A new press release from Samsung states that it has partnered with ARM for breaking the 3 GHz clock speeds mark through its upcoming mobile chipsets. Starting from next year, Samsung will be gearing up to launch 7nm and 5nm SoCs that will power its future smartphones.
The production of the 7nm LPP (Low Power Plus) is slated to begin in the second half of this year. Also, the development of Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) lithography process is expected to be ready by the first of the coming year. This will allow Samsung to manufacturer 5nm SoCs that will be not only smaller but also more power efficient than the 7nm SoC.
The 10nm A75 CPU offers a clocking speed of 2.8 GHz. According to ARM, the smaller 7nm A76 CPU will be faster than the A75 as it will be offering a clocking speed of 3 GHz. Also, it will consume 40 percent less power. Since it has been dubbed as “laptop-class,” there is a possibility to see it under the hood of more powerful devices other than smartphones.
The currently available SoCs for mobile devices are good enough for providing consumes with all the performance that they require. However, the upcoming 7nm and 5mm SoCs can will be able to deliver to better AI and machine learning.
Only 64-bit kernel-level code will be available on the Cortex A76, but it will carry support for 32-bit app. Hence, phones powered it are unlikely to suffer from compatibility issues. The processor is expected to be coupled with Mali G76 graphics. The Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus arriving in 2019 could be the first 7nnm SoC driven smartphones.
Vivo NEX has been an important model right from when it was announced, due to the innovative features it packs. The device comes with an innovative pop-up camera, in-display fingerprint sensor, a near bezel-less display and other leading features. Lately, Vivo added a Ruby Red variant to the colour options on offer. The Vivo NEX Ruby Red version is here captured in these pictures showcasing its exotic design.
The red colour variant is indeed looking like a precious ruby, radiating like a jewel. The body which is made of glass is coated using the microcrystalline technology. This is achieved by combining glass crystals on the surface of the panel so that light and shadow can change with the change of viewing angle. This creates a radiant visual effect which makes the device look like a piece of art.
The rear-mounted fingerprint sensor is also coated in a layer of Ruby Red in the same colour as the body but the single coating makes it look a little lighter than the other parts. The Ruby Red colour also extends to the sides, including the volume and other buttons at the sides.
The colour variant is available for the Snapdragon 710 version as well as the flagship Snapdragon 845 version. The Vivo NEX ruby Red version is already available to buy online via several channels including Vivo’s official website, Vivo official flagship store on Jingdong, Sunning.
Since the Honor Note 10’s existence has been confirmed by Honor’s President Zhao Ming, the rumor mill is now actively working on spilling leaked its photos and specs. Fresh photos of the Honor Note 10 smartphone has appeared on Weibo today. The appearance of the rear panel of the Note 10 suggests that it will be sporting a premium design.
The new images of the Honor Note 10 reveals that it will be arriving with a glass panel that seems to be curved towards the edges. There is a possibility that the back panel of the phone could be made out of ceramic. It is equipped with a metallic frame.
Most of the Honor phones that have launched so far either have vertical or horizontal arrangement for the dual rear cameras at their top-left corner. However, the Note 10 seems to be sporting a vertical dual camera setup at the center of the upper portion of the back panel. An LED flash and a fingerprint scanner are also placed under the dual camera setup.
The reason why this phone is being called Honor Note 10 is that it has the name “Ravel” mentioned on the back. A recent report had revealed that the Note 10 could be codenamed as Ravel. Before the launch of the Huawei P20 Lite smartphone, its leaked images had carried the “Shirley” name on its rear.
Unfortunately, the new leak has no images to reveal the front design of the phone. Some rumors have claimed that the Note 10’s massive screen may feature a notch, but there is no information available to confirm on its front design.
The Note 10 could be fueled by the Kirin 970 as it expected to arrive as a flagship phone. It is very likely to arrive with GPU Turbo that boosts the performance of GPU by 60 percent. The leakster who has shared the above images of the Note 10 on Weibo claims that its arrival is likely to coincide with the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 9 that is slated to go official on Aug. 9.
