the Best new phones coming in 2016

there are some stunners coming in 2016. These are the bestphones coming in 2016, including the best new Android phones, best new iPhones, best new Windows phones, best new Samsung phones, best new Sony phones, best new HTC phones, best new LG phones and more.

In this feature we'll show you some of the exciting new iPhones and new Android phones (listed alphabetically) that will launch over the coming year. We'll also look back on some of the best new phones of 2015 so far.

Best new phones 2016:Apple iPhone 7

The iPhone 7 will be Apple's brand-new flagship phone for 2016, and following tradition should be announced in September. Although the final release date is still many months away, that hasn't stopped the rumour mill going crazy over the upcoming iPhone.

We've already seen rumours that the new iPhone will feature big design changes, with an all-new D-jack headphone jack, waterproofing protection and an eSIM. Loads of rumours are circulating about the screen too - will it get bigger? Will it feature a curved edge? Will it have a Touch ID display, or edge-to-edge glass?

One things for sure, the new iPhone will be faster than ever, with an A10 processor and embedded M10 motion co-processor, plus 2GB of RAM.

We round up all the iPhone 7 rumourshere.

VAIO's Windows phone

Microsoft's Windows Mobile initiative is on the ropes, but no-one seems to have told Japan - the country has already seen more new phones running Windows 10 than ever came out here with Windows Phone 7 or 8. And the latest entrant to the fray is VAIO, the company formed when Sony spun off its loss-making laptop division. This is the first Windows phone to carry the VAIO name: meet the VAIO Phone Biz.

If you were disappointed by the staid, plastic build of Microsoft's recent Lumia flagships, the VAIO Phone Biz may make you wish you were shopping for phones in Japan. It looks like it might be a worthy successor to the company's lineage of iconic laptops, with a sleek silver-finished aluminum build - VAIO is really emphasizing the construction quality and stringent testing for this phone. The screen is a 5.5-inch 1080p LCD, the camera is 13 megapixels, and inside there's 3GB of RAM and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor, which is mid-range but supports Windows 10's Continuum desktop mode.

VAIO will sell the Phone Biz from April from about ¥ 50,000 ($ 424) unlocked, and the company is also partnering with leading Japanese carrier NTT Docomo to include various applications and network support.

Samsung Galaxy S6 edge vs Sony Xperia Z3

Introduction

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. The Sony Xperia Z3 has arguably the most underrated designs around! Being good looking is one thing, but the designers over at Sony’s camp delivered an impressive offering in the Xperia Z3 – one that adds a higher degree of water-resistance protection, which isn’t something we tend to see too much of nowadays in flagships.

On the flip side, the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge bears one eye-catching aesthetics with is unique dual-curved screen. Add to that, Sammy’s transformation is realized with the unveiling of its latest flagship smartphones, mainly because the designs now feature that premium quality that was non-existent with its previous efforts. Between them, we know the advantages that come along with being the newer product, especially from a specifications point, but the Xperia Z3 can’t be neglected either.

Design

The S6 takes charge with its dramatically different design, one that’s now premium in nature, but the Xperia Z3 is one of the last remaining flagships to offer a water resistant construction.

With every new Galaxy S release, Samsung has historically built upon the base by refining what's already there and adding some extra on top. With the Galaxy S6, however, the electronics giant has focused far more on the latter than on the former. To that end, instead of the plasticky shell of the Galaxy S5, Samsung has adopted a metal frame that hugs the device all over and nestles within two sheets of Corning Gorilla Glass 4 – one placed in front of the display, and the other to protect the rear.

Samsung didn't stop there, instead opting to carve several 'nano layers' into the shell. The result is a front and back that reflect light in different hues depending on your viewing angle. Also, we can’t forget about some of the handset’s key features – like its improved fingerprint sensor, built-in wireless charging, heart rate sensor, and IR blaster. In achieving a higher degree of craftsmanship and premium design, the Galaxy S6 edge, however, is stripped of some key design features that were once notable qualities with its predecessor.

