Review – ASUS ZenBook Flip S: ASUS Pen + Very Thin Ultrabook

Here we have the brand new ASUS ZenBook Flip S – an ultrabook that’s rather unique. It has the ability to convert into a tablet, and it also supports stylus input. It’s not a Surface-style device – so what is it, actually? This makes it the perfect device for artists, doodlers, or even those who want to take quick notes or draw notes, no?
Let’s take a deep dive into the ASUS ZenBook Flip S – specifically the UX370UAF – and see what it offers.

Unboxing
The ZenBook Flip S comes in a rather familiar packaging design. Remember the ZenBook 3 Deluxe? Technically, ASUS just reused the same packaging design for the ZenBook Flip S. Even the contents are pretty much the same.

However, the ZenBook Flip S does come with a few extras. Like the ASUS Pen and also a USB-C dongle that splits into a USB-C charging port, HDMI, and another USB-A port. I’m happy that ASUS is so considerate and elevate the pain of finding aftermarket dongles.

There’s also a PU leather pouch that comes in the box itself – but it has a special little twist compared to other the PU leather pouch that is found on other ZenBooks. We’ll talk more about that in the next section.
[nextpage title=”Design & Ports”]
Let’s take a look at the ZenBook Flip S’s pouch first. It might look the same as before – but opening it up reveals a special little design – a built-in pen holder and a little pouch behind it. The pen holder is obviously for you to stash the ASUS Pen, whereas the pouch is for you to put the dongle there.

Though, the little pouch to fit in the dongle seems to be an afterthought, as it will create a bulge behind the laptop sleeve. Though, ASUS Pen can be fitted into the pouch naturally.

The ZenBook Flip S is actually looking pretty sleek, too. It’s impossibly thin. It’s so thin that it can’t even fit in any USB-A ports, as those ports are thicker than the laptop itself. ASUS makes up for this by having a total of two USB-C ports. They’re not Thunderbolt 3 ports, unfortunately. There’s no possible way to hook up an external graphics card.

Other than that, there’s a headphone/microphone combo jack, a fingerprint scanner, volume rocker, and power button.
As the ZenBook Flip S is a convertible laptop, you can flip it and use it at whichever angle you choose. The hinge is nothing new if you’ve seen other ASUS convertible laptops before. If it works, then there’s no reason to fix it.

[nextpage title=”Screen”]
The screen itself is actually highly reflective as ASUS opted for a glossy finish instead. That is to be expected, as the ZenBook Flip S has a touch-screen. With that said, the ASUS also included its beautiful NanoEdge technology into the ZenBook Flip S – hence having super tiny bezels around the screen itself.

The 13.3-inch 1080p IPS screen looks absolutely fantastic, as its colors are calibrated nicely. ASUS claims that it has a 100% sRGB color gamut, too. The colors reproduced are fantastic.
The screen itself is sturdy enough to withstand most daily usages, but it does wobble quite a lot when the touch screen is used. As for typing, the screen can hold up pretty steadily. Though, the lid can’t be lifted with just one finger. The body will be lifted up together.

To use the ZenBook Flip S is not really an issue, as the display can go really bright to counter the sunlight – but at a heavy cost of battery life. More on that later.
[nextpage title=”Trackpad, keyboard, touchscreen, ASUS Pen”]
Now I realized how many input methods does the ASUS ZenBook Flip S has. There’s the usual trackpad and keyboard, then there’s the touchscreen and also the stylus input with the ASUS Pen. That’s a total of 4 different input methods!

Starting off with the trackpad. It has a smooth finish, and it feels great with my fingertips. Though the experience is rather fine for a Windows-based trackpad, it’s still far from what Apple has done with their trackpad. At medium sensitivity, I find too sensitive for me. I had to tune it to the lowest sensitivity to use it properly. As for the clickers, they’re alright.

The keyboard offers a rather interesting experience. Even though the ZenBook Flip S is stupidly thin, the keyboard still maintains a rather decent amount of travel. With that said, ASUS made the keyboard switch a bit stiffer. The keys collapse and instantly bottom out the keys when a certain amount of force is placed. It’s quite tiring to type on this keyboard, to be honest.And oh – the keyboard is brightly lit in white, too. The one and only complaint I have is how frustrating it is to use the arrow keys on the ZenBook Flip S.

As the entire keyboard is sunken into the frame itself, it causes the down arrow key even more difficult to press.
The ASUS ZenBook Flip S’s touchscreen experience is another one that’s worth mentioning. Finger swiping and gliding on the ZenBook Flip S is alright as there seem to be an oleophobic coating on the display itself – just like most smartphone screens have. The screen wobble is at an acceptable degree, but ASUS should strive for a better hinge to mitigate this issue even further.

Lastly, the ASUS Pen. Surprisingly, the pen itself is quite okay. It can track my pen movements accurately and with minimal input lag. However, there are a few complaints that I have. The placement of the pen’s buttons are a bit… uncomfortable to reach. Another complaint is liftoff distance of the pen. I find it a bit annoying that the liftoff distance is about 2cm, and with my writing style, it’ll have some weird touch input and ruin whatever I’m writing or drawing.

These might be a personal preference, and your mileage may vary. The ASUS Pen uses a single AAAA battery and can be changed easily by unscrewing the body.
[nextpage title=”Performance & Upgradeability”]
First of all, don’t expect the ASUS ZenBook Flip S to be gaming-grade. It doesn’t even have a Thunderbolt 3 port for external graphics! Other than that, the ZenBook Flip S’s specs seems to be okay for an ultrabook.

Intel Core i7-7500U (2C/4T)
Integrated Intel HD Graphics 620
13.3-inch 1080p IPS display
8GB LPDDR3 RAM
512GB NVMe PCIe Gen. 3 x4 M.2 2280 SSD

The use case scenario of this laptop isn’t going to be as intense as gaming-grade laptops, anyway. Though, when it comes to web browsing and video watching, the ASUS ZenBook Flip S can actually perform very well. It doesn’t lag, and when memory swap does happen – it does so pretty quickly thanks to the speedy PCIe Gen. 3 x4 NVMe SSD. That SSD alone is from Samsung, and it achieve crazy bonkers speed.
Insanely speedy NVMe SSD!
Throughout our test, we found out that the included Samsung NVMe SSD can actually achieve up to 245,618.2 IOPS. That’s certainly impressive.
Upgradeability and maintenance
The ASUS ZenBook Flip S is not the easiest when it comes to maintenance. The backplate is held by Torx screws. After removing them, the backplate can be lifted out pretty easily.
Few Torx screws around the perimeter.
At first look, there were two things that immediately caught my attention – firstly the humongous battery. Seriously, the battery is huge, and it takes up a majority of the space available in the ZenBook Flip S itself.

Secondly is the bright orange-colored sheet. Upon further inspection, I found out that the bright orange sheet is actually a sheet of copper, acting as a heatsink. The numbers beside the screws are the screw/unscrew sequence. Beneath that square of screws is the CPU die itself. Maintenance is pretty simple.
Sequenced screws
The sheet of copper spans the entire area, reaching to the fan itself. This is a clever design as any air intake will come in contact with the copper sheet and the components on the PCB itself before exhausting out from the vents on the left side.
Looks like a cochlea.
However, the only component that can be upgraded is the M.2 2280 NVMe SSD itself. It comes with a high-end Samsung NVMe SSD – so I don’t really see a point in upgrading it in the first place.

Also, ASUS included a piece of what seems to be an aluminium heatspreader onto the NVMe SSD itself, and another slab of thermal pad on top. This thermal pad then makes contact with the aluminium backplate of the ZenBook Flip S, hence passively cooling the NVMe SSD. Smart.
          Removing the aluminium tape at the front            There is another piece of aluminium tape at the back too
[nextpage title=”Battery & Charger”]
When it comes to battery, for all I can say is that the ASUS ZenBook Flip S can last you about 5 hours or so on web browsing with some music and social media sites running together while running on semi-better performance. As we saw earlier, the battery itself might look huge – but it’s rather thin. The total volume of the battery is rather small, hence the battery is only rated at 39Wh.

However, ASUS decides to take away control of the power plan from the user. There’s only one power plan available – and that’s Balanced. ASUS then offers a slider on the battery menu itself, asking if you’ll like more performance, or longer battery life.

