Android

The news that Xiaomi may not bring Android 10 to the Mi A2 Lite has clearly annoyed some people. Hundreds of people have responded by petitioning the company to do so, with representatives seemingly on hand to calm fears. Xiaomi still does not know when the Mi A2 Lite will receive its final OS upgrade, though.

The Galaxy S9 and S9+ have been eligible for beta versions of One UI 2.0, Samsung's custom version of Android 10, for months now. The arrival of Android 10 on the Galaxy Note 9 brought hope to the idea of Samsung honouring its January release schedule for the S9 series too, but that no longer appears to be the case.

Motorola’s Razr reboot with foldable pOLED display is up for pre-order, but it looks like it could carry the same caveats as Samsung’s Galaxy Fold. Ahead of its widespread availability the company has posted several videos including a care video that suggests it’s not going to offer a care-free user experience as promised by execs at its launch event.

POCO is continuing to pull out the surprises, this time by revealing that the POCO X2 smartphone will be launched at 12 PM on February 4. POCO India has used the light-hearted slogan “Bruh, it’s #SmoothAF” to announce the upcoming unveiling of its new device on the company’s official Twitter account.

The Motorola Razr foldable smartphone is now available for pre-order from Verizon Wireless. The phone boasts a Snapdragon 710 and Android 9.0 Pie, both of which seem outdated considering the phone's $1500 price tag. However, buyers will primarily be paying for the foldable form factor in addition to some nostalgic bragging rights.

Byte has emerged from beta onto the Play Store and the App Store. It, much like its predecessor Vine, allows the user to make videos of 6 seconds in length. Both apps also have a creator in common, who hopes to bring a form of revenue-sharing to this platform soon.

Huawei has confirmed that the Huawei Y9 (2019) will not receive the Android 10-based EMUI 10 update, and owners of the phone are, well, unhappy about that decision. Rightfully so, too, as the Honor 8X, another mid-range phone, was released around the same time and will be getting the update.

Action cameras are a popular device category, particularly among those who want to record their rugged pursuits wherever they go. A new report indicates that the market in question will grow to be worth US$8.9 billion in the next 5 years. This is thought to be influenced by similar performance by the travel and adventure-sports markets worldwide.

According to a new leak, Redmi - which is usually known as a smartphone brand - will launch a fitness tracker soon. It may be of the kind that fits into a silicone wrist-band, and may also have a front-facing capacitive button. This device may have been certified for use in India already.

ChargeLabs has designed the HyperDisk to be a tiny external drive housing super-fast memory. This OEM claims that it has read-speeds of up to 960 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write-speeds of 920MB/s. It comes in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB SKUs, and has attracted over US$600,000 of crowd-funded backing.

Recently, the Google/Huawei Nexus 6P was the subject of a class action lawsuit in which the claimants experienced a disproportional amount of battery drain, bootloops or both. This case was settled, and the beneficiaries have now been informed that they will receive their respective compensation. It should be issued from now until February 29, 2020.

Thanks to accumulated experience and cheap hardware, Blackview’s rugged smartphone is able to go head to head with the established competitors. The inclusion of an infrared camera tells us that Blackview is going after a specific manufacturer.

For some reason, Sony continues to deliver sub-standard camera performance with its smartphones, and the Xperia 5 continues that trend. The phone was tested by DxOMark and found lacking, only managing to match two-year-old flagships from other companies.

India is now a larger smartphone market than the US according to a report by Counterpoint Research. Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Realme accounted for nearly 72% of the 158 million devices shipped in the country. Despite the increased popularity of Chinese devices, Samsung has still maintained its position as the second-largest smartphone brand in the country.

It seems owners of the Xiaomi Redmi 8A budget-friendly smartphone could soon be enjoying all the features that Android 10 has to offer. A recent Geekbench database entry for a “Xiaomi Redmi 8A” has “Android 10” mentioned as its operating system. The cheap handset with a large battery currently operates on Android 9 Pie.