What do you think about the rear design of the Honor Note 10? Let us know your views by posting your comments below..
In April this year, Samsung grabbed the top spot in terms of smartphone sales figures globally. But now, according to the latest report, Apple has regained the pole position with its recent offering, Apple iPhone 8 being the global top selling smartphone for the month of May 2018.
However, there is no huge difference between the sales figure of iPhone 8 and Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, which grabbed the second spot with thin margin. But the data suggests a big jump for the iPhone 8 given that the phone was at fifth position in April 2018.
While the iPhone 8 and Galaxy S9 Plus are placed first and second, respectively, the iPhone X from Apple stayed at the third spot, grabbing around 2.3 percent market share. Another big change is the Samsung Galaxy S9, which went down from second spot in April to sixth spot in May with 2.1 percent market share.
According to the report, Apple managed to regain the top spot in the global bestselling smartphone list because of the strong promotions running up to the football World Cup, accelerating sales in Europe. However, Samsung registered a slightly weak month-over-month sales in Europe.
In the fourth spot, there’s Xiaomi Redmi 5A with 2.2 percent market share and iPhone 8 Plus is at fifth place with 2.1 percent market place. The list also includes Huawei P20 Lite, Vivo X21, Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus/Redmi Note 5 and Oppo A83 at seventh, eigth, ninth, and tenth position, respectively.
The report says that Xiaomi gained momentum in its home market and also continues its good performance in India. It has good penetration in the mid-to-affordable premium market in China. It is also expanding its presence in India, focusing on offline lines, which increased from 30% in April to 35% in May 2018 in India.
For Huawei, which keeps on growing in its home market and India, saw good performance from P20/Lite series. Huawei’s P20 series combined share (2.6%) was amongst the top sellers, but only the P20 Lite breaks into the Top 10 list.
A few months ago, OPPO had launched the MediaTek Helio P60 powered OPPO A3 smartphone in China. According to a reliable tipster, the Oppo A3s is an upcoming smartphone the company. It specs are similar to the OPPO A5 that is expected to debut soon in China. It is speculated that the same smartphone will be made available as OPPO A3s outside of the home country.
OPPO A3s Specifications and Features
Leaked information has revealed that the Oppo A3s will be coming with a 6.2-inch IPS LCD screen that will offer HD+ resolution of 720 x 1520 pixels. Since the display of the phone produces an aspect ratio of 19:9, it will be equipped with a notched screen.
The Snapdragon 450 SoC that features a 1.8 GHz octa-core processor is likely to drive the A3s smartphone. As of this writing, there is no information on the RAM and storage capacity of the smartphone. It will be arriving with ColorOS 5.1 based Android 8.1 Oreo. The handset features a dedicated slot for adding a microSD card.
The rear panel of the OPPO A3s of will be featuring f/2.2 aperture 13-megapixel + f/2.4 aperture 2-megpixel dual camera setup. On the frontside of the phone is an 8-megapixel camera with f/2.2 aperture. The handset is packed with a 4,230mh battery. Its dimensions are 156.2 x 75.6 x 8.2mm and it weighs 168 grams. The Oppo A3s will be available in color choices like Purple and Red. The launch date of the A3s is under the wraps.
As mentioned above, the OPPO A3s is quite similar to the rumored OPPO A5 in terms of specs. The A5 has 64 GB of storage and 4 GB of RAM. Probably, the A3s may feature the same storage capacity and RAM. It is likely that the A3s may go official after the A5 arrives in China.
Xiaomi has just released a promotional video to teaser the arrival of the upcoming Mi Max smartphone. Its appearance has been already leaked through the images that were present on its TENAA listing. Some of the other leaked images of the phone have also revealed its design. Today, freshly leaked hands-on photos of the Mi Max 3 have appeared on Weibo, the microblogging site from China. The newly images have confirmed the camera and some other specs of the phone.
In the below image, the Mi Max 3 can be seen with be with a gargantuan display. The plastic film placed on the handset reveals that it houses a 6.9-inch screen. It will be a notch-less phone that will carry support for an 18:9 aspect ratio.
