Fairphone Comes to the UK for £250
Not too long ago, the Fairphone was designed with ethically conscious design goals in mind, and now, it’s coming to the UK, for £250. For that price, you get a phone that’s certified conflict-free and built using well, fair materials for a fair price. Having said that, you don’t get a lot of smartphone for £250. It’s a 4.5-inch 920 x 540 device running Android (of the 4.2 variety) and it’s powered by the uninspiring MT6589 chip from MediaTek. There’s 16GB of internal storage and even the packaging is responsible. While £250 is a lot, you can choose to get the device on the Phone Co-op, the UK’s publicly-owned network for free with a plan of £22 a month, which is a much better deal than paying £250 for the device outright. Still, this is more about how good a smartphone is and it’s often easy to forget just what goes into our shiny gadgets, and if responsible electronics means a lot to you, then the Fairphone is the one to buy.
Amazon Announces Same-Day Click & Collect for Prime Members
So, let’s say you’re an Amazon Prime member and next-day delivery just isn’t good enough. If you’re in the UK you can order something before 11:45AM and pick it up before 4PM the same day from your nearby Click & Collect station, which includes around 500 different stores up and down the country. Now, if you order before 7:45PM in the evening, your parcel should be able to pick up by 6:30AM the next morning, which is pretty impressive. You’ll need to check where your local Click & Collect is eligible for this sort of thing, but if you’re already a Prime member this is certainly nice to see.
Dual-Screen YotaPhone Launches in India Through FlipKart Today
The first generation of the YotaPhone is launching today in India for RS 23,999 which isn’t too bad a price for a phone that pulls double-duty. There’s an eInk display around the back of the phone that can be used to store info like shopping lists, todo lists, missed calls, boarding passes and that sort of thing. Under the hood there’s a 1.7 Ghz dual-core Snapdragon S4 and Android 4.2 running a slightly modified version of Google’s vision. It’s launching today in India and will be available exclusively through Flipkart. Let us know in the comments below if the YotaPhone is something you’re interested in.
New Galaxy Note 4 Orders Won’t Ship from the Carphone Warehouse ‘Till October 27th
If the Galaxy Note 4 has been on your radar from Samsung, you might want to rethink that decision you made not to pre-order it, at least with Carphone Warehouse that is. If you’re looking to pick up the latest Note from Carphone Warehouse you might be a little disappointed to here that the Galaxy Note 4 won’t be shipping till October 27th now, as demand has somewhat surprisingly, been quite high for this latest iteration in the line. That’s ten days from now, and isn’t really all that much of a long wait, but it’d be nice to see Samsung up their stock levels for this year’s Galaxy Note.
Google Keyboard V3.2 Adds Support for 8 New Languages; Including Bengali
Following on from last week’s SwiftKey update, the Google Keyboard is now adding more languages to its fairly wide range already on offer. Those included are Bengali (India), Hindi (Compact), Kannada (India), Malayalam (India), Marathi (India), Tamil (India), Tamil (Singapore), and Telugu (India). It’s nice to see some more Indian languages here, especially with the launch of Android One, which will more than likely be relying on the Google Keyboard as their main form of input. Version 3.2 of the Google Keyboard should be available in the Play Store very shortly.
First-Generation Motorola Moto G Gets Price Cut to Just RS 8,999 in India
The original Moto G was a device that I was particularly fond of, with some of the best specs you could find in a device at that sort of price, the Moto G was unbeatable, until the new version came along. Which now means the Moto G in India has been cut to just RS 8,999 which is incredibly cheap. For a device that still has a great battery life and will soon be getting upgraded to Android L, it’s no wonder that Motorola has quickly risen up the ladder in the Indian smartphone market.
4G LTE to Speed Up in the UK as EE and Vodafone Ready LTE-Advanced
4G LTE has become fairly fast in the UK, but it’s about to get even quicker as EE and Vodafone look to introduce new LTE technologies. Starting with EE, the UK’s largest 4G network has been trialing carrier aggregation (which is the premise behind LTE-Advanced) to use spectrum in both the 1800 mHz and the 2.6 gHz bands in order to deliver faster speeds. EE has been testing the new service in London’s Tech City but the network now says that a rollout is expected to go live for everyone some time in October. Meanwhile, Vodafone is using carrier aggregation of 800 mHz and 2.6 gHz in Birmingham, Manchester and London to deliver faster speeds and more importantly, more reliable connections. If you have a phone from the last year or so that you signed up to a 4G contract with, you shouldn’t have to change anything to take advantage of the new speeds when they roll out nationwide.