Google Camera has just been updated to version 7.3.017 on the Play Store. A new report allegedly based on a teardown of its APK specifies the ability to record at 24 frames per second (fps). This option may pertain to upcoming phones such as the Pixel 4a series, which may also have cropped up in this code.

The eminent tipster Evan Blass has posted images of a Motorola phone with a feature new to this OEM: stylus support. The device as depicted also has a punch-hole camera, suggesting that it is intended for release this year. However, it may not be intended to compete with the Samsung Galaxy Note series.

The Samsung Galaxy M20 will probably get a successor called the M21 this year. A new addition to the Geekbench 5 database suggests that this phone does in fact exist. Should it be genuine, it will be powered by the Exynos 9611 chipset and 4GB of RAM.

What appears to be official promotional material for the Samsung Galaxy S20 phones has surfaced, confirming the names and designs of the S20+, S20 Ultra, and Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Buds+ TWS earphones. Those will pre-order the S20+ or S20 Ultra will get a free pair of Galaxy Buds+. S20 buyers, sadly, appear to be completely ignored.

For the first time, pricing details of the Samsung Galaxy S20 phones have been revealed. Going by the leak, the Galaxy S20 could share a base price tag with its predecessor, the S10, but things go downhill from there, with the most expensive device potentially costing up to US$1,699.

Samsung will indeed launch a follow up device to its controversial Galaxy Fold. Although some are referring to the Galaxy Z Flip as the ‘Galaxy Fold 2’, the device described by XDA’s Max Weinbach will indeed be a proper successor to Samsung’s original foldable smartphone/tablet hybrid.

Smart TVs are already popular purchases, and may become more so in the future due to their role as smart-home hubs. The latest analysis of their market has found that their shipments may number about 266 million over the next 5 years. This is driven by 4K content and its increasing availability.

The latest report on the health- and fitness-tracker market shows that it may achieve a valuation of as much as US$5 billion by 2025. This may be driven by the increasing number of applications and functions for these devices. They may in fact improve to the point that they can be used to help diagnose and prevent illnesses in the future.

The 2020 Samsung Galaxy A-series of smartphones was rumored to gain a novel variant called the A01 this year. However, it seems the leak in question has been proved true thanks to new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approvals. They suggest that this Galaxy A01 may be made available through certain carriers this year.

Two years ago, LG promised that it would start delivering updates faster and more frequently. While 2019 largely proved a bust in that regard, the company has already started pushing Android 10 to the V50 ThinQ. Now, the company has announced its Android 10 roadmap, and who knew that promising to deliver updates in a more timely manner also meant ditching most of your current portfolio.

Xiaomi may have taken its time in delivering Android 10 to the Pocophone F1, but the OS upgrade apparently brings more than just minor changes to the device. Some people are even claiming that the update brings drastically improved gaming performance, which would be a boon for the almost eighteen-month-old handset.

Xiaomi launched the Mi A2 Lite in mid-2018 running Android One, making it eligible for at least one more OS upgrade. However, the company has now sparked talk online about whether the device will even receive Android 10, with it seemingly relegating it to just security patch updates, instead.

POCO, now an independent brand in India, has confirmed that there will be no POCO F2. While that does not necessarily mean that there will never be a Pocophone F2, the next POCO will be something entirely different. The company has confirmed when to expect the launch of the new device, too.

The biggest improvement over the original Galaxy Fold coming with the Z Flip model is the addition of an ultra thin glass protective layer for the display, which should drastically reduce the failure rate. Among the other features we find a Snapdragon 855+ SoC, unfolded 6.7-inch dynamic AMOLED screen, 1-inch frontal display, plus a 15 W wireless charger.

If Warp Charge 30T is not enough, then what? Wireless charging? Well, that is the latest speculation about the OnePlus 8 Pro, which would be the first smartphone to support the standard. Is it even necessary, though?

