ZTE Axon 7 Mini: Everything you need to know

Update: The ZTE Axon 7 Mini now has Android 7.1.1.

It wasn’t that long ago that ZTE debuted the Axon 7, a handset that smartly married desirable hardware with an affordable $400 price point. It took on such smartphone juggernauts as Samsung, Apple, LG, and HTC — and against all odds, emerged successful beyond ZTE’s wildest estimations. The Axon 7 has been in and out of stock since June.

That’s helped cement the Beijing, China-based ZTE become a veritable player in the smartphone market. But the company has broader ambitions: It’s angling to rank among the world’s top three smartphone makers by 2020. And it thinks an even cheaper derivative of the Axon, appropriately dubbed the Axon 7 Mini, will hasten it toward that endgame.

ZTE’s is a common enough strategy: Sony has released smaller, midrange smartphones under its “Compact” brand that generally accompany its flagship devices. Samsung, too, has historically released miniaturized versions of its top-end Galaxy phones, as has Huawei. But typically, the “mini” label denotes compromise: Cheaper, smaller companion devices are generally less capable, at least on paper, than their larger counterparts.

In the Axon 7 Mini’s case, though, it’s quite the opposite, and you can read all about why at our full review.

Specs

The ZTE Axon 7 Mini is extremely similar to the original ZTE Axon 7, both in terms of looks and design, and when it comes to the specs under the hood. You’ll find the Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor, which is coupled with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It also has a MicroSD card slot, so you can expand upon the storage if you so choose.

On the back of the phone, you’ll find a 16MP rear-facing camera with an f/1.9 aperture and phase detection autofocus, while the selfie camera sits in at 8MP. The AMOLED display on the phone comes in at 5.2-inches, and has a resolution of 1920 x 1080. The battery capacity sits in at 2,700mAh.

On the software side, the phone has finally been updated to Android 7.1.1 — so users should update their phones, and if you’re thinking of buying this phone rest assured that you will be able to use Android 7.1.1.

Where to buy it

The ZTE Axon 7 Mini can be purchased in the United States through ZTE’s own online store, where it costs $300 and is available in platinum gray. Amazon also sells the Axon 7 Mini for $300.

A gold version is exclusive to Best Buy during its first couple months of availability, where it’s normally priced at $300. However, between December 4 and December 10, Best Buy will sell the gold Axon 7 Mini for only $200, or the platinum grey version for $250. We’d call this an absolute steal, so if you’re already tempted by the Axon 7 Mini, don’t wait to pick one up.

In the United Kingdom, Carphone Warehouse carries the gold Axon 7 Mini exclusively, where it’s sold for 250 British pounds without a contract, or for free with a 24-month contract that starts at 17.50 British pounds per month.

Uber founder Travis Kalanick has stepped down as CEO

Why it matters to you

The company will now be intent on steering a steadier course following months of criticism.

Uber founder Travis Kalanick has resigned as CEO of the ride-hailing company.

Kalanick decided to step down on Tuesday night following intense pressure from five major investors, the NY Times reported.

News of the 40-year-old founder’s departure follows mounting criticism over the way the company has been conducting its business, and comes just a few days after the funeral of his mother who died in a boating accident at the end of last month.

It’s believed that Kalanick will stay on as a member of Uber’s board of directors. It’s not clear at this stage who will lead the company.

In a statement seen by the NY Times, Kalanick said: “I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight.”

According to reports, Kalanick’s decision followed a revolt among shareholders who told him earlier on Tuesday that new leadership was required for the company to move forward.

Kalanick, who founded Uber in 2009, reportedly received the demand by letter while in Chicago. After several hours of discussions, he finally agreed to leave the top job.

While Uber has always faced plenty of criticism about how it conducts its business, matters appeared to take a turn for the worse earlier this year when a former employee made allegations of a company culture where sexual harassment and gender discrimination was rife.

Keen to clean up its act, the company conducted an investigation into its workplace practices, which culminated in the firing of 20 employees and the release of a report last week that recommended Kalanick play less of a major role in the business.

In response to the report, Uber’s founder began an indefinite leave of absence before finally resigning on Tuesday.

