Lenovo CEO promises “innovative,” “attractive” Moto phone for July

Earlier this month, in the middle of CES, panic swept over long-time Motorola phone fans: was Lenovo killing off the Motorola brand as we knew it? Calmer minds quickly prevailed, and the shape of story subtly shifted: sure, we wouldn’t be seeing “Motorola” splashed prominently across future handsets, but we hadn’t been for some time anyway, and the retention of the “Moto” brand, even if in the form of “Moto by Lenovo” would help upcoming models keep some connection to the past. Still, there’s an understandable undercurrent of anxiety to all this, and a lot of users might sleep just a bit easier having seen the next Moto handset arrive without incident. Today we get a sense for just when that might happen, as Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang talks about plans for new Motorola hardware due near the year’s mid-point.

Speaking at Davos this week, Yang indicated that a Moto smartphone that presents shoppers with a “more innovative, more attractive” handset option is currently in the works for a July launch.

That would fit nicely with the timing we’d expect for a new Moto X-series device, after last July’s launch of the Moto X Style and Moto X Play (alongside the latest Moto G). Unlike with those models, this time it sounds like a US release will be the company’s priority.

Should we latch on to the way Yang only appears to be talking about a single device, and not the spread we got last year? Perhaps, but this isn’t really a formal announcement, and it might be premature to squeeze too much analysis about this one brief comment. For now, we’ll look forward to July with the expectation that something big is coming, and see if more details don’t come to light as summer starts getting closer.

Source: The Wall Street Journal
Via: Android Central

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Amazon India teases Moto X Force

Life in India is tough. It’s hot, it can get cramped and the days are longer are harsher for more people than in most other parts of the world. And everyone’s getting online with a smartphone. What would it be like if people didn’t have to worry about having their phones smashed to bits?

We may find out soon enough as Amazon.in has a splash page up telling how the Moto X Force is “Coming Soon” with the “World’s first shatterproof display.” That’s all we know. Users will get updates on availability if they sign-in to their Amazon.in accounts.

As you’ll recall, we reviewed what turned out to be the US-exclusive version of the Force, the Verizon-lockedDROID Turbo 2. That phone goes for nearly $624 (Rs. 42493) at the carrier while the Moto X Force from Motorola Mexico is tagged at 10,499 pesos ($573 or Rs. 39009).

To be belated for sure, may the Force be with you if you’re looking forward to this one.

Source: Amazon.in, Motorola Mexico
Via: Android Central

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PlayStation sells well (again), but mobile is hurting Sony

Sony made money. Again! The company saw in tiny increase (0.5%) in sales compared to the same quarter last to 2,581 billion yen (or $21.5 billion), but income now stands at $1.69 billion. This quarter's financial results was yet more balancing (and canceling) out of Sony's many moving parts -- profitable and not. Gaming and Motion Picture arms saw increases in sales, but these were cancelled out by woes in Mobile and Devices arms. Once a positive part of the company's earnings sheets, Sony's smartphone camera sensors saw a decrease in sales -- reflecting the tough times that all companies are experiencing with phone sales. The company seems to be stabilizing its giant electronics ship.

Sony says operating income increases were apparently was due to refining and cutting across Sony's various electronics arms. (Read: less smartphone models, less TV models, better products). The company's restructuring costs have also started to tail off: this year charges cost $61 million — roughly a 50 percent drop.

Firstly, mobile: Sales decreased 14.7 percent compared to the same period last year — Sony says this is borne out from it's decision not to pursue scale in mobile phones for profitability, and why operating income improved significantly for the section. A significant decrease in image sensor sales is where Sony felt the bite most this quarter. Camera sensor sales to other smartphone manufacturers dropped by 12.6 percent year on year. This resulted in a quarterly loss of $97 million, compared to a profit of $445 million the period before.

A significant decrease in image sensor sales is where Sony felt the bite most this quarter.

Cameras saw a sales decrease of 5 percent, yet operating income increased, thanks to what Sony says is a better mix of cameras and video cams. Cost reductions and a better selection of products was also heralded for $260 million income increase in Home Entertainment — despite a sales decrease of 4.3 percent. 

