Motorola Droid Turbo is official with 5.2-inch QHD display

At a joint event today, Verizon and Motorola announced the Droid Turbo. The phone runs on the Verizon XLTE network and features a 5.2" Super AMOLED QHD display with a pixel density of 565ppi.

The Droid Turbo is powered by a Snapdragon 805 chipset with a 2.7GHz quad-core Krait 450 CPU, 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 420 GPU. The battery is 3,900mAh and Motorola promises it can last for 48 hours of mixed usage.

The phone also promises to be quite resistant to torturing. It's made either of ballistic nylon or metalized glass fiber reinforced with DuPont kevlar. The display is covered with a protective layer of Gorilla Glass 3 and the innards are covered with a water-repellent nanocoating.

The Droid Turbo with Ballistic nylon measures 73.3 x 143.5 x 8.3mm (at its thinnest), while the Metalized fiber one is a bit thinner at 7.8mm.

At the back of the phone, there's a 21MP snapper with a f/2.0 aperture and 4K video recording at 24fps.

The Motorola Droid Turbo will be available starting October 30 and the 32GB model will be available in Metallic Black, Metallic Red, and Black Ballistic Nylon for $199.99 with new two year contract or $25 per month on Verizon Edge. The 64GB Black Ballistic Nylon model will also be available for $249.99 with new two year activation or $27 per month on Verizon Edge.

HIS iSuppli: Xiaomi outpaces Huawei as 3rd largest manufacturer

The champagne is popping over at Xiaomi headquarters as according to HIS iSuppli, the company is now the third largest phone manufacturer. The analysts reports that Xiaomi outpaced Huawei with a total of 19 million smartphones shipped in Q3 2014. For the same period, Huawei managed to sell 16.8 million smartphones.

Xiaomi's pace has been growing continuously over the past couple of years. In 2012, it sold 5.7 million phones and 18.7 million in 2014 (note that these are full year numbers). This year it sold 11 million and 15.1 million in Q1 and Q2 respectively.

The latest markets to welcome Xiaomi are Singapore, India and Hong Kong. In India, the company has been quite active recently and with its aggressive pricing it managed to not only raise awareness but also sell quite a lot of Mi3 and Redmi Note smartphones.

Competition in China is getting more and more fierce with Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi fighting for a better position in the market. Meizu and OnePlus are also potent competitors, which are likely to offer even more competitive products as time goes on.

ARM announces Mali 8 GPU series - Mali-T860, Mali-T830, Mali-T820

Today ARM unveiled its next generation graphic processors - Mali-T820, Mali-T830 and Mali-T860. All three new GPUs support all popular APIs - OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 and 3.1, OpenCL 1.1 and 1.2, DirectX 11 and RenderScript Compute.

The flagship GPU is Mali-T860 with sixteen shader cores (each with two ALU cores), native 10-bit YUV input and output and it is 45% faster than the current Mali-T628 unit. It supports DirectX 11.1.

The Mali-T830 targets the mid-range class - it offers four shaders (each with two ALU cores), optional native 10-bit YUV input and output. Unlike the Mali-T860, the Mali-T830 supports DirectX 11 FL9_3.

The Mali-T820 is a low-end GPU, also packing four shaders but each of them offers just one ALU core. It supports DirectX 11 FL9_3 as well, but not DirectX 11.1.

ARM also detailed a new Mali-V550 video decoder. It handles H.265 hardware encoding and decoding on a single core and it also supports H.264, MP4, VP8, VC-1, H.263 and Real. Each core of Mali-V550 is capable of handling 1080p resolution at 60 fps, but it can be scaled up to eight-core configuration capable of 4K @ 120fps video encoding/decoding.

Finally, ARM also introduced a new Mali-DP550 display processor with extremely energy-efficient processing. It supports 7 layer composition, rotation, post-processing, and scaling to support 4K displays.

The new Mali gear is compatible with the current generation CPUs - Cortex A7, Cortex A15, Cortex A17, as well with the next-gen Cortex A53 and Cortex A57. ARM expects its partners to start embedding the new GPUs in chipsets in mid-2015 and expects the first devices using them to kick off by the end of 2015.

Asus PadFone X mini

For AT&T

GENERAL	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100
	4G Network	LTE 700 / 850 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100
	SIM	Yes
	Announced	2014, October
	Status	Coming soon. Exp. release 2014, October

BODY	Dimensions	132.1 x 66.3 x 12.7 mm (5.20 x 2.61 x 0.5 in)
	Weight	148.8 g (5.22 oz)
		- Padfone Station with 7 inches IPS+ display, 800 x 1280 pixels, 2200 mAh battery, 1 MP front camera. 203.7 x 119.4 x 11.2-21.1 mm, 249.8 grams

DISPLAY	Type	IPS+ LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	480 x 854 pixels, 4.5 inches (~218 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration, MP3 ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes

