OnePlus Nord has received a warm reception since its debut, primarily thanks to its appealing design, capable hardware, and more importantly, its affordable price tag. Currently, the phone is only available in two colors – Blue Marble and Onyx Black – but it appears that a third color option might be on its way.
OnePlus Nord "Grey Ash" color variant supposedly launching at the beginning of October.
Noted leakster Roland Quandt mentioned in a tweet that OnePlus Nord will soon get a new color option called “Grey Ash”, and that it will hit the shelves at the beginning of October. Shedding more light on the fresh leak, another tipster – Max J. – mentioned that the Grey Ash variant of the OnePlus mid-ranger will flaunt a matte finish.
Unfortunately, we are yet to come across any leaked images that can give us a glimpse of how the upcoming Grey Ash colorway actually looks. Also, it is unclear whether OnePlus will sell this particular variant globally, or if it will be confined to a select few markets.
Telegram is hands-down one of the best instant messaging applications out there, and it is also one that values privacy way more than its rivals. However, one notable feature that has been missing from the platform is support for video calls. That changes now. Telegram has rolled v7.0.0 of the app via the beta channel, and it introduces video calling at long last.
The video call feature is enabled by default. In order to make a video call, just tap on the three-dot menu button in the top-right corner of the chat page and select the video call icon. However, in order to make a video call, the person on the other end of the call must also be running the latest beta version of Telegram on their phone.
Unfortunately, there is no word when video calling will be rolled out widely for Telegram users via the stable channel, but we suspect it might happen in the next few weeks. However, AndroidPolice reports that the latest Telegram beta build doesn’t support group video calling, so there is still some improvement to be made before a wider rollout.
Google has been rolling out tools and features to help students and their parents with homework. It launched an augmented reality feature a couple of months ago. It lets you view 3D anatomy models and cellular structures. Now, the company is adding another feature to its Google Lens app.
Google is said to be using technology from mobile learning app Socratic, which will enable Lens to solve math problems by simply taking a photo. When the feature arrives, all you’ll be required to do is snap a pic of your study material and then highlight an equation or a particular problem you can’t seem to solve. And the Lens will give you quick access to step-by-step guides and detailed explainers.
The idea is to easily look up mathematical concepts giving you trouble. However, the company hasn’t stated when it is planning to roll out the feature. Meanwhile, Socratic itself is available as standalone apps for iOS and Android.
Around the turn of the century, smartphones came in many clever and innovative shapes and sizes. For about 10 years, we lost that innovation to rectangular touch screen slabs, but now some of that innovation is coming back. The Cosmo Communicator is a good example. It’s an Android smartphone with a real physical keyboard, a clam-shell hinge to open it up, and an external screen. It even allows you to partition the storage area and install full Linux for a dual boot experience.
Specs
The Cosmo Communicator is 171.4mm long, 79.3mm wide, and 17.3mm thick. It’s not a small device. The weight is 326g, so it’s not light either. It’s got a 4220mAh battery with fast charging, 5.99″ FHD 2160×1080 pixel main display, 1.91″ external OLED touch display, 24Mp external camera with LED flash, and 5Mp front-facing video call camera. It supports all of the GSM, CDMA, and 4G LTE radios and is also available in a Verizon version or Japan version for those different frequencies. You’ve got dual nano-SIM card slots and eSIM support as well. It comes with Android 9.0 installed, but now with recent updates, we can also install a special version of Debian Linux. Sailfish might work too.
For a processor, it uses a MediaTek Helio P70 and includes 6Gb of RAM and 128Gb of storage. Of course, there’s WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, HD Stereo speakers, noise suppression microphones, GPS, NFC, fingerprint scanner, and a 3.5mm audio jack. There are also actually two USB-C ports! One on each side. The left side is best for charging, by the way.
Even the box has a clamshell flip up design.
Hardware and Design
Opening the clamshell device is a little difficult. It takes two hands to pry it open, but once you do, there’s a gorgeous keyboard inside. The keys look full-sized, but they’re obviously smaller to fit the small form factor. They have excellent key travel. Putting two hands on the keyboard and trying to touch-type isn’t so great since it’s such a different size. Plus there are not tactile raised bumps on the “J” and “F” keys for finding your place by touch. That’s something that I wish the designers had included.
