You can buy an Honor 5X for just $1, there’s a catch though

Honor wants to sell you the Honor 5X, a mid-range phone with flagship features, for only $1. The Honor 5X is already pretty cheap with its $200 price tag even at launch. Honor/Huawei is holding sales on every eighth minute of every hour starting at 10:08 this morning (Central Standard Timezone) until the last sale which starts at 21:08.

You have to be really quick to get this phone at just $1. I just tried to get it myself and found myself too late after just 15 seconds past 18:08. I refreshed the page and saw the “Add to cart” button. After I clicked it, I got a message that the item was out of stock. Apparently, Honor is only letting one phone go for $1 per hour for a total of 12 phones.

So if you think you are lucky enough to get one of these $1 phones in your cart, be our guest. If you get an order in, let us know in the comments. It’s a great little phone for the price. It’s not the snappiest phone around, but for $200 what more can you ask for?

Check out our review of the Honor 5X as well. It features a Snapdragon 616 CPU paired with 3GB of RAM, and a 5.5 inch 1080 screen powered by an Adreno 405 for graphics, which works great for most games like Cut the Rope, Candy Crush, Temple Run, and other concurrent games. It’s also sold in the US as a dualSIM handset with slots for two SIM cards and microSD expansion.

Car-sharing service launched by BMW in Seattle

Car-sharing, while still not widely popular, is on the rise. Services like Car2Go or ZipCar have proven that people have a desire for renting a car for shorter amounts of time. Things like free gas and insurance are great perks, especially when renting a car.

When renting a car in the traditional sense: one is responsible for gas and insurance in addition to the actual daily renter’s fee. Some drivers only want to rent a car for one or two trips. Car-sharing services prosper well in a place like New York City or San Fransisco, where apartment dwellers don’t even have driveways, it’s inconvenient to be responsible for parking a car overnight.

ReachNow is launching with a fleet of 370 cars which will give drivers a variety of Mini Cooper (2 or 4 door), BMW 3 Series, or fully electric i3 to drive around the city. These cars can be picked up and dropped off at anywhere within the city which offers pre-approved parking areas. Unlike ZipCar, which requires you to pick up and return the car at the same place, ReachNow will allow one-way rentals.

BMW says signing up for ReachNow only takes a few minutes and you can be driving away in a car in the same amount of time. All you need to do is find an available car with the app, unlock the car with your smartphone remotely, then start it up and drive away. Now if only Reach Now could bring its fleet of premium cars to New York.

Meizu Pro 6 will be announced on April 13 in Beijing

Following the recent appearance of the Meizu Pro 6, the company officially announced the phone will be revealed on April 13. The invite reveals the launch will be held in Beijing.

We'll know officially what the Pro 6 is all about. Going by rumors we are expecting a 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED touchscreen, a 21 MP rear camera, a 5 MP front-facing snapper, Samsung's Exynos 8890 chipset, 4 or 6GB of RAM, and a 3,500 mAh battery.

Just the other day Meizu announced the m3 note.

iPhone SE now available in India

Right on schedule, the iPhone SE is now available for purchase in India. The phone is available offline as well as online through Flipkart and Infibeam.

The iPhone SE is available in two variants; the 16GB is priced at INR 39,000 ($585) and the 64GB at INR 49,000 ($735). The phone is available in silver, space gray, gold, and rose gold.

The iPhone SE is the latest iPhone from Apple, that packs the hardware of the iPhone 6s into the smaller body of the iPhone 5s. You get the same 4-inch display but now with the faster A9 chip, 12 megapixel iSight camera with 4K video, Apple Pay, faster LTE and Wi-Fi, and improved battery life. It's the best compact high-end smartphone you can buy right now in India.

Galaxy S7 edge (Exynos) vs. iPhone 6s speedtest

In another round of head-to-head speed tests, the folks over at PhoneBuff have pitted the Exynos-powered Samsung Galaxy S7 edge against the Apple iPhone 6s Plus. The Galaxy S7 with a Snapdragon heart lost miserably the previous time around, but then the Snapdragon vs. Exynos test clearly showed the edge Samsung's chip has.