What really sets the S6 edge apart from everything else is its unique dual-curved display, where both edges feature a subtle curve. We’ll admit that it supplements its aesthetic appeal, but it comes with some precautions as well – as in the way we hold it, just because it feels rather sharp in the hand. In doing this, it certainly does not make it the most comfortable thing, though, some folks will gladly still take it primarily for the aesthetics. However, we have to point out that this design isn’t water-resistant.

And with that, we have to look at the Sony Xperia Z3 longingly and admire the fact that it’s one of the few, remaining flagships to qualify being regarded as water-resistant with its design. That’s a testament to say the least, since it doesn’t make that many sacrifices whatsoever with its aesthetics and construction – it’s relatively slim and premium. Surprisingly enough, it shares some of the same design characteristics as its rival, such as its premium glass surfaces and metal unibody.

At the same time, too, it’s able to accommodate a handy, and always useful microSD card slot and dedicated shutter key. Not surprisingly, the Galaxy S6 edge earns adulation and commendation for its stark redesign, one that’s undoubtedly now deemed as premium, but we can’t neglect to forget about the Xperia Z3’s design either.

Florida mall shooting

A Florida man had "several pockets full of ammunition" when he targeted his wife in a shooting Saturday morning that killed two people at a mall food court where the woman worked, police said.

Authorities said the shooting happened about a half hour before the mall was to open to customers. Jose Garcia-Rodriguez, 57, of Palm Bay, died at a hospital following an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at Melbourne Square Mall, said Cmdr. Vince Pryce of Melbourne Police.

The man's 33-year-old wife, Idanerys Garcia-Rodriguez, was hospitalized with a gunshot wound and was in good condition late Saturday, Pryce said. A police statement later identified her as a worker at the mall's food court.

"The survivor is the intended victim," he said.

Offices said they responded to reports of multiple gunshots around 9:30 a.m, when about about 100 people were in the mall getting stores ready for a 10 a.m. opening to shoppers.

"We were still hearing shots when the first officers arrived on scene," Pryce said.

Officers evacuated the mall, assisting some employees who had locked themselves in closets when they heard gunfire, Pryce said.

Another man died in the shooting. His name was not released, and Pryce said his relationship to the Garcias remained under investigation and was unknown late Saturday. No one else in the mall was killed or wounded, police later said.

When officers found the three victims, Garcia "had several pockets full of ammunition," Pryce said. Police subsequently said investigators recovered three handguns at the site, along with the ammunition, believed to belong to the suspect.

Istanbul suicide bomber was 'teen widow of Norwegian IS jihadist'

Istanbul (AFP) - A teenager from Russia's Muslim region of Dagestan suspected to have carried out a suicide bombing in Istanbul was said Friday to have been the widow of a Norwegian jihadist who died fighting for the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria.

Turkish authorities have so far refrained from naming the suicide bomber but reports in Turkey and Russia on Friday identified her as Diana Ramazanova, 18, from the northern Caucasus region of Dagestan.A policeman and the female suicide bomber were killed in the attack on January 6 in Sultanahmet, the heart of Istanbul's tourist district and home to its greatest concentration of historic monuments.

The Hurriyet daily said she was the widow of Abu Aluevitsj Edelbijev, a Norwegian citizen of Chechen origin. The pair were married last year in a religious ceremony, either in Istanbul or in Syria.

The report said that Ramazanova had entered Turkey on a tourist visa in May 2014 but Edelbijev may have entered the country illegally.

Last July the pair crossed the border from Turkey into Syria, joining Islamic State (IS) jihadists who have seized large parts of Syria up to the Turkish border.

He took the name of Idris while she became known as Sumeyra, it said.

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Edelbijev was killed in December while fighting. Ramazanova then crossed the border illegally back into Turkey on December 26, before carrying out the suicide bombing in Istanbul on January 6.

Hurriyet said security services are still trying to ascertain whether she had brought her explosives with her from Syria or whether they had been given to her by a contact in Istanbul.

She also took a vehicle to Istanbul from the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep, an unusually long journey to have made by car which would have required logistical help.

In an interview with Norwegian television, Edelbijev's family also said their daughter-in-law had been the suicide bomber and confirmed the relationship with their son.

"I don't think she could take it anymore. She said that Abu was in peace and that she wanted peace too," Edelbijev’s mother told Norwegian TV2.

