Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G has been announced in India today. It has arrived in India’s first Xiaomi phone without the “Mi” branding. The handset comes with some key features such as a 90Hz AMOLED display, Snapdragon 778G, and support for 12 5G bands.
Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G specifications and features
The Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G has a 6.55-inch AMOLED display that offers a Full HD+ resolution, a 20:9 aspect ratio, a 90Hz refresh rate, a 240Hz touch sampling rate, 402ppi pixel density, up to 800nits brightness, and Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The punch-hole panel also supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+.
Placed on the front side of the 11 Lite NE is a 20-megapixel selfie camera. Its back panel has a squarish camera module that includes a 64-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel ultrawide lens, and a 5-megapixel telemacro snapper.
Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G
The Snapdragon 778G SoC is present under the hood of the Xiaomi 11 Lite NE. The device ships with 6 GB / 8 GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 128 GB / 256 GB of UFS 2.2 storage. There is a hybrid SIM card slot, which can be used for adding a microSD card. It runs on MUI 12.5 based on Android 11 OS. The company will be rolling out three Android updates and 4 years of security patches.
The Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G has a 4,250mAh battery that supports 33W fast charging. It offers other features like dual SIM support, 5G, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS, NFC, a USB-C port, stereo speakers, AI face unlock, and a side-facing fingerprint scanner.
Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G price in India
The Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G has arrived in two variants such as 6 GB RAM + 128 GB storage and 8 GB RAM + 256 GB storage. They are priced at Rs 26,999 (~$364) and Rs 28,999 (~$391), respectively. It comes in four colors like Diamond Dazzle, Jazz Blue, Tuscany Coral, and Vinyl Black.
The first sale of the 11 Lite NE 5G begins at 12 AM on Oct. 2. It will be available through Mi.com, Mi Home, Amazon India, and retail stores. With the bank offer of up to Rs 2,000 and a Diwali Offer of Rs 1,500 (between Oct. 2 and Oct. 7), both variants of the phone can be purchased for Rs 23,499 (~$316) and Rs 25,499 (~$343), respectively.
Earlier this year, in July, media streaming giant Netflix announced plans for adding game streaming services to its platform. Last month, Netflix Gaming made its debut in Poland with two Stranger Things mobile games.
Today, Netflix has announced the acquisition of video game creator Night School Studio, marking the first purchase of a gaming studio for the streaming giant.
Along with the acquisition, the company has also rolled out five mobile gaming titles in select European markets. Night School Studio is best known for its debut game, Oxenfree, a supernatural teen thriller with an eerie soundtrack.
The studio’s games — available on Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PCs — will be the first non-mobile titles in Netflix’s video game portfolio.
The news about this acquisition comes at a time when Netflix is looking to diversify its revenue sources as the competition in the online streaming space is increased day by day and new platforms keep coming up.
In a statement, Night School Studio said: “Netflix gives film, TV, and now game makers an unprecedented canvas to create and deliver excellent entertainment to millions of people. Our explorations in narrative gameplay and Netflix’s track record of supporting diverse storytellers was such a natural pairing.”
Netflix has already confirmed that it won’t be offering a separate subscription for this new gaming service as it is ”a one-product company.” This means that a subscription to the streaming platform offers movies, TV shows, documentaries, and games.
The arrival of the popular electric vehicles manufacturer Tesla is being highly anticipated in the Indian market but the company has to pass a few challenges before that becomes a reality. The EV maker has been progressing in that direction and has days after its appeal, the Indian government is reportedly considering slashing import duty on EVs.
Now, a new report coming from Counterpoint Research hints at Tesla aiming to give a bigger role to India. It claims that Tesla could announce the production of its cars in India as early as next year.
Earlier this year, India’s Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had said that the country is ready to offer incentives to ensure that Tesla’s cost of production would be less than in China if the carmaker commits to making its electric vehicles in India.
To attract EV makers, India is considering slashing its import duty. For electric vehicles with a valuation of less than $40,000, the tax rate can be slashed to 40 percent compared to 60 percent currently. For cars that are valued at over $40,000, the rate could be slashed from 100 percent to 60 percent.
It is believed that the Indian government is in favor of cutting import duties to see companies like Tesla providing benefits to the domestic economy by manufacturing locally later on, or give a firm timeline on when it would be able to.
