The Moto E (2015) has been available in the US in unlocked form for a while, and today it's also gone on sale at a couple of carriers.

Actually, we're talking about Sprint and one of its prepaid brands – Boost Mobile, to be exact. Sprint's other prepaid brand, Virgin Mobile, will launch the new Moto E on March 9 (which is this coming Monday).

At Boost, you can already grab a Moto E (2015) – online or in stores. You can only have the white model though. The black phone is available for Sprint Prepaid in Best Buy and Radio Shack stores.

The pricing is identical in all cases, the new Moto E goes for just $99.99, without any long-term contract requirement of course. Considering that this is the 4G-capable model which retails unlocked for $149.99, you're saving quite a bit of money if you get it from Boost, Sprint, or Virgin (it's a third cheaper). Then again, if you buy from one of these carriers, you'll need to use the handset on plans from that company, so there's that to keep in mind too.

This year's Moto E comes with slightly refreshed specs compared to its predecessor. It boasts a 4.5-inch qHD (560×940) touchscreen, a 5 MP rear camera, a secondary VGA camera, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, a microSD card slot for expansion, and a 2,390 mAh battery.

The 4G LTE iteration (which Sprint, Boost, and Virgin are selling) is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 410 SoC, sporting a 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU and Adreno 306 GPU. The phone runs Android 5.0…

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Next Tuesday, on March 10, Motorola is holding an event in India. It's always been clear that the company will use this avenue to make the new Moto E (2015) official for the subcontinent. But now it looks like Motorola will have something else to announce too.

It turns out that the company is planning to sell the Moto Maxx in India as the Moto Turbo. This information comes straight from Motorola's Indian website, believe it or not, which is currently showing the promo you can see in the image below.

It's still unclear if this is intentional or if it's just an employee's mistake, but it's now obvious that the Droid Turbo will end up being sold in India as the Moto Turbo. This confusingly comes after the same handset has been introduced in other international markets as the Moto Maxx. So we're already up to three different names for the exact same phone, for whatever reason.

While Motorola only says the Turbo is "coming soon", it would be odd for it not to get unveiled at Tuesday's event, especially now that it's front and center on the company's website.

If the Moto Turbo will be identical to the Maxx and the Droid Turbo on the inside as well as the outside, then it should sport a 5.2-inch 2,560×1,440 OLED touchscreen, a 21 MP rear camera with dual-LED flash, and a 2 MP selfie snapper.

Powering it is supposed to be the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chipset, with a 2.7 GHz quad-core CPU and Adreno 420 GPU, aided by 3GB of RAM. The phone may be kept running by the same 3,900 mAh battery too.

Like the Moto E (2015), the Moto Turbo could be exclusively offered in India through Flipkart, the country's biggest online retailer.

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If you're impressed with Samsung's new Galaxy S6 and S6 edge and you live in the US, then you'll perhaps be happy to know that we now have the first carrier confirming when it will start taking pre-orders for the duo.

The carrier in question is Verizon, and the day on which it will commence pre-orders for both the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge is April 1. No joke here, the company is looking forward to selling you some high-end Samsung smartphones.

Unfortunately Big Red hasn't also unveiled when the two devices will become available, but Samsung has said they would be up for grabs in 20 countries on April 10. We assume the US is one of them. Hence, Verizon's launch should happen on that day too.

So it's looking like a ten-day pre-order period followed by the release. Verizon hasn't announced pricing details just yet, but it's probably going to offer the S6 starting at $199.99 with a new two-year contract, and the S6 edge from $299.99 with the same arrangement. We'll surely find out more details pretty soon, since we're only about three weeks away from the starting point of the pre-orders.

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This year at MWC we saw not one, but two new Lumia smartphones. The Microsoft Lumia 640 and its bigger brother, the Lumia 640 XL. Only a few days later the former model has already been put up for pre-order in the Microsoft store for Germany, France and UK.

There are, however some interesting inconsistencies across the stores. While the latter two offer the Dual-SIM version of the handset, the UK store has listed, what appears to be the single-SIM variant. To further confuse things, prices also appear to differ. The German store, which was indeed the first to put-up the offer, has set a price of EUR 159, whereas the smartphone goes for EUR 179 on the French website. This might be due to TAX differences, but the fact that the single-SIM model is listed for GBP 169.99, or about EUR 236 in the UK page is quite puzzling. All of the devices are, however described as LTE-enabled.

