Realme has launched another entry-level smartphone Realme C11 on June 30. The new phone has a unique square-shaped camera, is powered by Helio G35 chipset, and has a beefy 5000mAh battery. The phone has been introduced in Malaysia as of now.
Realme unveiled its C11 moments after the launch of Redmi 9A and Redmi 9C. The two phones are Xiaomi’s next budget devices after Redmi 9.
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Realme C11 Features
The Realme C11 has a 6.5-inch HD+ display with ‘Mini-drop notch’ and a resolution of 1600×720 pixels and an 88.7% screen-to-body ratio. The processor gets octa-core MediaTek Helio G35 chipset clocked at 2.3GHz taped with HyperEngine technology and the IMG PowerVR GE8320 GPU. The C11 is the first Realme device to get Helio G35 gaming chipset. The handset has 2GB RAM and 32GB internal storage and an external MicroSD card slot.
The dual rear camera of Realme C11 includes a 13MP primary sensor and a 2MP portrait camera. The selfie camera gets a 5MP sensor. The camera support 1080P/30fps and 720P/30fps video recording.
Under the hood, Realme C11 packs a 5000mAh battery. The Chinese manufacturer claims to offer 40 days long standby on a single charge. Realme has provided with triple card slot for two SIM and a MicroSD. The C11 runs on Realme UI based on Android 10 operating system. The phone lacks the fingerprint scanner but is enabled with a Face Unlock system.
Realme C11 Price and Availability
The Realme C11 will go on sale from July 6 in Malaysia at a price of RM 429 (approx Rs 7,560). The mobile phone comes with a geometric art design in Mint Green and Pepper Grey colors. There is no word on India arrival as of now.
ALSO READ:Oppo Enco W11 TWS launched in India at ₹2,499
Realme C11 Specs
Model
Realme C11
Display
6.5-inch Mini-drop notch display, 1600×720 HD+ resolution, 88.7% screen-to-body ratio
Processor
MediaTek Helio G35
RAM
2GB
Storage
32GB, Dedicated card slot (256GB)
Software
Realme UI based on Android 10
Rear camera
13MP (f/2.2) + 2MP (f/2.4)
Front camera
5MP (f/2.4)
Sensors
Face Unlock, Magnetic induction sensor, Light sensor, Proximity sensor, Accelerometer sensor
Mac users are now exposed to a new “EvilQuest” ransomware that encrypts files and causes multiple issues to the operating system. Malwarebytes has analyzed the ransomware today, which is being distributed through macOS pirate apps.
The malicious code was first found in a pirate copy of the Little Snitch app available on a Russian forum with torrent links. The downloaded app comes with a PKG installer file, unlike its original version.
By examining this PKG file, Malwarebytes discovered that the app comes with a “postinstall script,” which is typically used to clean up the installation after the process is completed. In this case, however, the script implements a malware to the macOS.
The script file is copied to a folder related to the Little Snitch app under the name CrashReporter, so the user won’t notice it running in the Activity Monitor since macOS has an internal app with a similar name. The set location is: /Library/LittleSnitchd/CrashReporter.
Malwarebytes notes that it takes some time before the ransomware starts working after it’s installed, so the user won’t associate it with the latest app installed. Once the malicious code is activated, it modifies system and user files with unknown encryption.
Part of the encryption causes the Finder not to work properly and the system crashes constantly. Even the system’s Keychain gets corrupted, so it’s impossible to access passwords and certificates saved on the Mac. A message on the screen says the user must pay $50 to recover its files, otherwise everything will be deleted after three days.
There’s still no way to get rid of malware after it has encrypted the files, so users should keep an updated backup of everything.
The best way of avoiding the consequences of ransomware is to maintain a good set of backups. Keep at least two backup copies of all important data, and at least one should not be kept attached to your Mac at all times. (Ransomware may try to encrypt or damage backups on connected drives.)
Although the ransomware is only included with pirated apps for now, Apple must fix this security flaw as quickly as possible since this malicious code can be included in more apps.
You can read more technical details about EvilQuest on Malwarebytes’ website.
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When in 2010, former VC Michael Kim set out to raise a fund that he would invest in a spate of micro VC managers, the investors to which he turned didn’t get it. Why pay Kim and his firm, Cendana Capital, a management fee on top of the management fees that the VC managers themselves charge?
Fast forward to today, and Kim has apparently proven to his backers that he’s worth the extra cost. Three years after raising $260 million across a handful of vehicles whose capital he plugged into up-and-coming venture firms, Kim is now revealing a fresh $278 million in capital commitments, including $218 million for Cendana’s fourth flagship fund, and $60 million that it will be managing expressly for the University of Texas endowment.
We talked with Kim last week about how he plans to invest the money, which differs slightly from how he has invested in the past.
