Weekly poll results: Pixel 3a gets some love, the Pixel 3a XL not so much

Google's mid-range Pixel phones have a very specific target audience - if they find success somewhere, it will be in North America (and maybe Western Europe). They can only thrive in regions where the mid-range segment is sparse as the pricing is too high to compete with the likes of Xiaomi or Honor. The smaller Google Pixel 3a proved the more popular model by a wide margin. Price is part of the issue - you get the same camera and chipset whether you pay $400 or $480. And the camera is indeed the main draw of this phone. There are plenty of Android One phones out there, many with solid...

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Top 10 trending phones of week 20

After the relatively boring week 19, this week properly shook things up with a bunch of exciting announcements, which really shook up our trending chart. The OnePlus 7 Pro went official and unsurprisingly took advantage of that to leap to the top. The new flagship was sitting just behind the Samsung Galaxy A50 for the past two weeks when it was still only a rumor and now that it's a real thing it had no trouble dethroning the Samsung mid-ranger. The vanilla OnePlus 7 didn't get as much attention previously, but it still managed to make the podium this week, pushing another Galaxy A...

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Samsung Galaxy A70 in for review

Released just last month, the new Samsung Galaxy A70 quickly gained traction due to its well-balanced price and hardware. It can even be considered as an alternative to the considerably more expensive Galaxy Note9. We finally have it in our office so let's do a quick preview of what to expect in our full review. The handset is powered by a capable mid-range SoC - the Snapdragon 675 actually beats the Snapdragon 710 in terms of CPU power although it fails to match its GPU prowess. But when it comes to productivity, it's a very good middle ground that lets you save a few bucks without...

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Google's Now Playing could start keeping track of location and activities

The Google Now Playing feature may be getting another significant update sometime soon, as evidenced by an app teardown by XDA Developers. Lines of code in the March beta release (1.0.229715350) of Pixel Ambient Services indicate that it may start tracking location and activity. Now Playing was introduced with the Pixel 2 generation of smartphones. It constantly listens to the ambient music and compares it against a database of popular songs - if it recognizes the one that's playing it shows it on the lockscreen and in the notification shade. With the Pixel 3 release, the feature...

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Deals: Huawei P30 and P30 lite discounted at B&H, Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones $280 at Drop

If your consumerist self has urges to satisfy this weekend, there's a couple of deals that may be intriguing - if you're in the US, that is. B&H has taken some dollars off the regular prices of the Huawei P30 and the P30 lite. The high-end P30 can be yours for $570 as opposed to the regular $600 price tag. The lower-specced P30 lite goes for $280, and here the savings are even bigger at $40. B&H doesn't specify an end date for the discount but does warn of a 'Limited supply at this price'. Meanwhile, Drop wants to sell you a pair of Sony's WH-1000XM3 top-notch noise-cancelling...

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Scrolling screenshots now planned for Android R

You know how people like 'stock' Android for its lack of bloatware and overall streamlined experience? Well, the flipside to that is that some actually useful features are missing from the Android that Google puts out. Some makers add extra bits on top of it into their custom overlays and years down the road those features make it to Android natively. Such was the case, for example, with multi-window multi-tasking - it was introduced on the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 back in 2013 (running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean), but it wasn't until Android 7 Nougat in 2016 that such a feature was implemented...

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Black Shark 2 gaming smartphone reaching Indian shores on May 27

The Black Shark 2 gaming smartphone, which was announced in March, recently bagged the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) certification, hinting at an imminent launch in India. And we now know that this smartphone will debut on May 27 in India as the company has started sending out invites for its launch event. In addition to selling gaming smartphones, Black Shark is reported to sell gaming peripherals like the Gamepad 2.0 controller in India, but there's no word on that from this Xiaomi-backed company. Coming back to the Black Shark 2, it has a Snapdragon 855 SoC under the hood and...

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Oppo F11 goes on sale in India

The Oppo F11 that debuted in India back in March is now on sale in the country. It was launched with a price tag of INR19,990 ($284) for the sole 4GB/128GB variant, but is now sold at a price of INR17,990 ($256). You can purchase it from Amazon.in and offline retail stores across the country. Oppo F11 The Oppo F11 has a Helio P70 SoC at the helm and runs Android Pie-based ColorOS 6 out-of-the-box. It boasts a 6.53-inch FHD+ display on the front with a 16MP selfie camera in a water drop notch. Around the back, it has a dual camera setup which consists of 48MP and 5MP units, and...

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vivo Y3 goes official with Helio P35 SoC, triple rear cameras, and a 5,000 mAh battery

The vivo Y3 that leaked last week is now official. It's powered by Helio P35 SoC and boots Android Pie-based Funtouch OS 9. There are 4GB of RAM on board and the 128GB of built in storage can be expanded. The Y3 has a screen-to-body ratio of 89% and it flaunts a 6.35-inch LCD having a resolution of 1544 x 720 pixels and an aspect ratio of 19.3:9. For photography, the vivo Y3 comes with a triple camera setup at the back which is a combination of 13MP main (f/2.2), 8MP wide-angle (f/2.2), and 2MP depth sensing (f/2.4) modules. There's also a 16MP camera on the front sitting inside the...

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Meizu 16Xs full specs revealed by TENAA, 48MP camera and 6.2-inch AMOLED display in tow

A Meizu smartphone bearing model number M926Q, said to be the Meizu 16Xs, appeared on TENAA yesterday with its photos. And now, the Chinese certification authority has updated the phone's listing to reveal its hardware details as well. The Meizu 16Xs sports a 6.2-inch AMOLED display that has a resolution of 2232 x 1080 pixels. It runs Android Pie and has a 2.0 GHz octa-core processor under the hood which is paired with 6GB RAM. The smartphone comes with a triple camera setup at the back which is a combination of 48MP, 8MP, and 5MP modules. And on the front is a 16MP unit for selfies...

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Redmi 7A full specs listed by TENAA

Yesterday we saw the Redmi 7A on TENAA along with its images which confirmed its design. Now that listing has been updated to reveal its specifications. The Redmi 7A, which is listed on TENAA with model numbers M1903C3EC and M1903C3EE, is powered by an octa-core core processor clocked at 1.4 GHz. The smartphone comes in 2GB/16GB, 3GB/32GB, and 4GB/64GB configurations, and allows storage expansion by up to 256GB via microSD card. The Redmi 7A is built around a 5.45-inch display that has a 1440x720px resolution, and it runs Android Pie, likely layered with MIUI 10 atop. For...

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Redmi K20 specs leak following impressive benchmark scores

Xiaomi's Redmi brand has big plans coming up. Just this week it was revealed that Xiaomi's sister brand was going to reveal the K20, a fully-spec'd smartphone made by the brand. The phone was dubbed "Demon King" when Redmi's manager posted the phone's AnTuTu score on the Chinese micro-blogging site, Weibo. There will be a K20 and K20 Pro. Now, a full list of alleged specs has leaked on Twitter, offering more details of what we can expect from this supposed "flagship killer"- on paper, of course. The watermark at the bottom indicates the specs were originally posted to Weibo. Here are...

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