Google says no Pixel Watch is coming this year

In spite of past rumors claiming the contrary, Google will not be launching a Pixel Watch this year. The company has confirmed this through Miles Barr, its director of engineering for Wear OS, speaking to Tom's Guide in an interview today. The Pixel Watch was said to be unveiled alongside the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL smartphones at Google's upcoming event in early October. However, the search giant says it wants to focus on its partners in the wearable space, and on improving Wear OS. It offers input to companies making watches using its platform, the latest of which was regarding the...

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Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL show up at the FCC

Google's Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL have been leaking a lot lately, even though their official unveiling date might be October 9. Today it's been revealed that they have passed through the FCC's certification process already - with most documents filed in early July, though some date back to late June. We're only now finding out about this because the confidentiality period for the technical reports has ended today. The two devices have been submitted to the FCC by Google itself, unlike in previous years when HTC (for both first-gen Pixels), then HTC and LG (for the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL,...

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Sharp Aquos D10 joins the C10 and B10 in its European lineup

Sharp's much anticipated re-entry into the European smartphone market has finally happened this year, and the Japanese company has unveiled a new member of its lineup at IFA today, following the launch of the Aquos C10 and B10 last month. The new model is the Aquos D10, and while it's the highest-end of the bunch, it's still far from a proper flagship. It features a 5.99" 18:9 1080x2160 "Free Form Display" with a claimed 91% screen-to-body ratio, and a rather prominent notch. It's an LCD panel, by the way, no OLED here. At the helm we find Qualcomm's Snapdragon 630, with 4GB of RAM...

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OnePlus will open a store in Paris, France

While it didn't bring any new devices, OnePlus was at IFA, including co-founder Carl Pei. He revealed something potentially even more exciting than a phone - OnePlus will open a brick-and-mortar store in Paris soon. OnePlus has been all about efficiency since its inception, which means focusing on online sales. The OnePlus 6 already has some retail presence in France, due to a partnership with carrier Bouygues (the phone is in around 20 stores now, but will expand to many more). But this will be a true OnePlus store and it will open in time for the next major launch, says Pei, likely...

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Samsung readying Galaxy J4 Prime and Galaxy J6 Prime for launch

Samsung is prepping Prime versions of its Galaxy J4 and Galaxy J6 devices, as evidenced by the support pages it has up on its Vietnamese website. The devices have already been available in non-Prime form since this Spring. The Prime models will likely be powered by Snapdragon chipsets, instead of the Exynos 7570. Both the Galaxy J4 Prime and Galaxy J6 Prime will likely run Android 8.1 and not the Android 8.0 their Exynos-powered counterparts are running. Rumor has it that Samsung will release the Galaxy J4 Prime and J6 Prime this fall in Vietnam and the Netherlands. Source 1 |...

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Another phone with camera slider showcased, this time from Lenovo

The list of smartphones with a slide-out camera is getting bigger by the day. It all started with the vivo NEX and Oppo Find X and now we are hearing that the Honor Magic 2 and the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 are adopting the slide-out mechanism as well. It seems that Lenovo has been bitten by the periscope-like camera bug as well - the company's vice president just shared a video on Weibo showcasing a still unannounced Lenovo smartphone with extremely thin bezels, small chin and pop-up cameras in Find X style. Moreover, the video reveals that the phone will make use of an in-display fingerprint...

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Independent Strategy Analytics survey shows the Sony Xperia XZ3 has the best display

Sony has once again tapped Strategy Analytics to conduct an independent testing of the Xperia XZ3 screen. That's the new P-OLED screen with 1,440 x 2,880px resolution. For the competition, SA gathered what it considered the leading phones on the market. Here's the roster below. Note that the testing was done between August 21 and 23 so the Galaxy Note9 was not available yet. Sony Xperia XZ3 • Samsung Galaxy S9 • Apple iPhone X Sony Xperia XZ2 • LG V30 • Huawei P20 Here's what the 202 consumers that participated saw. The devices were concealed to eliminate...

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HTC U12 life hands-on review

The U12 Life, which is HTC's fancy way of denoting its lite devices, lives up to its name. It is a solid mid-ranger, equipped just well enough to go against some current popular competitors from the likes of Xiaomi or Nokia.

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Oppo F9 Pro now on sale in India in various online and offline stores

Oppo released its gorgeous mid-ranger, the F9 as the F9 Pro in India just last week. Pre-orders started the minute the device was announced and today the smartphone can be found in online and offline stores. Unlike some smartphones from the company, the F9 Pro can be found in more than one retailer - Amazon India, Flipkart and PayTM Mall. All prices seem leveled off and just to remind you, the handset ships with only one storage configuration - 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage while color variants are Sunrise Red and Twilight Blue. The asking price is INR 23,990 ($338) and all the online...

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Huawei has shipped more than 20 million handsets from the P20 and Mate 10 series

Huawei just announced its next-generation HiSilicon Kirin 980 chipset along with new P20 and P20 Pro color variants and AI Cube smarts speaker and GPS Locator. Yes, we know it's not the most exciting keynote although, the chipset makes it worthwhile to some extent. On stage, Richard Yu, an executive director and CEO of the Huawei Consumer Business group, took the time to boast about the successful P20 and Mate 10 series launch at the beginning of 2018. He revealed that both flagship lineups exceeded the 10 million shipments mark worldwide. Yet, the P20-series milestone is a bit more...

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Qualcomm announces aptX Adaptive; plans to get rid of wired headphones

IFA 2018 announcements are already rolling and Qualcomm joined the party. The San Diego company has just introduced the aptX codec for Bluetooth audio with Adaptive sound. The company introduced the platform with a promise for a robust, hi-res and glitch-free listening experience. The aptX Adaptive standard is designed to adjust depending on the content - be it gaming, video streaming or simply listening to your favorite songs on Spotify or any other music platform. It has simplified UI without extra gimmicky features and configurations. The new aptX version will bring easy...

