The Microsoft Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL finally became official earlier this week, and now you can already pre-order them if you live in the UK.

Three online retailers currently have them up for pre-order, and in all cases we’re talking about SIM-free and unlocked devices. The Lumia 950 can be yours for £474.99 at Expansys, £479.98 at Unlocked Mobiles, and £499.99 at Clove.

If you’d like the bigger Lumia 950 XL, you’ll need to shell out £529.98 at Unlocked Mobiles, £539.99 at Expansys, and £549.99 at Clove.

Expansys and Clove don’t say anything about when the two models might be in stock, while Unlocked Mobiles lists December 2 as the release date for the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL. So if you pre-order you’ll need to wait almost two months for the device you want to be at your doorstep. On the other hand, you’ll be sure to be among the first people in the UK to sport one of these new…

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Before the end of the year, OnePlus will launch its third smartphone ever, and the second one of 2015, to complement the OnePlus 2 in its portfolio. The new device will probably be smaller than the OnePlus 2, and it may be called either OnePlus X or OnePlus Mini.

Not long ago a purported full list of specs for the OnePlus Mini got leaked, and now a new OnePlus handset passed through the FCC. And, unlike what usually happens at the US-based regulatory agency, this time we even get a picture of the phone.

The model number for the device you see above is One E1005. This particular version comes with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, an FM radio, a 1.9 GHz processor, as well as support for LTE bands 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8 and quad-band GSM. As can be seen in the image, it has a microUSB connector and not a USB Type-C port like the OnePlus 2. It also sports a metal frame, and a back that’s either plastic or glass. Its dimensions are supposedly 139.7 x 55.8 x 6.85 mm, but if true it means this will be one oddly long and narrow device.

These are all the details that the FCC has made public, but they do sort of match up with the idea of a smaller OnePlus phone coming soon. In fact, the Chinese company has already scheduled an event on October 12 in India, which is when this handset could become official.

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Gionee has established Elife as its flagship series. This year, Gionee decided to go big with the new E8, and quite literally at that. The E8 is a big phone thanks to a new 6.0-inch QHD but it also packs in quite a lot of features, including a 24 megapixel rear camera, a fingerprint sensor, and an octa-core MediaTek Helio X10 processor. All packed in a new metal body.

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Motorola has started sending surveys for a software soak test to owners of the Moto X Pure Edition (2015), which is basically the US version of the Moto X Style sold internationally.

Unfortunately the company isn’t saying what exact firmware update is the one that the soak test will be sent out for. However, it seems pretty likely that we’re talking about Android 6.0 Marshmallow, since no other new versions of the OS have come out from the time the phone was launched.

Soak tests are sent out by Motorola to people who sign up for them in order to make sure that its over-the-air rollouts are going to work flawlessly when a new update is then released for every device out there. They are also a good way to spot last minute bugs in the wild.

Of course, this could be nothing more than a security patch of some sort, but obviously given Motorola’s history of quick Android updates (especially for its unlocked high-end devices) there’s also a possibility that it is indeed the first step in pushing out a Marshmallow release for the Moto X Pure…

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The Samsung Galaxy A9 poked its head above water again, surfacing at the AnTuTu benchmark database. It casts another vote for a 5.5″ 1080p screen, even though the naming scheme suggests the A9 should be better than the Galaxy A8 (5.7″ 1080p).

It’s definitely better in terms of chipset – the Snapdragon 620 has next-gen CPU cores and a next-gen GPU. The eight Cortex-72 cores should be much faster than the A53s used in current mid-range octa-cores. The Adreno 510 will also bring a much needed performance boost for 1080p gaming. And there’s more RAM, 3GB.

There’s 32GB of built-in storage, but AnTuTu failed to detect the camera resolution. The Samsung Galaxy A9 (SM-A9000) ran Android 5.1.1 Lollipop when the test was ran (which was most likely a pre-production version).