Well, apparently not enough to beat the iPhone 6s Plus. Apple's smartphone still manages to win the race, though the margin is much smaller this time. Additionally, the Galaxy S7 edge does a much better second lap compared to its first - returning to the apps, after they've been launched on the first go. Those 4GB of RAM certainly help.

Samsung IRIS CAM module spotted in import documents

Iris scanning technology has been a long-standing rumor with Samsung flagships. Going as far back as the Galaxy S5, numerous sources claimed that the technology is ready to ship with the Korean giant's next best thing. And, the statement has been reiterated ever since for almost every Galaxy S and Note models.

Now, in a new development, there might finally be some tangible evidence that Samsung is close to implementing iris technology. A tracking entry in Zauba indicates something called an IRIS CAM has been shipped from South Korea to India. This could be indicative that Samsung is already busy testing the technology in its local R&D department.

An optimistic but somewhat justifiable prediction is that the upcoming Galaxy Note 6 will be pioneering the new feature. Then again, we might be setting ourselves up for yet another disappointment, which seems to be becoming a tradition at this point.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 N910C gets Marshmallow

Android Marshmallow is seeding to the Exynos-powered version of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, with reports of the OTA arrival coming in from various parts of the world. So far, we've gotten tips from Poland, India and the US, and the screenshots below come from Turkey (though the device is running on a Polish ROM).

From what we gather, the firmware is in the whereabouts of 1.3GB (a little bit less than the Sprint Marshmallow build for the Note 4) and brings the OS version to 6.0.1. The users in the Turkish forum (source link below) report that the Screen off memo feature from the Note5 has been carried over to the Note 4 as well. And as you can see, the icons have gotten the same design as the ones on the latest Note.

We do have a Note 4 N910C at the office, but it is still on its trusty Lollipop 5.1.1, so we can't report first hand on the changes it brings. Hopefully, that'll change sometime soon.

Alcatel and TCL to launch Xess in US April 22 – the perfect kitchen accessory

We saw the Xess at CES back in January and it was called the Xess Slate, it seems like Alcatel dropped the Slate from the name and TCL, Alcatel’s parent company TCL, decided to put its own brand on it instead.

The Xess will launch in the US on April 22 for a price of $500. It is essentially a large tablet that is almost a touch PC. It acts as a control center for the home, in a way. The way it presents itself is more of a household appliance than a tablet for consuming media.

The Xess is powered by a 1.5 GHz Mediatek processor paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, expandable up to 64GB of additional storage. It has a Full HD 17.3 inch display and a 3 watt JBL dual-speaker setup. The Xess also houses a 9600mAh battery with a quick release magnetic charger port, so you never have to worry about tripping over the cord and pull the Xess down with it.

The US variant of the Xess will also include an IP camera which you can place anywhere in your home and you can use the Xess to monitor your children from the Xess or you can use your smartphone when you are away from home to monitor the IP camera as well as wherever you have the Xess set up in your home. US versions of the Xess will also include free access to certain Viacom children’s programming like Noggin and other Nickelodeon-branded content.

When we were shown the Xess back in January, we were demoed some of the touch-less gestures it could perform as a way to navigate around the Xess without even touching it, however there is no such mention of any gesture-based navigation in the latest press release. We’ve reached out to Alcatel in this regard and we will update this post as soon as we find out.

You can also check out our first-look and hands-on of the Xess at CES this past January.

New alleged Moto X spotted in public with a fingerprint scanner on the front

Now is about that time. Everyone is over with MWC. Samsung, LG, and HTC duke it out in the beginning of the year, then Motonovo- wait, what should we call it now? Let’s call it Moto for now. We are still far away from Moto’s usual launch timeframe of around late-Summer to early-Fall.

The picture of a leaked photo submitted to HelloMotoHK shows just enough of what we might want to know about such a device. This device was spotted on what looks to be either public transit, like a train, or even a coffee shop? Maybe? I don’t know, we are just speculating here

The top corner of the device shows the infamous Moto Batwing that is always spotted on prototype devices as in previous leaks like this. Peculiarly, there is a button on the lower-bezel of the screen which looks to be a fingerprint scanner. We hope this is some early prototype which requires the sensor to be on the front and we hope Moto decides to put the scanner where the dimple should go on the rear of the device.