Rather than stick solely with U.S.-based seed-stage managers who are raising vehicles of $100 million or less, he will split Cendana into three focus areas. One of these will remain seed-stage managers. A smaller area of focus — but one of growing importance, he said — is pre-seed managers who are managing $50 million or less and mostly funding ideas (and getting roughly 15% of each startup in exchange for the risk).
A third area of growing interest is in international managers in cities where seed-stage startups can now reliably find follow-on financial support. In fact, Kim says Cendana has already backed small venture firms in Australia (Blackbird Ventures), China (Cherubic Ventures, which is a cross-border investor that is also focused on the U.S.), Israel (Entree Capital), and India (Saama Capital), among other spots.
Altogether, Cendana is now managing around $1.2 billion. For its services, it charges its backers a 1% management fee and 10% of its profits atop the 2.5% management fee and 20% “carried interest” that his fund managers collect.
“To be extremely clear about it and transparent,” said Kim, “that’s a stacked fee that’s on top of what our [VC] fund managers charge. So Cendana LPs are paying 3.5% and 30%.” An observer “might think that seems pretty egregious,” he continued. “But a number of our LPs are either not staffed to go address this market or are too large to actually write smaller checks to these seed funds. And we provide a pretty interesting value proposition to them.”
That’s particularly true, Kim argues, when contrasting Cendana with other, bigger fund managers.
“A lot of these well-known fund of funds are asset gatherers,” he says. “They’re not charging carried interest. They’re in it for the management fee. They have shiny offices around the world. They have hundreds of people working at them. They’re raising billion-dollar-plus kind of funds. And they’re putting 30 to 50 names into each one, so in a way they become index funds.” The problem, says Kim: “I don’t think venture is really an asset class. Unlike an ETF that’s focused on the S&P 500, venture capital is where a handful of fund managers capture most of the alpha. Our differentiation is that we’re creating very concentrated portfolios.”
How concentrated? Cendana typically holds anchor positions in up to 12 funds, plus makes $1 million bets on another handful of more nascent managers that it will fund further if they prove out their theses.
Some of the managers that Cendana has backed have outgrown the outfit from an assets standpoint. Cendana caps its investments in funds that are $100 million or less in size. Over time, however, it has backed 22 seed-stage managers, including 11.2 Capital, Accelerator Ventures, Angular Ventures, Bowery Capital, Collaborative Fund, Forerunner Ventures, Founder Collective, Freestyle Capital, IA Ventures, L2 Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, MHS Capital, Montage Ventures, Moxxie Ventures, Neo, NextView Ventures, Silicon Valley Data Capital, Spider Capital, Susa Ventures, Uncork VC (when it was still SoftTech VC), Wave Capital and XYZ Ventures.
As for its pre-seed fund managers, Cendana has been the anchor investor in roughly 10 outfits, including Better Tomorrow Ventures, Bolt VC, Engineering Capital, K9 Ventures, Mucker Capital, Notation Capital, PivotNorth Capital, Rhapsody Venture Partners, Root Ventures, and Wonder Ventures.
For those curious about its returns, Kim says that Cendana’s very first fund, a $28.5 million vehicle, is “marked at north of 3x” and “that’s net of everything.”
He’s optimistic that the firm’s numbers will look even better over time.
According to Kim, Cendana currently has 38 so-called unicorns in its broader portfolio. It separately hold stakes in 160 companies that are valued at more than $100 million.
Say goodbye to June with amazing deals on the 10.2-inch iPad and more
Deals. It’s the last day of June but you can bet it’s not our last day of deals. Let’s start off with the 10.2-inch iPad which is $50 off, leaving the entry level variant for $279 shipped. If you want extra storage, the 128GB variant is also $50 off, leaving it at $379. The Razer Blade 15 is also $300 off, leaving the Intel Core i7, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD variant for $1700 shipped. The Galaxy Note 10 Lite is also $100 off, leaving it at $450 at B&H. We have more deals on Chromebooks, Galaxy Watches, Beats headphones and more in the links in the description.
Qualcomm announces Snapdragon Wear 4100 Platforms for wearables
Qualcomm just announced their new Snapdragon War 4100 and 4100+ platforms for the future of smartwatches. It’s built on a hybrid 12nm architecture, down from the 28nm from last year. This new architecture includes a higher performance SoC with improved CPU, GPU, Memory, Cellular Modem and camera sub systems. Basically the difference between the two is that the 4100+ is a big processor with the same small co-processor we saw on the 3100, while the 4100 is just a big processor. Some of the new features promised include Super-Fast Performance and Connectivity, a dedicated LTE mode, a Smarter Always On Display with far more colors. We have all of the specifics in the links in the description.
