Hardly 24 hours ago we told you about a rumor claiming that HTC won’t announce its next flagship smartphone at MWC in February, but at a dedicated event in March.

And now this has been ‘confirmed’ by another rumor. Although the source of this has leaked pretty accurate HTC-related information in the past, make sure you don’t forget your grain of salt.

The One M10 (codenamed Perfume) will run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with HTC Sense 8.0 on top. It’s said to come in two hardware versions, with two different chipsets powering it. Over in the US and EU, we’ll see the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 at the helm, while in China and South-East Asia the handset should sport a MediaTek SoC (though the exact model isn’t mentioned).

An unveiling in March (perhaps even towards the end of the month) would explain why we’ve seen almost no leaks or rumors about the One M10 yet. That said, do expect to hear (much) more about it in the coming…

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Last year Asus launched many different phones called ZenFone 2, and there’s no reason for us to expect anything else in 2016. We assume this time too there will be quite a few handsets going by the ZenFone 3 moniker, and so far the rumors had them launching in May or June.

Before that happens, Asus employees could be benchmarking two iterations of the ZenFone 3. Two different yet unofficial Asus smartphones, known just by their model numbers, have been put through the paces of GFXBench, yielding a list of the most important specs for each.

First off, the Asus Z010DD comes with a 5.9-inch 720p touchscreen, a 12 or 13 MP rear camera, a 5 MP selfie snapper, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset (with a 1.5 GHz octa-core CPU), 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and Android 6.0 on board.

Next up, the Asus Z012D has a 5.5-inch 1080p touchscreen, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 SoC (with a 1.7 GHz hexa-core CPU), and again 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and Android 6.0 Marshmallow running things.

Obviously we can’t yet be sure that these are in fact going to be part of the ZenFone 3 line, but since that’s clearly going to be Asus’ most well-known series this year we see no reason for them to be called anything else.

Source 1 • Source 2 |…

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A couple of weeks ago we told you about an entirely new design that Google was testing for the weather information you can summon through Google Now on Android. And here’s some good news – the test is over, and the new design is now rolling out to every Android device out there.

While this seems to be a server-side update, having the latest version of the Google app for Android (5.8.50.19) does apparently help get it faster. So make sure you’re up to date. If so and you still don’t see the new design, just be patient for a little while longer – Google loves to stage such rollouts.

The new weather card is not only prettier than before, but it also packs much more information. You get hourly sky conditions and chance of rain, severe weather alerts, a more detailed ten-day forecast, air quality info, UV index, as well as sunrise and sunset times.

The app-like experience is packed into three self-describing tabs (between which you can swipe sideways) – Today, Tomorrow, and 10 days. The update also brings some new functionality. Namely, when you search for a new location after the weather card is already on the screen, you can save that city for later. If you do, it will show up inside the drop-down in search.

Finally, you should know that the background colors change according to the time of day and sky conditions, and Google calls the frog-like character that you can see in the app “a new meteorologically inclined friend”.

Source |…

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Amazingly, Kickstarter has not so far had an Android app. Yet starting today that’s changed, with the crowdfunding service launching Kickstarter for Android in the Google Play Store. That’s almost three whole years after the same happened for iOS.

The app is free, as you’d expect, and it lets you browse through projects more easily than the website. Obviously you can pledge to support whatever sounds good to you straight from the app.

You also get updates on projects you’ve already backed, and you can see what your friends are backing – to get some new ideas perhaps. Kickstarter boasts that its users have so far pledged over $2 billion using the platform, and that number will probably keep on…

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Back in November of last year, Chinese smartphone maker vivo outed its latest handsets, the X6 and X6Plus. And now it seems like it’s already working on a successor to the latter.

That’s because the vivo X6SPlus has just been certified for sale in China by TENAA, the country’s FCC equivalent. However, unlike in the case of Apple devices sporting “S” in their names, the vivo X6SPlus isn’t so different from the non-S model on the inside.

Basically there are only two differences between them, at least as revealed by the Chinese regulatory authority. First off, the new phone has a 1.8 GHz octa-core CPU, whereas the X6Plus boasts 100 MHz less. It’s not clear what chipset the new model employs though. And finally, the X6SPlus has a 16 MP rear camera, up from the 13 MP unit in its predecessor.

Everything else seems to have stayed the same when it comes to internals. So the vivo X6SPlus also has a 5.7-inch 1080p AMOLED touchscreen, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and an 8 MP selfie snapper. It runs Android 5.1 Lollipop.

As for the outer shell, the X6SPlus looks like it’s got an identical design to the non-S iteration. That said, the dimensions have changed ever so slightly. The new handset measures 158.16 x 79.94 x 7.7 mm, and it weighs 190g. That makes it shorter and narrower than the X6Plus, but thicker and heavier. Based on this, we assume there might be a beefier battery inside than the 3,000 mAh cell in last year’s model, but TENAA data doesn’t list that so nothing’s certain just yet.