India is currently the fifth largest car market with an annual sale of around 3 million cars but last year, EVs accounted for only 5,000 of them. This is because of the negligible charging infrastructure and the high cost of electric vehicles. Also, India doesn’t have a comprehensive EV policy like China, the world’s biggest auto market.
Tesla is expected to enter the Indian car market and gauge the demand by first importing vehicles instead of manufacturing them locally. Currently, the company has active production facilities in California, Nevada, New York, and Shanghai with three more factories to start operation pretty soon.
The young brand, Realme, has given us a lot of surprises since its establishment. It first started out as a smartphone manufacturer, but now the brand is ambitiously expanding to markets beyond smartphones. In 2021, it has launched a bunch of new products in new categories. The Realme Book, the brand’s first-ever laptop product, was recently announced with incredible value for money. To achieve its very first step in the market, the Realme Book targets the affordable market, where things are highly competitive. Since we’ve seen so many excellent manufacturers splitting up a large chunk of this market, we are curious whether the Realme Book can stand out from the crowd and win its own position. Just follow our review and find out the answer.
Realme Book Slim Review: Design
At first glance, the Realme Book did impress us with its great build quality. Since these days even affordable laptops have a similar design to other premium laptops, the real differentiating factor lies in the laptop’s attention to detail and build quality. In this regard, the Realme Book is one of the most impressive models in its price range. The laptop’s design looks clean and highly integrated, thanks to the whole metal body.
The smooth aluminum alloy feels pretty premium with a united matte finish, which would not only prevent from getting fingerprints stains and dust but also theoretically ensures stable performance, due to its good heat dissipation.
Known as Realme Book Slim, the Realme Book also brings an ultra-slim design with 14.9mm thickness (thickest point: 15.5mm). Matching with the front size of 307 x 229mm and the weight of 1.48kg (1.38kg for the 8G version), the compact laptop is pretty good for portable use. But surprisingly, in the compact body (a common size for a 13-inch notebook), Realme installed a 14-inch 2K IPS display with a resolution of 2160 x 1440. Except for the bottom frame with the realme logo, the three bezels (left & right: 5.3mm) around the panel are quite narrow (Screen-to-body ratio: 90%), which makes the display look much more stunning than most of its competitors.
However, the compact design forces some compromises. The number of available ports probably won’t please some users. There’s only one USB 3.0 port and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the right side. On the other side, the laptop offers a Thunderbolt 4 (charging port) and another USB-C 3.2 port.
To fix that, an additional interface dock may be needed with the Realme Book.
In addition, the included 65W PD charger also applies a compact design for ease of carrying, which, more importantly, can be shared for charging both the laptop and your smartphone with a USB-C charging port.
The keyboard layout of the Realme Book uses large keycaps that feature good travel at 1.3mm. The keys offer a pretty fast and smooth response without producing much noise while typing. But for some users who require a strong rebound, the typing experience may not be so pleasurable. The keys are backlit and Realme offers two levels of brightness for users under different situations.
The large touchpad below the keyboard is one of my favorite points. It provides an ample touch area which is also responsive and smooth. And during our limited experience, we didn’t face any mistouches.
Realme Book Slim Display & Speakers
Let’s take a closer look at the 14-inch display. Honestly, the display of the Realme Book is one of the top options we can find at this price. It supports up to 100% sRGB gamut with outstanding color accuracy (actual test: ΔE=1.45), which is pretty close to some professional monitors for image processing. As an office-work or business model, the 3:2 aspect ratio is also a better option than the 16:9. The most intuitive experience is that it can display multiple tasks more comfortably.
The only unfortunate limitation is the 400-nit max brightness, which isn’t really enough for use under bright ambient light.
For audio, the Realme Book is equipped with dual Harman-tuned speakers with the support of DTS Stereo Surround Sound technology. The actual audio sound is loud and rich. Although it still is not comparable to some premium models, it’s already better than most options at the price point.
Realme Book Slim Performance & Gaming Review
As a competitive laptop taking aim at good productivity, the Realme Book has offered the best that it can at this price. The whole lineup of the Realme Book is powered by the 11th-gen Intel Core processors, but you only have Core i3-1115G4 and a Core i5-1135G7 for options. The model in our hand is an Intel i5 version with 16GB LPDDR4X RAM and 512GB PCIe SSD ROM, which is also the top configuration of the lineup.
