“Winter is coming!” or rather, it is here. And in this chilly weather, Huawei’s got some hot offers for you! Their campaign is titled “Cold Winter, HOT Price Offers”, in which they’re offering three phones at various discounted prices. And they are the Huawei Nova Y9 2019, Huawei Nova 2 Lite and Huawei Y5 Lite. But the offers are only there for a limited amount of time.
Huawei Y9 2019
Although its name suggests 2019, The Huawei Y9 2019 is another great mid-range handset of 2018. It has a pleasing large display, good enough set of cameras, and the Kirin 710 chipset at the helm. This is a phone that doesn’t excel in any particular aspect but performs well enough in all aspects. An average all-rounder, so to speak.
This phone was introduced for Rs.34,900 here. But now, as a part of Huawei’s offer, you can buy the Huawei Y9 2019 for only Rs. 31,490!
Display: 6.5-inches IPS LCD FHD+ screen with 19.5:9 aspect ratio
Operating System: Android Oreo 8.1 with EMUI 8.2 on top
Price in Nepal: Rs.34,900.
Offer Price: Rs. 31,490
Huawei Nova 2 Lite
Also known as the Huawei Y7 Prime 2018 internationally, the Nova 2 Lite can be categorized in the budget segment. It features an HD+ display with no notch, average cameras, and an average processor too. But it does have a shiny body that makes for a somewhat appealing looks.
This phone that costs Rs.23,900 is available, now, for Rs.21,990. With the offer though, it could be a good purchase.
Display: 5.99 inches IPS LCD, HD+ resolution (1440 x 720), 269 PPI pixel density
Sensors: Fingerprint, accelerometer, proximity, compass, etc.
Price: Rs. 23,900
Offer Price: Rs.21,990
Huawei Y5 Lite 2018
This is also a recent addition to Huawei’s budget lineup. And it made debut alongside the Nova 2 Lite as well. It features an HD display, 8 MP rear camera and has low internal specs. However, it does have a good battery. This can be a good phone, for someone who doesn’t use all the complex features of a smartphone, like maybe somebody’s grandparents.
This phone costs Rs.13,900 and now, as a part of the offer, this phone costs Rs.11,990. Again, with the offer, this phone might be a good buy.
Display: 5.45″ IPS LCD HD+ display, 1440 x 720 resolution
Camera: 8 MP with LED Flash
RAM: 1 GB
Internal Storage: 16 GB
CPU: MediaTek MT6737M processor
OS: Android Go Oreo (Android 8.1)
Battery: 3020 mAh
USB: micro USB 2.0
Price: Rs.13,900
Offer Price: Rs.11,990
Out of these three phones, we believe that the Huawei Y9 2019 is the best deal of all. That phone, though tagged as a “Jack of all trades, master of none” does an okay job in most aspects. So, it can make for a good mid-range device. But do purchase these phones soon, if you plan to. The offer won’t last for very long.
And what do you think about these offers? Will you be buying these phone in this offer? Or pass on them?
While Lenovo phones were popular some few years ago, we don’t hear the name very often now. But the company has made a come back here in Nepal with the Lenovo S5 and K5 Play. Today we have the Lenovo S5 – a phone that falls into the lower mid-range segment, with its price tag of Rs.26,999. Granted that this is a phone from some 6 months ago, some of the things might be a little outdated. But can it still stand against the phones of today? Let’s find that out in this Lenovo S5 review.
Lenovo S5 Specifications
Design: Full Metal design
Display: 5.7″ IPS LCD Full HD+ Max Vision Display (1080 x 2160) resolution
The first thing that you will notice about this device is the looks of it. There is nothing much striking about it, although it does resemble some Xiaomi phones. It’s an all-metal unibody construction with an aluminum frame surrounding the sides. And though the phone is not a glass body, it does look and feel good on hands. I have the black version here but there is also a red version available.
