Huawei has today launched its new smartphone under Nova series in the Philippines. Dubbed as the Huawei Nova 2 Lite, the phone is available for pre-order at a price of P9,990, which roughly converts to $192.
From the looks of the phone, its design seems to have been inspired by the Honor 9 Lite. The phone comes with an all-glass body and will be available in three color options — Matte Black, Blue, and Gold.
The Huawei Nova 2 Lite features a 5.99-inch HD+ IPS display with screen resolution of 1440 x 720 pixels. Under the hood, the phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor and not the company’s own Kirin processor.
The device packs 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage. There’s also a microSD card slot, which enables users to further expand the phone’s storage capacity up to 256GB.
There’s a dual camera setup at the back consisting of a 13-megapixel camera sensor and a 2-megapixel camera sensor along with an LED flash. On the front, it features an 8-megapixel sensor for taking selfies and video calling.
The phone runs on the company’s latest EMUI 8.0 which is based on Android Oreo operating system. While there’s a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone, the device also comes with a Face Unlock feature.
Connectivity options on the Nova 2 Lite include 4G LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, GPS, and a micro USB port. The phone is fuelled by a 3,000mAh battery, which should be enough to last for a day on single charge.
Currently, there is no information available about the global availability of the Huawei Nova 2 Lite. There’s a possibility that the company could launch this device under Honor brand in India to compete against Xiaomi which has been dominating the market.
Huawei is currently gearing up to launch its flagship smartphone series on 27th March in Paris, France. The company will be launching the Huawei P20, P20 Pro, and Pro 20 Lite. Recently, the phone’s press renders surfaced online, showcasing the phone’s design.
Meizu will be launching the Meizu E3 mid-range phone on March 21 in Beijing, China. The entire specifications of the smartphone have been revealed through its TENAA listing. Recent reports have suggested that it will be arriving as Redmi Note 5 killer phone in China since it will be packed with similar specs. Today, the rumor mill has revealed the pricing and specs of the Meizu E3 phone.
Leaked information that surfaced in the previous month had claimed that the Meizu E3 would be arriving in the market with a starting price of 1,799 Yuan. New information that has emerged today states that the Meizu E3 variant that comprises of 32 GB of inbuilt storage and 4 GB of RAM will be carrying a price tag of 1,499 Yuan (~$233). It also states that there will be another model featuring 128 GB of storage and 6 GB of RAM. It will be priced at 1,999 Yuan (~$316). However, the report does not contain any information on whether there will be 64 GB storage model for Meizu E3.
According to the TENAA listing of the Meizu E3, it features 5.99-inch display that will produce Full HD+ resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels. It will be offering an aspect ratio of 18:9. The Meizu E3 will arrive with a selfie camera of 8-megapixel. The back panel of the features a dual camera setup that includes a 12-megapixel sensor and a 20-megapixel sensor.
One of these sensors could be the Sony IMX363, claims the new report. It is the very same camera sensor that is available on the ASUS ZenFone 5 and 5Z smartphones that were unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 event in the previous month. Also, it is the same camera sensor that is expected to be available on the Mi MIX 2S that is launching on March 27. Today’s report also states that the Meizu E3 will be driven by Snapdragon 636, the SoC that is found under the hood of the Redmi Note 5. Its 3,300mAh battery is rumored to be arrive with support for 20W fast charging.
One of the unique features of the Meizu E3 is that it will be fitted with a side-mounted fingerprint reader like the Meizu 6S that was launched earlier in this year. A recent report had revealed that the Meizu E3 will be available in color choices like Black, Blue and Gold.
Do you think that the Meizu E3 will turn out to be a better phone than the Redmi Note 5 that is launching on March 16? Share us your views by posting your comments below.
Xiaomi will be launching the Mi MIX 2S on March 27 and Huawei will be also announcing the P20, P20 Pro and P20 Lite smartphones on the same day. In this week, Xiaomi will be debuting the Redmi Note 5 while rival phones like Lenovo S5 and Meizu E3 will be respectively unveiled on March 20 and 21. The Vivo X21 and Vivo V9 smartphones are respectively launching on March 21 and March 27. Oppo has also confirmed that the Oppo F7 will be announced on March 25 and the aggressive marketing of the OPPO R15 and R15 Dream Mirror Edition suggests that these phones will be also launched this month. Today, ZTE’s sub-brand Nubia has also confirmed that it will be announcing a new budget-friendly Nubia V18 on March 22.
