It may look like the YotaPhone 2 has lost the element of surprise but the sequel is actually trying to please the users the original wowed – and get a bigger crowd interested. The first generation was unexpected…

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With MWC 2015 just over a month away the hype is naturally growing around new device announcements and primarily flagship smartphones. And while chances are high that we will be seeing the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One M9, recent rumors speculate that Sony might just disappoint on the Xperia Z4 front.

The Japanese manufacturer has traditionally kept to an end-of-March release scheme for its premium models, but insider sources now point to a summer release for the next generation flaghsip. Of course plans may change and this should be taken with a grain of salt, but upon further observation of the mobile scene this scenario seem very likely.

The fact of the matter is that we haven't been hearing as much about the upcoming Xperia Z4 as we would expect, which either means that Sony has somehow tightened all leaky cracks or the Xperia Z4 will not be appearing in Barcelona this March.

Furthermore the recent announcement of a purple Xperia Z3 only further suggests that Sony still intends to pass it off as the current flagship and is therefore trying to keep it as fresh as possible.

We do however have enough puzzle pieces regarding the rumored Sony flagship to put together a tantalizing picture of the new device. Beastly specs have been rumored, featuring a Snapdragon 810 SoC, 4GB of RAM and a 5.2-inch display, which might be available in QHD and Full HD resolutions. Other than that, and an alleged certification in Japan, little is known of the Xperia Z4 which should not be the case if Sony was anywhere near the release.

Still we remain hopeful that MWC will bring us more than mid-range Sony devices as the manufacturer has some time to speed things along and not get outshined by the competition at the expo. What is your take on the Xperia Z4 and a possible delay in its…

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There's a whole flock of rumors surrounding the Samsung Galaxy S6 and they don't always agree. Earlier we heard that Samsung is likely to seal the battery with a non-removable glass cover, but now info from Poland comes that the company will do quite the opposite and do a small-scale version of Project Ara with the back panels.

Samsung is reportedly trying out different ideas with the replaceable backs that extend beyond the usual Qi charging or S View case.

The most intriguing (and most unlikely) panel enables additional lenses to be attached to the Galaxy S6 camera, which is rumored to be an optically-stabilized 20MP shooter. Such aftermarket lens are available for a number of phones, but we haven’t seen one straight from the manufacturer.

Next up is an E-ink back cover to transform the upcoming flagship into something like the YotaPhone 2. Barnes & Noble should love this idea, seeing how it borrows Samsung hardware for its Nook brand – E-ink screens are great for low-power always on screens and reading books.

Then there are covers that will enhance S-Health. One will measure your blood sugar and can upload the data to the cloud for your doctor's perusal. The Galaxy Note 4 can already measure pulse and blood oxygen level. Another case will integrate with fitness equipment and double as a bicycle computer.

All that sounds great though there aren’t any leaked photos of actual hardware yet, so take that as an unconfirmed rumor.

Thanks to Lukasz for sending this in!

Source (in…

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AdDuplex is back with another monthly report on the state of Windows Phone. This month new devices are gaining on their aging predecessors, with the Lumia 63x and Lumia 530 threatening to overtake the ubiquitous Lumia 520 as the top phone in the foreseeable future.

The Lumia 530, formerly the base Lumia model, made great strides and went from 10th place to 5th. The Lumia 635 is just behind it in 6th, moving up from 9th place. Interestingly, the Lumia 925 and 920 made some small progress, they are one and two generations behind, respectively.

In terms of manufacturers things haven’t changed – Microsoft/Nokia have over 95% of the market, with HTC as the only other maker with more than a percent. Both Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 are going up at the expense of WP7, eventually some the WP8.x phones will move to Windows 10.

In Colombia the Nokia Lumia 520 still accounts for over half the market, while in Brazil it makes up a third of phones. In Europe the Lumia 63x is making better progress, the Lumia 635 is the top device in Germany while the Lumia 630 is close to overtaking the 620 in Italy and Russia.

Last month we saw Microsoft's first device, the Lumia 535, break into the Top 10 in India and it has been growing fast – it's already in second place with 9.1% (up 5 percentage points). It's still far behind the 26.8% of the Lumia 520, though that's still a very positive reception for the new device.

The Microsoft Lumia 425 and Lumia 532 are still not on the map.

Source |…

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Samsung has undoubtedly been investing a lot of effort in its own Tizen platform. The Samsung Z1 entry-level smartphone is truly vital in this respect as it is currently the sole ambassador of the new OS in the mobile world and as such needs to make a good first impression.

Naturally all the time and attention add up and the Samsung Z1 has received not one, but two OTAs in the past week. Neither of them had a proper change log so it is still pretty much a mystery whether they are performance updates and minor bug fixes or the Korean tech giant had some serious problems lurking somewhere in the Tizen code.

In any case Samsung seems to be banging on the OS to catch on and, as it would appear, for a very good reason, as the headset has been doing well in India. This new modern-technology at budget prices approach towards emerging markets like India definitely seems to be giving results with efforts such as Google's Android One gaining speed, so this emphasis on the new platform is only logical.

The spike in attention seems to be toward Tizen as a whole, rather than the Z1 handset in particular, as the Galaxy Gear S smartwatch, which also runs on Samsung's in-house creation, has received much the same updates in the same time frame. Hopefully this, combined with the current naming trend the Korean manufacturer is employing and the recent expand in product families might just lead to the announcement of Z3, Z5 and Z7 Tizen-powered smartphones in the near future.

For now the choice in hardware for the new OS is limited to say the least and we can only speculate about its true stability and performance, but Samsung seems to be pushing things steadily in the right direction and who knows, maybe we will see a Tizen flagship in 2015.

