Gigabyte has today announced their latest PC to hit the market, the BRIX customisable Mini PC was first unveiled at this year’s CES, sized just as small as its name suggests, the BRIX packs the latest Ivy Bridge chipset, in either the Core i3, i5 or i7 format.

Alongside which it also packs a choice of SSD and the RAM, as well as your choice of the operating system.

There’s also two USB 3.0 ports, a HDMI-in, Mini Displayport and a VESA mount.

The BRIX Mini PC will be set at a range of prices depending on the specs you chose, for more information you can head over to Gigabyte’s website here.

Already we have heard a lot of rumors that Huawei will be announced the new Ascend P6 at their press event next month, taking place on June 18th.

And that looks to be true as a press shot has now been leaked on the Twitter account we all know too well, @evleaks.

Some previous rumors suggest that the Ascend P6 will include a 4.7 inch HD display with a 1280 x 720 pixel resolution, 1.5GHz quad core processor, 2GB of RAM and will apparently run Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean.

Alongside which rumors also suggest the handset will pack an 8 megapixel rear facing camera, a 2 megapixel front facing camera and will be available in either black, white or pink.

However there’s no news on a release date or pricing yet, or even any official confirmation, so we will just have to wait a little longer for that.

Source Android Community

[UPDATE] Microsoft have now confirmed to GameSpot that the service was not hacked:

“Xbox Live has not been hacked, Microsoft can confirm that there has been no breach to the security of our Xbox Live service.”

If you were just on Xbox LIVE, like I was you may have noticed that it’s currently impossible to sign into an account, with test connection failing to secure an internet connection, well just after which a hacker by the name of Reckz0r posted the following Tweet:

If true this could leave over 48 million user accounts exposed, however as of yet their has been no confirmation from Microsoft about this issue.

UPDATE:  Apparently this issue is just for  Virgin Media customers, but the Xbox Support Twitter account has said that they are working on it:

Mailbox has now been updated to be compatible with the iPad, optimised to work on the larger screen, breaking the new via their blog, “You asked, we listened. Mailbox is now available for iPad, so you can swipe your way to inbox zero on all your iOS devices.”

Version 1.3 is available to download from the iTunes App Store, and includes various other bugs fixes alongside the iPad compatibility.

In order to boost their network capacity, BSkyB has today announced a new agreement with Virgin Media Business costing £49 million, and will allow Sky to boost around a third of Sky’s nationwide broadband network.

The contract will last for five years and will see the core of Sky’s network boosted by the end of 2013, resulting in superfast and delivering speeds of up to 10GBps, using Virgin Media Business’ High Capacity Services product.

The director of Sky Network Services at BSkyB said the following about the contract:

“As we see traffic on our network grow significantly year-on-year, this agreement provides us with the capacity we need to keep innovating for customers and as such are committed to maintaining our high-capacity network.”

So you should start seeing faster broadband speeds if you subscribe with Sky by the end of the year.

Rovio has today announced that both Angry Birds Space and Angry Birds Space HD will now be free for a limited time, due to some fixes they have had to implement in the latest update.

If you have yet to download the app, or even hear about it, Angry Birds Space takes the normal Angry Birds game into space, with 160 levels, new birds and more power ups its more of an extension from previous games.

After the limited free period is over, Angry Birds Space will cost 69p and the HD version will be $2.99 in the US.

Check out the trailer below for a quick look.

Earlier today the site, Mobile News reported that UK pre-orders had been cancelled in the UK, reporting that Facebook itself had decided to hold off on releasing the handset across the pond, and not the decision from HTC or EE/ Orange.

Of course EnGadget then decided to check this story out for themselves after hearing reports from their sources that Mobile News was correct, they decided to contact both EE and HTC to see what’s going on.

Shortly after which they received the following reply from EE, confirming the rumors and even explaining that the handset had been held back due to poor customer feedback in the US:

“Following customer feedback, Facebook has decided to focus on adding new customization features to Facebook Home over the coming months. While they are working to make a better Facebook Home experience, they have recommended holding off launching the HTC First in the UK, and so we will shortly be contacting those who registered their interest with us to let them know of this decision. Rest assured, we remain committed to bringing our customers the latest mobile experiences, and we will continue to build on our strong relationship with Facebook so as to offer customers new opportunities in the future.”

Via: EnGadget

Source: Mobile News

HP has today unveiled its latest all-in-one computer, dubbed the Envy Rove 20 it will be available in either 18 or 27 inch sizes, and is fitted with a kick stand that can be adjusted to be laid flat, something that your unlikely to do as it weighs 20 pounds.

