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Google’s planning to introduce new Chromecasts, new Nexus devices, and plenty of other goodies at its September 29th event today, and thankfully, the company is livestreaming it for those who won’t be there in the flesh. If you’ve got a chance to watch along (although there probably isn’t much we don’t already know), head below the break…
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After many months of leaks, BlackBerry has finally made the Android-powered “Venice” slider smartphone official. The phone is officially coming to market as the Priv (as was leaked yesterday), a suitable name considering its privacy and security focus, and it’s going to be available later this year…
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Motorola has officially unveiled the Moto X Style, its top-of-the-line offering for those looking for a good-looking powerhouse. The company also unveiled a second Moto X called the Moto X Play, which is more rugged and offers better battery, but is less powerful in terms of tech specs.
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Google has this morning announced a new effort called News Lab, which is the company’s attempt at using its many resources and technologies to help usher in a new age of innovation in journalism. There are three basic tentpoles to what the company is doing here to empower journalists: tools, data, and programs.
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More than a year ago, Google became one of the first tech companies to share data on the diversity of its workforce, and now it has released an updated version of the data. In a post on Google+, the company revealed some of the changes that it has made to improve diversity and the results of those changes. Last month, Google revealed plans to spend more than $150 million on diversity initiatives over the next year.

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Sony has today announced a refresh of its Xperia C line with the introduction of the Xperia C4, featuring a Full HD display and a “best in class” 5-megapixel front camera. I’m not the target audience for a selfie phone, but there’s definitely some kind of target audience out there somewhere that buys these things…

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Ditching the Ascend name, Huawei has today announced its P8 flagship smartphone, most notably packing a steel metal construction and some nifty new camera features built around a 13-megapixel main shooter with optical image stabilization. Of course the software on the device got a bump into 2015 as well, bringing on board Google’s Android Lollipop (or at least Huawei’s version of it).
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Acer has today announced the latest addition to Google’s Chrome OS lineup with a new Chromebase all-in-one desktop with a touch screen. The announcement comes following the company’s introduction of the very first 15-inch Chromebook earlier this year, which like this device, was first of its kind.

The company has also sent invites to an event taking place at the World Trade Center on April 23rd…
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President of HTC America Jason Mackenzie told us yesterday that HTC has a big HTC One M9-related announcement scheduled for Wednesday, and today the HTCAmericas YouTube account has uploaded a countdown and stream for the event—coming to us live from Seattle in about 24 hours.

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Google today has announced that it is introducing a way to automatically convert Adobe Flash-based ads to HTML5. Google says that eligible Flash ad campaigns, both existing and new, will automatically be converted to HTML5 when uploaded through AdWords, AdWords Editor, and a variety of third-party tools.

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OnePlus is today teasing an announcement for tomorrow with the tagline “Back to Basics,” but no one really has any idea what the company plans to tell us about. Interestingly, the teaser image that OnePlus posted across its social media profiles (seen above) definitely makes reference to the Breaking Bad title screen, but it’s not clear yet what it might mean.

Also, updated models of the OnePlus One without Cyanogen branding on their back covers have begun shipping…

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The upcoming HTC flagship is probably one of the most exciting smartphone launches scheduled for the next couple of months, and today Phandroid has shared photos that claim to show the rumored “Hima” device in the flesh. There’s nothing crazy or exciting to see here, but we do now have a bit of corroboration of things we knew previously.

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LG has just published a new teaser video for its upcoming G3 smartphone. The video doesn’t reveal much, but it definitely proves that most of the leaks we’ve seen recently were accurate.

According to this epic new video, the LG G3 looks incredibly thin and appears to have a brushed metal design (also leaked in gold), but we won’t know for sure until LG’s announcement. The video teases the G3’s optical image stabilization, referenced only by a moving camera sensor, and concludes with a tag line that reads, “Simple is the new smart” and the official announcement date of May 27th, 2014. Unfortunately, there’s not much else to see here, but the video does provide a look at the smartphone’s thin profile.

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There has been much talk of Motorola’s upcoming Moto G smartphone in recent weeks, the rumored “mini” follow up to its Moto X flagship launched earlier this year. After making a brief appearance on Motorola’s website, the company started teasing a November 13th live online announcement for the device, and now we get what look to be official specs from a German retailer already listing the Moto G. 

The Phone House, a german retailer, today quickly posted and then removed a listing for the Moto G that was caught by The Unwired. On top of listing what we assume are official specs (below), it also quoted a price of £149 (approximately $235 US). That seems a little pricey to be the on-contract price for what many assume will be a budget version of the Moto X, so it could very well be the off-contract price, which compares to the $499 Motorola and carriers charge for the Moto X without a two-year contract. The Moto X currently sells for $99 on contract.

Head below for the full list of Moto G specs:

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Samsung has finally made things official for the Galaxy Tab 3 today, announcing in a press release on its website that the 7-inch tablet will become available globally starting next month. Samsung didn’t confirm pricing on the new tab, but did reveal specs including a 1.2GHz dual for process, 7 inch WSVGA (1024 x 600, 169 PPI) TFT display, 1GB of RAM, and 8 and 16GB variants expandable to 64GB via microSD.

The new Galaxy Tab 3 will be running Android 4.1 out of the box, but Samsung will only be shipping the Wi-Fi version of the device when it begins selling next month.

Other specs include a 4,000 mAh Li-ion battery, 3-megapixel main camera, 1.3 -megapixel front facing cam, A-GPS ＋ GLONASS, WiFi Direct, and Bluetooth 3.0. Rather underwhelming specs, so we assume pricing will be on the low end of things when Samsung finally decides to fill us in.

As for those waiting out for a WiFi + 3G variant, the company currently plans on beginning sales of that model in June with rollouts happening gradually and availability varying by market.

As the PS4 keynote event unfolds, a new great feature has just been announced: Android tablets as game controllers. The specific reveal came along with the game Drive Club. It’s a first-person team-based racing game exclusive to the new PS4. EvolutionStudios, the brains behind the new game, are allowing users to create a game and challenge their friends with Android tablets while on the go. More information as to whether this feature is exclusive to this game or a new PS4 feature has yet to be announced, but we’ll be sure to update you as we get word.

Update: Well that’s all folks! The PS4 “reveal” event is over now (with no hardware sighting), and Drive Club is the only game with Android tablets as confirmed second controllers. As more games are announced and eventually released, we’ll probably see this feature included. But, for now, Drive Club is the only known game.