A few months back, Samsung launched the Galaxy J2 Core smartphone with Android Go version of the OS on its system. It was the first Android-Go powered smartphone in Samsung’s lineup. And it was basically brought to lure people into cheaper smartphones instead of the feature phones. This time to offer more choices in the budget smartphones’ lineup, Samsung launched yet another Android-Go smartphone. The recently launched Android Go handset goes by the name Samsung Galaxy J4 Core. And it possesses somewhat richer specs when compared with the J2 Core.
Samsung Galaxy J4 Core Specs Overview
Budget handsets rarely come with a bigger display. But that’s not the case in the J4 Core. The smartphone comes with the tall 6.0-inch display. On the resolution front, the handset fancies HD+ resolution in an 18.5:9 aspect ratio. But IPS panel has been used on the display. So the users won’t be getting the deeper blacks and brighter whiter, which are usually found on most of the Samsung phones.
And a Quad-core CPU drives the processes inside the phone, which clocks at 1.4GHz. On the software front, J4 Core boasts the Android Oreo (Android Go Edition). And talking about the storage, there is 1GB RAM and 16GB of storage. Since the apps and processing are optimized in the Android Go version, even with the 1GB RAM, we can expect the phone to load and run light apps and games without any sort of issues.
On the optics front, the phone is equipped with an 8MP on the back and a 5MP shooter on the front. This is exactly the same setup seen on the J2 Core. But what has been the major upgrade from the J2 Core to the J4 Core is the battery. The newbie flaunts a humongous 3300mAh battery over the 2600mAh on the J2 Core.
The pricing of the smartphone is still under the veil and availability is still a secret. But since the smartphone is already on Samsung’s official website, it may not take long before we get more information regarding the smartphone.
We were already thrilled with the Huawei P20 Pro and Samsung Galaxy A7 2018, which had three cameras at the back. And adding a surplus camera at the already crowded back, Samsung had launched a smartphone recently in the international market. Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 is the phone, which rose in the smartphone market with four cameras at the back. It was the first smartphone to have quad camera setup at the back and it is still the sole smartphone to possess this quirky feature till date.
[Latest Price: Rs. 43,990] [Last updated on July 24, 2019]
Overview
The camera is the striking feature of the handset. And as mentioned earlier, the smartphone carries four cameras at its back. The primary rear camera on the A9 2018 embraces a 24MP sensor, which comes with an f/1.7 lens. There is also an 8MP camera module with an ultrawide angle lens, which increases the field of view. The additional 10MP camera module on the phone features a telephoto lens, which can be used to capture images with 2x lossless optical zooming. And lastly, there is a 5MP depth sensor, which comes into play while capturing the portrait images. Talking about the front camera, the phone boasts a 24MP sensor featured by an f/2.0 lens. Since Samsung has a good record of providing quality cameras on its phone, we can expect the cameras on the phone.
On the performance front, Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 comes with Snapdragon 660 chipset with 6GB of RAM alongside. In terms of memory, the A9 2018 flaunts 128GB of onboard storage, which can be substantial for most of the users. Additionally, there is a dedicated slot for a micro SD card to push the storage limit further.
Talking about the display, the phone comes with the tall 6.3-inch Super AMOLED display. The handset features Full-HD+ on the resolution front boasting a 392PPI of pixel density. So with this display setup on the phone, we can expect to view sharp, crisp and vibrant contents on the phone.
The phone also looks note-worthy in terms of horsepower. With 3800mAh battery, the battery backup looks dependable. There is also a fast-charging feature to squeeze power juice to the phone in a relatively shorter time. Talking about the colors, the phone comes in Caviar Black and Lemonade Blue options in Nepal.
Samsung Galaxy A9 2018 Price in Nepal
[Latest Price: Rs. 43,990] [Price Last Updated on: Rs. 43,990]
The Galaxy A9 2018 is Samsung’s first online smartphone in Nepal sold exclusively at daraz.com.np. The phone is priced aggressively at Rs. 54,999. The pricing is the cheapest we have seen as compared to other countries like India (INR 40,000 ~ Rs. 64,000) or Europe (€599 ~ Rs. 79,000).
After the notched display trend to get larger displays on smartphones, companies, now, seem to be going after the traditional fingerprint sensor. Many phones are replacing it with the futuristic In-Display Fingerprint scanner. While the technology made debut commercially on the Vivo X20 Plus UD, the Vivo V11 Pro is the one with it in South Asian markets. But what else does it have besides that? And is it worth it’s price tag of almost Rs.50000 in Nepal? Find out in this Vivo V11 Pro full review.