The slightly altered power plan option can be seen when the AC jack is connected. I find it rather… bizarre that ASUS used the word “best battery life” while plugged in. I’m pretty sure ASUS wants to convey the message where using the “power saving” mode when plugged in means it can charge faster, but they labelled it as “best battery life” instead.
I’m not sure if using such gauge is a good idea. ASUS hid the details and differences between all the modes, but through a simple Cinebench benchmark, it seems like, on Best Battery mode, it scored 224CB and the processor is mostly hovering at about 1.9GHz most of the time. On Best Performance mode, it scored 290C and the clock speed is maintained at 2.9GHz most of the time.
On whatever power plan that it’s on, it doesn’t affect the NVMe SSD’s speed either.
The charger, on the other hand, is a tiny one.

It has a few output wattages – either 65W which is the maximum, or 45W, 27W, or 15W. This power brick design is seen in many other ASUS laptops too – like the ZenBook 3 Deluxe that we saw here.

[nextpage title=”Wrapping up the ASUS ZenBook Flip S review”]
ASUS has made a lot of amazing laptops and the ZenBook Flip S is definitely an interesting one. ASUS crafted the ZenBook Flip S to be extremely thin while focusing on the ASUS Pen. For this use case, they’ve done extremely well as the ZenBook Flip S is powerful yet speedy. With a gorgeous screen and a lightweight body, the ZenBook Flip S is a great choice for those who seek a laptop to draw with.

Though, when it comes to the keyboard, I still find it tiring. The MacBook Air’s keyboard is good, though a little thicker than what the ZenBook Flip S is currently using. Plus, the ASUS ZenBook Flip S’s arrow keys are just terrible – especially the down arrow key.

For the price of RM6,699, it’s indeed a laptop that targets a niche market – but out of reach for most consumers. I doubt that the enterprise of SMBs would ever consider getting this laptop, too. Yet many in many consumer’s minds, they’ll be thinking something along the lines of “if I’m paying RM6.7k for a laptop, might as well get a MacBook”.

The bottom line is this – the ASUS ZenBook Flip S sure has a lot of bells and whistles built-in – but will you actually use it? Will you actually pay for them? That’s the question.

Pros

ASUS Pen is surprisingly good
Great touch-screen
Narrow bezels with a bright display
Thin convertible form factor

Cons

Very costly
Arrow keys are mushed too closely

Where to buy?
If you want to get one for yourself, then head on over to Lazada right now.

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ZenFone 2 launched in Malaysia; prices confirmed

It’s rare to see a public launching event that is open for all attendees, and this time is ASUS’s turn – a event that is open for all and I can say is – dang! There are a lot of people who went there! Firstly they opened a site for registrations for the first 1,000 people, then opened another 500 more. 1,500 people registered! Then comes another announcement where it is said to be opened for all.

This morning, KL Live was flooded with people. As in really packed – people were sardined across all 3 dimensions, and there were easily 1,500 attendees at the event.
Right – onward to the ZenFone 2 itself. The earlier leaked prices were actually the real thing, and yes – the highest end model with 64GB storage costs only RM1,299.
The ZenFone 2 will also be available in their ASUS Online Store in the coming weeks.

As for stock however, more ZenFone 2 will be coming to Malaysia by the end of this month, and including some of the other accessories. As I’ve predicted earlier in this article, ASUS Malaysia is bringing all of the below.

Yup, all of the above accessories will be brought to Malaysia some time in the future, hopefully in May. ASUS Malaysia did not provide any official price as the products are not in Malaysia yet, but we converted the prices from Indonesian Rupiah to Malaysian Ringgit in this article.

Also, the two series of backplates will also be brought to Malaysia! Again, the date given is by the end of May only, with no official prices given. My personal favourite is the Illusion series. Absolutely love it.

All we can say is, stay tuned for the official pricing of accessories and the colour variants.
Till then, stay tuned to our Facebook page!

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Telenor and Axiata to merge Asian operations

If those names are familiar to you, then you should know why. Telenor is the owner of Digi and Axiata is the owner of Celcom. In a post published by Telenor, a merger between the two companies in terms of operations are being discussed. For them to merge together means that they will be the largest wireless telecommunication company in Malaysia.
As of now, there are very little details regarding the potential merger. The new merger will have Telenor holding the majority of share at 56.5% and Axiata owning the other 43.5%. This is preliminary and subject to adjustments and due diligence.

Both Telenor and Axiata will work towards finalizing the agreements and will have the final proposed transaction within Q3 2019, following due diligence.
Once the transaction has been agreed, it still needs approval by shareholders, receipt of regulatory approvals, and other customary terms and conditions.
We will continue to update this page when we have more information about the Axiata and Telenor merger in Asian operations.

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Realme 3 launches on 4th March 2019

We have seen quite a lot of rumors about the upcoming Realme 3 already. We expect that smartphone to arrive soon but we do not have an exact date. Now, Realme has officially tweeted that the Realme 3 will be announced on 4th March 2019 – which is a week after MWC.
The official Realme Twitter account posted an image that reveals that the launch date of the Realme 3 will happen on 4th March at Nehru Planetarium, Delhi. There seem to be a pattern here as any tweets about the Realme 3 revolves around a common theme – space, planets, and planets. Anything about the cosmos.

As for the specs, Android Authority has gotten some exclusive confirmation that the Realme 3 will have two different versions – the RMX1821 with MediaTek Helio P60 chipset and the RMX1825 which has the MediaTek Helio P70 chipset. It is expected that the RMX1825 will be curated for the Indian market exclusively.

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Xiaomi Malaysia donated 100 units of Mi Air Purifier 2S to the MOE

Now look, the haze situation in Malaysia insanely horrible. No one can walk outside and breathe properly. It got so horrible that the schools are closed! To beat the haze, we can use air purifiers. So here’s Xiaomi Malaysia donating a total of 100 units of Mi Air Purifier 2S.
That 100 units of Mi Air Purifier 2S is worth RM65,800 in total – and Xiaomi Malaysia donated all of them to the Ministry of Education to help teachers and students to beat the haze. There are several schools in Malaysia that are closed down entirely for nearly a week because of the haze!

Jess Lee (Third from the right), Head of Marketing Xiaomi Malaysia and Singapore, handing over the Mi Air Purifier2S to YB Teo Nie Ching (Fourth from the left), Deputy Minister of Education for donation to schools in Johan Setia,Klang.
The presentation ceremony was officiated by YB Teo Nie Ching, the Deputy of Ministry of Education. Xiaomi Malaysia is represented by Jess Lee, Marketing Head of Xiaomi Malaysia and Singapore. This contribution is done as a part of Xiaomi Malaysia’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and they’ve done it really well and just in the nick of time.
Jess Lee, Head of Marketing Xiaomi Malaysia and Singapore, demonstrating on how to use the Mi Air Purifier 2S to YB Puan Teo Nie Ching.
There are several schools in Johan Setia, Klang received the that received the Mi Air Purifier 2S after the official presentation ceremony – because they need it the most. Johan Setia is heavily affected by the haze as it has the highest air pollution index (API) in Peninsular Malaysia.
The haze in Malaysia has affected us all but the most dangerous impact is for school students to absorb harmful substances in the air. This is a difficult time for many of us.
Our mission is to spearhead the latest technological innovations to benefit the
lives of people from all walks of life. With this contribution, we hope it will ease the burden on our students and teachers in coping with the negative effects of the haze that has plagued our country. We want to fulfill our responsibility to serve the country in any way we can.
– Allen An, The Country Manager of Xiaomi Malaysia and Singapore
For those who don’t already know, Xiaomi makes many products other than just smartphones. One of them is focused around smart homes (as shown here) and even internet-controller lightbulbs. Another type of products Xiaomi makes are air purifiers.
The Mi Air Purifier 2S has a compact form factor that occupies less than a sheet of A4 paper in terms of floor space. This sleek, white design makes it easy to blend in with other furniture around the house. Xiaomi has also reassured us that the ABS plastic material used to construct the Mi Air Purifier 2S is durable and highly resistant to yellowing because of UV exposure from the sun.
With a total of 943 intake holes, the Mi Air Purifier 2S can filter a large amount of air and expel fresh air upwards for us to breathe in. It has a Nidec brushless DC motor, axial fans, mixed flow blades, and tapered air ducts to have a Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) of up to 310m³/h. It can circulate a total of 21m² of clean air in just 10 minutes.

