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Sony Xperia Z3 spotted running Android 5.0.2 Lollipop at the MWC

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Sony announced that its entire Xperia Z lineup (yes, even the original Xperia Z) will get updated to Lollipop and… we’re still waiting. Spotted in the MWC halls in Barcelona was an Xperia Z3 running Android 5.0.2 Lollipop.

There’s no indication of how close to final it is. Read more »

Gionee Elife S7 hands-on

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Gionee has become known for its ultra-thin phones, but with the Elife S7 it also wanted great battery life from a phone that doesn’t overheat. The result is an elaborate and fairly unique design.

The metal frame of the phone is built from aircraft grade stainless steel. The sides of this frame are grooved, something quite deliberate. Read more »

Fujitsu demoes iris recognition tech, thinks it’s better than fingerprint scanners

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Fingerprint readers are old news – Fujitsu says that iris scanning technology is the way forward. Using an IR light emitter and a special sensor, a phone would be able to accurately recognize a user’s iris and unlock the phone as soon as you look at it.

The hardware – which weighs less than 1g – is still in the prototype stage, however Fujistsu says phones with the new ActiveIRIS recognition tech will launch this year. Read more »

Motorola Moto E (2015) hands-on

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The Moto E was one of the best phones you can buy on a budget, but now we have its successor in our hands. The Motorola Moto E (2015) has grown in size and we like the design better than the original. Plus, it’s more customizable, like a simple DIY Motomaker.

With increased competition from Microsoft and Chinese Androids, Motorola has to stay on top of its game if it wants to remain popular in the entry-level segment. Read more »

The Nikon Coolpix P900 makes things 83 times closer with its massive zoom

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The Nikon Coolpix P900 offers a whopping 83x zoom and up to 166x if you enable digital zoom. The impressive specs come from a fixed Nikkor ED lens that goes from 24mm f/2.8 to 2,000mm f/6.5 (that’s in 35mm equivalent).

The P900 features a 16MP BSI sensor (1/2.3″) and an impressive set of connectivity features, but all this doesn’t come cheap. Read more »

Vote now for the hottest flagship of MWC 2015: HTC One M9, Samsung Galaxy S6 or S6 edge?

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Day 0 of the MWC – which officially begins today on Monday – is drawing to a close, but fans of the superstars have gotten their fill. HTC unveiled the new One M9 and soon after that Samsung followed with Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge.

We have first-hand impressions from them, but we were curious what you, our readers, think of today’s most wanted. Read more »

SanDisk unveils world’s first 200GB microSD card

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Memory cards come in powers of two, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and so on. SanDisk broke the mold – and the record – with a new 200GB microSD card. It’s a follow-up to the to the first ever 128GB but offers 56% more storage.

That’s enough to record 20 hours of 1080p video. Read more »

Mozilla and partners to bring back flip phones and sliders with Firefox OS

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The established players are staging flashy events for its devices, but Mozilla has roped in an impressive number of new partners off-stage. Working with carriers spanning the globe from east to west – KDDI, LG U+ and Verizon Wireless – the maker of Firefox OS plans to resurrect old form factors.

The touchscreen consolidated phone shapes into one – the ubiquitous rectangle – but Firefox phones will soon come in flip, slide and other form factors. Read more »

HTC gets serious about exercise with HTC Grip smart band

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HTC has been promising a wearable for years now, but this year it delivered. The HTC Grip is a smart band with a built-in GPS, built in a collaboration with Under Armour. The company made it clear this isn’t for casual tarining, the Grip is aimed at fitness enthusiast and pro athletes.

Being a serious tool, it focuses on standalone performance rather than its interactions with a smartphone (it’s compatible with Android 4.3+ and iOS 7+). Read more »

HTC jumps into the VR game with the Vive headset, partners with Valve for games

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Valve is preparing a VR demonstration for the Game Developers Conference in March, but the first hardware for it came out unexpectedly from HTC. The HTC Vive headset will work with PCs rather than phones, but the company claims it has what it takes to beat the Oculus Rift.

This could be a big win for HTC though as official figures have it that Valve has 125 million users, nearly 9 million of which are online at the same time. Read more »

Weekend poll results: LG G Flex2 gets fan approval, fields a few jokes

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Last week we asked you what you think about the LG G Flex2. It’s the first Snapdragon 810 device and it’s a notable improvement over the original, making it all the more likely to become the first commercially successful bendy phone (it helps that it’s cheaper than its predecessor too).

The LG G Flex2 is already on sale, so if you were considering getting one you might want to learn what the public thinks of it. Read more »

Swiss show off smartwatches with a shared platform and 2 year battery life

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The Swiss are famous for their watches, but have been very shy about smartwatches so far. Mondaine (makers of the iconic Swiss railway clocks), Frederique Constant and Alpina (an FC subsidiary) have all introduced smartwatches at Baselworld, a key watch and jewellery industry showcase event.

The Mondaine Helvetica No. 1 (with labels in the namesake font) is based on the regular watch model of the same name but sprinkles some smart functionality. Read more »

Intel teases new Intel Atom x3, x5 and x7 processors while announcing a new naming scheme

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Intel is trying to make its Atom line of processors more user-friendly naming scheme than the current four digit (plus maybe letters) arrangement. From now on Atoms will follow the same three-fold division that the premium Core i processors have, but with a different letter.

The good, better and best of the Intel Atoms will be labeled x3, x5 and x7 respectively. And that’s not all, as Intel’s PR blogpost suggests that the change is not in the names only, but there is actually new silicone ready to be announced. Read more »

Xiaomi may be teasing a sports camera for March 2

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Xiaomi is teasing a new device for March 2, the teasers themselves are based around a matchbox, suggesting a tiny device. But what is it? The current most popular guess is a sports camera.

The company already has a smartband, so a sports camera isn’t out of the realm of possibilities. Read more »

MediaTek MT6795 smokes Snapdragon 810 in Geekbench 3.0, closes in on Exynos 7420

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The MediaTek MT6795 chipset has been in the works for quite a while now, but early benchmarks show it will have Samsung’s Exynos 7420 to compete with, while Snapdragon 810 lags behind. All three of these chipsets have the same basic CPU setup – a big.LITTLE combo with four Cortex-A57 and four Cortex-A53.

The leaked result comes from Geekbench 3.0, a developer board by the looks of it. This is a CPU benchmark so we can’t compare GPUs – the PowerVR G6200 in the MediaTek, the Mali-T760 in the Exynos and the Adreno 430 in the Snapdragon. Read more »