HTC’s Steam-powered Vive VR headset, which went on pre-order earlier this week, received 15,000 pre-orders in just 10 minutes. The revelation was made by Shen Ye, a VR product specialist at the Taiwan-based company.

Woah, more than 15k units in less than 10min :o— Shen Ye (@shen) February 29, 2016

That’s quite impressive given that the headset costs a whopping $800 in the US (€899 in Europe). HTC CEO Cher Wang also took to Twitter to share what she said was an “overwhelming response to the start of pre-orders.”

Super excited at the overwhelming response to the start of pre-orders!@htcvive @shen @PeterFrolund http://pic.twitter.com/mUpovMjYtL— Cher Wang (@CherWang) February 29, 2016

The HTC Vive is the second major VR headset that went on pre-order sale this year. Back in January, Rift from Facebook-backed Oculus VR was also made available to pre-order – the $600 device begins shipping March 28.

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T-Mobile became the first carrier in the US to start shipping Galaxy S7/S7 edge pre-orders ahead of the devices’ official launch. In fact, some of the magenta carrier’s customers who pre-ordered the flagships have already received their units.

Now, it is being reported that a couple of other major US carriers – AT&T and Sprint – have also begun shipping the pre-orders. In all, three of the ‘Big Four’ cell phone carriers in the country have now started shipping the latest Samsung flagships.

There’s currently no word on whether or not Verizon has commenced its Galaxy S7/S7 edge pre-order shipments. In case you aren’t already aware, the devices are officially set to go on sale starting March 11, and will be available in 60 countries in the first wave of their global…

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Earlier last month, Motorola started pushing the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update to the second-generation Motorola Moto G in India and Brazil. And now, the update has started rolling out in the United States.

Aside from the usual Marshmallow goodies, including Doze, Google Now on Tap, and redesigned app permissions, the update also includes the Android security patch for the month of January.

In case you want to take a look, the Android 6.0 update release notes for the Moto G 2014 are already available on Motorola’s India support website – head to the Motorola link below. Motorola US is yet to officially confirm the roll-out.

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A new report from Bloomberg has reported that Samsung Pay is being adopted very quickly compared to Apple Pay did when it first launched. “Samsung has signed up 5 million users and processed more than $500 million in transactions since debuting in the U.S. in September.”

Samsung has differentiated itself from the other mobile payment solutions with its acquisition of Loop Pay. This technology simulates the magnetic strip on a credit card and does not require an NFC terminal.

Basically, Samsung Pay is accepted anywhere a regular card swipe can be accepted which dramatically increases the number of merchants who accept Samsung Pay.

In Samsung’s latest ad, actor and comedian Hannibal Buress takes his Galaxy phone to a Deli in New York City, (a city with many places that only accept cash and barely even take credit cards) he baffles employees in the deli when he taps his phone and the card goes through.

As said in the report, there has to be something better for the consumer to embrace mobile payments vs traditional cash and credit card transactions made with plastic cards. Something really needs to take the mobile payment industry by storm in order to see an even wider adoption.

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The XDA community is always hard at work. From reviving older phones to run the latest Android versions to providing the most feature-rich ROMs for all kinds of phones to building a bounty fund for rooting Verizon devices, XDA is home to some of the best Android developers and ROM builders for our (free) flashing pleasure.

Mokee ROM for the Galaxy S5 has finally added support for the built-in fingerprint scanner on an AOSP ROM nonetheless.

The news is that Cyanogenmod, among the biggest names in aftermarket ROMs, will include fingerprint scanner support on future Cyanogenmod 13 nightlies for the Galaxy S5 thanks to the Mokee ROM developers.

For those of you who like to flash your Galaxy S5, expect to see more AOSP ROMs adopting this scanner support.

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If you hadn’t known it before, the Huawei Watch has a built in speaker that has been completely ignored for a long time, even the company did not acknowledge its existence when the smart watch was first released.

Thanks to a new update for the watch itself, the Huawei Watch will be updated to Android 6.0 Marshmallow where the internal speaker will be enabled on Huawei’s watch to allow users to make and receive calls with audio routed directly through the watch.

