Xiaomi reports impressive first sales of 14, 14 Pro flagships

Xiaomi 14 and 14 Pro were announced last week in China, and today was the first flash sale of the flagships. As is the norm with those all units were gone almost instantly. It took four hours for the allocated stock to be gone and there were six times more orders in the first five minutes of the sale compared with the Xiaomi 13 market launch, the company claimed.

Still, Xiaomi did not reveal the exact amount of units sold, meaning we couldn't know how much it earned during this first flash sale.

Xiaomi 14 series

These are the first phones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset....


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iQOO 12's India launch date announced

iQOO will unveil the iQOO 12 and iQOO 12 Pro on November 7 in China, and on December 12, the vanilla model will "make its grand debut" in India. The iQOO 12 will be sold through Amazon.in, but it should also be available through iQOO's official Indian website.

12.12.23, A date that's going to change the smartphone game forever. 😉 #iQOO 12 is launching soon on @amazonIN &
https://t.co/ZK4Krrd1DS 🤩 Mark your calendars, the future is here! 🔥 🗓Know More:
https://t.co/0rC6Ys3iQ3#iQOO12 #AmazonSpecials #BlockYourDate pic.twitter.com/icGIFsth7i— iQOO India (@IqooInd) November 1, 2023

iQOO...


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Samsung posts improved Q3 earnings thanks to strong demand for flagship smartphones

Samsung posted its Q3 earnings report and the numbers show quarterly revenue of KRW 67.40 trillion ($49.99 billion) and operating profit of KRW 2.43 trillion ($1.80 billion). The revenue figures represent a gradual decline of 12.3% on the yearly basis but are 12% up from the Q2 values while the operating profit is up over 262% compared to the Q2 values.

Samsung shared its mobile division saw strong sales for its flagship models alongside healthy demand for mobile displays. Samsung’s memory business reduced losses thanks to increased demand for its products and higher average selling...


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Apple will use lighter and better molded glass for 16 Pro telephoto

Apple will turn to molded glass lenses for the 2024 Pro models' telephoto cameras. According to a supply chain report, Largan will exclusively cover the needs of next year's telephoto lenses.

Molded glass lenses are thinner and lighter than traditional ground glass at the same magnification distance. That means that the 120mm zoom lens of the 15 Pro Max can be incorporated into the smaller iPhone 16 Pro in 2024, bringing it on par with the 16 Pro Max.

Due to the molded glass lenses' inherent complexity, Apple is already prepping for next year's iPhone Pro models. Reports suggest...


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Tecno introduces Universal Tone for perfect skin tones in every photo

Tecno announced a new imaging technology called Universal Tone. Leveraging AI, it promises to enhance skin tones in photos so people from all colors are correctly captured.

The essence of Tecno Universal Tone is recognizing multiple faces in one photo, along with their facial complexities, and then applying appropriate filters that encompass a vast range of skin tones in order to eliminate bias within the image processing.

The technology combines three engines, according to the press release. The first is the Multi-Skin Tone Restoration Engine, which works with a database of...


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Week 43 in review: Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Xiaomi 14 and 14 Pro are official

Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset this week and phone makers queued up to declare their next flagship will have it - iQOO and Honor were among them. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is all about AI - the AI Engine supports multi-modal generative AI models and popular large language models for speech recognition - the chip can run up to 20 tokens per second for instant AI assistant responses. Qualcomm boasts that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 packs the world's fastest stable diffusion, which can generate an image in a fraction of a second.

In CPU terms the 4nm chipset promises to be 30%...


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Weekly poll: how old is your phone?

Fairphone is promising 8 years (possibly up to 10) of support for its new Fairphone 5. Google brought Android longevity into the mainstream with the new Pixel 8 series, which will be supported for 7 years, this includes both software updates and availability for spare parts.

But this raises the question – is anyone actually using their phone for that long? While it’s tough to predict whether there will be any Pixel 8 users left in 2030, we can focus on the here and now. So let’s change the question to this – how old is your current phone?

We know that some of you have phones that you...


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Weekly poll results: the OnePlus Open is great, but buyers balk at the price

Economies of scale mean that once a product becomes popular, it costs less too. But that causes a Catch-22 – it’s difficult for an expensive product to become popular. Right now that is the problem facing foldables, especially the horizontal variety.

Last week’s poll shows that the OnePlus Open is a very promising phone. It might even be the best in class that the markets outside of China have seen. And yet... well, the pie chart speaks for itself, 40% of voters have interest in the Open, but find it too pricey.

