Xiaomi announced its latest flagship smartphone – the Mi 5 – at this year’s Mobile World Congress yesterday. While we already know that the SD820-powered device will be available for purchase in China starting March 1, we now have at-least some idea on its international availability, too.

Clearing any doubt whatsoever we’ve had until now, the Mi 5 will indeed be available in markets outside of the company’s home country of China. Xiaomi VP Hugo Barra revealed yesterday that the phone will land in the neighboring country of India soon. This will be followed by a release in “other global markets,” he said.

The handset carries a price tag of around $300 in China. We expect the company to reveal region-specific pricing info once the exact launch markets and dates are…

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If you recall, Android 6.0 Marshmallow brought along the concept of ‘adoptable storage,’ where-in the system adopts a microSD card and makes it behave like internal storage. While both Samsung Galaxy S7 and LG G5 sport expandable storage, it has now come to light that they don’t support the ‘adoptable storage’ feature.

The problem with the feature is that it requires the memory card to be formatted first and then encrypted, before it starts behaving like internal memory. And once the card gets adopted, you can’t remove it (sure, you can do that physically, but that’s not recommended) .

That’s the reason why Samsung isn’t supporting the feature. The company said, “Samsung decided not to use the Android Marshmallow ‘adoptable storage’ model. We believe that our users want a microSD card to transfer files between their phone and other devices (laptop, tablet, etc), especially the photos and videos they shoot with the camera.”

“With adoptable storage, first of all the card may be erased the first time it is inserted into the device. This behavior may be unexpected by many users and we don’t want our users to lose their files. Second, once Marshmallow starts using a card for adoptable storage, it cannot be read by other devices, so it loses this ability to be used for file transfer.”

“Adoptable Storage is also primarily targeted towards emerging markets where devices with only 4-8GB of onboard storage are common. We think that our model of using microSD for mass storage is more in-line with our owner’s desires and expectations for how microSD should behave.”

For those in the US and Europe who like to install lots of apps (especially large gaming apps), this is bad news given that the South Korean company has already confirmed that only the 32GB variants of its newest flagships will be available in these…

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According to a new report, Google and TV manufacturer Vizio are working to integrate Chromecast-like streaming functionality directly into TV sets. These new TVs will be available this year – “as early as this spring,” the report says.

Unlike traditional smart TVs, the new line of Vizio TVs won’t feature any apps. Instead, you can think of them as Chromecast with a screen, allowing users to view content (like video and music) streamed from their mobile devices.

The report further says that instead of a traditional remote, users will be able to interact with the TV via an Android tablet that includes apps and services required for streaming. However, the plan to use a tablet as a dedicated remote control isn’t yet…

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A few days ago, an alleged leak of the HTC M10 surfaced the web and showed an HTC One device with a really wide, almost exaggerated, chamfered edge surrounding the device.

The photo wasn’t doing the phone any favors aesthetically, but the chamfers were an eye sore. Okay, they were pretty ugly, but this is just the problem with leaks: someone takes a really bad photo of a device and people make comments putting the device down before it’s even official. It isn’t fair. But let me NOT ramble on about that.

#powerof10 http://pic.twitter.com/KiKyX4ycuI— HTC (@htc) February 24, 2016

The photo on twitter shows only a silhouette of the device and the only thing visible is a chamfer. This chamfer confirms that leak I mentioned earlier about the ugly chamfer.

The company used a hashtag #powerof10 which could very well be HTC’s marketing tagline for the M10. Are you ready for HTC’s big announcement? Keep an eye out for an event date since no such date has been confirmed yet.

Source |…

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We’ve all heard about Oneplus. It was the company who promised to sell a phone that was a flagship killer. The company got so much attention with the introduction of the Oneplus One.

It was a $300 phone that was sold unlocked and designed to directly compete with the other leading flagships at the time like the more costly devices like the Nexus 5, Galaxy S5 or LG G3 while offering similar or better features that users look for in a phone like NFC, great camera, and long lasting battery life.

In a CNET interview with Oneplus co-founder, Carl Pei stated that the US market will be very important for Oneplus this year with more traditional marketing methods. Could this mean that the invite system will be shelved for the new flagship?

