IDC: India is fastest growing Asia Pacific smartphone market

IDC put out a new report, stating that India continues to be the fastest growing Asia Pacific market for smartphones. The Q3 smartphone sales saw a growth of 82% over the same period of 2013.

The data also mentions a quarter-on-quarter growth of 27%. This exponential growth has largely been boosted by the festive demands.

There are also a number of other reasons that have played a crucial part in forming the favorable statistics that exceed every other market in the Asian Pacific region in terms of growth. Karan Thakkar, senior market analyst at IDC India, puts a lot of emphasis on positive customer attitude toward the market and mostly the existing low levels of inflation.

He believes, that these are the needed ingredients to ensure a fast paced and quickly refreshing device market. When the intensifying push towards 4G is added to the mix, Karan predicts an even greater spike in demand, reaching upwards of 80 million units in 2015.

Another peculiar trend, identified by the same researcher is a possible rise in interest towards phablet devices, which the IDC defines as having a screen size between 5.5 and 6.99 inches. At current their overall market share in India is pretty low and constant at 6%. Consumers still regard smartphones with screens between 4.5 and 5.5 inches as the ideal everyday device. Karan, however believes that richer media content and faster data connection will bring about a need for higher resolution and bigger screens and definitely sees this type of hardware making a return.

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OnePlus One will launch in India on December 2

OnePlus One will launch in India next week, on December 2. As we know already, the powerful yet affordable smartphone and its accessories will be exclusively sold through Amazon in the vast market.

Official pricing in India for the smartphone is yet to be revealed. OnePlus One will be offered via India-specific invites. Users will be able to register their interest in obtaining one on the device’s Indian product page.

We noticed that customers in India will have 48 hours to utilize their invite. OnePlus One invites in for other markets typically last for 24 hours.

In order to mark the launch of the smartphone, OnePlus and the retail giant released a promo video starring the Amazon India’s country manager and the CEO of the Chinese company. See it below.

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Android 5.0 is now seeding to Moto X (2014) for Verizon

ndroid 5.0 Lollipop is now seeding to Moto X (2014) for Verizon Wireless. The update arrives only a couple of days after soak test invites got out to Motorola Feedback Network participants.

The latest Android build for the Moto X is in stock guise, so it offers the same user interface experience as the Nexus 6. The biggest highlights of Android 5.0 include sleek Material Design and brand new ART runtime. The latter makes devices feel a lot more responsive regardless of the task they perform.

Verizon deserves a hat tip for bringing the new OS so quickly to the Moto X (2014). It was only a couple of weeks ago when Motorola began seeding Android 5.0 to the Pure Edition of the smartphone and Moto G (2014).

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Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 reference hardware kits go on sale

Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 reference smartphone and tablet hardware kits are now available to order. The incredibly well equipped development platforms are offered by the Canadian company Intrinsyc.

Priced at $799, the smartphone platform consists of a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC with octa-core CPU, Adreno 430 GPU, and Qualcomm Hexagon V56 DSP. The list goes on with 4GB of LP-DDR4 RAM (available commercially in a device for the first time), 32GB of built-in memory, microSD card slot, and 6.2” display with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels.

The handset packs a 13MP main camera with 4K video capture and 4MP front-facing unit with 1080p video recording. There are eight microphones built-in. An overwhelmingly rich sensor and connectivity suite includes fingerprint sensor, temperature and humidity sensor.

The device is powered by 3,020mAh battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0. It runs “the latest available Android OS” at the moment.

The tablet platform is priced at $999 and features the same chipset and amount of RAM as the smartphone. Its display is a 10.1” 4K unit (3840 x 2160) pixels, while onboard memory sits at 64GB, which can be further expanded via microSD card slot.

The main camera of the slate is a 13MP unit with 4K capture @ 60fps, coupled with 4MP front-facing snapper. A duo of 3D IR cameras is also on board.

The tablet features the same sensors as the smartphone. It is powered by a 7,560mAh battery.

The smartphone and the tablet platforms will begin shipping by mid December. Both devices are not intended for regular consumers, yet they give us a good glimpse about what’s in store for the Android flagship devices next year. We reckon that 2015 will be quite exciting.

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Xiaomi Mi3 5.0 Lollipop update in testing, release imminent

Xiaomi is on a seriously hot streak lately, the company selling smartphones as fast as it can build it. Its attractively priced devices even helped it climb to the third spot globally even though the quality of the Chinese maker’s after-sale support has often been questioned.

Luckily the Chinese are also looking to address that last concern by providing more timely updates. The development of the Android 5.0 Lollipop update for its former Mi 3 flagship is already in progress as revealed by the following picture posted by one of the Xiaomi developers.

The picture was posted on Weibo and shows the status screen of a Xiaomi Mi 3 where under Android version it says 5.0. Other details to come with the image is that the ROM is for the WCDMA variant of the Mi3 – the one available outside of China.

We don’t have a time frame for the update release, but it shouldn’t take too long now that the company is bragging about the development. We’ll keep you updated as more info pops up.

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[UPDATE]Unlocked Moto G 2nd Gen getting Android Lollipop

Update: It seems this is just a soak test and not a widespread rollout as was written in the original article, which you can read below.

Well, this is surprising. After the developer edition of the Moto X 2nd Generation started receiving the Android 5.0 Lollipop update, it's now turn of the unlocked version of the Moto G 2nd Generation. Motorola's latest budget smartphone is now being treated to the latest and greatest version of Android, well before any of the Nexus or Google Play edition devices, we might add.

We have seen some urgency this time from OEMs regarding the Lollipop update release but this is quite interesting. Not only is Motorola pushing the update well before Google is, it is doing so for its budget smartphone.

So far the update is only rolling out to the second generation model but it should arrive on the first gen as well some time in the near future.

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CyanogenMod introduces Scramble PIN layout

A known weakness of touchscreen PIN entry is that you leave fingerprints, so it's easy for someone holding your phones to tell which numbers you pressed (not their order, but it doesn't take too many tries to guess it). CyanogenMod has provided a solution – scramble the digits on the keyboard!

This way the position of your fingerprints doesn't give away which numbers were pressed since each time the numbers are in different positions. This does mean you can't just rely on muscle memory to enter the PIN, but security protocols are rarely pleasant.

Unfortunately, it seems that this feature will land on the proprietary version of CyanogenMod that powers the likes of OnePlus One. It's not clear if it will make it to the open-source distribution.

Such an option is already available via an Xposed module – Xblast Tools – but that one is paid and (obviously) requires Xposed. Jailbroken iPhones have CodeScrambler for an identical feature. If you know of a solution that works on an unmodified phone, drop a line in the comments.

In related news, CyanogenMod 12 based on Android 5.0 Lollipop is already in the works.

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