It’s been a rather long wait for Elephone fans, since the bezel-less Elephone P9000 Edge is still a few weeks away from launch. First revealed back in January, recently we have been getting some interesting details about the device. We already know that the phone comes with dual cameras at the back, in fact, we saw the real life image of the P9000 Edge a few weeks back. But until now, the details of the dual camera setup were not available. That changes today.
Elephone has just revealed to us that the Elephone P9000 Edge will come with 2 x Sony IMX258 cameras at the back along with PDAF. Like other dual camera setups in the market, the primary camera sensor will take care of shooting the image while the secondary camera sensor will take care of the depth of field and spatial information in order to achieve accurate results with fast focus. So, naturally, this means the phone will support depth of field photography, which essentially blurs the background to bring the object in focus. Another advantage of the presence of dual cameras is said to be the improved night time photography. The two camera setup at the back reportedly helps in low-light conditions, reducing noise, spots and improving the overall image.
Well, we have seen dual camera-equipped smartphones sport the features mentioned above, but when a cheap Chinese phone claims to achieve the same features, it really makes the device sound a lot more interesting.
Considering the information we have received till now, the Elephone P9000 Edge is turning out to be an interesting smartphone. Most of the specs of the phone have already been revealed, and you can read all about that from our previous coverage.
What appears to be professional sketches of the iPhone 7 and a new iPhone called the iPhone 7 Pro which might or might not be the new name of what was formerly referred to as the iPhone 7 Plus have been posted online.
The sketches which appear in black with a grey chassis (rose gold can’t hold a candle to this) screams premium from all angles. From the images, we can confirm that Apple is retaining the design of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus albeit with a thinner profile and has indeed ditched the 3.5 mm audio jack on the iPhone. The camera is also a bit raised and appears bigger.
How the iPhone 7 Pro/Plus dual camera configuration will work isn’t confirmed yet but we know it’ll be a 12 MP setup. There are also rumours saying the phone (pro/plus) will have IP68 water and dust resistance and will support wireless charging.
The big question now is how many iPhones are we expecting in September? Is the iPhone 7 Pro a new phone or is it the new name for the phone formerly known as the Prince iPhone 7 Plus?
Xiaomi is moving towards premium devices. Hugo Barra, the Vice President of Xiaomi in his own words said ”Customers are demanding for premium phones from us, so we are delivering higher quality with more premium components”.
Xiaomi’s latest flagship, the Mi 5 has a starting price of 1999 Yuan ($300) for the base version and goes up to 2699 Yuan (about $400) for the Pro version which has 4GB RAM and 128GB ROM.
While there might be a request for high premium devices, it will be wise if Xiaomi doesn’t stop manufacturing low priced phones with great quality as most of their fans are concentrated at that level. The Redmi 3 Note which sells for between $170 and $200 is an evidence of their success at that part of the pyramid. And going premium doesn’t equal to sales, you can ask HTC and LG.
A new ZTE smartphone has received certification on TENAA, where it is listed as ZTE S6. This should be the ZTE Blade S6 2016 edition model, most likely the successor to the Blade S6 that was released last year.
The ZTE Blade S6 2016 edition packs a lot of specs and features, different from last year’s Blade S6. The device seems to sport what looks like a fingerprint scanner at the back, colored in orange. It may be something else not yet known, though.
As earlier hinted, the smartphone is listed as ZTE S6 on TENAA and the listing shows the device comes with a 5.5-inch TFT HD display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. The device is powered by a 1GHz Quad-core processor which is believed to be a Snapdragon SoC but the model name wasn’t listed.
On the memory bank, the device packs just 1GB RAM as opposed to the 2GB version found on last year’s ZTE Blade S6. It also comes with 16GB of on-board storage which is expandable up to a further 64GB via microSD card.
Just like its predecessor, the ZTE S6 boots Android 5.1 Lollipop from the go but the 2016 S6 features just an 8MP rear shooter with LED flash and a 5MP front-facing selfie camera.
According to the TENAA listing, the ZTE S6 comes with a 3800mAh capacity battery and is available in Golden color option only. The device measures 157.2 × 76.4 × 9 mm and weighs 195 grams. Connectivity options available include 4G LTE, 3G, 2G, Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, FM Radio and a host of others.
