HTC One red colourway announced, pre-order live on Phones 4U

Flagship phone gets busy with the blusher.

HTC has deviated from tried and trusted gun-metal grey and black colour options it favours for its flagship phones, with a ‘glamour red’ (their words, not ours) edition of the One.
Available to pre-order now at Phones 4U, which has exclusive rights to sell the red version in the UK, the re-sprayed handset goes on sale officially in mid July. The One will be free from £33 per month on monthly contracts.

HTC's handset is unchanged from the more sober hued models in the design department. And given the acclaim heaped on its unibody aluminium construction, it’s not hard to see why.
And the features are the same too. That means you’ve got the same UltraPixel camera, a 4.7-inch full HD display and a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor.
The One runs Android 4.2 out of the box, with a revamped version of the HTC Sense user interface slathered over the top that apes the more ‘alive’ feel of Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system.
Philip Blair, President of EMEA at HTC, said: “We have always been committed to offering consumers the flexibility to share their personalities through their choice of mobile phone, whether through colour, customisation or features.

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HTC Desire 200 gets official

Desire brand gets a reboot

HTC has turned to a handset brand synonymous with its glory days of 2011 to revive its flagging fortunes, in the shape of a new low-cost addition to the Desire range.
Dubbed the Desire 200, the as-yet un-priced kit packs a 3.5-inch display with 480x320 resolution, as well as a five-megapixel camera. Perhaps surprisingly for a phone so obviously pitched at the low-end market, Beats by Dre audio technology is on board too.

Other than that, spec-sheet details are scanty. But the product listing on HTC's site does tell us that it’ll be 3G-only and packs a 1GHz processor courtesy of Qualcomm and 4GB of internal storage. This can be boosted by up to 32GB adding a microSD card.

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Sony Xperia smartwatch to be unveiled tomorrow?

Tick, tick, tick, BOOM!

Sony could be about to gazump Apple with an Xperia-branded smartwatch, a press invite to a launch event suggets.
The invitation for the showcase, which happens tomorrow at the none-more-swanky Bulgari hotel, trails what we're assured will be the "next breakthrough in the Sony design story". We're also promised hands-on time with whatever the gadget-maker unveils.
Although there's no mention of a smartwatch, the intimation that design will be the focus of the event, coupled with the fact that it's all been kept fairly low-key, suggests it's probably an accessory/peripheral rather than a new smartphone that's set for the big reveal.
We're certainly nominating a smartwatch to fill the hole, after a series of tweets last week from Sony's official Xperia account that alluded to the gadget-maker's long-time pedigree with wearable tech, in the form of the Walkman.

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TalkTalk offering BlackBerry Curve 9320 for £2.50 per month

Six days left for promo.

The BlackBerry Curve 9320 is available for £2.50 per month with TalkTalk Mobile, as part of a time-limited promotion.
The offer is available to all TalkTalk broadband and TV customers who sign up online for the handset on a two-year contract on TalkTalk Mobile before the end of June.

As well as a free phone in black, blue or white, £2.50 per month gets you monthly allowances of 100 any-network, anytime call minutes, 250 texts and 200MB of mobile data.
TalkTalk also provides 100 monthly call minutes to TalkTalk mobiles, as well as unlimited family calls, free text alerts and free voicemail.
Although it doesn’t run the latest BB10 version of the phone maker’s operating system, the Curve 9320 supports all key BlackBerry services. Not least the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant messaging app, which is accessible through a dedicated key to make it easier to share news and snaps.

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Vine for Android gets major update

Second software bump in a week.

Vine appears to be going all out in its attempts to stop Instagram’s nascent video platform from taking off.
Just one week after rolling out a major overhaul of its Android app, the Twitter-backed service is back with another update.
This time, Android users have been given front-camera access for some selfie action, along with an upload manager for playing around with old videos and getting them ship shape and cut down to six seconds.
Last week’s Android Vine update brought Facebook-sharing as well as hashtag searching.
It seems that with Instagram’s 15-second videos grabbing the limelight, Vine is desperate to prove that its shorter, looping format still has a future.

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Low-cost ‘plastic’ iPhone imagined in fresh 3D renderings

Yet another concept depicts Apple's much-hyped budget iPhone.

Fresh illustrations depicting what Apple’s long-rumoured ‘cheap’ iPhone could look like have emerged online, giving us yet another vision of a handset that’s effectively a unicorn of the smartphone world.
Designed lovingly by the good folks at Apple Insider, based on recently leaked schematics of the so-called ‘iPhone Light’, the concept reveals a white handset sporting a plastic casing with curved corners at the back, a faux-aluminium rim at the top and ‘pill shaped’ volume controls clearly inspired by the iPod touch.

