Elephone has been producing quite a few phones lately but with the M1 model, they deciced to put an emphasis on the design, but is it a good phone? Stay tuned for our full review.
16GB (expandable via microSD card slot up to 64GB)
Elephone M1 Review: UNBOXING
The phone comes with a charging brick, USB cable, screen protector and some documentation.
Elephone M1 Review: DESIGN
Let’s take a look at the design first and what we have here is an all-metal phone except for the top and bottom parts for a better signal reception. Also, it is not the smallest device out there due to its 5.5” display.
On the front we have the 2MP selfie snapper, earpiece, front firing LED and a sensor light. On the bottom there are 3 non-backlit capacitive keys.
On the metal back there is a 13MP shooter with a dual LED flash and underneath it there is a fingerprint sensor.
On the right Elephone implemented a volume rocker and the power key and on the left there is a dual micro SIM and microSD card tray.
On the top there is a headset jack and on the bottom you have a charging port, speaker grill and a mic.
Overall, Elephone M1 is well built and metal materials add quite a lot of premium look and feel.
Elephone M1 Review: DISPLAY
When it comes to display, we are looking at a 5.5” 720p panel, which looks sharp, bright and vivid, and it is a good panel overall for a budget phone.
Elephone M1 Review: UI
Elephone M1 comes with the Android 5.1 out of the box and you can choose from either default Elephone’s launcher, which has customized icons and a few other features or a stock looking UI.
If you go with the Elephone’s launcher, you are still getting a pretty much stock build but there is no app tray, so the apps have to be organised in folders.
There is not too much functionality added in the ROM but Elephone has its own online theme store and some other customisation options.
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One of the key features of the Elephone M1 is a fingerprint scanner and I have to say it works pretty fast and it is accurate. My only complaint is that it does not work straight from the standby mode.
Other complaints would be that the UI doesn’t show the juice left in the battery in percents. Also, if you select adaptive brightness feature, the display becomes simply too dim, so I had to use manual brightness.
Overall, the UI has a few bugs but it is snappy and I didn’t have a single hiccup during my testing period, which is pretty good.
Elephone M1 Review: BENCHMARKS
Elephone M1 Review: HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE
The phone has a pretty standard hardware package for a budget China phone. It has an MTK6735 chip with the clock speeds of 1.3GHz, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage.
This hardware allows the Elephone M1 handle the 3D games quite well. As usual, you may get some skipped frames but I didn’t get much stutter that would make gaming experience annoying.
Elephone M1 Review: MULTIMEDIA
When it comes to the multimedia consumption, the loudspeaker is okay but not very impressive. Well, this is what you usually get in this price range anyway.
Elephone M1 Review: CAMERA
The 13MP camera is a hit or miss. Sometimes it is capable of producing some nice looking images with a decent amount of details but other times it struggles with focusing big time.
When it comes to the low-light shots, they are okay as we can’t expect more from a budget phone. The shutter speed is very slow as it seems that the camera software keeps it open for an extensive period of time to capture more light. However, it is annoying. Also, some of the low-light images have a significant red tint.
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When it comes to selfies, I was surprised that there was no wide-angle lens. Also, the resolution is low, image quality is poor and the embedded front firing LED is practically useless.
Video quality does not impress either as it is shaky and lacks details.
I didn’t have any connectivity issues with the wifi, Bluetooth or GPS. Also, the call quality as well as signal reception are decent.
Elephone M1 Review: BATTERY LIFE
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Elephone M1 comes with 2780mAh sealed-in battery unit, which performs okay but there is nothing to be impressed about. I could get around 4 hours of screen-on time when I used my phone with 1 SIM card for social media, emails, a bit of gaming and camera. Anyway, it will definitely get you through the day unless you are a hardcore user.
Elephone M1 Review: CONCLUSIONS
So here it is, a great looking all-metal Elephone M1. For less than $160 you are getting a phone with a great build quality, decent display and fast and fluid UI performance, which has just a few minor bugs.
On the other hand, the camera can be a good performer for a budget phone but it is not reliable as some of the shots are a hit or miss. Also, the selfie shooter is a disappointment.
Other than that, the Elephone M1 is a good phone for the price but you may also want to check out what the competition has to offer in this price category. If you are interested, I will leave a product link below the video for you.
Bluboo has revealed more details about the Bluboo Xtouch’s body. We already knew that the phone will come with a 3D arc back design with a polygonal mirror texture, which is highlighted in the picture down below.