The Mi Air Purifier 2S has a triple-layer filter that consists of a primary filter that sifts out large particles, a high-density EPA filter that removes respirable particles (PM2.5, PM0.3-0.5), and an activated carbon filter blocks formaldehyde, odor, and more.
There is also an OLED screen at the front of the air purifier that tells what is the real-time air quality, room temperature, and humidity data. Like any other Xiaomi smart home products, the Mi Air Purifier 2S can be connected and controlled with your Mi Home app on your smartphone.
To sense the air quality accurately, the Mi Air Purifier 2S uses laser particle sensor to determine PM2.5 (caused by haze) and 0.3μm particles in its surrounding. These data can also be read from your Mi Home app.
The Mi Air Purifier 2S is available for sale at RM658 at Lazada, Shopee, as well as
Authorized Mi Stores nationwide.
Now, I wish I have one of the Mi Air Purifier 2S because I can’t breathe properly with an N95 mask on my face. I can’t even drink water!

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11street shares online shopping trends

11street.my is an online shopping platform South Korea, and entered Malaysia a few months ago. 11street is now one of the largest e-commerce site right here in Malaysia – and they’re not stopping here of course.

Throughout the months of operation here in Malaysia, 11street managed to gather some shocking information about our online shopping behavior. It’s a surprise that 11street is sharing these information with us, as these information highlights 3 main points :

Malaysian online shopping behaviors are becoming more diverse
Men to women shopper ratio are 48 men to 52 women
Nearly half of the customers shopped via mobile

In a brief elaboration between all of these 3 points, Malaysians are now not only using online shopping sites to buy fashion or electronics, but even products from the categories of health and beauty, kids and baby,, home and living, grocery, services, e-vouchers, and many more. Informatively, the most popular searches during the Ramadhan month were baby car seats, Tupperware, Bluetooth earphones, and skincare products.
Online shopping now has a healthy ratio of 48 men to 52 women too – and amazingly the prejudice of “electronics are for male only” is totally destroyed by the statistics from 11street. It has been shown that the majority of women shoppers actually purchased mobile and tablets too, other than the usual beauty, health, baby, and kids items.
Lastly but certainly the most important information, nearly half of the customers shopped via mobile, and that’s big news because it really tells the importance of having the perfect mobile app for both Android and iOS devices.

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Chill out guys, Shopee’s got your back on COVID-19 outbreak supplies

Face masks, hand sanitizers, disinfectants, and other supplies are facing shortages as COVID-19 continues to ramp up in severity and local manufacturers are tasked to ramp up production to meet market demands. But you don’t need to smash your piggy bank for securing supplies through malicious merchants that marked the price up sky high – Shopee will give fair access to all its users at a reasonable price.
The KF94 masks will be available at RM5.90 each, while a bundle of five 3-ply masks will be priced at RM3.90. Each Shopee user is limited to a maximum of one KF94 mask and a 3-ply mask bundle each so there is no “you got the cash, we got the goods” happening this time. The items will become available starting next week so keep in check with the schedule to not miss out.

Pay a visit to the S-Mart by Shopee and stock up some in case of emergencies.
Shopee is taking the necessary steps to prevent hoarders by selling the KF94 masks will be available at RM5.90 each, while a bundle of five 3-ply masks will be priced at RM3.90. Each Shopee user is limited to a maximum of one KF94 mask and 3-ply mask bundle.
Please do not hoard supplies by abusing multi-accounts and be considerate to other buyers as well.

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KINGMAX Zeus PX3480 Announced; Super-Fast NVMe SSD

In a world where we humans have a constant, never-ending need for speed, SSDs are one of the prime targets for speed improvements now. KINGMAX has just hopped on the bandwagon with their new KINGMAX Zeus PX3480 SSD which uses the M.2 2280 form factor and supports NVMe 1.3 standard.
KINGMAX claims that the new Zeus PX3480 SSD has read and write speeds of up to 3,400MB/s and 3,000 MB/s respectively. That’s really impressive! It even has intelligent SLC Caching and DRAM Cache buffer technology to further accelerate transferring speeds and system response time. That can only mean random access times on the Zeus PX3480 SSD is better than the other SSDs in the market.

The KINGMAX Zeus PX3480 SSD also supports LDPC (low density parity check) ECC (error correction code) technology to effectively detect and correct R/W errors for higher data accuracy and a longer lifespan. It also supports TRIM command, wear leveling and garbage collection to guarantee higher durability by decreasing data amplification and wear of the flash cell. The M.2 PCIe SSD PX3480 enables NCQ command, which can improve a SSD’s performance by optimizing its read/write executions. The S.M.A.R.T. monitoring system is also applied to prevent data loss for it can perform early detection of potential future failures.

KINGMAX M.2 PCIe SSD PX3480 is 100% factory-tested to promise high stability, durability, and compatibility. It is backed by a 3-year warranty for complete after-sale services. Combined with an affordable price and superior performance, the M.2 PCIe SSDs become the best storage upgrade for both budget- or performance-oriented users. Even good for video editors since it has such a high sequential read and write speed.
Specifications

Product Name
PX3480

Interface
PCIe Gen 3×4

Support
NVMe 1.3

Support
M.2 M key

Capacity
256GB \ 512GB \ 1TB

Sequential R/W Speed
(up to)
256GB 3000MB/s(R)  1000MB/s (W)
512GB 3300MB/s(R)  1950MB/s (W)
1TB 3400MB/s(R)  3000MB/s (W)

Random R/W
4K IOPs (up to)
256GB 180K (R)  230K (W)
512GB 350K (R)  430K (W)
1TB 550K (R)  550K (W)

Shock
1500G /0.5ms

MTBF
2,000,000 hours

Dimension
22 mm (W) x 80 mm (L)

Weight
10g

Voltage
3.3V

Operating temperature
0~70°C

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Enjoy special prices for HUAWEI products this 4.4 sales on Shopee, Lazada, and official store

HUAWEI Malaysia is offering a little bit of everything in conjunction with the monthly sale next month and Ramadan as well.

Although not a lot of selections here at least there’s like one or two for 3 categories of smart wearables, tablets, and laptops so pick the ones that you need and enjoy smaller damage to your wallet.
The offer is available across HUAWEI’s Official Store, Lazada, and Shopee.

Product

Original Price

Promo Price

HUAWEI Band 7

RM 219

RM 159

HUAWEI FreeBuds SE

RM 199

RM 119

HUAWEI WATCH FIT

RM 499

From RM 239

HUAWEI WATCH GT 3 SE

RM 899

RM 549

HUAWEI MatePad SE WIFI (4GB + 64GB)

RM 999

RM 699

HUAWEI MatePad 10.4 2022 WiFi (6GB+64GB)

RM 1,399

RM 949

HUAWEI MateBook 14 Intel i5 (16 GB + 512 GB)

RM3,999

RM 2,999

Aside from this, upon reaching a certain milestone of sales during the day, 9 lucky winners will be given an extra gift and it will happen thrice on 200, 400, and 600 units of sales which contain the following:

200 units – Sports Kettle
400 units – Laptop Stand
600 units – Power Bank

Winners are to be announced on April 7.

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Garmin released the new vívosmart 5 Fitness Band in Malaysia

Garmin Malaysia has launched the new vívosmart 5, a comfort-to-wear and easy-to-read smart fitness tracker powered by advanced sleep features.
The vívosmart 5 is designed with a rounded band that fits around the curves of users’ wrists featuring a bright, 66% larger display with larger text and an easy-to-use touchscreen and button interface. It’s also swim-and-shower proof paired with an impressive battery life of up to 7 days.

Supported by Garmin’s 24/7 Elevate heart rate monitoring, the vívosmart 5 samples heart rate multiple times per second for 24-hours a day. It alerts users of abnormally high and low heart rates while also conveniently tracking Pulse Ox respiration, body battery energy levels, all-day stress, hydration, and women’s health.
The fitness band enables users to connect the GPS to their smartphone to accurately track distance, pace, and speed during outdoor activities.
Furthermore, its safety and tracking features allow users to send an assistance alert to designated emergency contacts by simply pressing the button for a few seconds, which gives users peace of mind while exercising outdoor.
Pricing and Availability
The Garmin vívosmart 5 is now available at RM730 on Lazada, Shopee, AECO e-store, and all Garmin flagship stores and authorized retailers.

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Shopee and Visa signed a 5-year deal to grow SEA’s digital economy

Shopee proudly presents a new partnership deal with Visa signed for a period of 5 years in an effort to grow South East Asia’s digital economy.
All Shopee users will able to reap benefits from this collaboration by being able to pay with any Visa card while enjoying additional promotions and rewards while promoting digital transformation in terms of payment methods.