Perhaps. The company said it was very excited about the Oneplus 3 and thinks it will captivate interest like the Original One did, the Oneplus 2 wasn’t as well received when someone decided to strip NFC from the phone altogether, thought it did sell more units than the OnePlus One.

It was not all flowers and roses for the Chinese startup company at the beginning. The company decided to go unconventional and set up an invitation-only program to sell the OnePlus One. So for several months after the phone’s launch, it was still damn-near impossible to get your hands on one of these suckers.

Oneplus was able to use all this positive (and negative) attention that it’d been getting with the launch of the Oneplus One to build a reputation and customer base. The Chinese startup says it has 800,000 active forum users who support the Oneplus community and inspire the company’s design choices for its smartphones.

Source |…

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Apple has a new 4 inch iPhone under wraps, one that will directly succeed the iPhone 5S. The iPhone 5se is closer to becoming a real thing.

9to5Mac was able to source early schematic diagrams from a case maker. These diagrams show very similar dimensions to the iPhone 5 and 5S except for a repositioned power button which was moved from the very top edge to the right-upper edge of the body, just opposite the volume keys and physical notification switch.

Many customers voices their opinions, stating that a 4.7 inch screen would be more difficult to reach all corners of the display. This is one of the reasons you can double-tap on the home button to bring the UI elements halfway down the screen.

Other angles of the diagram reveal a very subtle curvature around the device. While the edges are still flat, the seams between the body and glass are curved much like the iPhone 6 and beyond.

The iPhone 5se will allegedly be revealed by Apple at a March 15th event, come with the internals of an iPhone 6S, improved camera setup, live photos, NFC for mobile payments, and a new Rose Gold color option. It will reportedly come in 16 and 64GB size options and will cost the same as the iPhone…

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Verizon has started pushing out over-the-air updates to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop for both the Xperia Z3v smartphone and the Z2 Tablet. This rollout might of course be considered a bit late since the next version of the OS, Marshmallow, has already been out for months. Then again, perhaps the ‘better late than never’ mantra applies here.

For both devices, the new software version is 23.4.B.0.319. Aside from everything that Google included in the 5.1.1 release of Android (including security patches), Sony’s update also brings with it HD Voice support for the Xperia Z3v.

As always in these cases, the rollout will surely be staged, so it might take a few days before it reaches every single Z3v and Z2 Tablet out there. If you’re impatient you can manually check for the availability of the new software by going to the appropriate section in Settings. Full release details for both devices can be found at the Source links below.

Source 1 • Source 2 |…

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Zopo Speed 8 is the world’s first smartphone to feature the MediaTek’s flagship Helio X20 SoC. In case you don’t know about this beast – it’s the first chipset with a deca-core processor (yes, this means 10 CPU cores).

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The latest update for the Gmail app for Android brings with it two nifty new features. First off, you have support for rich text formatting, as seen in the first screenshot below.

This means you can now add italic, bold, highlighted, underlined, and colored text to your emails to make them pop just a little bit more. All of these options allow you to easily emphasize what’s important in your communications.

The other new thing in Gmail for Android is the ability you now have to quickly RSVP to calendar invitations. This works with Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange. When receiving such an invite, you can see your schedule for that time frame with one tap, and then RSVP instantly.

Google has added these features because it’s trying to make the email experience better on mobile devices, seeing as how more than two thirds of all Gmail users check email with their…

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The many rumors which claimed HTC wouldn’t unveil the One M10 flagship smartphone at MWC, instead opting for a different special event later on, have been true it turns out. The grand announcement may or may not happen on April 11, as previously rumored. In the meantime, the Taiwanese company has released the first teaser image of the M10.

As you can see, we’re treated to a view of the upcoming smartphone’s edges, which look like they’re made out of one metallic piece, with plenty of chamfering going on.

The image was posted on HTC’s official Twitter account, alongside the hashtag “powerof10”. This pretty much confirms that the number 10 will be in the phone’s name, so it’s probably going to be marketed as the One M10 after all. Its codename is Perfume.

Past rumors had the One M10 coming with a 5.1-inch QHD AMOLED touchscreen, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 running things, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, a 12 MP UltraPixel rear camera with phase detection and laser autofocus, as well as optical image stabilization, a 5 MP UltraPixel selfie shooter, and a fingerprint scanner. It will run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with HTC Sense 8 on…

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