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Unlocked phone shootout: Meet the Huawei P8 Lite and Oppo R7
It used to be, not too long ago, that buying an unlocked smartphone online from some unfamiliar Chinese OEM was a sure-fire recipe for frustration. The thing is, the bar for no-contract phones has gotten so high within the past two years or so that you could easily ditch the common flagships down at your local carrier store and live the unlocked life with a great device you've never even heard of. To test that wallet-friendly hypothesis, I took a pair of unlocked Chinese smartphones that either are or soon will be available stateside. Say hello to the $250 Huawei P8 Lite and the $400 Oppo R7.
Huawei's flagship P8 smartphone is all about the fancy camera
Huawei's come a long way since it shook its ODM label and started making devices for consumers, too. It's now the fourth biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world, and in the past year, we've seen the company unveil new phones big and small, as well as new wearables including an Android Wear smartwatch. Aside from a few special-edition variants, though, the Ascend P7 has remained Huawei's flagship product for almost a year, so it's high time for a successor to take that mantle. Cue the Huawei P8 -- no "Ascend" this time 'round -- the company's newest feather in its smartphone-shaped cap.
iriver P8 player pops up on Russian site, packs prodigious battery life
It's been a while since iriver last updated its P series of large-screen portable media players, -- so long in fact, that we thought the series had simply been retired. Imagine our surprise, when this five-incher popped up on the company's Russian site, sporting a long list of supported file formats, and an even longer battery life (up to nine hours of video and 40 hours of audio). The P8 comes in 8GB and 16GB flavors, but also packs a microSD slot for tacking on additional storage. You're not limited to watching clips on the 800 x 480 touchscreen either, the player boasts an HDMI port for pushing HD content straight to a TV. Of course, whether or not this half-inch thick, half-pound device ever makes it to American shores or how much it will cost when it does remains to be seen. Check out the gallery of press shots below. %Gallery-127675%
Tony Hawk P8 demo coming tomorrow!
You heard it, folks. A Tony Hawk's Project 8 demo will be available on Marketplace tomorrow, October 20th. The demo will give you access to many of the games new features, including the much lauded "Nail the Trick" -- think The Matrix meets skateboarding. Also accessible will be the "Filmer" mode, in which you follow a cameraman and complete whatever tricks he wants to see. As if that weren't enough, there will also be what Activision calls "Spot Challenges," which are random goals that can be completed in the game world. All in all, it sounds like a pretty meaty demo. It's also the only place you'll be playing Project 8 for quite a while. We've said it before and we'll say it again, you gotta love Xbox Live.
