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Amid forecasts of strong growth in mobile payment services in Asia, Apple could be closer to a launch of Apple Pay in China. Earlier this year, we told you that Apple was negotiating with China UnionPay, the lone bank in China that deals with interbank payments. The bank was hung up on the prospect of paying Apple the small percentage of each transaction that it earns when a consumer uses Apple Pay. The tech titan has also been talking to Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba about helping Apple Pay launch in China. Alibaba's own Alipay has over 400 million users. Back in June, Apple registered a new corporate subsidiary in Shanghai's free-trade zone named Apple Technology Service Shanghai Ltd. According to the Shanghai database, this company is involved in " technical consulting, services and system integration in the field of payments ." Most analysts agree that this is the corporate structure Apple is using for its mobile payment service in China. Even after talking...

Just the other day, some new live pictures of the BlackBerry Venice surfaced, showing the slider running Android. Today, a video has appeared showing off an evaluation unit. From the video, it does not appear that either side of the screen is curved like the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge or Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+. The lighting on some pictures made the screen look curved, but that doesn't appear to be the case. We can see that like the QWERTY on the BlackBerry Passport, users will be able to scroll what is on the screen by moving their finger up or down on the QWERTY keys. The Venice also appears to offer a "double tap to wake" feature. And as we pointed out the other day, sliding up from the bottom of the screen offers you three choices. We can now clearly see that you can select from BlackBerry Hub, Google services and a universal search which will allow you to rummage through the web and your phone. A microSD slot is placed on top of the handset, so it looks l...

According to a recent report from South Korea, LG's Display division is getting ready to mass-produce displays that can be folded up to 100,000 times with no physical damage. Unlike Samsung, which is the other tech giant that's actively looking into foldable displays, the report says that LG will not make use of these foldable displays in one of its own smartphones. Instead, the LG is said to provide foldable display panels for another company.  Although the report does not specifically mention the name of this mysterious partner, it does say that it's a global software business with ambitions to compete against Samsung and Apple in the high-end smartphone market. From the looks of it, this partner is not lacking financial resources, as the report also says that LG will split the investment costs, said to rise to hundreds of millions of US dollars, with this unnamed partner. LG is rumored to manufacture these foldable panels at its facility in Gumi, Kyeongbuk.  ...

An interesting infographic from Voucherbox.com reveals that when converted to British Pounds, the price of both the Apple iPhone 6s and Apple iPhone 6s Plus are the cheapest in the U.S., and are the most expensive in France. Both models are roughly 29% more expensive in France than in the states. After the U.S., Canada is next on the list with iPhone 6s prices 5% higher than in the U.S. Other data shows that if you live in the U.K., and spend less than £27 British Pounds ($42 USD) a month on a Pay As You Go plan, you are better off buying the iPhone 6s at retail instead of signing a two-year contract and buying the phone for a subsidized price. The tipping point for the Apple iPhone 6s Plus in the U.K. is £26 British pounds a month. Pay less than that in the U.K. for a heavy use data plan for the iPhone 6s Plus, and your best bet is to buy the phone without a subsidy. Lastly, a chart shows the launch price and current value of past iPhone models. All of them are...

The Moto X has traditionally been a phone that was critically well-received and liked by those who had one, but not necessarily a big seller in the way that you'd expect in a flagship from a company like Samsung or LG. So, there are two different reasons why this news is what it is, but the fact still stands that the Moto X Pure Edition has (mostly) sold out through Best Buy. The Moto X Pure just went on sale through the retailer yesterday, but the Best Buy website is already showing that the 32GB black and white coated silicon rubber (CSR) models and the 16GB and 32 GB models with the bamboo backing are all sold out. However, the least expensive model - the 16GB black CSR model for $399 - is still available for purchase, which leads us to believe this is likely due to limited stock provided by Motorola in order to gauge demand for the device.  Motorola knows that the Moto X has never been a huge seller, but it can be difficult to estimate demand for a device like this....

