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Samsung started the whole ‘phablet’ trend with their Galaxy Note devices back in 2011. Despite the original Galaxy Note having some nice hardware at the time, it wasn’t as popular as Samsung may have hoped and instead carved a small niche of power users who wanted to make the most out of their smartphone experience.

Samsung pushed for a more mainstream appeal with the Galaxy Note 2 though, and since its release date, we’ve seen dozens of phablets hit the market in the attempt of attracting the crowds.

But which phablets really deserve our attention? Whilst there aren’t as many phablets as there are smartphones, there are still a lot out there, and if you’re looking into buying a phablet, you should definitely consider the ones on this list.

Samsung Galaxy Mega

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Whilst the Samsung Galaxy Mega is mainly considered a ‘mid-range’ handset, thanks to having 2013 hardware, it’s performance only just undercuts the likes of the Galaxy Note II or other high end phablets.

At 6.3 inches, this is Samsung’s largest smartphone yet- the display is quite nice, and can be used comfortably with two hands.

Of course for its large size, using it one-handedly is practically impossible. On top of this, its 1.5GB RAM and dual core processor don’t justify the expensive price point. You’ll be able to bag yourself a 2012 phablet with more powerful hardware for cheaper, both second hand and new.

On top of this, you can grab yourself a 7 inch Nexus 7 for around £150-£200, making the Samsung Galaxy Mega only viable for those that use a lot of media and rely on calling and texting whilst out and about.

HTC Butterfly

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The HTC Butterfly was one of the first 5 inch handsets to have an HD display. With a mahoosive pixel density of 441 ppi, the display on the Butterfly is clearly the winning point.

The large 5 inch display and beautiful chassis also make the Butterfly stand out from its competitors whilst making it comfortable to hold and easy to look at.

Luckily for some, the Butterfly comes with a micro SD slot, something that is not uniform with many other HTC devices, and the handset is also run on a powerful quad core 1.5GHz Krait processor and 2GB RAM.

The HTC Butterfly only has a 0.1 inch bigger display than the S4 though, so if you’re looking for a big screen, this phone may not be for you.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2

Only £324 SIM-free

The Galaxy Note II took everything that wasn’t finished to perfection with the original version of the Galaxy Note and fixed it up.

This included better S-pen functionality, more native Samsung Galaxy Note 2 functions, a super-fast processor, and at the time it was released it was the first phone to have 2GB RAM.

The 5.5inch display looks great, and thanks to the large screen estate, there is lot that can be done on the handset. A great choice.

LG Optimus G Pro

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The LG Optimus G Pro is in essence the bigger brother of the Optimus G, a phone that was used as the basis of the Nexus 4.

The LG Optimus G Pro has a large 5.5 inch display with a decent HD quality, and had very decent hardware to power it, including a 1.7GHz quad core Snapdragon 600 processor and the high end phablet standard of 2GB RAM.

Of course it is also 4G LTE capable and comes with Android Jelly Bean.

Sony Xperia Z Ultra

Only £460 SIM-free

Whilst the Xperia Z Ultra was only recently announced, its October release may mark the start of something great for Sony. The handset has a huge 6.4 inch display, but unlike the Galaxy Mega, it has enough hardware to really power the big screen.

The phablet comes with a super powerful 2.2GHz snapdragon 800 processor – something that is possibly twice as powerful as the HTC One’s Snapdragon 400 – and of course 2GB RAM.

The screen is at an amazing HD quality despite the large size, and is capable of being submerged in water without taking damage and can keep dust out of its innards.

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Apple shares have fallen by over 3% following reports of its fiscal fourth-quarter results. It was the third quarter in a row that Apple have had to admit that their earnings have fallen. This is despite it breaking yet another record for the amount of iPhones it has sold following the release of the new iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S.

In total, Apple reported that it increased the number of iPhones sold by over 25% and shipped more than 30 million handsets. iPad sales also went up by a tiny amount to just over 14 million, but Apple Mac computers are struggling with under five million sold in the quarter. As a result, Apple claimed that it had quarterly revenues of just under $40 billion and net income dropped slightly to about $7.5 billion.

The share price drop came due to fears about sales figures for the new iPhone 5C. Analysts have been concerned that the 5C doesn’t offer anything new over the existing iPhone 5 and that the plastic back may turn off consumers hoping for a more premium-style product. It has been claimed that the 5S, despite costing a lot more, has outsold the 5C in every market even in much poorer regions.

Apple still has amongst the biggest margins known in technology. While Google’s Nexus range of phones and tablets have razor thin margins or are even sold at a loss, it’s been widely publicised that Apple makes huge amounts of profit on the cost of components in its iPads and iPhones.

What this means is that if you buy an iPhone 5C for about £500, only about £200 of that money is going towards the costs of the components inside it such as the CPU, screen, memory, cameras, and radios. A tiny fraction pays for the manufacturing costs as well as international distribution and the remaining amount, which is roughly 70% of the sale price, go straight to Apple as pure profit. Of course, Apple products don’t have external SD card slots so if you want to update the internal storage you’ll also have to pay vastly in excess of the market rate for that.

It should be no surprise that it is estimated that around 50% of Apple’s revenue comes from its iPhone sales. Despite this, it appears that shareholders think that Apple still aren’t doing enough. Another hope was that the 5C would be priced much lower to tempt in consumers from emerging markets such as China and India. However, the retail price for the 5C means that Apple is risking being seen as solely a high end niche player according to tech analysts.

Meanwhile, even though Apple is raking in frankly obscene mountains of cash, the competition isn’t doing too badly either. Halfway through 2013, Samsung had almost a third of worldwide smartphone sales compared to Apple with under half of that and Android is now dominating the market with almost 80% of smartphones running Google’s operating system. Still, the future is anything but clear…

What you make of Apple’s latest revenue figures? Were you surprised to see the numbers that they reported? You think that the iPhone 5C will underperform? And where do you see Apple two years, three years and even five years from now? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.

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It’s recently been reported that Vodafone’s bosses will be cashing in on millions when their deal with Verizon Wireless is finally completed. All of Vodafone’s top managers will receive huge windfall according to the terms of the agreement. As the most senior 250 members of the management team own over 50 million Vodafone shares and they are being valued at £1.12 each, their income is worth a total of £50 million.

Just over a month ago, we were reporting about Vodafone’s latest ruse to try and cheat its way out of paying tax in the UK. It has a ready been revealed how Vodafone is reaping revenues of over £40 billion is making billions in profits but has not paid a single penny of tax to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

It is estimated that the amount of tax that Vodafone is evading totals about £6 billion which is roughly about the same that the coalition government is slashing from welfare causes in the budget. Our previous article, detailed how Vodafone would use loopholes and offshore holding companies to reduce the amount of tax they owe from about $40 billion to only about $5 billion.

This news caused lots of controversy especially in the current environment where ordinary people are struggling to afford to pay their heating bills over the coming winter. As a result, Margaret Hodge MP called for urgent action to be taken to prevent British taxpayers losing out on money that Vodafone should be contributing to the country.

The Guardian has said that the £50 million that the corporate team will be getting out the deal will be split between about £16 million in cash plus £40 million of Verizon Wireless shares. The dividend already have enough money, chief executive Vittorio Colao or pocket another £10 million on top of the £11 million he got paid last year.

Since most of the Vodafone executives who are benefiting from this deal will never have paid any money for their shares as they usually receive them as part of incentive deals, all the income will be pure profit for them. It is reckoned that Vodafone’s sale of its stake in Verizon Communications is amongst the largest corporate transactions ever.

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