The UK store does also state that the Lumia 640 will be available starting April 7, whereas in the German and French sites this date has been pushed forward to April 16. Despite the odd, inconsistent listing the fact is that Microsoft doesn't intend to waste any time getting the smartphone on the market. What is your take on the matter? And would you consider the Lumia 640 as your next phone?

Source 1 (in German) | Source 2 (in French) | Source 3 |…

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Xiaomi has a new contest in India, held via the official Facebook page. There you must find three words into a word puzzle and then you automatically participate for winning one of the three gadgets.

The puzzle has words such as 'Quick Charge', 'Wide angle', 'expandable', 'matte' and 'Cortex'. These should suggest the Redmi 2, since the Redmi 1S is out of stock already, while the Mi Note Pro is yet to be released later this year.

Hopefully Xiaomi doesn't make exclusive the Redmi 2 to Flipkart as it did with the previous Redmi 1S smartphone. The Redmi 2 is already available in China and it is about time Xiaomi launches it in India as well.

The contest ends by the end of March 11. This means the announcement should happen in a week or so. Meanwhile you can learn more about the Snapdragon 410-powered Xiaomi Redmi 2 from our specs and our dedicated in-depth review.

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HTC A55 made the rounds just a month ago with flagship-grade specs, but it was rumored as a Desire smartphone. Today we finally learn its retail name – it's indeed a flagship phone from the One series – the HTC One E9.

HTC Hima Ace or HTC A55 should launch as HTC One E9 – a different flavor of the One M9. It will pack a 5.5" Quad HD display and run on the MediaTek MT6795 chipset with an octa-core 2.0GHz Cortex-A53 processor, PowerVR G6200 GPU and 3GB of RAM.

The rest of the HTC One E9 specs are pretty much the same as the One M9 flagship – 32 GB storage, 20MP rear camera, 4MP UltraPixel selfie snapper, rich connectivity package (including a dual-SIM option) and Android 5 Lollipop plus HTC Sense 7 UI. In some markets the 4MP front sensor will even be replaced with a 13MP one.

There is no information on when the official announcement will happen, but it is rumored to launch in China by the end of this month. The rumored paintjobs are White Rose Gold, Gray, and Brown Gold colors.

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Two new alleged photos of the Huawei P8 have surfaced revealing the phone's thin profile. The company's upcoming flagship is rumored to measure just 6mm, 0.5mm less than its predecessor, the Ascend P7.

Additionally, according to Chinese CNMO (the source of the photos), Huawei is preparing a P8 Max with a 6.8" display. The resolution isn't known yet, but knowing where Huawei's CEO stands regarding QHD resolution is hard not to suppose it's 1080p. For now, there aren't that many details regarding the purported Huawei P8 Max.

As for the Huawei P8, rumors have been floating around suggesting a mid-April launch in a dedicated London event. It's believed to happen on April 15. Huawei will supposedly unveil the 5.2" smartpone featuring 1080p resolution and a 13MP camera with OIS. Under the hood, the Kirin 930 chipset with be in charge with 64-bit octa-core CPU built on the 16nm TSMC manufacturing process.

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iOS 8.2 has been in the works for quite some time. Last month we reported that a beta 5 version of the software has been made available to developers and rumors point towards next Monday – March 9, as the official release date for the final build. This does fit together nicely with the "Spring Forward" event, which is also set for the upcoming Monday and will be centered around unveiling the new wearable.

The new iOS version, which mainly adds support for the smartwatch has reportedly received one last GM build before the live update goes out next week and the release notes for the package have managed to slip through the crack. This gives us a sneak peek at what Apple is working on it terms of support for the wearable, as well as some big updates and stability fixes of the OS itself.

Below is the full internal change log for what is cited as build 12D508:

Health App improvements

Adds the ability to select the unit of measurement for body temperature, weight, height, distance, and blood glucose
Improves stability when dealing with large amounts of data
Includes the ability to add and visualise workout sessions from 3rd-party apps
Addresses an issue that may have prevented users from adding a photo in Medical ID
Fixes units for vitamins and minerals
Fixes an issue where Health data wouldn’t refresh after changes data source order
Fixes an issue where some graphics showed no data values
Adds a privacy setting that enables turning off tracking of steps, distance, and flights climbed

Stability Enhancements

Increases stability of Mail
Improves stability of Flyover in Maps
Improves stability of Music
Improves VoiceOver reliability
Improves connectivity with Made for iPhone Hearing Aids