In AIDA64’s stress test (FPU stress test), this i5’s single-core frequency could reach up to 4.2GHz, which would be a remarkable improvement for heavy productivity uses. During the stress test, the laptop had sustained high-performance output with excellent cooling capacity, which thanks to the cooling system mainly constituted by dual fans inside the body and the connection with dual 8mm-diameter heat pipes. And notably, the cooling system stayed pretty quiet and didn’t produce unacceptable noise.
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Another important detail reflected in the test is that the CPU could run up to 28W TDP. Considering it comes with Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics instead of separate Graphics, it’s the best performance that the i5-1135G7 CPU can achieve.
In PCMark 10, the Realme Book scored 4766, where it got 9628 for the Essentials Test, and got 6437 for the productivity test. In another Benchmark, CineBench R20, the CPU of the laptop scored 2192, which is a pretty good result among all the i5-1135G7 models.
As for gaming, we chose to run FPS Test of the game CS:GO on the Realme Book. The laptop could achieve an average framerate of 50fps under the game’s 1080P high graphics. And under low graphics, the framerate could stably maintain at 55-60fps.
To summarize the results in different benchmarks, we’re quite sure that the Realme Book is sufficient to meet the general needs of office productivity and light entertainment, while running heavy-loaded games is still a bit of a struggle.
Although the Realme Book is the brand’s first laptop coming with Windows 10 system pre-installed, the brand promised that the lineup is in the first list of laptops to be updated with Windows 11.
In addition, Realme pre-installed an exclusive application to achieve seamless collaboration with a Realme Phone. The PC-Phone Connect application allows to seamlessly mirror the phone screen to the notebook where users easily share and open files on the phone with PC programs. But just note that it’s compatible only with Realme GT series for now.
Realme Book Slim Battery Life Review
The Realme Book is equipped with a 54Wh battery. Realme claimed, under office use, the notebook could last for 8.5 hours. But in our actual uses, it was around 1 hour less than its claimed battery life, which is probably because we added up more usage scenarios like web-surfing and streaming video playback. Nevertheless, considering its slim body, such battery performance is still impressive.
Last but not least, we have a reminder for users who are going to buy a Core i3 configuration of the Realme Book. The i3 variant doesn’t support the latest Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, the ultra-high-speed of Thunderbolt 4 port, or even the new WiFi 6 network. Considering the absence of Core i7 configuration, we highly recommend going for the Core i5 version of the Realme Book if you are attracted by the beautiful price and its powerful performance.
Realme Book Slim: Verdict
As Realme’s first entry into the notebook market, the Realme Book surprisingly shows its mature product power. The optimized Core i5-1135G7 processor plus up to 16GB RAM and 512GB ROM brought back the smooth experience to budget notebooks. Unlike those mid-rangers using an MX450 independent Graphics as a gimmick (bringing very limited improvement and serious power and heated issues), it emphasizes the balance of good portability, stable performance and overall power consumption.
While taking the attractive price into account, it’s definitely one of the best options for portable productivity and light entertainment for the price.
You can get the Realme Book from Realme or via retailers like Giztop.
Huawei is one of the few companies to release foldable smartphones. So far, the OEM has only introduced three models. All of these feature a horizontally foldable display that unfolds into a tablet. As per a reliable tipster from China, the firm is currently working on a device with a vertically foldable screen. This type of phone is commonly referred to as a ‘clamshell foldable smartphone’.
HUAWEI Mate X2
According to Digitial Chat Station, Huawei is developing a clamshell foldable smartphone. The leaker says that the handset will be positioned in the high-end market. He also adds that it will be targeted at the female audience. Unfortunately, it’s not known when this phone will be released.
Going by the information, the upcoming HUAWEI-branded clamshell foldable smartphone will compete directly with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip series. The current-gen Galaxy Z Flip3 is said to be the best affordable foldable device to date without any major concerns. Hence, the Huawei-made handset needs to offer more to lure in customers.
At present, there are only two companies that offer foldable smartphones with a vertically foldable display. One of them is South Korea’s Samsung and the other is China’s Lenovo-owned Motorola.
