Phone Reviews

The availability of components like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 700 series and Sony's IMX586 has become a double-edged sword for phone makers. On the one hand, these have made often high-end functionality available on mid-range phones. On the other hand, the sudden explosion of these mid-range phones has also made it harder for devices to differentiate. Often it takes some design gimmick or marketing stunt to stand out from one another but the OPPO Reno 4 Pro goes beyond the surface to deliver something more substantial. But is it enough to truly rise above the rest? We take a deep drive to find out.

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OnePlus Nord was released in the Summer of 2020 in just about every global smartphone market but North America. If you're living in Europe or India, you're in luck, this is a surprisingly high-quality phone for a very reasonable price. If you live in the United States, this smartphone is a very big, but very promising, tease indeed.

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Vivo has made a number of its smartphones available to markets outside of China but it is making a big splash with the Vivo X50 series. As the first of its camera-centric X family, Vivo wants to put its best foot forward, showcasing technology no one, not even the likes of Samsung or Apple, has seen in a smartphone before. It has indeed done so with the Vivo X50 Pro and its unique Gimbal Camera System. That isn't, however, the full picture, no pun intended, and cameras alone do not a smartphone make. We take a deeper and longer look at the Vivo X50 Pro to see if it has more to say beyond what some may call a gimmick.

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The Motorola Edge+ (or Edge Plus, if you prefer) is one of the most interesting Moto phones released in years. It's very tall and thin, works with a decent set of cameras, 5G connectivity, and a waterfall display. That means we're not just getting curved left and right sides here, we're getting a curved display that reaches all the way down to the side, beyond the point at which it's functional. It's certainly a beautiful phone - but is it necessary?

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The POCO F2 Pro, or Pocophone F2 Pro, is a highly decent smartphone. It was released in May of 2020 running Android 10 with MIUI 11 inside. This device has a 6.67-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen up front with no camera to interrupt its rounded-corner rectangle face. This is one of the few smartphones to have ever been released with a mechanically operated pop-up front-facing camera module - and it comes in several colors, both wild and decent.

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The gaming phone RedMagic 5G is effectively a collection of the most interesting gaming technology yet offered on a phone, jammed in the body of a very optimistic handset. This device feels like it was made by a company that had the opportunity to take chances. Unlike other devices I'd classify as niche, the Red Magic 5G includes features that I would not expect on a device that's priced this (relatively) low.

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How much can you expect from a new smartphone like the TCL 10L, when it costs just $249? Even before Apple pushed its flagship iPhones through the four-digit price barrier, most of the attention was being paid to the high end of the device world: that, after all, is where the juiciest, most bleeding-edge tech resides.

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Value may be subjective, but it's hard to argue that the new iPhone SE doesn't shake up what's reasonable to expect from a smartphone in 2020. Apple's most affordable phone is recycling refined to art, a blend of old and new with a barely-believable $400 price tag. Here's the thing about the iPhone SE, though. It may very well be the smartphone for you, but first you have to know what you want.

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The OnePlus 8 is the lesser of two OnePlus smartphones released in the Spring of 2020. This device and the OnePlus 8 Pro are very similar, in many respects. Knowing the difference between the two could allow you to avoid spending a couple of hundred dollars more than you need. Knowing the abilities of the OnePlus 8 could also allow you to decide whether you want this generation - or would be just fine owning a device originally released a year or two ago.

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Today we're taking a peek at the OnePlus 8 Pro, one of two devices released by OnePlus in the "OnePlus 8 family" of devices as of April of 2020. This device comes in several colors, including Onyx Black, Glacial Green, and the one we've got here: Ultramarine Blue. The OnePlus 8 Pro advances beyond its predecessors as it attempts a feat similar to that of the last several OnePlus smartphone releases. This phone attempts to combine the simple, effective marketing of the iPhone with the daring or otherwise cutting-edge feature cycle of the most major brands to come out of China.

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In a span of just a few years, OPPO has quickly risen from being just another Chinese brand to one of the more prolific upstarts in the Android market. It quickly moved from boasting about new mobile technologies it has developed to boasting about the new smartphones that showcased those technologies. It's definitely easy enough to give OPPO a pass since it isn't Samsung, but you'd be missing out on what could possibly be the most competitive Android phone this year.

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OPPO has been flooding the smartphone market with one model after another, and that's not even counting its sub-brand like Realme. It's not that hard to get lost in a sea of similar-sounding names but attaching a "Pro" to it does get you to at least take a second look. Of course, the OPPO Reno 3 Pro, which was "relaunched" just this week for the global market, will need more than that to generate not just attention but also sales. We take OPPO mid-range contender for a spin to see if it has more than enough to stand out in an already congested market.

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