MEMORY	Card slot	microSD, up to 64 GB
	Internal	1 GB RAM

DATA	GPRS	Yes
	EDGE	Yes
	Speed	HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps; LTE, Cat3, 50 Mbps UL, 100 Mbps DL
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
	Bluetooth	v4.0, A2DP
	USB	microUSB v2.0

CAMERA	Primary	5 MP, 2592 х 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
	Features	Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection
	Video
	Secondary	2 MP

FEATURES	OS	Android OS, v4.4.2 (KitKat)
	Chipset	Intel Atom Z2560
	CPU	Dual-core 1.6 GHz
	Sensors	Accelerometer, proximity
	Messaging	SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	HTML5
	Radio	No
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS
	Java	Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
	Colors	Black
		- ASUS WebStorage (50 GB storage) - MP3/WAV/eAAC+ player - MP4/H.264 player - Document viewer - Photo/video editor - Voice memo/dial

BATTERY		Li-Ion 2060 mAh battery

Asus Android 5.0 update roadmap leaks, all Zenfones on board

Asus has been known for updating its devices with newer Android versions even though it often takes quite a while before the updates are launched. It seems Asus will be keeping the same pace with its newer gadgets and the new Android OS - 5.0 Lollipop.

Sony and HTC, among other manufacturers, have already announced partial Android Lollipop schedules, but Asus is yet to release an official statement. Meanwhile a leaked roadmap has spilled the beans on its plans.

Apparently all Asus Zenfones - Zenfone 4, Zenfone 4 A450CG, Zenfone 5, Zenfone 5 LTE, and the Zenfone 6 will be getting Android 5.0 Lollipop in April next year. The versatile PadFone S will be also getting the sweet Lollipop treatment by April 2015, while the PadFone Infinity 2 update is scheduled for June, 2015.

We bet even more Asus devices will be getting the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop OS next year, but Asus is still mum on the matter.Asus has been known for updating its devices with newer Android versions even though it often takes quite a while before the updates are launched. It seems Asus will be keeping the same pace with its newer gadgets and the new Android OS - 5.0 Lollipop.

Sony and HTC, among other manufacturers, have already announced partial Android Lollipop schedules, but Asus is yet to release an official statement. Meanwhile a leaked roadmap has spilled the beans on its plans.

Apparently all Asus Zenfones - Zenfone 4, Zenfone 4 A450CG, Zenfone 5, Zenfone 5 LTE, and theZenfone 6 will be getting Android 5.0 Lollipop in April next year. The versatile PadFone S will be also getting the sweet Lollipop treatment by April 2015, while the PadFone Infinity 2 update is scheduled for June, 2015.

We bet even more Asus devices will be getting the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop OS next year, but Asus is still mum on the matter.

Samsung Galaxy A7 benchmark reveals all specs

Of the three members in Samsung's soon to be unveiled A series of smartphones, we've so far known the least about the Galaxy A7. The A3 and A5 have seen many more leaks than the biggest of the bunch, and we basically already know everything there is to about them - save for a release date, that is.

Well, today we can finally say the same thing about the A7, because it's been put through the paces of GFXBench. And thanks to this development, we get to see all of the phone's most important specs.

Like a user agent profile hinted a few days ago, the Galaxy A7 will be sporting 1080p screen resolution and a 64-bit chipset. Interestingly, though, its display size won't be 5.5" like previously leaked, but a more sensible 5.2" instead.

The SoC in question has been revealed to be the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615, which sports an octa-core CPU (in this case clocked at up to 1.5 GHz) and an Adreno 405 GPU. Complementing it are 2GB of RAM, while the built-in storage space should be 16GB (of which around 12GB will be user-accessible).

The main camera is expected to be a 12 MP unit with Full HD video recording, while the selfie snapper will top out at 5 MP. The phone will also have an accelerometer, Bluetooth, a compass, GPS, NFC, and Wi-Fi.

That's all we have for now, hopefully Samsung will make the A series official pretty soon. Otherwise, we wouldn't be surprised to see more leaks about these handsets coming our way.

LG Isai VL debuts in Japan with 3GB of RAM and VoLTE

Before the LG G3 got official, we caught a glimpse of what to expect from it through the Isai FL, a handset that has basically been Japan's version of the flagship. It was the first LG smartphone to come with QHD (2,560x1,440) resolution, for example.

And today it's received an ever so slight update. The new model is called LG Isai VL, it's still exclusive to Japanese carrier Au by KDDI, and it very much resembles the Isai FL from earlier this year, even having the exact same dimensions: 145 x 76 x 10.5mm. It is 6g lighter though, coming in at 154g.

Compared to its predecessor it does bump up the RAM to 3GB, and features support for Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) too. Otherwise, though, we're looking at pretty much the same hardware package.

Just like the Isai FL, the new Isai VL comes with a 5.5-inch QHD display, a 13 MP rear camera, a 1.3 MP front camera, and a 3,000 mAh battery. It also sports 32GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD), Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, and it's water and dust resistant too. It runs Android 4.4 KitKat and will be available in the three colors you can see above: "aqua", black, and "pink gold".