The TENAA listing of the phone had revealed that one of the dual camera sensors lying on the back of the phone is of 12-megapixel. It did not reveal the configuration of the secondary camera sensor. The leaked image reveals that the Mi Max 3 will be featuring a 12-megapixel + 5-megapixel dual camera setup. The primary sensor will have a pixel size of 1.4micron. The alleged leaked firmware files that had surfaced earlier this year had revealed that it could be featuring the Sony IMX363 as the primary sensor. It is the very same camera sensor that is available on the Xiaomi MI 8 and Mi MIX 2S.
The plastic film placed on the Mi Max 3’s screen also shows that it will be coming with 5,500mAh battery that will carry support for fast charging. The other image only confirms the arrival of the vertical dual camera on the back panel of the Mi Max 3. A fingerprint scanner is also placed on the backside of the phone.
Through the TENAA listing of the Mi Max 3, it was confirmed that the smartphone is fueled by 1.8 GHz octa-core processor. The leakster who has revealed the above photos has said that the Snapdragon 636 is present under the hood of the phone. Even though multiple leaks have pointed to SD636 as the driving force for the phablet, some rumors have claimed that its 128 GB storage + 6 GB RAM edition variant will be powered by Snapdragon 710. This model is speculated to be dubbed as Mi Max 3 Pro.
The other rumored specs of the Mi Max 3 include 8-megapixel front-facing camera and Android 8.1 Oreo skinned with the latest version of MIUI. It is speculated to carry a price tag of 1,699 Yuan (~$255).
The Chinese government has stated that the U.S. is opening fire towards the world with their menaces regarding new commercial tariffs. New tariffs from the U.S. for $34 billion of Chinese goods will come into force starting from tomorrow. China will reply to this with its own fees which could come into force even before due to the time zone.
A few days ago, the U.S. President Donald Trump said that if Beijing will rebel to U.S. fees with further retaliation, he will be ready to set further tariffs which may hit up to $450 billion of Chinese products. Beijing said it will never fire the first shot and this means that the latest Chinese tariffs are just an answer to the ones set by the U.S. But if the U.S. will set $50 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese technologies and intellectual properties, Beijing will be ready to retaliate.
According to Beijing, China is not seeking a trade war, as long as the U.S. stops opening fire on the entire world with its extra duties aimed to enhance the U.S. economy and discourage exports. Consumers from the U.S. should not be affected by the new duties, but Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE would be.
Last month, Xiaomi had introduced the Redmi 6 series in China. The Redmi 6 and Redmi 6A were launch together while the Redmi 6 Pro was unveiled later in the same month. Xiaomi had been using Snapdragon chipsets for its Redmi phones since the past few years, but after a long time it has used MediaTek SoCs on Redmi 6 and 6A smartphones. Fresh information reveals that the MediaTek SoC powered Redmi 6 and 6A phones may debut in India in September.
Since 2014, Xiaomi has been launching Snapdragon powered smartphones in India. The reason behind it is that Ericsson had filed a case in 2014 which prevented Xiaomi from launching phones fueled by MediaTek SoCs in India. The companies involved in the legal battle have settled the issue which Xiaomi is allowed to launch phones with MediaTek chipsets in India.
The Redmi 5 smartphone was launched in India in March while the modest Redmi 5A was introduced in November last year. Hence, the Chinese manufacturer is unlikely to launch Redmi 6 and 6A phones early in India. According to 91Mobiles, these budget-friendly smartphones may get announced in September. As of this writing, there is no information available on the Indian arrival of Redmi 6 Pro.
The Redmi 6 and 6A phones feature 5.45-inch IPS LCD display that produces 18:9 aspect ratio and HD+ resolution of 720 x 1440 pixels. The Redmi 6 is powered by Helio P22 whereas the 6A phone has Helio A22. The Redmi 6 smartphone has 2 GB of RAM and an internal storage of 16 GB. On the other side, the Redmi 6 comes in two models such as 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of inbuilt storage and 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of native storage.