Microsoft might unveil the cheaper Xbox Series S console in August
It’s no secret that the PS5 made a bunch of headlines this month after they revealed the design but, we didn’t get a price tag and we’re assuming it’s going to be kinda hefty. Now, we’ve known that Microsoft will most likely have the upper hand when it comes to actual performance of the Series X but we’re also assuming that price tag will be heft as well. Apparently Microsoft is working on a more affordable console which is codenamed “Lockhart” and will reportedly debut as the Xbox Series “S”. The codename came from some leaked devkit documents but now a new report claims that this more affordable console will be announced in August. According to the leaks, this console will aim at 1080p and 1440p gaming instead of the 4K we’ll be getting from the Series X. It will bring the same CPU as the Series X but it will pack less usable RAM and a less powerful GPU. We’ll keep you posted.
Google acquires North, the maker of Focals smart glasses
Do you remember Google Glass? Well that didn’t turn out the way Google intended it to and now we’ve been getting a lot of rumors of Apple’s AR Glasses so Google decided to make a move. Mountain View just acquired North, the company behind the Focals 1.0 Smart Glasses. Neither of the two companies have disclosed the financial transaction but Rick Osterloh said in a blog post that North will be merged with Google’s team in Canada. The problem with this is that we won’t be getting the Focals 2.0 and this project is aimed at the long run so we’re not exactly sure about when we’ll get to see some hardware. Let’s just hope it’s Focals handling what’s coming up next and not Google. I mean.. Focals has succeeded, Google hasn’t.
OnePlus’ upcoming budget phone will officially debut as OnePlus Nord
It’s finally June 30 so OnePlus just launched the first episode of their documentary series and it actually reveals a lot of information. First off, the phone will be dubbed as the OnePlus Nord, the company even changed the Instagram account name to “OnePlus.Nord”. On this first episode, Pete Lau announced that this will be the company’s first product under the $500 mark in recent years. He also mentioned that it will be sold in India and Europe and only selected US consumers will be able to get it through a highly limited beta program after the release. We’re not sure if this is an early design but in one of the scenes we see a phone with a flat punch hole display and with dual selfie cameras, pretty much like the leaks. Pre-orders will also be available tomorrow, even if we haven’t really seen the phone. And no, stop looking at me funny, I don’t have the phone yet..
iPhone 12 will allegedly record 4K videos at 240fps
Don’t expect to find BOE OLED panels in 5G iPhones soon
And finally for the hottest news today, let’s talk iPhone 12. We’ve got two separate leaks, one that’s expected, the other that still has me speechless, and I’m not talking about the lack of a charger, we discussed that yesterday. Let’s start with a follow-up with Apple and BOE displays, or should I say, the lack of a partnership. According to a new DigiTimes report, BOE failed to secure Apple’s validation for these displays. This doesn’t mean that they won’t supply displays at all, it just means that we might get BOE displays on some iPhones until Q4, after the phone is launched. Meanwhile, Samsung and LG will be handling all of the displays until Apple and BOE can iron out their issues. But alright, let me ask you this: Name one consumer grade camera that can film 4K at 240fps. Heck, name one that can film 4K at 120fps. Thing is, we can barely name a handful that can do 4K at 60fps even today. Well on an interesting note, earlier this weekend, EverythingApplePro posted a new video with leaks and predictions for the iPhone 12 line, one of them being an option to record 4K video at 240FPS, and today, according to a tipster on Twitter, there is evidence on the iOS 14 Beta filesystem that mentions this feature, allowing for 4K video at 240FPS native video. Like this is nuts. I still consider any iPhone after the XS to be a great B camera, or good enough for anyone to start a YouTube channel. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/pocketnowsub http://pocketnow.com Follow us: http://flipboard.com/@Pocketnow http://facebook.com/pocketnow http://twitter.com/pocketnow http://google.com/+pocketnow Source
Enlarge / An odd coincidence: YouTube TV and AT&T rolled out price hikes on the same day.
Chances are, if you pay for a streaming alternative to live cable TV in the United States, your bills are about to go up, thanks to a glut of Tuesday announcements.
First up is YouTube TV, which announced a 30 percent price hike, its largest since rolling out as a product in 2017, effective immediately for all customers. The news came at the end of a lengthy announcement of various new channels, which users cannot opt out of, all coming from the CBS/Viacom family of cable TV networks.
Brand-new customers can expect to pay $65/mo for the service from here on out, while existing customers will see the price jump from $50 to $65 on their July bill. Shortly after mentioning the new price point, YouTube TV VP Christian Oestlien directed users to this landing page to pause or cancel their service if they want to.
If this whole story sounds familiar, you’re not imagining things. In April 2019, Ars Technica’s Jon Brodkin wrote an article titled “YouTube TV adds channels and raises price—you can’t opt out of either change.” That move saw the service raise its monthly price from $40 to $50 (25 percent) while adding nine channels. Today’s $15 jump adds the following eight networks: BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Network, TV Land, and VH1.