Speaking of which, there’s no telling when the X6SPlus will be launched, or if it will ever make its way out of China.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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2016 seems to hold particular promise for Nokia and its return to the smartphone market. If you don’t remember, the Microsoft buyout of the Finish’s Titan’s mobile business involved a non-compete clause that prevented the company from releasing smartphones under the Nokia brand. That expired on December 31, 2015 and eager fans can hardly contain their excitement at the possibility of new Nokia handsets. One possible candidate for a 2016 release surfaced in leaked shots a few weeks ago and now it would appear another round of photos of the same model has made it online as well.

If there is one definitive aspect about the design of the handset in question is that it is very boxy, but not necessarily in a bad way, especially considering the all-metal body, disrupted only by a pair of antenna lines on the back.

Other controls that can be spotted on the phone are a volume rocker on the left side and below it the power button. On the flip side, we find something that resembles a well isolated cover, possibly for the SIM tray and microSD card slot. This could hint at some IP rating, but we wouldn’t get our hopes too high.

It is also interesting to note that the newly pictured phone seems to be a different unit, as it lacks the prototype marking of the first one. This does add a bit to the authenticity of the leak and could mean that the device in question is really one of the three new Nokia smartphones, allegedly heading towards a release this year.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Verizon has released its Q4 financial results, revealing slightly higher-than-expected revenue and earnings. The US’ largest telecommunications company reported a revenue of $34.25 billion last quarter, up from $33.19 billion it reported in Q4 2014.

The Q4 revenue was also slightly up compared to the quarter prior, when the figure stood at $33.2 billion. For the full year, total consolidated revenues came out to be $131.6 billion, up 3.6% compared to 2014.

The carrier’s Q4 net income stood at $5.5 billion, or $1.32 per share. Adjusted earnings per share stood at 89 cents, up from the 88 cents figure analysts were expecting.

Verizon added a total of 1.5 million new postpaid customers last quarter, bringing the company’s total postpaid customer count to 106.5 million. Overall wireless customer count stood at 112.1 million.

“Verizon embraced transformational change in 2015, and in 2016 the company has a huge opportunity to drive a new era of growth in our industry,” said CEO Lowell McAdam.

Head to the Source link below for the full…

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A Canadian version of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S7 (one with Exynos 8890) was tested on Geekbench 3. A Kirin 950-powered Huawei Mate 8 also put in a score.

The Galaxy S7 score wasn’t in “crazy high” territory, but both the hardware and the software are under development so expect the final score to go up.

The Kirin 950 chipset, on the other hand, shows a massive improvement over the Kirin 935 and pulls ahead of the Exynos by a hair.

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GeekBench 3
Higher is better

Huawei Mate 8 (Kirin 950)
6088

Samsung Galaxy S7 (Exynos 8890)
5946

Samsung Galaxy S6 (Exynos 7420)
5215

Huawei Nexus 6P (Snapdragon 810)
4539

Huawei Mate S (Kirin 935)
3475

Source 1 2 |…

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Sharp has been struggling for years and now chatter from Japan indicates that there’s a bidding war going on for the ailing company.

Interestingly, Foxconn is said to have made a $5.1 billion bid. Sharp is one of Apple’s main display suppliers and, of course, Foxconn is Apple’s one of primary manufacturers. Foxconn chairman Terry Gou bought 38% of Sharp’s LCD business back in 2012.

The Chinese company isn’t alone though, the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (a state-controlled fund) has also made an offer.

The dollar amount isn’t clear and it may turn out not to matter – the INCJ is interested in keeping Sharp ownership inside Japan (Sharp lenders allegedly want the same thing). The fund has already invested in Japan Display Inc – a joint operation of former Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi businesses.

Speaking of, INCJ may also be interested in buying the electric appliances division of Toshiba. This could be part of a larger plan to pull another JDI and combine the electric appliances of Sharp and Toshiba.

Back in 2013 Samsung made a $111 investment in Sharp (buying 3%) as it too sources parts from the Japanese company but so far Samsung’s name isn’t mentioned in the bidding…

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The ZUK Z1 definitely stands out from the ever-growing crowd of Chinese devices for a few good reasons. First, unlike many of its competitors, it has a strong brand backing by non-other that Lenovo, but perhaps more importantly, the handset struck an official partnership with Cyanogen from the very beginning. In an essence, the OEM tried to pick up where OnePlus left off with the OnePlus One, before the OS scandal and the strategy seems to be generating results.

The ZUK Z1 was posed to receive a Cyanogen 13 build sooner or later, given this arrangement, but we were a little surprised to see working ROMs before the end of January. Now, there is a catch, the Android 6.0 builds in question are nightlies (read not retail-ready) and come from the development branch. This means that they are prone to bugs in this early stage, as evident by the fact that two packages cm-13.0-20160120-NIGHTLY and cm-13.0-20160121-NIGHTLY were published only a few hours apart. Plus, they are marked as Cyanogen Mod and not Cyanogen OS, like the official release will be.

An official build is imminent and once it becomes available, it will start seeding to devices as a stable OTA. If you rely heavily on the ZUK Z1 and want it to function properly, we would advise you to wait on the official update, but eager developers and tinkerers can head over to the download page in the source link and manually flash the firmware today.

Source |…

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