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Its been about two weeks since I first received my Elephone Trunk and whilst it would have been easy to jump right in and do a review after a couple of days, I wanted to give Elephone some time to work on a new firmware that was due to be released to fix a some problems.
The Elephone Trunk is aimed at the budget end of the market costing just $120 (£79), its time to take a look and see just what $120 will get you.
One of the first things that you will notice when you turn on the Elephone Trunk is the bright and vibrant 5″ 720p OGS display.
Its nice to see manufacturers releasing 5″ phones, for some people with smaller hands it is the sweet spot, whilst others prefer the 5.5″ screens found on many other Elephone handsets.
Given the screen size of 5″ the 720p resolution coming in around 250ppi gives enough detail to be pleasing to the eye, the screen size and lower resolution also help to keep the power usage lower and improve performance.
Elephone have always been avid supporters of Mediatek SOC’s using them for their entire range of phones, this time round for the Elephone Trunk they have chosen to include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad core GPU (MSM8916) clocked at 1.2GHz with Adreno 306 GPU
The Elephone Trunk feels snappy in every day use, with the Adreno 360 handling menus and most apps at decent fluidity and speed, surprisingly considering the CPU/GPU combination gaming performance is not bad.
The Elephone Trunk comes with 16GB Rom and 2 gb of Ram, storage can be upgraded via micro SD card.
The battery on the Elephone Trunk is a 2100mAh removable battery, the lower power usage from the combination of
cSnapdragon 410 CPU and 720p screen help keep battery usage down.
A full day of usage is possible between charges, if you are not pushing the phone to hard with lots of browsing, gaming or video playback.
1st Run – 22848
2nd Run – 22624
3rd Run – 21890
Average – 22,454
You can see the Elephone Trunk Antutu benchmarks in the following video (Video is sped up to save time).
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcDH6ZWlGOU[/embedyt]The Elephone Trunk is budget a phone, not really something that you would choose specifically for gaming, however all things considered it is capable of providing adequate levels of gameplay.
The video below shows Asphalt 8 running on the Elephone Trunk, gameplay is smooth and playable and would be enough to keep you entertained if you were stuck on a train.
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaTKCuazsN8[/embedyt]The Elephone trunk comes with two cameras upfront you will find a 2mp selfie camera, which is adequate but nothing special.
Looking to the back of the phone you will find an 8mp rear facing camera that uses interpolation to bring it up to 13mp a single LED flash is there to help when lighting is not at its best.
As mentioned above when the Elephone Trunk first arrived there were a couple of minor niggles and one fairly major one, the camera performance was to say the least not great.
The problem was that the sensor could not achieve an accurate focus lock even in good lighting, with the camera continually hunted for a lock.
Quite often the Elephone Trunk would appear to achieve a clear picture and then as you pressed to take the picture un-focus and take a blurred image.
I spoke with a contact at Elephone who said that they were aware of the problem and had an updated firmware in the works that would fix the camera issue.
The updated firmware arrived last week via an OTA update (which installed without any issues), once installed I fired up the Trunk and took the camera out for some testing.
Thankfully the update has really helped to resolve the issue, I can now pick a focus point on the screen and the camera will achieve lock and take a decently focused picture, the focus and capture times are a little slow compared to newer more expensive handsets, perhaps these times will improve with further updates.
What it will not do however is give you the most detailed image in the world, this is not a class leading sensor by any means, however it is more than adequate and for a phone of this price not much more should be expected really.
The camera is not quite perfect and in my opinion still needs some tweaking, capture speed, low light imagery as well as colour balance could be better.
The Elephone Trunk features the Qualcomm MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 quad core cpu, which unlike Mediatek CPU’s has a decent developer comunity following (mainly due to Mediatek’s choice of not releasing the required developer files as open source).
The Elephone Trunk really benefits from this active developer community, there are a couple of teams on the Russian site 4pda.ru and devs on XDA forums working on custom roms.
The Elephone Trunk (or as the Russians know it the Arc Benefit A3), is getting custom roms such as CyanogenMod 12.1 and even CyanogenMod 13 running well on the $120 handset.