As for the aesthetics, you get a clean look at the back, Dual cameras, an LED light, a fingerprint sensor, and the Lenovo branding. The looks seem minimalistic but the ever so slight protruding cameras cause some imbalance when the phone is kept upside down. Looking at the front, it’s evident that there is no notch game going on and honestly, I don’t mind that. The phone is slim and well does not ditch the headphone jack here. Down below, you get the single speaker grill, the primary microphone and the USB type C input which I am happy to see.
Up front, at the top, you get the speaker input, proximity and light sensors along with the selfie camera. Similarly, the right handles the placement of the power button and volume rockers along with having the SIM tray/ MicroSD card slot on the left.
Display:
The display measures 5.7 inches and well, has an 18:9 aspect ratio which is a standard all smartphones follow. But the bezels surely take away the charm of an edge to edge display from this phone. But the display that has a resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels does justice to the price. The display is colorful, vibrant and sharp. However, during the review time, I have always wished it provide me better sunlight visibility.
The design and display department of this phone is okay. I mean, it’s not excellent but it’s not bad either.
Performance and Storage and Software
For the price, the Lenovo S5 does well with performance too. You get the SD 625 chipset along with Adreno 506 GPU and well this combination works good enough. PUBG is playable at low settings and it ran well with only a few stutters. And also, the phone handles gameplay well even on the heating aspect. But battery drainage is an issue during long hours of gaming. However, it’s the same in almost all the phones so, there is not much to complain. Multitasking is fast enough although app opening is not blazing fast. Navigating through is also smooth enough.
But, I cannot not mention the fact that for a similar price, you get the Mi A2 Lite with Stock Android which brings me to the Software side of things. Well, the phone has ZUI on top of Android and I feel that it is yet to mature to a fully functioning good UI.
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multitasking bar
lenovo s5 home screen
lenovo s5 no app drawer
lenovo s5 notification center
lenovo s5 control center
What I mean by that is, some features it has of the iOS and some of Android and the combination is not very appealing to use. The upward swiping action center is confusing because most of the times I have just wanted to put on the navigation keys. Similarly, the notifications can only be deleted if you swipe towards the left, which is again very confusing. I have used this device for almost 2 weeks now and I am still having difficulties getting used to it.
In the storage department, you get 4GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage which is what we expect for the price so no complaints here as well.
While we are still talking about the performance, the fingerprint sensor is a bit slower than what I have been experiencing on other phones. Although the sensor gets it correct 9 out of 10 times. Likewise, the touch sensitivity is not that great either, I had some light touch times and the S5 did not receive it well.
The speaker at the bottom is just average. Good news is that it has a notification LED light but only glows in altogether 3 colors, so my notifications were not missed.
Battery:
The phone comes with a 3,000 mAh battery that is enduring and will back you up for a day. However, gameplay results to massive battery drainage and will leave you juiceless on intensive prolonged gaming. On normal use, the battery fares well. It takes you over two get it fully running which is a pretty long time. However, you get a USB Type C here which is something missing on even some phones priced more than this one.
Cameras:
Cameras on this one is a mixed bag. Sometimes, you get good results and sometimes, you just lose hope. Most of the times, good lighting conditions result in good pictures. The annoying part is that the images take a lot of time to process. To be exact, it takes around 2-3 seconds to produce an image, which means you will have to be very patient. But the image quality is not bad by any means. The images do lack a bit of punch but the detailing is good enough. If you are wondering what the megapixel count on this one is, it’s a 13 MP shooter at the back with another 13 MP Monochrome sensor. Black and white pictures look good but I wished it could be a depth sensor.
Lenovo S5 Back camera samples
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There is a portrait mode too but the depth sensing is purely software and well, they are just okay. But you can adjust the intensity of blurs after taking pictures, so that’s cool.
Lenovo S5 Portrait image samples
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Night shots are grainy and noisy and if your hands are not stable enough, you could get your images to be shaky.
