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Granted, the picture we see above us would've been much more intriguing a couple days ago, prior to Samsung Unpacked, but it shows the Samsung SM-V700 (aka Galaxy Gear) getting the official stamp of approval by the FCC, which means it's one step closer to store shelves. The docs don't give us any juicy tidbits that we didn't already know -- essentially, the device has Bluetooth and not much else in the way of wireless connectivity -- but this doesn't come as a surprise for an already-announced gadget. Still, the Galaxy Gear's appearance in the FCC is at least a clear indication that things are going in the right direction, and folks in the US may see it closer to the September 25th launch date than they initially feared.

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Okay, you have to admit: there might actually be something to this whole large smartphone business, started by Samsung two years ago at this very trade show. Not only has the trend not gone away, nearly every major OEM is hopping on the bandwagon. Alcatel OneTouch is interested in joining the party, and it's entering the field with a doozy aptly called the Hero, a 6-inch behemoth with a full HD (1,920 x 1,080) display and a few tricks up its sleeves. It's relatively easy on the hands, with a curved back and a decent thickness of 8.5mm. In fact, compared to the Acer Liquid S2 (another 6-inch smartphone announced at IFA), it's 6mm narrower, 7.5mm shorter and 0.5mm thinner -- great news, especially since we felt pretty comfortable with the S2 during our hands-on.

In many parts of the world, Alcatel OneTouch is still an unknown, despite the fact that the manufacturer has a reputation for pushing out up to a dozen handsets at one time. While this is still very much the case this week, we've noticed that the company has put a much higher amount of focus on quality. The Hero doesn't remind us of a cheap KIRF or knockoff phone. Instead, we came away much more impressed with the phone's look and feel than we originally expected. Continue past the break for more of our thoughts and the Hero's features.

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You can go ahead and consider Aio Wireless an option the next time you're shopping among mobile carriers, because the prepaid subsidiary of AT&T is now available nationwide. Service plans at Aio feature unlimited voice, messaging and overage-free data, and start at $40 per month for simple phones. Smartphone users can expect to pay at least $55 at Aio, which fetches 2GB of high-speed data, whereas the $70 plan comes with a healthy 7GB allotment. As one potential gotcha, the carrier throttles its high-speed data to a relatively paltry 8 Mbps -- a shame if you're sporting an LTE handset. If you're on a budget, it's worth mentioning that Aio Wireless is one of the sole providers of the Lumia 620 within the US, and at just $100 outright, it's a very tempting proposition.

[Thanks, Krishan]

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The oft-rumored Nexus 5 is turning into quite a riddle. If you've been following the saga, there has been no shortage of drama in recent memory. Most recently we saw a Google employee snapping pictures with an unknown LG-branded Nexus at HQ in Mountain View -- in an official video, no less, which was almost immediately taken down -- and now a smartphone dubbed the D820 has been approved by the FCC. Certainly, we don't want to just assume that every LG phone getting Federal approval for the foreseeable future is an N5, but there are a few clues in the paperwork that give us plenty of reason to nail this down as the primary suspect: first, the image above, taken from a section detailing the device's Qi wireless charging capabilities, shows the inside of the back cover. When comparing it to the phone revealed at the HQ slip-up, the two pictures line up incredibly well.

The D820 also features 7-band LTE, some of which are compatible with AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint (bands 2/4/5/17/25/26/41), CDMA / EVDO rev A, pentaband DC-HSPA+ and quadband GSM / EDGE, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and dual-band 802.11 b/g/n/ac. That's an amazingly healthy list of specs for your usual FCC submission, and the list of LTE bands is quite stunning as well. If it's not the Nexus 5, it's certainly going to be one heckuva flagship. Question is, how much doubt do you have? As usual, we leave you with the docs for you in case you have a burning desire to do some digging yourself.

Update: Our commenters have noticed some more nuggets in one of the docs: an admission that the phone is running firmware M8974A, and the software version listed is "aosp_hammerhead-userdebugKyeLimePieFACTORYeng.sangjoon84.lee.20130618.015154." The firmware seems to indicate a Snapdragon 800 SoC, which wouldn't surprise us in the least, and the software appears to suggest that it's running KitKat (Key Lime Pie), weird typo aside.

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Looking to capture some vocals or record a few guitar riffs while you're out and about? Well, IK Multimedia has yet another gadget that looks to lend a hand. The outfit's iRig Pro serves up a digital audio and MIDI interface that connects to the full gamut of iOS devices and Mac machines via USB. Battery-powered and quite diminutive in stature, the device wrangles microphones, guitars, MIDI devices and other Hi-Z instruments for mobile recording -- with those audio and MIDI inputs able to be employed simultaneously. The connected phone, tablet or laptop actually powers the add-on, but that internal 9V kicks it when needed to provide phantom power to a mic. A smattering of the company's apps come packaged with the unit including AmpliTube, SampleTank and iRig Recorder. Folks with older Apple devices shouldn't worry: the iRig Pro ships with cables compatible with Lightning, 30-pin and USB connections. If all of that sounds too good to pass up, $149.99 will be the required investment later this month. For now, venture past the break and take a quick look at the setup in action.

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Can you feel it? The anticipation's building for Expand NY, thanks in no small part to our fantastic lineup of speakers that includes LeVar Burton, Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky and Master Modder Ben Heck. Well, the list of luminaries just got longer and more lustrous. We're thrilled that Joi Ito, Director of the famed MIT Media Lab and Sonny Vu, CEO and Founder of Misfit Wearables will be joining us in New York. Equally exciting will be the presence of Inhabitat.com Editor-in-Chief Jill Fehrenbacher, Memoto co-founder Oskar Kalmaru and Pat Yongpradit, the Director of Education for Code.org. Get pumped, people, it's only a couple months until you get to see them all live in Gotham.

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You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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You know who seems like someone well equipped to dictate what shows up on a news site? That weird guy in your Facebook feed who is way, way too vocal about his political beliefs. Blatant sarcasm aside, Bing News has overhauled its web portal in order to accomplish two primary goals: look less like Google News, and surface stories that are trending. Naturally, the new look is built for touch -- you did buy a touchscreen-enabled laptop, didn't you? -- and it'll "automatically adapt to fit your browser width." Furthermore, "the latest buzz" from social channels will be highlighted, leaving news that actually matters to languish somewhere in the abyss. But hey, the next Casey Anthony trial is totally the most important thing ever, right?

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As reporters at the New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica dig deeper into the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, new and disturbing revelations continue to be made. Two programs, dubbed Bullrun (NSA) and Edgehill (GCHQ), have just come to light, that focus on circumventing or breaking the security and encryption tools used across the internet. The effort dwarfs the $20 million Prism program that simply gobbled up data. Under the auspices of "Sigint (signals intelligence) enabling" in a recent budget request, the NSA was allocated roughly $255 million dollars this year alone to fund its anti-encryption program.

The agencies' efforts are multi-tiered, and start with a strong cracking tool. Not much detail about the methods or software are known, but a leaked memo indicates that the NSA successfully unlocked "vast amounts" of data in 2010. By then it was already collecting massive quantities of data from taps on internet pipelines, but much of it was safely protected by industry standard encryption protocols. Once that wall fell, what was once simply a torrent of scrambled ones and zeros, became a font of "exploitable" information. HTTPS, VoIP and SSL are all confirmed to have been compromised through Bullrun, though, it appears that some solutions to the NSA's "problem" are less elegant than others. In some cases a super computer and simple brute force are necessary to peel back the layers of encryption.

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