Apple stores will offer gift cards on Black Friday instead of the discounts expected by shoppers.
The day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday, is a day of blissful debauchery for eager shoppers, who swarm retail stores in the wee hours of the morning and all through the day in search of unprecedented once-a-year deals.
But unlike years past, Apple won't offer discounts this time. Instead, shoppers will receive Apple Store gift cards with select purchases.
The coupons are available to shoppers both in Apple's retail stores and online, including in regions outside the US. In fact, Australian shoppers can see them now.
Raw deals
We won't know the exact values of the coupons being offered outside Australia until the promotion goes live in other regions, but shoppers down under who buy any MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or iMac will get an AU$150 ($136, £83) gift card.
The iPad Air, on the other hand, comes with an AU$75 ($68, £41) gift card, while the iPad mini, iPad 2 and iPod touch come with a mere AU$50 ($46, £27).
Even further down the ladder is the iPod nano, which comes with just AU$25 ($23, £13).
Gift cards also come with third-party products like the Olloclip, Parrot AR.Drone, the Fitbit Flex, and Beats headphones.
Apple no doubt figures it will make out just fine tomorrow anyway, what with the hordes of shoppers who will inevitably appear with cash in hand ready to make a purchase.
Hopefully Apple Stores survive the ire of those mobs of shoppers when employees try to hand them gift cards instead of discounts.
Of course, if you really want a discounted Apple product, plenty of other retailers will no doubt be offering the deals Black Friday shoppers expect.
Check out the first glimpse of the Huawei G750 (credit: MyDriver)
It seems Huawei has some Android tricks up its sleeves, one of them being the newly leaked eight-core Huawei G750.
The previously unheard of device reportedly packs MediaTek's powerful new octa-core processor, according to the photos and info that leaked on the Chinese site MyDrivers.
However, it's unclear whether the G750 is merely the codename or model number for the Huawei Honor 4/Glory 4, which are also rumored to be powered by the new MediaTek chip, or a separate device entirely.
Bragging rights
MediaTek has been vocal about its new 1.7 GHz MT6592 System on a Chip (SoC), which it claims is the "world's first true octa-core mobile platform."
The Taiwanese chip maker says in addition to the eight-core chip's raw processing power, it has the advantage of being fully scalable and consuming less battery power than the quad-core processors that are currently popular in various flagship smartphones.
Other than that juicy tidbit, based on the specs pictured in this leak it seems the Huawei G750 will sport a big but disappointing 720p 5.5-inch display, 2GB of memory, 32GB of storage, and 13- and 5-megapixel cameras.
It will also reportedly come with the slightly outdated Android 4.2.2 and be available on China's three big carriers, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom.
There's some powerful, albeit nonsensical, imagery on the Revolution teaser site
Geeksphone said "Happy Thanksgiving" today with the announcement of a new, reportedly higher-end Firefox OS device, the Revolution.
There's a catch, though: the mysterious new smartphone isn't technically running Firefox OS.
According to CNET, the Geeksphone Revolution actually runs Boot2Gecko, an identical Mozilla OS with a different name, because the Firefox OS brand is apparently unavailable to telecoms companies not associated with specific carriers.
Regardless, the Revolution has one very interesting feature: the hardware is capable of running either B2G/Firefox OS or Android.
Split personality
Geeksphone said when customers order the Revolution they'll be able to choose whether they want Mozilla's OS or Android.
The Spanish company dealt in Android phones before throwing its support behind Firefox OS.
Besides that literally no details about the new hybrid phone are known, but Geeksphone's new teaser website at geeksphone.com/revolution teases "a creation with a powerful heart" (is that an amoeba? Nope, looks like a processor!) and recommends we "stay tuned."
(The meaning behind the site's prominent imagery of a very pregnant woman is not quite clear.)
"We are...confident that we will surprise everyone by its very high performance," Geeksphone co-founder Javier Aguera said in a statement. "And it's very competitively priced."
Join the Revolution
Despite the apparent restrictions, Geeksphone is fully behind Mozilla's web-powered OS initiatives. It was one of the earliest supporters of Firefox OS, releasing two phones, the Keon and the Peak, to developers earlier this year.
An upgraded Peak model, the Peak+, is also reportedly in the works, though customers who ordered the Peak+ already can switch to the Revolution at no additional cost. It sounds like the Revolution will drop first.
As CNET noted, the Norwegian company Telenor today launched another Firefox OS device, the Alcatel One Touch Fire, which will be available in regions including Serbia, Hungary, and Montenegro by Christmas.
No word yet on whether the low end One Touch Fire will hit the US or UK, but as always we'll keep an eye out.
Huawei, LG, ZTE, and Sony are also committed to Firefox OS to varying degrees.
Nokia put two Asha 50x phones on sale – the 502 Dual SIM and the 503. The two are based on the Asha 501 design, but add a transparent outer layer on the back (while being every bit as colorful underneath).
