Page 622 – GadgetByte Nepal

Samsung Galaxy A50s Review: An Excellent Camera Phone

Pratima Adhikari

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December 26, 2019

Samsung Galaxy A50s Review: An Excellent Camera Phone

Just roll back like a year ago, Samsung J-series and A-series were not performing well, and hence we saw Samsung dominance fall. In India, Xiaomi dethroned Samsung for the number 1 spot and Realme, a relatively new name back then, emerged in the smartphone battle. The phone that I’ll be talking about today, the Samsung Galaxy A50s, will not help the company’s cause, I’ll tell you that!

But Samsung is not a brand that would sit silently watching its market share dip. So, they launched the M-series intended to challenge the online phones from Xiaomi and Realme. And they also revamped the A-series for the offline markets.

And to be honest, Samsung did well with its first wave of M and A-series in the first and second quarter of 2019. We’ve reviewed almost every Samsung phone since then and honestly, they were quite refreshing.

Now, coming back to the present context, Samsung has released the ‘s’ variants of its new A-series. And looking at the specs of all of these phones, they don’t deserve to be called as “an upgrade”. Also, the competing smartphones from Xiaomi and Realme are getting better with each iteration. This further puts Samsung in a dreadful misery.

However, Samsung has dropped the prices of all of these S-variants in Nepal. Because the original price was just not competitive enough.

The Galaxy A50s, that I have with me today, originally retailed for Rs. 42,000 which has since been dropped to Rs. 33,599 and I think this should have been the launch price of this phone, to begin with. Anyways, the question is, should you get the A50s? And how does it fare against the competition? Let’s dig into it.

Samsung Galaxy A50s Specifications

Body: 6.24 x 2.93 x 0.30 inches; 169 gm (5.96 oz)
Display: 6.4 inches Super AMOLED Infinity-U
Resolution: Full-HD+ (1080 x 2340 pixels), 19.5:9 ratio
Chipset: Exynos 9611, 10nm process
CPU: Octa-core (4×2.3 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.7 GHz Cortex-A53)
GPU: Mali-G72 MP3
RAM: 4GB/6GB
Storage: 128GB UFS 2.1 (expandable up to 512GB)
Rear Camera: Triple Camera;
– 48MP, f/2.0, 1/2″ Sony IMX 582 sensor
– 8MP, f/2.2 ultra-wide lens
– 5MP, f/2.2 depth sensor
– LED Flash
Front Camera: Single – 32MP, f/2.0
OS & UI: Android Pie with Samsung One UI on top
Battery: Non-removable 4000 mAh; USB Type C
Colors: Prism Crush Black, Prism Crush White, Prism Crush Violet
Price in Nepal: Rs. 33,599

Design & Display

So, the first thing that remains more or less unchanged from the Galaxy A50 is the design.

You get the same plastic back which evidently will get scratches after prolonged usage, so better case it up! One minor change is this one has this gradient back, which is more pleasing to the eyes than the regular A50.

Samsung Galaxy A50s Side View

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However, one thing I’ve really liked about this phone is how slim it is! It measures 7.7mm in thickness and when comparing it with other popular midrange phones like the Redmi Note 8 Pro or the Realme XT, the difference can easily be realized.

Moreover, the sleekness is achieved without compromising on the phone’s battery as the A50s comes with a 4000 mAh battery as well. Add this to the lightweight build, I can see people liking the overall design of the A50s.

What’s equally good here is the display. You get a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED Full-HD panel whose quality, as expected from a Samsung phone’s, is top-notch. And BTW there’s a tiny U-shaped notch on the top. The display produces excellent contrast, good colors, and is fairly bright. So using it outdoors should not be any problem.

Camera

On the subject of liking things about the A50s, its cameras are impressive as well.

You get an improved 48MP lens and Samsung has done a very good job with software optimization. The picture quality is definitely better than what you get from the Galaxy M30s or the Redmi Note 8 Pro or the Realme XT.

Samsung Galaxy A50s Normal Image Samples

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Mind you, all of these phones are cheaper than the A50s. So with this, you get what you pay for.

The second 8MP wide-angle lens is above average! Detail wise it’s okay, but the colors are generally lively and pleasing.

Samsung Galaxy A50s Wide Angle Images

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The portrait shots too are commendable with good subject focus, colors, background blur, and edge detection. Another point in the bank to Samsung for its awesome software optimization!

Samsung Galaxy A50s Portrait Images

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On the front, there’s a 32MP selfie camera residing inside the notch. And like the ones on the back, I’m a fan of these as well. From dynamic range to colors to details, the selfies from the A50s will not disappoint you.

Samsung Galaxy A50s Selfie Images

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The selfie portraits also work really well, with a good focus on the subject and background blur. However, its edge detection resides in the grey area with lots of room for improvement.

Samsung Galaxy A50s Portrait Selfie Images

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The videos are okay for the price. You don’t get the OIS, but the Gyro EIS does a good job for 1080P videos. And as expected, there is no option for 60fps here, but Samsung has included videography features like Slow-Mo, Super Slo-Mo, and Super Steady Mode here.

The only aspect I didn’t like about the A50s camera is the night mode. It overexposes the night time images making it unusual.

Samsung Galaxy A50s Normal vs Night Mode Images

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And Samsung had the exact same issue with the M30s. So, frankly, I am really disappointed that they haven’t yet rolled out an update to fix this issue.

Battery

As I’ve already mentioned before, there’s a 4000mAh battery powering this device, which will provide you with good battery life.

On the charging front, Samsung is still using a 15W charger, and I think this is another area where the company has compromised as they should have gone with 25W charger like in its bigger sibling Galaxy A70s.

Performance & Gaming

Though I can live up with the 15W charger, what I can’t understand is the decision from Samsung to pack the Exynos 9611 chipset on the A50s. If you don’t know, it’s basically the same as the Exynos 9610 on the A50.

Thus, the performance of 6-month old A50 and the A50s is near-identical, which I think is a big letdown. The Exynos 9611 is based on 10nm, so it’s comparatively energy-efficient although its CPU and GPU performance aren’t comparable to that of the Snapdragon 730G or the Helio G90T.

And I have also told this in my M30s review, about One UI not being very optimized for midrange chipset, and the same is the case with the A50s. So, you will obviously not feel the UI as smooth as say the Note 10 or the S10. Hopefully, that will get solved when Samsung releases the One UI 2.0.

I know it sounds unfair, but I believe that shouldn’t be the case. You are paying top dollars for the A50s and the UI/UX just shouldn’t be the way it is.

Anyways, if you are coming from a budget phone, A50s will serve you well. The multitasking is great, browsing and chatting are swift and you will not have any problem playing high-end games like PUBG in high graphics and High Frame rates.

So, yah, the performance isn’t bad. However, it’s just that competition is providing better SoC at this price and Samsung seems to ignore the fact that many consumers here in South Asia look for better performance in the midrange segment.

Another thing that Samsung is hopelessly pathetic at is its slow optical fingerprint sensor. Even if I forgave its delay, I cannot stand the fact that it just doesn’t read my fingerprint sometimes. The A50 had the same issue, and I was expecting the new version to have faster ones. After all, an optical fingerprint scanner is not a new tech anymore.