The agreement has publicly disclosed several key joint efforts that include:

Adopt digital payments through Visa to incentivize MSMEs for digitalizing their business on Shopee
Support MSMEs in marketing and campaigns to drive sales, traffic, and awareness of online shopping and storefronts.
Launch co-branded credit cards in collaboration with local banks over the next few months
Fast, easy, and secure Visa payments for all Shopee users
Exclusive user experience to Shopee users through sponsored platforms.

According to App Annie, in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, Shopee emerged as the top in the Shopping category by average monthly active users and downloads, and also the total time spent in-app on Android. Make sense for Visa to pair up with the fastest-growing e-commerce platform to accelerate the region’s digital economy.
To protect users from potential cyber harm during payment, Shopee’s transaction process will be deepened and integrated with Visa’s CyberSource that supports fraud detection to ensure everyone is having a safe online shopping experience.
Let’s see what rewards are we going to get when using Visa cards, I personally hope it is going to be something straightforward such as more Shopee Coins or stackable discount offers as it is one of the best ways to promote more online shopping and milking my wallet even more.

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It's NasiLemakTech's 2nd birthday giveaway!

Wow, we’re already 2 years old! What better way to celebrate the occasion than having a giveaway for all of you?

We got some awesome products for you guys – and it’s worth over RM1000 in total; all thanks to our sponsors!
Just a short recap from the video, we’re giving away the items listed below in no particular order :

X-Mini WE thumbsize speaker

Small and powerful
Looks of a grenade.
Pairs instantly with NFC.

Beyerdynamic MMX 102 iE

Includes 3 different eartips
A VoIP adapter included alongside with a carrying bag
Excellent bass response!

Logitech G502 Proteus Core tunable mouse

Has 11 programmable buttons
Most accurate sensor in the market
Mechanical switches

Logitech G430 7.1 surround sound headset

Immersive 7.1 Surround sound system
Comfortable ear pads that can be removed to wash
Rotating ear cups for transport and resting

I’m sure everyone is excited as I am now. Worry not – we have a simple set of terms and conditions :

Only Malaysian residents are allowed to join
Duplicated accounts will be disqualified
Staff of NasiLemakTech, employees of the sponsors and their affiliated agencies are not permitted to enter
One prize per winner – 4 winners at the end of the contest

How to join?
It’s simple! Just head on over to the Rafflecopter widget on our Facebook page and submit everything accordingly and you’re all set to go!
Remember, every completed task will earn you ONE chance to win a nifty gadget!
Good luck to all of you, and may the odds be ever in your favour!

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Facebook Phone??

As confirmed by many sources, Facebook apparently is hiring ex-Apple engineers to develop their very own Facebook Phone (which I shall now dub it FON, being FacebookphONe).
But the question remains, is it necessary? No doubt, integrating the most popular social media platform into the very core function of a phone is very interesting and convenient indeed, especially to the GenY that live, eat & breath social media. Apple has done the same albeit limited integration with Twitter. Google will fasten G+ into the new versions of Androids. Perhaps, Zuckerberg is afraid of being left out or is in the spending mood, has decided that it’s time to hold Facebook in the ‘physical’ realm.

We know this attempt is not a new one with the HTC ChaCha being the first dedicated FON with a dedicated Facebook button. It flopped without much attention. Zuckerberg never made it compulsory for employees to own one.
Facebook phone in our mind
One critical point to note was that the HTC ChaCha was based on the Android 2.3 platform. The rumored FON will not be based on a new OS (despite having BILLION of dollars in fund) but a modified Android OS version instead. In that case, the FON will only be a new skin on the same hardware, like what HTC Sense did with their spawns.
Thus the question of practicality remains. Facebook achieved its status today through integration of mobile technology through the internet. While they will not ignore the rest of us who did not join their FON foray, why not just come up with better cross-platform software? Unless, they are serious in bringing back the ‘F’ button which I can do with or without on my touchscreen just the same.
Then how about iOS? The mobile giant that the late Steve Jobs created has now eclipsed the total number of mobile users when you factor in Facebook users using their iPods and iPads. The effect of such discrimination remains to be seen.
I suspect, this idea is meant to generate revenues after investors lambasted them.

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Huawei’s Wide Aperture Mode – How And Why You Should Use It

When was the last time you took a picture and said: “awww, that’s such a nice shot but it was not in focus“? I’m pretty sure most of us have dealt with a similar situation – and Huawei’s dual camera system is going to fix that with their Wide Aperture mode.
First, a little preface. When it comes to mobile photography, I never frame my shots properly. I treat my smartphones like a point and shoot camera – and by right, it should get my pictures right with the first click. That’s never the case – except for Huawei’s Wide Aperture mode. This mode has saved me so much time and effort – and here’s how.

I treat my smartphones like a point and shoot camera
Adding bloom to a picture has been pretty tricky, and there were many other methods to add them in an image during post-processing. Most common and simple trick is by simply adding a blur overlay on top of the image. That works… but it looks weird since the blur is absolutely unnatural unless the subject is framed in the shot correctly. Then there’s Photoshop which is quite complex to add blurring to the image. While Photoshop offers way lot more granular control the blurring effect, it’s really difficult to recreate a true-to-life depth of field blurring.
What sorcery can the Huawei’s Wide Aperture mode do? Open up the camera app, tap on your subject, and take the picture. Now, get comfy somewhere and head back to the Gallery app and fine tune the picture you took. Here’s a picture I took. Apologies for my photography skills, by the way.

Oh no! I wanted to focus on those trees at the back, but it ended up focusing on that grey car. “What shall I do now?”, one might ask. Since this picture is taken with Huawei’s Wide Aperture mode, it can be saved.
Firstly, I can adjust the aperture to f/16 – and it graphically depicts the aperture to have a very tiny “hole”, which is true to life. That’ll have the larger depth of field and keep everything pretty sharp, but that’s boring. So I just tapped on those trees at the back and set the aperture to f/0.95 to blur out the cars.

See how much better that looks?
Oh – I tapped on the lower left corner to change the focus for fun and set the aperture to f/0.9 and created this effect – which is essentially the method to create bokeh images. Then it got me thinking – with the Huawei’s Wide Aperture mode being such a powerful yet easily-accessible tool, I can create a bokeh background right here on my desk!
I propped up my Ducky One TKL non-backlit keyboard with custom-modded orange LEDs and placed a figurine there to focus on. I tapped on the figurine’s head, adjusted the aperture to f/0.95 and took the shot.
Who knew a backlit keyboard can create such an effect! It would’ve been better if I got an RGB keyboard instead, though.
When it comes to technicality, there’s another major advantage in using Huawei’s Wide Aperture mode, and that’s not needing to care about exposure. It’s a major plus point when it comes to flexibility, and so far only Huawei is able to do it with their Wide Aperture mode. It’s a unique feature that I think everyone should play around with, and take advantage of it. Seriously, it’s a boon to us all.

Huawei’s Wide Aperture mode is quite a niche feature in my opinion. Most people will dismiss it as a gimmick, but it’s the one feature that I use the most on the Huawei P10. The reason is simple – when the moment comes, I take the picture first without worrying too much, then make adjustments later. Just look at the comparison here when I adjusted the aperture value!

1 of 2

Here’s a gallery of all the complete variations of that one picture that I took. I have to say, the amount of flexibility here cannot be found on any other devices as of now.

1 of 5

Focus on the grey car with aperture f/4.0. This is the original image.

Focus on the grey car with f/0.95. Look at that intense blur!

Focus on the lower left corner with f/0.95. See the amount of flexibility?

Focus on the grey car with aperture f/16. Everything is pretty sharp in this variation of the image!

Focus on the trees at the back with f/0.95. This is the effect that I want!

Ever since I starting using Huawei smartphones with this little handy feature, I can’t stop shooting pictures using Wide Aperture mode exclusively. Those images I uploaded onto our Flickr album for the Huawei P10 are mostly shot using Wide Aperture mode too! It just gives me a peace of mind knowing that I can redo what was wrong when I took the picture. As we all know, no two events are ever the same, and there’s only one chance to take the photo.
The Wide Aperture mode is available on Huawei’s latest smartphones – the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus, Mate 9 and Mate 9 Pro.
Do check out our full review of the Huawei P10 too!
This advertorial is sponsored by Huawei Malaysia.

