Author: chris eilers

The news about Xiaomi just keep coming these days. Xiaomi has apparently invested USD$300 Million into the chinese online video website IQiyi.com. This investment is part of Xiaomi’s strategy of increasing their online TV content and comes shortly after their announcement of raising USD1.5 Billion in a new funding round.

IQiyi.com is owned by chinese Google, the search engine Baidu and Xiaomi will be the first major shareholder. At the same time Baidu has also increased their investment amount into the website, to match Xiaomi’s investment.

According to China Business Network at the same time Xiaomi invested into another chinese video website, Youku Tudou. Both of the online video websites, IQiyi.com and Youku Tudou own TV licences by the Chinese government.

Xiaomi’s CEO on being compared often to Steve Jobs and Apple remarked already earlier that he sees Xiaomi much more like Amazon: “Our business model is more similar to Amazon,” Lei said, referring to Amazon’s habit of selling hardware at cost. On their profit strategy he said “We sell all our products online and our gross profit rate is very low. Our price is one third of Apple’s,” he said. “We make our profits through content and services.”

Last month Xiaomi already announced that they were going to invest nearly USD$1 Billion into internet TV content to increase their offering on MiTV and Mi BOX. Xiaomi’s expansion into online tv content puts them up against other chinese online giants like Tencent and AliBaba that are also investing agressively into Online TV Content.

Earlier we reported that Xiaomi is targeting to close a USD$1.5 Billion funding round. A big share of this funding will go into buying and developing their own video content for Xiaomi TV.

Elephone is being a trendsetter these days with two very interesting news at the same time. First their new Elephone P5000 will be one of the very first phone with Crowdsourced specs. Secondly the Elephone P5000 will boast a huge 5350mAh battery – WHOA.

More and more customers are realising these days, that battery life is a very important feature on every smartphone. No wonder that large battery smartphones are becoming a own niche, with chinese manufacturers seeing this trend early.

According to the Elephone Blog the Elephone P5000 will have a battery very close to 6000mAh, to be exact 5650mAh. This will be enough capacity to power the Elephone gadget for several days AND to act as PowerBank at the same time.

For the other specs of the P5000 Elephone has an official forum post where you can vote what hardware you want to see on the phone. If Elephone really follows up on the votes, this would make the P5000 the really first truly crowdsourced specs phone.

Elephone P5000 Crowdsourced Specs

While Elephone is still a pretty unknown brand, this is a very interesting way they choose to go. If Elephone puts their plans into high quality reality and a fair price with the P5000, this could be a very hot phone. What specs do you want to see on the Elephone P5000? 

Singles Day, 11.11 or just call it the biggest shopping event worldwide is just halfway over and there are already new records set, not the least by Xiaomi.

Alibaba, China’s largest E-commerce company sold more then 2$ Billion worth in revenue in just the first two hours and already achieved last years revenue, with more then half a day to go. More interesting for smartphone fans though, Xiaomi has set their own record today.

Xiaomi has sold phones for more then 163 Million USD just by middle of the day. Hugo Barra gave more information on those sales numbers on his Social Media Account. Just 5 Minutes after opening of the sales, Xiaomi made 16 Million USD in Sales. Then they went on to top their last year’s 11.11 record, 90 MIllion USD, within just 4 hours of the shopping event.

Update: Official Weibo Account says more then 853.000 units and 1.2 Billion Yuan in Sales till now.

Xiaomi has sold 720.000 Units by midday. Out of those numbers 250.000 units were Xiaomi Mi4 for $300, 460.000 units of the Redmi series. Also Xiaomi sold more then 25k units of their MI Tvs.

In total Xiaomi’s revenue numbers are still lower then Alibaba’s of course, but still very impressive. As you might know Xiaomi is just 4 years old and also they sold “just” 19 million smartphones in total of 2013. Today they will sell more then 1 Million Smartphones in just one day. That is more then ALL OnePlus One phones sold together. OnePlus sold 500.000 units in total so far ever. 

The big Singles Day Event couldnt come at any better time for Xiaomi. Xiaomi has gained a lot of media attention recently with gaining 3rd place worldwide as a smartphone producer. Today’s astonishing sales numbers will of course help closing this 1.5 Billion Sales Round and further expanding their operations aggressively.

