is it done? Users (especially hardworking Android app reviewers) will appreciate the operating system’s ability to grab a screenshot by simultaneously holding power and volume-down buttons.

Widget Management
Ice Cream Sandwich gives you widget flexibility by letting you select the size of displayed information on the home screens. Android 4.0 makes it easier to place widgets on the desktop; you simply press and hold the screen which opens a menu that reveals all of the widgets.

Copyright © 2010 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.

Top 5 Android ICS [Ice Cream Sandwich] Features

Ice Cream Sandwich has come out, and it’s looking pretty delicious. As reported by PC Mag, here are few of the best features so far, for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Face recognition unlock:

Swiping fingers is so passé. Enter face unlock. With Android 4.0 you can now simply look at the phone and unlock it, well if it is yours. Cool feature to have as smartphones are slowly bridging the gap with laptops.

New UI:

Bored of the Gingerbread UI on your phone? Worry not, the user interface for Ice Cream Sandwich is touted to take the best from both worlds, tablets and smartphones, and that definitely will be a delicious treat. That is, if your phone can be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich.

Watch out, iOS! Ice Cream Sandwich is coming

Speech recognition:

All those going ga-ga about Siri and the iPhone 4S can look to Google’s new and improved speech recognition. It’s touted to be more advanced in terms of functionality and we’re hoping it’s Google’s answer to Siri. As of now though, this feature lets users create e-mails, texts and other varied functions.

Better camera control:

With Android 4.0, the time period for clicking snaps has been considerably reduced so you won’t really miss that image shot again. Also, there’s an auto image rotator that will rotate pictures according to where your eye is looking.

Android beam:

This feature allows phones with NFC to share applications, maps, directions, videos, contacts, files and a lot more by tapping two Android 4.0 devices together.

So, that’s a brief rundown of the five cool features of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Google Nexus 4G detailed

Some details on Google’s upcoming smartphone were released by Boy Genius Report. With the working title Google Nexus 4G, the phone looks like a monster, and will have among its trappings the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, a 720p screen, 1080p video capture, and a 4G LTE radio.

Google’s last two phones, the Nexus One and the Nexus S, were not wanting for top-of-the-line hardware, but they failed to win the hearts of carriers. By many of its specs, the Nexus 4G sounds as if it’s set to burn even the latest crop of phones by a big margin.

The Nexus 4G will have either a 1.2 or 1.5GHz dual-core processor that BGR speculates will be a Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 or a low-power Krait-based Snapdragon model. The phone may also have 1GB of RAM and a 720p “monster-sized” screen—we’re not sure if that means the phone will transcend the 4-inch diagonal size barrier.

Cameras will also be a big emphasis for the Nexus 4G, as the 5-megapixel rear camera will have a superior sensor for better image quality and low-light shots, and will also record video in 1080p. A less-impressive one-megapixel camera will be on the front.

One of the most interesting changes is the handset’s apparent lack of the four standard physical Android buttons, previously required by the OS on all phone models. The button’s functionalities will be moved to software-based interactions.

BGR speculates that the Nexus 4G will debut on AT&T and will be the flagship device for this major Android revision, as the Motorola Droid was for Android 2.0 and the Motorola Xoom was for 3.0. While the phone sounds beastly by today’s standards, Google isn’t planning on releasing it until Thanksgiving. The Nexus 4G is one of the first phones announced for that timeframe, so the competition still has some time to catch up.