News written by Petteri Pyyny (October, 2015)

According to Korean sources, Samsung plans to move the release of its flagship model, Samsung Galaxy S7 to happen couple of weeks before the MWC event where it has traditionally released its flagship models.

The move indicates that Samsung doesn't want to compete for the media attention during the MWC expo where several vendors release their products.

More interestingly, according to SamMobile, Samsung might be changing its flagship model tactic to have "super premium", "premium" and "sub-premium" flagship models in order to be able to compete against the iPhone (super premium) and against newcomers, like OnePlus and Xiaomi (premium & sub-premium).

HTC announced, without much fanfare, its mid-range model, HTC One A9, today that mimicks very effectively the current iPhone design, promises to deliver Android updates almost Nexus-like and will cost $399 unlocked.

Despite the promises of a quick rollout of future Android releases to One A9's users, HTC hasn't dropped its Sense user interface. Phone sports metallic back, with antenna stripes, very much like iPhone has. Internally the phone has Snapdragon 617 chip, 2GB RAM in 16GB storage version and 4GB RAM in 32GB version. Both models have a microSD memory card slot.

Full HD display is 5" and uses Gorilla Glass 4. Main camera is a 13Mpix camera with optical image stabilization and f/2.0 optics. Other than those details, the phone has fingerprint scanner, UltraPixel front camera and Dolby Audio.

Phone is expected to start shipping in beginning of November. Availability varies geographically.

HTC's reputation hasn't been exactly stellar when it comes to Android updates, but now the company has apparently taken different road.

HTC announced its One A9 mid-range smartphone today and the big news was that the company pledged to roll out all the Android updates to One A9 within fourteen days after Google releases the Android update.

The unlocked MSRP for One A9 will be $399, but Europeans will have to pay significantly more for the device once it arrives to old continent.

The best-known torrent site in the world, The Pirate Bay, appears to be offline, globally, right now.

According to online forums, such as Reddit, the site seems to be having some kind of technical problems, as it shortly reappeared after its first period of offline earlier today.

The Proxy Bay, a site that lists mirrors and proxies for The Pirate Bay, confirms this to be the case, stating on their homepage:

The Pirate Bay is currently experiencing issues