Androidifying

If Sony’s Xperia Z5 color line-up isn’t quite bold enough for your style, then you might be happy to learn that a Pink version of the handset is on the way in late January, at least as far as Taiwan is concerned. According to local media, the pink variant of the Xperia Z5 will be an exclusive to Chunghwa Telecom in the country. The arrival of the phone will conveniently coincide with the Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day. This isn’t the first time that Sony will have offered an exclusive color option to a retailer, but these partnerships typically tend to expire after a little while and we may see the Pink model appear in different regions too. The Purple Xperia Z3 was available in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the UK back in January 2015, so we may be looking at a similar deal with the Xperia Z5 this time around. Read more: Sony Xperia Z5 review 114 We don’t have any official details or pictures yet, but the mock ups below should give you a good idea of what a pink Z5 would look l

Qualcomm and its Snapdragon series of chips may be best known for powering a huge number of smartphones, but the processor giant has recently set its sights on a new market – flying drones . To help showcase that its new Snapdragon Flight platform can do, Qualcomm has released a new video, complete with a rather intense voice over and backing track. In the video, Qualcomm gives mention to a few useful bits of technology that can be achieved with its Snapdragon Flight development platform. Autonomous flight, motion planning, and obstacle mapping can all be programmed and used via the drone’s built-in sensors and cameras. For a quick recap, the Snapdragon Flight board is built from a Snapdragon 801 processor, dual-band 2×2 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and GNSS location chips, Quick Charge technology to power up the batteries, and dual camera support with 4K video. See also: Qualcomm mobile SoCs take to the skies with Snapdragon Flight 3 Speaking of which, Qualcomm also expect

Update, December 31: Many of the games below will return to their regular prices from tomorrow (though some publisher may continue the discounts). Last chance! Original post:  Looks like Santa swung by the Play Store for an early delivery. Whether you were naughty or nice, help yourself with gifts in the form of big discounts on some of the best Android games you can buy. Action, adventure, RPG, strategy, combat… the Android games sales going on right on the Play Store cover most of the genre spectrum and include a bunch of blockbuster titles. Here’s a non-final list that we’ll update with more game sales as we find them. Update #4: here are a bunch of other cool games on sale right now: Alien Breed Superfrog HD Flockers Worms 2: Armageddon Samurai II: Vengeance SHADOWGUN The Great Fusion Pure Pool Half-Life 2 Half-Life 2: Episode One Half-Life 2: Episode Two Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions   Castle of Illusion Xenowerk SPACECOM Splendor Deep Under the Sky Civi

Preemptive multitasking was first implemented in the late 1960s. In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. (Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). Although many dared to do mighty deeds, it was sadly a different era. There was but just one CPU, multi-core processors didn’t exist and the idea that the operating system needed to take into account the amount of energy available was but a twinkle in some clever engineer’s eye. Zoom forward several decades and we live in an age where mobile phones have more computing power than NASA used to go to the moon, processors are multi-core, and the scheduler now needs to consider battery life. In 2014 ARM released a new piece of tech for the Linux kernel called Intelligent Power Allocation (IPA). Keeping a SoC at its nominal operating temperatures is essential for fanless desig

The BlackBerry Priv has been available to purchase in the US for a little while now, but between BlackBerry’s own website, Walmart and AT&T, the choice of shops is a little on the slim side. Fortunately, the smartphone appears to be on its way to T-Mobile in the New Year. According to an official looking calendar taken from T-Mobile, the BlackBerry Priv will be available from the carrier on January 26 th . The listing notes the launch of the “BlackBerry Venice”, which was the old codename for the Priv. T-Mobile has been rather quiet about its plans for the BlackBerry Priv. The last we heard from the company was back at the launch in November, when the carrier was apparently in talks with BlackBerry about the phone. Rival Verizon has been similarly silent, although its version of the Priv recently passed through the FCC, so a release could be nearing. See also: BlackBerry Priv review 46 Although we don’t have any official details from T-Mobile yet, the phone may arrive at t

Revision3 Remember Carrier IQ ? Yes, we are talking about that spawn of the devil that flooded your news feed and terrorized the whole tech industry back in 2011. The software pretty much tracked every single thing you did with your smartphone. Literally… every single thing. See also: How to Remove Carrier IQ on an Android Device 12 It was havoc. The whole point was that it was meant to provide feedback for companies to be able to improve services and cater to your needs in a more efficient manner, but this was discovered in a time when privacy was a very hot topic. Carriers and phone makers decided to listen to their costumers and were quick to remove the software from their phones . Fast-forward to 2014 and Carrier IQ finds itself finally settling the privacy violation lawsuit . But what is to be of Carrier IQ’s future? We would guess there is not much of it, but AT&T seems to have plans for whatever is left. The US carrier has just acquired Carrier IQ’s assets and recru

A coy little teaser has been spotted on Nubia’s Weibo site. The ZTE subsidiary is hinting that their 2016 flagship smartphone will be unveiled soon. With CES just around the corner in Las Vegas, there’s little doubt that we can expect to see the Nubia Z11 on January 5 – right before the ball gets rolling at the electronics showcase. We don’t have any firm details on the Nubia Z11 just yet. However, the rumor mill has provided us with some pretty high-possibility specifications. 5.2-inch QHD res displays are becoming more and more popular, and we’d be surprised if the Z11 wasn’t sporting one. Snapdragon 820 is going to be par for the course for 2016 flagships, so we’re expecting to see that too. We’ve got our fingers crossed for a metal body encasing 4 gigs of RAM and a quad-core CPU. There is speculation that the Z11 will come with a 13 MP selfie snapper and a sharper 20.7 MP main camera. As is becoming the norm, we should see three different variations in terms of storage space: 32