In the meantime Samsung Z1 owners should head on over to Settings » About device » Software and get the two update packages if you haven’t already done so. And be sure to report back with any new and interesting…

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At CES early this year HTC unveiled a successor to the Desire 820. The new phone – HTC Desire 826 – will go on sale in China this Thursday (January 29) at CNY 2,300 ($370/€325) for the 16GB version and CNY 2,500 ($400/€350) for the 32GB one.

The phone will launch simultaneously on HTC's web store, JD.com, Suning Tesco and Lynx. Note that some stores will carry only one of the two versions. Note that the older Desire 820 is CNY 2,000.

The HTC Desire 826 updates the 5.5" 720p screen of its predecessor to 1080p resolution, makes the jump to Android 5.0 Lollipop (to make full use of the 64-bit Snapdragon 615 chipset) and switches out the 8MP selfie camera for a 4MP UltraPixel one. The main camera is a 13MP shooter, the phone has LTE and optional dual-SIM connectivity.

After China, the phone will expand across the Asia-Pacific region. It's not clear if it will get a global rollout or not.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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One of the bigger controversies surrounding the next eagerly anticipated Samsung flagship – the Galaxy S6 is weather or not it will use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC or stick entirely with the in-house Exynos chip. There has been a lot of talk about alleged overheating issues in the chip as the main reason for Samsung's distrust, but the issues is still open to debate. The mere existence of a couple of new smartphones that will be relying on the Snapdragon 810 – the LG G Flex2 and Xiaomi Mi Note Pro is a testament for reliability and suggest that Samsung may have some other concern.

According to a recent report from ETNews, the Korean tech giant might have another agenda which excludes Qualcomm from powering its next flagship. The fact of the matter is that Samsung has certain advantages over the Snapdragon lineup with its Exynos 7420 chip mainly thanks to the 14nm manufacturing process.

It allows for a significantly higher clock rate of 2.1 GHz over the 1.6GHz of the Costex A57 cores in the 20nm Snapdragon 810. Samsung may well be planning to use this advantage to target a broader market with its own CPUs by offering them to third-party device manufacturers.

The reasons for suspecting that the time has come for such a move are plentiful. In the past Samsung had little choice in using Qualcomm chips, due to the built-in LTE modems which offer significantly better battery performance than an external solution. Now that this is sorted out and Exynos chips come packaged with the same level of connectivity and with an alleged GPU in the works, the Korean smartphone authority might just start grabbing chip sales away from the competition as well.

Source |…

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Nokia Lumia 835 popped up today on the Microsoft's official Lumia webpage. It's AT&T exclusive, has similar specs to Lumia 830 and of you click on the link – it takes you to AT&T's Lumia 830 store page.

The Lumia 835 looks a lot like a typo – if it was a new upcoming Lumia it wouldn't be Nokia branded, it looks like the Lumia 830, comes with similar hardware and even the link suggests for Lumia 830. Oh, and there is another typo in the description text – O1S instead of OIS.

Of course, there is always a chance someone messed up and spilled the beans on an upcoming Lumia 835 while creating its placeholder or dedicated locked page.

If someone is indeed readying a Lumia 835 for upload on the website, we guess the announcement should happen soon. We wouldn't get our hopes too high, though.

A hat tip to Ali Moradi for the…

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Samsung is a huge customer for Snapdragon chipsets and as such has a lot of sway. The largest smartphone maker was reportedly unhappy with the Snapdragon 810 due to overheating issues and reports started swirling that Qualcomm will be offering a customized version for the upcoming Galaxy S6.

As you can imagine LG is not happy about this – Korean media is reporting that the company may even take legal action against Qualcomm if it offers Samsung special treatment. Both Qualcomm and LG, which released the first Snapdragon 810-powered phone, have stated that there are no overheating issues. A modified version of the chipset may be seen as admitting that the issue is real, says an insider source.

Samsung has its own chipset that's comparable to the 810 and reports say it will be an Exynos chip inside most Galaxy S6 units, 70% of them or more. Whether or not the overheating is a pretext for Samsung to decrease its reliance on Qualcomm, the US chipset maker will be reluctant to lose a customer.

One unnamed analyst claims that the LG G Flex 2 is indeed experiencing issues, so Samsung may have a legitimate claim. At any rate, the Snapdragon 810 chipset entered mass production about a week ago and there's little to go on about its real-world performance. But MWC is close – a month away – leaving little time for a redesign.

Note that neither of the companies involved – LG, Qualcomm and Samsung – has commented on the matter of a potential lawsuit.

Source 1 • Source 2 |…

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Today Asus announced the latest addition to the ZenFone lineup – the ZenFone C. It is an entry-level device that the Taiwanese manufacturer has created as a replacement for the ZenFone 4. The full specs sheet for the device already surfaced online as well as a few photos of an actual unit. The new handset seems to be almost identical to the Zenfone 4 in terms of design, but with a few notable upgrades in hardware.

The new Zenfone C comes equipped with a bigger 4.5-inch IPS display with a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels. Under the hood there's an Intel Atom Z2520 processor, clocked at 1.2 GHz along with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage.

Cameras on the device seem mostly unchanged with a 5MP main shooter and 0.3MP front facing one, but a few touches have been made. There is now a LED flash on the device and EIS for improved low-light performance.

The battery has also gotten bigger with 2,100 mAh capacity. This is a significant improvement over the 1,600 mAh in the ZenFone 4 and should definitely boost the phone's endurance. The Android 4.4-powered budget device will be available in Malaysia early next month in black, white and red. The initial price tag is set at MYR 349 or about $97.

Source |…

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