Sony's smartphone division is up 25% YoY for Q2 2021

Sony's latest earning report is out for Fiscal Q2 2021 for three months ending on September 30 and the balance sheet shows a significant boost in sales revenue in its Mobile Communications division(includes smartphones and internet-related service business) for the quarter. This is a 25% increase over the same quarter last year. Sony's Mobile division earned JPY 99.1 billion (~$872.6 million) in Q2 2021 compared to JPY 79.1 billion (~$ 696.8 million). Sony reports that the increase in this division is due to "Increase in unit sales". Sony Xperia Pro-I and Xperia Pro Sony's...

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Facebook the company rebrands as Meta to take us all into the metaverse

Over the past few weeks we've heard increasing rumors about a Facebook rebranding as Metaverse, and well, some of that turns out to have been true. Facebook the company is now called Meta (no -verse). That said, Facebook the social network is still going to be Facebook. Meta is now the name of the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. Meta will be structured in two operating segments: Family of Apps and Reality Labs. Those names are pretty self explanatory, with all of the apps you know and hate (or love?) living under the former, while everything VR and AR is...

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Infinix Note 11 Pro review

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Xiaomi has sold over 240 million Redmi Note phones globally, will soon have 10,000 stores

During today’s Redmi Note-focused event Lu Weibing, general manager of the Redmi brand, revealed that the Redmi Note series has sold over 240 million units globally. It seems that things have been moving pretty fast since May when the number stood at 200 million. Before that it was 140 million in November last year and 100 million in October of 2019. So, in the last 5 months Xiaomi managed to sell 40 million units – that’s 8 million a month on average. Over 240 million Redmi Notes have been sold • The series will target a CNY 2,500 price point What does the future hold for the...

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Realme GT Neo2 disassembly reveals it’s fairly easy to replace battery and screen

The latest device to get the teardown treatment on PBKreviews is none other than the Realme GT Neo2 which debuted back in September in China before going global earlier this month. The phone earned a decent 8/10 reparability score with a fairly easy access to the screen and pull tabs for the battery. Like almost all teardowns this one begins by applying heat to the phone’s back to loosen up the adhesive. With the back pried off, we see a plastic cover put in place with 17 screws and which also requires a pry tool to detach. The mainboard houses the cameras, chipset, memory and storage...

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Redmi Watch 2 unveiled with 1.6" AMOLED display, cheap Redmi Buds 3 Youth Edition follow

Today’s Redmi event introduced the new Note 11 series phones, along with the sequel to the Redmi Watch from last year as well as a Youth Edition of the Redmi Buds 3. Redmi Watch 2 Xiaomi was able to slim down the bezels of the watch and to fit a larger screen – the Redmi Watch 2 boasts a 1.6” screen (up from 1.4”). Another upgrade is the switch to AMOLED (the old one had an IPS LCD). The screen became taller and its resolution is now 320 x 360 px. The new Redmi Watch 2 has a 1.6" AMOLED display (the original had a 1.4" IPS LCD) Efficiency also improved, so now the watch can last...

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Three-strong Redmi Note 11 series debuts, Pro+ brings 120W fast charging

Xiaomi introduced three new phones in China today - Redmi Note 11 Pro and Redmi Note 11 Pro+ and the more affordable vanilla Redmi Note 11. The two Pro devices are identical aside from one key difference - the Plus variant brings 120W fast charging, while the regular Pro has a bigger battery. Redmi Note 11 Pro and Redmi Note 11 Pro+ These two phones are the same on the outside. The front panel is a 6.67” AMOLED screen with 120Hz refresh rate and 360Hz touch sampling rate, and features a particularly small selfie camera punch-hole at just 2.96mm in diameter. On the inside, we have...

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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra to have the brightest screen yet

Samsung's flagship phones have always had cutting edge displays and the S22 Ultra is not going to be an exception. According to renowned Samsung tipster IceUniverse, the OLED panel used for the device is going to top brightness charts. The peak brightness of the handset's display is said to be the highest Samsung has ever recorded on a smartphone. No actual numbers were quoted, but known how bright current smartphones get that's already quite the statement. The current Galaxy S21 Ultra peaks at 1500 nits so we should be looking at a number higher than that. The tweet ends with a...

