We greeted the New Year with fanfare and it’s time for a recap of the one we sent off. And because we’re all about order, we’ll do it chronologically, starting with the most interesting stories from the first quarter of 2015.

The top-read article, by a long stretch, was the market launch of the Yu Yureka. Micromax’ subsidiary was a prominent player throughout the year, but it was precisely the Yureka that started it all.

A distant second in terms of hits, the announcement of the Lumia 640 and 640XL at MWC was another hot topic. A whole bunch of Samsung Galaxies were unveiled on January 6, and also made for a top-three story.

You were curious to read about Tizen’s compatibility with Android apps on the Samsung Z1, and that even topped the announcement of the company’s flagship pair Galaxy S6 and S6 edge. Lollipop updates were eagerly anticipated and the Android 5.0 firmware for Motorola’s original Moto G accumulated the most hits, with a subsequent 5.1 release also making the chart.

The promise for a bezelless Oppo R7 was another interesting read, and even though in the end it turned out little like the initial leaks, the smartphone and the entire family it ushered in proved to be solid performers. Meanwhile, the Xiaomi Redmi 2 netted half a million hits in just its top two articles, and there were quite a few more stories around it.

A chart topper in the bang-for-buck category, the Asus Zenfone 2 was announced at CES in January alongside the Zenfone Zoom. A smartphone with 4GB of RAM for $200 was sure to entice readers, though it did turn out that that the two numbers didn’t come in a single device.

An LG clamshell, what year is it? That’s what you thought, apparently, and clicked to find out more. And then a Lenovo leak from February revealed most of the company’s lineup for the year, with devices gradually getting official the following months.

Wrapping up this improvised top 20 list is the article with the Galaxy S6’s camera samples. It was an incessant stream of contradictory leaks regarding sensor manufacturer and megapixel count and you were curious to find out what Samsung did eventually.

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Micromax Yureka now available for purchase in India on Amazon
The phone is running Cyanogen OS 11 out of the box and is available for just $145.

Microsoft unveils 5-inch Lumia 640 and 5.7-inch Lumia 640 XL
Both will launch with WP8.1 but will be updated to W10. The Lumia 640 XL packs a 13MP Zeiss camera.

Samsung launches Galaxy E7, E5, A5 and A3 in India
Samsung is launching the Galaxy A3, A5, E7 and E5 in India, announcing the last two as well.

Samsung’s Tizen-based Z1 will run Android apps upon launch
OpenMobile’s ACL will bring some of Android’s versatility to the budget platform.

Samsung unpacks Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge at MWC 2015
The first Samsung unpacked event for 2015 brought us a duo of flagships – Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge.

Moto G Lollipop update now rolling out in India
Both the first and second generation models are being upgraded to Lollipop.

Xiaomi Redmi 2 officially updated with 2GB RAM, 16GB storage
Pricing and launch date is unclear though. Also, some already bought the 1GB/8GB version, now what?

Micromax announces Lollipop update for its Canvas phones
The Micromax Canvas Xpress A99 will be the first Micromax phone to get the Lollipop update.

Leaked video shows the bezelless OPPO R7 in action
The Oppo R7 has almost no bezels at the sides and expected to be as slim as…

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’tis the season to be jolly! Time truly flies when you are doing the things you love and with another year behind us, we can’t help but feel a little nostalgic and look back at what the past twelve months have brought us. .

First things first – we would like to use this opportunity to wish you happiness and peace. Thank you for being with us and we hope to remain your preferred tech website in the year ahead as well. Our YouTube channel now has almost 150,000 subscribers and around 80,000,000 views. It is now entirely dedicated to our engaging lifestyle videos and commentary and we have separated all the camera samples in a convenient new channel that is also growing in popularity.

Our Facebook group has also grown and now has over 830,000 likes and counting and so has out Twitter account, with over 107,000 followers reading along. We’ve also expanded our social media presence over at Google+, where we now have over 85,000 subscribers. But the growing fan base isn’t the only milestone we achieved in 2015, as most of you surely remember GSMArena underwent a major redesign and no stone was left unturned.

We really believe changes were for the better. Reviews, news articles and blog posts have a new and improved order, not to mention a new wider page design with improvements to readability and a better multimedia experience as well, thanks to the custom image viewer. Specs pages are now easier to read with highlights, the compare interface has an extra slot and everything is a lot more personal thanks to the new Account system, featuring avatars, favorite phones and many other improvements.

It was a busy year indeed as evident by more than 3900 news articles, 1200 blog posts and as many as 170 reviews that have passed through the home page. But we are ready and eager for 2016 and can’t wait to see what the New Year is going to bring to the tech world and we hope you stick around so we can share it with you.

Happy New Year to all of you and the people around you and we wish you joy, happiness and success in the months to come.

The GSMArena…

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Asus is almost ready to launch a new member in its Pegasus line of affordable smartphones, the X005. Before the official unveiling happens, the device has been certified for sale in China by TENAA, the country’s relevant regulatory authority.

As usual, this process has resulted both in images of the phone becoming available, as well as a pretty extensive list of its specs being outed.

While in terms of naming the Pegasus X005 seems to be a successor for the Pegasus X002, when it comes to its internals it basically seems to be a slightly stripped down version of the Pegasus 2 Plus X550. On the other hand, the design of the new phone is clearly different from both previous Pegasus-named handsets.

