The plain, 'vanilla' Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini still hasn't been on the receiving end of the update to Android 4.4 KitKat. This despite the fact that the S4 Mini Black Edition started getting the new software in mid-June.

And today it's the dual-SIM version's turn. Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Duos is now in the process of being updated to what is still the latest version of Android.

Unfortunately though, the rollout is limited to Russia for now. So if you bought your Galaxy S4 Mini Duos from there, you should get a notification about the new Android version any day now. After applying the update, you'll be on software build I9192XXUCNG2.

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A new Report about a Full-Metal body Galaxy Smartphone line came from the South Korean site ETnews.com. The Report doesn't have much details but cites industry insiders who claim that the Samsung Galaxy Alpha will be unveiled on August 13th, which is only a month away.

The Alpha line is intended to compete with the Apple iPhone by swapping Samsung's usual faux leather back for a metal chassis. Various purported images show an all-metal back, while others show a metal frame with plastic panels.

The Samsung Galaxy Alpha phone will be powered by the new Snapdragon 805 chipset used in the Galaxy S5 LTE-A and presumably in the Samsung G901 Galaxy F, which may or may not be the first of the Galaxy Alpha series.

Report [Korean]

The Samsung-made Exynos chipset has only one problem hen comes to connectivity, it doesn't support 4G LTE and Samsung had to release two versions of the same device (one with Exynos chipset and the other with Snapdragon chipset with LTE support). Today, Samsung announced Exybos ModAP which is the first Exynos Chipset with LTE Cat.4 integrated. ModAP stands from "Modem and Application Processor", underlining the departure of previous setups where the modem was a separate chip.

The Exynos ModAP is built on a 28nm HKMG process. The processor supports Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP), which allows all eight of its cores to work simultaneously (4x Cortex-A15 + 4x Cortex-A7).

The modem also uses the more is better than one approach and supports carrier aggregation, meaning it bonds together multiple channels to achieve the LTE Cat. 4 prescribed speeds of 150Mbps downlink and 50Mbps uplink. The modem supports both FDD and TDD, popular internationally and in China respectively. 2G and 3G technologies are supported as well, including TD-SCDMA.

The chipset can record 2160p video at 30fps and has a relatively speedy 6.4GB/s channel RAM. The GPU was not mentioned but a recent Mali model would be a solid guess.

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Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE-A was Korea's Exclusive Edition of long rumored Galaxy F. Now, It seems like the International version, Samsung Galaxy F G901F, has just received its Bluetooth certification. The Samsung Galaxy F was rumored to have a premium metal body and we've seen several photos claiming to be the Galaxy F. Now there's a new contender for the throne, which looks almost exactly like the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 with a metal rim but faux plastic back.

Along with the certification comes alternative specs for the "Samsung Galaxy F" 4.7-inch 1080p Super AMOLED, Exynos 5 Octa chipset, 12MP camera and a slender 6mm thick frame. This would make the "F" a compact flagship rather than a Galaxy S5 alternative. Keep in mind that Samsung execs are still denying the existence of a Galaxy F.

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The Samsung Apps store changed its name to the "Galaxy Apps" store on the web on July 1st, but Samsung just got around to pushing an update to its Android phones and tablets. And, Android is the key here.

As Samsung gets ready to introduce more devices running its own Tizen OS, it would get confusing to have a Samsung Apps store. So, the app store for Android devices now will be the Galaxy Apps store. We don't yet know what branding will come along with Tizen, or if Tizen will be the name for everything.

VIA