Third-party iOS keyboard from Google reportedly in the works

According to a latest report from The Verge, search giant Google is developing a third-party keyboard for rival Apple's iOS platform. The project has been going on for months now, the report notes, however adding that there's currently no clarity on if and when Google plans to launch the product.

As for the features, the keyboard is said to incorporate gesture-based typing as well as picture and GIF searches through dedicated buttons. In addition, there'll also be a Google logo tapping on which will give you access to traditional web search.

The keyboard - which the report says is visually different from Google's offering on Android - is said to be already being internally tested by the Mountain View, California-based company's employees.

BlackBerry Passport gets price cut in the US

The BlackBerry Passport smartphone has received a decent price cut in the US, where it is now officially being sold at 20% discount. The deal is available on the black, white, and silver variants of the smartphone.

While both black and white models are now available for about $399, down from their regular price of $499, the silver version will currently set you back around $439, down from its usual price of $549. The units on offer are unlocked, and are not compatible on Verizon, Sprint, US Cellular.

In addition, BlackBerry is also offering a 30% discount on phone accessories - head to theSource link below to learn more about the deal.

New 9.7-inch iPad Pro comes with underclocked A9X chipset

Yesterday Apple took the wraps off the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro, and during the announcement it said the tablet sports the same A9X chipset as the 12.9-inch iPad Pro launched last year.

However, in the meantime a pretty big caveat has emerged for this information. See, while the two tablets do share the SoC, the A9X in the smaller 9.7" model comes with both an underclocked CPU and an underclocked GPU compared to the iPad Pro 12.9.

This is made clear from the quick comparison you can see in the image below, which is now available on Apple's website. While the company never likes to publish actual clock speeds for its chipsets, the difference here is clear. It jumps out when you see that the iPad Pro 12.9 has a 2.5x faster CPU compared to the one in an A7 chip, while the 9.7-inch device only gets a 2.4x faster processor.

The situation is even worse for the smaller iPad Pro in the GPU department. The 12.9-inch tablet has 5 times faster graphics than the A7, but the GPU in the 9.7-inch units is just 4.3 times better than the one in the A7.

If we were to speculate, we'd assume this has something to do with keeping things cool inside the iPad Pro 9.7's smaller chassis. There's less surface area to dissipate heat, so less heat has to be produced - or something along those lines.

Still, it's not all bad for the 9.7 incher compared to its bigger brother. The new iPad Pro has the True Tone display, which adjusts colors to the current environment, and a 12 MP main camera with LED flash (a first for an Apple tablet). Then again, the 12.9-inch model has faster data transfer and charging because its Lightning port is based on the USB 3 spec, while the 9.7-inch iPad Pro has one that uses USB 2. So you win some you lose some, no matter which of these slates you go with.

Google Photos now shows you automatically created albums after an event or trip

Google's Photos service keeps receiving update after update. The latest one is rolling out starting today on the website as well as through its Android and iOS apps.

It's all about smart album creation, this one. After an event or trip, Google Photos will show you an automatically created album of photos and videos you took. This is curated, containing just your best shots. It will also tell you how far you traveled, and place location pins on a map for you to remember where you've been.

Once you've received the album, you can add text captions to it, as well as turn on collaboration to let others add their own photos. What's more, the customization with maps, location pins, and text works for all albums, even those you manually create.

LG's Friends for the G5 get priced in the UK

Back at MWC in February, LG announced some "Friends" alongside its G5 smartphone. These LG Friends are either modular accessories for the G5 itself, or standalone gadgets that supposedly work best in conjunction with the G5.

Almost the full set of Friends has now been priced in the UK, courtesy of online retailer Clove. The LG Cam Plus is both a camera grip and an extended battery pack for the G5, and it will be sold for £69. You can already pre-order one, with shipping starting on April 8.

The LG Hi-Fi Plus (with B&O Play) is a DAC aimed at music enthusiasts, as it includes its own amp and headphone socket, which should mean it will provide much higher-quality sound than the G5's built-in system. This has been developed in cooperation with Bang&Olufsen, and it's on pre-order priced at £149. It too will be out on April 8.

The LG 360 Cam (pictured above) is designed with 360-degree videos in mind, as its name clearly implies. It has two 13 MP sensors and three directional microphones. You can upload the videos it creates to YouTube, or watch them using the LG 360 VR, of which more below. The LG 360 Cam costs £199.

Finally, the 360 VR is a VR headset as you'd expect, capable of playing back 360-degree videos. It uses a USB Type-C connection to hook up to your G5 smartphone. The LG 360 VR can be yours for £199. Availability details for the 360 Cam and 360 VR aren't known yet. As for the LG Rolling Bot, not even its price is official at this point, so we assume it's going to be a while before you can see it in stores.

NVIDIA's latest in professional graphics is a 24GB Quadro M6000

Yes, you read that correctly, it has 24GB of video memory and yes, it can run Crysis, but that would be a criminal misuse of resources. The Quadro M6000 is is one of a number of current professional-grade GPU offers from the US titan and it now has a new mid-cycle upgrade, the main aspect of which is doubling the available RAM. This gives the card a neck up compared to AMD's 12GB FirePro W9100 champion, although it might be short lived, as the latter has a theoretical maximum memory of 32 GB yet to fill up.

This massive bump in memory is truly impressive, but was also expected. Back in September last year, when the original M6000 was first launched with 12GB of GDDR5 RAM, it was already clear that the GM200 processor has a theoretical maximum of 24GB that was bound to be reached at some point. This is exactly what NVIDIA has done now thanks to high density GDDR5 memory chips. The other notable addition to the upgraded M6000 are some new clock and temperature controls, for improved granular control over performance and throttling in high-end professional setups.