Really the keyboard works best as a thumb keyboard where you hold the device in two hands and type with your thumbs like you would with an old blackberry. This method works well except the Shift key is not sticky, so you have to use the Shift keys and modifiers on both sides. Instead of just hitting the Shift key once and then typing the key you want to be uppercase, you have to hold it down. That means if the key you want to shift is on the left side of the keyboard, you have to use your right hand to hold down the Shift key on the right side of the keyboard. It takes some getting used to.
On the outside, there are a lot of controls so that you can use some phone aspects and see notifications without having to open the device. We’ll talk about this in more detail later on. There’s also a fingerprint scanner where those two blue LEDs are and that area is also a rocker switch that works for interacting with the external screen as well as for volume control. You can also see the 24MP external camera at the top. The grey side pieces are metal while the blacktop pieces are rubber. It’s a very unique and distinctive design!
The back of the device is all smooth metal with hard rubber ends. It feels very sturdy.
The Planet Computer logo on the back looks great.
The hardware branding is not too obtrusive and it’s nice to show what this device actually is. A lot of phones don’t label themselves very well anymore.
There’s even some nice branding on the edge where the screen and keyboard open.
The right edge has the silver power button. It’s flush with the device, so you won’t press it accidentally. There’s also a USB-C port here along with some microphone and speaker grill holes.
The left edge of the Cosmo Communicator also has another USB-C port along with the 3.5mm headset jack, some more speaker/microphone holes, as well as a slot for the NanoSIM card and MicroSD card tray. The tray can accommodate two NanoSIM cards or one NanoSIM and a MicroSD card.
The hinge has an interesting mechanism to it where an “L” shaped metal part extrudes from the edge to give you a raised keyboard kind of set up when using it on a desk. This makes for an opening that goes through the inside of the hinge, so be careful not to get any dirt in there. The rubber part of this hinge looks a bit damaged as well. Not sure how that happened.
I decided to compare the Cosmo Communicator to some of the old slide-out & tilt keyboard smartphones from the ’00s. The Cosmo Communicator is huge compared to the HTC Touch Pro 2 (center) and HTC Kaiser (left).
KDE Plasma Debian Linux
Recent updates in the firmware on the Cosmo Communicator have enabled users to partition the storage and install Debian Linux with the KDE Plasma desktop environment for dual booting the device between Android 9 and Linux. This is an awesome new feature for power users and tech enthusiasts. So of course, I wanted to do this right away.
The Cosmo Communicator does not ship with Linux support available right away. In fact, the firmware to support this was only recently made available as part of the online updates. You will have to partition the storage area using the boot firmware, create a MicroSD card with the custom Linux installer downloaded, boot to the MicroSD, and then install from there. You can find the full instructions and the Linux installer downloader on the Planet Computers Linux for Cosmo Wiki page. Partitioning will lose everything on the Android side, so it’s best to do this before you really start using the Android side.
After receiving this review unit, I installed version 1 of Linux for Cosmo from February of 2020 and a lot of things didn’t work right away with that one. There was no phone calling, SMS, or LTE data support. Only WiFi networking really and even that didn’t save my password. Version 2 was released later on in July of 2020, and that brought a phone app, SMS messaging app, and LTE data connection support, but getting LTE data connections to work even in version 2 requires a lot of work as you can see here.
Once you get Linux running, you’ll need to enter the username and password, which are both “cosmo”. There is no onboarding interface that lets you create your own username & password. Also, this is the KDE Plasma desktop environment which isn’t very well designed for keyboard interaction (there are no visible keyboard access keys)… nor is it very well designed for touch screens (interactive elements are very small). By default, the touch screen acts as a left click poke. Meaning that you point and touch something and that acts as a left click on that item. Scrollbars are very thin in the default theme as well, so those are impossible to use. I was able to enlarge the scrollbars and many buttons by customizing the system theme.
