HTC is slowly delivering on its promise of rolling out Android 6.0 to its phones. Earlier today, HTC One M9 owners in Taiwan started receiving notifications to download the Android Marshmallow build for their phones. Updating the HTC One M9 to Android 6.0 requires the installation of two separate update files. The first is only 65MB, while the second (which is the actual Android M update) is a whopping 1.38GB. Downloading and installing the two updates will take nearly an hour, so we recommend you have a stable WiFi connection and at least a 50% battery charge before getting started.

If you have not seen the update notification on your HTC One M9 in Taiwan, you can go to Settings > About > Software Updates > Check now to manually ping HTC’s update server.

There are not a lot of cosmetic differences between Android Lollipop and Marshmallow, but HTC One M9 users will now have access to Google Now on Tap, Android Doze and Adaptive Storage which allows you to incorporate your microSD card into the phone’s system storage.

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Announced two days ago at CES, the new LG K7 will soon be available in the US from T-Mobile and MetroPCS. The launch date and price of the phone have not been shared yet, but the LG K7 will definitely be on the cheap side.

The LG K7 is the low-end K-series phone, equipped with a 5.0-inch FWVGA display, 1.1GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and a 2,125mAh battery and LTE connectivity. That being said, the phone does sport a handful of “premium” design features which include 2.5D Arc Glass, curved edges, a woven pattern polycarbonate back panel and rear mounted power and volume buttons.

If you’re hoping for more a more exciting Android phone announcement from LG, you’ll likely have to wait until Mobile World Congress at the end of February.

LG K7 Key Specifications

• Display: 5.0-inch FWVGA In-cell Touch (LTE) / On-cell Touch (3G)
• Chipset: 1.1GHz Quad-Core
• Camera: Rear 8MP or 5MP / Front 5MP
• Memory: RAM: 1.5GB
• ROM: 16GB
• Battery: 2,125mAh
• Operating System: Android 5.1 Lollipop
• Size: 143.6 x 72.5 x 8.9mm
• Colors: Titan / White / Black / Gold
• Others: 2.5D Arc Glass / Gesture Shot / Gesture Interval Shot / Tap and Shot

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HTC hasn’t said if sales of the HTC One A9 are meeting its expectations, but the company has decided to add a pink version of the phone to its lineup. The pink HTC One A9 will join the other Carbon Gray, Opal Silver, Topaz Gold and Deep Garnet color options, but you’ll only be able to find it in Taiwan. In HTC’s home country, the 16GB HTC One A9 is priced at NT$14,900 ($450 USD) while the 32GB model sells for NT$15,900 ($480 USD). That price is roughly 10% cheaper than what the phone goes for in the US and nearly 25% less than what it sells for across Europe.

We’re sure there are a lot of factors that are considered when deciding the price of a phone for different markets, but we have a hard time seeing why the mid-range HTC One A9 carries a higher price tag than the flagship HTC One M9 in Europe.

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You’ve been able to pony up $699 for the BlackBerry Priv unlocked and direct from BlackBerry since November, but if you wanted to get the Priv with a carrier payment plan, your only choice has been AT&T. That’ll change soon.

BlackBerry confirmed today that the Priv will be sold by Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon in the US. T-Mobile will begin sales on January 26, but neither Sprint nor Verizon have announced their launch plans quite yet. There’s also no word on how much any of these three carriers plan to ask for BlackBerry’s Android-powered slider.

Things have been a bit rocky for BlackBerry lately, but the Priv could help improve the situation there if it sells well. Whether or not that’ll happen remains to be seen, but the Priv’s chances of success will be greatly increased once it’s available on all four US carriers because it means that the major of US consumers will be able to get the device on a contract or payment plan, which is how most folks buy their phones.

Now that BlackBerry Priv’s availability will soon be greatly expanded, we’ve got one more question for BlackBerry: Where’s Marshmallow?

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New apps need lovin’ too, right? Every day there are thousands of additions to the Google Play store, but many go unnoticed and never receive the attention they deserve. We’ve shown in the past that this community can discover great apps and propel them to new heights. Our weekly Fresh Meat column highlights new apps with fewer than 100,000 installs. Browse our new Android app picks below and let us know which ones you enjoy.

Forage

Description: Forage gathers all of the restaurants near you and lets you choose what you feel like eating. Then it selects one from that category for you to go to! If you want, you can always let Forage pick everything for you and experience new and delicious locations.

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Newslet: News reader

Description: Newslet is a tiny News Reader that gives you news from your 3 favorite topics. News is served on the basis of the country you want, so it stays relevant to you. Want to know what’s going on elsewhere? You can change the edition (country) on the fly!

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Open Link With…

Description: With OpenLinkWith, you can share any webpage with it and it will ask you which applications to open the link with. Although the original intent of the application is to direct web pages to apps, it can even be used to switch between apps.

