A new budget-minded Huawei handset has been made available without an official announcement. The Ascend Y540 comes with entry-level hardware and retails in Europe for around €100-€110.

For that amount of money you get a Snapdragon 200 chipset with 1.3GHz dual-core processor, one-upping the 1.2GHz clock rate of the Ascend Y530. More significantly, RAM has been doubled to 1GB for improved performance.

Targeting budget-conscious buyers, the new generation features dual SIM slots with dual standby support. To address the increased power draw, battery capacity has reached 1950mAh. Android KitKat is on board, and that wraps up the list of changes.

A 4.5-inch screen of 480×854 pixel resolution is carried over from the predecessor, and so is the 5MP/0.3MP imaging combo. Built-in storage is tiny at 4GB, but thankfully a microSD slot provides expansion up to 32GB. Connectivity is covered by the uninspiring quad-band GSM support and dual-band 3G package….

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According to a report in Japanese media, Apple and Japan Display might team up to build a screen production facility The project is said to be worth ¥200 billion (about $1.68 billion).

The facility will be located in Ishikawa, central Japan. It is expected to begin operations at some point in 2016. Unsurprisingly, the plant will will supply screens mainly for the Cupertino giant.

JDI has declined to confirm the report. However, the company acknowledged that its constantly looking to become more competitive, including by building more production capacity.

A display production facility will mark another large-scale investment for Apple. Recently, the company announced that it will invest $2 billion in a data center, and $850 million in a solar farm….

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Just days after HTC UK confirmed that "the new HTC One" will be unveiled on March 1, HTC USA has teased the arrival of "something huge".
Something HUGE is coming from HTC. Imagine [number][big thing] in space. And then [math term] that by [number]. #Madlib— HTC USA (@HTCUSA) February 19, 2015

While it's reasonable to assume that the tweet is meant to drum up excitement for the Taiwanese company's upcoming MWC 2015 press event, it isn't clear what exactly "something huge" means.

One interpretation could be the unveiling of the One M9, which is figuratively "huge" given that it's a flagship smartphone. Or, the company could also be hinting at a large device – are we looking at the One M9 Plus here? Seems less likely, as recent reports suggest the device sports only a 5.1 inch display.

As it stands, we'll have to wait till March 1, when HTC finally unveils its “huge”…

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Goldgenie is up to its usual gold-covered antics once more. The company that brought you the £2.3 million iPhone 6 is now back with a limited edition for the same Apple device. And the price in this case is much more bearable (though still out of reach for most).

Goldgenie apparently felt that the fact that according to the Chinese zodiac 2015 is the Year of the Goat deserved celebration. So it's created the iPhone 6 Elite Year of the Goat Limited Edition, which you can see in the images below (click to expand).

iPhone 6 Elite Year of the Goat Limited Edition

It can be yours for £2,637 if you go for the 64GB version, or £2,837 if you prefer to have 128GB of storage. You can choose between white and black for the front fascia.

So what do you get for that insane amount of money? 24k gold, of course, but also a laser engraved hand-painted Chinese symbol of the Goat from the Chinese zodiac. This can apparently bring you "a gentle peaceful energy into the year ahead", whatever that may mean.

The gold iPhone 6 will be delivered to you in the special "Luxury Cherry Oak Finish" box you can see in the rightmost image above.

This is a limited edition, so only 99 units will be made in each finish. The phones are sold SIM-free and unlocked, so you can use them anywhere you want. Oh, and you also get free worldwide shipping, for what it's worth.

As you may have expected, underneath all that gold this will still be the exact same iPhone 6 that Apple sells for much less money. If you go for the Year of the Goat Limited Edition though you're obviously not paying for innards, but for bling.

Source |…

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Today BlackBerry has announced that the rollout of its latest OS release has commenced. BlackBerry OS 10.3.1 is in the process of making it to seven of the company's devices, namely the Q5, Q10, Z10, Z30, Z3, Porsche Design P'9983, as well as the Passport. The BlackBerry Classic isn't on that list because it already ships with BlackBerry OS 10.3.1 preinstalled.

So now this iteration of the OS is finally on its way to the rest of the Canadian company's recent portfolio of mobile devices.

The update brings with it quite a few new things, as well as the usual bug fixes and enhancements. The Amazon Appstore now comes preinstalled, alongside the BlackBerry World. Amazon's storefront has so far been confined to the Passport, but from now on it will be found on all BlackBerry 10 devices.

