Tag Archives: GSMArena.com – Latest articles

LG G4 and G Pad X8.3 go on sale at Verizon tomorrow

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After US Cellular, Sprint, and T-Mobile, it's now finally Verizon's turn to announce availability details for the LG G4. The carrier nicknamed Big Red goes one further, though, as it's also unveiled a new tablet on this occasion – the LG G Pad X8.3, which got leaked a couple of weeks ago sporting the correct launch date in its renders.

The LG G4 will be up for pre-order starting tomorrow, May 28. It will be available in stores on June 4, but pre-orders will be shipped before that.

The device can be yours through Verizon's Edge plan for $22.91 per month for two years, adding up to a full price of $549.99. This carrier will have three color versions up for grabs: Metallic Gray, Genuine Black Leather, and the Verizon-exclusive Ceramic White with 3D patterns.

If you buy your G4 from Big Red, you are eligible for LG's US promotion, offering a free 32GB microSD card as well as a second battery and charging cradle. You can get an LG G Pad 10.1 for $99.99 ($50 off what it normally goes for) or an LG Watch Urbane for $299.99 if you buy a G4.

The new LG G Pad X8.3 will become available tomorrow. Its normal price will be $129.99 with a new two-year contract. That said, if you also purchase an LG G4, then the tablet can be yours for just $49.99, though you'll still need to sign a two-year agreement for the tablet too.

The G Pad X8.3 comes with an 8.3-inch 1,920×1,200 IPS touchscreen, a 1.5 GHz octa-core processor, 16GB of expandable storage (of which 9GB is user-accessible), an 8 MP rear camera, a 2 MP front-facing unit, dual stereo speakers, a full size USB port, 4G LTE, and a 4,800 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Basically, it looks like this is an updated version of the original G Pad 8.3, which Verizon has also…

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T-Mobile’s Sony Xperia Z1s is now receiving Lollipop update

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Sony has been rolling out Lollipop updates left and right to its Xperia Z series devices for many weeks now. Multiple generations of the company's flagship line have so far been upgraded to Android 5.0, and today the time has finally come for the T-Mobile-exclusive Xperia Z1s to receive the same treatment.

The update to Android 5.0.2 Lollipop is now rolling out over-the-air for this device, with the new software having build number 14.5.B.0.236, as evidenced by the image below.

As always in these cases, the rollout is going to be staged over the next few days or weeks, so it may still be a while before your particular handset notifies you about the update.

Though no matter how long it takes, at least it's now on its way. And of course you can manually check for it by choosing the relevant option in your phone's Settings menu.

The Lollipop update brings with it the new Material Design UI, new Xperia wallpapers, themes, a new media app, the revamped lockscreen and notification drawer, along with the usual performance…

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Xiaomi finally launches US and EU accessory store next week

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Last we heard anything about it, Xiaomi's online accessory store for the US and a few EU countries was supposed to go live in mid-May. For whatever reason, though, the Chinese company has decided that a June launch would be better.

So today it's sent us word that its much-awaited first foray into 'Western' markets will happen early next week. In the US, the online store will open at 7 PM PDT on June 1, while in France, Germany, and the UK it will be available from June 2 at 1 PM CEST.

The different launch hours are as puzzling as what happened to the May inauguration. In Xiaomi's store you'll be able to find two power banks, a pair of headphones, as well as the Mi Band for fitness freaks.

The 5,000 mAh power bank can be yours for just $9.99, while the 10,400 mAh model costs $13.99. The Mi Headphones, with their large 50mm diaphragm, will go for $79.99. The Mi Band will require you to shell out $14.99, and it's just received support for syncing with Google Fit.

All orders will be shipped from China, and there will be a (not yet detailed) return policy too, in case you're not satisfied with the product you get. You also obviously receive warranty, since you're buying straight from the maker of these accessories.

Xiaomi boasts that its 10,400 mAh power bank is the best selling such accessory in the world, with over 10 million units moved globally ever since its initial release in December 2013.

The Mi Band is IP67 certified for dust and water resistance, and it has 30-day battery life. Xiaomi is currently selling 1 million of these each…

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Low-end Huawei Honor phone with gold frame surfaces at TENAA

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In the near future it looks like we should see a new low-end member join Huawei's Honor line of smartphones. While we don't yet know what its name will be, the device passed through the required TENAA certification in China with the model number SCL-AL00.

Oddly though, not a lot of specs have been made public for it, but we do have the pictures you can see below (click the thumbnails for full size images).

Huawei Honor SCL-AL00

The Honor SCL-AL00 should sport a Qualcomm chipset with a 1.09 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU, along with 2GB of RAM. The memory amount is certainly a nice surprise given the old ARM architecture used by the SoC.

The phone is going to run Android 5.0 Lollipop from day one, undoubtedly hidden underneath Huawei's own Emotion UI overlay. It will have dual-SIM functionality and support for 4G LTE networks, but that's about all we know about it thus far.

As the certification shots attest, the Honor SCL-AL00 will probably be made out of plastic, but it will come with a frame that seems to have a 'rose gold' type of color. Whether that is going to be metallic-looking plastic or actual metal remains to be seen.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Gionee Elife E8 is fully pictured in a new set of renders

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Mere hours ago we exclusively showed you an image of the upcoming Gionee Elife E8, and now we have a new render of the same device. This time around, we finally get to see both its front and back, side by side.

The Elife E8 has been leaking a lot lately, ahead of its possible introduction in June at a dedicated event in Beijing.

So far we know it will boast a 23 MP rear camera that will be capable of taking 100 MP pictures through software tricks, but also some lossless zoom shots a la the Nokia Lumia 1020.

Other specs for it include a 6-inch QHD AMOLED touchscreen, an 8 MP front snapper, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a 3,250 mAh battery, and MediaTek's MT6795 SoC with octa-core CPU at the helm.

The handset should run Android 5.0 Lollipop underneath Gionee's own Amigo OS. It will be 9.6mm thick, and will come with a fingerprint scanner on the back.

Thanks for the tip,…

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Bug in iOS crashes Messages app if a specific text comes in

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Bugs are an integral part of software, but some are more interesting (and potentially damaging) than others. Case in point: a new bug in iOS renders the Messages app completely unusable if a certain text is received.

That text has to be formatted in a specific way, and it contains a specific string of characters. But once you get it, two things generally happen: if you were already in Messages, the app itself will continuously crash, becoming useless in the process.

Yet that's perhaps not the worst case scenario. If you receive the text while you're looking at the lock screen, your iPhone will spontaneously (and without any notice) reboot itself.

Unfortunately the special text can be sent from other iPhones as well as Android devices, so your friends (or even strangers) could be pulling a bad trick on you in the near future.

Of course, the fact that the string of text required to be used for this to happen is incredibly specific means that this is unlikely to occur accidentally. That might be a good thing or a bad thing for you, possibly depending on how prank-inclined your friends are.

Interestingly, the crashing can be undone too – all that's needed is for the person who sent you that malicious string of text to send you another message, regardless of the content.

We assume Apple has already started working on a fix for this odd bug, so the situation clearly won't last…

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