SanDisk Ultra 400GB microSD review

We usually don't review storage devices here but when SanDisk reached out to us to review their 400GB Ultra microSD, it was hard to say no. Although large capacity microSD cards are not particularly new, 400GB is still a mind-boggling amount of memory for something that is smaller than my thumbnail. The 400GB model we have today is the cheaper of the two offered by SanDisk. Being part of their Ultra series, it's not as fast as the Extreme series of cards. SanDisk advertises a 100MB/s speed for the card but reading closely reveals it is just the read speed, with the write speed not...

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Weekly poll: Moto G6 and Moto E5 trios seek your attention

This week Motorola unleashed a whopping 6 new models split into two groups - the G6 and the E5 cliques. Which one (if any) is your favorite? The Moto G6 Plus boasts Dual Pixel autofocus on its dual camera and a 5.9" 1080p+ screen. Not bad for €300. The Moto G6 drops a few features and €50 off the price. The Moto G6 Play was a pleasant surprise with its 4,000 mAh battery and gets a reasonable price of €200. You can check out our hands-on review for more details. Then there are the budget-friendly E-series. The Moto E5 Plus is a champ with 5,000 mAh battery and a 6" screen - E-series...

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Smartphones - Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Among other things, for a smartphone to be bang on trend these days it needs, a tall 18:9 display with minimum bezels (with a notch thrown in for good measure), a superb camera system and Artificial Intelligence and/or Machine Learning. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are buzzwords being adopted and applied throughout our smartphones makeup, from the System on a Chip, all the way through to the operating system. So, is it just marketing hype, science fiction or is there fact being the fiction? Read on, and we'll provide a straightforward, and where possible jargon-free...

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Counterclockwise: the rise of the metal phone

Phone makers have converged on one design for premium models - a metal frame sandwiched between two panes of glass. It's a practical choice, the metal gives rigidity to the thin, long phones while glass lets radio waves and wireless charging through. The number of phones that incorporate metal in their build has been rising in recent years. While some phones use plastic for the back instead of glass, the chart below shows that glass is by far the most typical choice. It's interesting to see companies experiment with ceramics instead of glass. Some ceramics are transparent to radio...

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Meizu 15, 15 Plus, and M15 unveiled: top models have dual cams with a tele lens

Meizu unveiled a trio of phones with an interesting selection of chipsets. The top two models use Samsung-sourced Super AMOLED screens with 16:9 aspect ratio, bucking the trend of taller screens. They also get dual cameras with OIS and 2x telephoto, the "lite" version sticks to just a single camera setup. Meizu 15 Plus Plus means big, but not huge - the Meizu 15 Plus has a 5.95" screen, an AMOLED panel with QHD resolution. With no notch or taller screen, Meizu has cut the bezel down to just 1.175 mm - the narrowest bezel in the world. The screen will be showing you the colorful UI of...

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In Past Tense: The story of Vlad's phones

Hi, I'm Vlad, the evening shift guy around here (insert vampire joke if you must). I'm 33 and have been with GSMArena for almost four years now. My phone journey started when I was 15 years old. The early days My first phone was a Bosch 509, which I got in 1999. Two GSM networks had launched in my neck of the woods in 1997, so I wasn't really an early adopter - but in my defense, I was still in school and depended on my parents for such purchases. It was obviously very exciting to own a phone in that day and age, even though prices for calls were so high that it didn't get a lot...

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Weekly poll results: for gaming phones to succeed, they need hardware controls

The future of gaming phones proved to be a more divisive topic than we anticipated - the final result is nearly even, a 47/53 split in favor of "no, gaming phones do not have a future". At least some consensus seems to have formed in the comments. To succeed, these phones need two things - games and hardware controls. The former seems obvious but isn't. Nvidia tried to lure game devs into porting their games to Android (to promote its Tegra chipsets), Sony is still trying to do the same. And yet sales of AAA mobile games are nowhere near as profitable as they are on console and PC. As...

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