Microsoft has entered into a partnership with Acer that will see Taiwan-based company installing the former’s apps and services on some of its Android smartphones and tablets starting H2 2016.

As for what all will come preinstalled, Microsoft did reveal a few names, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive, and Skype. There was, however, no word on exactly which of the Acer’s upcoming phones and tablets will be affected.

“We’re excited to partner with Microsoft to provide enhanced mobile productivity to our products,” said ST Liew, president of Acer Smart Products Business Group. “By integrating the Microsoft software suite, Acer customers will enjoy productivity on-the-go along with the familiar computing experience on their smartphones and tablets.”

Commenting on the partnership, Nick Psyhogeos, president of Microsoft Technology Licensing, said, “We’re pleased that we have been able to enhance the already strong partnership that exists between Microsoft and Acer. Mutually beneficial and collaborative agreements such as this one promote innovation and lead to better products and experiences for consumers.”

If you aren’t already aware, Microsoft signed a similar deal with Samsung last year. The Redmond, Washington-based company also revealed that globally nearly 74 hardware manufacturers are currently pre-installing its apps and services on their Android devices.

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LG is at is again, after teasing the G5’s newest Always ON display, the company has introduced its Quick Cover case for the LG G5 which now has a mesh design that allows touch gestures through to the screen. This reminds us of the HTC One M8’s dot-case that allowed certain functions of the phone with the cover still on.

The mesh design takes after the K10’s quick case and allows the user to answer calls, dismiss alarms, check notifications, and check the time on “the Always-ON Display of the yet unseen LG G5 even with the cover closed.

It looks to us like LG wants some attention, especially after fully rendered images of the Galaxy S7 were leaked.

Anyway, LG’s Quick Cover will be on display at Mobile World Congress along with the LG G5. We can’t wait to see what LG has to offer this…

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The next member in Archos’ Oxygen line of smartphones has been unveiled today. It’s called Archos 50d Oxygen, and we assume that means it’s supposed to act as the successor to the 50c Oxygen from two years ago.

The 50d keeps the 5-inch screen size from its predecessor, but ups the resolution to 1080p. It’s powered by MediaTek’s MT6753 chipset, featuring a 1.3 GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU, aided by 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage. 4G LTE support is built-in, as well as dual-SIM functionality.

The main camera is a 13 MP unit with a LED flash, while selfies will be taken care of by the front-facing 5 MP snapper. The phone has all the usual connectivity options (except NFC), and a removable 2,100 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.1 Lollipop. Its dimensions are 141.4 x 70.8 x 8.2 mm, and it weighs 140g.

It will become available at some point in May, for a recommended retail price of £129 (SIM-free and unlocked, of…

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The Moto X Pure Edition (2015) is the equivalent of the Moto X Style for North America, and the brand’s current flagship offering for the region. And now it’s cheaper than before in three variations.

If you don’t necessarily want to use MotoMaker to customize the hardware of your Pure Edition, but do want to save a cool $75, then make sure you buy from Amazon. Oh, and you need to get the model with 32GB of storage, but that’s an easy pick since it’s now actually cheaper than the one with half that.

While the 16GB Moto X Pure goes for $399, you can pick up the 32GB iteration for just $374.99 (it normally sells for $450). You can choose from black or white hues at this price. If you want the bamboo back (with white front), then you need to shell out $25 more – that’s the price of that particular material…

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Exactly as rumored, T-Mobile has made the Alcatel OneTouch Fierce XL with Windows available for purchase today. The phone didn’t even get an announcement press release, but if you’re interested in picking one up you can already do so from the magenta carrier’s website.

This version of the Fierce XL runs Windows 10 Mobile, being indeed the first Alcatel device to do so. It can be yours for $139.99 upfront. Or you can go with T-Mobile’s famous installment plan, in which case you shell out $0 initially, then followed by 24 monthly payments of $5.84.

You obviously don’t get high-end specs for that amount of cash. The Fierce XL boasts a 5.5-inch 720p touchscreen, an 8 MP main camera with LED flash, a 2 MP secondary snapper, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 SoC (with a 1.1 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU), 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, LTE, and a 2,500 mAh battery.

The phone appears to only be available in the color version you can see above, with a black front and a bright blue…

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Ever since it launched many years ago, the timeline you see on Twitter has been all about the reverse chronological order – you get the newest tweets at the top. This is set to change, however, following many rumors on the matter.

