T-Mobile fans holding out for the Blackberry Priv may finally have a date to circle on their calendars. A leaked document shows that the Blackberry Priv is scheduled to go on sale at T-Mobile on January 26. The price of T-Mobile’s Blackberry Priv isn’t revealed in the leak, but it’ll likely be close to $700 since that’s what Blackberry is charging for the phone though its website.

With the Priv heading to T-Mobile and Verizon during the month of January, BlackBerry should see a significant sales bump. The company hasn’t given us any solid sales figures for its first Android-powered phone, but it has stated that it’s satisfied with how things are going so far. The Priv has received mixed reviews from the tech community, but out of 120 consumer reviews on AT&T’s website, it does have a 4.6 out of 5 stars. Based on how things are shaping up with the Priv, we can pretty much guarantee that we’ll be seeing a few more Android-powered Blackberry smartphones in the future.

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HTC may not have any plans to close up shop in 2016, but the company’s plans to reduce overall operating costs by 35% has led to the sale of its Taoyuan City factory and property. The assets have been sold to Inventec for $174 million, but HTC is planning to relocate its employees that still work at the factory. In 2013, HTC temporarily stopped smartphone production line at its Taoyuan City factory due to slowing sales of HTC phones.

During the third quarter of this year, HTC announced that its overhead reduction plan would lead to layoff of 15% of its employees, leaving nearly 2,000 people without jobs. While making massive cuts to its work force and selling a factory may seem like dramatic measures to take, they are required sacrifices that need to be made if HTC plans to survive in the current environment. Hopefully, HTC’s 2016 flagship can help turn the tides a little and allow HTC to pull its head above water.

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Two-year contracts are will soon be shunned by another US carrier. On January 8, 2016, AT&T will stop offering contracts with its smartphones, the operator confirmed to PhoneScoop. That means that the only ways to get a new phone from AT&T will be to pay full price or pay in installments with AT&T Next. AT&T does say that business customers will still be able to get a contract.

Meanwhile, leaks and rumors have shed more light on AT&T’s upcoming move. Leaked AT&T documents show that unlike Verizon, which recently stopped offering contracts to new customers but still allow existing contract customers to upgrade to a subsidized phone, contracts will be dead for both new and existing AT&T customers. If you want a tablet, hotspot, wearable, or Internet of Things device from AT&T, though, a Droid-Life report says that you’ll still be able to get those products on a contract.

Contracts used to be the way that pretty much all US wireless customers bought a new phone, but in recent years, the carriers have been moving to installment plans. AT&T started to move away from contracts earlier this year when it stopped offering them at third-party retailers like Best Buy, but soon they’ll stop being available at AT&T stores, too. It’s a big deal for the US wireless industry that helps to show consumers the true cost of a smartphone.

Are any of you currently in a contract with your carrier?

Sources: PhoneScoop, Engadget, Droid-Life

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The G4 from the Life’s Good crew turned out to be a good handset that a lot of people liked, and the V10 features a major new secondary display that might be a gimmick to some, but it could be something LG wants to keep around for a bit longer. And then there’s the Nexus 5X, another phone with features that will probably make it to the company’s newest flagship in 2016.

Those are assumptions placed on the right path, if a new report from Evan Blass via VentureBeat is to be believed. According to the serial leaker, LG’s G5 will gather noteworthy features from some of its other high-profile devices and merge them together into LG’s “most premium device to date.” The phone will reportedly feature an all-metal construction, a fingerprint reader on the back, and a secondary display with a resolution of 160×1040.

The camera system on the back will get a significant upgrade as well, according to the report. It will have two lenses on the back, with the main camera being a 16-megapixel shooter and the secondary working to give it 135-degrees of wide-angle functionality. Between those lenses, LG will house four sensors, including a pair of flashes, an RGB sensor that should boost scene recognition and focus, and the laser autofocus sensor. On the front, the G5 will boast an 8MP camera.

