On Tuesday evening SwiftKey took to their blog to formally announce that a new major update had arrived for the beta version of their app. The biggest change here is that there is a newly redesigned emoji keyboard UI with a backspace bar, swipe gestures to switch tabs, and a few general layout changes as well. Beyond the change to the keyboard, there is also a plethora of bug fixes and other under-the-hood changes that should address keyboard freezing, issues when syncing and more.

Update, June 22: A video apparently showing a Moto G (3rd generation) prototype has also surfaced. Check it out below (via HDBlog). [embed width="840"]https://youtu.be/qNypvHmGgQM[/embed] Original post, June 21: The second half of the year is nearly upon us and we are expecting more than enough good announcements. Among the most important ones is the 3rd-generation Moto G, which will likely follow its predecessors’ footsteps by offering the best bang for your buck. We don’t know much of the upcoming device and are limited to speculations, which is why we are so excited to show you today’s leaked images.

Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority TL;DR Xiaomi has announced that it’s giving away Mi 11 Ultra devices to Indian Olympic medalists. The Mi 11 Ultra is worth ~$943 in India. The bronze-winning men’s hockey team will get the Mi 11X. What if you don’t want to pay that much cash for the smartphone? Well, you could try being an Indian medal winner at the Tokyo Olympics. Yes, Xiaomi India’s Manu Kumar Jain has now announced that its 2020 Olympic medalists will receive the phone.

Xiaomi has opened its first-ever Mi Home Experience Store today in India. This is the first experience store in India, although the 25th Mi Home store in the country. Mi Home stores are Xiaomi’s flagship offline stores that allow customers to experience, assess, and buy all Xiaomi India products under one roof. The store in Chennai will showcase several smart home products ranging from Mi Kettle, Mi Bike, Mi Rice Cooker to Mi Weighing scale, and Mi Ninebot above all products available in India.

Sony’s Concept for Marshmallow software has introduced a number of interesting new features to the Xperia line-up. One of the most popular seems to be the customized launcher, which offers a number of new features above and beyond Sony’s stock option. Fortunately more of us can now try it out, as the launcher has been ported. Any device running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop or newer should now be able to try out the software, known as the “xMarshmallow Concept Launcher”.

TL;DR A banner on Google Play teased the appearance of a dedicated audiobooks section. That section looks to also show up in Google Play Books. The link to it currently does not work, though that could change very soon. Already home to apps, movies, TV shows, musics, books, and more, Google Play looks to add another category in the form of audiobooks. 9to5Google reports that a banner seems to have shown up for users using the mobile Google Play app and the desktop version.

The beginning of a new year sees a plethora of reports and statistics detailing the performance of various smartphone companies over the past year. This time it’s the turn of Strategy Analytics, who has published a report looking at the total number of units shipped by each manufacturer in the smartphone market.The report found that a massive 1.6 billion mobile phones were shipped out across the globe in 2012, 700 million of which were smartphones.

Have you ever used one of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets? If so, you probably quickly started to realize that the Fire OS is so customized and skinned that it essentially feels like its own OS. That being said, at the root it is still just an app-compatible fork of Android. Amazon continues to try and push what the Fire is capable of. Today that includes launching its own Maps API. Rumors previously suggested that Amazon would be partnering up with Nokia for its mapping solution.

There is a 99 percent chance that your smartphone is using a processor based on a design from ARM. Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, even Apple all make processors based on ARM’s designs and/or compatible with the ARM Architecture. But ARM isn’t just into complex CPUs and GPUs. It also designs a range of microcontrollers, and they are proving to be just as popular. In 2014 alone, ARM’s partners shipped some 4.4 billion microcontrollers based on ARM’s Cortex-M designs.

While mobile tech innovators are busy trying to find new ways to optimize device battery life, Gionee has decided that a brute force approach might be easier. A new Gionee M5 smartphone has been spotted passing through China’s TENAA, featuring two 3,000mAh batteries for a mammoth 6,000mAh combined capacity. Early rumors are suggesting that the handset could last up to four days on a single charge. What is even more impressive is that the handset can continue to run with just a single battery inside, leaving you free to charge them up in an alternating pattern for as much juice as you’ll ever likely need.