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HTC Ville C Leaked as Cheaper One S Clone
After stating that it wanted to lower down the number of smartphones it releases publicly a while back, HTC has apparently gone back to its old ways. It seems that the Taiwanese company isn’t exactly happy with just the One range which is apparently seeing a lot of success, and now yet another phone which is nearly identical to the HTC One S has been leaked. The news comes briefly after the Desire C was officially launched. The HTC Ville C was reported to have been spotted by the folks over at BriefMobile and the specs might sound familiar to you.
It is apparently packing a 1.2GHz (1.7 is a typo apparently) dual-core MSM8260 S3 processor, a 4.3-inch qHD display, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal memory, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC’s overlay of Sense 4.5, an 8MP camera with LED flash that is capable of 1080p video recording and all of that is powered by a 1650mAh battery. The only hardware specification here that differs from the list attached to HTC’s One S is that the One S has a 1.5GHz dual-core chip. Besides that, Sense 4.5 which seems to be in the works will also be featured on the device. With regards to the battery, there is no mention as to whether it is removable or not but our guess would be that it won’t be.
The Fairphone 2 was first unveiled in June earlier this year, where this particular handset carried a modular design while featuring majority of its components that have been sourced from conflict-free mines. It seems that this particular handset that you can purchase with a clear conscience has begun to ship to those who happen to live across Europe.
Fairphone announced in a blog post, “It’s been almost two years in the making, and some of the earliest buyers have been patiently waiting since July to receive their new phones. As community manager, I want to personally welcome the new batch of Fairphone owners to our community.” The initial 1,000 units are tipped to ship this month, before the other pre-orders follow in January 2016.
In terms of hardware specifications, the Fairphone 2 will run on a Snapdragon 801 chipset, has a 5″ 1080p screen with Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 2GB of RAM, an 8MP camera, with Android 5.1 Lollipop in tow. It will be a dual SIM capable handset with a microSD memory card slot and plays nice with 4G LTE networks, retailing for approximately €525 a pop.
It looks like the upcoming flagship model from Xiaomi will feature NFC support, at least based on a document that was released by China UnionPay. Just in case you are scratching your head and wondering who China UnionPay is, they happen to be the only domestic payment gateway supplier and card organization, and hence, to see them offer detailed support concerning the newly released NFC-based payment system points to the very real possibility of the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5 featuring NFC capability.
After all, the Xiaomi Mi 3 was also mentioned on the list, which so happens to feature NFC, and there is no mention of the Xiaomi Mi 4 which does not come with NFC. Still, such a new payment system would be the ideal tool to see the reintroduction of NFC to the flagship model.
OnePlus did make an announcement in the previous month that the Ceramic variant of the OnePlus X will be released on November 24. True to their word, they did exactly that – although only a pitiful number of units were made available, and not only that, this was through a charity auction. Thankfully for the rest of the masses who are on the lookout for this device, it has gone on sale officially already.
Needless to say, this particular variant is available only by an invitation, although do bear in mind that standard OnePlus X invites are not good here – you will still need to snag yourself a specific Ceramic variant invite before you make a purchase. OnePlus is also on the lookout to offer additional methods of picking up this smartphone, although no further details were revealed.
The OnePlus X Ceramic will be available only in select markets, where among them include Europe, India, and Hong Kong. To date, we do know that OnePlus had made only 10,000 units of the handset available. A case of the early bird getting the proverbial worm here?