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Introducing smart devices made of gold isn’t exactly a new concept (and it’s gone mainstream to a new degree as of late), but now Taiwanese phone maker HTC is on board. Some think the phone is gorgeous in gold, and some think it’s absolutely disgusting. Either way, the company’s flagship smartphone, the One M9, isn’t going to make its way up to par with the Android flagships with a 24-karat gold body.

Oh, and it looks like HTC also managed to accidentally reveal that photos they took to unveil the phone… were taken with an iPhone.
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There’s definitely nothing completely conclusive about this, but the upcoming HTC One M9 flagship showed up on online retailer B&H’s website (via PhoneArena), sporting a price tag of $649 and an “available for purchase” date of Wednesday, March 25th. Since earlier this morning, both of these tidbits have been stripped from the page, and replaced with “Price not available yet” and “Coming soon” placeholders…
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If you can afford to spend upwards of $200,000 on a brand new Lamborghini, then chances are you are doing quite well for yourself. If that is the case, then look no further than the luxury car maker’s new Tauri 88 smartphone in gold and leather. For just $6,000, you are getting an Android-based smartphone with some impressive specifications under the hood. You can’t miss this deal.
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The smartphone gold rush is showing no signs of slowing down, as Samsung announced today that its Galaxy S5 will be available in the trendy hue across all major US carriers starting on May 30th. Samsung is billing this shiny shade as fashionable, but we think it’s a trend that needs to be as short-lived as possible. While we’re all for seeing devices have a little pizazz, we’d like to see something more original. Ever since Apple launched a gold iPhone last year, it seems like every smartphone manufacturer has jumped on the bandwagon. Nevertheless, if your wireless service is tied to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon or US Cellular, a gold Galaxy S5 can be yours in less than a fortnight.

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The G3 has been at the center of various leaks over the past month, but the latest is the most complete. The above photo (via PhoneArena) reportedly shows off the back of both the black and white models, and the front of what appears to be the gold model. While the photo isn’t exactly “high quality,” it does provide for a good look at the brushed metal effect of the back.
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LG is sharing photos of its upcoming Android Wear-powered smartwatch in champagne gold, proving that the gold device fad extends beyond smartphones. Shown in photos published to both LG’s official website and their Facebook page, the images depict a device that hasn’t gone overboard with the color. The band is a tasteful white, while the gold acts more as a highlighting accent on the smartwatch itself.

Android Wear is expected to be a major part of Google I/O 2014. The OS already available to to developers, so it’s a good bet that we’ll see release dates for various devices announced. Besides the LG G Watch, Motorola has already announced the Moto360. Rumors also continue to swirl about a “Nexus” smartwatch, which would likely be the developer device given to attendees of the Google I/O conference and sold on the Google Play Store.
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We’re live from New York at HTC’s unveiling of the new HTC One (M8) and the company has now officially unveiled the new flagship smartphone. The company has spent the starting of its presentation talking about the HTC One’s high-quality metal construction that it described as “like a premium watch,” as well as the new Gunmetal Gray Hairline Finish pictured above. It also shared a few specs for the device (below) before moving on to its new customized version of Android, Sense 6 (or 6th Sense).

One of the big announcements for Sense 6 is that HTC is opening up its Blinkfeed homescreen to developers with a new SDK releasing today. Foursquare will be the first partner to support the feature and will publish, for example, lunch recommendations into the Blinkfeed homescreen, while Fitbit will display activity milestones in the feed. HTC is hoping other app developers will follow with support.

We have most of the hardware specs below (no huge surprises), but HTC also spent a lot of time talking about small tweaks you might not see in the specs list like much improved sound quality through a combination of redesigned speaker chambers and software tweaks. HTC also mentioned some big improvements for the camera including a new camera switcher (pictured in the gallery below) with new “dual capture”, “selfie”, and “customizable manual” shooting modes. The M8 also features a 300 millisecond focus time that’s 50% faster than the previous generation.

Sales for the new HTC One (M8) will kick off today in the US and Canada. Details on availability for other countries and carriers are available here.

Check out the official specs from HTC and some shots from the event below:

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Following weeks of rumors regarding the next-generation flagship smartphone from HTC, today images of the device have leaked via reliable leakster @evleaks. The image above shows off what appears to be an evolution of the previous HTC One design with camera and flash components that line up with earlier leaks of the device. Up until now most leaks of the device have been referring to its “M8” codename. However, the tweet from evleaks seems to indicate that the device will be branded the new “HTC One 2014” edition. It also looks like at least some partners will be getting a gold version of the device.

Yesterday, HTC sent out invites for an event being held on March 25. Rumor has it the company could skip any unveilings at Mobile World Congress later this month and hold out for its own event at the end of next month.

So far rumors for the device include a 5″ 1080p display, Android 4.4 KitKat, 3GB of RAM, a Snapdragon 800 processor, and Sense 6.0. Evleaks shared another image of the device showing off a protective case and the latest Sense homescreen (below):
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With Apple’s new gold iPhone 5s getting the most attention of any of the new colorful iPhones it released earlier this month, Samsung wants you to know that it isn’t copying Apple with its new gold Galaxy S4.

In a blog post on its official Samsung Tomorrow blog titled, “Golden History of Samsung Phones,” the company makes a point of noting that it announced the Gold Galaxy S4 on August 27th and launched it in stores on September 8– over a week before Apple’s gold iPhone 5s launch. It also showed off some gold phones it’s made dating back to 2004.

