Vivo has revealed that it will make an important announcement today. The revelation was made via the Chinese company's official Weibo page.

While there was no official word on what the announcement will be, it would be safe to assume that it will be related to Vivo's upcoming X5Pro smartphone – speculations are rife that the company will reveal the launch date of the device, which was recently spotted in a listing at TENAA (China's FCC) and had its specifications revealed.

This, interestingly, comes just over a week after there were reports that the smartphone, which is expected to come with 2.5D glass screen and eye recognition technology, will launch on May 7…

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Looks like Huawei's Honor 4C smartphone, which was launched in China last week, will make its way to other markets as well. According to a report from FoneArena, the budget smartphone will be launched in India tomorrow (May 8). It is expected to set you back INR 8,999 ($141).

As for the specs, the handset is powered by a HiSilicon Kirin 620 chipset with 1.2 GHz octa-core processor, and features a 5-inch 720p display. It has 2GB RAM and 8GB expandable internal memory, and packs in a 2550mAh battery. Camera-wise, the device sports a 13MP rear unit and a 5MP front shooter. It runs Android 4.4 KitKat with EM UI 3.0 skin on top.

Aside from the Honor 4C, Huawei will also launch another budget device, the Honor Bee, at the event, the report notes. It is expected to carry a price tag of INR 4,999 ($78).
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Just as promised, the ZTE Nubia Z9 is officially here. The handset was made official today in Beijing and, from the looks of it, it definitely lives up to expectations.

The definitive feature we were all hoping and waiting for is very much present. The ZTE Nubia Z9 features a 1080p, 5.2-inch 2.5D panel, surrounded by a very thin reflective bezel, which creates the illusion of an edge-to-edge screen. The bezel in question is only 0.8mm and uses clever optics to reflect the screen image. This is very similar to what we expected to see an upcoming Oppo handset, but the Nubia Z9 is a true ambassador of the new technology and visual style.

The bezel in question is more than just eye-candy. ZTE has taken the technology one step further and has developed a whole new touch-based interactive gesture system for the frame. The function is called FIT and allows for different user gestures. The animations below showcase some of them, like squeezing the phone twice to take a screenshot, adjusting brightness and activating the camera. The system definitely shows potential and we can't wait to see how developers manage to leverage the new input control.

As far as the rest of the specs sheet goes, it is pretty impressive. The Nubia Z9 measures 147.38 x 68.34 x 8.94mm, with a flat back and no protruding camera. Its body is made of metal, making for an exquisite look. Under the hood, there is a Snapdragon 810 SoC. As for RAM and memory, there are actually three version of the device. The Classic model has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard memory. It the Elite and Exclusive versions, this is bumped up to 4GB and 64GB respectively.

Inside the Nubia Z9 we also find Bluetooth 4.1, MHL 3.0 and NFC and it is all powered by a 2900 mAh battery. The camera setup consists of a 16MP main shooter with f/2.0 lens and optical stabilization. The selfie camera uses an 8MP Sony sensor and an 80 degree lens. The latest version of Nubia UI 3.0 also promises rich camera features, like NeoVision 5.1, which is meant to ensure exquisite image quality. The phone is also equipped with an impressive AKM4961 Hi-Fi processor and spouts Doubly 7.1 surround.

Another interesting feature of the Nubia Z9 definitely worth noting is the company's new proprietary fingerprint reading technology. It is dubbed TIO and will be included in the higher-end Exclusive edition of the handset only. The interesting thing about it is that it should incorporate sensors on both the power key and volume rockers, so touching either can unlock the device.

Preorders of all three version of the ZTE Nubia Z9 have already started in China. The three models go for CNY3,499, CNY3,999 and CNY4,499 respectively.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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As most of you have surely heard, the Xiaomi MiNote Pro is official. It was launched just a few hours ago. The handset boasts a pretty impressive specs sheet, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC, 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and a 5.7-inch QHD 2.5D display.

But the phone might just have another trick up its sleeve. According to Xiaomi, the MiNote Pro uses a newer version of Qualcomm's top-of-the-line chip. The SoC it has is a v2.1 model, which the manufacturer claims gives it a slight edge in performance over other phones with the same Snapdragon chip.

To back this up, Xiaomi published some benchmark results, from CFBench and Antutu, to be exact, which seem to show that the MiNote Pro outperforms both the HTC One M9 and the LG G Flex 2. This all sounds quite intriguing and we definitely can't wait to get our hands on the handset to verify the results for ourselves. As for the heat-management problems that the Snapdragon 810 has been battling with, Xiaomi claims to have found a remedy for that as well, by using what it describes as clever heat management. We'll just have to see about that as well.

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

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The Xiaomi Mi 4i smartphone, which was announced a couple of weeks ago and is currently only available in India, will soon be available in more Asian countries.

The Chinese company has announced that the device will go on sale in Hong Kong and Singapore starting May 12, and will also soon be available in Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. As for the price, it will carry a price tag of $210 in Singapore and will cost $205 in Hong Kong.

The Mi 4i was available for purchase in India last week, where its first flash sale saw 40,000 units going out of stock in just 4.2…

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Kantar has finished tallying up the market numbers for Q1 of 2015 and Microsoft seems to be doing quite well in Europe. Its Windows Phone mobile OS has shown an average overall growth of 1.8 points across EU markets. The number might not seem like much, but, considering that Apple's iOS boats the exact same increase, puts the achievement into perspective.

The analysis shows that the extra Windows Phone users come at the expense of the Android, which drops 3.1 points in the same markets. And, like we already mentioned, this is a trend across most of Europe. In France, for instance, Windows Phone has shown a staggering improvement of 5.8 points, whereas all other contenders have significantly declining market shares, over the same period last year.

On the vast Chinese market there are even greater fluctuations. According to Kantar, Android is down by as much as 8 points and, consequently iOS is up by a whopping 9.2 points. The trend is pretty much the same in Australia. In Japan, however, the score is reversed, with a 10.2 points growth for Android at the expense of a 12.5 points decline for iOS.

It is interesting to note that the increased popularity of Windows Phone seems to be confined to European markets. In the USA, for example, the OS in declining in market share, but Kantar does note that:

If we dig a little deeper, it is easy to see the strong value proposition that the Lumia portfolio offers, as Windows phone sales in the U.S. skew towards the prepay market (20%) and instalment plans (51%). Microsoft is betting that new Windows 10 functions and the ability for developers to easily port Android apps to Windows will make the Windows ecosystem more appealing.

And this is a very valid point, indeed. Microsoft's recently announced tactic to bring easier app porting from Android and iOS to its own ecosystem could reel in new developers and help increase the popularity of Windows Phone even further. Microsoft has also revealed that it has sold 8.6 million Windows Phone devices in Q1 2015, which is an 18% increase over the same period in 2014. Still, the company lost $4 million during the quarter, so there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Also, before the obligatory platform flame war starts up again in the comments, bear in mind, that while Kantar's results are generally quite accurate, statistics are often far from indicative of real world market trends, popularity and…

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