The Note8 is here and we can't help but feel the tension rising, especially in Europe where this is the first Note device to officially land in two years. Some time it's been, so a lot is riding on the Galaxy Note8.
Asus has launched the Zenfone V in the US, and that might be the Zenfone 5 in Apple-speak, but here it's [vee] for Verizon. The carrier-exclusive smartphone isn't a rebadged version of an existing one, but rather a new device with a model name V520KL. The Zenfone V is built around a 5.2-inch FullHD AMOLED display - Asus doesn't make all that many phones with AMOLEDs. Even fewer have the Snapdragon 820 at the helm, just the Zenfone 3 Deluxe, and now this Zenfone V. Probably that's where the primary camera comes from too - a 23MP unit with an f/2.0 aperture lens and...
Samsung's Galaxy Note8 has just gone live in 42 countries on Friday and Samsung has released its first full-length television ad for it. What better way to appeal to an audience by invoking emotion? In the newest Galaxy Note8 ad, love is the theme and two actors portray a brand-new couple who are figuring out their feelings for each other. The couple communicates with each other using the new Live Messages feature, which offers a more personal touch to messages. By the end of the ad, the viewer becomes emotionally involved with the couple, in which the girl sends a message to the...
Pre-orders are open for the iPhone 8 and in some markets shipping delays are already to be expected. Well, if the plain iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are so sought after, it would come as no surprise if Apple ends up unable to meet demand for the iPhone X later this year, as Ming-Chi Kuo predicts. A common source of intel on all things Apple, the analyst from KGI Securities expects that 40 million iPhone X units to be sold by the end of the year, but that would still leave some folks wanting a bezelless iPhone without one. That, however, would simply translate into sales next year, for a...
Just after Essential hosted an AMA on Reddit where customers and fans asked their most riveting questions about the smartphone startup, Andy Rubin confirmed that the Essential PH-1 is now officially compatible with Verizon's network. Wouldn't you know it, Andy Rubin tweeted out the following on Friday evening. Update: Verizon certification complete. Thanks for your patience. Might need to reboot your phone. Happy Friday!— Andy Rubin (@Arubin) September 16, 2017 In fact, just Thursday, Andy Rubin replied to a question in Essential's Reddit AMA about Verizon compatibility by...
Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa, has become increasingly popular, particularly when the entry level of the always-listening device dropped to $50 with the launch of the second generation Echo Dot last year. If you've been happy with the miniaturized version and are ready to add a full-sized one for it's room-filling speakers, now is a great time to purchase an Amazon Echo. Amazon is selling a Certified Refurbished Amazon Echo in black or white for $80, which is a pretty steep discount considering that a brand-new one costs $180 and this Refurbished one usually goes for $145. Amazon...
There's a lot of excitement of Apple fans with the announcement of Apple's first LTE-connected Apple Watch. However, the next hot button issue surrounding the idea of carrying a second cellular-connected device is: what will the $10/month add-on get you? At T-Mobile, you won't get anything faster than 512Kbps speeds on the new Apple Watch, this is according to the Un-Carrier's website. In order to get a wearable connected with T-Mobile, you must use the carrier's DIGITS service, which allows you to mirror a T-Mobile line to a second SIM, or you can use it to connect any...
While it's already mid-September and Google has published this month's Android security bulletin last week, T-Mobile is now rolling out the August security update for Samsung's Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. So it's not as timely as it could be, but a welcome update nevertheless for last year's flagships. The download size is around 289MB, and you'll get a notification on your phone when it's ready to be grabbed. After applying the update, you'll be on build G93xTUVU4BQH7. Replace that "x" with "0" if you have the S7 and "5" if your device is the S7 edge purchased from T-Mobile. As always, the...
Google is announcing the Pixel 2 and Pixel XL2 on October 4. Yet if you don't care about having the latest and greatest but are interested in purchasing smartphones supported directly by the maker of Android, Newegg has a great deal for you. You can snag the 128GB Google Pixel from 2016 for only $609.99, which is $140 less than the usual going price for this version of the phone. The savings are even bigger if you opt for the original Pixel XL with the same storage amount - $220, in fact. That's because you can purchase a 128GB XL model for $649.99 (down from the $869.99 recommended retail...