Vivo V11 Pro Specifications:
Design: Polycarbonate body with In-display fingerprint scanner
Display: 6.41″ Full HD+ Super AMOLED display (2340 x 1080) with 19.5:9 aspect ratio and 402 PPI
Rear Camera: Dual Camera setup, 12 MP primary lens with f/1.8 aperture + 5 MP depth sensor
First, the design of the phone. The design is attractive, yes, but it kinda feels cheap on the hands. Of course, that has to do with its plastic back. The construction of the phone feels quite sturdy, and with its glossy finish, it can be easily mistaken for glass. But the phone’s light weight gives it away. The back is also a fingerprint magnet, attracting quite a bit of smudges. The phone is durable, no doubt, but it is very slippery.
The polycarbonate back held its own on some drops, but unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the front. The front is a 2.5D curved screen with Gorilla Glass 3 Protection, which cracked easily on a single drop. But luckily, for an AMOLED panel with an in-display fingerprint sensor, replacing the screen was relatively cheaper than I anticipated. (Cost me Rs.8800 (NRs.) to be precise)
Back to the design, the phone is quite big in size, but it is slim. Still…one handed usage is difficult. All the buttons are on the right, and the bottom houses a single speaker, a 3.5mm headphone jack – which feels like a bliss in 2018, and a microUSB port. The fingerprint sensor is embedded in the display itself, and while that may make the phone appear futuristic, the microUSB feels silly, and that too, on a premium mid-ranger device! Of course, it is a cost cutting decision, but it doesn’t feel right in the final stages of 2018.
The color I had, i.e. Starry Night Black, is strikingly eye catching. It has a dual-gradient color that goes from blueish purple at the bottom to inky black at the top. There are also some sparkles at the bottom, which is probably why it’s called Starry night. The color at the bottom shifts from blue to purple, depending on the viewing angle. And while that reminds of Huawei Nova 3 and Nova 3i, the Vivo V11 Pro has its own additions that make for its stunning looks. If only, the back was metallic, it could have been my favorite design on a smartphone so far.
Also, the Vivo V11 Pro comes with a case in the box, and I recommend you use that on your phone. Because, even though the polycarbonate back is strong, it’s glossy finish is easy to scratch, and it is prone to slight discoloration with prolonged usage. So, if you want to avoid micro abrasions on it, do yourself a favor, and slap a case on it.
Overall, the phone looks striking, but fails to feel that way. It would have been great if the phone had a metal construction, because, for something that costs 49,500, a plastic back is another downer.
Display
Up front, the upgrade to Super AMOLED panel has made quite a difference! You get better color accuracy, with deeper blacks, punchy colors and better contrast overall. And even with an AMOLED screen, sunlight legibility is quite good. You’ll have no problem looking at the screen outdoors in different angles, whatsoever.
The screen is a large 6.41” with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. There’s a small water-drop or a tear-drop notch (whichever you like to call it) on top that houses the selfie camera. The front speakers are also located right above the selfie camera, and that design is cleverly minimalistic. But one thing that you need to know is that you cannot hide the notch in the settings. It is there to stay. But even with the small notch, the arrangement of the notification and information stats is kinda haywire. It’s not very well organized to fit all your notification icons.
The bezels are ever so slim and that makes the screen appear larger than it already is. The tiny bezels on top also accommodate the IR sensor for the facial recognition. Even with this minimalistic design, the phone cleverly manages to include all that’s necessary. The Full HD+ resolution of 2340 x 1080, makes for a 402 PPI pixel density, and for a large screen such as this, it makes for quite the viewing experience.
The in-display fingerprint sensor occupies the bottom of the screen, and is visible only when you lift the phone in your hands. There’s the Always On display option, which shows you the time, and battery level, but sadly, won’t show you notifications. And since the tiny notch means no LED notification lights, this is another inconvenience you’ll have to get over. However, you can also customize the time to turn on and off the Always On display, which is a handy feature to save battery.
Camera
As for cameras, the Vivo V11 Pro packs a dual camera setup of 12 MP with f/1.8 aperture and a 5 MP depth sensor. The primary camera does a great job while capturing pictures. And I was thoroughly impressed by its ability to capture details. In good lighting, the sharpness of the images will impress you.
Sample Pictures
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cloudy wide
cloudy wide
sunny greens
sketch detail
flower color
color accuracy
details
minor details
broad daylight
daylight hdr
color
food color contrast
food color cpntrast
oversaturated yellow
It represents colors accurately enough and your basic photography needs will easily be fulfilled. Low light images do get some noise, but the camera manages to brighten up the images.
What I mean is, even at very low light, the camera bumps the lighting to make it appear as if it was taken in better lighting conditions. If you look at these images, you’ll know, because even with the bumped up lighting, the grains in the images give it away.
Low Light bump up
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Night shots, however, are not usable. They’re a mixture of noise, grains and everything unpleasant. However, with a source of light around, the pictures will maintain their composure.
Night Shots
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evening hdr
evening
night
night light source
flash
The depth sensor does a good job of background blurs and edge detection, but as it is with bokeh shots, these are always a hit and a miss. You can also choose to blur the foreground instead of the background, but of course you wouldn’t do that. In good lighting, the portrait shots come out great. However, in low light, the edge detection suffers, and aren’t satisfactory.