Now, the company reveals that the frame on the XTouch measures just 3.75mm at the thickest end and 2.23mm at the thinnest end. This is one of the reasons why the overall thickness of the phone is so thin. Moreover, the phone will feature a CNC metal frame just like the Xiaomi Note with CNC polishing for a smooth round finish.
In addition to revealing details about the phone’s body, Bluboo also revealed a new teaser for a new smartwatch. This is either the Bluboo Xwatch that we saw a few days back or its an entirely new round smartwatch from the company. Anyways, we will soon know what it is. So, stay tuned for more details.
Here’s a couple more pictures of the Xtouch’s metal frame.
After months of rumors and speculations, Huawei has officially announced the Kirin 950 chipset in China. The company had a special event for the unveiling in the capital city, Beijing earlier today.
The Kirin 950 chipset will come with four Cortex A72 cores clocked at 2.53GHz and four Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. The A72 cores will make sure that the phone delivers super fast performance while the A53 cores will maintain efficiency of the chip. Unsurprisingly, the chip will be using the big.LITTLE architecture and will be built on the 16nm FinFET process from TSMC. There will be the Mali-T880MP4 GPU on board which Huawei claims is 100% better than Kirin 930’s GPU. Also, the chip will support Cat. 6 LTE networks ensuring download speeds of up to 300MBps.
Another interesting thing about the new Kirin 950 chip is the i5 co-processor on board. This is an always on processor which can work together with Cortex A72 and A53 cores for the best performance. The best part of the i5 co-processor is that its super efficient, using just 6.5mA, that’s 90% drop from the 90mA as compared to its previous generation i3 processor. This controls the various sensors on board the chip even when the phone is in sleep, which means you can expect tremendous improvement in the battery life, especially in the standby mode.
Also, like the previous Kirin 930 and 920 chipset, the new Kirin 950 comes with VoLTE which should enable better voice calls. Overall, it looks like the Kirin 950 a worthy upgrade to the existing Kirin 930.
In case, you are wondering about the benchmarks, the chip powering a device was kept in the presentation, and the phone scored about 83,000 on the AnTuTu benchmark. That’s better than existing chips like Exynos 7420.
OnePlus 2 is the second generation version of the popular OnePlus One handset and it had some big shoes to fill. The company tried its best with the new handset, and despite a few drawbacks, the phone is still a value for money proposition. As an upgrade, the OnePlus 2 came with a fingerprint sensor embedded into its home button.
But it looks like the fingerprint sensor may be plagued with some issues. Now, according to recent comments from users, the fingerprint sensor on the OnePlus 2 not working properly on many smartphones. In fact, it is found that the after a while, the sensor just stops working. And its not just the sensor, the home button becomes unresponsive. It simply doesn’t respond to touch. However, the other two capacitive keys on the side work well, which tells us that this is a specific issue with the fingerprint sensor mounted on the button.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6ro4YtWwrw
Many users have reported this issue in forums worldwide, and the exact cause of an unresponsive Home button / dead Home button seems to differ from person to person. For some, the sensor seems to stop working after flashing the device. Its not uncommon for users to try out a new build or tweak their phones, and it should be fine on most devices. But it looks like you’ll be better off keeping the same old Oxygen OS on the OnePlus 2 if you don’t want to take the risk of an unresponsive fingerprint sensor.
Another major reason, which many reported to be the cause of the unresponsive home button is water. Some users have said that if you used the sensor with a wet finger, the sensor just stops working. For other users, things were just unfortunate as the button just stopped working after a while.
On a personal note, we have also faced issues with its fingerprint sensor, but its just occasionally. And the sensor is still working fine for us.
After many reports, OnePlus did try to fix the problem, but it seems that their steps have garnered limited success, at least for now.
First option is to reset your device. If it didn’t work, you should try clearing your cache service com.oneplus.fingerprint.service before resetting. Another option is to restore your device to the same OxygenOS version that it shipped with. This seems to solve the problem for most users. However, if your sensor stopped working after using it with a wet finger, you may have go a level further. It is said that some users have tried disassembling the device and removed the battery to make sure that the sensor is completely dry. But this isn’t something that everyone can try out so, if you are facing this issue, its best to contact the service center, or seller if you are within the return period.