In all things PlayStation, the company saw a 10.5 percent increase in sales, now reaching $4.9 billion. Compared to Q3 last year, income was also improved,as the arm didn't have to pay for a write-off of Vita hardware which happened last year. 

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AT&T-bound Samsung Galaxy S7 model now benchmarked with Snapdragon 820

With less than a month to go until the presumed announcement of the Galaxy S7, Samsung’s pre-release testing of multiple “next big thing” configurations has to be in full swing. That’s corroborated by several visitspaid to several benchmarking authorities in recent weeks, the latest of which sees the SM-G930A model rated for single and multi-core speed in Geekbench.

This is without a doubt the standard, flat Samsung Galaxy S7 designed specifically for AT&T use stateside, and unlike the Canadian SM-G930W8 version, it appears to pack a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor.

The beefed-up and, hopefully, cucumber cool SD810 sequel comfortably beats the Exynos 8890 in single-core performance, but yields the multi-core battle, 4,979 points to 5,946. The gap is certainly large and worrisome for both the San Diego semiconductor giant and American fans of Samsung flagships, yet it’s probably far from conclusive.

There’s no way to know how close to completion the two prototypes were when put to the tests, and besides, we’ve already seen SD820 reference devices exceeding these scores by a lot.

Bottom line, you should stay calm and wait to check out the final GS7 in the flesh, with 4GB RAM clearly on tap, and Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow pre-loaded. Also, expandable storage, a familiar but attractive design,Quad HD screen resolution, water resistance, and an answer to 3D Touch.

Source: Geekbench
Via: G for Games

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Latest LG G5 rumors return to idea of Magic Slot accessory expansion

If you’ve been keeping an ear to the LG G5 rumors stemming back the past several weeks, it’s easy to come away with the impression that the phone we’re about to see launch is one that may be the G5 in name only, taking some big steps away from the sort of hardware we became familiar with in phones like the G3 and G4. Big changes may include abandoning the classic rear volume controls, to say nothing of the unusual slide-out battery design that’s been teased. One of the more unusual rumors to emerge suggested that LG could give the phone a multi-purpose expansion port, dubbed the Magic Slot. We haven’t heard much about that idea since it was first rumored in the last days of 2015, but now it finally resurfaces in a new report, with an additional source adding corroboration to the feature.

We’re still not hearing much about the physical makeup of this port, nor about the sort of accessories LG might have envisioned for its use, but we do get a small update about possible placement, with word that LG could integrate the Magic Slot into the G5’s bottom edge.

What would that mean for a slide-out battery, presumably using that same bottom edge for its battery door? Well, like we said when first considering that construction, it still might be possible to retain port functionality, even if that complicates the engineering a little.

It also sounds possible, based on the wording of this most recent report, that there’s some sort of overlap between that slide-out battery and the G5 Magic Slot – could the battery itself be integral to Magic Slot functionality?

What if instead of the phone’s bottom edge acting as a cover for this slot, that’s instead how Magic Slot accessories take shape, swapping the component with replacements that deliver additional functionality? While that admittedly sounds a bit complicated, it also might make for a nice resolution that manages to combine several of these G5 rumors into a single cohesive vision for the handset’s design.

Source: The Verge

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Apple may finally be ready to go dual-camera with the iPhone 7 Plus

There’s a big temptation in mobile tech for manufacturers to be among the first to identify the next hot technology and give it to their users before the competition’s got time to catch up. Recently we’ve seen features like fingerprint scanners placed front and center, a great example of tech that’s been around for a while, but has only recently matured to the point where it works as well as it needs to – and shoppers are asking for it. Phones that employ multiple camera sensors have similarly been around for a while, but often to little fanfare (who went shopping for the One M8 specifically because of the Duo Camera?) – at least so far. But now we’re looking at possible dual-camera setups on some upcoming high-profile handsets, phones like the LG G5; is it finally time for that tipping point when manufacturers make this a must-have feature? Could be, as rumors look to the idea of Apple building an iPhone with dual rear cameras.

Talk of Apple experimenting with dual-camera setups is nothing new, but are we ever going to see the feature emerge on a commercial device? At least one industry analyst thinks so, and points to the iPhone 7 Plus as the handset likely to introduce such a system.

