HTC starts Mother's Day promo for the One M9 and One A9

HTC is getting ready for Mother's Day with a special sale that's already available at its US online store. The offer is clearly targeted toward people wanting to gift a new smartphone to their mothers.

You get a choice between the pink HTC One M9 and the "deep garnet" HTC One A9. The M9 can be had in unlocked form for $399, which is down $250 from its initial pricing of $649.

You can pick up an unlocked One A9 for $389, which is $110 less than before. The One A9 version for Sprint is also available as part of this Mother's Day deal, but the price is the same as for the unlocked unit, and you aren't tied to a particular long-term contract with the carrier. Basically, buying the Sprint version just ensures that the phone will work on that network, since the unlocked model only functions on AT&T and T-Mobile. There's no option whatsoever if your mother likes Verizon, unfortunately.

The deal is available until May 8, "while supplies last".

Google drops Moto 360 Sport from its store

After dropping the Nexus 9 tablet, Google has now removed the Moto 360 Sport smartwatch from its online store.

The Moto 360 Sport is a variant of the Moto 360 second generation that comes with a few changes, such as AnyLight display that uses ambient light outdoors to illuminate itself, built-in GPS, and silicone bands.

Unfortunately, it seems people didn't quite find that worth the $300 price tag. In fact, Motorola recently dropped the price to $200 but now Google has gone ahead and removed the device entirely from its store, which is odd as the watch only went on sale back in January.

For what it's worth, the watch can still be purchased from Motorola and Amazon.

Leica announces M-D (Typ 262) with no LCD

Leica has announced another model in its M-series of digital rangefinder cameras. This one is a bit different though. The Leica M-D (Typ 262) does not feature an LCD on the back like most digital cameras, instead wanting the photographer to focus on the art of composition and framing without being distracted. This is not the first Leica camera to lack an LCD; we saw theM Edition 60 before this forego the display, but the M-D (Typ 262) is the first serial production camera while the M Edition 60 was a limited edition. 

The M-D only comes with dials to adjust shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. This leaves you with just the bare minimum to adjust your camera. The M-D also saves all images in DNG RAW format and there is obviously no video recording option. In order to make the camera more discreet, Leica has painted the entire body in black and also left out the traditional red Leica dot. The shutter is also quieter and tops off at 3fps in burst mode.

The Leica M-D (Typ 262) is priced at $5995/£4650 and will go on sale in May.

Samsung Gear 360 launched, priced at $350

As scheduled, Samsung has launched the Gear 360 camera. The device is now available for purchase in the company's home country of South Korea - it's currently listed online, but will be available in around 450 stores starting next month.

Priced at KRW 399,300 (around $350), the camera - which was announced at this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC) - is currently compatible with the Galaxy S7, S7 edge, S6, S6 edge, S6 edge+, and Note5.

Aside from South Korea, the device is also expected to made available in select other countries. However, those in the United States are currently out of luck as the tech giant has already confirmed that the US is not in the list of launch countries.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 getting May security patch already

April hasn't even ended, and Samsung has already started rolling out the Android security patch for the month of May to its Galaxy Note 4 smartphone. Weighing in at around 380MB, the update is currently rolling out to units in India.

There's no clarity on exactly what else the update brings along - the change-log contains generic language like performance and stability improvements, and bug fixes. Rolling out OTA, the update carries a build date of April 22.

This comes less than week after the device started receiving April security update in India. That update weighs in at around 360MB.

Lenovo has sold half a million K4 Notes since launch

enovo has announced that half a million units of the K4 Note have been sold since the device was launched in India back in January this year. Aside from this, the Chinese company has also sold 100,000 units of the ANT VR headset.

The VR headset was initially bundled with the smartphone, but was sold separately shortly thereafter. However, the company is bringing back the smartphone+headset bundle to celebrate the milestone.

