Weekly poll results: Oppo RX17 Pro rates well, Neo fails to impress

The Oppo RX17 Pro entered the European market this week and attracted some positive interest in last week's poll. The Super VOOC charger has some people hooked, the minimal teardrop notch coupled with a in-display fingerprint reader also seems like a design win. That said, it seems that Oppo may have missed the mark with the pricing - €600 is too much. Interestingly, water resistance came up as a con quite often, that's something the OnePlus 6T doesn't have either. But people also had reservations about Color OS. And you know what? Not one person commented "wow, a 3D ToF camera!", so we...

Read More

Counterclockwise: short history of the memory card

The first time data was stored on a card was in the distant 1725 when punch cards were used to automate a drawloom, which weave fabric and tapestries. In a way those cards stored images, though not quite how it's done today. Then in 1884 punch cards were used again in the Hollerith Electric Tabulating System (think electro-mechanical Excel). Hollerith would later start a company that would become the foundation of IBM. Hollerith punch card • Olivetti Programma 101 • Magnetic cards for instruction storage The Olivetti Programma 101 (1965) is considered by some to be the first...

Read More

Unboxing and hands-on with the Thunder Purple OnePlus 6T [Gallery]

OnePlus announced its mid-cycle release: the OnePlus 6T in a New York event last month where the company announced that the OnePlus 6T was arriving to T-Mobile in the United States. We were also expecting to hear about a purple variant of the phone though there wasn't a single mention of it at the event. Just about a week later, OnePlus announced an exclusive color for the Chinese market: Thunder Purple, during a Chinese launch event. Only for OnePlus to announce (exactly a week later) that the Thunder Purple finish was arriving to all markets. The variant is now available in North...

Read More

The Xiaomi Mi Laser Projector is now available in the US

The Xiaomi Mi Laser Projector is now available in the US through Walmart, priced at $2000. It's an ultra-short throw projector that can be placed between 5 and 50cm away from the wall, and is capable of producing in image up to a 150 inches in diagonal in 1080p resolution. Xiaomi promises up to 5,000 lumens of brightness and 3000:1 contrast. With all of that in mind, the price isn't half bad. That said, importing one from China through other channels could potentially save you some bucks, but you're left to deal with customs and there's the matter of warranty, or the lack of...

Read More

Security flaw discovered in Instagram's 'Download Your Data' tool

Instagram has come forward to users informing them that as a result of a security flaw their passwords could have been exposed. An Instagram spokesperson has said to The Information that the issue was 'discovered internally and affected a very small number of people'. The security flaw lies in the 'Download Your Data' tool, which was devised to comply with the EU GDPR regulations. For some users it could have included their password in the URL of the link they've been sent to, um, download their data. If they were on a shared computer, that link would have exposed their password to people...

Read More

Deal: Samsung Gear Sport and Gear S3 now $100 off in the US

Samsung's latest Galaxy Watch has been out for a few months, but last year's Gear Sport and the Gear S3 from 2016 are still available. Not only that, they're on sale in the US. Samsung itself and major retailers B&H and Best Buy will knock $100 off the regular price of the wearables so the Gear Sport will cost you $180, while the Gear S3 goes for $200, Frontier or Classic. Most of us around here have been struggling to find much use for a smartwatch or at least enough so to outweigh having to charge yet another thing on a regular basis. If you're okay with that, however, maybe...

Read More

vivo 1817 goes on GeekBench, has just 2GB of RAM

A previously unheard of vivo phone has been spotted on GeekBench - the vivo 1817. The existing vivo Y93 goes by v1818 internally, and the new model appears to be similar to that, minus one - it's certainly got 1GB RAM less than the Y93 base model's 3gigs. One of the vivo v1817 entries on GeekBench The vivo 1817, which will inevitably get a more marketable name when it goes official, is powered by a Qualcomm chip with an octa-core CPU, and it's likely the Snapdragon 439 you can find in the Y93/Y95 models. The 1817 also runs on Android 8.1 Oreo like its Y brethren. So far that's...

Read More

Huawei P Smart (2019) stops by the FCC: 3,320mAh battery, 32GB or 64GB of storage

Huawei has applied for FCC certification for the P Smart (2019) and the papers reveal some of the smartphone's specs. The most important one is the battery capacity - the 3,320mAh cell in the new model marks an increase from the existing P Smart's 3,000mAh capacity. Going by the less consumer-friendly POT-LX3 name for certification purposes, the phone will exist in no less than 4 versions depending on number of SIMs and amount of internal storage. Single and dual SIM variants will be available and 32GB and 64GB storage options are in the works. In any case, there will be 3GB of RAM on...

Read More

Android Pie rolling out to the LG G7 One in Canada

Android 9.0 Pie has started rolling out to the LG G7 One in Canada, one user reports on XDA Forums. The firmware comes in at 800+ megabytes and includes the November security patch and camera functionality improvements. Mind you, we're talking about the G7 One, which is part of the Android One program and therefore runs on stock Android, so updates should be quick and easy. Meanwhile, the fully customized G7 ThinQ's Pie build is still in development. Source

Read More