News & Reviews:   Android

If your phone is running Android 2.3 Gingerbread – you may want to either find a way to update it or replace it pretty soon as Google has announced that their support for smartphones running Gingerbread would end by early 2017.

We have reported that Samsung just bought the company Harman recently, which is part of Samsung’s push into the automotive electronics sector. However the company also now holds the brand rights to the Harman stable of audio peripherals – and a recent press conference between the two company has listed out the direction Samsung will take for the audio specialist.

A new superpower in mobile processing will be heading to smartphones soon, as Qualcomm unveiled the new Snapdragon 835 SoC. The new processor will be built on Samsung’s 10 nanomtre FinFET process, which promises better performance and energy efficiency.

If you are a Hotlink customer – head’s up. Maxis’s prepaid brand is launching the Biggest Internet Pass package that offers free calls to all networks and two times more YouTube streaming quota than ever before. With just RM50 per month, you will get 17GBs of high-speed Internet.

According to ASUS's CEO Jerry Shen – the company will be showcasing their first Tango-powered smartphone in next year’s edition of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 in Las Vegas. It will be the company’s first AR-supported phone in their line-up.

A report that came out from Campaign Asia suggests that Lenovo will stop producing smartphones under their own brand. This may see the death of the Lenovo smartphone brand, or in another word, consolidation of brands by Lenovo.

Look out for MWC 2017, as Sony is set to launch two new smartphones during that event. The two new devices will have the model label G at the back of the name, but they may follow current convention and use the X instead.

We have just seen the launch of the Xiaomi Mi Note 2 and the incredible Xiaomi Mi Mix – but sources at TENAA just shared that there will be two new models coming our way from Xiaomi. It looks like a mid-ranger from the specs, and we do not have any information on how it looks so far.

If you are getting tired topping up your prepaid service every week due to the validity period, TuneTalk is here to the rescue. They have just introduced a new prepaid plan that is valid for a year! Better yet, it comes with 36GB of data, or around 3GB a month. 

Apart from selling devices, Samsung is also involved in other businesses, which includes shipping, construction and even white goods. One of the features that they have introduced previously is Samsung Pay – a payment system that allows Samsung phones to be used as payment instead of cash. It seems that Malaysia is next on the list of countries to have this payment system as Samsung users have been prompted with an invitation to join the Open Beta trial locally.