As promised, OnePlus is back with more information regarding its upcoming OxygenOS, which will be replacing Cyanogen OS on its current and future products.

For starters, OnePlus announced the team members who will be working on OxygenOS, which includes the likes of Aaron Gascoigne, co-founder of Paranoid Android, Arz Bhatia, lead designer at Paranoid Android, Karim Frenn, former software development intern at Google, Helen Li, ex-Microsoft and OxygenOS product head, and several other people, mostly from Paranoid Android.

OnePlus also has a new logo for the OS, A red square with negative space in between creating the O, the chemical symbol for Oxygen.

OnePlus reiterated that OxygenOS will be close to AOSP and will be lightweight, with priority to battery life and system efficiency. The team is currently working on the OS, which is not ready yet and there is no date as to when it will be available for download.

Source • reddit…

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The manufacturer of luxury handsets Bellperre announced the Touch smartphone with Android OS. The newcomer is a Vertu rival from Netherlands with more modest specs and lower price point.

Bellperre Touch is made from 316L stainless steel and features a display covered by sapphire crystal. Customers can order their device by choosing from American buffalo or alligator leather in a variety of colors. The leather strip below the device’s display will also offer touch controls.

Specs-wise, the Bellperre Touch looks like a decidedly mid-range offering. The handset packs 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 48GB of built-in memory. The screen of the device is a 4.9″ Super AMOLED unit with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels.

The camera of the smartphone is an 8MP unit with 1080p recording, coupled with 1.9MP front-facing snapper. Full connectivity suite with NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, and LTE is on board.

Physical measures of the device are 138.0 x 69.4 x 9.4 mm, while its weight tips the scale at 166 grams. The phone utilizes a micro-SIM card slot.

Pricing of the Bellperre Touch kick off at €2,600 for a buffalo leather version, and tops out at €3,000 for a model with alligator…

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At its mysterious event in San Francisco today, Xiaomi has announced that it plans to open its own online store in the US in a few months.

However, the caveat of the century follows. See, Xiaomi will not be selling smartphones or tablets through that storefront. So the most craved items it makes will still be off limits to US-based customers, at least in an official manner.

Instead, Xiaomi will offer its increasing range of accessories, such as headphones (pictured above), fitness bands, power banks, and more. The US isn't the only 'western' market targeted by the company – it will bring is online store to other countries too.

One of the reasons why phones and tablets won't be made available for US customers is that apparently Xiaomi finds that localization of its MIUI ROM (which is reportedly being used on 100 million devices already) is very difficult.

There are also (unnamed) issues with hardware certification, software testing, infrastructure, as well as other logistical challenges, all of which conspire to keep Mi handsets and tablets out of the hands of American consumers, for now at least. And it doesn't help that it's a market in which people are used to buying their mobile devices from carriers, and not directly from the manufacturer's online store.

Xiaomi hopes that if it launches simpler products first, they'll help build brand awareness before it makes any bigger steps in the US. However, as of now a phone launch is not on the roadmap at all.

Source 1 • Source…

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As leaked last week, the very first release of Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones is now out. You can download and install it on one of just six smartphones that are currently supported.

Microsoft promises more handsets will be added to subsequent Preview builds in the future, but for now you can only proceed if you own a Lumia 630, Lumia 635, Lumia 636, Lumia 638, Lumia 730, or Lumia 830.

The software giant also notes that this is a "very early" preview, which means many things may break or not work right from the start. Bugs are to be expected, and there's a very long list of known issues at the Source link.

The user experience isn't polished yet, and you will see rough edges here and there. Microsoft says it's sharing it now for you to be able to give it feedback and help shape the final Windows 10 release for phones.

As described in the presentation video above, the Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones comes with a small subset of the features that will be in the final build. The full-size background image for the Start screen is in, as are more quick actions in the Action Center, and interactive notifications.

The speech-to-text ability of the OS has been improved significantly, and the more powerful Photos app will aggregate your local photos with those you have stored on OneDrive.

For now, Cortana will be limited to the US and will only work with English, which is a step back from its functionality in the latest version of Windows Phone 8.1. That said, Microsoft promises that by the time Windows 10 is finished, its virtual assistant will be more capable than it ever was.

Coming in future builds will be the Office universal apps, as well as the new Mail and Calendar apps and Skype integrated directly into Messaging.

If you own one of the aforementioned supported devices and wish to take Windows 10 for phones for a spin, you need to first join the Windows Insider Program. Then you install the Windows Insider app, start it up, register your device, then check for updates. As work on Windows 10 for phones progresses, you'll get all the new builds, including the final one when that's…

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The LG G Flex 2, which was unveiled at this year’s CES, and launched in South Korea late last month, is heading for its first European market. News has surfaced that LG's latest flagship will be available in Netherlands starting March 31.

This is only the second international market the device is entering following Singapore, where the G Flex 2 will be up for preorder on February 28. The curvy handset is slowly branching outside its native Korean market and even if you have to wait a while to pick it up at a local retailer, Amazon Germany already offers you to book your unit.

