HTC promised last July that it would focus all of its efforts on high-end devices in an effort to turn its struggling smartphone business around, but having tasted little success with that approach, it is now going to make more affordable midrange handsets its priority instead.

Chialin Chang, HTC’s Chief Financial Officer, told Reuters that the Taiwanese firm is looking to sell products in $150-$300 price range.

HTC’s yet-to-be announced flagship smartphone of 2014, the HTC One Plus (M8) is expected to be unveiled during the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona at the end of this month, however, we’re now starting to see the first signs that a scaled-down variant is also in the works. According to a popular leaker, the ‘mini’ version of the Happy Telephone Company’s upcoming flagship will sport a 4.5-inch display — that’s only 0.2-inches larger than the display of last years One Mini.

The first successful personal computer didn’t have a screen — not even a command-line screen. It communicated with the user through blinking lights. It was called the MITS Altair 8800. This blinking-light box was such a revolution, a kid named Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to write software for it.

I have the feeling that the first successful wearable computer will also show nothing more than blinking lights.

I’m going to tell you why the high-rez wearables may not go mainstream over next couple of years, but why blinking-lights devices might. But first, let’s check out two interesting blinking light wearable devices.

The CyanogenMod team have this week released CyanogenMod 11 builds for the Sony Xperia Z1 and Xperia Z Ultra Google Play Editions. Based on Android 4.4 KitKat, the ROMs include everything you’d expect from Google latest operating system, coupled with all the tweaks and add-ons that come with CyanogenMod.

While Android’s notification system is far superior to the iPhone’s in almost every way, Google could certainly make some improvements to the way in which we receive alerts when our smartphones are locked. All we get with stock Android is a tone and a blinking LED.

Fortunately, there are some third-party solutions that offer a lot more. SlideLock displays iPhone-style notifications on your lock screen so that you can read messages and emails without having to unlock.