For the past few weeks, we have been hearing a lot about the upcoming Xiaomi Mi Note 2 flagship. However, up till now, these rumors only revealed an approximate release period, which is said to be around August. But now, we might have a final date, as new rumors from China say that the Xiaomi Mi Note 2 will be announced on July 25. Further, the phone is said to come with a 5.7-inch display, 6GB of RAM, Snapdragon chipset and a price tag of 2499 Yuan ($375).
So, does the July 25 date make sense? Kind of. Xiaomi has already started teasing the Mi Note 2 and when a company does that, it can only mean that the release date is near. July 25 is still around three weeks away, which means there’s still time for Xiaomi to start teasing the device aggressively.
Moreover, another reason why July 25 could indeed be the release date of the Mi Note 2 is because of the latest teaser. Remember the teaser Xiaomi released a couple of days back saying 2>5. Here > could imply 7, which would mean that 2>5 is hinting at the July 25 date (7 / 25).
If you want another reason to believe this date, then just go back a few more days and recall the comment made by the Xiaomi co-founder, Lin Bin. He had said that the company will release a powerful flagship in July. Mi Note 2 should be out best bet.
Taking all these information into consideration, it is possible that we meet the Xiaomi Mi Note 2 on July 25. Of course, nothing is confirmed at the moment, so we can’t be 100% sure until we the company confirms the date.
Apple’s iPhone 6s was made available in rose gold, silver, gold, and space gray color variants and it is most likely the iPhone 7 will follow suit, a leaked image of the next Apple flagship suggests.
A recent image leak of the iPhone 7 Gold color variant has been revealed suggesting an iPhone 6 and 6s look-alike, except for some few noticeable differences like the camera hump which the iPhone 7 is rumored to come with.
Images of the space gray / black color variant of the iPhone 7 (pictured below) had earlier on appeared online and this image seems to lend credence to the previous images which showed the rear camera with a slight outward protrusion of some few millimeters from the phone’s body.
In addition, the leaked image reveals another stunning detail about the headphone port. Sadly, the image reinforces earlier speculations that the iPhone 7 and 7 Pro will not feature the 3.5mm headphone jack but the renowned 3.5mm audio jack will be replaced by USB Type-C port.
Going further, there’s also a hole between the camera and the flash and it is said to be a laser-focus module. The space gray / black color variant leaked earlier also had the same design including the laser-focus module.
It is also worth mentioning that a report on the Wall Street Journal is quoted rendering further information that the iPhone 7 will ditch the 16GB storage option and will start at 32GB of onboard storage upward but the price does not seem to change from the 5288 Chinese yuan ($790) as speculated.
Gizmochina has been increasing its efforts providing you the latest smartphone news and reviews from China. But you probably want a lot more than just news. We understand that and hence, we are starting a new series on the website for our readers: Chinese Android ROOT/ ROM Flash/ UNBRICK / Tips & tricks tutorials. We hope that these step by step tutorials will come in handy for our readers from around the globe to flash new ROMs and unbrick their bricked smartphones safely. You can anytime comment below with questions, suggestions or requests and we (specifically OSMAN aka AndroidBrick who is our and your Pro Android tech guy) will try our best to answer these questions.
As you may guess from this article’s headline, our first guide will be to learn flashing global stable ROM to Xiaomi devices. Because of the nature of this method, this will be also an UNBRICK guide, and I will explain about this later in the article. The phone that we will working on in this guide is Xiaomi’s latest flagship Mi5.
STEP 1A:
Before we begin, for device drivers to install without a problem, and to install drivers that are not digitally signed, we are going to disable Windows driver enforcement. To do this :
Click the Start menu and select Settings.
Click Update and Security.
Click on Recovery.
Click Restart now under Advanced Startup.
Click Troubleshoot.
Click Advanced options.
Click Startup Settings.
Click on Restart.
On the Startup Settings screen press 7 or F7 to disable driver signature enforcement.
Your computer will restart and you will be able to install non-digitally signed drivers. Keep in mind that, if you restart your computer again the driver signature enforcement will be re-enabled.
STEP 1B:
Second, we need to install adb on our computers, and for that we will use a program called “adb setup“, thanks to Snoop05 from XDA-Developers, this will enable adb and fastboot commands to work on our systems. It will also install necessary adb drivers. There are many ways to do that but what is more important about Snoop05’s solution is that we can use adb and fastboot commands system-wide, this means our old “command prompt” will turn to accept this commands, and no need to work in the “adb” folder like we used to before.