Reportedly, Apple could give the iPhone 7 Plus multiple camera sensors in an effort to super-charge imaging performance with such tricks as a simulated optical zoom mode, using tech the manufacturer picked up when acquiring LinX Imaging.

But rather than the iPhone 7 Plus simply being the dual-camera iPhone, we hear that there could be multiple editions of the handset: one with this extra camera, and one with a single rear sensor. That could be a practical consideration of Apple’s, dealing with a scarcity of dual-camera modules. Does that spell even further fragmentation of Apple’s growing smartphone lineup – maybe even separate branding for the dual-camera edition? We don’t know yet, but we’ve still got months and months to track down those answers.

Source: MacRumors
Via: The Verge

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Facebook's growth is apparently unstoppable

Facebook continues its upward trajectory with a very successful fourth quarter last year. Today, the social network reported that it had a revenue of $5.84 billion and had about 1.59 billion monthly active users in last quarter alone. This is a decent increase over the previous quarter, where it had 1.55 billion users, and an impressive 14 percent increase over this time last year. And that $5.84 billion? It's a whopping 52 percent increase year-over-year. Taken as a whole, that means Facebook had a revenue of $17.93 billion in 2015, which is a 44 percent increase from 2014.

As always, a good chunk of that money comes from mobile: About 80 percent, to be exact. Which isn't surprising, considering that Facebook also enjoyed 1.44 billion mobile monthly users last quarter. What's even more impressive is that Facebook kept the trend for daily active users -- as of last quarter, an average of 1.04 billion people used Facebook every day, and 934 million of those people were on mobile.

On the earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg went further into a few details. He said that more than one billion people used Facebook's Groups last year, and brought up the trend of folks using the social network to connect over the big events of the year like the refugee crisis and the Paris attacks. In particular, he said that more than 950 million people used a Safety Check feature to let folks know they were safe. He also said that 500 million people use the site for Events every month and about 123 million events were created in 2015.

Much of the growth last quarter also had to do with Facebook connecting the developing world. Zuckerberg said that 80 million people useFacebook Lite, which is the lightweight version of the site for less sophisticated mobile phones. COO Sheryl Sandberg also pointed to the recent efforts made to increase video advertising for lower bandwidth mobile devices, which tend to be more prevalent in those countries.

Speaking of video, Zuckerberg said that video continues to be an "important part of the Facebook experience" and will invest more in the area. He said that people have watched over a 100 million hours of video on Facebook and the company is working on ways for users to discover even more. There could even be a dedicated section for people who justwant to watch videos, he said.

Of course, Facebook is more than just the big blue app; it also ownsWhatsapp, Instagram and there's Messenger too. Last quarter, the company reported that Whatsapp now has 900 million users, Instagram has 400 million users and Messenger has 800 million users. The Messenger platform seems especially intriguing, as it's now more than just a place for conversations -- Facebook is now testing it so you could use it with the M digital assistant and you can even order transportation through it thanks to a partnership with Uber. Zuckerberg said that the company is even working with airlines so you could potentially check-in with a flight reservation just by using Messenger.

Last but certainly not least, it's also worth noting that Facebook owns Oculus. Zuckerberg has said he's very pleased with the initial reactions to products like the Samsung Gear VR as well as the new consumer-grade Oculus Rift, which has recently announced its pre-order price. "VR is going to be a big area of investment for us. It's going to change how we're going to communicate, work and play games," he said. "We're off to a good start."

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Oscar Nominations 2016

The nominees for the 88th annual Academy Awards are finally here, signaling the height of awards season. Now that the Golden Globes have surprised and confused us, here's a glimpse of who will take home Hollywood's biggest prize on February 28th.

It was a big year for aesthetically sophisticated action movies. Alejandro González Iñárritu's gory fur trapper tale The Revenant, which won Best Picture at the Globes, pulled together 12 nominations — the most of any film. George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Roadscored 10 nominations. Both films nabbed the coveted Best Picture nom alongside titles like The Martian and The Big Short. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, though definitely a fan favorite, garnered only five nominations on the technical side (i.e., Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Editing) but was left out of the Best Actor, Director, and Picture nominations.

