Despite basically pioneering the concept of a smartphone with a built-in fingerprint scanner with the Atrix 4G back in 2011, Motorola hasn’t been quick to jump back on this train last year, when such sensors have been featured in pretty much every high-end Android device.

That will change in 2016, however. Chen Xudong, SVP of Lenovo and president for Lenovo China and Asia Pacific, has revealed that all Moto-branded handsets launching this year will have fingerprint sensors. That’s a 180-degree change from the Lenovo subsidiary’s recent antics, and it will surely be welcomed by the brand’s fans.

The Lenovo exec has shared an additional detail about the Moto portfolio for 2016: there will be no more phones launching with screens smaller than 5 inches. So we assume there won’t be a new Moto E this year.

The Moto brand will mostly be used for higher-end offerings from this point forward, while the budget devices will generally bear Lenovo’s Vibe moniker. In total, between the two brands, no more than 15 models will be launched in 2016.

Finally, Chen Xudong stressed that Google services will “definitely” re-enter China before the end of the year. This means that the Play Store might finally battle it out over there with the dozens of local app stores for Android, while staple Google properties such as Gmail and Maps could once again be openly used by people living in the mainland.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Vertu and Bentley are repeating history with a new smartphone collaboration. While the first Vertu for Bentley device was based on the original Signature Touch from 2014, the new one presented today is actually just a rebranded second-gen Signature Touch.

The Vertu Signature Touch for Bentley has two-tone Beluga and Hotspur Bentley leather, with Hotspur stitching. The phone features “knurled side keys, a unique pillow rail and sound bar and a 3D Bentley logo”. You can further personalize it choosing from eight leather colors and 16 stitching options.

You also get a “unique Bentley app” with it, which will bring you exclusive content, tailored events, VIP access and “special features designed to integrate the Signature Touch with the range of Bentley models”, whatever that may mean.

The phone still comes with all of Vertu’s perks, such as the dedicated concierge, as well remote locking and wiping through the new Lost Phone service.

The Vertu Signature Touch for Bentley starts at $9,000. It has a 5.2-inch 1080p touchscreen with sapphire crystal glass, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 at the helm, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of expandable storage, a 21 MP rear camera with phase detection autofocus and dual-LED flash, a 2 MP selfie shooter, LTE, and a 3,160 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.1 Lollipop.

Source |…

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Seemingly wanting to confirm that “better late than never” saying, Verizon has only now decided to release the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update for its version of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

The flagship phablet from 2014 has actually been on the receiving end of this update ever since August of 2015, but that’s for internationally sold unlocked units. As always, if you buy yours from a carrier you can wait a lot more.

Case in point, here we are in January 2016, a few months after Google’s launched Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and Big Red is sending out Android 5.1.1 to the Note 4. Anyway, after applying the update you’ll be on software version LMY47X.N910VVRU2BOK3.

As this is an over-the-air rollout, it may be a few days before it reaches your phone and you get that update notification. If you’re impatient, you can manually check for the new software’s availability by using the dedicated menu inside Settings. This update adds things, but also removes others – namely, the Amazon Appstore and Amazon Widgets will be gone after the installation.

Source |…

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A couple of days ago a report came out saying that Apple was working on a tool that would make it easier for people to switch from iOS to Android. Yes, you read that correctly, and no, it didn’t seem to make much sense. Why would Apple make it easy for its customers to switch to a competitor’s mobile platform? If anything, so far the company has focused on doing the opposite thing – namely, helping people leave Android for iOS. It even has an app for that.

The original report from the weekend said Apple was “under pressure” from carriers to develop the tool (as if Apple has ever bowed to the whims of carriers before). “Amid mounting fears over its dominance”, Apple apparently “agreed to develop a simple tool to help consumers shift data such as contacts, music and photos if they move to Android”.

Except it obviously didn’t. In a rare occurrence, an Apple spokesperson has actually decided to comment on this. According to Trudy Muller, “there is no truth to this rumor”. “We are entirely focused on switching users from Android to iPhone, and that is going great”, the spokesperson goes on to say. So there you have it, one ‘shocking’ piece of tech news,…

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ZTE has launched a new smartphone in its Blade series of affordable offerings. It’s called Blade D Lux, and so far it’s only been made available in Vietnam and Singapore. However, we assume it will be headed to other countries too in the near future.

The D Lux is a lower-midrange product, as you’d expect from the Blade line. It comes with a 5.5-inch 720p touchscreen with 2.5D glass on top, a 13 MP rear camera with LED flash, an 8 MP selfie cam, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset (with a 1.2 GHz quad-core CPU), 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, LTE, and a 3,000 mAh battery.

It runs Android Lollipop, though whether that’s 5.0 or 5.1 is up for debate, since both version numbers show up in different parts of the ZTE website. The Chinese company is clearly aiming this one at young people, and especially selfie lovers thanks to the high-res front-facing snapper.

The Blade D Lux can be had in Vietnam for VND 3.89 million, which currently translates into $173 or €159. Over in Singapore, the device will be sold by the M1 carrier for SGD 239 ($166, €152).

