Samsung Galaxy S II delayed until May, 32GB model to cost more than $1100 in the UK

Back in February we informed you that UK carrier Clove has listed the Samsung Galaxy S II with a steep, steep price for a mid-to-late March launch in old Blighty.

Truth is, we were less than impressed with the information it's to cost $820 for the 16GB version and $949 for the 32GB one, but now we realize how little we knew back then, as Clove UK has updated this info and it turns out the actual price of the Samsung Galaxy S II is set at $860 for the 16GB model and $1,152 for the 32GB version!

We will be fair and square (as always), and will note it costs so much without a contract (thank god for that) and all local taxes are included, but yet this is a hefty price for any handset, not to mention our disappointment it's postponed to an unspecified date in May.

Of course, it's highly likely that the contractless price will be a bit more affordable in the US, but as of now there is no official information about when this phone will appear in the States, or the name of its US carrier. For more info on the device check out our Samsung Galaxy S II Hands-on.

source: Clove UK via Electronista

Richard Branson: Call Him Nemo

We all know Richard Branson as the maverick founder of the Virgin group of companies. After his Star Trekish project Virgin Galactic, in which the prototype shuttle was named after the ship in honour of the iconic television show, Branson is turning his attention to the deeps.

The ocean is his next frontier and he aims to emulate the feats of Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh back in the 1960s. They touched down their bathyscaphe at the bottom of the deepest place on Earth, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, 11 kilometres under the sea.

Branson and team will soon be attempting the same in five different attempts across the world in the next 24 months, trying to break the 36000 feet barrier. The first such dive will be in the Mariana Trench. Chris Welsh, the lone pilot of the ship, will dive to 11 kilometres under the sea and "fly" along the bottom for 10 kilometres.

This dive will be followed by a dive by Sir Richard Branson, who will take the 18-foot long Deep Flight Challenger to the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean at over 8 kilometres. The ambitious two-year plan will be called Virgin Oceanic.

The idea behind the Virgin Oceanic project is similar to the Virgin Galactic project where Branson hopes to make space travel available to the common man.

VSS Enterprise, the prototype vessel of the Virgin Galactic program, is scheduled to take its first flight this year and could go commercial by 2012. There is no news on the commercialisation of the Virgin Oceanic project.

In the mean time enjoy the video preview:

Angry Birds Rio downloaded 10 million times

The popular Angry Birds franchise has hit a new high after the blockbuster like success of the new Angry Birds Rio game. It has already been downloaded 10 million times in 10 days.

The game developers Rovio confirmed the figures via Twitter. The 10 million-download figures have been achieved through the game's immense popularity on both the iOS and Android platforms.

The game was an exclusive launch title for the Amazon apps store on Android were it was offered for free on March 14.

The ad-supported game is available for free on the Android marketplace, while the ad-free version is available for $0.99 on the Amazon App store for Android. It costs the same for the iPhone and the iPod touch on the Apple app store. The HD version for iPad is priced at $2.99.

With the unprecedented success of the franchise an animated move RIO is in the works, which is being developed by FOX Studios, the creators of 'Ice Age'. The story line of Angry Birds Rio will actually tie in with the movie. The movie will feature voiceovers from Jesse Eisenberg of Social Network fame and Anne Hathway.

In the mean time enjoy the gameplay video of Angry Birds Rio:

The course is the star of a celebrity's game

As a multiracial American who likes golf, I once revered Tiger Woods from afar. Then, after meeting him and learning that he could talk about video games the way a normal dude does, I thought I actually liked him as a person. So when he humiliated his wife and family (not to mention himself) in front of the entire planet with his spectacular sexual self-immolation, I was as disgusted and disillusioned as any fan could be. Heading into this week's Masters tournament, I am not rooting against him. But for whatever trouble he is having getting his game and his life back together, I, like millions of others, have zero sympathy.

