Androidifying

Historically speaking, Huawei hasn’t been the best with updates, taking well over a year to bring the Huawei Mate 7 over to Lollipop. Thankfully, in recent times they’ve gotten a lot more responsive when it comes to updates. If a newly leaked ROM is any indication, Huawei’s future update timeliness is only going to get better. Thanks to a user over at XDA, a leaked beta build of Android Nougat has now arrived for the Huawei P9. Ordinarily, it might seem a bit early for a new version of Android to leak with so much time left until the official release. But back in April, Google revealed that its Nexus family wouldn’t be the only devices to get a preview build of Android Nougat and announced that Sony’s Xperia Z3 would receive it as well. Going by the posts over at XDA, as well as YouTube evidence, it looks like Huawei is working with a preview build of Nougat because the leaked files updates the handsets’ stock ROMs instead of flashing it in full. That lines up with what Google a

As we reported yesterday, Sony plans to sell off the majority of its once innovative but now resource draining battery division. We also reiterated that Sony’s CEO had essentially given Sony Mobile until the end of 2016 to return to profitability or face the same ignominious fate. While many argued that the Xperia X series was not the right way to get there, Sony has just pulled a rabbit out of its hat. In the company’s Q2 earnings statement, Sony Mobile has miraculously turned a profit. See also: Sony Xperia X Performance review – is it worth $700? 85 That’s not due to the Xperia X, XA and X Performance flying off shelves though. It’s more directly attributable to Sony’s intense and far-reaching streamlining, cost-cutting and efficiency improving efforts. That and a favorable exchange rate which actually contributed ¥ 4.4 billion to the company’s bottom line. That alone is more than 10 times greater than the ¥ 0.4 billion Sony Mobile made. In fact, sales are down a massive 33.

Samsung continues to expand their smartphone portfolio with yet another entry-level offering with the Samsung Galaxy On5 (2016). While the exact date of its release its still unknown, this device has just been approved by the US telecom regulatory agency FCC , which means that it should be making its way to consumers soon. Last month, the entry-level smartphone from Samsung had showed up on Zauba, a website tracking India’s imports and exports. The Galaxy On5 (2016) was later spotted at GeekBench bearing the model number SM-G570F, which pretty much confirmed that it was a successor to the original Galaxy On5 that was released last October, the model number of which is SM-G5500. The GeekBench listing revealed that the Galaxy On5 (2016) would be powered by a 1.4 GHz quad-core Exynos 7570 processor, paired with 2GB RAM, and run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. The handset achieved a single-core score of 646 points and a multi-core score of 2,000 points in the Geekbench performance testing.

If you own a Xiaomi device, you must be sore at the fact that none of the currently available virtual reality (VR) headsets are optimized for MIUI. The Chinese powerhouse is about to fix that by launching its first-ever VR headset on August 1, going by the company’s latest teasers. Xiaomi is well-known for its aggressively-priced smartphones and wearables, but most consumers are unaware that it also offers IoT and smart home automation products, such as air-conditioners and bedside lamps, in China. With VR becoming the buzzword in the consumer tech industry, Xiaomi was also expected to soon jump on the bandwagon. Cheap Google Cardboard-inspired devices, as well as highly expensive VR headsets such as the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift , have already arrived in the market, though none of them are optimized to work with Xiaomi’s devices which run the MIUI. Xiaomi in video: Xiaomi Mi Max Review Xiaomi Mi 4S Review! Xiaomi Mi 5 Review! Xiaomi Redmi 3 Review Xia

The Galaxy Note 7 leak fest is starting to approach HTC levels, but we won’t complain. Not only has a swathe of new renders appeared, but we now have a full specs list and our first glimpse of the new Gear VR from Steve Hemmerstoffer (aka @OnLeaks). See also: Galaxy Note 7 wallpapers leak: download them here 52 First up, the Galaxy Note 7 specs include a 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED display, an octa-core chipset clocked at 2.3 GHz (which many are claiming is the Exynos 8890 used in the Galaxy S7 ), 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB ROM with microSD expansion, 12 MP f/1.7 camera with OIS and 4K video, 5 MP front-facing camera, 3,500 mAh battery, USB Type-C and of course that iris scanner. The device measures 153.5mm x 73.9mm x 7.9 mm and weighs 168 grams. If these specs are sounding a little familiar, that’s because they’re basically a Galaxy S7 Edge with a slightly larger screen (and a smaller battery). We know Samsung wants to reduce the perceptual problem of the Note series having a larger nu

Imagine a huge market – say, the smartphone market – reaching saturation point, slowly plateauing and then stagnating. Then imagine some revolutionary new phone comes along that miraculously kick-starts the market, sending it skyrocketing once again. While that might be a difficult future to imagine, we may have just witnessed something similar in the games industry thanks to Pokémon GO . See also: The best Android games of 2016 177 In a new report from market analysts Frost & Sullivan, Pokémon GO is essentially credited with near single-handedly revitalizing a stagnating global gaming market. In effect, all hopes for the future of the mobile market are pinned on not just the game itself, but what it represents: a massively successful proof-of-concept for location-based and AR games. The report is pretty depressing reading for anyone interested in gaming, painting a bleak picture of a market flooded with poorly performing games amidst declining smartphone shipments. The repo

Huawei Technologies is one of the world’s largest telecommunications equipment supplier. They plan to sell a record 140 million smartphones this year, with a greater focus on premium-priced models. In order to hit their targets, they plan to open 15,000 new retail stores around the world. “ We are optimistic and confident about reaching our target shipment of 140 million smartphones this year, ” Richard Yu Chengdong, the chief executive of Huawei’s consumer business group, said on Tuesday in Shenzhen. They sold 108 million units last year, and the latest planned surge will give them an extra 30 percent this year. There may have been an economic slowdown in the world, but Huawei still stands strong and in fact, Yu remains enthusiastic about growth. He continued by saying: “[The number of stores) is far from enough. We are going to open more retail stores overseas” Huawei already has 35,000 stores around the world with 11,000 in China, 6,500 spread around Asia, 6,200 in Europe