Conclusion

So, overall, I have mixed feelings about the A50s. Actually, this entire video would have been a rant if Samsung hadn’t dropped the price. But since they did, it’s not a bad phone entirely. You get a Super AMOLED display whose quality is hard to find at this price range, the cameras are good and as I said earlier, I can see people liking the design because of its thin and light form factor.

However, the overall performance, especially the UI/UX part, is just about average, and you will get a much faster performance at a lesser price. So, if you are one of those who value performance more, you should be looking somewhere else. Otherwise, with the recent price drop, the Samsung Galaxy A50s does make sense.

Samsung Galaxy A50s Pros & Cons

Pros:

Slim and sleek design
Great Super AMOLED display
Excellent camera performance

Cons:

The chipset could’ve been better
The optical fingerprint scanner is a hit or miss
One UI doesn’t feel optimized for a mid-range phone

iBoysoft Data Recovery Review: A handy tool to recover your lost and deleted files!

GadgetByte

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December 26, 2019

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iBoysoft Data Recovery Review: A handy tool to recover your lost and deleted files!

Marry in haste and repent in leisure. We are well aware of this proverb yet due to our carelessness and hasty nature, we make mistakes on time and often. And one of such mistakes is deleting the files off of the computer. Most of such deleted files can be retrieved from the recycle bin if they’ve have deleted with the simple “Delete” button. But if you’ve permanently deleted the files, you are doomed. But in recent times, many data recovery software is coming up in the market. They come with their own quirks and helps the users restore the deleted files. However, not all of them are consistent when it comes to recovering the removed files. But promising better features and luring recovery characteristics, iBoysoft Data Recovery software has surfaced in the market. So we thought why not give it a try. So after over a week of testing, here is our iBoysoft Data Recovery Review.

How to get it?

You can easily get the software on their website. They have software both for Windows data recovery and Mac data recovery. So based on the operating system of your computer, you can get it for yourself. The software comes in two options: Free and Premium. As the name implies, the free variant won’t cost you anything to install the software and to recover the files. However, as the free version comes with just a limited set of features, you won’t be able to make full use of its potential.

The Premium version will cost you $69.95, $199, and S299 for the Home, Professional, and Technician edition respectively. But for the academic users (teachers, students, educational staff, etc.), government departments, charity, and non-profit organizations, iBoysoft is providing a noteworthy 20% discount in the purchase of the software.

With the Home edition, you will get a lifetime license key of the software, which you can use it just for one PC. Similarly, with some added features, Professional edition lets you use the license key for up to two PCs. The Technician Edition is the richest of all when it comes to features. If you have the Technician edition, you will be able to recover files from five different PCs.

Ease of use

iBoysoft is fairly easy to use. When you run the software, you will see a window with various drives (both internals and externals), just like the window you see while pressing the “My Computer” or “This PC” button on Windows PCs. Due to the familiar UI, it’s really easy to navigate.

You can press any of the drives, from which you have to recover the deleted files and press next. The software will then take some time to scan through the drive. It involves processes like Rebuilding Partition structure, Reading NTFS File record, Building Virtual File System and Saving Scan results. And these processes concludes, a new window pops up, which shows the files inside the drive selected.

Since the deleted files are marked with a red crossmark [x], they are easier to find. But if you have too many files and folders on your drive, it can be cumbersome to locate the deleted file/folder you wished to recover. For such cases, you can go near the bottom-left corner, where you can get to select “Only show deleted files”. That way, you can save a lot of time from coping with the crowd of files and folders and locate the deleted files/folders really quick.

If that didn’t help, you can use the search tool inside the software. This could be the most convenient way to locate files if you know the deleted file name.

iBoysoft Data Recovery Tool Features

Since it’s a data recovery tool, the primary and essential feature of it is to recover your lost and deleted files. And the tool has its own quirks when it comes to recovering such files.

As I mentioned earlier, the preliminary step to recovering the files is to scan the drive. And there are two ways you can scan a drive. The Quick Scan option prioritizes new and big files. The “Deep Scan Mode”, on the other hand, tries to find more files inside the drive. So with the “Deep Scan” feature turned on, you will have a better chance of finding your lost/deleted files and recovering it successfully.

Although it’s a useful feature and most of the time full-proof, it takes a considerate amount of time to scan through the drive. So make sure you have plenty of time before starting the recovery process. On my use, deep scanning of a 200GB drive took me over 3 hours and that was really frustrating. So to cope up with the issue, developers have included the “Save Session” feature, which you can access through the Hamburger Button near the top left corner. With the “Save Session” feature, you can save the scan results to your PC and access the drive whenever you feel like recovering the deleted. It saves the files in .sr format and the good thing is you can rename those files as well. This helps to easily find the files and scan up the drive really quick.

In the new session, you can access these scan results simply going through the same Hamburger Button on the top left corner and clicking the “Load Sessions” feature.

Once you scan through the drive and get inside, you can see files and folders inside it. As the non-existing (deleted or lost) files are marked with red crossmarks, it’s easy to identify them. Furthermore, you get to preview the deleted files. So before recovering the files, you can be sure that it’s the same file you wanted to recover. However, during my use, I achieved success only with small-sized images and text files. So there is that.

You also get the Bitlocker Data Recovery feature with the software. But since the version I used was Home edition, it was not available by default. If you want to use that feature, you should go with a Professional edition.

Recovery

The process to recover the files is really easy. Firstly, you need to select the file to be recovered, secondly, press the “Recover” button and select the location, where you want to save the file. Then bam, you’ll have the file restored to your computer. But if you are using the Free version, you can only restore the files and folders up to 1GB. So keep that in mind while starting the recovery process.

Although the recovery process sounds fairly simple, the process is not all sunshine and roses. In multiple scenarios, the software showed files with the file size of 0KB, which were barely any good to recover. And some of the files had correct file size, however, they didn’t function well after they got recovered.

So I presented concerns about this issue and asked personnel from iBoysoft. I got a reply that the success rate in recovering the data depends on various factors like storage device type, how data got lost, if new and big files have been added to the system, etc. Even on their website, it has been mentioned that the software doesn’t offer any guarantee that the lost/deleted files are 100% recoverable. Even if recovered, the files could get corrupted and may not work as expected.

But clarifying the statement, the personnel from iBoysoft explained that if a new file has been added to the drive, it would take up the memory location used by the previous or the deleted files. And that makes it hard it recover a fully functional file. He also pointed out that it was the reason why most of the files didn’t work during my use.

The statement implied that the success rate hugely depends on how freshly it had been deleted. So I deleted multiple files from my laptop and tried to recover them. And this time, I had a better success rate. The success rate further improved while recovering the files from removable flash drives. And that offered me some consolation.

Memory Consumption

Since the software is fairly light (3.36MB for Windows PC), it doesn’t use up much space on your computer. Even while scanning the drive (the process at which it uses maximum resources), the memory usage and CPU usage reach up to 70% and 25% respectively. So even for the non-powerful computers, running the software shouldn’t be that alarming.