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Huawei Mate 20 Lite hands-on review

Huawei has been great at bringing the premium features from its flagships to its mid-rangers. The Huawei Mate 20 Lite is practically dripping with AI functions and assists, most of which are photography-related.

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It's official, Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro will be unveiled in London on Oct 16

During a keynote at the IFA show in Berlin, Huawei has confirmed that the Mate 20 series will be unveiled at a special event in London on October 16. Amusingly, Huawei has branded the Mate 20 as the first smartphone powered by the newly-announced Kirin 980. The Kirin 980 is no joke - it's the world's first 7nm chipset The Mate 20 series will consist of the Mate 20, Mate 20 Pro (perhaps a Mate 20 Porsche Design) and the Mate 20 Lite, which was announced last week. The Mate 20 will feature a 6.3-inch AMOLED screen with a water drop notch, triple cameras, 4,200mAh battery, Wireless...

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Hands-on with Huawei's AI Cube smart speaker and GPS Locator

Although not really a cube, Huawei's AI Cube smart speaker is an interesting addition to the company's portfolio and an unexpected one. According to analysts, the smart speaker market will reach 220 million in 2020, so Huawei wants to get into the action with a solution of its own. Just like all AI speakers, the AI Cube offers a smart assistant to take care of things you can't be bothered with by using your smartphone or PC. To our surprise, it's not Google's Assistant, but instead, the Chinese tech giant decided to partner with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant. To our question why...

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Huawei announces four new P20 Pro colors - we go hands-on

Huawei P20 Pro was announced back in March during a glamorous event in Paris. When we reviewed the phone, we said it is the Huawei smartphone with the most complete package to date. After four months of heavy usage, we came out with the long-term review and the initial wow effect from the performance was gone. The Twilight color option was the key feature that relentlessly stayed with us. Huawei knows the design is a defining feature among flagships now and decided to introduce four new eye-grabbing color options at IFA 2018, two of them with leather texture. Yes, you read that right - the...

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HiSilicon Kirin 980 is the world's first 7nm chipset, 37% faster than its predecessor

As per tradition, Huawei just announced its high-performance flagship SoC at this year's IFA in Berlin - the HiSilicon Kirin 980 that's expected to power up the upcoming Mate 20-series. The key selling point of is that it's world's first 7nm-based chip (manufactured by TSMC) promising plenty of power and efficiency gains over its predecessor and over the 10nm chipsets by the competition. The Kirin 980 uses an 8-core CPU design with 2x high-performance Cortex-A76 cores and 2x "power-efficient" Cortex-A76 cores. We assume those two power-efficient Cortex-A76 cores are clocked lower than...

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ZTE nubia wants to slap a smartphone on your wrist

ZTE's sub-brand nubia has showcased a smart bracelet with a curved screen that's so big, you can easily say that it's a smartphone on your wrist. The device is called nubia-α and according to the teaser video, it can do pretty much everything a normal handset could. Remember when Lenovo introduced a flexible wrist phone some time ago? It seems like ZTE beat it to the punch and we are not talking about a concept here - the Chinese firm plans to release a ready product as early as next quarter. The video shows a flexible OLED screen, cellular connectivity, apps (probably Android)...

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Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro to come with Snapdragon 660 in India

Xiaomi launched its Redmi 5 series back in December 2017 and the Redmi Note 5 Pro made its way to India by February. In five days the country will finally get to see the next iteration of the affordable Redmi series, and one of the phones might be the Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro. The Note variants aren't announced yet, but already appeared at numerous listings, including the EEC. Information coming from Weibo suggests the Redmi Note 6 Pro will make its way to India and will be powered by a Snapdragon 660 chipset. Screenshot of the taken down post The post, albeit already deleted,...

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Honor Play review

The alluring but always elusive gaming smartphone - many have tried to build it, even Razer, but no one did it perfectly. Now, Honor is also joining the gaming race but with a new concept. Instead of greatness, the new Honor Play is pursuing affordability. And that's a very welcome turn of events.

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Motorola quietly unveils its first Android One handsets - the one and one power

The motorola one and one power (apparently with no capital letters) have been leaking all over the web for the past few months and some of the recent reports even suggested that the newly launched Motorola P30 for the Chinese market is actually the motorola one for the global market. There's also plenty of evidence that the P30 Note equals to the motorola one power but today's quiet announcement from the company is here to debunk those myths. It appears that the motorola one and one power are entirely new devices even though they share similar design and hardware with their Chinese...

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Motorola quetly unveils its first Android Go handsets - the one and one power

The motorola one and one power (apparently with no capital letters) have been leaking all over the web for the past few months and some of the recent reports even suggested that the newly launched Motorola P30 for the Chinese market is actually the motorola one for the global market. There's also plenty of evidence that the P30 Note equals to the motorola one power but today's quiet announcement from the company is here to debunk those myths. It appears that the motorola one and one power are entirely new devices even though they share similar design and hardware with their Chinese...

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Meizu 16X passes by TENAA with Snapdragon 710

Meizu 16 was unveiled last month along with a Meizu 16 Plus, but the company CEO promised a more affordable device with Snapdragon 710 that will be called Meizu 16X. The phone now appeared with a model number M872Q at TENAA, revealing its front and back, along with all the specs. Meizu 16X on TENAA Since the Meizu 16 Plus was initially called M892Q and the vanilla Meizu 16 was M882Q, it is pretty safe to consider this phone as the Meizu 16X. We are also sure this is the Qualcomm platform since only the 710 has cores that clock up to 2.2 GHz. Meizu is one of the last...

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