Last year, a lot of mobile device makers jumped into the smartwatch realm, and apparently in 2015 we can expect some more of that. Specifically, it looks like those companies that haven’t yet presented a smartwatch (or two) will do so soon. The honor of being first to do that this year goes to Alcatel.

That’s because what you can see in the image above is the Alcatel OneTouch Watch. TCL (the company behind the Alcatel brand) is obviously quite proud of it, since it decided to semi-announce it a few days before CES. Read more »

Xiaomi’s held another weekly flash sale in India today. This one was for the Redmi Note 4G, and in fact this was the first time that you were able to buy the LTE-capable iteration of the company’s phablet in the subcontinent. So, understandably, the interest was high.

In fact, 200,000 people registered for the sale. Of those, however, only 40,000 people managed to get a Redmi Note 4G, as that’s the amount of units that were made available. The entire batch sold out in six seconds, which sounds incredible until you realize it’s definitely not the first time something like this has happened with Xiaomi products over there. Read more »

When Windows 10 launches, it will do so with two Web browsers on board – IE11 (for backward compatibility), as well as a brand new one codenamed Spartan. This will be lightweight, will look a lot like Chrome or Firefox, and will support extensions.

However, Spartan will still use Microsoft’s Chakra JavaScript engine and its Trident rendering engine, according to a couple of unnamed sources. Read more »

Microsoft has released a new ad for its Surface Pro 3 tablet today. And it seems to us that the company has cranked up the praise in this one – it’s obvious how proud it is of this device.

Add in some complimenting quotes from a few well known publications, and you pretty much have the whole recipe for this commercial – which, by the way, is called “Accolades”. Read more »

Nowadays the pre-roll ad model is widely used with video content. Just think how many times you’ve had to sit through an ad before a YouTube clip started playing for you (unless, of course, you’ve subscribed to YouTube Music Key, which makes the ads go away). Facebook, however, has another idea that it’s started testing.

These are ads that play after you’ve watched a video, and not before. At first blush, this might seem like a very counterintuitive idea, since many claim that pre-roll ads work exactly because you have no choice but to sit through them until the video you want to see starts. Read more »

The holiday spirit is everywhere these days, and Samsung wants to participate. The company perhaps feels that you may have forgotten about the Galaxy S5, especially now that the Galaxy Note 4 has been on the market for a while. So, to remind you that its smaller flagship smartphone exists, and is water resistant, it’s created a new promo video for it.

This features a few Galaxy S5 units and a snowman. Actually, it features a few Galaxy S5 units inside a snowman. Since it’s water resistant and all that. Read more »

HTC has been holding a weekly deal on its official website for the US for a while now. Unlike past offers, though, today’s deal isn’t going to expire in mere hours. In fact, it’s valid all the way up until January 2. If you purchase any handset from HTC’s website before then, you can get a 20% discount.

That’s a nice holiday deal, and you may want to take advantage of it if you haven’t yet bought gifts for those close to you. To benefit from the discount, you’ll need to shop at HTC.com and enter “HTCHOLIDAY20″ at checkout as a coupon code. Once you do that, 20% will magically be subtracted from your order. Read more »

Apple’s MacBook Air line of laptops currently comprises of devices with just two screen sizes – 11″ and 13″. However, they may soon be joined by an intermediary model, a MacBook Air with a 12-inch screen.

This has previously been rumored to enter production in the fall of 2014, which obviously hasn’t happened. Now though, a new rumor out of Asia says that we should expect factories to start making the 12-inch notebook in the first quarter of next year. Read more »

A few days ago we let you know that you could buy a Motorola Droid Turbo from Verizon for $99.99 with a new two-year contract. That’s half off its normal price of $199.99, but now Best Buy has gone ahead and made that deal look pretty bad.

That’s because the well known retailer is currently selling the Droid Turbo for a mere $1. That’s no typo, you’ll need to pay just one dollar for the top of the line smartphone. Read more »

Having already made its way to the USA, the Asus ZenWatch was supposed to finally make its debut in the UK tomorrow. But, for whatever reason, the wearable was launched one day early, as you can already buy one today.

Like we told you before, for now the ZenWatch is exclusive to Currys PC World. So you can only purchase one from those two outlets. The situation may change in the future, of course. Read more »

To help you get into the gift-giving mood, Verizon has a pretty good deal going on for Android smartphones. Namely, the carrier is selling all Android devices that normally cost $199 or more with a two-year contract for just 50% of their price.

So, for example, the Galaxy Note 4 can now be had for just $149.99, whereas you normally have to shell out no less than $299.99 for the privilege of purchasing one from Big Red. Read more »

The team that’s in charge of developing Facebook’s Messenger apps has come up with something new. The app is called Stickered, and it’s apparently due to be out in the Google Play Store for Android later today. It will also make it to iOS at some point in the future.

As you can see from the image above, Stickered basically lets you plaster the stickers you can find in Facebook Messenger over parts of your photos. Why you would choose to do such a thing is still quite the mystery, but – if you want to, now you can. Read more »

Believe it or not, five years have passed since the European Commission forced Microsoft to add the Browser Choice screen to the versions of Windows it sold in the EU. And incidentally, this means that the requirement has in fact expired.

As of now, Microsoft no longer falls under the obligation to show people in the EU the Browser Choice screen, so it’s stopped doing so. The dedicated website for the feature is gone too. Read more »

If you were having doubts about Apple making its new payment service available outside of the US, then this is for you. Apple Pay is indeed coming to Europe, the Middle East, India, and Africa. This has been confirmed by a job posting by Apple on its website.

The ad has since been pulled, but it mentioned the company was looking for a London-based intern to “drive out the rollout” of Apple Pay across the aforementioned territories. Read more »

Today Yahoo has announced it’s published a new version of its app for both iOS and Android to the iTunes App Store and the Google Play Store, respectively. The update is decidedly bigger for Android, where it introduces animated weather conditions (such as fog, rain, heat, snow, lightning, and frost).

Most of those have been available on iOS 8 since September, but today lightning and frost have made their way to devices running Apple’s mobile operating system as well. Read more »