Author: Chris Eilers

4G LTE is now available in many smartphones. Xiaomi is trying to update and create more and more wonderfull products. After the fist upgrade of the Redmi Note 4G, it looks like another phone will be continued to offer on-board LTE. And after much more recent rumours, the Xiaomi Redmi 1 S is already hit the market with its improvement. Yesterday, Xiaomi confirmed officially in their Weibo that Xiaomi will launch new Dual 4G LTE Edition Redmi 1s. The event has been taken place on January 4th. Its long-awaited edition will be on sale on January itself.

This phone passed through TENAA in China earlier this month. Except for the new improvement on dual 4G LTE, other specs are on the same compared to the old version. It means that its phone is powered by  Qualcomm’s 64 bit Snapdragon 410. Its phone features 4.7″ 720p display. The rest of specs are 1GB RAM, 8GB ROM, 2 megapixel front facing camera and 8 megapixel back camera, 2200mAh battery, running Android 4.4 based MIUI 6.0. This new Redmi 1s supports GSM, WCDMA, TD LTE, and LTE FDD networks. It has 2 SIM card slots, and both of the SIM card slots supports 4G LTE.

According to TENAA’s picture, this phone will at 134 g of weight. There are also other improvement with the texture. This phone will come in a thinner design than that Redmi 1S last edition, although the screen is also like an OGS screen.

The Oppo R5 was the thinnest phone in the world, but now the ViVo X5 Max has overtaken its position. But, 4.85 mm of thickness is still an impressive number.

“This phone has been developed with the end user in mind. We used cutting edge manufacturing techniques to create a phone that fits perfectly into the users’ hands, and that feels incredible. The frame has been forged nine times and then finished by hand to give a perfect sheen and feel. It has a quality that is not available anywhere else in the industry. The R5, like the rest of the R series delivers a truly stylish, exquisite and distinctive design and will continue to delight our customers with its innovative yet practical functions ” – Tom Lu, CEO, OPPO India

This phone was initially announced early this year in China. Its phone features with a 5.2″ full HD AMOLED screen along with a resolution of 1920 x 1080p. Moreover, it is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC as well as 64 bit octa-core. Actually, this phone can not be seen as a truely flagship in term of specifications. Although it comes with a standard set of 13MP in rear camera and 5MP secondary camera. But more interesting, OPPO said that it is just only 01.18 second focus on duration. This feature seems clearly impressive, at least on the theory. Its remaining specs are 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage built-in as well as a 2,000 mAh battery which is naturally non-removable. It looks like the main purpose of OPPO is targeted to the fashionista than the geek.

There’s a couple of valuable additions in the armory of the device though. Cos of a super slim as it is, therefore, this phone is easily to be overheating. In attempt to solve and reduce this risk, OPPO ship together with the R5 a phase changing material. This tool can help users to distribute heat so the phone will be heated much. Another addition is that the trademark VOOC charging technology which support to take the phone from 0% to 75% charge in only 30 minutes. You can also find VOCC at the OPPO Find 7 as well.

The OPPO R5 will launched  in India on January 1st for 29,990 INR ( US $470 or about PHP 21,000). We hope that this phone will come to Philippines soon. And, guys, what do you think?

If you’re a Samsung fan and you love the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. So, you are may be a quite sad about this news which said that the Galaxy Alpha will no be longer after February. So, it’s a good idea for you to own one this time.

Samsung Alpha is probably one of the best phones Samsung ever produced — it’s certainly the prettiest and the thinnest with elegant metal design. This phone can be called the the first important step of Samsung inattempt to find out the user’s reaction with metal frame type. But its phone meets some stumbles, such as: the battery didn’t last long enough as well as a high-price so it have to compete against better-rounded rivals. So, it is the reason why Samsung Galaxy Alpha don’t meet the sales volume requirement as initially expected.

According to this report, the Samsung vendor will stop producing the Galaxy Alpha by early February. Samsung allegedly replace this phone by the Samsung Galaxy A5 with a mid-to low-priced smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy A5 is expected to enter to the mid-range market. “It has better price competitiveness based on specifications than its predecessors,”

That’s predicted to be the replacement for the Galaxy Alpha, at least on the Korean market. There the A5 is expected to launch in the mid-January to early February next year. Samsung will concentrate more on impressive handsets in its local market next year, and the A5 is the first of those.

“Most likely, the ‘Galaxy A5’ will be launched in Korea as early as mid-January and as late as early February, ‘Galaxy A5,’” said a mobile carrier insider. “I understand that it is priced at about KRW400,000.”

