Looks like a new leak has appeared at @onleaks and this time it’s the nokia 8.1 Plus and what’s interesting about the smartphone is that it shows a punch hole design for its camera on a 6.2-inch display similar to the Huawei Nova 4 and the Samsung Galaxy A8s.
The punch hole camera is probably the trend this 2019 as different manufacturers are following this trend. Despite the Plus in its name, the smartphone has the same size of the Nokia 8.1. Though the dimensions of the smartphone is different at 156.9 x 76.2 x 7.9mm.
The smartphone also shows a fingerprint scanner at the back which basically means that the smartphone will not have an in-display fingerprint scanner and then there’s the USB-C port below along with the headphone jack at the top. Aside from that, the Nokia 8.1 Plus is expected to run Android One inside.
Well, that’s all the details that we know so far so all we can do right now is to wait for the official announcement of the smartphone.
Xiaomi has decided to spin off the Redmi brand and make it a different brand from Xiaomi. The new logo simply shows the Redmi brand by Xiaomi. The first smartphones that is expected to be included in the new Redmi brand is the Redmi 7 and the Redmi Note 7.
The Redmi brand is still expected to carry value for money smartphones so you don’t have to worry about the pricing of these smartphones from Xiaomi.
The Redmi 7 that we’ve shared before is expected to have a gradient color and there’s a rumor that there’ll be a variant that’ll have a 48MP rear camera.
Looks like the next-generation iPhone will follow the suit of Huawei and other Android smartphones as a render by Ben Geskin has appeared in his twitter showing the next generation iPhone to sport a triple lens camera.
Weirdly, it has a square camera bump similar to the Huawei Mate 20 series but with a different order of cameras. There are no other details regarding the smartphone aside from the renders made.
Xiaomi has finally unveiled their answer to Apple’s Airpods — the AirDots Pro. Well, it does look similar to the Apple Airpods but it will definitely be cheaper than Apple’s and it will work on Android, iOS, and even Windows notebooks.
The Xiaomi AirDots Pro features a 7mm neodymuim iron boron drivers with a titanium-played diaphragm for improved frequency response. It also comes with active noise cancellation for calls. The wireless earphones also comes with touch controls for different functions such as music, calls, and voice assistant.
The Xiaomi AirDots Pro promises to bring in 10 hours of battery on a single charge and it can be charge in just 1 hour.
The wireless earphones will be priced at CNY 399 (Php3,058~) which is way cheaper than the Airpods.
It looks like a lot of people really want that gradient colors on their messenger app but in case you still don’t have that feature on your messenger app, here are some ways to enable or to have the new look on your messenger application.
Step 1: Be sure to update your messenger application on your smartphones
Step 2:
a. In case you already have the messenger application, you can just restart your smartphone and open the messenger app again
b. If the step mentioned above didn’t work for you then go to the app info of your smartphone and clear the data of the messenger app
c. If the a & b didn’t worked out for you then you can reinstall the messenger app.
If you’re using your browser, a simple refresh of the browser will do the trick or you or you can do a simple log in-log out of your account. Unfortunately, if you still don’t have the feature after the mentioned instructions then it’s probably your smartphone can’t support the new update or your Facebook doesn’t enable that feature yet on your account.
This is a bit of surprise for us from ASUS as the Taiwanese company has just announced the PNK LTD line of colored gaming peripherals. These are ROG peripherals that are already available in the market like the ROG Strix Flare, ROG Gladius II Origin, ROG Strix Fusion 300, and the ROG Sheath but this time, it is now available in a new hue — pink which is perfect for those people who love the color or who wants to have a feminine look to their peripherals.
ASUS ROG Strix Flare
This is one of the keyboards that I’m craving right now and this time, it is now offered in matte pink with a textured finish. There’s a two-toned effect with a slash continued to the detachable palm rest. The keyboard also features media controls with grey accents and rubberized volume wheel. There’s a per-key RGB lighting too and there’s a Cherry MX Red, Brown, or Blue switches inside.
ASUS ROG Gladius II Origin
The Gladius II features Mayan-inspired etchings on the sides and scroll wheel with lighter grey color. There’s a detachable cable too with grey colors which makes the mouse less prone to dirt because of its color. This mouse features a PixArt 3360 optical sensor that can reach 12000DPI but can be dialed back for games where lower DPI is more essential.
