press event

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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Earlier on Thursday, we reported on a press release from LG and Qualcomm that teased the successor to the Optimus G flagship would feature a Snapdragon 800 processor, and now the company has sent out another message regarding a mysterious press event. The affair will take place on August 7th in New York City, but no hints as to what we can expect were given, with LG simply calling it an “international media event.”

There’s a pretty solid chance that LG will announce the successor to the Optimus G at the event, but you never know. We’ll be sure to bring you everything you need to know from the event when it happens. 
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After teasing the device for several weeks, Huawei finally unveiled its first true flagship in the Ascend P6 this morning in London. Just like the company teased, the device is ultra thin, coming in at just 6.18mm thin. Its size doesn’t compromise its specs, however, as the Ascend P6 is packing a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.5GHz and 2GB of RAM. It features a 4.7-inch display with a 720p resolution. The screen has “MagicTouch” technology, which essentially just means you can have on gloves and still use the display.

As far as the camera goes, the device is packing an 8MP shooter with an f/2.0 aperture and 4cm macro mode. Huawei is also touting its “IMAGEsmart” technology, which will find the best shooting mode automatically based on your surroundings. The front-facing camera is a whopping 5MP and has a setting that will automatically smooth out skin texture, adjust the clarity of your eyes, and as the company’s CEO says, essentially makes you look younger. 
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HTC’s CEO holding what a appears to be an unreleased M7

This morning, the folks over at UnwiredView claimed to have a spec list of two unannounced HTC phones said to launch sometime after HTC’s Feb. 19 M7 announcement. The first phone, named the “M4”, is said to be a mid-range phone, being a step-down from the M7 and a step-up from the G2. Its specs are displayed in the chart below.

UnwiredView’s alleged M4 spec chart.

The chart shows the device to have a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, 4.3-inch HD display, 2GB of RAM, and a 13MP camera. With phones in the ‘low’ 4-inch range nowadays light on specs, HTC seems to want to turn that around with the M4.

The second phone UnwiredView claimed to have the specs for is the G2. The G2 is a budget-phone that, if the charts are to be believed, won’t even launch with Jelly Bean but rather Ice Cream Sandwich. Since the M4 is supposedly launching with Jelly Bean, one can infer it will never get an upgrade to Jelly Bean if the G2 launches with ICS.

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While all signs point to HTC launching these two devices at MWC, UnwiredView claimed these phones won’t launch at February’s press event or MWC—but rather much after.