Verizon subscribers who are in the market for a free, on-contract smartphone now have two more options to choose from, as the US mobile operator just lowered the price of the HTC Windows Phone 8X and Nokia Lumia 928 from $99.99 to zero, when purchased alongside a two-year agreement.

It is worth noting that the Windows Phone 8X and the Lumia 928 join the likes of the LG Lucid, Pantech Marauder and Samsung Stratosphere II in being offered for free alongside a two-year contract with big red. Unlike the HTC and Nokia-branded devices, none of the other three handsets are high-end smartphones.

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Chinese electronics company ZTE has announced that it's to start selling its Firefox phone on eBay in the US and the UK. Available only in a fetching shade of orange and unlocked for use on any network the phone will cost $79.99 in the US and £59.99 in the UK.

The ZTE Open offers an affordable smartphone based entirely on open web standards using the Firefox OS. It has all of the functions you'd expect of a smartphone including calls, messaging, email and a camera, plus additional functions like built-in social network integration with Facebook and Twitter, location based services and access to the Firefox Marketplace to download apps.

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When it comes to battery life, you can call me a glass half-empty kind of person. I like to know precisely how long my smartphone can run on a single charge and, at any given time, the number of hours that I can use it before finally laying it atop of the wireless charger. For this reason, and I am sure that I am not alone in saying this, I wholeheartedly dislike basic battery icons, as they provide no exact piece of information.

Some Android iterations offer various indicators (on the status bar and on the lockscreen, aside from an in-depth consumption break-down), but Windows Phone 8 only provides basic information, tucked away in the settings menu. As a Nokia Lumia 920 user I am forced to resort to third-party apps, just to see the battery percentage, with one of the best offerings currently available being Battery Performance.

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Instagram just introduced a major change to the video-posting feature in its Android and iOS mobile apps, with the popular social network now allowing users to upload pre-recorded clips from the smartphone's gallery.

The revamped video-posting feature is part of the new Instagram apps for Android and iOS, version 4.1. "Starting today you can upload videos from your phone's media library and share those moments to Instagram regardless of when they were captured", says Instagram. "Once you select the video clip you'd like to import, you can trim it down to the exact part you like best. We've also made it so that you can choose how you square-crop your clip so you can keep the action front and center".

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While LG has slowly made a name for itself in the USA with such devices as televisions and washing machines, the company has also released smartphones to much lesser fanfare. The South Korean company has a small and quiet following in the Android community, but it is far outmatched by the likes of Samsung, Motorola and HTC. Today, the company hopes to change this by announcing the LG G2 -- an interesting new smartphone with an unfortunate ho-hum name.

The most intriguing new aspect of the G2 is something LG calls "Rear Key". Basically, the volume and power buttons have been moved from the side of the device to the rear. This is truly innovative outside-the-box product design -- my mind is officially blown!

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Vodafone reveals that its 4G network will be made available to mobile users in London on 29 August, with several other key cities being added to the list by the end of the year. SIM-only tariffs, with a 12-month contract, start at £26, matching the cheapest tariff offered by O2.

The mobile firm has teamed up with Spotify and Sky Sports to provide content to subscribers. Anyone signing up for a 4G package will be able to choose between a Spotify Premium or Sky Sports Mobile TV bundle, gaining access to music and live sport. Both bundles are provided free of charge for the first six months, but after this Sky Sports Mobile TV costs £4.99 per month, and Spotify Premium £9.99 per month.

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LG is set to launch the G2, its new flagship smartphone, in New York later today. The usual raft of pre-launch leaks means we know the device will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, sport a 5.2-inch 1080p display and come with a 13-megapixel camera.

Other details will be revealed by the South Korean electronics giant during the launch event, but if you’re not in New York, or haven’t received an invite to the unveiling, don’t worry -- BetaNews has saved you the best seat in the house.

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The app market is crazily busy. With so many thousands of apps to choose from, a developer looking to get noticed needs to come up with something pretty special. But the people with the best ideas aren't necessarily those with coding skills, and funds available to individuals and startups are usually limited. The solution? Make app development as easy as possible. Enter Windows Phone App Studio.

The online service is a new beta tool that can be used to create Windows Phone apps in a few simple steps. The idea is to keep things as simple as possible so even new developers should be able to create an app fairly quickly. No coding knowledge is required as this is all taken care of automatically. There are a number of templates available into which content such as text, video and RSS feeds can be dropped.