The Nokia Asha 502 Dual SIM improves the phone's photography skills by bumping the camera to 5MP and adding an LED flash. The video recording is still at the abysmal QVGA@15fps, though.
As the name suggests, it comes only in dual-SIM. Unlike the 501, this model has only 2G connectivity, but Wi-Fi is still available and so is WhatsApp. Note that the Asha 502 has a slightly smaller battery.
The Nokia Asha 503 comes in single- and dual-SIM versions. It also brings back the 3.5G connectivity from the 501, while keeping the improved camera. The battery is back to the original 1,200mAh capacity too.
Both the Asha 502 and the 503 have 3" QVGA screens (240 x 320) protected by Gorilla Glass 2, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, microSD card slots. They also feature social networking integration (Facebook, Twitter, Sina Weibo, LINE, WeChat) and Nokia's data compressing Xpress Browser.
The Nokia Asha 502 Dual SIM and Asha 503 are available right now in select IMEA (India, Middle East and Africa) and Asia Pacific regions.
HTC offers a mean flagship, in the form of the HTC One. But the firm knows that a lot of the mobile market now lies in the budget sector, and this is where the HTC Desire 500 is pitched. It might not have the super low price of the ZTE Blade V, but even so, the price is hardly going to make your eyes water.
This puts the Desire 500 in direct competition with the Sony Xperia M and the Nokia Lumia 625, and just a little more costly than the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini. It's also worth considering the cheaper Moto G here, which sports a deceptively low price for its feature set.
So has HTC equipped the Desire 500 with the necessary weapons to beat an increasingly difficult market?
It packs Qualcomm's Snapdragon 200 processor, backed up with 1GB RAM. This means that the Desire 500 might not pack the biggest punch, but the 1.2GHz quad-core chip is hardly a slouch.
While the Desire 500 does boast a 4.3-inch screen, it's unfortunately only 480 x 800, meaning a rather low 217ppi.
This is all packed into a 131.8 x 66.9 x 9.9mm plastic chassis, leading to a low 123g weight, and a rather inconspicuous footprint in your pocket. The HTC Desire 500 is ideal then, if you like wearing skinny jeans.
HTC also has also provided the Desire 500 with Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n (so no dual band surfing), as well as NFC, GPS and 3G. Unfortunately, there is no 4G.
Design wise, the HTC Desire 500 is very visually reminiscent of the HTC One S. So much so, in fact, that we found it a little difficult to tell them apart.
The plastic casing wraps around the screen, causing us some difficulty when it came to removing it.
We passed it around to a few friends, and eventually they all realized that just pulling gently below the screen would ease it off.
A massive hint for this was that the screen doesn't sit flush within the casing. This is a minor niggle, but made the Desire 500 feel a lot less premium than it could have done.
Sat behind the screen is an 1800mAh battery, which is removable. We're getting ever-more skeptical about the need for a removable battery, but it is a nice touch for intense users.
The microSD slot (supporting up to 64GB) and microSIM port are also hidden in behind the wrap around case.
The Desire 500 is by no means an unattractive device. Our review model was white and red, but we did also get a chance to play with a white-and-blue one (which we preferred), and there is an all-black version.
We can't work out why HTC hasn't done a black and red version, as it's a color scheme we were big fans of on the HTC Sensation XE.
The red wraps around the edge of the Desire 500, as well as providing highlights to the camera and the HTC branding on the back.
Speaking of cameras, the Desire 500 doesn't come packing the same UltraPixel technology that we have seen adorning the entire One range. Instead, the HTC Desire 500 comes with an 8MP sensor, as well as a 1.6MP snapper on the front. Thankfully, there is an LED flash on the rear as well.
In the way of buttons, the Desire 500 comes with two soft keys, sat just below the screen. We felt that this made the handset look a little odd, given the massive gap between the back and home buttons.
Long pressing the home button doubles up as the menu key, but we can't see why HTC wouldn't just put in a dedicated menu button.
For physical keys, the power/lock button is placed in the upper left corner of the HTC Desire 500.
The volume keys are sat on the right hand side, integrated into the red band. This is a great design touch, especially as the small break in the band allows you to easily differentiate between the two buttons, without the need for a rocker.
We found that we were able to hit all the buttons easily one handed, a consequence of the smaller 4.3-inch screen.
HTC has also provided the Desire 500 with the obligatory 3.5mm headphone port (in the top right corner), and the microUSB in the centre of the base.
Overall we're impressed with the design of the HTC Desire 500. It is light, and the 4.3-inch screen means that it sits very nicely in the hand.
The screen not sitting flat with the casing is disappointing, as is the slight unbalanced feel of only having two buttons, but not enough to stop us taking another look.
