New Google app could help providers block phone functions if you miss installment payments

A strange app has surfaced on the Google Play Store, an app from Google called “Device Lock Controller”. The app was quietly released back in June and has around 10 downloads as of this reporting. Basically, the app is designed to let creditors, banks, carriers (whoever you owe money to) limit function on the device if you fall behind on payments. The app’s function is described on the Play Store as follows: Device Lock Controller enables device management for credit providers. Your provider can remotely restrict access to your device if you do not many payments. If your device is...

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The Xbox Series S has 364 GB available for games, the rest of the 512 GB SSD is reserved

The new Xbox Series consoles will start shipping to fans next week on November 10. However, one lucky redditor got their Series S console early and confirmed that there is a significant chunk of storage dedicated to system functions. The Xbox Series S has a 512GB SSD built in, of which 364GB are available for game installations. Similarly, the Series X console has a 1TB SSD, of which 802GB are available. So that’s about 30% of memory reserved on the S and 20% on the X. This reserved storage is for the OS as well as the Quick Resume feature, which needs to store gigabytes of game...

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LG’s Q3 earnings report shows signs of recovery for mobile division

Earlier today, LG posted its earnings report for the July-September period and results from the mobile division are looking promising. Operating income from mobile was listed at KRW 1.52 trillion ($1.34 billion) - a 17% quarter on quarter increase in sales. Despite this, the mobile division is still operating at a loss - $124.9 million for Q3 which is down from the $169.1 million loss in Q2 2020. LG saw improved sales figures across major markets in North and South America. The LG Wing, Velvet and Q51 were listed as the key smartphones for LG in the past quarter. Increased production...

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OnePlus 9 is headed to Verizon and T-Mobile, apparently

If you're in the US and are wondering which carriers are going to offer the upcoming OnePlus 9, that may be coming sooner than expected, then wonder no more. The enterprising folks over at XDA Developers have discovered, through a deep dive into the OxygenOS code, that the OnePlus 9 is in fact headed to both Verizon and T-Mobile. On the other hand, the OnePlus 9 Pro seems to only be on the way to T-Mobile, with Verizon seemingly foregoing the more expensive option. The OnePlus 8 was also offered by Verizon There are very good hints about all of this in the OxygenOS code, but...

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AMD announces Radeon RX 6000 series gaming graphics cards

AMD today announced the Radeon RX RX 6000 series of gaming graphics cards. Built on the new 7nm RDNA 2 architecture, these cards provide up to 2x improvement in performance over the previous generation AMD flagship while also including support for the new Microsoft DirectX 12 Ultimate API and will be available starting November. The most important card in this series will likely be the $649 Radeon RX 6800 XT. It features 72 compute units and 16GB of 16Gbps GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit wide memory bus. The 6800 XT can clock up to 2015MHz under load (or Game Clock as AMD likes to call it)...

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Doogee S96 Pro rugged smartphone launches with infrared night vision

Rugged phone specialist Doogee has launched its latest device today, the S96 Pro. This pairs an incredibly rugged-looking construction with a 20 MP night vision camera, sitting alongside the 48 MP f/1.8 main camera sensor on the back. The Doogee S96 Pro comes with the MediaTek Helio G90 chipset, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of expandable storage (with a triple slot that can house two SIM cards and a microSD at the same time). It has a 6.22" 720x1520 LCD touchscreen with a waterdrop notch that houses a 16 MP selfie camera. On the back there's a quad shooter setup, the standout of the bunch...

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Top 10 trending phones of week 43

Apple's occupation of the top 4 of our trending chart was short lived with the newly announced Huawei Mate40 lineup securing two of the podium spots. However, the iPhone 12 Pro Max retained its top position as the Mate 40 Pro and Mate 40 Pro+ took second and third. The rest of the iPhone 12 lineup follows with the 12 Pro taking fourth, ahead of the vanilla 12 and the 12 mini. The exotic Huawei Mate 40 RS Porsche Design took seventh, ahead of the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro. Two more Xiaomi phones complete the chart - the Redmi Note 9 Pro and the returning Poco X3 NFC. This means there...

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Samsung Galaxy F12 (or F12s) is on the way to India, new leak shows

Earlier this month, Samsung made the Galaxy F41 official for the Indian market. This is the first smartphone in the F series, and weirdly enough it's just a rebranded Galaxy M31. So much for Samsung's strive to simplify its midrange offering stables, then. We have Galaxy A, M, and now F, and we're wondering why J had to die way back when. Anyway, the F line is only getting started, and a new phone is soon going to join the F41 in India. This will have the model number SM-F127G, and based on Samsung's naming conventions this means it will launch as either the Galaxy F12 or F12s. Also...

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OnePlus 8T: what to expect

The OnePlus 8T event on October 14 will be more of a celebration than a reveal – the company has revealed much about the phone already. All that info eked out over several weeks, so we’ve collected it all in one place in case you didn’t follow each daily teaser. The big upgrade will be the charging – the Warp Charge 65 will be have more than double the power of the current 30T plug. Topping out at 65W, this power brick will be able to do a full 0-100% charge in 39 minutes. Charging enough to last you through the day (0-58%) will take 15 minutes. The 8T will have a 4,500 mAh battery, by...

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Upcoming LG W31 leaks through Google Play Console, image and specs outed

When you think of LG images of the Velvet or Wing might instantly come to mind, but the company also has an ever-expanding roster of low-end to mid-range smartphones for sale in various markets across the globe, and soon this will grow by yet another model. Meet the LG W31, outed today through the Google Play Console. This listing, as usual, gives us an image of the phone's front, as well as a list of its most important specs. As you can see, the W31 has a teardrop notch and a very substantial chin. It's going to be powered by MediaTek's entry-level Helio P22 chipset (which has an...