The iPhone X did another quick run of Geekbench to solidify itself as the fastest smartphone around. Apple's upcoming flagship scored even more than it did last time and trounces all the top smartphones around. Granted benchmarks aren't great at making cross-platform comparisons, but the difference is still impressive. The A11 Bionic chipset has nearly doubled the single-core score of the A10 Fusion, which was already ahead of the Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 8895 Octa. Interestingly the A11 Bionic has the highest multi-core score, a first for an Apple chip. ...
Apple finally brought wireless charging and fast charging to the iPhone lineup but you can't have it right out of the box. The supplied 5W charger in the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X retail box is the same old charger Apple has been bundling for ages. In order to have fast charging you need to buy a separate charger and cable. And they won't be cheap, either. Apple has tested the new iPhones with the USB-C 29W charger it supplies with the 12-inch Macbook as well as the 61W and 87W power adapters. The 29W charger costs around €59/£49/$49. Then you'd need a USB-C to Lightning cable,...
The impressive Mi Band 2 by Xiaomi just got an upgrade in India. The gadget was launched as Mi Band HRX Edition in partnership with HRX by Hrithik Roshan, one of the most famous actors in India. The device offers better tracking algorithm for more accurate monitoring of activities and improved battery life. According to Huawei, the Mi Band HRX Edition has 23 days of battery life, which is more than 10% update over the previous 20 days. This unit though does not have a heart rate sensor on the inside like the regular Mi Band 2. Other specs include 0.42" OLED screen with...
Web traffic analysts DeviceAtlas compiled an extensive report on the smartphone usage in Q2 2017. According to the company, Snapdragon 410 chipset is the most popular, just head of the A7 & A9 duo by Apple. The company also posted numbers about RAM, Dual SIM and "Year released" popularity across the globe. Qualcomm chips are the most popular in the Android world, according to the analysts. The San Diego company is a leader in developed markets like Japan, the US, the UK and Continental Europe. Developing markets like India, Egypt and Colombia have double-digit usage of MediaTek chips,...
Apple kicked off the first wave of iPhone 8 and 8 Plus pre-orders today and the initial stock is already beginning to dwindle. At the beginning of the day buyers from most of the 29 countries that made the first wave of sales were seeing shipping times between 22 and 25 September but now shipping estimates are falling back to between 1 and 2 weeks. It depends on the market you're looking at. Italian users still see the 22-25 September shipping estimate. UK buyers of the iPhone 8 Plus can still get a 64GB model and it will arrive on 22 of September and US customers get the faster...
Very funny, Google. The official site for the October 4 unveiling of the Pixel 2 and Pixel XL 2 has a secret buried in its source code - cookies! For once a web page references actual cookies rather than their digital counterpart. The photo below is linked from teaser page, though it is not visible on the page itself. Digging through the EXIF data reveals the location - Google Building 43 in Mountain View - but we especially like the camera model and photo comment. The camera is listed as "Google Not that easy ;)" and the comment reads "Stay tuned on Oct 4". That's a cute way to prevent...
A week ago we overheard that Samsung is working on an Android 8.0 Oreo update for the Galaxy S8 and today the first solid evidence appeared - a Geekbench scorecard. The result shows an Exynos 8895-powered Galaxy S8 running the new major version of Android. The score is solid though not any faster than what the phone achieves on 7.0 Nougat. Samsung has not announced an official schedule for the jump to Oreo for its flagships - the S8 duo and the Note8 are likely first in line, followed by the S7 duo. Source
The Galaxy Note8 has lived up to Samsung's expectations and reached 850,000 pre-orders in 8 days in its home country of South Korea. It massively outperformed the Note7, which managed 380,000 pre-orders in 13 days. The Galaxy Note8 will be released on September 21 in Korea (it's already available elsewhere), but those who pre-ordered are already receiving their units. Samsung shared some statistics on consumer preferences - most people got the 64GB model (65%) rather than the 256GB model (35%) and the most-preferred color was Black, followed by Blue. Source
Apple announced the iPhone X with an eye-watering price of $999 on September 12. Industry insiders in China did an investigation how much each component costs and came up with the total cost of the iPhone X. The sum is $412.75, or 60% cheaper than the retail price. The most expensive component is the 5.8" OLED panel manufactured by Samsung. It's price is $80 per unit which is way higher than any other part. The NAND memory, acquired from Toshiba is $45 for 256 GB. The 3 GB RAM is half - only $24. Apple announced the A11 Bionic chipset, which is built by TSMC on their 10 nm...
