The Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro was released today with a set of 5 cameras on its backside. We've seen smartphones with 5x camera lenses before - a combination of front and back lenses - but never 5x on the back of a phone in an array so impressive as this. The primary lens amongst these monsters is a 108-megapixel sensor - a sensor that might well make its way to the Samsung Galaxy S11 in 2020.
Google's grand plan for Android in cars is as clear as its grand plan for Android on TVs and wearables. Which is to say it's totally not. A few months back it promised a new chapter in the Android Auto story. Half a year later, Google accidentally broke Android Auto on phones while also delaying that promised Assistant Driving Mode. Now it's rolling out a fix to the former with a new Android Auto for Phone Screens that, for all intents and purposes, does what the disappearing Android Auto icon on Android 10 phones.
It's a period of experimentation when it comes to foldable devices. There are, of course, literal ones that have foldable screens like the Samsung Galaxy Fold and the Huawei Mate X but there are also ones that use two screens like the LG G8X ThinQ and the upcoming Microsoft Surface Duo. And then there are prototypes like TCL's tri-fold phone and patents like this one from Oppo. What stands out from this patent isn't that it has a foldable tablet with a large flexible screen but that it practically requires a smartphone to be the brains and muscle behind the scenes, literally.
Microsoft announced a great many things at its IGNITE conference but some might be disappointed by a distinct lack of the dual-screen Surface devices or even Windows 10X. Of course, that doesn't mean it is yet again ignoring the mobile market and has, in fact, one particularly curious announcement prepared. It has just started the public beta testing of a new mobile app for Office that, on the surface, seems to simply combine three Office apps into one. That, however, belies the paradigm shift that Microsoft is trying to push to mobile.
It's time to take a peek at the latest round of Samsung Galaxy S11 release rumors and expected camera features. As it's been with the past several Samsung Galaxy S smartphones, the two primary draw points are the display and the back-facing cameras. With the Samsung Galaxy S11, we're at a point at which the jump between generations will be massive - in one way or another.
The last iPhone SE was Apple's love letter to the iPhone 4, a smartphone design that lasted for several years before giving way to the larger iPhones we know today. Now that the design is fully rounded-edged and beyond-rectangular (for the most part), what's left for a new iPhone SE 2 to do? Today we're taking a peek at all the tips, rumors, and release date targets likely for the year 2020. This might be the second coming of the iPhone SE, the last of the tiny iPhone devices!
Here in November of 2019, we've got the full list of Pokemon GO research ready to go! This is the part of the game where the Pokemon trainer gets to do work that's sometimes easy, sometimes incredibly taxing, but always rewarding. Every two months, Field Research Tasks are refreshed, and November is the place where a Pokemon GO update means a big change in the way users are able to pick up the latest and/or best Pokemon in the game!
ASUS is not a name that would immediately pop up in conversations about smartphones but it has two killer phones this year. The rather eccentric ZenFone 6 puts a new spin, or flip rather, to the popup camera design problem while the ASUS ROG Phone II definitely puts the game in gaming smartphones. But while ASUS has made impressive hardware this year, it has yet to prove it can pull off something similar with software. It may be trying to do exactly that with an Android 10 update rolling out to the ZenFone 6 now.
True to its promise, OnePlus is rolling out Android 10 updates to its supported smartphones. After a brief beta testing period, the OnePlus 6 and OnePlus 6 are finally getting the stable version of OxygenOS 10.0 with Android 10. That beta period may have been too short, however, as the update for the OnePlus 6 was immediately pulled out for a while due to a bug that should have been fixed before the official announcement was made.
LG was once regarded as a dreamer, innovator, and good Android citizen so it's almost tragic to see its slow fall from grace. It needs, however, to be called out for its unimpressive rollout of Android updates, if only to urge it to do better. Some of those may have reached LG's ears and have, indeed, caused a favorable change. The company is now reportedly rolling out an Android 9 update for the LG V20 after it was believed to have abandoned the phone completely.
"Stock Android" is a term often lauded in the tech world. Android the way Google intended it to be, without bloatware and other confusing modifications, seems to be a standard many users want. Diverging from that standard tends to draw some lukewarm reviews.
Phone screens are getting larger, enough for them to be the only kind of computer some people use. At the same time, however, smartphones are also becoming more capable that they can become veritable computers or media centers if you attach an external display. For the majority of smartphones these days, that often means "projecting" a phone's screen via Chromecast or even Miracast but there are a few that do support video output via their USB-C port. The Pixel 4 should have been part of the latter group but it turns out that, for one reason or another, Google chose to disable it at the deepest kernel level.