Motorola sets event for May 17, likely to present the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus

Motorola has sent out press invites for its May 17 event in New Delhi. There, the company is expected to unveil the highly anticipated Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus. The Moto G (3rd gen) was announced in July 2015 making us even more certain the G4 duo will come to light.

According to rumors, the Moto G4 will feature a 5.5" display of 1080p resolution. The Snapdragon 410 chipset of the old Moto G will be replaced by an octa-core CPU according to hearsay. RAM is reportedly 2GB

The design of the phone is evolved from the previous generation and now has a metal-looking frame, although it's not yet confirmed. What we do know is that there's a fingerprint reader on the Moto G4 Plus.

Huawei Honor 5C is official with a Kirin 650 SoC and 5.2" FullHD display

The Honor 5C has just been made official in China. The latest from Huawei's sub-brand has a lot in common with the yet unannounced P9 lite, for a price it's unlikely to match.

The specsheet starts with a 5.2-inch IPS LCD with FullHD resolution. An in-house Kirin 650 chipset does the number-crunching with an octa-core CPU (4xCortex-A53@2.0GHz + 4xCortex-A53@1.7GHz), paired with 2GB of RAM. Onboard storage is 16GB, expandable by up to 128GB.

Imaging is taken care by a 13MP primary shooter with an f/2.0 lens, aided in the dark by a single LED flash. On the front you get an 8MP cam with an f/2.0 aperture lens. There's also the now-mandatory fingerprint sensor on the device's back.

The Honor 5C has dual-SIM support and good all-round connectivity suite with multi-band 2G/3G and Cat.6 LTE (4G version only) for speeds up to 300Mbps down, and 50Mbps up. Bluetooth is v4.1, there's Wi-Fi b/g/n (no Wi-Fi ac), GPS, GLONASS and Beidou for satellite positioning and there's also an FM radio receiver.

The handset measures 147.1 x 73.8 x 8.3mm and weighs 156g, while packing a 3,000mAh battery - 9g more than the sleeker P9 lite for the same capacity. It also lacks the mini-flagship's Type-C connection and sticks to microUSB 2.0. The smartphone comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow on board, with a proprietary EMUI overlay on top, version 4.1 this time.

Available today in China, the Honor 5C costs CNY 899 ($139) for the 3G-only model, while 4G-enabled versions command a CNY 100 premium. Global availability remains to be detailed.

Samsung says Gear VR users have already consumed over 2 million hours of VR content

Samsung has revealed that users of its Gear VR headset have already consumed more than 2 million hours of virtual reality content thus far. The revelation was made by John Pleasants, the company's executive VP of Media Solutions, at SDC 2016.

If you calculate, that translates into over 228 years of continuous watching. And given that Samsung is one of the many players in the market, it does give an idea about the kind of interest consumers are having in the VR space.

This comes just a day after the South Korean company confirmed that it's working on a standalone virtual reality headset - one that doesn't rely on a smartphone, PC, or a gaming console to function.

Update to Apple Music for Android brings music video support

Apple has updated its Apple Music app on Android, bumping it to version 0.9.8. The update brings support for music videos as well as family subscription option.

"You can now enjoy thousands of music videos on Apple Music—view popular ones featured in New or search for the music videos from your favorite artists," the Cupertino-based company says in the change-log.

As for the Family Membership, it costs around $15 a month and allows up to six members of a family to enjoy the streaming music service together.

BBM for Android gains beta video chat support, coming soon to iOS

The latest update of BBM for Android, which should already be out in the Play Store, brings with it a much-requested feature: video chats. BBM has had support for video calls on BlackBerry OS 10, but this is now finally making its way to the two big mobile platforms - a release for iOS is apparently coming soon.

Over in the Android app, the video chat functionality is still in beta, and marked as such. Hence, some hiccups may occur. Also, to make sure nothing will break with its backend infrastructure, BlackBerry is currently limiting the rollout of the new feature to the US and Canada. All the kinks should be ironed out before the global rollout commences. That, by the way, is going to happen in July.

Until then, you can test video calling inside BBM (even cross-platform), but only in North America. It all works in a very simple manner - when you tap the icon to initiate a call with one of your contacts, the app will ask you if you want to make a voice call or a video call. You choose, and then you're connected. That's it. Obviously, for this to work the contact you want to video chat with also has to have the latest version of BBM.

Google Photos for Android receives new search bar, other useful additions

The Google Photos app for Android is in the process of receiving a new update today. Version 1.19 should already be available in the Google Play Store, and it comes with a few new features.

First off, there's now a dedicated search bar at the top of the app. This replaces the search floating action button that used to be found in the bottom right side of the app. The search bar lets you find things more easily, and if you tap on it and then scroll down you'll get a list of faces, places, and picture types from your library.

From this point on, you can customize the movies that Google Photos automatically creates for you. You can add your own music, images, and videos, in order to fine tune the movies that the app pops up after your holidays or trips.

Lastly, device folders you've created can be deleted or renamed. Managing photos on SD cards is also better, with support for adding folders, as well as copying and moving images. All of these features are coming soon to Google Photos for iOS.

HP's new Chromebook 13 is thin and made out of brushed aluminum

HP has unveiled a new Chromebook today. It's called HP Chromebook 13 and was apparently designed in partnership with Google. That kind of shows when you look at it, as its brushed aluminum construction and 12.9mm thinness pretty much scream "high-end".