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Flash Plus 2 is here; preorders starts now

The sequel to a super affordable smartphone is here – the Flash Plus 2. It’s a brand new smartphone with a slew of additional features to spice things up of course, and IMO, they did it real nice. You can preorder here now!
First off, the metal body – it’s not a unibody, just body. The back cover is removable, and with it you’ll be removing the entire piece of metal all together. By that, you’ll be also taking all the remnants of the colours of your Flash Plus 2, so you can have your Flash Plus 2 transform from gold to silver in a jiffy.

That said however, the Flash Plus 2 doesn’t have a removable battery, but instead comes with a 3,000mAh battery. While looking at the back cover, there are two SIM card slots – one nano SIM and another micro SIM, where both supports 4G fully. Also, there’s a separate slot for microSD card to expand up to an additional 128GB too.
Without further ado, there’s a full tech specs that we’ve all been craving for.

MediaTek Helio P10 octa-core processor
Mali-T860 MP2 graphics
5.5-inch IPS full HD 1080p display
Front-facing fingerprint sensor + home button combo
Flash Charge with 9V @ 1.67A (15.03 watt)

The Flash Plus 2 uses an OmniVision OV13853 sensor for its rear-facing 13MP camera, paired with PDAF autofocus system that results in 0.1 seconds focusing time.

Flash Plus 2 comes in two variants – one 16GB storage with 2GB RAM, and another 32GB storage with 3GB RAM. They’re even kind enough to provide the information that if you’re getting the 16GB storage version, you’ll only get to use 10.4GB, and 25.4GB usable on the 32GB storage version. The price for each variant is as follow.

The Flash Plus 2 is exclusively available on Lazada only, and preorder starts now for the 16GB ROM/2GB RAM version only. The other version is coming some time during mid-June, so stay tuned for that.

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5th generation POCO X5 series enters Malaysia from as low as RM999

POCO Malaysia has officially announced the arrival of the new POCO X5 series smartphones featuring 2 new models.

The launch will see the X5 5G and X5 Pro 5G coming in to be the brand’s 2023 offering of budget smartphones with great value that POCO is always known for. But then again, the looks are still very POCO and “bland” but sometimes simple is better for some people.
Anyway, let’s find out its specs because it is all POCO is about isn’t it.

Model

POCO X5 5G

POCO X5 Pro 5G

Display

6.67-inch AMOLED (1080p Resolution, Middle Punch Hole Notch, 120Hz Refresh Rate, 240Hz Sampling Rate)

Chipset

Qualcomm Snapdragon 695

Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G

RAM

Up to 8GB

Storage

Up to 256GB

Back Cameras

Main: 48MP f/1.8 with PDAF
Ultra-Wide 8MP f/2.2
Macro: 2MP f/2.4

Main: 108MP f/1.9 with PDAF
Ultra-Wide: 8MP f/2.2
Macro: 2MP f/2.4

Front Camera

13MP

16MP

Battery

5,000mAh (33W Fast Charge)

5,000mAh (67W Fast Charge)

Color

Black, Blue, Green

Black, Blue, Yellow

Price

6GB + 128GB @ RM1,099
8GB + 256GB @ RM1,199

6GB + 128GB @ RM1,299
8GB + 256GB @ RM1,499

Early Bird Pricing
Officially becoming available on February 9, those who buy early will get an RM100 instant discount but as always, the models are split across Lazada for the Pro and Shopee for the base model so take note of this.

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Here are the launch price of the new Xiaomi 11T series smartphones and the Pad 5 tablet in Malaysia

Xiaomi Malaysia has finally given the full official info about the 11T series smartphones and the brand new Pad 5 tablet in complete Ringgit Malaysia figure.

As we’ve previously talked about them during the initial reveal, we’ll keep this post short as we know you are coming in for the figures instead of the info. However, if you’re not informed as of now, click here to check out our intro post.

Xiaomi 11T (Available October 2nd)

RM1,699 (8GB+128GB)
RM1,899 (8GB+256GB)

Xiaomi 11T Pro (Available October 2nd)

RM2,099 (8GB+256GB)
RM2,299 (12GB+256GB)

Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE (Available September 24th)

RM1,199 (6GB+128GB)
RM1,399 (8GB+128GB)
RM1,599 (8GB+256GB)

Xiaomi Pad 5 (Available September 24th)

RM1,399 (6GB+128GB)
RM1,599 (8GB+128GB)

In addition to these, preorders or purchases placed starting today (Or on the launch day) until September 29 will be rewarded with a variety of freebies on top of a chance for a lucky raffle for a 43-inch Mi TV P1.

FREE Mi Watch Lite + Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 Basic

Xiaomi 11T + Xiaomi 11T Pro

FREE Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 Basic (First 5,000 customers ONLY)

Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE (8GB+128GB)

FREE Mi Watch Lite (First 2,000 customers ONLY) + Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 Basic (Next 5,000 customers ONLY)

Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE (8GB+256GB)

Promo Price of RM1,299

Xiaomi Pad 5

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realme releases new 7i at RM999; C17 at RM899

realme Malaysia has announced the availability of 2 new smartphones which are the realme 7i and realme C17. Both of them are fitted with a 90Hz display which seems to be gaining traction and getting widely adopted in the smartphone market now, but that is only suitable when the hardware is powerful enough to prevent the frame rates from dipping.
Anyway, let’s take a look at both of them through the specs.

realme 7i

6.5-inch IPS LCD screen

90Hz refresh rate
Top-left punch hole notch

Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 chipset
8GB RAM
128GB storage
Quadruple rear-facing cameras

Main: 64MP f/1.8 PDAF
Ultra-wide: 8MP f/2.3
Macro: 2MP f/2.4
Depth sensor

16MP f/2.1 selfie camera
5,000mAh battery

18W Fast Charge

Aurora Green, Polar Blue colors

By looking at the specs only, the realme 7i seems like a pretty standard mid-range smartphone but with a higher price tag as it lacks the faster-charging capability and also uses a Snapdragon 600 series chipset instead of a 700 chip.
realme C17

6.5-inch IPS LCD display

 90Hz refresh rate
Top-left punch hole notch

Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 chipset
6GB RAM
128GB storage
Quadruple rear-facing cameras

Main: 13MP f/2.2 PDAF
Ultra-wide: 8MP f/2.2
Macro: 2MP f/2.4
Depth sensor

8MP f/2.0 selfie camera
5,000mAh battery

18W Fast Charge

Navy Blue, Lake Green colors

Let’s take a step back and look at the specs once again. At this point in time, Snapdragon 400 series chipsets are only used in entry-level smartphones, and all entry-level smartphones aren’t priced this high.
Now, I am worried about that 90Hz screen and how the Snapdragon 460 can keep up. We already showed you that no games can run at 90Hz on more powerful realme phones, but with this weird specs matchup, can that Snapdragon 460 chipset maintain a smooth 90fps while scrolling through social media?
Pricing and Availability
The realme 7i is priced at RM999 and available for purchase right now on their official store at Lazada with an extra power bank thrown in as a bonus while offline sales at realme stores and authorized dealers will start on October 17 with the bonus freebie being the realme Buds Classic.
The realme C17 will be available soon which we will be updating this post when it happens.

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Review – Thunderobot ML701 wireless gaming mouse

Thunderobot. It’s a brand that many of us might have heard of before. This is the Thunderobot ML701 wireless gaming mouse, which I personally love but there are a few improvements that can be made to this product to make it even more perfect.
In this review, I highly suggest you watch the video since it’s quite difficult for us to explain in words.

As per mentioned, the mouse comes shipped in a box with the Thunderobot ML701 wireless gaming mouse itself, and two pieces of A4 paper. These papers are translated versions of the user manual for the Thunderobot ML701 wireless gaming mouse, because the included user manual inside the box is all in Chinese.

Inside the box, we get a few simple things – the most important things are obviously the mouse itself, the USB dongle, and also a USB-C cable.

I thought this mouse is going to need a semi-proprietary USB-C cable since it’s having that weird header, but no – we took a random Ugreen cable and it plugs right in.
Unfortunately though, the Thunderobot ML701 wireless gaming mouse only works in wireless mode. We plugged in via Type-C and disconnected the dongle – it just doesn’t work. No idea why.

Since this mouse is reliant on the wireless dongle, I sighed in disbelief when I found out that there are no dedicated slots on the mouse to store the dongle. Oof.

