Global Q3 2013 mobile phone sales reach 455.6 million units with 5.7% Y-o-Y growth as even W. Europe returns to growth for the first time in the year, Gartner reports.

Smartphones account for 55% of overall sales at 250.2m units-- the highest share to date, with growth reaching 45.8% Y-o-Y through customers replacing feature phones with smartphones, even in emerging markets.

“Sales of feature phones continued to decline and the decrease was more pronounced in markets where the average selling price (ASP) for feature phones was much closer to the ASP affordable smartphones,”Gartner says. “In markets such as China and Latin America, demand for feature phones fell significantly as users rushed to replace their old models with smartphones.”

Will future iPhones differ from the norm with larger, curved glass displays armed with pressure-sensitive touch sensors?  So reports Bloomberg, before claiming two such models will be available come H2 2013.

According to "a person familiar with the plans" the curvy iPhones will feature 4.7- and 5.5-inch displays with "glass that curves downward at the edges."

Subsequent curvy iPhone models might also be able to distinguish between different levels of pressure, the anonymous source continues.

Apple moving towards bigger devices might not come as too much of a surprise-- the 3.5-inch iPhone 5C/S looks diminutive compared to any number of 5-inch Android handsets-- but a take on the curvy form factor might turn a few heads, even if it sounds less radical than the curved displays seen in the Samsung Galaxy Round or the LG G Flex.

Samsung presents the first smartphone with a curved display-- the Galaxy Round, a device armed with a gently concave 5.7-inch OLED display allowing for what the company calls "round integration experiences."

The device looks nothing like the curvy prototype Samsung showed at CES 2013 as part of the Youm flexible OLED series announcement. Instead the Round offers a number of unique (or gimmicky, depending on how you look at it) UI features, including tilting on one side to quickly check notifications and a one hand operation mode bringing desired controls to a preferred side of the screen.

The larger display real estate also finds use in a tablet-style Multi Window multitasking mode.

LG sticks with the 4:3 screen aspect ratio as it launches the Vu 3-- a squarish Android phablet armed with a 5.2-inch display, stylus input and a processor identical to that inside the G2 flagship.

The IPS display handles 2380x960 resolutions, and according to LG the unusual design provides "optimum readability" through an aspect ratio identical to that of A4 paper and most textbooks.

The included rubber stylus comes complete with an update Notebook app, while further specifications include a Continue reading...