The Galaxy A5 will be cost at approximately KRW 400,000 (that’s about $363 or around PHP 16200). This phone is much more cheaper than its predecessor Alpha. Apparently, the Korian giant expect its phone will be more popular than the Galaxy Alpha, at least in Korean. Although Alpha is really not a huge success.

Samsung hasn’t confirmed any of this yet. So, be calm for more updates.

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As we have known, the HTC Hima – the newest HTC phone won’t be appeared at CES 2015 in Vegas early 2015 as expected. The HTC Hima might premiere at a stand – alone event, expected to March 2015. And a couple of days ago, there was a leaked photo which shown off the Detail of HTC Hima appeared on AnTuTu. While HTC has already sent invitations for a special press event on January 5th in Las Vegas. So, are you wonder that which phones will be come on this event?

A newly leaked rumour on Weibo says “Always Desire more“, which apparently means new Desire smartphone or smartphones will be announced at CES. So, it looks like a new Desire or Desire phones are coming soon. This is much possible the recently leaked HTC A12 which is expected to appear in February. So, maybe this phone will come sooner as predicted. This phone will be probably packed Snapdragon 410 chipset and features 4.7″ along with 720p display as well as 1GB of RAM. As for photography, its phone possibly come with an 8MP rear camera and 1.3MP “selfie”shooter up to front. Its dimension is 139.8 x 69.5 x 9.5 mm. Battery capacity is quite good, at 2,100mAh. Additionally, its phone will run on Android 4.4.

HTC A12 will allegedly release on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless in the United States. We will keep an eyes out for more informations on the device going forward.

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People are looking forward to seeing the Xiaomi Mi5 at CES 2015. And, a couple of days ago, we known about a pic of a phone, alleged called Xiaomi Mi5. Now, this time a rather interesting pic appeared on Weibo, too. But, this phone this time comes with Black edition. So, this phone seems pay too much attention and people look like get crazy about this phone.

And, cos of appearing in black color, so it’s hard to see the receiver, light sensor, camera and Xiaomi logo very clearly. But, in general, this phone bears a lot of similarity in appearance with the current Xiaomi Mi4, and it even has the Xiaomi logo and MIUI. But its phone screen is much bigger than 5″ screen of the Xiaomi Mi4. It may come with from 5.5″ to 5.7″ screen size. Additionally, design seems to be pretty much the same, especially in significantly thin bezels, extremely thin than its sibling.

The previous news revealed that the phone will pack 4G LTE connectivity, a QHD display with a Snapdragon 805 SoC and at least 3GB of RAM. This phone is believed to launch on Jan, 15th but until now, none of the information about the amazing phone is confirmed. But one thing is for sure that this phone will absolutely come soon, with CES right around the corner.

Xiaomi Mi5 may not likely to be powered with snapdragon 810 cause Samsung Galaxy Note 4 S-LTE had taken it as the first one that powered with it!

So, what do you think about this phone? Do you think this is the Xiaomi Mi5? Or the Xiaomi Mi 4S?

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Yesterday, @upleaks showed an exciting news of the HTC Hima – the next generation of the successful HTC One M8. And there is an AnTuTu screenshot go along with its news.

Nowaday, many smartphone makers have been created more and more flagship with a big screen, can be called phablet with a resolution of 1080p as well. But, it seems that HTC still want to keep its traditional display size – 5″ screen for its next product. But the remaining specs are still following the familiar path. Therefore, the HTC Hima will come with the latest operating system – Snapdragon 810 – an ARM-designed 64-bit octa-core processor paired with Qualcomm’s Adreno 430. In addition, 3GB of RAM will be equipped to its phone.

As expected, the phone will still come with a massive upgrade of 20.7 MP rear camera which takes HTC Hima to the top of modern smartphones. The front-facing camera will be featured a 13MP camera as the HTC Desire Eye (HTC phone for “selfie lovers”). Another leaked spec is the HTC Hima will run with Android 5.0.1 Lollipop ans Sense UI 7.0. So, needless to say that this phone is packed with a lot of advantages. Although other specs are still not revealed yet.

As we talked before, the HTC Hima is believed to hit the market on their stand-alone event instead of MWC event. But it’s not clear if this delay is deliberate (to avoid sharing the MWC stage with other flagships) or not.

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Xiaomi is more and more becoming a really hot smartphone maker in the world. Many more products will be expected to be published. Recently Xiaomi have created many waves and strongly shaked the market. One of its outstanding is about a new Xiaomi Mi4S or Xiaomi Mi5. Beside that, another news is of the next successor of Xiaomi Redmi 1, can be codenamed Xiaomi Redmi Note 2.

