作者彙整: Harish Jonnalagadda

Sony is consolidating its business units into a new Electronics Products & Solutions division.

It’s no secret that Sony hasn’t fared well in the mobile space for a few years. Sony tried to stem the losses by pulling out of the budget segment and switching focus to the premium segment, but that hasn’t been enough. According to Reuters, Sony’s mobile business recorded a loss of $863 million in 2018, selling just 6.5 million phones over the year.

To put things into context, Huawei announced last week that it netted $52 billion from its consumer business in 2018, with the manufacturer recording an overall revenue of $107 billion. Sony, meanwhile, now has a global market share just under 1%, and the company is shutting down a major production facility in Beijing.

Going forward, Sony will rely on its Thailand manufacturing facility for phones, and the company is adamant that it will not sell off the mobile unit. Sony will once again trim its workforce, this time by a projected 50%, … 閱讀全文 →

There’s no logical reason to buy a Moto G7 in India when there are much better phones available.

Motorola was once a shining beacon of light in a budget segment filled with sub-par devices. The Moto G series was often the benchmark for the budget segment, with Motorola striking an ideal balance between affordability and features. However, things took a turn for the worse over the last 18 months, with Motorola effectively ceding ground to Chinese players.

The Moto G6 was dead on arrival in India, and the Moto G7 isn’t going to fare much better in the country. The phone is making its debut today, with sales set to kick off from March 25 for ₹16,999 ($250). For that price, you get a phone with a 6.32-inch FHD+ screen, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, Snapdragon 632 platform, 12MP rear camera, 8MP front shooter, and a 3000mAh battery with 15W fast charging.

Motorola is using its brand cachet to sell underwhelming devices to unsuspecting customers.

The Moto G7 isn’t a bad dev… 閱讀全文 →

Redmi Go runs Android Oreo (Go Edition) and costs just ₹4,499 ($65).

Xiaomi has released a few phones under the Android One initiative, and the Chinese manufacturer is now launching its first Android Go device. The Redmi Go is an entry-level device that runs Google’s lightweight OS, and like all other Xiaomi phones, it offers pretty great value at ₹4,499 ($65).

The Redmi Go features a 5.0-inch 720p display with a 16:9 form factor, and Xiaomi is bringing its Night Light feature — a blue light filter — over to the device. The phone is powered by a Snapdragon 425, 1GB of RAM along with 8GB of internal storage, microSD slot, an 8MP camera at the back, 5MP front shooter, and a 3000mAh battery.

Xiaomi is also debuting its payments service in India. Mi Pay works with credit and debit cards as well as India’s Unified Payments Interface, and you’ll be able to make bill payments and recharge your phone with the service. Data is stored on servers located in India, and… 閱讀全文 →

Qualcomm ordered to pay nearly $1 billion in patent royalty rebates, but a payment may not be forthcoming.

In a preliminary ruling, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California ruled that Qualcomm owed Apple nearly $1 billion in rebate payments that were part of the business cooperation agreement of the two companies. Today’s ruling is unrelated to the patent fight that both companies are embroiled in, but pertains to the matter of patent royalty rebates.

As noted by Reuters, both companies had a patent licensing agreement that worked in the following manner:

In general, the contract factories that built Apple’s iPhones would pay Qualcomm billions of dollars per year for the use of Qualcomm’s patented technology in iPhones, a cost that Apple would reimburse the contract factories for. Separately, Qualcomm and Apple had a cooperation agreement under which Qualcomm would pay Apple a rebate on the iPhone patent payments if Apple agreed not to attack in court or … 閱讀全文 →

With new phones hitting shelves every week, it’s a gargantuan task to find a device that suits your needs. That’s where we come in. Here at Android Central we use dozens of budget phones over the course of a year, and that’s why we’re here to help you spend your money wisely.

Samsung Galaxy M20

Our pick

₹12,990 at Amazon India

Pros

Exciting design
Robust hardware
Massive battery
Great value
Vivid screen
Cons

Still on Oreo
The Galaxy M20 is one of the best budget phones Samsung has launched to date. With a new chipset that delivers excellent performance, the M20 is able to handle everyday tasks with ease, and the monstrous 5000mAh battery easily lasts for two days at a time. The design combined with the hardware makes the M20 a great value budget phone.

Samsung Galaxy M10

Recycled specs

₹8,990 at Amazon India

Pros

Affordable
Same design aesthetic as M20
Cons

Outdated specs
Low-res display
Sub-par camera
No fingerprint sensor
The Galaxy M20 is a fantastic d… 閱讀全文 →

You can now pre-order OPPO’s latest phones at Carphone Warehouse.

Xiaomi made its debut in the UK just two months ago, and now fellow Chinese phone manufacturer OPPO is bringing its latest devices to the country. At a launch event in London, OPPO announced that it is launching the Find X as well as the RX17 Pro and RX17 Neo in the UK, with all phones up for sale exclusively at Carphone Warehouse.

The Find X will be available in the UK for £799 ($1,018), with the device featuring a unique mechanised slider that hides both front and rear cameras. You get a 6.4-inch AMOLED panel with a layer of Gorilla Glass 5, Snapdragon 845, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, 16MP + 20MP cameras at the back, 25MP front camera, and a 3730mAh battery.

OPPO will be looking to go after Xiaomi in the UK.

The RX17 Pro, meanwhile, features a gorgeous gradient pattern at the back, and is powered by a Snapdragon 710. The phone has a 6.4-inch display along with a waterdrop cutout, 6GB of RAM and 128GB … 閱讀全文 →

Samsung says it is now mass-producing the first 1TB storage module designed for phones.

Samsung has announced that it is now mass producing the world’s first 1TB embedded Universal Flash Storage 2.1 (eUFS) module for phones, and the timing of the launch suggests the storage chip could end up on the Galaxy S10. Samsung noted that the module itself is the same size as the 512GB chip found on the Galaxy Note 9.

Samsung is able to achieve that by leveraging V-NAND technology, where NAND cells are stacked vertically to maximize density and efficiency. Samsung is touting sequential read speeds of up to 1000Mbps and write speeds of 260Mbps, which should enable the storage module to offer continuous video recording even at 960fps.

According to Samsung memory marketing VP Cheol Choi, the 1TB eUFS module will play a key role in “bringing a more notebook-like user experience to the next generation of mobile devices.” Samsung’s mobile CEO DJ Koh said in an interview earlier this week that the… 閱讀全文 →

Samsung is finally paying attention to the budget segment, and that should worry Xiaomi.

For the longest time, it seemed like Samsung just didn’t care about the budget segment. Year after year it rolled out underwhelming phones in the Galaxy J series while Chinese brands introduced devices that redefined the category. The result is that Xiaomi managed to erode Samsung’s market share in India over the last two years, with the Redmi series breaking all sales records over the last two years.

Samsung’s inability to affect any real change in its budget strategy suggested the manufacturer didn’t really focus on the category as a whole; after all, a bulk of its revenue comes from the Galaxy S and Galaxy A series. Then there’s the fact that the Galaxy J devices managed to sell in the tens of million yearly even though there were much better phones available in the same category. A lot of this was down to Samsung’s brand cachet and its robust distribution network.

But with dwindling market… 閱讀全文 →