Conclusion

As the need for data recovery is at a peaking phase, the iBoysoft made a good attempt to fill the gap. It has user-friendly UI so navigating the features is hassle-free. And since most of the features can be accessed in the free version, you don’t essentially have to pay for the tool unless you need to store bulk files. But despite these niceties, there are still a lot of things to improve. I would’ve totally loved and fully recommend the software if it had been a little more consistent with the restored files. So I hope the iBoysoft team will work on the flaws I mentioned and release a software update to make it even better.

Realme to embark on a new adventure with Realme Fitness Band

GadgetByte

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December 26, 2019

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Realme to embark on a new adventure with Realme Fitness Band

Realme, a sub-brand of Oppo, introduced itself to the world in May 2018 through the launch of Realme 1. Since then it has rejoiced popularity, especially in the Indian market where it has been looked on as a fierce competitor to Xiaomi. Lately, the brand is expanding its portfolio by launching different accessories. And it has been revealed that a Realme fitness band is underway.

The news about the fitness band was confirmed by Madhav Sheth who is also the company’s CEO. Realme has a monthly program in its Indian youtube channel called “#AskMadhav”, where the CEO directly answers the questions submitted by the fans. The announcement came through the thirteenth edition of the monthly video series.

Realme Fitness Band: Launch

When asked about the rumors, he confirmed that Realme is working on a fitness band. He even added that it could even launch as early as the first half of 2020. If Realme brings the product to the market it will compete against its counterpart from Xiaomi, Huawei, and others. Through the same video, he also confirmed that Realme’s flashing tool is expected to launch in the Q1 of 2020.

From the words of the CEO of the company, it looks like Realme is determined to star as the “Largest Tech-lifestyle” brand in India through its “Realme for Every Indian” mission. To achieve the mission, the company will be focusing on four big segments – smartphones, ColorOS, IoT, and Realme PaySa. The brand will be working on the Big Four to achieve the mission in 2020.

Also, read about Realme Buds.

It seems obvious that the company is following the footsteps of Xiaomi, which has already excelled at expanding its products and services beyond smartphones. It has already started bearing fruits. Xiaomi recorded record profit at $7.63 billion for the Q3 of 2019 and interestingly, the major portion of that ($2.22 billion) came from Xiaomi’s IoT components and consumer electronics devices.

Will the Realme excel on its plan? Its something we need to wait before we find the answers.

Check out our review of the Nokia 7.2 if you haven’t already!

Nokia 7.2 Review: A love-hate relationship

Nikhil Shrestha

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December 25, 2019

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Nokia 7.2 Review: A love-hate relationship

Nokia – a brand that you’re most likely already familiar with. By now I’m sure most of you guys already know the rise and fall of the company in the smartphone industry. After its acquisition by “HMD Global Oy“, a Finnish company, we’ve been seeing plenty of Android smartphones under the “Nokia” branding.

Here in Nepal, the company recently received a new distributor in the form of TeleTalk Pvt. Ltd. which has launched the Nokia 7.2 (codenamed “Daredevil” who is my favorite superhero too btw) at an attractively competitive price. Though the phone’s pricing is more than fair compared to the global arena, does it hold out against the competition in the domestic market? Read on to find out in our review of the new Nokia 7.2.

Nokia 7.2 Specifications

Body: 6.30 x 2.96 x 0.33 inches; 180 gm
Display: 6.3-inches IPS LCD “PureDisplay” panel
Resolution: Full-HD+ (2280 x 1080 pixels); 19:9 aspect ratio
Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 660; 14nm Mobile Platform
CPU: Octa-core (4×2.2 GHz Kryo 260 & 4×1.8 GHz Kryo 260)
GPU: Adreno 512
RAM: 4 / 6GB
Storage: 64 / 128GB (expandable up to 512GB via a dedicated SD card slot)
Software & UI: Android 9.0 (Pie); Android One
Rear Camera: Triple-camera;
– 48 MP, f/1.8, PDAF primary shooter
– 8 MP, f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle lens
– 5MP Depth Sensor
– LED flash
Front Camera: 20MP, f/2.0 aperture
Fingerprint sensor: Physical (rear-mounted)
Connectivity: Dual-SIM (Nano), WiFi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, NFC, Bluetooth 5.0, AGPS/GPS/GLONASS/GALILEO/BDS, USB Type-C
Battery: 3500 mAh battery with 10W Charging
Colors: Cyan Green, Charcoal, Ice
Price in Nepal: Rs. 23,999

Design & Build

Design is Nokia 7.2’s forte. It is built with a “high-tech polymer composite” material which, the company claims is twice as strong as regular polycarbonate yet half the weight of aluminum. With the metal frame and a glass back, the phone is quite slippery so I’d strongly advise pairing it with a case. Nevertheless, holding the phone feels super-premium with its curved finish.

The back also holds the triple rear-camera and the LED flash in a circular module, which I’ll get on to in more detail later in the review. Similarly, the physical fingerprint scanner is just below the camera module.

Button placement on the Nokia 7.2 is commendable as well. The volume rockers and the power button are on the right of the phone. Accessing them with one hand wasn’t a problem for me although I have fairly small hands. Interestingly, there’s no dedicated notification LED in the front of the phone here which has been compensated with one on the power button. There’s a slow glow-and-fade animation for every notification.

Though definitely unique, I found it to be counter-productive and not very useful since you can’t see the glow when the phone is placed straight below yourself. Like, you know, how you usually lay down your phone. I firmly believe that utility shouldn’t be sacrificed for design. Additionally, it only glows white so there’s no per-app notification color either.

On the left, you get the dedicated Google Assistant button and the SIM tray which can house two nano-SIM cards alongside a microSD card. Some people may find the button useful but I’m already comfortable with triggering the assistant with voice, so I had the button remapped to toggle on the flashlight on a double-tap instead. There’s only the option to either enable or disable the Google Assistant in Nokia 7.2’s settings, so I had to use a third-party app to remap the assistant button.

Moving on, the 3.5mm headphone jack lives on (thank god) on top of the phone next to the secondary microphone. Similarly, there’s the standard USB Type-C port on the bottom, as well as the primary microphone and the single-firing speaker. The audio output is decently loud as well. However, I often found my fingers blocking the speaker grille on my gaming sessions. On a different note, I have the “Charcoal” color variant of the phone while it also comes in “Cyan Green” and “Ice” options.

Display

I have quite many things to say about Nokia 7.2’s display so let’s get going with it. It has a 6.3-inch “PureDisplay” IPS LCD panel with a Full-HD+ resolution on a 19:9 aspect ratio and 400ppi. Additionally, the brightness maxes out on 500nits which is pretty decent for a mid-range phone. Similarly, the Nokia 7.2 supports the HDR10 standard with the ability for real-time HDR conversion. For protection, it has Corning Gorilla Glass 3, which is… not impressive for a 2019 phone.

Under the PureDisplay settings, you can also turn on “Auto White Balance” which reduces the blue tinge around the phone’s display. Toggling settings under “Dynamic Mode” adjusts the phone’s display according to the type of app you’re using.

For an LCD panel, the Nokia 7.2’s display is admirable, to say the least. I found it to be sufficiently bright enough even when I was outdoors. Also, the phone’s color accuracy and contrast are well to my liking.

