BlackBerry Motion is now official without physical keyboard

The BlackBerry Motion is now official with a 5.5-inch 1080p LCD and no physical keyboard whatsoever - neither slide-out nor permanently fixed one.

The new BlackBerry phone is built around a Snapdragon 625 chipset with 4GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in storage and a 4,000mAh battery. With a power-efficient chipset and a huge battery like that battery life should be quite impressive.

Imaging is covered by a single 12MP f/2.0 camera on the back and an 8MP selfie camera on the front. There's IP67-certified protection against dust and water.

The BlackBerry Motion has the same Android 7.1 as the BlackBerry Keyone.

Despite the midrange chipset and storage the Motion comes with the solid build we've come to expect from BlackBerry. It will retail for around $460 starting with the Middle East - UAE and Saudi Arabia. It won't come to North America at first, but there's no other word on future market expansion.

Huawei 7X appears on TENAA and Geekbench

The Honor 7X appeared in images on TENAA, the Chinese certification center. The phone will have an 18:9 display, two cameras on the back, implemented in the antenna band and a square fingerprint reader.

The phone also appeared on Geekbench, unveiling more specs, including the chipset. The successor of the Honor 6X will come with Kirin 659 SoC, paired with 4 GB RAM.

The listing also reveals that the Huawei Honor 7X will come with Android 7.0 Nougat OS, meaning the Chinese manufacturer will most likely put its in-house EMUI 5.1 on top. Looking at the benchmark results, the single-core run yielded 909 points while the multi-core score was 3,159. The cores of the 16 nm chipset are clocked at 1.71 GHz.

Sources suggest the price tag of the Honor 7X will be between CNY1,799 and CNY2,099 ($270 and $316).

New Huawei Mate 10 Pro renders confirm design

Huawei's new Mate 10 family will be announced in a week, on October 16, and we'll be there to bring you the complete coverage of the devices. But until then we can enjoy the latest leak, showing one of the three or four family members, the Huawei Mate 10 Pro.

We've seen the Mate 10 Pro on another occasion, courtesy of Evan Blass, and now get two new renders by way of China Weibo's @ichangezone.

The renders offer more of the same - a front housing an 18:9 aspect screen and a dual-toned back design, two cameras with Leica branding and a back-mounted fingerprint scanner.

The renders don't really show the reflective back, we've seen from other leaks but that may belong to one of the other rumored Mate 10 devices - the Lite, regular or Porsche Design.

New Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 smiles to the cam with dual camera and 18:9 screen

Up until this point we knew some details about Xiaomi's first 18:9 midranger - the Redmi Note 5 - and have seen it in renders but we're now finally being treated to a few snaps from the wild.

The device in the blurry images looks like a prototype of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 complete with a minimal-bezel front where there'll likely be a 5.5-inch 18:9 display, and the dual camera setup on the back.

It's rumored that the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 will have a 16MP+5MP setup on the back and a front-facing camera of unknown resolution.

The chipset of choice will either be a Snapdragon 660 or, more likely, a MediaTek Helio P25. The battery is rumored to have a 4,000mAh capacity.

We expect Xiaomi to release a few different variants of the Redmi Note 5, either with 3GB or 4GB of RAM.

Asus zenfone4 selfie Lite launched with 13mp front cam

Asus has unveiled yet another ZenFone 4 variant. The Asus ZenFone 4 Lite has been launched in the Philippines, and is a budget smartphone with a focus on the selfie camera. The rest of the specifications are decidedly entry-level, with a Snapdragon 425 SoC one of the examples. The smartphone is due to go on sale this month, media reports indicate. It has been launched in Deepsea Black, Mint Green, Rose Pink, and Sunlight Gold colour variants. Asus is also touting 100GB of free space via Google Drive for 2 years.

According to Philippines-based site Revu, the Asus ZenFone 4 Lite is priced between $156 (roughly Rs. 10,200) and $176 (roughly Rs. 11,500). The dual-SIM (Nano) smartphone runs Asus ZenUI 4.0 based on Android 7.0 Nougat, and sports a 5.5-inch HD (720x1280 pixels) IPS display with 2.5D curved glass. As we mentioned, is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 425 SoC coupled with 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM.

The Asus ZenFone 4 Lite sports a 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and phase detection autofocus (PDAF). On the front, the smartphone bears a 13-megapixel sensor coupled with an f/2.0 aperture and a 'softlight' LED flash. It comes in two inbuilt storage options - 16GB and 32GB - expandable via microSD card (up to 2TB) with a dedicated slot.

Connectivity options on the Asus ZenFone 4 Lite include 4G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v4.1, GPS/ A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, and Micro-USB. Sensors on board the smartphone include an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, digital compass, fingerprint sensor (on the home button), gyroscope, and proximity sensor. The smartphone measures 155.66x75.9x7.85mm and weighs 144 grams. It is powered by a 3000mAh battery.

The Asus zenfone 4 selfie expert is official

Just when we thought we were finally beginning to make sense of Asus' Zenfone 4 lineup, the company has come up with another Selfie, the Zenfone 4 Selfie Lite. This one comes in addition to two existing Zenfone 4 Selfies, the ZD553KLand the ZB553KL, and the top-of-the-line Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro.

Listed on Asus' Philippine website, the new Selfie Lite shares a lot with the ZB553KL, including the selfie bits - a 13MP f/2.0 camera with an LED flash. The rear camera is another 13MP unit, though Asus stays mum on other specifics. There's a 5.5-inch display on the front, and the lack of resolution in the specs points to 720p.

It becomes clear where the 'Lite' in the Zenfone 4 Selfie Lite's name comes from when you look at the chipset - it's the Snapdragon 425 with a quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU. The two other plain Selfies feature the S430 (8x1.4GHz Cortex-A53), while the Selfie Pro is in a different league with its S625 (8x2.0GHz Cortex-A53). Next comes a downgrade in RAM - just 2GB, and storage can be either 32GB or a lowly 16GB.

Those changes aside, the Zenfone 4 Selfie Lite measures the same 155.7 x 75.9 x 7.9 mm as the other two non-Pros, and packs a 3000mAh battery inside. The phone boots Android Nougat (unspecified version) with Asus' ZenUI on top.

The phone will be available in the Philippines sometime this month at a price between PHP7,995 and PHP8,995 ($156-$176). It's unclear whether this specific configuration will be available in other markets.

Apple eyeing on swelling batteries of iPhone 8 and iPhone 8plus

Numerous users around the world have reported their iPhone 8 or 8 Plus opening up due to a swollen battery. At the time of writing reports include devices in China, Canada, Greece, Japan and Taiwan, forcing Apple to officially look into it.

So far the reports appear to be limited related to the number of devices sold.

The issue shouldn't be directly compared to what transpired with the Galaxy Note7 last year as the iPhone 8's don't appear to be exploding, just cracking open due to a swollen battery.

There's no information at this point about what causes the issue. Some reports suggest the battery swells during charging though some report the phone arriving in a swollen state in its retail box.