We already know that the LG G5 flagship will be made official at this year’s Mobile World Congress, and just yesterday, LG announced that a new, mid-range ‘X’ series of smartphones will be also be unveiled at the annual event.

Turns out that’s not all, as the South Korean company has now announced that a sequel to last year’s G4 Stylus – dubbed Stylus 2 – will also be unveiled at MWC 2016.

As clear from the device’s name, the Stylus 2 will also come with a pen, but with a nano-coated tip instead of the previous rubber-tipped pen. LG says the change is aimed at attaining “more accuracy.”

The phone will include a set of proprietary features that the company claims will enhance the user experience. These include Pen Pop and Pen Keeper. While the former “toggles a popup menu when the stylus is removed to offer shortcuts to Pop Memo and Pop Scanner,” the latter is aimed at preventing the stylus from being misplaced – it displays “a popup message when the phone is detected as being in motion when the stylus bay is empty.”

Specs-wise, the Stylus 2 is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, and sports a 5.7-inch HD display. RAM is 1.5GB, while internal memory is 16GB, although expandable. There’s a removable 3,000mAh battery to keep the lights on.

In terms of camera, the device features a 13MP rear camera, and an 8MP front shooter. Measuring 155 x 79.6 x 7.4mm and weighing in at 145g, the handset runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and will be available in titan, white, and brown color options. While LG didn’t reveal any pricing-related details, it did say that the Stylus 2 will be “exceptionally-priced.”

“LG Stylus 2 provides both the big screen and premium notetaking functions of a premium large phone at a price of a mid-tier phone,” said Juno Cho, president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “This device is another example of our commitment to the mass-tier segment where there is so much opportunity for growth and…

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Just a week after they were launched in the United States, the Sony Xperia Z5 and Z5 Compact have received price cuts in the country. While the former’s price has been slashed by $60, the latter has got its price cut by $50.

This means that the Xperia Z5 is now available for $539, while the Compact variant will now set you back $449. As for availability, while Amazon is selling both devices at these reduced rates, Best Buy is only offering the discount on the Compact variant.

If you’re planning to buy any of the handsets, keep in mind that Sony hasn’t included the fingerprint sensor on its Z5 line of devices for the US – reason isn’t yet officially known, although reports say it’s due to logistics.

Amazon 1 2 | Best…

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If you recall, Samsung has already announced that its mobile payments service – Samsung Pay – will be launching in several countries this year, including the UK, Spain, China, Australia, Singapore, and Brazil. However, now it looks like the service will also be available in Russia soon.

Going by the promotion material prepared by the country’s largest carrier, Samsung Pay is expected to launch alongside the company’s Galaxy S7 flagship smartphone.

If you aren’t already aware, the Galaxy S7 is all set to be unveiled at a dedicated event on February 21, a day before this year’s MWC officially kicks off. At the event, Samsung is also expected reveal its plans for the mobile payments service’s global…

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Last month, specs of a 7-inch variant of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab E tablet leaked online. This was followed by reports that the device is heading to the US – it also received the FCC approval. Now, the tablet has leaked in all its glory.

Specs-wise, from what we’ve heard so far, the device will be powered by a 1.3GHz processor, and sport a 7-inch (1280×800 pixel) display. RAM will be 1.5GB, while internal memory will be 8GB, although expandable. Weighing in at 283g, the 8.7mm thick tablet will pack in a 4,000mAh battery, and run Android 5.1 Lollipop.

It will carry a model number of SM-T280, and there will also be variant (SM-T285) offering 4G connectivity. Reports also say that the tablet’s name isn’t yet final, and could be launched as Galaxy Tab A 7.0 instead – a March-April timeframe is being tipped for its arrival. It could carry a price tag of around €170.

Via 1…

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In 2015, Cricket was the first US carrier to offer Microsoft’s Lumia 640 mid-range smartphone, and it now looks like the company is set to do the same thing this year for that handset’s successor.

As has been previously rumored, Cricket will sell the Lumia 650 which has just been unveiled earlier today. The confirmation for this comes straight from Microsoft’s own website, specifically the support section for the Lumia 650. From that page, you can download the “Lumia 650 User Guide Cricket” in PDF form.

