OnePlus and OPPO have reportedly merged their research and development teams in an effort to “better maximize resources.” OnePlus is majority-owned by OPPO, which itself is a subsidiary of BBK Electronics.
OnePlus said in a statement, via Android Authority, that it’s in the process of further integrating some R&D capabilities within OPLUS, its long-term investor.
“To better maximize resources and further position OnePlus for growth, we are in the process of further integrating some R&D capabilities within OPLUS, our long-term investor. OnePlus will continue operating independently and working to deliver the best possible user experience for existing and future OnePlus users.”
While the statement doesn’t outright confirm the two have completely merged their R&D teams, it might be as close to confirmation as we’re going to get. This is a move that likely already happened internally a while back, but now the news is public-facing.
OnePlus already shares a lot of infrastructure with OPPO (manufacturing, backends, etc.) and the companies also share a lot of the fruits of hardware R&D (see how similar the OnePlus 8 Pro is to the OPPO Find X2 Pro). The biggest difference between OnePlus and OPPO products has always been the software (OxygenOS on OnePlus phones versus ColorOS on OPPO phones) and that will remain distinct between the two.
The move will likely result in even better alignment among the brands. Realme, which is also overseen by investor group OPLUS, will likely benefit as well. Improved integration with teams could mean ideas not only become better, but developed quicker for market.
A report from DoNews, which first broke this report, likens the integration between OnePlus and OPPO to the relationship between Xiaomi and Redmi, which share the same R&D system.
For now, the integration is purely related to hardware, not software, so each brand will seemingly be distinct with their own flavor of Android. That doesn’t mean, however, that we won’t see similarities shared by the different takes on Android.
Smartening up your house can cost a lot… unless you’re keeping an eye on deals (or looking at our smart home gifts under $100), of course! Sales on smart items are pretty common if you know where to look. A few retailers, like Amazon and Best Buy, tend to have regular discounts on the smart home items you probably need the most. Today, Best Buy has an incredible deal for those looking to expand their smart home–a Lenovo Smart Clock bundle for just $30!
Normally $95, you’ll get the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential and a 4-pack of GE Soft White Smart Bulbs. Anyone who has looked at the prices of smart bulbs in the past knows that they’re expensive, and the GE bulbs usually retail at $45 alone. You can buy them separately on sale for $20 right now as well, but for just $10 more you also get the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential!
Arguably the star of the Lenovo Smart Clock bundle, the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is probably my favorite smart clock yet. It’s very simple, as it’s mostly just… a clock, with nice big display that’ll let you easily see the time from anywhere in the room. However, you can also use the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential to control other smart devices around the house. Like, you know, the smart bulbs you get with the bundle!
The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential does not have a screen like other smart clocks, but if you already have something like the standard Lenovo Smart Clock, you may not need it! The Essential is perfect for rooms where you just need a clock and a speaker, not all the features of a smart clock with a screen. Honestly, I think it’s a perfect blend of simplicity and functionality.
The only catch of this awesome Lenovo Smart Clock bundle? You’ll have to pick it up from your local Best Buy! For just $30, though, I’d say the curbside pick-up is worth it.
For just 430, get the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential and a 4-pack of GE Soft White Smart Bulbs! That's an incredible deal on two very useful smart home items.
If the Lenovo Smart Clock bundle is not available in your area, don’t fret, as you can still buy the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential and GE Smart Bulbs separately online for delivery. It won’t be at the same low price, but a bit of a discount is always better than no discount at all!
I’ve had the Samsung Galaxy S21 series in my possession for 72 hours now. During this time, most of my attention has been focused on the top dog, the Galaxy S21 Ultra. Three days isn’t quite long enough for a full review, but enough time to form a lot of opinions. Here are my five key takeaways from Samsung’s latest flagship.
Wacom Stylus and S Pen support (sold separately and stored externally)
MST support in some regions
Colors
Phantom Violet
Phantom Gray
Phantom White
Phantom Pink
Phantom Violet
Phantom Gray
Phantom White
Samsung.com Exclusive:
Phantom Gold
Phantom Red
Phantom Gray
Phantom White
Samsung.com Exclusive:
Phantom Titanium
Phantom Navy
Phantom Brown
Note: I received a retail, Snapdragon 888 variant of the Galaxy S21 Ultra on loan from Samsung Hong Kong. Samsung did not have any inputs in this article
Zoom Lock is a gamechanger
By now, you’re probably aware that the Galaxy S21 Ultra sports a 10x optical zoom camera, a jump from the 5x optical lens of the Galaxy S20 Ultra and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. Samsung allows the Galaxy S21 Ultra to zoom all the way up to 100x magnification digitally. While 100x shots are sometimes useable, the more practical use case for the zoom lens is to capture 10x, 20x, even 30x shots that are surprisingly sharp and Instagram-ready. For example, see the 30x zoom samples below.
