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Sunday, May 1, 2016

If you want HTC's highest-specced, big-screened QHD smartphone, the One E9+ is very likely the one you're looking for. Only the lack of the signature all-metal unibody saves the company's reigning flagship a good deal of embarrassment.

It's quite hard to actually decide which precise model sits atop HTC's 2015 One lineup, and there may well be more than one correct answer. You have the M9, obviously, which has Qualcomm's latest chipset inside and the metal design to appeal to your sense of style, but sticks with a FullHD 5-inch screen.

Midway up the size ladder, you'll find the 5.2-inch QHD M9+, which retains the metal unibody and adds a second camera on the back, as well as a fingerprint sensor, but opts for an arguably inferior Mediatek chipset. There's an almost identical ME version, which comes with a single rear camera, and comes with a polycarbonate body.

All that builds up to the HTC One E9+, which has finally landed in our hands. It has the largest 5.5-inch QHD screen of the bunch (so, not to be confused with the E9, which is apparently a China-only 1080p 5.5-incher), a slightly downclocked version of the same Mediatek chipset and a polycarbonate build.

With the family relations (somewhat) settled, let's move on to the list of key specs.

Key features:

Polycarbonate body, soft matte finish, thin and light for its size
5.5" 1440p capacitive touchscreen with 534pi; Corning Gorilla Glass 4
Mediatek MT6795M (Helio X10) chipset with a 2GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU, PowerVR G6200 GPU, 3GB of RAM
Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with HTC Sense 7 UI
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4 & 5 GHz); DLNA, WiFi direct, hotspot
20MP AF camera with a 1/2.3" BSI sensor; 27.8mm f/2.2 lens; single-LED flash; 2160p@30fps video capture, 720p@120fps slow motion
4MP fixed-focus UltraPixel front-facing camera with a BSI sensor; 26.2mm f/2.0 lens; HDR; 1080p video recording
32GB of built-in memory; microSD card slot; 100GB of free Google Drive storage for 2 years
Dual nanoSIM slots, LTE Cat.4, GPS/GLONASS/Beidou, NFC, Bluetooth 4.1, FM radio; microUSB 2.0 port, MHL, USB host
Active noise cancellation with a dedicated microphone
Front-facing stereo speakers with BoomSound and Dolby Audio
2,800mAh battery

Main disadvantages

Tall for a 5.5-inch phone, massive top and bottom bezels
Non-removable battery
Chipset looks more suited to a mid-ranger

You can see why one might get confused. The HTC One E9+ has all the makings of a modern day high-end device, albeit in a rather understated package. And it's not like HTC hasn't done it before, last generation's E8 was just that - a flagship in disguise. Only, now HTC is giving you even more options and it's not a simple price-vs-looks dilemma.

HTC One E9+ press images

It is, however, the first time we get to see the Mediatek MT6795 in action (also going by the PR-friendly Helio X10). It's an interesting decision by HTC part to equip all its QHD smartphones so far with the Mediatek top-of-the-line solution and reserve the Snapdragon 810 for the FullHD One M9.

We've yet to see what that means in terms of performance, but not before we've unpacked the handset and got a real feel for it in-hand.

Oppo R7 review

hetkar 10:40 AM

Introduction

Once the world's slimmest smartphone, the Oppo R5 has found a worthy heir in the face of the new R7. With the crown already forfeited, the company chose to walk out of that fight and made the R7 a touch thicker, but it still has every bit of the upmarket feel of the R5.

Although it may have lost the wow factor of the razor-thin R5, the R7 is an equally fine-looking smartphone, if not even more so. The metal back with the etched Oppo logo flows into the surrounding frame forming a unibody construction, and the front glass, gently curved at the edges (what has become known as 2.5D), is a pleasure to touch and behold.

By the way, we don't consider the R7 to be a replacement of the R5, as plenty of their hardware is practically shared. It's simply a more balanced device, its priorities gently guided in the right direction. Frankly, the push for slimness at all cost has never been our thing.

Hope you don't get this wrong, at 6.3mm the Oppo R7 is not exactly what you'd call bulky. The extra thickness has allowed for a welcome increase in battery capacity, a major weakness of the 4.85mm R5.

Rumors prior to launch hinted at a bezelless or edge-to-edge display, but this proved not to be the case. The R7 Plus is somewhat closer to that description, although it still doesn't truly amaze.

Instead the R7 packs a 5-inch AMOLED display, a careful step back from the 5.2 inches of the R5. This was perhaps done to clearly separate the R7 from its bigger brother, the 6-inch R7 Plus. Plus, as we said, battery life is now a priority and a slightly trimmed screen should help there, too.

The 3GB of RAM is another notch on the score sheet, and so is the introduction of a microSD slot - most welcome really given the rather limiting 16GB of built-in storage. It's the increasingly more common type, where the memory card shares a slot with the second SIM card - not the most convenient solution, but a compromise most will be willing to make.

We have Snapdragon 615 in charge, and that keeps the R5 firmly grounded in the midrange, regardless of how much RAM Oppo fits, or how spectacular the body looks. That said, the chipset is a proven performer in its class.

The primary camera remains at 13MP but now uses a Samsung ISOCELL sensor instead of Sony's in the R5. It's now graced with a Schneider-Kreuznach-branded lens, though it's gone a bit dimmer. On the front you get a new 8MP shooter, the highest pixel count in the company's lineup, if you leave the rotating N-series out of it.