The KDE Plasma interface is so poorly suited for a device like this, you might be better off just typing terminal commands for everything. Still, I was able to install xserver-xorg-input-mtrack, which makes the touchscreen act like a trackpad that moves the pointer around on the screen. Instructions can be found here. If you’ve used Remote Desktop apps on phones before, the effect is very similar. Swiping the touch screen makes the arrow move around, tapping causes a left click at the pointer’s location. This modification helps a lot. Alternatively, you can always plug an actual hardware mouse into one of the USB-C ports on the sides.
I was able to get the Graphical Image Manipulation Program installed, but its interface was not scaling well at all. The menus weren’t even accessible. So there are still some problems here.
Darktable works pretty nicely, but again it’s hard to work with on such a small screen. Still, it was able to load photos from a USB SD card adapter no problem… just like a real computer.
Of course, the venerable Libre Office works here as well, but again the user interface might be a struggle to use without a mouse on this small screen.
As of July 2020, there are now functioning SMS and phone calling programs in the Gemian Debian Linux build! They don’t appear with updates from the version 1 build, so I had to re-install Linux from the version 2 image download.
Incoming calls work as well and even include canned SMS replies. While the ringing works even if the phone is asleep with the screen off, nothing is displayed on the screen or the external screen… AND you have to enter your password to unlock Linux before you can see the answer dialogue. It’s certainly not perfect at the moment.
As mentioned, the external screen doesn’t work when booted into Linux and neither does the camera… or at least there is no functional camera software included yet and the web browser cannot recognize the existence of cameras for things like WebRTC video calls.
Android Software
If Linux is too much of a challenge for you, of course, you can always go back to the good old Android 9 partition with a reboot. Or if you want to hack Android a bit, you can also root the Android partition in order to do whatever you want there.
The Cosmo Communicator’s default Android home screen always switches to landscape mode. You’ve got the usual back, home, tasks (triangle, circle, square) buttons on the right instead of the bottom, and there are application icons all over. There is an application drawer for showing all of the other applications, but you can’t see it. There is no button to activate the application drawer. You have to learn the secret swipe up gesture on the home screen to find it.
Planet Computers has included some extra software to make Android a little better for keyboard devices. One is the “App Bar” that appears at the bottom. It’s kind of like a dock in MacOS or the taskbar in Windows whereas you can pin whatever programs you want to the app bar and rearrange their sequence. Then you can use the Planet Computers logo button (Alt) on the keyboard to show the app bar and then use the arrow keys to select the app you want to launch. This makes the keyboard usability of Android much better.
Even though the very first Android smartphones (Check out my review of the Android G1 from 2008), were actually designed for landscape/portrait switching and slide-out keyboards with decent keyboard navigation support. Today’s version of Android certainly is not.
Planet Computers also includes some other useful programs. Above is “Airmail” which is a decent email program based on the K-9 open-source Android email app. It’s got better information density than the default Gmail app and works well with the keyboard.
The Agenda app is another one that Planet Computers added. It’s a calendar program that syncs with the regular Android calendar libraries, but you can also sync it directly with a PC using a USB cable. That’s how things used to be before wireless internet was so prevalent and it has its advantages such as: not uploading your data to someone else’s computer in the cloud.
There’s also a basic Notes app. It doesn’t seem to sync with anything, but you can back up the notes to a separate file. It lends itself nicely to the landscape layout, but personally I’d rather use Microsoft OneNote.
There are a lot of LED lights on the outside of the Cosmo Communicator, and there’s a utility for customizing them here.
We’ve actually got a database program in the Cosmo Communicator too! You can import data from CSV files into tables and also export data to SQL, CSV, or TXT. It doesn’t connect directly to any online database servers though, so this is mainly for offline uses.
There’s also an app that makes it easy to specify which voice assistant you want to use with the keyboard shortcuts.
Planet Computers also includes a special file manager separate from Google’s Files app.
External Screen
Since this is a clamshell device that closes against its main screen, you can’t really see much when the phone is closed. Luckily there’s a small external screen on the outside. This will show you radio status, the time, and date normally, and it will also show icons that represent notifications that are waiting within Android.
