Chinese Tech

Two days ago, Huawei finally brought its Mate 20 Pro flagship to the Indian smartphone market. The device is billed to go on sale on December 4, and with an MSRP that translates to just under US$1,000.

Nubia has released the second generation of its Red Magic gaming phone, the 'Mars'. The device is as expected based on several leaks and rumors: it is powered by the Snapdragon 845 chipset, runs Android Pie and has a 10GB RAM variant. The Red Magic Mars also follows the RGB trend.

The FCC just posted every piece of information you could want to know about the Moto G7 Play. There's some good (like the Snapdragon 632 processor), some bad (like the smaller 2820 mAh battery), and some confusing (like the large notch in the display).

The new Redmi Note 6 Pro went on sale in India across the weekend. Xiaomi sells its phones in the region using flash sales, and the first of such sales saw over 600,000 units of the mid-range phone sold.

Huawei's Honor 8X mid-range phone is currently receiving the Android Pie-based EMUI 9 beta update in China. The Honor 8X has been confirmed for a US launch, and we expect a late December event.

The leaker IceUniverse has shared an image that appears to portray a Huawei phone with an Infinity-O-like display via Twitter. This tweet also suggests that the phone in question will be a competitor to the Samsung Galaxy A8s, and that this device will be released in December. However, the unnamed Huawei counterpart may beat the mid-range Galaxy to launch.

The US carrier T-Mobile is offering US$580 in bill credits when a OnePlus 6T is bought on a monthly plan today (November 26, 2018). However, this deal requires an eligible device to trade in and for the customer to add a new line to their T-Mobile account. It also applies to the 8/128GB variant of the 6T only.

Huawei is set to release the successor to last year's Huawei P Smart. Details of the Huawei P Smart (2019) have surfaced, showing a mid-ranger with a teardrop notch, dual rear cameras, and a Kirin 710.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is one of the most expensive phones of the year; however, it offers standout features for all of that money. The YouTuber JerryRigEverything's durability test demonstrated that potential and actual customers need to consider additional investments into protective accessories, however.

The Mate 20 Pro is in contention for flagship of the year. The device was launched in Europe and China a while ago, but is only just about to make the trip over to the world's second-largest smartphone market, India.

The Gameband, formerly known as the Atari Gameband, looked like a promising gaming-focused smartwatch during its successful Kickstarter campaign last year. Despite raising a total of $500,000 between Kickstarter backers and other investors, the Gameband has officially been killed. Worst of all, backers may never receive a refund

A commit posted to Fuchsia's source code management hub last night showed that a Huawei engineer was able to boot the Fuchsia kernel (Zircon) on the Honor Play. This commit hints at many things, mainly that Fuchsia development is continuing strong and Google has partnered with Huawei to continue work on Fuchsia, perhaps to bring the OS to consumer smartphones.

The Pro and Gaming versions of Xiaomi Mi Notebooks are between 41 and 42% off on Gearbest for the peri-Black Friday period. These notebooks have up to 16GB of RAM and either i5 or i7 processors. The Gaming variant, which comes with a GTX 1060 GPU, may be a good option if Thunderbolt or G-Sync are not a priority.

Available with up to 6 GB of memory and 128 GB of internal storage space, the HiSilicon Kirin 710-driven Honor 10 Lite sports a 6.2-inch display, a 3,400 mAh battery with fast charging, as well as a dual camera setup on the back and a generous 24 MP selfie shooter. It comes with Android Pie-based firmware onboard and retails for up to US$275.

Introduced at the end of September in Thailand, the 6.26-inch Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro is now coming to India. Although the 6 GB RAM variant was supposed to come with 128 GB of internal storage, both models available in India seem to sport 64 GB (there is also microSD support, fortunately).

Lei Jun, Xiaomi's CEO, announced at a press conference that 43.9% of the company's revenues in the third quarter of 2018 had come from international markets. These overseas earnings had increased by over 100% compared to last year. This may be attributed to Xiaomi's by-now solid standing in Europe as an electronics provider.

Open Beta 7, the latest in a series of in-testing stock ROMs available to owners of the OnePlus 6 to test out, contains an interesting new feature. It is OnePlus Roaming, a SIM-independent form of access to the internet that can be purchased directly on the 6 - and only the 6 for now.