The Redmi 6 has 12-megapixel + 5-megapixel dual camera setup on its back and a 5-megapxiel selfie camera. The Redmi 6A features a 13-megapixel rear camera and a front snapper of 5-megapixel. Both the phones are driven by 3,000mAh batteries. The Redmi 6 duo are running on MIUI 9 flavored Android 8.1 Oreo OS.
There is no information on the pricing of Redmi 6 and 6A phones for India. In China, the Redmi 6A is available for 599 Yuan (~$90) whereas the 32 GB and 64 GB variants of Redmi 6 are respectively priced at 799 Yuan (~$120) and 999 Yuan (~$150).
Ever since TCL acquired BlackBerry, it has never really launched a true flagship smartphone. The first one should be BlackBerry Ghost alongside its Pro variant, and the last year, there have been a consistent amount of rumors and leaks about it. Today Evan Blass, one of the most famous and reliable leaksters, has revealed new juicy details about the upcoming device which, unlike the latest BB phone KeyONE, will not sport a physical QWERTY keyboard. According to Evan Blass, Ghost will be a flagship-class device with a large 4000 mAh battery.
It is the biggest capacity you can actually find on a flagship and it is a big added value which may attract people to get a unit. Note that it would even be the biggest capacity ever seen on a BB phone. Given that BlackBerry Ghost will probably feature a Snapdragon SoC by Qualcomm, we also expect to see a great efficiency and a low energy consumption. Sadly, these are the only details revealed by Evan Blass today, but the official announcement of the device is expected to come soon, so we will not have to wait so much to know everything about it.
From what the latest reports suggested, BlackBerry Ghost will be the first BB phone to have a display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. So, it is likely to have narrow bezels. According to a leaked render it will sport a metal frame with a volume keys and a power key on the right side, while on the bottom front part of the front panel there will be the company branding. This phone is expected to have a much better camera over its predecessors. Indeed, there should be a dual camera setup on the rear side which will be able to shoot detailed photos even in low-light conditions, and it may also support optical zoom.
When Xiaomi launched the Mi A1 last year, the company never expected the level of interest the device would elicit. But it turned fans loved the idea of having a Mi phone running stock Android. The Mi A1 was Xiaomi’s first Android One phone. The company is expected to launch the Mi A2 any moment from now. The device is expected to have the same design and specification as the Mi A2 except that it would run Android Oreo.
A recently leaked “About phone” page coupled with its NCC listing had shown the Mi A2 is already around the corner. The “about phone” page confirms that the device will run on Android 8.1 which should be under the Android One program. A sample photo shot by the device has now been spotted online. The picture was shared by a user on the MIUI community in Spain and from the photograph’s EXIF data, it could be seen that the nice photo was indeed shot by the Xiaomi Mi A2.
Since the device has the same configuration with the Mi 6X, it is no surprise that camera sample is of awesome quality. The device packs a 20MP + 12MP rear camera with AI capabilities while at the front is a 20MP selfie shooter. This aspect might see some changes considering the Redmi Note 5 camera configuration is different from that of India’s Redmi Note 5 Pro. However, the Mi A2 will have a 5.99-inch display, 3101mAh battery and should be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor. Since this is the same SoC on the Mi A1, we might see something else onboard, perhaps the Snapdragon 710 chipset.
Honor is the Huawei’s subsidiary brand that makes pretty good and affordable phones that usually offer great specs and nice design. The Honor Play is one of the first phones to feature the turbo GPU for excellent gaming and all-around performance. Obviously, his phone has a ton of other premium features we need to talk about, that’s why you need to stay tuned to the full Honor Play review.
The phone ships with all the usual items and some extras include a soft TPU case.
DESIGN and DISPLAY
The notch display is one of the highlights of the phone and it is a great, sharp and a large panel. Sunlight legibility is not the best but it’s decent.
The phone feels very premium in the hand because its all metal construction and the build quality is excellent. One of the drawbacks of the matte black color is that it attracts fingerprints very quickly and it’s really hard to clean them but I guess that’s the shortcoming you can live with.