STEP 1C:
Last step, before we begin our guide is to enable “USB debugging” on our phone. In this example, the Xiaomi Mi5. Talking about USB debugging, I strongly advice to all users out there, please do “enable” USB debugging as first thing and keep it that way, don’t turn it off. I am saying this so that you can avoid future problems. I mean in some bricks, this can be because of a wrong app setup, or it can be because of a false rooting way or even non-user related OTA update. Having USB debugging open is very crucial to rescue our phones from such disasters. Just keep this in mind, I will explain more in the future.
STEP 2:
On Xiaomi phones to enable USB debugging, go to settings> about phone, and click “MIUI version” couple of times till you see “you are a developer” message. Then back to settings>Additional settings>Developer opitons>USB debugging, click it and allow. Now its time to connect our phones to computer, plug the USB cable. Your system will install “adb” drivers. Now open command prompt and type :
“adb devices“
Look at your phone for the “Allow USB debugging?” message, select “Always allow from this computer” and click OK. If you forget to allow from phone, the command will return “unauthorized“, if OK you will see your phone as “device” and we are ready to start our guide.
This guide is for locked bootloaders, so no need to wait for the unlocking procedure to flash this official ROM. For unlocked bootloaders the method is almost the same, I’ll explain it too.
Let’s download those two. First link is our ROM, second is our Xiaomi’s Miflash FLASH tool. Before we install Miflash to our computer, open the command prompt and type this command :
“adb reboot edl”
This command will reboot our Mi5 to “Qualcomm HS-USB Qdloader” mode, this is Qualcomm’s service port on most Snapdragon based phones. Your phone will be completely dark, so nothing will be seen on the screen, and this is very normal. Here, we will use this port to flash our ROM, and you may see this port in some “bricked” situations too — for instance, if you have accidently corrupted some important partitions. So as you may guess now, this method can be used for unbricking our Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Xiaomi Mi5s too. If you face that kind of brick you can use this guide to rescue your phone, you will just have to change the ROM, rest will be the same. For Xiaomi, rescue ROMs are called “fastboot” ROMS and you can find them under this link :
In my computer, all drivers are installed. Your PC will have a new unknown device under device manager after you reboot your phone to EDL (emergency download mode). Ignore it and start to setup Miflash that you downloaded, Miflash will install necessary drivers to your system , so don’t forget to choose “Install this driver software anyway” option when it asks, twice, and after it finishes you will see a new port named Qualcomm HS-USB Qdloader 9008 in your device manager too. The driver path will be “C:\Program Files (x86)\Xiaomi\MiPhone\Qualcomm\Driver”, in case you want/need to install your drivers again.
After you see your new EDL port, open the Miflash itself. Click “refresh” button and you’ll see your port there. Then click “Browse” and choose your downloaded ROM folder please (unzip it before you that). It will look like this :
As you can see in above picture, there are some options under the Miflash window. “Flash all“, “Flash all except storage” and “Flash all except data and storage“. If you want to wipe everything on your phone and do a clean flash choose first option, or if you want to keep your data in your storage (like pictures or What’s App folder etc), choose the second option. When you are ready click “flash” button.
It took 155 seconds for me to flash our new rom, this is my computer of course, and I wonder how long it will take on your PCs. Let’s compare and leave a comment. You can ask anything you want in comments, I will try to answer them all. After you see “The operation completed successfully” under “Status” section press your phone’s power button and boot it up. If you unplug the USB cable before it finishes you will brick your phone !
But, remember what I told before, don’t panic, unbricking procedure is the same — just repeat all the above steps again.
NOTE:For unlocked bootloaders, every step is the same, except, you don’t need to boot your Xiaomi to EDL/Qualcomm HS-USB Qdloader 9008 mode, just reboot your phone in “fastboot” mode while pressing “volume down -“ button while you are powering it. Then repeat Miflash steps again.
If you are in a bricked situation and you can’t boot your Xiaomi Mi5 except for fastboot mode— In this case, we have another fastboot command that will help us to unbrick our phone, just type this command in command prompt :
“fastboot oem edl”
Your phone will boot in EDL mode again, rest is the same as mentioned above.
Remember that I have told you to leave “USB debugging” on, no matter what? Let me explain it now. In case you bricked your phone and it does not boot normally, or in case your phone is stuck at the Mi logo and you don’t have “fastboot mode” either. Check your device manager for “ADB Interface”. If it’s there, just use this guide, starting from “adb reboot edl” command step and rest is the same. Now you see why leaving USB debugging “on” is so important ? This little trick can save us our phone back in just 155 seconds !
