OPPO F9 Jade Green is now available in the country and the smartphone definitely represents the beauty of the Philippine islands with its stunning colorway. In my opinion, this is the best colorway for the OPPO F9. Aside from the announcement of the availability, OPPO Philippines has also partnered with Bantay Kalikasan to help raise funds to preserve La Mesa Watershed and if you participate, you can get a chance to win a brand new OPPO F9 in Jade Green.
There will be a charity photo contest which will bring three photographers who travelled across the country to capture the best our country’s unique sceneries, people, and culture and each of them has produced five photos on specific themes using the OPPO F9 Jade Green.
The public can choose their favorite photos and vote for their choices and share it to their social media accounts. You can only vote and share one photo per day until the end of the contest on January 31, 2019.
These votes and shares can actually help OPPO and Bantay Kalikasan’s advocacy as OPPO Philippines will donate one peso for each vote and shre to Bantay Kalikasan’s effort to play approximately three hectares of trees at La Mesa Watershed which is Metro Manila’s only major watershed. So be sure to vote and share every day to get a chance to win a new OPPO F9 Jade Green and help contribute to the total donation. Be sure to use the hashtags #OPPOCharity and #OPPOF9JadeGreen.
There will be three voter-sharers that will win a brand-new OPPO F9 Jade Green in a raffle after the competition duration while the photographer that garnered most votes and shares will be announced on OPPO Philippines’ social media pages.
https://jamonline.ph/oppo-f9-review/
So be sure to check out OPPO’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/OPPOPH and @OPPOPhilippines on Twitter and Instagram
Here’s a fantastic news for everyone who wants a camera smartphone. Huawei Philippines has just announced that they’ll be selling the Huawei P20 for Php21,990 exclusively on Lazada from January 14 to January 16.
The Huawei P20 is one of the best smartphones that we’ve reviewed last year as the smartphone packs a beautiful design and despite the lack of the triple lens camera of the Huawei P20 Pro, the smaller brother, Huawei P20 still managed to show us amazing handheld night shots that blows away the competition.
If you want to get the Huawei P20 at a cheaper price then you better place the Huawei P20 in your cart now and get it at this link: https://tinyurl.com/FBLazadaP20
Huawei P20 Specs
Octa-Core Hi-Silicon Kirin 970 NPU
5.84-inch 2244×1080 IPS Notched Display
4GB RAM
128GB Internal Storage
12-megapixel color sensor + 20-megapixel Black & White sensor, Leica Optics, f/1.6, 2x lossless zoom
24-megapixel f/2.0 front camera with AI Light Fusion
For those who have a low end PC will now get a chance to experience a PUBG PC experience with PUBG Lite. The game is different from PUBG Mobile Lite, PUBG Mobile, and PUBG as this one will be exclusive for PC and it will have a toned-down graphics but the experience will be similar to PUBG PC.
This will be a separate game from PUBG PC and PUBG Mobile so you can’t do cross play on this one but thankfully, PUBG LITE will be free to play and it won’t be taxing to PC so everbody can play and enjoy this game. Here’s the minimum requirements of PUBG PC.
Since the game can run under Intel HD Graphics 4000, I’m pretty sure that a lot of shared graphics even on notebooks 2 years ago can run this game.
But of course, all we can do right now is to wait for PUBG Lite to arrive here in the Philippines
There’s no stopping Huawei as the Chinese company was able to shipped more than 200,000,000 units last 2018. That’s actually pretty big and it was not surprising at all as the company has a strong lineup last year including the P20 series which changed the smartphone camera game and the Mate 20 series which has a powerful Kirin 980 chipset.
For the past eight years, Huawei’s smarrphones shipments have increased from 3 million units in 2010 to 200 million units in 2018 and the company has become a top 3 player from being an “other” previously and last year, the company has become the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.
In the Philippines, the company is going strong in different segments. They have the Y series for their affordable and entry-level segment while their mid-range Nova series has a strong pricing and features while their flagship series — the P and Mate series, features a big leap from previous generations and a large advantage over other smartphone manufacturers.
Looks like Huawei is really aggressive with the opening of their stores nationwide as we spotted an under construction Huawei store at Podium. We don’t have any details regarding the store but Huawei Philippines has been opening stores left and right at different locations.
The Huawei Store at the Podium is located at the 3rd floor of the newly opened section of the mall. Expect devices like the Huawei Mate 20 series, Nova series, and the latest accessories to be sold at the store that will be opening this month.