As for the selfies, they look good in good lighting conditions, when the lighting becomes darker, you will start noticing grains in your pictures. Here are a few samples for you to judge.
You can see in the pictures, they are not that punchy but the selfies don’t look bad. So, the 16 MP selfie camera fares well enough.
Lenovo S5 selfie samples
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Talking about the videos, you can record videos up to 4k, however, they are not that stabilized. The autofocus does not work very properly either.
Conclusion:
So, to conclude, I would say that the Lenovo S5 is an okay phone overall. What I mean by this is all the aspects of this one are neither extraordinarily good nor strikingly bad. It can give you a performance that is “okay” in all aspects.
However, it is also worth considering that there are other options from Xiaomi that might give tough competition to this one. The Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite and Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 AI would be some phones challenging this one. However, anyone buying this phone will not regret in overall usage. However, I am not a fan of the software though!
Realme, OPPO’s sub-brand is a pretty well-known phone brand. Mostly, because of their affordable phones with good internal specs. And after a series of Realme phones, a new one has surfaced. Known as the Realme U1, this phone is the first to feature the new MediaTek Helio P70 chipset.
OPPO Realme U1 Overview
And since it is from OPPO, it is not surprising that this one is a selfie-centric phone. Well, the other Realme phones may not have been as selfie-centric, but it’s OPPO. So, to include a good selfie camera is a given. Anyways, the design is more-or-less very similar to the Realme 2 Pro. And the display as well, with the same 6.3″ Full HD+ LTPS IPS LCD panel with the tear-drop notch, the phone looks quite identical.
In terms of camera, the rear camera consists of a 13 MP primary sensor with f/2.2 aperture and a 2 MP depth sensor. The rear camera setup seems inferior to the Realme 2 Pro’s and with a narrow f/2.2 aperture, I don’t expect much from the rear camera. However, as aforementioned, the selfie camera is a big 25 MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture. And with this, we can be pretty confident that it will take great selfies.
Underneath, the Helio P70 powers this phone. This is the first phone to have this chipset, and it is the upgrade to the Helio P60, which was a good mid-range chipset. The Helio P70 claims better clock-speed enhancements, feature enhancements, and better power efficiency. Other than that, it also claims a steady 60 fps in gaming via optimizations, which is good as the only 60 fps you’ll see on this phone are in the gaming department (because there is no 60 fps video recording of any kind). Also, the new chipset also monitors the power usage and temperature constantly. But only time will tell if its claims hold up.
As for the Realme U1, it comes in two RAM / storage configurations: 3 GB / 32 GB and 4 GB / 64 GB options. Also, there’s a dedicated microSD card slot for your storage expansion needs. The phone has a good-sized 3500 mAh battery, but there is no fast-charging whatsoever. But, it still retains the 3.5 mm headphone jack, and FM Radio. In addition, the phone will run on the ColorsOS 5.2 on top of Android 8.1.
The phone launched in India for INR. 12000 (US $170) for the 3/32 GB and INR. 15000 for the 6/64 GB. The Realme brand is, right now, only available in India, and so, won’t be launching in Nepal anytime soon. But what do you think of this phone? Do let us know.
Realme U1 Specifications:
Display: 6.3″ LTPS IPS LCD Full HD+ (1080 x 2340 pixels), 2.5D Gorilla Glass protection
Rear Camera: Dual camera setup, 13 MP sensor with f/2.2 aperture + 2 MP depth sensor
Front Camera: Single, 25 MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture
Lava phones may not be as popular as some other brands out there, but they still have a hold in the Nepali smartphone market. And the Lava Iris 88, the company’s phone which launched in the Nepali market back in June, got its price slashed. The phone which initially launched for Rs.14,290, and was available for Rs.13000 in recent times. And now, with another price slash of Rs.1000, it is now available for Rs. 11,999.