Huawei entering this segment will make it the only second Chinese OEM to offer this type of phone. However, there’s a chance of fellow Chinese firms like Xiaomi, OPPO, or vivo beating the telecom giant in this regard.
Honor, which started off as a sub-brand of Huawei, has now become an independent brand after the technology giant sold it to Zhixin New Information Technology Co. Ltd in November last year.
The company has been focusing on increasing its footprint in the offline market and in line with that, Honor is now set to open around 300 new Honor Experience Stores in China in the first week of October, i.e. between 1st October and 7th October.
At these new stores, customers will be able to experience the Honor Magic3 series flagship smartphone as well as the new multi-camera fusion computing photography technology that was launched a few days ago. However, this will be limited to select premium stores in Suzhou, Chengdu, Shanghai, and Changsha.
After becoming independent, the company launched its own online store in January this year, named Honor Mall for selling smartphones, tablets, smart displays, notebooks, earphones, and smartwatches, among others.
The company is also focusing on offline stores as well and is in the process of establishing thousands of new brick-and-mortar stores across the world. As of August 2021, Honor’s Experience Stores have increased by 68 percent compared to stores the company had at the beginning of this year.
Last month, George Zhao, CEO of Honor, revealed that the offline sales for the company accounted for more than 70 percent of its overall sale. This is interesting as Honor mostly positions its devices in the mid-range segment and under Huawei, it was the leading company for online sales in China.
Honor has now returned to the top three list of smartphone manufacturers in its home country China, with a market share of 14.6 percent. Not just China, Honor has also resumed business operations in about 50 countries around the world and is now focusing on recovering the lost market share.
Huawei is still facing issues with smartphone manufacturing because of the US imposed sanctions and thus, the China-based technology giant has shifted its focus to other products and developing next-gen technologies.
In line with that, it seems that the brand has launched the Huawei Sound SE speaker in its home market, which comes with a starting price of 799 yuan, approximately $124.
The Huawei Sound SE speakers come in two different color options — Bright Black and White Gold. It uses six-unit four speakers which includes three full-range speakers, one woofer, and two passive radiators. It also supports Devialet Push-Push acoustic architecture, Devialet SAM technology, Devialet joint tuning algorithm, and more.
As for the connectivity options, the new speaker supports Bluetooth 4.2 and Wi-Fi. There’s also 3.5mm AUX-in audio input but it doesn’t support stereo sound. It also comes with support for DLNA/QPlay playback.
Powering the Huawei Sound SE speaker is the company’s own HarmonyOS 2 which also supports features like touch pass and voice control through several different voice assistants available in the market.
It also supports a quick connection feature with other smart devices, including smart screens, tablets, and more. When the speaker is placed near other devices, it’ll automatically detect them and push a pop-up connection window, without the need for installing any application on the device.
This Huawei Sound SE speaker has been priced at 899 yuan (~$139) but is currently available at a discounted price of 799 yuan, which roughly converts to $124.
Apple recently launched its latest iPhone 13 series smartphones in several different markets globally. The phone has already become quite popular and the shipment dates have not been pushed to late October.
The reason for the popularity of the new iPhone models is the top-notch offering, not just for the performance but also the display panel. DisplayMate has now awarded the iPhone 13 Pro Mac as the “Bst Smartphone Display Award” with the highest-ever display performance grade of A+.
This time, the display panel of the iPhone 13 Pro series models features a new Super Retina XDR display with ProMotion, which basically means that it comes with support for variable refresh rates between 10Hz and 120Hz, depending on the type of content being displayed on the screen.
It also offers the highest ever brightness for smartphones with OLED panels, says the report from DisplayMate. The iPhone 13 Pro Max is said to have a peak brightness of 1,000 nits for typical content and 1,200 nits for HDR content. It also set records for the highest absolute color accuracy, highest contrast ratio, lowest screen reflectance, and more.
For the uninitiated, South Korean tech giant Samsung is exclusively supplying the LTPO OLED panels for the iPhone 13 Pro Max model so far. But if the reports are to be believed, then LG is also expected to start supplying LTPO OLED screens next year.
The usage of LTPO technology would result in a more power-efficient backplane, which is responsible for turning individual pixels on and off on the display, allowing for a 120Hz refresh rate without a significant impact on battery life.
