Samsung Galaxy Round with curved display goes official

Shortly after we saw it in leaked press images, Samsung took the wraps off the Galaxy Round – the world’s first smartphone with curved display. The peculiarly designed handset will be available in Korea on October 10.

Undoubtedly, the biggest highlight of the Samsung Galaxy Round is its curved display. The latter is a 5.7” Super Flexible AMOLED unit with Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels). You may remember that back in the day the Samsung-made Nexus S also had a slight curve going on, but in that case it was just the screen glass that was curved, and not the panel itself.

 

Samsung Galaxy Round official photos

The rest of the Samsung Galaxy Round are quite Note 3-ish: there is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC with quad-core Krait CPU clocked at 2.3GHz, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in memory, and microSD card slot. There’s a 13MP camera on the back of the device, a 2MP front-facing unit, as well as full connectivity suite on board.

The Samsung Galaxy Round measures are 151.1 x 79.6 x 7.9mm, while its weight tips the scale at 154g. The handset is powered by a 2,800mAh battery.

Update: Here are some live shots of the Samsung Galaxy Round.

   
Samsung Galaxy Round live photos

The Samsung Galaxy Round boots Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, dressed in Samsung’s latest TouchWIz UI. Samsung has naturally added a couple of tricks to utilize the curved screen of the device. They include Bounce UX for controlling the device’s music player by tapping on its sides, and Gravity Effect for interacting with the display by rolling it. You can check out the latter in action at the video below.

The Samsung Galaxy Round will be available in Luxury Brown for KRW1,089,000 (approximately $1,000). More colors will be available soon.

Unfortunately, currently there are no plans for international availability (as in outside South Korea).

Is Lenovo planning to buy HTC?

Newspapers in Korea and China have both reported that Lenovo and HTC have been in talks over a partnership or sale since August.

HTC doesn't have an official statement on the rumours but the Korean manufacturer told the WSJ that is is "not interested in selling" and neither HTC nor Lenovo would say whether they have a different kind of partnership under way.

It's no secret that HTC's bank balance is in freefall as it reported its first ever loss earlier this week, despite the fact that it has made what TechRadar deems to be theworld's best phone in the form of the HTC One.

Fire sale

Top smartphone skills haven't seen HTC nabbing a seat at the top table with the iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S4 though.

Last month the company sold off its Beats shares for a sweet $265 million cash injection (around £165m / AU$284m).

As for Lenovo, while it still rides high in the ailing PC market, it hasn't had much luck on the smartphone or tablet side of things; linking up with HTC could give it a boost in this arena.

We'd be very surprised to see an outright sale a la Microsoft/Nokia but a partnership could be on the cards. Neither company is commenting for now, however, so we'll just have to wait and see.

How much will Nexus 5 cost?

We're all waiting patiently for the Google Nexus 5 to arrive and while the search giant hasn't given us any firm confirmation that it's on the way, the tsunami of leaks, speculation and rumors makes us pretty confident of its existence.

It looks like Google is planning on launching the next installment of its smartphone series sometime this month, and while that's all well and good what we really want to know is how much it's going to cost us.

We've been going through all the chatter surrounding the Nexus 5 in our dedicated hub for the smartphone, and from there we've picked out some key pointers to help us discover the potential price.

• What you need to know: Nexus 5 release date, news and rumours

Nexus 4 price drop

The Nexus 4 launched at the incredibly low price (considering the spec sheet) of $299 (£239, AU$349) and $349 (£279, AU$399) for the 8GB and 16GB models respectively, which have since seen a healthy price cutmaking them even cheaper.

Google's decision to drop the prices may be part of the process of clearing the way for the Nexus 5 to rock up at the older, higher price point as well as getting rid of stock.

Nexus 5 pricing hints

The chance of the Nexus 5 inheriting the original pricing structure of its predecessor has been given more credence after reports appeared online suggesting the same thing.

An unnamed source leaked the information to PhoneArena in dollars and while some have made a direct conversion of the touted $299 price to around £185/AU$315 they're forgetting the taxes and other costs which are applied.

If this is the correct US price the Nexus 5 won't be as cheap as the conversions suggest in the UK and Australia - with the original pricing of the Nexus 4 a much better guide.

Other rumors have hinted that the Nexus 5 would arrive at half the cost of the iPhone 5S (that's around £275, $446, AU$473), which would make it a little dearer than expected.

Money saving design

From the various photo (and video) leaks claiming to show off the Nexus 5 it looks as though Google (and manufacturer LG) are planning on mimicking the design of the new Nexus 7 tablet.

This would mean no glass rear with fancy disco ball effect, instead replaced by a rubberized back providing a lot of grip but little in the way of premium appeal.

The transition to rubber and plastic could be an attempt by Google to keep the price of the Nexus 5 down, avoiding the more expensive metal cladding you find on the HTC One and iPhone 5S. Cutting costs in design could also allow for better tech under the hood.

New Nexus 7

It's not just the Nexus 4 which sports a low price tag with Google's tablets - the Nexus 7 (2012) and Nexus 10 - also coming in at an affordable level.

The new Nexus 7 is an enticing proposition and it has inherited the same pricing structure as its predecessor, which provides more support to the theory that the Nexus 5 will cost the same as the Nexus 4 did when it launched.

Cash in the apps

We've got to remember that Google isn't looking to make money directly from the hardware it sells, it's looking to get Android in the hands of as many consumers as possible so it can create an income from the Google Play store.

Being able to offer its Nexus devices at such competitively low prices means it can shift a lot of them and thus in the long term there's more people spending money on its platform rather than on iOS 7, Windows Phone 8 orBlackBerry 10.

That means it's not totally out the question that the Nexus 5 could arrive at a potentially lower price point than its predecessor - and if Google could launch it at the current price of the Nexus 4 (it starts at £159, $199, AU$249) alongside the rumored spec sheet then it could take the market by storm.

We don't think Google will go this low at launch as it would begin to cannibalize the already well established lower end of the Android market, but never say never.

Sony Xperia Z1 rumored to get Android 4.4 update in November

It seems Sony is already working on the Android 4.4 update for the Xperia Z1 smartphone, according to the latest bit of rumor, the 4.4 update, named KitKat, will be released for the company's flagship device in November 7. It will then eventually be released to other devices, such as the Xperia Z Ultra at an unknown date.

The Android 4.4 update was announced very recently by Google and we know very little about it as of now other than it's name. Which is why it's heartening to see that Sony has already began working on it and will be releasing it as early as next month, assuming the rumors are true.

This also suggests that we are not far from the announcement of the next Nexus device, as that's usually when we get to see the next version of Android simultaneously.