Higher prices for the AT&T family
The other family of streaming and TV services to see a price hike today comes from AT&T, whose AT&T TV (a streaming-only product with rates and plans that resemble standard cable contracts) and DirecTV (a standard satellite-TV product) are each seeing their new-customer rates jump.
Without a formal announcement from AT&T on these rate changes, we’ve referred to TV Answer Man’s guide, which suggests a $10 jump in monthly cost for every single tier of service on the aforementioned services. Existing customers’ rates do not yet appear to be affected, however, and we haven’t seen price hikes yet attached to AT&T TV Now (a streaming-only product formerly known as DirectTV Now).
And if that slew of product lines confuses you, remember, it confuses AT&T executives as well. Perhaps that’s why the company went to the trouble of killing a fourth pillar of paid TV service, AT&T WatchNow, which, as of Tuesday, informs users that it is “no longer available for new sign ups or to re-subscribe.” Existing subscribers to compatible AT&T Unlimited plans can still access the service, but its previous availability as an a la carte add-on for $15, delivering live cable TV networks’ programming, has been waved away in favor of HBO Max, a $15/mo video-on-demand service.
These price spikes come less than three months after AT&T disclosed a massive 890,000 drop in premium TV service subscribers.
An Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) tech policy group today urged lawmakers to immediately suspend use of facial recognition by businesses and governments, citing documented ethnic, racial, and gender bias. In a letter (PDF) released today by the U.S. Technology Policy Committee (USTPC), the group acknowledges the tech is expected to improve in the future but is not yet “sufficiently mature” and is therefore a threat to people’s human and legal rights.
“The consequences of such bias, USTPC notes, frequently can and do extend well beyond inconvenience to profound injury, particularly to the lives, livelihoods and fundamental rights of individuals in specific demographic groups, including some of the most vulnerable populations in our society,” the letter reads.
Organizations studying use of the technology, like the Perpetual Lineup Project from Georgetown University, conclude that broad deployment of the tech will negatively impact the lives of Black people in the United States. Privacy and racial justice advocacy groups like ACLU and the Algorithmic Justice League have supported halts to the use of the facial recognition in the past, but with nearly 100,000 members around the world, ACM is one of the biggest computer science organizations in the world. ACM also hosts large AI annual conferences like Siggraph and the International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS).
The letter also prescribes principles for facial recognition regulation surrounding issues like accuracy, transparency, risk management, and accountability. Recommended principles include:
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Disaggregate system error rates based on race, gender, sex, and other appropriate demographics
Facial recognition systems must undergo third-party audits and “robust government oversight”
People must be notified when facial recognition is in use, and appropriate use cases must be defined before deployment
Organizations using facial recognition should be held accountable if or when a facial recognition system causes a person harm
The letter does not call for a permanent ban on facial recognition, but a temporary moratorium until accuracy standards for race and gender performance, as well as laws and regulations, can be put in place. Tests of major facial recognition systems in 2018 and 2019 by the Gender Shades project and then Department of Commerce’s NIST found facial recognition systems exhibited race and gender bias, as well as poor performance on people who do not conform to a single gender identity.
The committee’s statement comes at the end of what’s been a historic month for facial recognition software. Last week, members of Congress from the Senate and House of Representatives introduced legislation that would prohibit federal employees from using facial recognition and cut funding for state and local governments who chose to continue using the technology. Lawmakers on a city, state, and national level considering regulation of facial recognition frequently cite bias as a major motivator to pass legislation against its use. And Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft halted or ended sale of facial recognition for police shortly after the height of Black Lives Matter protests that spread to more than 2,000 cities across the U.S.
Citing race and gender bias and misidentification, the Boston City Council became one of the biggest cities in the U.S. to impose a facial recognition ban. That same day, people learned the story of Detroit resident Robert Williams, who is thought to be the first person falsely arrested and charged with a crime because of faulty facial recognition. Detroit police chief James Craig said Monday that facial recognition software that Detroit uses is inaccurate 96% of the time.
Machine learning-based personalization has gained traction over the years due to volume in the amount of data across sources and the velocity at which consumers and organizations generate new data. Traditional ways of personalization focused on deriving business rules using techniques like segmentation, which often did not address a customer uniquely. Recent progress in specialized hardware (read GPUs and cloud computing) and a burgeoning ML and DL toolkits enable us to develop 1:1 customer personalization which scales.
Recommender systems are beneficial to both service providers and users. They reduce transaction costs of finding and selecting items in an online shopping environment and improves customer experience. Recommendation systems have also proved to improve the decision making process and quality. In an e-commerce setting, for example, recommender systems enhance revenues, for the fact that they are effective means of selling more products. In scientific libraries, recommender systems support users by allowing them to move beyond catalog searches. Therefore, the need to use efficient and accurate recommendation techniques within a system that will provide relevant and dependable recommendations for users cannot be over-emphasized.