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Flashback: the Nexus 4 cost less than half what the Pixel 5 costs, but it had a flagship chipset

The Nexus line may have had a rocky start, but it elicits love from fans in a way that the Pixels never quite managed. The trouble with the Pixels is that they are premium phones with premium prices whereas the Nexus line invented the “flagship killer” in all but name. That came about with the Nexus 4, which launched at a price of $300/€300/£280 (for the 8GB model, $350/€350 for 16GB). A year after launch you could have it for as little as $200, but even the launch price is less than half of what Google is asking for the new Pixel 5 unveiled earlier this week. It’s less than what the Pixel...

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Marshall Major IV come with 80 hour battery and wireless charging

Marshall has announced the new Major IV Bluetooth headphones, which come with a serious boost to battery life, along with wireless charging and some design changes. One of the major improvements over the previous generation model is to the battery life. Major IV take the already impressive 60 hour battery claim of the Major III up to an incredible 80+ hours. The headphones also feature fast charging, so a quick 15 minute charge will give you 15 hours of usage. The Major IV also include a new way to charge. The headphones include wireless charging support through a wireless...

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Amazon announces new Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite

Amazon has announced two new Fire TV devices. The first is an update to the existing Fire TV Stick and the other is a new Fire TV Stick Lite. The updated Fire TV Stick now features the faster SoC from the Fire TV Stick 4K. This means you get a new, faster quad-core CPU and a better GPU that can launch apps and start playing content quicker. It also includes new dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi for faster and more stable connection. The standard stick is still limited to 1080p at 60Hz but it now supports HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG content. There's also support for Dolby Atmos for...

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 gets eSIM enabled with the latest software update

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 unveiled earlier this month lets you have two different numbers - one through the regular SIM, and another through an eSIM. The eSIM functionality wasn't available out of the box, but Samsung has now released a new software update to enable it. This new firmware, sporting version number F916BXXU1BTIA and currently seeding in Europe, adds SIM card manager to the Settings menu that lets you use an eSIM on the Galaxy Z Fold2. It also updates the camera app. The Galaxy Z Fold2 went on sale in major markets last week. It's powered by the Snapdragon 865+ SoC,...

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Google Pixel 5 full specs leak

Yesterday we saw the Google Pixel 5 being listed at various retailers in both the UK and continental Europe, ahead of the phone's official unveiling on September 30. Today, from Germany comes a full specs leak of the upcoming device. Let's dive in. As rumored countless times before, the Pixel 5 will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 765G chipset, and not the flagship-grade Snapdragon 865 or 865+. This means lower performance, but also a lack of support for mmWave 5G - only Sub-6 networks will work. The screen will be a 6-inch 1080x2340 OLED with 90 Hz refresh rate and HDR support,...

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Huawei Watch GT2 Pro review

Introduction Huawei has become a staple of smartwatch with a rapidly growing roster of GT and Honor Magic watches that have great build quality, battery life and deliver great value for money. We loved the Huawei Watch GT2 for its responsive interface, great build quality and advanced set of features. The Huawei Watch GT2 Pro retains the internals, but is made with a much more premium selection of materials. Its borderless dial is made of sapphire crystal isntead of the traditional glass, the watch case is Titanium and the watch plate, which rests on your wrist is ceramic. Inside...

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OnePlus Nord N10 5G is headed to the US, priced under $400

OnePlus joined the mid-range fray this year with the Nord smartphone, and yet that model isn't available in the US - and it looks like we now know the reason why. According to a new rumor, the company is preparing another handset with Nord branding for launch in the States, and this one will be a bit different. Meet the OnePlus Nord N10 5G. We still don't have any leaked images of it (what you see below is the Nord), but some specs have surfaced today. Unlike the international Nord, that has the Snapdragon 765 SoC at the helm, the Nord N10 5G is going to be powered by the upcoming...

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Google is announcing the Pixel 5 on September 30

The rumors were right. Today Google has officially announced when its next hardware announcement will take place: on September 30, at 11 AM PT, and as usual during these times it's going to be an online-only event. Hence the tagline you can see in the invite below - "your couch is the best seat in the house". This "launch night in" is clearly about hardware, considering which Google Twitter account outed it. So we're expecting the Pixel 5 to make an appearance, alongside the Pixel 4a 5G. Names might change, but the idea here is that there should be two new phones becoming...

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More evidence of Apple’s folding iPhone appears

With the successful launch of Samsung’s folding smartphones in 2020 with the Z Fold2 and Z Flip (along with a kind of messy launch in 2019 with the original Galaxy Fold), other companies are pressured to come up with a device that might have some folding element to it. Rumors as early as 2017 have suggested that Apple has been working on an iPhone device with a folding form factor. The latest evidence comes from leakster Ice Universe and if it is to be believed, Apple is apparently in talks with Samsung Display for foldable screen samples and “hopes to exclusively supply the amount for one...

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Realme C17 appears on Geekbench with Snapdragon 460

Realme already brought several new C-series members to its lineup with the C11, C12 and C15 and it looks like we’re in for another model dubbed Realme C17. The device appeared in a Geekbench listing bearing the RMX2101 model number revealing it's powered by the entry-level Snapdragon 460 alongside 6GB RAM - the most in the C-series so far. It scored a respectable 253 points on the single-core part and 1,248 points on the multi-core test. The same phone previously bagged certifications from Indonesia’s Sertifikasi and TKDN as well as Thailand’s NBTC. Starting with the Realme C3, all...

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