News on Science and Technology

This is ASUS's gaming phone, the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Phone. Its pretty good to see smartphone manufacturers making gaming phones on the footprints of last years Razor Phone. ASUS ROG Phone: Display: 6.0 inch OLED display with a resolution of 1080*2160 (18:9) and (~402 ppi). Chip-set: Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 with Adreno 630 GPU. Variants: 128/256 GB along with 8 GB RAM. OS: Android 8.1 (Oreo). Cameras: Dual 12 MP (f/1.8, 1/2.55", 24 mm, 1.4 micro metre, 4 axis OIS, dual pixel PDAF) and 8 MP (12 mm, no AF) rear cameras and 8 MP (f/2.0, 24 mm) front camera. Battery: 4000 mAh. Price:  ~59990 Rupee. Design: Where every phones look the same now with same notched display and minimal look, this phone stands apart. The phone is huge, thick (~9 mm) and heavy as well. The back gives a titanium look to the phone and has a rainbow shine while hold in an angle. The camera, flash cut outs and the line in the back of the phone gives it a geometrical look. The fingerpr

Xiaomi backed Huami launched two smart watches in India which are looking very promising specially AMAZFIT Bip (another one is AMAZFIT Stratos) which costs only 5499 Rupee (launching price, may vary later). So, let's take a look. Design and Material: The smart watch really looks good. It seems like the Apple Watch. The watch is made of plastic but, it doesn't look cheap. The straps are made of silicon which are very comfortable to wear. Besides, the watch weights only 31 gm. So, you can wear the watch comfortably for a long time. Display: The 1.28 inch 2.5D Colour Touch Display with 176*176 resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 is pretty good. The indoor and outdoor readability is quiet good, no problems with that. But, there is no auto brightness which is acceptable looking at the price. Sensors: 1. GPS and Glonass: For positional tracking. 2. Barometer: For elevation. 3. Geomagnetic Sensor: Its basically a compass. 4. PPG Heart Rate Sensor: To read your

Huawei showed up the Nova series at a press conference in New Delhi. There are two phones, Nova 3 and Nova 3i in the series. While the Nova 3i will be available to buy from 7th August, there is no announced date from when Nova 3 will be available in India. Nova 3: Display: 6.3 inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1080*2340 (19.5:9) and ~409 ppi. Chip-set: HiSilicon Kirin 970 with a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and Mali-G72 MP12 GPU. Variants: 64/128 GB ROM along with 6 GB RAM. OS: EMUI 8.2 on top of Android 8.1 (Oreo). Cameras: Dual 16 MP (f/1.8, PDAF) and 24 MP (B/W, f/1.8, PDAF) rear cameras and dual 24 MP and 2 MP (depth sensor) front cameras. Battery: 3750 mAh. Price: 34999 Rupee. Nova 3i: Display: 6.3 inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1080*2340 (19.5:9) and ~409 ppi. Chip-set: HiSilicon Kirin 710 and Mali-G51 MP4 GPU. Variants: 128 GB ROM along with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB ROM along with 6 GB RAM. OS: EMUI 8.2 on top of Android 8.1 (Oreo).

Honor has launched 9N which is the predecessor of 9 Lite. Display: 5.84 inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1080*2280 (19:9) and ~432 ppi. Chip-set: HiSilicon Kirin 659 with Mali T830 MP2 GPU. Variants: 64/128 GB ROM along with 4 GB RAM and 32 GB ROM along with 3 GB RAM. OS: EMUI 8.0 on top of Android 8.0 (Oreo). Cameras: Dual rear cameras 13 MP (PDAF) and 2 MP (Depth Sensor) and 16 MP front camera. Battery: 3000 mAh. Price:  11999 (32 GB ROM along with 3 GB RAM) and 13999-17999 Rupee (64/128 GB ROM along with 4 GB RAM). Design: The phone is nicely built. There is glass in front and back and a metal frame around the sides. The camera set up is placed horizontally with a LED flash like the iPhone 7 Plus. The fingerprint sensor is placed on the back. As the edges of the phone is rounded and due to the bezel-less design, the phone fits the hand nicely and its comfortable to use the phone with one hand. Display: The display is good enough to please your eye

Xiaomi is going to launch the much expected Mi A2 & Mi A2 Lite soon (on 8th August Mi A2 may launch in India not the Mi A2 Lite). The Mi A2 is the global version of Mi 6X in China and Mi A2 Lite is the global version of Redmi 6 Pro in China. Both of them are Android One device (So, two years of major updates and three years of security updates). So, for the folks who like Xiaomi's design, build quality and affordability but don't like the MIUI, it's the phone for you. Mi A2: Display: 5.99 inch LTPS IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1080*2160 (18:9) and ~403 ppi. Chip-set: Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 (2.2 GHz) with Adreno 512 GPU. RAM: 3/4/6 GB. Storage: 32/64/128 GB and non-expandable. OS: Android 8.1 (Oreo) and up-gradable to Android P. Camera: 12 MP (f/1.8, 1/2.9", 1.25 micro metre) and 20 MP (f/1.8, 1/2.8", 1.0 micro metre, PDAF) dual rear cameras and 20 MP (f/2.2, 1/2.8", 1.0 micro metre) front camera. Battery: 3000 mAh. Price: R

