Just days after Sony unveiled the Xperia Z5 series, which consists of the Xperia Z5, Z5 Compact, and Z5 Premium smartphones, the rumour mill is abuzz that company is preparing to launch a Premium model of the Z5 Compact in its home country of Japan.

According to a report out of China, the device will sport a 4.6-inch 1080p display, and will come with 4GB RAM and a 2,900 mAh battery. This compares to Z5 Compact’s 720p display, 2GB RAM, and 2,700 mAh battery. Rest of the specs are said to be same.

The report also says that the handset will be available through NTT DoCoMo. There was, however, no word on the pricing. Needless to say, none of this has been officially confirmed by Sony, so take it with a pinch of…

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In a dedicated blog post, Mozilla has disclosed that its bug-tracking system was compromised and the hacker managed to take away security-sensitive information, which the company believes was used to attack users of its Firefox web browser.

Mozilla said they believe the attacker used the stolen information to exploit the vulnerability that was patched on August 6, adding that Firefox version released on August 27 contains patches to all the vulnerabilities that that attacker could have learned about.

The company also shared that they’re making improvements to their bug-tracking system to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. “As an immediate first step, all users with access to security-sensitive information have been required to change their passwords and use two-factor authentication,” Mozilla said. “We are reducing the number of users with privileged access and limiting what each privileged user can…

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A yet to be announced LG V10 phablet passed through TENAA, sporting high-end specs and secondary display. The Korean manufacturer’s next top shelf handset is expected to make its official debut at some point next month.

The secondary display of the smartphone is placed right above its main unit. It is a tiny ticker solution – not a full-blown screen.

Rumored specs of LG V10 include Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 SoC, 3GB of RAM, 64GB of expandable memory, and 5.7″ QHD display. A 16MP main camera, 5MP front-facing unit, and fingerprint sensor will also be on board. The component will be integrated into the device’s power/lock key.

At a quick glance, LG V10 looks like a beefed up version of the LG G4. We will find out more about the smartphone when it debuts next month.

Source |…

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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chipset has quite a reputation for loving to overheat. On the other hand, it is that chip maker’s current top of the line offering, so some smartphone makers are seeing themselves in a situation where they have to use it for their flagships.

Case in point: Sony. The Xperia Z5 Premium goes with the Snapdragon 810, because to pair a 4K touchscreen with anything less simply wouldn’t have made sense. But what about the heat? Well, it looks like Sony has found a solution.

The image you see above is said to show a disassembled Xperia Z5 Premium, a unit which has been put through a teardown. And sitting pretty in the upper side of the phone we see a dual heat pipe, undoubtedly put there to take care of the S810’s proper ventilation. Furthermore, Sony has applied a lot of thermal paste onto the innards of the Z5 Premium, in order to make things even less prone to overheating.

So in theory we should get cooler behavior from the S810 chip inside the Z5 Premium. However, just how efficient this system turns out to be in real-life use is something that remains to be seen.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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For many months now there’s been speculation about Nokia re-entering the smartphone space in 2016, after the non-compete clause embedded in the sale of its smartphone division to Microsoft expires. And after initially denying it, even the Finnish company’s CEO said we should in fact expect to see some Nokia-branded handsets next year.

The first of those could be the C1, allegedly depicted by the leaked renders you can see below.

A word of caution: these have been posted on Weibo (China’s Twitter equivalent) and there’s no way to tell if they’re really leaked renders of the new Nokia phone or simply what someone hopes this will look like. Do keep in mind that another alleged render of the C1 turned up last December and was immediately debunked as being nothing more than a concept.

Assuming this is real, the Nokia C1 will complement the already launched N1 tablet in the company’s portfolio. That said, like the N1 it’s expected to be produced by another company, with Nokia being involved in the design and granting a license for the use of its name.

No specs for the C1 have been outed this time around, but previous mumblings talked about it sporting a 5-inch 720p touchscreen, an 8 MP rear camera, a 5 MP front snapper, and an Intel processor aided by 2GB of RAM.

