Counterclockwise: vivo is the musical sibling of photo buff Oppo

Last week we told you about Oppo, so this week we want to talk about its sibling company, vivo. While Oppo was founded in 2004, vivo is even younger - it was founded in 2009 and released its first phone in 2012. The company hails from Dongguan, a major manufacturing hub. Samsung Electronics, Nokia, DuPont, Maersk and others have manufacturing facilities in the city. In 2011 it built a Hi-Fi acoustic laboratory, which was designed for testing of audio equipment. A year later the first phone came - the vivo X1. The company claims this is the first smartphone with a dedicated audio chip,...

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Weekly poll results: the LG V40 ThinQ gets more love than the G7

LG strategy seemed all over the place, but the scattershot approach has hit the bullseye - the LG V40 ThinQ got the approval of our readers in last week's poll, the vote was 3:1 in favor. The company's firm commitment to the 3.5mm headphone jack and the hardware that makes it awesome (the 32-bit Quad DAC) have not gone unnoticed. LG's other passion, multi-camera photography won people over as well. The V40 ThinQ is the first phone to offer both a wide-angle and a telephoto camera. Even that aside, the main camera has improvements over the LG G7 (larger pixels and a brighter aperture)....

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Google Chrome for Android soon to get a new Explore UI when opening a new tab

Google is testing a new "Explore" feature on its Android Chrome app and the good news is that you can test it out by yourself without needing to install Chrome Beta or Chrome Canary. The feature introduces a new layout when opening a new tab that will help you explore topics and websites based on your interests and browsing history. Here's how it looks. Screenshots from the new tab If you want to get it too, just head over to your Chrome app for Android, open a new tab, type in chrome://flags and search for the "Explore websites" flag. It should be set to "default" so change...

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Asus will announce two new Zenfone Max phones in India

Yesterday Asus scheduled an event for a new smartphone launch on October 17 in Delhi, India and we may have a lead on which phone the Taiwanese company is preparing. According to an unnamed source, the event will be all about two smartphones, not one. The report claims that Asus will be doing a follow-up of the successful Zenfone Max Pro with two versions - a regular one and a more budget-oriented Lite variant. Also, both of the handsets will sell for less than INR 12,000 ($162), which aims to disrupt the low-end segment where Chinese brands like Oppo and Xiaomi reign. The source...

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HTC's Exodus blockchain smartphone to be announced on October 22

HTC has had a blockchain-based smartphone in the works for several months now and it even talked about some tidbits in a recent announcement but everything seemed pretty vague. Luckily, we don't have to wait too long as the so-called Exodus smartphone is coming as early as this month. It looks like the company is keeping its promise and will deliver the handset this Fall and the announcement was made via its newly created HTC Exodus Instagram account. There's a pretty cool teaser to be found there and we just can't wait to see what HTC has been cooking all along. View this post...

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Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018) hands-on review

The world's first quad camera smartphone. Kind of has a ring to it, doesn't it? Depending on how you tally up the snappers, that statement is true and unquestionably so, if you only consider the rear camera setup. Frankly, we can't exactly say we are too surprised. It was more or less a matter of time. But, if we had to place some predictions, our money would have definitely been on a more obscure manufacturer finally polling out the quad camera card, rather than Samsung.

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This is what Samsung's first ODM device, the Galaxy A6s, looks like

Rumors about Galaxy P-series launching in China have been thrown around lately as well as an unknown Galaxy phone codenamed "Phoenix." The latest leak coming from Weibo appears to be all about the latter, assuming the Phoenix and the P30 are not the same device, although we are pretty sure that's exactly the case. Anyway, the leaked photos reveal a Samsung Galaxy A6s smartphone, which is supposed to be the company's first ODM handset. Galaxy A6s in different colors back and front Due to struggling Chinese sales, the Korean giant is looking to outsource its production of mid-range...

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LG opens up pre-orders of the V40 ThinQ in the US earlier than expected

The LG V40 ThinQ was unveiled two weeks ago and historically, the company has been opening up pre-orders a month after the announcement. This time around, however, LG says that the feedback from customers has led to the decision of launching the pre-orders sooner. So now, the handset can be found in the US with a price tag of $949 ($920 at T-Mobile) at AT&T, T-Mobile, B&H Photo and Sprint. Unfortunately, only AT&T discloses shipment dates - between October 16 and 18, but we assume that the difference in shipment days between all carriers and stores will be negligible. In the...

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Our iPhone XS Max video review is up

With the release of the new iPhone XS Max that follows the design language from last year's iPhone X, a lot of people were concerned about the pricing of the phone. And that's quite understandable - at $1,099 MSRP for the base model with just 64GB of storage, the XS Max is the most expensive smartphone ever released by Apple. But what gives? We take a deep dive in our comprehensive iPhone XS Max video review to see what the fuss is all about. You will learn all about the new gorgeous big OLED screen and battery life, and we also got plenty of sample shots from the much-improved camera. We...

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