At Epsilon we have used machine learning to solve problems of granular product recommendations in a wide range of channels, to drive customer engagements and bottom-line. The usual solutions to predict product recommendations involve creating multiple models for high-level product categories. Such solutions are not scalable, are resource-intensive and don’t make personalized recommendations. In the sections below, we quickly touch upon the methods to build effective recommender systems.
Collaborative Filtering
Collaborative filtering recommends items by identifying other users with similar tastes; it uses their opinion to recommend items to the active user. These recommenders learn from the user-item interactions data from where you can create a N x M sparse matrix that captures all possible user-item interactions. Here N is the number of users and M is the number of items. This data is usually very sparse, meaning very few non-zero elements are there in the matrix. This is also evident from the long-tailed distribution that we can see from the interaction frequency plot for all items.
Figure 1: Long tailed distribution of item purchase frequencies shows some items are very popular while others have very low purchases
The sparse matrix representation of the data helps in real-world use cases since the sparse matrix only needs to save the non-zero elements which are relatively few. Collaborative recommenders are used by Netflix where user ratings could be explicitly obtained from customers or implicitly derived from user behavior.
There are many different algorithms which solve the collaborative recommender problems. Broadly they can be classified as:
Neural Net based – these have the potential to capture even non-linear relations e.g. using Embeddings, Variational Auto-Encoder, Reinforcement Learning, etc.
Content Recommender
These algorithms leverage the metadata available for items and users and try to match the items based on the user’s taste. Item’s metadata are essential attributes that describe an item and user metadata is data that explains the characteristics of the individual users e.g. demographics. Using the past user-item interaction data and these user and item attribute profiles are created for each item and user and similarity matching is then applied to find the top N recommendations.
The distance calculation can be obtained through many different distance metrics but quite often cosine similarity is used. In case the input data is already normalized one can use a simple linear kernel instead of cosine similarity. Another common distance metric is the Euclidean distance but that may not be suitable for recommender if a lot of one hot encoded dummy variables are involved.
Naïve Bayes
This is a simple machine learning algorithm based on Bayes’ theorem of conditional probability. It is naïve because it assumes that all the predictor features are mutually independent. This assumption allows it to make fast predictions and lend it scalability. The assumption of independence between features may not be valid in many real-world cases. It’s commonly used as a baseline method in text classification problem.
In recommender systems, it can be used to predict the likelihood of purchasing a product conditioned upon the likelihood of past purchases. The output scores can be sorted in descending order and top N products can be recommended. Its fast, scalable and performs well in case of categorical predictors.
Sequence Modeling
Sequence modeling is the task of predicting next item/s in the sequence given the earlier items. This term is most often used in context of RNN / LSTM in Natural Language Processing. Concepts similar to text sequence can be applied to other domains as well e.g. stock predictions, likelihood to buy any product, etc.
A simple RNN is illustrated in the figure below. As can be seen the output from the RNN is fed back as an input to it. The same is illustrated in an unrolled form in the figure (right). X0, X1, X2, . . . . Xt are inputs at different time steps and h0, h1, h2, . . . . ht are the hidden states
Figure 2: A simple RNN
There are different configurations which can be used in sequence modeling. These configurations are illustrated in figure below.
One to One – this is when there is no RNN, the input and outputs are of same size e.g. Image Classification
One to Many – g. Image captioning where sequence of words is generated to describe the image
Many to one – e.g. Sentiment classification – given an input text its sentiment is classified as positive or negative
Many to many (1) – e.g. Neural Machine Translation, Text summarization – given a sequence of text as input another sequence of text is generated as output
Many to many (2) – e.g. video frames classification – each video frame is classified
Figure 3: Different configurations in sequence modeling
When the sequences to be modelled are long, simple RNNs severely suffer from vanishing gradient problem. In such cases, it is better to use a modified RNN architecture which is called LSTM. LSTM has special gates – forget and update which helps it learn from even longer sequences.
Figure 4: LSTM structure
In order to predict the likelihood of purchase of a product given the prior sequences we can model it using a many to one architecture. At Epsilon we have successfully built such models for several clients who have seen a significant lift in the purchase rates of different products.
Contrary to sequence modeling, other approaches like collaborative filtering, content filtering, naïve Bayes, etc. cannot capture the time aspect of retail purchases. Looking at the association between past purchases it can help us predict what products the customer might purchase but it can’t be more specific by factoring in the prior purchase sequences. Deep Learning enabled architectures to allow us to include the user and customer metadata as well in a single model. This can help us get more refined models that can better predict the next set of items that the customer is going to purchase.
Recommender systems solve a key problem faced by marketers, that of uniquely addressing a customer with the right product and creative content. This post described how an organization can use its existing transactional data to drive personalization.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 series of smartphones is rapidly incoming, with the big launch scheduled for August, 2020 if rumours are to be believed.
