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).

We did a tour to ZOPO’s booth and grab a Speed 8 for a quick hands-on.

It packs a 5.5″ IPS 1080p display, comes with a 21MP Sony IMX230 camera with phase-detection AF and a dual-tone flash, and there is an 8MP selfie shooter with a front LED flash, too.

Check out the full hands-on of the ZOPO Speed 8…

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LG’s created three Nexus smartphones so far, starting with the Nexus 4 from 2012 and including the Nexus 5X from last year (pictured below). Its Nexus offerings have generally been well-received, and thought to exhibit a pretty good price to features ratio.

There’s bad news for fans of LG-made Nexus handsets, however. The Korean company will not be making a new one in 2016. This comes straight from an LG spokesperson, so it’s pretty much official – we won’t have a successor to the Nexus 5X this year, at least not one bearing LG’s logo on it.

The reason for this move apparently has to do with LG needing to focus on its own brand, and devices such as the recently unveiled G5. A Nexus smartphone is usually perceived as being more a Google offering than one from the company actually making it, and profit margins on Nexuses probably aren’t great either.

LG’s break from the Nexus program doesn’t mean we won’t have any new such phones this year, though. Last month a rumor claimed HTC would be putting out not one, but two Nexus devices in 2016. Obviously that’s not confirmed yet, so it’s still possible that some other company will get involved too.

LG will bring the canceled Watch Urbane LTE 2nd Edition smartwatch back to the market at some point in the second half of this year, according to the same spokesman who shared the news about the company’s Nexus plans (or lack thereof). The watch got canned last November because of certain issues with its display, which seem to have been quite big since it’s taking LG so much time to reengineer the wearable. Anyway, there’s going to be another new LG smartwatch hitting the streets before 2016…

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We had the opportunity to spend the day with the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge and we set out on a photo tour of Barcelona, MWC’s home city in the last ten or so years.

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Ever since Apple unveiled Siri for iOS, owners of computers running the company’s Mac OS X have been wondering when the personal assistant would land on that platform too. And according to a new rumor on the matter, 2016 will be the year when this finally happens.

Apple allegedly plans to make Siri the headline feature of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.12 release, which will probably be introduced initially at WWDC in the summer, and will then be rolling out in the fall.

Apparently, there have been test versions of Mac OS X with Siri built-in since 2012, but only this year will the user experience be polished enough for Apple to launch this publicly.

Siri for Mac will live inside the menu bar, in the right corner of it to be precise. The Siri icon placed there will activate the voice control feature. Once you click on the icon, you’ll get a dark transparent interface similar to the one in the mockup above, complete with colorful sound waves which indicate speech input.

Siri will also get its own pane in the Mac System Preferences, and you’ll even have the option to choose a keyboard shortcut to activate it. And the “Hey Siri” command will work while the Mac is plugged in.

Aside from Siri, the new Mac OS X version isn’t said to introduce many new features, just minor UI tweaks here and there. Don’t forget not to take any of this for granted however, because plans can change from now and until the announcement of Mac OS X…

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If you are or have ever been on Facebook (let’s face it, who hasn’t) then you surely know of the pivotal Like button – the perfect millisecond gesture for expressing anything from acknowledgement to plain out mockery, while remaining perfectly vague to confuse mostly everybody involved.

Well, you are definitely not the only one in the know about this ambiguity and the social giant has finally decided to address it with a slew of various reaction icons to complement the good old thumbs up (but rest assured, it is still there … thank god). Actually, Facebook has been testing the new emoticons for quite some time in select places, Spain and Ireland to be exact, and now feels it has the perfect set of options to roll out globally.

The reactions include “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry” and come in the shape of new icons hidden away under the like button, so to say. What this means is that the Like button is still center stage, but if you long press it on mobile or hover on a PC, the other options will be revealed. So now you can be sympathetic to those all to common grim Facebook status updates without beeing too creepy (the new likes sadly don’t do anything to fix the innate awkwardness of such posts in the first place, but hey, we can’t be too nitpicky).

