A few months ago an Android Wear update brought with it support for Wi-Fi connections made directly from your smartwatch. However, not all Android Wear devices with hardware support for Wi-Fi got this feature enabled back then. There was one big omission: LG’s G Watch R.

It does sport the required chip, but it hasn’t so far been put to use. Well, thankfully that all changes with the next iteration of the OS, which Google has just announced earlier. This is going to roll out over the next few weeks to all Android Wear watches.

When it lands on the G Watch R it will come with more than just interactive watch faces and Google Translate built-in. That’s right, Wi-Fi support will finally be enabled in LG’s first round smartwatch.

This means you’ll be able to leave your phone at home when you go somewhere with Wi-Fi, and your wearable will still show you notifications and whatnot from that handset – provided it’s connected to the Internet…

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You may not remember this, but for a while Samsung released some tablets running Windows under the Ativ brand. At one point we thought this would be to Windows devices what the Galaxy brand is to Samsung’s Android offerings, but the Korean company hasn’t launched an Ativ product in a long while.

That could all be set to change later this year, though. According to a new rumor out of China, we’ll see a 12-inch Samsung tablet running Windows 10 out of the box at some point in the future. It will apparently come with a Super AMOLED touchscreen, a 14nm Intel Core M processor, 4GB of RAM, and the S-Pen. It should be just 6.2mm thick and will weigh 600g.

The screen’s resolution isn’t mentioned, but there’s no reason to expect anything other than a high density panel. So perhaps 2,560×1,600 or 3,840×2,400 are good options to consider.

This is nothing but a singular unconfirmed report at this point, so keep that in mind and take all of it with a pinch of salt for now. If Samsung really is working on this device, then a lot more leaks about it are surely headed our way.

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Today Google has announced the next update for Android Wear. When it arrives on your particular smartwatch, this will bring some interesting new features with it.

First off we have interactive watch faces. So with a tap the watch face you’re using can change its design, reveal more information, or launch a specific app. For example, a face that gives you the current temperature aside from the time may want to let you tap on that in order to get a more detailed forecast.

This obviously works for anything, though, be it a fitness-focused watch face or the new one Google calls Together. This lets two people stay connected to each other by basically making the entire watch face a space for sharing stuff with each other – photos, emoji, or even their current activities.

Moving on, Google Translate has landed on Android Wear. In an interesting move, it will be built into the latest software update, so it’s not a standalone app you can download right now. Translate will work on your wrist even if you don’t have the corresponding app installed on your phone.

To use it, just speak into your watch and what you say will be instantly translated into one of 44 supported languages. You can send the translated text to a friend with a flip of the wrist, and when that person answers in their language you flip your wrist back to see in your language what they’ve said. And so on.

Since Translate automatically recognizes what language is spoken, once you start a conversation with someone you only have to keep talking naturally, and it will take care of the rest. For text-to-text translation, Google Translate works with 90 languages at the moment.

The new version of Android Wear will be rolling out to all smartwatches running Google’s wearable OS “in the coming weeks”. Now that you know what’s new, the only thing you need is patience.

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Sony’s next Compact flagship smartphone is the star of what is said to be a leaked promotional image, which you can see below. This is allegedly going to be one of many official promo pictures that the Japanese company will make public once it announces the Xperia Z5 Compact.

Speaking of which, said announcement could come on September 2, when Sony has confirmed it will hold an event at IFA in Berlin. On that occasion we might see both the Xperia Z5 and the Z5 Compact see the light of day for the first time.

Officially, that is, because we’ve seen them both a couple of times so far in leaked live images, showing off their unmistakably Sony design as well as their side-mounted fingerprint sensors embedded in their Power buttons.

The promo shot that’s been outed this time around also confirms that in terms of design, Sony isn’t planning on giving up its OmniBalance language, at least not this year. The phone is shown here in white, but it will surely be offered in black and probably another more ‘daring’ color as well.

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If you own an HTC One M9 purchased from Verizon, you’ll be happy to hear that an update is finally headed your way. We’re talking about the one incorporating Android 5.1 Lollipop – and this is something that’s already been rolled out in many parts of the world, as well as to One M9 units sold by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint.

And now it’s Verizon’s turn to release it. There are a couple of added goodies in there too, perhaps to try and make up for the delay in some way.

HTC One (M9) Verizon customers! Received approval for L5.1 which will OTA out tomorrow. Includes Stagefright fix,Band 3 & 7 enabled -roaming— Mo Versi (@moversi) August 19, 2015

According to Mo Versi, HTC’s VP of Product Management, the ugly Stagefright vulnerability has been fixed in the new software. Furthermore, you’ll also get support for LTE bands 3 and 7 (1800 MHz and 2600 MHz) when roaming, so your phone will be able to connect to even more high-speed networks abroad.

The update will start rolling out over-the-air today, but as usual do expect it to take a while for it to reach all the devices out there. If you’re impatient you can keep checking for its availability by going to the appropriate section of your Settings…

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Sony has just announced its second generation smartband, and in the typical no-nonsense fashion the company calls its wearables, this one is dubbed the Sony SmartBand 2. Blunt naming aside, the gadget comes with the typical functions you’d expect, mostly focused on fitness and notifications.

The now “advanced heart rate tracking” is a prominent feature in the press material, said to deliver “meaningful insights about your fitness, well-being and stress levels”, as if you require an app to tell you that you need a couple of drinks (or a yoga class) at the end of the week. Either way, sports enthusiasts will appreciate the all-weather nature of the band, which has a rubber strap and IP68 certification for environmental sealing.