You can use this method for every Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Xiaomi phone including your Redmi Note 3 Pro (SD) or Redmi 3 / Pro etc., except for the “fastboot oem edl” command, this command will only work on some new Xiaomi phones.
Motorola unveiled two new devices in its Moto Z series lineup a few weeks back. However, from the recent leaks and rumors, it looks like the company may have other devices in the lineup as well. The latest information we have is on the Chinese variant of Moto Z Play and it comes via a trusted source, namely the AnTuTu benchmarking app. The phone seems to have just run the benchmark app revealing most of its specs as well as its AnTuTu scores.
moto z play antutu
The Moto Z Play will be a toned down version in the flagship series. AnTuTu reveals that the phone will come with the Snapdragon 625 mid-range chipset along with 2GB / 3GB RAM and 16GB / 32GB ROM options. This clearly tells us that the phone is going to be a mid-range handset. Further, it will feature a 5.5-inch 1080p display up front and a 5MP shooter. There will be a 16MP camera at the back. It will run on Android 6.0.1. As for the score, AnTuTu reveals that it managed to get around 59K points, which is pretty good for a mid-ranger.
This is not the first time we are hearing that the Moto Z Play will feature Snapdragon 625. Earlier, a Geekbench listing had revealed that the phone will feature this mid-range chipset but that was the XT1635-01 model. This is the XT1635-03 model, which is probably why AnTuTu is referring to this as the Chinese variant. In case you remember, we had also seen the Moto Z Play on the Indian import export data website Zauba, a few days back. So, we could meet this handset soon.
Pricing is said to be around 1999 Yuan ($300), which if true, doesn’t really help the handset in the Chinese market considering you get Xiaomi Mi5 as well as ZUK Z2, both featuring Snapdragon 820 and better specs around this price.
Although Huawei P9 is quite a powerful smartphone, the true flagship series of the company has always been the Huawei Mate series. This year, the company is all set to update the lineup and like in 2015, we might see two devices launched in the second half — first, the Huawei Mate S2 and later, the Huawei Mate 9. If the company continues the tradition as last year, then Mate S2 should be a gentle upgrade to the Mate 8 flagship, while we expect some powerful hardware on the Mate 9 which should be announced near the end of the year.
Mate 8 with Messi’s signature
Now, an insider seems to have revealed some details about the upcoming Mate 9 handset on Weibo. He states that the Huawei Mate 9 should be using the Kirin 970 chipset. What’s more, he adds that the chip will be built on the highly efficient TSMC’s 10nm FinFET process. The source further states that Helio X30 is another chip that is going to use this ultra-efficient manufacturing node from this Taiwanese semiconductor foundry.
Now, we have been hearing rumors that the upcoming flagship was going to feature Kirin 960. In fact, we even have the possible specs of the 960 chip, unlike the Kirin 970 (about which we have hardly any info) mentioned by this insider. According to the previous information, the Kirin 960 chip is supposed to come with ARM Cortex A73 Artemis cores and Cortex A53 cores in big.LITTLE architecture with an upgraded GPU (possibly octa-core) and new LTE baseband including CDMA and Cat. 12 support. Moreover, this chip is said to be manufactured on TSMC’s 16nm process.
Considering the new information (rumor) we have at hand, it’s possible that Huawei decides to use the Kirin 960 for some of its upper mid-range smartphones like the upcoming Mate S2 and Kirin 970 for Mate 9 and next year’s top-end flagships.
A new render image of what is said to be the 2016 Nexus Marlin and Sailfish smartphones has surfaced online. Don’t get it twisted, the image wasn’t released by Google or its manufacturing partner HTC but a recreation by the guys at Android police who were able to do that based on “information from a reliable source” about the devices codenamed Marlin and Sailfish.
The image, which shows both the front and back views, is said to represent both Nexus Marlin and Sailfish which they believe would only be different in sizes but sport the same design. The image also depicts the Nexus phones as taking on a cleaner design language for 2016, according to the information they’ve received from the source.
We could have thrown this one into the trash as a baseless rumor, if not for the fact that they were confident enough to give the rumor a confidence level of 8 out of 10. That’s an indication that either we are looking at an actual image leaked from Nexus or sure the source is very reliable. But then it’s just a sole source we talking about here.