Elephone have done a really nice job with with the Elephone trunk handset, a rubberised texture on the rear leaves it feeling really comfortable to hold and also makes it feel secure with less fear of dropping.
The front of the phone is mostly filled by the 5″ OGS panel (with black boarders approximately 2.5mm wide), the lower chin has three capacitive buttons, the centre is is a circular home button, as yet Elephone have not given the option to use this for notification, but with luck they or one of the other devs will manage to implement this feature in the future.
The top chin is where you will find the ear piece, proximity sensor and 2mp selfie camera, the rear casing of the Trunk has a matte rubberised coating giving it a nice tactile feel, the finish is reminiscent of the earlier Apple Macbooks finish before they went to unibody aluminum construction.
The coating provides great grip and works well with the curved contours of the phones rear.
On the rear of the trunk you will find the Elephone logo and 8mp rear camera with single LED flash, towards the bottom is the built in speaker which is output through to small slots providing fairly decent audio output levels.
The right hand side of the phone is home to the power button and volume rocker, these are chromed plastic and feel fairly nice to operate.
There are no buttons on the left hand side of the phone.
On the top of the phone you will find a standard micro usb port as well as 3.5mm headphone jack.
The Elephone Trunk supports Bluetooth 4.0 and Dual sim slots with support for the following networks
2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
3G: WCDMA 850/900/2100MHz
4G: FDD-LTE 800/1800/2100/2600MHz
The Elephone Trunk’s removable battery is a 2100mAh Li-polymer unit, this is not particularly large but should see you through a day of normal usage.
The 5″ 720p screen and CPU combination help to get the most from the battery, neither of them sucking too much juice.
If you intend to do a lot of browsing, gaming and other intensive tasks on the Trunk I would advise purchasing a spare battery or power bank to keep handy just in case.
The Elephone Trunk is a decent little phone, whilst not for everyone, it does fit into a niche that has been somewhat ignored by a lot of manufactures recently.
Its small form factor and decent real world performance make it a good option for non power users who are happy with ‘good enough performance’ and just want a phone that fits easily in a pocket and does what its supposed to do.
It’s premium feel and appearance give it the look of a phone costing much more than the $120 price tag would suggest.
The phone would rank a lot higher if it were not for the camera niggles.
But what it does have going for it, is third party rom support, this alone could be a reason to buy as it should see frequent updates and new functionality and tweaks (check out the forums linked above to see some of the great work being done on the Elephone Trunk).
Hopefully with ongoing support for this little phone Elephone and the other Devs will iron out the bugs and make this little phone even better.
For me this phone makes me reminissant of what it was that got me hooked on android, allowing my inner geek to tweak and flash new roms, whilst for non power users and children it offers a good set of functions and quality at a price that will not break the bank this Christmas.
Please feel free to leave comments and questions below
kind regards Shanos
The Elephone Trunk can be purchased here
Original article posted on Gadgetz.tv
*Antutu Benchmarks are provided to give a comparative view of handsets performance.
Whilst they do give an indication of a handsets overall potential. they do not fully take in to account hardware and software optimisation.
Manufacturers have also been known to include cheat software built in to handsets, to deliberately make handsets operate faster in tests than they might otherwise in real world usage.
Antutu benchmarks on gadgetz.tv are run 3 times in close succession to see if any throttling occurs due to heavy CPU/GPU usage.
**Gaming videos are recorded using AZ Screen Recorder
The Chinese manufacturer of smart watches Zeblaze launch a new device that will receive the name of Zeblaze Cosmo and has now shown us a picture of it.
Zeblaze had already made a couple of smartwatches this year, the first was the Zeblaze Rover and then launched the Zeblaze Crystal . The second SmartWatch is much better than the first and having already produced two of them and see the response and feedback from the public assume they will pretty clear what to do with the third one to be an even better device than previously we had seen.
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Many expected Xiaomi to unveil its latest flagship smartphone, the Xiaomi Mi 5 at the Grand Finale event on November 24. However, at the event we met only two devices, the Redmi Note 3 and the Xiaomi Mi Pad 2. So, it meant we had to wait for a couple of months more to meet the flagship Mi 5.
