Moto G 3rd Gen. press images and specs listed on Swiss retailer site

We’re mere days from the official introduction of the third generation of the Moto G series, and the device is popping up around the web in increasingly revealing leaks.

Just a few hours ago, Swiss retailer Digitec put up a listing for the Moto G 3rd Gen., complete with high quality press images showing the black and white versions of the device. The listing, which has been pulled down since news of it broke on German website Giga.de, appears to confirm some of the specs that have been associated with the new Moto G over the past months.

The images confirm that Motorola is going for a slightly more upscale design, with a finely textured back and a metallic-looking insert down the middle of the phone’s back. Only the black and white versions were listed, though if @evleaks has it right, Motorola is about to expand the availability of the Moto Maker customization program to the Moto G.

The specs included in the listing are a 5-inch Full HD display, 2GB of RAM, a quad-core processor clocked at 1.7GHz with an Adreno 405 GPU (likely a Snapdragon 610), Cat. 4G LTE, and 8GB of storage (expandable). Some of the listed specs could be placeholders, but they generally fit the bill for what we expect to be a solid mid-ranger with a killer price tag.

Here’s a first look at the OnePlus 2, courtesy of China’s TENAA

We are edging ever closer to the launch of the OnePlus 2, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised to see the handset passing through China’s TENAA certification center.

The nice thing about TENAA is that it also gives us a look at the handset. From the images we can see the adoption of a new physical home button, which is presumably where the fingerprint scanner will be housed. Rather than opting for a rear scanner like Huawei has done in the past, a scanner located in the home button is something that we are used to seeing from the likes of Samsung.

On the back we can also spot the new camera module lower down the handset, which, if earlier reports are accurate, appears to feature a laser auto focus system just underneath the lens. LG’s G3 and G4 smartphones make use of laser technology to allow for much faster camera focusing for nearby objects.

Other confirmed OnePlus 2 specifications include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, reversible USB Type-C connection and a 3300mAh battery, at a cost of under $450. The phone is also said to have a 13 megapixel rear camera with f/2.0 aperture.

The OnePlus 2 is expected to launch on July 27th, just five days away, and will be broadcast in virtual reality for those who own a little Google Cardboard or another VR headset. We should know all of the official details in just a few days’ time.

Galaxy Note 5 launch confirmed for August 13

Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus smartphones have leaked a lot over the past few weeks but unlike most smartphone launches, the rumours don’t seem to conflict too much. One thing that has been accepted as almost-fact is that the Samsung will defer away from its usual IFA release schedule to launch its new handsets early and get a jump on Apple’s upcoming iPhone 6 refresh.

We’ve previously heard that the Galaxy Note 5 could make its launch on August 12th with a release a few days later on August 21 and a new report from the Korean media has seemingly confirmed this, although suggests that the launch will take place on August 13 in New York City. The reason for the change? According to BusinessKorea,

It is believed that Samsung tries to not only check Apple, which threatens its number one position in global smartphone market share, but also capture consumers before the release of the iPhone 6S in Sept.

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Facebook News Feed Preferences change to give you more control over what shows up

The News Feed is one of the most important parts of Facebook, so this is pretty big news. The social network has announced that it’s giving its users more ways to tweak what shows up in the News Feed.

This comes by way of a revamped News Feed Preferences menu, which launches on iOS today and will become available for Android and the Web “over the coming weeks”.

The new News Feed Preferences let you prioritize whose stuff you see first, easily unfollow people or reconnect with those you’ve previously unfollowed, and discover new pages. To make sure you don’t miss posts from specific friends and pages, you can prioritize them. Then, every time you launch Facebook, you’ll see the stuff they shared since you last visited the social network at the top of the News Feed, with a star attached (so you know why that’s there). If you scroll down, you’ll then get the rest of your News Feed normally.

“Discover New Pages” is basically just a collection of recommended pages that Facebook thinks you should like, based on the types of pages you’ve liked in the past. You’ve always been able to unfollow people from their profile, but now you can choose to do that from the new Unfollow menu in News Feed Preferences too, if you so wish. Presumably this should be more useful for bulk operations. You can also see who you’ve unfollowed in the past, and choose to re-follow them.

The new News Feed Preferences can be accessed in the iOS app by tapping on More in the bottom right corner, then going to Settings.

Asus ZenFone 2 can run Windows 7 in case you really need it to

The latest smartphone that can boot an OS it will likely never need is Asus ZenFone 2. A crafty XDA Developers member ported Microsoft Windows 7 to the Intel Atom-based smartphone.

The desktop OS was ported on the ZE551ML variant of the ZenFone 2. Windows 7 runs on the smartphone as an aSPICE KVM virtual machine.

The desktop OS runs a tad slow on the mobile device, but is still surprisingly usable. See it in action below.

As you have probably guessed by now, getting Windows 7 to run on your ZenFone 2 is not a casual exercise. You will need to root your device, keep its bootloader unlocked, as well as install a number of additional tools on it before you can even get started.

A large capacity microSD card is also recommended alongside a partitioner for it. The whole exercise is explained in detail at the source link below.

New Office 2016 for Mac now available for purchase

Microsoft has released the final version of Office 2016 for Mac. The company had released a preview back in March but now you can purchase the full version from Microsoft.

Office 2016 for Mac is a complete revamp of the old Office 2011. The new app brings the new UI design seen on the Windows and mobile versions of Office while harmonizing with the new design and features of OS X. It supports features like fullscreen mode, multi-touch gestures, and also has Retina assets for all the high resolution Macs.

Office 2016 for Mac comes with five applications – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. If you are an Office 365 user, you can just download it for free. If you are a student, you could get it for free or at a substantial discount. If you are a home user, you can get it for the same monthly or yearly subscription price as the Windows version or from your local retailer.