But Edelbijev’s mother also told the Norwegian broadcaster NRK that she had spoken with her daughter-in-law the day before the attack and "everything seemed normal".

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"There was nothing that suggested that this could happen. It was as much of a shock for us when she blew herself up as when my son decided to go to Syria. We're struggling now," Edelbijev’s mother added.

- 'Loved make-up' -

The confirmation that Ramazanova was the bomber makes clear for the first time a jihadist link to the Istanbul suicide bombing.

It also raises new questions about the laxity of Turkey's border security, which has already been criticised by Western states for allowing jihadists in and out of Syria.

A radical outlawed Marxist group had initially caused confusion by claiming the attack but then retracted that claim, saying it had made a mistake.

Both Russian media and Hurriyet published pictures of Ramazanova before she was married, showing a seemingly normal Russian girl who took good care of her appearance and wore short dresses.

Without specifying the source of the images, Hurriyet also published pictures it said were of the pair with fellow jihadists in Syria.

Russian media have been quick to dub Ramazanova a "black widow", the label given to female suicide bombers from the Caucasus who carried out attacks in Russia after their husbands were killed by the Russian security forces.

Tabloid news site lifenews.ru cited acquaintances of Ramazanova in Dagestan and Moscow as saying she had totally changed after meeting her extremist husband on a social networking site.

"She was fashionable, a very beautiful girl. She loved to put make-up. I even rebuked her for wearing unsuitable clothes at school," it quoted a Moscow teacher as saying.

Ramazanova's purported page on Russian social network VKontakte, with a profile picture of her eating a cake, gives her date of birth as January 10, 1996 and main interests as cinema and music.

Hezbollah chief threatens Israel over Syria strikes

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah threatened in an interview Thursday to retaliate against Israel for repeated strikes on Syria and said he has missiles that can hit the Jewish state.

Nasrallah told Al-Mayadeen television that his powerful Shiite movement has had Iranian Fateh-110 missiles that could strike throughout Israel since 2006, adding that it is always ready to fight the Jewish state.

Nasrallah, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has sent thousands of fighters into Syria to help defend the regime.

He said that Israeli strikes on Syria "target the whole of the resistance axis", which includes Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran.

"The repeated bombings that struck several targets in Syria are a major violation, and we consider that any strike against Syria is a strike against the whole of the resistance axis, not just against Syria," he told the Beirut-based Arab news television.

"The axis is capable of responding. This can happen any time."

Asked about Hezbollah's arsenal, Nasrallah said the group had "all (the weapons) you can imagine... and in great quantities".

He added: "We are now stronger than we ever were as a resistance movement."

Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating war in the summer of 2006 that killed some 1,200 Lebanese -- most of them civilians -- and 160 Israelis -- most of them soldiers.

According to Pentagon officials, Hezbollah has 50,000 missiles, including some capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

The Israeli air force has carried out several raids against targets in Syria, including depots storing weapons meant for Hezbollah, since the conflict there started nearly four years ago.

The most recent strike was in December, when Israeli warplanes struck weapons warehouses near Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Israel has never confirmed it carried out the strikes, but it says it has a policy of preventing arms transfers to militant groups including Hezbollah.

Israeli media said, however, after the December strikes that the air force had targeted arms convoys or depots of Iranian-made rockets.

Nasrallah said in the interview that Hezbollah is ready to fight a new war against Israel in Lebanon and renewed a threat to invade the Galilee region of northern Israel.

"When the resistance (Hezbollah) leadership... asks you (fighters)... to enter into Galilee, that means the resistance must be ready to enter into Galilee and to go even beyond the Galilee."

- 'No solution without Assad' -

Nasrallah also spoke extensively on how he views the war on Syria, where his troops have played a key role since mid-2013 in helping Assad's regime reconquer territory it had previously lost to the opposition.

He said he does not believe there can be no solution to the devastating Syrian war that excludes Assad.

Gulf states, Turkey and the West have repeatedly called for Assad's ouster, while rebel groups have refused to talk to the regime so long as Assad remains in power.

Russia is a key Damascus backer, and aims to hold talks later this month. It is unclear which opposition groups will attend the meeting.