Chinese officials, citing "massive evidence," have accused Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix of colluding and fixing the price of DRAM. If the allegations are true, the three largest DRAM manufacturers in the world would be directly responsible for the massive price increase for DRAM over the past few years. This isn't the first time these three companies have been accused of price-fixing. Back in 2005, all three pled guilty to similar charges levied by the US Department of Justice.

According to a recent report by the analyst firm TrendForce, global laptop shipments have grown by 3.9% during the last quarter of this year. However, this number was projected to be 5 to 6% by now. This slowdown in the laptop market is attributed to Intel's current silicon drought.

The OnePlus 6 is currently on sale with US$100 off its MSRP. A Snapdragon 845, 6 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage, dual rear cameras, and a headphone jack is an incredible package for just US$429. Buyers in Canada also get 130 CAD shaved off the device's regular retail price.

Huawei introduced the tri-rear camera to the world earlier this year and has since been copied by Samsung and LG. No company has attempted to implement three selfie cameras, though, but we could see one such device in the near future, one produced by an unlikely OEM.

While the Mate 20 Pro and Mate 20X both feature AMOLED displays—as opposed to the regular Mate 20's LCD display—new information shows that Mate 20X users can rest easy, with their phones unlikely to suffer from the green hue issues found on the Mate 20 Pro.

Priced at the equivalent of US$230 in China and around US$310 in Nepal, the Oppo A7 is a 6.2-inch handset with a Snapdragon 450 inside, as well as 4 GB of memory and 32 or 64 GB of internal storage. There is also a generous 4,320 mAh battery, dual cameras on both sides, as well as HyperBoost capabilities.

Citing an insider source, XDA Developers has shared knowledge about an upcoming Motorola smartphone dubbed "Odin." The device will sport a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8150 and will continue support for Moto Mods, including the 5G Moto Mod. While these details point to a flagship device, possibly the Moto Z4, other supposed specifications sound more in line with a mid-range handset.

After all the buzz Samsung's upcoming Galaxy F foldable smartphone has generated, rival OEMs are taking notice of the new form factor. One of these rivals, Oppo, recently filed a foldable smartphone design with the Chinese patent office SIPO. While a patent doesn't necessarily mean that a device is coming, it does show that Oppo is considering the idea of a foldable smartphone.

The Red Magic may represent a novel alternative in a gaming-phone space dominated by a small number of brands. This phone, marketed by the ZTE sub-brand Nubia, is reportedly getting a second generation. A new leak shows a Geekbench score for the phone, and suggests some other new details about the device.

So far, only a few OEMs like OnePlus, HMD Global, and Sony have sent out the stable Pie update. Thankfully, the Android One program exists to combat that, and it's been rather effective so far, with a number of Android One phones receiving the update to Android Pie last week.

Huawei executive Walter Ji has teased the company's plans of launching a device with up to four rear cameras, and 10x zoom. The Huawei man also confirmed that the company has no plans of releasing an Android One phone, which means that Huawei fans will have to make do with EMUI for the foreseeable future.

The Mi Mix 3 was one of the most interesting device launches this year, with its manual slider possibly ushering in a new trend. The Xiaomi flagship has remained in China for the past couple of weeks but, if word on the grapevine is anything to go by, it could be coming to Europe on December 1.

Although there are still some rumors involved — for example, that this handset will be a foldable one — at least Huawei has confirmed that its first 5G phone will be unveiled at MWC 2019, which is scheduled to take place in Barcelona, Spain on February 25-28. Other major brands will probably bring 5G phones at CES in January, but Huawei is not well received in the US nowadays.

Yu Chendong, the consumer business division CEO at Huawei, has said that his company is aiming to take the smartphone-OEM crown from Samsung in under 2 years. It has already overtaken Apple as the #2 manufacturer in the world; now the CEO believes that they will be at least level with the Korean giant in 2019.

An early press render of the upcoming Moto G7 Plus show that Motorola may be redesigning their popular mid-range handset. The press render shows an almost all-display front with a waterdrop notch similar to the OnePlus 6T and very thin top and side bezels.