Neither do many of the sponsors who helped make Mr. Woods the very definition of marketing ubiquity. But one company that has continued to release major, mass-market consumer products under the Tiger Woods brand is Electronic Arts, the game giant.

Even within his own videogame franchise, however, Mr. Woods now finds himself taking a back seat to inanimate terrain. And that is because the real star of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters, released recently by Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 3, is not Mr. Woods but the hallowed ground of Augusta National Golf Club, the tournament's home in Georgia.

Putting aside the fact that Mr. Woods's face does not even appear on most retail versions of the product, it is perhaps inevitable that the inclusion of Augusta would overshadow any individual player. Along with Pebble Beach in California and the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland, Augusta is among the world's most famous golf courses. While St. Andrews and Pebble have been rendered electronically over the decades I have been playing golf video games, this is the first time most people will have a chance to "play" Augusta National in their living rooms. (A version of the course was included in an obscure game released only in Japan in the 1990s, though that is hardly relevant for most players.)

LG Unveils the Optimus X2 and Optimus Black in India

LG has unveiled the Optimus X2 in India and the device will be available on store shelves by the end of April 2011 for Rs. 30,000. The Optimus X2 is one of the first devices to launch in India that boasts of a dual core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor. It runs Android 2.2 and can be upgraded to Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

It will compete with the Samsung Nexus S and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc in the high-end Android smartphone market.

The X2 has a 4-inch WVGA display, 8GB of internal storage expandable up to 32GB via a micro SD card, an 8MP rear camera with 1080p MPEG-4/H.264 playback and recording, a 1.3MP front facing camera and a HDMI out.

LG has also unveiled the LG Optimus Black for Rs. 27,000. The Optimus Black has a 4-inch IPS LCD display with a 480 x 800 resolution. The device has 2 GB of internal storage expandable up to 32GB via micro SD card. It has a 5MP autofocus camera at the back and a 2MP front facing camera.

Both the LG Optimus X2 and the Optimus Black are aimed at the high-end consumer market. With the 3G revolution hitting India, LG has plans to launch 10 3G enabled smartphones during the course of 2011.

Movie studios sue Zediva over movie streaming

Hollywood movie studios are challenging a gutsy startup that thought it had found a loophole to make the latest hit movies available for instant viewing online long before they are available on Netflix or Redbox.

Zediva tried to circumvent the fact that it didn't have licenses to stream movies online. It lets customers rent a DVD and a player that are physically located in the Silicon Valley.

But the Motion Picture Association of America said Zediva's approach is illegal. Six studios, including Warner Bros., Columbia Pictures and Disney Enterprises, filed a federal lawsuit in Los Angeles on Monday against Zediva's parent company, WTV Systems, and founder and CEO Venkatesh Srinivasan.

Zediva had no immediate comment Tuesday. The company launched its service to the public last month, after spending two years developing its technology. It only lets one user rent a DVD at a time, so if it buys 20 copies of a DVD, only 20 accounts can watch it at the same time.

It costs $1.99 to rent one movie or $10 to get 10 movies.

The MPAA said Zediva's claim that its service is just like any brick-and-mortar DVD rental store is a sham.

"Zediva's mischaracterization of itself is a gimmick it hopes will enable it to evade the law and stream movies in violation of the studios' exclusive rights," said Dan Robbins, senior vice president and associate general counsel for the MPAA, in a statement.

On Tuesday, Zediva's website said registration was temporarily closed to new users while it was building more capacity.

San Francisco lawmakers approve Twitter tax break

City lawmakers approved a tax break on Tuesday to keep Twitter Inc. from fleeing San Francisco.

The measure that passed with an 8-3 vote by the Board of Supervisors exempts Twitter from a payroll tax on new hires if the micro-blogging service moves to the blighted Mid-Market area.

The exemption applies to any business in the neighborhood, but city officials called Twitter the big fish that could spur economic growth.

"We finally have a chance to put into place a policy that will bring economic development and jobs," said Supervisor Jane Kim, who represents the area. "This ordinance offers hope to revitalize a long neglected part of our city."