Moreover, Nokia 7.2 has a teardrop notch on the top for the selfie camera, while there’s a significantly large chin with the “Nokia” branding. The side bezels are minimal but noticeable regardless. With this, the phone achieves 82.4% screen-to-body-ratio.

Now, the Nokia 7.2’s display has natively rounded corners like with most smartphones these days. However, there’s a visible discoloration around the top edges, which can be observed especially when content on the phone is predominantly white.

I loved content consumption on the Nokia 7.2 with its “SDR to HDR” quality conversion. Watching HDR videos on YouTube was amazing! However, I found that turning on PureDisplay messed up with the app and Quick Settings menu’s coloration.

Thing is, I’m a “Dark Mode” fanboy (though I’d rather Google implement true black dark mode rather than gray) and set my app’s theme to dark wherever available. When I turned on PureDisplay, I found that YouTube’s color scheme would start misbehaving. The UI’s dark mode would turn even more washed-out grey than usual, with clouds of white kind of flowing around the app. Turning off PureDisplay would take things back to normal.

I was curious whether the issue could be traced to the YouTube app or PureDisplay itself. So, I installed “YouTube Vanced”, which is a modded version of the regular YouTube app with a black dark theme, Picture-in-Picture (PiP) support, background play, and many more features. Though there was no problem with YT Vanced’s UI, the phone’s quick settings menu would still suffer from discoloration. Turns out, Nokia’s got some work to do!

Camera

The Nokia 7.2 has a triple camera setup on the back with the coveted “ZEISS” branding. The company has been using Zeiss optics for a long time and it has been one of the most compelling selling points of Nokia smartphones in recent times. Here, you get a 48MP primary lens with Quad-Pixel Binning, an 8MP ultrawide sensor with 118º FOV, a 5MP depth sensor, and the LED flash inside a bumpy circular module reminiscent of the long lost Nokia Lumia 1020.

For taking the sample photos, I used the native Nokia camera app and turned off the “AI Scene Detection” option which isn’t very accurate, to begin with. However, there’s also a GCam port for the Nokia 7.2.

Images from the primary lens are praiseworthy. Though they tend to be on the warmer side, the photos preserve fine amounts of detail with decent saturation. Similarly, the image sharpness and the dynamic range is something I like about Nokia 7.2’s camera as well. Comparing it with that of the Redmi Note 8 Pro, I found that the Nokia 7.2 had a better dynamic range while images from the Note 8 Pro were a little washed out.

Primary Lens - Camera Samples

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Moving on, the wide-angle camera is hit-or-miss. It does manage to produce overall good-looking photos but the colors are a wildly washed out. Similarly, details on the wide-angle shots aren’t good either, with noticeable pixelation starting from the first pinch of zoom. The Note 8 Pro, however, had even worse detail preservation compared to the Nokia 7.2.

Normal vs Wide angle - Camera Samples

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On to the portrait shots, the edge detection on the Nokia 7.2 doesn’t work as well as you’d want to. It would sometimes majorly miss out on the subject’s edges (especially on top), when maximizing the bokeh effect, thus resulting in jarring photos. Putting the portrait from the Nokia 7.2 and Note 8 Pro (with minimal bokeh) side-by-side, we can see that the latter has a slight beautification, while the Nokia 7.2 results in washed-out subjects.

Portrait Lens - Camera Samples

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Coming to the front, we have the 20MP camera inside a teardrop notch which embeds Qual-Pixel binning as well. The selfies are depressingly lacking in color reproduction and look bizarre. They look washed out making you wonder about your natural skin tone. Comparatively, the Note 8 Pro produces better selfies though they feel slightly unnatural and reddish, in regards to the beautification.

Similarly, edge detection on selfie-portraits shares a similar fate to the primary lens counterpart. The edge detection is flawed and like with the regular selfies, the results are washed out. Note 8 Pro’s selfie portraits, on the other hand, are streets ahead than that of the Nokia 7.2, though there’s an unnecessary level of added beautification.

Normal vs Portrait Selfies - Camera Samples

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Moving on to videos, the phone is capable of shooting 4K @ 30fps. The stabilization is pretty good thanks to the gyro-EIS, which only works when shooting videos in 1080p. Color reproduction and audio capture are noteworthy too. However, “focus” is something the phone struggles on in terms of videography.

Nokia has been marketing the Nokia 7.2 for its camera capabilities and to a certain degree, it delivers on the promise. All in all, though it has certain things going for it, the aggregate results are inconsistent.

Performance

Here’s where the compromises begin to critically hurt the Nokia 7.2. I don’t know why, but the company has gone with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 660 (14nm) chipset with Adreno 512 GPU. Mind you, this was released way-way back in Q2 2017. So you be the judge as to whether Nokia made a smart choice with the SoC on the Nokia 7.2 or not.

Comparing the 7.2 with other phones in a similar price range like the Redmi Note 7 Pro and Xiaomi Mi A3 is enough to break your heart. Both competitors come with a newer, more powerful chipset. Though Snapdragon 660 isn’t entirely an incompetent SoC, it should be obvious that the chipset shouldn’t be powering mid-range smartphones in 2019. Let’s just look at the benchmark scores.

Nokia 7.2 Benchmarks

AnTuTu v8: 173,472
- CPU: 75,138; GPU: 36,301; Memory: 35,094; UX: 26,939
Geekbench 5
- Single-Core: 339; Multi-Core: 1,523
- OpenCL: 614
AndroBench
- Sequential Read: 279.0 MB/s
- Sequential Write: 207.42 MB/s
PC Mark
- Work 2.0 (Performance): 6,025
3D Mark
- Sling Shot Extreme – OpenGL ES 3.1: 1,355
- Sling Shot Extreme – Vulkan: 1,299

Oof, those aren’t very impressive for the price.

Don’t get me wrong. Like I said before, it’s a good chip, but not a good choice for the device and it shows. There are no frequent lags like maybe I’m making it out to be but occasionally, it’s observable. I’ve been using the 4/64GB variant (there’s also 6GB RAM and up to 128GB memory configuration available) of the Nokia 7.2 as my secondary device for about a month now.

In my time with the phone, I used it for playing a few games, browsing the web, watching videos on YouTube, and that’s about it. Talking about gaming, I played Call of Duty, PUBG, and Injustice 2 on the phone. I was only able to push CoD‘s Graphics Quality to Medium and the Frame Rate to High. Despite the negligible lags here and there, the overall gameplay was smooth.

Similarly, PUBG set the Graphics to Medium by default on my Nokia 7.2. Here, I could push the Graphics to HD and Frame Rate to High. Turning on Anti-Aliasing and Shadows as well, there were no issues in the gameplay. The phone did get mildly warm, but there was no significant lag.

On the other hand, Injustice 2 ran smooth like butter since it’s comparatively less taxing on the CPU and GPU. The details were fine and I had fun playing Injustice 2 on the phone.

Multi-tasking wasn’t much of a problem either. In fact, I was surprised by Nokia 7.2’s memory management. It was able to keep multiple apps and games in memory and I could fluently switch between them. Let me once again remind you that my review unit had only 4GB of RAM.

Software & UI

Another thing that I really liked about the Nokia 7.2 was the software. Since it’s part of the “Android One” program, you get stock Android here sans any bloatware apps. Also, the program guarantees that the phone will get at least 2 years of system upgrades and up to 3 years of monthly security updates.