The physical home button still present-and-correct, along with a four-inch display like the iPhone 5. Though, we presume the screen is probably not of a Retina quality and is more likely a lower-grade LCD to keep costs down.
Looks-wise, it’s unmistakably an iPhone, and as far as we're concerned, certainly doesn’t look as bargain-bin as many budget mobiles do.
With a minimalist design that's integral to the Apple DNA and the freshly announced iOS 7 front-and-centre, the concept very easily completes the illusion that this could very well be a product “Designed by Apple in California”.
The iGiant is widely expected to bring a keenly priced iPhone to market later this year to compete with the hordes of inexpensive Android smartphones, especially in emerging lucrative regions such as China and India.

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First Firefox phone on sale tomorrow

ZTE Open for business.

The ZTE Open, the first phone to run Mozilla’s Firefox OS, is set to go on sale tomorrow. The news was announced on Twitter by Spanish carrier Telefonica earlier this morning.
While the handset itself isn’t exactly chock full of bleeding edge tech, the real excitement is centred around the price. The device is set to come in at €69 (£59) SIM-free in Spain.
As if that wasn’t enough to tempt cash-strapped Spaniards to pony up, ZTE is also throwing in €30 (£25) of credit for pay-as-you-go punters.

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Sony Xperia Z Ultra coming to Three, Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4u

Oh and Dialaphone.

Sony’s freshly announced Xperia Z Ultra will be available on Three when it hits shop shelves this Q3, the network has confirmed.
Three announced via a blog post that the Z Ultra (or ZU for short) will be ‘coming soon’ to its ‘UltraFast’ network - becoming the first and only UK network to confirm plans to range the handset since its official unveiling yesterday.

Alas, Three didn’t provide any specifics as to when the when the Z Ultra will be actually available, nor any details on pricing. Hopefully these will be revealed closer to launch, along with the option to pre-order the device on the carrier’s popular pay-monthly tariffs.
Following on Three’s footsteps, Carphone Warehouse, Phones 4u and Dialaphone have also put up ‘Coming Soon’ pages for the Z Ultra, with Carphone expecting to have stock in September.
Billed as the world’s largest and slimmest full HD smartphone, the Xperia Z Ultra is home to a 6.4-inch ‘Triluminous’ display with Sony’s latest ‘X-Reality’ technology that fixes and replaces broken pixels in videos in real-time and can register inputs from a stylus or even a pencil or pen, making it a bona fide contender to the Samsung Galaxy Note.

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Sony Xperia Z Ultra official announced – world’s largest and thinnest full HD waterproof smartphone

Yes, it’s ‘Ultra’ in every sense of the word.

Sony has officially raised the curtain on the Xperia Z Ultra, the latest addition to the Xperia family that’s set to take on Samsung and Apple at the smartphone summit.
Announced today at an intimate press gathering at the Blvgari Hotel in London, the Xperia Z Ultra – or the ZU as it’s also known – is home to a 6.4-inch full HD ‘Triluminous’ display featuring Sony’s latest ‘X-Reality’ video processing technology that fixes and replaces missing pixels in the picture on the fly to offer a silky smooth viewing experience.

This is made better by the screen’s ability to recognise inputs from stylus or even a pen or pencil, making it a direct challenger to Samsung’s hugely successful Galaxy Note range.
Powering the Z Ultra is Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor clocked at 2.2GHz, which numerous benchmark tests have already proven to be faster than any smartphone currently in the market.
At the back of the ZU sits an eight-megapixel Exmor RS camera with HDR support for both photos and videos. This is teamed with a front-facing two-megapixel camera for video calling in HD.
On the connectivity front, there’s also NFC support with one-touch functions for instant connecting to other NFC-enabled devices such as speakers or televisions. Also on board is a magnetic charging port that will allow the device to be charged with a compatible charging dock or cradle without needing a special back cover.

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Apple iWatch: 5 key rivals to Cupertino’s future effort

We take a look at the techno timepieces vying for wrist-room.

The Apple iWatch remains a glint in the eye of every Cupertino fanboy and fanatic.
But the unannounced timepiece is already having a huge effect on the tech world, with mobile makers clamouring to beat Tim Cook and co to the punch with their own versions.
In fact, the first wave has already arrived, with Sony leading the charge. Here are five key iWatch rivals to keep an eye out for.

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