Now we get in our hands a new message of Bin Lin – Co-founder and President of Xiaomi. According to this source, Xiaomi will unveil its next flagship device in January 2015. He also mentioned that Xiaomi “just completed the latest round of funding last week, raising US$1.1 billion at valuation of US$45 billion”. 

Therefore, Xiaomi officially announced that we will see Xiaomi’s new flagship phone in next January. But unfortunately he didn’t mention which exact phone will be launched. And recently, we got a lot of news about the Xiaomi Mi5 or Xiaomi Redmi Note 2. And cuz of this, almost Mi fans will probably think of and look forward to 2 kind of phones.

About the Xiaomi Mi 4S or the Xiaomi Mi5, we found many images with extremely slim bezels and  narrow frame design. And, this phone will probably feature 5.7″ screen accompanied by Snapdragon 810. And this phone will also be expected to launch in January at the CES 2015. Additionally, its specs maybe pack 2K Screen, Fingerprint Scanner, 20.7MP camera.

The Xiaomi Redmi 2 is possible the next phone Bin Lin is mentioning about as a new introduction of the Xiaomi Redmi Series. We also heard much many specs and alleaged pics for the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2. But, personally, we don’t think that  Lei Jun means the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 as “Heavy Weight Flagship” for the 1000 Yuan 5.5″ phone.

And lastly, no matter the new Xiaomi Mi5 or Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 will come in January, we are happy to hear about this news. Because it is a new “Heavyweight Flagship”, so it means that this phone will not make you down, no way.

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It is discernible to say that 2014 is an extremely successful year of Xiaomi with variety of products in its portfolios: Tvs, headphones and even the Mi Air Purifier. Xiaomi is now on the top five of the world’s largest smartphone makers with their super-affordable and high-quality devices. Therein, the Xiaomi Redmi 1S and the Xiaomi Mi3 was sold as their hot cakes. And now, it seems that Xiaomi is ambitious to expand into the PC market with its first ever laptop.

Actually, this is not the first time we hear about Xiaomi Notebook as in the past few m0nths. And, we’re now seeing plenty of photos and specific specs of this possible computer. And more interestingly, this device is extremely similar to the Apple Macbook Air line.

Xiaomi has been accused of copying Apple’s design for its phones and tablets and this time, it looks like not an exception. This new device is much similar to the Apple Macbook Air line, not only in its design but also other specs.

The device looks exactly like Apple’s Macbook Air except for the logo on the front and the back which appears to have a sandstone finish in contrast to Apple’s signature aluminum. And the other special difference is the orrange power button instead of black also helps the Mi laptop stands out to the others.

The rumours are also generous enough in giving us some other detail of this device. According to this source, this device will feature 15-inch variant with a Full HD 1080p display. Moreover, its device will be powered by the latest Intel Haswell i7-4500u processor along with 16GB internal memory. The laptop is expected to run on a linux OS customized by Xiaomi. As for the critical thing, the rumours also said that its laptop will be priced at around 2999 Yuan which comes to around $481 or PHP 21865. 

With all of this listed specs and the overall appearance and its impressive price, this device launch will like rock concerts. Unfortunately, Xiaomi isn’t yet to announce anything officially and so far we dont have any official announcement on our hands. But please stay tuned for more information forward, which to say that this is a true or just a beautiful dream. But with all of rumours recently and what Xiaomi did and proved after that, we won’t be surprised if Xiaomi does debut this notebook PC sometime later next year.

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Too much news about this new Asia monster – Meizu m1 Note which is possibly the direct competitor of the Xiaomi Redmi Note. But, cuz its phone is too hot, and of course, super-cheap. So, it will be necessary to talk more about it.

Meizu m1 note currently announced in their official online website. Lets have a quick recap of the specs again. Its phone features 5.5-inch IGZO display and offers a list of impressive specs for only $160. They have much more outstanding features, such as: 5.5″ screen with a resolution of 1080p along with a pixel density of 403ppi and a 75% reduction in reflection thank to a full GFF lamination. The phone uses the 64-bit MT6752 chipset with an octa-core 1.7GHz Cortex-A53 CPU, a Mali-T760 GPU and 2GB of RAM. Besides that, the Meizu m1 note measures 75.2 x 150.7 x 8.9mm and weighs 145 grams with a super battery of 3,140mAh. As for camera, there’s a 13MP main camera made by Samsung and shoots 1080p videos. In the opposite side, a 5MP “selfie” camera takes up the front with a 4-element lens.