Moving on, the update has BlackBerry Blend inside. This is a feature that brings messaging and content that's on your BlackBerry to your computer or tablet, and effortlessly so.

BlackBerry Assistant is this company's entrant into the increasingly crowded virtual assistant space. It can take voice and text commands. The BlackBerry Hub has gained Instant Actions, a feature which lets you quickly organize your inbox without having to go into each message.

Keyboard shortcuts are back for the Q5, Q10, Porsche Design P'9983, and the Passport. Your Power Saving Profile can now be customized, allowing a battery life boost of up to 15%. The Camera has new functions, among them some automatic recommendations. You now get 17 preset equalizer options for media, and you can favorite songs, photos, or videos, so you can easily access them.

The Calendar's new Meeting Mode will automatically set your phone to quiet mode for the duration of a meeting, and will then turn notifications back on when the meeting is over. There's also a new weekly agenda view. Finally, BBM Meetings is built into the latest BlackBerry OS release, which should be good news for businesses.

When BlackBerry OS 10.3.1 is ready to be downloaded and installed on your phone, you'll get a notification in the BlackBerry Hub. Of course carriers could slow down the rollout, so if you bought your device from one of them then you may be in for a longer…

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Flipkart, one of India's biggest online stores has just released an interesting teaser on Twitter. It has to do with a new Motorola device that the retailer simply refers to as a "Moto beast". Now this could refer to a lot of smartphones, but thankfully the included banner clears the smoke and almost definitely point in a single direction.

It reads "Accelerated performance. Ballistic Nylon Fairing. Revving in soon." Whole this sounds like a lot of gibberish to ramp up the hype it most likely describes the Motorola Moto Maxx. The phone is essentially a global variant of the Droid Turbo and comes with a unique back panel, dubbed "Ballistic Nylon" so Flipkart is most certainly talking about the Maxx.

The Moto Maxx comes equipped with a formidable Snapdragon 805 SoC with four Krait 450 cores, clocked at 1.7GHz. GPU is an equally impressive Adreno 420 and the setup is backed up by 3GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage. Cameras also do not disappoint. Motorola has invested heftily in the primary shooter, which is a 21 MP, f/2.0, dual-LED model, capable of 2160p video at 24fps.
There's a Moto beast coming your way… exclusively on Flipkart. Stay tuned for more details. #MotoOnFlipkart http://ift.tt/1zqCtHR Flipkart (@Flipkart) February 19, 2015

Another important aspect of the phone is its extremely spacious 2,900 mAh battery pack, ensuring maximum endurance. And if this is not tantalizing enough, Motorola also promises that its own turbo charger can restore up to 8 hours of battery life in the phone for a mere 15 minutes of charging.

There is still no word on pricing for the device or when it is going to be up for sale, but it looks like it will be hitting Flipkart really soon. So if you are in the market for a high-end device, be sure to check out the Moto Maxx in all its "turbocharged"…

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The LG G Flex2 caused quite a stir at CES in the beginning of 2015 and is only a few weeks away from becoming available on US soil. Sprint will start accepting preorders for the smartphone on February 20, but the device won't make it to users' hands until March 13.

The fabulous Volcano Red color option will be exclusive to Sprint, while others will only get the more inconspicuous Platinum Silver. The device will set you back $21 a month over a two year period, for a total of $504.

The LG G Flex2 is the first commercially available device, featuring the latest and greatest Snapdragon 810 chipset. 16GB and 32GB of built-in storage options will be in existence, with 2GB and 3GB of RAM respectively, continuing LG's practice to install less operating memory in the base model.

The headline feature is of course the FullHD 5.5-inch curved P-OLED display, smaller in size, but superior in resolution to the predecessor. Another LG specialty, the healing back cover is on board as well, in its second generation.

By all means check out our comprehensive review of the LG G Flex2, where we examine it in detail and assess its…

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HTC is preparing the new generation One flagships and it has been known for a while that there will be two versions. A benchmark called Compubench has leaked the specs of both, the HTC One (M9) and One (M9) Plus, confirming what we've seen so far.

The camera department on both will be almost identical with a 20MP main camera, there will be no Duo cameras this time. The selfie camera had previously leaked as a 4MP UltraPixel shooter, but this benchmark detected a 12MP selfie camera that records 2160p video on the One (M9). The selfie video capture on the One (M9) Plus is capped at 2,048 x 1,536px.