This could be a software glitch, which we hope it is. Because, a simple future update can solve such a problem. For example, the company had updated the software to OxygenOS 2.0.2 back in September and the sensor worked much faster. However, if its a hardware glitch, then things will get much harder to fix. Anyways, lets see how OnePlus tackles this fingerprint issue. We will keep you updated with more information soon. Meanwhile, you can read more about the problem and possible workarounds from OnePlus Forums.
Let us know if you have faced issues with your OnePlus 2’s fingerprint scanner.
Everbuying started a week of brand sales from November 4 for Ulefone where the phone maker’s latest devices will be marked with lowest price ever.
Ulefone Paris is now sold for USD129.99, which equals to pre-sales price. Though Everbuying says it’s a flash sale, there seems not limit on either supplies or time. The price for Ulefone Be Pro 2 is USD112.99, compared with Ulefone’s conductive price of USD119.99. Ulefone Be Touch 2 again is lowered to the former snap-up price of USD179.99 while the company’s smart watch uWear sells for USD22.99, even lower than the presales price. So if you like Ulefone products, it is no doubt the best time for purchase.
In China, biggest online shopping platforms like Taobao and JD.com has remolded November 11, local Singles’ Day, into a shipping carnival and this year the festival has extended to all the first 11 days of the month. That’s why Ulefone, which conducted quite strict price control previously, almost lets retailers go as they will now in case that new users will be grabbed by its competitors in a fierce price war.
If there is one thing that Elephone can’t be accused of, its sitting back and not thinking of what to bring out next, today we have recieved news of another phone nearing release. The Elephone Ivory will be ready by the end of November.
The specs for the Elephone Ivory are not bad at all considering the low price of just $99 the phone will be powered by the popular 8 core Mediatek MT6753 that is more often found in phones in the $150+ price range.
The display is a 5″ 720p HD unit with on-cell display and 2.5D glass
Given the specs and the low price this could be a great option for people wanting a fairly decent spec spare phone or even a phone for their children.
If Elephone can get the software right and include a bright and vivid screen, as well as a half decent camera, the Elephone Ivory could be a real winner and help to rebuild Elephones reputation.
Having got hands on with the Elephone trunk (review to follow shortly)recently, it is definatly possible for Elephone to make a phone with a decent screen at a decent price, lets hope that they get the software and the camera working well.
The fact that Elephone are aiming this phone at the budget end of the market, with a price tag of just $99 (£65) could make this a real bargain stocking filler.
Will this be a phone find its way in to a christmas stocking for you this year?
As always please leave comments and questions below
Yesterdays saw the release of the 4K teaser image from Elephone, we now have 2 new images that confirm what Elephone have been working on, its the Elephone 4k action cam.
The Elephone 4k action cam allows recording of video in the following formats and frames per second, 720 HD video at 120 frames per second,1080p full HD at 60 frames per second and 4K at 15 frames per second.
A 170 degree wide angled lens is mounted up front to capture the video, this wide an angle will get pretty much everything in your field of view (so be carefull what shoes your wearing).
Most sites are stating that the Elephone 4k action cam comes with a 16 mega pixel OV4689 sensor, however the OV4689 is actually a 4 mega pixel sensor rather than the widely stated 16 mega pixel.
This is the sensor used in other action cams such as the Soodoo F60, it does achieve 4K at 15 frames per second on the Soodoo F60, but it would appear that the resolution is probably achieved via interpolation up to 4k rather than being a native sensor resolution.
The Elephone 4k action cam features an Allwinner V3 chipset ARM Cortex A7 processor @ 1.2GHz, this is a chipset that is finding its way in to a fair number of China based action cams.
The Elephone 4k action cam has built in WIFI support and can be connecter too and operated via an Android or IOS devices, as yet control software has not been shown.
A micro SD card is supported, most China based action cams support up to 64gb, support for 128gb would be a nice addition if it can be pulled off by the Elephone 4k action cam.
I hope that Elephone will spend time optimising their hardware to try and get quality on par with the market leaders such as Gopro, but until we get some hands on time with a review unit we will have to wait and see.
As usual any questions or comments can be left below.
Xiaomi is a Chinese company that needs no further introduction as they produce a lot of tech stuff and some of it may be unknown for you if you don’t live in China. This time around, the company has launched a successor the their successful line of products – earphones. Let’s take a look.
As usual, Xiaomi inform the consumers about the time and effort that was put designing and manufacturing the earphones. It is said that it takes 20 steps to manufacture them but more importantly, it goes through more than 700 quality tests.
