The Xiaomi Mi Band turned a lot of heads last year when it matched the functionality of other entry-level fitness trackers at a much lower price tag of CNY79 ($15 dollars when it began selling in the US).

Its successor, the Xiaomi Mi Band 1S, is reported to launch on November 7th just in time for China’s biggest shopping day of the year, November 11th, Singles Day.

The Mi Band 1S will still feature step counting, calorie counting, sleep monitor but will also be adding a heart rate monitor, and buzz notifications. It will remain water-resistant though.

The Mi Band 1S is will cost CNY99, a modest increase from Mi Band’s price (this could translate to a $5 or $10 increase in the US market).

Xiaomi gobbled a large share of the wearables market with the Mi Band last year. The Mi Band 1S has big shoes to fill this year and we can’t wait to see how it manages.

Via |…

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Lenovo’s Android update tracker has just been updated to give a timeframe when specific devices will be receiving Marshmallow, if at all. To quickly clear the air – hugely popular devices like the K3 Note and A7000/A7000 Plus will indeed be graced with an Android M firmware, just not particularly soon.

Okay, that might have been an understatement. All three models are listed for a Marshmallow release in September 2016, when Google will be gearing up to launch Android N, in all likelihood.

It’s the smartphones’ budget nature that may be to blame, as models up the lineup will be updated sooner. The yet-to-be-released Vibe S1 and the Vibe P1 that recently hit the shelves will get Android M in June 2016.

As of now, these 5 devices are the only ones with a confirmed Marshmallow update, the current flagship Vibe Z2 Pro (albeit a last-year model) will remain on 5.0 Lollipop for the time…

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The Tizen OS is still very much in its infancy, but in its short 3 year lifespan it has come a long way and shows great promise. Now, you might not think much of the platform and that is perfectly understandable, considering its limited spread and immaturity when compared to the big boys, but Tizen is growing at an impressive rate and with Samsung and Intel backing it, it might very well be the next big OS to fuel the…

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The Meizu Pro 5 mini has been flying under the radar for the most part, but to cropped up on a European seller’s site with full specs and price. This is a rare entry into the premium mini flagship and while it differs from its Meizu Pro 5 sibling, it makes no sacrifices.

It sports a 4.7″ AMOLED display with 1080p resolution in what is likely a metal body. It’s powered by a MediaTek Helio X20 chipset, unlike the Exynos 7420 in the bigger model. That’s a different mix of cores, ten of them, including two of the latest Cortex-A72.

The Meizu Pro 5 mini runs Android 5.1 Lollipop. There’s 3GB of RAM on the 32GB model and a possibility of 4GB for the 64GB one (at least that’s how it works on the Pro 5). The microSD slot allows for additional storage too.

Meizu Pro 5 mini

The camera has been changed too – a 16MP main shooter, replacing the 21MP sensor. The selfie camera stays at 5MP. Another change is that the Pro 5 mini is a dual-SIM phone, but may lack NFC.

Surprisingly, the battery appears the same, 3,050mAh, though we wouldn’t get too excited before an official confirmation. The fingerprint sensor is on board too.

The Meizu Pro 5 mini specs verge on “too good to be true,” but even with some corrections (the battery and the chipset are our top suspects) it will really liven up the premium mini market.

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It appears Sony’s current crown jewel – the 4K Xperia Z5 Premium has made it a bit quicker to the Taiwanese market than initially expected. The handset is seeing a limited launch in the region and reportedly only a few retailers have some available units, mainly intended to fulfill pre-orders, meaning that the most eager fans probably already got their hands on one.

Wider availability for the handset should follow shortly, around the middle of the month and from the looks of things, suppliers need to stack up on the Chrome one, as it is generating the most interest.

Also, we are getting reports that only hours after the first Z5 Premium units were turned on by lucky owners, the first firmware update became available. Launch-time OTA’s aren’t unusual, meant to correct issues that slipped passed final quality control and into user hands. Hopefully, whatever the case was, these first Xperia Z5 Premium units won’t be acting up. The update package itself brings the build number up from 32.0.A.6.115 to 32.0.A.6.170 and according to the changelog delivers mostly performance enhancements.

The Sony Xperia Z5 Premium is the very best of Sony’s current lineup and the world’s first 4K resolution smartphone. If that isn’t enough to impress you, there is also the powerful Snapdragon 810 SoC, 3GB of RAM and a capable 23MP camera, not to mention a slick and rigid exterior, complete with an IP65/68…

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Samsung Pay is one of the more interesting contactless payment solution to come along in a while and probably the most ambitious one as well. If you haven’t heard about it yet, it aims to successfully trick almost any traditional swipe payment terminal and transmit a secure version of you card information to it. The whole idea is almost too good to be true, but Samsung has made the magnetic field trickery possible and it is already enjoying quite a lot of popularity in Korea and the US.

Now, in a new development, Samsung has disclosed some of its thoughts on the future of Samsung Pay and it appears opening up the platform to other manufacturers and non-Samsung devices in the future is possible. The information comes from Injong Rhee, executive vice president and head of enterprise business at Samsung’s mobile division, so it is as credible as it gets. However, he also stressed the fact that currently the main focus is on rolling out the platform on various markets and building on its initial success – over one million subscribers and $88 million worth of payments already serviced.