Some were unreleased like special edition phones for the Olympics and one for Ocean’s 13, and Samsung notes that “this is definitely not a complete list of gold-colored products made by Samsung.”
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Samsung Gear Patent Filing

Following a report from SamMobile last week sharing some specific specs coming in Samsung’s much rumored Galaxy Gear smartwatch, today GigaOm reports on a few more details from developers with prototypes of the device. On top of confirming a Sept.4 unveiling at Samsung’s events scheduled to take place in Berlin and New York, the report claims Galaxy Gear will include a 2.5 inch OLED display, dual core processor, an accelerometer, speakers, and built-in NFC:

It is said to be around 2.5 inches diagonally (and 3 inches diagonally including the case), is powered by a dual core processor and should have pretty decent battery life. In addition, we are told the watch has a camera that is integrated into the strap and even has tiny speakers in the clasp of the watch, plus built-in NFC to allow for bump-to-sync and authenticate. The watch uses Bluetooth 4.0 LE to connect with smartphones for connectivity… In addition, the watch has a built-in accelerometer that makes it possible to switch it on when it is moved up towards the eye. It could be a great way to wake the watch and also the apps and manage battery power. The watch screen will support the usual touch, swipe and select type gestures but will likely not have text-input.

The report adds that watch will work with a Samsung watch manager app on a smartphone and utilize apps from the Samsung App Store, not Google Play. GigaOm also claims that Galaxy Gear will support Facebook and Twitter integration at launch. The Samsung App Store integration could mean the device will only be available for Samsung device users:
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We already knew that Google Glass would be running Android 4.0.4 and got a look at the official tech specs straight from Google, but until now we didn’t know some of the specifics such as how much RAM and what processor the device is using. Today we details via developer +JayLee (via Selfscreens) that Google Glass reports running a OMAP 4430 CPU similar to that used in the original Kindle (although not other details are available on the processor) and 682mb of RAM. Lee speculates Glass might actually pack in 1GB of RAM:
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We have been hearing a lot of rumors about Sony’s unannounced “Yuga C6603” smartphone, and today Russian site Mobile-review.com posted images of the 5-inch, Android 4.1.2 powered device. According to the report, which also includes a number of benchmark tests, the Sony Yuga’s packs in a full HD (1,920 x 1,080) 5-inch display with 440 ppi and Sony’s Mobile Bravia Engine. The display also features on-screen buttons running along the bottom. Other specs include 2GBs of RAM, LTE, a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU, Adreno 320 graphics, USB Host support, and micro HDMI and microSD for support up to 128GB. This could definitely be an interesting flagship device for Sony in 2013. It’s also sporting a 12 megapixel camera according to the site.

Head over to Mobile-review for more images and benchmarks. We’ll be keeping our eyes out for the device early next month at CES. 
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Anandtech has published some interesting findings based on their extensive Samsung Galaxy S II review. It’s the first smartphone to use the graphics processing unit based on the Mali-400 core from ARM Holdings, a fables chip maker from the UK. In fact, Samsung has engineered and manufactured its own system-on-a-chip solution for the handset.

They call it the Exynos 4210 and it combines a dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU core and the aforementioned Mali-400 GPU sporting four cores. The resulting performance, says Anandtech, is comparable to Texas Instruments OMAP 4 chip that incorporates Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR SGX540 GPU core. However, the quad-core 1.2GHz Exynos 4210 probably won’t hold a candle to iPhone 5, which will likely carry the same dual-core processor-GPU combo as the iPad 2’s 1GHz A5 chip:

Samsung implemented a 4-core version of the Mali-400 in the 4210 and its resulting performance is staggering as you can see above. Although it’s still not as fast as the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 found in the iPad 2, it’s anywhere from 1.7 – 4x faster than anything that’s shipping in a smartphone today.

Interestingly, and per the GL Benchmark seen in the above image, the Exynos 4210 is more than twice as fast compared to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 that runs Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chi. It’s also nearly four times speedier than iPhone 4’s 800 MHz A4 chip which has the PowerVT SGX535 GPU core. However, the 4210 falls short in the triangle throughput department.

The publication this this could be a big disadvantage over the iPad 2’s A5 processor that clocks nine times the graphics performance of the original iPad’s A4 chip. Triangle throughput is important in graphics-intensive games and will become key in “future games that may scale along that vector rather than simply increasing pixel shader complexity”. The video of Anandtech’s Samsung Galaxy S II review is right after the break.

Cross-posted on 9to5Mac.com.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ofK7xFhb1k]

Android powered nano-like watch anyone? The video above from I’mWatch, a brand owned by Blue Sky, shows an interesting little Android powered touch screen with wristband, which eerily resembles the many third-party products available for turning Apple’s iPod nano into a similar accessory.

I’mWatch is a device that appears to be focused on connecting to your phone in order to provide quick reference to everything from incoming calls to emails, and Facebook and Twitter notifications. It does this by fastening an iPod nano-like, fully functional touch screen to the traditional wristwatch form factor. The site even mentions the ability to “touch, drag, swipe or pinch”.

Mysteriously, a list of compatible devices mention the I’mWatch is compatible with iPhone 4, in addition to Android devices, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 7. We haven’t seen an Android device that is able to interact with an iPhone or iOS like I’mWatch claims, so we’re skeptical about this so called iPhone 4 compatibility.

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