However, at the interview after the event, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun revealed that he was currently using the device and he found its to be great. So, it looks like the Mi5’s design has been finalized.
Now, we have our first glimpse at the Xiaomi Mi 5 flagship and from the image, the phone looks really beautiful. The image shows that the phone will come with a bezel less design, which means no black borders on the side. Nubia has shown us that its possible with its Z9 flagship back in May this year, so it won’t be surprising to see the Mi 5 come with such an amazing design.
On a closer look, the phone does look like the Mi Note. But the bezels on the Mi Note flagship are not as thin as this. So, we will have to wait and see whether this is the real design of the upcoming flagship.
The image comes directly from Xiaomi’s official account. It was posted a few days back, but till now went unnoticed. Our best guess would be the Xiaomi Mi 5!
Further, the phone is said to come with ClearForce Touch technology from Synaptics which is similar to Apple’s 3D Touch. So, the display will be able to measure the force with which a user presses the screen. This would come in handy in things like gaming where the phone will be able to distinguish between a hard press or a soft press on the throttle.
As for the specs, the Xiaomi Mi 5 is expected to come with a 5.2-inch 2K resolution display with 4GB RAM, 64GB storage and Snapdragon 820 chip under the hood. At the back, you can expect a 21MP camera and up front, an 8MP shooter.
According to earlier reports, we can expect the release of the phone to be around January-February period next year. So, expect a lot more details about the device in the coming weeks.
Stay tuned!
Remember a few days back, we got a report that Mediatek was working on a slightly upgraded variant of the existing MT6795 chip called as the Helio X12. Well, according to insiders who told the Chinese media website IT68, this chip may not actually exist. So, the rumors about the MT6795X aka Helio X12 could have been fake.
The same report had said that the X12 chip will be used in the Redmi 3 handset which is expected to be unveiled early 2016. However, it was surprising even at that time, given that Redmi 3 lies below the Note series and, it would really be crazy for Xiaomi to incorporate such a mid-range chip on an entry level device which may cost just about 599 Yuan ($94).
While the Helio X12 chip may not be real, we are quite positive that Xiaomi will launch the Redmi 3 early 2016. So, it would be interesting to see which processor Xiaomi plans to use inside this device.
What do you think? Will we see a Helio X10 powered Redmi 3 handset next year? Or maybe it will be powered by the Helio P10 chip, which will make more sense.
Ulefone starts today to list the golden version of Ulefone Paris on retailer sites for presales at the price of USD169.99, the same with the original price of the white and grey versions.
Xiaomi has expanded into many different segments in the past few years, including wearables. Although the company is yet to release a low-cost smartwatch, its Mi Band, which costs under $20 has turned out to be quite successful. As a result, the company has managed to make it to the top three wearable companies by shipments as well as market share for the Q3 2015.
Display |
5″ 1080p (Full-HD) |
Processor |
MTK6735, 64-bit, quad-core, 1.3GHz |
RAM |
3GB |
Camera |
8MP Front/16MP Back |
Connectivity |
Bluetooth, 3G, 4G, GPS, WIFI, GSM,EDGE, GPRS, UMTS, HSPA, HSPA+, dual-SIM, FDD-LTE B1/B3/B7 |
Battery |
2.500 mAh (non-removable) |
Dimensions |
143.4 x 69.4mm x 6.1 mm / 163g |
OS |
Android 5.1 |
Storage |
16GB (expandable via microSD card slot up to 64GB) |
Cubot X17 design gallery:
Today sees the first teaser for the upcoming Android Wear device from Elephone, in this quick youtube video showing the ELE Watch.
The video is short and sweet but does show off some of the basic functionality of the watch.
The ELE Watch features a 1.5″ 320 x 320 screen, is waterproof and has a heart rate sensor built in as well as wifi.
Hopefully the fact that Elephone have released this video means the watch release is not too far off, hopefully China based companies such as Elephone can bring the price of Android Wear based watches, in to a more affordable price bracket in the same way that they have for mobile phones.
So far its looking fairly good and hopefully will deliver a fully functional Android Wear device at a decent price in time for this Christmas.