The prospect of Samsung Pay transcending outside the Korean giant’s own device lineup is truly exciting and could potentially boost its popularity immensely. Sadly, that is about all we currently know on the matter. The system does require additional specialized hardware that currently only a select few high-end Samsung devices have, so opening the full set of features that Samsung Pay offers to other OEM’s would also require licensing or selling the hardware component. However, Samsung Pay does also utilize a more conventional contactless payment technique as well – namely NFC. That means using any NFC-enabled mobile phone for the process would be possible. During the interview Injong also mentioned that the company intends to start bringing Samsung Pay to its non-flagship models as well, so we have that to look forward to.

Here’s to hoping more info comes shortly and Samsung does start working towards opening the platform soon.

Source |…

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There are many hopefuls in the smartphone OS race. Windows Phone (now Windows 10 Mobile) is fairly secure in its third spot, while BlackBerry held on to fourth after dropping through the ranks.

It seems that the freefall of the Canadians continues and now Tizen occupies the fourth place, according to Strategy Analytics.

Tizen has the advantage of being backed by smartphone giant Samsung, which has been expanding its Tizen portfolio. Much more than its Windows lineup, which has essentially been abandoned.

Tizen has found a niche in the budget segment in India where it’s second behind Android. The OS also powers Samsung’s latest Gear S2 smartwatches and select smart TVs.

Anyway, that’s not great news for the RIM guys, but it does explain the recent jump to Android with the new BlackBerry Priv.

Android itself took a small hit, as did Windows, only iOS rose. Even Firefox OS, which accounts for a tiny sliver of the market declined.

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It’s been a long wait, but smartwatch aficionados based in the UK can now look forward to a Huawei Watch from Vmall and Selfridges and soon Google Play Store too. The Selfridges search tool yields no results as of yet, but Vmall has a number of configurations (those aren’t available for immediate purchase though).

The most affordable version – pairs cold-forged 316L stainless steel with sapphire crystal and a black leather band. It goes for £290, essentially matching the €400 price on the continent. It seems that the silver color option is £30 cheaper than the black one.

You also get Link and Mesh bands, which start at £330. The ceiling is around £600 if you go for the priciest Huawei Watch options.

The UK Google Play Store should soon put the Watch on its virtual shelves too. In the US you can get $50 off if you grab a Huawei Nexus 6P, hopefully the brits will get a similar…

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It’s November 5 and sure enough, just as promised, Huawei pulled the curtains on its latest mobile chipset – the Kirin 950. The silicon in question has been generating quite a lot of attention with leaked specs and benchmark scores that promise industry-leading performance.

It appears that the rumor mill got everything right and there are no real surprises in the hardware. The Kirin 950 is an impressive chip indeed, manufactured using a 16nm FinFET process and utilizes flip transistors. The latter entails building transistors vertically, instead of just horizontally, which equates to less power consumption. In fact, Huawei promises a 40% increase in performance and 60% decrees in power needs.

As for the architecture inside the Kirin 950, it is an octa-core CPU, utilizing four high-power Cortex-A72 cores, clocked at up to 2.53 GHz and an additional four power-saving Cortex-A53 ones, working at 1.8 GHz. They are configured in a big.LITTLE setup, providing a lot of flexibility between power and battery consumption on the fly. The Kirin 950 also has a small i5 co-processor, which is always on and helps the device stay constantly aware of its surroundings by monitoring various sensors. It is also a huge improvement over the second-generation i3 chip with power usage brought down from 90 mA all the way to 6.5 mA.

The Kirin 950 also shows great promise in the graphics department. It is equipped with a high-end Mali T880MP4 GPU, said to be twice better in terms of performance, compared to the Mali T880 inside the Kirin 930. Network connectivity is covered by a Cat. 6 LTE, which voice calls should also benefit from, considering Huawei’s new push towards VoLTE. The technology reportedly doubles the audio frequency range and significantly slashes latency.

It is still too early to expect proper performance figures for the Kirin 950, especially before it appears in an end-user device. Still Huawei did show off a stellar test score of almost 83 000 points on AnTuTu with a demo rig. That’s easily the highest we’ve seen from any device so far and means the upcoming Huawei Mate 8 will have some proper power underneath its hood….

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At some point you may have come across the name Sennheiser Orpheus. They were a one of a kind pair of headphones from the German manufacturer that you won’t normally see on its catalog. That’s because only 300 of them were made and, well, they were obscenely expensive.

The original Orpheus were made 25 years ago. Now, Sennheiser has come up with a successor, one that has been 10 years in the making.

The new Orpheus are every bit as extraordinary as the original and in many ways, even more so. For starters, they come with their own tube amplifier, made out of glass and a solid block of Carrara marble, with brass knobs that are painted in chrome. The vacuum tubes are connected to the spring-loaded damped marble housing to prevent structure-borne noise and surrounded by high quality quartz bulbs that protect against airborne noise. The amplifier accepts optical, coaxial, and USB inputs for audio and has its own 8 internal DACs, four for each channel to increase accuracy and decrease distortion and noise.

That’s not all, though. The new Orpheus are the first electrostatic headphones with their own internal Cool Class-A MOSFET amplifier housed within the earcups, one on each side. This eliminates the capacitive reactance of the cable delivering a 200% more efficient ultra-high impulse fidelity. The diaphragms are made out of 2.4 micrometer platinum-vaporization, the transistors are gold-vaporized ceramic, and the cables are 99.9% OFC silver-plated. The drivers have a frequency response of 8Hz to 100kHz and a distortion of 0.01% at 1kHz, 100 dB SPL.

The Sennheiser Orpheus costs…

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