Vivo X Fold new images reveal color options, price also leaks
vivo will announce the X Fold on April 11 and we’ve gathered enough data from leaks and rumors to know what to expect. It’s nice to have a little extra and the cost is quite high.
The vivo X Fold will start at CNY 11,999 (INR 1,43,300, EUR1,735, converted) and CNY 12,999 (INR 1,55,000, EUR1,880, converted) for the higher-specced model. The information was confirmed by a blurry snap from a briefing presentation slide.
For context, the Galaxy Z Fold3 officially runs for CNY 14,000 in China – that’s the single 12/512GB variant, meaning that Vivo’s pricing is more aggressive than Samsung’s.
Additionally, the vivo X Fold will come in Grey, not just Blue, and Black. Here’s a press render of the phone in Grey and Blue, courtesy of Ishan Agarwal and MySmartPrice.
Let’s do an overview. The vivo X Fold is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and a 4,600mAh battery with 66W wired and 50W wireless charging. It has a pair of 120Hz screens – a 6. 53-inch FHD+ outer display, expected to be slightly curved, and an 8.0-inch inner folding display.
The vivo X Fold will have a 50MP 1/1. 57-inch main camera, a 48MP ultrawide snapper, a 12MP portrait camera (likely 2x), and a periscope zoom (possibly 5MP).
WHOOSHI Portable Amplifier turns any wired audio device into wireless
Innovation starts when a problem arises, or sometimes, it begins when people want improvement. In this day and age, there are plenty of things in the world that can be enhanced, especially regarding technology.
Audio devices abound, so it may be difficult to shop for them. The Whooshi amp is a great portable option if you are looking for one. It’s a device that allows you to transform existing wired headphones into a wireless version that gives off premium audio quality, whether from a phone, laptop, or tablet.
Designer: Ivan Shmatko
The small size of the Whooshi makes it easy to carry and use. With this product, you can easily control your music, volume, and change track. You can do almost any physical activity with the Whooshi attached to your clothes. Feel free to train, cycle, or run with the Whooshi, and don’t worry about it falling off.
The Red Dot Award 2019 winner continues to make an impression. This product represented Ukraine in the event held in Las Vegas a few years ago. You can now purchase one in different markets in Europe and Ukraine.
Whooshi allows you to experience personalized audio. The Bluetooth Headphones Amplifier for audiophiles also comes with a Whooshi music player app where you can quickly create a personal audio profile. First, you must pass the hearing test before it can do anything for you. You will enjoy a better listening experience thanks to Qualcomm aptX HD Audio technology and DAC from Cirrus Logic.
The idea of it converting your non-Bluetooth headphones or devices to wireless makes this a potential seller. You can use it to improve the audio coming from your laptop. Its 300mAh battery is enough to make it last over eight hours.
The project started on Kickstarter and was fully funded, exceeding 296% of the goal. It received the Red Dot Product Design award in 2019. Its appearance at CES 2019 allowed the public and potential buyers to learn more about the portable amplifier.
The Whooshi accessory can be clipped anywhere. The buttons can adjust volume, change to next track or previous track, play/pause and turn off/on. On one side, there is an indicator and a USB Type C slot. On the other end is a 3. 5mm jack slot and MEMS microphone.
The WHOOSHI turns your favorite headphones wireless. It connects via Bluetooth up to 10m of connection range. It also comes with a wireless charger for easy and quick charging. It can upgrade sound quality as made possible by Qualcomm aptX HD and aptX Low Latency audio technology and the 384 kHz/32-bit Cirrus Logic digital-to-analog converter.
It works with both Android and iOS vis the WHOOSHI player app. Feel free to create different profiles for you and your family. You can also enjoy the built-in music effects, so you don’t have to make the adjustments yourself.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra launched in India in late February with only three colors to choose from: Phantom White, Phantom Black and Burgundy. Today a fourth colorway has arrived, Green.
Right now it is available on Samsung.com and should show up on Amazon as well. Note that there is only one memory configuration you can get in this color, 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB storage (this is the case for the Phantom White color as well).
Green Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra now available in India
The price is the same as at launch, Rs110,000. 12/256 GB is the base configuration in India as the 8/128 GB version never arrived in the country. Samsung is running a deal that heavily discounts the Galaxy Watch4 (44 mm, Bluetooth) to Rs3,000 (down from Rs27,000) if you get it alongside the S22 Ultra.
There are three other Galaxy S22 Ultra colorways, Graphite, Red and Sky Blue, but there’s no indication of if and when they might arrive in India. By the way, the Galaxy S22 and S22+ were already available in Green.