You can open the notifications to get a little more information as well as some actionable options. Most of the actionable options will tell you to open the device in order to continue, but it will launch whatever app you’re trying to interact with so that it’s a little less disconnected.
There is also a grid of mystery meat icons that you can access with the buttons in the fingerprint scanner. These give you quick access to certain functions like phone calling, photos, video recording, flashlight, and music playback. Since this is also a touch screen, you can tap the circle icon you want to activate it. Unfortunately, this makes accidentally changing things while the phone is in your pocket very easily. I’ve accidentally switched to airplane mode and turned off all of the radios for the phone while it was in my pocket.
One awesome feature of the external screen is that you can use it to take photos with the external camera. Unfortunately, the viewfinder display here is extremely laggy. It’s often behind real-life by a couple seconds. So you really have to hold still to frame the selfie photo. Then the camera shutter button is often unresponsive as well, so you may have to hold still and also press the button a few times before it takes a photo.
There are a good number of settings in the external screen interface as well. You can change its orientation, brightness, notification text options, etc. As mentioned before, you can also control which radios are on. Here you see we’re using the “CODI” external display software version 1.1.1.14.
Just so you know, getting the cover display software to update can be an absolute nightmare. It took me maybe 1.5 weeks of repeatedly pressing the “upgrade now” button, waiting for 20 minutes, seeing it fail, and trying again. There’s a “manual” upgrade option where you can download 2 files from Planet Computers and try to install those through the utility. If you navigate to them through the file browser’s “recent” list, then the whole thing will just crash. You have to go through the file browser’s main storage listing. This way it won’t crash, but it will still fail with an error. You also have to disable the cover display in the Android action center, as well as go into airplane mode to disable all radios. You also have to try to install the smaller update file first before the larger one it seems. Even then, it may not work, and the documentation is pretty thin. You’ll see lots of complaints about this on the Open Embedded Software Foundation website.
Cameras
The external 24Mp camera sounds like it would be really good. If we were talking about a 24Mp camera on a Nokia Lumia phone from 7 years ago, then yes, it would be something really fantastic. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here. The image quality is disappointing. The camera software is disappointing as well. It has very very few controls. You can take a picture, take a video, turn on the flash, and turn on HDR mode. That’s it.
Installing Open Camera helps to give you a lot more control, but Android’s Camera API2 doesn’t get access to the camera’s RAW data, so we can’t really do further edits or customizations.
Above is a 100% crop of a JPG from the 24Mp camera. While it technically has 24 Megapixels, there is not much detail here at all. Everything is smeared and smudged. Below are a few more camera samples.
Battery
The 4,220mAh battery seems like a large number that should get you through a weekend, but in practice, it really might only last a day. Of course, all of this depends on what you’re doing with the device. Do you have the keyboard backlight on, is the external screen always on, what kind of programs are you running, are you trying to render animations in Blender on Debian? In general, I would expect the battery to last most of a single working day.
Pricing & Availability
You can order the Cosmo Communicator directly from the Planet Computers Store. There are 28 versions available with different language keyboards. It’s costs £665.83 ($871.64 USD) and not all language keyboard options are available at the moment. Some are still pre-order options. There is also a special version for Verizon radio bands in the U.S.A.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Big keyboard works great for typing
Dual boot to Android 9 or KDE Plasma Debian Linux with other operating systems coming soon
Desktop Linux gives you a lot more customization, computing power, and flexibility than Android
External screen gives you access to basic functions and notifications without opening the device
Two USB-C ports
3.5mm headset jack
Extremely unique design
Cons
Very big and heavy
Includes Android 9 instead of 10
No wireless charging
Camera hardware doesn’t support RAW output via Android’s Camera API 2
24Mp camera has very poor image quality
No water resistance
Difficult to use in portrait mode with Android apps that don’t rotate
Touch screen can be very difficult to use in KDE Plasma on Linux
Conclusion
The Cosmo Communicator certainly is not for the faint of heart. This is clearly a power-user device as even updating the software can be a massive undertaking. You’re going to need some courage and technical expertise to buy this phone. The big appeal for me is the fact that it can run full Linux outside of Android. The Linux side is still a work in progress, so the initial user experience isn’t very good, but improvements have appeared even while I was writing this review. Having Debian Linux on your phone means you have way more control than you would in Android or iOS. Plugging a mouse in and using the phone as a little laptop is really pretty awesome. The camera is terrible though, so I wouldn’t buy this if you like to take photos a lot while out and about. I would highly recommend this phone if you’re a programmer or white-hat hacker though, as the Cosmo Communicator gives you a lot more flexibility than you would have on a normal rectangular slab touch screen phone. You’ve got Debian Linux, unlocked root-able Android, Team Win Recovery Project support, and maybe someday, Jolla Sailfish.