The below shown press invite confirms the launch date of March 22 for Nubia V18. However, nothing much is known on the specifications and features of the phone. The text mentioned on the launch teaser states that it will be full screen design phone that will be arriving with 6-inch display.
The handset will be also delivering a long battery life which indicates that it may come packed with a behemoth battery. Also, it will be priced at 1,000 Yuan (~$158).
It is unlikely to be the gaming-centric phone that Nubia is rumored to launch. The Chinese manufacturer has recently launched the Nubia N3 mid-range phone. It includes a 5.99-inch FHD+ display and is fueled by Snapdragon 625 chipset, 4 GB of RAM and 5,000mAh battery. The N3 has a native storage of 64 GB, a selfie camera of 16-megapixel and it also includes dual rear cameras.
As far as Nubia V18 is concerned, the rumor mill may reveal some key information on it before its launch
Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has officially announced that it is now rolling out an over-the-air (OTA) update for its Honor 7X smartphone that brings the face unlock feature.
With this, the Honor 7X has become the third smartphone from the China-based company to get Face Unlock update. Earlier, the Honor View10 and Honor 9 Lite have received this face unlock feature.
While the update has been rolled out, it will be completed by mid-March, said the company in a statement. P Sanjeev, Vice-President, Sales, Huawei Consumer Business Group said that ‘Face Unlock’ intelligent feature is usually available in flagship-level smartphones but Honor has introduced this feature in the coveted Honor 7X.
The Honor 7X was launched in India in December last year and is priced at Rs. 12,999 for the 32GB variant and Rs. 15,999 for the 64GB version.
The phone features a 5.93-inch Full-HD+ IPS display with screen resolution of 1080 x 2160 pixels. Under the hood, the device is powered by a HiSilicon Kirin 659 octa-core chipset with four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2.36GHz and 4 Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.7GHz.
It packs 4GB RAM and comes in two storage options — 32GB and 64GB. There’s a microSD card slot, which enables users to further expand the phone’s storage capacity up to 256GB. The phone runs on EMUI 5.1, which is based on Android Nougat operating system.
Connectivity options on the Dual SIM device include 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v4.1, GPS/ A-GPS, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and Micro-USB. The phone is fuelled by a 3,340mAh battery.
Last month, the company also started selling Red Edition of the Honor 7X in India, which packs 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. The Huawei 7X Red Edition is priced at Rs. 12,999 in India. While the phone was launched as online-only in India, it is now available through offline channels in India.
The Ulefone Power 3 Android 4G smartphone was launched on December 11, last year. As expected, the phone’s awe-inspiring specs and features propelled it straight to skyrocketing popularity among smartphone lovers.
On the downside, the Power 3 smartphone came bearing a relatively steep price tag, making it quite hard for some buyers to get their hands on the coveted smartphone. But that’s about to change.
Banggood is giving the cost-conscious buyers who have restlessly been waiting to buy the Ulefone Power 3 smartphone, an opportunity to save a considerable amount of money. The site is currently offering a 27% off on the handset’s original asking price of $299.99.
In other words, you can now buy the Power 3 smartphone by shelling out only $219.99 for a limited period of time. The discount is valid for the golden and black color versions of the smartphone.
The Ulefone Power 3 smartphone sports a mammoth 6.0 inches IPS, FHD+, In-cell display with a screen resolution of 1080 x 2160 pixels. It features a Corning Gorilla Glass 4 for added protection.
The phone offers 6GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage. It packs a powerful MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763T) processor, coupled with an ARM Mali-G71 MP2 700MHz GPU, under the hood.
It sports a 16 megapixels+5 megapixels dual camera setup at the back and a 13 megapixel+5 megapixels front shooters for selfies. The device is crammed with a slew of other amazing features such as a portable hotspot, tethering, wallpapers, calendar, calculator, clock and messaging, just to name a few.
