Androidifying

Xiaomi probably surprised a number of its home-grown fans in China when it announced that its new Mi 4i would be heading to India first , but such is the company’s focus on the fast growing Indian market. However, it looks like Chinese customers are in for a new low cost device of their own called the Mi 4c, complete with some beefed up specifications. A picture from China of the back of the box has given away pretty much all of the specifications for the Mi 4c, which appears similar to the Mi 4i in many regards. There’s the same 13 megapixel rear camera, 5 megapixel front camera, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and similar 3,080mAh battery as the Indian handset. However, the Xiaomi Mi 4c is expected to ship with a high performance Snapdragon 808 SoC, the same chip found in the LG G4. This SoC features two high power Cortex-A57 CPU cores, four lower power A53 cores and an Adreno 418 GPU. For comparison, the Mi 4i ships with an octa-core Snapdragon 615 SoC, which is built sole

Teasers for a new Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch have been coming thick and fast this month and today we can bring you another set of leaked pictures of the second generation wearable, courtesy of @Upleaks . Furthermore, the prolific leakster suggests that a Sport version of the smartwatch is in the works too. moto 360(2nd gen) and moto 360 Sport. http://pic.twitter.com/xKtUOiOqvP — upleaks (@upleaks) August 31, 2015 The pictures of the Moto 360 (2 nd gen) match up with the previous leaks, showing off a metal build and a variety of leather and metal straps. There also appears to be a third rose gold color option, which wasn’t mentioned alongside the silver and black options that leaked yesterday. The Moto 360 Sport appears to swap out these materials for a plastic case which doesn’t look to offer changeable straps. We don’t have any specifications at this point, but this seems to suggest a waterproof case of some sort, which is pretty much a requirement for a sports wearable.

T-Mobile’s John Legere has published an open letter to its consumers, informing them about upcoming action to be taken against individuals who have been “stealing data from T-Mobile”. While that might sound a little odd, the company is actually planning to target customers who have been abusing its unlimited data plans, by consuming as much as 2 terabytes of tethered data each month. According to Legere, only a small fraction of consumers are abusing the rules. They have apparently been doing so by concealing tethered connections in an attempt to use high-speed LTE data as an alternative to a traditional broadband. Mobile bandwidth is a more limited resource, so these high consumption users are hogging resources that should be spread across a wider selection of T-Mobile customers. “These aren’t naive amateurs; they are clever hackers who are willfully stealing for their own selfish gain. It’s a small group – 1/100 of a percent of our 59 million customers – but some of them are usi

Over the past few years, the mid-range smartphone market has changed dramatically all over the world. With the specification wars raging on in full force, major handset manufacturers are constantly competing with each other for the top spot in the premium market segment. This comes at a price, though. Certain devices from major OEMs can cost upwards of $900 unlocked, but recently, it seems as though consumers aren’t willing to pay as much as they used to. For those of us who aren’t willing to pay almost $1,000 for a smartphone, what are our options? The mid-range market has been growing over the years, sure, though it’s been proven quite difficult to penetrate. Unlike Motorola’s Moto G , which has arguably found the winning formula for great performance in the low-end market, mid-range devices haven’t quite hit their stride yet. It seems like many OEMs have been trying to find the correct balance between high-end specs and a low price point, but none have really produced too many me

It has been almost two months since Samsung first began rolling out an Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update for its Galaxy Note 4 smartphone in Russia , but today a similar update is now rolling out across all of Europe. The build, version number N910FXXU1COH4, originally hit handsets in Sweden, Austria and Italy via over-the-air updates last weekend, but the firmware has since made its way to Samsung’s KIES software tool for other customers to download. We could also see OTA updates appear in more countries across the continent in the next few days, if you don’t fancy messing around with Samsung’s application. As well as bringing the handset up to the latest Android 5.1.1 version, and the small tweaks that entails, the update is also said to improve the performance and stability of software on the Note 4. The same Android Lollipop update for the handset has also previously landed in the US through carrier Sprint . If you haven’t spotted the update OTA or through KIES, you can also down

A series of hands-on images and specs about Sony’s  upcoming trio of smartphones – Xperia Z5, Z5 Compact, and Z5 Premium – leaked yesterday , and now what appears to be the original source of the info has surfaced. A video from French website Clubic shows a hands-on demo of the Xperia Z5 Premium and Xperia Z5 , conducted by a marketing executive of Sony France. It appears that the video of the pre-briefing was published accidentally ahead of the expected launch of the devices on Wednesday –  the version embedded above was somehow bootlegged and reuploaded on YouTube. The most interesting aspect of the French-language video is the apparent confirmation of the 4K display for the Xperia Z5 Premium. Despite our strong reservations, it appears that Sony is indeed pushing the envelope of display technology with a 4K resolution on a 5.5-inch LCD panel. The Sony representative leaves no room for interpretation, calling the device “world’s first 4K smartphone.” That confirms the faint ru

One of the most popular smartphone processors at the moment is the Samsung Exynos 7420, mainly because it is the processor used by Samsung for its current range of high-end devices including the Samsung Galaxy S6, the Samsung Galaxy S6+ Edge, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 5. The Exynos 7420 is an octa-core processor which means it has 8 CPU cores, each of which is capable of running a task in parallel with other tasks running on the other cores. With 8 cores and the possibility to run 8 tasks in parallel, it is important to understand what level of parallelization is offered by this high performance CPU. Recap Earlier this year I wrote two in-depth articles about the nature of multiprocessing on Android and specifically on ARM based CPUs. The first article debunked the myth that Android apps only use one CPU core , while the second looked at  how the Samsung Galaxy S6 uses its octa-core processor . Both bits of research showed how Android utilizes the parallel (multi-core) nature of