ZTE Axon 30 5G’s new variant is now available for purchase in China. At launch, it was announced with up to 12 GB of RAM and up to 256 GB storage. Now, the company has released the 512 GB storage version of the device.
ZTE Axon 30 price
The newly announced 512 GB edition of the Axon 30 5G ships with 8 GB of RAM. It is priced at 3,498 Yuan (~$541). It comes in a Light Coffee color that features a leather back.
ZTE Axon 30
ZTE Axon 30 5G specifications and features
The Axon 30 5G has a 6.92-inch AMOLED display that offers a 1,080 x 2,460 pixels resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, 400ppi pixel density, 100 percent DCI-P3 color gamut, and an in-screen fingerprint scanner.
The handset has a 16-megapixel in-display camera. The rear camera setup of the phone has a 64-megapixel Sony IMX682 primary camera, an 8-megapixel ultrawide lens, a 5-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel depth lens.
The Snapdragon 870 mobile platform powers the Axon 30 5G. The SoC is coupled with LPDDR4x RAM and UFS 3.1 storage. It has a 4,200mAh battery that carries support for 55W fast charging. It runs on MiFlavor based Android 11 OS.
Update: This article is about the ZTE Axon 30 5G’s new storage variant. However, the original version of the article incorrectly mentioned it as the ZTE Axon 30 Ultra UD edition. The article has been updated with the correct information.
Ever since the Apple iPad mini 6 hit the stores last week, users across the globe have been affected by a weird “jelly scrolling” effect in the display. This makes the scrolling stuttery where one part of the display refreshes at an abnormally slower rate. But as it turns out, this may not be an issue after all. Apple believes there’s nothing wrong with the screen and this is expected behavior on LCD panels.
There have been multiple reports that suggest a wobble effect kicks in the iPad mini 6 and at first, it felt like a software bug. Despite this being an annoying event, the company states that the “jelly scrolling” effect is completely expected on LCD screens. Apple blames the LCD panels “do refresh line by line,” which causes a delay between lines.
Here is is slow-mo video of scrolling on the iPad Min i slowed down EVEN MORE in a frame-by-frame step through. Notice how the right moves up faster than the left.
In normal usage you barely see it, but every now and then it become noticeable. In landscape it goes away entirely pic.twitter.com/iq9LGJzsDI
Contrary to what Apple says, the “jelly scrolling” effect is negligible and hard to notice on other iPad models having 60Hz LCD displays, including the iPad Air 4. Not just Apple, but devices with LCD panels from other brands don’t seem to have this issue either.
But now that Apple has cleared the air on the “jelly scrolling”, there’s no way iPad mini 6 users can expect a repair or replacement and will, unfortunately, have to bear with the wobbling display. For the ones who are still under the 14 days window of refund, if you happen to face this issue, getting it returned appears to be the only wise option as of now.
A new Vivo smartphone with model number V2102A has received approval from China’s MIIT authority. It can be said based on previous reports that it may come equipped with the next-generation Snapdragon 898 mobile platform. The CMIIT certification suggests that the smartphone may debut before the end of the year in China.
The V2012A’s CMIIT listing only reveals some of its connectivity features like 5G support. Earlier this month, the V2102A smartphone was spotted at the Geekbench benchmarking site. The listing revealed that it is powered by a Qualcomm chipset that is codenamed as “taro” and it is equipped with Adreno 730 graphics. These hints suggested that the Vivo V2102A is powered by the successor of the Snapdragon 888 SoC, which is being referred to as the Snapdragon 898 by the rumor mill.
The Geekbench listing further revealed that the V2102A has 8 GB of RAM, and it runs on Android 11 OS. Qualcomm is yet to introduce the Snapdragon 898 chipset. Probably, it will be announced through Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit 2021 that is scheduled to take place between Nov. 30 to Dec. 2.
Last year, Xiaomi introduced the Xiaomi Mi 11 5G as the first Snapdragon 888 SoC-powered phone in December 2021. With the V2012A phone appearing at CMIIT so early, it appears that Vivo may launch the first Snapdragon 898 phone this year. Unfortunately, there is no information on the final marketing name of the V2102A. It remains to be seen whether it could be arriving in the Chinese market as Vivo NEX 5 or the Vivo X80 Pro+.