Google, Facebook take France to court over privacy

Internet heavyweights including Google and Facebook are to file a complaint with France's highest judicial body against a decree obliging them to keep web users' personal data for a year.

More than 20 Internet companies active in France, including Dailymotion and eBay, are bringing the case before the State Council, their representative French Association of Internet Community Services (ASIC) said on Tuesday.

"The ASIC is appealing at the State Council against the decree to keep connection data," ASIC head Benoit Tabaka told reporters.

The decree, published at the start of March, obliges e-commerce sites as well as video-music sites and online email services to keep a battery of data on their customers.

These include users' full names, associated postal address, pseudonyms, associated email addresses, telephone number, passwords and data used to check or modify them.

The data must be kept for a year and can be demanded in the context of an enquiry by police, the fraud office, customs, tax or social security authorities.

ASIC will lodge the complaint on Wednesday morning, Tabaka said.

"Several elements are problematic. For instance, there was no consultation with the European Commission," he said.

"This is a shocking measure, this obligation to keep passwords and hand them over to police services," he said.

Obama to answer questions at Facebook HQ

US President Barack Obama will answer questions submitted via Facebook during an appearance at the social network's California headquarters later this month, the White House said Tuesday.

In an announcement on its own Facebook page, the White House said Obama will sit down with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg for a "town hall" event at Facebook's Palo Alto offices on April 20.

The "Facebook Live" event will be streamed live on Facebook starting at 1:45 pm Pacific time (2045 GMT).

The White House said Facebook will select questions on the economy and innovation for Obama to answer during the event.

Questions can be submitted through White House.gov/facebooktownhall or the Facebook event page.

Obama, who announced on Monday through Facebook and Twitter that he would seek reelection in 2012, met with the 26-year-old Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley technology leaders during a visit to California in February.

BlackBerry 9930 Bold touch leaked

RIM's plans of unveiling their latest flagship device the BlackBerry Bold Touch 9930 were torpedoed as a couple of planned tutorial videos were leaked all over the internet.
According to the video the device does not look very different from the current BlackBerry 9780, as it sports the all-familiar candy bar form factor with the iconic BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard. The only difference being it sporting a multi-touch powered touchscreen and the latest BlackBerry OS 6.1.
Aside from these changes the device is expected to have an updated Snapdragon processor, HD video recording capabilities and maybe even near field communication (NFC) for mobile phone based payments.
BlackBerry devices have been notoriously underpowered but these upgrades are sure to add some punch to the BlackBerry Bold.

Recently BlackBerry launched the Torch 9800, which was widely adopted by BlackBerry enthusiasts but it failed to make dents in the market share of Android and iOS.

Check out the video below:

Targeted nature of email breach worries experts

Think twice next time you get an email from Chase or Citi asking you to log in to your credit card account. The bank may not have sent it.

A security breach that exposed the email addresses of potentially millions of customers of major U.S. banks, hotels and stores is more likely than traditional scams to ultimately trick people into revealing personal information.

Security experts said Monday they were alarmed that the breach involved targeted information tying individuals to businesses they patronize -- and could make customers more likely to reveal passwords, Social Security numbers and other sensitive data.

The company that was in charge of the email addresses, a Dallas marketing firm called Epsilon, handles online marketing for some of the biggest names in business. Those companies have flooded customers in recent days with warnings to be on guard.

Man kills wife, hacks body with saw

London:  A woman was killed by her husband who then cut up the body with an electric saw, a court was told.

Twenty one-year-old Emma Ward is alleged to have been assaulted in her home by Nicky Ward, 29, who then dragged her into the bathroom, The Sun reported.

Experts found traces of her bone, muscle and skin in Ward's electric saw and blood-stained scratches made by the saw in the bath, Prosecutor Simon Spence told Norwich Crown Court, Norfolk.

When Emma was reported to have gone missing, Ward told police that she had left him for another man. No trace of her was ever been found.

