Author: chris eilers

New photos of a near bezel-less Xiaomi phone leaked right from the production line in China. Could this already be already the successor of the Xiaomi Mi4, the new Xiaomi Mi5 Flagship?

The Xiaomi Mi4 launched earlier this year and showed a change in strategy for Xiaomi. With previous Flagship Mi Phones Xiaomi would pack in the newest and hottest specs that money could buy and sell them at very low price. The Xiaomi MI4 was more like a soft update to the Xiaomi MI3 with a complete significant Design update.

Some Xiaomi fans were a bit disappointed about the Xiaomi Mi4, although the Mi4 Specs are still definitely at FlagShip Level. Especially the missing LTE for international customers was a big critic point next to a design thats pretty close to Apple.

If you decided to not buy the Xiaomi Mi4 yet, then you might want to look at this Xiaomi Mi5 version.

These leaked images are right from the fabric in China and if rumours are true this is the next Xiaomi Flagship. The front design has not changed that much from the Mi4, but you get much narrower bezels on this phone.

On the second image we can see a slight curve on the display, like we know it from other smartphones like the IUNI U3.

So far it is not confirmed if this is the new Xiaomi MI5 or maybe the new Xiaomi Redmi Flagship that we heard about before!

What do you think about these Xiaomi Mi5 photos?

One feature stands out on every smartphone, and this is the camera quality. Many of you have discussed and argued which smartphone takes the best quality shots at the moment. Today we will show you a comparison of pictures from four different chinese smartphones under 2000 yuan, OnePlus One, Xiaomi Mi4, Huawei Honor 6, and the Meizu MX4.

There is the OnePLus Fans, the Xiaomi Mi4 fans arguing with each other. Now there is Meizu coming into the game with their 20.7MP Shooter and also the Honor 6 Flagship. All phones for the shoot had the latest updated software from 10.11.2014. Its up to you to decide these pictures and compare the best smartphone camera quality.

Scene 1 Order: Order: Canon 650D DSLR camera, MX4, Honor 6, Mi4, OnePlus One

 Scene 1 Close Up Order: Order: Canon 650D DSLR camera, MX4, Honor 6, Mi4, OnePlus One

Scene Two Night Shot Starbucks Order: OnePlus, Honor 6, Xiaomi Mi4, Meizu MX4

Scene Two Night Shot Starbucks Close UP:  OnePlus, Honor 6, Xiaomi Mi4, Meizu MX4

 Scene Three: Order: Order: Canon 650D DSLR camera, MX4, Honor 6, Mi4, OnePlus One

 Scene Four: Order: Order: Canon 650D DSLR camera, MX4, Honor 6, Mi4, OnePlus One

 Scene Four Close UP: Order: Order: Canon 650D DSLR camera, MX4, Honor 6, Mi4, OnePlus One

So which one of those do you think has the best Camera Quality ? Meizu MX4, Xiaomi Mi4, Honor 6 or the OnePLus One? The Xiaomi Mi4 and One Plus sell both around RM1050-RM1100 at the moment. The Meizu MX4 is still a bit more expensive in Malaysia while the Honor 6 the cheapest is at RM977.

The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 6″ phablet is finally coming to Malaysia on 14th November. The Huawei was first announced at the IFA 2014 in Berlin and comes with 6 inch Full HD screen, Huawei’s OctaCore Kirin CPU, 3GB RAM and huge 4100 mAH battery. Combine this with a sleek metal design at only 7.9mm and you have a potential besteller with the Huawei Mate 7 for Malaysia. 

Read our Huawei Ascend Mate 7 Hands on Review 

We here at Oizoioi had already the chance to test the Huawei Mate 7 phablet and a lot of you have been asking when it will finally release in Malaysia. According to Gary Xu, the Country Director for Huawei Malaysia the Mate 7 Launch confirms Huawei’s dedication to the market: 

“The arrival of the Mate 7 a little after a month of its international launch is yet another indication of our commitment to Malaysia. As work and play both converge on to handheld devices, Mate 7 is well-timed as an excellent companion on many fronts, be it a large screen size, fingerprint security, a powerful processor with eight cores and excellent battery life to keep the experience going from work to play and beyond.”

The Huawei Mate 7 phablet sports Huawei’s very own Octa-Core Kirin 925 CPU, which is very powerful indeed. The Kirin 925 comes with four  BIG A16 cores at 1.8 GHZ and four little A7 cores at 1.3GHZ. The cores will work alternatively to optimize for performance and power management, which can save up to 50% of battery life. Additionally you get either 2GB or 3GB of RAM on the Ascend Mate 7.

