Vodafone UK’s accounts office closes for Indian elections

Customers calling line are advised to call back later or send an e-mail because of the Indian general election

Vodafone UK’s accounts office has apparently shut-down because of the Indian election.

Suppliers enquiring about their invoices were instructed by mail to contact the help desk on +44 8454420306.

Calls to this number were automatically answered by a pre-recorded female voice with a heavy Indian accent saying: “We are closed on account of general elections in India, please call us back later or send us an email and we will respond to your queries at the earliest opportunity. Apologies for the inconvenience caused”.

The Indian elections have been taking place over a number of weeks with the biggest voting day on April 17 when 12 states go to the polls.

“I’ve heard some super excuses about late payment in my time. However being told by one of the UK’s biggest companies that no-one is available to process a payment because of the election in India is worthy of some sort of prize”, said Keith Berry, accounts manager for Mobile News publisher Clark White Publications.

Blanket WiFi for fans at World Cup

Coverage at stadia provided by consortium of Brazil’s biggest network operators will enable fans to tweet messages and watch instant replays of the action

Football fans attending matches at this year’s World Cup in Brazil will be able to tweet and watch replays of the action as blanket WiFi coverage will be provided at tournament venues.

The connectivity is provided by a consortium of the four biggest network operators in Brazil, with Ruckus Wireless of the US taking charge of the installation. Foreign visitors will be able to connect by paying a fee for access when they connect.

“Usually in the stadium you have WiFi but it’s mostly been used by journalists and FIFA,” Ruckus Wireless regional sales director Jussi Koria told Mobile News.“To my best knowledge this is the first connected World Cup. There’s quite a lot of expertise, design and man- hours that have gone into ensuring a quality network is up and running and with enough margins.”

The firm was involved with WiFi installations at the 68,000-seater Estadio Nacional Mane Garrincha in the country’s capital Brasilia, and the 52,000-capacity Arena Fonte Nova in Salvador. Both venues will host quarter-final matches.Ruckus put in a variety of access points both in the bowl area of the stadium and also in the interior to ensure blanket coverage.

Most stadium builds and renovations for the tournament were carried out with a mixture of public and private money, and Koria says this political mix was one of the most challenging aspects of the project. “It was very bureaucratic and some of the stadium owners were thinking they could put their own WiFi in,” he said.

“The owners realised that the amount and quality of the equipment you had to put into the stadium was very different from the usual mindset of putting WiFi in a venue. It was a different kind of beast.”

The California-based firm has already completed WiFi installations around the globe including Hamburg’s Imtech Arena and the Chennai Stadium in India.

Google revenues are up 19% in the first quarter

Google announced another winning quarter – the $15.4 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2014 was 19% up year on year. Of course, the sale of Motorola Mobility was a big event for Google in Q1. The search giant will continue handling profits and losses from the phone maker until the sale to Lenovo closes, but has already moved Moto to the "discontinued operations" column.

Discontinued operations posted a net loss of $198 million, just a little more than the $182 million net loss from last year. It's unclear how much of that is due to Motorola Mobility and how much to other Google properties. For comparison, Motorola alone posted an operating loss of $271 million in Q1 last year.

Google notes that if Motorola was being reported as an operating segment, it would have brought in $1.45 billion in revenue, "$74 million higher than what was included in net loss from discontinued operations."

Anyway, the search giant reported net income of $3.45 billion on $15.4 billion revenue, up from $3.35 billion net income in Q1 2013. 57% of revenue came from outside the US, the UK alone accounted for 10%.

Google sites made $10.47 billion (68% of total) revenue, partners brought in $3.40 billion (22% of total) and "other" revenue streams clocked in at $1.55 billion (10% of total). Paid ad clicks went up 26% quarter on quarter but decreased 1% compared to the holiday quarter last year. Cost-per-click for ads went down 9% quarter on quarter.

Google also underwent a stock split in Q1, giving its current stock holders equal amounts of voting and non-voting shares. Earnings per share was $5.04, up from $4.97 from last year.

LG G2 mini coming to UK by the end of April for £250

LG announced the global availability of G2 mini, the compact version of the company's flagship smartphone almost a month ago. However, the South Korean manufacturer did not reveal how much the device would cost.

Well, the pricing details of the LG G2 mini are no longer a mystery. Clove, а UK based online retailer has announced that the smartphone will be available for £250 (about $420) by the end of this month.

At the moment, there are no other retailers to have come up with the availability details of the LG G2 mini. Other major players across UK are also expected to sell the device, but we will know more about that in the coming days.

For your money, you get a 4.7-inch IPS LCD display, 1.2 GHz quad-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of internal storage and 4G LTE support. You can check out our hands on report from the MWC floor to know more about the features and the specifications of the smartphone.

