HE Philippines’ big-screen phone market just got bigger with Lenovo’s latest Phab lineup. The company today announced the Phab 2, Phab 2 Plus, and Phab 2 Pro for the local market, all three aiming to ride the people’s seemingly insatiable addiction to smartphones with monster displays.
The Cherry Mobile Defender is built for tough love
HE Cherry Mobile Defender (click for complete specs) is the company’s first truly rugged smartphone featuring a metal frame and rubberized plastic bumpers. The battery is fixed into the assembly, and all ports are covered with rubber flaps to seal the body. It doesn’t look off-kilter to us — which is not what we expected when we first heard about it. (The list of fairly attractive rugged phones gets thin after Samsung’s Galaxy Active series.)
Hands-on: Cherry Mobile Taiji Android phone/ebook reader
HERRY Mobile this week gave us our first look at three Android smartphones due for release this December. Among them is the Taiji — incidentally, also the most interesting of the bunch for reasons that will become obvious in a moment.
The 10 most popular guys in video-game history
EMEMBER the first time you held a joystick or a control pad? Remember the first video-game character you played? Chances are, that protagonist has had a great impact on your life as a gamer. So this week, with news of Super Mario Run coming to mobile in December, we’re paying homage to the guys who have punched, kicked, jumped, fired, rolled, slashed, and stomped their way into making the video-game industry what it is today. The gaming world would have been lost without them. Before getting really into gaming, you should check out VPNs for online games. This will ensure …
Infinix Hot 4 Pro, Hot S, Note 3 Pro budget smartphones released in PH
OU may not have heard about Infinix yet, but the Hong Kong-based smartphone brand is certainly well aware of the Filipinos’ appetite for devices in the “good but cheap” category. It’s common knowledge in the Philipppines that price has been, is, and will, in the foreseeable future, be king.
Apple iPhone 7 Plus review: King of big phones
T’S New iPhone Day in the Philippines! Apple’s Plus-sized iPhone has historically been one of the best phones money can buy, and now it’s back for another encore. And if you’re still on the fence about whether the iPhone 7 Plus is the right smartphone for the job, you’ve come to the right place — as long as you can afford it.
OPPO F1s review: Beyond selfies
ODAY, OPPO Philippines is launching a limited gray version of the OPPO F1s (click for complete specs) to coincide with the company’s official announcement of Alden Richards as an endorser. Almost three months after its gold and rose-gold variants were first released on the local market for P13,990, is the smartphone — now costing P12,990 — still worth considering? Read on.
Cherry Mobile Flare 5 review: incremental improvements
HERRY Mobile, the leading mobile brand in the Philippines, unveiled six new Flare smartphones last month. Devices, it hopes, will carry the Flare label past the “5 million phones sold” mark in 2016. Much of that burden falls on the Cherry Mobile Flare 5, the cheapest of the bunch. Priced at P5,499 — a tad higher than the Flare 4 (pictured in the background above) that cost P4,999 at launch — it falls into the company’s most profitable demographic whose tastes are often ultimately swayed by price.
Beyond the Box reveals iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus prices
HE wait is nearly over for Apple fans around the country. Beyond the Box, one among several official Apple resellers in the Philippines, recently posted the off-contract prices of all iPhone 7 (click for complete specs) and iPhone 7 Plus (click for full specs) models on its social media accounts and website.
10 smartphones powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 821
PEED has always been a big talking point within the smartphone community — though we would be quick to argue that having more CPU cores and more RAM are not necessarily as advantageous as some companies make them out to be. The iPhone 7, to wit, has a quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM, but it handily beats its Android counterparts in real-word and synthetic tests.
Uber vs. Grab: Comparing fixed fares. Is there any difference?
OPPED in an Uber anywhere in Manila recently? You may have noticed an all-in, fixed fare on the Uber app, as opposed to a suggested fare that could be more expensive or cheaper than the actual fare.
LG V20: How much it will cost, when it will be released in PH
G Philippines has announced the price and date of availability of its other signature phone, the LG V20. This Korean manufacturer’s counter to arch-rival Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7, which is now discontinued after a botched recall and multiple fire reports, is the first non-Google handset to ship with the new Android 7.0 Nougat operating system. We’ve listed it as a good alternative to the Note phone.
Samsung outs P13,990 Galaxy J7 Prime in PH
AMSUNG will be happy to put the second half of 2016 behind it, but that’s not to say it’s done for the year as far as releasing smartphones is concerned. The troubled Korean manufacturer today announced the Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime in the Philippines, which joins Vietnam and India as the only countries to have the lower-midrange phone on offer.
Already affordable Vivo V3 Max gets a price cut in PH
E don’t usually write about markdowns for consumer electronics (because street prices fluctuate like gas prices) — but today, we’re making an exception for a deal that we think is too good to pass up. That is, if you’re in the market for a capable smartphone and expensive flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Apple iPhone 7 are out of the question.
Google Pixel follows in iPhone’s footsteps, but not in way you expect
F you look at Google’s new Pixel phones long enough, you’ll notice a bit of resemblance to the iPhone, the newer ones, to be sure. Maybe it’s only right that they do. Apple’s handsets have always been about leveraging its own hardware and software to deliver the smartest user experience possible; Google now aims to do the same with the Pixel.
How NBA 2K17 for Android is different from the iOS version
E love NBA 2K17 for mobile; we think it’s one of the best and most graphically impressive mobile games out there. We said it in our review, and we’ll say it again here: NBA 2K17 is worthy of the franchise it belongs to.
End of an era or long overdue? Bye-bye, BlackBerry
THERS described it as the “end of an era.” We thought it was overdue and that the writing on the wall has been clear for some time. Now it’s official — and we can finally say goodbye to an iconic phone brand.
Being a first adopter doesn’t always suck: Our case with Smart and Globe
EING an early adopter can have its downsides and its share of negative consequences. It can be soul-crushing when a Kickstarter project fails miserably. In rare cases, it can even leave you with a fire hazard that is the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. But being first has its own advantages, too. And some of those perks can be worth the risk of inconveniences in the long run. My Revü Philippines partner Alora Uy Guerrero and I have had the luck of the draw on our side on two separate occasions, both involving the Philippines’ largest telecom operators. Allow us to expound.
NBA 2K17 for Android and iOS review: Worthy of the name
BA 2K16 for Android and iOS wasn’t a good port — it had no audio commentary at launch; it ran slow as molasses on most devices, and many weren’t able to run it at all. A year after its release, it’s still nowhere as good as its console and PC counterpart (you can read our review here), nowhere as good as what it could and should be.
NBA 2K17 review: As real as it gets
(Note: I will be coming out with another piece detailing NBA 2K17’s MyCareer and online modes. I feel that they deserve more focus and more hours spent playing them.) remember my first game in NBA 2K17 so vividly. I set up a rematch of last season’s NBA Finals, reigning NBA champs Cleveland Cavaliers, squaring up against Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, and the rest of the Golden State Warriors.