The vivo X20A has been spotted in a benchmark database. The device has surfaced on Geekbench, with the listing revealing a few key specifications including Snapdragon 660 SoC and 4GB RAM. The listing also reveals the handset runs Android Nougat (version 7.1.1) out of the box. As you might already know, there's a standard vivo X20 as well. It is rumored to be powered by the same SOC, but will come with 6GB RAM. Display is 5.8-inch with 1080x2160px resolution, while camera department is handled by 24MP rear and front shooters. Battery capacity is said to be 3,500mAh. Both X20 and...
Gionee has confirmed that the M7 smartphone will be made official on September 25. The company too it to Weibo to confirm the announcement date and that the event will be held in China. Meanwhile, a couple of images allegedly showing the M7's front panel leaked on Weibo. Take a look: Specs-wise, from what all has been revealed so far through rumors and leaks, the device is powered by MediaTek's Helio P30 SoC, and sports a 6.0-inch display of 1080 x 2160 pixel resolution. RAM is 6GB, while internal memory is 64GB. Camera configuration is 16MP/8MP, while Android 7.1.1 Nougat...
As scheduled, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 went on sale today in China. And unsurprisingly, it sold out very quickly. The company later officially announced that the flash sale lasted only 58 seconds. Like it's usually the case with flash sales in general, there's no information on how many Mix 2 units were up for grabs. The Xiaomi Mi Note 3, which debuted alongside the Mi Mix 2, was also scheduled to go on sale today. There's, however, currently no information on how it performed yet. Via
Today, Samsung began the global roll out of its latest Galaxy Note8 flagship smartphone. The device got its first update even before this commercial launch. The update was hitting international units so far, but it has now arrived in the US as well. Specifically, Verizon has started pushing out a new update to Galaxy Note8 units on its network. The update arrives as version N950USQU1AQI5, and - like the one hitting international variants - doesn't include September security fixes. The kernel update date is September 8 though (compared to September 1 on international...
We hear it time and time again and last week's poll confirms it - people prefer stock Android. Overwhelmingly so, this option got a cool 42% of the vote while the second place - Samsung - was way behind with 15%. Android gained extensive customization features a while ago - it started with custom launchers, lockscreens and keyboards and ended with native theme support. These days you can tweak stock, non-rooted Android quite a bit... unless a manufacturer's skin gets in the way. Other than Samsung's second place (15%), we have a tie for 3rd - Motorola and Xiaomi at 10% (we're even...
Apple launched three new phones this week and two of them were just listed for pre-order. The iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus launch simultaneously in 29 countries and regions as part of the first wave. Apple is accepting pre-orders on Apple.com and through the Apple Store app. Some retailers like Best Buy, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile also take pre-orders for the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Shipments for pre-orders and actual sales begin next Friday, September 22. The first wave of countries includes Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France,...
In anticipation of the launch of pre-orders for the iPhone 8, Apple Watch Series 3, and Apple TV 4K (which occurs tonight at 3AM (EST) (or 12AM PST), Apple has already begun rolling out new content with support for 4K resolution and HDR video with higher dynamic range. In addition, Apple is upgrading iTunes customers' previous purchases of video to 4K HDR format, which is has promised to do so, free of charge. All the new iPhones announced this week support HDR video, and the new Apple TV 4K supports both the higher resolution and HDR video, along with Dolby Vision support. You...