As always please feel free to leave comments and questions below
Regards Shanos
Original article posted on gadgetz.tv
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[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpBhB6wfhKY[/embedyt]
Metal seems to be the new standard among mid-range smartphones. Even Huawei has joined the party with the brand new Huawei Enjoy 5S handset. The phone is priced at 1099 ($172) and is targeted at those users who would like a compact device with a 5-inch display. Other metal phones in this range are usually of 5.5-inches, so this phone will cater to the needs of a slightly different population.
The Huawei Enjoy 5S comes with a 1.5GHz Mediatek MT6753T processor with 2GB of RAM on board and 16GB of internal storage. At the back, there will be a 13MP camera and up front, you will find a 5MP shooter. The 5-inch display will come with 720p resolution, which is a bit disappointing considering competitors have already upgraded to FHD resolution. The battery is also not very impressive, 2200mAh but its mainly because the company decided to keep the phone super thin, measuring just 6.3mm.
This isn’t the best specs we have seen on a $172 phone, but for a 5-incher, it’s not bad either. You can check out a few hands on pictures of the Huawei Enjoy 5S from down below.
Also, let us know how you feel about this new device in comparison to the Redmi Note 3, Meizu Metal and LeTV 1S that were launched recently.
It would seem that a lot of China based phone companies are looking to get on to the Marshmallow band waggon at the moment, Oukitel not wanting to be left behind have been working on the Oukitel K4000 Pro with Android Marshmallow.
From the information received today it would appear that this is not the K4000 Pro’s official Rom, but is however the work of some of their technical guys.
It would appear that their curiosity got the better of them and they decided to see if they could endow the Oukitel K4000 Pro with Android Marshmallow via a port of the highly regarded CyanogenMod 13 ROM.
I would love to see it in action and get a list of whats working and more importantly whats not working, but for now will have to make do with the knowledge that Oukitel are at least trying.
Not much more is known about the K4000 Pro, we do know that like its non Pro little brother it will come with a 5000mAh battery, and that the battery works with Flash Charge Technology (5v/1.5a) to give fast charge times.
The K4000 Pro will also feature a 2.5D curved Arc design screen that is 1.1mm thick (as opposed to 0.7mm which is standard for most phones), this should help to make the screen a lot more resistant to drop based cracking.
Whilst not shown in the picture, It has also been confirmed that the rear cover will feature a crocodile skin textured plastic design.
The K4000 Pro comes with support for the following networks
4G LTE FDD Five-Band: 800/ 900/ 1800/ 2100/ 2600
I will keep you informed as and when we get more news and information on the K4000 Pro
For now please feel free to leave any questions or comments below.
Regards Shanos
Original article posted on Gadgetz.tv
A few months back, Xiaomi and Microsoft entered into a partnership which allowed the company’s Windows 10 OS to be installed on Xiaomi’s Mi4 flagship. We have already seen a couple of Mi4 devices running on an early version of the OS, but today, Microsoft released an official Windows 10 Mobile ROM version for all Xiaomi Mi4 users. This means that you can experience the power of Windows right on your Xiaomi smartphone. The ROM will be publicly made available for all Mi4 users to try out.
Along with the new ROM, Xiaomi also announced today that it will make the Windows 10 ROM available for its Xiaomi Mi Note series. So, in the coming weeks, there will be at least three different models running on Microsoft’s Windows 10 OS — the Mi4, Mi Note and the Mi Pad 2.
While we have not yet tried out the newly released version, here are some pictures of the Xiaomi Mi4 running on the Windows 10 Mobile operating system directly from Xiaomi. So far everything looks good, but we will have to wait for some more feedback to see whether there are any major flaws or bugs in the OS.
Check out the pictures from down below. Meanwhile let us know whether the idea of Windows 10 Mobile on your Xiaomi Mi4 sounds interesting to you.
LeTV has quickly established its presence in the market with its Le series of smartphones. The devices in the range feature amazing specs inside a beautiful metal body which has made them popular in the home country of China. It’s been more than six months since the launch of the series and naturally, details about its next generation version have already started to come out.
