The Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch is expected to launch in India this month, according to a new report. The wearable device was unveiled at the end of August 2015 ahead of the year’s IFA show, and went on sale in the US a couple of months later.

The report, however, contained no information on the exact launch date as well as the official price at which the smartwatch will be available in India. Also not revealed was whether or not all variants of the device will be available for purchase in the country.

Along with the Gear S2, the South Korean company will also launch its virtual reality headset – Gear VR – in the Asian country, the report noted. The report comes just a day after Samsung announced that it will launch the dual SIM variant of the Galaxy Note5 smartphone in India on January 17, which is…

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Just two days ago Sony surprised us by releasing the update to Android 5.1 Lollipop for the Xperia C4 smartphone. This was unexpected because previously the Japanese company said this device would jump from Android 5.0 straight to Android 6.0 Marshmallow, with no 5.1 update planned in between.

And today it’s time for a new handset to get the exact same treatment. According to Sony, the Xperia C5 Ultra was also supposed to go directly to Marshmallow. Yet an update to Android 5.1 for it is now rolling out nevertheless.

In this case the new release is being sent to all the variants of the C5 Ultra, regardless of where they’ve been sold. When it comes to model numbers, that’s the single-SIM E5553 and E5506, as well as the dual-SIM E5533 and E5563.

Obviously though, as this is a staged rollout, you could need to wait a few days before it hits every device out there. If you own the single-SIM Xperia C5 Ultra, then after applying the update you will be on build number 29.1.A.0.87, while for the C5 Ultra Dual it’s 29.1.B.0.87.

Hopefully the release of these Android 5.1 updates won’t delay the upcoming rollout of Android 6.0 Marshmallow for these…

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Smartphone manufacturers have gradually started avoiding Las Vegas for high-end announcements, for better or worse. Apparently then whoever brings a flagship to CES, be it one already announced before, gets most of the attention.

This has been the case this year, judging by the results in our poll from last weekend. Huawei gathered a total of 44% of votes, all thanks to the Mate 8, which has been official since late November, and the Honor 5X from a month before. Okay, that’s not completely true, Huawei did bring to Las Vegas the entirely new MediaPad M2 10.0 tablet.

And it was a tablet that surely brought Samsung to the second place in the poll. Despite bearing the Galaxy moniker, the 12-inch TabPro S runs Windows 10, and is a Surface Pro competitor. Whether it’s solely responsible for Samsung’s 27% result, or the Notebook 9 and Chromebook 3 had their say, we’ll never know.

Lenovo placed third with 12% of upvotes, but at least it brought a smartphone to the show in addition to all the ThinkPads, the Vibe S1 Lite. Two new smartphones from a just-conceived range meant 11% for LG in our poll, only marginally behind Lenovo, but in fourth…

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This week we got phones ranging from 4.5″ to 5.5″, each of them ranking high on feature and low on price. Xiaomi kicked things off with the Redmi 3, a phone that barely crosses the $100 mark, but brings an all-metal body, a 5″ display, octa-core chipset and a surprisingly big 4,100mAh battery for its 8.5mm of thickness.

A few days later the company launched the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3… no, not this one, this one. The 5.5″ phablet aimed at the international market and swaps the Helio chipset for a Snapdragon 650 and upgrades the camera to 16MP along the way.

On the other end of the size scale is the Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016), which tiptoed into official status. It has a 4.5″ screen (Super AMOLED), a quad-core chipset and a 5MP camera. Its official price tag of $135 is $10-$20 above what can be found with a bit of shopping.

The Lenovo Lemon 3 competes with the Redmi 3 with a 5″ screen (with a higher resolution, 1080p) and a similar just-over-$100 price tag. It has a 13MP camera and the same Snapdragon 616 chipset.

The Asus Live is another 5-incher. It’s heading to Brazil where tech gets a hefty markup. The phone features a 720p display, 8MP camera, two SIM slots and a built-in digital TV…

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Samsung’s Gear S2 smartwatch has received a price cut in the United States, where retailer Adorama is now offering a cumulative discount of $100 off the wearable device’s listed price, which is $300.

Those purchasing the device will receive a mail-in-rebate of $50. Plus, you can use coupon code 50OFFJAN to get the remaining $50 off, taking the total discount to $100, meaning you’ll effectively have to pay $200. For more information on the offer, which ends January 20, head to the Source 2 link below.

