Who's Behind the Orange London Intel-Based Smartphone?

This year, we'll be seeing Intel-made processors start making a comeback in the smartphone market. Thanks to the CES, we've already had the opportunity to see some of this hardware in action, getting some hands-on time with the Intel-based Lenovo K800. More recently, we learned of Motorola's interest in producing an Android handset also based on Intel silicon. Today we may have another such Intel Android on our hands, supposedly arriving as the London on carrier Orange.

Information on the London was first revealed by an Orange subscriber who had been asked to participate in a survey about future products. As a result, there's no guarantee that the carrier will actually release the phone, especially if it doesn't like what it heard from these survey results, but it's probably a likely outcome.

Orange loves giving phones its own branding; who's the original manufacturer here? It could easily be a ZTE or Huawei model, or even the Lenovo K800 itself; Android buttons aside, it's externally similar to what we saw at the CES.

Supposedly, the Orange London will run a 1.6GHz Intel chip, feature an eight-megapixel camera, include 16GB of on-board storage, and have a 4.03-inch Gorilla Glass screen (which makes us think this might not be the K800, which is supposed to have a 4.5-inch display).

Orange certainly talks-up the London in the text it prepared, describing the phone as being the fastest handset anywhere when it comes to web browsing, and having exceptional camera capabilities. It's all very intriguing, and now has us anxiously waiting to here more about this model. 

PlayBook Leak Corroborates Update Release Date Rumor

Earlier this week, we heard some new rumors about just when RIM would release its PlayBook OS 2.0 update. We'd already heard of today, February 17, as a likely candidate, but more recent rumors suggested that the software wouldn't drop until February 21. Obviously, today's arrived with no update in sight, so we've been waiting to hear about either a new rumored release date or confirmation for February 21. It's not hard-and-fast official, but a leak out today lends some more credence to the software getting here next Tuesday.

The documentation here discusses PlayBook pricing leading up to the PlayBook OS 2.0 launch, which is again noted as occurring on February 21. Things even get more specific than we could have hoped for, claiming that users everywhere will be able to access the update at the stroke of 4:01am that morning. Of course, that tidbit would be a whole lot more useful if we had any idea just which timezone it was supposed to be in. For what it's worth, RIM's Waterloo, Ontario headquarters is in Eastern time.

In addition to the new PlayBook software, this leak also claims next Tuesday will see the arrival of BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, the cross-platform mobile device management platform we learned about last fall. 

Samsung Epic 4G Touch ICS ROM Pops Up In Forums

After the Samsung Galaxy S II had its official (but not final) Ice Cream Sandwich ROMs leaked one after the other, rumor had it that the Sprint variant, the Epic 4G Touch had some ICS goodness in the works. Now that ROM seems to have made its way into the forums.

The Stock ROM, FB09, deodexed and pre-rooted has been uploaded containing Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich, just like its European cousin. If you want to try this out on your Epic 4G Touch (while you understand that there's a risk involved of you permanently damaging it), you can head over to the source link below where you will find instructions, feedback as well as the download link.

iOS 5.1 Pre-GM Shots Reveal Japanese Siri, Camera From

After watching beta releases of iOS 5.1 head out to developers over the past several months, it's finally looking like Apple's preparing for a public release, likely to coincide with the launch of the iPad 3. While nothing's definite just yet, some signs suggest that the release could happen early next month. Today some images from what's supposedly a pre-GM version of iOS 5.1 have been released, claiming to confirm some last-minute feature additions. 

There's already been talk that Siri was about to see its world expand a little, with the introduction of support for Japanese. This screenshot comes from a Portuguese iPhone, but whip out a translation app and you can quickly see that Japanese appears to be added to Siri's settings. 

The other change noted in this iOS build is a change to how you bring up the Camera app directly from the lockscreen. Simply swipe upwards on the camera icon, and you'll apparently jump straight to Camera, without needing the time to fully-unlock your phone and possibly miss the shot you were hoping to take. 

Supposedly, these images were obtained from a cellular carrier with early access to iOS builds. 

LG X3 Upcoming Tegra 3 ICS Phone Benchmark Results

It's not like we didn't already see the LG X3. It was the second quad-core phone revealed after the HTC Edge which became the HTC Endeavor. With a Tegra 3 chip at its core, the X3 will pack, according to what we've already seen, a 4.7-inch screen of 720x1280 pixels, 16GB of internal storage, eight-megapixel shooter coupled with a 1.3-megapixel webcam and Android Ice Cream Sandwich on top of the silicone. 

As you can see in the screenshot below, the X3 is capable of 4412 points in the new Quadrant version 2. This is a solid score but if you come to think of it, our Samsung Galaxy S II running the leaked Ice Cream Sandwich ROM scores easily above 4200 (on the same version of Quadrant). However, four cores (actually five) are better than two if you come to think of it. We'll be there at MWC to tell you all about it.