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Honor, the budget conscious subsidiary of Huawei, has announced their arrive into the US market in a big way.  Their first phone to launch here, the Honor 5X, is a 5.5″ unibody design and is only $199.99 right now at Amazon.  The phone will start shipping on January 31st but pre-orders are being taken now.  For the price, you get an impressive phone.

To start, the Honor 5X has a 5.5″ 1920 x 1080 Full HD display that is powered by 1.5Ghz Snapdragon 615 Octa-Core processor.  It has 2GB of RAM, 16GB of Storage and can be expanded up to 128GB thanks to a MicroSD card slot.  It has a 3000 mAh battery, a 13MP rear camera and 5MP front camera.  Here in the US it will support LTE Bands 2, 4, 5, 12 and 17 and WCDMA bands 1,2,4,5 which means that it will work on any carrier here at some level.  Be sure to refer to my guide on LTE bands for more details on carriers here in the US and their LTE bands.

Honor 5X – Available January 31, 2016 – Pre-Order for $199.99 from Amazon

Android Marshmallow continues to roll out to a wide range of devices with even more expected in this quarter but to suggest the adoption is setting the world alight would be an great overstatement.  In their latest report on Android versions that have hit the Google Play Store, Google has posted that devices running the latest version of the mobile OS accounts for 0.7%.  While that is up .2% from December, it is a far cry from rapid adoption.  Worse, Android Lollipop, the previous version, continues to hold steady with about 32% of the market.  While the information is not 100% accurate, it does give developers a good idea of users who are coming to the store which in turn gives us as users a good idea too.

By far the two most dominant version of Android remain Lollipop at 32.6% and KitKat at 36.1%.  KitKat has seen a slow drop in usage as more people move to newer devices with a newer version of Android but it gives you a good idea of the challenge Google faces in getting consumers and manufactures to move up to the latest version of their mobile OS.

[Update]  Thanks to reader Andrew Mikolajczyk who posted another code that is available.  See it after the break along with the rest of the codes.

Like any mobile provider, Project Fi has a list of Dialer Codes that force your Nexus device to interact with the service in a certain way.  This could be, for example, to force your phone to only use T-Mobile, or Sprint or even repair a bad activation.  Generally speaking these codes should only be used in specific circumstances with the guidance of the Project Fi support team.  However, if you want to try them out, you can do so and you will find all of them after the break.

A word of warning before you jump ahead.  While I am publishing these codes, Google can change them and I make no guarantee they will work for you.  Further, you use these codes at your own risk.  Dialer Codes will force a behavior and to “unforce” that behavior, you may (likely) have to reboot your device.  Note also that these codes are aimed for Nexus devices.  Given that Project Fi is not officially supported on any other devices other than Nexus devices (6, 5X and 6P), your mileage may vary on other devices you have connected to Fi.  It should work but again, no promises, guarantee or warranty implied.

Acer has been busy at CES 2016.  Earlier they announced the new Chromebook 11 and now they have announced the release of the Chromebase 24.  This new all-in-one desktop will be the first Chromebase to be powered by Intel CoreTM processors and will sport an impressive 23.8″ Full HD display.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with what a Chromebase is exactly, it is a desktop PC that runs on Chrome OS.  We often associate Chrome OS with Chromebooks but there have been several Chromebase products in the market for some time now.  This one from Acer however is certainly going to be a premium product.

The new Chromebase 24 will support up to 8GB of DDR3L ram and will have 802.11ac Wi-Fi capability.  It has a built in HD webcam and has four digital microphones for video calls and conferencing in clarity.

The exact configuration and pricing combinations were not released in the Press Release but given that the current Chromebase DC is starting at $329 and is powered by a NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor, I suspect this new 24 will be a bit more but not overly so.