Russian phone customization company Caviar is back at it again, with yet another version of the Putinphone. The update was necessary of course, since Apple has launched a new iPhone.

So, predictably, the new Putinphone is based on the iPhone 6s. You get the same internals, but a totally different exterior, as you’d expect. Vladimir Putin’s face is encrusted in gold on the back, as are a few lines from the Russian national anthem, and in between them sits the presidential emblem.

All of the gold elements described above contrast with the “restrained and somewhat muted” titanium base used for the phone’s back. The color, texture, and strength characteristics of titanium apparently all accurately reflect “the essence of a strong, invincible and strong-willed character, inherent to the person who never gives up”.

The new Putinphone’s official name is Caviar Ti Gold Supremo Putin «Anniversario Edizione 63», and it’s called that in honor of the birthday of the Russian president. Only 63 units will be made. The price is RUB 199,000 ($3,174 or €2,822 at the current rates) for the 64GB model, while the 128GB version goes for RUB 209,000 ($3,334 or €2,964).

If you order such a device, you will receive it inside the “luxurious” wooden case you see above. You also get a free car charger.

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Book store chain Barnes & Noble has announced the latest tablet in its Nook line today. And like the last few offerings to bear the Nook brand, this is also nothing more than a rebranded Samsung tablet.

The new model is the Galaxy Tab E Nook, and it’s based on the 9.6-inch Galaxy Tab E. It comes with Nook Profiles, which let you customize the on-device experience for any family member. Lots of relevant kid-friendly content is promised, so parents shouldn’t have a hard time finding stuff for their children.

Of course the tablet comes with the Nook store preinstalled, which boasts over 4 million books, 110,000 children’s books, and 100 bestselling US magazines available for subscriptions or single sales.

If you buy a Galaxy Tab E Nook before the end of the year, you’ll get $5 in credit to build your Nook library. And if you trade-in another tablet, you can save up to $200.

The Galaxy Tab E Nook is priced at $249.99, and you can find it in Barnes & Noble stores and online. If you trade-in an old Nook device you’ll get $50 off, and if you trade-in “select iPad, Kindle, and Samsung tablets” you’ll receive a $25-200 credit, potentially lowering the price of the new device all the way to $49.99.

The hardware is identical to what you can find in the non-Nook branded Samsung Galaxy Tab E 9.6. So you get a 9.6-inch 1,280×800 touchscreen, a 5 MP rear camera, 2 MP front-facing unit, 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, and a 5,000 mAh…

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It’s not news that Samsung is building its own GPU to complement home-grown Mongoose CPU cores already in testing. It’s the only logical step after in-house SoCs have evolved from a regional option to a global chipset of choice with the Exynos 7420 in the entire 2015 flagship lineup.

According to a Korean source outed on Chinese social site Weibo, this said new GPU will make it to production devices in 2017 or 2018. We’re looking at a Galaxy S8/S9 here, unless Samsung decides to abandon its current naming scheme, or changes the update cycle.

There’s an intermediate step before it gets there, though, and that’s HAS or Heterogeneous System Architecture. The concept relies on integrating the CPU and GPU on the same bus which will result in a significant graphics performance boost and overall speed improvements. This step of the roadmap still includes ARM’s standard Mali GPUs.

Mind you, a few months ago insiders claimed that Samsung is pushing in-house GPUs some 5 years further down the road, so who do we believe now?

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Although still quite a few months away, the Galaxy S7 is already exciting the tech world and stirring up controversy. Samsung reassured fans that the absence of a Qualcomm chipset in the S6 lineup isn’t the end of the two parties partnership and by all accounts it seem that the Korean giant’s next flagship will once again have a Snapdragon version, probably the Snapdragon 820.

In a new development, however, the S7 might actually come with three different chipset options. One of those should be the Exynos 8890 – already spotted in a few benchmark scores. According to an industry source, the third option will also be an in-house chip – the Exynos 7422. You might remember that it was initially rumored to power the Note5, but that never came to pass. Still, it appears that Samsung hasn’t abandoned the project and might equip the Indian version of the Galaxy S7 with it. Presumably with the added bonus of a lower price tag. As for the Snapdragon 820, it is said to hit China and US markets, leaving the Exynos 8899 in Korea, Japan and Europe.

