Nvidia has started sending out invites to its MWC 2012 event, that seems to be about quad core phones, among others. Under the tagline “Nvidia quad core firsts continue at MWC”, we get to see a picture of a guy holding a smartphone in his hands, that may just be one of the first Tegra 3 handsets shown in Barcelona.

There were already a couple of Tegra 3 tablets shown at CES 2012 and now Nvidia wants to give us a taste of its technology on the smaller screens. LG already has the X3 quad core handset leaked and ready for showcasing in two weeks, while HTC is rumored to go with Qualcomm this time. Samsung has the Exynos to rely on, when it comes to quad core, so I guess Nvidia will have to partner with the likes of LG, Huawei or Acer. Lenovo and Intel seemed like a match made in heaven at CES, so they’ll probably keep using Intel’s CPUs.

Texas Instruments is also a rival to look out for, since they’ve been powering quite a bunch of decent handsets and tablets lately, including the Galaxy Nexus and Motorola Xoom 2. Nvidia ruled the smartphone market last year, being the favourite dual core CPU on Android phones, but will it do a repeat this year?

Rybarczyk Francois imagined a concept of a HTC phone with an optional battery module that you can detach and charge separately. Thus, when you attach it to the handset you’ll give it the extra power it needs. He also imagined a future where we use no wires and you can simply plug in the phone to a power source, without requiring an extra wire. Here’s the device:

This HTC concept uses a magnesium unibody chassis and its design also involves a lower back side imprinted with an unique pattern, done by machining. This model looks a bit like the recently leaked HTC Edge quad core phone and it keeps the usual HTC lines and elegance. The design imagined this unit both with Windows Phone and Android, but I fancy the letter more, because of the way it integrates those capacitive keys. The idea of the battery module inserted into the phone is even more useful when you think of all those LTE smartphones that drain their batteries so fast.

Also, with all the wireless syncing going on, we’re one step away from getting rid of the USB cable, so why not get rid of it for good and simply plug the phone’s charging socket into the power source and get rid of other accessories such as charger and cables. What do you say?

Nokia is expected to unveil at least one new high end smartphone at Mobile World Congress, an event that starts in about two weeks in Barcelona. This is the biggest tech show of the year, so it’s bound to contain some novelty. It will take place in Barcelona and span from February 27th to March 1st.

The info about the new Nokia high end device comes from Forbes, quoting insiders from the industry. Nokia’s MWC presentations will show us what to expect in 2012 and I’m sure that their next big thing will be related to Windows Phone or maybe even Windows 8 if it’s a tablet. Like all major companies in this playing field, Nokia is tight lipped about what they’ll announce in Barcelona. Forbes also says that a partner of Nokia’s was the one announcing the product that will come at MWC 2012, while also saying it will run “an unusual software feature”, that’s usually found on high end smartphones.

Could it be a new type of LTE device specifically created for Europe? Or maybe it will have a 720p display? Many have said that we’re to expect here the Nokia Lumia 910, an European version of the Lumia 900 with a 12 megapixel camera and HSPA+ connectivity. If you want the clear details, know that Nokia’s press conference will take place on February 27th in the morning. Keep in mind that we could also witness the launch of a hot new Symbian phone with a camera that will make it the successor of the N8 model.

LG just teased a brand new device that we’ll be seeing in Barcelona at the end of the month and this time it’s a 5 inch device, that could serve as a rival for the Galaxy Note. I’m talking about the LG Optimus Vu, that will be accompanied by the likes of the Optimus 3D 2 and the quad core X3 phone at MWC 2012.

The teaser below showed up on LG’s Korean blog and the unique aspect about the phone is its rare 4:3 inch aspect ratio. LG Optimus Vu features a 5 inch 1024 x 768 IPS display, 1GB of RAM, 8 GB of internal storage and a dual core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S3 processor. The OS of choice is Android 2.3 Gingerbread and we also have among the specs NFC and an 8 megapixel camera. Another 4:3 aspect ratio device was the Pantech Rocket, that failed to take off in AT&T’s offer.

No idea if the LG Vu will ever leave Korea, but if it does, it could prove to be a Samsung Galaxy Note rival, since I’m expecting a very reasonable pricing here, considering the specs are underwhelming. A stylus wouldn’t hurt, either… Here’s the video teaser:

PocketNow has just got their hands on a brand new LG Windows Phone unit, dubbed Miracle. All they have right now is the picture below and some specs, but this is a more familiar model than you think, since some of you may know it as the LG Fantasy, first detailed last July. The LG Miracle is supposed to be a mid-range handset with a 4 inch display.

The real novelty here is the fact that the screen uses NOVA technology, a first for the Windows Phone segment. LG Miracle supports a WVGA resolution, has a 1GHz processor, 8 GB of storage, a 1.3MP front camera and 5MP back camera. These are all standard WP features, so nothing surprising. On the connectivity side we get 14.4Mbps HSPA radio, 5.0 GHz WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. The phone will come with NFC tag reading abilities, although that hasn’t exactly been detailed.

Rumors say that this phone will be shown at Mobile World Congress this month and released this Spring. No info on price and carrier so far and one can only hope for a good price tag here. According to the FCC documents from last year, this model supports CDMA bands, so we could see it on Verizon or Sprint.

