Sony made the Xperia Z4 Tablet official earlier today, and now the company's French arm has put it up for pre-order. This is helpful because it reveals the starting price for the tablet, which will be a pretty steep €559 in its Wi-Fi-only iteration.

As prices for mobile devices are usually the same amount in US dollars as in euros, we assume it will start at $559 in the USA. This makes it $60 more expensive than the entry level iPad Air 2 model, though that only has 16GB of storage (whereas the Xperia Z4 Tablet ships with 32GB).

If you buy the Wi-Fi Z4 Tablet with the Bluetooth keyboard accessory bundled, you'll need to pay €659. The LTE-capable model of the tablet will retail for €659 sans keyboard, and €759 with the accessory. If you buy the keyboard alone, you'll need to shell out €180.

Unfortunately the Xperia Z4 Tablet is only scheduled to actually become available in June, so even if you're in France and you pre-order one you'll have to wait around three months for it to arrive at your doorstep. That's a lot, especially in the insanely fast moving mobile world.

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French smartphone maker Wiko has unveiled two new devices today, the Highway Star 4G and the Highway Pure 4G.

The Star 4G is almost a flaghsip offering for Wiko, considering the fact that its other handsets are much lower-end. It has an attractive aluminum body, and it comes with some decent specs too.

It has a 5-inch 720p AMOLED touchscreen with Gorilla Glass 3, a 13 MP rear camera with LED flash, a 5 MP selfie cam, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of built-in storage (expandable via microSD), and a 2,450 mAh battery. It's powered by an unnamed octa-core CPU which is based on ARM's Cortex-A53 architecture, clocked at 1.5 GHz.

The phone supports LTE Cat.4 connectivity, for theoretical peek download speeds of up to 150Mbps. It has dual-SIM functionality, and it runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat. Its dimensions are 141 x 71.4 x 6.6 mm, so it's pretty svelte too. It weighs 123g.

Moving on, the Wiko Highway Pure 4G is one of the thinnest smartphones in the world, having a 5.1mm profile. What's more, it's also incredibly light at only 91g.

Spec-wise it's a bit of a downgrade compared to the Star 4G, but in this case its waistline will surely be the main attraction. The Pure 4G sports a 4.8-inch 720p AMOLED touchscreen, an 8 MP rear camera, a 5 MP front snapper, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a 2,000 mAh battery.

At the helm is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 410 SoC, coming with a 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU. As is clear from its name, the Pure 4G supports LTE networks too, and like the Star 4G it runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat at the moment.

Unfortunately Wiko hasn't announced pricing for either device yet. As for a release time frame, all we get for now is a pretty vague assurance that they'll both be up for grabs in the first half of this year. That said, exact dates should be unveiled later this week.

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HTC is soon going to stop selling the One (M8), its flagship from last year. In its place the Taiwanese company will offer the One M8s, a device which will be almost identical to the one it's going to replace.

The one difference will be in the chipset choice. Whereas the One (M8) ships with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC (which was that chip maker's top of the line offering in the first half of last year), the new M8s will go with a midrange Snapdragon 615 instead.

The 64-bit 615 comes with an octa-core CPU, boasting four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at up to 1.7 GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1 GHz.

The HTC One M8s has in fact been leaked and rumored for a while as the One (M8i), but it looks like HTC decided to go with the letter "s" and not "i" after all.

This information comes from HTC's Benelux arm in Europe, so it's all rather official. At least in those three markets (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) the smartphone maker will choose to replace the One (M8) with this M8s. The situation might be repeated in other places too, however.

HTC Benelux director Mark Moons said the SoC change was needed in order for the company to continue selling the One (M8)'s hardware. He also stressed that the Snapdragon 615 is a newer part, and it's 64-bit.

For now the exact timeline of the swap is unknown, but we do know that the One M8s will be about €250 cheaper than the new One M9. Since the latter is going to be offered for €749 in the EU, this means the One M8s will sell for €499.

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The Alcatel OneTouch Hero 2+ is a special version of the OneTouch Hero 2 running Cyanogen OS. The phone packs a 6" 1080p TFT display and has a built-in stylus, just like the original. Under the hood, there's a MediaTek MT6592 chipset with an 2.0GHz octa-core Cortex-A7 CPU and 2GB of RAM. Internal storage is 16GB and is expandable via the microSD card slot.

The phones ships with Cyanogen OS 11 out of the box, which is based on Android 4.4.4 KitKat. The Alcatel OneTouch Hero 2 measures 160.5 x 81.6 x 7.9mm and has a 3,100mAh battery. At the back, there's a 13MP main camera capable of shooting 1080p@30fps, while a 5MP front-facing takes care of video chats and selfies.