15-20 years ago, many of us dreamed of having a full laptop computer that could fit in a pocket and still make & receive phone calls, browse the web and get email over wireless internet. Microsoft’s Windows CE/Mobile/Phone came closest to that dream… until now. Having full desktop Linux on a pocket-friendly handheld computer that still makes phone calls and has wireless internet is a pretty excellent dream come true.
I was expecting more from Microsoft and its latest Android entry, but there are better devices available that offer dual screen solutions for the enterprise.
OPPO Reno3 Pro was launched in India back in March. The phone is different from the Reno3 Pro that was launched in China earlier this year. The phone was announced at a starting price of Rs 29,990 for the base 128GB storage variant. Now, it has received a price cut.
The OPPO Reno3 Pro price in India now starts at Rs 27,990 for the 8GB + 128GB storage model. The 8GB + 256GB storage option costs Rs 29,990.
The OPPO Reno3 Pro features a 6.7-inch full-HD+ (1080×2400) Super AMOLED display. It has a 20:9 aspect ratio and a 91.5% screen-to-body ratio. It is powered by the MediaTek Helio P95 chipset, paired with 8GB of RAM. It runs Android 10 with ColorOS 7 on top.
The phone sports a quad rear camera setup of 64MP + 13MP + 8MP + 2MP and a dual front camera setup of 44MP + 2MP. It packs a 4,025mAh battery that supports 30W VOOC Flash Charge 4.0 technology. Moreover, the handset comes with Dolby Atmos as well as Hi-Res Audio support.
With summer in full force, there are a huge number of sales hitting the web, and now is the time to pull the trigger and buy all that great gear you’ve been eyeing all year. From flash drives and telephoto kits to Bluetooth headphones and Google Home accessories, this list has something for every tech-lover, and each item is on sale for a limited time. Enjoy.
Take your photography game to the next level with this powerful and portable telephoto kit. You’ll be able to snap shots with 12x magnification, and an adjustable tripod stand will give you the stability you need to capture the perfect photo in any environment.
These best-selling Bluetooth headphones are a must-have item for serious listeners on the go. They offer 12 hours of battery life, sweat-resistance, and HD drivers that deliver crisp highs along with rich lows.
The only problem with your trusty Google Home is that it’s confined to the reach of its power cord. This easily-attachable battery base solves this obnoxious issue once and for all by allowing you to get rid of that pesky cord so you can take your Home with you wherever you go.
If you have a smaller Google Home Mini, this trusty battery base will allow it to be fully portable at all times. With a slide-in design and a lightweight build, this sleek and stylish battery extension boasts up to 8 hours of run-time on a single charge.
This hands-free smart selfie stick offers infinite rotation, live video monitoring, and specialized AI tracking features that make it ideal for online bloggers. Available in white or black, the Robots Smart Gimbal is also easy to fold up and toss in your bag at a moment’s notice.
Safeguard your data with this 512GB flash drive. You’ll be able to keep your sensitive information out of nefarious hands thanks to data encryption, and a specialized PIN keypad means that you’ll be able to create simple and memorable passwords for added convenience.
Store and sanitize everything from headphones and masks to jewelry and keys in this all-in-one disinfection bag. With UV-C sanitizing technology, this bag can be recharged via a simple USB connection, and it’s small enough to take with you when you’re on the move.
HUAWEI has announced that its first wireless speaker, the Huawei Sound X, will be available to buy from August 17 on the HUAWEI Store for RRP £299.99. It will come with a free Huawei MatePad T8 offer included for those who order the device before August 30.