Xiaomi Co-founder and President Lin Bin has confirmed that the company's Mi 4c smartphone will be launching on September 22, in line with the previous reports. Announcing the news via a Weibo post, Bin also revealed that the Xiaomi Mi 4c will be available in two variants - 2GB of RAM with 16GB storage and 3GB of RAM with 32GB storage. Shortly after, the company officially posted details about the Mi 4c launch on the MIUI forums. The new variant of the Mi 4, the Mi 4c, has been leaked before on several occasions. Similar to the majority of Xiaomi devices, the upcoming Mi 4c is said to be available in China first, and then be rolled out to other regions. The smartphone is expected to be released in the first week of October. Xiaomi Today reports that the Mi 4c will be priced at a starting price of CNY 1499 (approximately Rs. 15,650) for the 16GB model, while the 32GB model is said to be priced slightly higher. The leaks so far have tipped tha...

Logitech has announced the launch of the Ultimate Ears Boom 2 wireless speaker at a price of $199.99 (approximately Rs. 13,300). The Boom 2 is the successor of the popular Ultimate Ears Boom speaker that was launched in India in June this year for Rs. 14,995. The UE Boom 2 improves upon the previous model with an increased wireless range of up to 100 feet and claims to go 25 percent louder than the first generation Boom. New colour combinations have also been offered for the Boom 2, with Cherrybomb (red and pink), Yeti (white), Phantom (black and gray), GreenMachine (green and blue), Tropical (purple and orange), and BrainFreeze (dark and medium blue) being the new options. The speaker is also suitably weather resistant and tolerant of rough use. It has an IPX7 water-resistance rating, as well as drop resistance from up to 5 feet. It's rated to run for 15 hours on a full charge, and has tap buttons to control your music when you don't have the phone in your hand. Using...

We have been hearing rumours about a Samsung foldable phone in the works for more than two years now, with the company showing off several prototypes of folding displays as well. The South Korean company in the meantime has launched Galaxy smartphones with curved edge displays. If a new leak is to be believed, we might finally see a foldable Samsung smartphone in January - with the company reportedly already testing the smartphone. Additionally, Samsung's mysterious Galaxy View device has been certified by the Bluetooth SIG claiming it's a tablet. According to a tipster from China (via GforGames), Samsung's foldable smartphone has been codenamed Project Valley and is being tested with two different chipsets - Qualcomm Snapdragon 620 and Snapdragon 820. Other details tipped by the tipster claim that the handset will feature 3GB of RAM; come with expandable storage, and will come with an embedded battery. It's worth noting that a previous report...

Sony's Xperia Z5 Premium is no doubt the world's first smartphone featuring a 4K display with a resolution of 2160x3840 pixels and an impressive pixel density of 806ppi. The new Sony phone however, even before going up for sale, is under scrutiny for not displaying a 4K resolution all across the UI. During the time we spent with Xperia Z5 Premium at IFA we noted that screenshots captured from the Z5 Premium were actually of 1080p resolution. We checked with Sony executives present at the launch event about the same but did not receive any kind of explanation. Now, Sony has provided an official answer. "Xperia Z5 Premium features a 4K display with a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels based on SID Standard and enables all video and image content to be enjoyed in 4K resolution. All other content is displayed at 1080P or lower resolution in order to optimise the performance and battery stamina for this device, ensuring you can enjoy the 4K resolution when you need it ...

A new report by the University of Texas, Austin, has revealed an easy exploit hackers can use to bypass the lock screen of Android devices. The trick works on handsets running any OS version between Android 5.0 to Android 5.1.1 (but not the latest LMY48M build) with a password-based lock, even if encryption is enabled on the device. Google's latest Android distribution numbers peg the affected handsets at 21 percent of all active Android devices. According to the study, hackers would first have to swipe left from the handset lock screen to open the camera app and access the 'Settings' page from the notifications panel. On tapping the Settings icon, the hacker would see the smartphone asking users to insert a password. The hacker can then dump a sufficiently long string of characters in the field, and as a result, the handset will crash to the home screen. "At this point arbitrary applications can be run or adb developer access can be enabled to gain full access to...