The phone will cost €699 for the 16GB model, which is around the €650 it is currently listed for online. No information is known yet about pricing and availability of the 32GB model. This is still significantly lower than the original LG G Flex, which cost some €850 when it first came out.

The G Flex 2 is the company’s first mobile device to feature Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 chipset, which has received some bad press lately, especially after there were reports that Samsung ditched it in favor of its own processors for its upcoming flagship, the Galaxy S6. However, LG has clarified that it has had no issues with the SoC, and has termed its performance as "quite satisfactory".

Other specifications of the device include a 5.5-inch 1080p display, a 2.1 MP front-facing camera, and 13 MP rear camera. There are 3GB of RAM in the international version of the device, while the Korean one is limited to only two. The smartphone also packs in a 3,000 mAh battery.

Source (in…

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The latest version of Xiaomi's MIUI 6 is to become available for the Redmi 1S later this week. MIUI 6 was announced back in August last year, but the budget-friendly smartphone has so far been left out in the cold.

Admittedly, it will be a beta version of the ROM at this point, released to the public to iron out unforeseen imperfections. The official version should follow in the coming weeks though. The company has also promised that the update will be rolled out to its entire smartphone lineup at a later stage.

MIUI OS is Xiaomi's iOS-inspired thoroughly-customized Android overlay. It abandons Android's two-level interface and ditches the app drawer in favor of a number of homescreens for all your apps. A flat, polished look with consistent app icons is also typical of the…

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Miami-based BLU announced today the launch of its Studio Energy smartphone on the US market. The smartphone was unveiled at CES in January alongside a number of budget friendly devices, targetting specific niches. Its headline feature is the huge 5000mAh battery, currently the highest capacity in the smartphone realm, the company claims.

That amount of juice translates into 45 days of standby time or 4 days of regular use, according to BLU's calculations. Thickness has been kept at a manageable 10.4mm, but weight may be more disturbing at 180g.

The BLU Studio Energy features a 5-inch display of 720×1280 pixels resulting in a 294ppi density. Computing power comes from a quad-core processor, clocked at 1.3GHz, coupled with 1GB of RAM. An 8MP camera on the back is responsible for capturing the world, while a 2MP front snapper takes care of selfies.

The newly launched smartphone will boot Android 4.4 out of the box, but the company promises a Lollipop update in June. The device is available now on Amazon for $149,…

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The rumors about Samsung's next highly-anticipated flagship phone just keep pouring in. Controversy is at an all-time high and it seems that leaks are starting to contradict themselves more and more. One of the more widely spread opinions on the tech scene is that the Galaxy S6 will keep with current design trends and spout a full-metal unibody.

However this might turn out to be not entirely true as two separate industry sources are now reporting that the Galaxy S6 will come with built-in wireless charging capability. The couple of reports come from DDaily and News 1 Korea and both hint at magnetic induction wireless charging in the smartphone. This is all fine, but magnetic induction can simply not function with an all-metal body. The material is a formidable barrier for electro-magnetic waves, making the whole process all but impossible due to losses and even quite dangerous.

If the Galaxy S6 does indeed come with wireless charging that must mean that its back will not be 100% metal. One option would be for it to have carefully placed plastic inserts, but that seems kind of unlikely. The other variant, which one of the aforementioned sources goes into detail about is that the back will be made of glass, or plastic with a glass effect, which would allow for the charging technology to work properly.

According to other rumors the Galaxy S6 will not offer a removable battery so wireless charging might be there to offer at least some kind of compensation to Samsung fans. But considering a metal unibody along with electro-magnetic charging is only feasible in the way it is achieved with the all-metal HTC One (M8) – with an external charging adapter.

This is definitely a new curve ball in the Galaxy S6 story, leaving even more room for speculation and doubt. And we are bound to get a few more of those before the official launch event on March 1.

Source 1 (in Korean) | Source 2 (in Korean) |…

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Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy Note II will also get the Android 5.0 Lollipop update, although it hasn't yet confirmed the date.

The announcement was made by Samsung Poland via a tweet. It is worth noting that the South Korean company usually updates it flagship devices for around 1.5 years, but the Note II seems to be an exception as it has been more than two years since the device was launched.

The news comes just a day after the Galaxy Note 4 started receiving the Lollipop update in…

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The Sony Xperia E4 quietly sneacked onto the stage yesterday and the announcement was so quick we didn’t even get a launch date and a price. Clove UK has answered both of these questions by putting the new handset on pre-order.

It's priced at £100 and will be available in late March. Clove also cleared up the OS situation – the Xperia E4 will launch with Android 4.4.4 KitKat and get 5.0 Lollipop later. Note that the price is for the single-SIM version, there's another one with two SIM slots but there's no price for it yet.

Expansys is also accepting pre-orders but hasn’t listed a price or a launch date. We couldn’t find it in other stores for now. Three UK has a post about it, which just speculates on price but points to mid-February as the launch…

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