Samsung is releasing a new phone using parts from its Galaxy Note 7, which was axed after a battery fault led to some devices catching fire. The new handset will go on sale only in South Korea on 7 July, with a safer, smaller battery, the firm said.

The Snapdragon 450 is said to be clocked at 2.0 to 2.2 GHz instead, using the same eight Cortex-A53 cores. This sets itself apart from this other 400 series siblings and actually takes it closer to the Snapdragon 625.

Jianguang Asset Management (JAC Capital), Leadcore Technology, Qualcomm (China) and Wise Road Capital have signed an agreement to form a joint venture - JLQ Technology - which will focus on the design, packaging, testing, customer support and sales related to chipsets for mass-tier smartphones designed and sold into China.

2017 is the year of the slim-bezel smartphone, and the latest to enter the fray is Andy Rubin's "Essential" smartphone startup. Today the company announced the "Essential Phone," a flagship Snapdragon 835 device headed to the US for $699.

Micron will install 13-nanometer production equipment at the Hiroshima Prefecture facility.

The return of the Nokia name to the smartphone world stopped being a romantic dream earlier this year when HMD Global announced the Nokia 6 during CES. The excitement built as the Nokia 6 was joined by the Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 handsets at Mobile World Congress. All of them were focused on delivering excellent value and power to the mid-range market.

Robert Bosch has won orders from Apple to supply the next iPhone with some of its motion sensors, according to a person familiar with the deal, a potential blow to InvenSense, currently the main supplier of those smartphone components.

BlackBerry's $815 million arbitration award in a dispute with Qualcomm is a positive for the company and it's likely to use the money to seek acquisitions to bolster its business, analysts said Wednesday.

Record earnings at Samsung Electronics' chip division are set to propel the tech giant's first-quarter profit to a three-and-a-half-year high, and the quarters ahead could be even better if its newest smartphone, Galaxy S8, is a success.

The supply of Samsung Electronics' upcoming flagship smartphone, presumably the Galaxy S8, may fail to meet demand due to the sluggish production of Qualcomm chipsets, industry sources said Tuesday.

High-end smartphones took up less than 30% of Samsung Electronics' combined sales of handsets, data showed Monday, although the figure is expected to rebound after the launch of the tech giant's upcoming new flagship model this week.

Apple's iPhone 8 smartphone will include a 3D-sensing module to enable augmented-reality applications, Rosenblatt Securities recently said. Rosenblatt Securities named Austria's AMS AG as a likely supplier of 3D sensors to Apple.

"We don't expect many projects on our latest high-end chip," Mediatek Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Ju told reporters in a press briefing Monday at the Mobile World Congress here. "For now, we think less than 10 smartphone models will adopt this high-end X30 chip."

Xiaomi has managed to secure itself a decent shipment of Snapdragon 835 chipsets for use in the company's upcoming high-end smartphone, Mi6.

Samsung will sell modified versions of the Galaxy Note 7 in emerging markets, including India and Vietnam, according to Hankyung, which claims the move is designed to help Samsung minimise losses and avoid a potential environmental fine.

Samsung hopes to avoid another disastrous recall by adding a third battery supplier for its new smartphone.

HTC's presence among major US carriers is waning as the company is shifting its focus away from low-end smartphones to more expensive handsets.

A town in the Netherlands is trialling special pavement lights designed to help smartphone users cross the road safely.

Sony has announced the development of the industry's first 3-layer stacked CMOS image sensor with DRAM for smartphones.

Apple finally broke 60% share threshold in Japan smartphone market during Q4 2016, posting yet another record market share in this country, mostly driven by the robust sales of the new flagships iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

This is the new BlackBerry - software licensing powerhouse. With its latest signing, the once dominant smartphone maker now blankets the globe with its manufacturing deals, a completion of its prolonged pivot toward becoming a software and services-only company.

Samsung Electronics is discussing a supply deal with Japan's Murata Manufacturing for batteries for its next-generation smartphone.

Last year Nextbit launched the innovative Robin Android smartphone. It has just been acquired by Razer and will continue to operate as an independent entity within the larger company.

Breaking with recent tradition, Samsung had already said it would not be introducing its new Galaxy S8 smartphone at the massive Mobile World Congress that starts in late February. Instead, the phone will be unveiled at a separate event on March 29.

"The Snapdragon 835 won't be available in large quantities until after the Galaxy S8 launches," source said.

Xiaomi was little known outside China in 2013, when Hugo Barra left a top job at Alphabet's Google and signed on to make the Chinese smartphone maker a force internationally.

Google is expanding its "Android One" program for low-cost smartphones to the US in coming months, promising phone makers major new promotional dollars if they play by its rules, say three people briefed on the plan.

Samsung's Galaxy S7 is currently the only smartphone with a device boasting a IP68 rating, but Apple allegedly plans to catch up this year with an iPhone that can can be submerged just as deep.

Rosenblatt Securities's Jun Zhang today reiterates a Buy rating on shares of Qualcomm, and raises his price target to $75 from $70, writing that the company's set to ride the wave of smartphone sales by Chinese phone makers Vive and Oppo.

HTC is officially hosting a press event later this week, on January 12, when it's likely going to announce (at least) two new smartphones.

Apple is planning to open its first retail store in South Korea, moving onto the home turf of smartphone rival Samsung Electronics.

The increased consumer interest in smartphones, according to Accenture, is based largely on the Chinese market. Nearly three out of four Chinese consumers said they would buy new smartphones in 2017, up from 61% in 2016.

Samsung Electronics is likely to forecast its best quarterly profit in nearly three years on Friday, analysts said, with robust memory chip sales easing the pain of the costly failure of a flagship smartphone.

At CES 2017, Qualcomm plans to showcase its Snapdragon 835, but more than that, it also intends on unveiling another Tango-enabled smartphone, but this time belonging to ASUS, and it is named the ZenFone AR.

The success of the new Apple AirPods must have got the attention of the company's biggest rival in the smartphone industry and according to the latest rumor, Samsung is preparing a competitor that will most likely be launched with the announcement of the Galaxy S8.

Nokia said on Wednesday it had filed a number of lawsuits against Apple for violating 32 technology patents, striking back at the iPhone maker's legal action targeting the one-time cellphone industry leader a day earlier.

Apple's iPhone secured 103.6% of the smartphone industry's profits during the third quarter, BMO Capital Markets analyst Tim Long said in a research note on Thursday. That's the highest share of profits Apple has nabbed in recent memory and easily topped its approximately 70% share of profits in the second quarter. In the third quarter of 2015, Apple's iPhone profit share hovered above 90%.