MediaTek Dimensity 1300 is official – 6nm, 3GHz Cortex-A78, 5G
Without much fanfare, MediaTek has announced the Dimensity 1300 chipset, which is expected to debut on the OnePlus Nord 2T/3.
The chip, built on TSMC’s 6nm process, features an octa-core processor with four Cortex-A78 cores (one Ultra, running up to 3GHz, and three Super, up to 2.6GHz) and four Cortex-A55 efficiency cores, scaling up to 2GHz. The graphics processor is a 9-core Arm Mali-G77 MC9.
The Dimensity 1300 supports up to 168Hz displays at up to FullHD+ resolution, or 2520x1080px. You can pair the chip with as much as 16GB of 4266Mbps LPDDR4x RAM. The Dimensity 1300 supports UFS 3.1 type storage.
The ISP supports up to 200MP cameras and can capture multi-person portrait mode video and 4K HDR video. There’s hardware-accelerated AV1 decoding for faster 4K streaming.
MediaTek hasn’t shared which devices will launch with the Dimensity 1300 first, but we expect the OnePlus Nord 3 to be among them. The Dimensity 1300 should offer performance on the scale of Qualcomm’s most-powerful 7-series chip, the Snapdragon 778G.
OnePlus Nord 2T leaked images suggest three cameras with questionable aesthetics
The OnePlus Nord 2T is expected to come as a refreshed version of the Nord 2. According to reports, the camera design will not change but will get a new back panel.
According to one tipster the Nord 2T will have a dual-circle design, with the top one hosting the main shooter. The weird part is the second circle – it has room for the 8MP ultra-wide cam and the 2MP monochrome sensor, but they are positioned assymetrically.
OnePlus Nord 2T
The source of such leaks is usually on-point, so it’s likely worth giving the benefit the doubt even though the design might be… polarizing. We can see the phone will come with a dual-LED flash, likely dual-tone like its brother from another mother Realme GT2.
The Nord 2T is expected to bring Dimensity 1300 chipset and 80W charging for its 4,500 mAh battery as its key upgrades.
FCC reveals Xiaomi 12 Lite details as launch nears
It has been three months since the Xiaomi 12 series launched and the family still isn’t complete – we’re missing an Ultra and a Lite model. The latter is on the way, it has already passed the FCC certification process, along with the TKDN and EEC.
The phone, model number 2203129G, has also gone through a Geekbench test, which revealed that it is powered by a Snapdragon 778G chipset (the 2. 4 GHz clock speed shows this is the vanilla 778G rather than the plus). The test unit was equipped with 8 GB of RAM and was running Android 12. The FCC docs confirm that this is MIUI 13.
They also list three memory options – 6/128 GB, 8/128 GB and 8/256 GB. This is a dual SIM phone, but it’s not clear if there is a microSD slot. The current 12-series models don’t have it.
They are also higher end devices with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the Xiaomi 12 and 12 Pro and a Snapdragon 870 in the 12X. The X model has an MSRP of EUR700, which highlights the need for a more affordable Lite model.
Xiaomi 12 Lite (left, speculative render) and Xiaomi 12 (right)
According to leaked info, the Xiaomi 12 Lite will have a 6. 55″ OLED display, which will place it between the 12/12X (6. 28″) and 12 Pro (6. 73″) in terms of size. A triple camera setup is said to feature the 64 MP ISOCELL GW3 sensor (1/1. 97″, 0. 7 um, Tetracell), an ultra wide and a macro cam.
The Xiaomi 12 Ultra is allegedly coming next month, which will also be a good time to launch the Lite.
Motorola Moto G22 arrives in India with faster charging, sales begin April 13
The Motorola Moto G22 unveiled last month debuted today in India. It comes in a single 4GB/64GB memory configuration with two color options – Cosmic Black and Iceberg Blue. There’s also a third version called Mint Green arriving later, while the Pearl White model has been skipped for the Indian market.
The Moto G22 is priced at INR10,999 ($145/€135) and will go on sale in India through Flipkart starting April 13. However, the company is offering a discount of INR1,000 ($13/€12) on purchases made till April 14.
The Moto G22 is powered by the Helio G37 SoC and runs an ad-free, “near-stock” version of Android 12. The smartphone is built around a 6.5″ 90Hz HD+ LCD with a punch hole in the center for the 16MP selfie camera. Around the back, we have a 50MP primary camera joined by 8MP ultrawide, 2MP macro, and 2MP depth units.
The budget smartphone packs a 5,000 mAh battery which supports 20W charging instead of 15W in India. That’s no surprise since this isn’t the first time Motorola has launched a smartphone in India with faster charging. Last December, the phone maker launched the Moto G51 5G in the Asian country with 20W charging support, which is twice as fast as the G51 5G’s Chinese and international units capped at 10W.
