Samsung claims its Indian smartphone market share has crossed 40%

Samsung has said that its smartphone market share in India – which is the world's third-largest smartphone market – has crossed 40% in the month of June, up from 35% in January. The claim was based on data from market research firm GfK.

"Our market share (smartphone) has crossed 40 percent by value in June this year," said Samsung India VP marketing (IT and mobile) Asim Warsi at the Galaxy A8 launch event. "Since January 2015, we continued to grow for six consecutive months and widened the gap (marketshare)."

It's worth mentioning that in 2015, the South Korean company has already released around 16 handsets in the country, including the Tizen-based Z1 smartphone, which has sold well. "India is an encouraging market with double digit growth," Warsi…

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Qualcomm is rumored to detail the Snapdragon 820 on August 11

Qualcomm first acknowledged the Snapdragon 820 chipset back in March at MWC, but then it only gave us a couple of vague hints about what it would entail. If a new rumor is to be believed, though, we're now very close to the unveiling of the full details regarding Qualcomm's next top of the line SoC.

This is said to be happening next week, on August 11 to be precise, at a special event in Los Angeles. So far we've been told just that the Snapdragon 820 will use Kryo cores, custom designed by Qualcomm. This will signify a return to the company's past antics, as custom designed Krait CPU cores have been featured in its top of the line offerings as recently as the Snapdragon 805.

The Snapdragon 810 is different in that it uses ARM's big.LITTLE architecture. The 810 has been plagued by overheating issues (which have obviously been shot down by Qualcomm on several occasions), so device makers everywhere are anxiously waiting for the 820. This will probably power a smartphone near you at the end of the year, or, more likely, in early 2016.

It will have a quad-core CPU, the Adreno 530 GPU, the MDM9x55 LTE Cat.10 modem, and will be made on a FinFET process – either Samsung's 14nm or TSMC's 16nm.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Microsoft Lumia 950 (XL) prototype gets photographed in the wild

By the end of this year, Microsoft will have launched Windows 10 Mobile and, alongside it, a couple of highly anticipated flagship smartphones. These were expected to be called Lumia 940 and Lumia 940 XL, respectively, but it now seems more likely the company will go with Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL instead. Still, they're the same handsets, just with different names.

Up until now we've seen one of them go through a benchmark, a camera unit leaked with triple-LED flash, and we've had some rumored specs too. Now though we get the first ever image showing a prototype of either the Lumia 950 or Lumia 950 XL.

Which exact device this is is hard to tell from the image. That shouldn't be an issue though, as they're supposed to be very similar in terms of looks – just with the XL obviously being larger.

The prototype you can see above is inside a special case, but you can distinguish its rounded corners even so. The device has dual-SIM functionality and sports a QHD (2,560×1,440) touchscreen, which will be a first for the Windows world when it launches.

It's also got a USB Type-C port, and it's powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset aided by 3GB of RAM. It currently runs Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview, and its model number is RM-1116. Its camera can shoot 1080p videos at up to 90fps and 720p videos at up to 120fps.

The Lumia 950 and 950 XL will probably be made official by Microsoft at an event in New York in October. On the same occasion, we may also see the Surface Pro 4 and Microsoft Band 2 getting unveiled.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Samsung Galaxy Note 5 now portrayed in detailed hands-on pictures

Samsung's grand unveiling of the Galaxy Note 5 will happen next week, on August 13. And as we get closer to that we're seeing it leak left and right, multiple times a day even.

It wasn't that long ago when we saw it getting benchmarked, hence having all of its specs revealed. And now we've got a new set of pictures to look at.

As you can see, this leak is all about going hands-on with the smartphone, and photographing a live unit from all possible angles. This is probably the best look we've had at it, at least if we're talking about an actual operating device.

At this point there are really no surprises left for Samsung to announce, when it comes to form anyway. As for specs, once again the phone is said to come with a spring-loaded slot for the S Pen, a regular USB port (no Type-C here, unfortunately), 4GB of RAM, no SD card slot, and 32 / 64 / 128GB of storage.

The battery will apparently be a 3,000 mAh non-removable cell, which is smaller than those in the Note 5's predecessors – but something we've seen before with the Galaxy S6 sporting a smaller cell than the S5.

And speaking of the Galaxy S6, the Note 5 looks like a blown-up version of that, with the added curves to the rear glass – which may make it easier to handle.