The promotion sale kicked off on March 12 and is slated to end on March 19. Moreover, it is worth noting that there were only 60 pieces left at the time of writing.
In order to get the discount, you just need visit this link before the promo comes to an end. Apart from saving $80, you also earn 219 Banggood points.
OnePlus, OPPO and Vivo are smartphone brands that belongs to a Chinese firm called BBK Electronics. Recent reports have revealed that smartphones like OPPO F7, OPPO R15, R15 Dream Mirror Edition, Vivo V9 and Vivo X21 will be all sporting notched display like the iPhone X. Hence, it is speculated that the OnePlus 6 will also arrive with a similar design. Leaked images of the OnePlus 6 that had surfaced in the previous month had shown that it houses a notch enabled display. Earlier this week, OnePlus had released its first build of Android 8.1 Oreo for OnePlus 5T through OxygenOS Open Beta 4 update. By scouring through the firmware, XDA Developers was able to find some evidences that revealed that OnePlus 6 will indeed arrive with a notched display.
The OxygenOS firmware has revealed that the upcoming OnePlus 6 could be codenamed as Enchilada. This could be confirmed after the references of it was found alongside other codenames like dumpling and cheeseburger that respectively belong to OnePlus 5T and OnePlus 5.
The following image that is named as “screendecor_up_image_enchilada_1” was also found inside the firmware. The publication claims OnePlus engineers could have used it as an overlay for testing apps on a prototype of OP6. It also stated that a similar image was also found in the firmware files of Huawei P20 which revealed that it would be coming with a notched display.
Recently, the OnePlus 6 phone with a model number of A600 was spotted on AnTuTu by Android Central. The screenshot of the AnTuTu app revealed that there was an empty space at the topside of the display between the clock and SIM card and battery icons. It hinted that the OP6 could be equipped with a notched screen. Hence, the handset is expected to deliver an aspect ratio of 19:9.
It goes without saying that the OnePlus 6 will be powered by Snapdragon 845. The AnTuTu listing of the phone had revealed that it had scored an extraordinary score of 276,510. Like the predecessor model, the OP6 is also rumored to arrive in variants like 6 GB RAM + 64 GB storage and 8 GB RAM + 128 GB storage. As far as the launch date of the OnePlus 6 is concerned, OnePlus CEO had confirmed at the beginning of this year that the OP6 will be announced in late Q2. Hence, it is speculated to get official in June.
After confirming the official announcement of the Oppo F7 which will take place on March 26 in India, the leader of the Chinese smartphones market has published new creative teasers which hint at its wonderful design. The teasers are focused on its bezel-less display which will include an iPhone X-like notch on the upper part. The screen-to-body ratio will be incredibly high: according to the latest reports, the display will cover an 89.09% of the front panel that is close to the screen-to-body ratio of the Vivo APEX, the “best bezel-less phone” ever announced.
The display of this phone has been named “Super Full Screen”. Oppo F7 is expected to come with a 6.2-inch panel that will have a 19:9 aspect ratio and will show images at a Full HD+ 1080p resolution. Even though the display is very wide, the phone will still look compact thanks to its high screen-to-body ratio. It will be a device with a great quality-price ratio, and not a flagship. It will probably be consistently cheaper than the Oppo R15 and R15 Dream Mirror, the upcoming flagship smartphones by the company which are tipped to come with a MediaTek Helio P60 and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC, respectively.
Oppo F7 will also be a camera phone focused on selfies. Its front camera will have a resolution of 25 MP and it will also support artificial intelligence to beautify selfies. We still do not know anything about the hardware side of Oppo F7. Its predecessor Oppo F5 is powered by an octa-core Helio P23 SoC by MediaTek, supported by 4 or 6 GB of RAM and 32 or 64 GB of internal storage depending on the variant that you will choose to buy. On the rear side, it sports a single camera setup with a 16 MP resolution, while its battery has a capacity of 3200 mAh.