Well then, we should add also that you shouldn’t expect the Nexus phones to look exactly like the ones in the image since they are someone’s recreation and not the real deal. Some details may not be accurate, like the “G” logo on the back of the device may not be part of the final design. Another thing is the recreation wasn’t done with the actual dimensions and measurements of the phones in sight so it may be mighty different when the devices pop up.
However, few details could be gathered from the image render and one of them is that there’ll be no camera hump on the devices. Also, both Nexus Marlin and Sailfish phones are coming with aluminum body and not polycarbonate. There’s a secondary glossy plastic layer, which might be made of glass though, on the back of the phones which gives the back a cool two-tone look. The rear edges are gently curved and there’s the fingerprint scanner sitting in its usual Nexus position.
Although the image is that of a dark gray / black colored device (which could be one of the color variants available), Android Police believes the “flagship” advertised color will be a standard aluminum finish with a white face. They also believe Google is considering what they called an “electric blue” version of the dual Nexus devices (white face, but blue glossy rear pane) but that’s not for sure.
From the image render also, the design of the phones bears basically no resemblance to the HTC 10, and also relatively little resemblance to the current Nexus phones.
Coming to the front view, a single earpiece speaker, front-facing selfie shooter, a small sensor cluster are all visible. While on the back, there are some antenna bands on the bottom running horizontally and on the top running vertically and off the center.
Three tiny holes can be spotted next to the camera whose purpose are not known but could relate to the camera (auto-focus and perhaps a secondary sensor of some kind) and perhaps one of them could be a secondary microphone.
That’s all we’ve got for now, except if you’re unaware of a previous rumor about the Nexus Marlin and Sailfish devices which are said to be getting a navbar do-over such that the software home button will be of solid white color with 4-color “flower” design. But it remains unclear at this time if that’s also true.
A few weeks back, we spotted 2GB RAM version of the Xiaomi Mi Max model in China. However, at that time we were not sure whether the variant would end up in the market since, at the time of the launch of the Mi Max, the company has made only the 3GB RAM and 4GB RAM versions of the phone official.
Last week, a few sellers started selling the 2GB RAM + 16GB ROM model of the Mi Max online for a price tag of 1224 Yuan, but now, this low-end version of the Mi Max is being sold at the lowest price we have seen till now. The 2GB RAM is currently sold by some retailers for as low as 1199 Yuan ($180), which makes this particular variant an attractive option for those who are on a budget and want a large phablet with an amazing battery life. To remind you, the 3GB + 32GB ROM model of the Mi Max retails for 1499 Yuan in China ($230). So, at this price, there is a considerable difference between the two variants.
So, what do you think? At $180, do you think 2GB RAM version of the Mi Max is an attractive option?
Xiaomi last year launched a unique service which enabled Mi Note users to get a free back panel replacement. This year, the company has launched a similar program wherein Mi Note users can get a free upgrade to Natural Bamboo Cover free of charge.
The offer started on 4th July and will be live until 31st July. Mi owners only need to take their Mi Note, to any authorised service shop and the glass cover on their phones can be replaced with the natural bamboo cover, free of charge.
However, there are a few conditions that must be met to get this free upgrade, and is available on a first come first serve basis. Each user will be entitled to 2 upgrades only and the offer is limited to in-store replacement only.
Xiaomi also seems to have an advice for the users who are looking to avail the offer. The company has mentioned that the bamboo covers looks amazing on the white version. But for the black and pink versions, users need to be careful as it might not be as good looking as it looks on the white ones.
As per Xiaomi, the replacement bamboo cover is made of best quality natural bamboo found in the southern part of China, which is known for its strength and delicate string texture. The thin arc-shaped structure is 0.9 mm thick and weighs 5grams less than the original glass version. The bamboo cover is waterproof and will not deform quickly. Each case carries a unique texture giving the Mi Note a lightweight, thin and delicate sense of natural bamboo texture.
Huawei Plans to release a smaller version of what appears to look like the Huawei Mate 8 on July 14.
The poster for the phone bears a slogan which roughly translates into ”not afraid of what the young” or better put ”not afraid of being young” indicates that the phone is aimed at the younger generation.