Over the next few days, users should start seeing the update pop up on their Huawei Watches.

The new update brings new support for sending messages through the watch for WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, Telegram, and Nextplus, new gestures for navigating the watch, battery life improvements, Ability to play sounds on watches with speakers, and more language options in Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian, Polish, Dutch and Thai.

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Venture Beat was able to get its hands on the unreleased device by Huawei: the Huawei P9. The photos show that the device will feature a dual-camera set up and will be offered in at least 4 different variants, reports say.

The camera setup looks like it might have a laser-focus sensor right under the flash and a side-by-side camera setup to refocus after taking shots, adjust appeared aperture, and apply filters. This dual-setup is said to become a feature for Huawei’s future P devices.

The Huawei P9 also features a Kirin 950 CPU, Mali-T880 GPU, 3GB of RAM, and a 3900mAh battery. The P9 will also have a 5.2 inch screen with a 1080p resolution.

Leaked photos of the Huawei P8

The underside of the device has one speaker grille and a bottom-positioned headphone jack. The Huawei P9 also features a USB Type-C port for charging and transmitting data.

These leaks of the device confirm leaked renders from a few months back. Earlier rumors of the Huawei P9 have suggested its launch date to be this month while others say it might be in Q2 of this year.

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Today Pebble has announced some good news for prospective buyers of its smartwatches. Both the Time and the Time Round have received a permanent $50 price cut.

This means the official price for the Pebble Time is now $149.99, whereas the Pebble Time Round is now sold for $199.99. Sure, we’ve seen them going for even less from time to time, but this is no limited-time offer or anything like that.

Pricing has changed in the Eurozone as well, where the Time is now listed for €169.95, and the Time Round goes for €229.95. In the UK, the Pebble Time now costs £149.99, while the Time Round is £179.99.

If you placed an order for one of these two smartwatches (on pebble.com) on or after January 21, and paid the old prices, you’ll be refunded the difference if you contact the company. Full instructions for this are available at the Source link…

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The yet-unofficial Samsung SM-T280 tablet has been in the news a lot over the past few weeks. Most of the time, it’s been thought to be sold by the Korean company as the 7-inch version of the Galaxy Tab E. However, it now looks like it will be called Galaxy Tab A instead.

That’s because a Polish online retailer has already listed the SM-T280 up for pre-order. And it’s calling it Tab A indeed. The device is priced at PLN 599, which at the moment translates into approximately $150 or €138. The tablet will apparently become available on March 8, which is exactly one week from today.

This Galaxy Tab A comes with a 7-inch 1,280×800 touchscreen, a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 8GB of expandable storage, a 5 MP rear camera, a 2 MP front-facing unit, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a 4,000 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.1 Lollipop. Its dimensions are 186.9 x 108.8 x 8.7 mm, and it weighs 283g.

Its specs line up perfectly with past leaks, if you ignore the fact that the rumors got the name wrong. Now that it’s already up for pre-order in the EU, perhaps Samsung will finally announce it soon.

Thanks for the tip, Kozo!

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Ever since September of 2015, Samsung has been rumored to be thinking about ’emulating’ Apple once more, this time regarding a leasing program for its devices. This hasn’t actually become reality yet, but according to a new report out of South Korea that’s going to change very soon.

Samsung hasn’t stopped working on its leasing program, and will in fact be launching it on March 11, on the day when the Galaxy S7 (pictured below) and S7 edge go on sale. For starters, those will be the only two devices that you’ll be able to grab through the leasing scheme. The biggest caveat, however, is the fact that for the time being Samsung will only offer the leasing option in South Korea. And only through its own physical stores.

The program will require eager customers to sign a two-year monthly installment plan. However, you are able to upgrade your device after just 12 months if you so wish, without having to complete the remaining payments. Since the scheme will be offered directly by Samsung, people who go this route will be able to choose any one of the three Korean carriers for a service agreement.

Right now it’s unclear when (or if) Samsung plans to take this leasing program global, but perhaps the Korean release is just a test run, and if everything goes well we might see the same thing offered…

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