The BMW 9-SERIES CONCEPT CAR

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 The BMW 9-series, isn't more than a concept mocked up by design firm Radion Design. Disappointing, I know, but by all accounts drool worthy.

Clearly the car, and design team, drew inspiration from the Fiskar and BMW’s 6-series. The rear end might be the best looking part of the vehicle, though to be honest, there doesn’t seem to be a bad angle. BMW’s iconic kidney grills have been seriously toned down, making them questionably small, but there really isn’t anything wrong with trying something new, right?

If you’re wondering what would lay under the hood, my best guess, based on the design and when the car could come out, would be a 100% electric motor powered by hydrogen. But alas, it’s purely a concept, so what does it matter.

HTC One SV

What you should know: 

There's no dodging the figures here. When 800 x 480 resolution is stretched across a 4.3-inch screen, you're going to notice the low 217-ppi screen density -- individuals pixels can often be seen at work, especially on the diagonal. That being said, pixelation on the One S is much worse despite packing more pixels (960 x 540, to be exact) into the same dimensions. Sense 4.1's clean UI is appropriately scaled to give a 4 x 4 grid of icons in the app menu, so everything looks a little bigger than on higher-res handsets, but in general the visuals remain preserved.
Keeping everything moving under the hood is a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus with Adreno 305 GPU (MSM8930) and a lone gig of RAM. Don't worry about the thrifty 8GB of storage, because a microSD slot supporting 32GB cards can be found under the back cover above the removable battery, and next to the micro-SIM cavity. For connections, it's got all the radios up to LTE, 802.11a/b/g/n -- both 2.4GHz and 5GHz -- Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC.

What it offers: 

The SV is a solid option for people who want an LTE device on the cheap.

The advantage: 

• Solid performance
• Attractive design
• Inexpensive

The unfavorable: 

• Low-res
• Somewhat awkward to hold

The price:
$280

ASUS TAICHI 21

What you should know: 
The good news is that the TAICHI is fairly thin, at 0.69 inch -- not bad considering it has not one, but two displays on board. That chassis is just thick enough that it makes room for two USB 3.0 ports, along with micro-HDMI, mini-VGA, a volume rocker, an audio jack, a screen lock and a slider for powering the machine on. Additionally, the TAICHI ships with a USB-to-Ethernet adapter, a micro-HDMI-to-VGA dongle and, on select models, a pressure-sensitive pen. Like other high-end ASUS machines, it even comes with a pouch for the adapters and a matching case for the computer, which wins extra points on account of its leather detailing, magnetic closure and slot for holding the pen.

What it offers: 
The TAICHI has an inventive dual-screen design with fast performance, wide viewing angles and decent audio. But we'd rather wait for a second-gen model with better battery life.
The advantage: 

• Innovative design
• Great viewing angles on both displays
• Fast performance
• Supports pen input
• Good sound quality

The unfavorable: 

• Short battery life
• Interior screen doesn't support touch
• Runs hot
• Some touch pad issues

The price:
$1,299

Samsung Galaxy Note II

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Galaxy Note II show up wearing a very pink outfit on Samsung's Taiwanese site. Clearly, the phone tablet slab looks to follow in the footsteps of its other galactic siblings, the OG Note and GS3, and, in the process, looks to give an extra hue option to those who prefer something a little different than the more traditional colors, or even the newer amber brown and ruby wine. Since Samsung hasn't made an official announcement yet, however, availability details are still relatively unknown, so we'll have to wait to see whether or not this light pink Galaxy Note II ever makes it past the Taiwan page and onto others. In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to mosey past the break, where a rather glamorous press shot gallery awaits.

LG had promise to unveil new series of phones

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LG unveiled its Optimus L series with a bang at last year’s Mobile World Congress, and then we saw three devices covering everything from the low-end to upper mid-range with the Optimus L3, L5, L7 and L9.

This year, LG wants to one-up itself and teased on Facebook:

“New series will be unveiled.”
Pretty concise. We take this as a hint that LG is ready to bring a new series to devices no later than MWC 2013. What’s more, the company says it is ready to surprise us:

Could this mean a new Optimus series? After the successful and well received LG Optimus G and Nexus 4, LG has the right momentum to get its traction back.

Nokia Lumia will be coming up with 41-megapixel sensor

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Nokia is finally bringing its "revolutionary" 41-megapixel Pureview sensor to its Lumia range of Windows Phone handsets, according to sources close to the Finnish handset maker.

The new model will be known as EOS, and will launch in the summer in the US.

Observers queried the lack of the 41MP sensor - boasting five times the resolution of most top-end phone cameras - when Nokia launched its flagship Lumia 920 Windows Phone handset at the end of 2012 - although the phone does confusingly boast a camera technology also known as Pureview.

The 41MP sensor debuted at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona in February 2012 on Nokia's final Symbian phone, the 808. The resulting images drew rave reviews at the time, though in fact the aim of the sensor is not to produce huge images, but good images in low light.

Low-light images taken at high ISO ratings (where small amounts of light are registered) typically have a lot of "noise" on them – random speckles of visible colour - caused by increasing sensitivity of the CCD sensors in the digital camera.

The aim of the 41MP sensor is to oversample the image; the actual size of pictures taken on the 808 is about 5MP, but each pixel can be determined from the information provided by the redundant pixels, thus eliminating much of the flawed data.

The 808 also uses a bigger sensor, which means bigger pixels. Nokia explains in a white paper (PDF) that pixel size has "shrunk just over the past six years from 2.2 microns, to 1.75 microns, to 1.4 microns … The smaller the pixel, the less [sic] photons each pixel is able to collect. Less [sic] photons, less image quality. There's also more visual noise in images." (One micron is a millionth of a metre.)

The latest Nokia Lumia 920 comes out with a floating lens technology, which is actual optical image stabilization - a first for a smartphone.