Fitbit Versa has been officially announced and it is a premium fitness smartwatch which aims to be one of the most interesting high-end wearables of 2018. With the smartwatch market not matching the expected growth, fitness trackers are becoming the most important wearables. This new device shares many features common with Pebble Time Steel (in case you do not know, Pebble has been acquired by Fitbit). It also runs the same operating system as the Ionic, Fitbit OS 2.0, but its price is much more affordable.
Fitbit Versa has a touchscreen display which can reach a brightness of 1000 nits. This makes it perfectly visible under sunlight, that is very important for a device focused on physical activity. It is also a waterproof smartwatch: up to 50 meters deep. The wearable supports more than 15 exercise modes and it includes a heart rate sensor and an NFC chip. The NFC chip is used for Fitbit Pay, a service which will be available in Europe and the U.S. (in the USA it will only be available with the Special Edition bundle) and will allow users to pay via their smartwatch. Fitbit Versa has a dedicated storage and supports two music streaming services: Deezer and Pandora.
According to the company, the wearable can download up to 300 songs to listen offline with Deezer. There is no GPS, but the battery can last up to 4 days on a single charge and it can be fully charged in just two hours. Fitbit Versa has been officially made available for pre-orders on the official store and on third-party stores Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. It is possible to purchase it with a price tag of $200 in the USA, €200 in Europe and £200 in the UK. It will start shipping from April. It is also possible to purchase a Special Edition with a Horween leather band or a metal or mesh band (the standard version comes with a silicone band).
As part of its latest Flash Sale, GearBest is offering a considerable 37% discount on the original asking price of the global version of Huawei P9 Lite VNS – L31 4G smartphone. The discount is valid for the golden color version of the phone.
Sporting a 5.2 inches IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display with a screen resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, the P9 Lite was launched in April 2016. The hybrid dual-SIM phone offers 3GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage.
On the photography front, the P9 Lite smartphone sports a 13-megapixel camera with autofocus, and LED flash. It features an 8-megapixel front shooter for selfies. The phone sports an extended screen-to-display ration of 76.4%, coupled with an awe-inspiring ID design and metallic bezel.
The P9 Lite smartphone packs a powerful HiSilicon Kirin 650 processor along with a Mali-T830MP2 GPU (graphics processing unit), under the hood. Moreover, the phone draws its juices from a robust 3000 mAh battery and runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system.
You can visit this link to check out the full specification and buy the Huawei P9 Lite (VNS – L31) 4G smartphone at a discounted price of $159.99 before the promo comes to an end in 2 days. It’s also worth noting that the discount is only valid for the remaining 92 pieces.
The ZMI Space Power Bank is housed in a 304 stainless steel case which is further polished in a bid to intensify the glare and give it a mirror finish. With 6000mAh capacity, the device offers a two-way USB Type-C fast charge.
You can now preorder the ZMI Space power bank by shelling out a considerably lowered price tag on Banggood. Let’s check out the details.
Sporting an eye-catching mirror finish, the ZMI stainless steel power bank normally carries a price tag of S$69.99 on Banggood. But the site is giving a considerable 17% discount on the device’s original selling price for a limited period of time.
You can now preorder the ZMI Space 6000mAh power bank for just $57.99. This is a 17% reduction in the device’s original asking price. However, it’s worth noting that the discount is only valid for the first 100 pieces.
The remaining 500 pieces will bear a marginally steeper price tag of $59.99. Once all the pieces are sold, the ZMI power bank will retain its original selling price i.e. $69.99.
Apart from getting this discount, you are eligible to earn 57 Banggood points. You also get a free case.
In addition to a slew of other accessories, the power bank comes with a PU leather protective cover, and an OTG adapter cable. While the device’s power input is either a 5V/2V or 9V/1.8A, it offers an output of 5.1V/2.4A, 9V/1.6A, and 12V/1.2A.
You can follow this link to check out the full specification of the ZMI Space power bank and take advantage of the promo before it comes to an end.
The Vivo V9 is one of two Vivo smartphones scheduled to launch this month. Like the Vivo X21, the V9 also has a notch in its display and vertically arranged dual rear cameras. Live photos of the phone were posted online a few days ago and more have been leaked again today.
