Samsung came under fire recently for listening to conversations on its Smart TVs and then sending the data unencrypted over to its servers. Samsung responded by saying that the television on which this was found was an older model and newer models don’t have this issue.

Unfortunately for Samsung, the researchers at Pentest Partners found even the new TVs exhibit the same behavior. While the previous test featured the UE46ES8000 model from around two years ago, the new test featured the UE55HU7500 model launched last year and still on sale. Even on this model it was noted that data was being sent in plaintext. Read more »

The Motrr Galileo is an interesting little device that doesn’t divulge much about its purpose by its looks alone. At first glance you might take it for a Bluetooth speaker or something similar. But you would be wrong. Indeed, it’s meant to connect to with your iPhone via Bluetooth but it has nothing to do with music.

The Galileo is a motorized stand that can be used to capture beautiful panoramas or timelapse videos. By mounting an iPhone or GoPro camera on the Galileo, you can capture video and photo footage with seamless motion that could even be remotely controlled. Read more »

Mozilla is rolling out an update for the Android version of Firefox on the Play Store. This update brings with it a new tablet interface and HTTP/2 support.

Firefox now has a revamped tab layout on top that looks just like the tab design on the desktop version of Firefox. There is also now a fullscreen tab panel, which shows a grid of open tabs with thumbnails for a better view of your open sites. Read more »

Xiaomi Mi Note, the company’s highly anticipated flagship, has come recently to our office and we did an in-depth review. The article is now live at our homepage and you can read all about our encounter right here.

Our review process includes a battery life performance test and we’ve put the Xiaomi Mi Note through all our routines. It runs on the popular Snapdragon 801 chip, has a 3,000 mAh battery and utilizes a 5.7″ IPS 1080p display. We’ve met various smartphones powered by the S801 platform and most of them scored about 65h endurance ratings. Read more »

Last week we asked you what you think about the LG G Flex2. It’s the first Snapdragon 810 device and it’s a notable improvement over the original, making it all the more likely to become the first commercially successful bendy phone (it helps that it’s cheaper than its predecessor too).

The LG G Flex2 is already on sale, so if you were considering getting one you might want to learn what the public thinks of it. Read more »

For almost two weeks now Meizu has been teasing the upcoming release of the Ubuntu-running edition of its MX4 smartphone. At first, things were pretty cryptic, but yesterday the Chinese company published the first official screenshots of Ubuntu running on the MX4 – so all was clear. Today it’s keeping the teasing campaign going with the image you can see below.

So we get yet another confirmation that the Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition will finally become official during MWC next week. Meizu even found time to take an ever so subtle jab at the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition, which was the first ever handset to run the mobile version of the OS. But indeed that is no “premium device”. Read more »

Well, the cat’s out of the bag now. Huawei has been teasing a smartwatch for a couple of weeks or so, but today we get to see exactly what it will look like. This is thanks to the fact that Huawei already has ads for the watch at Barcelona airport, waiting to welcome people attending MWC we assume.

Since the Android Wear logo is present in the bottom right corner of the ad, it’s clear which platform the Huawei Watch will run. As you can see, this is another round contender in the smartwatch space, and judging from this image alone it seems to be one of the best looking wearables revealed so far. Read more »

Today Google has released the latest version of its Maps application for iOS. Google Maps 4.3.0 is already up for grabs from the iTunes App Store, for both iPhone and iPad (running iOS 6.0 or later). The update brings with it a few new features.

For starters, you now see nearby businesses when you look up an address. Additionally, you get quick facts on popular points of interest, and you can add transit directions to your calendar. Read more »

Alcatel has announced it’s going to hold a press conference at the Mobile World Congress this year. Scheduled for Sunday, March 1, the event should see a yet unknown number of phones announced.

The company has been quite mysterious lately and has managed to keep its upcoming line-up of devices under cover. Historically at the MWC, Alcatel has always announced smartphones covering all of the market tiers and we expect the same thing to happen this year, too. Read more »

The Swiss are famous for their watches, but have been very shy about smartwatches so far. Mondaine (makers of the iconic Swiss railway clocks), Frederique Constant and Alpina (an FC subsidiary) have all introduced smartwatches at Baselworld, a key watch and jewellery industry showcase event.

The Mondaine Helvetica No. 1 (with labels in the namesake font) is based on the regular watch model of the same name but sprinkles some smart functionality. Read more »

Today LINE Messenger app for Windows Phone has got a new update which brings Timeline and Group Home features. The LINE app for the Android and iOS was recently updated with Timeline sharing options.

Timeline, just like that on Facebook, allows the users to share their activities and images for their friends to like and comment on them. Read more »

The downpour of leaks and rumors on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S6 has been intensifying with the nearing of its official launch. One detail that has remained left out though has been the flagship’s headset.

That omission has been addressed and live images of the earbuds that will likely accompany the Galaxy S6 and its Edge sibling have been spotted online. Read more »

Earlier this week Google announced that it won’t be allowing people to have sexually explicit content on its Blogger platform. Earlier such content would be marked as ‘Adult’ so as to provide a warning to viewers before the content was presented to them but then Google thought even that wasn’t enough.

However, it seems the company has received a fair amount of backlash on the decision, following which it has promptly reversed its stance on it. Read more »

One of the best features of Safari on desktop or mobile is the Reader mode, that extracts the basic text and the relevant images from a web page and presents it in a more readable manner, free of distractions such as advertisements and odd font choices.

Google has been working on something similar for Chrome. They already added it in Chrome for Android a while back but oddly you have to mess around in chrome:flags to enable it. Now they are bringing it to Chrome for desktop and you can use it with more fiddling around. Read more »

Earlier this month, a Brazilian judge passed an order to suspend WhatsApp across the country after the instant messaging service allegedly failed to cooperate in an ongoing investigation into “sexually graphic photos of children” that were circulated using the app. The Facebook-owned company appealed the decision, and now it is being reported that the suspension order has been halted.

“The suspension measure of WhatsApp services does not meet the requirement of proportionality,” the court said, while also maintaining that the company was legally obliged to help police with their enquiries. Read more »