Looks like you won’t be running out of memory anymore with Lexar’s latest product with its 1TB SDXC flash memory card made for the cameras. The 1TB SDXC flash memory card will be called Professional 633x. It’s a UHS-I memory which has a speed of 95 MB/s (class 10) but that would be enough to capture 4K videos and burst RAW photos.
Lexar will be the first one to sell this size of SDXC card and it has an SRP of $499.99. But hey, at least we know that we won’t be running out of storage on our cameras soon.
ASUS has recently updated their mid-range smartphone — the ASUS Zenfone 5. And yes, you can now experience Android Pie on your smartphone. These are some updates that are included in the Android Pie update on the ASUS Zenfone 5.
Better Application Management – the OS that learns your preferences on the go, which should allow for smoother operations
Adaptive Battery – learns the battery usage and prioritizes the allocation of the energy
Adaptive Brightness – automatic brightness adjustment according to your usage
App Actions
Intuitive Navigations – redesign of the navigation system, simpler to use for faster switching of apps
Performance Improvements – provides better user experience, support for the latest OpenGL and Vulkan APIs for better gaming and heavy-app performance
When it comes to Android smartphones, Samsung will be the first brand to come into the mind of many people. Why? Because South Korean has been long in the game and their track record has been really good in the mobile industry. Today, we’ll review one of their hottest smartphones today in the Philippines, the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018).
This smartphone is actually surprising for me as they’ve never competed for a smartphone like this in its price range. The Samsung Galaxy A7 2018 is going head to head against smartphones like the OPPO F9 and the Vivo V11 which are really popular mid-range smartphones in the country. So what does the Samsung Galaxy A7 2018 can offer?
Design and hardware
I’ve reviewed and owned a lot of Samsung devices before and the Samsung Galaxy A7 2018 is a little bit different from most Samsung’s smartphones. But don’t get me wrong because the smartphone is clean and really sturdy enough. To give you detail about the smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy A7 2018 features a plastic frame and it has a 2.5D rear glass back which is really durable as I dropped the smartphone accidentally a lot of times without the case. And no, the smartphone feels comfortable to the hand (I’m just clumsy with this smartphone)
At the back is where you can find the vertical triple lens camera that looks neat with the Samsung logo in the middle. The lack of fingerprint scanner is noticeable here but it does made the smartphone really cleaner to look at. The fingerprint scanner is placed at the side of the smartphone which also acts as the sleep/power button for the smartphone. At the top of the power button is the volume rocker and of course, we have the 3.5mm headphone jack and the Micro USB port below the smartphone. Like what I’ve told in my previous reviews, I wished that the smartphone uses a USB-C but its competition is still using the same port. But I do hope that they can do something about this 2019.
According to Samsung, the back of the smartphone is made of glass but it does feel light and the smartphone has the same feel of the OPPO F9. The smartphone also comes with 64GB of Internal storage and so far, I didn’t have any problems with it. But in case that’s not enough for you, there’s the triple card tray on the side which lets you place dual sim cards and also a MicroSD card simultaneously.
Again, there are two ways to fast unlock the smartphone. The first method is to use the face unlock which isn’t the fastest but it was not disappointing to me but in case you need more security, you can use the fingerprint scanner which I find convenient as I only need to place my finger on the side of the smartphone. I actually prefer the placement of the smartphone on the side than placing it at the back or below the display of the smartphone.
When it comes to battery life, the smartphone can have a full day of average use. It’s actually not disappointing as I was able to get a score of 8 hours and 17 minutes at PC Mark Battery test.
No notch, no problems
For those people who hate notch, rejoice! The Samsung Galaxy A7 2018 doesn’t have a notch but it does have the rounded corners with thin bezels. Is it a problem? No, at least for me. While I do appreciate the fact that having a notch on a smartphone maximizes the screen-to-body ratio of the smartphone, some people still appreciate that not having a notch means that there nothing that will block your Netflix experience or there’s no awkward large notch at the side of the smartphone.
When it comes to smartphone displays, it’s really hard to beat Samsung in this game. Why? Because they’re the ones who create Super AMOLED displays. And even for a midrange like the Samsung Galaxy A7 2018, the display of the smartphone is impressive. Just to give you a technical detail, the Samsung Galaxy A7 2018 is equipped with a 6.0-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED Infinity display that delivers impressive colors and contrasts compared to the competition. The display is so lively and so vivid but of course, don’t expect the same display of their flagship smartphones. But overall, the Samsung Galaxy A7 2018’s display is impressive for its category.
