Now you can make crystal clear video-calls with your loved ones or business contacts by utilizing the latest technology for Skype and Logitech, which is incorporated into the latest update to Skype for Windows and the Logitech C920 webcam.

With Logitech c920 the video encoding is done inside the camera which enables full HD or HD video quality with older computers. To enjoy full HD quality at its best, you will need at least a 2 Mbps upload/download speed. (read more inside)

Microsoft's Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit is out of beta today with a fully supported 1.0 release. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer previously promised that Kinect for Windows would go official on February 1st during his CES keynote last month, and the company delivered the final bits to developers this morning. The final release adds support for up to four Kinect sensors on one PC, "near mode" functionality for the Kinect for Windows hardware, and the usual fixes and API improvements. (read more inside)

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, today announced the launch of the Samsung GALAXY S Advance. Designed for those who define themselves by the phone they carry, the GALAXY S Advance strikes a balance of style, power and performance. It will be available in Russia starting from February, and then be gradually rolled out in CIS, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Southeast and Southwest Asia, Latin America and China.
"The GALAXY S Advance adds to the successful track record of the GALAXY smartphone range with a phone that combines power and style with all the versatility of Samsung's Hub services," said JK Shin, President of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. Read more inside..

"Samsung Galaxy S III specs has been leaked. According to the rumor the device will be packed with a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor and 12 megapixel camera. Aside from the specs we also received information regarding its availability. The Galaxy S III to be launch in April 2012. Another thing is there are more to its specs. The device will get a quad-core processor, 12 megapixel camera, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, HD screen and super thin. However, its still a rumor therefore we ought to wait until MWC 2012 to confirmed everything." via slashphone.com

"HP today began executing its plan to deliver an open webOS by committing to a schedule for making the platform's source code available under an open source license.
The company aims to complete this milestone in its entirety by September.
HP also announced it is releasing version 2.0 of webOS's innovative developer tool, Enyo. Enyo 2.0 enables developers to write a single application that works across mobile devices and desktop web browsers, from the webOS, iOS and Android platforms to the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers – and more. The source code for Enyo is available today, giving the open source community immediate access to the acclaimed application framework for webOS." Read more inside..

"Mobile World Congress is coming very soon. We have a bunch rumored devices includes both the HTC Edge/Endeavor and the HTC Ville that possibly appear in MWC 2012. Now, we got another device which is the HTC Primo. The device will packed with Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich OS. The Primo features a 3.7-inch Super AMOLED display and a 5-megapixel camera with 720p video capture on its backside. It also has a 1GHz dual-core processor alongside 512MB RAM. As for pricing, it would cost around £250 aka $388. Availability to be announced." via slashphone.com

"The Board of Directors of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) today announced that, acting on the recommendation of its Co-Chief Executive Officers to implement the succession plan they previously submitted to the Board, it has unanimously named Thorsten Heins as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Heins was also appointed to RIM's Board. The Board acted after conducting its own due diligence. Both appointments are effective immediately.
Mike Lazaridis, former Co-Chair and Co-CEO, has become Vice Chair of RIM's Board and Chair of the Board's new Innovation Committee. As Vice Chair, he will work closely with Mr. Heins to offer strategic counsel, provide a smooth transition and continue to promote the BlackBerry brand worldwide. Mr. Heins said he looks forward to continuing to work with Mr. Lazaridis, globally recognized as a technology pioneer. He said, "Mike created a whole new way of communicating and I look forward to continuing our close collaboration." Read more inside..

ZTE Corporation a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, has announced the availability of its first Windows Phone device in the UK – the ZTE Tania. The ZTE Tania is great for both business and personal use, and makes it easier than ever to connect and share with friends, family and colleagues. With 4GB internal storage and a 4.3 inch touch-screen, the ZTE Tania is smart and stylish with a chassis measuring just 10.7mm in depth. The ZTE Tania comes fully equipped with Microsoft's latest release of Windows Phone. Windows Phone has a wide range of fully integrated functionalities such as a direct link to users' Xbox LIVE accounts, an intuitive and seamless sync for Microsoft Office Mobile, and Zune music streaming. The phone's Live Tile feature brings friend and family groups to life by delivering the latest updates and news from popular social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn directly to the home screen. The 1GHz processor and ultra-sharp cinematic WVGA 800 x 480px screen make responding to emails, editing documents and browsing the internet fast and intuitive. In addition, the device comes with a five megapixel camera with autofocus and flash. The ZTE Tania is the most affordable 4.3" screen Windows Phone on the market and will be sold on contract at tariff points between £10-£20. It will be launched with a number of key channels including Brightpoint, Virgin Media, Go Mobile and a leading specialist retailer."We're delighted to be working with Microsoft and as a key partner will support the industry forecasted growth on this exciting new platform with both the ZTE Tania and in the future a growing range of devices. Last year, ZTE announced its plans to build market presence with ZTE branded devices with the release of the ZTE Skate, Libra and Tureis. Our first own-brand handset to enter the market in 2012 is the ZTE Tania," said Mr Wu Sa, director of mobile device operations at ZTE UK."Having ZTE join the Windows Phone family is great news. Their expertise will be crucial in delivering Windows Phone to new and different customers. We look forward to continuing and developing our relationship with ZTE in the future," said Leila Martine, director of Windows Phone UK.Market analyst IDC reported in late 2011 that ZTE had become the fourth-largest mobile phone vendor in the world after it shipped 19.1 million units in the third quarter, ahead of both Apple and RIM. ZTE gained an overall market share of 4.9 percent, up from 3.5 percent a year earlier, and was the only Chinese company in the top five. Additionally, Gartner predicts Microsoft will reach second place in the mobile device operating system rankings by 2015 with 20.3 percent market share.