At the moment Xiaomi is selling in 7 countries worldwide, including the huge market India. Further plans include Central and Latin America and further parts of SEA like Vietnam.

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Thanks to their low price-high spec strategy and excellent Marketing Xiaomi has achieved to become the third largest smartphone producer worldwide in a breeze. Now all this is paying off big time: Xiaomi is raising an astonishing $1.5 Billion round in capital. That is the biggest deal in private financing since Facebook in 2011!

The negotiations for the deal are not finalized yet, but according to CNBC reports investors include the Russian Internet company DST. DST other famous investments include Facebook, Airbnb and Alibaba and it seems like they investing in Xiaomi at a valuation of more then 40 Billion USD.

When the deal goes through, Xiaomi which is barely 4 years old, would be more valuable then Lenovo and Sony combined. At this valuation Xiaomi would be even worth double as much as Uber. Xiaomi staying traditional though, is taking most of the financing from Asia based investors and not Sillicon Valley based VC Firms.

A large amount of that investment, 1 Billion USD, will go into expanding Xiaomi’s own TV Content. Xiaomi has hired Chen Tong, the former chief editor of Sina.com, for a complete revamp of their Internet Video Business model according to Xinhua news.

After this huge round of investment, many believe that the next step for Xiaomi will be an IPO: Xiaomi, one of the large Chinese technology companies, valued at $50 billion would tap the IPO market next year,” wrote South China Morning Post in Hong Kong for example. Already the company is seen by many investors as the next chinese AliBaba. AliBaba just completed a very successful 25 Billion USD IPO in the US.

According to IDT Xiaomi’s smartphone sales, with 17.3 million smartphones sold and doubling profits last quarter makes Xiaomi the Number 3 worldwide. When the deal goes through, this 1.5 Billion USD investment, would be the largest investment raised by any VC backed Chinese Company (outside IPO)

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It seems like 2K Quad HD is not enough for Samsung. They have been hinting at the development of a 4K AMOLED Screen for some time now, but there is new information that the first phone to boast the 4K Screen will be the Galaxy Note 5.

Sources from PhoneArena the 4K AMOLED screen will be 6″ in diagonal and come with an astonishing pixel denisty of 743ppi. We cannot be 100% sure that this is true, but it might be a very logical step for the Galaxy Note Series. The Galaxy Note Series have been growing larger, so a 6inch 4K screen might very well be the next step for the Samsung Note 5.

In a recent interview the Head of LG Screens also suggested that 600 and 700ppi screens are in reach, so its no surprise that Samsung is targeting that goal. Sharp as well was rumoured to be working on a 4K display with a 5.5 – 6 inch size, so 2015 is going to be very interesting in terms of displays.

More information suggests that the Galaxy S6 will come with an Eight Core Exynos 7420 Chipset. We might see this powerful processor as well on the Galaxy Note 5. A second variant of the Note 5 will probably sport the Snapdragon 810.

Normally Samsung launches their Galaxy Note Flagships in fall of the year on the IFA in Berlin in Germany. There is a lot of time till September next year, so the Galaxy S6 is the next Samsung flagship we will be looking forward too.

Many of you have waited for the Xiaomi MI4 4G LTE that will work on LTE networks outside of china. Finally Xiaomi MI4 FDD-LTE the will come to you since it has been spotted on TENAA (Chinas certification service for telecommunications equipment) and is getting ready to go on Sale.

When the Xiaomi Mi4 was announced first, Xiaomi said that there are TD-LTE (Mainland China) and international Xiaomi FDD-LTE versions available, with the international LTE versions launching later.
Now finally the long awaited xiaomi mi4 fdd-lte that will work with international LTE has the number 2,014,719 in the TENAA database, this number is different from the current 3G and TD-LTE Version of the MI4.

Xiaomi MI4 Specs Sheet

The new FDD-LTE Model is made to work with China Unicom networks but will work on most international 4G networks as well. In fact on the TENAA specs we can see that the new Xiaomi Mi4 will work with GSM, TD-LTE, GSM and WCDMA too.