Lava Iris 88 Specifications:
Dimensions: 146.5 x 70.2 x 8.65 mm
Display: 5.45-inch HD+ display; 93.8% screen to body ratio
Chipset: MediaTek MT6739WW
OS: StarOS 5.0 based on Android Oreo (v8.1.0)
RAM: 2 GB
GPU: IMG 8XE 1PPC
Storage: 16GB
Rear Camera: 8MP w Flash and Bokeh effect
Front camera: 5MP w FaceID
Sensors: Face ID, accelerometer, gyro, proximity
SIM: 4G
Connectivity:Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, A-GPS
Battery: 3000 mAh
Colors: Grey and Gold
Price in Nepal: Rs. 11,999
Lava Iris 88 Overview
Being a budget phone, the specs of the phone may not impress you today. But for the money, we can say it packs decent specs. It features a 5.45″ HD+ display up front with 18:9 aspect ratio.
The phone sports an 8 MP camera at the back with Autofocus, LED Flash, and is capable of shooting portrait images. The front camera is a 5 MP sensor which also assists in Facial Unlock. Yes, even for a budget phone, this device has that feature. This phone is powered by MediaTek MT6739WW chipset and supported by 2 GB RAM. Also, it has an internal storage of 16 GB, and you can expand that up to 256 GB using a microSD card slot. This phone also packs a 3000 mAh battery.
So, for a super budget phone, you can say this is good enough specs, don’t you think? With this price, it can compete with the newly entered Xiaomi Redmi 6A as well. So, what are your thoughts on this super budget phone? Do let us know.
It has only been a few weeks since Samsung showcased a couple of displays it has been working on. Fast forward a few weeks, Huawei looks set to emulate one of those displays on a new smartphone. The smartphone, rumored to be named the Nova 3S will be among the first devices to feature this sort of display cut-out.
2018 has seen the trend of mobile phones featuring a high screen-to-body ratio with a number of devices going absolutely bezel-less. Complying with that trend, Samsung had only recently unveiled designs of display that have three types of notches.
Huawei has just released a teaser on one of its social media account citing a smartphone launch for December. What’s more interesting here is the sparkling light on the top right corner of the device. This design certainly reminds us of the Infinity-O display.
This design looks very similar to the renders of the Galaxy A8s which will have the same cut out to equip the selfie camera, according to various leaks. Up until now, Samsung has always stuck with no cutouts for its display, so it will be interesting to see how the company moves here onwards.
It will be interesting to see how the public reacts to this new smartphone from Huawei, as a lot of people have been waiting to see the end of notches on smartphones.
Love iPads? Then surely the new 2018 update of the iPad Pros were on your wish list. Well, thanks to Oliz Store now that wish-list can finally come true. The two new Apple iPad Pro 2018 have got a design overhaul. And now the new iPad Pros looks much cleaner and feature just a USB C port. The display on the smaller 11″ iPad has a 2388 x 1668 pixels resolution panel, while the 12.9″ comes with a slightly denser 2732 x 2048 pixels display.
Both come equipped with ProMotion technology (which automatically adjusts the display rate for up to 120Hz), True Tone support, and a max brightness of 600nits. The bezels are now even thinner, with a layer of anti-reflective coating on top.
Both iPads come with the new A12X Bionic chip from Apple. It’s built on a 7nm process with an 8-Core CPU and 7-Core GPU. These CPUs are pretty much as good as it gets even for high demanding tasks like creating 3D models, editing photos, etc.
There is even a Neural Engine Chip that works alongside the A12X chip for better machine learning. Storage options start from 64GB all the way to 1TB with 4G LTE support on selected models.
The iconic home button is now gone, replaced fully by the FaceID that utilizes the 7MP front-facing True-Depth camera. It’s usable for securely unlocking your iPad, as well as Apple Pay. The back gets a 12MP camera with up to 4k video recording.
The batteries on these iPad Pros are rated to last about 10 hours while doing certain Apple approved tasks. Company figures aside, the smaller iPad Pro comes with a 29.37Wh battery while bigger one has a 36.71Wh unit.
