Chinese Tech

Pressured by the new Apple and Huawei flagship SoCs, Qualcomm plans to launch the Snapdragon 865 model 1 month in advance, and the first handhelds to sport the new SoC will apparently come from smaller smartphone makers like Oppo and Vivo, plus the usual Huawei competitors like Xiaomi and Samsung.

The Redmi Note 8 Pro is set for an Indian-market release on October 16, 2019. However, it appears that this is not all its parent company Xiaomi has to debut on that date. MIUI, its OS skin, has teased a launch of its own in the same country at the same time.

Oppo has continued with its spate of Reno branded device launches with the official unveiling of the Reno Ace. The new device looks to be positioned in a similar segment of the market to the OnePlus 7T from sister company OnePlus.

The Motorola One Macro has become official in India, and will sell for a price of INR 9999 (or about US$140). It is a triple-camera phone, one of which takes 2MP photos with a pixel size of 1.75 microns. The OEM claims that this allows it to get 5X closer to a subject than the average phone.

The OPPO Reno A, the Chinese OEM's latest mid-range smartphone, was launched in Japan today. Packing a Snapdragon 710, 6 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of storage, the handset seems centered around selfies due to its 25 MP front-facing camera. The Reno A is currently available in Japan for ¥35,800, or about US $330.

HMD Global has announced an OTA update to Android 10 for the Nokia 8.1. It is the first of this brand's phones that were included in the beta program for the OS in question to see the stable version. It upgrades the 8.1 with Dark Mode, navigation gestures and the September 2019 security patch.

Realme has revealed that the X2 Pro's display will come with a touch-sampling rate of 135 hertz (Hz). This means that the upcoming Snapdragon 855 Plus flagship may have enhanced user-input responses to go with its 90-hertz display refresh rate. Its camera prowess has also been teased on Weibo.

Xiaomi's latest gaming phone, the Black Shark 2 Pro, will be released for sale in Europe on October 9, 2019. It will be sold through the brand's regional website for an as-yet undisclosed price. The 2 Pro is powered by the Snapdragon 855 Plus SoC and up to 12GB of RAM.

Realme has launched its new X2 device for the Chinese market today. As rumored, it has an updated processor compared to that contained in its pre-existing variant, the XT. This new version is also the one coming to Europe later this month.

TCL's 2019 8-series of TVs are based on QLED technology and integrate the Roku streaming platform. They are 4K HDR panels that support Dolby Vision and 100% of the DCI-P3 color space. The new TCL 8-series will become available through Best Buy in the US.

The Mi Band is a popular fitness wearable series worldwide, albeit with one potential drawback: many units sold outside China come without NFC. Its maker, Xiaomi, will reportedly address this deficiency in its next generation. This device is also now said to be more durable and sophisticated that its predecessor.

There have been multiple reports of Pokemon GO handing out strikes preventing play to those who own certain Redmi devices. This pattern has been linked to MIUI 10.3.2.0, a recent firmware update for the phones affected. Niantic, the AR game's developer, has announced that it is now working on trying to revise them.

Realme has announced that its upcoming flagship, the X2 Pro, will have dual stereo speakers. Furthermore, they will be equipped with Dolby Atmos and "hi-res" audio. The brand has not given a launch date for this phone, but is now clearly aiming it at the European market.

The highly anticipated launch of the Mi Mix 4 has been something of a wild ride so far. Fans expected a launch event last month but were left disappointed. Since then, though, it's been multiple conflicting reports on the existence of the Mix 4, and the latest one will leave rekindle the flames of hope in fans of the series.

The Reno2 line of smartphones will become available in a new market, the UK, on October 16, 2019. OPPO is calling this event "Reno Studio Earth", during which the Reno2, Reno2 Z and Reno2 F will be released to this region. The last of these is also now on sale in India.

A Huawei device with the novel model number ART-TL00x has appeared on the TENAA regulator's website. As this phone has dual cameras, is described as having an HD 6.39-inch screen and the Kirin 710F SoC, it may be intended as a successor to the budget Enjoy 9. However, it lacks a launch date (and a product name) at present.