Portrait shots
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bokeh focus
indoor bokeh
group bokeh
As with most phones of 2018, the cameras are AI integrated, and while it comes into play at certain times, you won’t really notice the difference. The AI Portrait Framing option will help you focus on the necessary areas of your picture, but again, it’s not very accurate. You also get the AI Face Beauty feature in the back camera, but I don’t find it very useful. Of course, some of you out there would love this feature, as it can help remove all the blemishes and spots on your face, and make you look pretty.
As for the selfie camera, it is a 25 MP lens with f/2.0 aperture. And while the front camera can take good resolution pictures, I didn’t quite like it. Mainly due to its tendency to overstep beautifying aspects of your face. Now, there is a separate beautifying options in the selfie camera, but even with all that turned off, it sneaks up on you. So, if you want to look natural in your selfies, you simply can’t! But, for those who want to enhance themselves, you’ll like the selfie camera.
Selfie
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group selfie
normal selfie
bokeh selfie
beauty mode selfie
However, portrait shots with the selfie camera are still good, even though it’s all software. If you can get over the facial enhancements, you might like the overall results of your portrait selfies.
For high resolution image samples of the Vivo V11 Pro, click here
For videos, the Vivo V11 Pro is capable of taking 4K videos, but the lack of Image Stabilization makes this feature less useful. The camera lacks any kind of image stabilization – neither OIS nor EIS, so, you’ll need the steadiest hands you can find for your videography needs. However, the quality of the videos is good enough.
But Slow Motion on the Vivo V11 Pro seems half baked. For such a price, I expected it to have some sort of super slow-mo, but it actually doesn’t. The regular slow motion will not impress you any, and you might not even use it all that much, as it’s not that handy.
Overall, the camera offers a lot of bells and whistles, most of which, won’t come in handy for everyone. Instead of those half-baked extras, improvement over the basic camera features would have been better, like the inclusion of image stabilization. And Vivo needs to work on the facial enhancement features in their further phones.
Performance
There’s not much to say in the performance department. With an octa-core Snapdragon 660 chipset combined with 6 GB of RAM, the phone is quite powerful. The transitions between screens are fast, and multi-tasking is very smooth. It can keep apps open in the background for a considerable time too.
Gaming on it is also amazing, especially because of its large screen with the small notch. Regular games face no constraints, and even heavy games like PUBG runs very well on the highest possible settings. You can play it in HDR settings in High Frame rates, without any kind of lags or stutters.
I didn’t really notice much heating on the phone either. That maybe due to the plastic build, but even so, the thermal levels were lower than on other phones of similar construction. So, from a gaming perspective, this phone is a good choice.
The In-display fingerprint sensor, as exotic as it sounds, actually doesn’t perform that well. And by that, I mean, it’s a bit slow and sometimes, fails to recognize your fingerprints. Now given that it’s not your regular sensor, I can understand its slow speed. But the fact that it fails sometimes even when you press it nice and hard, it gets you thinking. However, the effect when you press the sensor are some cool extras.
The Facial Recognition is the one that impressed me, but also got me concerned about security. Now, it’s because, while the speed at which it can unlock your phone is superb, it can also do so at quite sharp angles. And if you think that’s fine, it unlocked the phone even when my face was half covered. The phone unlocks faster with the Facial recognition than the fingerprint sensor, but my only concern is…is it really all that secure?
Let me also mention that this phone doesn’t have the Widevine L1 certification. This means that you can stream contents from Netflix or Amazon Prime at 540p at the max. The Pocophone F1 received criticisms due to this, but there are many phone which still run on the Widevine L3 certification. So, I’m just putting it out there, because it’s not as big a deal for all of us, especially in South Asian market.
In terms of software, the Vivo V11 Pro runs on Android 8.1 Oreo with its FunTouch OS 5.1 on top. And yes, we’ve always been saying that this uncannily resembles the iOS, but Vivo doesn’t seem to mind. I, on the other hand, don’t like this all that well.
iOS-like FunTouch OS
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homescreen
no app drawer
vivo transition animation
notification shade
quick settings
multitasking
settings
dialer
quick access sidebar
There are plenty of bloat-ware in here, but you will get used to them in time. However, no search option in the settings menu, and having to slide up for the toggle settings menu feels a bit odd. The phone does come with Vivo’s own theme store, but they are also pretty heavy and won’t appeal to you that much.
Battery and Storage
As for storage, the phone is available in 64 GB and 128 GB variant, but the one we get in Nepal is the 128 GB variant only. If that’s not enough, there’s a dedicated microSD card slot, with which you can expand your memory up to 256 GB.
