Google Messages testing floating conversation bubbles on Android 10

Google introduced a new API called "Bubbles" which would make it easier for app developers to push more visible notifications directly on top of the user's display, much like how Facebook Messenger does with its "Chat Heads" feature. The folks over at XDA-Developers were able to manually enable the Android Message Bubbles and they've posted some screen shots of the feature in action. There's honestly not much new to the feature compared to Facebook's Chat Heads - as you receive a message, you'll get a visual notification on top of your screen, so you don't have to leave the app you're...

Xiaomi Mi Watch Premium Edition postponed until February 2020

Xiaomi unveiled its Mi Watch last month alongside the Mi CC9 Pro. Its Xiaomi's first smartwatch to come with its "Mi" branding and it looks a lot like the Apple Watch. The Mi Watch has already been on sale since last month in China retailing for ~$186 and a Premium Edition of the Watch was also promised with a sapphire crystal display and stainless-steel frame. It was initially promised to go on sale by the end of this year, but the company has just released a statement about its delay on Weibo. Dear Mi fans, Thank you very much for your attention to the Xiaomi Watch Premium...

Huawei Mate Xs gets 3C certification, will have 65W charging

Huawei's second-gen foldable has received a certification from the Chinese 3C regulator. According to the leaked document from the regulator the Huawei TAH-AN00m, which will be called the Mate Xs, will be capable of 65W wired charging. The Huawei Mate Xs will bring an improved hinge design and use the latest Kirin 990 5G chipset. It's also expected to be lighter than its predecessor. If Huawei's development goes to plan, the Mate Xs will make its first official appearance at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the end of February. Huawei will be looking to sell the device...

Huawei to ship 100 million 5G smartphones in China next year

As the end of the year approaches, all eyes are locked on 2020 which is touted as the year of mass 5G adoption. China is expected to become the largest market for the next generation network and according to a new report, Huawei alone is likely to ship up to 100 million 5G smartphones in its home market. Shoichi Tosaka who serves as CEO of Japanese smart capacitor manufacturer Taiyo Yuden Co revealed that his company received its yearly 5G base station orders and expects orders for 5G smartphone components in the coming weeks as well. Huawei and ZTE are believed to be the two...

Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Tab A4 S gets Bluetooth certification

Samsung is gearing to release another Android tablet soon. After delivering the premium Galaxy Tab S6, the Korean manufacturer will now bring a new mid-range slate with the upcoming Tab A4 S. The tablet was certified by the Bluetooth SIG bearing the SM-T307U model number and is revealed to support Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity. Galaxy Tab A4 S Bluetooth certification Previously, the tablet was spotted on the Wi-Fi Alliance database where we learned it will come with dual-band Wi-Fi, Android 9 Pie and 32GB of onboard storage. It's also rumored to come with an 8-inch display and...

Xiaomi Redmi 8a hands-on review

New Samsung Galaxy S11+ image shows actual camera setup

The camera placement on the upcoming Galaxy S11 lineup has been stirring up some debates lately. Some tipsters have chimed in that the circulating renders are not portraying the actual positions of the camera sensors and the latest image from OnLeaks aims to fix that. As we can see the quad-camera setup on the S11+ features three sensors on the left side with an additional one on the right which sits alongside the LED flash. Last week, another prominent leakster IceUniverse also revealed the alleged final camera configuration for the S11+ alongside more details on the new 9-1 Bayer...

First renders of Apple's 2020 iPad Pros show triple cameras

Here's something we didn't expect this early - the first renders of Apple's next two iPad Pros, courtesy of @OnLeaks and iGeekbsBlog. The renders depict the 2020 iPad Pro 11 and iPad Pro 12.9, which according to the poster, are coming in March of 2020. The images reveal an almost identical design to the current iPad Pro 11 and Pro 12.9, only instead of the single camera of the current-gen models there's the triple camera of the iPhone 11 Pro. That would mean a setup of 0.5x-1x-2x. Rumor has it the next iPad Pros will come with 3D-sensing camera tech, but that will likely be on the...