HTC One (M8) CDMA

Also known as HTC M8, All New HTC One

GENERAL	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 - Sprint, Verizon
		CDMA 800 / 1900 - Sprint, Verizon
	3G Network	HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 - Sprint HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 - Verizon
		CDMA2000 1xEV-DO - Sprint, Verizon
	4G Network	LTE 800 / 1900 / 2600 - Sprint
		LTE 700 / 1700 / 2100 / 1800 / 2600 - Verizon
	SIM	Nano-SIM
	Announced	2014, March
	Status	Available. Released 2014, March

BODY	Dimensions	146.4 x 70.6 x 9.4 mm (5.76 x 2.78 x 0.37 in)
	Weight	160 g (5.64 oz)

DISPLAY	Type	Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	1080 x 1920 pixels, 5.0 inches (~441 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes
	Protection	Corning Gorilla Glass 3
		- HTC Sense UI v6

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes, with stereo speakers, built-in amplifiers
	3.5mm jack	Yes

MEMORY	Card slot	microSD, up to 128 GB
	Internal	32 GB, 2 GB RAM

DATA	GPRS	Yes
	EDGE	Yes
	Speed	EV-DO Rev. A, up to 3.1 Mbps; HSDPA, 14.4 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps; LTE, Cat4, 50 Mbps UL, 150 Mbps DL
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
	Bluetooth	Yes, v4.0 with A2DP
	NFC	Yes (market/operator dependent)
	Infrared port	Yes
	USB	Yes, microUSB v2.0 (MHL), USB On-the-go, USB Host

CAMERA	Primary	Dual 4 MP, 2688х1520 pixels, autofocus, dual-LED (dual tone) flash
	Features	1/3'' sensor size, 2µm pixel size, automatic simultaneous video and image recording, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, HDR, panorama
	Video	Yes, 1080p@60fps, 720p@60fps, HDR, stereo sound rec., video stabilization
	Secondary	Yes, 5 MP, 1080p@30fps, HDR

FEATURES	OS	Android OS, v4.4.2 (KitKat)
	Chipset	Qualcomm MSM8974AB Snapdragon 801
	CPU	Quad-core 2.3 GHz Krait 400
	GPU	Adreno 330
	Sensors	Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
	Messaging	SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email
	Browser	HTML5
	Radio	No
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support and GLONASS
	Java	Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
	Colors	Gunmetal Gray, Glacial Silver
		- SNS integration - Google Drive (50 GB cloud storage) - Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - TV-out (via MHL A/V link) - DivX/XviD/MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player - MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV/FLAC player - Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk - Organizer - Document viewer/editor - Photo viewer/editor - Voice memo/dial/commands - Predictive text input

BATTERY		Non-removable Li-Ion 2600 mAh battery
	Stand-by	Up to 290 h
	Talk time	Up to 12 h

MISC	SAR US	0.83 W/kg (head)     1.17 W/kg (body)
	Price group

Galaxy S5 sells twice better than Galaxy S4, UK retailer says

It's customary for manufacturers to try and build up hype for their newly launched smartphone by talking up their sales numbers. Samsung made no exception to this, saying that its new Galaxy S5 flagshipsold 30% more units than its predecessor on launch day.

Back then many expressed doubts that this is more due to the far wider launch - 125 vs 63 markets, while demand in developed markets has actually stayed pretty much the same. It's a common assumption that the high-end segment in those has reached saturation point and growth is next to impossible to achieve.

Yet today, a new report from the major UK retailer Phones4u points in the complete opposite direction. According to the press release the Samsung Galaxy S5 saw twice the sales of the Galaxy S4 on launch day and it has been enjoying similarly high interest since. While neither the retailer nor Samsung have provided exact numbers, the statement is still pretty impressive and bodes well for the success of the smartphone.

Samsung should be releasing their Q1 financial report shortly, but that one won't include the Galaxy S5 sales as those only started in April. However, we are still expecting to see some clues about it in the guidance for the second quarter and we should get a dedicated announcement when the latest flagship hits 10 million sales.

HTC updates Gallery, BlinkFeed apps through Play Store

Has the age of proprietary apps on the Play Store begun? We sure hope so, because Motorola has had a lot of success with this method of app distribution. Instead of waiting to release a full system update to a device to update a core app, Motorola started uploading core apps to the Play Store to update them as frequently and as fast as it liked. Camera, Active Display, Gallery and more were updated many times in the last few months, significantly improving the experience of the devices.HTC is going for the same approach with the all-new HTC One (M8), and the company has just released updates for both the BlinkFeed and Gallery apps. The BlinkFeed app received optimized scrolling, more social content and bug fixes, while the gallery saw the addition of tapping anywhere to apply the Foregrounder effect. While the changes aren’t big, it’s great to see HTC giving consumers app updates faster.It looks like Samsung is falling behind in this game, though we may see the company take the same approach once the Galaxy S5 launches tomorrow. Because obviously, this approach is the superior one. Who doesn’t like faster updates? If you’re an HTC One owner, download these updates by hitting the widgets below!