Also, the new Xiaomi earphones use a “double sound” unit. Whatever that means.
Finally, the new Xiaomi earphones will be priced at just 99 Yuan in China and it will go on sale on November 11th.
We can’t wait to get our hands-on with the new Xiaomi earphones since previous generation models were probably the best in its price range. We suggest you checking out the Xiaomi Pistons 3 review in the video below:
Meizu is usually known for its mobile phones but apparently they want to expand their products portfolio.
Meizu has officially announced that it will launch their “Annual Flagship” headphones on November 9th.
There are no rumours or leaks regarding this headset but it since it is supposed to be an “annual flagship”, we may see the high-end headphones with lots of hi-fi features and other sound enhancements.
Stay tuned to Gizmochina as we will give a preview of the Meizu headphones as soon as they are released.
Leagoo may not be the first manufacturer you think of when it comes smartphones. The Elite 1 is a very stylish yet affordable device but is it any good?
14.38 x 6.95 x 0.75 cm / 5.65 x 2.73 x 0.29 inches / 136g
OS
Android 5.1
Storage
32GB (expandable via microSD card slot up to 64GB)
Leagoo Elite 1 Review: UNBOXING
To be honest this is the first time I am reviewing the Leagoo phone and it made a great first impression by a nice looking box and a great overall presentation.
Everything’s packed neatly and the contents include the USB brick and a charging cable, OTG cable, a pair of headphones, SIM ejector pin, instruction manuals and a screen protector. That’s quite a bundle, I would say.
Leagoo Elite 1 Review: DESIGN
When it comes to the design, we are looking at a very sleek and premium feeling device, which is very well made and it uses metal and glass sandwich construction. Also, it is quite a compact phone due since it carries only 5” display.
The front is covered with the Gorilla Glass 3 and on the top we have an LED, which can light up in 3 different colours, earpiece, a generous 13MP selfie camera and front firing LED flash.
Leagoo implemented a physical home button, which also doubles as a fingerprint scanner and it is said to be covered with the saphire glass. We also have two backlit capacitive keys next to it.
The back is also covered by the Gorilla Glass 3 but it is a fingerprint magnet as all glass surfaces.
As far as optics, we have a 16MP shooter with dual LED flash.
The Leagoo Elite 1 has a quality metal frame and on the right we have a bunch of controls, which include a volume rocker, power key and guess what, there is a camera shutter button but it only has one stage.
On the left there is a dual SIM or a combo of one SIM and the microSD card slot.
On the top there is a headset jack and on the bottom you can find a mic, a speaker grill and the USB port.
Overall, I have to say that this is a one premium looking phone with very good build quality that can rival much more expensive phones as Leagoo Elite 1 costs just below $200.
Leagoo Elite 1 Review: DISPLAY
When it comes to the display, we have a 5” 1080p IPS panel, which is nice and sharp to look at but I found colours to be on a colder side for my taste.
Leagoo Elite 1 Review: UI
When it comes to the UI, we have a highly customised version of Android 5.1.
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First of all, we don’t have an app tray but we have a bunch colourful icons and if you don’t like them, you can change the whole theme by simply pinching in on the display. Speaking of themes, you can download more of them on the dedicated online store.
Also, we have lots of animated widgets like the music player or gallery.
Whether you like gesture or motions controls or not, Leagoo included a bunch of them, which are divided into different settings menus for some reason. Usually, I only use double tap to wake feature but I tried a few others and they work pretty good.
When it comes to the fingerprint security, the setup is pretty straightforward but I can’t say that the fingerprint scanner is the fastest one. Yes, it is pretty accurate (although not the most accurate) but it just takes time to recognise your fingerprint. Another con is that it does not work straight from the standby mode.
Overall, the UI is fast on the daily use but you may see some choppiness in animations there and there if you are scrolling through menus very fast. However, it is far from a deal breaker.
Leagoo Elite 1 Review: BENCHMARKS
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Leagoo Elite 1 Review: HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE
The Leagoo Elite 1 uses an octa-core MTK6753 chip with the clock speeds of 1.3GHz, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable storage. Well, we’ve seen these kind of specs on a bunch of China phones lately but it all comes to the right implementation.
Luckily, the phone manages to handle 3D games very well. Honestly, there were just a few minor skipped frames but there is nothing worth complaining and you may get almost stutter free performance.