If this comes to pass, it will be a Samsung first and could potentially add a lot of confusion to the next Galaxy flagship, which will almost certainly also be offered in an edged variant. There has even been talk of a 5.7-inch Galaxy S7 variant, but that seems quite unlikely, as it would effectively collide markets with the Note…

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Huawei has announced the Honor 7 for the Indian market. The phone is priced at INR 22,999 ($354) and will be available exclusively through Flipkart starting October 15.

The Honor 7 has a full metal body, 5.2-inch Full HD LCD, HiSilicon Kirin 935 processor with octa-core (2.2GHz Cortex-A53 x 4 + 1.5GHz Cortex-A53 x 4) CPU and Mali-T628 MP4 GPU, 3GB RAM, 16GB storage with microSD support, 20 megapixel rear camera (Sony IMX230) with phase detection autofocus and two-tone LED flash, 1080p video, 8 megapixel front camera, 3100mAh battery, and fingerprint sensor.

Huawei is also launching the Honor Band Z1 in India, which is priced at INR 5,499 ($85). It’s a fitness band with a circular OLED display, dust and water resistance, and works with both, iOS and Android. The Band Z1 will be available by the end of…

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All the Apple hype right now might be around the recently announced iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, but the Cupertino company doesn’t want you to forget about the Watch. A set of videos have been posted, highlighting a few of the use cases, where the iPhone can’t quite do the job as well as the Watch, or at all.

Siri is the star of the first one, giving turn-by-turn directions off a biker’s wrist. One scenario you may not have thought of, is sending a full-on voice message to your girlfriend to set up a date. It’s questionable whether you want to be involved with a person who spells “you” as “u”, but that’s a whole different matter.

Once you are already on a date it’s good to know that your toddler is tucked in and sleeping at home, so you can party the night away. The Watch is there to help with Apple Pay too, when you only have the one hand free.

It’s good then to keep the Watch on one wrist and the phone in the opposite pocket, so you always have a single-handed course of action. And then obviously fitness monitoring, where the iPhone itself can’t do all of the work on its own.

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Google has sent out media invites in India for the launch of the company’s latest Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X smartphones. The event will be held in New Delhi on October 13, where the pricing and availability will be officially revealed.

So far we have seen the two phones appear on the Google Store India so it is no surprise that the company is launching them shortly after the US announcement. We also saw Flipkart teasing the Nexus 6P in India. We already know the prices of all the variants of both devices, which you can find…

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WhatsApp for iOS has received an update, bumping it to version 2.12.7, and bringing a feature that lets you bookmark messages as favorites for later access. Dubbed Starred Messages, the feature lets you tap and hold on any message – including text, image, and video – in a chat to star it.

Once starred, the message can easily be accessed later by heading to the contact or group info for the chat. Starred messages also appear in their own section in search results. The updated app is available for download from the App Store.

This comes a couple of months after an update brought along several new features – including the ability to include videos in chat backups and custom notification settings for individual chats – to the app.

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Samsung beat analysts’ expectations and its shares surged 8.7%, the biggest jump since 2009. The full results are not available yet, but the operating income rose to $6.3 billion – a massive 79.8% jump compared to the year ago quarter.

Semiconductors and displays are behind Samsung upswing. External Super AMOLED consumers like Huawei (for the new Nexus 6P) are buying more, helping the display unit (over 30% of display units may head to Chinese makers).

Samsung’s semiconductor business is enjoying Apple’s success (it supplies components for iDevices) and is expected to keep its top position among semiconductor makers, five quarters in a row.

There are no hard numbers on the mobile division, but analysts’ expectations are for a 24% rise year on year (around $1.9 billion). This will be the first year-on-year rise in sever quarters for the division, which went through a rough patch.

Still, Samsung Galaxy phones are feeling the heat from iPhones on the high end and Chinese and Indian devices on the low end. The sub-$200 devices are largely responsible for the sales increase, while Galaxy S6 shipments are dropping “significantly,” says an IBK Securities analyst. He calculates the Average Selling Price in September dropped 14%.

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Blocks Wearables, the UK-based company currently developing the world’s first modular smartwatch Blocks has announced that it will be launching a Kickstarter campaign for the product on October 13.

The wearable device, whose prototype was shown off at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, has been in the works for the last two years. Just recently, Blocks Wearables announced a partnership with chip giant Qualcomm, revealing that the smartwatch will be powered by the Snapdragon 400 chipset.

For the uninitiated, what’s interesting about Blocks is that you’ll be able to customize it as per your requirements – its strap is made up of a series of links or blocks that contain swappable components, allowing you to add additional sensors like GPS or heart-rate…

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