North American consumers will likely be blown away by the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s zooming prowess, but those in Asia who have easy access to devices like the Huawei P40 Pro, Huawei Mate 40 Pro, or the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra know there are other phones that can do these same shots.
Where Samsung one-ups the others is a feature called “zoom lock,” which uses AI smarts to lock onto a target area once the zoom goes beyond 20x. Once locked on, minor hand movements like trembling and shaking won’t affect the viewfinder’s shots.
The Galaxy S21 Ultra at 30x with zoom lock enabled (in the upper left corner box).
The zoom locked visuals in the viewfinder resemble a camera on a gimbal, in that it floats steadily with minimal movement unless the camera-holder make drastic hand movements. See the video below of zoom lock in action — I’m holding the Galaxy S21 Ultra with one hand at 100x zoom and the viewfinder is more stable than a Huawei Mate 40 Pro at 30x zoom or iPhone 12 Pro at 10x zoom.
Significant video camera improvements
Speaking of cameras, the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s video capabilities have gotten a big improvement. For years, I and other reviewers have said the iPhone’s video camera performance is superior to Android offerings. This was most noticeable in areas like video stabilization, dynamic range, and adjusting to sudden shifts in lighting.
The Galaxy S21 Ultra excels in all three areas, particularly finding the correct lighting balance even in drastic exposure shifts. In fact, in a night video shot in neon light-drenched Hong Kong streets, the Galaxy S21 Ultra exposed the myriad of lights better than the iPhone 12 Pro Max. It’s still too early to say if the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s video camera is better than the iPhone 12 Pro Max’s, but it’s as close as any Android brand has ever gotten to toppling Apple. See for yourself in this side-by-side footage below.
The Galaxy S21 Ultra also brings other tricks, such as the ability to record with both the front-facing and rear-facing cameras at the same time, bokeh video, and one of my favorite features — the ability to use a Galaxy Buds Pro or Buds Live as a Bluetooth wireless mic.
The screen curvature is just right
I’ve spoken to enough industry peers and have read and watched enough reviews to know that many (most?) of them do not like curved screens. Whether it’s arguably the most influential mobile tech YouTuber in the world, tech site editors, or XDA’s own COO, there’ve been open calls for brands to stop with the curved screens and stick with flat displays.
Their complaints range from accidental palm touches to color distortion at the edges to increased fragility. And I think those gripes are mostly fair, but despite all of that I would still prefer a curved screen personally because they look good and feel good to use. I find curved screens more aesthetically pleasing to look at, and the curvature makes for a more comfortable grip due to the rounded, narrower form factor. I’d also like to add that some brands, like Huawei, have completely made accidental touches on the edges a non-issue.
Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra seems to have found the middle ground. Its 6.8-inch screen is curved ever so subtly — just enough that the Galaxy S21 Ultra still keeps that premium “there are no sharp edges anywhere” in-hand feel that Samsung practically invented, and its side bezels are noticeably slimmer than the ones of the flat-screened Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21 Plus. But the curves are also subtle enough that accidental touches increased fragility shouldn’t be an issue. And in my opinion, the Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21 Plus’ flat sides and sharp corners feel less-than-premium.
Personally, I still think a phone with a more dramatic curve like a Huawei P40 Pro looks much more mesmerizing, but Samsung seems to have found the middle ground to please most people.
One UI 3.1 moves further away from Bixby and Samsung’s quirks
The Galaxy S21 Ultra runs One UI 3.1 over Android 11 out of the box. Visually, One UI 3.1 is very similar the One UI 2.5 that shipped with the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. I mostly notice that some of Android 11’s subtle visual changes such as rounded notification boxes in the panel have carried over. And other One UI 3.1 features that had leaked earlier such as S-Pen support and video bokeh work fine on my Galaxy S21 Ultra. Our editor-in-chief Mishaal Rahman also wrote an in-depth breakdown of what’s new to One UI 3.0 for those interested.
For me, I notice that the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s software doesn’t push Samsung’s own software on the user as much. For example, my device comes out of the box with Google’s Discover feed instead of Samsung’s own feed. When I press the power button, it also brings back the power off menu, instead of trying to launch Bixby.
You can now double tap the screen to turn it on or to lock it — a feature I have loved ever since the LG G2, and if I open an app via the “edge panel” (the swipe-over menu), apps now open in a split-screen view if I already have another app opened. The “app pairing” section will also remember the last two apps you opened in case you need to open that combination again.
