Google Starts Selling Nexus 9, Chromecast On The Play Store In New Zealand And Taiwan

It may be taking longer than many potential customers would like, but Google is still working on bringing its goods and services to interested parties around the world. Today, those in New Zealand and Taiwan will be happy to find that the Play Store now has a "Devices" section in their countries.

For now, it seems that only the Nexus 9 and the Chromecast are available in these two countries, but this is still a promising development.

Google Starts Selling Nexus 9, Chromecast On The Play Store In New Zealand And Taiwan was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

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HTC One M9 (Hima) leaked again in press and case renders, comparison with One M8 thrown in for good measure

When it rains, it pours. We’re a little over a month away from HTC unveiling the followup to last year’s phenomenal HTC One M8 with the all new HTC M9 (codename Hima). Okay, well mostly new. According to the first crop of leaked images — which we showed you guys only yesterday — the phone may not look all too different from the design of the current One M8.

The main difference between this year and last year’s models being updated internal specs, a square shaped camera hole, and the placement of the power button (now located on the side of the phone, just underneath the volume rocker). After leaking a few purported images of the phone in the wild, Nowhereelese.fr have now come across a leaked press render of the phone (the back anyway) and a few renders of the device as it appears in a few generic cases. Take a look.

While some assumed HTC could be attempting to hide the real design by packing M9 hardware inside the M8 housing, after receiving a few images of the phone being tested in the wild (that we sadly, aren’t allowed to post), we can confirm — this lines up exactly with what we’re seeing.

Okay, so if HTC is really opting for a similar (read: identical) design as last year’s model (ala iPhone), you’re probably wondering exactly how much has changed from the HTC One M8 to the new HTC One M9. Well, not much. Steve Hemmerstoffer of Nowhereelse.fr posted this quick comparison image to his Twitter page, showing the two devices side-by-side, even super imposing them on top of each other.

Sure there are some small differences — notably the size of the bezels — we can’t being too sure. Naturally, there’s a margin of error associated with attempting to line up two completely different images. We’ll need to see more before we can be sure. In any case, we’ve been screaming for years that Android OEMs should adopt the Apple model of keeping a flagship phone’s design for 2 generations (updating the internals, of course) before moving onto something new.

We’re curious. If this HTC M9 is, in fact, the final design of the phone, would you have any objections with it?

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Samsung Galaxy S6 might not use Snapdragon 810 due to overheating, water resistance also in the air

Talk about the Samsung Galaxy S6 at AndroidForums.com!

The unsavory rumors for the Samsung Galaxy S6 just keep rolling in. The latest, a report from Bloomberg, tells us that we shouldn’t expect Samsung to go with the super-hyped Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset, which is currently at the very top of the chipset maker’s totem pole.

Why not, you ask? Well, apparently there are concerns about the chipset overheating during unit testing. Unfortunately the report didn’t state whether Samsung believed the overheating to be due to the design of the phone or a fault in the chipset itself. Either way, that’s a problem they absolutely don’t want to deal with once the phone makes its way out of retail.

Should Samsung ultimately decide to ditch Qualcomm’s wares, they’ll likely look to their own line of Exynos chipsets for processing power. Their chips aren’t bad — in fact, they’re top notch — but Samsung would likely prefer to use Qualcomm’s silicon due to the efficiency of their LTE chips. We also imagine they save quite a bit of money when outsourcing for chipsets instead of ramping up production on their own line.

To maker matters worse, Korean press is reporting that Samsung also won’t be able to slap an IP67 certification on the device, which would certify it to be dust proof and water resistant. It’s sure to be a disappointment after seeing the feature present in the Samsung Galaxy S5.

All of this joins an already sizable list of unfortunate changes Samsung is rumored to be making to their tried and true design. A report earlier in the week suggested Samsung would be looking to do away with a user-replaceable battery thanks to the inclusion of glass on the device’s rear.

We all asked for a better looking Samsung Galaxy S lineup, but it seems far more functionality has to be sacrificed for the sake of beauty. We’ll have to see how all of this ultimately affects Samsung’s sales performance in the year to come, especially considering their previous year wasn’t much to be proud of.

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