European police arrest 2 dozen in anti-terrorism sweeps

BRUSSELS (AP) — French, German and Belgian police arrested more than two dozen suspects in anti-terrorism raids Friday, as European authorities rushed to thwart more attacks by people with links to Islamic extremists in the Mideast.

Rob Wainwright, head of the police agency Europol, told The Associated Press that foiling terror attacks has become "extremely difficult" because Europe's 2,500-5,000 radicalized Muslim extremists have little command structure and are increasingly sophisticated.

Highlighting the fears, a bomb scare forced Paris to evacuate its busy Gare de l'Est train station during Friday morning's rush hour. No bomb was found.

Visiting a scarred Paris on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met French President Francois Hollande and visited the sites of the attacks on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket. Twenty people, including the three gunmen, were killed.

French and German authorities arrested at least 14 other people Friday suspected of links to the Islamic State group. Thirteen more were detained in Belgium and two arrested in France in an anti-terror sweep following a firefight Thursday in the eastern Belgian city of Verviers.

Two suspected terrorists were killed and a third was wounded in that raid on a suspected terrorist hideout, and federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said Friday that the suspects were within hours of implementing a plan to kill police on the street or in their offices.

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Belgian authorities were searching for more suspects Friday, and found four military-style weapons including Kalashnikov assault rifles in more than a dozen raids, Van der Sypt said.

"I cannot confirm that we arrested everyone in this group," he said.

Belgian authorities did not give details of the people detained or even those killed, but said most were Belgian citizens.

Belgian authorities stressed that the targets of their crackdown had no known connections to last week's attacks in neighboring France.

Belgium has seen a particular large number of people join extremists in Syria, and is "the worst affected country in Europe relative to population size," said Peter Neumann of the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization. He estimates 450 people have left Belgium to fight with Islamic radical groups in Syria, and that 150 of them have returned home.

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Across Europe, anxiety has grown as the hunt continues for potential accomplices of the three Paris gunmen.

The Paris prosecutor's office said at least 12 people were arrested in anti-terrorism raids in the area, targeting people linked to one of them — Amedy Coulibaly — who claimed ties to the Islamic State group. Police officials earlier told AP that they were seeking up to six potential accomplices.

Paris is at its highest terrorism alert level, and police evacuated the Gare de l'Est train station after a bomb threat. The station, one of several main stations in Paris, serves cities in eastern France and countries to the east.

In Berlin, police arrested two men Friday morning on suspicion of recruiting fighters for the Islamic State group in Syria. Prosecutors said 250 police officers participated in the dawn raids on 11 residences that were part of a months-old investigation into a group of Turkish extremists.

Kerry's visit to France came after the Obama administration apologized for not sending a higher-level delegation to Sunday's massive rally in Paris, which drew more than 1 million people to denounce terrorism.

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Hollande thanked Kerry for offering support, saying: "You've been victims yourself of an exceptional terrorist attack on Sept. 11. You know what it means for a country. ... Together, we must find appropriate responses."

In a separate speech to diplomats, Hollande said France is "waging war" against terrorism and will not back down from its international military operations against Islamic extremists in Iraq and northern Africa. France's Parliament voted this week to extend airstrikes against Islamic State extremists in Iraq.

The Belgian raid on a former bakery was another palpable sign that terror had seeped deep into Europe's heartland as security forces struck against militants, some of who may be returnees from jihad in Syria.

That investigation had started well before last week's rampage in Paris, but Belgian authorities are separately looking for possible links between a man they arrested in the southern city of Charleroi for illegal trade in weapons and Coulibaly, who killed four people in the kosher supermarket.

Several other countries are also involved in the hunt for possible accomplices to Coulibaly and the gunmen who attacked the newspaper, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi. The Kouachi brothers claimed allegiance to al-Qaida in Yemen; Coulibaly to the Islamic State group.

A senior Iraqi intelligence official told The Associated Press on Friday that Iraqi intelligence officers warned their French counterparts about two months ago that a group linked to Khorasan in Syria was plotting an attack in Paris. The official spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to brief media.

It was impossible to verify how serious or advanced the alleged plot was. Iraq's prime minister also warned in September of possible attacks in New York and Paris.