Earlier this week, Xiaomi announced the Xiaomi CIVI smartphone in China. Aimed to target the youth and female audience, the CIVI handset offers an exciting design, a 32-megapixel camera, a 120Hz AMOLED panel, and Snapdragon 778G chip. Fresh information reveals that the company has no plans to release the smartphone outside China.
Xiaomi confirmed to Android Authority that, “Xiaomi CIVI remains a Mainland China-only device.” This statement does not really rule out a rebranded version of the phone for the global markets.
Xiaomi CIVI
Xiaomi CIVI specifications and price
The Xiaomi CIVI has a 6.55-inch OLED panel with curved edges. It produces a Full HD+ resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. The handset houses a 4,500mAh battery, which carries support for 55W fast charging. It weighs 166 grams and measures only 6.9mm in thickness.
The Snapdragon 778G fuels the Xiaomi CIVI with up to 12 GB of RAM and up to 256 GB of storage. It has a 32-megapixel front camera, and a 64-megapixel (main) + 8-megapixel (ultrawide) + 2-megapixel (macro) triple camera unit. The front camera supports features like autofocus, pixel-level skin restoration feature, and slow-motion video shooting.
The CIVI comes with other features like an in-screen fingerprint scanner, MIUI 12.5 based Android 1, dual SIM, 5G, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS, NFC, and a USB-C port. It comes in three options such as 8 GB RAM + 128 GB storage, 8 GB RAM + 256 GB storage, and 12 GB RAM + 256 GB storage. They are priced at 2,599 Yuan (~$402), 2,899 Yuan (~$448), and 3,199 Yuan (~$495), respectively. It will go on sale for the first time in China in tomorrow (Sept. 30).
Samsung has had a terrible time handling incidents of devices getting blown up. The company had to suspend the sales of Galaxy Note 7 series when a manufacturing defect led to many devices getting exploded. Well, this one’s nowhere close but something did went wrong. A user who had taken his Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 to the repair center ends up finding his device fuming.
A user took it to Twitter to share his experience where he had initially dropped his Galaxy Z Fold3 a week ago and after taking it to Samsung repair center, he was advised to mail it to Samsung to get it replaced by a new unit. Upon preparing the device to ship, it turned into a blazing hot lava.
For the record this phone (which I just came back from a Samsung repair center where they said to just mail it in for replacement) fell off my bike a week or so ago. I am sure it had integrity damage which caused this. I don’t suspect this is a Note 7 type issue….
— Chad Christian – American Dream Trading (@CoachCWC) September 26, 2021
While the user suspects this could be due to an integrity damage, there could be multiple reasons that made the device end up like this. In a similar incident, Samsung Galaxy A21‘s explosion made an Alaska Airlines flight to evacuate the passengers as it happend inside the airplane.
Since there are no similar reports in this regard, we will only be able to tell what exactly happened when Samsung does a postmortem and pin points the main culprit and in the meantime, hope that it isn’t widespread like we saw on Galaxy Note 7.
OPPO will be launching a new A-series smartphone on Oct. 1 in India. A teaser image that appeared on Amazon India last week suggested that OPPO could be gearing up to launch the OPPO A55 4G in India. An updated microsite, which confirms some of the key features of the smartphone is now available on the retailer site.
The microsite reveals that the next A-series phone for India will feature a 6.51-inch punch-hole display with the eye comfort feature. For security, it will offer a side-facing fingerprint scanner and face unlock.
The display punch-hole available at the upper-left corner will house a 16-megapixel selfie camera. Its rear camera setup will include a 50-megapixel main camera, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel depth assist lens.
The handset will be arriving in two colors such as Rainbow Blue and Starry Black. It will be equipped with an IPX4 rated splash-proof chassis. Its other details are under the wraps. Hopefully, new details of the phone may appear before it goes official on Oct. 1.
In related news, OPPO has recently introduced the OPPO F19s, Reno 6 Pro 5G Diwali Edition, and Enco Buds Blue. These products can be purchased through Flipkart and OPPO India’s e-store. The F19s is already available for purchase with a pricing of Rs 19,990 (~$269).