Besides concerns about its workplace culture, the company is also embroiled in a legal battle with Google spin-off Waymo over the alleged theft of autonomous-car tech. It’s also facing a probe by the Department of Justice following accusations that it used secret technology to hide its vehicles from officials in some cities where attempts were being made to cut down on the service.

Uber’s investors will be hoping new leadership will set the company on a steadier course free of controversy, and we’ll update this article as soon as we hear more about how it plans to move forward.

Flic Hub takes Shortcut Labs’ smart button to a new level by bypassing phones

Why it matters to you

Flic buttons turn any home into a smart home. The new Flic Hub allows those smart features to be accessed by anyone within the home.

Earlier this year, Shortcut Labs released the Flic smart button. It’s a “do anything” button that allows users to control the apps on their phone at the simple touch of a button. Now, it’s taking the idea a step further with the Flic Hub.

By connecting with up to 64 Flic buttons, the Flic Hub is designed to discreetly add complex online functionality within the home or workplace. Previously, the buttons needed to work through a smartphone, but the Hub completely bypasses phones. This allows multiple users to use the buttons for a variety of activities such as turning on smart lights like the Philips Hue, placing a food order, or controlling the music.

Within the smart home industry, the most successful innovations are ones that are easy to use regardless of how tech savvy someone is. With the Flic Hub, the whole family can operate the buttons even when the user’s phone is not present. Through a combination of single, long, or double presses, Flic buttons can control just about any smart device. Smart lights can be switched on or off. Buttons can connect to Spotify,  and Samsung Multiroom, Sonos, or Bose Soundtouch audio systems to control music around the house. Flic can also be used to control heating, order pizza, as a doorbell, and much more. If there’s an app for it, chances are it can be accessed with the Flic button.

“We’re seeing real momentum behind the smart home movement and there’s a defined and clear opportunity in establishing the smart workplace, too,” says Flic co-founder Pranav Kosuri. “The Flic Hub is designed to take all the elements that make the Flic button so great — its ease of use, simplicity and time-saving qualities — and completely untether people from their phones with their everyday tasks to make them more accessible regardless of age or technical ability.”

In the workplace, Flic Hub brings even more convenience. In a restaurant, it can be used by customers to order a beer or request the bill. At a care facility, patients can easily call for help or dim the lights on their own.

You can preorder the Flic Hub through its IndieGoGO campaign starting today. Prices start at $49, with shipments expected in October.

OnePlus 5 accused of cheating in benchmarks, Carl Pei responds

XDA accuses OnePlus 5 of manipulating benchmark scores to gain a 5% performance boost.

Earlier this year, the folks at XDA Developers found that the OnePlus 3T and Meizu Pro 6 Plus were cheating at benchmarks, activating a “performance” mode as soon as a bnechmark test was initialized to eke out a favorable score on testing apps like GeekBench.

With the OnePlus 5 now official, the company is once again under fire, with XDA claiming that units that have been sent out to reviewers manipulate benchmark scores.

With the OnePlus 3T, the company specifically targeted benchmark apps, boosting the CPU frequency when it detected that a particular benchmark was running:

Last time around, OnePlus introduced changes to the behavior of their ROM whenever it detected a benchmark application was opened. Such application names were explicitly listed by their package IDs within the ROM in a manifest that specified the targets.

Then, the ROM would alter the frequency in relation to an adjusted CPU load — our tools showed CPU load would drop to 0% regardless of obvious activity within the application, and the CPU would see a near-minimum frequency of 1.29GHz in the big cores and 0.98GHz in the little cores.

The publication notes that time time around, the cheating is much more “blatant:”

The OnePlus 5, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast — it resorts to the kind of obvious, calculated cheating mechanisms we saw in flagships in the early days of Android, an approach that is clearly intended to maximize scores in the most misleading fashion.

While there are no governor switches when a user enters a benchmark (at least, we can’t seem to see that’s the case), the minimum frequency of the little cluster jumps to the maximum frequency as seen under performance governors. All little cores are affected and kept at 1.9GHz, and it is through this cheat that OnePlus achieves some of the highest GeekBench 4 scores of a Snapdragon 835 to date.