The HTC One (M9) Plus will have a sharper display – QHD (1,440 x 2,560px). The benchmark reports it as 5.1", but that contradicts earlier rumors and since these scorecards often get size wrong we'd be more inclined to expect a properly larger screen. Where we can trust the benchmark is chipset detection and so the One (M9) Plus will use a MediaTek MT6795 chipset. That one is based only on the smaller Cortex-A53 cores, eight of them, 3GB of RAM and packs PowerVR Rogue G6200 chipset (the GPU used in Meizu MX4).

HTC One (M9) • HTC One (M9) Plus (leaked specs)

The base model will have a 5" 1080p screen and will be powered by Snapdragon 810 – four Cortex-A57 cores, four A53, 3G of RAM and Adreno 430.

Both phones will launch with Android 5.0 Lollipop and will have 32GB of built-in storage, 23GB of that available to the user.

Note that we're also expecting an HTC Butterfly 3 with a 5.2" QHD display, which is a separate device from the One (M9) Plus. We should see the whole roster unveiled on March 1.

Source 1 • Source 2 | Via 1 | Via 2 (in…

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We reported a few days ago on Samsung's move to a 4:3 aspect ratio with its future flagship tablets, and now more detailed specs of the new generation Galaxy Tab S have been revealed, courtesy of industry insiders.

With the newly adopted screen sizes of 8" and 9.7", it's not exactly unclear which competition the Galaxy Tab S line takes on. The new aspect has expectedly resulted in a change of resolution and the new one will be 2,048 x 1,536 pixels, same as the one used in the similarly-sized offerings from Apple.

The source reports that the new tablet will be powered by a home-brewed Exynos 5433 chipset, but does not rule out the possibility of the powerhouse Exynos 7420 making it to the final version. The 64-bit Lollipop 5.0.2, that the tablets will boot upon launch, can benefit from the state-of-the-art SoC, while the Exynos 5433 is a more dated 32-bit offering.

The new models won't see an upgrade in the RAM department where the 3GB of the predecessors will be retained. The 32GB of built-in storage will be expandable up to 128GB via microSD, and the 8MP/2.1MP imaging combo is carried over from the predecessors.

The second generation Galaxy Tab S models will feature the ubiquitous metal frame of Samsung's latest upmarket design language and will be impressively thin at only 5.4mm. The 8-inch model will fit in a 198.2 x 134.5mm footprint and weigh 260g, while the bigger brother will measure 237.1 x 168.8mm and tip the scales at 407g. Battery capacity will be 3,580mAh and 5,870mAh, respectively.

Bear in mind that the devices are still in development and any of this may change by the time they become…

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A massive leak of soon-to-be-announced Lenovo smartphones has made the rounds today. The company appears to be preparing to unveil five new models at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this March. The phones in question are the Lenovo Vibe S1, Vibe X3, Vibe P1, Vibe P1 Pro and the Vibe Max.

Lenovo Vibe S1

Starting with the Vibe S1, which is oriented towards the younger crowd. It will feature some snazzy colors including purple, pink and light blue. It's said to feature a front-facing camera that's great for selfie snapping. Further specifications aren't available just yet, though.

Lenovo Vibe S1

Next up is the Lenovo Vibe X3, which is known to feature a 5.5" 1080p display and stereo speakers. The latter is enhanced with a Lenovo-made Hi-Fi 3.0 software package. The phone features a metal frame and a cool looking back design complete with a fingerprint sensor below the camera. It has been reported to be 20.7MP, but that's remains to be confirmed.

Lenovo Vibe X3
Lenovo Vibe X3

The Lenovo Vibe P1 is focusing on battery life and features a 4,000mAh unit with quick charge support. It's said to have a nano ceramics coating and preliminary specifications suggest a 64-bit octa-core CPU and 2GB RAM residing in a MediaTek chipset.

Lenovo Vibe P1

The phone supports 4G LTE networks and comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box. By the looks of it, it also seems to have a metal frame.

And if you need an even larger battery, Lenovo is also going to launch the Vibe P1 Pro. It will have a 5,000mAh unit and a fingerprint sensor. The display size is north of 5.5" judging from the photo, but that's not confirmed yet.

Lenovo Vibe P1 Pro

Finally, there's the Lenovo Vibe Max, also known as the Vibe Shot. Just as we reported yesterday, it's going to feature a 5-inch FullHD screen and is powered by 64-bit Snapdragon 615 chipset. It doesn't skimp on RAM either, packing the generous 3GB.

Expect Lenovo to officially announce the devices as MWC 2015 rolls…

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