The Xiaomi MI4 will still sport the awesome specs of Snapdragon 801 at 2.5 Ghz, 3GB of RAM. As well as 5.0 inch Full HD display, 16GB ROM and 13MP Camera. The Pricing is expected to be at 1999 yuan, same with the current version of the MI4.

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Vivo might not be as sophisticated as Xiaomi in terms of marketing, but they surely can produce great phones. Both in terms of design and specs Vivo Phones dont need to hide, so lets have a look at the leaked specs of the new Vivo XPlay Phone.

Earlier this week we already heard news from Vivo, because they decided to win back the title for thinnest smartphone worldwide from Oppo. Vivo will launch a 4.75mm thin Vivo X5 Max and its announced on Teenaa already.

Now we get News and leaked specs of a real Vivo Flagship on Weibo for the next generation of Vivo Xplay Phones.

The Xplay generation has been Vivo’s Flagship Series traditionally. The Vivo Xplay 3S, the current Flagship, was the first smartphone with 6inch 2K QHD Display and even the first chinese phone with 3GB RAM, Snapdragon 801 and a fingerprint scanner on the back. Combine this with a f/1.8 13-megapixel camera and its hard to imagine how Vivo can improve on those awesome specs!

And yet the leaked specs suggest that Vivo might achieve to actually top themselves. The Specs show that the new Vivo Phone will come with Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon 805 at 2.7Ghz and a 6-inch 2560 x 1440 resolution display. The new Vivo phone will also have 13 Megapixel f1.8 main camera with optical image stabilization and dual-tone LED flash. Also it will have a 8 Megapixel f2.4 88 degree Selfie Camera. Further Hardware contains 32GB ROm extendable to 128GB and a 3500 mAH battery.

The new Vivo phone sport Funtouch 2.0 based on Android KitKat 4.4 and is super sleek for 6 inch at only 158.2 x 81.23 x 5.68!

The last Xplay was launched at the same time year, so we really look forward to this Vivo Specs Monster!

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A few days ago we broke news that Xiaomi were planning a GoPro style action camera and were working alongside a company in Shanghai to see it happen. Today more fuel for the rumour fire around the Xiaomi MI Camera arrives.

A few days ago we broke news that Xiaomi were planning a GoPro style action camera and were working alongside a company in Shanghai to see it happen. Today more fuel for the rumour fire around the Xiaomi MI Camera arrives.

UPDATE: The source has updated the price now to 999 Yuan, which translates to 163USD. That is not as super low as the first news, but still much more affordable then the GO PRO Camera.

We just got the News that Xiaomi might be planning a Xiaomi Mi Pro Action Camera and were cooperating with a company in Shanghai to get it done. Today we got more news for the purported Xiaomi Action Camera that will be produced with Ant Technologys.

In Xiaomi’s high spec-low cost tradition the Xiaomi Mi Pro Camera could come with a price as low as 99YUAN when it launches in online stores end of they year. That is just around 17USD and really only a very small part of what you pay for a GO Pro Hero or similiar Action Camera these days.

The new rumours actually include some more specs about the Mi Camera as well. We believe the Mi Pro Camera will come with 128 degrees wide angle lense, which is a given for Action Cameras to get as much of your surroundings as possible. Further the Xiaomi camera will be able to take 30fps 4K videos or 1080p videos at 120fps. The Videos will be stores on SD Cards and the maximum supported SD card is a huge 128GB!

If the Xiaomi Mi Pro Camera really comes out end of the year already I will be one of the first to buy one for Christmas!

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It seems like Huawei has a new Smartphone in the planning, the Huawei Honor 6X phone. Judging by the specs we see on Teenaa the new Honor 6X is definitely an upgrade to the very popular Honor 6, and a real FLAGSHIP phone!

The new Huawei phone just appeared on China’s verion of the SIRIM Database, TEENAA. The Honor 6 will sport a 5.5 inch FULL HD display in a very compact body at 150.4 x 75.68 x 7.5mm.

Also the huawei device will sport an 1.8 Ghz Octa Core Processor, very possible of Huawei’s very powerful Kirin Series. Also the Honor 6X will have 3 GB of RAM and 32GB internal memory, upgradeable with Micro-Sim.

These specs look already very good. Especially the current Honor 6 Kirin 920 OctaCore CPU is extremely powerful, in combination with 3GB of RAM the honor 6x is promising very good performance.

