The Xiaomi Redmi Note and Xiaomi Redmi Note Pro were announced two weeks ago. The Pro flavor is expected to go on sale in March, while the regular Redmi Note unit was released today in China.

The first batch of Redmi Note phablets was depleted in just three minutes. As usual Xiaomi didn't share the number of units sold today, so we can't confirm whether this is as impressive as it sounds or not. Xiaomi announced yesterday the number of people claimed interest online exceeds 220 million.

Xiaomi Redmi Note will once again go on sale on February 3 in China, so stay tuned for the next batch. If you are interested in the Snapdragon 810-powered Redmi Note Pro model, you'll have to wait a little while longer…

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The Xiaomi Redmi 2 was one of the first phones to launch this year, a successor to the popular and highly affordable Redmi 1S. The upgrades weren’t huge, the new chipset was easily the most noticeable change. That left the phone with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, which is considered low these days (not necessarily for a CNY 700 / $110 phone, but still).

Yesterday, TENAA certified an updated version of the Redmi 2 and Xiaomi's CEO confirmed on Weibo that it's the real deal – a new version of the phone with double the RAM and storage, 2GB and 16GB respectively.

That's good news and was well-received in the MIUI forums… except for people who already bought the 1GB/8GB model. There's no info how those cases will be handled. We'd say "return it" but the pricing isn’t clear (it seems that it will be slightly higher) and it's not clear when the new model will go on sale (so you may have to wait a while).

We'll be on the lookout for more info from Xiaomi because right now excitement is mixed with confusion.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Microsoft announced its financial results for the quarter that ended in December. It made $5.8 billion in net income on $26.5 billion in revenue, marking an increase of 8% in revenues compared to the same quarter last year though it lost some profitability, a year ago the net income was $6.5 billion.

Part of that is a $243 expense related to the continuing integration of the Nokia Devices and Services division. That division has been doing well – it sold 10.5 million Lumia phones, up from 8.2 million a year ago and 9.3 million in the previous quarter.

Revenue slipped as the market reorients towards the affordable side of the Lumia line. In total, phone hardware brought in $2.3 billion in revenues. The featurephone department sold 39.7 million phones, declining along with the market for non-smart handsets.

Surface, another part of Microsoft's hardware unit, showed a 24% growth driven by the Surface Pro 3. Overall it scored a revenue of $1.1 billion, up from $908 million the quarter before.

The other big hardware line, Xbox, sold 6.6 consoles in total (that's 360 and One combined), down from 7.4 million in the year ago quarter. The Xbox One price had a bit of a roller coaster ride, but eventually settled on #350 (sans Kinect). That price cut may have driven sales in numbers up, but revenue is down 20% year over year. Microsoft did not specify how big the Xbox One share is in the total sales.

Microsoft's traditional bread winner, Windows, had a 13% drop in revenue from OEMs. Part of that is the new class of low-cost devices (some of which cost as much as a Windows license). Businesses are still sticking to Windows XP, reluctant to buy into Windows 8.

Microsoft made a move to unify its platform by offering free upgrades for Windows 7 and 8 to the new version, Windows 10. This will unify the fractured ecosystem and the universal apps will give the phone OS a boost by making it easy for devs to make an app for both desktop and phone with little extra effort.

The cloud services are doing quite well with revenue up 9% for Microsoft's server offerings and more than double for its cloud offerings. Office 365 in particular grew to 9.2 million users, up from 3.5 million a year ago. That ate into the desktop Office though, which is down 25%.

Bing drew in 23% more search revenue and ended the year 2014 with 19.7% market share in the US. Deeper integration with the desktop (via Cortana) should give it another boost going forward.

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Samsung premiered its first Tizen-based smartphone – the Samsung Z1 in India 10 days ago and has in that time span managed to sell 50 thousand unit of it.

That's an impressive number for the maker, especially for a first-time device. This could easily be scratched off to the very low price of 5,700 INR (around $92/€82).

Samsung is also manufacturing the Z1 in India and offers some bonus content if you go for the device like 70 live channels, 230,000 songs for on the go enjoyment. The Samsung Z1 offers dual-SIM connectivity as well.

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As Meizu fans surely remember the company scheduled a conference for January 28 and teased an upcoming new device announcement at the venue. From what we have gathered so far the Chinese manufacturer will probably unveil the Meizu M1 Note Mini, a smaller device meant to complement the Meizu m1 note.

A lot rumors have been circulating around the expected budget handset and first and foremost the naming convention is not clear. The new smartphone could be dubbed the Meizu m1 note mini, or simply m1 mini and the GFXBench specs sheet that surfaced today lists a lot of hardware details but sadly no name.

A quick glance reveals that the phone is powered by an quad-core MediaTek MT6732 SoC with Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.5 GHz. RAM in the unit should be 1GB and 8GB ROM. Sensors are pretty much standard and include accelerometer, Bluetooth, compass, gyroscope, GPS, light sensor, pedometer, proximity and no NFC support. No information is available on the camera setup, though, but a good guess might be 8MP main shooter and 5MP front.

