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 »

Last week Oppo unveiled a couple of highly capable mid-rangers, with slender metal bodies, octa-core processors and advanced camera hardware and we asked you – hot or not?

While both fall under the R7 name, the Oppo R7 Plus got a much warmer reception. 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 »

Once again, OnePlus is teasing something via its official Twitter account. This time it looks like we’re going to see a new announcement from the Chinese company on June 1, which is next Monday.

Obviously no big clues as to what that will be are given, but as you can see from the accompanying image OnePlus is talking the big talk. Read more »

Today, the Sony Xperia Z3+ finally saw the light of day. Just as promised, the Xperia Z3+, also known as the Xperia Z4 in Japan, made it to international markets and along comes a the first promotional videos for the new handset.

Just popped-up in Sony Xperia’s official YouTube channel, the video promotes the phone’s battery life, which the company claims is up to two days. Frankly, this isn’t really all that impressive, but, at least, the video is nicely made, so there is that. Read more »

Smartphones serving as the brain of a laptop always sounded like a great idea, until someone actually makes one. Undeterred by the cold reception of the Motorola Atrix and its laptop dock and the low profile of the Asus Padfone, Samsung has patented a Galaxy Note-like device, which docks into a laptop host.

The patent does get a couple of things right that eluded the Atrix and the Padfone. Read more »

We already reviewed the 5.7″ Microsoft Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM and it turned out quite light on the battery and thus leading to an excellent endurance rating of 74 hours. That’s the reason we had high expectations for the smaller 5″ Lumia 640, which is based on the same Snapdragon 400 chipset.

The Lumia 640 LTE has a 5″ HD display, Snapdragon 400 SoC with 1GB of RAM, and is powered by a 2,500 mAh battery. It runs on the latest available Windows Phone 8.1 with Update 2 and Lumia Denim, just like the XL model. Read more »

DxOMark put HTC One M9 and its 20MP camera through the paces of its highly contested photography test. The Taiwanese manufacturer’s metal-clad flagship received the poor overall score of 69 (73 for still photography and 61 for video capture).

The result of HTC One M9 falls well behind the 86 points scored by the DxOMark leader, Samsung Galaxy S6 edge. The M9 shares 21st place with the Amazon Fire Phone and falls behind some decidedly devices such as Samsung Galaxy S III and iPhone 4s. Read more »

This week saw the announcement of Oppo’s pair of upper-midrangers, the R7 and R7 Plus, and we had a brief hands-on time with the phones to gather some initial impressions.

We’re now offering you a chance to have your say on the phones’ appeal by asking the usual question “Hot or not?” Read more »

The Yuphoria is the second device to be launched in India by YU, a division of Micromax made in collaboration with Cyanogen Inc. Yuphoria is an entry level smartphone, priced even lower than the Yureka that came before it.

Despite the entry level pricing, the Yuphoria does pack in a lot of features, including a metal body, 720p display, Snapdragon 410 processor, 2GB RAM, and 8 megapixel camera, not to mention Cyanogen OS 12 that comes out of the box. But all of that’s on paper. Let’s see what it’s like in the real world. Read more »

O2 UK currently has an impressive promotion up for grabs. Two Windows Phone Lumia devices can be picked up with a £40 discount. One is the Nokia Lumia 930 and the other, the Lumia 735.

The offer only applies with a contract and brings the Lumia 930 down to £29.99 up front and £23.50 a month. The Lumia 735 is even cheaper with no initial payment and £14.50 per month. The deal can be picked up online, as well as at the carrier’s stores. Read more »

Best Buy began accepting pre-orders for LG’s latest flagship smartphone – the G4. To sweeten the deal, the retailer is offering a $100 gift card with all purchases of the device.

You can pre-order the handset, both with and sans contract on Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. Read more »

Sony Mobile and and UEFA announced a three-year global partnership. Under its terms, Sony will promote its Xperia smartphones and tablets during Champions League games.

Sony Mobile will also support the UEFA Super Cup, as well as the Women’s Champions League Final and UEFA Youth League Finals. Read more »

The LG G4 was last in line in this year’s set of major flagship announcements, but, even though it arrived a little late to the show, the Korean tech giant intends to hit hard with the intriguing device and one such effort is this latest promotion. Even though, the smartphone is still available only as a preorder in the US, LG has already promised that if you purchase it, you can receive a pretty good gift bundle, for no extra charge.

In consists of a second 3,000 mAh battery and a 32GB microSD card. This definitely sound like a pretty good deal and we can’t help but notice the subtle undertone of the gift set. LG could have easily gone with a case, protector, headphones or any other accessory, but the selected items are surely meant to bring extra attention to the fact that LG’s flagship has use for both items, which is more than some of its competition can boast. Read more »

As you probably noticed we got the chance to spend to quality time with the newly announced Oppo R7. We already gave you live shots, camera samples and our first hand impressions of the company’s latest flagship.

Now we also have a few benchmark tests to try and see what kind of performance the Snapdragon 615 chipset delivers. This might be Qualcomm’s mid-range offering, but the R7 has some great aspirations so it’s important that the company got the most of it. The smartphone will launch on Android 4.4 KitKat, which is what also powers powers our test unit, so we do expect a small boost later down the road when the Lollipop update arrives. Read more »