Although it plans to keep selling mobile devices in China, Samsung no longer intends to make them in the same country. This move is thought to have been taken in order to cut costs, and also due to overwhelming competition from other OEMs such as Huawei. The South Korean company will transfer production to other nations such as Vietnam in the future.

Motorola is now linked to an upcoming release for another One-line phone. It is rumored to be called the One Macro, and to be powered by a MediaTek SoC. A phone that might meet this description has been tweeted as a render by Evan Blass.

Huawei has had its latest phablet series on shelves in its home country for only 6 days now. In this time, it has reportedly sold out on a popular online sales platform, accrued 1 million sales in 3 hours and may have raked in half a billion yuan per minute in the process. This apparent success is ascribed to the uptake of Google-less EMUI 10 in China.

Redmi has announced that it will start selling its Note 8 Pro via Amazon's German store in October 2019. This phone is the brand's first device to feature a 64MP camera sensor. It will be sold in 6GB RAM SKUs with either 64 or 128GB of internal memory in its new market.

Preliminary benchmarks proved that the Kirin 990 is almost on par with all other major brands, but Huawei is clearly not content with parity. The Chinese company is already planning to release a 5 nm successor allegedly known as Kirin 1000, which will use ARM's Cortex-A77 cores plus a faster NPU, and it should be launched with the Mate 40 in Q3 2020.

A Realme executive has just lifted the lid on the X2 Pro, which is to be the brand's first Snapdragon 855 Plus device. This upcoming flagship is also said to have a 90Hz display and next-gen VOOC charging technology. At present, it does not have an official launch date.

Huawei has released its official update roadmap for the Android Q-based EMUI 10 update. All of the company's two-year-old flagships will receive the update and even year-old mid-range phones like the Honor 9X are set to get their second major updates.

The Mi Mix 4 has been a rollercoaster so far. The flagship was hyped up to high heavens but it turned out that most of those rumors were for the Mi Mix Alpha concept phone instead. A recent leak may have led Xiaomi fans to keep faith in the future launch of the Mix 4 but Xiaomi has now doused the flames of those hopes in brutal style.

The Honor V30 will be the successor to last year's Honor V20, and will—hopefully—be rebranded as the View 30 for international markets. The V30 has been sighted for the first time, giving us our first look at what will be an affordable sibling to the Huawei Mate 30.

UMIDIGI has launched the F2, its first phone with an in-display selfie camera. This device also ships with "stock" Android 10 out of the box. It also has quad rear cameras, which include a 48MP main shooter and a dedicated macro lens.

Chuwi's least expensive 4K laptop gets even cheaper with a sizable price cut and a free carrying bag for the first 200 orders.

Visionox is a company involved in the manufacture of flexible display panels. Its latest trick has been the Mi Mix Alpha, Xiaomi's new limited-edition wraparound-screen phone. It has recently opened a new assembly line on which similar screens measuring up to 18 inches can be produced.

Xiaomi recently released the Mi Mix Alpha and that may have led some to believe that the Mix 4 was dead in the water. Apparently not, if new rumors are anything to go by. The Mix 4 is touted to be on the way, and it could come with the same 108 MP sensor we saw on the Alpha.

The OPPO K5 is to be launched on October 10, 2019 as the OEM's new 64MP camera phone. However, the rest of its specs are not known. A novel model number from the same company has appeared on Geekbench with 8GB of RAM and a Qualcomm processor.

Xiaomi India's managing director, Manu Kumar Jain, has tweeted a photo of himself and a second executive in what appears to be the OEM's regional office. The background of this image contains a whiteboard on which a possible yearly timeline is sketched out. If so, the word "F2?" is found under the "November" point of the same.

Realme may have a phone powered by the Snapdragon 855 SoC in the works. This is indicated by a new certification granted by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) for a new device from this brand. It is described as running a processor that matches up to the premium chipset well.

A while ago, Xiaomi launched the Redmi Note 8 and Note 8 Pro but the duo never quite hit the heights of their predecessors. The company is apparently set to release a more attractive device in a purported Redmi Note 8T, and it will be powered by the Snapdragon 730G.