Apple became the first trillion dollars company recently. The milestone cues the formidable stature of the company. However, the sales of the recent iPhones say otherwise. Lately, Apple’s sales are going downhill. It already has been two months of the launch of the new iPhones. However, the sales are not going the way the silicon-based tech titan expected. So to promote the sales, Apple restarted the production of the iPhone X and slashed the price of iPhone XR in certain regions.
iPhone X production
During the announcement of the iPhone XS and XS Max, the company declared the discontinuation of the iPhone X. Except for the chipset and OS, there were no any major differences between the iPhone X and iPhone XS. Probably that could be the reason for launching the new iPhone XS at the price of the iPhone X.
So Apple hasn’t been true to its words. But according to the rumors flying around in the tech community, there are two broad reasons. The first reason suggests that the tech giant is facing a huge blow in terms of sales. So many people believe that this step of Apple is to supplement the sales and revenue and to meet the target.
Apple surely is a profit-oriented company. But a company of that stature may not go against its words just to increase its sales. So the second reason suggests that the company is being obliged to restart the production. The rumor elaborates that Apple had a contract with Samsung to purchase certain units of Super AMOLED displays for the iPhone X. But in the one year’s time, Apple did not make use of all the contracted amount of display units from Samsung. So due to the mere obligation of Apple to use the contracted number of Super AMOLED displays from Samsung, Apple had to restart the iPhone X production.
iPhone XR Price Drop
iPhone XR is the most affordable iPhone of this year. Cutting some premium specs of the iPhone XS and XS Max, Apple tried to make the iPhone XR somewhat budget-friendly. Despite the affordable nature, the XR was still powerful in many aspects than its competitors. Also, Apple released the XR in many variants of colors to lure the customers and hence to create an upsurge in sales. But sadly, things did not go as planned and on the favor of Apple. Since there are a lot of capable smartphones (mostly Chinese) available at similar or a lower price than the iPhone XR, people shifted their attention to the other phones.
With two months passed already, this kind of decline in sales can be really disastrous for Apple. And if things go like this, it would be even harder to compete with other smartphones when the calendar hits 2019. So the company slashed the price of iPhone XR in certain regions to lure people into iPhones and finally to create an upsurge in its sales.
A few months ago, Huawei surpassed Apple in terms of sales. And Huawei’s sales is going uphill. Other Chinese companies like OnePlus and Xiaomi are also making quite an impact in the smartphone market with their value for money phones. This can worsen the things even more for Apple. So due to the overpricing nature of Apple, the company seems to be losing its grip on the smartphone. But with these stunts, can Apple discourage the declining sales? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
When the presence of a dual camera in a smartphone is becoming mainstream and the concept of triple cameras is still a sapling, Samsung pushed all its limits to provide four cameras in its smartphone. With four cameras at the back, the Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 features a total of five cameras. With plenty of cameras, this smartphone does sound interesting. But how does this smartphone really fares when it comes to real life usage? Find out in this Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 review.
Camera
Since the cameras are the major highlight of the phone, let’s begin the review with the camera. As mentioned earlier, the phone carries a quad camera setup at the back. Accompanying the primary shooter, there are three additional lenses – each one doing a unique task. So let me explain each one of them.
The topmost camera among the four is an ultra-wide angle lens. This camera lens is an 8MP sensor and a f/2.4 aperture. It basically extends the field-of-view up to 120-degrees, just as wide as the pair of human eyes can see.
The second camera on the Galaxy A9 is the telephoto lens. Paired with a 10MP sensor and f/2.4 aperture, this camera promises to capture images with 2x zooming without any loss in the image quality.
The primary shooter lies on the third from the top. It is equipped with a 24MP sensor and a wide f/1.7 aperture. The major purpose of the wide aperture is to let in a plenty of light into the sensor which helps capture amazing images even in the low light settings.