Luckily though, the mouse is very comfortable to hold and it is also very nice to use. The clicks feel good and satisfactory, tactile, and responsive. There’s also a DPI cycle button which cannot be programmed since there is no accompanying software.

That’s not really a big deal, considering that this is a really basic wireless mouse that’s also nice to use. Considering that it is a “gaming” mouse after all, it needs some lights.

Underneath the mouse, there is a 3-throw power switch. There’s a “totally off”, a “turned on with minimal lights”, and also “turn everything on”.
I’m also stuck with 800 DPI or 1600 DPI
The lights are customizable but the colors are either bound to its DPI value, or accidentally changed while gaming because the command to cycle through the colors is by pressing down both left and right clicks together.

Still, the battery life of this Thunderobot ML701 wireless gaming mouse is phenomenal. I used it with all lights turned on for about 3-4 days straight editing videos that need constant mouse movements – and it held up really nicely.

While there are shortcomings when it comes to the Thunderobot ML701 wireless gaming mouse, I still love it. Personally, for me, it’s important for a mouse to be nice to hold, nice to use, and also feels good. Wireless mice need to have decent battery life and also a non-proprietary charging port – which the Thunderobot ML701 wireless gaming mouse checks all of those boxes. I don’t care about lighting, honestly.

There are a few things that I’d like to see improved on the Thunderobot ML701 wireless gaming mouse – like having an accompanying software to configure its buttons and DPI. Another thing is to have a dedicated slot on the mouse itself to store the wireless dongle. Also, the ability to use the mouse in wired mode would’ve been nice.

And finally, back to the price. At RM99 (sometimes as low as RM79), I can live with those issues. It’s an insanely low-priced wireless mouse that actually feels really good to use.
So, if you’re looking for a simple wireless mouse on a budget that actually feels and works great, I highly recommend the Thunderobot ML701 wireless gaming mouse.

Where to buy? (Affiliated link)

Shopee

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Review – OPPO Reno8 T 5G

Introducing, one of OPPO’s new phone in the market. This is the Reno T series – which we were told that the T stands for “technology” as some of the high-end technologies are packed within this series of phones. Today, we have the OPPO Reno8 T 5G. There is another 4G version which we don’t have – and there are some differences between the two.
I have to say, this phone does have a few unique features – but is it a good phone? Let’s find out.

Design
Starting off – I’ll just quickly mention about its design. This phone uses the same design language as the OPPO A78 5G that we reviewed recently – but this band of glossy material that says “108MP portrait camera” is larger. Honestly, while I do think the design is nice – maybe just don’t reuse the design so close between phone launches?

The Reno8 T 5G also comes with the Reno Glow color too. Our unit has the Sunrise Gold color and if you look at it closely, the color shifts when viewed at different angles.

One notable highlight that OPPO told us about was the curved edge and also curved screen. Yes, even a budget, well – a “budget” phone, has curved edges.

Display
Now, let’s talk about the display. It’s fairly simple. It’s a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with 120Hz refresh rate with 2412×1080 pixels in resolution. What’s interesting is of course – that curved screen. However, if we look at it from the front, the screen isn’t curved that much.

However, if we look at the curvature itself, there we can see what OPPO is hiding – the bezels. I mean, yeah – it’s using the same tricks as what we’ve seen before. By having this curved screen, the display looks less confined – something like a luxury apartment with an infinity pool.

However, even with such a small curvature, this makes tempered glass screen protectors almost impossible to apply without special guidance tools to align properly. I’m speaking from past experience with Samsung’s S series of smartphones.

But, the colors are actually good. Covering nearly 100% of both DCI-P3 and sRGB color gamuts while having the max Delta E number of slightly higher than 3 but a super low average Delta E, this is good.

The maximum brightness is at 500 nits – which I think is okay but might have issues under bright direct sunlight.
What I want to nitpick here, is the location of the fingerprint scanner. Why is it so low? It makes the phone not ergonomic to use.

Camera
Now, let’s talk about the cameras. This is a weird one. Again, like what I said many times before, depth sensors should cease to exist in the year 2023. But still, the OPPO Reno8 T 5G has two usable cameras.

To have a look at all the pictures taken with the OPPO Reno8 T 5G, watch our video at the top of this review.
Performance
How about the performance then? Well, it’s powered by the Snapdragon 695 5G chipset. Honestly, I can play Genshin Impact at the lowest graphical settings with a decent experience overall but there is a lot of stuttering here and there. It won’t look good either, but at least it’s playable.

Software
How about the software then? Powered by ColorOS 13 on top of Android 13, the experience found here is no different from the other OPPO phones that we’ve reviewed. The settings menu and overall usability of ColorOS is good, and I especially like the shelf feature that is now available on OPPO devices too.

And as usual, I’m not a fan of the bloatwares that they included. Especially the Hot Games, Hot Apps, and also OPPO’s own App Market that kept pushing ads via notification. It’s annoying.

Battery life
Then, the battery life. Comes with a 4,800mAh and with our standardized battery life test of PCMark at 100 nits of brightness, this phone lasts for nearly 12 hours. Rather decent I’d say.

Charging speed
The charging speed is also rather quick. With a 67W charger, it charges from 15% to completion in about 43 minutes, and the temperature is kept below 37.5°C all the time. That’s good.

While I want to talk about the charger, I think it’s best if we leave it for a future video. It’ll be about switching power supplies and how these wattage numbers trick you. Do subscribe so you don’t miss out on that when it eventually comes out.
Few more things to mention
A few more things to mention. The OPPO Reno8 T 5G comes with a USB 2.0 port – which is obvious given the category that this phone sits in – and it also has one nano SIM card slot and another hybrid card slot.

Should you buy the OPPO Reno8 T 5G?
And finally – for the price of RM1,799 – oof, I just gotta say that this phone is expensive. I mean yeah – there are a lot of special features like the curved screen for better comfort when gripping, the microscope camera, 67W fast charging – all of that stuff. However, are those your priority? Maybe this is the priority for certain users – but that’s up for you to judge. I’m merely presenting the data and what I found out about this phone to you.

Where to buy? (Affiliate links)

Amazon
Lazada
Shopee

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DOTA 2 Update Brings New Heroes, Items, Diretide!

This is the most anticipated DOTA 2 in ages! The DOTA 2 community has been raging over the absence of Diretide over Halloween, and Valve has since promised to bring Diretide at the end of the year.

The time has arrived, not just for this event, but also a major update that will perhaps, tip the balance of the game with the introduction of new heroes. While Storm Spirit has been available in game modes, Valve is adding Earth Spirit and Ember Spirit into the mix. Gone are the days of unusual couriers, as with the proper tools, one can imbue their existing couriers with unusual effects, or socket newer attributes to existing strange items (which are converted into an ‘inscribed’ class). This may ripple the existing ‘trader saturated’ market and level the playing field as anyone could obtain an unusual courier simply through crafting. Of course, you will never have a 38,000 USD pink Wardog though.

Showcase View allows viewers to watch replays from new perspectives – which may result in better video content from tournaments or users. This will bring a new and refreshing look to tournaments, and could perhaps fuel more interest for audience support and ticket sales.
Diretide starts 14th November and introduces 3 new Diretide chests for pickings. Hopefully, Valve has resolved their mechanics from last year’s event and makes it impossible for players to game the system for Golden Baby Roshans.
For more information, head to dota2.com/threespirits

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Amazfit introduces new feature-rich yet compact GTS 2 mini fitness smartwatch at RM389

Amazfit has launched the new GTS 2 mini fitness smartwatch over the last week featuring a more compact design yet still packs all the features you expect from a digital health companion device.

The mini version of the original GTS 2 now adopts a borderless screen design through the use of 2.5D curved glass covering a 1.55-inch AMOLED panel for a smoother overall look while weighing in at just 19.5g and 8.95mm thin – perfect for those who doesn’t like bulky stuff pressuring their wrist. It is also rated up to 21 days of uptime with an average of 14 days per full charge, depending on the use case.
The health management functions in this device can be described as all-rounded thanks to it covering a wide range of biological aspects from the usual heart rate/oxygen/sleep tracking and monitoring to female exclusive menstrual tracking and prediction to help the more busy women group to worry about one less thing and less likely to be surprised by their monthly friend. High-pressure workers can also turn on the stress tracker and PAI health assessment system to manage and deter potential health problems through early detection and prevention.
The GTS 2 mini also carries quite a number of sports activity tracking that supports up to 70+ modes that provide you with simple figures in terms of physical wellbeing and overall performance. Nothing too professional here which is easy to use as well.
Purchase Link and Price Tag
The Amazfit GTS 2 mini is already available up for grabs at the price of RM389 on Shopee.