"He must have disposed of the body parts," Spence was quoted as saying.

Ward has denied the murder.

Raging storm kills 9 people in southern United States

Georgia/Florida/Tennessee:  At least nine people were killed by raging storms with heavy rain and ferocious winds that have struck across the southern United States, with Tennessee, Florida and Georgia the worst hit.

Several people  who died on roads made treacherous by downed trees and power lines.

The storms were part of a system that cut a wide swath from the Mississippi River across the Southeast to Georgia and the Carolinas on Monday and early Tuesday.

An enormous tree limb crashed through a Georgia family's bedroom killing a father and the young son he was holding in his arms.

Paramedics found the 4-year-old boy, Alix Bonhomme III, wrapped in the arms of his father, Alix Bonhomme Jr., in a sight so wrenching that even grizzled rescuers wept.

Miraculously, a younger son in the bedroom wasn't hurt, nor was Bonhomme's fiancee, Marcie Moorer, who was sleeping in another room.

Drivers dodged debris during the morning commute in Atlanta, where one person was killed when a tree fell on his car.

A portion of the roof was peeled back on the county administration building in Barrow County, Georgia.

The National Weather Service had confirmed at least eight of the nearly two-dozen possible tornadoes it was investigating in several states, though the damage in Jackson was blamed on 60 mph winds that weren't part of a twister.

The system that also knocked out power to hundreds of thousands had moved over the Atlantic Ocean by late morning.

Austria pastry maker faces complaint over Nazi cakes

Vienna:  A Holocaust survivors' group has filed a criminal complaint against a pastry maker in Lower Austria for baking cakes decorated with Nazi designs, prosecutors said.

The public prosecutors' office in Wiener Neustadt said yesterday it had received a complaint by the MKOe Mauthausen Committee against the bakery, Tortendesign, in the village of Maria Enzersdorf near Vienna, for offering customers cakes decorated with swastikas or a baby raising its right hand in a Nazi salute.

While the cakes are not actually put on display in the shop window, a catalogue containing photographs of the designs is made freely available to customers, MKOe said in a statement on its website.

The group's chairman Willi Mernyi said: "This is a particularly abhorrent example of how money is made from Nazi filth. We're going to file a criminal complaint."

Pastry chef Manfred Klaschka told ORF public television: "If someone orders it, I make it. I don't really think about it. Basically, it doesn't interest me what the customers do with the cakes. I have to make a living."

"This is exactly the sort of justification we heard all those decades ago. I didn't know anything, I didn't see anything. That doesn't concern me," said MKOe chairman Mernyi.

Austria bans neo-Nazi activities and the public display of Nazi symbols, as well as attempts to glorify the Nazi era and to deny the Holocaust.

Mexican airline flight attendants pose for Playboy

Mexico City:  A group of flight attendants from Mexicana airlines, which has been in limbo since suspending operations last year, pose almost nude in this month's edition of Playboy Mexico, which went on sale Tuesday.

The flight attendants had previously done a calendar showing them striking sensual poses, though without quite so much erotic content.

In the photo-story "Aeromozas Mexicanas" (Mexican Flight Attendants), six of them appear in lingerie accented with elements like stewardess caps and pilots' characteristic peaked-caps and sunglasses. Some photos use airliners as a backdrop, as can be seen in a promotional video.

Since flights of bankrupt Mexicana were suspended, employees have been waiting for the government, owners and investors to reach an accord so the airline can start flying again.

The erotic calendar launched in November 2010 featuring 10 flight attendants was aimed at collecting funds to support the work of unions serving the labour force.

The initial edition was a thousand copies, but eventually 4,000 were printed to meet the demand.

At the beginning of December, Playboy Mexico signed with the calendar's promoters to launch a sponsored second edition of 25,000 copies.

Despite repeated promises of investors and the government - giving different dates - that the airline would be back in the skies once more, the future of Mexicana and its more than 3,000 workers is still uncertain.

