Xiaomi began selling accessories through the its official website. Going forward, users in the country can order headsets and cases for their smartphones directly from the manufacturer.

Xiaomi has been selling handsets online in India through an exclusive partnership with Flipkart. But on its home turf, Xiaomi hosts the fancy flash sales on its own website.

Basically, the Mi online store for India is slowly turning into an online store of its own, though its doesn't offer smartphones just yet. Last month, we reported about Xiaomi’s plans to follow the same strategy in the US…

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Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge got the Goldgenie treatment. The UK-based jeweler will begin taking pre-orders for tricked out versions of the smartphone duo in a couple of days, on March 20.

The Korean giant’s hot new flagship smartphones will be available in 24k gold, rose gold, and platinum. Goldgenie is expecting high demand for all three precious metal finishes.

Of course, having your Samsung Galaxy S6 dressed in 24k gold won’t come cheap – Goldgenie’s pricing kicks off at £1,664 (around $2,457). The jeweler will begin shipping smartphones to customers in two to three weeks after the April 10 retail launch of the smartphone.

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HTC’s upcoming big announcement will include a broken phone replacement service. Dubbed “Uh-oh,” the upcoming solution will take the already available HTC Advantage to a whole new level.

The Taiwanese manufacturer’s new service will provide “a full year of protection for your smartphone, including device replacement. Unlike HTC Advantage that covered only broken glass, the new offering will also include water damage.

“Uh-oh” customers will also be covered in case they switch their wireless carrier within the first year of having their device. HTC is also said to include “up to $100” towards a new HTC One device with the program in a bid to retain customers.

We don’t know which HTC devices will “Uh-oh” support. HTC One M9 is all but certain to be the first smartphone to be offered with the program.

We will be covering HTC’s event live tomorrow. Be sure to tune in to find out what the company has in store.

Source…

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Sony first announced the Xperia E4 and E4 Dual back in February, and now it's ready to take one of those handsets to India.

The Japanese company's arm in the subcontinent has made the Xperia E4 Dual official for the Indian market today. We're talking about the 3G-only model here, keep that in mind, this isn't the 4G-enabled Xperia E4g.

As its name implies however, the Xperia E4 Dual does have dual-SIM functionality, so there's that. Its recommended retail price for India is INR 12,490, which roughly translates into $199 or €188 at the current exchange rates.

The Xperia E4 Dual boasts a 5-inch 540×960 touchscreen, a 5 MP main camera with LED flash, a 2 MP secondary front-facing unit, and a 2,300 mAh battery. At the helm is the MediaTek MT6582 SoC with a 1.3 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU and Mali-400MP2 GPU. The phone has 1GB of RAM, as well as 8GB of expandable built-in storage. It runs Android 4.4.4…

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Welcome to the Galaxy blind camera test! We have Samsung's most recent flagships – in order of release the Galaxy S5, the Galaxy Note 4 and the Galaxy S6 – and we want to see how much Samsung cameras have progressed in the eyes of users…

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HTC definitely captured a lot of attention at this year's MWC. Now the Taiwanese tech giant needs to strike while the iron is hot and capitalize on the hype its new One M9 flagship generated. This is presumably what is going on in the US branch at the moment.

An announcement event will be held in Seattle tomorrow, March 18 and HTC is promising "big news". The event is entitled "HTC Uh-Oh Teaser" and it will most likely be the venue at which the company officially announces the release on the One M9 in the US.

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Going to be an exciting week. In addition to NCAA tourney, HTC has a BIG announcement for US customers on Wednesday. #HTCOneM9— Jason Mackenzie (@JasonMacHTC) March 16, 2015

The event, however, might not be so straightforward as HTC America's president Jason Mackenzie has led us to believe. In a couple of Tweets he talks about a "big surprise" about the One M9 in the US. This has led to a lot of speculations. Perhaps HTC still has a few tricks up its sleeve and has saved some news for after MWC.

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Wednesday, March 18th. Be ready! Big surprise about the HTC One M9 in the US. You're going to love it! Never been easier to choose HTC One— Jason Mackenzie (@JasonMacHTC) March 16, 2015

Rumors have been floating around about a QHD display option for the One M9, which would definitely appeal to a lot of users and broaden the market. Or perhaps the One M9 will come with an exclusive accessory and perhaps, even a new trade-in program for the new flagship, similar to the alleged Apple endeavor we talked about earlier.

But we can't really be certain until the event takes place, tomorrow. If you are interested in what HTC has cooked-up, you can follow along with the live stream below.