The Envy Rove 20 is also fitted with a 10-point capacitive touchscreen, 802.11ac Wi-Fi connectivity, 3 USB ports and a 1TB hybrid hard drive.

There’s no news yet on when the Envy Rove 20 will be available or for how much it will be priced, however it is expected to be priced under $1,000 in the US.

Microsoft has today unveiled a new set of Sculpt Mouse’s for Windows 8, the first being the Sculpt Comfort Mouse which Microsoft have said is the perfect companion to the Sculpt Comfort Keyboard which was first announced in Autumn 2012.

The mouse features a touch-sensitive blue strip on the side, which will launch the Windows 8 Start Screen when pressed, connecting to your PC via Bluetooth, there’s no need for a USB receiver.

The blue strip can also be used with various gestures, swipe up and you can cycle through open applications, swipe down and you will reveal all your open apps.

The Sculpt Comfort Mouse will launch in June $39.95.

Second in the list is the Sculpt Mobile Mouse, which is the new version of the Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500, and includes a Windows start button on the top, and connects via a wireless USB receiver.

It also features four-way scrolling, allowing you to tilt the scroll wheel left or right to scroll sideways.

The Sculpt Mobile Mouse will be available in May for $29.95.

No UK prices or release dates have been announced yet.

Although Clove have already mentioned that they will be stocking the new Mega 6.3 from Samsung, up to today no carriers within the UK have actually confirmed its availability, however that’s all changed as Three have now confirmed that they will be stocking the handset.

Revealed in a video they released on YouTube, Three explain some of its new features that include  a 1.7GHz dual-core processor, 3,200mAh battery, 8GB/ 16GB of in-built storage, 4G LTE connectivity and of course that 6.3 inch screen.

They have not however confirmed a release date or a pricing structure for the handset just yet.

Clove did however mention that the handset will be available in July for £459.99 unlocked, so you can probably expect the price to be a little lower for SIM-free on the carrier, or around £40 a month for Pay Monthly.

Apple has today confirmed that their World Wide Developer Conference 2013 keynote will begin on June 10th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Whilst we already knew the event will be starting on June 10th, we had no idea as to when the keynote would actually start, but now according to AllThingsD, Apple’s new product line-up will be announced on the same day.

This post is part of the thread: WWDC 2013 – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.

Denon have today announced their new top-end line of AV receivers dubbed the X Series, consisting of five new units that start with the AVR-X500 at £249 and ending with the AVR-X4000 for £1,199.

The AVR-X500 will launch in May, and will feature five channels each at 140W, with DolbyTrueHD and dts-HD Master Audio Decoder technology, as well as 4 HDMI inputs, 2 optical inputs and a revamped display and new GUI.

Next up is the XVR-X1000 will launch in May for £349, this is includes five HDMI ports, five 145W channels, as well as DLNA, AirPlay, Spotify and vTuner, as well as the ability to stream photos from Flickr and connectivity with the Denon Remote App as well as Audyssey’s MultiEQ XT technology.

Next up is the XVR-X2000 which will include a seven channel receiver with 150W per channel, there’s also seven HDMI inputs with 3D and 4K supports, the X200 will be priced at £499.

Second from last on the line up is the X3000, releasing in June for £799 it has seven channels with 180W per channel receiver, with Spotify and Last.fm connectivity, as well as Audyssey 7.1 channel processing and Dolby TrueHD technology, dts-HD Master Audio and ProLogic llz processing.

Last on the list is the AVR-X4000 it will release in June for £1,199, it has seven 200W channels, with Denon Link HD technology, it has Audyssey processing with 9.2 channels, 3 HDMI outputs, it will be available in black and silver, however the rest of the range will just be available in black.

If you have been waiting for it for some time now, you might be pleased to hear that the Assassin’s Creed movie release date has finally been announced by Ubisoft, set for release on May 22nd 2015.

Sony Pictures will be producing the movie and will be the first time that Ubisoft has made a move into the movie market.

Michael Fasssbender has already been announced to star in the film, however there is yet to be any more details about the movie.

However we should hear more soon.

Source: Slashgear

Logitech have today announced their latest Bluetooth speaker, to join the Ultimate Ears range the new Bluetooth speaker, dubbed the UE Boom Bluetooth Speaker, it has been designed to provide full 360 degree sound, wirelessly from any Bluetooth capable device.

With a range of 50 meters, it measures 4.06 x 4.06 x 10.06 inches, and packs a Lithium-ion rechargeable battery is said to last 15 hours from a single charge.

The Boom Speaker can also be connected with another UE Boom speaker, and linked via the UE Boom application.

The Ultimate Ears Logitech Boom Bluetooth Speaker is available from today from Logitech’s online store for $200.