XDA’s OnePlus 5 unit scored 6,700 in GeekBench’s multi-core benchmark, which is slightly more than the 6,653 posted by our Xiaomi Mi 6, which is also running a Snapdragon 835. The publication says that with the cheating mechanism enabled, OnePlus is able to eke out a 5% uptick in performance in the multi-core benchmark on average.

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei weighed in on the issue on Reddit, stating that the OnePlus 5 treats benchmarks the same way it does resource-intensive games:

We have made it so that when running benchmark apps, the phone performs the same as when running resource intensive apps such as 3D games. We also fully activate our chipset in other parts of OxygenOS, for instance when launching apps to make the launch experience faster and smoother.

We are not making it easier for the chipset to perform, for instance by changing to a lower resolution when detecting a benchmark app. We are not changing the performance of our chipset, for instance by overclocking it.

When users run benchmark apps, which I agree aren’t a useful proxy for real life performance, we believe that they want to see the full potential of their device without interference from tampering. That’s what we’ve unlocked.

Every OEM has proprietary performance profiles for their devices, I appreciate that we have a tech enthusiastic following, but feel free to have a look around. 🙂

OnePlus will have the same build available on consumer devices, with Pei noting that anything otherwise would in fact be considered cheating. With the Snapdragon 835 running full-tilt during intensive games, there is a likelihood of the phone overheating, to which Pei said that the OnePlus 5 will “turn itself off before it gets too hot,” and that it has better thermal management from previous generations.

The fact that OnePlus has been caught gaming benchmarks for a second time is disappointing, particularly when there’s absolutely no need to do so. Even without artificially-inflated benchmark scores, the OnePlus 5 is one of the fastest devices available in the market today.

And although a small number of users continue rely on benchmarks for purchasing decisions, synthetic benchmarks aren’t an accurate representation of a device’s real-world performance. As our own Andrew Martonik noted in the Android Central review of the OnePlus 5, the phone is fantastic:

The OnePlus 5 is fantastically fast and smooth in everything I use a smartphone for, right on par with my experience using a Google Pixel XL for several months now. And based on how smooth my OnePlus 3 and 3T have been over time, I don’t expect this experience to slow down in the future.

What’s your take on the latest OnePlus 5 scandal? Are you convinced by OnePlus’ explanation? Let us know in the comments below.

OnePlus 5

• Complete OnePlus 5 review
• Reviewing our first OnePlus 5 photos
• OnePlus 5 vs. OnePlus 3: Should you upgrade?
• OnePlus 5 specs
• The latest OnePlus 5 news
• Join the discussion in the forums

OnePlus

The OnePlus 5 will be available exclusively from O2 in the UK

OnePlus has just announced the OnePlus 5, which we’ve given a full five-star review. The phone offers many flagship specs and features, including a dual camera, but for a fraction of the price of its competitors.

• OnePlus 5 review: The flagship-killer’s coming of age

If you want to get yourself OnePlus’ latest device, you can either head to the company’s own website, or head down to your local O2 store or to the website, as the high-street retailer will be the exclusive stockist in the UK.

O2 will be stocking both the Slate Grey version with 64GB of storage, or the Midnight Black version with 128GB. Both are available to pre-order now and anyone who does so in the first week will get 30GB of data with their tariff and a £9.99 upfront cost. The 64GB model will cost £49/month while the 128GB will be £51.

O2 will be also be hosting a series of in-store events at its Birmingham Bullring, Oxford Street and Manchester Arndale stores on 22, 23 and 24 June respectively. At these events, customers will be able to get hands-on with the new phone, receive support, win goodies and enter a competition to win a OnePlus 5.

OnePlus 3T owners on an O2 Refresh tariff will be pleased to know they can pay off the remainder of the phone section of their plan to trade up to the OnePlus 5. O2 will even give up to £80 to anyone who trades their OnePlus 3T in.

Magnus McDonald, Director of Product and Category Management at O2 said: “As the only high street retailer in the UK to sell the OnePlus 5, we’re proud to be continuing our relationship with OnePlus and bringing our customers OnePlus 5”,

“Demand for the OnePlus devices has exceeded all our expectations and we’re excited to see how successful our partnership with OnePlus can be as we continue to move forward”.