There are still 20 or so hours to the presentation and until then all we can do is guess and ponder. What do you think HTC's "big news" will be?

Source 1 | Source 2 | Source…

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OnePlus is finally ready to join the Android 5.0 Lollipop roll out party. On the official forums, the company has noted that it will push Lollipop OTA update for the OnePlus One smartphone on or before March 30.

Last month, we reported that Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus stated that the Lollipop is expected to roll out only in March. Now, the OnePlus One smartphone owners can expect the Lollipop based CyanogenMod 12S OTA on their phones in coming two weeks.

Besides that, the company has chalked a timeline to release the first official version of its home developed – OxygenOS based on Lollipop to be available for download by March…

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At a surprisingly low-key event in Russia today Samsung officially revealed its brand new Galaxy Tab A lineup and two devices were announced. The two new slates sport mostly identical hardware and come in 8" and 9.7" display sizes.

The Galaxy Tab A tablets are the first to show Samsung's switch to the 4:3 screen ratio, which will reportedly feature in the new generation top-of-the-line Galaxy Tab S models. In the Galaxy Tab A range both sizes come with the same low resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels, which translates to the rather unimpressive 160ppi and 132ppi for the 8" and 9.7" flavors, respectively.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8" and 9.7" models

The tablets are powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, presumably within a Snapdragon 410 shipset. Contrary to previous info, which put RAM at 1.5GB for the regular Galaxy Tab A, and 2GB for an alleged Plus version, the vanilla models do indeed pack 2GB of operating memory.

The 16GB built-in storage is expandable up to 128GB via microSD. A 4,200mAh battery is quoted to power the 8-inch model, which Samsung claims will be enough to last for up to 10 hours. The larger slate's battery capacity naturally gets a bump to 6,000mAh.

The larger of the two models also sports a dual speaker arrangement, over the 8-incher's single one, but whether that will provide stereo sound or just pump out more decibels, remains to be seen. A 5MP/2MP camera combo is on board for those cases when your phone is too deep in your pocket.

The tablets sport a new design, compared to the Galaxy Tab 4 models, which they are supposed to replace. The new slates show a metal-looking back, which contradicts somewhat with the headline wireless charging capability, now built-in. They aren't breaking any records, but are reasonably thin at 7.5mm.

Back of Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8" and 9.7" models • Dual speakers on the 9.7-inch version

The 8-inch Galaxy Tab A is priced between RUB16,990 ($275) and RUB18,990 ($307) for the Wi-Fi-only version and RUB20,990 ($340) to RUB22,990 ($372) for the LTE-enabled one, with the premium presumably governed by the 32GB built-in storage. Samsung is making the math simple, and the 9.7-inch model will set you back exactly RUB 4,000 (~65) more on top of an equally specced 8-inch…

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As promised yesterday, Xiaomi has announced the new Mi Note Natural Bamboo Edition for $370 (RMB 2,299). This special edition will feature the same specifications as the regular Mi Note.

The new Mi Note Natural Bamboo Edition has the same quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC chipset with Adreno 330 GPU to support the 5.7-inch IPS Full HD display (1080×1920) with 386 pixel density. It offers support for 4G networks on both of its SIM slots.

Xiaomi has packed 3 GB RAM to power the MIUI v6 based on Android 4.4.4 KitKat and offers 13MP rear camera with dual-tone dual-LED flash that can even shoot 4K quality video. In the front is a 4 MP camera for clicking selfies and the phone packs 3,000 mAh battery. Read our review of Mi Note to know more about the phablet.

The new Mi Note Natural Bamboo Edition is available for pre-order in the China region now and will be on sale from March…

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Sony is rolling out the Android 5.0 Lollipop update to the Xperia Z3 and Xperia Z3 Compact, now the older Xperia Z2 flagship is joining the party. Sony is renovating the software of the Xperia Z2 Tablet and Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact as well.

For now the Sony Xperia Z2 (D65XX) is receiving Android 5.0.2 (build 23.1.A.0.690) in the Nordic and Baltic regions.

The two tablets are getting the same software. That's the Wi-Fi only (SGP611, SGP612) and LTE (SGP621) versions of the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact. The rollout for the older Xperia Z2 Tablet is a bit slower, with the Wi-Fi only 32GB variant (SGP512) standing by as the 16GB LTE and Wi-Fi (SGP521 and SGP511) are pulling in the update.

People on the XDA-Developer sub-forums for these Xperias are already reporting success with installing the update.

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