Other specs on this 6 inch phablet include a 13 MP Sony Camera with BSI Sensor and f2.0 aperture, 5MP Front Camera, 4100mAH battery and a Fingerprint scanner that works up with up to 5 different User Fingerprints.

The Huawei Ascend Mate will start selling on 14th November and come in two different official Pricing variants:

• Standard Version: 2GB RAM and 16GB for RM1799
• Extreme Edition: 3GB RAM and 32GB for Rm1999

Otherwise we found the Standard version already for RM1599 in Malaysia if you dont want to wait.

Antutu – the most popular and well known benchmark company has released their TOP 10 List for Q32014. Right on top of the list this year is not Apple, not Samsung and not even Xiaomi. The Number 1 Spot on Antutu’s Benchmark list is taken by Meizu’s MX4 Flagship phone – Whoa!

Now for those of you followed Meizu, the Meizu MX4 Antutu score might not be a total surprise, after all we have seen the Meizu MX4 taking the top score on Antutu two times before. Those Meizu MX4 Antutu top scores were before the launch of the Top Flagships Galaxy Note 4 and Sony Xperia Z3 though. We were not sure if the Meizu MX4 with Mediatek can defent the top position against the mighty Galaxy Note 4 – but it seems the MX4 can hold the top position, even if only by 170 points against the Note 4.

Read our initial Meizu MX4 Hands On 

The Antutu Top 10 was created with data from 160 countries. With models like the Note 4 with different cpu’s for different regions, only the better performant CPU was taken into account. In the end the Meizu MX4 has the Antutu Top Position at 48,792 points, tightly followed by Galaxy Note 4 at 48,622 points and Galaxy Alpha with 48,385 points on Antutu.

IF we have a look at the Top 10, its mostly dominated by Smartphones with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Chipset. It seems that things are slowly changing though. If we look at the top three, we see three different SOC’s. The Top 10 Winner Meizu MX4 with Mediatek’s MTK6595, the Galaxy Note 4 with Samsung’s own OctaCore Exynos 7 and the Snapdragon 801 in Galaxy Alpha ( that means that Samsung’s Exynos 7 OctaCore CPU performed better then the Snapdragon 805 version of the Note 4).

This Top 10 shows us definitely that Qualcomm is not anymore the only Top CPU player in the game. It will be more then interesting to see how this develops. Will Qualcomm be able to regain their top position with the upcoming 64bit Octa-Core 810? What will Xiaomi’s do with the Leadcore SOC platform?

Anyways Meizu has achieved to gain all of our attention. The Meizu MX4 has just launched in September and is already very high in demand. The MX4 sports a 5.4″ inch screen with Full HD resolution 1152×1920 and 418ppi. Next to the mentioned Octa-Core Mediatek processor, it comes with 2GB RAM, 16 or 32GB of RAM and a impressive 20.7MP Sony CMOS IMX 220 Main Camera. The battery is at 3100mAH provides good enough battery life in most tests.

In China the Meizu MX4 sells at 1799 yuan, slightly cheaper then the competition of Xiaomi MI4 and OnePlus One at 1999 yuan. Internationally it is a bit harder to get though and easiest to buy via resellers like AliExpress at the moment.

Recently Xiaomi invested in the CPU and Chipset Maker from China Leadcore. Now details of a 65USD Xiaomi 4G LTE Phone with Leadcore chip surface!

If you compare Leadcore SOC and CPU to the big guns in the business like Mediatek and Qualcomm, there not quite at the same level yet. That does not mean that the Underdog cant win the race, especially after a huge investment of the now third biggest smartphone brand worldwide – Xiaomi!

Leadcore has a some processors on the market, one of them the quite powerful Leadcore LC1660, which is believed to be integrated in the new generation of Xiaomi Low Cost phones.

The Leadcore LC1860 on the new xiaomi 4g lte is built on a 28nm Cortex A7 structure, clocked at 2.0 Ghz and sports a Mali T628 GPU. The Leadcore chip can support up to 2K QHD Displays, 1080p Full HD videos at 60fps and has 4G LTE, 3G and GSM support integrated.

Even Xiaomi is famous for high specs at very low prices, it is not likely that the full potential of the Leadcore LC1860 will be seen in the new 65 USD Xiaomi 4g lte. It even seems that the Leadcore chip might be a bit too high powered for a phone at this price level, which was rumoured so far to come with 720p display and 1GB of RAM.

In any case a 65USD Xiaomi Phone with 4G and the newest Leadcore chip is definitely a good deal and it might open up the way for for more low-cost Xiaomi Leadcore Devices in the future.

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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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