Earlier today, we came across an AnTuTu listing of an upcoming LeTV model, the LeTV Max Pro X910. According to the benchmark listing, the device will come with the latest Snapdragon 820 quad-core chipset, which is the same chip that’s expected to power the Xiaomi Mi 5 flagship.
LeTV Max is the company’s top-end lineup and hence, we can expect very high-end specs on the device. The listing reveals that the LeTV Max Pro comes with a 5.5-inch display with 2K resolution. There will be a 21MP rear camera along with a 4MP (mostly Ultra-pixel) front-facing one. As for memory, the phone comes with 4GB of RAM on board along with 64GB of internal storage. It will be running on the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS.
As you can see, the specs are pretty high-end. Unfortunately, other than this leaked benchmark listing, we have no idea about how the phone looks or when it is going to be launched. However, since the phone is already on AnTuTu it could mean that the launch is nearby. Stay tuned for more details on the LeTV Max Pro in the coming days.
The guys and girls over on the Elephone forums have been busy bunnies and today we have news of Updates & Custom Roms for Elephone Trunk & P8000
The first Rom and the Rom that will certainly be getting a lot of attention from custom Rom installers like myself is the Elephone Trunk port of Cyanogenmod 13 the build date for the Rom is 2015-11-24 just over a week ago. the Rom is based on Android 6.0 making the Trunk one of the first phones from China to run the latest Marshmallow OS.
It will be interesting trying out this version of the OS and getting to see how well the Trunk runs Cyanogenmod 13 seeing what works and what bugs there are to iron out.
As the Trunk is running a Qualcomm CPU and has identical hardware to the ARK Benefit A3 that it is getting a fair amount of attention from Russian devs, we should start to see a lot more Roms soon.
The second Rom is an update to the previous version of the Meizu Flyme rom, this new Rom version is 4.5.4 the build date is 2015-12-01 and the Rom is based on Android 5.1
Changelog:
System
Fixed the occasional rebooting bug;
Phone
Fixed the occasional bug of the Phone app being shut down abnormally;
Fixed the program crash when tap ‘Add to marked’ in detail page of call log;
Messages
Fixed the occasional failure in syncing Messages;
Fixed the problem in which the message reply icon is useless when receiving an incoming call;
Wi-Fi
Fixed the slow response problem occurred in the system after disable WPS;
Email
Fixed the problem of unable to login to vanke email account;
Third-party apps
Fixed the crash bug when input and long press text in Jota+ app;
Fixed the bug of the phone being unable to upload videos to Instagram.
They have not mentioned the fingerprint scanner, this was not working in the previous version and I would assume that it is still not working in this one.
If you fancy trying out Updates & Custom Roms for Elephone Trunk & P8000, the Elephone P8000 can be purchased here for $169.99 (£111) whilst he Elephone Trunk can currently be purchased for $109.99 (£73)
Do you own one of these phones? have you tried flashing the custom roms on your handset? how has your experience been so far? let me know what you think in the comments section below.
Regards Shanos
Original article posted on Gadgetz.tv
Just when we are busy talking about the Snapdragon 820 which was officially unveiled early November, rumors and specs of its next generation version have already started making rounds on the internet. According to Pan Jiutang, an analyst from China, Snapdragon 830 could support up to 8GB of RAM memory.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The current generation Snapdragon 820 supports up to 6GB of RAM. While we are yet to see a smartphone with such memory from a notable brand, there are rumors that at least of a couple of smartphones with 6GB RAM may hit the markets next year. For example, a few weeks back, we heard that the next generation version of LeTV Max 2 model could come with Snapdragon 820 and 6GB RAM. However, the company is yet to confirm these specs.
So, support for 8GB RAM won’t be surprising on a chip that’s going to debut in 2017. We are already seeing apps and games that require such amount of memory and in a couple of years, the demand for more power could lead to 8GB RAM powered smartphones. Moreover, it is rumored that Snapdragon 830 will be manufactured using the 10nm node. Again it’s possible since the current generation Snapdragon 820 uses the efficient 14nm process.
These specs would make the chip ideal for flagships. It is said that Samsung’s Galaxy S8 could be one of the first phones powered by 830. But we will have to wait and watch if it turns out to be true since Xiaomi’s Mi 5 could be one of the first phones to debut Snapdragon 820 next year. So, it could follow suit in 2017 as well.
