Right ahead of IFA, Archos has announced yet another smartphone. This is Diamond-branded like the Diamond S we told you about not long ago. Yet in this case we’re looking at a device that’s more into phablet territory, in fact bridging the gap between the 5-inch Diamond S and the Diamond Tab.

The Archos Diamond Plus comes with a 5.5-inch 1080p touchscreen, a 16 MP rear camera with LED flash, an 8 MP selfie snapper, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, 4G LTE support, dual-SIM functionality, and a 2,800 mAh battery with fast charging.

At the helm we find MediaTek’s MT6753 64-bit SoC with a 1.5 GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU and Mali-T720MP3 GPU. The phone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop. Its dimensions are 152.6 x 76.4 x 8.4 mm, and it weighs 178g.

It will become available in Europe in November, SIM-free and unlocked, for a recommended retail price of…

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Meizu officials have already said that we’re not going to see an MX5 Pro smartphone, with the “Pro” line getting shelved. However, that apparently doesn’t mean that there won’t be some high-end devices from the Chinese company in the near future.

It may in fact be already working on not one, but two of those – one of which could be the device formerly known as the MX5 Pro Plus (and supposedly pictured below). A Meizu device with a Samsung Exynos 7420 SoC as well as another Meizu device with a MediaTek Helio X20 chipset have managed to top some benchmark charts recently.

Let’s start with the Exynos-powered unit, codenamed NIUX according to the folks who run the AnTuTu benchmark. This has achieved a score of 69,000, putting it pretty much on par with the Samsung Galaxy Note5 sporting the same chipset.

There is one important difference, however, as the Meizu went through AnTuTu with ‘just’ a 1080p screen. The display’s size is still a mystery, but other specs of the device have been revealed. It’s going to have a 21 MP main camera, a 5 MP front-facing snapper, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. It currently runs Android 5.1 Lollipop.

Moving on we get to another handset, and this one is said to launch as the Meizu ME5 (to complement the MX5 in the firm’s roster, undoubtedly). It uses MediaTek’s upcoming Helio X20 SoC with a deca-core processor (yes, that’s ten cores). Because two of those cores are Cortex-A72, it’s managed to beat the aforementioned Exynos 7420 in the AnTuTu benchmark, because Samsung’s offering has to make do with Cortex-A57s on the performance cluster, and the A72s outperform those.

The Helio X20 goes past 70,000 points in the benchmark, revealing perhaps the first ever true high-end contender from MediaTek. Once again, though, the Meizu device used to achieve that score has 1080p resolution, so keep that in mind.

The ME5 is rumored to come with a 5.5-inch screen, a 20 MP Sony Exmor RS rear camera with f/1.8 aperture and the 1/1.7″ Sony IMX204 sensor, as well as a 6.2 MP selfie snapper with f/1.8 aperture and a 1/3.06″ sensor with wide-angle lens. The phone should have 2.5D curved glass on both the front and the back, with a metal frame – a design that’s said to be reminiscent of Samsung’s Galaxy S6, but with less reflections put out by the glass. There will be a fingerprint sensor on the back, 4GB of RAM in tow, and a 3,600 mAh battery. It will be around 7.9mm thick, but the camera will protrude to 9.9mm.

According to sources in China, Meizu will price the ME5 at a whopping CNY 4,999, which is around $785 or €695, putting it on par with the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy S6 in that market. So this will clearly not aim to compete with any ‘affordable Chinese flagships’. Meizu feels that the design and workmanship of the ME5 are worth the high asking price.

It’s unclear when either of these handsets will become official. It’s also quite possible that the two are going to be offered as two versions of the same ME5: a lower-end one with the Exynos 7420 and 3GB of RAM, as well as a higher-end model with the MediaTek Helio X20 and 4GB of RAM. Their other specs are similar enough for this to easily happen.

Source 1 (in Chinese) • Source 2 (in Chinese) • Source 3 (in Chinese) | Via 1 • Via 2 • Via…

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Google is sometimes making news for the least expected reasons. Case in point: today the search giant has changed its logo, and this already has amassed an incredible number of reactions. Some are good, some are bad (hint: people on the Internet generally don’t like change).