I guess you’ve been wondering for a while now what’s the deal with Nokia’s ClearBlack display technology, that has been used on so many devices over the past years. These include models such as the X7 and the E7, but also recent Lumias, such as the 900 and 800 model. To put it short: such a screen includes polarising filters that block incoming light.

The diagram above explains it pretty well and you must know that a ClearBlack Display filter includes a linear polariser and retardation layers between the handset’s surface and the display. When the light hits the display, it will hit the linear polariser first, that will polarise the light vertically and then it will hit the circular polariser retardation layer. This will convert the light again and make it right-circularly polarised. I know that this doesn’t sound like much to you, but bear with me here. Also, you must know that polarising means aligning the wave vibration in a certain direction.

After the processes mentioned previously, the light will hit the screen, bounce off and switch rotation to leftist. And then it goes through the retardation layer again and becomes horizontally polarised only to hit the linear polariser and it will be blocked entirely by this solution. Other phones, that don’t use this technology won’t have the light from their displays blocked. There’s a comparison between a Nokia phone with and without the CBD technology, to give you an idea on how useful it is.

We may be close to MWC 2012, but some people are still looking back at the tech events from last year and drawing conclusions from them. One of those is the Nokia World 2011 conference that took place last fall. What you see below is a slide from the event showing current and future form factors that Nokia will adopt. As you can see, there’s also a tablet in there.

In the “today” section we see the current Windows Phone layout with both capacitive buttons and the screens. And next there’s a square-ish unit, that may be a companion watch just like the one made by Sony Ericsson and Motorola, followed by a tinier full touch handset to the right. Next there’s a touch and type unit, in equal measure a QWERTY device and a touchscreen-based one, followed by the current unit and then a large display full touch handset.

In the end we find a full touch tablet, that might just be that Windows 8 Nokia Tab that everyone is talking about. The touch & type unit included here makes sense, since Windows Phone Apollo is rumored to bring lower resolutions and keyboard & display combos, with the result being BlackBerry-like phones. It could also mean the resurrection of Nokia’s E Series, this time with Windows Phone on board.

Nokia announced this week the brand new white version of the Lumia 800 handset, its very first Windows Phone device, only to post on its Facebook account a pic that looks strangely enough like the Lumia 900. The info got out and every major tech blog out there took the info and went with it, while Nokia pulled down the image eventually.

There are several factors going in favor of the leaked Lumia 900 theory. One of them is the presence of a front facing camera on this phone, so unless Nokia decided to launch a Lumia 800 with a front camera upgrade, this is the more recent model. Also, this white handset is shown without AT&T branding and knowing that the Lumia 900 is meant to be an US-only device, this could be good news for Europeans and Asians, if this is truly the newer Windows Phone with a 4.3 inch display.

So, considering the pic was taken down by now, it’s clear that this is the Lumia 900 and that it’s coming to Europe, too. What about that theory about the upgraded version of the phone with 12 megapixel camera and speculated Lumia 910 branding? What do you think?

HTC Ville is among the most interesting new devices promised for showcasing at MWC 2012. It’s supposed to be the thinnest HTC smartphone ever and bring some pretty appealing specs. Now we also have a bunch of live pics with this model, that you can see below, as well as some specs, that are reconfirmed by insiders.

Ville is supposed to be unveiled on February 26th, together with another new model, the quad core Edge. As far as HTC Ville goes, this ultrathin handset is expected to have a profile of 8.9mm and while that may not be impressive compared to Samsung’s last year Galaxy S II and its 8.5mm waist, it’s still impressive for a HTC phone. This is a midrange phone with a qHD AMOLED display, that has a 4.3 inch diagonal. There’s also a dual core 1.5 GHz processor on board, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as the OS and Sense 4.0 as the UI of choice.

The chipset that powers this device hasn’t been mentioned yet, but it’s probably the MSM8260 Snapdragon, that was used on the Sensation XE. We’re only 20 days away from the big unveiling at MWC, so I guess that more leaks will follow in the next weeks. Maybe we’ll also get a clearer glimpse of the Ville and its interface and maybe this time we’ll have a more clear video of what’s going on…

After receiving the update to Android 4.0.4 we thought that things would cool down for a while, but already there’s talk about the Android 4.0.5 update. We have here a teaser from French carrier SFR, who promised this update for both the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus and it appears that the software will arrive in March via OTA.

What’s interesting is that the HTC Sensation is also on the list, being promised Android ICS + Sense 3.5 in March, while the Galaxy S II will get its Ice Cream Sandwich next month as well via OTA and Kies. Android 4.0.4 brought quite a bunch of interesting features, such as higher volume, better performance, better overall speed, it got rid of some bugs in the connectivity area, so it’s overall a good piece of software. Android 4.0.5 is not expected to be so revolutionary, other than the usual Google fixes.

With Samsung Galaxy S II spotted recently running the official ICS build, it’s no wonder we’re so close to the official update, at least in France. Hopefully, the rest of the world will be as fast as SFR when providing updates. It’s very probable that the Android 4.0.5 update will come to the GSM Galaxy Nexus first, since the Verizon model only got its copy of the 4.0.4 software this weekend, so there’s a certain priority for the GSM units.