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Human – Activity Tracker

Description: Human tracks all your activity throughout the day and shows how you compare to people like you. The all-day activity tracker runs in the background of your phone and automatically picks up walks, runs, and bike rides

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Misfit Cycling

Description: Misfit Cycling app turns your Misfit Flash Cyclist’s Edition into a tool that helps you be on top of your cycling performance. The Misfit Cycling app lets you see your rotations per minute (RPMs) in real time, chart your cycling sessions on a map, and look at speed and estimated calories burned over time.

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KayKal

Description: Find restaurants nearby that fit your calorie or macronutrient (carbohydrates, protein, fat) goals. Just input your diet goals for your next meal and we’ll show you what’s available nearby and how to get there!

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ArtRage Oil Painter Free

Description: Oil Painter Free is the basic version of our powerful ArtRage for Android app and ArtRage desktop programs, which focuses exclusively on our popular Oil Brush tool, featuring four Oil brush presets that will allow you to create a wide range of effects and paint in your preferred style.

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Personal Trainer: Home Workout

Description: Personal Trainer by Track My Fitness is just like having your own personal trainer on your phone or smartwatch. Just select your workout and get moving! Enjoy fresh, new home workout videos added each week to the app including Weight Loss, Cardio, HIIT, Abs, and Strength Training.

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Rocket Redeem

Description: Discover new apps. Get Amazon.com Gift Cards. It’s that simple. Rocket Redeem is the highest paying app discovery reward app on Google Play. We want you to get rewarded for doing what you already do – downloading and using new apps and trying out services that interest you.

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Fast Browser, Best & Smallest

Description: Fast Browser, Best & Smallest gives users a great browsing experience by speed and better user experience. Fast Browser, Best & Smallest with the help of Virustotal will protect you from malicious websites through 56 virus scanners are integrated.

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Back in September of last year, Nextbit officially introduced the Robin, an Android-powered smartphone that is “cloud-first.” With an eye-catching design and features that focus on storing and pulling things from the cloud, it earned plenty of attention. And after a successful stint on Kickster, it is about to start shipping. At least for the first 1,000 Kickstarter backers, anyway.

As revealed by the company’s chief designer, Scott Croyle, the Robin will begin shipping to the first 1,000 Kickstarter backers beginning February 16. However, while that’s certainly good news for those lucky 1,000, it is only of the GSM model to start. For anyone that backed a CDMA model, the wait continues.

There’s no word on when other backers will start to see their device shipped or when the CDMA models will get their first shipments.

Did you back the Robin project?

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Withings continues to charge hard at the wearable market without going head to head with the true smartwatch crowd.

The Withings Go is the latest offering and it takes a decidedly more dressed down approach than the Activité line, but at least in my opinion a more compelling look than the Pulse 02.

That 8 months of battery life is probably going to be the highlight feature of the Go for those that can’t stomach the idea of another gadget to charge. The E Ink screen and of course minimal functionality are responsible for that extended battery life. The Go is simply there to track your sleep and fitness activity and provide the time when called upon to do so.

The Go comes with two modules in the box; the first is a clip to attach to your pants, shirt, sports bra or perhaps your shoelaces and the second is a rubber watch style band. The modules come in either black, yellow, red, blue or green.

The Go is also able to be worn while swimming, something most of the more advanced fitness trackers don’t recommend, and will successfully differentiate between activities like swimming, running or walking.

While you can view your daily activity progress on the E Ink display, there is far more data to be had when viewing the Health Mate app.

The Withings Go certainly isn’t going to be for everyone given the stripped down functionality versus a smartwatch, but for those that only really care about fitness tracking and want to just put something on and forget about it the $69 Withings Go will be a compelling package when it launches later this year.

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If your interest was piqued by the aggressively priced mid-range competitor the Honor 5X yesterday, then you will be glad to hear that you can already place your pre-order on either Amazon or Newegg. Both sites have all three colors for $199 with an expected ship date of January 31st.

While it is unquestionably a mid-range device, the Honor 5X does offer a number of features that to date have been reserved for higher end devices. Two of the big highlights are the all-metal construction as well as the fingerprint scanner on the back. A 5.5-inch screen isn’t unheard of in this range and it is 1080p rather than the higher resolutions we’ve been seeing lately, but many people are perfectly happy with that resolution.

As for the rest of the internals the camera is a respectable f/2.4 13MP and a 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 615 with 2GB of RAM should be plenty to keep things running smoothly on that 1080p screen.

The Honor 5X is launching with Android 5.1, but a rapid update to Marshmallow is in the works.

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HTC and Valve won’t be sending you the HTC Vive Pre any time soon, but you can get a feel for unboxing experience of the developer kit thanks to a new video that just went up on Owlchemy Labs’ YouTube channel. We can guarantee that the packaging of the consumer version of the HTC Vive will look a lot nicer than the drab brown boxes that the Vive Pre is shipped in, but it’s still nice to hear and see the excitement from the developers when they see the redesigned headset and controllers for the first time.