At the Lenovo India Gaming Week in Mumbai, Lenovo unveiled a new gaming laptop for India - the Lenovo IdeaPad Y700-17ISK. The IdeaPad Y700-17ISK sports a quad-core Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor (base clock of 2.6GHz that goes up to 3.5GHz in Turbo), a 128GB solid state drive, a 1TB 5400rpm hard drive, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 17-inch full HD display (1920x1080 pixels) and an Nvidia GTX 960M video card with 4GB of GDDR5 video RAM. It runs Windows 10 and weighs a hefty 3.5 kilograms. But that's not the only thing heavy about it, the laptop costs Rs. 1,25,000, inclusive of taxes. Even more amusing, Lenovo Gaming Week's focus is on eSports, which means games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 are at the forefront and playable on all its demo units at the event. These are the kind of games that would run perfectly fine on a toaster. So, why launch a pricey gaming laptop here? Lenovo's answer was anything but forthcoming. "It's because one we're ...

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken out in support of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old who was arrested in Texas for his school project. "Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post that's reproduced in full below: You've probably seen the story about Ahmed, the 14 year old student in Texas who built a clock and was arrested when he took it to school. Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed. Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I'd love to meet you. Keep building. Earlier this week, teachers at Irving Independent School District in Irving, Texas reported Ahmed Mohamed to police for bringing a clock he built as a project to school. Ahmed was reportedly escorted out of the school in handcuffs and accused by the police ...

iOS 9 is now available for download and upgrading on your device is simple enough. However, there are times when the ability to download the firmware for your device as a standalone file is helpful. Whether you want to save bandwidth costs by downloading the file once and deploying to multiple devices, or if you have an unreliable Internet connection and you would like to be able to resume your downloads, you can directly download iOS 9 firmware files for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. This also comes in handy when you want to restore the device at a later date. If you are directly downloading iOS 9 firmware files, you likely know what you are doing, but here's a refresher nonetheless. Download the file corresponding to your device using the links below. Connect your device to a computer with the latest version of iTunes installed, launch iTunes, select the device in the top row and instead of clicking on Check for Update normally, keep the Option (Alt) key on your Ma...

Microsoft on Tuesday released a new build of Windows 10 Mobile for Windows Insiders. The latest preview of the company's forthcoming mobile operating system comes with a number of features and improvements for the Photos app, suggesting that the company wants to provide users with better control over how their handsets handle photos. The latest Window 10 Mobile preview build - dubbed 10536 - for Windows Phone handsets comes with an updated Photos app. The company said that it has added several of users' most requested features to the app. The new additions include a folder view that makes it easier for a user to see OneDrive and PC folders from within the Photos app. In addition, users can now access files stored in an external storage media (SD card) right from the app. One will also see context menus in the app, Microsoft's Gabriel Aul - Corporate Vice President, WDG Engineering Systems - wrote in a blog post. Viewing photos on the app has become f...

While the PlayStation 4 (PS4) has had an unprecedented run at retail the world over, it seems that Sony has sold enough to justify some slick new accessory options at its pre-Tokyo Game Show 2015 conference. These include hard drive panels and controllers. The former come in a host of colours such as yellow, blue, pink, and gold. As for the controllers, they come in gold, silver, steel black, and transparent crystal. Both will be available in Japan from November 6. The hard drive panels will cost JPY 2,500 each (around Rs. 1,400) and the new DualShock 4 controllers will be available at JPY 6,480 (approximately Rs. 3,600). And if you're not in Japan don't worry, Sony's European blog has said that the gold and silver controllers will be available in the West, but has not said when, nor has it commented on the availability of hard drive panels outside Japan. In addition to this, the company also announced that its much awaited Morpheus VR is now being renamed PlayStat...