Battery life is a potential concern
The Galaxy S21 Ultra has a 5,000 mAh battery, which is normally considered fairly adequate capacity, but the phone also packs a gorgeous 6.8-inch, 3,200 x 1,400 WQHD+ display that refreshes up to 120Hz and can reach 1,500 nits of brightness.
In other words, the 5,000mAh cell is just about adequate for a heavy user like myself. Over the past three days, I saw the battery dip below 20% near the end of a 13-hour day, with about five hours of screen on time.
Today was slightly alarming: I unplugged a fully charged S21 Ultra at 7:00 am to check some emails and texts, then went back to sleep without plugging the phone back in. I woke up at noon (I work late into the night!) and noticed the phone’s battery sat at 93% — it suffered a chunky 7% battery drain in five hours of standby time.
I then took the phone out for an afternoon of photo and video tests, streamed an hour-long podcast on Spotify, and right now as of time of this writing (midnight, almost exactly 16 hours hours after I first unplugged the phone but just 12 hours of really using it), the battery sits at 18% with 4 hours 23 minutes of screen-on time.
This isn’t bad battery life, but it’s not great. And in non-Covid times, I could very well still have another two to three hours out before I return home to a charger. To be fair, I am a heavy power user: I set the screen resolution to the maximum setting (it comes out of the box at 2,400 x 1,080), and used “adaptive” refresh rate (which can get up to 120Hz). I also shot more videos than usual today.
Three days is still too early to judge a phone’s endurance — but I don’t think the Galaxy S21 Ultra is a phone I know will always last me an entire day the way a Huawei or Xiaomi phone can.
That’s it for my five takeaways after 72 hours with the Galaxy S21 Ultra. I think Samsung has made an apex slab phone that will be hard to top this year, but I’ll confirm that in my full review coming next week. Other members of the XDA team will also test the phone in other areas, so stay tuned to XDA for our in-depth coverage of the Galaxy S21 series.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is the ultimate overkill in the new 2021 flagship series, packing in a flagship SoC, a premium build, a great display, and an amazing camera setup, as well as all the extras expected on a premium flagship.
Microsoft has finally brought the Surface Laptop Go to India after it was introduced last year in October. The notebook comes with a traditional clamshell design and with a fairly compact size. It is also the lightest Surface Laptop weighing just 1.1kgs with a thickness of 15.9mm. According to Microsoft, the Surface Laptop Go offers up to 13 hours of battery life.
The new Surface Laptop Go will be available with the 10th-gen Intel Core i5-1035G1 Ice Lake processor with up to 16GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB of SSD storage. Notably, the base variant of the notebook features a 64GB eMMC instead of an SSD. The display includes a 12.4-inch touchscreen panel with a 1536 x 1024-pixels resolution and a 3:2 aspect ratio. The notebook also comes with a full-size keyboard with a 1.3mm key travel, while users can also sign-in using the inbuilt fingerprint reader via Windows Hello (not available on the base variant). Other features include a 720p webcam, omnisonic speakers with Dolby Audio, and high-quality studio mics.
On the connectivity front, the notebook features Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 and for I/O the notebook features a USB Type-C port, a USB Type-A, 3.5 mm headphone jack and the Surface Connect port that lets you charge and attach docks to the notebook. The notebook will only be available in a single Platinum color option, although it was originally announced in Ice Blue, and Sandstone colors as well.
Pricing and Availability
The pricing for the Surface Laptop Go starts at ₹63,499 for the variant that features an Intel Core i5 processor with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. There is also an 8GB RAM and 128GB storage variant which will be available for ₹71,999, an 8GB RAM and 256GB storage variant priced at ₹91,999, and the top config with 16GB RAM and 256GB storage at ₹1,10,999. According to the press release shared by Microsoft India, the consumer SKUs do not include the base and top variants as they will fall under commercial SKUs.The laptop will be available via authorized resellers, authorized retailers, and e-commerce websites including Amazon and Reliance Digital starting January 22.
It’s been a fair few weeks since Realme last launched a smartphone, so we do expect a bunch of releases right around the corner. The new year has brought along new processor releases as well, and it’s just about expected that the Chinese company would leverage the new SoCs in new phones. If you are waiting for new phones from Realme, here’s some good news: Realme is working on releasing the Realme Race Pro with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and the Realme X9 Pro with the MediaTek Dimensity 1200.
According to reports from Frandroid and TechRadar, Realme’s next flagship is the Realme Race Pro. We already knew that the company had planned to make use of the Snapdragon 888 under the “Race” series, and now specifications have emerged to give us a better look at the complete picture.