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Ahead of its August 16 launch, Apple reveals details of a takeback program that aims to replace third-party power adapters with authentic units. Concern over the safety of third-party and counterfeit adapters for iPhones, iPads and iPods prompted the scheme, and Apple says any adapters handed in will be "disposed of in an environmentally friendly way".

So what's the incentive for just giving your current adapter to Apple? Well aside from that warm, fluffy feeling that comes from knowing that you're helping to do your little bit for the environment rather than just adding to landfill, Apple has another carrot to dangle.

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When Nokia unveiled the Lumia 1020, during its "Zoom.Reinvented" press event held in mid-July, the Finnish maker announced that its camera-oriented Windows Phone will initially only be available in the US. Prospective international buyers would have to wait a little longer to get their hands on the new smartphone, with the provided estimate being Q3 -- pretty vague for a launch date -- for China and important European markets.

Good news! UK retailers Clove and Expansys have started taking pre-orders for the Lumia 1020, allowing interested buyers to get the new Windows Phone as soon as it is available -- according to the former, the first batch is expected to arrive in the first week of September. And, both UK retailers offer international shipping, which should come in handy for some.

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We've all done it -- put our hands to our pocket only to discover that the phone we thought was pressed close to our body is in fact missing. But where? That's the question. Android Device Manager is Google's latest solution to help you hunt out your hidden handset.

You could get a friend to call your phone -- that would seem like the obvious thing to do. But it's no help if you have put your phone into silent mode. Android Device Manager is able to call your phone and make it sound, even if the volume is turned down, so you can quickly determine if your Droid is nestling down in the back of the sofa or in the back of your car.

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Jelly Bean continues its dominance streak in the green droid distribution charts, with Android 4.1 alone surpassing the former ruler, Gingerbread, based on the number of devices visiting Google Play during the 14 days ending August 1.

In the latest charts, combined, the first two Jelly Bean iterations, Android 4.1 (34 percent) and Android 4.2 (6.5 percent), reached a 40.5 percent distribution level, which represents a 2.6 percentage points increase (from 37.9 percent) over the previous data set from early-July. By contrast, Gingerbread (versions 2.3 to 2.3.7), accounted for a lesser 33.1 percent share, which is one percent lower compared to the numbers -- 34.1 percent -- released a month ago.

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In late-January, Google revealed that, after July 31, Windows Phone handsets will be unable to establish new Exchange ActiveSync connections to Gmail. The controversial move would leave said devices without the ability to sync calendar and contacts entries with the search giant's consumer-oriented email service, after the passing of the deadline. However, that is no longer the case, as Google just gave Windows Phone users another reprieve.

"We've reached an agreement to extend support for new Windows Phone connections to the Google Sync service through December 31, 2013", says Google in a statement that was issued to me earlier today. The agreement, as you can probably tell, was made with Microsoft, likely to give the software giant and its partners more time to deploy CalDAV and CardDAV support, which is needed for Gmail calendar and contacts sync, in Windows Phone.

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The rapid growth in usage of tablets and smartphones is turning us into a nation of multi-taskers according to a report by the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom. Although 91 percent of adults tune in to the main TV set in the lounge at least once a week, around 53 percent now access other media whilst watching television.

We're interacting with TV shows or sending off tweets and Facebook posts about them whilst we watch. We're also performing unrelated tasks like shopping and surfing the web whilst the TV is on. Most of this is done via smartphones, with 51 percent of adults now owning one compared to only 27 percent two years ago. Almost a quarter of households now own a tablet computer too.

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On Tuesday AnandTech published a report that suggested some sort of "trickery" was being used by Samsung to boost device performance when benchmarks are run. The Korean electronics manufacturer responded to the claims today, and while it does not deny that performance is adjusted when benchmarking tools are running, it refutes the suggestion that changes to the frequency of the Galaxy S4's GPU during benchmarking are "intended to improve [these] results".

Investigations started after a post on the Beyond3D forum claimed that the GPU speed was usually limited to 480MHz but increased to 532MHz when certain whitelisted apps were running. Benchmarks using older testing apps gave worse performance results than newer ones for user frogblast.

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