It was only a few days ago that Xiaomi unveiled the Mi Mix Alpha to a stunned global audience. The company has now rolled out an unboxing video that also answers the question of how the nearly all-glass, all-display device will be protected.

Realme has announced a new software update for the 3 Pro. It upgrades the phone's security patch level to September 2019. This OTA also adds Digital Wellbeing and a screen-on time meter to this build of Color OS.

The Manifest has conducted a study to find out which name was most familiar in the wearables sphere. 77% of those polled were able to name Fitbit in this context, compared to 73% for the next most recognized name ("Apple Watch"). Ironically, the latter sold a million more units in the second quarter of 2019 (2Q2019) than the former.

The market for fingerprint readers (from capacitive to thermal, and consumer- to government-grade) is estimated to be worth about US$3.5 billion at present. This worth is thought to grow to as much as $7.1 billion by 2024, however. The scanner type we have become most familiar with is thought to represent the largest sector over these next 5 years.

Despite all the bans and restrictions imposed on Huawei that ultimately lead to a delay of the Mate X, the company is considering the release of improved versions that also includes a stylus, as revealed by the latest published patent. The stylus option really makes much more sense for the larger screen integrated in foldable devices, and, with this move, Huawei could provide a serious competitor for Samsung's Galaxy Note.

Honor has confirmed that the 9X will come to UK and European markets soon. However, some images obtained by a reliable leaker indicates that these phones will have a rear-facing fingerprint sensor, whereas existing Chinese units do not. There is also some doubt that they will ship with Google Play Services in their new regions.

One could be led to believe that Huawei would be abandoning its devices but they'd be wrong. Very wrong. The company is preparing to send out the Android Q to its two-year-old flagships, with the EMUI 10 beta-testing program now open for the Mate 10 line phones.

Xiaomi recently unveiled the latest version of its skin, MIUI 11. The company is set to send out the MIUI update to its devices and a list has surfaced online showing which device will be eligible and when they'll receive the OTA. It's an impressive list, too, with the oldest device on it being three years old already.

The Redmi 7 was launched about six months ago and Xiaomi is set to release a direct successor. The Redmi 8 brings several tangible improvements over its predecessor but the SoC is a downgrade in terms of performance, and potential buyers may just be better served looking at the cheaper Redmi 8A.

It has only been a week since the launch of the Mate 30 series in Munich, but it has already become clear that Google and Huawei have been working more closely together than perhaps the current US administration would like. Despite having no official access to Google products, the Mate 30 series can access services like Google Pay without issue. Read on to find out why this is the case and what Google and Huawei have done to work around the restrictions currently imposed on the Chinese company.

Less than six months after the release of the Redmi 7A, Xiaomi has launched a successor, the Redmi 8A. The Redmi 8A offers a tangible upgrade over the 7A, with a bigger battery, fast charging, and a very interesting main camera being the biggest talking points, while still managing to keep its sub-US$100 pricing.

The Moto Z2 Play may finally have an update to Android 9.0 (Pie). However, this story is based on a forum post from a total of 1 user so far. Then again, this individual has supplied a number of screenshots that look convincingly like those for a new upgrade for this brand.

OPPO has announced that it will unveil the K5 in China on October 10, 2019. This phone is slated to have a quad rear camera, the main shooter of which will be 64MP in resolution. It is listed on some retail platforms already, which reveal it has 6GB of RAM and 128GB in fixed storage.

The camera benchmark website DxOMark has a new number one smartphone camera, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro. The Mate 30 Pro scored an incredible 121 points, usurping the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G. The former's selfie camera apparently falls short of recent Samsung flagships and even the Sony IMX586 in the ASUS ZenFone 6, though.

OnePlus has officially launched the OnePlus 7T in India featuring a 90 Hz AMOLED HDR10+ display, Snapdragon 855+, and a triple-camera setup. The OnePlus 7T also features a new design and is the first new smartphone launch to feature Android 10 out of the box.

The efforts to reduce the dependence on U.S. technology are constantly fueled with new developments endorsed by the Chinese government. After the Jhaoxin CPUs and the Jingjia Micro GPUs, China is now preparing to enter the memory market with the ChangXin DRAM modules that are expected to be available in 2020.