What can be gathered from the renders is that it will use a unibody construction, though it’s not entirely obvious whether we’re looking at plastic or metal. The C1 seems pretty thin too.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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The Google Translate app for Android has a new trick up its sleeve, but for now it only works if you’re running the Marshmallow Developer Preview. This will, however, become more widely available as the final release of Android 6.0 Marshmallow gets out and starts spreading.

We’re talking about the fact that Google Translate works systemwide, if you run the aforementioned iteration of Android and also if you have version 4.3 of the app (or newer).

As portrayed in the screenshots above, what this means is that when you select some text in whichever app you happen to be using, you don’t have to copy it, then switch to the Google Translate app in order to have it converted into another language. Now when you select text “Translate” appears as a direct option, and if you tap on that a pop-up Google Translate window will show up and quickly give you what you want.

This functionality takes advantage of Marshmallow’s new contextual selection feature, and it should work anywhere you can select text. This makes using Google Translate on Android for things you find written in an app or on a website a lot more useful than it’s been so…

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The LG Nexus 5 (2015) (or Nexus 5X, perhaps?) and the Huawei Nexus 6 (2015) are right around the corner. If the ever more detailed leaks on Google’s upcoming Marshmallow pair wasn’t enough of an indication, the latest price cut of the current Motorola-made Nexus 6 clears all doubt.

Originally launched at $650, the Nexus 6 now goes for $350 on Amazon.com, another $150 off, compared to the previous price cut. That’s for the 32GB storage version, while doubling the internal memory still commands a $50 premium.

At $350, or even at $400 for the 64GB, the Nexus 6 poses a serious threat to Motorola’s own brand new Moto X Pure Edition (the US moniker for what will be globally available as Moto X Style). The pre-orders for the unlocked Moto X Pure Edition started a few days ago, but the year-old Nexus 6 has a few trump cards over it, and now that the price difference is out of the way, it may end up cannibalizing its sales.

Optical image stabilization, larger display, superior GPU, larger battery with built-in inductive charging are all in Nexus’ favor. The Moto X Pure does have a much higher resolution main camera with phase detection, and its front shooter has an LED flash on top of being higher-resolution too. A microSD slot is present on the Pure and not on the 6, and it’s hard to beat Motorola’s customization options. A very tough call between these two.

Source |…

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As most of you surely know, Apple has set its grand unveiling event for September 9 and with IFA press conferences all but over, the industry is channeling its attention to the upcoming iPhone 6s. Rumors and speculations about the device have been more than plentiful and today a brand new twist might reveal yet another piece of the puzzle.

Ming-Chi Kuo, who is an analyst working at KGI Securities allegedly sent out a memo to his investors, claiming that the next iPhone due – the 6s and 6s Plus, will be offered with the same storage options as the current generation. That would mean 16GB, 64GB and 128GB. If the rumor is true then it is most likely based on some inside information and is thus quite plausible.

This, however raises a rather interesting question. Another prevailing rumor for the new iPhone is that it will bring a camera upgrade, bumping resolution up to 12MP. This would, of course, allow the phone to capture 4K video and it only makes sense that Apple will make the option available in order to catch up to Android competitors. 16GB, however, is fairly limiting and the even the owners of the current models are already struggling with this sort of storage. Without a memory card slot, 4K just seems ludicrous on a basic model and it is interesting to see how Cupertino handles the situation.

Other than that, we are fairly sure of a few other aspects of the new iPhone. For one, it should be housed in the same chassis as the current generation as was the case with most previous “s” iterations. However, the iPhone 4s did prove that that was not set in stone and given the addition of a new camera on the back, as well as a better 5Mp one on the front, like another rumor suggests, could introduce the necessity for a slightly thicker. Hopefully, this won’t be the case and current accessories will remain compatible. Force Touch is also almost definitely going to find its way into the handset and so will a new and improved A9 chip. RAM, however, will likely remain at 1GB.

As for pricing and availability, industry sources have already claimed a September 11 preorder date and most-probably and unchanged price…

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Alcatel has already announced a myriad of smartphones at IFA, with even more to come, we’ve been told. On top of that there’s also a smartwatch, running a proprietary OS.

The OneTouch Pop Up is the highest-specced of the lineup and is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 610 (MSM8929) with an octa-core processor clocked at up to 1.4GHz. There are 2GB of RAM on board and the built-in storage is 16GB, expandable via microSD.