Other features include Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor under the hood, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in storage, and a battery that’s measured in at 2800mAh. The screen’s resolution is said to be 5.3 inches, and boast a resolution of 2560×1400.

The LG G5 will also reportedly feature something called a “Magic Slot,” but the details on what this could be are thin. However, the report indicates it could be used to support hardware expansion modules, things like an external keyboard, camera accessories, and more.

As far as a release date goes, the report suggests it could see the light of day in the first quarter of 2016.

What do you think of the G5 rumors?

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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.

Clipboard Actions

Description: Clipboard Actions creates actions based on your clipboard and shows them in the status bar as notification.

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FoodMe

Description: FoodMe shows you full meals, one at a time, with PICTURES, with tax/tip included in the price and no delivery minimums or options to worry about. Just swipe, swipe, food! 

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AutoMate

Description: AutoMate makes common services available to you from your device while you’re driving. With AutoMate, you get the right information at the right time, so you can focus on the road.

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SportsLine

Description: SportsLine combines advanced data with the analysis of sports experts to project the outcome of every game for all major U.S. sports. Our picks are powered by computer simulations that play out each game over 10,000 times to predict the winner, score and stats for every matchup.

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Avast Wi-Fi Finder

Description: Avast Wi-Fi Finder helps you automatically connect to the nearest free Wi-Fi in your range, so you can save on monthly bills and roaming fees.

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BlindTool

Description: This app tells you what it is looking at and vibrates based on how confident it is. When using this app you will wave the phone around you until you feel it vibrating more and more which means you are getting closer to an object it understands.

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YouSing

Description: Discover YouSing, THE new social karaoke app that enables you to fill your daily life with singing! Sing in solo, or join the singers of the YouSing community: record duets or group songs and meet other talents, brought together by singing!

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FiLMiC Pro

Description: Features include: Intuitive User Interface, Standard, Manual and Hybrid shooting modes. A shooting style for whatever your level.
Variable Speed Zoom

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Large Heap App Detector

Description: Applications that request Large Heap in the manifest are typically reducing user experience on the device. Android will terminate other apps’ processes to free up system RAM for use by the large heap. This will result in slower multitasking and response times for your device.

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Times Square Official Ball App

Description: Join millions of revelers around the world to celebrate New Year’s Eve LIVE. The Official Times Square Ball App is your exclusive access to be part of the activities in Times Square as you watch the LIVE official show featuring musical performances, celebrity appearances, reveler interviews, hourly countdowns and the midnight Ball Drop!

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If you’re in need of more memory for any of those new gadgets you picked up over the holidays, you should take a look at the Transcend deals on Amazon today.

For your mobile needs, there’s a 64GB Class 10 microSDXC card at $13.99 or a 128GB version for $42.99. While both are solid deals, the 128GB in particular is a steal at $14 off the previous low price.

Full-size SD cards are similarly discounted, with a 64GB Class 10 SDXC card at $15.99 and a 128GB Class 10 UHS-3 card just $41.99.

And on the off chance any of you are in the market for a large SSD, Transcend has its 1TB SSD at just $244.99, which is almost $100 off what you’ll find it for most days.

All of these deals end at midnight Pacific time, so don’t wait too long.

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In case you missed it, Google Play has been running a year-end sale that offers up to 90% off some fantastic games, and today is your final chance to take advantage of the deals.

There are 27 total games included in the sale, and whatever style of game you are into, there is probably something there for you, so make sure you check out the deal page before the end of the day.

Some of my favorites include Lara Croft Go, Minecraft: Story Mode, Hitman: Sniper, Dark Echo, and This War of Mine (50 cents off a $14.99 game isn’t exactly a scorching deal, but it is a great game).