"RIM has outed BlackBerry 7.1 OS, the latest iteration of its smartphone software, as well as BlackBerry Tag, an NFC tool used to pair up accessories, swap data and even add new contacts to the similarly updated BBM 6.1. The new version also introduces WiFi hotspot functionality, sharing a BlackBerry’s connection with up to five WiFi-tethered devices, a new BlackBerry Traffic 3.0 app with traffic-based ETA and turn-by-turn voice guidance, and boosted universal search. BlackBerry Tag allows users of 7.1 OS devices to invite a friend to BBM, swap contact information, documents, URLs, photos and other multimedia, or pair their phone with an NFC-enabled Bluetooth device. It’s a similar range of skills that we’ve seen from other manufacturers – Nokia allows for a similar sharing and pairing system with its NFC-enabled phones, and Google has Android Beam for swapping data via NFC – but it should help the short-range wireless system gain traction all the same. Other new features in BBM 6.1 include animated GIF avatar support, 12 new emoticons, color-changeable chat bubbles and longer personal messages in each user’s Profile. It’s also easier to set a new user-photo, with an option directly in the camera app." via slashgear.com

" Las Vegas, US - Today at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nokia and AT&T announced the Nokia Lumia 900, the first of Nokia's Windows® Phone-based range to feature high-speed LTE* connectivity. With Nokia's largest display, the Nokia Lumia 900 delivers a rich content experience from a phone that still fits easily in your hand.
Coming exclusively to AT&T in the coming months in cyan and matte black, the Nokia Lumia 900 has a 4.3-inch AMOLED ClearBlack Display for rich, bright images both indoors and out, faster connection speeds based on cutting-edge 4G LTE technology, and a long-lasting 1830 mAH battery for enjoying content all day." Read more inside..

"  Sony Ericsson is showing visitors to the 2012 International CES Show a fully connected entertainment world with the first Xperia™ smartphones from Sony®*, including Xperia S, the first smartphone from the Xperia NXT series – next generation smartphones from Sony, and new Xperia smartphones made specifically for the US and Japanese markets, all with access to premium entertainment services and easy connectivity to other screens within the world of Sony." Read more inside..

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, unveiled the world's slimmest smartphone today at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The Huawei Ascend P1 S is 6.68mm thin and features a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED 960 x 540 touchscreen with Corning® Gorilla® Glass. The Ascend P1 S is also the fastest and most compact smartphone in its class with a dual-core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4460 Cortext-A9 processor and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.
"We're excited to unveil the world's slimmest smartphone here at CES 2012," said Richard Yu, Chairman of Huawei Device. "The Ascend P1 S demonstrates our ongoing commitment to innovating high quality devices that utilize the latest hardware and software technologies." Read more inside..

"Kicking off 2012 in a positive way, and heavily updated from the original feature, I've compiled a latest 'top 30 freeware' for all Symbian^3 smartphones. Excluding games, which tend to be a very personal taste (though there are some great free games too, if you look around). Hopefully this article is a great reference to point new Symbian users to, with everything from small utilities to major applications. And free, free, free...." Read more here:

Thanks to a reminder from WebProNews, it's instructive to look again at the smartphone world via StatCounter, a pro service embedded on many web sites which tracks the browser and OS used to access them. And, reflecting the still enormous installed base of Symbian-powered smartphones across the world, Symbian still (for web access, at least) still dominates the world, at 31%.
The counter-intuitive nature of the chart, i.e. that Symbian still dominates despite Android and iOS activations reportedly running very high through 2011, is explained by the difference between sales marketshare and installed base 'share'. Earlier this year, actual sales of Android-powered smartphones per quarter overtook Symbian. But the 300 million or so active Symbian users across the world - regardless of whether they're using a three year old Nokia 5800 or even an older N95 - is a statistic that can't be ignored for actual use. You may remember that I've talked before about not underestimating the inertia behind Symbian's installed base - the numbers boggle the mind.
Added to the huge installed base of Symbian smartphones is the factor of the rise and rise of affordable data, even on pay as you go SIM cards, across the world. In other words, just about everyone is now getting online. In StatCounter's eyes, web access is web access." via allaboutsymbian.com