This leaves no doubt about the fact that Cricket will be offering the smartphone in the near future. Rumors on the matter had the release date occurring sometime in April at the carrier. It’s unclear if other, bigger networks will choose to carry this device too, but you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up.

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A couple of days ago news emerged about an odd but deadly bug for 64-bit iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch units – setting your date to January 1, 1970 and then restarting the device will result in a pretty much unfixable bootloop. If you do this for whatever reason, you’ll need to visit your local Apple Store to fix the problem, because you won’t be able to get rid of it at home.

Now after the Internet was filled with people being generally angry about all this, as well as others, amazingly, trying it even after they knew the consequences, Apple has acknowledged the existence of the bug. The company promises to fix it as soon as possible and incorporate that fix in a future software update that will go out to all affected devices. A timeline for that rollout hasn’t been provided unfortunately.

Apparently you don’t even have to set the date to precisely January 1, 1970, for the bug to do its magic – any date prior to June 1, 1970 will work. Obviously the big mystery here remains why anyone would do something like this and change the date to one from 1970. To top it all off, people have reportedly been going to Apple Stores and changing dates on the demo devices on display there, with the sole intent of bricking them.

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Lenovo introduced the Lemon 3 smartphone for the Chinese market last month. So far it hasn’t been launched elsewhere, but that’s set to change soon.

The company is now teasing the unveiling of a new device at MWC in Barcelona next week, and the handset in question looks exactly like the Lemon 3.

So this means we’ll soon see it becoming available in other countries, probably starting with India – because the teaser image you can see above has originated at Lenovo’s official Twitter account for the subcontinent.

The Lemon 3 is basically Lenovo’s competitor for the Xiaomi Redmi 3. It’s even priced the same at around $100, so it’s incredibly affordable. That said, it doesn’t necessarily disappoint in the specs department.

It’s got a metal construction and features a 5-inch 1080p touchscreen, a 13 MP rear camera with LED flash, a 5 MP selfie shooter, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 616 SoC at the helm (with a 1.5 GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU), 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, LTE support, dual-SIM functionality, and a 2,750 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.1 Lollipop.

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Huawei is holding a special event in Barcelona this coming Sunday, on February 21, as are many other companies. Yet it’s still unclear what Huawei is going to announce on the eve of MWC.

That said, one possibility could be a hybrid laptop. With a stylus. This has been rumored before, and it will apparently be called Huawei Matebook. Richard Yu, the Chinese company’s CEO, has published the invite you can see below on his Weibo account.

That stylus can’t be part of the package for a high-end phablet, since the Mate 8 has been unveiled only around three months ago. So given the past mumblings about the Matebook having both a detachable touchscreen and a stylus, it would make most sense for it to be the product under the spotlight at MWC.

The Matebook will allegedly come with a 12.9-inch display, an Intel processor, Windows 10 on board, a focus on business customers (which once again fits well with the teaser above), and premium pricing.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Huawei’s Honor 7 units that have been purchased in Europe are finally set to receive the update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow. This should happen in the next two weeks, so the rollout will commence by the end of the month.

Up until this point we’ve seen the new tasty treat being out in India, but only with prior registration, which means it might actually have been a beta build. Speaking of that, Huawei launched the first beta for the new software in the UK at the beginning of December 2015.

It’s now in the process of sending out the final version of the update to those who signed up to be beta testers. The final build should reach these people in a few days, and the rollout to the general public will follow after that.

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ZTE has announced that it will be holding its Mobile World Congress 2016 press conference on coming Sunday – February 21, a day before the event officially kicks off.

As you can see below, the invite sent out by the company doesn’t reveal much about what all will be unveiled at the event – it just says Imagination and Beyond, followed by the details.

A quick look, however, at ZTE’s official website reveals that the company’s theme for the event is “the Enabler of mobile Internet (M-ICT).” In terms of mobile products, the company will “showcase and announce a range of smart devices,” in addition to displaying some of its existing products, including the AXON global flagship smartphone…

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