MT6752
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We dig this slim smartphone from China, but it won't be cheap
This wouldn't be the first time that Gionee's released a slim, 5.5mm-thick phone. Following the aptly named Elife S5.5, the Chinese company is back with an LTE refresh model that's confusingly dubbed the Elife S7, which manages to retain the same slimness (read: not 7mm thick), the standard headphone jack and a lighter weight of just 126.5g, while packing some nice upgrades. First of all, you get a slightly bigger 5.2-inch 1080p AMOLED screen, along with a similar 1.7GHz octa-core MediaTek chipset with 2GB of RAM, but enhanced with 64-bit computing, multi-mode LTE radio and dual micro-SIM slots. And yes, the phone runs on Android Lollipop with Gionee's customized UI. There's also a more generous 2,750mAh battery -- a notable jump from the S5.5's 2,300mAh cell that had us frustrated.
Meizu's M1 Note is a dirt-cheap iPhone 5c on steroids
While many Chinese smartphone makers have recently stepped up their efforts in delivering more original designs, we can't say that's the case with Meizu's latest offering. In fact, we already knew the cheeky company was up to something when the Chinese media received an iPhone 5c chassis in their invitations, and now we know why. As you can see above, the plastic M1 Note announced today comes in the shamelessly identical set of colors as the iPhone 5c: green, pink, white, yellow and blue. Starting at just CN¥999 (about $160) unsubsidized, this is Meizu's cheapest Android smartphone yet, as it attempts to compete directly with the likes of Xiaomi and Huawei in the sub-CN¥1,000 entry-level market.
MediaTek's new chips save your precious time and money with built-in compression
While Opera Max is slowly making official launches around the world, this cloud-based data-compression service has just nabbed another partner -- and it's a pretty big one, too. Today, the Norwegian company announced that MediaTek will be embedding its app in two of its LTE-enabled 64-bit chipsets: the octa-core MT6752 and the quad-core MT6732. What this means is that should manufacturers want to integrate Opera Max into their MediaTek-powered devices (our understanding is that this feature is optional), they wouldn't have to spend time on testing the app, ergo shorter time to market. And of course, the end user gets to load pages, music and video clips faster anywhere on the device (unlike how the Opera browser only compresses data that are loaded within it), while also saving "up to 50 percent" of bandwidth, courtesy of Opera's cloud servers. That said, the service doesn't process encrypted links, for obvious reasons. For those who aren't familiar with Opera Max, feel free to check out the new video after the break.
