China

Users trying to connect to many websites in China through Chrome will soon see a message that the website’s security certificate is not trusted, advising against proceeding.

In a far-reaching response to a recently security breach, Google plans to cease recognizing all web security certificates issued by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) – which includes many government, banking and ecommerce sites in the country … 
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Invites for an HTC event taking place in Beijing on April 8th, 2015 have reportedly been sent out to the Chinese media (via Nowwhereelse.fr). As you can see, the device shown on the image above is a bit different than the HTC One M9—it has a dual-camera set up and a circular main camera, rather than the single, rectangular shooter on the back of the new flagship. The render does look similar to the regular One M9 in some ways though, showing what looks to be the same dual-tone finish. In all likelihood, this is the rumored HTC One M9+.

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It looks like another HTC smartphone, this time the One E9 (rather than the M9), is on the way to market sometime soon. The images have shown up thanks to Chinese regulators (via Engadget), and as you can see above, they actually don’t look that similar to last year’s HTC One E8 (which came to Sprint in August). This device has a much larger camera on its rear, and sports a larger 5.5-inch screen (which is a half-an-inch bigger than that of its M9 relative)…
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Many Android smartphone manufacturers have already entered the Android Wear race, with the latest entry—the aptly-named Huawei Watch—coming from Chinese company Huawei at Mobile World Congress last week. Today, it looks like the first evidence of an Android Wear device coming from another Chinese OEM, Oppo, have surfaced on the web via a couple of different sketchy Chinese sources.

The above smartwatch, sporting a fairly traditional design, might just be Oppo’s upcoming entrant…
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Bloomberg is reporting that the Samsung Galaxy S6 will be released in two versions, one of them with a wraparound screen similar to the Note Edge but curving around both left and right sides of the display.

Samsung Electronics Co. plans to release two new versions of its top-tier Galaxy smartphone next month, including a model with a display covering three sides, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter […] The second model to be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Spain will only have a front-facing display.

Earlier claimed renders had also suggested a curved screen, though with some confusion about whether the wraparound would be on only one side, like the Edge, or both sides as now claimed by Bloomberg … 
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Xiaomi is known as being the rising star in the smartphone arena, making its way past LG last year to become the third-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world. The success of the company is to be blamed largely on its Chinese reception, as it hasn’t launched a single device on this side of the Pacific.

That said, Xiaomi is going to hold a press conference in San Francisco, California later this month (via Android Police), but don’t get too excited if you’re hoping to hear about a North American launch, as the company has already confirmed that that’s not happening…

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Chinese manufacturer Huawei has announced record-breaking results for 2014, with smartphone sales up 45% to 75 million and revenue up 30% to $12.2B. The numbers aren’t too great a surprise, as Reuters came pretty close to calling them in a piece posted on New Year’s Eve.

The dramatic growth in sales could see Huawei threatening the rankings of both LG and Xiaomi in the next round of market share estimates after recently being knocked down into fifth place …

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpN7auMh5M8]

Motorola today held an event for its return to China after being acquired by Lenovo with company execs taking the stage to officially announce the launch of the new Moto X, new Moto X Pro and new Moto G with 4G LTE smartphones in the country.

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Reuters has pre-empted Huawei’s financial results, due to be released next month, citing an internal memo showing a 40% year-on-year increase in smartphone sales, with divisional revenue up almost a third to $11.8B.

The division shipped about 75 million smartphones in 2014, according to the year-end memo to employees sent by Richard Yu, the head of Huawei’s consumer business. Although that represented a more than 40 percent year-on-year increase, the figure lagged behind Huawei’s previously stated sales target of 80 million units.

While the company started life making low-end handsets, it later branched out into high-end smartphones, including the recently-announced Honor 6 Plus, closely modelled on Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus … 
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Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun announced this morning (via Weibo) that the company has completed its latest round of funding, securing another $1.1 billion for the startup to now be valued at $45 billion total. And in light of this news, the Chinese company has mentioned that it plans to announce its next flagship device at some point next month.

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Update: The FT reports that access has been restored for now at least, with a slight pickup in Google’s stats appearing to confirm.

China has tightened its firewall blockade of Google services, reports Re/code and the WSJ, with email apps no longer able to access Gmail via IMAP, POP3 or SMTP. While web access to Gmail has been blocked since June – believed related to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre – users had remained able to access mail using email apps like Apple Mail and Outlook until Friday … 
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While most malware is the result of third-party attackers trying to gain access to your device or information, security research firm Palo Alto Networks has discovered that Chinese handset maker Coolpad has deliberately installed a backdoor on two dozen of its Android handset models. The so-called “CoolReaper” backdoor presents several security risks and is believed to impact over 10 million users.
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Chinese handset maker Huawei took the stage in Beijing today to introduce its next-generation flagship smartphone, the familiar sounding Honor 6 Plus. The all-new device, which has an unforgivably similar name to the iPhone 6 Plus, has a sleek, metallic design and takes on HTC with dual 8-megapixel rear-facing cameras and another 8-megapixel front-facing camera for added measure.
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Chinese handset maker Xiaomi has seen explosive growth since entering the market in 2010, emerging to become the world’s third-largest smartphone maker after just four years. According to a recent regulatory filing, the company is also profitable too, bringing in $56 million profit in 2013 despite having razor-thin margins on its smartphones and tablets.
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The Times of India reports that the Delhi high court has banned Xiaomi from both importing and selling smartphones in India following a patent infringement claim by Ericsson.

Hearing a case filed by Ericsson India against Xiaomi, the court on Monday passed an ex parte order forbidding the popular Chinese manufacturer from importing and selling its smartphones in India […]

It is not clear if the order will impact all Xiaomi devices sold in India or specific devices that violate the patents.

However, as the patents concerned are Standard Essential Patents – patents which are so fundamental to a particular product category that the patent owner is obliged by law to license them on reasonable terms – it appears likely that the ruling applies to all Xiaomi handsets … 
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Just when you wondered how much slimmer smartphones could get, Chinese brand Vivo has set a new record with the X5Max at just 4.75mm thick, beating the 5mm thin iPhone 6 clone Gionee Slim 5.5. Astonishingly, it has achieved this while still managing – just – to fit in a standard 3.5mm headphone socket. It does, though, the now-standard cheat of allowing the camera to protrude by 2mm.

It’s also no slouch in the specs department, with a 64-bit octacore Snapdragon 615 processor, 5.5-inch 1080p display, 13MP main camera, 5MP front camera, 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage – with a clever dual-SIM tray that allows you to substitute a microSD card of up to 128GB for one of the SIMs … 
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Just weeks after Xiaomi overtook Huawei and LG to become the world’s third-largest smartphone maker, The Guardian reports that the Chinese handset maker’s chief executive and founder Lei Jun is out with a bold prediction that his company could move past Samsung and Apple to become the world’s largest smartphone maker within the next five to ten years.
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