Android

Samsung this morning has taken the wraps off of a new octa-core Exynos processor that is widely expected to be the processor used in the upcoming Galaxy S6 flagship. Samsung says that the Exynos 7 processor is built on a 14nm processor and has eight cores. The company touts that it is “designed for next-generation flagships.”

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According to a new report from the Korea Times, LG has decided not to release its expected G4 flagship at Mobile World Congress next month. Instead, the company plans to release it on its own during April. Last year, the G3 was released on May 27th, but LG is believed to still anticipate releasing its successor before that day this year.

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Motorola, which said last month it would update all of its devices to Lollipop “really soon,” appears to have started taking initial steps to upgrade the first-generation Moto G. Users of the device are reporting that they have received a pop-up message on their device regarding a future update (via MobileSyrup).

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ASUS ZenWatch, the company’s current Android Wear offering

Leaked details last week of a purported HTC smartwatch in the works suggested that the Taiwanese company would be ditching Android Wear in at least one future device, and now it appears that ASUS—another Taiwanese company—is doing the same. According to a report this morning from Focus Taiwan, ASUS is working a wrist-worn device with much better battery life—and they’re going to achieve that by leaving behind Google’s operating system.
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LG has taken the Watch R and added a little class to it with the new ‘Urbane’. Specs-wise, it is pretty much a Watch R except with a thinner bezel and gold or solver trim with IP67 dust and water resistance. From the initial images, it does look nice.

“The LG Watch Urbane’s classic design and smart features make it the perfect smartwatch to complement our G Watch and G Watch R, which were designed as more casual and active devices,” said Juno Cho, president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “LG Watch Urbane is an important part of our strategy to develop wearable devices that are worn and viewed as everyday accessories, not electronic gadgets.”

More details including price, release date and more will be announced at Mobile World Congress at the end of the month. We’ll be there!

Head south for Press release and Specs…
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Google is reportedly working on a way for users of Android One devices to get free data when using some apps, as data plans are expensive and can sometimes prevent potential customers from getting online. Zero rating is most commonly done in deals between carriers and third-party apps that will let users of those apps use them without it tolling their data usage. But Google has a bigger plan, bringing zero rating to many third-party apps in developing markets like India.

The company may go as far as to make it possible for any developer to zero-rate the mobile data used by their application…

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Google has today pulled the mobile apps for its Helpouts service from the Play Store and the App Store (via TechCrunch), less than a year after they launched. The service, which allows you to offer on-demand real help to others in live time for a price (or for free), is seemingly no longer available on mobile despite the fact that the apps only launched in April of 2014.
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Samsung has taken to Twitter to start teasing the upcoming refresh of its Galaxy S line of smartphones, and it’s starting out by calling it “#TheNextGalaxy”. While the top banner picture of the account has been updated with the same imagery shown in the invites sent out earlier this month, including the slogan ‘what’s next,’ the profile picture is where the real mystery is…

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/-HYfwSKlc6w]

Earlier today Google and Mattel teamed up to unveil a new product that revives Mattel’s classic View-Master toy using some new Google Cardboard virtual reality tech. We were on the floor at the press event and managed to get some hands-on time with the new toy, which will first arrive with support for Android devices before arriving for other mobile devices.
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News has been tossed around lately that Samsung’s TouchWiz will be losing a lot of weight with the release of the Samsung Galaxy S6, and now SamMobile is back with a few more details as to what changes the Korean company will be making. The software is being optimized to be “near stock” in terms of performance, but new information suggests that Samsung will also be preloading a slew of apps from Microsoft’s productivity suite.
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Currently most of us have to inform our bank by phone when we’re travelling to avoid purchases in other countries appearing as red flags for fraud and being declined. That could soon change as Visa looks to track smartphones with a service called Mobile Location Confirmation in order to help their security systems become smarter and reduce declined purchases by as much as 30%.
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As we told you earlier this month, Xiaomi is holding an event in San Francisco today. While we aren’t expecting any new products to be announced, the company definitely has some interesting information to share with us as those of us stateside get an opportunity “to get to know the company and leadership a bit more.​”
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OnePlus teased its OxygenOS custom Android ROM late last month, and now the company has come out with a few more interesting details about how it’s being made and what the company’s goals are for it. Specifically, OnePlus today revealed that it’s bringing on several people from the Paranoid Android team, including co-founders of the project Aaron Gascoigne and Jesús David Gulfo Agudelo.

Oh, and the ROM is scheduled for release “next month.”

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Today Dell is launching the next generation of its education-aimed Chromebook 11, and the laptop comes with many improvements—durability and affordability were the focus with this device according to the company—that make it a worthy upgrade. The device packs an 11-inch, 1366 x 768 resolution screen (which is definitely nothing special), but there are a few things about this laptop that set it apart from the rest (and from its predecessor).
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The stainless steel version of Sony’s SmartWatch 3 will go on sale around the world “from this week,”says Sony in a blog post.

The new model has the same innards as the original silicon-cased version launched last September, with the same 1.6-inch 320×320 display, 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm processor and 512MB of RAM. The steel model will also retain the same IP68-standard waterproofing, making it safe even against complete immersion in water for up to 30 minutes … 
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