ROG Strix Fusion 300
The ROG Strix Fusion 300 also features a pink and grey hues just like the others. This headset features a 50mm ASUS Essence drivers and 7.1 virtual surround sound. The modified chamber design is airtight to seal air inside and reduce audio leakage and vibrations, and the area around the drivers is bigger, which allows for more air and creates a wider soundstage. The Fusion comes with two cables, a USB cable and a regular 3.5 mm audio cable, to allow you to connect to mobile device as well as your PC.
ROG Sheath
This is the perfect mat that’ll be paired with your PNK LTD edition peripherals. The desk mat is large enough to fit all of the gears that was mentioned above. It still features a tightly woven fabric on top of non-slip back that doesn’t budge as you play. It maintains a 35″x17″ footprint with a combination of grey, white, and pink colors.
OPPO wants to change the game with their latest smartphone, the OPPO R17 Pro. It’s their first smartphone to sport a triple lens camera. Not only that, but the smartphone is also capable of long exposure handheld shots which is pretty cool and its one selling features. Interested? Check out our review of the OPPO R17 Pro below.
It’s a beautiful design
Without a doubt, the OPPO R17 Pro’s color and build is beautiful and solid. It might not have the same shimmering and great ergonomics of the OPPO Find X, but the OPPO R17 Pro is damn beautiful thanks to its radiant mist color and its glass build. However, I highly suggest that you use the included case as the smartphone is a little bit slippery to the hand.
Again, the OPPO R17 Pro is really premium when it comes to building quality. The front might look like the OPPO F9 but the smartphone features a frosted glass at the back which they call as the 3D fog glass while the side has an aluminum finish that’s why the smartphone does feel solid to the hand.
Unfortunately, the OPPO R17 Pro is missing a headphone jack and there’s no included 3.5mm dongle on the smartphone but thankfully, there are the USB-C headphones included on the smartphone. So if you’re planning to use a wired speaker or other headphones, be sure to buy a dongle first on this one unless it’s a USB-C.
Inside the smartphone is pretty spacious. We got a 128GB internal storage but there’s no MicroSD card slot on this one which I already expect since the smartphone is actually considered a premium smartphone (The OPPO Find X doesn’t have a headphone jack too). Aside from that, the smartphone packs an 8GB of RAM which is pretty big too and on par with most flagship smartphones today.
Another cool addition on the smartphone is the in-display fingerprint scanner and it wasn’t the fastest one that I’ve tried but it will definitely do. When it comes to audio quality, the OPPO R17 Pro was just fine. It isn’t its best feature but if you’re just listening to music at your small room then the OPPO R17 Pro will be just fine for you.
The AMOLED display
One of the advantages of using the OPPO R17 Pro is the display. Yes, it might look like the OPPO F9 but if you look closely, you’ll notice that the smartphone has better colors and contrasts thanks to the AMOLED display. But that’s not only its best feature as the OPPO R17 Pro features a Gorilla Glass 6 which is one of the first to have this kind of glass.
Regarding its brightness, well, the smartphone was quite good when using outside however, I do notice that the smartphone’s display tends to have a slow response in adapting to really bright conditions sometimes. But I believe that this smartphone can be fixed with just a software update.
Super fast charger
The OPPO R17 Pro features a really damn fast charging tech called Super VOOC which is even faster than the VOOC fast charging of other OPPO smartphones. In my test, I was able to charge the smartphone to 50% from 0% in less than 20 minutes. That’s pretty damn fast.
And when it comes to battery life, the OPPO R17 Pro does fare well in our PCMark battery test. It was able to last a single work day for me and it was a very capable as a daily driver smartphone.
Not a flagship processor
The biggest drawback of this smartphone is its processor. The OPPO R17 Pro is running on Snapdragon 710 processor along with 8GB of RAM. But don’t get upset with that because the Snapdragon 710 just performed well in our usage of the smartphone.
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In our test with Antutu Benchmark, we got a score of 168355 which fared well in our expectations. This is our first smartphone to be reviewed with this processor so we’re clueless about its performance before.
We also tried PUBG Mobile on the smartphone however, the settings can only be maxed out up to high settings only which is why the FPS on the smartphone is limited only however, the FPS stability was 98% which is great enough. I believe the Snapdragon 710 can even do more and I hope that PUBG Mobile will be updated soon to take advantage of the Snapdragon 710 processor.
Using the smartphone in basic tasks and multi-tasking isn’t a problem. It was smooth and it was a breeze to use especially with OPPO’s ColorOS. Everything was user-friendly and It has most of the apps that you need on the smartphone. And since there’s a tiny notch at the top, most of the content on the screen isn’t blocked.
