Phone and Tablet News

Google’s Nexus 6 smartphone is expected to be revealed any day now. Going under the internal codename ‘Shamu', the Nexus 6’s definite nomenclature has yet to revealed, although we do know the 5.9 inch high-resolution mobile phone is being manufactured by Motorola.

Reports indicate that the next member of the cellphone Nexus family will be arriving later this month, or early November, with Google attempting to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s recently released iPhone 6 Plus. Google is hoping to match the specs of the iPhone 6 Plus, including the screen quality, but at a markedly lower price.

It looks like HTC are set to make some big announcements this week at their "Double Exposure" event taking place this Wednesday. The most high profile bit of news we’re expecting is the announcement of the HTC Desire Eye. Speculation is rife that this phone will be HTC’s attempt to win over customers with the prospect of the best selfies they could possibly wish for.

The Desire Eye is tipped to feature a 13 mega-pixel front facing camera with dual-LED flash. With the trend of selfies showing no sign of abating, it seems HTC is hoping to make the most of it. Other specifications on the rumour mill include a large 5.2 inch full-hd display (no point taking great selfies if you can’t admire them fully afterwards), quad-core snapdragon 801, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal memory.

Assassin’s Creed games are a dime a dozen nowadays but the newly-announced Assassin's Creed - Identity is the nearest we've come to a fully fledged AC title on mobile devices. In Assassin’s Creed - Identity the player creates their own customised assassin before taking part in an action RPG-esque adventure set during the Italian Renaissance.

It’s a setup that'll certainly look familiar to Assassin’s Creed 2 fans, although Assassin’s Creed - Identity features smaller randomly generated missions designed for gaming on the go. Around 16 different mission types are available which Ubisoft claims allows for a virtually unlimited lifespan, while key story missions will take players to famous locations as they unravel the mystery.

The current generation of smartphones market themselves based strongly on their processors, namely using the number of cores as the attention grabber. The truth is though, there is currently no real need for a higher core count.

When Mediatek launched their 8-core processor it was heavenly in benchmarks, but processors like this are often paired with very weak GPU's - the part chiefly responsible for the performance of gaming.

It will come as little surprise to anybody that Apple has managed to shift 10 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus during their opening weekend on sale, once more breaking the sales records set by the previous iPhone.

Apple CEO Tim Cook also claimed that the hardware giant could have shifted even more units if a better supply chain had been implement; Apple couldn’t in fact make the phones quick enough to compete with the monstrous demand.

Huawei has released a premium smartphone addition to its Honor series, the Huawei Honor 6, as well as releasing a new teaser video showing the new mobile in action.

The Huawei Honor 6 is powered by an Octa Core Kirin chipset with 3 GB RAM on-board memory. According to Huawei the chipset is comparable to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor, so we can expect a similarly impressive level of performance. It features a 5-inch Full HD display and has a 3100mAh battery life which should provide it with decent battery life. It has a 13 megapixel rear camera that uses a Sony sensor plus 16 GB native storage.

Google has revealed the world’s first smartphones to run on its Android One platform, a new standard created by Google to allow the production of more affordable smartphones for the developing world. Smartphones have taken the world by storm over the last decade, but the plan for Android One is to capture the next billion consumers that are yet to transition to the latest tech.

The initial Android One mobiles will be debuting in India first, with Karbonn, Spice, and Micromax all unveiling phones with 4.5” screens, 1GB RAM, 1.3 GHz quad-core MediaTek processors, 5-megapixel rear and 2-megapixel front-facing cameras, along with dual-SIM slots, support for microSD and cards, FM radios, and of course Android Kit Kat.

Google has officially adjusted its Play Story refund policy to make it that little bit more user friendly for those of us predisposed to purchase regret. The Play Store’s refund window has expanded eight-fold, increasing on the previous 15 minute time period allowed between purchasing and asking for money back.

Google has now officially changed its policy to allow a more generous two hour time period to elapse before you can no longer ask for money back on a recently purchased app or game.

As many expected, Apple used its press event last night to showcase not one, but two new iPhone models. The second, larger model to be shown off was the phablet-sized 5.5” IPS LCD display with 1080p Retina HD resolution and a pixel density of 400ppi.

iOS 8 has been tweaked and updated to make the most of the higher resolutions offered by this phablet smartphone, so the OS will be ready for the iPhone 6 Plus when it launches to the general public next Friday, 19th September.

Apple may have its fans and haters in equal measure, but its iPhone 6 event last night was still arguably the biggest industry event of the year, and Tim Cook immediately kicked off proceedings by announcing the much anticipated iPhone 6.

The iPhone 6 is the 4.7 inch variant of new Apple iPhone, and comes in slightly cheaper than its bigger brother at £539 for the 16GB version and £700 for the 128GB version off contract.