The last one is a 5 MP depth-sensor with f/2.2 aperture. Now, you all know what a depth sensor does – highlighting the subject and blurring the background to give portrait images with bokeh effects.
Yes, the phone seems to have all sorts of lenses. And so, I had all sorts of expectations from it. But it was a huge blow when I took photos. The primary camera, despite being rich on the megapixel count with a 24MP resolution, couldn’t quite pack sufficient details into the images. It wasn’t the case all the time but I also had problems while focusing on the subject. And that’s not all, some of the captured images even had slightly inaccurate colors.
Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 Camera Samples
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In low light settings, things worsen more. The already not-so-sharp images lose details further with noise and what not. And some of the images were absolutely useless.
Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 Low light samples
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Disappointed with the primary camera, I toggled to the ultra-wide angle setting. The ultra-wide angle lens also did not fare any better. It, too, lacked the punch when it comes to details. I also noticed a slight change in color temperature in the images from the primary camera and the ultra-wide camera. The captured images also seem to have a fish-eye effect with a slight visual distortion near the edges due to which the images quite look slightly hemispherical.
Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 Wide-angle samples
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Normal vs Wide-angle shot
Normal vs Wide-angle shot
Normal vs Wide-angle shot
With these disappointments, I was still expecting positive results from the telephoto camera. But adding insult to the injury, the telephoto camera dejected me further. Although Samsung claims it can shoot with lossless zooming, the captured photos said otherwise.
Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 @x Lossless zooming
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Normal Vs 2X Zooming
Normal Vs 2X Zooming
Normal Vs 2X Zooming
Normal Vs 2X Zooming
And lastly, I toggled to the Live Focus option to turn on the depth-sensing camera. I captured a fair amount of portrait images. Just look at these portraits, you can yourself observe the jittery edge detection and unnatural blurs. Yes, it has the option to select the focus area and the blur intensity; it still was hard to obtain a decent portrait image sometimes.
Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 Portrait Samples
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The rear camera on the phone failed to bring decent results. So, the Quad camera setup on this phone looks simply appears to be a gimmick and nothing more than a stunt – which, they failed. We have seen Samsung making compromises on other aspects of the phone previously, but never on the camera front. The A9 failed to bring decent results on my tests, and this was a hard truth to swallow.
So I thought to reach out to Samsung, thinking that this may be a faulty review unit. And promptly, I was told that the review units everyone is getting are betas, i.e. not fully functioning well. I was told that the retail units, which would go to the customers, would have polished software and won’t have such kind of issues. But during the review period, the phone was not available for sale to the customers and I couldn’t check the differences. When they do become available, we might have to perform an in-depth camera review for everyone out there if Samsung indeed delivers as promised. But for now, it is what it is.
Continuing with the camera, there is also a 24MP selfie camera on the front, which, unlike the rear camera captures amazing images. And this is also why I refused to believe that the rear cameras are the way they are. There is also a selfie focus feature to capture the portrait selfies. Since there is just a single camera on the front, software does all the works on blurring the background. So the portrait selfies lack proper edge detection but it was decent enough for my liking. I sincerely hope, for the sake of Samsung fans, and Samsung themselves, that the retail units do perform better than these.
Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 Portrait samples
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To check out all the images in high resolution, Click here.
Design and Build
Now, let’s dive into some other aspects of the phone. When it comes to design, the Galaxy A9 looks absolutely stunning. It comes with a tall and sleek body wrapped in a plastic back and reinforced with a metallic frame. A plastic body on a premium mid-ranger surely does not sound appealing. But it is so cleverly crafted that it gives a feel of a glass back. And while holding the phone during my usage, it offered me a premium impression.
All the buttons are on the right, at least all the important ones, anyway. The dedicated Bixby button is on the left, which I accidentally pressed countless times often being mistaking it with the volume button. I don’t use it much, and I can’t think of anyone who does either. But the sad part it is, it neither can be turned off nor can be remapped. So you have to learn to live with that!