And, of the new range, the top-tier Samsung Galaxy Note 20 phone, slated to be called the “Ultra” (following the Galaxy S20 Ultra nomenclature) is the handset that phone enthusiasts the world over are waiting for.
Tipped to come with an advanced 120Hz screen, rapid Snapdragon 865 Plus processor, and upgraded triple lens camera system, the Note 20 Ultra promises to be one of the standout phones of the year.
And, now, thanks to this Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra video we’ve just got our best look yet at the incoming flagship.
The video here comes courtesy of acclaimed tech designer Concept Creator, who has based the phone’s look on the very latest leaks and rumours from reputable sources.
Here the Note 20 is envisioned with a Snapdragon 865 Plus, 5G, 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage space. The Ultra’s reported next-gen S Pen digital stylus is also shown off, which has been reported to boast a super fast 9ms response time. This new pen should work brilliantly with the phone’s 120Hz screen.
Here at T3 we think this depiction of the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra looks fantastic and, hopefully, Samsung is going to deliver something that look very similar when the phone is unveiled in the South Korean maker’s next Unpacked event.
Sony’s smartphone division has fallen behind the likes of Apple, Samsung and OnePlus in recent years, forcing it to adapt.
The release of the Xperia 1 in 2019 marked a shift in strategy for the Japanese company, introducing a 21:9 aspect ratio for the first time.
Now, it’s bringing this tall, thin chassis to budget phones, starting with the Xperia L4.
Can this standout feature make the phone a true budget contender, or are there too many compromises in other areas? Read our full review to find out.
Design
The first thing I noticed about the L4’s design is the shift to a 21:9 aspect ratio. It’s the most obvious difference over last year’s L3, and the first time Sony has brought this tall, narrow form factor to its budget line.
Its effect on the user experience remains largely the same as 2019’s Xperia 1 and Xperia 5. Despite only sporting a 720p display, many films look stunning displayed in their native format, free from any letterboxing.
However, it’s punctured by a rather unsightly teardrop notch, something that isn’t present on the more expensive Sony phones. That houses a single 8Mp front-facing camera, without support for face unlock.
With a sizeable chin, the phone lacks symmetry to the point that it becomes annoying at times. The 79.5% screen-to-body ratio is by no means a dealbreaker, but even budget phones regularly exceed 85% in this regard.
The unusual aspect ratio also makes the 6.2in phone almost impossible to use one-handed. That’s typical of many handsets over 6in, but its effects are magnified on such a tall display.
With so many budget phones looking similar these days, the 21:9 display is a surefire way for the L4 to stand out from the crowd, but its implementation does cause a few complications.
The other key design choice is a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. Like with the Xperia 5, a patent issue means it couldn’t be integrated into the power button, and the latter is therefore placed awkwardly low on the side of the device.
The sensor itself is easy to enrol and had an extremely high success rate in my testing, even when my finger was wet.
Another notable inclusion is a 3.5mm headphone jack. Although Sony has brought this back to its flagship Xperia 1 II for 2020, it’s been an ever-present on the company’s budget line.
Combined with a very decent pair of downward-firing speakers, the Xperia L4 offers some excellent audio options.
Flipping the phone over reveals triple rear cameras, with the main 13Mp lens joined by 5Mp ultrawide and 2Mp depth sensors. The latter means the L4 is capable of portrait mode shots, although we’ll have more on that later.
The back of the phone is where the plastic build is most apparent, although it definitely doesn’t have the same cheap feeling as its predecessor. That’s particularly apparent on the black model I tested, although it’s also available in a more eye-catching blue variant.
I felt comfortable enough testing the phone case-free, and the Corning Gorilla Glass screen means I’d be confident of it surviving the drops you might expect in everyday usage.
Hardware
The Xperia L4 sounds pretty unspectacular on paper. Powered by a MT6762 Helio P22 processor, the only configuration offers 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The latter is expandable via the microSD card slot, although it would have been nice to have more flexibility here.
Indeed, the below benchmarks would appear to tell a similarly mediocre story. The L4 performs only marginally better than 2019’s Xperia L3, and lags well behind the best budget phones on the market.
However, this is a classic case of benchmarks not necessarily being representative of real-world usage. I really enjoyed using the Xperia L4 as my everyday phone, to the extent that I was reluctant to take my SIM out of the phone once I’d finished testing.
Moving through the UI was smooth and seamless, with Sony’s stripped-back interpretation of Android undoubtedly contributing to that.
It’s definitely not suited to power users, and graphic-intensive gaming didn’t quite hit the mark, but for everything else it was a joy to use.
Software
The Xperia L4 comes running Android 9 Pie out of the box, and unfortunately there’s no indication whether it’ll get the update to Android 10.
That means you won’t get the improved notification and permission controls or new fonts, although that wasn’t a big issue for me.