The all-new HUAWEI-Devialet joint Wireless speaker — the HUAWEI Sound X packs One-Hop audio sharing, which saves users the hassle of waiting for a Bluetooth connection to establish. Instead, you can simply tap your phone’s NFC area against the Sound X, and velvety surround sound will begin to play without delay. It delivers 60W of bass.
For reference, Devialet is a top-three global audio brand. The company has garnered 76 awards and 160 technology patents, and cemented its position as a leader in acoustics. The HUAWEI Sound X comes equipped with Devialet‘s patented signal-processing SAM (Speaker Active Matching) technology, and iconic Push-Push symmetrical structure.
SAM introduces an efficient compensation algorithm that is capable of adapting the output signal to match the specific characteristics of the speaker and minimize sound distortion. The Push-Push structure places the two high-power speakers symmetrically so that their back wave vibrations cancel each other out.
Further, the RGB tri-color indicator light on the top surface seemingly blends the emitted light with its surroundings, for a kaleidoscopic display that is reminiscent of a glamorous music hall.
Microsoft has quietly made the Surface Duo official. The company says Surface Duo is the thinnest Surface yet. The price starts at $1,399 and it will start shipping September 10 onward. It brings together Microsoft 365 experiences and the full ecosystem of Android mobile apps
The Microsoft Surface Duo features an 8.1-inch PixelSense Fusion display connected by a 360-degree hinge, which allows you to use each 5.6-inch display individually or together, across a variety of modes.
The Surface Duo comes with a custom engineered Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) which enables full control over firmware components. The company says it delivers Enterprise-grade security to Surface Duo by writing or reviewing every line of firmware code in house. It allows Microsoft to respond directly and agilely, to potential firmware threats and to mitigate supply chain security risks.
Further, you can manage the entire Surface Duo experience for employees and protect work data with a variety of mobile device management (MDM) options, including Microsoft Intune.
The Surface Duo is powered by Snapdragon 855, paired with 6GB RAM and 128GB/256GB of storage. As for the optics, it comes with a single 11MP f/2.0 sensor, although it can capture 4K 60fps video. It is said to come with features like portrait mode, super-resolution zoom, and more. It packs a 3,577mAh battery with support for 18W fast charging.
It comes with Microsoft apps like Office, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, Edge, OneNote, To Do, News, and more. You can pre-order the foldable phone today from AT&T, Best Buy, or the Microsoft Store, and it will arrive on September 10.
The next smartphone innovation is expected to be under-display camera sensors. The technology is expected to come embedded in the flagship phones next year. It is expected that many smartphone manufacturers are working on this tech. However, ZTE has gone ahead and confirmed that it will be soon launching the world’s first under-display camera smartphone.
The ZTE Axon 20 5G could be the first phone to come equipped with an in-display selfie shooter. ZTE’s President of Mobile Devices, Ni Fei took to Weibo to confirm the development. While Fei did not reveal the name or launch date of the smartphone, a well-known Chinese tipster revealed that Fei could be referring to the ZTE Axon 20 5G.
The flagship smartphone is said to use China-based Visionox’s solution for its under-display camera technology. Visionex confirmed last month that it had started the mass production of its under-display camera solution and phones featuring will be debuting soon.
When you search a celebrity or famous person’s name, you see a knowledge card that gives a brief intro about them at the top of the search results. If you ever wished (I definitely have. A lot!) that such an introduction for you appears when people Google search your name, you’re in luck. Google has launched what it calls ‘people cards‘ that will essentially serve as your virtual business card for the world.
In the people card form, you can write a brief intro about yourself and your business, highlight your website, add a profile image, mention your educational qualifications, and links to your social media handles. If you are looking to create a people card of your own, just follow these steps to create one:
Search the term “add me to Search” in your browser.
Tap on the “Get Started” button that appears inside the “Add yourself to Google Search” box.
On the next page, enter details such as name, location, a brief introduction, occupation, work details, website, and the rest of the fields you deem necessary.
After filling all the details, tap on the preview button and then hit the Save button to create your profile card.