The Realme Race Pro is expected to come with a 6.8″ OLED display with QHD+ resolution, refreshing at an astounding 160Hz if the leaks are to be believed. Complementing the Snapdragon 888 will be 12GB of RAM and storage options of 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB. A 5,000 mAh battery with 125W fast charging support, as well as a 64MP + 13MP + 13MP rear camera setup is also being expected on this smartphone. And on the software side, we can expect Android 11 with Realme UI on top.
The Realme X9 Pro is expected to be another high-end offering, but relatively modest in front of the Realme Race Pro. The device will have a 6.4″ FHD+ OLED display refreshing at 120Hz, which is still a respectable spec. The SoC on this device is expected to be the MediaTek Dimensity 1200, complemented by 12GB RAM and 128/256GB of storage. The battery is a smaller 4,500 mAh cell, and charging is also “downgraded” (used very loosely here) to 65W. Another one of the bigger highlights of the phone could be the 108MP primary camera, partnered with two 13MP auxiliary cameras.
Both the devices are expected for Q1 2021. The new smartphone season has been flagged off with the release of the Xiaomi Mi 11 and the Samsung Galaxy S21, so we can expect the next generation of smartphones to be making their way to us very soon.
Samsung is occupying news headlines this month for the Samsung Galaxy S21 series, but the company makes a lot of smartphones every year across practically all price ranges. Moving past the flagships, the South Korean company is gearing up to launch two budget smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy M12 and the Samsung Galaxy F12, with Exynos 850 and Android 11.
According to Ishan Agarwal as well as through Google Play Console’s Device Catalog, we have a fair idea of what we can expect from the upcoming budget devices. While Ishan is unsure whether the information with them is for the Samsung Galaxy M12 or the Galaxy F12, the Google Play Console mentions both of them as separate devices although with the same set of specifications.
The Galaxy M12 / Galaxy F12 is tipped to come with a 6.5″ HD+ TFT LCD. The device runs on Exynos 850, which is a budget processor from Samsung that was launched in May 2020. The Exynos 850 comes with 8x ARM Cortex-A55 cores clocked at up to 2GHz. As for the device(s), it will come with RAM options of 3GB and 4GB, while storage options of 32GB ad 64GB will be available, alongside microSD card support.
The phone is expected to come with a 6,000 mAh battery. The rear quad camera setup will be headed by a 48MP sensor, followed by a 5MP ultra-wide-angle camera, a 2MP depth sensor, and a 2MP macro camera. The front camera is expected to be an 8MP shooter.
It’s possible that Samsung may launch the device as the Galaxy M12 as an “online-exclusive”, and then launch the same phone as the Galaxy F12 for the offline market. That could explain why Ishan is unsure on which device the specifications belong to, because they may be the same device but with different names. We should see the devices launch soon enough in India.
Xiaomi’s Redmi sub-brand is largely known for its stellar Redmi Note series and Redmi series. Spread across the early budget and mid-ranges, these phones are often the epitome of value you can get for every bit of money you spend. Xiaomi reserves the higher end specifications for phones under its Mi branding, but that could change this year, as Redmui’s first gaming smartphone is coming with the new MediaTek Dimensity 1200.
Redmi’s General Manager in China, Mr. Lu Weibing, has revealed on Weibo (via AndroidAuthority) that the brand will launch its first flagship gaming smartphone. The statements were made within the context of the Dimensity 1200 launch and how Redmi will be the first OEM to ship a phone with the new processor, strongly hinting that this is the chip that could be powering the gaming phone. As is the Redmi philosophy, the pricing is expected to be aggressive, making the entire proposition very enticing. It’s unclear if the first phone with Dimensity 1200 would be the gaming smartphone or something within the Redmi K-series lineup.
It’s worth keeping in mind that the Dimensity 1200 features the same GPU (ARM Mali-G77MC9) as the Dimensity 1100, Dimensity 1000 Plus, and Dimensity 1000. There are other changes that do benefit a gaming smartphone, such as support for 168Hz refresh rate at FHD+, as well as support for ray tracing through software. There’s also MediaTek HyperEngine 3.0 support on the new chip, but the company did not specifically detail what this bump up in versioning brings to the table, and if the same could also make its way to the older Dimensity flagship chips as they bear the same GPU.
One thing that becomes abundantly clear is that OEMs have a lot more faith in MediaTek’s Dimensity lineup than ever before, enough to dedicate a few firsts for their brand to the new flagship chips. While it remains to be seen how the Dimensity 1200 measures up to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and Samsung Exynos 2100, it does appear promising as a value performer.
