Another leak of the HTC 10 shows the handset in white

There is no doubt that HTC is really excited about the HTC 10 that it has been teasing the device left and right since the beginning of this year. This time, however, a photo was leaked through Chinese micro-blogging network Weibo.

Apparently someone who had their hands on a final unit in white, took a picture of it laying atop a greasy laptop keyboard. The unit shown had Chinese software on it but looks just like another Chinese unit that was also leaked earlier last month.

What is different about this unit was that it was white. We’d only seen units with black faces so at least we now know that HTC plans to release a version of the phone with a white bezel, perhaps with a silver finish on the rear?

HTC has already teased the HTC 10 in the past with its large beveled edge, another teaser featured the HTC 10’s speaker system and promised that it would feature the best Boom Sound experience than ever before. HTC also teased the phone’s performance, and camera(calling it “the best ever smartphone for shooting photos and videos) and finally, just today, HTC also teased the phone’s battery life.

HTC has big shoes to fill. Especially now that it’s been teasing the crap out of its new unreleased flagship. The unveiling is expected to happen on April 12 at 8AM EST time. Until then, we hope that HTC is able to deliver on all its promises.

Samsung Galaxy Note 6 will be water and dust resistant, report says

So far, we've heard that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 6 will come with 6GB of RAM, a 5.8-inch touchscreen (presumably keeping the QHD resolution), a 12 MP rear camera, and 64 or 128GB of storage (maybe even 256GB).

And now a new piece of the puzzle is reportedly revealed. According to a new report, the Note 6 will be IP68 certified. That means it will be dust tight and just as water resistant as theGalaxy S7 - being able to withstand submerging into up to 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes.

The phone could also sport an iris scanner, as revealed earlier today by an intriguing import into India. Unlike its predecessor, the Note5, the new Note-series member will thankfully besold in Europe from day one. The handset could be unveiled as early as June, according to speculation from certain analysts. Then again, Samsung might also stick with its traditional schedule for Note launches and announce it in late August or early September. It's too early to be sure at this point.

Blackberry is reportedly switching focus to mid-range handsets

During an interview with The National, CEO of BlackBerry, John Chen admitted that the first Android-powered BlackBerry may have been set too high for customers. Indeed, theBlackBerry Priv must have turned customers off when they found out about its near-$700 price tag. BlackBerry intended to aim the BlackBerry Priv at enterprise customers, or for a more business oriented lifestyle.

Chen also told The National that BlackBerry plans to release two mid-range devices this year. One will feature a physical keyboard like the Priv, while the other one will be an all-touchscreen phone. My guess is the all-touchscreen phone will be the lower-end handset of the bunch.

            BlackBerry CEO: John Chen 

BlackBerry also announced that the Priv sold 600,000 units in Q1 of 2016. Well below the 850,000 forecasted by analysts. If BlackBerry wants to up its game, it needs to look at how successful it was in the late 2000s and try to apply the same ideas and strategies and modernize them to be able to compete with the other big players in the field.

BlackBerry forgot that just a few short years ago around 2007-2009 the success of the blackberry was thanks to the mid-range BlackBerry Curve. The Curve was a BlackBerry that all kinds of people could use and it became widely popular in the US and still remains popular even today in some areas of the world where smartphones are still a novelty.

          From left to right: Pearl, Curve, Bold 

Even in 2007-2009, BlackBerry had different models that corresponded to different people. For example, the BlackBerry Pearl was a multimedia oriented device capable of playing videos, music, and the compact keyboard (which I hope to never have to use) had two letters on a single key but offered predictive text.

Next up is the Blackberry Curve (I owned the 8530 for Sprint). It was a step up from the BlackBerry Pearl because it had a full QWERTY keyboard and offered more traditional BlackBerry Experience while marketing directly to consumers and not to enterprise customers. This phone was so popular (particularly the 8300) that it launched Research In Motion (RIM, before renaming the company to ‘BlackBerry’) into huge success at that time.

The BlackBerry Bold was the highest end of BlackBerry devices. It offered a much more comfortable keyboard, the same one found on the BlackBerry Priv which was somehow better to type on than the BlackBerry Curve’s. The later Bold models even had a touchscreen on the phone.