"To celebrate the milestone of 5 lakh happy customers, Lenovo is bringing back the VR bundle offer," a company spokesperson said. "Customers will be able to purchase the K4 Note and VR Headset together for a bundle price of Rs 12,499 on Amazon.in on April 29th, 2016."

Interested in purchasing the bundle? Head to the Amazon link below.

Rumor says Huawei Mate 9 will feature 20MP dual camera setup, Kirin 960 SoC

It's been just a few months since Huawei launched its Mate 8 smartphone, and rumors about the device's successor have already started pouring in. According to a latest one out of China,Huawei Mate 9 will be powered by the homegrown, and yet-to-be-announced Kirin 960 chipset with octa-core CPU.

Huawei Mate 8

In addition to the SoC, it was also revealed that the Mate 9 will sport a 20MP dual rear camera setup. This compares to the dual 12MP cameras that the Chinese company's newly-announced P9 and P9 Plus feature.

There was, however, no word on whether - like the P9 duo - Leica will have any role to play in the Mate 9 as well. The device is expected to made official sometime later this year.

Marshmallow is now out for the LG G3 on AT&T and T-Mobile

Although Google has already started testing Android N with developers, Android handset makers are still busy updating their wares to Marshmallow. Case in point: LG, and its G3. The flagship smartphone from 2014 is now receiving the update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow both on AT&T and T-Mobile, according to multiple reports from owners.

T-Mobile's model isn't currently enjoying an over-the-air rollout of the update, so to download and install it you'll need to use LG's desktop software. Even so, the new release may not yet show as being available for everyone.

If you bought your G3 from AT&T, then you can check for the update by going to the phone's settings and hopefully grab it over-the-air. If you do succeed in updating, you'll then be on software version D85030k, as you can see from the screenshots above.

The update also includes the March security patches, but unfortunately not this month's. Another interesting tidbit is that this is Android 6.0, and not Android 6.0.1 - even though that iteration has been out since last November. Hopefully LG will issue another Marshmallow update for the G3 in the future, bringing it up to date.

New Nexus 6P version gets benchmarked with Snapdragon 820, 4GB of RAM

Earlier today we once again heard that HTC is the company in charge of building this year's two Nexus-branded smartphones for Google. And now it looks like one of them may have just been spotted in a benchmark's database.

An intriguing entry for "google Nexus 6P" is available in Geekbench's online score browser. The name is pretty much identical to the Huawei-made device that's been announced last year, but this Nexus 6P has different hardware.

Namely, it's powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chipset (not the 810 like the 2015 model), and it comes with 4GB of RAM (up from 3 on the existing Nexus 6P). The prototype that's been benchmarked was running Android N at the time, which makes perfect sense considering that Google has already released the first two developer previews for that version of its mobile OS.

It seems entirely plausible that Google will stick with the Nexus 6P moniker for this year's Nexus phablet, just changing the hardware and the company manufacturing it. So this might be an HTC-made product, as rumors have been saying for a while. On the other hand, perhaps Huawei and Google are simply working on a minor spec refresh for the existing Nexus 6P, changing the SoC used and the RAM amount. If this is the case, then the upgraded phone could be made official at Google I/O next month.

Schematic details the iPhone Pro with dual-camera, Smart Connector

With the 4" iPhone SE out of the gate, the rumor mill turns its attention back to the 5.8" iPhone Pro. A schematic (probably unofficial) shows the dimensions of the rumored Apple flagship.

The schematic clearly shows the wider camera assembly - info so far points to a dual-camera setup. Will it be like the LG G5 (wide + narrow) or the Huawei P9 (color + monochrome)? That's unknown at the moment.

Another interesting feature on the back is the Smart Connector. Apple debuted the three-pin connector with the iPad Pro and while it allows advanced functionality like connecting a keyboard, it can be used just for charging (like Logitech does). This could enable slightly more compact battery cases for the iPhone Pro.

One key detail that the schematic doesn't show is the release date - if we had to guess, we'd see the iPhone Pro at Apple's September event. Until then, you can enjoy these 3D renders(based on rumors).

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.