A camera made for night shots
The OPPO R17 Pro is just one of the few smartphones to sport a triple lens rear camera. And the OPPO R17 Pro boasts a TOF camera that is made for depth sensing however in our review, we didn’t get to test that much its camera due to the lack of software to test it out however, I noticed that in our portrait mode shots, the depth sensing was a lot better compared to other OPPO smartphones.
One of the main features of the camera is that the OPPO R17 Pro sports a variable aperture which lets you adjust between f/1.5 and f/2.4 aperture depending on the environment or the condition. This is a feature that we’ve seen before on the Samsung Galaxy flagship smartphones and it works well on the OPPO R17 Pro. The depth of field is noticeably shallower and the night shots were really great on the smartphone.
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Speaking of night shots, the OPPO R17 Pro has a night mode in where you can do 4s handheld night shots and it produces bright and vivid images. This feature has been present on the Huawei P20 series before so it’s really nice to see that the smartphone is also capable of this feature.
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Overall, I’m pretty happy with its camera. It’s probably the best camera smartphone from OPPO that I’ve tried and I do hope that the company can improve the smartphone’s camera even further.
Verdict
The OPPO R17 Pro is definitely beautiful. The front panel of the smartphone has a tinier notch similar to the OPPO F9 but the display is better than the display of the F-series brother and the design of the smartphone is really premium and it looks even better in person. Some of you might be disappointed with its processor but the Snapdragon 710 chipset can run the smartphone really well but it isn’t as powerful as I expected. The camera? it was really great even for night shots.
The OPPO R17 Pro is priced at Php38,990 which is a little bit pricey on your wallets but if you really want its beautiful design and to try out its camera and seize the night then this one will be good for you.
PlayStation is definitely doing good in this generation as the company has just announced that the PlayStation 4 sales surpass 91.6 million units worldwide after a strong holiday season.
And the recent holiday, Sony has managed to seel 5.6 millionunits globally which is impressive. Additionally, 50.7 million PS4 games were sold through globally during the holiday season which sums up to 876 million PS4 games sold worldwide as of December 31, 2018.
One of the most popular games on PS4 right now, Marvel’s Spider-Man launched in September 2018 and has sold more than 9 million copies worldwide as of November 25, 2018.
I am not surprised that Playstation 4 was able to sell 91.6 million units as they currently have a strong line-up. Well, it’s been 6 years since the Playstation 4 has been released in the market and I hope that the next generation will be coming soon.
It’s the season of GeForce RTX and MSI has joined the game with their latest notebooks to pack Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics including the GS75 stealth which is one of their best laptop yet and the GE75 raider which packs powerful specs inside.
GS75 Stealth
The GS75 Stealth is the world’s first thin and light notebook to pack a GeForce RTX 2080 graphics inside. The notebook only packs a 2.2kg, 18.95mm size which makes the notebook really portable and then there’s the 17.4-inch 144Hz IPS-level display.
GS75 Stealth Specs
17.3-inch Full HD (1920×1080) 144Hz, 4 sided thin bezel IPS-level display
But if you don’t have the budget for the GS75 stealth, you can opt for the GE75 Raider that still packs powerful hardware inside. The notebook is the first 17-inch laptop with Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU and it has the “3D Dragon Spine” design that is made from a 3D surface with red anodized finish. It also features MSI Cooler Boost 5 tech and 2 dedicated fans and seven copper heat pipes with per-key RGB gaming keyboard by SteelSeries.
GE75 Raider Specs
17.3-inch Full HD (1920×1080) 144Hz, thin bezel IPS-level display
Finally, we got the details of Acer’s newest gaming device — the Acer Predator Triton 900. It’s a 2-in-1 gaming laptop that promises amazing firepower and of course, high-end specifications. It comes with the “Ezel Aero Hinge” that lets you do 4 different ways to use the laptop. You can use it in the normal notebook mode, tablet mode, and display mode in where you can show your friends the display of the notebook.
The Acer Predator Triton 900 packs a 17-inch 4K IPS display with nvidia G-Sync and it will come with the latest 8th Gen Core i7 processors with NVIDIA RTX 2080GPU, NVMe PCIe SSDs, and up to 32GB DDR4 memory. It also comes with an Xbox wireless receiver so you can use your Xbox One controllers on the notebook.
This one will definitely cost you an arm and leg as the Triton 900 starts at $3,999. (Php209,510~)
