Here are Google's Black Friday deals, going live this Thursday

Today Google has published its Black Friday deals that will become available through its online store in the US this Thursday - because starting Black Friday deals on a Thursday makes perfect sense (and it's not even that Thursday, it's the one the week before).

Anyway, scheduling shenanigans aside, we're all for deals, and Google has some nice ones lined up. You will be able to save $400 on the Pixel Fold and get it for $1,399. Or save $200 on the Pixel 8 Pro, which will be $799. Or save $150 on the Pixel 8, which will go for $549. The Pixel 7a will be yours for only $374, down from the...


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Samsung's early access Black Friday deals let you save big on Galaxy S23 Ultra, Z Fold5 in the US

Black Friday is next week, but Samsung US is starting its holiday offers early. We have some exclusive deals for you that you won’t be able to find yourself – free memory upgrades for some devices and additional discounts for others.

Starting with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5, you can score a free upgrade to 512GB storage with the link below. You can trade in old devices to get up to $1,000 off. If you’re a student, you get a 25% discount.

There are some bundle options available. You can pick up a case or battery pack to go with the Z Fold5 with a 35% discount or you can pair it with the...


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Honor X50i+ arrives with 108 MP camera, lightweight body

Honor launched a new smartphone today with the name X50i+. It comes with a 108 MP main camera, a light body and a relatively low price.

The Honor X50i+ is built around a 6.7” AMOLED screen with Full HD+ resolution and up to 90 Hz refresh rate. There is an 8 MP selfie shooter inside an oval cutout – that's correct, there is one camera, but Honor made a larger gap, so the setup looks a bit more complicated.

Mediatek provided the chipset – it is a Dimensity 6080, coupled with 12 GB RAM and 256/512 GB storage. The phone comes with MagicOS 7.2 out of the box, which is on top of Android...


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Gurman: iPhone 16 series to gain exclusive generative AI features

Apple is taking its time with iOS 18 development and a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggest next year’s iPhone 16 series will come with exclusive generative AI features which will be the key selling points for the new devices.

The new report does not reveal any specifics on what these AI features will do but we can assume they will be similar to what Google and Samsung are doing with text-to-image generation, the ability to summarize documents and translate content among others. Apple is also rumored to be using its own LLM model to overhaul Siri.

The iPhone 16 series...


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Top 10 trending phones of week 45

Xiaomi 14 Pro made it a golden hat-trick this week, extending its reign in our trending chart. The Samsung Galaxy A54 overtook the Galaxy S23 for second place, but it's still the same three phones on the podium.

We then have the Redmi Note 12 in fourth, edging the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max, which had to settle for fifth this time around.

In sixth sits the newly announced iQOO 12 Pro, ahead of the Xiaomi pair of Redmi Note 12 Pro and Redmi 12.

Samsung Galaxy S23 FE took ninth, while the Galaxy A34 rounded up the top 10. Xiaomi 14 lost out this week, suggesting that the newly announced...


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Huawei Freebuds Pro 3 review

Huawei had a big event in mid-September, where the star of the show was the Watch GT4, but we also saw the new Freebuds Pro 3 TWS earphones. We reviewed the smartwatch, and now we are also ready with the review of the new earphones.

We tried the Green earphones, which is the hero color in the current lineup. The paint job is new, but otherwise the Pro 3 look identical to their the predecessors, the Pro 2. If you look closer tiny differences start to appear, but even Huawei itself says the real changes are inside the buds. And having spent a few weeks with the earphones we are now ready to...


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Week 43 in review: iQOO 12 and DImensity 9300 are official

This week, Xiaomi said that it won't issue HyperOS updates to devices with unlocked bootloaders. And, phones with HyperOS will be harder to unlock. Right now, to unlock a Xiaomi phone, the company requires you to submit an application via their Windows app and wait one week until you can finally unlock the bootloader. Chinese HyperOS users will be required not only to wait out the one week, but also gain level 5 on their community forums. Users outside of China will have to wait for an official Xiaomi announcement on how the new unlocking process will work. Of course, if you lock back your...