The Asus Pegasus X005 has a 5.5-inch 1080p touchscreen, a 13 MP rear camera with LED flash, a 5 MP selfie shooter, a 1.3 GHz octa-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, 4G, dual-SIM functionality, and it runs Android 5.1 Lollipop with Zen UI on top. Its dimensions are 155 x 76.4 x 9 mm, and it weighs 176.7g. It looks like it has a metal frame. It will be offered in three color versions: blue, white, and gold.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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The upcoming OnePlus 2 Mini just got a bit more real. The phone was just approved by TENAA, which is the telecommunications equipment certification center in China.

According to the certification page, the phone, model number One E1000, has 4.99-inch 1920×1080 AMOLED display, 2.0GHz octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor, 3GB of RAM, 16GB storage with microSD support, 13 megapixel rear camera, 8 megapixel front camera, and Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.

The phone measures in at 140 x 69 x 6.9mm and weighs in at 138g. The images suggest it will have glass panels on the front and back with a metal frame around the sides, similar to the OnePlus X.

Some of the specs contradict the previous ones we have seen on GFX Bench results, although TENAA is infinitely more reliable than any benchmark info, as the latter can easily be forged.

We will have to wait and see when OnePlus decides to take the wraps off the new model.

Source •…

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We reported earlier that a weird glitch took over Steam on Christmas morning, as several users reported seeing other users’ account information instead of their own. The issue was sorted out in a few hours, and later Valve confirmed that it was due to a caching issue.

While that may have been the direct cause of the glitch, it was caused due to another problem altogether. Turns out, Steam was the target of a DoS (denial of service) attack, which prevented serving of store pages to users. It caused the traffic to the store to soar by 2000% over average traffic.

In response to the attack, one of Steam’s web caching partners deployed caching configuration to minimize the impact on Steam Store servers and continue to route legitimate traffic. A second caching configuration was deployed during the second wave of the attack, which incorrectly cached web traffic for authenticated users. This is what caused some users to see other users’ pages.

According to Valve, this would have allowed users to see the billing address, last four digits of their Steam Guard phone number, their purchase history, last two digits of their credit card number, and their email address. That’s still a fair bit of information, especially since Valve initially said that no real information was seen by other users.

The issue has since then been resolved but it shows rather poor communication from the company, especially since it concerned user…

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Sony is apparently looking to add a new color version to its Xperia Z5 lineup, if a new rumor out of Taiwan is to be believed. The company will allegedly launch the pink Z5 in Taiwan first, where it will land at some point in late January.

Over there this hue will be exclusive to Chunghwa Telecom, which is one of the carriers you can pick from if you’re in Taiwan. Hopefully the phone will then make its way to other territories across the world, but obviously nothing’s certain in that regard since the pink Xperia Z5 isn’t official yet.

The launch is going to be perfectly timed for the Chinese New Year shopping season, as well as gift giving on Valentine’s Day. Do note that the images are not leaked shots of the upcoming pink variation of the Xperia Z5, rather fan-created concept renders. There have been no leaks about the pink Z5 up to this point.

If this pans out, it would sort of emulate the new color launch that Sony pulled off in late January of this year, that time around for the purple Xperia Z3. That one eventually became available throughout Asia, but in the UK as well. Clearly the new pink Z5 will sport the exact same internals as its siblings, with only the hue differing.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Over a couple of months after announcing the 60-inch 4K Mi TV 3, Xiaomi is launching a 70-inch variant of the smart TV. As with the former, the new model is also expected to be only available for purchase in China.

The 70-inch variant is powered by an MStar 6A928 chipset with a quad-core Cortex-A17 CPU and Mali-T760 GPU, and sports an ultra-sharp 4K display. Internal memory is 2GB, but can be expanded up to 8GB. The TV is also said to feature Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity options.

As for the price, it will set you back RMB 9,999, which translates into $1,540 at current exchange rates. For comparison, the 60-inch variant is priced at RMB…

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A day after there were reports that some retailers in the UK – including Carphone Warehouse (CPW) – have halted Lumia 950 XL shipments due to unknown hardware issues, Microsoft has issued a statement refuting the reports.

“Demand for L950XL has been strong. CPW has listed L950XL as a pre-order purchase for more than a week as it has run out of stock and is awaiting more,” the company said. “L950XL is available to UK customers via other outlets – see here. We are working to re-supply CPW and keep all our other channel partners stocked.”

Carphone Warehouse currently has the device listed for pre-order, with delivery expected by January 19. It’s worth mentioning that Amazon Germany also recently halted the sales of the Lumia 950 XL saying that the device differs from its stated description, which in layman’s terms means it is…

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A week after it was banned in India, Facebook’s Free Basics service – which aims to bring affordable Internet to the 5 billion people in the world who otherwise can’t access it – has been suspended in Egypt.

The service was suspended following the expiry of a mandatory permit that the Egyptian government issues. Free Basics was launched in the country only a couple of months ago, and according to Facebook, around 3 million people had already signed up for it, of which 1 million were accessing the Internet for the first time.

“We’re disappointed that Free Basics will no longer be available in Egypt,” the social networking company said in a statement, adding that it hopes “resolve this situation soon.” It isn’t yet clear whether or not the suspension was related to net-neutrality concerns, as was the case in India.

Via 1…

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The OnePlus X Champagne Edition is now available for purchase in India, where Amazon has it listed for INR 16,999, which translates into $255 at current exchange rates. FYI, It is the same price at which the standard Onyx variant can be purchased.

The model made its debut in China, and is already available for purchase in several other countries. OnePlus has also announced open sales of the device on every Tuesday, but, unfortunately, that’s only for international markets.

This means, in India you’ll have to have an invite to get the limited-edition variant, although an invite to the standard model will do.

Source 1…

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