That said, the Chromebook 13 is more of a Chromebook Pixel for the masses, as it starts at just $499. At that price you do get the looks, but only a measly Pentium processor.

If you can pay more, then you'll get a choice of Core m3, m5, or m7 CPU, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 3,200x1,800 resolution for the 13.3-inch non-touch display. HP quotes 11.5 hours of battery life, which is similar to what Apple's new MacBook achieves (and it too uses Intel's Core m).

The HP Chromebook 13 sports two USB Type-C ports, one plain old USB 3.0, a headphone jack, and a microSD card reader. It weighs 1.29kg. It will become available at some point in May, with pre-orders opening today.

Xiaomi smartwatch coming in H2 2016

Back in March last year, there were reports out of China that Xiaomi is working on its own smartwatch, although no availability details were revealed at that time. Then, there we rerumors that it will be unveiled at an event in November - that, we all know, didn't happen.

Now, for the first time, Xiaomi has confirmed the existence of the wearable device. The confirmation came from the company's co-founder and VP Liu De, who also revealed that the smartwatch will be made official in the second half of this year.

Sadly, he didn't reveal a specific launch date/month as well as any specs and pricing-related information. If you recall, previous rumors suggested a round dial and a brushed metal design. In addition, the watch is said to offer pulse wave velocity identification feature.

Samsung confirms it's working on standalone VR headset

At its ongoing developer conference, Samsung confirmed that it's working on a standalone virtual reality headset - one that doesn't rely on a smartphone, PC, or a gaming console to function.

Image credit: Shara Tibken/CNET

The confirmation came from the South Korean company's head of R&D, Injong Rhee, who said that the device will feature positional tracking. He also noted that features like hand and gesture tracking for the headset are currently being explored, and could be supported in the future.

The company's aim is to create a Star Trek-type holodeck. "You enter a holodeck, you're actually in a virtual world, interacting with all the virtual objects as if you're living there," Rhee said. "That's the kind of reality we're trying to create on these virtual-reality headsets."

It's worth mentioning that there have already been reports that Google is also developing a standalone VR headset.

IDC Q1 2016: Oppo and vivo replace Lenovo and Xiaomi in top-5 smartphone vendors list

Well known Chinese smartphone manufacturers Lenovo and Xiaomi are out of the top five vendors list, and have been replaced by two other - and comparatively lesser known - Chinese firms Oppo and vivo. This was revealed by market research firm IDC in its recently released Q1 2016 numbers.

"Along China's maturing smartphone adoption curve, the companies most aligned with growth are those with products serving increasingly sophisticated consumers," said IDC's said Melissa Chau. "Lenovo benefited with ASPs below US$150 in 2013, and Xiaomi picked up the mantle with ASPs below US$200 in 2014 and 2015. Now Huawei, OPPO, and vivo, which play mainly in the sub-US$250 range, are positioned for a strong 2016."

There was, however, no change in the first three spots, which were still claimed by Samsung, Apple, and Huawei, respectively. While the Chinese company continued with its impressive performance, Apple saw saw its first-ever y-o-y decline in the first quarter as volumes slipped to 51.2 million units. Samsung also witnessed a slight decline in its shipments.

Overall, a total of 334.9 million smartphones were shipped in the quarter, a slight increase from the 334.3 million figure reported in the year-ago quarter.

Google announces MODE bands for Android Wear

By far the best feature of the Apple Watch is the range of bands available for it, and the beautifully simple mechanism for attaching and removing them. Most Android Wear watches have nothing of the sort, with some not even offering the option to change bands.

Google wanted to do something about this, so the company has announced something called MODE bands. These are snap-and-swap watch bands that come in a variety of colors in leather and silicone. The main feature here is the attachment mechanism, which, like the Apple Watch, comes off with just the flick of a switch.

Considering the range of Android Wear watches available, Google knows you can't just make one design and expect them to work with all. So it has created a vendor playbook with instructions, requirements and brand guidelines. Other companies will have to use this to make their own MODE bands. It honestly doesn't sound particularly viable, and brings thisxkcd comic to mind. We will have to wait and see how well brands adopt this.

Samsung records better-than-expected Q1 growth thanks to Galaxy S7/S7 edge

Samsung has announced its Q1 2016 financial results, revealing a 5.7% increase in overall revenue and 12% increase in operating profit.

The figures stood at KRW 49.78 trillion ($43.46 billion) and KRW 6.68 trillion ($5.83 billion), respectively, ahead of the KRW 49 trillion ($43.3 billion) revenue and KRW 6.6 trillion ($5.7 billion) operating profit the company's earnings guidance had suggested.

"The first quarter saw overall earnings growth led by the early launch and successful sales of the flagship Galaxy S7 and S7 edge," the South Korean company said, while also attributing the growth to "improved memory product mix, expanded 14nm supply of System LSI products and increased sales of OLED panels."

Samsung's mobile division posted KRW 27.60 trillion ($24.12 billion) in consolidated revenue, up 6.6% year-on-year, and KRW 3.89 trillion ($3.4 billion) in operating profit, an year-on-year increase of 42%. This was the division's strongest performance in nearly a couple of years.

"As for the year ahead, Samsung anticipates softening demand in the smartphone market and negative growth in the tablet market," the company said, adding that it "will reinforce its leadership in the premium smartphone segment on the back of the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, while continuing to increase volume and improve profitability in the mid-to-low-end segment."