If I was in the market for a new smartphone, I’d always look for one with stock Android or something close. I’m an advocate for a clean smartphone experience and the phone didn’t disappoint.

The animations and transitions were fluid, though I occasionally noticed some lags when opening certain apps or games. However, gestures in Android Pie (9.0) haven’t been my cup of tea though I like the new style of navigation in Android 10.

I wish the Nokia 7.2 would get the Android 10 update sooner so that the awful Pie gestures would just go away. This is a subjective thing, and therefore we could agree to disagree on the feasibility of gesture navigation in Android Pie.

Battery & Security

Nokia has managed to pack an ok-ish 3500 mAh AI-assisted Adaptive battery inside the Nokia 7.2. Adding insult to the injury is the fact that it only supports 10W charging despite the chipset being capable of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4 technology. Come on man, I was rooting for you! Due to this, the battery performance on the phone isn’t on par with 2019’s standard.

As I mentioned before, Nokia 7.2 was my secondary device. However, the screen usage time would net out to 3-3.5 hours daily on average. It certainly did get me through the day with about 30% battery remaining. Charging speed as you can expect didn’t blow me away. It took me somewhere in the ballpark of 2 hours to juice up the phone from 0 to 100%.

Talking about security, a fingerprint sensor is present on the back below the camera array. It is definitely not the fastest one that I’ve used so there’s that. Also, forget unlocking the phone when your hand is a little sweaty because the sensor wouldn’t recognize my finger at such a situation.

Moreover, the software-based face-unlock is no good either. It’s just too slow! Pair this with the fact that these aren’t much secure, face-unlock isn’t the way to go on the Nokia 7.2. At most times, I’d use the fingerprint scanner and go for the good-old patterns when trouble came knocking.

Extras

Hm, what else does the phone have? Yes, the 3 months’ worth Google One subscription! Valued at dollar ninety-nine a month, you get 100GB of cloud storage across Google’s suite of applications like Photos, Drive, etc.

Conclusion

The Nokia 7.2 is a mixed-bag of a phone. On one hand, the design and the stock Android experience of the device are something you’ll cherish. However, the price-to-performance ratio doesn’t quite add up, especially considering the options in the market. The pricing of the Nokia 7.2, especially in the European region is absolutely atrocious though it has a competitive asking cost in Nepal.

Nokia 7.2 Pros & Cons

Pros:

Stunning design & build
Decent camera performance
Stock Android with guaranteed upgrades
Good audio performance
Good display with decent brightness and HDR10 support

Cons:

The chipset could’ve been better
Small battery & slow charging
Notification LED on the power button is counter-productive
Comparatively slow fingerprint and face-unlock

Huawei Mobile Services launched: Another step towards a Google-less Future?

GadgetByte

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December 25, 2019

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Huawei Mobile Services launched: Another step towards a Google-less Future?

The US trade ban on Huawei was one of the most talked-about sagas in the tech world in 2019. Huawei is now compelled to march towards a Google-less future and in that process, it has taken a new step with the launch of its mobile service dubbed the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS).

Why Huawei Mobile Services?

In a controversial chain of events, Huawei, the second-biggest smartphone brand in the world, was restricted to carry out transactions with US-based companies. We all know that Android is an open-source program. But most of its success is due to Google’s Play Services which is only available through a license from Google. Google, being a US-based company, has scrapped Huawei of its license. Since then Huawei has been putting a lot of effort into developing its ecosystem to overcome the dependency on Google.

The company has released two services – Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) and HMS Core, both in its beta stage in the Chinese market. The Huawei Mobile Services is said to improve performance experience. It also comes with several bug fixes and a handful of new features such as Huawei account, message notification, wallet service, and an internal payment system.

HMS Core

Talking about the HMS Core, it is a small app that is developed in a marketplace model. It will integrate the download and installation of basic HMS services. It is supposed to let developers integrate HMS services into their apps in an efficient manner.

Huawei Mobile Services (HMS)

Huawei also has its ecosystem – Huawei Mobile Services. And it has shown some signs of progress. As per the company, the HMS is now being used by more than a million developers. The HMS core also has more than, 450,000 apps on the platform.

Huawei HMS AppGallery — Huawei AppGallery

A while ago, Huawei did come up with its OS. Though the Hongmeng/Harmony OS is available only in its TV, it is also expected to power Huawei’s smartphones in the near future.

In spite of all the efforts that are being put into it; achieving a google-less future still seems a daunting task – even for someone as big as Huawei. So, the question remains – can Huawei achieve the impossible? We would love to hear your views on it.

MSI Prestige 15 SC Review: An eXcellent XPS alternative!

Pratima Adhikari

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December 24, 2019

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MSI Prestige 15 SC Review: An eXcellent XPS alternative!

Buying a laptop can be tricky; so many things to look out for, so many things to figure out before choosing one. But the fundamental still remains the same, what will you be using it for? For those who game a lot, sheer performance will be all that matters while a slim form factor and an extensive battery life are crucial for content creators and frequent travelers. And today, I have the MSI Prestige 15 SC laptop.

Now, looking at it from the outside, there is nothing very striking about it and looks like your usual Ultrabook. But on the inside, it packs some pretty interesting stuff.

This one here has the latest Intel 6-core i7 10^th Gen processor paired with the GTX 1650 MaxQ graphics. And since this combination is pretty rare for a laptop intended towards content creators, I was very interested to test this guy out. So, let’s get straight into it.

MSI Prestige 15 SC Specifications:

Design & Build: Aluminum Body; 14.05W x 9.20D x 0.63H-inches; 1.6kg
Display: 15.6″ Full-HD IPSmatte panel(1920 x 1080); 95% sRGB, 73% Adobe RGB, 63% NTSC Color Gamut
Keyboard: MSI Keyboard with white backlighting
Processor: Intel Core i7-10710U
RAM: DDR4 16 GB in dual-channel
Graphics: 4 GB GDDR5 NVidia GeForce GTX 1650 MaxQ
Battery: 4-cell 82 Watt-hours
AC Adapter: 90 Watts
Storage: 512GB NVME SSD (with one M.2 SSD slot available too)
Webcam: 720p Web-cam
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 ax Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, Fingerprint scanner
Ports: 2x Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1x HDMI, 1x Audio, 2x Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1x Micro SD slot
Price in Nepal: Rs. 180,000 ($1,399 international)

Design & Build

As you can see here, the design is top-notch.

MSI Prestige 15 SC - Design

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It has an aluminum body wherein the lid has the classic MSI dragon logo. It’s also thin, light and easy to carry around.

The lid has some flex in it. But then again, you have to compromise a little with a laptop so thin. By the way, it only measures 15.9mm in thickness and has a weight of mere 1.6 kilos. It’s not as feather-light like the Acer Swift but is still portable enough to carry around.

Port selection too is very good for an Ultrabook. On the left, you get two Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports both of which support Thunderbolt 3.0, an HDMI port, and an audio port. On the right, you are greeted with two Type-A USB3.2 Gen2, and surprisingly, a Micro SD card slot too.

MSI Prestige 15 SC Ports

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But since this laptop is intended for the content creators, MSI should have gone with an SD card slot instead.

