HTC is giving its fans in the USA a chance to win an HTC 10 and a chance to appear in a video. For entry, all you have to do is find an interesting background and click a selfie centered on yourself. The contest is open for adults in USA only, and is open till the 10th of June.
A new set of pictures have appeared, showing off the OnePlus 3. At this point, the device has been thoroughly leaked with nothing but the actual pricing and device specs confirmation left for the event. This set of pictures are in line with all the previous leaked images and give us something to feast our eyes on, till the device launches.
Yesterday, several news sites ran with the story that Huawei may have “confirmed” the existence of another Nexus this year. The source for their news originated from an article on a website covering the launch of the Huawei P9 in South Africa.
However, we feel an unrelated statement was subject to misinterpretation and molded to fit within the scope of clickbait headlines. We try to shed light on why this was a misinterpretation in our opinion. First, a bit of a backdrop:
Gearburn.com covered the launch of the Huawei P9 on their website. Their main article focuses on the current event of the launch, talking about the Huawei P9 trio and Huawei’s plans for South Africa. For their coverage, Gearburn had the opportunity to interview Charlene Munilall, General Manager for Huawei’s Consumer Business Group in South Africa. During the course of the interview, Munilall mentioned this:
We’re doing the Nexus again this year, by the way
Woah! Huawei is doing the Nexus again this year? This may have been your likely first reaction when you read that statement. And you wouldn’t be wrong either. The sentence says exactly that! So what, pray, is the point of this article? The point is context. The statement is missing context. Let’s rewind a little bit and see the point that is being trying to be made:
“Munilall also explained why there hasn’t been an official Nexus 6P launch in the country.
“The Nexus product is a very niche product… the techies love it but there’s a very small number of people that buy it. Hence Cellucity only brought 300… into the country,” she explained.
“…The operators generally don’t take up the Nexus device,” Munilall added.
“That said, the distributors, our open market, do bring in the device, that’s how Cellucity got it… and that will still be the same this year. We’re doing the Nexus again this year, by the way,” she explained.“
When you look at the complete statements, the obvious implications of another Huawei-made Nexus are no longer so obvious. The wording certainly creates confusion, but what we believe Munilall is trying to say is more related to bringing Nexus devices physically to South Africa rather than Huawei creating another brand new Nexus, successor to the Nexus 6P. The conversation flows from “we only brought 300…” to “operators generally don’t take up the Nexus….” to “we’re doing the Nexus again this year”, which points more to the plans of carriers and other stakeholders involved in bringing in more stock of the Nexus device for the consumer this year.
The conversation then flows onto the Huawei Matebook not making its way over to South Africa, in a manner that does not indicate that a Huawei spokesperson dropped a leak for one of the biggest products from an Android enthusiast perspective. Rather, it falls perfectly within the context of South Africa not being treated as a priority market. For some additional perspective, consider the following:
Gearburn itself, the original reporters, do not seem to make a big deal about the statement. Considering the Nexus is one of the biggest smartphones among enthusiasts (Gearburn is for the “gadget obsessed”), wouldn’t they have made the new Nexus news a bigger part of their coverage, or the main point in general? Moreover, why would the manager for a consumer business department in South Africa announce what must be one of their biggest short-term internal secrets of the company? Isn’t it plausible that she meant Huawei would be bringing the phone to South Africa that year, given the context and her position?
So, does this mean that all the hype in the last few hours was for nothing? Almost, yes. Again, the wording of the Huawei spokesperson leaves plenty of room for (mis)interpretation, so they could have snuck in a teaser for the latter half of 2016. But given the context of the statement, the location of the event and the geographical market priority of the region, it is highly unlikely that Huawei would choose such a stage to outright leak a future Nexus. Events such as the CES 2016 or the MWC 2016 or the Google I/O 2016, or even the global launch of the Huawei P9 may be better platforms to get attention from more mainstream consumer sites, and through actual announcements or teasers, not a comment by a general manager in a conversation about imports. Further, we have been only hearing about HTC and the two Nexus devices that it is tasked to produce, with no indication of any other OEM joining in the fray.
But that aside, a Huawei-made Nexus could actually be a possibility. This statement is made on the basis of prior leaks and data evidences, and not from the interview mentioned and discussed above. While the interview does not indicate there might be a Nexus coming, there have been some happenings that could indicate such a release.
For instance, Huawei did trademark the “Huawei 7P” name. This trademark is related to a mobile device, but does not necessarily point to a smartphone as it could extend onto tablets and wearables as well. Also to note is that the trademark is for the “Huawei 7P” and not “Huawei Nexus 7P”. Then there was also a benchmark that popped up for the Huawei Nexus 6P sporting a Snapdragon 820 SoC and 4GB of RAM, which appeared to be just a spec refresh. Nothing more could be ascertained from this piece of information, and benchmarks of this kind have been forged in the past.