Samsung Galaxy Note9 gets fifth Android 10 beta

After getting four Android 10 betas thus far, the Galaxy Note9 is getting a fifth one in its home market of South Korea. It's also expected to make its way to other regions like India and Europe in the coming days. The update brings only two minor bug fixes. The first one aims to tackle a problem with the quick panel icons while the second one is about improving the fingerprint authentication in Samsung Pay and Samsung Pass. Given the minor nature of the latest updates, we should expect the stable One UI 2.0 update to arrive shortly. Via

Samsung set to unveil artificial human Neon at CES 2020

South Korean tech giant Samsung announced its AI-powered digital assistant Bixby back in March 2017. It first came pre-loaded on the Galaxy S8, but later made its way to a long list of smartphones and home appliances. More than two years later, the company is all set to unveil its new AI-powered product, dubbed Neon, at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020 next month. Neon is developed by Samsung Technology and Advanced Research Lab (STAR Labs), with Pranav Mistry at the helm as the President and CEO of the unit. Mistry is best known for his work on SixthSense and Galaxy Gear and has...

vivo patents several quad punch-hole smartphone designs

The race to full-screen smartphone displays has given us a number of workarounds from notches to pop-up and rotating cameras and punch holes. Manufacturers will continue to experiment until they can get over the hump and the latest example is a patent from vivo for a quad punch-hole smartphone. The patent was granted by the CNIPA (China National Intellectual Property Administration) and reveals a total of three different designs that all sport multiple camera cutouts on the display. The first design positions four front-facing cameras in each corner of the screen, reminiscent of the...

Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro to get a full battery charge in 35 minutes

Xiaomi is preparing at least two smartphones to represent its flagship lineup Mi 10 - the vanilla Xiaomi Mi 10 and the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro. The phones are expected to have the latest fast-charging technology by the Chinese company, and according to one reliable leakster, the Pro variant will be able to get a full battery charge in 35 minutes. The top variant of the Mi 10 will support 50W charging, as well as some sort of wireless fast charging, although the rate of that is yet to be confirmed. According to the leakster Xiaomi is still working on the technology and we might get to see a...

Samsung Galaxy S9 gets another Android 10 beta with more bug fixes

Last week Samsung released the fourth Android 10 beta for the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ which squashed a few bugs and bumped up the Android security patch level on the two smartphones to January 1, 2020. Now the Korean phone maker has released one more beta build for the S9 pair with bug fixes, and it appears that a stable build will be rolled out soon. The builds for the S9 and S9+, sporting version numbers G960FXXU7ZSLC and G965FXXU7ZSLC, respectively, weigh around 140MB in size and are currently seeding in India and the UK. But the rollout should expand to other regions soon. If...

Realme X50 5G official poster and live images arrive: side-mounted fingerprint reader confirmed

Yesterday we saw the first official poster of the Realme X50 5G which revealed the phone's design and confirmed the Polar color option. We also saw a live image of the X50 5G which revealed the smartphone will come with a side-mounted fingerprint reader. Now we are looking at another official image, which confirms the X50 5G will feature a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. The fingerprint reader will be placed on the right side of the phone, embedded in the power button. This is the first time Realme is launching a smartphone with a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. A set of new...

LG Neon Plus incoming with dated looks, render reveals

LG is rumored to unveil the flagship V60 ThinQ next year in February at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain. But before that, the company might announce a budget smartphone dubbed Neon Plus that has appeared in a leaked render. The image confirms the blue color for the Neon Plus and reveals the design which looks straight from 2016 since the display is surrounded by thick bezels at the top and bottom. The render also tells us that the smartphone will come with a single 8MP primary camera and a 5MP selfie shooter. The phone has its power button on the right side, with the...

WhatsApp adds expiring messages for group chats in latest beta

WhatsApp frequently adds features to its widely popular communication app. Back in October, it was rumored that WhatsApp was testing a new feature called "Disappearing Messages" but its function wasn't clear until now. The feature has been spotted again in the latest version 2.19.275 of WhatsApp Beta for Android and we have a better understanding of its purpose. The feature has since been refined and renamed to "Delete messages" and lets the users messages expire after a selected amount of time, either an hour, day, week, month, or year. Source: WABetaInfo As per WABetaInfo's...

Next-gen Huawei Mate X is launching in the second half of 2020

We've already heard that a slightly changed version of Huawei's Mate X foldable smartphone will make an appearance at MWC 2020 in February, sporting the Kirin 990 chipset and possibly named Mate Xs. But that's just a minor revision of an already existing product. The true successor to the Mate X, according to a new rumor from Taiwan's supply chain makers, will land at some point during the second half of next year. Some of the company's suppliers for the upcoming phone, including those for hinges and panels, have already begun small-volume trial production runs for components the new...