Honor, the sub-brand of Huawei launched a low-end phone, 7S which costs $110 (~7586 Rupee). The Global variant is available in Pakistan, Egypt and South Africa now and may make it's debut in India as well. So let's go through the specifications first. Display: 5.45 inch LCD display with a 720*1440 resolution (18:9) and ~295 ppi. Chip-set: MediaTek MT6739. RAM: 2 GB. Storage: 16 GB and expandable up-to 256 GB via microSD card. OS: EMUI 8.0 on top of Android 8.1 (Oreo). Cameras: 13 MP rear camera and 5 MP front camera for Global variant (both with LED flash) and 13 MP rear camera and 24 MP (f/2.0) front camera in China (both with LED flash). Battery: 3020 mAh. Price: ~7586 Rupee. Time for some details. Design: The design of the phone is good enough. The back is metal. Although the phone is made of plastic material. The phone feels a little thick in hand but provides a good grip which is good in overall. Display: The display is not great. The resolu

Nokia X5 launched in China on 19 th July. And hopefully this phone will come in a global variant as Nokia 5.1 & 5.1 Plus at least in Sri Lanka and India as a tweet from the Chief Product Manager, Juho Sarvikas of HMD Global indicates. It's a more modest version of the Nokia X6. Let's go through the specifications: Display: 5.86 inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 720*1280 and ~287 ppi. Chip-set: MediaTek Helio P60. RAM: 3/4 GB. Storage: 32/64 GB and expandable up-to 256 GB. Cameras: Dual 13 MP (f/2.0) and 5 MP rear cameras and 8 MP (f/2.2) front camera. Battery: 3060 mAh. Price: 10000-14000 Rupees. But all these is a rumor only as the actual phone's specification may vary from the original X5 launched in China. For the design the phone has a glass front and back along with a polycarbonate frame running around the sides of the phone which looks good. There is a notch in the front as well. The phone is an Android One device and wil

Apple has launched it's most powerful laptop till date, the i9 Macbook Pro 2018. It's more powerful than most other laptops and even many desktops on this planet. And yes, it costs a lot. {It costed $6699 (~461929.55 Rupee) for MKBHD}. But does it worth the money? Let's disclose: Processor: 8th gen Intel Core i9 (6 Cores) with a highest clock speed of 2.9 GHz. Graphics Card: AMD Radeon Pro 560X. RAM: 32 GB DDR4. Storage: 4 TB SSD. So, the laptop is a beast on paper. Let's go through some details. Display: The display of the new Macbook Pro is a special one. It's a true tone display with a ambient sensor to adjust the white balance of the display according to your surroundings. Touch Bar:  The touch bar is also a true tone one which adjusts the white balance according to your surroundings. Keyboard: The keyboard is upgraded as well from it's previous generation. There is a butterfly mechanism to make it more quieter. Apple added a mem

Xiaomi is the 6th largest mobile company in the world. It's largest market are China and India. Xiaomi is called as the Apple of East for it's iOS like MIUI. But this company has some interesting facts. 1. Xiaomi holds a Guinness World Record: Xiaomi sold a whooping amount of 2112010 units of it's  products on a single online platform in 2015 during it's annual fan festival. 2. Xiaomi has limited it's profit margin to 5% forever: Xiaomi CEO, Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi will make a maximum profit of 5% from it's all hardware line up. Xiaomi is doing this because of their business model relies on after sale purchases like accessories and content from digital stores. 3. Xiaomi bought a domain name for $3.6 million: Xiaomi bought a domain name i.e.  mi.com  of $3.6 million. Xiaomi did this to increase their business globally as pronunciation of mi is far easier than Xiaomi (Shou | me). If you are wondering about the amount of money Xiaomi spend to

Xiaomi and Samsung are the most popular brands in India now. The Chinese brand, Xiaomi got a huge popularity in India for it's specification heavy budget phones. Where the South Korean brand, Samsung got it's popularity over years of time. In the first quarter of 2018 Xiaomi hold 31 percent of the market share where Samsung hold 25 percent (according to the report of Canalys). The top selling phone of Xiaomi, Redmi 5A shipped over 3.2 million units where Samsung's top seller Galaxy J2 Pro shipped over 2.3 million units. Now to compete with Xiaomi Samsung focused on it's budget phones, specially on budget camera technology. They added Portrait Dolly and Background Blur Shape on their devices like the Galaxy J8. As a result Samsung has seen an annual growth of 50 percent in India (according to Canalys's Q2 2018 report) gaining a market share of 30 percent. On the other side Xiaomi has doubled their shipment in Q2 2018 in India with a market share of 30 p