A smartphone from the Chinese manufacturer Realme has been spotted on the AnTuTu benchmark racking up an incredible score of 574,985 points, which is currently a record figure. There has been some speculation that this mysterious Realme RMX2071 device with its Snapdragon 865 chip could end up being the Realme X50 Pro flagship smartphone.

According to a Brazilian blog, Motorola has started to update its Moto G7 Plus to the latest version of Android. It adds the new kind of navigation controls, a dark mode and December 2019 security patches to this phone. So far, its roll-out appears to be slow, although it may be complete within a month or so.

A new day, and a new set of leaks about the Galaxy S20 series. These, as most tend to, purport to be the most accurate yet, and they do not show the S20 Ultra in a good light. Who knew that Samsung could go bigger than Google and Apple?

Official renders of the Galaxy S20 series are here, complete with pricing and storage options. Predictably, the Galaxy S20 Ultra will be the best-equipped of the three devices in the series, with prices ranging from €899 to €1,549.

The Samsung Galaxy S20 phones are the talk of the town, with most reports focusing on their new, improved camera hardware. Cameras are just one aspect of a phone, though, and potential buyers can rest easy with the knowledge that the phones' all-round performance will be equally impressive.

OnePlus has announced and started rolling out OxygenOS 10.3.1 for the OnePlus 6 and 6T. The latest stable update for the devices addresses a host of issues while also improving system and camera performance.

The Redmi 8 is a triumph among entry-level smartphones. While it inevitably has its shortcomings, the device offers a compelling balance between price and performance on all accounts. In short, it is hard to find a sub-US$150 smartphone that offers more than the Redmi 8 does. If you have around that price to spend on your next smartphone, then the Redmi 8 would make a great purchase.

POCO has been driving speculation about a successor to the POCO F1 of late, which has stirred up hope of there being a Pocophone F2 in the offing. But, is it all that it seems? Dissecting the latest speculation suggests not, but the rebirth of POCO may be more complex than we were led to believe.

The rumor mill for the Poco F2 grinds on and, this time, it could be bringing some less than favorable news. New information on Pocophone's upcoming device points towards it not being an entirely new device of its own, which could leave fans of the series disappointed.

Motorola will start taking pre-orders for its eagerly anticipated Motorola Razr phone reboot. One of the hit flip phones in the mid-2000s, the Razr has been reborn with a foldable pOLED display and is among the more affordable models to hit the market so far.

ZTE's next flagship, the Axon 10s Pro, may be revealed in full soon. It has passed through testing by the Wi-Fi Alliance and TENAA, which confirms its premium 5G status. However, besides its updated chipset, it appears to have the same chassis as its predecessor.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has just cleared its first Motorola phone of the year. Its product data shows that it has a new model number (XT2055-2) and code-name (Blackjack). The device also has a markedly large battery, although this may be the most impressive thing about it on launch.

Xiaomi might be gearing up to release the Mi 10 series for the time being, but the company more than likely has the Redmi K30 Pro in the works too. The device has now posted results on Geekbench, which suggests that it will come with a Snapdragon 865 and at least 8 GB of RAM.

Is this the Huawei P40 Pro? Some people certainly think so, but there are conflicting reports. Huawei devices leaking on subways is not that unusual, at any rate.

The version labeled 5.0 of the popular open-source software compatibility layer known as Wine has just surfaced as both source code and binary for multiple operating systems, including Android, macOS, and various Linux distros. The list of major changes includes Vulkan 1.1 and multi-monitor support, built-in modules in PE format, and more.

Alleged European prices for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S20 5G, S20+ 5G, S20 Ultra 5G, and Galaxy Flip Z have been shared online, along with the expected sales date for the Galaxy S20 smartphone range. While Galaxy fans may have to pay between €900 and €1,400 for one of these premium devices, potential buyers in the US may have to fork out US$850 to US$1,200 for a brand-new Galaxy S20.