Critically acclaimed action role-playing game (RPG) Bloodborne is getting its first expansion pack this year. Announced by Sony at its pre-Tokyo Game Show 2015 conference, you can expect to hack and slash your way through Yharnam on November 24. Called The Old Hunters, it's priced at $19.99 (around Rs. 1,300) and will be available for purchase via the PlayStation Network. You'll be able to experience the nightmare of the Byrgenwerth hunters. "Set in a nightmare world where hunters from the past are trapped forever, explore brand new stages full of dangers, rewards and deadly beasts to overcome. You'll find multiple new outfits and weapons to add to your arsenal as well as additional magic to wield and add more variety to your combat strategy," reads the PlayStation blog that further explains what to expect. "With new story details, learn the tale of hunters who once made Yharnam their hunting grounds, meet new NPCs, and discover another side of the h...

Huawei's anticipated Nexus smartphone appears to have had its specifications detailed thanks to a leaked benchmark test result. According to a Geekbench listing, the Huawei Angler, widely expected to be the Nexus smartphone, runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow alongside featuring a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor. The listing (via Mydrivers) also tips 3GB of RAM and a clock speed of 1.55GHz for the Huawei Nexus smartphone. Notably, all the specifications tipped by the benchmark listing are in line with previous leaks. Some of the other details tipped for the Huawei Nexus smartphone include 64GB of inbuilt storage and a 5.7-inch display alongside front-facing speakers. The Huawei-made Nexus smartphone has also been previously rumoured to pack a fingerprint scanner. An earlier report had also claimed that the Huawei-made Nexus might feature a USB Type-C port. The inclusion of USB Type-C support does not come as a surprise however, with the new Nexus smartphones meant...

Apple's new iPhone models - the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus - are both heavier and thicker than the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, respectively. The design decision is against Apple's usual philosophy of releasing faster, lighter, and thinner devices. One would think it's because of the use of aircraft-grade aluminium 7000 series alloy metal in the new body shell, which provides better structural strength to help prevent bending. But it's something different entirely. The aluminium body of the iPhone 6s Plus is only 2 grams heavier than its iPhone 6 Plus counterpart, as per Apple's recently published environment report, while the body of iPhone 6s is just 1 gramheavier than the body of the iPhone 6. It is the display in the new iPhone models that is to be blamed for the almost 11 percent weight gain - iPhone 6s is 14 grams heavier than the iPhone 6, while the iPhone 6s Plus is 20 grams heavier than the iPhone 6 Plus. The 3D Touch cap...

Qualcomm is continuing to trickle out information about its upcoming flagship Snapdragon 820 processor, but has also today taken the wraps off two new mid-range models and a new version of its Quick Charge technology. The primary features that the company is promoting in all its new SoCs are new integrated LTE modems. While the Snapdragon 617 gets Qualcomm's X8 hardware capable of LTE Cat 7 speeds, or up to 300Mbps down and 100Mbps up using carrier aggregation, the lower-end Snapdragon 430 gets an X6 modem for speeds of up to 150Mbps down and 75Mbps up. The Snapdragon 430 also integrates Qualcomm's new Adreno 505 GPU which supports OpenCL 2.0 and OpenGL ES 3.1. It has eight Cortex-A53 CPU cores at a maximum of 1.2GHz. It will support dual-camera configurations and a sensor of up to 21 megapixels. The Snapdragon 617 inherits the dual image signal processors and camera features of the Snapdragon 620 and 618. It will feature eight Cortex-A53 CPU cores at up to 1.5GHz and...