Source (in Vietnamese) |…

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The new iOS 9.3 beta for developers isn’t the only thing Apple is releasing today. The company has also made the watchOS 2.2 beta available for developers. This latest iteration of the software running inside the Apple Watch comes with one big new feature.

You can now pair multiple Apple Watches with one iPhone. This is only possible if all of those wearables are running the watchOS 2.2 beta release, and if that iPhone has the iOS 9.3 beta installed.

The watchOS 2.2 beta also brings with it a new Nearby menu, which you can find in the Glances section of the Maps app. Nearby will show you sub-categories like Food, Drinks, Shopping, Travel, and Health, letting you choose which one you’re interested in. Meanwhile, Glances will run searches and show you quick directions when you need them.

With watchOS 2.2, developers can create more detailed workout summaries in their apps. This means you may see things such as “active energy burned” or the amount of time spent exercising listed inside your favorite fitness apps.

Unlike for iOS, Apple doesn’t currently have a public beta program for watchOS, so you’ll only get these new features on your watch when the software is finalized. That’s probably going to take (at least) a few…

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Today WSJ is reporting that Amazon is soon going to launch a smaller, more portable version of its Echo wireless speaker. The Echo became available last year, and it pairs a speaker with Alexa, Amazon’s very own personal assistant. The Echo, described as a “surprise success”, is priced at $179.99, but the smaller speaker will be cheaper.

It’s codenamed Fox, and will be small enough to “fit comfortably in the palm of a user’s hand”. It’s apparently slightly reminiscent of the Beats Pill speaker, though Amazon’s product stands vertically when you place it onto something.

Aside from size and price, perhaps the biggest difference between the Echo and the Fox will be that the smaller speaker won’t need to be plugged in to function. It will have a built-in battery and will be charged on a docking station. To ensure that battery will last for decent amounts of time on a charge, the always-on listening for voice commands of the Echo is gone here. Instead, you’ll need to push a dedicated button on the Fox, and only then issue your…

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Yet another Android feature is coming to iOS, just on iPads for now. This time around it’s multi-user support, which is now official with the release of the first beta of iOS 9.3 for developers. However, there’s a big catch – at the moment multi-user support is only available for schools. Yet if Apple took the time to implement this, it’s probably safe to assume that a wider release should follow in the future (with iOS 10 perhaps).

As the name implies, multi-user support (which Apple is calling Shared iPad) lets different people (or, in this case, students) use the same hardware, with all of their content being “ready to go” as soon as they log in. All their apps, books, and documents will just be there, thanks to “intelligent caching” – apparently there won’t be a need to wait for anything to download.

This is obviously meant to address the fact that not all schools can afford to buy one iPad for each student. But Apple’s renewed education push also comes with tools for teachers, through which they can, for example, guide what students are looking at on their devices, using the new Classroom app. If you’re a teacher, you can see what your students see, launch and lock apps on their iPads, share student work on a TV with Apple TV, as well as reset forgotten passwords.

There are even more new things in iOS 9.3 beta. Night Shift is a feature that mimics apps such as f.lux or Twilight, automatically shifting the colors in your device’s display to warmer ones after sunset. This will help you get a better night’s sleep, according to research that shows that exposure to bright blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms.

You’re now able to secure notes with your fingerprint or a password, News gets faster and contains even more personalized stories, and the Health app shows your move, exercise, and stand data from your Apple Watch. You can also see your goals in the same place. CarPlay receives a Nearby feature in Maps showing you gas stations, parking spaces, restaurants, coffee shops, and more with just one tap. The New and For You sections from Apple Music are now accessible in CarPlay too.

In the past, the public beta of a new iOS version followed the developer release within a few days, so perhaps that will happen again this time. The last public beta was outed by Apple in December for iOS 9.2.1.

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If you’re interested in purchasing a Microsoft Surface 3 tablet, the software giant is now offering to sweeten up the deal significantly.

For every Surface 3 unit bought between now and January 17 (that’s this coming Sunday, by the way), you will receive a free Type Cover. This is a $129 value, so you’re saving quite a lot if you were going to get the cover anyway.

The deal is available if you get the tablet and cover from the Microsoft online store or its offline locations in the US. The Surface 3 starts at $499, for the configuration with 2GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and Wi-Fi connectivity. Adding 4G LTE bumps the price up by $100, as does going with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage (but no LTE). The most expensive model costs $699 and has both the superior memory options as well as…

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The next 4-inch smartphone made by Apple has been in the rumors for many months now, yet it still hasn’t become official. That may change in the next few weeks, however, if we go by some recent speculation.

One thing that’s been up for debate so far is what it’s going to be called. The oldest rumors have referred to it as the iPhone 6c, then some people started calling it iPhone 7c, and today a Chinese analyst says it will actually be neither of those.

According to this person, Apple will name its new 4-inch device iPhone 5e, where “e” is supposed to roughly stand for “enhanced”. This model will apparently be a slightly upgraded iPhone 5s, coming with support for Apple Pay, as well as VoLTE.

The main camera will reportedly be an 8 MP unit, while the SoC running things should be the A8, paired with 1GB of RAM. In China, the iPhone 5e is expected to cost CNY 3,288, which right now means $500 or €459.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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