Here’s the full list of games on sale:

• Castle of Illusion
• Civilization Revolution 2
• Dark Echo
• Deep Under the Sky
• Final Fantasy III
• Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
• FRAMED
• Goat Simulator
• Hitman: Sniper
• Joe Danger
• Lara Croft GO
• Lego Batman: Beyond Gotham
• Leo’s Fortune
• Minecraft: Story Mode
• Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour
• Monument Valley
• NBA Jam
• Pac-Man CE DX
• Ravensburger Puzzle
• Rayman Fiesta Run
• Riptide GP2
• Sleeping Prince: Royal Edition
• Small World 2
• Splendor
• Surgeon Simulator
• This War of Mine
• Trivia Crack (Ad free)

Let us know if any of your personal favorites are in there that shouldn’t be missed.

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T-Mobile’s Binge On network feature has been getting a lot unwanted attention ever since it was introduced this fall. While Binge On promises that streaming video from select services will not count against your plan’s data limit, Google has noticed that T-Mobile has been reducing the quality of YouTube streams to its customers, even though YouTube isn’t Binge On-certified. Because “throttling” accusations have been flying across the web over the past few weeks, T-Mobile has released a statement to clear the waters:

Using the term “throttle” is misleading. We aren’t slowing down YouTube or any other site. In fact, because video is optimized for mobile devices, streaming from these sites should be just as fast, if not faster than before. A better phrase is “mobile optimized” or a less flattering “downgraded” is also accurate.

If you want to get around the “downgraded” video streams that have been “mobile optimized,” Binge On can be turned off within the My T-Mobile app by going to Profile > Multimedia settings. Most of T-Mobile’s “Un-carrier” moves have resulted in quite a bit of positive press for the company, so we’ll be waiting to see if they decide to roll the feature back or try to offer more granular options so that users know and have control over which streaming media services are being optimized for streaming over T-Mobile’s network.

What’s your take on T-Mobile’s Binge On?

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Yesterday we learned that the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge may not share the same screen size. Both phones may be getting larger displays compared to last year’s models, with the S7 edge’s display size getting a substantial bump up to 5.5 inches.

Thanks to a new leak, we now have diagrams of what the two phones might look like and how their sizes and designs compare to last year’s Galaxy S6. Based on the image, the Samsung Galaxy S7′s display increase from 5.1 inches to 5.2 inches will not affect the size of the phone at all. Unfortunately, Samsung will not be able to squeeze the new 5.5-inch display into the Galaxy S7 edge without expanding the phone’s footprint to 151mm x 73mm. The difference in screen sizes will allow Samsung to target different consumers with each device rather than relying only on the curvature of the display to set the two apart.

The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge diagram also shows that the two phones are slightly thicker than last year’s S6 with tapering edges on the back. We expect the devices will look fairly similar to what Samsung gave us last year, but the design tweak should make both phones more comfortable to hold.

Rumor has it that Samsung may unveil the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge before Mobile World Congress in late February, but it’s highly doubtful that we’ll see wither of the phones as CES in Las Vegas next week. If Samsung does plan to bring the two phones to market sooner than last year’s models, we would see a Samsung scheduling an Unpacked event for the beginning of February.

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While FitBit may sell more fitness trackers than anyone else, Samsung is hoping to make a name for itself in the category with fitness-focused processor. Samsung has announced its new Bio-Processor which will allow manufacturers to quickly design and build wearables that are smaller, while reducing the number of internal electronic components needed. Samsung’s new chip is capable of measuring body fat, and skeletal muscle mass, heart rate, heart rhythm, skin temperature and stress level. In addition to processing the bio-signals it measures, the new chip integrates Analog Front Ends, a microcontroller unit, a power management integrated circuit, digital signal processor and eFlash Memory.

“Samsung’s Bio-Processor, which can process five different biometric signals, is the most versatile health and fitness monitoring chip available on the market today and is expected to open up many new health-based service options for our customers.”

Production of the Samsung Bio-Processor is already under way with the first wave of devices expected to hit store shelves in the first half of 2016. We expect Samsung will announce a few wearables which use the new chip at CES or Mobile World Congress, but we won’t be surprised if we see the Samsung Bio-Processor referenced in press releases from major wearable players over the next few months.

Show Press Release

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