Leagoo Elite 1 Review: MULTIMEDIA
When it comes to the multimedia consumption, the loudspeaker is ok but there is nothing to be impressed about. It lacks depth and the sound is a bit tinny but ohh well, this is what you usually get for this price.
The sound via earphones is also okay but it is not stellar.
Despite lots of customisations in the UI, Leagoo decided to go with the stock Mediatek camera app we’ve seen on a lot of phones and I guess it’s ok.
Leagoo Elite 1 Review: IMAGE QUALITY
When it comes to the actual quality of the images, the 16MP camera is capable of producing some sharp looking photos with a good amount of details, natural colour reproduction and great contrast.
However, the sensor is having a hard time dealing with direct sunlight rays and some of the pictures have softer focus on the corners.
As usual, the quality declines when the sensor does not get as much light but the Elite 1 is not that bad performer. Well, it is not great either as the images have quite a lot of noise, not that much details and the camera does not always illuminate the scene to make it more visible. Still, this phone is a bit better than lots of phones I’ve tested in this price range.
When it comes to selfies, the camera is inconsistent. Sometimes, you can get a decent looking photo but the problem is that sometimes camera struggles focusing right, which leads to blurry images.
The 1080P video is above average I would say. Still, the footage could have more details and look a bit sharper overall. See video review for a video sample.
Leagoo Elite 1 Review: CONNECTIVITY
When it comes to connectivity (call quality, signal reception, GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth) everything’s working fine and there are no issues here.
Leagoo Elite 1 Review: BATTERY LIFE
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The 2400mAh battery does not sound impressive neither on paper nor in reality. I could get maximum of 3 hours of screen-on time with the auto-brightness and one SIM card.
Leagoo Elite 1 Review: CONCLUSIONS
Leagoo Elite 1 is a one pleasant surprise, to be honest with you. The company is pretty serious about the presentation and it can be seen from the packaging to the design and the materials used in this phone.
It is a premium looking device that is compact and the Elite 1 has a feature-rich UI, which is running smoothly most of the times, a well-optimized processing package, which leads to a good gaming performance. Also, the phone has a pretty good but not perfect camera.
However, the Leagoo Elite 1 has a slow yet accurate fingerprint scanner and the battery life does not impress.
Other than that, the phone is a good offering considering the price if you don’t mind a few shortcomings… and if you choose the Elite 1, no one will think this is a sub-$200 phone.
Given that its been quite a while since Vivo released a new flagship, we expect a new smartphone launch from the company pretty soon. Now, a couple of days after the first teaser for a new product from the company was released on Weibo, alleged images of the Vivo XPlay 5S flagship have been leaked.
The photos are quite clear and compares the upcoming flagship with the thin Vivo X5 Pro. And guess what, its even thinner than the latter. Yes, looks like Vivo is all set to take thinness to a whole new level with its Vivo XPlay 5S flagship as these pictures show that the phone will be just 4mm thin. If this turns out to be true, then it would really be a great achievement. What makes things even more interesting is that the phone is said to feature the standard 3.5mm headphone jack.
Rest of the design of the Vivo XPlay 5S is borrowed from its predecessors. So, you get a double glass design with a metal frame around the body. The rear camera module does not seem to be protruding out even with the 4mm thin design profile.
Another interesting feature revealed by the leak is the presence of the 1GB of dedicated graphics memory on the device. Although its just a leak at the moment, if it turns out to be true, Vivo XPlay 5S will be one of the first smartphones with dedicated 1GB of graphics RAM. The company’s teaser said that the device was going to be FAST, so was it hinting about the phone’s dedicated graphics RAM?
You can check out all the leaked images from down below.
Remember, these pictures have not yet been confirmed by the company. So at the moment, this is just a leak and the actual smartphone may look a bit different than the one shown in the pictures. We will have to wait for the official press conference to confirm this.
Just a couple of hours back we heard that Xiaomi Mi TV 3 was sold out in just 5 seconds. If you thought you were impressed with that figure, then take a look at LeTV. The company has just revealed that it sold over 550,000 LeTV 1S models within an hour!
The company had made 300,000 units available for purchase today. However, in under an hour, all the units were sold out. Further, the company continued to accept pre-orders for the device, which took the total to a staggering 550,000 sales within an hour.
This particular company who just entered the smartphone industry has become one of the fastest smartphone companies in the world. With its premium smartphones priced aggressively, LeTV smartphones are known for their value for money quotient. The recently announced LeTV 1S is the best example of this.