U.S. Cellular customers will be able to begin pre-ordering the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus starting tomorrow, Septembegr 15 at U.S. Cellular stores an online at uscellular.com. The new Apple phones and the cellular-connected Apple Watch Series 3 will be officially released at the carrier on September 22. If you'd rather wait around for the iPhone X (which would be wise considering the iPhone 8's four-year old design), preorders for the futuristic iPhone X will be available on October 27. While the official launch date of the iPhone X is on November 3, U.S. Cellular customers may...
Yesterday Huawei revealed that it's going to unveil the Maimang 6 in China on September 22, and the teaser image the company shared basically confirmed that this will indeed be the first Huawei phone with an 18:9 screen. Then mere hours later we saw a prototype Maimang 6 portrayed in a photo shoot out and about, confirming that aspect ratio and some specs. Now it's time for us to glance at some leaked press renders of the same handset, coming from two different sources. This is definitely leaking more lately than the much more high-end Mate 10, but hopefully that situation will change in...
Today YU took the wraps off its latest creation for the Indian market, the Yureka 2. Despite what its name may allege, this is in fact the sixth Yureka-branded phone, following the original Yureka, the Yureka Plus, the Yureka Note, Yureka S, and Yureka Black. The Yureka 2 boasts a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS touchscreen, the Snapdragon 625 chipset with 2 GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of expandable storage, and a 3,930 mAh battery. Its main camera is a 16 MP unit with LED flash, while selfies are taken care of by an 8 MP shooter up front. A fingerprint sensor is on the...
At the end of last month, Sony revealed which of its smartphones will be receiving updates to Android 8.0 Oreo, and today it was time for Motorola's US arm to do the same. The Lenovo-owned company hasn't committed to any release time frames for any of these, though, so it's anyone's guess when the phones listed below will actually taste Oreo. Here's the list of Motorola phones that will be updated to Android 8.0: • Moto Z2 Force (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon) • Moto Z2 Play (Verizon, unlocked) • Moto Z Force DROID (Verizon) • Moto Z (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, unlocked) •...
The Essential Phone has finally made its debut in Sprint stores today, and with that its launch is pretty much complete across all channels. The device has already received its first production software update, but that's still Nougat. Wondering when to expect Oreo to drop? "In the next month or two", according to Rebecca Zavin, Essential's VP of Software. She announced this through a Reddit AMA performed alongside Andy Rubin, the company's founder, and three other execs. Essential is also working on a mystery high-end audio accessory that will have a 3.5mm headset jack and a high...
If that billboard which surfaced earlier today still didn't convince you that Google is unveiling the Pixel 2 and Pixel XL2 on October 4, then the company's newly-started teaser campaign for the event really should. It's posted the video you can see below both on its YouTube channel and on its Twitter feed, and there's a landing page live too - where you can enter your email if you want to get more information about the handsets once they become official. If you're currently thinking of switching phones, Google thinks you should wait until October 4 and see what it has to offer. And...
HMD Global is getting ready to launch its next Nokia smartphone running Android, and this will in fact be its cheapest yet. We've already told you about the Nokia 2's whopping 4,000 mAh battery earlier today, but how about some leaked press renders showing the device in all its glory? Evan Blass a.k.a @evleaks delivers. The Nokia 2 is going to feature software-rendered Android navigation buttons as you can see, a first for HMD's lineup, owing to the fact that there's no fingerprint scanner on such a low-end device. Based on past rumors and leaks, the Nokia 2 is expected to have a...
The Google Pixel 2 XL might come with Always-On Display, previous rumors suggested. But you don't have to wait for that one to get the feature - one user at XDA found a way to run it on any rooted Android Oreo phone. A mere modification of the AmbientDisplayConfiguration.java will make the Always-On Display option to appear in Settings once "false" is changed to "true". Then the Always On Ambient Display pops up inside System UI Tuner. Many unofficial ports already enabled the feature. Google's implementation works similarly to Samsung's or LG's AOD. The...