In the past Twitter brought you the “While you were away…” section, which was the first thing to ignore the reverse chronological order of tweets. And now the social network is taking that to the next level with the “show me the best tweets first” option.

This is rolling out “in the coming weeks”. You’ll be able to toggle it on and off through a dedicated item in Settings. When it’s on, you’ll see “the Tweets you’re most likely to care about” at the top of your timeline after you’ve been away for a while. These will be “recent” and in reverse chronological order themselves – they just won’t be the latest tweets. To get to those, you scroll down past the “best tweets” section, or just pull-to-refresh at any time.

Twitter says the new feature should create more and livelier conversations, as well as generally more tweets and retweets. When this becomes available for you, Twitter will put a notification in your…

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LG is all set to announce the G5 at a special event at MWC on February 21. And while we wait for that to happen, the Korean company is teasing us about the handset’s features. Behind the scenes, however, LG is also extensively testing its newest creation, as you’d imagine.

In fact, someone with a G5 prototype has run Geekbench on the thing, and that has resulted in a couple of its specs getting confirmed, along with the fact that it runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. The information gathered by the benchmark says the G5 sports Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 chipset along with 4GB of RAM.

None of those are surprising, of course, as the presence of both should be par for the course in a flagship Android device in 2016. The phone that was tested here is the LG F700S. That “S” means it’s meant for SK Telecom, one of the three carriers in South Korea.

The model number, F700, strongly implies this is the G5 we’re seeing here. That’s because for its home market LG has used F600 to describe the V10, while the G4 had the model number F500. So by that logic, the next high-end smartphone from LG is the F700. Which will be known commercially as the G5.

The LG G5 may arrive with a modular design of sorts, its volume buttons on one side (not the back), a 20 MP rear camera, an 8 MP selfie shooter, and a 5.6-inch QHD touchscreen, previous leaks have said.

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Users of Apple Pay (who have more than 2 million locations to use the service now) have been experiencing issues with it for a few hours. The single yellow blemish in the otherwise perfectly green dashboard for Apple system status has been there since a little past 4AM ET.

More specifically, users have been unable to add Visa debit and credit cards, and Apple is, obviously aware. On the positive note, cards already in the system have been working just fine.

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T-Mobile listed the LG K7 today for $139.99. The handset was unveiled at CES 2016, back in January, along with its higher-end sibling, the K10, which is yet to be spotted in a listing. Both set the tone for the Korean giant’s new “K” line of budget-friendly handsets and at $140, the K7 does sound pretty affordable.

It’s specs, however, are rather underwhelming, especially by 2016 standards. It comes with a 5-inch 854×480 touchscreen, a 2,125 mAh battery, a 5 MP selfie shooter, and Android 5.1 Lollipop. All the other specs vary depending on whether you get the 3G or the LTE version.

Luckilly, T-Mobile is offering the latter, which does run on a Snapdragon 210 SoC with 1.1 GHz, quad-core CPU and 1.5 GB of RAM. Storage is set at 8GB with up to 32GB extra via microSD and the main shooter is 5MP as well, while other versions are said to feature an 8MP one.

Both K series devices have LG’s new “glossy pebble” design language, which employs a “curved, modern finish aimed at a younger audience”. They both have 2.5D curved glass on top of their displays and the body of the LTE K7 up on offer at T-Mobile is in a “Titan” hue.

For a more in-depth overview of the K7 as well as the K10, you can check our hands-on review.

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We’ve been hearing about HTC One M10, codenamed Perfume, for quite some time now. It is touted to be HTC’s big return on the market, following the controversial One A9 expensive mid-ranger and the company’s premium model for Asia – One X9.

HTC One M10 was supposed to be announced at the MWC in a few days, but some recent reports push its announcement for somewhere in March. Its One M9 predecessor also launched in March so that wasn’t be such a surprise.

But today a new rumor sheds some light on the official launch date. The announcement event, which was previously reported to take place in London will take place on April 11.

The One M10 is also rumored to lose the M10 for another moniker, but the One brand will stay, of course. .

The One M10 is rumored to follow the One A9 design language and come with a 5.1″ QHD AMOLED screen, Snapdragon 820 (EU/US) or unspecified MediaTek chip (Asia), 4GB RAM, and a 12MP UltraPixel rear camera with optical image stabilization and laser-assisted AF. It will runAndroid 6.0.1 Marshmallow with HTC Sense…

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