The new photos were posted on Twitter and are from someone who got his/her hands on a retail unit ahead of release judging from the retail box in one of the images.
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The Vivo V9 comes in a white box which has an image of the phone’s front on it. It also has the World Cup Russia 2018 logo and a text that says “official smartphone”. This is a confirmation that Vivo will be one of the sponsors of the tournament.
There is also a tag line that reads “Perfect Shot, Perfect View” which hints at the phone’s selling points – its camera features and its 19:9 aspect ratio full-screen display.
Unlike the images that leaked a few days ago which shows the gold variant, this new leak is of the black version. You can’t see the notch when the display is off but in the other two photos, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Sitting within the notch is a confirmed 24MP front facing camera, the earpiece and the sensor. There is a a bit of chin on the Vivo V9, unlike the iPhone X which it takes its design from.
Update Begins Here
Full specs of the phone have also leaked though they are unconfirmed and should be taken with a grain of salt.
The Vivo V9 is said to feature a 6” 2160 x 1080 AMOLED display covered with Gorilla Glass 5. A Snapdragon 660 paired with 4GB of RAM drives the phone. It will have 64GB of expandable storage and 12MP + 8MP dual camera on its rear.
A 3250mAh battery powers it and it will run FunTouch OS 4.0 based on Android 8.0 Oreo. Its dimensions are said to be 155.9 x 75.2 x 7.2 mm with a weight of 159g.
In addition to that, Vivo Indonesia’s YouTube channel has gone ahead to release the official ad for the phone. The video confirms it does have a 24MP selfie camera and it will be available in black and gold.
Broadcom’s bid to buy fellow chipmaker Qualcomm has dominated discussions in the industry for quite some time now. Qualcomm has rejected Broadcom’s offer but that has not deterred the tech giant. However, it looks like the bid has finally hit the rock. Slashgear reports that U.S President Donald Trump has blocked the planned takeover, citing national security concerns.
We wouldn’t want to get caught up in U.S politics but this seems to bear the same colouring as the U.S president’s recent economic policies of putting the interest of American companies first. It played out recently in the increased tariffs on Steel and Aluminium imports and may be what is making the U.S authorities block Huawei’s bid to take on Apple on home turf by advising U.S citizens against buying Huawei’s smartphones under the guise of national security concerns. Broadcom is a foreign-owned firm and is presently based in Singapore although the company is planning a return of its headquarters to the U.S. In this case, though, Donald Trump might just be doing us all a whole lot of good by blocking such a massive takeover which would have been the biggest in the industry.
According to the report, Trump’s order cites concerns that a Broadcom takeover of Qualcomm could “impair the national security of the United States.” The order further states that Broadcom and Qualcomm should immediately and permanently abandon the proposed takeover. Both firms are also required to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) that such termination is effected.
The notch is the weirdest trend in Android smartphones in 2018. Oukitel U18 (current price is about $160) is one of the first budget phones that is made with the notch in the display but besides that, the device offers decent specs, quite a nice design but as always, there are a few flaws to consider. Here is the full Oukitel U18 review.
The phone ships with some extras like a soft TPU case and a headset jack adapter. Besides that, you get all the usual stuff.
DESIGN and DISPLAY
The notch is a cutout in the upper portion of the display in the iPhone X. I’m not going to go into details about that but the Oukitel U18 looks like the iPhone X if you take a look just at the front of the phone.
Flip the phone to the back and you will find a metal backplate with a textured top that houses a dual-camera setup that I will talk a bit later in this review. Inside the notch, you can find an 8MP selfie shooter. Unfortunately, the phone does not have a notification LED light, which is a bummer for many users.
The overall build quality is pretty good as we have a metal band that goes around the device and responsive buttons. However, you can see that the phone is quite thick and a bit heavier since it packs a 4000mAh battery inside.
That notch display is pretty nice and sharp, despite its lower resolution. In fact, this is one of the first phones to sport 21:9 aspect ratio but in practice, I don’t see a difference between this and 18:9 aspect ratio panels. I noticed just a few UI glitches in terms of the notch display when the text was cut out but it happened only when I was setting up the phone. Overall, this notch thing is really subjective. For me, it looked weird at the beginning but I got used to it in no time.
