Category: Mobile phones
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Buy a Lumia and get a free plane ticket

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Microsoft has recently partnered up with AirAsia for a new promotion, bearing the catch name “Buy a Lumia and Fly”. Now, straight off the bat, this sounds like one of those sweepstakes, “buy for a chance to win” contests, but the offer is actually surprisingly straight-forward.

If you purchase a Lumia 532 or 535 between March 20 and April 30 you are eligible for 5,000 BIG Points at AirAsia. This is enough to buy you a ticket to Phuket, Krabi or Singapore, so the deal sound pretty sweet. Read more »

LG rolls out two new portable projectors, one sports a TV tuner

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LG’s press team announced today the launch of a pair of compact LED projectors, as part of the company’s Minibeam range. Both focused on portability, the two devices are otherwise quite different in specs and usage scenarios.

The top of the line model is called PF1500 and comes with a FullHD native resolution, which it can output at diagonals up to 120 inches. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy S6 lets you disable unwanted preinstalled apps

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TouchWiz has been regularly criticized for being much too crowded and packed with features beyond the needs of the average user. Actually, the phrase “resource hog” often popped up and we can’t wholeheartedly disagree.

Samsung aimed at putting critics to rest in that department as well, after having addressed the other main source of complaints, choice of materials. Read more »

Weekly poll: Samsung Galaxy S6 Hot or Not?

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The most hotly-anticipated flagship of recent months, the Samsung Galaxy S6 is already here, and we subjected it to our customary test routine. We don’t doubt you’re already familiar with our findings, but on that slim chance you’ve been gone from our site for the past week, you can check out the detailed review here.

Our discoveries are one thing though, and you’re likely to have your own personal take on the matters at hand. Thus,we’re offering you a chance to share your thoughts on a few key aspects of Samsung’s latest and greatest. Join us after the break, for the complete list of hot topics. Read more »

Vivo Xshot hands-on

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Vivo is one of those small Chinese manufacturers that rarely make headlines, but when they do, it’s usually big. The company definitely deserves credit, as it is generally quite open to experimentation and has always employed a premium quality approach to their tech.

This, of course, has its down-sides, but the good news is that most every phone that bears the Vivo brand is quite distinctive in some way. The Xplay and Xplay 3S were very early adopters of cutting-edge hardware at the time of their releases and the Vivo X5 Max was the bearer of the title – “word’s thinnest smartphone”, that is before Gionee came along. Read more »

Subor S3 claims to be the World’s first bezel-less smartphone

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Being first in something, especially in the tech world, does bring about a certain level of attention. And coming up with new innovations and pushing the boundaries on the mobile tech scene has become increasingly harder. So when somebody claims to have created the World’s first bezeless phone, we, only naturally, give the company it’s much deserved two minutes of fame.

And before you ask “Why the bitter sarcasm?”, consider the following news – Subor, a virtually unknown Chinese manufacturer has constructed an odd, proof of concept device, which really sounds more like a bad idea than anything else. The company claims that its latest S3 model has no side bezels around the display whatsoever, which definitely sounds cool and looks nice, but is surely accident prone. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy S6 teardown reveals its internals

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Country by country, pre-orders of the Samsung Galaxy S6 commence and the phone will be available in early April, but it has already undergone a teardown treatment.

The phone was successfully brought to pieces resulting in some interesting finds. As you know, the Galaxy S6 sports a dual-glass design on front and back and the battery isn’t removable. To remove the back glass cover, you have to heat up the edges of the phone.

Read more »

OnePlus One will get more expensive in Europe starting on March 25

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The euro’s current instability when it comes to exchange rates against the US dollar has forced OnePlus to take some drastic measures. Starting next week, the Chinese company’s One (and only) smartphone will become more expensive to buy in Europe.

Right now, the 16GB model is priced at €269, while the 64GB version goes for €299. But from March 25 onwards you’ll need to pay €299 for the 16GB variant and €349 for the one with 64GB of storage. Read more »

HTC’s UH OH protection program to extend to the One (M8), starting with One M9 launch

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HTC’s welcome new customer service initiative, dubbed UH OH, will apparently cover not only the yet-to-be-released One M9 flagship smartphone, but also the current One (M8), as confirmed during the company’s dedicated announcement. Don’t go rushing to the stores just yet though, as the program will go live starting with the availability of the new generation top dog.

HTC’s Jason Mackenzie didn’t specify when exactly that will happen, as it’s dependent on logistics and what not, but named April 10 as the ballpark date. That’s the US market launch we’re talking, of course. Read more »

Motorola is giving you a free 3G Moto E (2nd gen) if you buy a Moto X Pure Edition until March 24

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The deal of the day (and possibly even the week) comes from Motorola. The company is offering you a free 3G Moto E (2nd generation). All you have to do to get it for nothing is buy a Moto X (2014) Pure Edition straight from its maker.

So you first design your Moto X the way you like it, and when you’re finished with that just add the Moto E to your cart. At this point the savings should automatically appear, transforming the Moto E’s price into $0. The only (pretty huge) caveat is that the Moto X you purchase will have to be off-contract. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 V budget tablet announced

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Joining more capable brethren in the face of the Galaxy Tab A pair announced quietly today, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 V became official in a similar lackluster fashion. Launched in Malaysia, the affordable 7-inch tablet brings decent hardware at a reasonable MYR499 price ($135).

Aimed at first-time tablet buyers, the Galaxy Tab 3 V comes equipped with a 7-inch WSVGA display (that’s 1,024 x 600 pixels in layman’s terms), which results in 170ppi, actually more pixel-dense than the Galaxy Tab A’s. Read more »

Motorola Gallery app updated with Material Design, new sorting options

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Motorola rolled out an update for its Gallery app for Android. As expected, the new Motorola Gallery brings Material Design user interface tweaks that play nice with Android Lollipop.

Apart from the new UI, the app also gets a new icon, as well as quick access to the image crop tool. Read more »

Cyanogen OS 12 will bring a new boot animation

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A few weeks ago, Cyanogen Inc. announced a company rebranding which included the logo. The latter will be present in the boot animation of the company’s custom ROMs.

Today, Cyanogen showed a new boot animation that will be integrated with the upcoming Cyanogen OS 12. Read more »

Apple has trade-in program for Android users in the works

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According to a report in 9to5Mac, Apple will soon launch a trade-in program for users of non-iOS smartphones. The new venture will aim to boost the Cupertino giant’s already healthy iPhone sales.

The trade-in program will primarily focus on Android and BlackBerry smartphone users. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy S6 storage performance test

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Samsung Galaxy S6 is the company’s first flagship not to offer microSD expansion. Until the S6 and S6 edge duo all Galaxy Note and Galaxy S smartphones had memory expansion, and, in fact, it was one of the highlights of both series.

Samsung even supported moving App to SD card even when Google disabled the feature – a rarity these days. So, what happened with Samsung’s love of external storage?

Well, the company came up with its own UFS 2.0 storage, which uses “Command Queue” tech (as seen in Solid State Drives) for accelerating the speed of command execution. The new technology promises 2.7x faster performance than the eMMC 5.0 memory found in the previous crop of flagships and yes, the Galaxy S6 has one.

There lies to the key to the lack of a microSD slot. If you were to put an SD card on your Galaxy S6, you’d have compromised this blazing-fast performance. This is actually true for all 2014 high-end phones, but it seems Samsung wanted users to truly feel the difference this time around and has decided on not including the storage expansion on the feature list even if it made a lot of users sad.

Let’s see how fast it really is. Read more »