The AI camera is another highlight of this device as it uses two sensors but as usual, I will talk about image quality a bit later in this review. There is a beefy 16MP selfie shooter that sits next to the notification LED light.
Other features you need to know: the fingerprint scanner is very accurate and blazing fast, and the phone has face unlock feature that is also pretty good. There is also a hybrid dual-SIM card tray, a headset jack that provides good sound quality and quite good loudspeaker. Here is an audio sample.
HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE
The Honor Play has a powerful Kirin 970 CPU that is accompanied by the new turbo GPU.
The phone is advertised to give you 4D gaming experience but I can’t tell the difference between this and other phones. What I can tell you is that the overall gaming performance is just excellent. I played quite a few 3D games on the highest graphics settings and the phone just flies through everything. Even the Pubg on the highest graphics works absolutely fine. Flagship grade performance.
USER INTERFACE
The phone ships with the EMUI 8.2 which is based on Android 8.1.
In general, the Honor Play looks and feels like a Huawei phone in terms of user interface. Since I have a Chinese model, my phone shipped without Google Services pre-installed and there were plenty of bloatware apps. A good thing is that it takes just a minute to install Google Services and all the bloatware apps can be removed.
Just like any Huawei phone, there are plenty of features and customization options to choose from. There are many display settings, smart features, you can choose between different navigation ways and so on. In general, the phone feels very fast and smooth all the time, very good overall performance.
IMAGE QUALITY
The overall image quality is very good. The pictures are sharp and vibrant, and there is plenty of detail. Every time you take a picture, the AI recognizes the scene and applies the best image settings.
I found the AI to do a pretty good job but usually, the pictures come out with a high-contrast and colors that are a bit too punchy. On the other hand, the images tend to have a wow factor which is a must for social media.
Portrait or wide-aperture pictures look quite nice too as the object is nicely separated from the background with just minimal artifacts.
Selfies usually come out nice and sharp and portrait mode does a decent job with the bokeh effect.
Low-light is where I expected a better performance out of this phone. I can’t say the images look bad but I expected pictures to have less noise and more detail.
4K video quality is pretty good. The only complaint is that there is no image stabilization, so the footage is a bit shaky.
1080p selfie video looks great as the footage has plenty of detail. Also, the sound recording quality is quite decent.
CONNECTIVITY
In terms of connectivity, the Honor Play is excellent. Call quality and signal reception have been great, GPS is very accurate and other connectivity options work fine. There are quite a few sensors including a gyroscope.
BATTERY LIFE
Battery life has been great. My record screen-on time was about 10 hours and my usage involved taking a lot of pictures, using the phone for social media and a bit of gaming.
Also, it takes just about 1,5h to fully charge the phone with the supplied fast charger.
CONCLUSIONS
Overall, the Honor Play shapes up to be a solid phone that has a lot of premium features for the price of about $370.
Low-light image quality could be better but other than that, you get a premium-looking phone with a nice display, excellent day-to-day and gaming performance, solid cameras and good battery life.
I’m not going to assert this is the only phone you need to buy but the Honor Play is a very solid option that has quite a few flagship features for the price. Therefore, I can definitely suggest you check it out.
HMD Global seems to be readying the launch of two new Nokia smartphones. Two unknown devices have just been certified by the Russian EEC (Eurasian Economic Commission) and they carry the model numbers TA-1119 and TA-1087. Most of the times when devices get certified means that their launch is not so far. So, we can prepare to see new HMD Global smartphones to be announced. Unfortunately, the EEC did not disclose any info about the specs of the new devices, so we do not have any idea about which kind of smartphones we are talking about. But we expect new info to surface in the coming weeks.
At the moment, according to the latest rumors, HMD Global is developing the Nokia 9 which is expected to be the best HMD flagship of 2018. Among the rumored specs there is the most powerful SoC by Qualcomm: the octa-core Snapdragon 845 running at a max frequency of 2.8 GHz. Further, the upcoming flagship is expected to arrive with an in-display fingerprint scanner such as the latest Vivo flagships. This means that the screen-to-body ratio will be very high, unlike most Nokia devices released in the last year. The Nokia 9 should also sport a better camera setup than the actual flagships with Carl Zeiss lens and more than one sensor on the rear side.