All that aside, here’s the new logo. This time around the company opted for a specially-crafted sans-serif font, as well as slightly tweaked colors. Google says it’s “simple, uncluttered, colorful, friendly”.

The logo obviously comes bundled with a new brand identity, one that we should be starting to notice inside Google products other than search very soon (search is the first to be updated, and that’s already live if you haven’t noticed).

To celebrate the introduction of the new graphics, Google has published the video you can see below, which pairs a visual history of the company’s logos with quick descriptions of some of its biggest accomplishments.

There’s also a smaller version of the new logo, a four-color “G” that replaces the previously used lowercase blue “g”. This will mostly be seen on mobile devices, where space is at a premium.

Source 1 • Source…

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Motorola has made it official: the new Moto X Pure Edition will go up for pre-order in the US tomorrow. As previously announced, it will start at $399, and the only way you’re going to be able to get one will be if you use Motorola’s Moto Maker service. This means all units will be sold unlocked, you will not find this device at any of the carriers (though Verizon is apparently working on its own variation of the Moto X Play, but that’s another handset entirely).

The new Moto X Pure Edition is going to be called that only in the United States, for whatever reason. In the rest of the world, the exact same product will be sold as the Moto X Style. This was unveiled in July alongside the Moto X Play.

Motorola says the Moto X Pure Edition works on “all major networks”, and the price is really competitive given its specs. The handset comes with a 5.7-inch QHD touchscreen, a 21 MP rear camera with dual-tone dual-LED flash, a 5 MP front snapper with a LED flash of its own, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 808 SoC with hexa-core CPU, 3GB of RAM, 16 / 32 / 64GB of expandable storage, and a 3,000 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.

Oddly enough, this isn’t the first time Motorola unveils a launch date for the Moto X Pure Edition through a tweet – the same thing happened last month, though the date was different and that tweet eventually got deleted. Hopefully that won’t be the case this time…

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Motorola’s upcoming 2nd generation Moto 360 will finally get official next week, on September 8, following a couple of months of ample leaks about it.

And to top things off, today a handful of leaked press renders of different Moto 360 (2015) variations have been compiled, for your viewing pleasure, into the image you can see below.

Like with its predecessor, the original Moto 360, it looks like this year’s smartwatch offering from Motorola will not be lacking in customization options. It’s also probable that it will be offered through Moto Maker, the company’s online customization portal, which allows you to quickly configure a Motorola product the way you like it.

The new Moto 360 will come in two sizes, in a move that emulates what Apple’s done in this space. The bigger of the two will be as big as last year’s model, while the other one will be smaller. Neither will have a fully circular display, though, since the ‘flat tire’ design is here to…

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Nextbit Robin is now live at Kickstarter awaiting for your support. The company employs brains from big manufacturers and intends to change the way how we use the smartphone and pave a new path for Android.

Nextbit Robin was designed not to be the pretty slippery phone like most of the flagships today are, but instead it takes a different approach for putting handling before looks. Indeed the Robin isn’t the typical smartphone we are used to see this year, but we have to admit it still looks pretty. The team assures all the controls have been thoughtfully placed for maximum user friendliness – but on the other hand – which phone maker doesn’t?

The Robin is built around a 5.2″ IPS 1080p display and runs on Snapdragon 808 chip with 3GB RAM. It has a 13MP rear camera with phase-detection AF and dual-tone flash, as well as a 5MP selfie snapper.

Robin’s connectivity package includes a USB Port-C port with quick charging support, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, LTE. There is also a fingerprint scanner, front stereo speakers and a 2,680 mAh.

Finally, there are four notification LEDs on the back of the Robin, which will notify you for everything that’s happening on your phone.

But the specs aren’t what makes the Nextbit Robin so interesting. It runs on the latest Android Marshmallow OS and comes with 32GB non-expandable storage. But you are not limited to those 32GB inside your phone – this is where the internet cloud comes in. The Nextbit take on Android introduces an entirely new way of handling phone storage.

The OS will backup everything in the cloud – multimedia, apps, and data. Once it detects you are no longer using an app or some photos – it will delete them from the phone, knowing they are up in the cloud. The deletion process won’t require to be online, but should it happen that you need that data back – you would definitely need an internet connection to retrieve it.