In terms of battery, the phone packs a 3400 mAh unit, which, may not be that big, but it can last you all day long. With regular to semi-heavy usage with constant use of social media apps and light gaming, you will still end up with more than 25% charge at the end of the day. If you’re a heavy gamer however, you might want to carry a charger around.
The charger is a microUSB, but it comes with Vivo’s Dual Engine Fast Charging. Now, while the name sounds futuristic, its fast charging doesn’t seem to be faster than other fast charging standards on other phones. It is par with the Oppo’s VOOC charge and OnePlus’ Dash charge. So, nothing extra-ordinary, I guess.
Conclusion
The Vivo V11 Pro gives off a futuristic vibe with its large screen to body ratio, minimalistic design on the front, and its in-display fingerprint scanner. It has a few aspects in which it shines. For instance, the Super AMOLED display is great, it is pretty powerful, the rear camera picture quality is good, and the battery life is outstanding.
I have mixed feelings about its plastic build, the extra add-ons of the camera, in-display fingerprint sensor and the facial recognition. What I didn’t like is the selfie camera, the microUSB port, and the phone’s OS.
For something that costs close to 50000, even though the design looks good, I think a metal build is mandatory. The cameras’ extras need a bit of improvement, if it’s here to stay. The selfie camera’s beautifying feature also needs a bit of work as well. Also, a micro-USB port in 2018 is a downer. But, it has that dual-engine fast charging, so, I guess we can let it slide.
To conclude, the Vivo V11 Pro costs Rs.49490 and for all that it packs, it seems to me a good deal. The areas it cuts corners in are quite clearly visible as well, but most of them are easy to get over. This phone excels in the basic features, but the extras they provide need some work. Hope Vivo addresses them for their future phones.
HP is undoubtedly a huge name in the portable PC market. The company’s Spectre-series brought something relatively new to the table, not that it was revolutionary but it was fresh nonetheless. Well, the new HP Spectre 13 x360 2018 is now even fresher, cleaner, sharper and in fact better in any way possible.
The Spectre 13 x360 is now available in two colors, Dark ash silver, and Poseidon Blue, the latter $10 more expensive than the former. The HP Spectre 13 x360 comes in an all-new Aluminium chassis with a blue Sandblasted finish. It also features narrower bezels and a smaller footprint than it’s predecessor.
The HP Spectre 13 x360 comes in a much more angular and sharp design choice than before. A striking feature for me was the USB C port at the edge of the chassis [picture of it below]. If you put numbers to the context, the new laptop is now 14.5mm thick and 1.3Kgs heavy.
The HP Spectre 13 x360 comes with 8th Gen Intel processors. It’s based on the Whiskey Lake architecture, the third refresh in their 14++nm process. There is an increased Turbo clock speed, native USB 3.1 Gen 2 support, integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0 and support for Intel’s own Optane memory. It’s also even more power efficient than before.
The particular processors used here in this laptop are the i5-8265U and the i7-8565U. Both are Quad-Core processors with Intel UHD 620 graphics solutions. The i5-8265U has a base clock speed of 1.6GHz and can go all the way up to 3.9GHz. The i5 however only gets the opt for 8GB of DDR4 2400MHz RAM.
The i7-8565U, on the other hand, starts at 1.8GHz and goes all the way up to 4GHz. For this one, you can either opt in for 8GB or an optional 16GB RAM with the same speeds. Jumping from i5 to an i7 is a $120 upgrade while for the 16GB of RAM, you will need to shell out another $80.
As for storage, the PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD solution on the HP Spectre 13 x360 starts from 256GB. For $100 more, you can opt for a 512GB variant. Add $200 more for a 1TB version and finally $400 more for the 2TB upgrade. So, it’s basically $100 for 256GB of fast PCIe NVMe storage.
You get three display options here. The first one is a base FHD IPS WLED display with edge-to-edge glass multi-touch display. Add $40 to that and you get the same display with an Integrated Privacy screen [watch the video below]. Then there is the $160 upgrade form for a 4k IPS display.
All displays cover 100% of the sRGB color gamut with 400 nits of brightness and are touch sensitive. While the 4k panel will suck up more power, the FHD display comes with an ultra-efficient panel with just 1W of power consumption. This is one of the main reasons why the HP Specter 13 x360 can reach 22.5 hours of battery runtime.
Talking more about the battery, it stands at 60Wh. In real life usage, HP claims a boost of around 37% over its previous generation. That comes to a total of 22.5 hours, assisted heavily by the low power consumption panel and a pretty power efficient CPU.
Connectivity department also sees a huge improvement, going as far as to add an optional 4G LTE modem. The system does come standard with Intel Wireless-AC 9560 802.11b/g/n/ac Gigabit Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 combo. You also get a 3.5mm headphone jack, MicroSD card reader, 2x Thunderbolt 3 ports, 2x USB Type C 3.1 Gen 2 port and 1x USB 3.1 Type A Gen 2 port.