To be fair, it costs less than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold5 (unless you get in...


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Oppo A79 goes official with Dimensity 6020 SoC and 50MP camera

The Oppo A79 that leaked a few days ago is now official. It's powered by the Dimensity 6020 SoC and runs Android 13-based ColorOS 13.1 out of the box. The smartphone has 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.2 storage onboard, with the option to expand the storage by up to 1TB via a microSD card.

The Oppo A79 is built around a 6.72" 90Hz FullHD+ LCD with Panda Glass protection. It has a pixel density of 391 ppi and 680 nits peak brightness. Oppo advertises the screen as a Sunlight Display because "you can see every detail, even in bright sunlight." The panel also has Widevine L1...


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Samsung Galaxy S24 series tipped to support Ultra HDR

Google introduced the Ultra HDR feature with Android 14, which allows users to capture and view HDR photos on their Android devices in HDR format instead of SDR. Some Chinese flagships already have a similar feature, but Samsung didn't implement it with One UI 6. However, rumor claims Samsung will implement an Ultra HDR-like feature on its smartphones next year.

Word comes from reliable tipster Ice Universe, who said the Galaxy S24 lineup, expected to arrive in January 2024, will support HDR picture viewing in photo albums. If true, that would be a nice way to utilize the rumored 2,500...


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Tata to become first Indian company to make iPhones with the $125 million Wistron deal

Apple's been assembling iPhones in India for over half a decade now, with the first "Made in India" iPhone being the iPhone SE produced by Foxconn in 2017. Apple has two more partners in India for making iPhones - Pegatron and Wistron. However, with Wistron set to exit the iPhone business in India, its 100% stake will be purchased by Tata Electronics Private Limited (TEPL), making it the first Indian company to produce iPhones.

TEPL, which is a part of the Tata Group known for selling everything from salt to software to cars, will purchase the indirect stake from Wistron InfoComm...


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Samsung teases Galaxy S24 Ultra camera with AI image stacking, improved 4K zoom

Samsung posted a video revealing new capabilities of the ISOCELL 200 MP sensor, powered by the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset by Qualcomm. There isn't a smartphone on the market with such hardware, so this is clearly a teaser for the upcoming Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Here's the 60-second video and keep reading for a breakdown of what's inside.

Zoom Anyplace automatically tracks subjects in a video but also keeps capturing full-frame zoomed-out footage of the entire scene. This means the sensor essentially allows capturing two 4K video streams - of the cropped area and one of the whole...


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Samsung exec confirms emergency satellite tech on the Galaxy S24 series

Samsung's President of System LSI Park Yong-in confirmed that Galaxy phones will support satellite services starting next year. It's a not-so-subtle hint about the Galaxy S24 series, expected in early 2024.

Speaking at the 2023 Semiconductor Expo (SEDEX), Park Yong-in added that technical preparations have already been made to enable communication using satellites. This could be a reference to the Exynos Modem 5300's support of 2-way communication over satellite.

However, this begs the question: if rumors of a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered Galaxy S24 Ultra and Exynos 2400-powered S24 and...


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Xiaomi 14 and 14 Pro are here with HyperOS and revamped Leica cameras

As expected, today Xiaomi unveiled the 14 series featuring the just announced Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, revamped Leica-branded main cameras, a new design, and Xiaomi's new HyperOS.

Xiaomi 14 Pro

The Xiaomi 14 Pro moves away from the curved edges of its predecessor and instead brings a flat metal side. The frame has a glossy, mirrored finish. The phone has a symmetrical design and the two glass panels taper slightly at the very edge. The camera island sits on a metal bezel finished with a Parisian hobnail texture.

The Xiaomi 14 Pro is the bigger phone, bringing a 6.73-inch 1440x3200 px...


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PC manufacturers rush to adopt the new Snapdragon X Elite chip, here's the list

The ARMs race has begun! With Apple's third-generation ARM-based Apple M3 silicon just around the corner, Qualcomm announced its competing solution, Snapdragon X Elite for Windows laptops. The SoC promises excellent performance, extreme efficiency and will arrive in the PC market by mid-2024.

A number of the largest Windows PC manufacturers have now been confirmed to develop devices with the new chip. The list includes HP, Lenovo, Asus, Dell and Acer. Honor, Microsoft, Samsung and Xiaomi are also going to deliver Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptops to announce next year.

Software...


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