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Apple Realizes Their Mistake; Adds “Find My AirPods” Function

Most of the time, I won’t even report about anything regarding the Apple ecosystem unless it’s full of crap. This time around, it’s a total first world problem – how to Find My AirPods. Remember those brand new Apple AirPods that was announced alongside the Apple iPhone 7/Plus a few months ago? Yeah, that pair of wireless earphones that they shoved down all users of the jackless iPhone 7/Plus.
We’ve all griped about the one most obvious problem – losing one of the AirPod. In iOS 10.3 Beta, Apple implemented the new Find My AirPods feature in a way that most of us would expect. You’ll have to use the Find My iPhone app to Find My AirPods, though.

While within Bluetooth range, you can have either one or both sides of your AirPods to play a sound to help you look for them. That might sound a little ridiculous – and when you think about it, what sound does the AirPods make, exactly? And how loud? Those things are tiny – so I don’t expect any sort of loud beeping noise from them.
What if your pair of unreasonably expensive pair of AirPods aren’t within Bluetooth range, in the AirPods’s case, or ran out of battery? Also, they’re near-impossible to lose, as it can rest around your neck. Since the Beyerdynamic Byron are in-ear earphones, they have proper sound isolation too. Say no to sound leaks!
Source: CNet

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Review – Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G

Xiaomi announced even more mid-range smartphones and just for the Redmi Note 11 series alone, I think there’s a total of 6 variants that are available for sale in Malaysia. Remember – that is only the Redmi Note 11 series. The one we’re looking at today is the new Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G, which has a ridiculously long name and it is also the highest-end smartphone in the Redmi Note 11 series – at least for now.
I gotta be honest with you, this phone is actually quite good – but there are a few things that you need to know before purchasing. So, let’s begin.

Performance
Let’s start with the performance. Oh man, I think that the MediaTek Dimensity 920 chipset in this phone did wonders for this phone. It goes to show that MediaTek really improved its chipset over the years.

This chipset manages to run the game at such a good frame rate in Genshin Impact that I am actually just surprised at how smooth it is. Sure, it’s not the best gaming experience but hey – coming from a mid-range smartphone, it’s good!

Better yet, it doesn’t even get hot at all! At the front and the back, the surface temperature is just barely warmed up. This goes to show that we should never just a chipset by its brand or manufacturer – we need to test to know what’s the performance.

The most perplexing thing is, that the chipset can push out some good frame rates and the phone doesn’t feel hot, but the power consumption is quite high. I have no idea where all the energy went.

Screen
Then, the screen. It’s a fairly standard 6.67-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2400×1080 and has 120Hz refresh rate. I mean, this screen is used in many other Xiaomi or Redmi phones anyway.

However, since we got our colorimeter out at that time when we were reviewing this phone, we decided to test its color accuracy too.

From what we can see here, the maximum average brightness is slightly more than 450 nits – which means it is somewhat okay to be used outdoors most of the time – and then we lowered the brightness back to 100 nits and tested the color accuracy.

It’s actually quite a good screen as it covers 98.5% of sRGB and 94.23% of DCI-P3. The Delta E number is still below 0.2, which I think is good.
Design
I also like the design of this phone. The squarish design with rounded corners is the same as the other phones within the Redmi Note 11 series, but I do like this dark green color. Covered with a very fine matte finish at the back, it feels good to touch.

One more thing that I like is the flattened camera bump. Seriously, a flat camera bump looks better than those ridiculous stacked camera bumps like the Redmi Note 11S.

Cameras
And of course, speaking of the cameras, we need to talk about the cameras now. They’re the exact same as the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G, the non-Plus version, and I’ll still only consider two out of the four cameras to be usable to take pictures. I mean, yeah they look pretty much the same anyway so we’ll just speed run through them.

That time, I went to Putrajaya in the morning to test 5G connectivity and the clouds were beautiful at that time. To have a look at all the pictures taken with the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G, watch our video at the top of this review.
Battery life
Then comes the parts of the phone that I don’t have any particular feelings about – the battery life. Compared to the non-Plus brethren, the battery capacity in the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G actually got shrunken down to 4,500mAh only. The battery life test did quite decently at 10 hours something, but like what we pointed out in the gaming test, the MediaTek Dimensity 920’s power consumption is quite high.
Charging
However, the shrunken battery does come with an upgrade in terms of charging speed. The Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G comes with a proprietary 120W charger in the box, and it is also advertised to be able to be charged at 120W too!

But this time, the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G packed two different technologies to ensure this phone has the best charging speeds. I first tested with the “boost charging speed” turned off, and it reached to 100% in about 23 minutes.

Then, I turned on the “boost charging speed” option again and redid the charging test – this time, it reached to 100% in only 15 minutes! Even faster than the Black Shark 4 Pro!

Then I dug around and found out that hey – the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G uses a dual-cell battery just like the Black Shark 4 Pro, and it also uses a technology called “multiple tap winding” or MTW for short. It technically just opens more lanes for the charging to take place, so it can charge faster.

By combining these two technologies together, the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G can charge faster than the recently-announced Xiaomi 12 Pro which also advertised to have 120W charger. Check out our full review to know more.

Software- MIUI 12.5?
Then lastly – the software. I thought since Xiaomi announced MIUI 13, all the phones released after that announcement will also be using MIUI 13. But no – for some reason, the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G is using MIUI 12.5? What???

The most confusing part is that the 4 phones that I’ve reviewed previously – the Redmi Note 11, Redmi Note 11S, Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G, and also the Redmi Note 11 Pro 4G (which I am using as my second phone now) came with MIUI 13 pre-installed. What’s the excuse for the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G to be using MIUI 12.5???

But of course, like what we mentioned in our past reviews, MIUI 12.5 and MIUI 13 feels identical but with a few visual change here and there. All the bugs and annoyances are still the same.
Conclusion
And lastly, the price. The Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G starts at a whopping RM1,499. I believe this is the highest starting price for any Redmi smartphone ever. And I realize a trend now that this generation of Redmi smartphones either retained the same price as the last generation but with downgraded specs, or outright bumped up the price.

The Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G falls in the latter category and that is because if we think about it, the closest competitor was last year’s fantastic Redmi Note 10 Pro or the Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE. I mean, there’s a few hundred bucks price gap there. Let’s compare the launch price:

Redmi Note 10 Pro 8GB RAM + 128GB storage @ RM1,199
Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE 8GB RAM + 128GB storage @ RM1,399
Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G 8GB RAM + 128GB storage @ RM1,499

Oh – I should also mention that the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G uses a hybrid card slot instead of dedicated triple card slots. I think this information is important to some of you.

But, at the price of RM1,499, I think there are no other new smartphones that can compete with the value that the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G offers. Though, you can consider getting the Samsung Galaxy A52s through retailers that are selling for less than RM1,499 – which you can check out our review here.
Where to buy? (Affiliate links)

Amazon US
Lazada
Shopee

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Good Guy Nuclear Power

Nuclear power, despite being taunted as the adversary of mother nature and used to threaten world peace, is more friendly and safe than you think. Scientists from NASA recently published a myth-busting finding that nuclear power, as an energy source, had prevented epidemic level of death.

This was measured against the use of fossil fuel to substitute nuclear and the unwanted byproduct produced by both source of energy ie. carbon dioxide (CO2) and nuclear waste. They concluded that solely relying on fossil fuel to power our needs will produce enough CO2 that could cause far more harm than radioactive waste would, with consideration given to nuclear accidents such as the one in Fukushima.
If you fancy numbers, we’re talking about 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas prevented through use of nuclear power.
Source :  Chemical & Engineering News

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Vivo Care initiative gives out free phone sanitation service for your Vivo devices

Earlier this year, Vivo Malaysia has shown its commitment to caring about the wellbeing of society by giving out free sanitizers to visiting customers to keep their hands clean at all times.
3 months have passed since then. However, social distancing and social gathering bans are still effective due to the recovery phase of MCO and we cannot afford to be complacent as the country could still experience another surge in Covid-19 cases. In light of that, the company is now offering free phone sanitizing service to all Vivo users at its concept stores nationwide through its recurring Vivo Care campaign.