The real promising surprise on the Honor 6X is a Dual Camera with Dual LED Flash though. You can see the dual camera’s in the picture above. It is not yet clear how Huawei will integrate the Dual Cam, but it has been suggested that they could work similiar to HTC’s Duo Camera with extra depth-of-field effect for your pictures. To know which effect or advantages the Dual Camera on the new Huawei phone will bring exactly, we need to be wait though to the official launch though.

The new Huawei Honor 6 is expected to launch End Of the year, so very soon we will know what’s this new powerful Huawei phone with Dual Camera is all about and if it can compete with Xiaomi and Meizu.

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These days Xiaomi surely stays in the news and now it seems like Xiaomi is planning their next big thing. At the moment the Action Camera market is dominated by a few high priced Brands like the GoPro4 and rumours suggest Xiaomi wants to have a share of that cake.

GoPro is clearly the most famous and biggest Brand for Action Cameras. The Go Pro Hero Cameras are designed for different sport activities like climbing, mountain biking, surfing or even skydiving. Undisputable the Go Pro Cameras are amazing with great video quality and lightweight design – if you can afford it. The GoPro Action Models are not exactly cheap.

That is exactly why Xiaomi might be planning to move into that market segment. Rumors on chinese new websites suggest that Xiaomi could be creating their own portable Action Sports Camera for the huge market in China. It seems like they are cooperating with the Company Ant Technology in China and could even launch a first product before end of the year.

If these news is true and Xiaomi will produce a low-price Action Camera, we will definitely be one of the first customers here at Oizoioi!

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Meizu, at the moment the biggest rival of Xiaomi In China, has announced the November 19th for the release of their newest flagship, the Meizu MX4 Pro. They spread the news via their Social Media Networks and are using the Slogan ” Think Higher” for their newest launch in Vice Pavilion of the Beijing National Stadium on November 19th at 14:30, local time. See our Hands on Pictures from the Launch !

Meizu and their current flagship the Meizu MX4 definitely achieved to win the hears of many customers. With high specs, a very good camera and nice design at a reasonable price of only 1799 yuan, the Meizu MX4 sold like hot cakes.

This is how Meizu MX4 Pro launch invite looks like:

Now meizu has started sending out official invites for their Meizu MX4 Pro Launch Event on 19th November. The Meizu MX4 Pro will come with Samsung Exynos 5430 Eight Core CPU, with 3GB of RAM and a 5.5″ 2k QHD display. The camera will still be Sony’s 20.7MP sensor with 2160p video. Additionally there will be a fingerprint scanner on its home button, just like some Samsung Devices.

Live Pictures of the Meizu MX4 Pro 

Early Benchmarks confirm those specs of the Meizu MX4 Pro:

What do you think of the Meizu MX4 Pro Launch? Several sources say the price will be around 2499 Yuan(1358RM) in China, the international price is not yet confirmed. We definitely think the design and specs are impressive and could mean further points for Meizu in the “battle” against Xiaomi in China.

We already announced the news that the Xiaomi MI4 will get a Low-Cost Version with Price Cut and now its official. On November 11.11, the big Sales Day, Xiaomi will release a lower spec version of the Xiaomi Mi4, the Xiaomi Mi4 Youth. The Specs will mostly be the same, with the only change of 2GB RAM instead of 3GB. Xiaomi CEO, Lei Jun, has officially confirmed the Xiaomi Mi4 Youth Version on his Weibo Account.

Lei Jun announced that the Special Low Cost Version of the Xiaomi Mi4 will sell for RMB1799(978RM) and launch on 11.11 in China. It will have 2GB of RAM, 4G support and still sport the powerful Snapdragon 801. Further Lei Jun said that Xiaomi achieved to produce 1.2-1.5 Million Xiaomi MI4 phones this month and plan to produce more then 2Million units of the popular Mi4 in December.

The Xiaomi MI4 Youth with its price level of 1799 Yuan is targeted directly on the Meizu MX4 for 1799 Yuan. The Meizu MX4 has sold so well , that Meizu actually got stock problems as well because of the huge demand.

The Xiaomi Mi4 Youth Version will start selling on Tmall on 11.11 but we might see it on international Resellers already before Christmas Season.

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