Security was also a priority while designing the laptop. It comes with the usual fingerprint reader, pre-installed TPM module, a SureView privacy display and a mechanical switch that disables the webcam electronically.
HP also announced a 15-inch variant of the HP Spectre 13 x360 that comes with an optional Nvidia GTX 1050Ti MaxQ design for added graphical power but lacks the LTE modem. The bigger one also gets Quad-Speakers, a full Numpad, and a respectable battery life claim of 17.5 hours. It however only comes with a 4k panel and weighs about 2.1Kgs.
The HP Spectre 13 x360 is already up for sale here for a base price of $1,149.99. The 15-inch version starts at a slightly higher $1350. Both laptops are pretty great at this point, with HP opting to not just update the internals but also the overall design of the laptop. It will be interesting to see how other manufacturers, especially the XPS makers react to this laptop in their next refresh.
HP Spectre 13 x360
Display: 13.3″ FHD or 4k resolution panel, 100% sRGB, Touch, Gorilla Glass protection Processor: Intel Core i5-8265U or Intel Core i7-8565U Graphics: UHD Graphics 620 RAM: 8GB/16GB DDR4 2400MHz Storage: PCIe NVMe SSD 256GB up to 2TB Weight: 1.3KGs Battery: 60Wh Connectivity: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 9560 802.11ac (2×2) Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5 Combo, Gigabit 4G/LTE modem Sensors: Accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, Hall effect sensor, ambient light sensor, fingerprint sensor Dimensions: 12.16″x 8.58″x 0.57″ Price: Starts at $1,149.99
By now, if you haven’t heard of the Pocophone F1, you probably are cut out from the rest of the world. It is a phone that has caused a stir around the world. Flagships specs for the price of a mid-ranger is the major selling point for the phone. For a price of some $300, it houses the latest flagship grade processor and such internals, albeit on a plastic body.
And even after three months of its initial release, the phone is still in many’s wish-list. And in a country like ours, where we mostly receive new products later than the international market, it’s exclusive launch by Daraz Nepal is a great news! Daraz announced that it will be exclusively selling the Pocophone F1 through the website on Daraz 11.11 Sales Day, for a price of Rs.34000! And that is another great news for us consumers.
The pre-booking of the phone was available since November 1. You can still do it through here. And the pre-booking facility was very well received as well. People are crazy excited about the Pocophone F1. We can tell as the pre-bookings have exceeded 3000! Daraz expected to sell that many Pocophone F1s in the 11.11 Sales Day itself. However, in just a few days after the pre-bookings started, that number has exceeded. And it continues to do so.
The Pocophone F1 features a 6.18″ Full HD+ display with an 18.7:9 aspect ratio, with Gorilla Glass 3 on top. Also, it sports a dual camera setup which of a 12 MP primary lens and a 5 MP depth sensor. As for the selfie camera, the phone packs a 20 MP lens. It runs on the Snapdragon 845 and comes in two RAM options. A 6 GB / 128 GB or 6 GB / 64 GB version and an 8 GB / 256 GB variant. However, we’ll only get the 6 GB / 64 GB variant in Nepal. The phone also houses a large 4000 mAh battery with Fast Charging 3.0.
As for those of you, who have registered for the Pocophone F1, you guys will be notified through email on November 11, 12.00 A.M., i.e. on Daraz 11.11 Sales Day. You will also receive notifications through the Daraz App. So, if you haven’t downloaded the app yet, you better do it now. Not only can you get great offers and discounts, but there are also mystery boxes and a lot of surprises awaiting you on Daraz 11.11 Sales Day!
The OnePlus 6T is creating quite a buzz around the world right now. After a couple of weeks of its international launch, the Oneplus 6T launched in Nepal. It is sold exclusively on Daraz starting November 11, which is its 11.11 Sales Day. However, you can also buy the phone later from retail shops and Oliz store, albeit at a higher price tag.
The OnePlus 6T is a flagship smartphone, and it comes with all of the 2018’s top specifications. The 6T sports a tall 6.41-inch Full HD+ Optic AMOLED display that has the minimal Waterdrop notch on the top. This display is donned by the Corning Gorilla Glass 6 with its previous iteration, the Gorilla Glass 5, covering its back.
The OnePlus 6T features the latest flagship CPU from Qualcomm as the Snapdragon 845 powers up the phone aided by Adreno 630 GPU and 6 GB of RAM. It comes with 128 GB of internal memory which is definitely good to see as there is a lack of a microSD card slot on the device. The OnePlus 6T runs on the latest and greatest from Google, i.e. Android v9.0 Pie. OnePlus has cashed in a lot on the software side of this device, as it has a completely revamped OxygenOS along with a lot of customizations.
Oneplus 6T Camera: Is it any Good?
Camera wise, the OnePlus 6T comes with the same camera setup that the OnePlus 6 possesses. So, you must already know the megapixel count which stands at 16-megapixel and 20-megapixel. The second lens helps to set proper depth, and the wider aperture of f/1.7 on both the lenses capture in more light in the low-light environment.