Samsung eyeing up next-gen Gear VR headset with high-resolution OLED screen

Samsung could be looking to release a standalone virtual reality headset as part of its Gear VR range, or perhaps an entirely new family of products, that doesn’t require you to insert a phone, if a report out of South Korea is to be believed.

• Samsung Exynos has ambitions beyond the Galaxy S8

The report on South Korean news site Naver, says the ‘next-gen’ Gear VR headset would have its own OLED display with 2000 ppi, giving it a far higher resolution than any other VR headset on the market right now.

The 2000 ppi OLED display is also said to feature a Fine Metal Mask (FMM), which is a layer that goes over the OLED panel and has incredibly small holes in it to deposit the RGB pixels in selected areas.

An OLED display will of course also inherit the same advantages that OLED TVs exhibit over their LCD counterparts. That being higher contrast, deeper blacks and whiter whites

Having such a high ppi count will also help achieve a more natural experience for the user. The NHK Science and Technology Institute says “the higher the pixel density, the more the sense of a reality is felt.” So no more risk of feeling nauseous when wearing a headset. Or at least, that’s the theory.

The report says that the headset wouldn’t require the user to insert a phone to display the content, but it doesn’t say how content would be shown on the display instead.

We’ve already been told that Samsung is working on standalone VR headsets at Mobile World Congress 2017. The tech giant’s Exynos arm plans to implement its processor chips into more than just smartphones, and one such product area is virtual reality headsets.

We had a look at one of the company’s reference VR headsets that had a 700 ppi display, which even then Exynos said was the ideal figure, so a 2000 ppi display should prove even better.

• New Samsung Gear VR headset is Galaxy S8 compatible, works with Samsung VR content
• Best VR headsets to buy in 2017, whatever your budget

There’s no word on when Samsung’s next-gen VR headset will be released, if it is released at all, but considering the company has already confirmed it is working on phone-less headsets, we hope the 2000 ppi version will make it to market one day.

This translation device is the Babel Fish we’ve all been waiting for

Remember the Babel Fish in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the fish you popped into your ear to translate any language? Well, now it’s here.

Okay, it’s not actually a fish. And only one part of it goes into your lughole. But the Translate One2One from Lingmo is a real device that can convert languages in real time (with a three to five second delay).

It currently works with English, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German and Chinese, translating one to another. There is a catch. both speakers need to be wearing one. However, it will understand the nuances of local slang and dialects.

Its AI will also understand contextual speech, translating them into sentences the recipient will recognise.

The Translate One2One is powered by IBM Watson’s Natural language Processor and Language Translation APIs. It is a standalone product, so doesn’t required connection to a smartphone or other external device through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

The device is available for purchase now and will ship in July. It is priced at $179 (£142) for one unit, although two are needed for translation between different people, so a “travel pack” containing a pair of devices comes at a discount, costing $229.

BBC

Google has also been reported in the past to be working on a “Babel Fish” device, although nothing much has been heard about the project for the last couple of years.

KeepVid Android: Download any song or video from YouTube to your Android

There’s an Android app that will let you download YouTube songs and videos to your Android. It’s called KeepVid Android.

KeepVid Android is not only a free YouTube downloader, which lets you download directly to your device at not cost, but it also lets you visit any video site and download directly, whether that be YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, DailyMotion, etc. While we were playing around with the Android app, we discovered several other handy features. Here’s everything you need to know.

How can you get KeepVid Android?

Easy, just go to the KeepVid Android website and download the apk. You’ll first have to ensure your device is enable to download from unknown sources (Settings > Security > Unknown sources > Allow installation of apps from sources other than the Play Store). Once the apk downloads, it’ll appear on your device like any other app. Just look for the KeepVid Android app on your device.

How does KeepVid Android work?

Getting started

Once you download the KeepVid Android apk, launch the KeepVid Android app on your device. You will notice the main interface has three main tabs: Sites, Discover, and Subscribe. There are also three buttons in the corner that let you search for videos and music to download, manage your downloads, and access settings. We recommend playing around to familiarise yourself with the UI.

