BlackBerry has already started shipping Priv units pre-ordered through its online store, last Friday to be precise. However, this doesn’t mean that if you order a Priv today, it will be delivered to you tomorrow (or the day after).

Because of higher than anticipated demand for its first Android-running model, BlackBerry has been forced to push the shipping date for those who order a Priv starting today. If you take the plunge, you’ll see that you have to wait until November 23 in order to actually receive the smartphone.

Shipments have been “phased”, the company says, and it’s on November 23 when the second wave will commence. So effectively the Priv is still only on pre-order at the moment. You can’t say it’s available in stock if it takes two weeks to ship.

Note that all of the above is valid for orders placed through BlackBerry’s online store in the US, UK, and Canada. Elsewhere (and at other retailers or at carriers) things may be different, as other companies have all had their own stock allocations.

Although BlackBerry would obviously love it for people to think that the Priv is selling like hot cakes, it’s holding back an essential bit of info that may confirm that – how many units have actually been ordered. Or precisely how big that first batch that’s already shipped was. Because of that, this whole “demand is greater than supply” thing could be a marketing ploy and nothing else.

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After having outed a couple of “Innovator Edition” Gear VR headsets in the past year or so, Samsung has officially announced its mass-market offering in this space back in September.

The ‘consumer version’ Gear VR was then said to start shipping in November. And here we are, with pre-orders having already commenced over at Best Buy.

As previously revealed, the newest Gear VR can be yours for just $99.99, which makes it the cheapest such accessory Samsung’s ever made. It should start shipping on November 20, by the way.

The new Gear VR is compatible with the Samsung Galaxy Note5, S6 edge+, S6 edge, and S6. So it’s also the Samsung VR headset with the widest handset support yet. Do note that the Gear VR will not work without having one of these phones inserted into it, so if you have a different smartphone you can’t take advantage of all that VR greatness it…

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Meizu did such a wonderful job with the MX5 that we were pretty certain a Pro edition wasn’t needed this year. As it turns out Meizu thought otherwise and is giving us a bigger and faster Meizu Pro 5, with refined design, blazing-fast chipset and better camera sensor.

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The much-anticipated Apple Music app for Android is now available to download from the Google Play Store, a few weeks after screenshots showing it got leaked.

The app is currently in beta. As such, it doesn’t yet have music videos, and the sign-up process apparently isn’t optimized for Android yet. Furthermore, in order to sign up for a family account (or upgrade to one) you need a Mac or iOS device, for now.

These seem to be the only things missing from the app at this point. Apple Music for Android comes with a free three-month trial period (as it did for iOS), the For You tab with recommendations from music experts based on what you listen to, and a Browse tab that’s curated by Apple’s editors.

You also get access to the Beats 1 radio station as well as other stations curated by editors. The app supports playlists, and through My Music it shows you all your iTunes purchases and saved music from Apple Music in the same spot.

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Qualcomm has been drip feeding us information about the Snapdragon 820 chipset ever since March. Today though it’s thankfully decided it’s time to finally fully reveal that SoC’s specs. This obviously means we’re getting closer and closer to seeing the Snapdragon 820 in actual shipping devices, even if the company insists that won’t happen until 2016.

The Snapdragon 820, as you may know, marks Qualcomm’s return to custom-designed CPU cores, something it has done a lot of in the past but chose not to with the Snapdragon 810 – where it simply used ARM designs.

The Snapdragon 820 comes with a quad-core CPU with 64-bit Kryo cores, which can be clocked at up to 2.2 GHz. The CPU is said to have twice the performance of the one in the Snapdragon 810, which is quite a feat for just a one-generation leap. The same improvement is quoted when it comes to “efficiency”, which makes us think that the S820 will have better battery life compared to its predecessor. This will apparently also happen thanks to the new Hexagon 680 DSP.

In terms of graphics the Adreno 530 GPU is used, which has already been detailed in August. It’s said to come with a 40% improvement to graphics performance, compute capabilities, and power usage when compared to the Adreno 430 from the S810.

When it comes to connectivity, because of its X12 LTE modem, the S820 supports Cat.12 LTE downloads (with 600Mbps peaks) and Cat.13 uploads (with 150Mbps peaks), tri-carrier aggregation for downloads and two-carrier aggregation for uploads. In terms of technologies supported, there’s FDD and TDD for LTE, DB-DC-HSDPA, DC-HSUPA, TD-SCDMA, EV-DO and CDMA 1x, as well as GSM/EDGE. LTE/Wi-Fi link aggregation is in too, as is support for LTE-U, LTE Broadcast, dual-SIM, VoLTE, and Wi-Fi calling.

