Samsung has confirmed its next Unpacked event very early, saying that its 2016 Unpacked event will be held on February 21st, 2016. The event will almost certainly be used for the company to lift the curtain on its Galaxy S7, the handset that will replace the current Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge as the company's flagship device.
Huawei has had a really busy year through 2015, but the company continue to rout handsets. So much so that it is sometimes hard to keep up, but the next smartphone to be launched should stand out from the crowd. It is the Huawei P9 Max, a device that is expected to launch November 29th and will be the Chinese company's new phablet flagship.
While we are still awaiting HTC's Android 6.0 Marshmallow rollout for its handsets (aside for the One A9 that ships with the platform), the company's Google Play Edition One M8 is receiving the upgrade now. This marks the first HTC device already on the market to get the latest version of Google's OS, and it is an obvious choice.
HTC has announced its third quarter financial report, and as you can probably guess, it is not good news for the struggling Taiwanese brand. Things have been getting progressively worse for HTC through the course of this year, even so bad as for the company's stock to crumble and it to lose virtually all of its brand value.
HTC has announced its third quarter financial report, and as you can probably guess, it is not good news for the struggling Taiwanese brand. Things have been getting progressively worse for HTC through the course of this year, even so bad as for the company's stock to crumble and it to lose virtually all of its brand value.
HTC said that is flagship devices like the One A9, One M9, and One M8 will be getting Android 6.0 Marshmallow within three months after the platform launched earlier this month. That means those handsets should be getting the update sometime in January, and that seems to be the case with the One M8 as the Marshmallow software for that handset received certification for Bluetooth SIG recently.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor is the company's current flagship silicon, but it has been plagued with issues. It started off overheating, which led for smartphones (we're thinking the LG G Flex 2) to throttle the chipset and underperform. It has gotten better through the year, but largely an issue that has stayed with the silicon. Qualcomm is now smoothing things over by saying its upcoming Snapdragon 820 will have no such problems.
Motorola and Verizon announced the DROID Turbo 2 yesterday, a decked out flagship with rugged build and a ShatterSheild screen. As always, Motorola will also launch the handset in other regions, without the DROID name and with Verizon on board. That international variant has been announced today as the Moto X Force, which becomes the company's most spec'd out smartphone (the Moto X Pure Edition is the flagship still).
What is HTC doing? The company has just launched another high end smartphone a week after the One A9, and this not a fresh handset either, it is another One M9 variant for the Chinese market. We have truly lost count of how many M9 handsets there are, so much so that we are sure the E9 already exists. Quick research says it hasn't, but it really highlights how diluted HTC's flagship output had become, a sad time for the company.
Chinese companies are revamping their mid-range line ups by making their handsets metal. Meizu was first out of the blocks with the M2 Blue Charm Metal, while LeTV launched the metal Le 1s this week. Next up is Xiaomi, the leading smartphone manufacturer in China, with a metal variant of its Redmi Note 2.
If you want to grab the HTC One A9 at its introductory price of $399.99 (directly from the company) then you will need to be quick. That's because the price will apparently go up a full $100 to $499.99 by November 7, which is eleven days away.
It seems as though Apple is having a typical "s" year. When the company launches an iPhone with an s at the end of the title there is usually a levelling out of sales, which in turn usually leads to plenty of doom mongering that Apple has topped out. It is happening again as Apple released its third quarter financials that showed that iPhone sales fell below analyst expectations.
We have heard plenty of rumors about a Microsoft Surface Mini, a smaller (likely 8-inch) version of the company's larger Surface and Surface Pro tablets. Indeed, the device was widely tipped to be making its debut way back in September 2013, but it never materialized alongside the other Surface tablets... so, just a myth then?
Apple has announced that its Apple Music streaming service is off to a good start as CEO Tim Cook revealed on Monday that the company has 6.5 million paying subscribers for the service. It is a very pleasing number for the company considering Apple Music only launched on June 30th of this year.
You can color us surprised by the announcement by LG that its G4 smartphone flagship is going to be getting Android 6.0 Marshmallow next week. That is a super-fast turnaround considering the platform has only been available for a few weeks. Normally all the devices with stock Android (Nexus, Google Play Edition, etc.) get the build first and OEM's usually take a couple of months.