At the back, the fingerprint sensor is at a good location. Just where my finger rests while holding a smartphone. So, unlocking the device wasn’t a problem for me at all.
Display
On the display front, the phone comes with a 6.3-inch Full-HD+ display featuring a Super AMOLED panel. With a Super AMOLED panel at disposal, the contents on the handset look lively with appreciable contrast ratio. Viewing angles and color accuracy are also impressive. During the review, I got a chance to compare it with the OnePlus 6 and in the comparison, I did not find any major differences. That definitely cues a premium quality display. So Kudos to Samsung!
Furthermore, the screen on the phone is also sufficiently bright and I did not have any issues even while viewing the contents even on a bright sunny day. But the thing that bugged me on this phone is the absence of notification LED lights. This phone, however, has “Always On display” feature as a replacement for that. But this feature does not quite alert the users about the notifications and it also consumes a considerable amount of power than the notification LEDs. So the replacement did not quite console me. And all this even with bezels on the phone is questionable.
Performance
As for the performance, the phone is powered by the Snapdragon 660 chipset and is not bad by any means. But since the OnePlus is offering a Snapdragon 845 chipset on a smartphone available at a somewhat similar price and Xiaomi offering the same chipset on a smartphone half the price of this phone, the choice of the chipset on the A9 2018 did not please me.
But, what did please me was the generosity in the memory side. The phone has a good 6GB RAM and 128GB of storage. On top of it, there is a dedicated SD card to expand the storage further.
So with plenty of RAM at the helm and a decent chipset on board, the phone performs remarkably well. Multitasking and switching between apps is also blazing fast. Similarly, while playing games, the phone does not sigh with the fatigue. Playing light games was a breeze on this phone.
It did try to maintain the consistency even while playing graphics intensive games but hadn’t been quite successful. Although the counts were minimum, I noticed lags and stutters, which occurred mainly while playing Asphalt 9 in high settings and PUBG in medium settings. Considering the price, it’s not very convincing.
Software and UI
The Galaxy A9 2018 comes with the Android Oreo out of the box with Experience UI on the top as usual. Like all the other Samsung smartphones, this one too comes with tons of bloatware. But since most of them can be disabled or uninstalled, there is nothing much to worry about.
But what did bug me was the inclusion of Android 8.0 Oreo on the phone. Since the phone was launched after the rollout of the stable version of Android Pie, I was hopeful about the phone receiving the latest software, which is not the case here. But maybe, the retail units, like Samsung claims, will come out with Android Pie or, if not, the phone might receive one pretty soon. Until then, it’s fingers crossed.
Battery
The aspect, where the Galaxy A9 2018 shines is on the battery front. The phone rocks with a massive 3800mAh battery, that’s truly respectable. Since the A9 2018 features an efficient processor and a low power consuming display, it does really well when it comes to backup. The phone lasts easily for a day and a half on normal use. I always ended up with 35 to 40% at the end of the day. So I am entirely satisfied with the backup.
The phone also comes with a quick charging support. Although it is marketed as fast charging, it was not fast enough for my liking. The handset takes around 1 hour and 40 minutes to get the battery fully charged. So when it comes to charging speed, the phone lags behind the smartphones like OnePlus 6T and Vivo V11 Pro by a huge margin.
Verdict
To sum it up, the A9 2018 is really a great device. It has got the fancy design, capable chipset, remarkable display, and a respectable battery life. On the camera department, we couldn’t pass a solid judgment. But even if the cameras were great as Samsung promised, the phone still doesn’t make sense at this price despite having so many great features already. At a similar price, if you can buy the OnePlus 6T, which is better than the Galaxy A9 2018 in almost every aspect. So why settle for the A9?
It is not a Black Friday offer or any sort of other deals. But Vivo recently slashed the price of the Vivo V11. So this is going to be a permanent price drop. And at the new price, the handset has become the most affordable smartphone in Nepal to come up with a whopping 128GB of storage. Other specs of the smartphone is pretty good as well. So this Vivo V11 price drop seems to bring a strong competition among the mid-range smartphones in Nepal.