The Revenant's Leonardo Dicaprio, who took home a Golden Globe for Best Actor last week, will go up against Matt Damon, Michael Fassbender, and Eddie Redmayne for an Oscar. Bryan Cranston also makes a surprise appearance in the Best Actor category forTrumbo, a movie about blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters. In the Best Actress slot, Jennifer Lawrence was a shoe-in for Joy, despite the movie's mixed-to-bad reviews, and she'll go up against Cate Blanchett for her role in Carol and Brie Larson for her depiction of a mother held captive in Room.

As far as snubs go, Straight Outta Compton received just one nomination (for Best Original Screenplay) and Creed's Michael B. Jordan was surprisingly absent from the Best Actor category. In fact, this year's nominees included no non-white actors at all.

Below are the nominees.

Best Picture:

• The Big Short
• Bridge of Spies
• Brooklyn
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Martian
• The Revenant
• Room
• Spotlight

Best Director:

• Adam McKay - The Big Short
• Alejandro González Iñárritu - The Revenant
• Lenny Abrahamson - Room
• Tom McCarthy - Spotlight
• George Miller - Mad Max: Fury Road

Best Actor:

• Bryan Cranston - Trumbo
• Matt Damon - The Martian
• Michael Fassbender - Steve Jobs
• Leonardo DiCaprio - The Revenant
• Eddie Redmayne - The Danish Girl

Best Actress:

• Cate Blanchett - Carol
• Brie Larson - Room
• Jennifer Lawrence - Joy
• Charlotte Rampling - 45 Years
• Saoirse Ronan - Brooklyn

Best Supporting Actor:

• Christian Bale - The Big Short
• Tom Hardy - The Revenant
• Mark Ruffalo - Spotlight
• Sylvester Stallone - Creed
• Mark Rylance - Bridge of Spies

Best Supporting Actress:

• Jennifer Jason Leigh - The Hateful Eight
• Rooney Mara - Carol
• Rachel McAdams - Spotlight
• Kate Winslet - Steve Jobs
• Alicia Vikander - The Danish Girl

Best Original Screenplay:

• Matt Charman, Joel & Ethan Coen - Bridge of Spies
• Alex Garland - Ex Machina
• Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Ronnie del Carmen - Inside Out
• Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy - Spotlight
• Andrea Berloff, Jonathan Herman, S. Leigh Savidge, Alan Wenkus - Straight Outta Compton

Best Adapted Screenplay:

• Nick Hornby - Brooklyn
• Adam McKay and Charles Randolph - The Big Short
• Drew Goddard - The Martian
• Phyllis Nagy - Carol
• Emma Donoghue - Room

Best Animated Feature Film:

• Anomalisa
• Inside Out
• Boy and the World
• Shaun the Sheep Movie
• When Marnie Was There

Best Foreign Language Film:

• Embrace of the Serpent
• Mustang
• A War
• Son of Saul
• Theeb

Best Documentary — Feature:

• Amy
• Cartel Land
• The Look of Silence
• What Happened Miss Simone?
• Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

Best Documentary — Short Subject:

• Body Team 12
• Chau, Beyond the Lines
• Last Day of Freedom
• Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
• A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness

Best Live Action Short Film:

• Day One
• Everything Will Be Okay
• Stutterer
• Ave Maria
• Shok

Best Animated Short Film:

• Sanjay's Super Team
• We Can't Live Without Cosmos
• Prologue
• Bear Story
• World of Tomorrow

Best Original Score:

• The Hateful Eight
• Sicario
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens
• Bridge of Spies
• Carol

Best Original Song:

• "Earned It" - Fifty Shades of Grey
• "Writing's on the Wall" - Spectre
• "Manta Ray" - Racing Extinction
• "Simple Song #3" - Youth
• "Till it Happens to You" - The Hunting Ground

Best Sound Editing:

• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Martian
• The Revenant
• Sicario
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Sound Mixing:

• Bridge of Spies
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Martian
• The Revenant
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Production Design:

• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Martian
• The Revenant
• Bridge of Spies
• The Danish Girl