The major additions to the optical side of the OnePlus 6T are Nightscape and Studio Lighting. Nightscape helps to take better low-light images while Studio Lighting enhances the face contour on portraits.
In terms of battery, the OnePlus 6T features the biggest battery on any OnePlus smartphone. There is a 3,700 mAh battery that coupled with the Full HD display, will give you a day of battery life. OnePlus’ trademark 20W fast charging technology is also embedded on the phone.
The OnePlus 6T has ditched the headphone jack for which it has been receiving a lot of hate. According to the company, this step was undertaken to add in more battery and include the in-display fingerprint scanner. The scanner is placed under the display and it takes only 0.34 second to unlock the phone, OnePlus claims.
Huawei, the smartphone brand that rocked the smartphone’s camera aspect, had recently brought its new flagship handsets on the international market. Namely known as the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and the Mate 20, the new handsets feature three cameras at the back, a powerful processor, and a big battery. And the good news is that among these recently launched two flagships, the premium or the Pro version has finally launched in Nepal for a flagship price.
Huawei Mate 20 Pro Overview
Talking about the specs, the most exciting feature in the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is its camera. As mentioned earlier, the Mate 20 Pro comes with three cameras at the back. But unlike the Huawei P20 Pro, the Mate 20 Pro uses a primary camera backed by an ultra-wide lens and telephoto lens. So users now can not only do the lossless zooming while capturing the images but also can expand the field of view without moving anywhere. On the front, both the camera houses the same 24MP selfie shooter, which is equipped with an f/2.0 lens.
Another cool thing on the phone is its highly powerful Kirin 980 chipset. This new chipset is designed on 7nm architecture and is said to surpass the Snapdragon 845 on the performance front. Alongside this powerful chipset, the phone is also provided with an ample 128GB of storage. In terms of RAM, the Mate 20 Pro comes with 6GB of memory.
Huawei Mate 20 comes with Android Pie. On the top, Huawei has added its custom skin EMUI 9.0 on the top. So the users can readily see some pre-installed apps on the phone.
Connectivity: Dual SIM (Nano-SIM + Nano-SIM/NM), Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth 5, GPS + GLONASS, USB Type-C, No 3.5mm headphone jack
Battery: 4200mAh with Supercharge technology (40W fast charging), Supports Wireless Fast charging (15watts) and reverse wireless charging
Colors: Emerald Green, Midnight Blue, Twilight, Pink Gold, Black
Huawei Mate 20 Pro Price in Nepal [Updated]
The latest price of Huawei Mate 20 Pro in Nepal is Rs. 129,900 for the 6/128GB variant. It is available through official mobile retailers throughout Nepal.
The Xiaomi Redmi 6 is an entry level phone that made quite a bit splash in the smartphone market when it came out. And many have been calling it a king, when it comes to entry level phones. And so, we thought we’d test that theory out. Can it really be called the Entry Level king as others so put it?
Xiaomi Redmi 6 Specifications:
Design: Plastic build
Display: 5.45″ HD+ IPS LCD display (720 x 1440 resolution), 18:9 aspect ratio
Rear Camera: Dual Camera setup, 12 MP primary sensor with PDAF & f/2.2 aperture + 5 MP depth sensor
Front Camera: 5 MP lens
CPU: Octa-core 2.0 GHz MediaTek Helio P22
GPU: PowerVR GE8320
RAM: 3 GB
Storage: 32 GB, 64 GB (expandable up to 256 GB via microSD)
Battery: 3000 mAh
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2
Ports: microUSB, 3.5 headphone jack
Price in Nepal: Rs.16,490 (32 GB), Rs.18,490 (64 GB)
Design and Build
The Xiaomi Redmi 6 comes with an all-plastic build. Considering it’s a budget phone, that’s not surprising. The phone appears to be built sturdily when you hold it, but there occur some flex, creaks and squeaks when you abuse the phone a little. Of course, it seems it can withstand minor drops and such.
The design on it is typical Xiaomi. And since it’s a phone from some 3-4 months, back, it looks kind of old, especially when you’re getting used to the notched designs with bigger screens these days. This makes the design look a bit boring, but it is quite practical. The buttons are on the right, but not tactile enough when you press them. The fingerprint scanner sits at the right spot – under the cameras. It is easy to reach with your finger at the back, and is also pretty fast and accurate.
The SIM slots and the microSD slot are on the left side. One of the slot houses a SIM and a microSD card, whereas the other is a single SIM slot. The inclusion of a microSD card slot is a good option, as the phone only has a 32 GB of storage on-board. But yes, it also comes with a 64 GB version as well.
The speaker is located at the back, which is an unusual place for a speaker to be. It is easy to muffle while laying it on the table, but since the speaker is loud, you can still hear it that way. Vibration, on the other hand, isn’t that strong. It’s easy to miss your calls when walking or riding.
