GadgetByte Nepal

Meitu, the Chinese manufacturer, is known more for its camera apps and less for its phones. But things are getting changed with its newest release, the Meitu T8. The T8 is the world’s first dual-pixel selfie phone that houses a 12MP shooter on the front. The dual-pixel technology is a real deal breaker. Many different DSLRS and mirrorless cameras are using this technology. We saw few phones using such technology in the back but it’s the first time it’s being used on the front. To name a phone using dual-pixel technology in its camera unit on the back, it’s the Samsung galaxy S7. So, if you’re a selfie manic then this phone is what you should buy next. Oh wait, I’ve one bad news and it is the phone is on sale only in China as of today.

More on Meitu T8 (Specs, Price, and Availability)

Meitu T8 is the first phone in T-line up of smartphones from the Meitu. This phone is all about the front camera which has a lot to offer. That said, the 21MP unit in the back is no lesser as well. The front 12MP camera, with Sony IMX368 sensor, works on dual-pixel technology for faster and better phase detection auto-focus. Plus, both the units in the back and on the front use fill light technology and optical image stabilization giving much better camera performance.

The Meitu T8, the selfie phone, uses AI for the enhancement of the selfies. The AI helps in the recognition of age and gender of the people in the selfie. And, Hence will apply the required mode of beautification. Say, if it’s a selfie of a young girl then it won’t apply skin smoothing as it would apply to a selfie of a 50 years old woman. Plus, in group selfies, obviously, there will be a lot of faces. The Camera app used in Meitu T8 will observe all those faces individually and apply the unique mode of beautification to each of them.

Meitu T8

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What about the other aspects of the phone? Well, starting with the design. It is quite different than what we have been seeing lately. The hexagonal design looks different yet lovable.

Meitu T8 Highlights:

• 2.3 GHz Helio X20 deca-core processor
• 5.2 inch Full HD display (LCD/OLED yet to be confirmed)
• 4GB RAM, 128 GB onboard storage (Not expandable)
• 12MP, f1.8, OIS, dual pixel front shooter; 21MP, f2.2, OIS rear shooter
• 3850mAh battery, fast charging
• USB Type C
• front mounted fingerprint sensor
• RMB 3,299/USD 480 (Standard Edition), RMB 3,599/USD524 (Angelababy Special Edition)
• Colors: Rose Gold, Magic Orange, Bright Blue, Phantom Black

Verdict:

If you love taking selfies on the go and don’t want to bother editing them before posting them on social medias then you should definitely buy the Meitu T8. But unfortunately, phones like the T8 never make into the markets like that of Nepal. However, Meitu T8 is just a beginning. We can expect to see such improvements in the selfie cameras of many other phones in days to come.

LeEco is a Chinese smartphone company that most of us have certainly never heard of. It is just recent that the company has entered the technology market and has already started making huge waves. It is already competing with the likes of Xiaomi in China when it comes to Internet of Things.  It’s always good to have many options while buying an affordable smartphone and although the LeEco doesn’t have an official distributor in Nepal, the Le Pro 3, a flagship phone from Le Eco, is now available officially via mXpress.

Le Pro 3, on a first glance, looks like the OnePlus 3T and the similarity doesn’t end as there’s a lot of the internals that is similar as well. The phone comes with a 5.5-inch 1080p display and bezels are something to watch out for. It is also among the first phones to ditch the headphone jack in Android and instead relies on the USB C port for headphone and data transfer. The USB C on the device enables fast charging via Quick Charge 3.0. The phone comes with its own UI called the eUI which can take a little to get used to and as LeEco was a former streaming service provider, you get tons of streaming services and free contents along with it.

Le Pro 3 is powered by the quad-core Snapdragon 821 CPU with Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of RAM. Optics-wise the phone comes with a 16MP Camera with f/2.0 PDAF and can shoot 4K (2160p) @30fps. The front boasts an 8MP Camera with f/2.0 aperture. For audio, the phone comes with Dolby Atmos Audio enhancement and a front firing speaker on the top. The speaker acts as an earpiece as well so you’re gonna get pretty loud and clear audio from it. The phone also includes a fingerprint sensor on the back.

Specifications of LePro 3:

• 5.5 inches(1080 x 1920 ) @403ppi
• eUI 5.8 on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow
• Qualcomm MSM8996 Snapdragon 821 Chipset
• Quad-core (2×2.35 GHz Kryo & 2×2.0 GHz Kryo) CPU
• Adreno 530 GPU
• 4GB RAM
• 64GB Internal Storage (Not Expandable)
• 16MP Rear Camera with f/2.0 aperture, PDAF
• 8MP Front Facing Camera with f/2.2
• USB C 1.0
• Quick Charge 3.0
• Fingerprint Scanner
• Non-removable Li-Ion 4070 mAh battery

The phone is available via mXpress with the price of Rs.49,970.

Snapchat is one of the fastest-growing camera app (‘previously social-media’) in the world. At first, the whole idea of Snapchat sounded like a stupid thing, who would want to post pictures that only lasted for 24hours? who would want to send photos using time limits and for the love of god who would want to talk by snapping pictures? But that’s what we’re doing right now, aren’t we? and it has become so popular that other social media giants like Instagram are copying the similar concepts. Well, the company is doing more than just creating a camera app, they are also creating hardware that makes their experience more engaging.

It’s recent that Snapchat has entered the hardware front. A few months back they introduced the Snapchat Spectacles which was stylish and most importantly shot videos form your POV and uploaded directly to Snapchat. Although we couldn’t get the first-hand experience of the spectacles but it seemed really awesome and people seem to totally love it. Continuing the integration of hardware for snapping, Snapchat has recently hired a group of 50 hardware engineers whose goal is to make the perfect smartphone for the Snapchat users.

Well, the specs are kind of raw as it is a concept phone. It will come with a 360-degree camera, a separate front facing camera, a button to easily scroll through filters, one touch capture and sharing. The main goal of the phone is to let users snap and share everything while carrying the phone on a single hand. The phone will be camera focused so we can expect some major camera integration and to our disappointment, the phone will be running on android. If you have been using Snapchat on android, you already know how disappointing the image quality is going to be despite having a good camera. Although till they launch the smartphone (‘if they launch the smartphone’) we can hope for some optimization for the image quality.

The whole move towards the hardware front is because Snapchat had to do something different to make the users stick as their core functionalities are being implemented on other platforms. We don’t know how practical it is to buy a smartphone just to use Snapchat but a lot of things seem stupid at first until they don’t.