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));Are the Oscars on your mind?Posted by Facebook on Wednesday, February 24, 2016

All in all, if you really don’t care about the Like button all that much, you probably won’t notice any difference in your feed, besides that the likes counter should now report on the number of “reacted” and there might be an informative pop-up or two to be had next time you open Facebook.

Source |…

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BBC made listening to music on the go that much easier by launching a BBC Music app for iOS and Androids (compatible with both phones and tablets).

The service has a ton of exclusive content, including Live Lounge and In Concert sessions and interviews with the artists. This includes both audio-only content and videos too.

The app makes music discovery a breeze – there are curated lists and personalized automatic recommendations. Also, if you have a song stuck in your head from the last few days, you can easily find a track that played on BBC Radio in the last week.

If you have subscriptions to Spotify, Deezer or YouTube you can export playlists you’ve built in BBC Music to those…

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The Lens Cover for the Samsung Galaxy S7 impressed with the quality of its build (you can read our hands-on for more info). Also, it was interesting to see Samsung dabble in something usually handled by third-party accessory makers.

A Dutch e-tailer has put up the Lens Cover and its two lens (telephoto and fisheye) up for pre-order and, well, we hope it really overestimated the price.

Really, the total cost (including VAT) comes out to €152.46. That’s £120/$167. Fine, Dutch gadget prices are higher than average for Europe and in the US taxes will probably be lower than the 20% VAT in the Netherlands, but that’s still a lot of money (guess olloclip can breathe easy).

Anyway, the cover will ship March 9, that’s a couple of days before the Galaxy S7 edge itself heads out to consumers.

Thanks for the tip, Michel!

Source | Via (in…

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A few hours ago Xiaomi rocked the mobile world by announcing the latest Mi 5 flagship. During the lengthy presentation, impressive facts about the handset were flying towards us at supersonic speed – the new 16 LED backlight display, UFS 2.0 storage, full-featured NFC, the list goes on and on.

But the camera was one area that company VP Hugo Barra seemed particularly excited about, even leaking sample photos prior to the announcement itself. The Xiaomi Mi5 has a 16MP main shooter with an aperture of f/2.0 and the Sony IMX 298 sensor. But the real rabbit in the hat is definitely the new 4-axis optical image stabilization.

The name is admittedly somewhat confusing, as it could suggest that Xiaomi engineers have broken through space-time continuum, but regardless of the title, the technology looks truly impressive. In fact, to showcase just how well it works, Hugo Barra showed a demo clip on stage, which has leaked online and can be seen below.

In it, we can clearly see the Xiaomi Mi 5 obliterate the image stabilization of the latest iPhone 6s Plus. Mind you, the latter is a clever system of both OIS and digital stabilization, although the software part is said to be a post-processing thing, so the demo might actually be taking it out of the equation. Still, the results are impressive, to say the…

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The Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ has also started getting the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow update following the Galaxy S6, S6 edge, and Note5. The update is currently rolling out in the company’s home country of South Korea.

Galaxy S6 edge+ units on SK Telecom network are currently getting the update. Available through Samsung’s Smart Switch desktop app, it weighs in at over 1GB and bumps the firmware version to G928SKSU2BPAG.

The update should bring along the usual Marshmallow goodies, including Doze, Google Now on Tap, and redesigned app permissions, as well as other changes that the recent Note5 update included, such as the new Samsung Web browser that comes with support for…

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Xiaomi has announced that its MIUI ROM is now being used by more than 170 million users around the world. The announcement was made by the Chinese company at the ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

MIUI crossed the 100 million users milestone back in February last year, meaning the ROM has amassed 70 million new users in the last one year alone. In addition to the total number of MIUI users, Xiaomi also revealed that the ROM is now available for more than 340 handsets.

As you might already know, Xiaomi announced its latest flagship smartphone today. Dubbed Mi 5, the device runs MIUI 7.0, which is based on Android 6.0…

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