More than 7,000 HTC Vive Pre kits are being shipped to developers across the globe. Pre-orders for the HTC Vive will open next months, but HTC and Valve are not planning to ship the consumer version of the Vive until April. HTC is still not willing to talk about the Vive’s price, but that information will likely be revealed during Mobile World Congress at the end of February.

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If you hadn’t noticed, yesterday was quite crazy. There were dozens of new Android-related product announcements that featured new smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, wearables, TVs and other accessories. Since it’s nearly impossible to keep up with all the news, we’ve pulled the most important announcements into this post to showcase the highlights of the day. Whether you read through the highlights or dig into every story, be sure you’re done before the next wave on CES news rolls in today.

Smartphones and Tablets

While there were quite a few smartphones and tablets announced yesterday, the devices from Huawei definitely stood out. The Huawei Mate 8 is the company’s new flagship smartphone for international markets, featuring a 6-inch 1080p display, 2.3GHz Kirin 950 octa-core processor, 3/4GB of RAM, 32/64GB of internal storage, 16-megapixel rear and 8-megapixel front cameras, a fingerprint scanner, Android 6.0 and a massive 4000mAh battery. The Mate 8 is will sell for a starting price of €599.

While it wasn’t the first Huawei phone to be unveiled, the Honor 5X is certainly the most exciting since it sports an aluminum chassis, fingerprint scanner, 5.5-inch display, Snapdragon 615 processor and 13-megapixel main camera. And it can be pre-ordered now from Amazon for only $199! Competing with the Honor 5X is the Huawei GX8, which sports nearly all the same specs while carrying a $349 price tag.

Hauwei also introduced the MediaPad M2 10.0 (an overpriced mid-range Android tablet) and started offering the Nexus 6P in Matte Gold.

If you live in Asia and are looking for nice mid-range phone, the Lenovo Vibe S1 Lite may be perfect. The phone comes with a 5-inch 1080p IPS display, MediaTek processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage and a 2700mAh battery, all wrapped up in a 8.5mm-thick body that carries a $199 sticker price.

Since cheap tablets are everywhere these days, you shouldn’t be surprised to see one at CES. The Acer Iconia One 8 runs on Android 5.1 with an 8-inch display, MediaTek quad-core processor, a 5MP rear camera, a 2MP front-facing camera, 1GB DDR3L RAM, and 16GB of internal storage. The good news is that Acer is only planning to charge $99 for the Iconia One 8 when it goes on sale in February.

Wearables and Smartwatches

Huawei has introduced two new variants of the Huawei Watch: the rose gold-plated Elegant and the Jewel, which features 68 Swarovski Zirconia crystals around the face of the smartwatch. Both watches share scratch-resistant, two-layer sapphire crystal screens and 316L cold-forged stainless steel construction. Internal specification are the same as the original Huawei Watch.

HTC typically doesn’t have a huge presence at CES, but the company decided to change that in 2016. HTC finally introduced its fitness product portfolio, bundled as the UA Health Box. The bundle includes the UA Band for tracking your sleep, steps and workouts; UA Heart Rate for precise heart rate monitoring; and the UA Scale, which keeps track of your weight and body fat. HTC and Under Armour will be selling each product individually when the Health Box go on sale in February, but you can save money by pre-ordering the UA Health Box for $400.

The Fitbit Blaze is a new $200 smart fitness watch that features a color display and basic notifications and music controls. Along with the expected step, sleep and heart rate tracking, the new FitStar feature displays guided workout animations on the Blaze’s screen.

Casio is a new player in the Android Wear arena, but the Casio WSD-F10 should be an appealing option for those looking for a rugged smartwatch. The device can resist being submerged in 50 meters of water, is MIL-STD-810 “military standard” certified and incorporates a dual layer display that incorporates a color TFT LCD and monochrome LCD, which allows the smartwatch to last more than a single day with regular use or more than one month when switched over to Timepiece Mode.

The Garmin Varia Vision is the biker’s alternative to Google Glass. Selling for $400, the Varia Vision fits onto either side of an existing pair of sunglasses and offers a heads-up display that shows ride data cyclists might find useful. That includes distance traveled, time, navigation prompts and performance alerts, in addition to call and message notifications from your smartphone.

Your fitness tracker no longer needs to be an eye sore thanks to the new Misfit Ray. The cylindrical aluminum body of the Ray looks like a fashion accessory, but it can keep track of your fitness and sleep and can last up to six months before the battery needs to be replaced.

Other devices

CES announcements wouldn’t be complete without a few Android TVs. Sony’s  XBR-X930D, XBR-X940D and XBR-X850D 4K TVs offer quite a few improvements over last year’s models terms of in contrast, color accuracy and clarity, and they give users the ability to enjoy media or gaming through Android TV. 

On the surface, the new Jaybird Freedom and Jaybird X3 may seem like ordinary Bluetooth headphones, but both work with the company’s new MySound app, which gives users the ability to create completely customized sound profiles for their wireless earbuds that actually stay with the hardware. 

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