More discrete GPU clock options for a better customer experience when running their application... Greater software temperature control to keep the GPU temperature below the hardware slowdown threshold for the best user experience.

And if you are still scratching your head and wondering if this relates to you or why your desktop GPU seems to be lagging so far behind - we are talking about strictly professional hardware utilized by companies like Sony Pictures Imageworks to produce amazing high-quality CGI. For them and any other company using NVIDIA's product stack, the new 24GB M6000 will be a drop-in replacement and a welcome sight, well worth its massive $5000 price tag.

As for any plausible use cases outside such an environment, we really can't imagine even the most hardcore enthusiast could put the massive 250W, 1140 Mhz card to good use.

HTC 10 will be unveiled on April 12

After literally dozens of leaks about it, the HTC 10 is finally set to become official next month. The Taiwanese smartphone company has used its Twitter account to unveil that the big announcement will happen on April 12 (one day later than rumored).

It seems like you'll be able to watch a video stream of the introduction online on the HTC website. What isn't very clear is whether the event will be online-only, or if HTC has planned something offline as well in the three cities mentioned in the image you can see below.

If there's going to be a media event taking place somewhere in New York, London, and Taipei, then we'll surely hear more about that once the company starts sending out invites.

Expect HTC's teaser campaign for the 10 to continue until April 12, even though we already know pretty much everything about the device through past leaks, from what it looks like to its specs.

LG K4 Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 version appears in Canada

The LG K4 is the company's entry-level model from the K-series, a lineup targeting budget conscious buyers. For all we knew, the smartphone was equipped with the Mediatek MT6735M chipset, but apparently that's region-dependent, as a new version has emerged in Canada.

Carrier Wind Mobile has listed the K4 sporting a quad-core 1.1GHz Cortex-A7 CPU, as opposed to the 1.0GHz Cortex-A53 inside the Mediatek. That led us to check LG's Canadian website, which does indeed say "1.1GHz Quad" in the processor field of the specs. The device's model number is LGK121, while previously available versions were labeled K120E and K130E.

Now, neither the carrier, nor LG Canada explicitly quote the Snapdragon 210, but the CPU and market position make it the the obvious suspect. The other specs remain unchanged - the LG K4 still features a 4.5-inch display with 480 x 854 pixels resolution, single gig of RAM and 8GB of storage.

watchOS 2.2 now available for download, makes switching between devices a breeze

watchOS 2.2 is now available for download. Owners of the Apple Watch can update with the latest software version, which makes switching between watches easier than before. Up until now, users with more than one watch had to unpair and then pair again with the other one. Now, the procedure is more streamlined.

Apple also updated the Maps app on the Watch. Launching it now gives you a menu screen with shortcuts buttons, similarly to Google Maps.

Another change is support for system language in Catalan, Croatian, Sloval, Romanian and Ukranian. There's also new support for dictation in Catalan, Croatian, Sloval, Romanian and Ukranian.

The last slight change is the increased frequency of background heart rate measurements when you're stationary.

You can download the watchOS 2.2 right away from the Watch app on the iPhone.

You can pre-order the deca-core ZOPO Speed 8 for $279.99

Remember the ZOPO Speed 8 from this year's MWC? If you do, then you must be into trivia as the Chinese handset is definitely memorable for one particular reason - being the first official deca-core smartphone. Don't get us wrong, we are not saying the Speed 8 doesn't have any other qualities going for it, but the MediaTek Helio X20 is undoubtedly the attention-grabber in the mix.

Today the ZOPO has officially started its pre-order and initial shipping schedule, along with a $20 price discount. Luckily, to get the deal, you don't even have to rush all that much. Pre-orders will kick-off on March 28 and last for a whole month up until April 28. If you order within the period, you can pick up the phone at $279.99. It is also worth noting that pre-orders seem to be available already, only without the $20 discount.

The first units should start shipping right after that and the Speed 8 will return its regular price of $299.99. As for the rest of the specs on the model, you get a 5.5-inch FullHD display, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, all powered by a quite spacious 3600 mAh battery. Its camera setup consists of a 21MP main camera with a Sony IMX230 sensor, a dual-tone LED flash, and an 8MP selfie shooter. There is also a round fingerprint scanner on the back, and the USB port is of the new Type-C variety.

iPhone SE: 2GB of RAM, old TouchID and selfie cam

So, the new Apple iPhone SE went official yesterday and it's very much an iPhone 6s internals in a 5s body. Well, almost...

As you've probably heard, the SE will not support Force Touch, but on the upside, AnTuTu detected 2GB of RAM - as much as the 6s has and double what the 6 and those before it had.

AnTuTu shows 2GB of RAM on the iPhone SE

For one, the Touch ID sensor is the slower first-generation, unlike the 6s models (first-gen was also used on the iPhone 6).

Another change is the selfie camera - it's back to 1.2MP with f/2.4. That means it's the iPhone 5 selfie camera, the 5s went to f/2.2 and the 6s upped the resolution to 5MP. Retina flash is available, though (yay?).

The iPhone SE uses the M9 motion co-processor but lacks a barometer. This was used for activity tracking as a power-efficient way to estimate how much you've climbed (going up the stairs, for example, before that the GPS was used).

Apple to launch the iPhone SE in India on April 8

Apple will begin selling the new iPhone SE in India starting April 8, according to Redington India. The phone will be sold through 3000 retail outlets across the country.

Apple previously announced that India will be among the second wave of countries to get the iPhone SE in "early April". The company also issued a press release stating the phone will be priced at INR 39,000 ($584) for the 16GB model.

Other than India, Albania, Andorra, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Guernsey, Jersey, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Maldives, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and UAE will also be getting the phone around that time.