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Xiaomi Mi Note Bamboo Edition gets a price cut

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Xiaomi Mi Note went official in January and hit the shelves soon after. Three months later Xiaomi introduced a Natural Bamboo Edition with a rear panel made out of bamboo.

The regular edition of the Mi Note is priced at CNY 1,999 (€290), while the Bamboo Edition was more expensive at CNY 2,299 (€330). Well, this is no more – Xiaomi decided to lower the price of the Natural Bamboo Edition now. Read more »

Oppo R1x battery life test

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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 battery life test

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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 »

Weekly poll results: Sony Xperia Z3+ gives the 2015 crowd a tough time

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Sony Xperia Z3+ emerged victorious in our last week’s poll, or at least partly so. Beating two of the current flagships and giving the third a run for its money, it would appear that Sony has gotten things right yet again.

You might have guessed who’s who in the above sentence, but the numbers may surprise you nonetheless. Read more »

Google outs an online tool to help you choose the right Android smartphone

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Google released an online tool to help you choose the right Android smartphone for you. The solution is available via the search giant’s Android homepage.

The entire process features a nice graphical interface and is quite fun. Read more »

Sony says phones are dirty but its Xperia M4 Aqua is washable

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Sony has put up a new promotional website for its recently launched Xperia M4 Aqua smartphone. That said, this is anything but a normal such venture. It’s called “Dirty Phones”, and focuses on, well, how dirty phones can be. Literally, that is.

First, the company scares you with words such as the ones you can read in the image above. It claims that there are about 25,000 germs per square inch on the average touchscreen phone. Furthermore, according to “research”, 92% of handsets have bacteria on them, while ‘just’ 82% of hands can boast the same thing. 16% of hands and phones unfortunately have E.coli, a bacteria found in feces. Read more »

One Samsung Galaxy S6 edge Iron Man limited edition sells for $91,635 in China

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After a few leaks and some teasing, Samsung made the limited edition Iron Man themed Galaxy S6 edge official back in May. It went on sale last month in the company’s native South Korea, and now it’s also become available in China.

That’s where one person paid a whopping $91,635 for one such smartphone. The individual shelled out that amount following an auction for the unit, which was held by JD.com, one of China’s biggest online retailers. The auction went up to $91,635 after 92,429 bids. Read more »

Recently published Samsung patent shows off a three-part foldable tablet

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Just a couple of weeks after there were reports that Samsung is working on a foldable-display phone – internally codenamed Project Valley or Project V, a newly published patent (No. 30-0757696) from the company has surfaced online, revealing a tablet display that could fold up to two times, effectively forming a single device.

It isn’t yet clear how the device’s display would work in its unfolded form – would all three connected screens work together to display wide-screen video, or would one of them double as a keyboard? Read more »

Shown in 60 seconds: the best Samsung Galaxy S6 edge features

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Samsung tried to sum up the best features of the Galaxy S6 edge into a 60 second ad. Most of them are enabled by the first dual-curved display – People Edge, Edge Lightning, Night Clock, Information Stream – but also both cameras and Samsung’s charging options.

Here’s the 1 minute crash course into Samsung’s flagship. Read more »

Trade-in a working iPhone 5 and get an iPhone 6 for $1 on contract (Verizon and Sprint)

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Best Buy is currently running a trade-in promotion where you can trade in a working iPhone 5 for a gift card which can be used to purchase an iPhone 6 for just $1.

It’s worth mentioning that the offer only applies to the 16GB version of the Apple device, and is for a limited time only – valid till June 20. Also, you need to sign a 2-year agreement with Verizon Wireless or Sprint to take advantage of it. Read more »

Nexus 5 sees increased standby with Android M

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While Project Volta was mostly a colossal failure, it seems Doze is actually doing its job. Reports suggest the Nexus 5 running on the developer preview of Android M is seeing noticeable improvement in battery life.

According to tests by Computer Base, the Nexus 5 running Android M consumed 1.5% power in 8 hours of standby, 4.5% in 24 hours, and 9% in 48 hours. In comparison, the same phone running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop consumed 4%, 12%, and 24%, respectively. Read more »

Benchmarking Asus ZenFone 2 ZE551ML with Intel Atom Z3580 SoC and 4GB of RAM

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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 »

We test: The Sony Xperia Z3+ touchscreen is amazingly good when wet

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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 »

Samsung outs its own Galaxy S6 Teardown

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We have already seen a teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 edge before from iFixit. But now Samsung has released its own teardown of the two phones, for some reason.

Samsung’s teardown doesn’t show anything new that we haven’t already seen or learned from iFixit’s and is decidedly less detailed. We do get some high quality images of the insides of the phone, however. Read more »

HTC celebrates the UEFA Champions League final with 24ct gold One M9

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HTC took the wraps off a One M9 in 24ct gold to celebrate this year’s UEFA Champions League final between FC Barcelona and Juventus. The Taiwanese manufacturer is among the sponsors of the tournament.

In addition to being coated in the precious metal, the limited edition HTC One M9 has the UEFA Champions League logo engraved on its back. Read more »