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Flashback: how Symbian Anna tried to bring an old OS into the modern touchscreen world

The king was on his last legs – Symbian once ruled the smartphone world, but the introduction of the iPhone followed by the arrival of Android spelled the end for the platform. However, it would not go gentle into that good night.

Symbian is the core of the OS and there were several user interfaces built on top of it. Series 60 is perhaps the best-known among them – it made its debut with the Nokia 7650, which was not only Nokia’s first camera phone, but also the first mass-market Symbian phone (there were some niche phones before it).

Nokia 7650, the first mass-market Symbian...


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Farewell to our old battery test: a look back at 12 years of testing

After 12 years it was finally time to retire our original battery test – the smartphone world had evolved so much over that time that we felt it no longer produced relevant results. This is why we introduced the new Active Use Score. But as we welcome the new protocol, we also want to throw a retirement party for the old-timer.

In the span of over a decade we had tested 1,058 phones. The first was the Nokia N9, the last was the Realme GT5 240W. 240 watts! That really puts things in perspective, the Nokia N9 charger only output 5W – 5 volts, 1 amp was just fine back then. But we’re not here...


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Get the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE, Galaxy Buds FE and other deals in the US

Prices of flagship phones blew past the $1,000 mark a few years ago and unlike, say, the Asian market, the US doesn’t have a wide selection of “flagship killers”. But the right model at the right discount could be a great deal.

The new Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is down to $600 and you get a $100 Amazon Gift Card with that. When we say “new”, we should mention that it uses last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. On the plus side, you get Samsung’s long term software support (4 OS updates so it will get Android 17 and will get security patches until late 2028). There’s also DeX, the desktop...


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Weekly poll results: the smaller, cheaper Xiaomi 14 stands above the Xiaomi 14 Pro

The power structure inside Xiaomi’s flagship line has shifted – in a poll last year the Xiaomi 13 Pro was the more popular model when compared to its vanilla sibling. Fast forward to last week’s poll and you’ll find that more people are looking at the vanilla Xiaomi 14 than the Pro.

In both cases, reviews will be a major deciding factor – people are especially curious about the new HyperOS that arrives to replace the stalwart MIUI, which has been around since before Xiaomi started making phones. This is an important change since MIUI has plenty of critics and HyperOS is a chance to win...


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Poco F5 / Redmi Note 12 Turbo long-term review

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Get the Samsung Galaxy A54 or A34, plus other deals from Australia

The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE arrived on Australian shores recently and it offers a near-flagship experience at a lower cost. But there are other ways to get that as well.

The local version of the S23 FE is the one with the Exynos 2200. Last year’s model, the S21 FE, got the previous Samsung chip, the Exynos 2100, but we’ll get to that phone in a moment.

Besides the faster chipset, the 2023 FE model has a better main camera – a 50MP sensor instead of 12MP. However, everything else is fairly similar, including the 6.4” FHD+ 120Hz AMOLED display, the 8MP 3x tele and 12MP 123° ultra wide...


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US smartphone shipments grow sequentially in Q3 fueled by Apple's iPhone 15 series

In the third quarter of this year (July to September), smartphone shipments in the US grew sequentially (compared to Q2) by 21% to 31 million units, according to the latest report by Canalys.

This growth was driven by Apple's release of the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max, which accounted for 34% of all iPhone sales in the US in Q3 despite only being on sale for a few days. However, the market was down 5% year-on-year.

Carrier promotions targeting premium device upgrades helped that downward trend not be any worse, but Apple's very late in the quarter...


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Oppo Find X7 to have satellite communication

The upcoming Oppo Find X7 series will feature satellite communication. Oppo announced the feature on Weibo with the image teaser below.

The Oppo Find X7 will have satellite communication, source: Weibo

The feature will likely leverage the BeiDou satellite messaging service, which the Huawei Mate 60 uses. If that is indeed the case the functionality might be limited to China even if the phone eventually goes global.

The vivo X100 series is also expected to have satellite communication, as does the Galaxy S24 series.

The Find X7 series is coming soon with an impressive...


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