The SmartBand 2 will also deliver notifications to your wrist, with both vibrations and color LEDs. Tap operation will allow you to control music playback on the connected device, and should you stray more than 10m away from it, the band will warn you. It will be able to do all that for up to two days on a single charge, Sony states.

The band will be compatible with devices running Android 4.4 KitKat or newer and iOS 8.2. You’ll be able to pick up a Sony SmartBand 2 starting September, and it’ll set you back an eye-watering €119.

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Project Ara is still quite early in its lifecycle and yet can already boast a turbulent and arduous history. What began as an ambitious modular device concept under the name Phoneblocks, has since been adopted by Google, gained a spectacular amount of attention and gone through at least half a dozen different designs, implementations and prototypes.

Luckily, the ambitions project has managed to survive, is still live and after a considerable period of silence has been quite active with status updates in the last few days. We now know that the previously planned Puerto Rico debut won’t come to pass and that the launch is postponed for 2016 and perhaps even later.

The latest development in the project Ara saga suggests that the initiative might be passed along to Motorola. Since Ara was first adopted by Google, Motorola Mobility was sold off to Lenovo for $2.9 billion, naturally leading to some restructure in the Moto-managed research and development. This affected many Google projects, but the search giant never sold off Motorola completely. In fact its large patent portfolio and “Advanced Technology Group” are still part of the Google family and might actually take over project Ara.

Industry sources suggest that the work will be moved to Motorola’s Beijing R&D facility. We are not quite sure how this will affect the modular project, but the existing partnership with Yezz for hardware development, as well as the completed Spiral 2 prototype are sure to be carried over. As for Spiral 3, which was planned to debut in the second half of 2015, it might undergo yet another major shift in design, as Google is reportedly worried about the durability of its modular creation.

In any case, we will be sure to keep a close eye on Ara and keep you updated on any developments as they come.

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Sony is saying goodbye to Hideo Kojima with the Xperia J1 Compact Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Edition. The phone is limited to Japan only – Sony’s first SIM-free phone for its home country and essentially an Xperia Z1 Compact variant.

This one is special though – it features the Outer Heaven logo on the back that fans of Solid Snake & Co will instantly recognize. Solid himself makes a cameo on some of the bespoke wallpapers pre-installed on the phone.

You also get two original soundtracks from The Phantom Pain and a ringtone, plus an $8 voucher to get Metal Gear comics in e-book form from Sony’s Reader Store. You also gain a MGS V: The Phantom Pain art book PDF.

The pre-loaded wallpapers

The Sony Xperia J1 Compact The Phantom Pain Edition is priced above its plain counterpart – JPY 59,800 ($480) plus tax. It can be found exclusively in Sony stores.

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Huawei has announced the new Honor 7i. The biggest feature of this phone is the rotating camera module that can be plucked out and pointed forward to take self portraits. Using the main camera for self portraits will result in much higher quality images, and the rotating camera also allows taking photos from different perspectives by simply pointing the camera module instead of turning the entire phone. The module is supposedly rugged and Huawei claims will last for two years even if you open it 132 times a day, which is quite a lot. Powering the camera is a Sony 13 megapixel BSI sensor with 28mm f2.0 lens.

The Honor 7i is also the first phone to have a fingerprint sensor on the side of the phone. The sensor is on the left of the phone and Huawei claims it is the smallest sensor on any phone. The sensor can be used to unlock the phone and take pictures by touching with your thumb.

The phone has an aluminum frame on the side with glass on the back and covering the 5.2-inch 1080p display on the front. Inside is the new Snapdragon 616 with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage although there is also a version with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage. Both variants have a microSD slot. Powering it is EMUI 3.1 and a 3000mAh…

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The Huawei Mate 8 has been in the rumorland for quite a while. It was touted for an August 20 release, but we got the Honor 7i today instead. Then it was reportedly coming in Berlin’s IFA next month, while some latest rumors postponed its launch for early next year.

We thought we were sure Huawei will be outing the rumored Mate 7S or just Mate S at IFA, but now we are not so confident. The last couple of days the supposed Mate 7S leaked via the Chinese TENAA and it looks slightly different from what we are seeing today. Particularly the placement of the front camera is wrong. So we are either looking at two different devices, or just one with a massive name confusion created by all the leaks.

Anyway, the Mate 8 showed its face through some nice renders and its IFA announcement seems imminent after Huawei itself began teasing its next flagship.

Today we can finally see the Huawei Mate 8, or Mate S, or Mate 7S, or whatever it’s called in live photos, and while those are low-res, they seem like the real deal. Check it out.

The Mate 8 is expected to come with a bezel-less 6″ IPS Quad HD display and to run on the powerful Kirin 950 chipset with 3GB or 4GB RAM. The Kirin 950 chip is expected to pack an octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A72 at 2.4GHz and 4x Cortex-A57. The GPU in charge of graphics will be a Mali-T880.

The Mate 8 is also rumored to offer a 20.7MP main camera and an 8MP selfie shooter, a fingerprint sensor, LTE Cat.6 connectivity, a massive 4,500 mAh battery, and a brand new Emotion 4.0 UI on top of Android Lollipop.

September 2 is very close, so everything will become clear very soon, including the name of this device.

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