Interestingly, Sony has released a patch that means you will get the option for a system-wide dark mode, so that’s something. The company’s phones had also already embraced gesture-based navigation, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on that.
Subtle differences in Sony’s gestures mean there’s a slight learning curve, but once I became accustomed to them I definitely wouldn’t go back to the traditional on-screen buttons.
As always, you can bring the traditional nav buttons back by heading into settings.
As I alluded to in the previous section, this is a thoughtful interpretation of Google’s software that focuses on the basics.
The main point in its favour is that there’s very little bloatware. In fact, a basic music player was the only app I could see that you might not find on Pixel phones. Snaps from the camera even go straight into Google Photos, instead of the Gallery app we so often see from third-party manufacturers.
This makes it excellent if you’re heavily invested in the Google ecosystem, although the flexibility of Android means it’s easy to install third-party alternatives and transform the look and feel of your device.
Potential lack of updates aside, the software on the Xperia L4 is a joy to use.
Cameras
The Xperia L4 comes with an impressive-looking triple rear camera setup, although that’s par for the course when it comes to modern budget phones. The main 13Mp sensor is joined by 5Mp ultra-wide and 2Mp depth sensors.
Unfortunately, despite sounding good on paper, the L4’s cameras are a bit hit-and-miss.
As you’ll see from the samples below, it regularly has issues with exposure. In many of the shots I took, either the background was overexposed, or darker elements in the foreground underexposed.
As you can see above, you can get some nice shots in optimal lighting conditions, but it feels very hit-and-miss.
It’s easy to say that you’re not buying a £169 for its photographic prowess, but Sony has specifically drawn attention to the Xperia L4’s triple cameras and so their performance is slightly underwhelming.
On the video side, the phone is capable of 1080p video at 30fps, while there’s also the option to take advantage of the 21:9 aspect ratio for recordings.
Footage is fine if you plan on keeping movement to a minimum, but will quickly become juddery with anything more due to a lack of optical image stabilisation.
Battery life
The Xperia L4 comes with a 3580mAh, up from 3300mAh on the L3. Despite having a similar resolution screen, its performance on Geekbench 4’s battery test was significantly down on its predecessor.
8 hours and 48 minutes is around average when you compare all our smartphones, but I was expecting it to be closer to the 11 hours and 6 minutes from the L3.
It’ll get you through a full day without a problem, but it’s far from being a contender for our best battery life phone.
One area it did perform well was standby time; I was able to leave the phone with less than 5% battery for a number of hours without it running out of juice. This is an area that some Android phones struggle with, so it’s even more impressive here.
The phone does support 18W fast charging, although it’s a separate accessory which is ‘available soon’ at the time of writing.
I was able to get 22% of battery in 30 minutes from off via the adapter in the box, so you’re looking at around two hours for a full charge.
Price and value for money
The Sony Xperia L4 costs £169 via the Xperia Official Partner in the UK, where it’s also available for the same price at Amazon.
There are no configuration options beyond colour, so in exchange you’ll get 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The latter is expandable via the microSD card slot, although that’s pretty mediocre when you consider what else is available on the market.
At this it’s going head-to-head with many of the entries in our best budget phone chart. Similarly priced options such as the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S and Oppo A5 2020 show what is possible at this end of the market, thus drawing even more attention to the L4’s shortcomings.
I wouldn’t say it’s poor value for money per se, but the wealth of extremely capable sub-£200 handsets makes the L4 less attractive for the average consumer.
Verdict
The Xperia L4 is one of only a handful of budget phones to have a unique selling point. The 21:9 aspect ratio might not have mainstream appeal, but bringing the tall, thin chassis to Sony’s budget lineup was a major statement of intent.
Despite only being 720p, the display is a pleasant surprise, and being able to watch films in their native format is very impressive.
Other highlights include a premium design and excellent software, even if it is Android 9 and not 10.
However, the biggest disappointment on the Xperia L4 is the cameras. You can get some decent shots in good lighting, but it regularly struggles with exposure and video is often unusable. Considering the focus Sony placed on the L4’s photographic abilities, this is a big let down.
Throw in some average internals and a very unnecessary notch, and there are just one too many compromises for most people to pick this phone over the competition.
Specs
Sony Xperia L4: Specs
6.2in 720×1680 LCD display
Mediatek Helio P22
PowerVR GE8320 GPU
64GB storage
3GB RAM
Triple rear camera (13Mp regular, 5Mp wide, 2Mp depth)
This setup was designed to get work done. Photo: Luke Peluso
Luke Peluso runs a mid-sized IT company from his desk so organization is essential. He has to be in constant communication with his team and his clients. That is why he uses both a MacBook and an iPad: the MacBook for work, and the iPad for communication.