The screen is where the debate really takes off. If we assume that the m1 note mini and m1 mini are in fact the same device then it is still very much unclear how big the display will be. GFXBench lists the panel as being 4.7-inch with a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels, which is in tune with some of the rumors. Then again other sources and even a leaked photo point towards a 5-inch display.

There is of course the possibility that Meizu is actually planning to unveil two devices and both sources are correct, but we can't be certain until tomorrow's event takes place to hopefully clear the smoke. Another big point of dispute is the OS that will power the new smartphone. The screenshot at hand says Android 4.4.4, which is expected, but other sources have speculated that Meizu might offer the M1 mini with a choice of platforms, including Flyme OS, the in-house flavor of Android, YunOS, developed in part by Aliexpress and even Ubuntu.

The new device is most likely intended to take on the likes of Xiaomi Hongmi 2, also known as the Redmi 2, primarily in its home market, with an asking price of around $100. This is a good strategic step on Meizu's part, but seeing how Xiaomi intends to upgrade the Redmi 2, with 2GB of RAM and 16GB onboard storage Meizu might have to push harder to make its budget-oriented phone desirable. The OS choice could potentially do the trick and hopefully we will hear more about it during the "Connected" event tomorrow. So be sure to check back in for an update after the conference.

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Huawei Consumer Business Group, the Chinese conglomerate's consumer device division, reports a marked increase in revenue for the 2014 financial year. For the first time in company history, the $10B mark has been crossed, and by a sizable margin.

The division reports that a total of 138 million devices have been shipped in 2014, a 7.8% increase year-on-year. 75 million of those were smartphones, which marks a 45% growth on that front.

The basis for Huawei's success lies in its decision to focus on mid- to high-end devices back in 2012. Gathering momentum from then on, the company sold 4 million Ascend P7 flagship smartphones over a six month period after its launch in June 2014. Another 2 million Ascend Mate7 phablets sold since September contributed to the solid figures.

Brand awareness is also on the rise, with 65% of survey participants in 32 countries recognizing the brand in 2014, up from 52% the previous year. An extensive network of 630 Huawei shops, opened by the end of 2014, has been a powerful factor for the company's progress, as…

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We have been hearing some rumors about a bigger phablet version of the HTC One M9, Called the M9 Plus to be launched simultaneously along with the M9 at MWC 2015. It seems, though, that there will be a variant of this phone specifically for South Asian markets and it will be running on a MediaTek processor.

This information comes courtesy the @upleaks account on Twitter, who also has other information regarding the phone, namely it having a fingerprint sensor and BoomSound speakers.

We recently saw AnTuTu benchmark screenshots of an upcoming HTC device. It was named the HTC M9pt, which according to @upleaks is not short for prototype but that the 'p' stands for Plus and 't' for TD-LTE network on China Mobile.

Source 1 • Source…

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Over a month after launching the Honor 6 Plus smartphone in China, Huawei has launched a gold version of the device in the country. Comparing it with Apple’s gold iPhone 6 and 6 Plus smartphones, which sport white front panels, the Chinese company said that the new variant is more difficult to manufacture as it’s completely covered in golden color.

Specifications-wise, the device is similar to the white and black versions, sporting a 5.5-inch 1080p display, and the company's proprietary Kirin 925 chipset. It also has 3 GB of RAM, 16/32 GB of internal memory (which is expandable up to 128 GB via a microSD card slot), and a 3,600 mAh battery.

The gold Honor 6 Plus is priced at around $390 in China, and it isn’t yet known when and if Huawei will launch it outside of the…

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The upcoming HTC One (M9) flagship made an appearance in the Geekbench 3.0 benchmark database. The smartphone achieved single and multi-core scores of 1232 and 3587 respectively.

The device from the benchmark test unsurprisingly packs Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 chipset with 1.55GHz octa-core CPU and 3GB of RAM. Sporting the model number 0PJA10, the handset boots Android 5.0.2 Lollipop.

It is worth noting that the result of the HTC hardware is lower than the alleged score of Samsung Galaxy S6 we encountered earlier (1520 single-core and 5478 multi-core). The Korean offering ran on Exynos 7420 chipset.

HTC will announce its next flagship smartphone during MWC in Barcelona. Purported live photos of the handset have already leaked out on several occasions.

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LG took the wraps off the Ice Cream Smart flip smartphone in Korea. The casually characterful handset is the second flip phone from the Korean manufacturer after the LG Wine Smart that debuted in September last year.

In terms of specs, LG Ice Cream Smart packs Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset with 1.2GHz quad-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of expandable memory. The device’s display is a 3.5″ unit with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels.

An 8MP main camera, VGA front-facing snapper, and full connectivity suite that includes LTE and DMB-TV round up the highlights in the device’s specs. LG Ice Cream Smart boots Android 4.4 KitKat.

Physical measures of the smartphone are 118.6 × 59.4 × 16.9mm. A removable 1,700mAh battery powers the device.

Don’t expect to see the LG Ice Cream Smart outside of Korea. The handset will clearly be aimed at younger users in its motherland.

Source (in Korean)…

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