The Wi-Fi part of the chip gets support for 2×2 MU-MIMO 802.11ac connections, which is the fastest currently available option. Of course, you still need a wireless router with MU-MIMO support, and there aren’t a lot of those yet – but you do get some future-proofing, that’s for sure.

4K displays are supported by the S820, along with up to 28MP cameras through the new 14-bit dual-ISP. The chipset also works with UFS 2.0 or eMMC 5.1 flash storage, LPDDR4 1866MHz dual-channel memory, USB 3.0 or 2.0, and NFC. Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 is four times faster than conventional charging and 38% faster than Quick Charge 2.0.

The Snapdragon 820 will be manufactured on the 14nm FinFET process, as previously rumored. You should obviously expect to see this chip inside most (if not all) of next year’s Android flagship…

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In spite of the expectations that the Exynos 8890 chip will hit mass production in December, the latest rumor from South Korea suggests Samsung has already begun making its next greatest chip.

If true, Samsung would have the opportunity to ship the Galaxy S7 in February, following an official unveil in January. The company is certainly going to rely on a Snapdragon 820 variant as well, in addition to a rumored Exynos 7422, originally thought to star in the Note5.

According to another piece of online gossip, Samsung will ship as many Exynos 8890-powered Galaxy S7 smartphones as it will Snapdragon 820 ones. Previously, the company preferred its in-house chipset solution to Qualcomm’s due to Snapdragon 810’s overheating issues.

As you might already know, the Exynos 8890, also known by its codenames M1 or Mongoose, is going to be the first Samsung-made one to feature custom CPU cores.

Source • Source (2) | Via • Via…

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During the last few days vivo has made it abundantly clear that its X6 flagship is coming soon. We have already seen a few official teasers, detailing things like the e-payment ready fingerprint reader on the back, as well as 4GB of RAM and, quite naturally, LTE connectivity. The vivo X6 has been drawing a lot of attention, but despite all the leaks, we were yet to see a clear view of the phone.

Today brings a new glimpse of the X6 in a PR shot, posted by Harper’s Bazaar magazine on its official Weibo page. We can’t really be sure if the appearance of the X6 was intentional or some slip-up, but it is an odd way to spot a handset for the first time (still, we’ve seen a lot weirder).

The shot suggests that the vivo X6 is going to a Victoria’s Secret show, as evident by the pair of backstage passes and by design or not, we can also be fairly sure that it is the X6 in the picture, firstly because of the back-mounted fingerprint sensor, which no other vivo currently has. Then there is also the matter that the Weibo post itself comes from a vivo X6.

Sadly, the shot is little more than a peculiarity and doesn’t reveal more information about the vivo X6, aside from what we already mentioned. The specs we know so far include it using a 10-core MediaTek Helio X20 SoC and, get this, having 1GB of dedicated video RAM, as in a discreet graphics solution. Now, there’s something you don’t see every day.

Source(in Chinese) |…

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Just as Google promised back at its I/O 2015 conference, the Android version of Maps boasts enhanced offline mode.

The new perks include turn-by-turn navigation (without having to go online first like before), searching for business information as well as destinations within the selected region. Speaking of which, selecting and downloading a map locally is now easier thanks to the dedicated and easy to see download button.

iOS users are going to have to wait a bit until the new functionality reaches their devices. Google says it is hard at work on that task. For Android users, the new Maps version will slowly become available in the coming days and…

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Happy holidays, USA, from HTC. Every Tuesday you can get an HTC Holiday Deal that can save you up to 30%. With that deal the HTC One A9 is back to its rightful $400 price point and even One M9 flagship drops to $455. As usual, the rest of the pays full price.

The deal applies a discount on the total price at check out. If you spend $650 (or more, up to $2,000) you get 30% off. For smaller sums you get 20% off if you spend more than $400 and 15% off if you spend more than $200.

So the $500 HTC One A9 becomes a $400 phone and the $650 One M9 goes to $455. The selfie-centric Desire Eye gets discounted to $368. Also, since the discount to the whole order, you can say grab a $180 Desire 626 plus some accessory and get a discount on…

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Facebook is rolling out a new feature for the Facebook Messenger app. Called Photo Magic, the feature will remind you to send photos you took of your friends to them. This should come in handy if you are one of those people who takes pictures of your friends but then forgets to send them across later.

The feature works by using facial recognition on the photos you capture or the ones you already have stored on your phone. It then finds people in them and matches it against its database to identify them, and then reminds you to send the photos to your friends.

The app can automatically detect when you take a picture and can popup a notification immediately on Android to ask if you want to share the photo with the people who are in it, and with a single tap can send it to them on Facebook Messenger. Or you could dismiss the notification if you don’t feel like doing that.

The feature might sound a little bit creepy but it’s completely optional if you don’t feel like using it.

The feature is rolling out now in Australia on Android and later on iOS and other parts of the…

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