Just like the iPhone X and some other phones, the Oukitel U18 uses face unlock feature. Surprisingly, it works quite well even if you put glasses. This unlock feature is usable but I still prefer using the fingerprint scanner, which is quite accurate but as usual, the display could light up faster.
There is one major design flaw – the phone is not compatible with regular USB-C cable connectors. That means that you need to use a supplied cable that has a longer connector than usual.
There is no headset jack but the sound quality via the supplied adapter is quite decent.
As for the loudspeaker, I can’t assert it’s the best in this price range but it’s quite decent.
HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE
As for hardware, the phone is not really exceptional as we’ve seen plenty of devices with this kind of specs. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty good overall package for the price.
If you want to play 3D games on this phone, the overall performance will be pretty good with just a few skipped frames but I can’t really complain. However, the phone gets hot quickly, making it uncomfortable to hold in the hands while gaming.
USER INTERFACE
In terms of user interface, the phone runs on Andoird 7.0 and it’s a mixture of stock Android and a few customizations made by Oukitel.
We have the same customization options and tweaks we’ve seen on other devices like the ability to customize the navigation bar, there are plenty of gesture and motion controls, fingerprint gestures and so on. In terms of speed, I found the phone to be pretty fast, no lag, no stutter, thanks to almost stock Android.
IMAGE QUALITY
Even though it’s still winter and I could test the camera only on a cloudy day, the overall camera performance does not impress. Pictures could have more detail and sharpness and colors are usually washed out.
Same can be said about low-light performance, the quality could be a lot better.
Selfies do not look great either as most of the pictures came out soft.
Portrait mode uses software tricks to mimic hardware bokeh effect and you can definitely see that in mediocre quality photos.
1080p video quality is kind of poor, the same shortcomings apply as in still image quality department. Finally, I’m not really impressed with the 720p selfie video and sound recording quality.
I would rate the call quality quite well and the signal remained strong all the time. Other connectivity options including GPS work fine.
In terms of sensors, there is no gyroscope, which is a shame.
BATTERY LIFE
In terms of battery life, there is a software bug that does not show the exact battery usage data but I was able to use the phone for 1,5 or 2 days. I didn’t notice any battery drain issues or anything and I would say that the overall battery life is good. You can also charge the phone in just about 1,5h, which is great but only if you use a fast charger. In the box, you get a regular charger that charges the phone in over 2.5 hours.
As I said before, you need to use a supplied cable that has a longer connector than usual. This is a serious design flaw, in my opinion.
CONCLUSIONS
The Ouktel U18’s key selling point is design, whether you like the notch or not. However, there are quite a few flaws to consider.
First of all, the overall camera performance is disappointing. Also,you need to use a supplied cable that has a longer connector than usual. This can be an issue if you are traveling and forget the cable at home. Moreover, the phone misses LED notification light, there is no fast charger in the box, no gyroscope sensor, and no headset jack.
On a positive note, I like phone’s great overall performance including gaming, good build quality and the fact that it ships with near stock Android.
Hopefully, you will find this summary of pros and cons useful while making a buying a decision and let me guys know what do you think about this phone in the comment section.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, TCL-owned Alcatel announced a range of smartphone, including its first Android Go smartphone — Alcatel 1x. Now, the company has announced that Alcatel 1x in the Indian market.
The phone packs modest specifications and will soon be available for purchase in India. However, the company has not yet revealed the phone’s pricing or availability details for the Indian market. The phone was unveiled at MWC 2018 with a price tag of 99 euros.
The Alcatel 1x features a 5.3-inch display that supports screen resolution of 960 x 480 pixels. However, the display offers an aspect ratio of 18:9. Since it is a low-end phone, it is driven by MediaTek MT6739 chipset featuring a quad-core processor and PowerVR Rogue GE8100 GPU.
It packs 1GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. There’s also a microSD card slot, allowing users to further expand the phone’s storage capacity up to 128GB. As for the camera department, the phone comes with a 13-megapixel rear camera that supports full HD video shooting and comes with support for Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS). It has a LED-equipped selfie camera of 5-megapixel. The front-facing camera also comes with face recognition functionality named Face Key.