After announcing the device back on October 27, the phone was finally available for purchase to customers today at 10 AM on JD.com. Given its great specs for just 1099 Yuan, its no surprise the company managed to sell so many units in just an hour.
The LeTV 1S features MT6795T octa-core chip clocked at 2.2GHz with 3GB RAM and 32GB of storage and 5.5-inch FHD 1080p display. At the back, there is a 13MP camera while up front, you will find a 5MP shooter. The 3000mAh battery with USB Type-C supporting fast charge up to 24W makes sure that the phone is capable of lasting for more than a day. Further, there’s fingerprint recognition along with the metal body making the overal package quite attractive for its 1099 Yuan ~ $173 USD price tag.
Xiaomi’s new 60-inch Mi TV 3 was up for sale along with its Mi TV Host and Mi TV 55-inch version earlier today. And guess what, the all the three products were sold out within a few seconds on the website today.
The Mi TV 3 60-inch model was sold out in just 5 seconds, while the Mi TV Host and the the other Mi TV 3 model were sold out in 7 seconds and 11 seconds respectively. This clearly shows that Xiaomi’s new model is popular among customers.
There’s no surprise that Xiaomi’s latest product, the Mi TV 3 is selling so well. It comes with a true 4K display from LG in a super slim 11.6mm aluminum body. Inside, you get MStar 6A928 4K TV processor with 8GB of storage and there are four speakers on the side with 2.5-inch drivers. All this for just 4999 Yuan which comes to around just $786, making it a steal for customers.
After today, the Mi TV 3 will be available for purchase on the big sale today, 11/11. But we are almost sure that even on that day, the product won’t last for long on the website.
Do you have one or two Bluetooth speakers but both of them are neither powerful enough nor rugged, nor outdoor ready, nor splash-proof? The Divoom Voombox Party may be the speaker that does it all, on a budget of under $100.
Divoom Voombox Party Rugged Bluetooth Speaker Review: VIDEO
Divoom Voombox Party Rugged Bluetooth Speaker Review: UNBOXING
As usual, let’s take take a look at the packaging, which does look fancy and inside of it you will find a micro USB cable, AUX cable for non-Bluetooth devices and some documentation.
Divoom Voombox Party Rugged Bluetooth Speaker Review: DESIGN
When it comes to the design, this is not a small Bluetooth speaker as it is about the size of a brick (233L x 54W x 103H mm) and it weighs 3.5 pounds or 1.6kg.
It is very well made and it uses quality metal and rubber materials.
Both sides of the Voombox Party have speakers inside as it uses a combo of whopping 5 sound drivers, which are capable of delivering 20W of sound output.
On the top we have a bunch of very clicky and tactile control buttons, which include volume up/down and call button as the speaker has a mic for hands-free calling. Lastly, there are Bluetooth and power buttons.
On the right there is a flap and underneath it you can find a micro USB port for charging and AUX input for non-Bluetooth devices.
The Voombox speaker also has NFC for easy pairing, which is always a nice feature to have.
Overall, the Divoom Voombox Party is built like I tank and it’s built to last. Also, the IP44 rating gives you solids and liquids protection for the outdoor use. That’s pretty cool.
Divoom Voombox Party Rugged Bluetooth Speaker Review: SOUND QUALITY
20W of sound output that it coming out 5 custom made speakers are freaking loud and the sound is deep and very rich. Also, the built-in subwoofer with dual passive radiators provide a lot of bass that if you boost the bass setting on the equaliser of your player, the speaker will soon start moving.
Divoom Voombox Party Rugged Bluetooth Speaker Review: CONCLUSIONS
So here it is, the Divoom Voombox Party. It is a very powerful Bluetooth speaker that has been made with the outdoor use in mind due to its IP44 rating, which delivers ruggerised and splash-proof properties.
It is well worth $100 considering a high quality construction, 20W of sound output and NFC feature. Regarding connectivity, I found Bluetooth 4.0 working well as I had no range issues.
On the other hand, the playback time when listening to music at around 70% of volume was about 6.5-7 hours, which is not that impressive.
Other con is that the embedded mic does not assure the best call quality. You can make understandable conversations but people on the other end will notice that you are using hands-free immediately.
All in all, despite a few shortcomings, this is a true powerhouse for just under $100 and the VoomBox Party is definitely one of the best rugged and powerful Bluetooth speakers in this price range.
