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China nails Samsung and Oppo over smartphone bloatware
A minor Chinese consumer protection group has filed lawsuits against Samsung and Oppo to contest the pair's use of bloatware on their smartphones. The Shanghai Consumer Council believes that the two companies install far too many additional apps on their devices and then make it difficult for them to be easily removed. The group says that it was motivated to launch the legal broadside after a high number of complaints from users. It believes that people are aggrieved that they've got less storage space than expected, and that these apps slurp down excessive quantities of data.
Weekends with Engadget: Bose sues Beats, OS X Yosemite preview and more!
This week, we looked at the top 12 tablets available, watched Bose sue Beats, took the OS X Yosemite public beta for a test drive and reviewed the Oppo Find 7. Read on for Engadget's news highlights from the last seven days. Oh, and be sure to subscribe to our Flipboard magazine!
Engadget Daily: the Oppo Find 7, shoes that vibrate in the right direction and more!
Today, we review the Oppo Find 7, learn where not to fly drones, contemplate Apple's rumored 12-inch Retina Display MacBook and take a look at smart shoes that vibrate in the right direction. Read on for Engadget's news highlights from the last 24 hours.
Oppo Find 7 review: A solid phone that faces stiff competition
The Galaxy S5. The One M8. The G3. Every notable player in the overcrowded smartphone space has a flagship, one heroic device that the company pins its hopes on... for a year or so, anyway. For Oppo, a Chinese phone maker whose profile has swelled thanks to a surprisingly solid phone lineup, that flagship is the Find 7: an unassuming slab that looks painfully pedestrian compared to the last time the company went all out. Maybe that's a bit harsh. The Find 7 pairs top-notch performance with one of the highest-resolution screens you'll find on a mobile today -- hardly a formula to sneeze at. But is it worth the $599 asking price? Is Oppo really a mobile force to be reckoned with? Follow me, friends, and we'll figure it out together.
Oppo Find 7 is the world's first phone that can take 50MP photos (video)
We've seen the teasers and we've seen the leaks, so it's about time to see the real thing. Oppo has finally unveiled the Find 7 in Beijing just now, and as promised, this Android 4.3 device really can take 50-megapixel photos! But as with many things in life, there's a catch here: the sensor is actually a 13-megapixel Sony IMX214 CMOS, so it's a software trick. Still, the results we saw earlier were surprisingly good, so read on to check out how it's done and what the rest of the phone is like.
Oppo's Find 7 smartphone poses for glamour shots, two weeks early
So much for surprises. Oppo has been trying to maintain an aura of mystery around the launch of the Find 7 on March 19th, but the design lovers at Red Dot have spoiled things by showing off the smartphone in their product gallery, nearly two weeks ahead of time. While we've had some idea of what the Find 7 will look like, it's now clear that the 5.5-inch device will have a more upscale look than the Find 5 with a seamless front and a "breath light" at the bottom for notifications. What you don't see, however, is that rumored 50-megapixel camera -- the handset shown here comes with a relatively ordinary 13-megapixel shooter. Nokia isn't likely in danger of losing its camera resolution supremacy, then. Even so, we doubt that many prospective Find 7 owners will complain given the Quad HD screen and other top-tier specs.
Photo suggests Oppo's Find 7 smartphone might have a 50-megapixel camera
Oppo may have just stolen Nokia's camera resolution crown. The Chinese company has posted a whopping 50-megapixel (8,160 x 6,120) photo that was reportedly taken with the upcoming Find 7 smartphone. On a surface level, the image checks out -- there's a lot of detail here, including street signs that suggest Oppo took the picture in Barcelona (despite the likely fake Florida license plate). However, we wouldn't be too quick to praise the Find 7's photographic abilities. Oppo is known to occasionally post bogus teasers that don't translate into shipping products, so it wouldn't be surprising if the company's new flagship relies on more modest camera technology.
Oppo's next smartphone due in March with Quad HD and 1080p display options
You may cringe at this "Find 7 [are] coming" line, but it's actually an intentional typo, as Oppo's releasing its Find 5 follow-up with two screen resolutions. You see, back in December, the Chinese company teased that its next flagship phone will be using JDI's (not LG's) 5.5-inch 2,560 x 1,440 (538 ppi) panel, which is even sharper than the 6-inch counterpart on the Vivo Xplay 3S. Then to confuse us, earlier this week a Find 7 benchmark showed up on GFXBench with a 1080p display instead, along with a Snapdragon 800 SoC and Android 4.3. We've since checked with our own sources, and we can now confirm that said device will indeed be offered with more than one display option to please everyone: 2K aka Quad HD for the spec chasers, and 1080p for the humble users. We also understand that other specs may differ between the two versions, so if all goes well, we'll take a closer look at the Find 7 variants in Beijing's 798 Art Zone on March 19th.
Oppo N1 will have a Snapdragon 800 to go with its swappable camera system (Update: not the N1)
Oppo's N1 smartphone has been sitting on our watch list ever since we first got wind of its strange N-Lens camera add-ons, which will apparently offer a choice of zooms up to 15x. Now we can flesh out another key spec: the Chinese handset will run on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 processor, which should more than cope with its equally unusual dual touch inputs and possibly help it to rival other imaging-centric Androids like the Galaxy S4 Zoom and Sony's upcoming Honami. The HSPA+ Snapdragon processor (MSM8274) was shown on a photo of the N1's internals that was "leaked" by an Oppo marketing staffer on Sina Weibo -- and unless we're horribly, horribly mistaken, the photo also seems to show a microSD slot to store all those optically stabilized, 16-megapixel images. Barring other significant pseudo-leaks, you can expect the next big N1 update on September 23rd. Update: Oops! Oppo just reached out to us to say that the N1 doesn't actually use the Snapdragon 800. Looking back at the original Sina Weibo post, the leakster only said "large screen, flagship" and not "N1," so perhaps this is actually the rumoured Find 7 instead?