Other speculation has pointed to the charging port being a USB-C connector. While we really can’t tell because of the quality and angle of the photo, let’s just leave it at that. Early rumors of the Galaxy Note 5 also said that it’d come with an USB-C port and it never did.

There is also a white dot on the upper right corner which shows the return of the front facing camera with flash, just like on the current-generation Moto X Pure Edition. What do you think of the first images of the alleged Moto X?

Microsoft Lumia 950 falls to £344 in the UK

Surprising no one, the Microsoft Lumia 950 gets another price cut in the UK. This time, it's a pretty solid discount and the 5.2" Windows flagship now costs £344 from Amazon UK.

In January it was £400, then down to £380 in February. The current price is the lowest yet, significantly discounted from the £420 that Microsoft's official store is asking for it. Carphone Warehouse is still charging £400 for it.

Amazon also has an ok deal on the Lumia 950 XL - £450 (down from £470 offer from Microsoft).

Reports say Facebook users aren’t posting as many personal updates

I don’t know about you, but lately my Facebook feed has been nothing but re-shared memes, videos, and click-bait articles. Facebook has been so focused on selling its platform for companies and organizations to advertise on, that users feel overwhelmed with all the irrelevant content that appears on their feeds and don’t even find it worth sharing personal updates anymore.

According to a report from The Information, five and a half percent of overall posts declined from mid-2014 to mid-2015 while the amount of personal updates on Facebook has dropped 21 perfect in the same period. Since then, the rate of decay has dropped to about a 15 percent decline last year.

Facebook used to be about people’s interactions or even the number of likes a post can get. Now that I think about it, Facebook might have introduced these new reactions as a way for people to start posting more personal updates again, rather than re-share that video of anything stupid that Trump is saying or World Star Hip-hop videos.

Facebook even tried to make it easier for you to share something by showing you your most recent photos from your gallery, asking if you’d like to make a post about any of them. I know this method scared a bunch of people (for just a second) into thinking their most private photos were shared to their friends somehow.

Facebook Feed in 2010

More people are sharing more private thoughts and pictures to other apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. But I feel like Snapchat has taken a lot of the spotlight away from Facebook because Snapchat allows users to share everything they do and it disappears after 24 hours.

There’s an idea that just the fact that others will look through your stories (and you can see who did) is what attracts so many people to the self-destructing photo app. Just knowing that 60 of your friends saw your Snap of you on vacation at the beach is better than getting 5 likes on the a similar post on Facebook. Most of them probably don’t care. But there’s some kind of satisfaction that Snapchat brings that Facebook has been lacking lately.

What are your thoughts? Do you feel like Facebook has sidetracked from what it used to be say, 4 years ago? Or do you think the rise in popularity with other apps like Snapchat and Instagram are causing people to post less? Let us know in the comments.

Reddit finally releases its own Official App for Android

Redditors everywhere know that the only way to have a somewhat cohesive Reddit experience on a smartphone would be to compare the bunch of third-party apps available on the Play/App Store. These apps were always unofficial readers for Reddit and didn’t offer a predictable UI or functionality.

Ever since Reddit’s popularity was on the rise the past few years, many developers who were also fans of the site have taken it upon themselves to create their own Reddit client because other clients were not as good as they’d hoped. They also must have been tired of waiting for Reddit to release an official app.

Reddit has been hard at work developing its own official app since around 2014 when it posted a job listing looking for someone to help do so. We’ve already seen Reddit testing a Beta since December 2015. Then, Reddit released the Beta for private testers and, now, finally we see the official first public release of the “Reddit: The Official App” (For Android for now).

Surely, many might still flock to their own Reddit reader of choice, and that’s okay. Just because Reddit finally releases an official client for readers to use, doesn’t necessarily mean readers will stop using their own app of choice, perhaps one they’ve been using for months, even years in some cases.