Just earlier today, Huawei confirmed the launch of the Mate 8 flagship on November 26. The phone is supposed to come with pretty high-end specs, and in particular, we are all excited to see the performance of the Kirin 950 chipset that will power the flagship.
Just a few hours after the confirmation of the launch, we have got a glimpse of how the Huawei Mate 8 might look like. Like the predecessor i.e. the Mate 7, the upcoming Mate 8 is also expected to feature an all metal build. The Mate 7 was praised for its premium looks and from this image, we feel that the new flagship could also turn out to be quite the looker. Another thing highlighted by the image is the round fingerprint sensor at the back. The Mate 7 had a square one. The sensor is located just below the rear camera.
Elephone have just sent over the Elephone 4k teaser image above and are asking what we think their push in to the 4K era could hold? will it be an ultra HD TV, a really high resolution Smartphone?, perhaps a Virtual Reality Headset or maybe even something else?
To me I would say your money would be safely bet on an Ultra HD tv, or possibly a 4K TV streaming box, for now we will just have to wait and see what Elephone have in store for us next.
What are your thoughts on the subject? please leave your comments below.
16GB (expandable via microSD card slot up to 64GB)
Umi eMax mini Review: UNBOXING
UMI eMax mini comes in a typical for UMI box and the contents include a OnePlus style USB cable, power plug and instruction manuals.
Umi eMax mini Review: DESIGN
When it comes to the design of the phone, Umi eMax mini is a very compact phone due to it’s 5” display. Also, the phone is very lightweight and it sports all plastic build.
On the front we have an 8MP camera, a sensor light, earpiece and notification LED.
On the bottom we can find three capacitive keys and back and multitasking buttons have a nice backlight.
The backplate is made of textured plastic, it feels nice to the touch and helps with the grip.
As far as optics, we have a 13MP snapper with a single LED flash.
On the right we have a volume rocker and a power key.
On the top there is a headset jack and on the bottom we have a mic, USB port and the speaker grill.
The backplate is removable, where you can find an embedded generous 3050mAh battery, 2 SIM card slots and the microSD card slot.
Overall, the phone looks and feels very well made and high quality despite using mainly plastic in its build. I have to say I kind of like it.
Umi eMax mini Review: DISPLAY
The 5” display on the Umi eMax mini is of a 1080p variety and it is sharp, bright and a great panel to look at overall. The only shortcoming would be that it doesn’t have the best sunlight visibility but it’s still visible outdoors.
Umi eMax mini Review: UI
The phone runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop, which is not the newest version but I don’t think it’s a big issue. The UI is clean and you are getting a pretty much stock Android experience except for the fact that Umi redesigned some icons.
I am actually happy that Umi didn’t add any of those useless gesture controls and left only one we mostly use – double tap to wake. It is mostly working great but it happened a few times that it worked only from the second time.
As far as the overall smoothness of the UI, I can say mostly positive things. Everything’s running nice and fast even with quite a few apps running in the background.
Umi eMax mini Review: BENCHMARKS
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Umi eMax mini Review: HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE
Umi eMax mini comes with a pretty decent hardware package. It includes an octa-core Snapdragon 615 chip with the clock speeds of 1.5GHz, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage.
The 3D games performance is actually great. The graphics look good and there were just a few minor skipped frames but there is nothing worth complaining about.
Most importantly, there are no overheating issues when gaming.
Umi eMax mini Review: MULTIMEDIA
When it comes to the multimedia consumption, the HD content looks great on a nice and sharp display and even the loudspeaker is loud and pretty good too despite lacking just a little bit of depth.
The sound via earphones is decent too.
Umi eMax mini Review: CAMERA
Umi eMax mini comes with a nicely designed camera app with some shootings modes and settings to play with. They even included a manual mode, which is a nice addition for a budget phone.
Both focus time and the shutter speed have improved siginificantly over the previous Umi phones I’ve tested.
Umi eMax mini Review: IMAGE QUALITY
When it comes to the actual quality of the images, I would say that it is one of the best Umi phones yet.
With plenty of light, the images tend to look great with a good amount of details and colour reproduction is mostly good. However, the dynamic range is not always correct.
In the lower lit situations, you may see the softer focus, less details and more noise.
The night shots are okay for a budget phone but we have quite a lot of grain in the images. However, I’ve seen some worse performers in this price range.
