HE dream of a proper Android phone from Nokia lives on. The storied phone maker will return to the smartphone market in early 2017 under a company called HMD Global, which acquired the exclusive rights to use the Nokia brand on phones and tablets for the next 10 years.
YAAO 6000 Plus smartphone has a 10,900mAh battery
little over a week ago, we featured 10 locally available smartphones with batteries above 4,000mAh. Battery-wise, the most impressive unit we wrote about was the recently announced Cherry Mobile Flare S5 Power, which carries a tablet-grade 6,050mAh cell and provides two days of continued use (or more, if you’re being prudent about what you do with the device).
Bigger, better ASUS ZenFone 3 Max gets priced in PH
HE bigger, better variant of the 5.2-inch ASUS ZenFone 3 Max, the 5.5-inch ZC553KL, finally gets priced in the Philippines, about two weeks before its official release in the country.
Lenovo Phab 2, Phab 2 Plus, Phab 2 Pro launched in PH
HE Philippines’ big-screen phone market just got bigger with Lenovo’s latest Phab lineup. The company today announced the Phab 2, Phab 2 Plus, and Phab 2 Pro for the local market, all three aiming to ride the people’s seemingly insatiable addiction to smartphones with monster displays.
OPPO Find 9, where art though?
S it coming soon, or is it not? There’s a story today quashing earlier reports saying that the OPPO Find 9, successor to the Find 7, will not be launched in the first quarter of 2017.
Vivo V5 now official in PH, takes on OPPO’s F1s
EMEMBER that selfie phone Vivo launched in India about a week ago? The one with the 20-megapixel front camera? Well, it’s finally official in the Philippines, with the release slated for November 26, 2016. And with a P12,990 suggested retail price, it seems to be gunning for the similarly priced OPPO F1s’ place in the local market.
The Cherry Mobile Defender is built for tough love
HE Cherry Mobile Defender (click for complete specs) is the company’s first truly rugged smartphone featuring a metal frame and rubberized plastic bumpers. The battery is fixed into the assembly, and all ports are covered with rubber flaps to seal the body. It doesn’t look off-kilter to us — which is not what we expected when we first heard about it. (The list of fairly attractive rugged phones gets thin after Samsung’s Galaxy Active series.)
Hands-on: Cherry Mobile Taiji Android phone/ebook reader
HERRY Mobile this week gave us our first look at three Android smartphones due for release this December. Among them is the Taiji — incidentally, also the most interesting of the bunch for reasons that will become obvious in a moment.
Infinix Hot 4 Pro, Hot S, Note 3 Pro budget smartphones released in PH
OU may not have heard about Infinix yet, but the Hong Kong-based smartphone brand is certainly well aware of the Filipinos’ appetite for devices in the “good but cheap” category. It’s common knowledge in the Philipppines that price has been, is, and will, in the foreseeable future, be king.
Apple iPhone 7 Plus review: King of big phones
T’S New iPhone Day in the Philippines! Apple’s Plus-sized iPhone has historically been one of the best phones money can buy, and now it’s back for another encore. And if you’re still on the fence about whether the iPhone 7 Plus is the right smartphone for the job, you’ve come to the right place — as long as you can afford it.
OPPO F1s review: Beyond selfies
ODAY, OPPO Philippines is launching a limited gray version of the OPPO F1s (click for complete specs) to coincide with the company’s official announcement of Alden Richards as an endorser. Almost three months after its gold and rose-gold variants were first released on the local market for P13,990, is the smartphone — now costing P12,990 — still worth considering? Read on.
Smart iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus postpaid plans revealed
week before the official Philippine launch of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus on November 11, Smart Communications has finally revealed its complete postpaid offerings for Apple’s latest smartphones. Globe Telecom had earlier posted its own postpaid plans.
New Huawei Mate 9 said to become faster the more you use it
HERE’S a newly launched large-screened smartphone that’s looking to fill the void left by the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Meet the Huawei Mate 9, the smaller, 5.9-inch successor to last year’s 6-inch Mate 8.
Cherry Mobile Flare 5 review: incremental improvements
HERRY Mobile, the leading mobile brand in the Philippines, unveiled six new Flare smartphones last month. Devices, it hopes, will carry the Flare label past the “5 million phones sold” mark in 2016. Much of that burden falls on the Cherry Mobile Flare 5, the cheapest of the bunch. Priced at P5,499 — a tad higher than the Flare 4 (pictured in the background above) that cost P4,999 at launch — it falls into the company’s most profitable demographic whose tastes are often ultimately swayed by price.
Beyond the Box reveals iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus prices
HE wait is nearly over for Apple fans around the country. Beyond the Box, one among several official Apple resellers in the Philippines, recently posted the off-contract prices of all iPhone 7 (click for complete specs) and iPhone 7 Plus (click for full specs) models on its social media accounts and website.
Here are Globe’s iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus postpaid plans
few hours after Smart Communications put up its registration page for the Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, Globe Telecom’s reservation page went live, but with more info than you can find on Smart’s. It already shows how much your cash-out for each of the model is for every plan being offered by Globe.
Smart iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus registration page is up
OVEMBER is around the corner, and you know what that means for Apple fans for the past three years: A new iPhone is about to be launched in the Philippines. True enough, Smart Communications just put up their registration page for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, coincidentally on the day Apple announced a new MacBook Pro. You can register your interest on this page.
10 smartphones powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 821
PEED has always been a big talking point within the smartphone community — though we would be quick to argue that having more CPU cores and more RAM are not necessarily as advantageous as some companies make them out to be. The iPhone 7, to wit, has a quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM, but it handily beats its Android counterparts in real-word and synthetic tests.
Xiaomi Mi MIX, the future of smartphones, is here
IAOMI dropped a bomb on us at the launch of the Mi Note 2 (click for full specs): It announced the Xiaomi Mi MIX, a concept product that could very well be the smartphone of your dreams. Except that unlike other concept devices which you won’t find in stores at any time soon, it will already be available starting November 4.
The resurrection of Moto: Why it might be successful in PH this time
ATCHING the re-entry of Moto to the Philippine market is like witnessing the resurrection of a dearly departed — twice. Motorola Philippines, which had been in the country since 1979, ceased operations in 2009. It returned in July 2015 as a company now owned by Lenovo, but went silent early this year. This week saw its comeback, and Moto might just make it this time around.