The Gear S2 is officially being sold for $300 in the US. Other third party retailers like Amazon are also selling the Tizen-powered watch at the same price.

Source 1 | Source 2 |…

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Xiaomi has permanently dropped the price of its Mi Pad tablet in India. Those interested can now pick up the device for INR 10,999 ($162) instead of the previous INR 12,999 ($191).

The Mi Pad has a 7.9-inch 2048×1536 resolution display, NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor, 2GB RAM, and 16GB storage with microSD. It is one of the better specced tablets on the market. The previous price was already quite low and with the discount it is now a complete steal, provided you are okay with MIUI.

The company has no plans yet of launching the newer Mi Pad 2 in the…

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Rumors so far have suggested that the second generation Apple Watch will be unveiled in the month of March. However, if a new report from TechCrunch is anything to go by, there are no signs indicating that the wearable will be made official any time soon.

The report cited Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin, who said that supply chain doesn’t seem to be occupied enough to suggest a March unveiling. “With the supply chain cuts from the usual suspects of Apple component providers, the timing does seem suspect for a new product given orders would have taken place in the latter part of 2015 if a new product is shipping first half of 2016,” he said.

“We are observing some interesting new patterns in Apple’s supply chain that are making the waters more murky than before. As with the current edition of the Apple Watch, no one really saw that coming via supply chain so it is possible to not see it. However, the Apple supplier warnings of soft revenue ahead do seem to cause one’s eyebrow to raise when thinking about a new product supposedly shipping in a few months.”

In addition, the report noted that there has also not been any major action at the developers’ end to suggest that a new Apple Watch is coming in around a couple of months from now.

The report comes just a few days after there were rumors that trial production for the Apple Watch 2 will begin by the end of this month, adding weight to the March announcement…

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Canadian carrier variants of the HTC One M9 – those on Sasktel, Rogers, Wind, and Videotron – will start receiving the Android 6.0 update starting tomorrow. This was announced by the company’s US VP of Product Management Mo Versi in a tweet.

Great news for our Sasktel, Rogers, Wind and Videotron HTC One M9 owners! We’ll go live on Monday for the Marshmallow OS update. Thank you!— Mo Versi (@moversi) January 15, 2016

While answering some user queries on Twitter, Versi also revealed that the Sprint and T-Mobile One M8 units will get the Marshmallow update by the middle of next week and starting January 25, respectively. The update for the latter is currently under testing.

@NoleMario15 Yes, our target is mid next week. Thanks.— Mo Versi (@moversi) January 15, 2016

@cameron29016996 We’re in the lab. should be soon – our target is 1/25.— Mo Versi (@moversi) January 15, 2016

For those who aren’t already aware, the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update for the unlocked One M9 and M8 units in the US starting rolling out last month.

Source 1 2…

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Nintendo unveiled its first mobile game – dubbed Miitomo – last October. Although the game was initially set to arrive at the end of year 2015, the launch was delayed to March 2016 in order to better promote it.

While the March launch time frame, too, was apparently not set in stone at that time, the company has now confirmed that the game is indeed launching a couple of months from now. The confirmation came from the Japanese company’s president Tatsumi Kimishima, who revealed this in an interview with newspaper Mainichi Shimbun.

For those who aren’t already aware, Miitomo doesn’t seem to be a game in true sense, it’s more of a chat app that lets users create and customize their Miis – characters that were debuted alongside the Wii via the Mii Channel. Users (or players) then interact with each other through their Miis in real time.

Source |…

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The Microsoft Lumia 650, which has been the subject of several rumors and leaks until now, will be made official early next month – February 1 to be precise, according to a new report.

The unveiling would likely be a low key affair, with the report stressing that the mid-range device’s details – including its pricing and availability – will be announced in a blog post rather than a dedicated media event.

In addition, the report notes that the Lumia 750 and 850 have been cancelled, and there isn’t much expected from Microsoft at this year’s MWC. It also adds that the Lumia 650 will be the first and last Lumia phone for 2016 – the rumored Surface Phone is said to be on track though.

As for Lumia 650’s price, a recent leak from Europe revealed that the Windows 10 handset will carry a tag of around…

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