Charging here is done via the USB C ports for which you get a 90-watt adapter.

Display

Now, about the display, this one has a 15.6 inches FHD IPS matte screen. There is a 4K variant of it too that claims to have 100% RGB, but this one is a slightly toned-down version.

Having said that it is fairly color accurate with 95% SRGB, 73% Adobe RGB and 63% of NTSC Color Gamut coverage. For me, it did a good job on my photoshop and video editing needs. However, I am not keeping aside the fact that the 4K version will give you marginally better color coverage.

I also found the display to be fairly bright. However, it is not that bright to be used outdoors. MSI has included tons of color profiles which you can change from the MSI Creator Center or the MSI True Color app.

The screen also bends 180 degrees which is something I have always wanted on my Dell XPS 15. And what’s cool about this is the fact that you can rotate the display to show content to people sitting right opposite to you.

On the aesthetics side, you get very thin bezels on the screen which kind of makes the laptop look bigger than it is. On the top center of it, you get a 720p webcam whose quality is strictly average, with a subpar microphone.

Similarly, the 2x 2W stereo speaker is also quite average, so it’s not good for listening to music, watching videos, or other stuff.

Keyboard

Below the screen, you get the MSI Keyboard. It is not the steel series one like we’re used to seeing on MSI’s gaming units. The keyboard is very comfortable nonetheless and is very easy to get used to.

I come from the XPS 15 keyboard which is one of the best I have used so far. However, I’ve come to like this too.

This keyboard does have backlighting but only glows in one shade of white. There are three levels of the backlight which you can adjust using the F8 button.

Right below the keyboard, you have the trackpad which I felt is not the best thing about the Prestige 15. On my use, it has been prone to frequent accidental touches while typing, which went on to being frustrating at times. And it is not the most accurate one out there either.

On the top left of it, there is a fingerprint sensor that gives the laptop a very nice touch. So overall, I felt the design of it is quite solid and sturdy.

Performance

Alright, let’s get on to the performance. It’s fired up with Intel’s latest Core i7- 10710U Comet Lake processor.

This is a 6 core-12 threads 10^th gen CPU with 15Watt TDP, although it is configurable up to 25W as well. So, as compared to the 45Watt Intel 9^th gen i7 9750H, this one here is more energy efficient.

You also get 16GB RAM in dual channel and a relatively fast 512GB of NVME SSD. There is also a vacant M.2 Slot, in case you need more storage.

Normal tasks yielded absolutely no problems whatsoever, as one might expect from a laptop of this caliber. The multitasking capabilities were also quite impressive. I had over 15 google tabs opened at once, did some photo editing at the same time and still, the laptop showed no sign of fatigue.

MSI Prestige 15 SC and Dell XPS 15 comparision — MSI Prestige 15 SC & Dell XPS 15

Then I moved on to some heavy tasks like editing videos. The Galaxy A70s video that we recently published; we edited that in this machine. And the editing part was quite fluid as well.

There were some hiccups while using the Adobe After Effects, but Premier Pro had no such issue. The rendering time wasn’t bad at all.

It took around 20 minutes to render the aforementioned video. In comparison, our main editing PC with the Intel i7-9700K processor and RTX 2070 was slightly faster at 17 minutes.

So, yes, this one is capable of light to moderate editing. And also, if you are a graphic designer or a front-end developer, the 10^th gen U-processor will not result in any performance issue.

Gaming

Now, even though this is not a gaming rig, the MSI Prestige 15 does have a fairly powerful Nvidia GTX 1650 MaxQ GPU.

However, when I played games on it, for the optimal performance, I used the High-Performance Mode which you can turn it on using MSI’s Creator Centre. Here, you can choose between High Performance, Balanced, Silent, and Super Battery. You can also create a shortcut key (a macro) for when to activate these modes, based on the task you are doing.

Games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Fry Cry 5, and Apex Legends were playable at around 50fps at max settings, which is not bad at all. I also played Battlefield in medium settings and got around 60fps with no stutters or lag. Midtier games like FIFA 20, CS Go, and Dota 2 works flawlessly at max settings and fps over 120.

Average FPS count of games at max settings:

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: 41
Far Cry 5: 51
Apex Legends: 58
Battlefield: ~60
FIFA 20, CS GO, Dota 2: Over 120

Talking about the thermals, it does run quite hot especially while playing games. It’s hot especially on the top, near the hinge area where the air exhaust lies.

The CPU temperature is also usually over 90 degrees while gaming for over 30 minutes, whereas the GPU is a little bit cooler. However, you can tune the fans to turn it to the max, which by the way, gets very loud! But again, this will also solve the throttling and heating issue.

So, yeah, the Prestige 15 isn’t any gamer’s fantasy laptop. There’s no arguing there. It’s for someone who works all day and takes a break to enjoy some gameplay.

Battery-life on the MSI Prestige 15 is very impressive though, and that’s the perk of having a low powered CPU.

You can get around 9-10 hours of battery life on this FHD version while using it for browsing and watching YouTube videos. For more intensive activities like Photoshop, you will get around 4-5 hours of battery which I think is commendable.

Conclusion

So, here’s my verdict about the MSI Prestige 15: I think it’s a great Ultrabook, especially for a market like Nepal where the Dell XPS 15 and the MacBook Pro 13 costs you a fortune. The Prestige 15 is priced at 1.8 lakhs Nepali Rupee whereas the XPS 15 and MacBook Pro 13 cost well over 2.5 lakhs.

Although the XPS 15 offers you a faster CPU and a better build, the Prestige 15 holds its own ground with a fairly good display, excellent battery life, and an overall good enough performance.

So, if you want to save some money and get a decent XPS 15 alternative, I would recommend the Prestige 15 to the content creators. And also, if you are a Civil engineer or a mechanical engineer who uses AutoCAD or Solid works kind of software and are traveling a lot on-site, this is a very good option.

Sastodeal brings New year’s Cell-A-Bration to start off the New Year

GadgetByte

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December 23, 2019

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Sastodeal brings New year’s Cell-A-Bration to start off the New Year

Lucrative deals and schemes keep emerging in the market from time to time. And with the new year knocking at the door, we can only expect to have more deals to take advantage of. Talking about deals, Sastodeal has partnered with Cellpay to bring “SastoDeal New year’s Cell-A-Bration”. The campaign starts right from December 24 and will last till January 2, 2020.

Under this scheme, one can avail up to 40% discounts on your first purchase order through the e-commerce site. The discounted amount will be deposited as loyal points in your Cellpay’s account. The maximum discount offered is 1000 Loyal Points. What we need to know is one loyal point equivalents to Re. 1 Nepalese Rupees. They will also be providing an extra 10% discount on checkout and free delivery service on a few selected brands. Nothing further has been said about this particular scheme.

Cellpay

In case you are hearing about Cellpay for the first time, it is an e-payment system through which we can pay for our transactions online. In Nepal, the most popular means of paying online is through the available e-wallet system. Cellpay helps you pay directly from the bank without the intervention of any e-wallets. Since the money is going to stay in your bank account you’ll have better control of your money and you can avail advantages that the e-wallets deprive you of. But it isn’t free; you need to pay a nominal amount for the transaction fee depending upon the size of the transaction.