A decent performer
Samsung has equipped the Galaxy A7 (2018) with an Exynos 7885 processor. It might not be as powerful as other processors but it is decent enough to run games and apps that you need. In PUBG Mobile, the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) was able to run the game at HD settings with high framerate. Check out the benchmark of the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) below.
Screenshot 20190103 072609 AnTuTu Benchmark
Screenshot 20190103 161733 Geekbench 4
Screenshot 20190103 165311 3DMark
PUBG Mobile runs at a median FPS of 23 which is playable but it will have some disadvantage compared to other smartphones. So do consider toning down the settings of the smartphone when playing these games.
When it comes to benchmarking applications, the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) won’t be at the top of your list but for a Samsung smartphone at this price, it’s acceptable.
Software, Apps, & UI
The Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) is still not using the latest One UI which is expected to be available on Android Pie devices of Samsung however, the UI of the smartphone is still smooth and I love the combination of colors of it popping out in its AMOLED display.
Of course, we still have the Samsung applications including their own Galaxy apps in where you can download some applications with freebies in-game and Microsoft Office applications which is really useful. But the best part about the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) is the Samsung members app which will give benefits and perks to Samsung mobile users including free vouchers for Grab and some discounts at restaurants and stores.
The triple-lens camera
The biggest feature of this smartphone is the triple lens camera at the back. This is the company’s first foray to the triple lens rear camera market and surprisingly, they did well on the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018). The smartphone features a 24-megapixel rear camera with an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera and I was surprised that both cameras fared really well in our review.
The 24-megapixel rear camera was really great when shooting at decent lighting conditions however, I cannot say the same when shooting at low-lighting but don’t worry, the low-light shots will not disappoint you. While the 8-megapixel wide-angle lens camera of the smartphone performed well, the wide-angle lens doesn’t have auto-focus but it wasn’t really a letdown for me as I was using the wide-angle lens most of the time when taking landscapes and not objects that are close to me.
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There’s a scene optimizer mode on the camera which is basically the AI scene detection of the camera app however, I still prefer using the auto mode. You can also create your AR emoji but you can only produce stickers base on your AR emoji. Other modes include Live focus mode for depth effect, Panorama, Pro, and beauty mode. Overall, the camera of the smartphone is really good for its price range.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) is one of the best mid-range smartphones of the Korean company for a while. It might not be the best one in the A series but the smartphone can definitely compete against mid-rangers like the OPPO F9 and the Vivo V11. It also has a triple lens camera which is unique in its price range and it performs well. The design of the smartphone is very clean too as they placed the fingerprint scanner on the power button of the smartphone.
However, the Exynos processor inside it isn’t as powerful as other chipsets in its price range but don’t worry as it can run most apps and games without a problem too. If you love taking photos especially landscape photos and you need a wide-angle lens, then this Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) is something that you should take a look at.
PUBG Lite was announced today by PUBG Corp. and yes, this one is different from the current PC version of PUBG and PUBG M and PUBG M Lite which are available on mobile devices. PUBG Lite is aimed for people who have a low-end PC as the game will require a really low requirements.
The details are scarce regarding the game but the pre-registration for beta is now open in Thailand and there’s no word regarding pre-registration for beta in the Philippines.
What we know is that PUBG Lite is formerly known as Project Thai. You can actually search in YouTube about PUBG Project Thai and it shows different gameplay videos of PUBG Lite showing lower graphics compared to the original PUBG
Now the question is, how will they differentiate PUBG to PUBG Lite and what will PUBG Corp. do to PUBG Mobile players playing on emulators on PC. I know, the game is redundant and confusing.
We’ve checked the FAQ section of the game and it is confirmed that the game will be FREE however, it is not cross platform. It means that you can’t play with players on PUBG PC and PUBG Mobile.
We reached out to PUBG Corp. however they’ve not shared any details regarding the game as of this posting.
The Redmi brand is here and they’ve just announced their newest smartphone — the Redmi Note 7. The smartphone is one of the amazing mid-range smartphones today as it packs a tiny waterdrop display and then there’s the powerful SD660 chipset and a 48-megapixel rear camera. Yep, 48MP.
The smartphone will also come with a Super Night View feature in where you can take amazing night shots which is common to most smartphones these days. The smartphone will also sport Quick Charge 4.0 and then there’s the 4000mAh battery.
