Flashback: OnePlus One's story is one of great success and some missteps

The OnePlus One was a dream phone - the dream of Pete Lau and Carl Pei. The two met at Oppo and eventually left together to form their own company based on the ideals of simplicity and quality, the "never settle" mantra was part of the company's mission statement from the beginning. Before we get to the phone, a short bio on the company's founders will help us understand how they got to where they are. Pete Lau worked at Oppo where as a Vice President he was instrumental of bringing CyanogenMod to the Oppo N1. Carl Pei was hired by Meizu after the Meizu fan site he created got popular and...

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First Meizu 17 renders show off a curved screen design

With the Meuzi 16 and 16s series in the past, it's time too look forward to the Meizu 17 and the first renders of the smartphone arrive just in time. As of now, there's only a render from the front revealing a curved screen design (could be an extreme, "waterfall" curve like the vivo NEX 3 or the Mate 30 Pro) or it could be just a standard curve like the Galaxy S and Note-series. Aside from that, we can see an under-display fingerprint reader - no surprises there - and super slim bottom and top bezels. The top one, however, is still big enough to house a selfie camera, crammed in...

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Future iPhones could come with LED-illuminated Apple logo, patent reveals

According to a new patent, future iPhones might finally get LED notification light of some sort, which would double as an Apple logo too. The patent tells a story about a transparent layer on the back of a smartphone with adjustable decoration overlapping by the transparent layer changing the appearance of the light that comes out of the logo. There's also a control circuitry that can adjust the appearance in response to an event like a call or missed notification. It's interesting to see this feature being revived after it was removed from MacBooks. As some of you remember, the...

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OnePlus will begin manufacturing its TVs in India by the end of the year

In an interview, Pete Lau, the company's CEO said that the the newly-announced OnePlus TVs will be produced in India by the end of the year. As for now, the TVs sold in India are imported from China with a starting price for the non-Pro model at INR 69,900. Gradually, TVs sold in the country will be produced within the borders, which could also mean that prices would go down a little due to the lack of import taxes and cost of labor. Unfortunately, the CEO also said that the company isn't planning affordable TVs in the near future and will focus on higher-end devices for...

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iOS 13.1 will tell you that your replaced screen isn't genuine

Along with the new iOS 13 features, there will be some changes that not everyone would like. Case in point the the CPU throttling "feature" that Apple introduced with the rollout of iOS 13.1. Another thing that might put you off is the notification that would appear in case you've changed your screen with a non-genuine one. In an official statement by Apple, all handsets from the iPhone 11 family will prompt you with a message on the lock screen that your panel isn't genuine, or the repair wasn't performed by a certified Apple technician. This message will go on for four days and then...

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Sony is developing its next flagship with Snapdragon 865

According to a Japanese media, Sony has its next flagship phone in the works and as anyone would expect, it's going to utilize the successor to the Snapdragon 855 and 855+. The first evidence of such SoC has surfaced on Sony's firmware distribution server. The SoC has an internal model number SM8250 and it's widely believed that this is the chipset itself, for now, called Snapdragon 865. There's also a rumor going around that the chip will come out in two variants - with integrated 5G modem, like the recently launched Kirin 990, and one iteration with 4G connectivity. It would make...

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Moving forward, Android devices will ship with pre-installed YouTube Music app

YouTube Music was a logical successor to Google Play Music since the YouTube library is far superior to the one available to Google Play Music. And since yesterday, Google made that perfectly clear by announcing that future devices will come with pre-installed YouTube Music app. Each new phone coming with Android 10 and Android 9 out of the box, will swap the Google Play Music app for the YouTube Music app. However, current Google Play Music subscribers and users can still download the app from the Google Play store and enjoy their personal library. But with this step, it's clear...

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Oppo K5 surfaces on Geekbench rocking a Snapdragon 730 SoC

The Oppo K5 with model number PCNM00 emerged earlier this week on TENAA with most of the specs and was later revealed that the handset will come alongside the Oppo Reno Ace flagship on October 10. Today, a Geekbench listing came out with a device named "Oppo PCNM00". It was the missing piece of the puzzle as the TENAA sheet revealed the clock speeds of the main cores - 2.2GHz, while the Geekbench score sheet gave out the energy-efficient cluster clocked at 1.8GHz. Putting two and two together lead us to believe that the SoC inside is Snapdragon 730. However, the Geekbench score...

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OnePlus 7T will get super-slow motion recording at 960fps with a future update

Despite the long list of features that the OnePlus 7T has, there are a couple that are missing but were promised during the announcement. The Super Slow-Motion video recording is one of those functionalities and OnePlus said it would deliver with a future update. The company officially confirmed that it's planning to push a software update for the newly released phone that would bring Super Slow-Motion videos at 960fps in 720p resolution. This is a significant step from the previous OnePlus phones supporting 480fps recording in the same resolution. However, the sensor on the phone...

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