Also read: Samsung Christmas & New Year Offer

Requirements

In order to take advantage of this offer, you need to link your Cellpay account to your bank account. You can download Cellpay’s app from the App Store or the Google Play Store. You can link your bank account by going over to the Manage Account section of the app. For this, you need to have subscribed to mobile banking service and the details you enter must match with the record at Bank. Further details can be found on Cellpay’s website.

JBL Flip 5 Review: Good Times Bad Times

Nikhil Shrestha

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December 23, 2019

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Bluetooth. It’s safe to assume that most of us are plenty familiar with the technology which has been connecting our smartphones and so many other IoT devices for decades. Considering the bandwidth and speed, it’s surprising that some new innovation hasn’t completely replaced it by now. Anyhoo, today I’m talking about a new Bluetooth speaker from JBL, the Flip 5. Will it rock your world? Find out all about it in this review.

JBL Flip 5 Specifications

Dimension (W x D x H): 7.13 x 2.72 x 2.91-inches
Battery: 4800 mAh (LiPo); 3.6V
Battery Life: Up to 12 hours
Charging: Within 2.5 hours; 5V/3A
IP Rating: IPX7 (Up to 3 feet for 30 minutes)
Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2 (A2DP V1.3, AVRCP V1.6), USB Type-C
Transducer: 44mm x 80mm
Output Power: 20W (RMS)
Frequency Response: 65Hz – 20kHz
Signal-to-noise Ratio: >80dB
Weight: 540gm
Companion app: JBL Connect
Price in Nepal: Rs. 14,800

The Good

Audio Performance

For any speaker to be considered “good”, it has to… well, sound good. In the case of the JBL Flip 5, the audio quality is impressive. While the last-gen JBL Flip 4 came with two 8W drivers and stereo sound, the company has gone with a single 20W driver and a mono sound system on Flip 5.

Now, the switch from stereo to mono may already be an immediate turnoff for many. And normally, it would make sense. However, I think JBL made the right call by going mono on Flip 5. First of all, unless you are an audiophile or have an extremely keen pair of ears, the stereo sound can hardly be noticed and enjoyed on a speaker of this size. Therefore, due to the lack of use of different driver for each audio frequency range, for me, Flip 5 sounds more consistent and better than the Flip 4.

It. is. loud!

Add this to the bigger 20W driver, the Flip 5 gets loud – maybe too loud even. The volume level goes from silent, loud, louder, louder, to “in-the-middle-of-a-Newari-Jatra” loud. If it bothers you too much, you can turn on “Disable Absolute Volume” under your phone’s Developer options menu. The audio is clear, crisp, and the bass is commendable.

On the speaker’s end, you’ll find two passive radiators (rubber end caps) which are more rubbery than the ones in the Flip 4, which leaned on the plastic-y feel. These passive radiators are used to extend the low-frequency range (for soundwaves like bass) of the speaker.

JBL Flip 5 - Passive Radiators

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If you’re still not sold on the Flip 5’s mono audio system, you can actually pair two Flip 5s and use them as a stereo sound system. But, most of us probably won’t be buying two units of the same speaker for a complete aural experience anyway.

Design & Controls

Moving on to the design, the Flip 5 comes in a familiar wire-mesh grille body and has that rugged look and feel to it. You can also carry around Flip 5 with its lanyard that resembles a shoe-lace. Moreover, it is IPX7 waterproof so you rest assured taking it to pools or other similar environments. But, there is a 3ft/30minutes restriction, so do be careful.

On the front, there are four tactile buttons; from left to right – PartyBoost, Volume Down, Volume Up, Play/Pause. You can skip a track by double-pressing the play/pause button, and that’s about all it can do.

I had no problems operating the buttons since they are quite clicky and responsive. Also, you can easily distinguish which one is which, just by feeling them. On the back, you have the power and the Bluetooth button alongside an LED battery indicator and the USB Type-C charging port.

The indicator glows a single shade of white and fades as the battery wears down. I was a little skeptical about it at first, but with time, it has grown on me. Also, unlike Flip 4, there’s no flap covering these ports on Flip 5 which makes it a lot easier to get to.

Battery

The battery is another area where Flip 5 sees an improvement. Packing a bigger 4800 mAh unit, it now charges via a Type-C cable unlike Flip 4 which used MicroUSB for charging. Additionally, the charging time in Flip 5 has been reduced to 2.5 hours while the Flip 4 fully charged in 3.5 hours. Bravo JBL! In my time of testing, I played music through Flip 5 on moderate volume and it lasted me about 8 hours, in contrast to the advertised 12 hours. But of course – the louder you play, the lesser the battery life!

Companion App

“JBL Connect” is the companion app for JBL speakers. Using this, you can use the “PartyBoost” functionality which I’ll get into in heavy details later on. Also, you can pair two Flip 5s and use it as Stereo (L/R) channels through the app. There’s not much else you can do from JBL connect. It displays the battery level and you can toggle “Audio Feedback Sound” on/off.

The app isn’t required for using the speaker on a general basis. You can simply power on Flip 5, turn on the Bluetooth of your phone (or other input sources) and the speaker and then listen as you please. I did, however, notice that when the devices were already paired, if I tried accessing the app, it would still take some time to recognize that my pre-paired Flip 5.

The Bad

Had your fun? Now let’s get to the bad stuff.

No headphone jack!

There are plenty of feature omissions on Flip 5, which raises a major red flag for the speaker. First of all, it has no 3.5mm headphone jack, unlike its predecessor, thus making it a Bluetooth-exclusive speaker. What if you encountered some trouble with the connection but had a 3.5mm AUX cable laying around? Too bad!

Bye, bye miss speakerphone-ay!

Flip 5 also doesn’t have an in-built microphone so you can’t take calls or use voice assistant unlike Flip 4. Such a crucial feature, why’d they remove it?. Even though communicating with Google Assistant and Siri on a Bluetooth speaker suffers from a noticeable lag, calls aren’t. The ability to talk with the whole family through a speakerphone is not possible on Flip 5 and that plain sucks.

Older-gen Bluetooth and the basic codecs

Furthermore, Flip 5 still uses Bluetooth 4.2 like Flip 4. Why didn’t JBL make a jump to Bluetooth 5.0? It provides a better range and higher data rate as well. Obviously, I don’t mean Flip 5’s Bluetooth is downright miserable. In my time of testing, I barely noticed any audio delays but the in-house range was limited to about 5 meters, which is not that spectacular. Beyond that, the “kryek-kreyk” ensued!

Besides this, Flip 5 doesn’t support high-end Bluetooth codecs like aptX, aptX HD and is restricted to A2DP and AVRCP which as the most basic audio codec for any Bluetooth device. When connected, your phone may show you the option to toggle “HD audio: SBC” on or off, but don’t be blown away by that just yet. The Sub-Band Coding (SBC) delivers worse latency and audio quality than the aforementioned high codecs.

But no, once again, the Flip 5 will not give you unbearable latency and aural experience. I’m just saying JBL could’ve gone with Bluetooth 5.0 and some better codecs.

