Oppo R7 is quite an interesting smartphone, which upgrades on the super thin Oppo R5. The new R7 brings back the 3.5mm jack and adds extra battery capacity at the price of 1.4mm of extra thickness. We also get dual-SIM connectivity, a microSD expansion slot, a higher-res selfie camera and enhanced rear snapper this time around.

The Oppo R7 keeps the same key hardware specs – a 5″ AMOLED 1080p display, the same Snapdragon 615 chip, this time around with 3GB of RAM, and runs on the aging Android KitKat. The older Oppo R5 returned a disappointing endurance rating and we hope Oppo managed to fix this issue for the successor. Read more »

A while ago, we asked for your opinion on a few upcoming OS releases in the mobile realm. You’ve had some time to think and to evaluate the contenders and now it’s time to see what you think of Android M, iOS 9 and Watch OS 2.0. Results are in and, for the better part, they are conclusive, but we do suspect some Apple “bashing” might have occurred as well.

Let’s take it from the top. Read more »

The Android 5.1.1 update for the Samsung Galaxy S6 has been out for a while and it finally landed in our grasp so we updated our unit and took it for a quick spin. And we do mean quick as the changelog is particularly short.

We dug around the interface, tried shooting a RAW image and ran some benchmarks. Our findings are pretty slim – the 0.1 update brings only a handful of features. Read more »

The Lenovo A7000 is one of company’s budget smartphones, slotted between the A6000 Plus and the new K3 Note. But while we will be taking a look at the latter in a future post, it’s time to take a closer look at the A7000.

Despite its budget positioning, the A7000 does come with a good set of features, including a 5.5-inch HD display, 64-bit octa-core processor on a MediaTek chipset, 2GB RAM, 8 megapixel camera, LTE, dual SIM support and a 2900mAh battery. It’s also the world’s first phone to have Dolby Atmos-certified audio. Read more »

We have the HTC One E9+ over at the office for our usual routine. As you probably know, that’s the company’s 5.5-inch QHD offering, the largest member of the 2015 One lineup.

Unlike the One M9, which is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, the rest of this year’s Ones, including the E9+, rely on the Mediatek MT6795 chipset. As it’s our first encounter with the SoC we were eager to test it out, and ran a few benchmarks, with the results coming after the break. Read more »

The HTC One M9+ is the estranged big brother of the One M9 that grew up in Asia and learned a few new tricks. It is literally bigger, thanks to its 5.2-inch Quad HD display, has a fingerprint sensor, a MediaTek helio X10 processor, and even brings back the Duo Camera sensor from the M8.

The M9+ is only available in select Asian markets where the standard M9 isn’t available, and will be coming to certain parts of Europe later this year. If you were thinking of picking this up over the standard M9 or just stuck with this one option in your region, read on to find out more. Read more »

The Oppo R1x stunner of a smartphone was at our headquarters for a detailed review recently. We praised the 5-incher for its design and although it failed to impress with raw performance, it posted respectable scores in the battery department.

It’s exactly battery life we’re going to focus on now, with the complete rundown now following. Read more »

Xiaomi Mi 4i turned out quite an interesting smartphone, a worthy alternate of the original Mi 4. The new Mi 4i model changes the design, keeps the 5″ screen and 13MP great camera, but comes running on the Snapdragon 615 chip. There is a beefy 3,120 mAh battery, which should keep the Mi 4i up for days.

The MIUI v.6, just like before, offers Performance and Balanced power modes. The Performance mode allows the phone to use all processor cores, while the Balanced limits the CPU usage in order to save battery. Throughout our tests – call, video, browser and standby we used the Balanced mode, as any MIUI users will do most of the time. We tried switching to Performance and re-test the device, but we noticed just minor differences in the results. Read more »

The previous week Google unveiled the upcoming version of Android, dubbed just M, and this week Apple unveiled iOS 9 along with the new Watch OS. All three OSes tackled different issues, but do you think they were the right issues and that both companies did enough?

Time for another round of hot or not. Read more »

We got our hands on a retail unit of the range-topping version of Asus ZenFone 2 with 4GB of RAM, so we decided to put it through our set of benchmark tests. The smartphone packs a beefier chipset, which aims to compete with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 family.

Asus ZenFone 2 with 4GB of RAM packs an Intel Atom Z3580 SoC with 2.3 GHz quad-core CPU, coupled with PowerVR G6430 GPU. For comparison, Asus ZenFone 2 with 2GB of RAM features Intel Atom Z3560 with 1.8GHz quad-core CPU. Read more »

All Xperia Z devices are waterproof, but the new Sony Xperia Z3+ goes beyond surviving the elements, its touchscreen is happy to continue working even when wet. Capacitive touchscreens and water are like oil and, well, water – they don’t mix that well.

You’ve probably seen the UI start jerk around when even a single raindrop lands on the screen. Not going to happen with the Xperia Z3+ though, Sony made sure of it. Read more »

Remember those sniper missions in some of the action games? Now imagine doing that for the entire game. That’s essentially Hitman: Sniper in a nutshell. The game features Agent 47 perched atop a vantage point raining hell down on bad guys with his high powered sniper rifle.

Like Hitman Go before, Hitman: Sniper is made from the grounds up for the mobile platform and it shows. The game is now available on iOS and Android for $4.99. Let’s take a look. Read more »

Microsoft Lumia 435 and Lumia 532 are among the most affordable smartphones out there. Both devices are quite similar – they pack 4″ WVGA screens, run on Snapdragon 200 chips with 1GB RAM, offer 8 gigs of internal expandable storage and basic camera departments.

The Lumia 435 comes with a dual-core Cortex-A7 processor and 2MP cam, while the Lumia 532 model packs a quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU and 5MP snapper. Both run on Windows Phone 8.1 with Update 1 and are powered by 1,560 mAh batteries. Read more »

Sony just can’t shake the two flagships a year habit and now we have the Xperia Z3+. A bit thinner, no more annoying flap over the USB port and for better or for worse a Snapdragon 810 chipset.

But what about the true 2015 flagships, can a warmed over 2014 model compete? Read more »

Last week Oppo unveiled a couple of highly capable mid-rangers, with slender metal bodies, octa-core processors and advanced camera hardware and we asked you – hot or not?

While both fall under the R7 name, the Oppo R7 Plus got a much warmer reception. Read more »