Microsoft announced its Q2 earnings for the fiscal 2015. The Redmond giant posted a net income of $5.6 billion from $26.5 billion of revenue. The latter has increased by 8% from the same period of last year, while net income has declined by 10%.

Thanks to the strong sales of low-cost smartphones, Microsoft’s Phone Hardware division posted a 28% increase in sales from the same quarter a year ago. The company sold 10.5 million Lumia devices for the three months that ended in December 31 – up from 8.2 million last year.

Microsoft incurred a $243 million expense to integrate the Nokia phone business it acquired. The negative impact equals $0.02 per share.

The Surface business also did quite well during the quarter. Thanks to strong sales of the Surface 3, the division posted $1.1 billion of revenue – up by 24% from a year ago.

The Xbox division sold 6.6 million units for the quarter. The number includes both Xbox One and Xbox 360 units.

Microsoft’s OEM revenue for Windows dropped by 13% during the quarter. The company’s server and cloud products on the other hand grew by 9% and 116% respectively.

Going forward, Microsoft expects intense competition in all markets. Redmond will continue to make investments in new products and will increase focus on services.

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The Motorola Nexus 6 apparently could have come with a fingerprint scanner on its back. This information comes straight from former Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, speaking in an interview.

While developing the first Nexus phablet, the company considered placing a fingerprint sensor on its back, in the exact spot that is taken by the dimple housing the Motorola logo.

This didn't end up actually happening because of Apple, at least in part. See, that company purchased "the best supplier" of fingerprint recognition technology around, namely AuthenTec. So Motorola obviously couldn't use that technology.

Woodside says "the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren't there yet", almost certainly referring to the quality of the sensors' recognition rates and ease of use.

So it looks like when it was faced with deciding between using a fingerprint scanner that wasn't the best, and not using one at all – Motorola chose the latter for the Nexus 6. It's not clear whether there are many people out there who miss such a feature in the phablet, though, so perhaps the company wasn't wrong in its choice.

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AT&T's version of the HTC One (M8) has started receiving a new software update today, according to official documentation from the carrier. This is apparently the same update that seemed to go out last week, but may have been pulled at some point.

A couple of days ago HTC's own Mo Versi announced that the update would finally be rolling out this week, and here we are.

The update brings with it support for VoLTE and HD voice, it bumps the Android version on the phone up to 4.4.4 (which in itself brings security and Bluetooth enhancements), and it enables the HTC Eye Experience that debuted on the company's Desire Eye smartphone last year.

Those features have already made it to One (M8) units sold unlocked internationally, and now they're finally reaching AT&T's model. The update is in the process of rolling out over-the-air, and after you install it you'll be on build 3.42.502.1.

This release also contains updates for Visual Voicemail, AT&T Ready2Go, improved battery life, as well as a new Usage Manager app preinstalled.

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We've been hearing about a smaller device meant to complement the Meizu M1 Note joining the company's portfolio since even before that model was unveiled. But after it was made official, rumors and leaks about a purported M1 Mini have intensified. Meizu is holding an event on January 28, and that's where the M1 Mini will see the light of day.

As that event is now just a couple of days away, Meizu has apparently decided to tease the upcoming phone through one of its execs. Namely, we're talking about Meizu VP Li Nan, who posted the following image on his Weibo account.

That's clearly the M1 Mini over there, smiling for the camera in an interesting and unusual hue. Meizu is all about going (very) colorful with the M1 series, and the M1 Mini looks like it was inspired by Apple's love of colors for its iPhone 5C.

Interestingly, there's a digital camera next to the phone, and it sports the exact same green hue. That may be nothing, or maybe Meizu is getting ready to sell its own camera. The latter doesn't seem very likely, though.

The M1 Mini will come with either a 4.7-inch or a 5" 720p HD touchscreen (we've heard a number of conflicting reports on this matter), a 13 MP rear camera, and a 5 MP front snapper. It could be priced as low as CNY 799, which is about $127 or €113 at the current exchange…

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The Samsung Exynos 7420 chipset has been tested in the Geekbench 3 benchmark, likely residing in a prototype Galaxy S6 unit. The SoC aced the benchmark test scoring 5478 and 1520 points in the multi-core and single-core tests, respectively.

In comparison, the Exynos 5433 with 1.9GHz CPU clock scores on average 4000 points in the multi-core test. GeekBench reports that the CPU in the Exynos 7420 is clocked at 1.5GHz, but that's likely the speed of the slower, Cortex-A53 cores.

However, it's not all sunshine and roses, because the HTC Nexus 9 and the Nvidia Tegra K1 have a fighting change against the Galaxy S6 prototype that was likely the host of the Exynos 7420. In the single-core testing, the Tegra K1 and its dual-core 2.5GHz Denver CPU score 1895 points.

Additionally, the benchmark result page reports the test device to spot 3GB of RAM and run Android 5.0 Lollipop. Earlier, the Galaxy S6 was reported to also be available with 4GB of RAM. Further speculations suggest a 5.5-inch QHD (1440×2560 pixels) display, 20MP main camera, and 5MP front-facing snapper. We'll surely find out more about the Galaxy S6 during MWC 2015 in March.

