Minecraft developers Mojang today announced a new online gameplay feature coming soon to the Minecraft: Pocket Edition mobile apps called “Minecraft Realms.”

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AppChat is a really interesting new app. First released just a week ago in a humble thread on XDA-Developers, the app—which creates little chatrooms for all of your currently-installed apps—has seen the creation of almost 80,000 of these rooms and more than 70,000 messages sent within them. The response has been pretty big, and the app has gone through 6 releases over the last week to make the experience as great as possible.

But what exactly is AppChat? expand full story

When Samsung announced the Galaxy Alpha, I was a bit shocked at first. It was very clear that Samsung was making an attempt to step up its design game a bit. Well, here we are beyond its release and today we’re going to find out what the Galaxy Alpha is all about. It may not be a life changing device, but for Samsung it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

Let me start out by saying that the Galaxy Alpha is bit hard to understand initially. It seems that Samsung didn’t want to put the pedal to the metal, so instead we’re left with what may be considered the best of both worlds, having metal and plastic as main parts of the Alpha’s design. All that aside, one this is very clear: If you know the Samsung Galaxy S5, you already know the Galaxy Alpha, but I don’t think this device was ever meant to shake the industry…

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PhoneArena has some new pics claiming to show off leaked renders of a new Samsung device, the Samsung Galaxy A5. This appears to be part of a new range of phones, based off the Galaxy Alpha. We have seen some prototype pics of the device before.

The ‘A’ lineup appears to symbolise Samsung’s phone with ‘premium’ materials (non plastic body, for instance). The A5 is supposedly made of aluminium, featuring a 5 inch AMOLED screen with a 720P resolution. The phone also appears to include a 13 megapixel rear camera and a 5 megapixel front camera. With Samsung’s recent focus on battery life, it’s unsurprising that the A5 will pack a 2,300 mAH battery — according to reports.

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It is hard not to look at the design of this and think Samsung is skating to where the (i)puck was.

Samsung recently announced the Note 4 which sports a new premium design with a metal frame, but before that came the metal-framed Galaxy Alpha. This device flew under the radar for many because it was announced at a very random press event in Russia last month. Unfortunately, the only way I can describe this device is being, “Samsung’s iPhone.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it seriously looks like an iPhone…

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According to a new report from the often reliable SamMobile blog, Samsung is about to follow up its recently introduced Galaxy Alpha smartphone with more high-end devices under the “A series” family. The report points to evidence that the Galaxy Alpha, which received much attention for its metal body and high-end specs, is just the first device with three more on the way soon: expand full story

During its earnings call with investors where Samsung announced a 31 percent drop for its profits in its mobile division, the company also slipped in a small announcement about upcoming smartphones to reassure investors going into the next quarter. As noted by The Wall Street Journal, Samsung executive Kim Hyun-Joon told investors that the company would launch a new model with a large screen and another that will be made with “new materials.” expand full story

In line with what we heard earlier this month and following leaked photos of the device that surfaced last week, a new report from SamMobile claims that Samsung will unveil the Galaxy Alpha on August 4th. Despite being an all-metal smartphone, the Galaxy Alpha will not positioned as a premium device alongside the flagship Galaxy S5, but rather as a mid-tier variant that uses a mix of high-end and mid-range hardware. expand full story