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HTC One M9 drop test and and full water submersion makes us cringe [VIDEOS]

We still have a few more days before you can officially mosey into a store and leave with a shiny new HTC One M9 in your pocket. After we saw the Samsung Galaxy S6’s durability put to the test, it’s now time for the the HTC One M9 to suffer the same fate.

Our latest double feature is brought to you by Phil Esposito and the twisted minds over at TechSmartt who wasted no time in taking up HTC on their new Uh Oh protection policy. We know most devices these days feature some level of water resistance, normally just enough to survive a few minutes out in the rain or a quick splash into a puddle.

HTC already told us, like last year’s One M8, the One M9 is rated for IPX3. This means it’s splash proof, but isn’t meant to be fully immersed in water. But what happens if (heaven forbid) your brand new HTC One M9 takes a dive into your toilet? Well, according to the video below, it might be salvageable even if swimming around for 20+ minutes (the Galaxy S6 hit a similar time before kicking the bucket). Check out the video down below to see for yourself.

Now, we know the HTC One M9 can survive a quick dip in water — but what about when it slips out of your hand and comes into contact with cold, hard concrete. Once again, we have another video showing you this worse case scenario, illustrating exactly what happens when you drop the HTC One M9 from a series of different heights. The result? A few dings, dents, chips, and eventually… a broken display. No surprise there.

But all in all, the HTC One M9 held up rather well. Because the glass is kind of floating towards the middle of the device (thank goodness for the boom sound speakers, right?), a big drop onto its corner wont actually crack the display. It will, however, leave a nasty dent in the body.

While situations like this are enough to make any smartphone lover cringe, there’s a certain peace of mind that comes with knowing that no matter what happens to your HTC One M9 — whether it’s dropped, doused, or set on fire — HTC’s Uh Oh protection has you covered.

from Phandroid http://ift.tt/1IjLG9W

Opera Browser Beta Updated With 64-Bit Support, Chromium 42 Codebase, Improved Text Wrap, And More

It's easy to forget that Opera is still out there with all the talk of Chrome and Firefox, but it's still a capable browser. Even more so after it switched to a Chromium base a while back. The beta version of Opera is getting an update today, and it's based on a new version of Chromium with a few added features.

Here's the changelog for the new Opera beta.

Tab synchronization: new view for synced tabs, new layout in Tab manager

Improved Text wrap

64-bit support

New progress bar

Opera Turbo replaces Off-road mode

Upgrade to Chromium 42

Various stability and usability improvements

The 64-bit support isn't going to make a ton of difference right now as there are almost no Android devices with 64-bit cores.

Opera Browser Beta Updated With 64-Bit Support, Chromium 42 Codebase, Improved Text Wrap, And More was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

from Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets http://ift.tt/1CtUqJg

Facebook Introduces 'Scrapbooks,' A New Way For Parents To Tag And Organize Pictures Of Their Kids

One thing that Facebook has not been well-equipped to deal with is children. No, I don't mean teenagers. Most users are familiar with the barrage of photos that accompany each birth in the family of a Facebook friend, which often involves a mess of tagging of one or both parents in every baby photo. For parents themselves, they struggle sorting out photos of their sons and daughters unless they just dedicate albums to the children specifically.