We met the Gionee Elife S5.5 back at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and we were absolutely impressed by its build quality. While the brand may not be terribly familiar with most people out there, it’s going to quickly gather traction if it continues to make such extraordinary smartphones.

Why this fuss? For starters, the Elife S5.5, along with the Allview X2 Soul, is the slimmest smartphone in the world right now and measures just 5.55mm thick. It features a metal frame which gives it a premium feel, while the glass back panel improves the feel in the hand even more. Read more »

The HTC One Mini 2 is up there with the best looking compact smartphones currently on the market. The competition in this particular market segment has heated up considerably as manufacturers give their best to remain an important part of the 4-4.5″ market even after the flagships shot way past this mark.

So, it’s time for one of our classic poll battles to reach out for your opinion on how much of a chance does the One Mini 2 stand against its competitors. We’re pitting it against the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, LG G2 mini, Samsung Galaxy S4 mini and the Motorola Moto G LTE. Read more »

LG has just released a trio of G3 promo videos and they are available for everyone to see. The clips cover key features of the phone focusing on the camera, design and display of the upcoming flagship.

LG has even put up a special website for its May 27 event. It’s all but confirmed that the company is going to host a live stream there, too. Read more »

Analytics and research company IDC has conducted a survey asking some 50,000 people across 25 countries what are their main drivers when it comes to getting a new smartphone.

The results are quite interesting as they show what customers are looking for in a smartphone and 40% of buyers who went the Windows Phone route looked specifically for a device running Microsoft’s operating system. Read more »

Just as earlier rumors hinted, HP is starting to announce its 2014 line-up of Android tablets. The first of the batch to go official in the US is the HP 7 Plus tablet, which HP has priced at just $99.99.

The tablet is available in the US and it seems to offer some good hardware for the price. The most notable is a Cortex A7 1GHz quad-core CPU on an Allwinner Technology SoC. Read more »

CyanogenMod is the most popular custom Android ROM out there and it packs some sweet out-of-the-box apps. Previously, they were unavailable outside the CyanogenMod environment, but thanks to the CM Apps utility, you can now install them on just about any ROM.

Available to download on the Google Play Store, CM Apps gives you access to cool CyanogenMod apps such as the Apollo music player, the famous Clock+Weather widget, DSP Manager, Torch and File Manager apps. Read more »

UK phonemaker OwnFone announced what it claims is the world first phone for people with visual disabilities. Both the front and back panels of the phone are made using a 3D printer, which allows for additional customization, according to the company.

The phone is also available in a non-Braille version with the raised text on the keypad. “3D printing provides a fast and cost-effective way to create personalized Braille buttons,” says Tom Sunderland, inventor of the phone. Read more »

Samsung has been running an aggressive marketing campaign in the UK for a while now, but this is pretty big even for the Korean giant. The company is renaming Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport to “Terminal Galaxy S5″ in its latest attempt to push its latest flagship into the spotlight.

Everything over at Terminal 5 will sport a piece of Galaxy S5 marketing – wayfinding boards, lounges, security at the gates, all 172 digital screens as well as the terminal’s website. The campaign will run for two weeks starting May 19. Demo Galaxy S5 units will be available for tryouts a Dixons Travel stores at the terminal. Read more »

eBay is currently offering refurbished Nexus 7 (2013) tablets at a great price. The 16GB model sales for $149, while the 32GB one for $169. Normally, at the Google Play Store they sell for $229 and $269, accordingly.

If you’re in Europe, there are deals for you, too. The German branch of Amazon regularly holds Warehous Deals and now they have several listings for used Nexus 7 (2013) tablets in a very good condition for around €180. (Via) Read more »

Today Xiaomi announced its first tablet called Mi Pad and it’s looking like a pretty exciting piece of tech at a hard to believe price point. The slate features a 7.9″ 2048×1536 pixel display (326 ppi), which matches the one on the iPad mini 2 and is the fist to be powered by the latest gen Nvidia chipsets.

Under the hood of the tablet lives the powerful Nvidia Tegra K1 with a 2.2GHz quad-core Cortex-A15 32-bit CPU, a potent 192-core Kepler GPU and 2GB of RAM. According to a leaked benchmark score the CPU inside the Tegra K1 is more powerful than even the Krait 450 inside the Snapdragon 805. Read more »

A new set of Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 photos has surfaced thanks to the FCC. The photos show the tablet from different angles and not just from the front and rear as the first batch we saw a few days ago.

In addition to the new photos, the FCC also provides measurements of the tablet, carrying the model name SM-T800. It measures 246.5mm wide and 176.4mm tall. Sadly, thickness isn’t specified yet, but by the looks of it, the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 is quite slim. Read more »

Motorola is part of a small subset of phonemakers that doesn’t take part of specification races, but focuses on delivering great value at attractive price points. As such, ever since the summer of 2011 when Google set its eyes on the company, Motorola has set its focus on the mid- and low-end of the phone spectrum and it appears things aren’t changing after the Lenovo acquisition.

The Motorola Moto E is the company’s latest effort to capture the hearts of the budget-conscious smartphone customer. It did so with the Moto G, but it seems many of the boffins inside of Motorola though they can do better. Read more »

Samsung has launched an external battery pack that has the same faux-leather design as the Galaxy Note 3. With a capacity of 6,000mAh, the battery pack is capable of charging the Galaxy S5 two times.

The Samsung EB-PG900B battery pack measures 74 x 140 x 11mm, which is quite compact. A neat feature is the built-in retractable microUSB cable used for charging. Read more »

The Motorola Moto E is now official and the company hopes it will be an even bigger success than the Moto G.

And with a tempting price tag of $117, Motorola ought to be on to something with the Moto E. It packs a lot of cool features like scratch-resistant 4.3″ display and a splash-proof construction that aren’t normally features found on such a budget device. Read more »

Gmail for Android now boasts over 1 billion downloads on the Google Play Store. Gmail is the first app to reach this milestone, after Google Play Services package, which is automatically installed on every certified Android device.

The download counter reflects unique installs and not a total number of downloads, including repeats. Don’t think, however, that there are 1 billion active Android Gmail users, as there are most certainly some abandoned or duplicate accounts. Read more »