ASUS has launched the ZenFone 4 Selfie series of smartphones in India. This consists of the ZenFone 4 Selfie, the ZenFone 4 Selfie dual camera and the ZenFone 4 Selfie Pro. ASUS ZenFone 4 Selfie The ZenFone 4 Selfie is the most affordable of the bunch. It has a single 13 megapixel f2.0 front facing camera with an LED flash and whole host of ASUS SelfieMaster features for beautification. Below the camera is a 5.5-inch 720p IPS display. On the back is a 13 megapixel f2.2 camera with PDAF. Powering the whole thing is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor with 3GB of RAM, 32GB of...
When Apple announces a phone, it talks more user experience and less numbers. That doesn't work for TENAA, however, the wireless authority that certifies gadgets for use in China. So, here are the battery capacities of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. The milliamp hour numbers have gone down 8% for both sizes of iPhone. And the phones themselves have not gotten thinner or lighter, quite the opposite in fact - they are 0.2mm thicker and weigh 10g and 20g more for the big and small ones, respectively. Battery RAM iPhone 7 1,960 mAh 2 GB ...
The Snapdragon 660 is used in several high-end phones while the 630 isn't getting much love. Both are mid-range (so affordable) 14nm chips (so power-efficient), but only one of them uses the faster Kryo cores. A new chip may be coming to bridge the gap between these two. The Snapdragon 635 will also be built on a 14nm LPP process and will use an octa-core Kryo processor - 4 big cores, 4 small. The rumor does not mention clockspeeds, though (the two clusters of the S660 run at up to 2.2GHz / 1.8GHz). The GPU promises to be 20% faster than the Snapdragon 625 GPU. If true, that's not much...
Earlier today we told you about a billboard, revealing the launch date of the new Pixel phones by Google. Two devices are expected to arrive - the Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL and the latter just popped up on FCC. The Pixel 2 XL will be built by LG and come with a 6" FullVision screen like the one in the LG G6. The device is not actually listed with the "Pixel" branding at FCC's website, but there are several points that lead to this assumption. The model name G011C has the same first letter as "Google". It also comes close to the G011A (aka the Pixel 2) that stopped by the FCC...
The last several days have been filled with reactions, memes and comments what the new iPhone is and what isn't. A lot of rumors and alleged live images appeared and while many of them turned out real and gave us a good idea of what to expect, some of them ended up to be unfounded speculations. Everything started with a suggestion from analysts KGI Research that the anniversary iPhone might come with a "Function Area" to occupy the lower portion of its OLED panel. At one point we even thought a TouchBar might be in place, but the iPhone X has a seamless screen with the usual...
Hey, remember when Nokia 2 passed through the FCC? Buried under a mountain of wireless connectivity tests was the battery capacity - a whopping 4,000mAh! That's a huge jump over the 5, 6 and 8 models, all three of which have around 3,000mAh. The Snapdragon 210 chipset doesn't use a lot of power - not because it's very efficient (it's a 28nm chip), it's just not very powerful. Couple that with the rumored 4.7-5" screen of modest 720p resolution, the battery life should be stellar. Certainly better than HMD's current entry level phone - the Nokia 3 and its 2,630mAh battery. Anyway,...
The Apple iPhone X has a 5.8" screen... except it doesn't. You can see on the official site that the 5.8" measurement is for a rectangular screen while the X has rounded corners. But that's a minor quibble, the bigger issue is that there's a cutout at the top of the screen, which limits the usable area. The aspect ratio of the new Super Retina Display is 19.5:9, wider than even Samsung's 18.5:9 (LG and Xiaomi use 18:9). But again, the cutout means you get a small screen that you can practically use. In fact, ignoring the top portion leaves a screen that's just about 18.5:9 in aspect...
Huawei has scheduled an event for September 22, which seems to be for the Maimang 6, aka RNE-AL00. We saw its specs on TENAA, now let's look at some live photos of the device. It has a 5.9" 1080p screen - 1,080 x 2,160px specifically due to the 18:9 aspect ratio (never mind that the benchmark claims 720p). The octa-core chipset has been named - Kirin 659, the chipset used in Huawei's nova 2. It has eight Cortex-A53 cores and a Mali-T830 MP2 GPU, in this case paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage. Huawei Maimang 6 / RNE-AL00 in the wild Additional info from someone who...
