Most of you surely remember the YotaPhone – that quirky Russian handset, equipped with a second e-ink display. Well, as it turns out, the dual-screen setup might not be the most interesting thing in the smartphone after all.

Some new official information reveals that the Russian smartphone, produced by the government-sponsored Rostech corporation, comes with a backdoor, which allows tapping into the device for surveillance purposes. This was revealed by Sergey Chemezov, head of Rostech and former KGB agent. Read more »

YotaPhone 2 is among the most interesting and innovative smartphones on the market today. It offers a dual-display configuration with a front 5″ 1080p AMOLED screen and a rear 4.7″ e-paper always-on panel. There is also a Snapdragon 801 chip to power everything, 32GB storage and very good 8MP rear snapper as we’ve concluded in our review.

The YotaPhone 2 costs as much as any other competitive flagship, though its launch price ins Russia went even higher due to the unstable currency. Well, this is changing today as Yota Devices cut the price of the YotaPhone 2 with 17%. Read more »

Here are all the best apps and games that came out this week.

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Sony just can’t shake the two flagships a year habit and now we have the Xperia Z3+. A bit thinner, no more annoying flap over the USB port and for better or for worse a Snapdragon 810 chipset.

But what about the true 2015 flagships, can a warmed over 2014 model compete? Read more »

The LG G4 has grown a bit compared to the G3, but kept the battery capacity at 3,000mAh. Actually, that number hasn’t changed since the LG G2, but the company is promising that display and chipset advancements help expend battery life.

Except the growing number of screen pixels and CPU cores make optimizing for power efficiency a tough proposition. Read more »

Just days after Twitter’s live video streaming app Periscope arrived on Android, it has received an update, bringing along several bug fixes as well as video improvements.

The update fixes issues related to account creation and Twitter sharing. It also resolves a problem with Save to Gallery as well as an issue some users were having with deleting their broadcasts or replays. The change-log also says that the updated app “may also include traces of video improvements and stability.” Read more »

AT&T cut off $200 from the price of the LG G Watch R smartwatch today and you can now have it for just $99. The offer is available via the AT&T online store, but you can opt for picking up the watch in-store.

LG G Watch R runs on Android Wear and features a P-OLED circular display, elegant sport looks and a beefy 410 mAh battery. It supports smartphones running on Android 4.3 or later. Read more »

Nvidia finally launched the Shield console, you can snag one in the US or Canada. The elusive Shield Pro version with a 500GB drive is also available right out the gate.

The Android TV-based console can play games on its Tegra X1 chipset, currently there are 200 Android TV games. Read more »

The Inbox email app, which was launched by Google back in October last year and was invite-only, is now open to everyone. The announcement was made by the Mountain View, California-based company in a blog post.

The company has also updated the app with various new features. Chief among them is a feature dubbed Trip Bundles which, as the name suggests, clubs all emails related a trip into a single bundle. It also makes sure that the most important details (like flight times and hotel reservation numbers) are available the instant you open the app. Read more »

Google Cardboard was introduced at last year’s I/O, this year it’s getting a refresh though not as big as you might have hoped. Still, the viewer was redesigned and it now supports devices with up to 6″ screens.

They are also easier to assemble, taking just three steps instead of twelve. Read more »

Google Maps for Android has had some sort of offline support for years now, but it’s definitely not good enough for most use cases, in the current iteration at least. At its I/O conference Google has announced that it’s working on bringing better offline support to Maps sometime before the end of this year.

So in the future you’ll be able to start navigating to places while offline. Currently navigation works offline, but you need to be online when you start it. Additionally, Google Maps will allow offline searches for places and points of interest (with autocomplete no less), something which you can’t do right now. Read more »

We knew it was coming, but now it’s official – Google Photos is becoming a separate app. Photos is already available for Android, while an iOS version and web app should be launched later today. It offers free unlimited storage.

It has some very smart way to organize and search your growing photo collections too. Read more »

The Google I/O keynote didn’t miss its chance to update us on the progress of Android Wear. The dedicated wearable platform has really come a long way for its relatively short life and third-party developers have played a major part in this success.

During the presentation the popularity of Android Wear was put into numbers and, it appears that Google-powered smartwatches now have a flourishing ecosystem with over 4000 dedicated apps at their disposal. Read more »

Get ready for the third “Pay” program. After Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, Google has today unveiled Android Pay at its annual developer conference. Just like its competitors, Android Pay is all about allowing you to easily make payments with your phone, by using NFC and even fingerprint sensors on devices that have them.

In a similar fashion to the other systems, with Android Pay you add a bank card to an app on your mobile device. When you’re at a merchant that accepts Android Pay, you simply unlock your phone and place it near the NFC terminal. The payment goes through without requiring you to open an app or do any other additional thing. Read more »

Sony SmartWatch 3 is now getting the latest available Android Wear OS – 5.1.1. The update was officially announced by Google a month ago and it introduced numerous improvements and features.

Android Wear 5.1.1 adds support for Wi-Fi connectivity, which will allow the SmartWatch 3 to stay connected to your phone and do all major stuff (calls, messages, emails, fitness tracking), even when you leave or forget your Android smartphone at home. Read more »