Interview: Oppo's Jeff Zhang on VOOC and the future of smartphone charging

Late last month, Oppo held its Flash Charge Open Day 2021 event in China to talk about what's next for its Flash Charge technology. Following the event, we got a chance to speak with Mr. Jeff Chang - Chief Charging Technology Scientist and Senior Director of Hardware Engineering at Oppo - to learn more about the company's stand on magnetic wireless charging, the awareness of fast charging standards amongst the users, and the future of smartphone charging. Mr. Zhang, who's also known as the "father of flash charge," joined Oppo in 2004 and led the development of SuperVOOC and AirVOOC...

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Top 10 trending phones of week 32

There was a flurry of high-profile announcements this week and our trending chart is understandable totally overhauled. Xiaomi's Mix 4 ended up on top, ahead of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 and Z Flip3, the entire trio making its debuts this week. The Redmi Note 10 Pro took fourth, ahead of two more new arrivals - the Honor Magic3 Pro+ flagship smartphone and the Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 Pro premium tablet. The Poco X3 Pro is sitting in seventh, just ahead of the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. The Redmi Note 10 slid down to ninth as the OnePlus Nord2 rounded up this installment of the...

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Week 32 in review: New Galaxy foldables, Xiaomi Mix 4 and Honor Magic3 series debut

Another week down, and it was a busy one so let's recap. Samsung's Unpacked event brought us the new and improved Galaxy Z Fold3 5G and Z Flip3 5G, the Galaxy Watch4 and Watch4 Classic and the Galaxy Buds2. The new foldables have Snapdragon 888 processors, waterproof bodies and 120Hz displays all-round (not counting the 1.9-inch cover display on the Flip3). The Galaxy Z Fold3 5G brings S Pen support and an under display camera. The Galaxy Watch4 and Watch4 Classic are Wear OS 3 devices with the ability to measure your Body Composition. The Galaxy Buds2 have active noise cancelling and a...

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Weekly poll: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3, the new S Pen and the Galaxy Z Flip3

Samsung is betting that foldables will be the next big thing in mobile and this week it unveiled its latest designs – the large and practical Galaxy Z Fold3 5G along with the compact and hot-looking Galaxy Z Flip3 5G. Are you on board with this new (and still fairly expensive) trend? The Galaxy Z Fold3 5G improves both screens. The squarish 7.6” internal display has the same size and resolution as the Z Fold2 display, but is brighter and devoid of interruptions. The external 6.2” display now matches the internal display with 120Hz adaptive refresh rate for a smoother transition between...

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Interview: Honor's CEO George Zhao talks foldable phones, Magic 3 software updates and international rollout plans

Honor has been on a bit of an announcement spree lately, unveiling devices like the Honor X20 and the Honor Pad V7 Pro. The most exciting, however, was the announcement of the Magic3 series, including the Magic3, Magic 3 Pro and the Magic3 Pro+ top dog. Those mark a strong return to the flagship segment on Honor's part and did gather plenty of attention both in China as well as internationally. Following the event we had a chance to talk to the company's CEO George Zhao and learn more about the company's future plans. Mr. Zhao confirm the company's intentions to launch the Magic3, as...

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Flashback: Sony Ericsson P910 used an odd flavor of touch Symbian and wanted to do it all

After gaining a beachhead in the 80s, personal computers invaded homes en masse in the 90s. Then in the 2000s smartphones were trying to do the same to people's pockets. By that time people had gotten used to document editors, spreadsheets, email and web browsing. Feature phones weren't great at that - for example, the famous Nokia 3310 (which came out in late 2000) could do none of that. But soon a new breed of phones appeared, phones that were like mini laptops. We've talked about the Nokia Communicator before, today we will focus on the Sony Ericsson P910. The third model in the series,...

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Weekly poll results: Google Pixel 6 duo gets positive reception, but limited availability is an issue

Last week we asked you about the Google Pixel 6 series, which will drop sometime in the Fall, and you seem to like what you saw in Google's extensive teaser. Over 77% of the votes gave the Pixel 6 series the benefit of the doubt - that's the good news. The bad news is most people said that they're interested, but won't actually get a change to buy them. Hardly surprising seeing how the duo will only be offered in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, the UK, and the US and even then, if history is any indication stock will be limited. The Google Pixel 6 Pro was the...

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Hot take: Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold3 5G, Z Flip3 5G, Galaxy Watch4 and Buds2

Samsung's recent Unpacked event was its busiest yet - we should know, we've been to all of them - it brought two foldable phones, two watches and new earbuds and bar none, all of these devices are at the front of their respective fields. So with the dust settled let's draw a few early conclusions from the event. Samsung's Galaxy Z series are the standard-bearers The first Galaxy Fold 2019 was a true marvel. It was unlike anything we'd ever seen. But it was also a first-gen device and it wasn't fit for everyday duty. The Galaxy Z Fold2 5G was the first folding phone that was ready for...

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