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Samsung's next expected flagship device – the alleged Galaxy S6 has been generating a lot of buzz in the rumor mill. But besides the usual talk of more RAM, a better camera and whether it will be water resistant or not there is also another exciting rumor floating around, namely that the device might be available is a variant with a curved screen.

This is an exciting thought and it seems to be inching closer and closer to becoming a reality. One of our readers tipped us off that the source code of a certain product page on Vodafone.nl holds a comment carelessly left behind by a developer, that hints of an upcoming preorder for something dubbed the "Galaxy S Edge".

If might just indicate that Samsung has decided to go with the same naming scheme as its first edged device – the Galaxy Note Edge and drop the number from the title. Even if we trust Vodafone's anonymous developer on the preorder set to happen this still tells is little about the device itself and there is a lot that needs clarification.

To mention some of the chaos and confusion surrounding the Galaxy S Edge, it is still unclear whether its screen will be curved on just one side, like the Note Edge or it will extend downward on both sides. Rumors, however go beyond and state that the device not only exists, but a testing unit has made it to India for R&D purposes.

In any case Samsung is still to confirm anything regarding the mythical Galaxy S Edge. Hopefully we will know more pretty soon, but seeing how MWC 2015 is just around the corner we might have a month or so of waiting if Samsung decides to hold up until the big venue.

Thank you for the tip Michel

Source (hidden away in the source code) |…

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The sequel to the OnePlus One, the"flagship killer" of 2014, will likely be released later than some have hoped for. The cited reason is “manufacturing challenges with the Snapdragon 810”, Forbes reports.

The smartphone's launch date has been postponed for the third quarter of the year. It's not actually so much behind schedule, if you bear in mind that the previous generation was launched after all major players in June 2014. Limited availability throughout its existence didn't prevent the company from selling upwards of a million units.

Purported overheating issues with the chipset are likely to cause Samsung to go in-house for the upcoming Galaxy S6. Other devices, namely the Xiaomi Mi Note Pro and LG G Flex2 have been announced with Qualcomm's silicon though and the companies report no such problem.

Going back to OnePlus, the company has reportedly decided to name the new device "OnePlus 2", opting for a digit this time around. Perhaps the numerologists among you will read into that and shed some light on the matter.

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Apple is likely to announce soon that for the first time it sold more iPhones in China during 2014 than it did at home in the US. Analysts believe that this overtaking was made possible thanks to Apple's deal with China Mobile and the subsequent release of the Apple iPhone 6 in China last October.

It's interesting because Apple's iOS holds a 41.8% share in the US but only 20.7% in China. It just goes to show just how fast the Chinese market has grown over the past few years (the two were equal just 3 and a half years ago).

Apple's deal with China Mobile has helped the company become more familiar with Chinese users. According to analysts China has accounted for 36% of iPhone shipments while the US accounted for just 24%.

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The successor to the Huawei Ascend P7, the company's last flagship to bear the Ascend name, has popped up in some live images. What will likely be the Huawei P8 is revealed to the public, front and back.

Huawei P8 live images

It follows the design language of the predecessor with sharp edges and slightly rounded corners. Side bezels have been kept to a minimum, the top one is also quite compact. The camera/flash arrangement on the back differs a bit from the cutouts shown in a previous leak, but perhaps that was an early design that was abandoned later on.

Hardware specs have been revealed by the same source, and they are very much in line with what we already know. The device will reportedly come with a 5.2-inch display of 1080p resolution, in-house Kirin 930 64-bit chipset and 3GB of RAM. On-board storage wasn't specified, though.

The source reports that the main camera will be a 13MP unit with optical stabilization, which is the next must-have feature in phone cameras. Battery capacity will be 2,600mAh, and that might raise some eyebrows. Given, however, the stance of Huawei CEO on QHD displays and battery efficiency, the P8 may be appropriately equipped. The device will boot the latest Android Lollipop upon launch.

Official announcement is expected to take place at a dedicated event some time in Q2 2015.

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AT&T is on a shopping spree in Mexico – it completed the acquisition of the country's third largest operator, Iusacell, just nine days ago and has already struck a deal with the second largest carrier, Nextel Mexico.

Interestingly, the Iusacell deal was a $2.5 billion acquisition while the US carrier is paying only $1.875 billion for Nextel. Nextel's parent company NII Holdings Inc. is in bankruptcy protection and will use the money to fund its Brazilian operation. Nextel is also in debt, the size of which was not announced.

Nextel Mexico's network covers 76 million people of 118 million total. AT&T plans to combine both carriers (Nextel and Iusacell) to improve the coverage, especially outside of metropolitan areas. With the deal, AT&T will also get Nextel's spectrum licenses, network assets and retail stores.

The deal will naturally be subject to regulatory approval and if that goes well it should close in the middle of this year.

The biggest carrier – owned by the world's richest man, Carlos Slim – is in trouble with the regulators since it has the overwhelming majority of Mexico's mobile customers and has been looking to sell a large portion of its business.

AT&T also acquired DirectTV, the US-based satellite TV provider, which has 41% ownership in SKY Mexico.

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