Even though the build is plastic, the phone is pretty slippery. Overall, the design is old school Xiaomi. While it looks kinda practical, its nothing eye-catching. Yes, this is a budget phone, but the Oppo Real Me 2, also a budget phone, was a bit more eye-catching than this.
Display
Up front, there’s a 5.45” IPS LCD display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. It has an HD+ resolution, which may look okay on paper, but it appears inadequate. Especially because you can notice some pixelation at a few points on the screen. Of course, you have to look very closely to be able to see that, but it is quite visible while watching YouTube.
Of course, it is a budget phone, but even on other phones with the same pixel density, I hadn’t faced such problems. So, this can very well be a software or codec issue on this unit.
Besides these small problems, the display overall is good enough. Colors are vibrant, and details are represented well enough as well. There is considerable amount of bezels on all sides, but they don’t look too violating.
Camera
In the photography department, this phone comes with a dual camera setup at the back, and a single camera in the front. The dual camera setup comprises of a 12 MP primary lens and a 5 MP depth sensor, both with f/2.2 aperture.
While the overall image quality from these cameras look good, the pictures lack sharpness. The colors appear a bit cooler, and it could do with a bit more contrast. Also, bright colors appear over-saturated. The dynamic range on this is also only okay at best. It’s because with the HDR mode on, it looks like it does a good job, but the images appear to have been altered with effects.
Xiaomi Redmi 6 Camera Sample
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Image has low contrast and looks cool
color representation sample
building
colorful building
low contrast
overlay nature shot
sky hdr
indoor lighting
portrait mode
low light portrait mode
portrait mode indoor
evening
night light
The portrait mode is decent enough. Edge detection, like on other phones, tends to sometimes miss out on the subject. But when it does work, it works pretty well in terms of background blurring and such. However, in low light, the pictures gather a lot of noise. And most of the times, the images come out pretty much unusable. This has to do with the camera’s narrow apertures, but it is what it is.
The 5 MP selfie camera is better than the rear cameras, achieving good results under good lighting conditions. But sometimes, the AI tends to overdo itself and make your face a bit too artificial, or cartoonish. With that off, it does an okay job, and the bokeh effect on selfies looks better than the one on the back.
Selfie Camera
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regular selfie
beauty mode selfie
group selfie
bokeh selfie
The phone is capable of taking Full HD videos at 30 fps, and shares the same story just like the pictures. They are usable when taken under good lighting, but are quite grainy in low light.
For a phone in this price range, it does include EIS, but it’s not that great. Of course, it’s better to have one than none, but you can also turn it off if you wish.
Performance
Here’s the kick to the guts: the performance on this phone isn’t as good as expected. For a phone which many claim to be an entry-level killer, it didn’t meet my expectations. Maybe, I had it too high or something, but I was a bit disappointed.
The Helio P22 chip on it doesn’t perform as good as it should. Now, I have used a few other phones with the same chipset, and this one doesn’t seem to be at par with them. Even simple tasks such as using YouTube can get some lags. However, it wasn’t like this when I got the phone… this actually started after I updated the phone to the available latest software, i.e. MIUI 10.
I also tried PUBG on this, and it did run, with the BAGT app helping with the performance and it was playable to an extent. The BAGT app is available in the PlayStore and it will help play heavy games on your phone. Basically, this is a laggy performer in my experience compared to the Realme 2, which came with a Snapdragon 450. So, all I can say is it must be a software issue. I did succeed in playing games like Clash Royale and Pocket Pool but Asphalt 9 was not playable at all.
The UI in this one has been greatly improved and it’s more user friendly now, but the software in general seems to be a lot heavier, especially after the MIUI 10 update I received. It seems to hog down a lot of processing power and memory. Which is why, this phone’s performance was not very good during my review.
It’s added navigation gestures are a breath of fresh air. You swipe up from the bottom to go to the Home Screen, swipe and hold for recent apps, and swipe from left or right to go back. Also, there are little things like brightness slider, and updated settings menu that gives a freshness to the old MIUI 9 that we have used for so long.
However, Xiaomi still needs to optimize its UI by a lot. It may not be a big deal for most high end Xiaomi smartphones, but its not the case for budget smartphones like the Xiaomi Redmi 6.
Connectivity
In terms of connectivity, its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth seem to work fine without any problems. This phone has a headphone jack at the top while it’s microUSB port is at the bottom. It misses out on the Gyro-Sensor, and I also faced issues with the proximity sensor. I found random apps opened after a call was over.
Battery
The 3000 mAh battery on a phone of this caliber should have been fine, but I didn’t find it satisfactory. Again, that probably had to do with the latest update as the UI is pretty heavy. It gave me around 4 and a half hours of average screen on time. Also, it takes 2 hours to fully charge, and if we’re nitpicking, the cable is too short.
