What we know about the Motorola X Fon (ghost): 25+ color options, all US carriers, early July ship, more

Update: We’ve been asked to remove the picture.

We’ve been sitting on some good Motorola X Fon information for awhile but weren’t able to confirm it until the most recent leaks which seem to corroborate what we have.  It turns out that the leaked images by Tinhte and @Evleaks appear to be legitimate Motorola X prototypes according to our source.  The phone above is a drawing the X FON which now appears to be the same phone pictured below:

The information we’ve heard from our source who has seen it a LTE version was that it will be released on all 4 US carriers and come in over 25 different color options.  The bottom bezel is remarkably small as you can see from the drawing above and the Tinhte.vn images. Like the other ones pictured, this one was 32GB storage, 2GB of RAM, and no SDCard.  Like the others, it was still running Android 4.2 recently and was codenamed ‘ghost’.

Both volume and power buttons are on the right side. Headphones jack is on top center, charging port was on bottom center.

The display was estimated to be 4.7 inches but with the very slim bezel on the bottom it felt very small. Perhaps as small as a 4.3-inch phone.

What we’re thinking at this point is that this phone looks like the successor to the Droid RAZR or RAZR M – small bezels, 4.3-4.7-ish display, extremely long battery life. But what about all of those colors and protection we’ve heard so much about?

Here’s what we’re thinking: Motorola is going to offer protective plates/skins in 25 colors from the point of ordering. 80-90% of people buy protection for the phones so perhaps Motorola is owning this aspect of the device from the order and can provide almost an almost indestructible, perhaps water-resistant customization.

Well, that’s our current thinking. We’ll likely hear what’s on offer at Google I/O in a few weeks.

HTC launching low-cost One variant by the end of June

HTC-M4

If you love the HTC One but are not so keen on its price-tag, HTC may have the solution in the form of a lower-cost variant currently code-named the M4 (the HTC One was code-named M7).

Phone Arena says the handset is almost identical in appearance to the HTC One, but smaller, using cheaper materials and with a lower-spec – a similar approach to that taken by Samsung with its S III mini version of its then flagship S III. Or perhaps in the previous generation – where the HTC One S was the mini version of the One X.

M4 reportedly steps down the processing power, to just a dual core CPU, and storage is just 16GB, but RAM is still a healthy 2GB, and the camera also contains HTC’s lauded (but somewhat controversial) UltraPixel technology. With less powerful components come less stringent power needs, and in this case, HTC has allegedly opted for a 1700mAh, non-removable battery.

The handset is said to have a 4.3-inch 720p display, LTE and is expected to run Jelly Bean 4.2, a step up from the One’s 4.1.

Want a Verizon Galaxy S4? You’ll need to wait until May

Spint and T-Mobile showed their hand earlier this week. Verizon’s isn’t looking good but they do have more LTE than everyone else combined so good things come to those who wait.

AT&T announces record Android sales in fourth quarter results

att-sign-28AT&T just announced its fourth quarter results highlighting record smartphones sales and a record 8.6 million iPhone activations. In its results, the company said it had its best quarter ever for Android sales, but didn’t highlight specific numbers like it did for iPhone. It all added up to record sales, the most ever among any U.S. carrier, with 10.2 million units sold during the quarter:

In the quarter, the company activated a record 8.6 million iPhones, with 16 percent new to AT&T. The company also had its best-ever sales quarter for Android smartphones.

AT&T also reported its largest increase in three years for subscribers with 780,000 wireless postpaid net adds and a total increase in total net wireless subscribers of  1.1 million. As for LTE, the company said 55 percent of postpaid smartphone customers were 4G-capable devices while LTE should be rolled out to 250 million or more people by the end of 2013: Read more

Images & specs for Sony’s 5-inch, full HD Yuga smartphone surface

We have been hearing a lot of rumors about Sony’s unannounced “Yuga C6603″ smartphone, and today Russian site Mobile-review.com posted images of the 5-inch, Android 4.1.2 powered device. According to the report, which also includes a number of benchmark tests, the Sony Yuga’s packs in a full HD (1,920 x 1,080) 5-inch display with 440 ppi and Sony’s Mobile Bravia Engine. The display also features on-screen buttons running along the bottom. Other specs include 2GBs of RAM, LTE, a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU, Adreno 320 graphics, USB Host support, and micro HDMI and microSD for support up to 128GB. This could definitely be an interesting flagship device for Sony in 2013. It’s also sporting a 12 megapixel camera according to the site.

Head over to Mobile-review for more images and benchmarks. We’ll be keeping our eyes out for the device early next month at CES.  Read more

LTE enabled on Nexus 4 in Canada, here’s how to do it

While lack of LTE connectivity in the Nexus 4 seemed to be one of the biggest controversies surrounding the device’s launch, Canadians will at least get to access local LTE networks on the device for now. As discovered by Canadian blog Tekgadg, which posted the video above (via TechCrunch), enabling support for LTE by simply switching the network type in settings seemed to do the trick. Unfortunately, the trick, which only supports Canadian networks running LTE Band 4 put o 20MHz, could possibly be shutdown by Google in the near future. Until then, those who want to enable LTE on their Nexus 4 will have to type in *#*#4636#*#* to access the necessary preference pane. TechCrunch has step-by-step instructions, if you’re interested.