Vodafone UK introduces the modestly-priced Smart II

 

Vodafone UK today introduced the Smart II, its budget-friendly Android smartphone priced at a cool £70 on pay-as-you-go plans. Targeted at first-time smartphone buyers, the Smart II is the successor to Vodafone’s original SMART. The Smart II comes spec’d in line with its price tag, and includes a 3.2-inch display at 480 x 320 HVGA resolution, an 800 MHz processor, a 3MP camera, and Gingerbread underneath the hood. The Smart II is available now at the source link and in stores in both dark grey and white. Vodafone's promotional video can be found after the break.

Source: Vodafone UK

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CyanogenMod introduces new mascot: Cid

After a long run with skateboarding Bugdroid "Andy" as their mascot, the team behind popular custom firmware CyanogenMod has unveiled a new robotic character to carry the CM banner forward. His name is Cid, and he's the little robot guy you see in the image above.

Cid -- a play on CID, or CyanogenMod ID -- is the result of the CM developers inviting fans to submit character designs over the past few weeks, and he's based on a creation by CM fan Caio Alves. Cid is a little more humanoid than Android's well-established Bugdroid character. Alves says he wanted the design to feel like "an evolution of what we had before", adding "it's a huge challenge to try to evolve something people know and love."

In an official blog post, the CyanogenMod team says it wants its new mascot to embody the idea of CM being more than just "stock Android on a zillion devices". This ties in with the devs' recent efforts to establish their work as a stand-alone OS based on Android, rather than just another custom ROM.

So as CyanogenMod 9 development continues, we'll be seeing a lot more of Cid. Hit the source link for more background on how Cid was brought to life.

Source: CyanogenMod

Huawei introduces the Ascend D quad, dubs it the World's Fastest Smartphone

Three new phones in the Huawei D series, including first quad-core handset

Huawei has been making some moves the past little while and now they've gone ahead an announced their latest series of Ascend devices that will be coming in April to China, Australia, Europe, Asia-Pacific, North and South America, and the Middle East in Q2 2012.

The Ascend D quad series of devices comes from Huawei and carries some pretty impressive specs to go along with it. They would have to be if Huawei is going to be putting a tag line such as the World's Fastest Smartphone on it.

• Huawei's K3V2 1.2GHz Ascend D quad /1.5GHz Ascend D1 quad-core chip and power management system.


• 720P high definition touchscreen (PPI 330)


• Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound and Audience earSmart™ voice technology


• 8-megapixel BSI rear-facing camera, 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera


• 1080p full HD video-capture and playback capabilities

In total, there is three devices in the series -- Ascend D quad, Ascend D quad XL, Ascend D1, each with their own set of specs that slightly differ than the other. can check out the full press release past the break to get a full run down of the models in the series and stay tuned for a better look. We're sitting in with Huawei right now at BCN.