We have seen BlackBerry's 'Venice' slider smartphone, believed to run Android, in live images before. Now, a fresh image featuring the yet-to-be-announced 'Venice' smartphone has popped up on the Internet. First posted by BerryFlow, the rumoured BlackBerry Venice Android phone was spotted at the Toronto Film Festival. In the leaked image, the handset is seen running a near stock version of the Messenger app. The image also purportedly shows the handset covered in a protective case to possibly hide the overall design. Unfortunately, the blurred image only shows the front of the handset. The BlackBerry 'Venice' Android smartphone was last month leaked in a series of images purportedly showing the design. In the previously leaked live images, the BlackBerry 'Venice' was seen featuring a sliding Qwerty keyboard just beneath the display while the home screen showed the regular dialler, contacts, mails, Chrome, Camera, Calendar, and Play Store app...

Following their launch in April this year alongside the ZenFone 2 series in India, the LolliFlash and ZenEar accessories have been made available by Asus in the country. The company had already revealed the prices back then, but has since raised them by Rs. 100. The Asus LolliFlash, priced at Rs. 899, is a dual-tone LED torch for phones that comes in the shape of a lollipop and acts as a 'fill-in' light. The LolliFlash will be available in five colours - Black, Blue, Red, White, and Yellow. The LolliFlash has a battery life of 3 hours with a capacity of 3.7V 65mAh. The Asus ZenEar earphones, priced at Rs. 699, are basic models and feature a transmission-tube design. They feature Asus' Sonic Master 2.0 audio technology, and come with a special damping system. The Lolliflash and ZenEar will be now available to the Indian users in Asus exclusive stores and e-commerce sites. Asus earlier this month at IFA 2015 revealed details of the ZenWatch 2 smartwatch, inc...

Finnish telecom group Nokia announced Monday it has received all US regulatory approvals needed for its proposed acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, taking a step closer towards creating the world's biggest supplier of mobile phone network equipment. Following its previous antitrust clearance from the US Justice department, the acquisition of the French-American company has now also been cleared by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Nokia said in a statement. In mid-April Nokia struck a EUR 15.6 billion (roughly Rs. 1,03,635 crores) deal to buy its troubled rival Alcatel-Lucent, which only had one year of profit since the company was created in 2006. The tie-up was approved by the European Commission in July. "Both companies will continue to work closely with the few remaining antitrust authorities in the relevant jurisdictions to conclude their regulatory reviews as quickly as possible," the Nokia statement said. EU...

It's long been an established part of the mythos of Apple that its founder Steve Jobs was pushed out of the company in 1985 by John Sculley, the former Pepsi executive whom Jobs had recruited as CEO. But Sculley, who is now a co-founder at Obi Mobiles, has said in interviews that he never fired Jobs, and this was something that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also pointed out in a Facebook exchange with the American blogger and technology evangelist Robert Scoble. This comment came up in a discussion about the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic, and a new documentary about the Apple founder. The upcoming Aaron Sorkin penned Steve Jobs biopic, directed by Danny Boyle and based on the biography by Walter Isaacson, starring Michael Fassbender as Jobs, is going to be released next month. Wozniak, who has seen a rough cut of the film, says it actually captures the spirit of Apple, and he toldDeadline Hollywood, "I felt like I was actually watching him." On his wall, ...

Microsoft has sent out invites for a media event on October 6. At the event, which centres on "Windows 10 devices," the company is expected to refresh its Surface lineup and its fitness tracker Band alongside launching the long-rumoured Cityman (Lumia 950) and Talkman (Lumia 950 XL) Windows 10 Mobile-powered handsets. "We have some exciting news to share about Windows 10 devices," reads the invite. At the event, the company is expected to launch the Surface Pro 4, the successor to the company's Surface Pro 3. Not much is known about the device, save for the fact that it would have the same form-factor as its predecessor, and a similar charging mechanism, as previously noted by the company. This suggests that the Surface Pro 4 won't have any major improvements. The company will almost certainly swap the processor to install one of Intel's latest 'Skylake' chipsets. It will almost certainly have the RealSense Web camera that would support ...