Preorder listings for the Lumia 950 and 950 XL are up form a Russian retailer

Few devices have been getting quite as much attention lately as the Lumia 950 and 950 XL and we can definitely understand why. A new proper flagship in the Windows realm has been long overdue and fans are understandably excited. The duo should be officially released on October 8, which is still a few days away, but that hasn't stopped at least a couple of retailers from leaking details about said smartphones.

Today, however, a Russian online store by the name of Bayon might have officially become the first one to offer pre-orders on both models. This confirms the specs sheets for the duo yet again and also gives us some perspective on the Russian pricing.

Interestingly enough, there is one extra detail revealed – the 950 XL seems to be available in Dark Blue, as well as the classic Black and White colors. The smaller Lumia 950 is listed for 56,990 rubles ($865), while the bigger XL one goes for 62,990 rubles ($956). That is quite a hefty price to pay, but it is also worth noting that we are talking about the dual-SIM variant here and also local Russian prices for handsets do tend to be slightly higher than most other places.

Huawei Honor 6 gets Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with EMUI 3.1

Huawei Honor 6 is now getting the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, enhanced with the new EMUI 3.1 launcher. The first country to get the new firmware is India, but oddly the update is now available via the OTA service just yet.

Huawei has uploaded the ROM on the official Huawei India website, so you can download it from there and update it manually. Just few people reported for OTA notifications. The file is 1.3GB big, so in case you'll do the update manually, you should free at least 3GB on your phone.

There is no official changelog for the new firmware, but it will upgrade your KitKat up to the latest Lollipop and bring some traces of Material design, lots of under-the-hood optimizations, better security and switch to ART runtime for better performance.

Huawei Honor 4C and Honor 4X already got the update - in case you've missed the news you can found the ROMs over the source link. Now it's turn for the Honor 6. Other markets should be getting the update very soon and hopefully the OTA release is just around the corner, too.

Official-looking Lumia 550 render leaked

An official-looking press render of the upcoming entry-level Microsoft Lumia 550 smartphone has been leaked, courtesy of the usually reliable leakster @evleaks.

The device has already been the subject of several leaks in the past, with the most recent leak showing the smartphone in four color versions - white, red, blue, and black.

Specs-wise, the Lumia 550 is said to be powered by a Snapdragon 210 SoC and sport a 4.7-inch 720p AMOLED touchscreen. It is expected to come with 1GB RAM and 8GB expandable internal memory, and pack in a 1,905 mAh battery. In terms of camera, the Windows 10 Mobile-powered device is said to feature a 5MP rear unit and a 2MP front shooter.


The handset, along with the high-end Lumia 950 and 950 XL, is expected to be made official at the company's October 6 event next week.

Sony Xperia Z5 now available for purchase in UK

The Sony Xperia Z5 smartphone - which was announced last month - is now available for purchase in the UK, where mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse has all the four color options (black, white, gold, and green) in stock.

As for the price, the SIM-free version is available for £550 (around $830). You can also purchase the device on contract where-in you'll be required to pay £42 (around $60) each month. Other retailers in the country are expected to start selling the handset next week.

This comes less than a week after the Xperia Z5 Compact went on sale in several European countries.

AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon will all sell the newly outed LG V10

If the LG V10 that was announced a few hours ago seems interesting to you, and you live in the US, here's some important information.

We already know which carriers will offer the new smartphone through their stores, online and offline. So if you like to get your handsets from carriers, this is for you.

AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon will all sell LG's latest phablet at some point in the near future. Unfortunately neither company has mentioned an actual release time frame for the V10, or anything about pricing. All of this information should come out later.

Verizon will get an exclusive color version of the V10, dubbed Luxe White. If you want this hue, you'll have to pick Big Red as your carrier. AT&T and T-Mobile haven't announced any such exclusive arrangements.

The LG V10 has a secondary ticker screen above its main display, and it comes with two 5 MP front-facing cameras, to allow for outstanding selfies as well as group selfies (or "groufies").

The phone features a 5.7-inch QHD main touchscreen, a 2.1-inch 1,040x160 secondary display, a 16 MP rear camera with OIS, laser autofocus, and LED flash, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of expandable storage, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 808 SoC at the helm, and a 3,000 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.

Huge Galaxy View tablet has specs confirmed through benchmark

last month during its IFA event. This is going to be the company's biggest mobile device yet, as it's so far been rumored to sport a whopping 18.4-inch touchscreen. That is, if the Galaxy View turns out to be the tablet with the model number SM-T670.

Today the T670 was spotted at GFXBench, which means that its specs have once again been confirmed, through the benchmark's info listing.

The device apparently has an 18.5-inch 1080p touchscreen, a 2 MP front camera, no rear camera, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and it's powered by an unidentified Samsung Exynos 7 Octa chipset. This comes with a CPU sporting four Cortex-A57 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores, and the maximum clock speed seems to be 1.6 GHz. The GPU is a Mali-T720. The prototype that's been benchmarked was running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop at the time.

The lack of a rear camera seems surprising at first, but imagine how odd it would be to actually take pictures with an 18-inch tablet. The Galaxy View will allegedly be targeted at businesses and the education market, as well as consumers - in this case as a device for the living room. 

Samsung Galaxy Active Neo is official

Samsung announced today a new rugged smartphone - the Galaxy Active Neo. It's a Japan exclusive, but is expected to go international in few months.The Galaxy Active Neo is a mid-range device with a 4.5" WVGA (480p) display and powered by the Snapdragon 410 chip - quad-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A53 CPU, Adreno 306 GPU and 2GB of RAM.

The Active Neo packs an 8MP rear snapper and a 2MP selfie shooter, 16GB expandable storage and 2,200 mAh battery. Its connectivity package includes LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1 and NFC, while the OS in charge is Android 5.1 Lollipop.

As it is an 'Active' phone, this means you'll get IP68 certification - that's dust and water resistance up to 1.5 meter and 30 minutes, plus MIL-STD-810G certification for salt and sea water, dust, humidity, rain, vibration, solar radiation, transport and thermal shock resistance. It can withstand 2 tons of load and survive a drop on concrete from 1.5 meters.

NTT DoCoMo will be offering the smartphones starting November for JPY 20,000 or €150. There is a good chance the phone makes it to other markets later on.