The Reno 6 Pro 5G Diwali Edition comes with a unique UI, 12 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage, and a different packaging is priced at Rs 41,990 (~$566). It will go on sale from Oct. 6. The Enco Buds Blue costs will also go on sale on the same date with a price tag of Rs 1,499 (~$20).
The Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are speculated to debut on Oct. 19 and these phones are expected to release in the market by Oct. 28. A fresh leak by Brandon Lee of This is Tech Today YouTube channel has revealed the pricing of the Pixel 6 duo for the European market.
Lee has received an image from someone who works for a major carrier in Europe. Past reports have revealed that the Oriole codenamed belongs to the Pixel 6, whereas the Pixel 6 Pro is codenamed as Raven.
In the image, the Oriole model (Pixel 6) is mentioned with two price tags such as 548 euros and 649 euros, which seemingly belongs to the 8 GB RAM + 128 GB storage and 8 GB RAM + 256 GB storage variants. The Raven (Pixel 6 Pro) is listed with a pricing of 899 euros. 9to5Googleclaims it was able to confirm these prices from a different source in Europe.
Reports have claimed that the Pixel 6 Pro will come in three options such as 12 GB RAM + 128 GB storage, 12 GB RAM + 256 GB storage, and 12 GB RAM + 512 GB storage. Considering that its base model is priced at 899 euros, the remaining two variants may cost 999 euros and 1,099 euros.
There will be five colors like red, green, black, silver, and gold between the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. The black model could be called Carbon, whereas the green model could be marketed as Fog.
The chairman and founder of Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding, Eric Li has put in motion a bold plan to go into smartphone production with the first units coming out of the new company as early as 2023. Li is believed to hold a majority stake in the new smartphone company.
The move by the Chinese carmaker who also owns Volvo seems the first from an automaker. The common trend in the industry is smartphone companies delving into car manufacturing. Apple, Xiaomi, and Huawei are some of the smartphone manufacturers that are already making progress in the development of their own branded electric vehicles, albeit with some strong partnerships with established EV manufacturers
Li had made some really futuristic plans that are still hanging in the air, the move for the smartphone market seems to be solid and bold indeed. A foray into the smartphone market will throw Geely into intense competition for a market that is experiencing some levels of saturation. The big hitters in the Chinese smartphone market are Xiaomi and Apple on the high end, while several other brands compete for the huge mid-range and low-end segment.
According to Li, the major trend in the coming future is to create user ecosystems across borders to provide a more convenient, smarter, and connected multi-screen experience. The new company is named Hubei Xingji Shidai Technology Co Ltd, and it is making progress to establish its headquarters in Wuhan, China where it will develop smart devices, smartphones inclusive. There is an initial capital of up to $1.55 billion dollars for the project, with a targeted revenue of about $1.5 billion dollars within the first year of operations.
The company has set a very ambitious short-term and long-term target. However, time will tell whether it will become a success or not.
Huawei recently unveiled the Watch Fit New in China with impressive features like blood oxygen monitoring, NFC payments, and up to 97 sports modes. Now, the Huawei Watch Fit New seems to be heading to Europe as a popular tipster has shared an explicit launch date of its European arrival.
According to Roland Quandt, the Huawei Watch Fit New will launch next month in Europe. The tipster reveals that it may launch on October 18 featuring the NFC feature. Well, to give the tip some weight, Huawei has already created a landing page for the smartwatch on its Germany portal.
Furthermore, the tipster suggests that the smartwatch will cost EUR 129. If this is to be believed then it will be similar to the Chinese pricing of CNY 799(~$124). In China, it has four colour variants namely Obsidian Black, Grapefruit Red, Island Blue, and Pink Cherry. We expect these colour options to also arrive in European markets.
The Huawei Watch Fit New is a successor to the last year’s Watch Fit and it comes with more sports modes. The Watch Fit New has a 1.64-inch AMOLED display with a 280 x 456 pixels resolution. It has 300 watch faces and 97 sports modes. The new addition to the existing sports modes is the Jump rope counter.
It has a 24/7 heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring sensor, stress monitoring sensor, and has menstrual tracking. The smartwatch supports the NFC payments feature and gets call and SMS alerts.
Earlier, we revealed that Lenovo is gearing to launch its Xiaoxin Pro 14 2021 laptop in the Chinese market. Today, Lenovo has officially launched the Lenovo Xiaoxin Pro 14 2021 notebook with Intel’s 11-generation chipset and a 90Hz panel.