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Some early Pixel 6 buyers report screen issues: weird flickering, green tint, a second punch hole

Google is not the best when it comes to quality control of hardware. Previous generations of Pixel phones typically developed some kind of malady and the 6-series is no exception. Here are a few issues reported by new owners. One Pixel 6 Pro that drew attention exhibited a weird issue when powered off – pressing the Power button would cause the screen to flicker. Here’s what it looks like on video: Another issue that cropped up is a green tint on the display of a Pixel 6. It’s not an uncommon issue with OLED panels, many brands have experienced it, Google included (on the Pixel 4 XL...

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Samsung Q3 earnings report confirms record-breaking profits

As expected Samsung’s Q3 earnings report brought record-breaking profits with KRW 73.9 trillion ($63 billion) in revenue and KRW 15.8 trillion ($13.4 billion) in operating profits – the highest in the past three years and second highest in Samsung history. Revenues rose 10% on a yearly basis while profits increased by 26% compared to Q3 2020. As expected, Samsung’s semiconductor business propelled profits with extended demand for data centers and cloud servers. Total sales in the semiconductor department totaled KRW 26.4 trillion ($22.5 billion) which is a 16% improvement compared to last...

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Poco will bring M4 Pro on November 9

Poco announced another M series phone will arrive by the end of the year. The company scheduled an online launch for November 9 where we’ll see the arrival of the Poco M4 Pro 5G. The Poco phone will be “fun” and “powerful”, according to the official hashtag of the launch campaign. This is all we have from the official source at this point, but we'll undoubtedly get more specific as the brand ramps up its hype campaign in the 10 days leading up to the event. Previous rumors suggested the M4 Pro will be identical to the Redmi Note 11, expected to arrive later today in China. Its...

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Honor X30 series unveiled with large displays and Dimensity chipsets

Ahead of China’s biggest shopping holiday – Single’s Day (November 11) Honor went ahead and released two new midrangers – the X30i and X30 Max. They are powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity chipsets, pack spacious LCDs and ample sized batteries. Honor X30i 5G X30i brings a 6.7” LCD with a 90Hz refresh rate and FHD+ resolution. There’s a punch-hole cutout centered at the top for its 8MP selfie cam while the back features three modules headlined by a 48MP main shooter. The remaining two are a 2MP macro cam and a 2MP depth sensor. MediaTek’s Dimensity 810 5G chipset sits at the helm...

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Apple releases iOS 15.2 beta with App Privacy Report and improved Notification Summary

Shortly after seeding iOS 15.1 and iPadOS 15.1 to compatible devices, Apple is now releasing iOS 15.2 to beta testers and developers. The latest iteration focuses on bringing some promised features that weren't available with the initial release of iOS 15. One of the most notable ones is the so-called App Privacy Report, which allows you to track how often certain apps have accessed your private information such as location, photos, mic, contacts and camera in the last seven days. The feature keeps tabs on apps contacting other domains in the background too. Emergency SOS or...

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Huawei introduces affordable Enjoy 20e with two different chipsets

Right on schedule Huawei introduced its latest entry-level smartphone dubbed Enjoy 20e. The phone arrives in two different variants - one that is pretty much identical to the Enjoy 10e with Helio P35 chipset, and another that runs on the Kirin 710A platform. The Enjoy 20e with the HiSilicon chip will be sold with 6GB RAM and 128GB of storage. It will run HarmonyOS 2 out of the box, while the MediaTek "standard" version will boot EMUI 10 and have 4GB of RAM. This means that the only thing setting the P35 Enjoy 20e from the Enjoy 10e is the fingerprint scanner on the back of the newer...

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About time: Instagram now lets everyone share links in Stories

Instagram has announced that it's expanding the link-sharing feature in Stories to all its users. The company started testing this feature in June and replaced the swipe-up links with it in late August. Since the latter was only available to accounts that are verified or have more than 10,000 followers, Link stickers will enable more users to share external URLs through Stories irrespective of their accounts' verified status and follower count. Additionally, Link stickers will allow Story viewers to reply to it and engage with the account, unlike the swipe-up link Stories, which didn't...

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