… & The Ugly

Full disclosure, if you don’t own any other JBL speakers, you can just skip this part. Because the ugly I’m talking about is JBL’s yet another “PartyBoost” protocol for connecting it with other speakers from the company.

Previous JBL Bluetooth speakers used to come with the “Connect+” pairing protocol using which you could connect up to 100 devices at a time. The Flip 4 featured Connect+ as well. But no… JBL had to come up with yet another protocol titled “PartyBoost” which has basically the same functionality as Connect+ but is only compatible with other speakers with PartyBoost.

WHAT’S THE DAMN POINT?

Right off the bat, I didn’t know about this and tried pairing it with Flip 4. Then I noticed the different logo between the two and Googled to know what it was. As far as I can tell, the new JBL Pulse 4 comes with PartyBoost and maybe other upcoming speakers. So, if you were planning to have a sound system with your older JBL speaker(s) with the Flip 5 at the helm, the company’s probably like “Cry me a river!“. Maybe the future Flip 6 will have PartyBoost+, who knows?

Conclusion

The JBL Flip 5 is a terrific Bluetooth speaker with great audio performance, no doubt. With a bigger battery and a faster-charging speed than the predecessor, there are so many things to love. However, it is (or could be) equally bad in some other departments. The lack of a headphone jack and speakerphone is a bummer. Also, the non-backward compatible PartyBoost shouldn’t have existed, to begin with. Therefore, if you’re in the market of a standalone decent Bluetooth speaker, JBL Flip 5 is an excellent choice. However, for people with older-gen JBL speakers looking for a connected sound system, I would suggest they skip the Flip 5.

OPPO A91 brings Super AMOLED display, 30W charging in a sub $300 price tag

GadgetByte

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December 23, 2019

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OPPO A91 brings Super AMOLED display, 30W charging in a sub $300 price tag

While it is keeping the world at wait for the Reno3 series which is said to be unveiled on December 26, Oppo has released the Oppo A91 in China. The company has started booking for the phone for the Chinese audience and should launch in south Asian markets including Nepal as well. Oppo A91 is the latest midrange phone in Oppo’s A-series of smartphones and it packs some promising specs.

Overview

The Oppo A91 comes with a 6.4-inches AMOLED display and a 20:9 aspect ratio. The display, here, is a Full-HD+ panel with 1080 x 2400 resolution. Oppo has packed in features such as eye protection mode, DC dimming 2.0 too. There is a small waterdrop style notch inside which sits the front camera. It also comes with an in-display fingerprint scanner.

The phone is powered by the MediaTek Helio P70 which has also powered smartphones like the Vivo S1 and Oppo F11 Pro. So, it brings nothing new to the performance department. It is backed up by 8GB of RAM and massive 128GB internal storage which can be further expanded via a microSD card.

Talking about the camera, Oppo A91 features a quad-lens setup on the back. The primary camera on the device has a 48MP lens. In addition to this, there is an 8MP sensor for ultrawide shots, a 2MP depth sensor, and another 2MP sensor for taking macro shots. The selfie camera sports a 16MP sensor and it sits on the notch on the front.

The phone comes with a 4,000 mAh battery. And thanks to the VOOC 4.0 fast charging technology, the company claims that the 30W charger, which comes with the phone, can charge the device to 50% within 30 minutes. On the software side, we get ColorOS 6.1 based on Android 9 which is quite disappointing given that the company has already launched ColorOS 7.0 based on Android 10.

OPPO A91 Specifications

Display: 6.4-inch Full-HD+ AMOLED display
Chipset: Media Tek Helio P70; 12nm Mobile Platform
RAM: 8 GB
Storage: 128GB internal, expandable via microSD card slot
OS: Android 9 with ColorOS 6.1 on the top
Rear Camera: Quad camera – (48MP primary sensor) + (8MP depth sensor) + (2MP macro sensor) + ( 8MP ultra-wide sensor)
Front Camera: 16MP
Security: Fingerprint (under display)
Connectivity: Dual SIM (nano + nano/SD card), Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (2.4GHz / 5GHz), Bluetooth 5, GPS + GLONASS, USB Type-C
Battery: 4,000mAh with VOOC 3.0 fast charging support via the 30W charger

OPPO A91 Price and Availability

The Oppo A91 is open for booking in China. Its price is set at 1,999 Yuan which roughly equivalents to NPR 32,500. As of now, we are unsure if it is going to be launched in any other market other than China.

Will it launch in Nepal? Most likely. So stay with us on further updates regarding the Oppo A91’s availability in Nepal.

OPPO A8 with a 4230 mAh battery launched in China

GadgetByte

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December 23, 2019

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OPPO A8 with a 4230 mAh battery launched in China

Oppo has launched the Oppo A8; a new budget-oriented member in the Oppo’s A-series of smartphones. As with most of the budget-oriented devices these days, the A8 comes with a big sized battery.

Overview

The Oppo A8 features a 6.5-inch HD+ IPS display. It packs in the resolution of 720 x 1600 pixels. The company has added an eye protection mode which protects the user from the harmful blue light. It has a waterdrop style notch on the front which encloses the front camera.

Additionally, Oppo A8 comes with MediaTek Helio P35 chipset which is backed by 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. There’s a microSD card slot in case the 128GB internal storage seems insufficient.

Talking about the camera, it houses three cameras on the back arranged on linear fashion atop of an LED flash. The 12MP main camera is coupled with a 2MP lens for micros and a 2-MP sensor for better depths. At the front, there’s an 8MP selfie camera.

As far as the software is concerned, it ships with Android 9 with Oppo’s own ColorOS 6.0 on top. Oppo has also added The Breeno Smart Voice Assistant which was first introduced as an intelligent assistant for the era of 5G in Oppo Developers Conference 2018. It comes with a 4,230 mAh battery which the company claims to last 7 hours of gaming and 14 hours of online video watching.

Also read: OPPO Developer Conference 2019.

As for security, there’s a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner on the back. It also comes with a micro USB port which is quite outdated as most of the phones nowadays come with Type-C port.

Connectivity-wise, it comes dual sim support, 4G Volte, dual-band Wifi, Bluetooth 4.2, and a 3.5mm jack.

OPPO A8 Price And Availability

Oppo A8 is open for booking in China and is set to go on sale from December 26. It is priced at 1,199 Yuan which is roughly 19,500 in Nepalese currency.

As of now, nothing has been said about its release in other markets. However, looking back at the company’s history, it is safe to assume that the Oppo A8 will see its launch in Nepal for a not-so-comparable price.

OPPO A8 Specs Overview

Display: 6.5-inch HD+ IPS LCD display with waterdrop notch
Chipset: Helio P35; 12nm Mobile Platform
CPU: Octa-core (4× 2.3GHz Cortex-A53, 4x 1.8GHz Cortex-A53)
RAM: 4 GB
Storage: 128GB internal, expandable via microSD card slot
OS: Android 9 with ColorOS 6.1 on the top
Rear Camera: Triple camera – (12MP ) + (2MP depth sensor) + (2MP macro lens)
Front Camera: 8MP
Security: Fingerprint (rear-mounted)
Connectivity: Dual SIM, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, micro-USB 2.0
Battery: 4,230mAh

Also, check out our review of the OPPO Reno2 F!