"Windows Phone reached a key milestone this week. Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace now has more than 50,000 apps. Of these, 17,276 were added in the last 90 days and 8,010 were added in the last 30 days, All About Windows Phone reports.Though still far behind iOS and Android in terms of number of apps, it seems that Windows Phone is trying to catch up their rivals. For instance, Windows Phone just took 14 months to reach 50,000 apps, while Android took 19 months and iOS took 12 months to cross 50,000 apps mark, concludes eWeek." via slashphone.com

White HTC Radar 4G was spotted on Microsoft’s website. This quite a little surprise since typically when the device first launch, it will come in black variant. However, in this case it seems the device striking the market with many’s fav color, white. The funny thing is there’s no official words on the device black version. On top of that, we have not hear much regarding the Radar 4G specs. via slashphone.com

"Nokia is clarifying the naming of the user interface of its Symbian smartphones. The user interface will now be referred to as Nokia Belle, rather than Symbian Belle. The operating system will continue to be referred to as Symbian. Thus devices, such as the Nokia 701, will be referred to as Symbian smartphones running the Nokia Belle user interface. The news comes via a post on Nokia Conversations, but we have confirmed the details with a Nokia spokesperson. The naming change is aimed at making things clearer for consumers by clearly distinguishing between the operating system and the user interface. This seems sensible, given Nokia's commitment to deliver additional software updates in 2012. The advent of the named software updates for Symbian devices (Anna, Belle, C...) effectively decoupled the user interface updates from operating system updates.  It may also make it easier for Nokia to market the devices; despite being the pioneering smartphone platform the Symbian brand was never very well known amongst general consumers, especially when compared to the Nokia brand. It is also not unreasonable to argue that the Symbian brand, where it is known, may have damaged by the poor overall performance of Nokia's smartphone business in the last few years.  Nokia Belle is already being used on the most recent Symbian devices including the Nokia 700, Nokia 701 and Nokia 603. It will also be available, via a software update, for the Nokia N8, Nokia C7, Nokia C6-01, Nokia E6, Nokia E7 and Nokia 500 early next year." via allaboutsymbian.com

"Didn't jump on the webOS 2.2.4 Doctor bandwagon yesterday? Can't say we blame you for waiting for the possibility of the update for your Pre3 to come over the air. Your patience has paid off, dear reader, as just a day later the update itself has been made available. As you would expect for an X.X.4 update, it's a small package that contains, we quote, "a variety of software improvements", in other words: bug fixes. The update weighs in at 29MB for Euro Pre3 owners and just 10MB for the AT&T Pre3 -update- and 9MB for the handful of Verizon Pre3 owners.
Update: Got an unlocked GSM Pre 2 or a Sprint FrankenPre2? Fire up the System Updates app, because you're apt to find an update to webOS 2.2.4 waiting for you. The changelog matches the previous update for just a handful of Pre 2 owners, except this time it's for everybody (unless you're on a Verizon or AT&T Pre 2). Now all we need is the HP Veer to get 2.2.4 and all of the recent webOS smartphones will be running the latest version of the OS (plus the Veer would stand to finally get Touch-to-Share)." via webosnation.com

"Google Nexus S users, check the update option on your phone, you might just have a nice surprise. Google has announced that over the coming month you will be getting Ice Cream Sandwich.

"We're rolling out Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, to GSM/UMTS Nexus S devices over the coming month, starting today. Enjoy the tasty update!" Google announced via it's Android page on Google+.

The news comes after two months of internal testing on Nexus S smartphones at Google and will mean that you won't have to stump up the cash for the new Galaxy Nexus to get the new Google operating system announced in October.

Google's Ice Cream Sandwich offers a number of new features to Android as well as promising to merge the phone and tablet arms of the OS together.

Read our comprehensive review of Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich to find out whether you should be excited about getting the update, or fearful." via pocket-lint.com

"As Android and Apple continue to dominate the U.S. smartphone market, RIM and other smartphone manufacturers have made moves to reclaim lost market share.
PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, December 13, 2011 - According to The NPD Group, a leading market research company, Android's operating system (OS) share of smartphone sales grew to command more than half of the U.S. smartphone market (53 percent) from January through October 2011, as Apple's iOS share grew to reach 29 percent of the market, and RIM's OS share declined to 11 percent. RIM and other companies that were formerly on top of NPD's smartphone rankings, however, have made critical business decisions this past year in a quest to shore up their U.S. smartphone businesses." Read more inside..