The Lenovo Xiaoxin Pro 14 is priced starting at CNY 5299(~$820) for the 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD configuration. It will be available for purchase from JD.com and other authorised stores in the country.
Lenovo Xiaoxin Pro 14 Specifications
The laptop has a 14-inch display with a 2.8k screen resolution. It features a 90Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 400 nits. The device has an aspect ratio of 16:10 and sports a 10-bit colour depth. The screen supports Shuangcaiyin eye protection certification meaning that it light emitted by the screen will be easier on the eyes. It has a chiclet-style keyboard without a dedicated number pad. It features a medium-sized trackpad and has Lenovo branding besides it.
The laptop is powered by the Intel i5-11320H CPU paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of onboard storage. It comes with a 61Wh battery that supports 65W fast charging support. The device comes with dual speakers featuring Dolby Atomos support. As for the ports, the laptop has Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
In related news, Lenovo is also planning to unveil a Xiaoxin series tablet. It is touted to be the Lenovo Xiaoxin Pad Pro and it will feature a 12.6-inch display. It is reported to come powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 SoC and pack a 10,200mAh battery. Lenovo might soon unveil the tablet in the home market in China.
A couple of months back, Vivo unveiled the Vivo Y21 smartphone in India. Today, the company has officially brought it to Kenya at an entry-level price. The major highlights of the smartphone are dual-rear cameras, Helio P35 SoC, and a 5,000mAh battery.
The Vivo Y21 is priced at 16,999 KsH(roughly $154) and comes in two colour options – Diamond Glow and Midnight Blue. The smartphone will be available for purchase across Kenya via authorised channels.
Vivo Y21 Specifications
The Vivo Y21 comes with a 6.51-inch water-drop notch display. It is an LCD panel with 1600 x 720-pixel resolution. The device has an 8MP front camera for selfies and a dual-camera system at the rear. It has a 13MP main sensor and a 2MP macro lens. The rear camera island also has an LED flash.
Under the hood, it comes powered by the MediaTek Helio P35 SoC paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. Interestingly, the RAM memory has an additional 1GB expansion option. There’s also a microSD card slot for storage expansion. The smartphone packs a 5,000mAh battery with support for 18W fast charging. According to Vivo, it will go from 0% to 34% with just 30 minutes of charge.
The Vivo Y21 boots on Android 11 out of the box and has Vivo’s FunTouch OS 11.1 on top of it. It has a USB Type-C port at the bottom for charging and also features a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Amazon has unveiled its latest innovative home assistant robot on wheels, named Astro. The Amazon Astro will cost $1,000 and Amazon is offering an opportunity for potential buyers to request an invitation to buy it because it is a limited-version product.
The Amazon Astro bears a similar name to a futuristic pet dog in the Jetsons TV series of the 1960s. The Amazon Astro seems to be the culmination of different technological inputs from robotics, artificial intelligence, home monitoring, and cloud services. It seems to be Amazon’s most ambitious home system product so far. Amazon’s Astro may just signal the beginning of a vigorous stage of in-home product development for the ultimate home robot, capable of doing virtually everything that could be thought of.
It looks a bit futuristic that an ultimate home robot will become a reality but the development in this area is rapid. The Astro, according to Amazon is capable of a variety of activities that could be expected from a home robot. It can map the home, obey commands to go to specific rooms, has face recognition capabilities that enable it to deliver items to specific persons. Amazon’s Astro also offers the functionality in Alexa by providing tons of details and information from the weather, and can also be used for a video call. Amazon’s Astro will follow you wherever you go, thus keeping you in the frame all through the video call.
Amazon’s Astro can also provide safety and security cover in your home when you are not around. It can roam around the house to make sure nothing is amiss in the house. It can also deploy third-party apps and accessories to record key body functions like your blood pressure.
As pointed earlier, the Astro is possibly the first step in the evolution of the perfect home robot. There are several things it cannot do which are basic functionalities expected of what could be seen as the ultimate home robot. For a start, Astro does not have arms, cannot move on stairs, and has a whole lot of basic skills. We are sure that Astro would not be the last in-home robot from Amazon.
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