Vivo V11 Overview
When it comes to looks, Vivo V11 is really appealing. It comes in three color variants: Starry Night, Dazzling Gold, and Nebula. All these colors complement the design of the phone pretty well. So the handset looks absolutely stunning. This gorgeous smartphone is equipped with a 6.3-inch IPS display, which features Full-HD+ resolution. The display on the device comes in 19:9 aspect ratio with a notch on the top. The notch on the Vivo V11 is really tiny. And with this little notch, the display on it looks more or less similar to the waterdrop display on the Oppo F9. Vivo likes to call the display on the device as a Halo display. With the pixel density of 400PPI, this so-called Halo display looks sufficiently sharp.
On the performance front, the phone comes with MediaTek Helio P60 chipset accompanied by 4GB of RAM. And as mentioned earlier, the phone flaunts a massive 128GB of storage, which is absolutely respectable at its price. In addition, there is an SD card slot to expand the storage further.
Like all the Vivo phones, Vivo V11 is also a camera-centric smartphone. The phone enjoys a dual camera setup at the back, which comprises of a 16MP and 5MP sensors. Upfront, there is a 25MP camera dedicated for the selfies.
On the software front, the phone comes with Android Oreo with FunTouch OS on the top. Vivo V11 also features a 3400mAh non-removable battery to supply the power juice to the phone.
There’s a new Honor phone in town. Six months after the launch of the Honor 10, we now have the Honor 10 Lite – a phone that is targeted towards the younger audience, or so they claim. The Honor 10 Lite is slightly different than the Honor 10 in terms of design, and in internals, it matches the Honor 8X. But the major difference is the new fancy gradient colors they’re flaunting.
Honor 10 Lite Overview
The new Honor 10 Lite has a large 6.21″ LCD screen up front with Full HD+ resolution. Pixels wise, we might not be able to expect flagship level display, but it might be impressive, nevertheless. The screen is packed in a body that flaunts gradient colors in an eye-candy design.
In the camera department, the rear setup packs dual cameras – a 13 MP primary lens with f/1.8 aperture, and a 2 MP depth sensor. The front camera is a 24 MP lens with f/2.0 aperture. But with its new AI capabilities, they claim that this camera will be a game changer. It supposedly features pixel-binning to emulate 1.8 micrometers of pixel size and learns from your selfie preferences over time. Also, it enables you to change the shape of a face, color, eye-colors, surrounding light, and even whiten your teeth! Talk about a misleading Tinder profile, right? But well, seems AI in the camera is going places.
Inside the shiny body, a HiSilicon Kirin 710 powers the phone, which can deliver good mid-tier performance. There are also 4 GB / 6 GB RAM variants, with 64 GB / 128 GB internal storage. There is also an option for expandable storage of up to 512 GB that uses the secondary SIM slot. This phone packs a 3400 mAh battery with Fast Charging features and USB-C. And this phone, thankfully, features the 3.5mm headphone jack.
The phone will be running on the latest EMUI 9.0.1 based on Android 9.0 Pie, with features like Adaptive Battery, Adaptive Brightness and Android Dashboard out of the box. Also, it features the Turbo Boost 2.0 as well.
Honor 10 Lite Specifications:
Design: Dual Gradient colors on shiny finish
Display: 6.21″ IPS LCD Full HD+ (1080 x 2340 pixels)
Colors: Gradient Blue, Gradient Red, Night Black, Lily White
Prices: CNY 1399 (US $200) for 4/64 GB, CNY 1699 (US $245) for 6/64GB, CNY 1899 (US $275) for 6/128GB
All of that specs packed into a phone that costs less than $300 seems pretty great. But it is quite unfortunate that the Honor brand doesn’t come to Nepal. But what do you think about the new Honor 10 Lite? Do let us know.