Its phone comes with variety bright colors: green, pink, blue, yellow and white (which can be seen as exactly the same colors with iPhone 5C) and looks similar to the iPhone 5C in design. And if some of you probably think that this is nonsense comparison, pls kindly see these following hands-on pics.

The handset is mostly purchasing for the Chinese market, where the high-tech war is fiercer than ever. As we mentioned before, its phone is previously direct rival of the Xiaomi Redmi Note with good specs and impressive price of about $160 (PHP 7155 for 16 GB version). No matter the Meizu is the iPhone 5C knock-off or not, its phone is frankly desirable and be the best phone ever at the price of around PHP 7000. Moreover, this phone will come in February in Malaysia, so sounds great for Philippines fans cuz you can definitely get on your hands this phone soon.

JiaYu S3 is coming with 3 colors: black, white and grey and is at the quite same price with the Meizu m1 Note. But the Meizu m1 Note has much more advantages by more famous brand and higher-quality. So, i myself guess that this phone will be your good option of mid-end phone.

Here are some hand-on pics of this phone

Meizu website

With many kind of 64bit MT6752 smartphones over the next few weeks, one of outstanding is the JiaYu S3 with an extremely affordable price of 899 Yuan in China.

Actually Jaime didn’t attend keeping secret about the S3 from us. Therefore, information about design, specs and price of this handset are revealed. And because of the plan is so far different to the what actually happens. So, it is really happy to see the official online listing for the JiaYu S3 over in China.

As promised, there are two versions of the S3: 2GB RAM (without NFC) and the  3GB RAM (with NFC). Some important specs is revealed, such as: a 5.5-inch 1080p display, dual SIM, 4G LTE, a 64bit Mediatek SoC, 13 mega-pixel Sony IMX214 F2.0 rear camera with dual LED flash, 3000mAh battery, dual flash. And JiaYu ensure for accurate and fast GPS. Additionally, we can find a 5 mega-pixel front camera, dual SIM, NFC, OTG and Gorilla Glass 3! The JiaYu S3 is one of the best looking JiaYu flagship up-to-date. Full dimensions are 152 x 75.5 x 8.9mm. Body thickness is 8.9mm but a nicely tapered rear means the phone will fit your hand well than it actually is

With all of listed specification, needless to say that the S3 is possible to be a trong rival of Meizu m1 Note. The criticall thing is the official global price of the JiaYu S3. Its variants come officially at the price of 899 Yuan & 999 Yuan, in respectively. And if you convert the Chinese RRP to philippines peso, we get PHP6564 for 2GB variant & PHP7295 for 3GB variant (without other cost, like: taxes, shipping fee, reseller markup…).

More interestingly, the S3 are already on the pre-sales for a few days now and are available on 3 colors: white, black and a Meizu MX4 grey finish.

You can get the full specification from the S3 via JiaYu website

Other

Two months ago, we heard about the Oppo N3, but it haven’t hit the market yet. According to this, the Oppo N3 was initially promised to enter 20 markets by the end of 2014, but it seems that this plan couldn’t meet the deadline. Now however we are getting some signs that the launch will be came. Maybe, with the case of the Oppo N3 we have had to wait for a few months after the debut before its phone could officially hit the shelves. But at least, it will come, for sure.

The flagship with a motorized camera has just gotten the network certification of TENAA – the Chinese elecommunication authority. It means that this kind of phone will be legally purchase in China market any time now. We hope that there are a few more markets to join China in the first launch period.

The Oppo N3 features a 5.5-inch FHD display, octacore Snapdragon 801 chipset, 2GB RAM, 32GB internal memory along with external MicroSD card slots up to 128GB SD card as well as 16 mega-pixel rotating camera and rear touch control.

And lastly, if you are excited about this device and would like to get it, you should be prepared to part with about $649 (which is equivalent to nearly 29000 PHP).

According to Jack Tong, president of HTC North Asia said that HTC corp will focus more on releasing the entry-level 4G handsets in the first quarter of 2015. He added that the company will sell products over the internet along with specially designed models online. It seems that HTC will use a similar online sales technique as the one followed by Xiaomi in attempt to increase sales volume up a ton of sales. By offering low priced flagships online, HTC wants to get the balance between the distribution of its top-shelf handsets through the usual channels and online channels.

He also said that the company is also expecting to doubly rise digit growth in shipments in 2015. Tong also said that sales of HTC’s RE mini camera which was released in early this month, have been underwent a strong period, and is expected over 20,000 units to be purchased by the end of the year.

“HTC began to market its mid-range HTC Desire 820 dual-sim in cooperation with Chunghaw Telecom (CHT) in November and will release HTC Desire 820 single-SIM in January 2015”, Tong noted.

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