Best Cinematography:

• Edward Lachman - Carol
• Robert Richardson - The Hateful Eight
• John Seale - Mad Max: Fury Road
• Emmanuel Lubezki - The Revenant
• Roger Deakins - Sicario

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:

• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Revenant
• The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared

Best Costume Design:

• Carol
• Cinderella
• The Danish Girl
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Revenant

Best Film Editing:

• The Big Short
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Revenant
• Spotlight
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Visual Effects:

• The Revenant
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• Ex Machina
• The Martian

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Get ready for Android app promo codes

Have you ever seen an Android developer give out promo codes before? Most likely not, because Google has only just added the feature. A poster on Android Forums has spotted a page on Google's Developer Console with instructions on how devs can create codes and how they can get their apps ready to use them. Based on the details written on that page, the codes can be used to purchase apps and pay for in-app goodies, but not for in-app subscriptions.

Also, developers can only generate 500 codes per quarter that can't carry over to the next, and they can set an expiration date. We'll bet developers will use a chunk of their codes to give out to reviewers like what iOS app creators have been doing for a while now. Still, with an allowance for 2,000 codes per year, we'd keep an eye out for giveaways, if we were you.

[Image credit: Jan Persiel/Flickr]

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These were some of 2015's best selling games

Major franchises like 'Call of Duty,' 'Grand Theft Auto' and 'Madden' sold the most last year.

What games sold the most copies in 2015? Exactly the titles you'd expect: the latest entries in long-running franchises like Call of Duty: Black Ops III,Madden NFL 16 and Fallout 4. It's not surprising -- sequels have the springboard advantage of an existing fanbase -- but disappointing: not a single new IP shows up on the NPD's top 10 best selling games list for last year.

Annual 2015 Top 10 Games (New Physical Retail only; across all platforms incl. PC)

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops III (XBO, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)**
2. Madden NFL 16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)**
3. Fallout 4 (PS4, XBO, PC)**
4. Star Wars Battlefront 2015 (XBO, PS4, PC)**
5. Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3, PC)**
6. NBA 2K16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)**
7. Minecraft (360, XBO, PS3, PS4)
8. Mortal Kombat X (PS4, XBO)**
9. FIFA 16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)**
10. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (XBO, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)**

**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)

That said, this breakdown still makes a lot of sense. The new Star Wars: Battlefront title was sure to sell droves in the wake of the franchise's new feature film and Grand Theft Auto V (the 5th best selling game of the year, continentally) was one of the most anticipated titles of this console generation. NBA 2k16, Minecraft, Mortal Kombat X, FIFA 16 and last year'sCall of Duty: Advanced Warfare rounded out the last five top-sellers for the year.

As far as new and unique titles go, last year's NPD best sellers were far more interesting, including not only two new IPs (Watch Dogs and Destiny), but a console-exclusive title as well (Super Smash Bros). Still, if you missed out on 2015's most popular games, give them a shot -- with a wide mix of popular franchise games, there was something for everyone in 2015.

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LeTV looking to Le Future in India on January 20

LeTV has been driving high-gear growth of its mobile phones over the past year across Asia and has just made landfall in the US. Qualcomm essentially boasted on behalf of the Chinese manufacturer that the Le Max Pro would be the first to run the Snapdragon 820 chipset. We didn’t get to test final products at CES, but LeTV is ready for some more promotion runs in India.

The LeTV event in Delhi that happened on January 5, as far as we can gather, only featured the company’s Bluetooth and VR headsets along with its Super Cycle. The company did subsequently announce a Le Future event headed for the Kingdom of Dreams in Delhi on January 20.

LeTV-associated entity LeEco posted to its Facebook page that it was excited to get its #SuperPhones out to the public and that “great things come in pairs.” Also, #NoMoreRumors.

But until then, rumors: we’re still waiting on the Le Max to officially show its face, but will its sibling, the Le Max Pro, also appear alongside it? Commenters on the post have speculated about the Le 1 and Le 1s making its Indian debut.

This one’s going to be interesting.

Source: LeEco, Pawan Kumar (1, 2) [YouTube]
Via: XDA-Developers

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