In software, the TouchWiz version installed on the Note 5 will let you customize the Air Command menu, as you can see in the first set of images (where Instagram is part of the options). Air Command appears when you take the S Pen out of its hiding place inside the phone.

Other previously revealed specs are a 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED touchscreen, the Exynos 7420 SoC at the helm, a 16 MP main camera, and a 5 MP selfie unit. The Galaxy Note 5 will run Android 5.1.1…

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Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge plus full specs sheets revealed

The Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 edge+ are undoubtedly the hottest topics in our rumor mill right now. The two eagerly anticipated phablets are keeping mobile fans on their toes and have been doing so for quite some time. But now, with Samsung's next Unpacked event approaches, leaks and information on the duo are becoming more and more substantial.

Today brings us two complete specs sheets for the handsets in question. The Galaxy Note 5, also formerly known as SM-N9200 is the latest successor to Samsung's legendary phablet series will once again feature a 5.7-inch display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels and a pixel density of 515 ppi.

According to the leak, it will be powered by an Exynos 7420 SoC, the one found inside the current Galaxy S6 and S6 edge flagships. This is now the second source that references this hardware, instead of the Exynos 7422 model that was previously believed to power the Note 5.

The rest of the specs include 4GB of fast LPDDR4 RAM, a Mali-T760 GPU and 32GB of internal storage, at least in the unit in question, other storage options will be available as well.

The camera setup consists of a 16MP main shooter and a 5MP front-facing one. Sadly, there is no additional info on OIS, special color sensors of focus hardware or the flash. We got confirmation on the Android 5.1.1 version, though.

Moving on to the Galaxy S6 edge plus (SM-G9280) – the beefed-up version of the S6 edge. According to the leaked info it will be surprisingly similar to the Note 5, not counting the curved screen of course. The said display should be 5.5-icnhes with a 2K resolution and 534 ppi. The chipset is, again, Exynos 7420 and the rest of the hardware matches up as well – 4GB of RAM, Mali-T760 GPU, 16MP and 5MP cameras.

Needless to say, both phones look quite promising and should deliver exceptional performance. In fact, if leaked AnTuTu scores are to be believed, both the Note 5 and the S6 edge plus will manage to outperform the current Samsung flagship duo comfortably. The Note 5 has a top score of 69,702 and the S6 edge plus – 68,345, whereas the S6 and S6 edge managed to pull 67,520 and 63,910, respectively.

There's no way to verify the credibility of these rumors, but given the amount of detail they give and the fact that most of it matches with other reports we are willing to give them the benefit of doubt. Either way, we will know the full story come July 13.

Source |…

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MediaTek Helio X30 chip to pack 10-core 4-cluster CPU

MediaTek's Helio X10 chip went quit ea long way toward pushing the company further up the market. Featuring an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU (up to 2.2GHz) and PowerVR G6200 GPU, it powers a bunch of premium offerings – the Sony Xperia M5, HTC One ME, One E9, One M9+ and One E9+ and Meizu MX5 to name a few.

Its successor the Helio X20 is the first to introduce a deca-core (means 10-core) processor and tri-cluster architecture. It utilizes 4x Cortex-A53 at 1.4GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 at 2.0GHz and 2x Cortex-A72 up to 2.5GHz. Its GPU is superior too – Mali-T880MP4 unit. The Helio X20 is yet to launch on a mobile phones, but MediaTek has already detailed its successor – Helio X30.

The Helio X30 samples should be ready by the end of the year, but now we can finally shed some light on its specs. The X30 will also offer a 10-core processor, but it will come with a new 4-cluster architecture. One of those features 4 powerful Cortex-A72 cores – two more than what the X20 offers. The complete breakdown goes like this: 2x Cortex-A53 at 1.0GHz, 2x Cortex-A53 at 1.5GHz, 2x Cortex-A53 at 2.0GHz and 4x Cortex-A72 at 2.5GHz.

The GPU remains the same – Mali-T880, though the number of GPU cores is yet to be confirmed. Helio X20 uses Mali-T880MP4, which is a quad-core configuration, but maybe the Helio X30 will opt for MP6 or MP8 configuration. We'll know more soon, for sure.

The Helio X30 will be manufactured on a 16nm FinFet process, which is better than Snapdragon 820's 20nm process, but slightly behind Samsung's 14nm FinFet process for the Exynos 7420.

As we noted above the Helio X30 samples should appear by the end of the year and the first mass-market devices to use it will most probably hit the shelves sometime in…

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