The Sony Xperia Z is Sony’s next step into the smartphone market, with a completely new and a frankly beautiful design, the Xperia Z takes from previous handsets like the Xperia T and Xperia S, the Xperia Z packs some of the best specs on the market as well as the great design ethics that we have recently seen in Android handsets like the HTC One.

Packing a quad-core 1.5GHzz Snapdragon Krait processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of in-built storage, a 13 megapixel camera, a 5 inch 1080p HD screen with the Bravia Engine in-built, the Xperia Z packs a ton of great features as well as being water and dust resistant.

Probably the best part about the Xperia Z however is its design, its actually one of the best looking Sony handsets we have seen in a long time.

The handset feels premium, made from a mix of plastic and glass, I never had any worries about dropping the phone whilst reviewing it, however the glass does tend to attract a lot of fingerprints, in fact it’s that bad you will have to clean the screen constantly throughout the day.

Sized at 139 x 71 x 7.9mm, the Xperia Z is on the larger size, and can sometimes be hard to hard, although as it is quite thin, so it’s not too much as a struggle, and only weighing 146 grams, it’s not too heavy that it’s uncomfortable to hold.

To aid the phone in being both water and dust resistant all of the ports are covered up with caps, placed along the edge of the phone, you’ll find the headphone jack on the top, the charging and microSD card slot on the left, and SIM card slot on the right.

On the front of the device however, you will find the Xperia Z is actually quite minimalist, only featuring the Sony logo on the top and the front facing sensor placed next to the various sensors.

On the back, you will also find the 13 megapixel rear facing camera, NFC badge, the camera flash light, but you might want to take not that the rear cover is not removable, so there’s no chance in changing the battery.

All of that and the Sony Xperia Z is still quite cheap, in fact Vodafone are currently offering the phone on their 4G-Ready Red plan from free for £42 a month, being 4G Ready, it means that the company will upgrade the plan, allowing for 4G access, beforehand however, you just get the usual unlimited texts, calls and 2GB of data.

If you want too, you can pick up the phone on the deal I just mentioned from the Vodafone site or in store.

Being one of the biggest manufactures of displays, you would quite rightly expect the handset to take advantage of the technologies, Sony already use in a wide variety of their products, featuring a 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution with a pixel density of 441ppi, which although being a TFT display and not a Super AMOLED the screen is very sharp but does lack some off the colour that is featured in other displays, alongside which at an angle the screen does tend to look a lacking.

Running on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean the interface used with the Xperia Z, the handset looks similar to most other handsets within the Xperia line-up, Sony have added their own widgets and use interface, but its not so heavy that you won’t find a lot of the Android features found in stock handsets.

Probably the best custom integration however from Sony is Sony’s ‘Small Apps’ screen, which can be accessed from the multi-app button on the bottom right, once pressed it shows both your currently open applications and a selection of other mini apps along the bottom.

Sony have also added their own touch to the notifications bar, which works the same to any other Android device, but on the Xperia Z you also get various toggles for settings like the WiFi and Bluetooth.

There’s also various themes that you can choose from, which adjust both the lock/ home wallpaper and the accent colours for things like the menu etc, there’s also the usual app drawer, accessible via the dock button at the bottom of the screen.

Below that button you will find three touch icons, one for the ‘small apps’ screen, another is the back button and the third is the home button, which you can hold down and swipe up from to reveal Google Now, Android’s own personal assistant.

Sony have also done great things with the contacts system, only adding a hint of their own design ideas just to give it a new look.

When you first login at setup, contacts can be downloaded automatically from your Google account, which can be accessed by tapping the phone icon on the home screen or in the app drawer, depending on where you place it.

Photos for your contacts can also be brought in from Facebook, and they can be edited to add their birthdays, new numbers or other details.

During my tests, I didn’t find any problems during my tests with the Xperia Z, with no call drops and great connectivity at the start and throughout a call, and to add upon which, the Z also includes HD Voice which makes call quality better on both sides.

The Xperia Z uses Android’s standard messaging application to receive both SMS and MMS communications, however much like the phone application Sony have decided to add their own little touch to its design.

Alongside which there’s a couple of other new functions, allowing you to send your location via Google Maps, or add a doodle of a note or image to your message, right from the app itself.

The keyboard on the Xperia Z is not half bad, the main problem I found with it being the size of the space bar, but apart from that its quite easy to use, and actually looks great, quite similar to the iPhone.

Set out in a QWERTY format, with access to various other keys with the bottom right key, however the Z has its own little feature, allowing you to simply swipe from key to key to type out your message.