The phone called ”Maimang 5” will have 2 versions with one of the versions featuring 4GB of RAM, 64GB of ROM, a 16MP camera with OIS and ability to shoot 4k videos; and Snapdragon 650 or 652 processor. The phone is set to compete with the likes of OPPO R9 and Vivo X7. However, unlike the Mate 8 or OPPO R9 which have metal bodies, the Maimang 5 could end up with a double glass design with a metal frame. The pricing for the phone is expected to start at 2000 Yuan ($299). We still haven’t got any confirmation, so let’s wait for more details.
Since the release of the first 6GB RAM smartphone in the world, we have seen so many new flagships coming with such high memory inside. We have the Vivo XPlay 5 Elite, ZUK Z2 Pro, Le Max 2 and even the OnePlus 3 with 6GB RAM inside. But Xiaomi doesn’t have a 6GB RAM phone in the market right now, and the most powerful option from the company is the Xiaomi Mi5 which comes with the Snapdragon 820 and 4GB of RAM. But what if I told you, you could replace the 3GB /4GB RAM module inside the Mi5 with a 6GB RAM Samsung 1866MHz LPDDR4 dual channel memory, essentially converting the Mi5 into a beast? Well, at least someone in China managed to accomplish this upgrade!
It looks like sellers in China are currently offering to upgrade the memory inside the Xiaomi Mi5 to 6GB for just 285 Yuan (~$43). Further, to show that upgrading the RAM works well on the new device, they even have released a few images (added below) wherein the phone detects 6GB RAM inside. And if you are worried about whether it will work in the long run, these guys are even offering 180 days chip warranty.
Of course, we would always caution you from doing such a thing, as it will void your warranty. Plus, we can’t be entirely sure whether such an upgrade works perfectly fine. So, we better wait for reviews of the phone after the upgrade.
But what do you think? Will you take the risk of upgrading the RAM inside the Mi5 to 6GB under $50?
As per the schedule, Meizu is planning to launch its flagship Meizu MX6 on 19th July 2016. This already is a very powerful device, however, rumors are abuzz for the much hyped “Pro” device from Meizu.
Recently, a device image surfaced on social media claiming to be the Pro 7. The leaked images only showed the back of the mobile, which bears a totally different design language than its predecessors. Until now Meizu devices have been heavily inspired by Apple , however, it seems, now they’ve shifted their inspiration source to Samsung.
This leaked image shows that Meizu Pro 7 features Samsung S 7 like rounded corners and glass body. This 3D technology has been successfully tested on S7 and it makes the device very comfortable to hold.
The back of Meizu Pro 7 is minimalist in design and just has a camera, flash, and Meizu branding. We haven’t got any official confirmation from any Meizu officials yet regarding the authenticity of this leak. In case this stands out to be true, then we are looking at an extremely premium looking flagship device.
Huawei plans to release a new version of their Emotion UI this Fall. At the helms of the design team, is Abigail Brody who has worked for Apple and Ebay. The design team has focused on the use of more colors just like Xiaomi is doing with MIUI 8. The new UI will also be closer to stock android and allow more customizations.
The above designs were leaked on the Chinese social networking website, Weibo by KJuma, who is known to leak such information on a regular basis. The new interface should be welcomed by users outside Asia as one of the gripes about Asian brands is their UIs which are usually designed without a focus for customers in the West.
Apple has come a long way with the iPhone ever since the first one was released in 2007 and they’ve had their highs and lows with respect to the launch of a new model. But it seems Apple is planning a game changer for next year’s iPhone which coincides with the 10th year anniversary of the launch of the first generation iPhone.
Apple’s last 3 phones haven’t been much of a game changer as they either just featured minor changes such as a new processor like the iPhone 6S or just featured new guts in an old body as seen in the iPhone SE. But a rumour going round says Apple is deploying all resources towards next year’s release in time for the 10th year anniversary.The source says the 2017 iPhone will kick start a new generation of iPhones.
4th Generation iPhone
Apart from focusing on a new design, Apple will be bringing back the glass back that featured on the iPhone 4 and will also make use of an OLED display.
After a few months of silence, Meizu’s CEO Huang Zhang made a microblogging post on Weibo today “If not for using Pro 6’s appearance, I think MX6 would be the best MX series smartphone” (translated).
So looks like the leaked internal mail was true! The CEO doesn’t seem to be happy that MX6 is using a similar design as the Pro 6. However, specs wise, the phone should have capable hardware inside to take on other mid-range flagships.
