White Galaxy Nexus coming up next month, 32GB version in tow

Samsung blessed most of its smartphone portfolio with shiny white dresses for the holiday season, but it seemed to have forgotten about its most important product. Well, rest assured - the Galaxy Nexus is getting the same treatment soon.
According to some UK retailers the white Galaxy Nexus units should start arriving sometime next month. Dates vary, but are generally in the first two weeks of the month. Pricing for the white version is identical to that of its black sibling.
Pre-orders for the 32GB version of the Galaxy Nexus also started, but there is no exact launch date for that one yet. Its £599.99 price tag sure sounds scary, but given that there's no microSD card slot on that one, this is your only option of getting a bit of extra space for all those apps and multimedia files.
So, are you getting a white Samsung Galaxy Nexus? Or did you just start saving for the extra storage version? Share with us in the comments section below.
Note: the image above is a just quick mockup of ours and does not depict the actual product.
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News Samsung ships 35M smartphones in Q4, makes record profit

Samsung has posted its preliminary Q4 financial report and things are looking great for the Korean company. Thanks to the extremely strong performance of its mobile division, Samsung recorded an operating profit of $4.5 billion, which is an amazing 73% higher than the operating profit for Q4 of 2010.
During the past three months Samsung shipped about 35 million smartphones, a 25% increase over the previous quarter and a new record for the company. The strong performance of the Galaxy lineup is the key to this success and Samsung expects to see more of the same in future.
In fact the Samsung handset division is now the conglomerate's biggest earner.
The Koreans expect to solidify their position as the world's number 1 smartphone maker in 2012 as they expects that Apple won't be able to maintain its level of innovation and will start to fall back.
What's even more, Samsung expects to end the first quarter of 2012 with about the same operating profit as the last quarter of 2011. Typically, electronic companies experience a dip in sales and profits after the holiday season, but this time the profit will remain at a similar level.
We are yet to see what Samsung has in store for us in the first few months of the New Year. The company already unveiled the Galaxy Ace Plus (which we already welcomed to the office) and Galaxy M Style and things will certainly get even more interesting at CES next week and the MWC next month.
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HTC profits decrease as smartphone competition stiffens

Every streak has its end and the HTC two-year streak of continuous growth came to an abrupt halt over the holiday season. The Taiwanese company posted net profit of $364.26 million, which is a 25.5% decrease compared to the same period of last year.
And while the company already warned that it won't be making its previously set targets, it even failed to meet the revisited goals. Obviously the company's current portfolio is not faring particularly well, with the increased pressure from Samsung and Apple quoted as the main culprit.


To make matters worse, the company expects to see more of the same in the first quarter of 2012 with net profit expected to continue sliding.
There's still no reason to panic of course, as the company is still making cash rather than losing it and it's probably just a hit product away from going back on the right road. Plus, the company was so successful recently that it saw its shares triple in just 14 months - there is no way it was going to maintain that kind of performance forever.
We are holding our breath for the new HTC announcements that should come at CES next week and then later, at the MWC in February. The company is expected to unveil the world's first quad-core smartphone at one of these events and we can't wait to get our hands on that beast.
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App download record smashed

App downloads broke an all time record high in the last week of December, 2011, according to analyst firm Flurry.
According to figures, 1.2 billion apps were downloaded in the Christmas week, buoyed by users given new devices given as presents and discounted app offers.
The US was responsible for nearly half of all downloads, followed by China, with 99mill app downloads
The UK downloaded 81 million apps, beating Canada (41 mill), closely followed by Germany and France both downloading 40 million.
In Flurry's most recent report, they estimated that a record-breaking 6.8 million iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas Day, along with an equally record-breaking 242 million application downloads.

Story Source: http://blog.flurry.com/

iPhones with quad-core chips?

Some reliable people have discovered quad-core processor support into the iOS 5.1 beta code. So, we could expect quad-core iPhones and iPads in the near future.
Shocker? Of course not. But it’s good to know Apple is already working on the next big hardware jump.

core.0 means single-core, core.3 means quad-core

A few months ago other skilful developers discovered the iPhone5,1 reference into the first iOS 5.1 beta code. It might turn out Apple is indeed gearing the next iPhone with a quad-core A6 chip.
So, what do you think - will the next iPhone be a quad-core gadget or Apple will stick to the dual-core technology for one more generation?
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