Mubarak's son hauled up before anti-corruption body

Cairo:  Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's younger son Gamal has been hauled up and asked to appear before a panel by the country's new anti-corruption body to explain sudden spurt in his wealth.
    
Gamal who was long considered to be a successor to his father has been asked to appear before the panel next week on public complaints that he "inflated his wealth", Al Jazeera reported quoting state owned Al-Ahram newspaper.
    
Mubarak's son is the third influential figure in the erstwhile regime to be hauled up.

The former President's Chief of Staff Zakaria Azmi would be quizzed on Friday.

The regime's former interior minister is in jail slapped with corruption charges.
    
The former President currently under house arrest in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm-al-Sheikh, would also face corruption charges, the official MENA news agency reported.
    
Mubarak, his wife Suzannea and two sons Alaa and Gamal and their wives have already been banned from travelling abroad and their assets ordered frozen by the new Prosecutor General Abdul Majid Mahmud.

Cracks found in 5 more Southwest planes

Washington, DC:  The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) displayed a damaged section of a Southwest Airline jet on Tuesday, after the Boeing 737-300 sprung a hole during a flight on Friday, forcing an emergency landing at an airbase in Arizona.

In response, Southwest grounded 79 sister planes over the weekend.

Boeing was surprised when a section of a fuselage ripped open in flight because the plane is comparatively new, a company official said on Tuesday, as the airline cleared most of its older 737 planes 'fit for duty'.

Southwest said it had inspected nearly all of the jets it grounded after the accident on Friday.
NTSB Chairman, Deborah A. P. Hersman, stressed that her agency was working to make "this fleet of aircraft is as safe as possible."

"If we identify any issues that need to be addressed, we have the ability to issue urgent recommendations," she said.

Five aircraft were found with the same kinds of cracks suspected of causing the 5-foot-long (1.5 metre) hole to open up as the jet cruised at around 34,000 feet.

The planes are being repaired, the airline said.

Ecuador expels US ambassador in WikiLeaks flap

Heather Hodges

Quito, Ecuador:  Ecuador on Tuesday said it is expelling the U.S. ambassador over a diplomatic cable divulged by WikiLeaks that accuses a newly retired police chief of a long history of corruption and speculates that President Rafael Correa was aware of it.

Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino announced Ambassador Heather Hodges' expulsion at a news conference.

He said the ambassador, called to his office the previous afternoon, had not explained what led her to suggest in the 2009 cable that Correa knew of "supposed acts of corruption by members of the police leadership and more specifically the former commander of the institution, Jaime Hurtado Vaca."

"We have asked that she leaves the country as soon as possible," Patino said.

In bunker, Ivory's Coast's Gbagbo plays final hand

Abidjan, Ivory Coast:  Ivory Coast's strongman Laurent Gbagbo tried to hang on to power for one more day on Wednesday from inside a bunker encircled on all sides by soldiers loyal to his rival. Diplomats said he had sent emissaries to negotiate, only to then refuse the proposals put before him.

Although Gbagbo is cornered and his army is rapidly disbanding, getting him out of the bunker is not an easy matter. Forces backing internationally recognized leader Alassane Ouattara have received strict instructions to take him unharmed, said several members of the president's cabinet.

After the evening newscast Tuesday, Ouattara's private TV station showed the movie "The Fall," which traces the last days of Adolf Hitler inside a bunker in Germany.

"This stubbornness is absurd. Gbagbo has no other solution anymore. Everybody has dropped him," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told France Info radio Wednesday. "He is holed up in the bunker in his residence so we will continue with the United Nations, which is handling that, to put pressure on him so he accepts to acknowledge the reality: There is only one legal and legitimate president today, it is Alassane Ouattara and I hope that persuasion will win and that we will avoid having to resume the military operations."

Man held for killing wife, showing body with webcam

Madrid:  A man who strangled his pregnant wife and showed her dead body to his father in Romania using a webcam has been arrested here, authorities said.