Android 11 could finally let you record videos over 4GB in size

Fun fact: Android phones can't record video files that are larger than 4GB in size. This could possibly change next year in Android 11, though, and to say it would be a welcome change is a huge understatement. The limitation is getting more and more annoying as time goes by, because right now handsets capable of recording 4K videos at 30fps are basically everywhere, and that means big file sizes. 4K60 takes up even more space, and don't be surprised if the first devices with 8K recording capabilities show up on the market in the very near future. With that in mind, the size per...

Top stories of 2019: Q3

As the year winds down it's a great time to reflect on the top stories of the past 12 months. This is the third of four installments where we look at the stories that shaped this year. Here are the top stories of Q1, Q2. We're now entering the fall flagship territory. The long and mostly uneventful summer has passed and the world of tech has finally begun picking up again. This is the time when the biggest makers in the world unveil their most important flagships (or joint most important, for companies like Samsung). The first major second-half of the year flagship came out...

Realme X50 will have over two-day battery life

The next 5G Realme smartphone is the Realme X50. It's a 5G supported smartphone arriving with the Snapdragon 765G chipset on deck. This was one of the chipsets announced at the Qualcomm Summit earlier this month with 5G support on-board via the integrated modem. Today, Realme China's product manager, Wang Wei Derek, posted a screenshot on Chinese micro-blogging platform Weibo from the Realme X50 5G with the text reading "After one day of use" (translated). The screenshot showed the phone was left with 62%. Source: Weibo Obviously, we don't know the kind of usage that the...

2019 Winners and Losers: Huawei and Honor

This year the mobile phone market saw the rise of many new trends - from high refresh rate screens through 108MP image sensors to periscope cameras. The first foldable phones went on sale, charging speeds went through the roof, displays got curvier and grew punch holes. Some brands used these trends to their advantage and grow in the market, others missed the mark. In this series we look at what each company got right in 2019 and where their efforts came short. Next up is the company that many expected to dominate the year and fight for the global lead, but ultimately came at the wrong...

Counterpoint: iPhone XR was the top-selling smartphone globally in last quarter

The iPhone XR announced last September was the top-selling smartphone across the globe in Q3 2019, according to a report by Counterpoint Research's Market Pulse. It captured a market share of 3% and also remained the best-selling smartphone in every quarter globally since Q4 2018. Counterpoint reports that iPhone XR alone contributed to over one-quarter of Apple's total sales during the quarter, which made it the best-selling smartphone for the Cupertino-based tech giant across all markets. Apple also tweaked the XR's prices in China and other regions to keep the demand strong...

Redmi Note 8 lineup is available on open sale in India

Xiaomi released the Redmi Note 8 series for the Indian market in mid-October, and until now they were sold during flash sales. Due to "popular demand", the company has finally launched an open sale for the Redmi Note 8, Redmi Note 8 Pro and Redmi 8. They can be purchased during any time of day at Flipkart or Amazon, Mi.com, and some offline stores. The Redmi Note 8 Pro is one of the first phones on the market with a 64 MP camera and a Helio G90T chipset. It has a huge 4,500 mAh battery and a microSD slot, which is exclusive for India. Xiaomi also included an 18W charger in the box...

Oppo Enco Free TWS earphones arrive with AI noise cancellation and up to 25-hour battery life

Oppo today unveiled the Reno3 series at an event in Hangzhou, China and alongside that, the company launched its truly wireless earphones, dubbed Oppo Enco Free. The Oppo Enco Free pack 13.4mm dynamic drivers and have a frequency response range of 16Hz to 20KHz. They come with an FPC positioning system paired with a dual magnetic circuit and composite diaphragm to deliver detailed, studio-quality audio. The Enco Free sport a half in-ear design but they also come with silicon tips in three different sizes for a better fit. The earphones weigh 4.6 grams each and are IPX4 certified,...

MediaTek introduces the mid-range chipset Dimensity 800 that comes with integrated 5G

MediaTek hosted a quick press conference in Beijing where it introduced to media representatives the Dimensity 800 chipset, aimed to power mid-range smartphones in 2020. It has an integrated 5G modem and will be a more affordable solution than the Dimensity 1000/L that can be found in the Oppo Reno3 smartphone. The company did not disclose any specs but revealed the platform will be demoed at CES 2020 in Las Vegas in the first days of the new year. Expectations are the Dimensity 800 to compete with smartphones powered by Kirin 800 series and Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 series chipsets....