Connectivity options on the device include 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, NFC and USB OTG. The phone is running Android 8.1 Oreo (Go Edition), which is a stripped down version of Android Oreo operating system built specifically for entry-level smartphones. The Go Edition OS comes with a lean size and is optimized for Android devices with RAM sizes of 512MB to 1GB RAM. The phone is powered by a 2,640mAh battery.
After months of waiting for a stable update to Android 8.0 Oreo, Essential announced that it had cancelled the update. Its reason for doing so had to do with stability issues present in Android 8.0 that would be addressed in Android 8.1 Oreo. So instead of an update to 8.0 Oreo, the Essential PH-1 would get an update to 8.1 Oreo.
After a few weeks of extra waiting, Essential has today announced that the Android 8.1 Oreo stable update has begun rolling out to devices. The announcement was made on Twitter a short while ago.
We're excited to announce the full release of Android Oreo 8.1 on Essential Phone! Check your phone now for the update. pic.twitter.com/0PwPBMj6h1
At the begining of the year, Huawei released a list of devices that will get updated to EMUI 8.0. The Huawei P9 and P9 Plus flagships from 2016 were also included. Report has it that the update is on the way.
The info comes from Huawei’s product manager who confirmed the update on the official forum. The update will bring Android 8.0 Oreo to the device and may likely be the last major update it receives.
When the Huawei P9 and Huawei P9 Plus were released in April 2016, they ran Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box. It later got an update to Nougat.
The Huawei P9 and P9 Plus are the first Huawei phones to come with optics co-developed with Leica. The phone may already be almost 2 years old but it should still hold its own against a lot of phones in the market today.
EMUI 8 will surely breath new life into the device with its AI engine for resource allocation, smart split screen, and navigation dock. Though some of the features found in the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro’s version of EMUI 8 will be missing.
The Huawei P9 has a 5.2” FHD IPS display while the P9 Plus has a 5.5” FHD Super AMOLED 3D touch display. Both are powered by the Kirin 955 with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage. The P9 also comes in a 3GB RAM + 32G ROM variant.
In the previous month, Xiaomi had slashed the price of the Mi MIX 2 by 800 Yuan (~$127). However, many were unable to take advantage of the deal as it lasted only for a day. The Chinese manufacturer has confirmed that it will be offering the Mi MIX 2 with a price cut of 800 Yuan once again on March 14 and March 15.
The ceramic body edition of the MI MIX 2 will be available with a price tag of 3,899 Yuan (~$616) after the price cut 800 Yuan on its original pricing of 4,699 Yuan (~$743). The price cut has been announced ahead of the March 27 launch event of Mi MIX 2S. It is likely that the company may permanently slash the price of Mi MIX 2 around the launch of Mi MIX 2.
The Mi MIX 2 features a 5.99-inch FHD+ resolution support screen that offers an aspect ratio of 18:9. The Snapdragon 835 chipset and 8 GB of RAM are present under the hood of the MI MIX 2. The Chinese manufacturer has already released Android 8.0 Oreo update for the handset. In the coming days, the handset will be also treated with full screen gestures through the latest MIUI version update.
Xiaomi phones such as Mi Note 3, Mi 6, Mi Max 2 and Mi 5X are all available with 200 Yuan (~$32) discount. Other Xiaomi products like Redmi phones, Mi TVs and Mi Notebooks are also now available with attractive pricing. Head on to the Xiaomi official store at Jingdong to take the offer.
After Samsung’s Turkish website has confirmed the official update dates for the Samsung Galaxy S7 series, the Galaxy Note 8 and the A-Series (2017), Samsung Canada has added new devices to the Android Oreo update roadmap. The roadmap only refers to Canada, so if you are not from Canada the date of the update for your device may be different.
But given that, usually, updates get rolled out gradually in some weeks at max, these dates give us a clear idea of the time frame in which the devices will finally get Android Oreo. According to Samsung Canada, Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus will officially be updated in the country on March 18. Ten days after, on March 28, it will be the turn of the Galaxy Note 8. On spring/summer 2018 the company will start rolling out the update on the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, Galaxy A5 (2017) and the flagship tablet Galaxy Tab S3 9.7-inch version.