Motorola Moto G22’s features
The rest of the Motorola Moto G22’s highlights include a water-repellent design, a dedicated microSD card slot for storage expansion (up to 1TB), USB-C, 3.5mm headphone jack, and a side-mounted fingerprint reader.
This modular product system reuses parts of a product to create new devices
We’ve seen our fair share of modular designs, both in practice and in theory, and almost all of them have one common goal. Modular systems are primarily intended to allow people to customize the product, whether by expanding its scope or even just rearranging parts. Modularity can sometimes have the side benefit of making it simpler to repair or replace damaged parts, however, the parts don’t serve any other purpose than being part of the whole. This circular modular system proposes that parts can be reused for new products. It is a great idea for sustainability.
Designer: Seungheon Baek, Soohyun Kim
A modular desk that lets you add or remove parts as you need is pretty neat, but most of the time, those parts become useless when the desk itself gets broken beyond repair or is no longer usable. This kind of waste is even more pronounced in electronics, even the modular ones, when parts have to be thrown away because the whole can no longer be used anyway. You could recycle those parts, of course, but recycling also consumes energy and water in the long run. It would be better, instead, if you could reuse those parts for something else.
“Circulab” is a portmanteau of “circular” and “laboratory” and is a system that was conceptualized to reduce electronic and material waste. It means that one part can be used in conjunction with another product. For example, the fan of a hairdryer could become the fan of an air circulator by simply changing the chassis and removing the heating components.
This creates a virtuous cycle where other parts are passed on to new products. For example, the battery hub of an air circulator can serve as a base for a cleaner or styler. A styler’s water container can be used as a container to hold an oral irrigator, or humidifier. If the parts of the humidifier are in working order, the top part can be used as the nozzle for the hairdryer.
This creates something almost like a LEGO for products, where people can mix and match parts depending on what they need. This system can be used on any product, even if it is damaged beyond repair. And, of course, each part can even be “smart,” allowing you to check its status through a connected smartphone.
Unfortunately, current business trends and market practices go against such a reusable modular system. It is in a company’s best interests to just keep churning out products that are often thrown away at the end of their life, forcing people to buy whole new devices even when only a single part is broken. Fortunately, many companies are also getting smarter and are building their businesses around selling parts and offering services, so this kind of modular system might not be that distant a dream.
Realme V23 leaked in full ahead of imminent launch
A Realme V23 smartphone surprisingly appeared on China Telecom’s website – one of the biggest carriers in the company’s homeland. It is listed along with some photos and specs, which indicates that a launch may be just around the corner.
The phone is an affordable midranger with a Mediatek chipset, two cameras, and a big battery.
Realme V23
The Realme V23 is listed with a Dimensity 810 chipset and two RAM choices – 8GB or 12GB, while storage is 256GB. At the front, we have a 6. 58″ screen with 1080p resolution and a waterdrop notch for the 8MP selfie camera.
Around the back are a 48MP main camera and a 2MP secondary shooter, likely for portrait shots.
The battery capacity is 5,000 mAh, but there’s no word on fast charging.
Realme 9 Pro+ Free Fire Limited Edition appears in official images, launch date revealed
Realme teased the Realme 9 Pro+ Free Fire Limited Edition in February without divulging anything about it, and yesterday, a leaked image of its sketch gave us a glimpse of the smartphone’s design. Today, Realme’s Thai branch took to social media to give us our best look yet at the Realme 9 Pro+ Free Fire Limited Edition while also revealing its launch date.
The Realme 9 Pro+ Free Fire Limited Edition will debut in Thailand on April 12 at 2PM local time, but the company hasn’t revealed anything about its availability in other regions. However, previous rumors claim the smartphone will eventually launch in India – Realme’s biggest market.
The Realme 9 Pro+ Free Fire Limited Edition has a new paint job, with the company logo moved from the bottom-left to the center of the back cover, which also features the Free Fire logo with a rainbow-like effect. With the remainder of the panel reflecting light from different angles, the design accents that flank the Realme logo create a similar effect.
Additionally, you can see that the camera island on the rear has the text “Booyah!” written on it. Realme is even promoting the Realme 9 Pro+ Free Fire Limited Edition with #DaretoBooyah on social media.
Realme 9 Pro+ Free Fire Limited Edition
Realme hasn’t detailed the 9 Pro+ Free Fire Limited Edition’s specs sheet yet, but we expect it to be the same as the standard version since the differences between the two are likely to be only cosmetic. You can check out the Realme 9 Pro+ regular model’s detailed specs here.
Realme 9 Pro+ regular version in Sunrise Blue color