Let’s get back to the issue at hand (I got carried away): Can BlackBerry make better success by aiming to release mid-range devices rather than focus on a single high-end device? In a market so saturated with different kinds of smartphones, there is still a great opportunity to sell devices in the mid-range market. People who will definitely NOT buy an iPhone or Galaxy flagship might be easier to convince between device options.

HTC 10 will have great battery life, new teaser promises

Believe it or not, we are now just four days away from the official unveiling of the oft-leaked, oft-rumored, and much-teased HTC 10 smartphone. Now that we're getting closer and closer to the big day, HTC is ramping up its teaser campaign posting new videos every other day.

All of HTC's teasers so far have done a great job at overpromising things (be they related to the camera, audio capabilities, and now battery life), so we're left hoping the actual device won't underdeliver in any of those respects.

The same "obsessed" theme that's been used in all of HTC's video teasers for the 10 is featured here too, as you can see. Only this time around the company's engineers are apparently working "crazy long hours" so that "your phone will too". Not only that, but they're so obsessed with extending your battery life, that "they've turned it into a science".

According to one past leak, all of this talk equates to a 3,000 mAh battery - in fact the exact same capacity as the Galaxy S7's. So, if this is true, battery life comparisons between HTC's and Samsung's flagships will be very easy to make.

As for other specs, the HTC 10 is expected to sport a 5.1" or 5.2" QHD touchscreen, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chipset, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, a 12 MP UltraPixel rear camera, a 5 MP selfie cam (which could have OIS), and a fingerprint scanner. It will run Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

Huawei MediaPad T2 10.0 Pro gets the leaked press render treatment

Back in February right before Huawei's MWC event an upcoming tablet by the Chinese manufacturer got leaked. However, the MediaPad T2 10.0 Pro, for that's its name, wasn't actually made official that time around. Huawei has yet to acknowledge it, but the slate has been leaked again today - so maybe its announcement is close by.

The new MediaPad has received the leaked press render treatment, with official-looking shots depicting it from a few angles.

Alongside the new images we also get a confirmation of its specs, which were first outed in February. The MediaPad T2 10.0 Pro will basically be a slightly watered down version of theMediaPad M2. It will come with a 10.1-inch 1,920x1,200 IPS touchscreen, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 615 SoC at the helm (with a 1.5 GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU), 2 or 3GB of RAM, 16 or 32GB of expandable storage, an 8 MP rear camera with LED flash, a 2 MP selfie shooter, and a 6,660 mAh battery. Disappointingly it runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.

LTE connectivity will be available on some models, which will obviously be more expensive than the Wi-Fi-only iterations. Speaking of which, the starting price in Europe is apparently going to be around €280, while for an LTE-capable tablet you'll need to pay €350. The MediaPad T2 10.0 Pro is 8.5mm thin and it weighs 495g. It will be offered in two color versions - white and black. The slate will be the successor to the T1 from last year.

HTC 10 may have an OIS-enabled selfie camera

HTC promises amazing camera on its upcoming HTC 10 flagship and a tweet sent out too early may have revealed part of this generation's innovation - OIS on the selfie camera.

The company was one of the first to add Optical Image Stabilization on the main camera with the HTC One, but Nokia had it earlier. This will be a first, though.

The tweet was sent out by Kisha Bari, an internationally recognized photographer. The Twitter account has since been restricted.

62% of current Apple Watch owners plan to upgrade to the next one

Market research specialists at Fluent have conducted a survey among Americans asking them about their thoughts on the Apple Watch a year after release. Some of the numbers have turned out quite intriguing.

For starters, 197 of the 2,578 people that took part in the online survey actually own an Apple Watch, that rounds up to 8%. An equal percentage had a different smartwatch, meaning half of smartwatches in the US are indeed Apple Watches. More importantly though, 62% of current owners plan to upgrade to the next model, which no one has seen or heard of yet. Talk about brand loyalty.

Apple Watch owners also tend to see a brighter future for smartwatches than the rest of the survey participants, naturally - 75% consider that the majority of Americans will have a smartwatch in 10 years, whereas the overall opinion is fifty-fifty.

Apple will be pleased to learn that shopping (read Apple Pay) is the second most often mentioned primary use of the Apple Watch behind fitness tracking (telling the time doesn't count). We wonder, what do you use your Apple Watches for?

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.