And this is how your people card looks when someone performs a Google search for your name:
Redmi Note 9 is reportedly receiving the MIUI 12 update in India. It follows the MIUI 12 update that was rolled out for Poco X2 last week. The information comes from shared by Twitter user Ankit (@TechnoAnkit1) on Twitter. As per the screenshot, the MIUI 12 update for the Redmi Note 9 comes with version MIUI V12.0.1.0.QJOINXM and is 538MB in size.
The update brings an all-new animation engine and a brand-new visual design. However, the screenshot does not reveal all the changes and features. But we can expect the features showcased at the MIUI 12 unveiling back in April to be present. It is likely to include improved floating windows, a simpler and cleaner visual design.
MIUI 12 update for Redmi Note 9 comes with several changes in terms of privacy and security. Plus, a new Control Center design is also present. You can check for update by going to Settings > About Phone > System update.
As previously reported, Realme is all set to launch two new C-series smartphones. The Realme C15 and Realme C12 will be introduced in India on August 18. They will be launched via a livestream that will begin at 12:30 PM on the launch day. Both devices have been teased to pack a 6,000mAh battery.
The Realme C15 features a 6.5-inch IPS LCD display with a mini-drop notch, which supports HD+ resolution of 720 x 1600 pixels and 20:9 aspect ratio. The phone is powered by Helio G35 SoC, paired with 4GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage. It supports 18W fast charging and runs Android 10 based on Realme UI. It sports a quad rear camera setup of 13MP + 8MP + 2MP + 2MP and an 8MP selfie shooter.
In contrast, the Realme C12 is expected to come equipped with a feature 6.5-inch IPS LCD HD+ display, Helio P35 chipset, and 3 GB of RAM. It is likely to run Android 10 as well. It could pack a 6,000mAh battery with support for a downgraded 10W charging. Further, it is likely to be placed between Realme C15 and Realme C11 in the market.
Samsung Galaxy Note20 series is one of the most firepower-heavy smartphones out there, and with the S Pen and a ton of productivity features at its disposal, it is arguably the most capable Android smartphone in the company’s lineup. So, does the Galaxy Note20 offer support for 5G – a must-have trait for all modern flagships that have arrived so far in 2020. Well, the answer is yes. Samsung’s latest flagship is 5G-ready.
In fact, the Galaxy Note20 supports dual-mode (Standalone + Non Standalone) 5G and can latch on to both sub-6GHz and the faster mmWave networks. Additionally, the Galaxy Note20 Ultra also supports the Ultra Wide Band 5G network if your carrier offers it. Talking about the specific 5G bands it can latch on to, T-Mobile’s product page for the Galaxy Note20 lists support for Band n41, n71, n260, and n261.
And in case you’re wondering, 5G support on the Galaxy Note20 is facilitated by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X55 5G modem-RF system (only on the Snapdragon 865+ variant of the device) which is claimed to deliver a peak download and upload speeds of 7.5Gbps and 3Gbps respectively. Plus, it also enables support for global 5G multi-SIM mode and employs the Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) technology.
Listed below are the specs of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X55 5G modem:
In the meanwhile, check out my colleague Joshua Vergara’s experience of the Galaxy Note20 Ultra after spending 24-hours with it in the video above. And if you are yet to have a close look at the new Galaxy Note20 duo, check out Pocketnow’s hands-on video below and feast your eyes upon the new flagships:
Back in May, Twitter began testing a new feature that allows users to limit who can reply to their tweets. But so far, the feature has been limited to a small bunch of users in the test circles. Thankfully, that changes now. Twitter has announced that users across the globe can now access this feature and keep unwanted replies from strangers at bay.
Before posting a tweet, users will be able to choose between three options to control who can reply to their tweets – everyone (default setting), only people you follow, and only people you mention in a tweet. If you go with any of the last two options, the reply icon below the tweet will be grayed out, making it clear to ‘everyone’ that they can’t reply to that particular tweet.
However, people who have been restricted from replying will still be able to view, like, retweet and share that tweet with others. Twitter says that the new reply limiting tool helps “some people feel safer and could lead to more meaningful conversations, while still allowing people to see different points of view.”
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