The incident occurred on Monday in the Madrid suburb of Torrejon de Ardoz and the arrest was facilitated by Romanian police.

The killer from Romania, identified only as D.M., strangled his wife, also Romanian, Madrid police commander Emilio Alcazar told a press conference on Tuesday.

The 19-year-old victim apparently told her husband that she intended to break off their relationship and said that the child she was expecting was not his.

US criticizes Pakistan on terror fight

Washington:  The Obama administration on Tuesday gave Congress a harshly critical assessment of Pakistan's efforts to defeat Al Qaida and other militants, saying that after years of work with the Pakistani military "there remains no clear path toward defeating the insurgency" that thrives in the country.

That conclusion, buried in a 38-page report on the state of the war in Afghanistan and the efforts to defeat Al Qaida in Pakistan, comes just three months before President Obama is scheduled to announce the pace at which American troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan. It amounts to a concession that the effort to match Mr. Obama's "surge" of troops in Afghanistan with a new strategy to squeeze Al Qaida and the Taliban from the Pakistani side of the border has yielded virtually no results.

For more than a year American officials have expressed frustration with the slow pace of the Pakistani effort, which was further complicated by the devastating floods there last summer. But rarely have they gone public with the scope of those frustrations. The report issued Tuesday was not accompanied by any public statement by Mr. Obama, who, like President Bush before him, has been loath to publicly criticize the efforts of Pakistan.

But the report states clearly what many administration and Pentagon officials have long said in private: Without pressure from the Pakistani side of the border, it is virtually impossible to wipe out the strongholds of Taliban or Al Qaida, except through American-led Predator strikes from the air.

Libya photos show abuses under Gaddafi

Zawiyah, Libya:  In the second-floor office of a burned-out police station here, the photographs strewn across the floor spun out the stories of the unlucky prisoners who fell into the custody of the brutal government of Col. Muammar el-Gaddafi.

Some depicted corpses bearing the marks of torture. One showed scars down the back of a man dressed only in his underwear, another a naked man face down under a sheet with his hands bound. The faces of the dead bore expressions of horror. Other pictures showed puddles of blood, a table of jars, bottles and powders and, in one, a long saw.

In a labyrinthine basement, workers were clearing out burned books and files. One room contained a two-liter bottle of gin. Gesturing into another room that was kept dark, a worker mimicked a gun with his hands and murmured "Gaddafi," suggesting it was an execution chamber.

Journalists discovered the photographs and records on an official trip to this devastated city, where Gaddafi forces battled rebels for nearly a week to retake control. They were the latest reminder of the long record of arbitrary violence against civilians that now overshadows the government's efforts to broker an end to the international airstrikes and domestic rebellion threatening Colonel Gaddafi's four decades in power.

1000 ships to celebrate Queen Elizabeth

London:  Britain's Queen Elizabeth II will celebrate her diamond jubilee with a boat trip on London's River Thames in a newly crafted barge, leading a flotilla of 1,000 ships, the event's organisers said.

The aquatic pageant, the biggest on the river for 350 years, will take place on June 3 next year, a public holiday created to celebrate the Queen's 60 years on the British throne.

The monarch would travel from Putney, in the British capital's west, to the central Tower Bridge in a barge refurbished to look like an 18th century galley, the event's organisers, Thames Diamond Jubilee Foundation, revealed yesterday.

Robert Salisbury, the group's chairman, said the Queen was "enthusiastic" about the multi-million pound event and the lord added it was "very important for younger members of the royal family to play a prominent part."

Sony Ericsson Xperia arc Review

This is a global GSM phone. It can be used with T-Mobile USA and AT&T, but without 3G.

Introduction:

It's no secret that the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 was somewhat of a letdown considering it was pegged as the mobile giant's multimedia powerhouse. On paper, it looked great, but the reality was the likes of HTC's Sense UI made Sony Ericsson's Android skin feel more like a beta than a final release. The Sony Ericsson Xperia arc therefore represents a reboot - curvaceously sexy, endowed with a new screen technology and a revised UI, Sony Ericsson hopes it can mend some perceptions the X10 created- and from the offset, the odds are already looking more favourable for Sony Ericsson's new flagship.