To conclude, as much as many claim this phone to be an entry-level king, I don’t believe it to be so. The Oppo A3s costs a bit more and has only 2 GB RAM with 16 GB storage, but that phone performed better than this one.
But overall, this phone still provides a great value for money. For a price of Rs.16,500, you get some of the best basics for a smartphone. I feel like it could’ve performed better if used with the MIUI 9.5 it came with. So, if you can, you should probably hold off on upgrading it the MIUI 10 until Xiaomi can optimize its heavy UI for entry-level phones.
Pros
Low pricing
Okay performance, although could do with a lot of optimization
A foldable phone was just a concept. And the big players in the tech industry like Samsung and LG had promised to bring such futuristic phone. But before these tech titans debuted the product, a startup company shocked the world with World’s first foldable smartphone.
The California-based startup company namely known as Royole has been the first in the race of bringing the world’s first foldable smartphone. The smartphone is christened as “FlexPai”, which was unveiled at a conference in Beijing. The phone is actually a phablet with 7.8-inch size when unfolded, just as big as an iPad Mini. This giant screen comes in 4:3 aspect ratio with the resolution of 1920 x 1440 pixels. But when folded, the device can turn into a manageable 4-inch size.
The display on the handset is an AMOLED panel, which folds down in the middle. The phone is said to come with Dubbed Water OS, which switches the contents to only half of the screen when folded. The other half of the screen displays a wallpaper. When unfolded, the FlexPai measure 7.6mm in terms of thickness. The phone does not fold perfectly flat so the thickness will be more than 15.2mm when folded. Although the device may look cool, it may not still fit into many people’s pockets. Nonetheless, the hinge on this device is rated to being unfolded 200,000 times. So we can consider it durable in that respect.
On the performance front, the FlexPai comes with 7nm Snapdragon 8150 chipset packing either 6GB or 8GB of RAM. Snapdragon 8150 is a unique chipset, whose details have not been mentioned on the website. But the rumors cues that it is a new flagship chipset from Qualcomm (probably for the foldable phones). So if that’s true then we can expect a top-tier performance from the device. In terms of storage, the company has provided three options: 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB.
On the camera front, FlexPai enjoys a dual camera setup. The camera pair on the device embraces a 20MP telephoto lens and a 16MP wide-angle lens. Although the capacity of the battery has not been revealed yet, the phone is said to come up with proprietary Ro-Charge fast charging technology, which squeezes the power to the battery from 0% to 80% just in an hour.
128GB and 256GB variants are already available for pre-order in the US. In terms of price, the base variant (6/128GB) comes with the price tag of $1300. And for the 256GB model, the price is set at $1469. All the pre-orders will start shipping in December.
If you are a fan of smartwatches and fitness tracking device, we have good news for you. Samsung Galaxy Watch, which is Samsung’s premium smartwatch is now available for purchase in Nepal. This activity-tracker is the successor of the Gear S3 Frontier. Although Samsung ditched the “Gear” monitor in this smartwatch, it still comes with all the premium features and inspirable glory found on all the previous Gear smartwatches.
In terms of size, Samsung Galaxy Watch comes in two sizes: 42mm and 46mm. However, Samsung Nepal launched only the 46mm variant here in Nepal. Even in the connectivity side, there are two options internationally: one with LTE support and another with Bluetooth. But only the variant with Bluetooth connectivity is available for purchase in Nepal.
In terms of display, the Galaxy Watch comes with 1.3-inch Super AMOLED display. The dial on the smartwatch is circular and features 360 x 360 pixels. This results in a pixel density of 278PPI. The screen on this device is shielded with Corning Gorilla DX+ glass to evade the vulnerabilities of cracks and scratches. And like all the previous Gear smartwatches, the Galaxy Watch also comes with the rotatable dial. So navigating, tuning and switching the features in the watch is easy and hassle-free.
Since the device features a Super AMOLED display, it is very power efficient in nature. Users can even choose dark watch faces to be more frugal on spending the battery power. Users can find 60 thousand different watch faces in the Galaxy Store. So users can definitely find one perfect watch face, which would match their requirements.
On the performance front, Samsung Galaxy Watch comes with Exynos 9110 chipset paired with 768MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. The activity tracker has Tizen 4.0 OS on the software side of things. To fuel the processes inside the device, the watch comes with 472mAh battery. And the smartwatch does come with Wireless Charging feature.
Samsung Galaxy Watch Specifications
Dimensions: 46 x 49 x 13 mm; weight: 63g
Display: 1.3-inch Super AMOLED
Resolution: 360×360 pixels
Protection: Gorilla DX+ glass, IP68, and 5 ATM water resistance
Chipset: Exynos 9110 SoC
Processor: Dual-Core 1.15GHz
OS: Tizen 4.0
RAM: 768MB
Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi b/g/n, NFC, A-GPS/Glonass
