News

Honor Note 10 is a massive phone with high-end specs

More tablet than smartphone?

Published

August 1, 2018

Marvin Velasco

One of the cringiest tech words I had to write back in the day was “phablet,” which is a combination of “phone” and “tablet.” It couldn’t be avoided, though; massive phones were all the rage a few years ago and there was no better way to describe them. Their hype died down after a while, but the legacy lives on in phones like the Honor Note 10.

Honor’s newest smartphone is a notch-less 6.95-inch beast (practically seven inches) with top-grade specs to match. We’re looking at the same Kirin 970 processor found on the Honor 10 and Huawei’s P20 series, with up to 8GB of memory and 128GB of storage.

Even better: It comes with a 5000mAh battery that supports SuperCharge tech. That pretty much places the Honor Note 10 in tablet territory, but the slim dimensions (7.65mm in thickness) suggest that it’s still pocketable.

For cameras, we have a dual setup on the back consisting of 24- and 16-megapixel sensors, while the front has 13 megapixels at its disposal. Since the panel is AMOLED, photos are sure to look amazing on this phone.

The press materials imply that liquid cooling is available within the frame. This would help keep the GPU Turbo feature in check. In addition, there’s something called CPU Turbo on the Honor Note 10, although little info is available on it at the moment. Together, they should push overall performance while maintaining battery efficiency.

As a fresh device, it’ll naturally come with Huawei’s EMUI 8.2 skin on top of Android 8.1 Oreo. On the outside, Midnight Black and Phantom Blue are the available color options.

The Honor Note 10 can already be purchased in China for CNY 2,799 (US$ 410) for the 6GB memory with 64GB storage variant, CNY 3,199 (US$ 470) for the 6GB+128GB model, and CNY 3,599 (US$ 528) for the top-tier 8GB+128GB version.

Enterprise

Samsung will re-evaluate fake Supreme partnership after criticism

They incited the ire of the hypebeasts

Published

December 13, 2018

Luigi Leonardo

Recently, Samsung China committed a public relations boo-boo. After launching the Galaxy A8s, the Chinese branch announced a future partnership with Supreme, the popular lifestyle brand. Unfortunately, the partnership was not with the original Supreme brand. Rather, the partnered party is Supreme Italia, a knock-off brand based in Italy. At the time, Supreme NYC (the original) and Samsung China knew about Supreme Italia’s status. Regardless, Samsung China still went for the deal.

Now, the company is re-evaluating the partnership once again. According to Samsung leaker Ice Universe, Samsung China issued a statement about the partnership. Translated from the original Mandarin, Samsung said: “Recently, Samsung Electronics announced at the Galaxy A8s conference that it will cooperate with Supreme Italia in the Chinese market. We are currently re-evaluating this cooperation, and we deeply regret the inconvenience caused.”

Based on the original Weibo post, Samsung China received a significant amount of criticism for the snappy decision. Further, it didn’t help that Leo Lau, Samsung China’s digital marketing manager, defended the controversial decision.

Despite not having rights in the country, Supreme maintains a healthy following in China. However, because of the lack of selling rights, Chinese Supreme fans resorted to off-brands like Supreme Italia.

However, it doesn’t excuse Samsung China. With the decision, the Chinese branch has been assaulted by criticisms from both Supreme fans and Samsung’s higher brass. Regardless, the company has a lot of brand equity to lose by being associated with a knock-off brand. With a re-evaluation, the brand is working to restoring some lost credibility.

News

Huawei midrange phones will soon have 20W SuperCharge

Another flagship feature for midrange phones

Published

December 13, 2018

Daniel Morial

Smartphones nowadays are not just about displays, performance, or cameras. Ultra-premium phones already have the capability to quickly fill up their batteries in just 30 minutes, just like the OPPO Find X Lamborghini Edition.

Huawei‘s new Mate 20 Pro with SuperCharge 2.0 technology also has incredible fast charging speeds (70 percent in 30 minutes) using its own 40W charger. But, what about midrange phones?

Image credit: ChargeLab

If this leaked document is real, it appears Huawei is already working on putting SuperCharge technology on its upcoming midrange phones.

According to the leaked information, the fast charger uses a charging protocol that produces half of the Mate 20 Pro charger’s power. So, instead of charging at 10V/4A with a 40W charger, the upcoming standard applies 10V/2A with a 20W charger. Also, it’ll have the reversible USB-C as its interface.

Huawei is expected to announce its new charging technology in 2019, but there’s no exact timeframe for now. There are rumors about plans to introduce it along with the P30 series, which should go official as early as the first quarter.

The charging tech could also be used by Huawei’s sub-brand Honor, so there’s a chance that it’ll be available on more affordable phones, as well.

Source: ChargerLab

News

Samsung to supply Apple with cheaper OLED panels in 2019 — report

Will Apple lower their price as well?

Published

December 13, 2018

Daniel Morial

It’s no secret that despite the war fans are raging, Samsung and Apple are good business buddies. There’s a piece of Samsung in your iPhone X, XS, or XS Max — the display. The Korean company is the sole supplier of OLED panels for the current iPhones and they have a solution to keep the cost down.

The gorgeous displays of OLED-touting iPhones take a good chunk of the overall production cost and they drive the product’s price high. To address this, Samsung is reportedly offering a more affordable option by incorporating the so-called Y-Octa panels with in-cell touch technology.

Cheaper doesn’t mean worse, because this technology is used by Samsung on the Galaxy Note 9 and Galaxy S9 phones which have one of the best mobile displays in the market today. It’ll allow Apple to design a thinner, lighter, and hopefully cheaper iPhones in 2019.

According to inside sources, the Y-Octa panels were already offered by Samsung for the production of this year’s iPhones, although Apple wasn’t quite happy about it, yet.

Could this mean iPhone prices will drop next year? It’s a long shot, but we do hope so.