Bug Fixes

Fixes an issue in Maps that prevented navigating to some favorite locations
Addresses an issue where the last word in a quick reply message wasn’t autocorrected
Fixes an issue where duplicate iTunes purchased content could prevent iCloud restore from completing
Resolves an issue where some music or playlists didn’t sync from iTunes to the Music app
Fixes an issue where deleted audiobooks sometimes remained on the device
Resolves an issue that could prevent call audio from routing to car speakers while using Siri Eyes Free
Fixes a Bluetooth calling issue where no audio is heard until the call is answered
Fixes a timezone issue where Calendar events appear in GMT
Addresses an issue that caused certain events in a custom reoccurring meeting to drop from Exchange calendar
Fixes an certificate error that prevented configuring an Exchange account behind a third-party gateway
Fixes an issue that could cause an organizer’s Exchange meeting notes to be overwritten
Resolves an issue that prevented some Calendar events from automatically showing as “busy” after accepting an invite.

Looking at the list, there are, indeed, some interesting new health features added in the mix, like integration with 3rd-party apps and different units of measurements for body temperature, weight, height, distance, and blood glucose. The pedometer will also, apparently, feature a privacy setting, slowing the user to turn it off at will.

It does, however seem that despite all of the development and testing time Apple has had with iOS 8.2, this last-minute build does address a lot of bugs and issues, some of which sound pretty severe. Calendar time zone issues and audio transfer, for instance don't sound like things that should have been rolled over to the final betas, but there might be more to the story than meets the eye. Hopefully no major issues will come with iOS 8.2. We'll be sure to revisit the matter once we get the new update, so stay…

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Sony Vice President for Western Europe shared some interesting in-house info. According to the company's official the entire Xperia Z3 series – the Z3, Z3 Compact and the Z3 Tablet Compact – are doing very well on the market.

Sony understands it doesn't need e new flagship that often and instead it will be shifting its focus on the consumer experience. Don't get this wrong – Xperia Z4 will come later this year, but Sony wants to improve its user experience first. Here is the official quote:

"The innovation is not so much about launching and announcing a flagship with more and more megapixels and so on, it’s about how can you make consumers’ lives more innovative and more relevant as we go forward. This is what it’s all about. We are focusing on bringing what is unique to the brand, bringing this content element into our proposition, such as Sony (Xperia) Lounge. This is what you need to understand. We will continue to launch beautiful hardware but it’s not the only thing anymore."

"The story is beyond that. It’s whether you are expanding consumer experience beyond a technology standpoint, making sure these experiences are available to as many consumers as soon as possible, even those who bought products six months ago."

Sony isn’t moving to one-year product cycle either. According to the VP of Global Communication Sony will be adjusting the product releases, but the lack of announcement at the MWC isn't a shift to a new product cycle. Check this out:

"Z4 is the next-generation of product that we’ll be announcing. No, we haven’t [moved to a more traditional 12 month product cycle]. As a general rule you will see some adjustment to the way we phase our products, but we’re certainly not going to offer any specific details as to when we are going to bring our next products, beyond these, at this stage."

"We haven’t always announced a smartphone at MWC, sometimes we phase it and we’ll have a smartphone or a tablet. This year we really wanted the emphasis on our story at MWC to be around expanding the mid-range offer and broadening the mid-range and obviously bringing in a super premium tablet as well. It’s more a case of phasing the products in than anything else."

"At IFA we announced three Z3 series products, the full sized smartphone, the Compact and the Compact Tablet. These are doing really well in the market and there is still quite a considerable amount of interest in those particular products and since we’ve announced them, we’ve updated a number of features. We’ve introduced Remote Play, there are more camera themes and there are more camera apps."

So, the Sony Xperia Z4 is on the way, but it will be probably delayed for the spring or the…

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It's clearly Android 5.0 Lollipop update season for Samsung smartphones these days (at least the high-end ones, that is). We've seen a lot of rollouts starting over the past few days, and the latest device to get to run the newest iteration of Google's mobile OS is the Galaxy S5 Active.

This is the vanilla Galaxy S5's a lot more rugged sibling, which launched last year. And while the S5 itself has been enjoying Lollipop for quite some time, the Galaxy S5 Active is only now starting to taste it.

The first rollout for this update is happening in Europe's Nordic region. People who purchased S5 Active units from the countries making that up can expect to see an update notification pop up soon. The file size for the download will be around 1.4GB, keep that in mind if you wish to get it via your carrier's network.

After successfully installing the new software, you'll be running Android 5.0, build G870FXXU1BOB4. If you haven't received the update notification yet, you can manually check by using the option in Settings > About phone > Software update.

Now that the ball's running, we should see the new software making it to Galaxy S5 Active units bought in other regions pretty…

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