Above, you can see the listings showing TA-1119 and TA-1087 model numbers which have been filed yesterday 4th July 2018 at 19:13 PM local time. In the meantime, HMD Global has been busy launching the banana phone 8110 in Europe with a price tag of €89. The company has also announced that it is looking forward to adding the support to WhatsApp to this phone (in case you do not know, it is a feature phone, a re-visitation of the iconic 8110 launched in 1996), even though it does not have Android but it runs KaiOS, a fork of Firefox OS.
The Mi MIX 2S is just three months old but Xiaomi is already working on a successor. The MIX 3 as the device is known has surfaced in leaks recently. A new leak has surfaced and it gives us yet another look at the front of the device.
For the Mi MIX 3, Xiaomi has focused on keeping the bezels to a minimum. The lower bezel which houses the front camera has been shaved off and is now the same thickness as the other bezels. This gives the Mi MIX 3 a “truly bezel-less” appearance.
So where are the front camera, sensors, and earpiece? The earpiece is still at the top – a small slit carved into the little bezel at the top. However, the sensors and the front-facing camera are both missing. There are rumors that Xiaomi will also use a pop-up camera similar to that of the Vivo NEX. Sadly, none of the leaked photos have confirmed this.
Samsung may still be the number one smartphone maker globally but the company is gradually feeling the heat being generated by the growing profile of its competitors. Several analysts who are familiar with the company’s operations have hinted that the Galaxy S9 is not selling so well globally compared to the performance of the Samsung Galaxy S8. This is particularly a cause for concern considering that last year’s Galaxy S8 was said to have performed poorly in comparison with the Galaxy S7.
It is not actually easy to know the exact number of units that have been sold so far. Basically, data of smartphone sales are heavily reliant on research by firms like IDC which usually release quarterly/yearly reports based on individual brand and other indices. The figures they come out with are at best estimates as we can’t know exactly how many units of a particular model were sold. In this case, unless Samsung will share its sales figure which is not likely to happen.
The point being made is that Samsung phones are not selling well like before. We could recall the tech giant sold up to 80 million Galaxy S4 units. That was then, anyway. With mounting pressure from Chinese manufacturers who offer phones with the same build quality and specs at lower prices, things won’t remain the same for Sammy for long. Chinese manufacturers like Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo have even brought innovative features like triple camera setup, full-screen design, pop-up cameras to the scene on their flagship offerings. Samsung shares are said to have dropped by 9% and already, the company has been edged out of the top spot in India. The same thing would likely have happened in the U.S if not for the difficulty Chinese companies face when attempts are made to enter the lucrative U.S market. So, if Samsung plans to keep its leadership position, it has got to sit up and bring in more innovations to the table. We have seen enough of phones like the Galaxy S8, S9 and perhaps the Note 8 and Note 9 coming with similar designs. The mid-range segment is worst off as it is usually difficult to tell the difference between some of the Galaxy series based on their designs.
Back in May, Xiaomi announced a new lamp under the Yeelight brand. The new lamp called the Yeelight Eye Lamp Pro is the first lamp with eye protection and can now be purchased starting today.
The lamp uses a special kind of LED that uses purple light instead of blue light which is similar to natural illumination and is easy on the eyes.
The lamp has a metallic body with an adjustable arm. The part that houses the LED itself is also adjustable. Power consumption for the Yeelight Eye Lamp Pro is 15W. It also has smart capabilities, so you can turn it on and off via the Mi Home app or even adjust brightness levels or set modes. There is also a touch control on the base of the lamp.
Xiaomi recently shared a promotional video on the official Xiaomi phone Weibo handle. The video is actually a promotional one for the Mi Max which was launched in May 2016 and it is curious that the video is being shared now by the company. This move is seen as a strong indication that the next-generation Mi Max model, the Mi Max 3 will be released soon.