Alongside this, predicted words will appear just above the keyboard allowing you to choose the corrected word or select the word you were already working on, selecting words however can be quite the procedure, in fact I haven’t found many other phones that allow you to do this quite as elegant as the iPhone.

The web browser is of course very similar to most other Android phones, using Google’s Chrome browser for Android, it works just as well as you would expect it to, what makes it great however is the connectivity this device provides.

As mentioned before the device has 4G LTE connectivity (I have yet to try that out on this device), it also uses HSDPA+ for those who aren’t on a network currently offering 4G.

With this you can achieve great loading speeds both when on WiFi or on the way to work.

With a 13 megapixel camera on the rear, and a 2.2 megapixel camera on the front, the Sony Xperia Z is a great snapper, shooting at 4128 x 3096 pixels for the rear camera, you end up with a great set of pictures.

There is one thing that really annoying however, the phone doesn’t have a physical shutter button, which can make taking a photo quite a difficult procedure of moving your hand around the touchscreen and trying to keep it out the way of the shooter at the same time, however being accessible from the lockscreen, it can be quickly accessed when needed.

Within the app you will also find a range of enhancements for your photo, actually you will find a ton, with three different modes just for the smile selection, alongside which you will also find panorama modes as well as scene selections and picture effects.

The shutter speed of the camera is okay, but not amazing. Sony does however mention that the camera does pack a Exmor RS sensor, with HDR capablities and an LED flash.

Images  shot from the camera do look pretty impressive, however they do tend to look a little better on the phones screen than on the PC, the LED flash also works okay in some occasions, but as with most phones, it’s not as good as the Lumia 920.

Sample shots:

Of course the Sony Xperia Z’s camera also records video in full HD 1080p resolution at 30fps, video looks okay, but sometimes may find a lot of noise outputed, and even with a light on, sometimes video can look a little dim.

Video stabilization also works great, and videos never really turn out shaky and I was impressed that white balance and the focus could be changed on the fly during recording.

Playing back video on that display is a great experience, there’s no problems with stuff like movie formats and the Xperia Z can playback HD or even SD videos with ease, and when you take note of the addition of the BRAVIA Engine 2 SD videos can be up-scaled to HD.

As you would expect, the music player that comes with the Xperia Z is good, and a simple drag and drop interface for the PC makes it easy to add new content to it.

Alongside that you will also find that the application has been branded heavily with the old Walkman brand, which means you end up with a great looking music player, in which album art takes center stage.

Within the music library  you can view your music as sorted by either the artist or album, or if logged into Facebook, it can even show you what our friends like to listen to, as well as allowing you to share what you like to, right from the app.

The speaker for the Xperia Z is located at the bottom right of the handset, a placement which I didn’t find to work to great when it comes to quality, and the speaker is actually extremely quiet, with quite shoddy audio quality.

I suspect this might be due to the waterproofing of the phone.

However when you used headphones, you will soon find that the Xperia Z comes out on top when it comes to a media player.

Personally I never use the speaker on any of my devices, which are normally connected up to various Bluetooth capable speakers around the home, so the loudspeaker being so bad on the Xperia Z doesn’t really bother me, and I’m willing to bet it won’t bother many of you guys either.

What I really care about is the provided audio experience, as ever since the iPhone was first released I have been using a smartphone to play music more or less everywhere I go.

To put it simply, the Z works great when used with headphones, and with added ClearAudio+ technology, music sounds crisp and clear.

Alongside this, you can also go into the settings to change things like ambiance and even the EQ.

As with any smartphone on the market today, how long its battery lasts simply depends on how you use it, however Sony do claim some times for how long the Xperia Z will last from its fully charged 2330mAh battery, claiming 11 hours total battery life on talk time and 550 hours on standby.

Which I would say is about right, you will defiantly struggle to get anywhere near a full days charge with this device, and with the lack of a replaceable battery, to some this could prove to be an annoyience.

The included Stamina mode is extremely useful in trying to help manage the battery life  and keep you from charging for another couple hours, something I found worked extremely well.

Overall, I am a huge fan of the Sony Xperia Z for one main reason, it breaks the common mold that Android phones seem to have attracted for some time now and it actually looks great, even on par with the iPhone 5 or maybe even the HTC One, however the fingerprint attracting glass is kinda annoying, however with a great set of specs as well as that water and dust resistant body, the Xperia Z is certainly something to boast about.

I would defiantly recommend the Xperia Z to anyone looking for a new Android phone, however I’m just not sure if I would recommend it over something like the HTC One, or possibly the iPhone 5.

By the way here’s our table of benchmarks for the Sony Xperia Z:

Product Shots:

Disclosure: Vodafone sent us the Sony Xperia Z for review purposes.