Galaxy S launches seem to carry a curse for SK Telecom. Last year the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) imposed a ban on SK preventing sales for 45 days right around the time the Galaxy S5 was supposed to launch. Now that the Galaxy S6 launch date is nearing, KCC is imposing another ban.

Pointing to illegal subsidies (as much as $450 for iPhone 6 subscribers), the KCC will ban the carrier from selling any phones and signing on new subscribers for 7 days. The telecom will also have to pay a fine of KRW 23.5 billion ($21.2 million).

Both SK Telecom and Samsung are concerned how this ban will affect their businesses. It seems like the KCC hasn’t settled on an exact day to enforce the ban. Samsung Galaxy S6 units are supposed to ship on April 10, so the ban may delay SK's launch.

The other two major carriers, KT and LG U+, are unaffected by the ban and will be offering special…

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The LG G4 has appeared in the GFX Benchmark database, revealing the key specs. They are pretty close to what has been rumored so far, though the chipset is a surprise. The chipset reported features a hexa-core processor with Cortex-A57 cores plus an Adreno 418 GPU.

That's certainly not the Snapdragon 810 found in the LG G Flex2. Instead it's the the Snapdragon 808 announced in April last year alongside the 810. The phone will come with Android 5.1 Lollipop, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (23GB user available).

The LG G4 will have a 5.5" QHD screen, same as the current model, but will upgrade the camera to 16MP with 2160p video. The selfie camera has been bumped up to 8MP with nearly 2160p video (the numbers reported by the benchmark don't seem to match a standard resolution).

Looking at the benchmark scores, the new GPU beats last year's Adreno 330 in the LG G3. Qualcomm said it should be 30% faster than the 330, but didn’t compare it to the 420. Again, going by the benchmark scores, the Adreno 418 seems to be in the middle between those two GPUs.

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GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better

LG G Flex2
22

LG G4 (rumored)
14.9

LG G3
11

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)
Higher is better

LG G Flex2 (1080p screen)
22

LG G4 (rumored, 2160p screen))
9.4

LG G3 (2160p screen)
7.7

So it remains to be seen if two A57s and four A53s can beat for Krait 400 cores. At least they'll produce less heat than the Snapdragon 810 chipset.

The LG G4 is rumored to arrive in April and we've already had a good look at its new, slightly curved design. There was some talk it will be demoted from its flagship position and going by the chipset this seems true, at least compared to the LG G Flex2.

Source |…

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Sony was neither quick, nor especially thorough with bringing the Android 5.0 update to its smartphone lineup. The rollout started only two weeks ago with a soak test in the Nordic and Baltic countries on the Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact. It was later followed by the Z3 Tablet Compact and the Z2 generation, both smartphone and tablet.

Newsflash from today, Sony is expanding the availability of the update "to further markets worldwide", although that's as specific as it gets and no road map has been released with countries and dates. Additionally, the Zperia Z2 and Z2 Tablet will receive the coveted update, starting next week.

What was only a rumor last week, that the Xperia T2 Ultra will receive Lollipop, is being confirmed, so as it turns out Sony's policy to only update the flagship Z-series isn't all that strict.

Even more surprisingly, the Xperia C3, a midrange phablet announced last summer, is also on the list for a planned upgrade, proving that the Japanese company may turn out to be more open-minded after all and actually listen to its customer base….

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LG has been working on the LG G4 as the successor of the G3 launched last year. The South Korean company is reportedly also developing a LG G4 Note to compete directly with the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

Few images of a mysterious LG device surfaced online last week and was attributed as the G4. But now a new image of the LG device with a stylus appeared and it appears to be picturing the same device.

There’s no way to estimate which device it was – G4, G4 Note or LG G4 Stylus. Last year, the company introduced the G3, G3 Stylus, and G3 Beat variants so it might repeat that feat this year.

There's no official info pointing in any direction at this point so take it all with a grain of…

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