Before the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 came out there were rumors that it will have a camera with optical image stabilization (OIS). It didn’t and rumors had it that it was due to the insufficient supply of stabilized modules in time for the launch. Then there were a couple of OIS-enabled cameras linked to Samsung – a 13MP one and a 16MP one – with speculations coming that they'll be used on the Galaxy S5.
Not so fast, says Korean publication ETNews. Apparently, the next Galaxy S flagship will not have OIS due to a number of issues. For one, OIS camera modules are thick and might not fit in the thin Galaxy S5.
Getting enough units is another issue – the Galaxy S phones sell in the tens of millions and Samsung is reportedly worried that camera suppliers won't be able to deliver enough units, at least in time for the S5 launch early next year.
Samsung execs recognize that competitors are using OIS as a marketing point, but the next flagship smartphone will most likely miss out on the feature.
Keep in mind that that these rumors are in no way official and might turn out to be false. The same goes for other Galaxy S5 rumors including the metal frame and 64-bit processor.
HTC One hit the shelves in late March and despite its initial production issues, it's still one of the most popular smartphones in the market.
Unfortunately HTC One didn't have a microSD card slot for memory expansion and it faced a lot of negative feedback about it. What's really odd is that HTC was offering a microSD-enabled dual-SIM model of the One on the Chinese market, but didn't give the international version the same treatment.
The good news is HTC is finally going to offer the same dual-SIM and microSD-enabled HTC One in the UK. The phone is already available on pre-order via the official HTC online store and costs £494.99 for the 32GB model.
There is no info on the release date just yet, but we hope it will ship before Christmas. There is also no info concerning carrier availability and potential rollout of the microSD-enabled One to other markets.
Windows Phone users may have got a little excited after news from Italy confirmed that Sky Italia would be providing Sky Go support for the Microsoft platform.
Unfortunately we've been brought back down to earth with a bump, as BSkyB in the UK has confirmed that it does not have any similar plans at this time.
A BSkyB spokesperson told TechRadar: "Sky Italia and Sky are separate companies operating in different countries. We as BSkyB are currently prioritising bringing support to additional Android tablet devices."
Bumpy ride
Sky Go had a bit of a bumpy ride since its launch, with just a handful of Android devices gaining support for the live streaming application, and while Sky is committed to rolling it out to more tablets, its pace still feels a little slow.
It does, however, give full support to Apple's range of iPhones and iPads, with the iOS platform a lot easier to develop for thanks to the lack of fragmentation with plagues Google's OS.
Windows Phone integration isn't completely out of the question though, as the spokesperson confirmed that "we will continue to monitor the marketplace and should we see an uptake by our customers of Windows phones will explore support."
Oppo has posted the first official photo of its upcoming Find 7 flagship on its Weibo page. The teaser image shows just the back of the phone - but its enough to give us a better idea of what the phone would look like.
The photo shows that the Find 7 will have some sort of reflective material used for its back panel and won't stick with the matte finish of the Find 5. Oppo calls it a "holographic mirror design" and promises the phone to be another Oppo classic.
Strong words, indeed, but we definitely like what we see. The edges of the glass back look to be chamfered and you can spot the metal frame surrounding the phone. The camera and LED flash are situated on the top left corner with earlier rumors pointing at a 13MP snapper. The Oppo Find 7 is also speculated to pack a Snapdragon 800 chipset and a 4,000mAh battery.
However, we wouldn't count on it, as in September Oppo officially disclosed the Find 7 will be made available in late 2014. We doubt the manufacturer is going to put last year's chipset in its latest flagship.
The five star HTC One may be about to get even better as word that the dual-SIM version is heading to our shores, complete with microSD slot.
We didn't find much wrong with the HTC One when we reviewed it, but one of the minor points against the handset was the lack of expandable storage - but that's about to be rectified.
The dual-SIM HTC One has been available in Asia since the handsets launch, but only now has the Taiwanese firm made the decision to roll it out to other countries.
However, that additional functionality will come at a price - the back cover will be removable, which has the effect of making the phone feel less well-packaged, as we saw on the supersized One Max.
Why, exactly?
The dual SIM offering is an interesting - HTC reckons there's a large amount of users who are carrying two phones for international reasons, or just want to have a work and home phone.
Here's the weirdly good news: there will be very little price difference between the two models, with the HTC One dual SIM coming for the same price as the original HTC One, according to HTC's official store.
It will also be coming to the high street as well as be available through online retailers in the new feature, as HTC is touting that fact it's talking to a number of outlets at the moment.
In terms of the HTC One dual SIM release date, we're a little in the dark. The model launched in China quite soon after the announcement of the original One, so it's not a case of getting production up and running.
Here's hoping that HTC has opened its eyes and realised there's still a huge appetite for expandable storage on phones - will the HTC One Two follow suit?