A selfie camera is pretty good too and it also has a fast shutter speed.
As far as video, the phone can capture some decent looking footage. Well, it is not the sharpest out there but definitely more than usable. See video review for a sample.
Umi eMax mini Review: CONNECTIVITY
All the connectivity options are actually working great and I had no issues with GPS, Bluetooth, wifi or call quality.
Umi eMax mini Review: BATTERY LIFE
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When it comes to the battery life, Umi eMax mini is a good performer too. I could get up to 5 hours of screen-on time with both light and heavy use, and both with the auto and max brightness.
Umi eMax mini Review: CONCLUSIONS
So there you have, the Umi eMax mini. I have to say that this is a pretty good phone overall and I was happy to use it during my testing period.
For less than $150 you are getting a simple but neat design and great build quality, a sharp and bright 5” display, almost stock looking UI, good gaming performance, decent camera and a good battery life.
One minor complaint would be that double tap to wake feature works only from the second time when you pick up the phone from the standby mode.
Other than that, I have to say that Umi really stepped up their game with this model and the eMax mini is a really good offering in this price range. I will leave a product link in the description below the video if you want to check it out.
After their initial release which saw some of the required Elephone P8000 Source Code released a few months ago, Elephone have today released the full Elephone P8000 Source Code required for devs to build their own roms, hopefully stable Marshmallow roms or properly ported existing roms such as Cyanogen CM12.1 etc to the P8000.
One thing that has let Elephone down a little in the past and not won them any favours has been the bugginess of their roms, often requiring fixes to the fixes to get things working as they should, now is the chance for these things to be put right and with hope make Elephone see how important a dev community could be to the success of their forthcoming handsets such as the Vowney and the P9000 and force their hand to release the code for these phones as well.
The Elephone P8000 Source Code can be found on github here
To those of you that like to dabble with your phones or the more hardcore rom devs out there, I say let the fun begin and lets see what you can create.
Many phone users are now demanding more battery life from their handsets, we have seen ultra slim handsets come and go but the growing trend is for increased battery life at the expense of a few extra mm of width.
Oukitel have today sent over a video of the new OUKITEL K6000, the Oukitel K6000 features 9V/2A quick charge technology to allow the 6000mAh battery to fully charge in under 2 hours.
For the video they have also set up two OUKITEL K6000’s one is charged using their new 9V/2A charger, whilst the other is charged up using a standard iPhone 5v/1A charger.
The video gives a good comparison of the differences of standard charging vs flash charging, with the new system appearing to be around 3 times quicker.
Oukitel state that the battery in the K6000 is a 6000mAh unit, this is a lot of charge for a handset, hopefully unlike some other china based phone manufacturers this will be a true reflection of the actual amount of charge the phone can hold.
It the 6000mAh capacity does prove to be true and the charge times shown in the video are correct it should make for a phone that will give a lot of usage between its ultra quick charges.
Please check out the video for the Oukitel K6000 featuring 9V/2A quick charge and as always any questions or comments can be left below.
Its been a long time since we have heard any official information about a new Vivo device. The latest we heard was a couple of leaked images which was reportedly of the upcoming Vivo XPlay 5S flagship. Now, it looks like we will soon see the device since Vivo has released a new teaser on Weibo.
Since this is the first teaser, the company did not give out much details about the new device. All it says in the title is that its a new product and its coming soon. However, there is a very good chance that this is for the Vivo XPlay 5S flagship that we have been hearing about recently. Moreover, the teaser says that it will be fast. This could be hinting at a faster processor like Snapdragon, or a faster camera. Well, we don’t know exactly what it means right now but we will get more information on November 4.
According to the leaked specs, the Vivo XPlay 5S will come with Snapdragon 820 processor, 5.5-inch 4K display. 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage. As you can see, this could turn out to be a high-end device.
Since Vivo has promised to reveal more details on November 4, its best to wait for a couple of days more to get some official information about the device.
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The phone comes with a charging brick, USB cable, screen protector and some documentation.
Let’s take a look at the design first and what we have here is an all-metal phone except for the top and bottom parts for a better signal reception. Also, it is not the smallest device out there due to its 5.5” display.
On the front we have the 2MP selfie snapper, earpiece, front firing LED and a sensor light. On the bottom there are 3 non-backlit capacitive keys.
On the metal back there is a 13MP shooter with a dual LED flash and underneath it there is a fingerprint sensor.