His MacBook is a 2019 13-inch MacBook Pro and he primarily uses it for “agency management type software and few Windows-only apps.” The iPad is the 2019 iPad Pro that he uses with a Brydge Pro+ Wireless Keyboard. The iPad is for “iMessage and Zoom meetings,” Peluso says, and that having “separate large device just for communications is very helpful.”
Both the MacBook and iPad are supported by a pair of Twelve South Curve MacBook Stands. Peluso has an amazing 34-inch LG UltraWide monitor, and his only complaint is that the monitor’s stand is not sturdy enough.
A USB-C Hub from Hedge Docks is covertly hidden underneath his MacBook stand giving him a plethora of ports.
For peripherals, Peluso has an Apple Magic Trackpad 2 that he pairs with a Microsoft Surface Mobile Mouse and a Surface Keyboard. A trackpad does not have to replace the mouse altogether, but instead should compliment it with its easy slide and swipe capabilities.
For audio, Peljuso has the Beats Studio 3 headphones. They are conveniently stored on top an AIGEL Headphones Stand. He also sports the impeccable AirPods Pro, which he charges on a Belkin Charging Pad.
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Via: Submitted personally by Luke Peluso.
If you would like to see your setup featured on Cult of Mac, send some high-res pictures to [email protected]. Please provide a detailed list of your equipment. Tell us what you like or dislike about your setup, and fill us in on any special touches or challenges.
According to PCMark 10, our review unit scored somewhere between other devices equipped with a GTX 1650 Ti or GTX 1660 Ti, and an i5-9300H or i7-9750H. Subjectively, the 15-inch device felt very fast and snappy at all times, be it application launches, load times, boot times, or file transfers.
The reviews are in for Apple Inc.’s first-ever online-only software conference: Virtual tech conferences can work.
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference last week became a bellwether for the potential of corporate gatherings that take place exclusively online as the coronavirus pandemic makes physical conferences impossible.
A ZTE Blade A3v has appeared on the Google Play Console, model name Z5157V. It’s a simple device, quite similar to the Blade A3 Prime that launched on Yahoo Mobile and Visible earlier this month at just $99. Both of these are Verizon-based MVNO networks by the way and that “v” in the model name suggests that that the new handset is likely on end up on that carrier as well.
The phone runs Android 10 on a MediaTek Helio A22 chipset – quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU at 2.0 GHz and a PowerVR GE8300 GPU (660 MHz). It’s connected to 2 GB of RAM, no word on the storage.
The screen has 720 x 1,440 px resolution and a pixel density around 320 dpi (GPC reports rounded values). This suggests that the screen will be around 5” in size – that makes sense as the Blade A3 (2019) has a 5.0” screen while the A3 Prime is “bigger” with a 5.45” screen.
The ZTE Blade A3v was certified by both the FCC and the Bluetooth SIG in May, so it’s only waiting for a convenient time to launch. Don’t expect a flashy event though, most likely it will quietly show up in stores (again, probably Verizon’s or one of its partner networks).
Belkin’s newly-unveiled multiport adapter uses Thunderbolt 3, not just USB-C, and can drive two 4K monitors at 60 Hz. But that’s just the start, as the Dock Core can also transfer data over a USB-C connection at up to 40 Gbps. Plus it includes Gigabit Ethernet, a pair of USB-A ports, audio in/out, and more.
It’s designed to be part of high-performance mobile office, as it does not need a second power source.
Plenty of ports to go around
The hub includes an HDMI 2.0 port and a DisplayPort 1.4 port. These can be used to attach a Mac or Windows computer to two monitors, but they’ll have to use two different connectors. When used individually, the ports can drive a single 5K monitor at 60Hz or an 8K display at 30Hz.
The Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Dock Core includes a USB-C PD port for 40Gbps data transfers. Or connect this to a power supply to recharge the laptop.
There’s a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port for communicating with legacy devices at up to 10 Gbps. And there’s a slower USB-A 2.0 port.
An Ethernet port offers a reliable, hardwired network connection. And there are Audio In/Out ports for microphone and speaker support.
Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Dock Core is a single-cable solution
The new Dock Core is 4.0 inches square and 1.2 inches thick, making it portable enough to be used on the road.
“Belkin’s Thunderbolt 3 docks and adapters are perfect for remote workers, be it from the home, an RV beach vacation or a hotel room,” said Jon Roepke, director of product management, Belkin. “With one cable from the laptop, these docks are a clutter-free alternative to a tangled nest of cables on the desktop or dining room table now serving as an office.”
The Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Dock Core launches in July for $169.99. And it’s not alone — it joins the Dock Pro ($299.99), Dock Plus ($249.99) and the Dock Mini ($139.99) in Belkin’s line of Thunderbolt 3 accessories.
Or rival Anker makes its own Thunderbolt 3 hub. The PowerExpand Elite has no less that 13 ports, but it has to be plugged into external power to function.