Later in 2018, Samsung Galaxy XCover 4, Galaxy A8 (2018), Galaxy J3 Emerge, Galaxy Tab A 8.0 (2017), Galaxy Tab Active 2 and Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (2016) will get updated as well. For each of the listed devices, the update will come alongside a new version of the customized user interface by the Korean giant, which will be called Samsung Experience 9.0. It will bring new features and improvements, as well as important bug fixes and security fixes.
Huawei Nova 3e is expected to launch on March 20 in China, a week before the P20 series would be unveiled in Paris on March 27. The Nova 3e had earlier been rumoured as being the same as the Huawei P20 Lite and from the look of things, that is the case. A leaked poster of the Nova 3e had earlier confirmed this assertion. Now, a leaked hands-on video featuring the Nova 3e has emerged on Weibo and sincerely it is no different from the P20 Lite’s renders we had seen in the past.
The Huawei Nova 3e is basically the P20 Lite by another name. As the saying goes, arose by any other name would smell as sweet. So, the device still looks radiant and beautiful as seen on the video and earlier leaked poster. Since Huawei is launching the Nova model in China, it is unlikely the P20 Lite will be unveiled whenever the P20 series models hit China. This may be a repeat of the Honor 7X scenario which was launched recently in the U.S as Mate SE.
Design wise, the leaked video shows the device in all-white colour but from previous renders, the device will be available in a number of colour variants including Black. The device will come with a Glass finish similar to the Mirror finish of the Honor 8. The leaked video indeed shows the rear view with a glossy glass finish. The device is also seen to pack a vertically aligned dual rear camera setup. The cameras are located at the top left corner. There is also a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor in the middle.
The same similarity with the P20 Lite also plays out on the front view of the Nova 3e. The display is the trendy full-screen display. The stand out feature up at the front is the notch design which the device takes in order to bear some similarity with the iPhone X. We know the Apple flagship wasn’t the first to feature the notch design, the Essential Phone was. But since the debut of the iPhone X, a number of OEMs have been cooking up models with a display notch similar in all respect to the iPhone X’s.
We also expect the specifications to be similar and in that respect TENAA has gifted us the specs of the P20 Lite. In the same vein, the Nova 3e is expected to feature a 5.8-inch display with a resolution of 2280 x 1080 pixel and a 19:9 aspect ratio. The device will be powered by a Kirin 659 chip which is the same one used on the Honor 7X and Honor 9 Lite. The processor is backed by 4GB of RAM while there is 64GB of storage on the device which can be expanded up to 256GB. On the camera end, the device packs a 16MP + 2MP rear camera. The secondary rear sensor is a Bokeh camera. The device also packs a 16MP selfie shooter having Face Unlock capability. The Nova 3e (P20 Lite) will be fired up by a 3000mh battery with 18W fast charging an would run Android Oreo -based EMUI 8.0 out-of-the-box. The China-bound Nova 3e will also have HiAssistant similar to Google Assistant. Apart from the White variant on display in the leaked video, the device will be available in Black, Pink and Blue color options.
In order to improve its products, OnePlus started a new program called Open Ears Forum. The first edition was held last September in London, and served as an avenue for OnePlus to meet selected members of its community to get feedback and improvement ideas.
Last week, there was an Open Ears Forum in Hamburg, Germany, that focused on the camera. Members of the OnePlus camera team and a special guest, Kevin Abosch, met with selected fans of the brand to discuss how to improve the camera.
The meetup was split into a morning discussion segment to hear people’s opinion of the camera performance along with analysis of photos taken by attendees themselves. While an afternoon segment focused on portrait mode and how to make it better. There was also a discussion on overall camera user experience and a Q&A with Carl Pei and Becker, who is the image algorithm engineer.
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As part of its latest Flash Sale, GearBest is offering a considerable 37% discount on the original asking price of the global version of Huawei P9 Lite VNS – L31 4G smartphone. The discount is valid for the golden color version of the phone.