However, it’s too early to confirm anything, so let’s wait for some more concrete details before getting too excited.
In this competitive world, R&D forms the backbone of any tech company. In order to stay ahead of the competition, companies have to incorporate cutting edge technology in their products in order to differentiate them from the masses.
We know that major tech companies spend billions of dollars every year on R&D and today, we have some idea about what each of the top tech companies spends in this department.
According to a recent report from Bloomberg Businessweek, Apple spends just about 3.5% of its revenue on R&D which is a pretty small figure as compared to other tech companies. For example, Google spends about 15% of its revenue in this department, while Facebook and Qualcomm spend around 22% and 21% respectively.
When it comes to Chinese tech giant, Huawei, it’s around the same figure as Google. The company reportedly spends around 14.2% of its revenue in R&D.
However, this is the percentage of revenue spent. When it comes to the total amount spent, Apple, even with its meagre 3.5% manages to spend about $8.15 billion in R&D, greater than Huawei, Facebook or Qualcomm.
In terms of total amount of money spent, Huawei spends around $6.5 billion in this department. This is greater than both Facebook and Qualcomm’s figures of $2.6 and $5.56 billion respectively. In comparison, Google spends about $9.9 billion.
Huawei’s CEO Yu Chengdong had said that the company’s smartphones will surpass Samsung next year and if that has to happen, the company will need to spend a lot of R&D this year. So, this figure could increase significantly in 2015.
So, do you think Huawei can surpass Samsung in the next couple of years?
Elephone have today published the Elephone Ivory product page, you can now find full details and specifications online.
Coming in at just $99.99 (£66), the Elephone Ivory could turn out to be a real bargain, featuring an Octa-core Mediatek MT6753 CPU clocked at 1.3GHz and an ARM Mali-T720 GPU, the phone should be easily able to push pixels around the Ivory’s 5″ 720p screen.
Elephone have given the Ivory 2GB of Ram and 16GB of ROM, for those of you that want more storage the Elephone Ivory also has support for up to 128GB Micro SD cards.
Elephone have chosen to go with a 13MP rear facing camera (hopefully this will not be an interpolated 8mp sensor) and a 2mp front facing selfie camera.
What could be one of the phones most impressive features upon release, is not a hardware based feature at all.
The Elephone Ivory will be one of the first China phones to come with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box, it will be interesting to see how Elephone get on with optimising the new OS for the phone.
Network support has been confirmed
Be sure to check out the Elephone Ivory product page and leave comments and questions below, pre order should be available some time around the middle of this month, hopefully making it available to give as a Christmas gift to your family or friends.
Regards Shanos
Original article posted on Gadgetz.tv
Recently, ZTE Nubia Manager, Ni Fei had confirmed to the South China Morning Post that its upcoming ZTE Nubia Z11 flagship will launch simultaneously in China and US. The company has shown interest in the US market and has been doing well thanks to its recently launched ZTE Axon Pro flagship.
While officially, this is all that Ni Fei revealed, other sources have given out a few more details about the Nubia Z11. First of all, the phone will be powered by the latest Snapdragon 820 quad-core chip. Secondly, it is said to be released by Q1 2016, which is around the same time as Xiaomi is expected to release the new Xiaomi Mi 5 flagship. However, since Ni Fei revealed that the phone will be simultaneously launched in US as well, the Z11 could have an advantage.
The company has sold about 5 million Nubia Z9 units till now. But that’s just in China. If the company manages to put in high-end specs at a great price, somewhat similar to the Axon, ZTE could have a winner here.
Other specs of the phone are also expected to be pretty high-end. The ZTE Nubia Z11 will reportedly come with 4GB of RAM, 128GB internal storage, 5.2-inch bezelless display with 2K resolution, 20.7MP rear camera, 13MP front shooter, and a fingerprint sensor on board. Pricing is one area where the Nubia series never had an edge, but let’s hope that changes with the Z11.
You can check out our previous coverage on the bezelless design of the Nubia Z11 for more details.