According to the specs revealed on TENAA, the Honor 10 Lite will retain the 6.21-inch 1080p display from the original Honor 10 model, but the 24 MP selfie cam notch will be smaller. The mid-range smartphone will be powered by the Kirin 710 SoC coupled with 4 or 6 GB of RAM and 64 or 128 GB storage. The rear dual-cam will only get 13 + 2 MP sensors.

The relatively steep 30 percent price cut comes 9 months after the initial launch of the smartphone. Honor says the deal will only apply to North American users for now with no plans to extend the promotion overseas.

Red Magic is an 'alternative' gaming phone developed by Nubia in order to compete with the likes of Xiaomi's Black Shark. Now, the second generation of this device, which may be called the Red Magic Mars, has started to show up in benchmarks. It has reportedly beaten the Black Shark Helo variant by about 20,000 points on Antutu so far.

Noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has told investors to temper sales expectations for the iPhone XR. Citing trade disputes, consumer fatigue, and steep competition, Kuo has slashed sales expectations for the iPhone XR by 35% for 2018Q4 and 30% for 2019Q1 and 2019Q2.

Xiaomi's launched its enthusiast-oriented Pocophone F1 a few months ago in Europe and India. The company is set to bring the device to South Korea on November 19, and it will be sold locally by SK Telecom, LG Uplus, and KT.

Although there is little doubt about the fact that Samsung will make this color option available for the entire world in the coming months, the Ice Blue Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ will only launch in China. Fortunately, those who just want a blue contemporary Galaxy S flagship can already find the Coral Blue flavor in most markets.

Earlier, OnePlus had made a commitment to bring Pie to its older flagship series. However, the company later admitted that this upgrade would be delayed. Now, it seems that the prospect of Pie for last year's phones, the 5 and 5T, is back on the table with a new Hydrogen OS beta based on the latest version of Android.

Only launched in Midnight Black and Mirror Black, the OnePlus 6T flagship also received a Thunder Purple color option after a while. Sadly, it was supposed to be a China-exclusive choice, but now it seems that the US and Europe will receive it as well. The price remains the same and the sales should start on November 15, at 9 AM EST.

Last week, Xiaomi opened up shop in the UK. The triumphant entry into the market was marked by a flash sale, the likes of which have almost become a Xiaomi trademark. Sadly, participants of the sale noticed a few irregularities and have cried foul.

Huawei introduced a new feature known as reverse (or inverted) wireless charging with the Mate 20 Pro. It means that the new flagship can be used as a charging pad for other devices with compatible technology. However, Android Authority found it to work very slowly for a Pixel 3 in comparison with its own chargers.

Lasso is a new short video sharing platform from Facebook designed to compete with TikTok. The new app, available now on iOS and Android, "makes it easy for anyone to create and share short videos with fun effects." Marketed at teens and young people, Lasso looks like the latest effort by Facebook to retain young users.

The 5G market is going to explode in 2019 and Huawei plans to be prepared for the event with the upcoming Kirin 990. This would be the company's first 5G-ready SoC manufactured on the 7 nm+ node, so it would also get a 10% performance bump over the newly launched Kirin 980 SoC. First smartphones to integrate the Kirin 990 chip are rumored to hit the market in late 2019.

Only available in a 6 GB/128 GB memory/storage configuration, the Vivo X21s can be acquired in China for around US$360 and sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor, a 12 + 5 MP dual camera setup on the back with AI-driven scene detection, as well as a generous 6.41-inch display with a small notch.

11.11 was a major sales event for Chinese and international e-sellers that took place (accordingly enough) on November 11. Xiaomi has reportedly had a marked success for the day, making US$747 million by the end of the promotional period. It was also the most popular brand in various price brackets.

The OnePlus 7 (or whatever it'll be called) will not be the company's first 5G phone keeping in mind the high costs of the technology. However, OnePlus is indeed testing 5G in Qualcomm's labs for incorporation in a possible new premium lineup. This could mean that we might see three smartphones from OnePlus next year.

Bargain-hunters have spent a record US$30.8 billion via Alibaba in a single 24-hour period to celebrate Singles’ Day. The company managed to rake in US$1 billion worth of sales in just the first 85 seconds of the special shopping day. Singles’ Day is mostly celebrated in China by young single individuals, who take the opportunity to treat themselves to some famous brand-name goods.