Anyway – the Robin will manage your phone storage in a way that you will never actually run out of space. Everything that matters to you will be kept offline, while everything else will be pushed from the cloud upon request.

Everything is backed up regularly when you are charging your phone and you have an active Wi-Fi connection. The Robin comes with 100GB available cloud space for everyone, but it promises not to charge for additional space. If users pass the 100GB cap, the cap will be raised instead of charging you for the extra gigs.

Nextbit Robin is now available on Kickstarter. The first 1,000 backers will get it for $299, while its regular Kickstarter price is $349. The retail price of the device when it becomes publicly available will be $399.

The first batch of Robins will ship in January next year, the next one is scheduled for February 2016. The phone will be manufactured by Foxconn.

So what do you think – should all your phone’s data be up in the server cloud or…

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HTC (A9) Aero has been first teased by the company’s CEO Cher Wang back in June for an October release. He promised the investors back then an October flagship that will render their concerns for the future unnecessary.

Today we see another official teaser posted by HTC on its Weibo account. The teaser hits for a September 6 announcement and says we can expect a “superior handsome” flagship, if machine translation is to be trusted.

The Chinese text bellow was a tough one for Google Translate, but it says something about “the strength to fight bias”, and then about “simple color value”. If this means anything to you, please share it with us.

The (A9) Aero smartphone, also known as the HTC hero device, is rumored to pack a Quad HD display with Gorilla Glass 4 and 2.5D curved edges. The chipset in charge should be MediaTek Helio X20 with ten-core tri-cluster processor and Mali-T880 MP4 GPU.

Unfortunately we won’t be tuning our hopes too high, as we saw a purported HTC Aero that looked a lot like an iPhone 6 Plus. This is surely not the way to fight bias, competition and tough quarter reports.

Anyway, HTC should be outing its hero device on September 6 and hopefully it will lead the way back up for the struggling manufacturer.

Source |…

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The iPhone 6s front panel showed a larger front-facing camera, now let’s look at the iPhone 6s Plus front panel. Component store apple.club.tw got early replacement units of the panel, which shows an unchanged design but an added Force Touch controller (the Taptic Engine).

The “s” refresh is not the time for a major redesign so no surprises so far. The changes will be mostly internal, including better cameras – the selfie camera on the front stays above the earpiece but will allegedly go up to 5MP with 1080p video capture.

Alleged photo Apple iPhone 6s Plus front panel

The panel is white, which does nothing to confirm the Rose Gold color option which has been called into question recently. We’ll find out next Wednesday when Apple unveils the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.

Source (in Mandarin) |…

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The upcoming Motorola smartwatch has leaked though several accidental posts but now parent company Lenovo has revealed the official announcement date – “it’s time” says the teaser image and sets the date at September 8.

It even gives us a peek at the watch itself with its 2-o’clock button, though we’ve seen the watch plenty of times already. The latest buzz is that there will be two versions of the Moto 360 (2nd gen) – regular and Sport. One of them will keep the 46.5mm size, the other will be a bit smaller.

Moto 360 (2nd gen) will be unveiled on September 8 (click for full size)

This info corroborates nicely with the September 8 launch date that Swedish stores let slip, which gives credence to the price too – $460/€400 for the 46.5mm model and $350/€305 for the smaller model.

This also means the Moto 360 (2nd gen) will not be among the many smartwatches at IFA, which starts this week. Competition will heat up quick, but at least it will have the spotlight all to itself.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Apparently, the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime could soon have some serious competition. According to a report from Variety, Apple is planning to enter the original programming business.

As per the report, the goal is to create development and production divisions – hiring for which will begin soon – and make them operational by next year. The company is already in talks with executives in Hollywood to gauge their interest in spearheading efforts to produce entertainment content.

The iPhone maker is said to have made an offer to ex-Top Gear stars Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond earlier this year, but they were hired by Amazon last month.

Things are at a nascent stage, and details are sketchy, the report notes, adding that for instance, there’s is currently no clarity on the structure of the business. When reached for comment, an Apple spokesperson said they do not comment on “rumor and speculation.”

The report comes just over a month after YouTube hired MTV’s programming president Susanne Daniels as the vice president of its Originals division.

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