The phone is destined to hit the US market soon and is set to cost $299 SIM-free when it launches in Q2. It's the second smartphone other than the OnePlus One, which ships with Cyanogen OS and it's going to be interesting to see if the phone manages to ramp up considerable amount of sales.

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The Mobile World Congress is home to large corporations and popular brands as much as it is to underdog and startup companies in the industry. After the big players have unveiled their products, it’s time for us to spend…

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Vivo X5Max went official last December as the world's slimmest smartphone with amazingly thin 4.75mm profile. In this tiny shell Vivo managed to accommodate a 5.5" 1080p display, Snapdragon 615 chip with an octa-core processor, a 13MP rear snapper, two SIM slots but an underwhelming 2,000 mAh battery.

While the Vivo X5Max looked indeed very cool, it was criticized because of the poor battery life and overheating issues.

It seems Vivo decided to update the X5Max and release a more usable version – the Vivo X5Max+. It has the same looks as the original model, but runs on a different chipset and features a battery with higher 2,300mAh capacity. The new chip is MediaTek MT6752 with an octa-core 1.7GHz Cortex-A53 processor, Mali-T760MP2 GPU and 2GB of RAM.

Because of the new hardware and battery bump, the Vivo X5Max+ has a thicker 5.1mm shell.

The device still runs on Android KitKat and costs exactly the same as the X5Max – CNY 2998 or…

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Lenovo’s MWC stand is drawing quite a lot of attention, and rightfully so. The company has a large portfolio of devices on display, spanning the entire range of smart gadgets from phones, to tablets, to wearables, and then some.

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Samsung Netherlands has begun accepting pre-orders for the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, which revealed the official price in mainland Europe. Both versions will ship on April 10.

The flat-screened Galaxy S6, the 32GB model, is priced at €700. That's the same price that the Galaxy S5 (16GB) launched at last year. That was also the starting price of the Galaxy Note 4 late last year.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 edge commands a hefty premium for its three-sided display. The 32GB version is €850, that's €150 over the regular S6 model. The Galaxy Note Edge carried an even bigger premium initially, so we'll see how the price difference evolves.

For comparison, a Dutch retailer has the HTC One M9 listed at €750. Samsung's UK shop just says "Coming soon" for both S6 versions now, but earlier it let it slip that the Galaxy S6 will go for £700.

Note that there's no microSD slot this time so you might want to consider going for a bigger storage option. Those aren’t available yet, but there should be 64GB and 128GB versions of the Galaxy S6.

Finnish site Expert does have a price for the additional storage options of both. The Galaxy S6 64GB goes for €830, while the 128GB model is €950. Things get even pricier for the Galaxy S6 edge – €1000 buys you a 64GB model, and €1100 gets you the top 128GB model.

So, the jump in price per each storage increase varies between €100 and €150. The lack of a card slot is definitely felt, considering a 128GB microSD is around €90 right now. Ouch.

Thanks to Michel and Kushal tipping us off!

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Micromax has launched Canvas Fire 4 in India for $113 (Rs. 6,999). This fourth iteration of Canvas Fire series runs Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box.

Canvas Fire 4 appears to be an iterative run-of-the-mill smartphone with dual front speakers. These speakers are powered by the Cirrus Logic Wolfson WM8918 audio chipset to deliver high quality audio output.

The Canvas Fire 4 runs on an unspecificed quad-core 1.3 GHz mobile processor, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB built-in storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, and FM Radio.

It offers 8 megapixel rear camera with dual LED flash and a 2 megapixel front-facing camera. With the Dual SIM support, it can hold one 3G HSPA+ SIM and offers a 2000mAh battery.

Micromax Canvas Fire 4 will be sold in Black and Silver color…

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MediaTek announced the mid-range MT6753 chipset with WorldMode LTE. The 64-bit octa-core SoC is already is sampling to the company’s partners at the moment and will arrive on commercial devices in Q2, 2015.

The chipset features eight 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 processors, clocked at up to 1.5GHz. MediaTek’s CorePilot tech helps the chipset’s processors balance performance and power efficiency. The GPU is Mali-T720 with Open GL ES 3.0 support and Open CL 1.2 APIs.

Multimedia capabilities of the chipset include integrated 16MP camera image signal processor with 1080p recording and 1080p display support. Video playback capability tops out at 1080p @ 30fps with H.265 and H.264 codecs.

Available connectivity features of the MT6753 consist of Cat. 4 and TDD LTE, CDMA2000 1x/EVDO Rev. A, HSPA+, TD-SCDMA, and EDGE. Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band Wi-Fi are also integrated.

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