Samsung unveils Galaxy S Plus, ticks at 1.4GHz

Samsung has been treating the Russian market with an unusually warm heart lately. The other day they announced the Star II Duos and today it has pulled the veil on the special Galaxy S Plus, with both targeted to launch in Russia.

The phone will be marketed as the Galaxy S 2011 edition on the Russian market but it should also be available to other markets as the Galaxy S Plus as the previous leak of the device suggests.

The new Galaxy S phone boasts a 1.4GHz Snapdragon processor by Qualcomm - yep, at least that's what unofficial sources claimed a while back. The Qualcomm MSM8255T used in the Samsung Galaxy S Plus is not only the first mobile single-core solution to reach 1.4GHz but according to Qualcomm, it also consumes the same power as little power as current 1GHz CPUs. The chipset however makes use of the older-gen Adreno 205 GPU.

The Galaxy S Plus runs the latest iteration of Android - 2.3 Gingerbread. The screen remains the same 4-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen as the other Galaxy S variants.

Connectivity is trivial for Android with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS. The handset will cost 21 990 rubles ($781 / €539) and will hit Russian stores in May.

A nice upgrade over the original Galaxy S is the metallic back. In case you wonder about what other differences to the original Galaxy S, you are welcome to our compare tool.

Here is what 2011 holds for Windows Phone 7 - on video

MIX11, Microsoft's developer conference devoted to all things Windows Phone, announced the latest features that developers will be able to get their hands on for free from May.

Among other things, Joe Belfiore (Corporate VP for Windows Phone Program Management) spoke of the new functionality made open to devs including multitasking for background programming, audio and file transfer and fast app switching (including audio playback for HTML5 webpages).

Deep phone integration is also on the cards meaning, WP7 users will get to see more apps making use of Live Tiles and push notifications via Live Agents running in the background. Hardware access is more readily available as well with new access to the camera and sensors (the gyroscope and compass) via the Motion Sensor library meaning apps can make greater use of your Windows Phone's hardware.

Belfiore also made a brief mention of the Windows Phone update issues that had plagued some users (namely those with Omnia 7's) before welcoming Nokia's Symbian developers and going on to demo accelerated webpage rendering against iOS and Android.

To show just how useful all these new tools could potentially be they followed up the announcement with some demos, including concepts of Spotify, Layar, Qantas and even Skype.

The VoIP giant that was initially cited as being "nowhere near" Windows Phone 7, now looks to be coming to users as soon as summer this year. Belfiore was quoted saying, "Skype will be coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform this fall" so there's no doubt that it's on the way and this all means another step to making Windows Phone a stronger OS contender.

LG Optimus 2X to get Gingerbread update in June or July

The LG Optimus 2X will be getting updated to Android 2.3 Gingerbread this summer. That’s according to the FAQ section of LG Denmark’s support site. The release date for the update isn’t as specific as some of you might have hoped for, but it's still something.

The timeframe for the Gingerbread update of LG’s Tegra 2 powered phone is June-July with a promise for a more exact date when the launch nears. That puts the LG Optimus 2X update after the LG Optimus One P500 update.

Later is better than never but the competition is either running Gingerbread already or will soon launch with Gingerbread out of the box.

It’s not just the LG Optimus 2X either – the Optimus 3D is slated to launch with Froyo too.