iPhone 6 & Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Concepts Compare Rumors

New iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4concepts borrow from their respective rumor mills and bring rumors to life well ahead of the iPhone 6 and Galaxy Note 4 releases later on this year.

While we wait for Apple and Samsung to announce their rumored iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphones, designers have taken it upon themselves to produce their own concepts. Many of these concepts are based on future technology, others, like the ones we’re about to show you, borrow from real life rumors.

Rumors suggest that the next iPhone might come in two different sizes. The iPhone 6 rumor mill states that Apple might release a new iPhone that’s around 4.5-inches to 4.7-inches and another that is over 5-inches in size. The 5+-inch iPhone 6 would be a direct challenger to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Samsung’s 5.7-inch smartphone, and the rumored Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

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You can make your own HTC One M8 Dot View case, but I wouldn’t recommend it

HTC’s fancy new case for its flagship One M8 is bordering on brilliant, but it’s also $50 and kind of flimsy. What would happen if you tried to make your own version of the Dot View case? We decided to give it a shot to find out, and the end result was… well, just look for yourself.

It didn’t take long to figure out the basics of the Dot View case. Basically, there’s a small magnet hidden between the layers of rubber on the front flap, behind the HTC logo. There is also a tiny sheet of metal in the back side of the case. These two offer just enough magnetic force to activate a trigger mechanism in the phone that allows it to understand the case is in place and then when the case is open or closed.

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HTC One M8 To Hit Dubai Shelves On April 4, Special Gold Edition Planned

Phone manufacturer HTC unveiled its latest smartphone the HTC One (M8) in Dubai on Wednesday, and announced that the device will be available for sale across the UAE and Saudi Arabia from Friday, April 4.

The phone will be priced at Dhs2,750 in the UAE and SAR2,800 in Saudi Arabia.

Nikitas Glykas, executive director, HTC MEA described the device as a “premium product, such as an expensive watch or a fine piece of jewellery.”

The phone, almost 90 per cent metal, features a 5-inch, full HD (1080p) display and a Super LCD3 touch screen with Gorilla Glass 3. It comes with HTC’s new interface — Sense 6 and is supported by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.3 GHz quad-core processor.

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Samsung Galaxy S 5 gets drop tested, holds up remarkably well

Many people knock Samsung for making its phones out of plastic, but there’s something to be said for their durability. A new drop test from TechSmartt pits the Galaxy S5 against the Galaxy S 4 and shows both phones holding up surprisingly well. However, the Galaxy S5 really takes the cake, surviving four drops and being run over by an SUV.

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Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone and three new Gear watches coming April 11

WITH THE LATEST version of its Galaxy S smartphone, Samsung has tried to focus less on the technical marvels, and more on the everyday user. The Galaxy S5 becomes available on April 11, and in a press briefing on Tuesday (April 1), Ken Price explained that Samsung wants to “become more about what people are doing with the phone”.

Which is why many of the features he highlighted during his presentation in a suite at the Fairmont Pacific Rim are upgrades to basic mobile traits: better networking and greater resistance to the elements, in particular.

Price, the vice president of sales and marketing for Samsung Canada’s mobile division, explained that “people are using these outside, they’re dropping them”, so the new GS5 has been constructed to withstand a metre of water for 30 minutes and is better at keeping out dirt and dust. But he warned that the GS5 is not a “ruggedized” device. “It is not an underwater camera,” he half-joked. 

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The Nokia Lumia 1020 is a great camera, with an OK phone

The Nokia Lumia 1020’s 41 megapixel camera is, simply put, a beast. It sets the smartphone apart from its contemporaries, with the gap made wider still by its excellent colour reproduction, exceptional low-light shooting and digital zoom performance. Nokia’s hardware and software allows photographers to capture more detailed images, zoom, crop and cut photos that feature greater clarity and detail than what most smartphone currently cameras are capable of.

As for what the rest of the Lumia 1020 offers users? Well, that’s another story.

Available to Rogers and Telus cellular customers, the Lumia 1020 with its matte finish and 10.4 mm x 130.4 mm x 71.4 mm size, feels and looks like any number of other monolithic Android or Windows Phone 8 handsets on the market today, save the camera lens and flash assembly jutting out of the back of the handset. Unless you have large hands or long fingers, this protrusion likely won’t get in the way while you’re holding it. Unfortunately, unless you have large hands or long fingers, you also won’t be able to reach the top of the Lumia 1020’s 4.5-inch 1280 x 768 display. But the same follows for a lot of handsets these days. While the phone is well built and feels solid to the touch, it doesn’t offer the same confidence-inspiring heft offered by premium handsets like the iPhone 5s or the HTC One M8. In short, the handset feels… adequate. You likely won’t destroy it through the casual abuse most of us heap on our smartphones during the course of a two-year cellular contract. But there are other handsets out there that are a whole lot more hardy.

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LG G Flex review: The shape of things to come?

Smartphone manufacturers stick to their guns all too often, with few daring to deviate from what has been a winning formula in the past.

This criticism certainly does not apply to LG, which has brought us one of the most unconventionally-shaped handsets we have ever seen in the shape of the LG G Flex.

This 6-inch Android device is among the first to come with a fully curved display, but are there really any benefits to this novel design quirk?
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