Sites

From the Sites tab in the KeepVid Android app, you’ll see several thumbnails to different sites, such as YouTube and Facebook. Clicking these thumbnails will open up the website within KeepVid Android. You may need to sign into the site with your login credentials in order to access the media you want to download. Once you find the media, copy it’s URL.

We logged in to Facebook, for instance, found a video in our feed we wanted to download, then tapped the download icon in the corner of the video, and gave permission to our device to download is via KeepVid Android always. Occasionally we were brought to another page where we had to tap the download button again. Either way, the video downloaded to our Android every time.

On the Sites tab, you will also notice a + button in the corner. Tap it to enter the URL you want to download. So, instead of tapping the YouTube thumbnail, logging in, finding the video, and downloading, you can tap the +button and quickly paste a YouTube video URL or any video URL you want to download. Once you do that, it’ll download to your device. Quick and easy.

Discover

You can also browse and download from KeepVid Android’s own collection of media. Just tap the Discover tab and scroll through the feed of recommendations. You can also tap the search icon at the top of the app, then enter an artist or song, and find media that way. We searched for Britney Spears, and then we saw related results with options to download each of the results.

Subscribe

To easily access your YouTube subscriptions, just tap the Subscribe tab in KeepVid Android. You will of course have to login to your Google account, but then your subscriptions will be listed there, along with options to download and share their YouTube videos.

What else can you do?

Manage

Every time you download a file from a site or from browsing KeepVid Android, you can tap the downloader icon next to search to manage your downloads – including multiple videos at one time. You will see what’s not only currently downloading but what’s also downloaded. From the downloader screen, you can also tap the more button (…) to play the download or share it.

Share

All videos in Discover and on websites accessed through the app will have a share option, as well. Just tap the universal share button, and your share card should then pop up with links to copy to clipboard, save to a storage service, share via SMS, email, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Skype, Tumblr, Whatsapp, or any other social media app you have installed on your device.

Is there a website?

If you don’t want to mess around with the Android app, just use KeepVid’s free Youtube to MP4 online downloader tool here. All you have to do is paste your YouTube video url into the page and it will download – for free – from there.

Spotify hopes you’ll create shared playlists in Facebook Messenger

It can be fun to create shared playlists on streaming music services — it’s a window into your friends’ tastes. You don’t necessarily want to wade through an app to add tracks, though, and they usually shut out pals who can’t use the service. That’s where Spotify thinks it can save the day. It’s launching a Group Playlists chat extension in Facebook Messenger that lets anyone in a chat add songs to the queue, even if they’re not using Spotify. Once someone has started one of these collective playlists, you just have to tap a button to start adding tracks.

The addition is bound to be helpful for parties — your friends can add to the mix using an app they already have. It’s also good for discovering new songs in your social circle. It’s no secret as to why Spotify wants this: it could not only encourage you to stream more often, but expose Spotify to friends who might be new to the service. And when there are nearly 2 billion Facebook users, that’s a lot of potential listeners.

Source: Spotify (Facebook Messenger)

Spotify Announces Group Playlists for Messenger

Spotify today announced a new mobile feature called Group Playlists for Messenger, which enables users of Facebook’s chat app to create music mixes collaboratively within a conversation thread.

With Group Playlists for Messenger, users can create new Spotify playlists with friends and immediately begin collaborating to build out their perfect mix. Ideal for parties, road trips, or simply collecting new favorites, Group Playlists provide a seamless way for users to collaborate and share music more easily than ever before.

The new feature means Messenger users can create a Group Playlist, share it with friends, and add songs to it directly from within the Messenger app via the Spotify Chat Extension, which is available by tapping the blue + icon next to the composer.

By tapping the Create button at the bottom of the screen, users can give their playlist a name before sending it to the group chat session, where it will appear as a thumbnail preview accompanied by a button below to add songs.

While the person creating the playlist must be a current Spotify user, others in the conversation thread can add more songs to it, even if they aren’t on Spotify. The Group Playlists extension can also be accessed from within Messenger using this link.

Tags: Facebook Messenger, Spotify
Discuss this article in our forums