Huawei also mentioned of a DayDream-ready device to launch in fall, later this year. But this by itself is no new information, and just a confirmation of what Google themselves mentioned during the Google I/O 2016. After Android N releases to the public, new devices will follow along which will make use of the new DayDream VR platform for providing an enriching Virtual Reality experience. While the timeline for the launch is convenient, it could just be another additional flagship grade device from Huawei instead of a Nexus.
Through the power of blogspam and passive journalism, you may have become excited at the thought of a repeat of the Huawei Nexus 6P. But our apologies for spoiling your party, as yesterday’s statement simply cannot be treated as a “confirmation” for the existence of the successor to one of the best smartphones for 2016. In our opinion, we still need more leaks from trusted sources to come at the conclusion that everyone else jumped onto. For now, we recommend you join us by keeping on your hats of skepticism.
What are your thoughts on the statements made by the Huawei spokesperson at the South Africa event? Do you feel it is an accidental slip of classified knowledge? Or is it a deliberate “leak” statement made to grab the headlines and the hype? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
A few days ago, YouTube user Damir Franc uploaded a video showing a huge problem with the camera on his Sony Xperia X unit. In the video Damir has his X next to a Galaxy S7, both recording at 1080p at full screen brightness.
Less than 4 minutes into the recording, the Xperia X notified Damir and the viewers that the phone is too hot, and features such as Face Detection, Auto See Recognition, and Auto Focus have been disabled. When Damir picks the Xperia X up to see how it reacts to motion, it is very obvious that the phone is struggling to keep a stable framerate, resulting in a stuttering viewfinder. After nine minutes of continuous recording, the Xperia X shut the camera off, and displayed a message letting us know it was time to let the phone cool off.
After the Xperia X has stopped recording, Damir picks up the Galaxy S7 to show that it is still working just fine, with no lag whatsoever. When using a temperature probe, Damir shows that both the Xperia X and Galaxy S7 were at 40°C. This isn’t too different from the heating handicaps that were present on the Xperia Z3+/Z4, which left many users with a bad taste in their mouths.
This isn’t the only handicap that the Sony Xperia X cameras face, however. It has been confirmed by a community manager at the Sony Support Forum that neither the Xperia X or the Xperia X Performance support 4K recording. The processor on the Xperia X is a Snapdragon 650 with A72 cores and 28nm process size, which does not suggest the issue at hand is due to a lack of processing power. Furthermore, the X Performance is equipped with a Snapdragon 820, which is expected to perform much better than the 650, and highly unlikely to face to same issues as the Xperia X. This is a sad turn of events given that 4K recording has been around since the 2013 Galaxy Note 3, which had a Snapdragon 800 chipset — far older and slower than modern-day high-class SoCs. It has also been present in all of the Xperia Z phones since the 2014 Xperia Z2 with a Snapdragon 801.
The Xperia X not having the ability to record in 4K is a little surprising. Similar phones such as the Redmi Note 3 with the same 650 processor are able to record in 4K (the MIUI camera app does not support it, though), and aren’t suffering from the same heating issues. But the X Performance not having 4K recording ability is quite curious. The Galaxy S7 variant with the same processor has 4K recording, but capped at 10 minutes. It is also curious to note how the S7 Exynos variant can record 4K with no limitations whatsoever, with the counter in the viewfinder suggesting it can reach at least an hour.
We will reserve full judgement until we can do our in-depth testing at XDA for a full review. We hope that this is not a widespread issue, but seeing 4K turned off by default does sadden us, especially knowing that the SoCss employed do support said functionality.
Do you think this is a problem related to the processors at hand, or just a problem with the Xperia X line’s camera software? Drop a comment and let us know what you think.
XDA Senior Member Ninnix96 has just released ports of the Nextbit launcher, camera and gallery apps. These apps should work on all Android 6.0+ devices, just be sure to reboot after installing the launcher.
The United States Department of Commerce has issued a subpoena to Huawei and demands they release all information of American technology that was exported to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. This is similar to what ZTE went through recently, but there isn’t any hard evidence that Huawei did anything wrong yet. Just allegations that the United States wants to check up on.
There have been reports that Google hasn’t been happy with the revenue Nest has brought in since it was acquired back in 2014. It’s unclear if this is the result, but Tony Fadell has announced he will be parting ways with the connected devices company. Marwan Fawaz will be stepping up as the new CEO of Nest, & Tony Fadell will remain as an adviser to Alphabet.
