With LG already sending out invites for its February 21 event in Barcelona, eager fans are already discussing the possibility of a new flagship phone – the LG G5, which has naturally given a new spark to rumors about the device, as well.

The latest report out of Korea hints at the possibility of a “modular” design for the LG G5. But, before you start thinking about Google’s Project ARA and get overly excited about the possibility of upgrading your future smartphone, we should tell you that it is more of an innovative solution for a thinner design, while still preserving the removable battery.

The latter feature has apparently remained a priority for LG throughout the years and a lot of fans do still value the convenience of easy access to the phone’s battery – an increasingly hard to find feature in the mobile realm. This, however, undoubtedly introduces some extra girth to a device and in its strive to produce an even thinner device this year, LG has allegedly come up with this new solution. It involves a detachable bottom piece on the phone, which will reveal the battery and allow it to simply slide in and out.

This, of course, would involve some of the hardware to be mounted on detachable connectors as well, like the speaker, USB port, microphone and perhaps a few other things as well, but that shouldn’t really be a problem. An alleged eyewitness testimony also suggests that in an effort to slim down the profile even further, LG has decided to move its volume and power controls away from the back and to the side rim once again. All that the LG G5 will allegedly have on the back is a camera and a fingerprint reader.

As for the hardware of the device, we still haven’t heard a lot, but a 5.3-inch QHD display has been suggested, along with a secondary ticker display, like the one on the LG V10. The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 should be powering the phone and the aforementioned rear camera setup will allegedly consist of two modules with a resolution of 16MP (although we can’t say if that number applies to both shooters).

Source (in Korean) |…

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Google has started rolling out a new update for the Maps application on Android, which adds a couple of new features.

The first and most important one is Driving Mode. With this enabled, the app will tell you information such as traffic conditions and ETAs as you drive around without having to enable the navigation feature. This would be convenient when you are driving to a location where you don’t need to use navigation but need the additional info anyway. It uses location history and web searches to assume where you might be heading and provides relevant information.

The other new feature is the ability to disable an old one. You can now easily disable the voice feedback when using navigation in your car with the tap of a button on the map instead of digging through the settings.

Lastly, Google has also updated the timeline settings, with with the option to include history from Chrome and other apps, and also to show your Google Photos in your timeline.

The update has started rolling out and should be available over the next few…

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