Source |…

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Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk is currently in Germany, discussing the future of electric vehicles with the local government. However this didn’t stop him from taking digs at Apple while interacting with media.

During an interview with German business newspaper Handelsblatt yesterday, when he was asked to comment on Apple hiring Tesla’s engineers for its car efforts, Musk revealed that the people hired by the iPhone maker are those which were fired by the automaker. He added that this is the reason he jokingly calls Apple the Tesla Graveyard. “If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple,” he said

On whether he considers Apple as a serious competition, he took another jab at the Cupertino-based company, saying making a car is not as easy as making a smartphone or a smartwatch.

“Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch? (laughs) No, seriously: It’s good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction,” he said. “But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car. But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant…

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Coffee chain Starbucks will start accepting Apple’s mobile payments service this year, while Chili’s and KFC will hop on the Apple Pay bandwagon next year. This was announced by the Cupertino-based company’s Vice President Jennifer Bailey at the Re/code technology conference yesterday.

In fact, Starbucks has already begun an Apple Pay pilot program at some of its stores, and the company plans to expand it to all of its 7,500 stores next year.

Earlier this year, consumer electronics chain Best Buy announced that it has updated its official iOS app with support for the payments service. At that time, the US-based company had also said that all its stores in the country will begin accepting Apple Pay later this year, something which started happening last month.

This comes just over a week after Samsung released its own mobile payments service, dubbed Samsung Pay, in the US. The service already had a successful launch in the company’s home country of South Korea.

Via 1…

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One lucky Redditor got to handle the BlackBerry Priv, something we’ve seen only the BB CEO do so far. The initial impressions are quite positive.

Most surprising is that the Priv is reportedly thinner than the Galaxy Note5, which is a slender 7.6mm thick. As for weight, it was reported more than the Note5 (171g). The BB slider is not a small device though, rumors put its screen at 5.4″. The screen was sharp (expected resolution: QHD) and it has a 2.5D glass (curved on the sides).

The Priv’s slider offered a pleasant sliding action, something we’ve all but forgotten since touchscreen slabs took over. The screen sliding up does not throw off the weight balance of the phone so typing on the hardware keyboard below is comfortable. When the slider is closed, the phone shows an on-screen keyboard for quick typing.

BlackBerry Priv handled by a lucky Redditor

In the dark the 18MP camera took longer to lock focus than the Galaxy phablet. The software running on the Snapdragon 808 chipset was as smooth as a Nexus 5 with Marshmallow. The BlackBerry Priv will come with Google Play Services, though it’s not clear how deep BB customization will run.

Hit the source link for the full discussion over at…

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Apple has revealed that the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus smartphones, which were released on September 25 in the first wave of countries, will be available in over 40 more countries by October 10 – tomorrow.

Over 35 countries will get the handsets today. These include Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Taiwan.

Those regions where the devices will be released tomorrow are: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. A third wave will see the flagships releasing in 24 additional countries starting October 16, including Turkey, India, and Malaysia, taking the total count of countries to over 75 and making it the fastest iPhone roll-out ever.

The Cupertino-based company plans to release the smartphones, which are now available unlocked in the United States, in more than 130 countries by the end of…

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Sony’s new Universal Media Remote for PS4 – which was leaked earlier this year in retail listings – is now up for pre-order on various retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, Gamestop, and Toys R Us. Carrying a price tag of $30, the device will be released on October 27.

The Japanese company describes the remote as “a convenient and intuitive way to navigate and control your favorite PS4 entertainment Apps and Blu-Ray Disc player right from your couch.” The device is Bluetooth-enabled, and can be used to control up to three devices in addition to the PS4, including a TV, cable box, and audio receiver.

The Universal Media Remote will be compatible with several PS4 apps, including Blu-ray Disc Player, Crunchyroll, FUNimation, HBO GO, Media Player, NBA GAME TIME, Netflix, NFL Sunday Ticket, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Vue, Twitch, and …

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