The display is a 5-inch IPS unit with 720p resolution and 5-finger multi touch support. The primary camera is a 13MP shooter with a sensor size of 1/3.06″, f/2.0 lens aperture and an LED flash. On the front there is a 5MP fixed-focus selfie snapper.

There’s a reasonable connectivity suite, which includes multi-band 2G/3G/4G radios, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS and the smartphones also have an FM radio receiver. It’s a dual-SIM dual-standby smartphone with a battery capacity is 2,000mAh.

The OneTouch Pop Star comes in two distinct versions, one limited to 3G networks only, the other supporting Cat.4 LTE on top. The differences boil down to chipset and height (oddly), with the 3G version sporting a Mediatek MT6580 and measuring 141 x 71.5 x 8.6mm, while the 4G employs the MT6735P SoC and is 1.5mm taller.

Either model comes with a single gig of RAM and 8GB of expandable storage. Imaging department is a bit more modestly equipped with only an 8MP primary camera, still with an LED flash. The 5MP FF front snapper is kept as well. Interestingly, the 3G version can shoot 1080p videos, while the 4G variant is capped at 720p.

The display is again 5 inches in diagonal with HD resolution, though alcatel quotes it as Full Lamination, which means there’s no separate touch sensor layer, thus resulting in a thinner glass/touch sensor/display assembly.

Cellular connectivity aside, both versions support Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS and FM radio reception. Battery capacity is again 2,000mAh, with a quoted charging time of 3 hours. Dual-SIM versions will also be available.

The Pop Star may be low on specs, but is certainly strong on customizability and will be offered with a wide range of back covers. The number of options is so large that they’re grouped into entire collections. There’s the Funky collection with “psychedelic designs” (presumably the neon-colored ones), the Leather collection (not actual leather), the Fashion collection, and the wood-like Nature-ECO collection.

Then comes the OneTouch Go Play smartphone which boasts an IP67 certification for protection against the elements. Alcatel also claims it’s shockproof, though this is harder to quantify.

The specsheet lists a Snapdragon 410 chipset, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage, thankfully expandable. The display is a 5-inch 720p TFT panel. It has the same 8MP/5MP camera combo as the Pop Star, with 1080p video recording.

Alcatel is not new to the smartwatch world having already launched its OneTouch Watch, but is now expanding its portfolio with a more rugged Casio G-shock-style Go Watch. Pegged as the perfect companion in underwater activities for the Go Play smartphone, that’s where the Go Watch borrows most of its design cues.

The Go Watch is powered by a modest 180MHz Cortex-M4 CPU and features a 1.22-inch IPS display with (240 x 204), and its flat-tire nature is masked by the rugged bezel. The wearable measures 50.5mm in diameter and is 13mm thick, while the wristband is 22mm wide. Alcatel promises 2-5 days of battery life out of the 225mAh cell.

The smartwatch has most of the features you would expect, including a heart rate sensor and a vibration motor for notifications, as well as a gyro sensor and accelerometer, but adds an altimeter on top of all these. It runs on a proprietary OS, so no immediate access to Android Wear apps. It is, however, compatible with both Android smartphones, running Jelly Bean 4.3 and up, and Apple devices with iOS7 or newer.

You can check out our hands-on report on the Alcatels, while we’re waiting for a few more promised…

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Google has released Chrome 45 for desktop, which is now available to download on PC, Mac, and Linux. The biggest change in this update is improved RAM management, which reduces the memory usage of idle tabs in the background.

Chrome can now check on tabs in the background and can tell if there is no activity on them for a while. It will then aggressively clear unused memory to reduce the memory footprint of those tabs. Google claims it can free up about 10% memory on an average and as much as a quarter for sites like Gmail.

Chrome will also intelligently restore your tabs upon relaunch, if you use that feature. The tabs are restored based on when they were accessed and older tabs are not restored until you click on them to save memory, especially on low memory machines.

As we wrote about before, Chrome will now also not load non-essential Flash content on websites, which should save up to 15% battery on laptops.

Chrome 45 is now available to download and if you have it installed has probably updated itself by…

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