Calling the new breed of phones "bezel-less" is a bit of a misnomer - they do have a bezel, just much smaller than traditional phones. Still, it's how they've come to be known and now even Apple makes one. But screen to body numbers get thrown around and some of them are not quite accurate. Things like rounded corners and display cutouts make things yet more complicated, but we took the time to calculate the actual numbers, accounting for all the deviations from the classic rectangular screen. The competitors (not to scale) So here it is. The Apple iPhone X measures among the best....
A couple of months ago, there were reports that Facebook is working on a standalone group video chat app. Well, now the company has started rolling out the app, dubbed Bonfire. The roll out is limited at the moment, restricted to iOS users in Denmark. Bonfire lets you perform a video chat with several participants at the same time. It is reportedly similar to the Houseparty app, which is currently quite popular among teens. This new Facebook app offers ability to apply Snapchat-like effects. Not only that, you can also share pictures to Instagram, Facebook, and...
The BlackBerry Krypton, which is expected to be the next smartphone by the TCT-owned brand, has received certification from the FCC in the US. As is usually the case, the FCC certification doesn't reveal much about the device, however, there are a couple of things to note. Firstly, the name Krypton is clearly mentioned in the filenames. And secondly, there's a graphic included as well, although it doesn't give away much about the device. The device has already been certified by Bluetooth SIG and WiFi Alliance (WFA). As for specs, rumors so far say the Krypton will be...
Last month, serial leakster Evan Blass revealed the next generation Google Pixel smartphones will be officially unveiled on October 5. However, if a newly-spotted Google billboard is anything to go by, the devices may arrive a day earlier. Agreed, the billboard doesn't explicitly say anything, but the words "Ask more of your phone," followed by Google's logo and the date are strong indications that the company is talking about a new phone, details related to which will be outed on October 4. For what it's worth, last year's Pixel event also happened on October 4. The upcoming...
Samsung has started pushing out a new update to its Galaxy A9 Pro smartphone. Arriving as firmware version A910FXXU1BQHB and weighing in at just under 1.3GB, it's a major update that bumps the OS version to Android 7.0 Nougat. The update is currently hitting units in India, although other markets (like China and Malaysia, where the device is available) should also get it sooner than later. OTA roll outs are usually gradual, so be patient if you haven't received the update yet - it shouldn't be long now. Via
The V-series of phablets was conceived as a novel take on the phablet with a secondary ticker display. Well, that lasted for two product cycles, and the secondary screen is no more. Instead, the LG V30 is all screen.
Google is offering users with defective Nexus 6P units (purchased directly from the company's online store) a brand new Pixel XL smartphone as replacement. This has been reportedly going on for some time now, but came to light recently. Even units out of the original 1-year warranty are eligible for the upgrade. It's worth mentioning that whether or not you'll get a Pixel XL as replacement depends on your region. Reportedly, those in the US and Canada are definitely getting it, while users in UK aren't lucky enough (it's a hit and miss there actually). Australians, on the other hand,...
The Essential Phone is now receiving a new software update, on the eve of its release in Sprint stores across the US. While technically it isn't the first, the previous ones were only actually seen by people with review units. For all intents and purposes, this should be the first update notification that people who bought the device will come across. Before you ask - no, it's not Oreo. Essential promised quick Android version updates, yes, but it's too soon for that. Not one non-Google supported device runs that yet. What this update does bring is the September security fix. The...
Jet Black was the most exclusive color scheme for last year's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus upon launch, since you could only get it on a device with 128 or 256GB of storage. The entry-level 32GB tier wasn't available in this shiny hue. That changes now, however. Following its announcement of the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus, Apple has already discontinued the red iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, as well as 256GB models for last year's handsets. On the flip side, you can now buy a 32GB iPhone 7 or 7 Plus in Jet Black, for the first time ever. The price isn't any different to what the company...