You would recall also that Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun recently shared a picture of the Mi Max 3’s retail packaging box. This latest promotional video and the leaked retail box point to the likelihood of the device getting launched this month. Xiaomi is yet to release any launch detail but since the month is still at its infancy, an official announcement could happen in the coming days.
The Mi Max 3 image has already met with us via its TENAA listing. The device will come with a 6.99-inch display which will make it the biggest phone in Xiaomi’s lineup. The screen is a Fullview display with a resolution of 2160 x 1080pixels and an 18:9 aspect ratio. The third-gen Mi Max series continues with the big battery trend of its predecessors, packing a 5400mAh battery. This is slightly bigger than the 5300mAh battery on the Mi Max 2. The phone is likely powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor and there will be three memory versions; 3GB+32GB, 4GB+64GB and 6GB+128GB options.
India’s best selling feature 4G phone, the JioPhone, now has a successor. The JioPhone 2 comes with a new design and tons of new features while keeping a few ones from its predecessor.
The biggest change in the JioPhone is its design. Gone is the candy bar design. The JioPhone 2 is now wider, thanks to a full QWERTY keyboard. The display is still 2.4-inches but now sits in landscape mode.
It still has 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage with a MicroSD card slot for adding up to an additional 128GB of storage. The JioPhone 2 also runs KaiOS and will be getting Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube support when it goes on sale on August 15. The original JioPhone will also get it on the same day.
Another upgrade in the JioPhone 2 is support for dual nano-SIM cards. It also has a 2MP rear camera and a VGA front camera. There is Cat. 4 LTE, VoLTE, VoWiFi, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS and even NFC. There is also an FM radio, Google Assistant, and a single mono speaker.
With each passing day, the launch of the Xiaomi Mi A2 draws nearer. But until the device finally launches, we probably won’t stop getting leaks. The latest is a live photo of the device that shows the “About Phone” section.
The Mi A2 in the photo has white front bezels. It’s hard to tell what color the rear is, but our guess is it is the Champagne Gold variant. There is a LED flash, sensor, earpiece and front camera at the top bezel while the bottom is bare.
The image confirms this is indeed the Mi A2 as seen from the model name. it is running Android 8.1 Oreo with May 2018’s security patch installed.
Xiaomi phones running on Android 8 Oreo Developer version now have support for LDAC. The new feature comes with the new upgrade of the public beta of the Development version. The new feature will also be available on the Stable version when the Android O update hits.
LDAC is an audio coding technology developed by Sony that enables the transmission of High-Resolution (Hi-Res) Audio content wirelessly, even over a Bluetooth connection. Unlike other Bluetooth compatible coding technologies such as SBC, it operates without any down-conversion of the Hi-Res Audio content and allows approximately three times more data than those other technologies to be transmitted over a Bluetooth wireless network with unprecedented sound quality, by means of efficient coding and optimized packetization. The technology was unveiled at CES 2015 and is 3X more efficient than standard Bluetooth coding.
With this new LDAC technology onboard, the eligible Xiaomi models now have a significant improvement in their performance when connecting to a Bluetooth headset, wireless gaming pad and other peripherals. That’s if the device that is connected to the phone supports LDAC. A connection to an LDAC compatible device makes the LDAC icon to be displayed on the screen after the connected device’s name. A new Window will also pop-up notifying that LDAC is currently supported and enabled by default.
The Mi MIX 2S is the first Xiaomi phone to support wireless charging. Along with its release, Xiaomi also announced its first wireless charging pad. Now, there is news of a second wireless charging pad.
The new wireless charging pad was seen on the website of the Wireless Power Consortium and has been certified. The pad was registered yesterday and already has its Qi registration ID.
There is even a photo of the charging pad. The design is different from the one that comes with the Mi MIX 2S and it comes in black. Although it has the same green LED in front.
We don’t know if Xiaomi plans to announce this new wireless charging pad separately or will launch it with a new device. According to leaker Roland Quandt who first spotted the charging pad on the WPC site, he thinks it may launch with the Mi MIX 3 later this year.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