Design:

We said it in our introduction - this is a sexy phone. At just 8.7mm in the middle, which gradually becomes 10mm at both ends, it feels waif-like in the hand in the best way possible. Without fail, everybody who held this phone commented on the slickness of design. The arched profile makes it more comfortable to hold and handle and lends to offset the bulk the 4.2” display could potentially lumber the handset with.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia arc has an arched profile that makes it more comfortable to hold

You can compare the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The screen is a Super LCD, with 480x854 pixels measuring in at 4.2". In turn, while the resolution isn't going to set the Sony Ericsson arc apart, the fact that it's graced with Sony's BRAVIA engine that the company uses in its award-winning flat screen TVs does. We can attest that there is a difference as photo and video playback is truly bright and vivid, though we nevertheless prefer Super AMOLED, as it enables these vibrant colors anywhere throughout the interface. The display is comfortable to use in the bright outdoors which is great, though viewing angles aren't what we'd hope from a premium screen. Nevertheless, when looked at head-on, the screen delivers a distinctly premium viewing experience.


Under the screen are three thin Android navigational buttons – back, home and menu. They are reminiscent of what we have on the other phones in the Xperia line, and are illuminated, however, their icons aren't, which is somewhat unintuitive. The three keys have a nice rubbery feeling to them when pressed and are very easy to operate.

Under the screen are three thin Android navigational buttons

The Sony Ericsson Xperia arc comes in a “Midnight Blue” and “Misty Silver” version, both of which look stunning. The whole design is made of quality plastic which keeps the weight down, so while not as robust as aluminum unibody handsets for example, the thinness and lightness endows the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc with a huge amount of appeal.

The “Misty Silver” version of Sony Ericsson Xperia arc

The camera sensor is placed in  the upper edge on the back - which means you have to be careful not to place your finger over the lens when shooting. Combine that with the rather smallish and somewhat hard to press shutter key on the right near the lower edge, and you definitely need to hold the phone with two hands when taking a picture, unless you use the touchscreen. In addition, there is no front facing camera, which leaves video calls out of the equation.

		Camera shutter key
The back of the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc

The other design element that classes up the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc is the chromed band surrounding it, which encompasses all the rest of the buttons and openings – the volume rocker and microUSB port up right, the 3.5mm audio jack up left, as well as the cover of the microHDMI port and the power/lock button at the very top - which is unfortunately small and takes some getting used to.

The sides of the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc

Motorola P793 Universal USB Portable Power Pack Review

Introduction and Design:

The Motorola P793 Universal Dual-Charging Portable Power Pack is really what you should expect of a mobile juicer – a slim device capable of delivering 1420mAh worth of extra charge to satiate the energy cravings of your cell phone. Its microUSB cable built into the package contributes to the compact feel of this portable charger. The Power Pack actually has a rather down-for-business determined look with its black body and simple shapes.  The device has a height of 3.94” (110mm) and weight of 2.16” (55mm) with a thin 0.39” (10mm) profile. It tipped the scales at 1.92 ounces, which makes it a lightweight pocketable gizmo that you can easily carry around.

The Motorola P793 Universal Dual-Charging Portable Power Pack is a slim and light device

On the front you have the power button, which unleashes the power pack's charging force, while just above it is a charging indicator consisting of four indicator lights. This is the only means of communication between you and the portable juicer, so a quick look at the four indicators will give you an idea of just how much charge you have left. When eventually you drain its battery, you'll have to plug it into a USB outlet. A flashing light then indicates that the Motorola Power Pack is charging and when you have all four indicators lit-up again, your charger should be ready to juice up gizmos at its full capacity.

Power button on top	microUSB port on the side	USB port

Charging Nokia N8