The BlackBerry Z10 was the first handset from the company formerly known as RIM, now renamed BlackBerry, to run its new operating system BlackBerry 10, and there was much more on the line here than simply making a few pennies – arguably the company's survival rested on the success of this device and the BlackBerry Q10.
It's no secret that BlackBerry is on the rocks, with the company even admitting that it hasn't been in the best shape of late, and the 4G toting Z10 was the start of what it hoped would be a successful revolution.
Since its launch in January the BlackBerry Z10 has received a few software updates which has seen things become more stable, plus the app store has also witnessed some new arrivals, so we've taken the time to update the keys parts of our review with the latest information.
In the UK the handset has witnessed a massive price drop since launch and you can pick up the Z10 free on contracts starting at £32 per month, while you'll need to fork out just £149.95 if you want it SIM-free.
Sporting a 4.2-inch 1280 x 768 display, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and lower price tag, the BlackBerry Z10 finds itself jostling for position with the Nokia Lumia 925, Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini and iPhone 5C.
Lock eyes on the BlackBerry Z10 and you'll notice it's an unassuming slab of black glass and plastic that mimics the general aesthetical design of many a smartphone these days.
The Z10 is a little bezel-heavy with a sizable gap above and below the screen, and that's before we even get to the additional plastic chunks stuck on both ends of the handset.
It all seems a little unnecessary but luckily it doesn't make the BlackBerry Z10 overly cumbersome, with the handset measuring a comfortable 130 x 65.6 x 9mm (5.1 x 2.6 x 0.4 inches).
Weight wise the BlackBerry Z10 finds a happy medium – weighing 137.5g (4.85 oz), it's nowhere near as heavy as the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820, yet it's not as feather light as the iPhone 5.
The weight gives it a reassuring presence in the palm and while the chassis is distinctly plastic, the handset's heft at least restores some form of premium feel.
Around the back you're greeted with a textured plastic rear that is slightly rubberised, providing a decent level of grip.
There are only a couple of things to note on the back of the BlackBerry Z10: the 8MP camera with a single LED flash, sat in the top-left corner, and the shiny metallic BlackBerry logo in middle.
We were pleased to find that the rear can be removed easily by placing a finger in the indented speaker grill at the base of the Z10, enabling us to simply peel off the plastic.
Underneath you'll find microSIM and microSD slots, with the latter capable of supporting cards up to 32GB in capacity, although we've been told that a future update may see this support boosted to the 64GB variants.
This means you can build nicely on the already decent 16GB of internal storage, which will appeal to many who have been put out by the likes of the iPhone range and HTC One, which don't offer storage expansion.
An added boon is the removable 1,800mAh battery, enabling you to switch out a dead battery for a fully charged one if you're someone who likes to carry multiple power packs around.
On the rear cover itself you'll notice the NFC pad, which enables the BlackBerry Z10 to interact with other compatible wireless devices.
On the right-hand side of the Z10, anyone familiar with the BlackBerry PlayBook will instantly recognise the triple button setup, with volume rocker switches separated by a central key – used for playing/pausing music and activating voice control when held down.
Up top you get a centralised power/lock key next to a 3.5mm headphone jack, while on the left there's a couple of handy connectivity ports.
The metal finish of the keys gives the handset a touch of class - if not a little sharp when you catch your finger on them - and all are well positioned, enabling us to reach them easily when using the Z10 one-handed.
The now standard microUSB port that features on pretty much every phone these days (bar the iPhone) is present, alongside a miniHDMI port. This enables you to connect the BlackBerry Z10 directly to a TV for big screen viewing.
There's no HDMI cable in the box so you'll need to pick one up separately, but there is at least a USB cable so you can hook the Z10 up to your computer.
The BlackBerry Z10 doesn't wow us with a new design, but it's a sturdy handset with a decent build quality and functional layout that makes it easy to handle.
We already knew Nokia is working on a some sort of smartphone with the codename Moneypenny. Now a new info from popular leakster @evleaks says the company is also releasing a dual-SIM variant of the upcoming device.
Nokia planning a dual-SIM version of Windows Phone Blue-powered Moneypenny.
Nokia's Moneypenny along with Goldfinger will be the first smartphones to feature the WP 8.1 Blue out of box. It appears that the new release will finally bring support for dual-SIM smartphones to the platform, allowing Nokia to compete more successfully in developing markets, where a second SIM slot is often seen as a mandatory feature.
If the earlier rumors are to be trusted, WP 8.1 Blue will also bring a notification center, better multi-tasking and a Siri-like Cortana voice assistant.
There is no word on the specifications and the launch date of Moneypenny, but since Microsoft is expected to announce the WP 8.1 OS in early 2014, we might see the device going official either at CES or at MWC.
MediaTek has been vocal about its new 1.7 GHz MT6592 System on a Chip (SoC), which it claims is the "world's first 