Meizu’s smartphone business is bigger than ever before. Thanks to the healthy competition between Meizu and Xiaomi, the former smartphone company has managed to post very impressive growth in the past few quarters. The company has even introduced new smartphone lineup aimed at the young generation in the past couple of years, such as the Blue Charm M series. But it looks like, the company’s popular flagship MX series could be in trouble this year.
In an alleged leak of Meizu’s internal emails, Meizu’s CEO Huang Zhang seems to be unhappy with the design of the upcoming Meizu Pro 6 smartphone. He said that if the next generation version of the Meizu MX6 and Pro 6 are going to be this similar, then he may consider scrapping the lineup!
Well, this sounds like an exaggerated statement, but to his credit, Meizu has killed off a few smartphones in the past. For example, remember the Pro 5 Mini phone which was supposed to meet us sometime in the first half of 2016? Well, due to some supply problems faced by the company, Meizu scrapped the device. And then there’s the MX Pro lineup which the company killed last year, favoring the new Meizu Pro series.
Given that Meizu’s MX series is hardly in the limelight due to the numerous other powerful mid-rangers in the market, could the company consider killing the MX series for a new mid-range lineup? Well, we can’t be sure, because the leaked image of the internal mail cannot be verified at the moment.
Xiaomi announced the MIUI 8 in China back in May and later, last month, at the launch of the Mi Max phablet in India, the company hinted that the beta version will hit some select Xiaomi smartphones publicly by July.
The public beta which will be released on July 11, will be made available on the Xiaomi Mi 5, Mi Max, Mi Note, Mi 4i, Mi 4, Mi 3, Mi 2, Redmi Note 3, Redmi Note 2, Redmi Note Prime, Redmi Note, Redmi 2 Prime, Redmi 2, and Redmi 1s. But obviously, that is not the big news which many fans have been waiting to hear.
Anticipations have continued to heighten about the release date of the MIUI 8 stable ROM which promises an awesome array of all new features. The anticipation has been put to rest with the official statement from Xiaomi that the MIUI 8 stable ROM will be rolling out publicly by August 16, 2016.
Already, we have the MIUI 7.5 stable ROM which comes with some of the features the MIUI 8 will come with but then it isn’t MIUI 8 and at the end of the day, we all want to experience all the features the MIUI 8 offers as soon as possible.
A few days back, Huawei published a stunning photo on its Google+ page with a title which suggested the photo (the one you see below) was shot using the Huawei P9’s dual cameras, which by the way is doing marvelously well in the market.
The truth about the photo’s details would not have been known if the image had been posted on any other platform. But posting the photo on Google+ was their undoing, because Google+, just like some photo-sharing services such as Flickr, preserves the camera’s Exchangeable image file format (EXIF) metadata in any image you post.
Undoubtedly, the photo is a great one of a very attractive lady. The details exposed by the crisp and clear shot is downright impressive for a smartphone camera but turns out the shot wasn’t taken by a smartphone camera. Huawei has since taken down the photo from its Google+ account but here’s a screen shot.
Make no mistake, the post didn’t outrightly say the photo was taken by the P9 but it’s downright deceptive. Here’s the post, you be the judge:
We managed to catch a beautiful sunrise with Deliciously Ella. The #HuaweiP9’s dual Leica cameras makes taking photos in low light conditions like this a pleasure. Reinvent smartphone photography and share your sunrise pictures with us.
The EXIF data was able to unravel the fact that the shot was actually from the all powerful Canon EOS 5D Mark III shutter. The high-end camera currently carries a price tag of $2600 on Amazon while the EF70-200 f/2.8L IS II USM lens which comes separately, is priced at $1900. That makes it a whopping $4500 camera setup. The image’s EXIF details…..
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Lens: EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM
Focal Length: 135mm
Exposure: 1/800
F Number: f/4
ISO: 500
Camera make: Canon
Flash: Not used
Exposure Bias: -1 EV
Huawei has however issued the following statement in regard to the image (like I said earlier, they have since deleted the controversial image from their social networks):
It has recently been highlighted that an image posted to our social channels was not shot on the Huawei P9. The photo, which was professionally taken while filming a Huawei P9 advert, was shared to inspire our community. We recognise though that we should have been clearer with the captions for this image. It was never our intention to mislead. We apologise for this and we have removed the image.
So, Huawei’s saying this was just a mix up, if you believe that you’d believe anything I’d say.
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