Based on recent studies, the COVID-19 virus is able to survive on surfaces for up to nine days and beyond. With our smartphones getting touched so frequently every day, it is important to disinfect them after returning from outdoors. If you are unclear about the procedures of sanitizing them, check out this post.
From what we can confirm, this service is only valid for Vivo smartphones – which is still commendable since there are a lot of Vivo smartphone users in Malaysia. Of course, it’s not as inclusive as Samsung’s sanitation service – but hey, the companies are doing this out of their own pockets instead of using that money to slap ads on our faces.
You can find out more information about this campaign through their Facebook Page or official website.

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WD My Cloud OS 3 brings simplicity to storage

Feeling gloomy? This news will cheer you up for sure. If you’re using any of the WD My Cloud family of devices, then take note – the all-new revamped OS is currently available for update!

This is the WD My Cloud OS 3. Brand new logo for a brand new interface, and a refreshing experience too. How many times have you guys (including myself) experience some cringe-worthy looks and experience on the now-obsolete previous-generation My Cloud OS? Probably many.

So what did WD do to their WD My Cloud OS to make it so worthy as a major update? Firstly, brand new features! Milestone Arcus Surveillance software will be available on the WD My Cloud Business Series NAS systems with My Cloud OS 3 this month, and this feature is coming to My Cloud Expert Series in the future. Take it as a private network for CCTV recordings right in the comfort of your office or home. The Milestone Arcus Surveillance software can be downloaded through the My Cloud App Store, and then connect up to 16 cameras – and they’re kind enough to give out the first two camera licenses for free! Need more than 2 cameras? Get the license from WD authorized distributors.
Secondly is of course the brand new user experiences! There’s a new MyCloud.com and the new My Cloud Albums app that displays all of your photo and videos beautifully, and being able to share with your friends and family. It even supports file collaboration and access management so only your loved ones can view or edit the specific file.
Thirdly is a brand new WD Sync feature, where data is synced across multiple PCs and notebooks. It allows users to have automatic camera-roll backup and also includes a new transfer tool to quickly move everything to the My Cloud devices. Even Chromebooks and Chromecasts are supported!
The WD My Cloud OS 3 will be available for free on the current My Cloud personal cloud storage devices – that being the My Cloud, Mirror, Expert Series EX2/EX4, EX2100,EX4100, Business Series DL2100/DL4100.
Even the brand spanking new app is available on iTunes and Google Play now!

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Celcom To Launch Galaxy S3 At High Price?

Everyone is anticipating the Galaxy S3.
Celcom posted on their webpage earlier that the S3 will be available on 31st May, at the launch venue from as low as RM1,438. To contrast, DiGi is launching the S3 at RM999 with a RM88 SmartPlan.

On the other hand, we have heard rumours that Celcom will launch S3 at RM888, but this is just hearsay at the moment.
We believe that RM1,438 is extremely high and unlike Celcom. It could just be a ploy to throw off competitors and sneak in a better deal to consumers under the competitors’ noses.

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Samsung ditches TouchWiz for Iconic UX

We are all familiar with skins slapped onto Android by the phone manufacturers. We have all seen TouchWiz, and experienced it at least once before. TouchWiz performed, and how many people actually gave horrible reviews about TouchWiz, as most people really do prefer its competitor’s skins.
That aside though, it seems like Samsung finally realized it and plans to rectify this issue by replacing the entire TouchWiz UI with a brand new skin called Iconic UX. Of course this is still a rumour, but it seems like the FCC caught the new skin showing up for certification, yet showing off some of its brand new revised features. It is also rumoured that Samsung is releasing the Iconic UX in conjunction of Android 5. I sure am, but in the mean time we can only wish that this is really the case.

Source : TweakTown

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Black Shark introduces new Fun Cooler 3 Pro attachment and Lucifer T14 TWS in Malaysia

Black Shark Malaysia has announced the arrival of a couple of new gears that include the Fun Cooler 3 Pro cooling attachment alongside the Lucifer T14 TWS.

First on the list is the new cooler that is made to be compatible with any smartphone with a width between 67mm and 88mm and thanks to the big copper cooling plate with great thermal conductivity operating in a way that separates between heat dissipation and cooling area. In this way, it can take out more heat to prevent thermal throttle while keeping the hands cool.
One can also adjust the RGB lighting to their liking all the while enjoying temperature drops of up to 30°C with ease.

Moving onto the TWS section, the new Lucifer T14 is here to offer a nice feature set at an affordable price. For one, it is now smarter as it can be paired immediately within a single click to facilitate the setup process faster. Utilizing Bluetooth 5.0 for lower latency and better power efficiency, the earbuds can run up to 6 hours per full charge with the case holding another three.
If you want to use it on the go during some light exercises, you may do so too as it carries IPX5 waterproof certification so some sweat and water splash ain’t a big deal for it.
Price and Availability
Starting from today, the Black Shark Fun Cooler 3 Pro and Lucifer T14 can be acquired from the brand’s official Shopee page at the price of RM269 and RM99.

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Xiaomi to use next-gen 65W GaN chargers for Mi 10

The Xiaomi Mi 10 was launched more than a week ago – it’s old news by now. One thing that stood out to me is that Xiaomi themselves has disclosed that they will be using the next-generation GaN chargers for the Mi 10.
These GaN chargers aren’t exactly new – but they’re just starting to get mainstream now.

Let’s summarize a little. GaN here is a composite material consisting of gallium and nitride, which is a form of a semiconductor. GaN replaces silicon as the substrate, and it unlocks a few new potentials in semiconductors – particularly, power output.

Nowadays, we’ve come to expect a certain size for power supplies that we’re using.

However, gallium is much more expensive compared to silicon when it comes to the raw material prices, so the adoption rate of GaN-based chargers might take some time.

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Stem Cell Strikes Again! – New Teeth Grown

Stem cell development just got better and better. Now we can see new achievement almost every week from the result of stem cell research. Growing new parts for the human body may not be a science fiction anymore as scientists are able to grow a full teeth with the roots.

These genius found a way to grow a new adult teeth by using cells from the human gums and some cells for the molars of a fetal mice. Previously, they all thought that this is only possible with embryonic cells which caused a spark of controversial issues.
They extract epithelial cells from the gums, mixed with mescnchymal tooth cells of embryonic mice. A week after, they transplant this into the tissue of a living mice(ouch?). The teeth of course, is going to be a human + mice hybrid.
Now, the only problem is to find a way to do this without the mice. I love how science is acceleration forward everyday. Soon, we could grow anything to replace almost any part of the human body.
Via : BBC news

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Check out how the EdTech industry is currently doing and how are they moving forward in this METAEDU 21 report

The METAEDU 21 event has wrapped up completely last month with a blast and we are to give a little recap of what happened over there.

Organized by Taiwan’s Industrial Development Bureau (IDB), the administrative agency of the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Taiwan, in collaboration with the Institute for Information Industry (III) and Digital Education Institute (DEI), the event runs on a seminar/webinar hybrid model that gathers the industry players in the education technology (EdTech) where they have given insight, shared experience and laid out future visions for the transformation of the academic sector that have already occurred underway in response to the global pandemic.
According to the 2021 Taiwan EdTech Industry Survey Report, EdTech in Taiwan has outputted a total of USD16.4 billion which is a 220.9% growth compared to 2020. Crazy right? Yes, and the boom of EdTech is contributed by the demands for teaching hardware that covers more than 80% of the multi-billion figure with the rest of them being communication products, cloud video, and learning platforms, and teaching assistive devices, among other deployment requirements. Therefore, METAEDU 21 strives to bring long-term collaborations between industry players and stakeholders across the world to accelerate and stabilize the growth of EdTech for the coming years.
The event is shaped around 3 major themes: Innovative Diffusion, Talent Cultivation, and Ecosystem Integration across 5 days from November 1 to November 5 with the HolonIQ online forum during the 1st day being the core highlight as many award-winning companies have shared their business ideas and future development plans and I kid you not, HolonIQ is the world’s leading impact intelligence platform that has helped EdTech events in Middle East, Africa, Asia to accelerate forward with Taiwan receiving the Taiwan 50 EdTech award for the very first time.
For the other 3 days, there’re online webinars including the 2021 International Reading Education Online Forum where experts from the Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and representatives from the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Communications (Pusdatin) are invited to explore and share the goal of digital equality through technology with the last day covering the financial subcategory as international investment experts, overseas startup teams and research institutions giving talks about the aspect of delivering investment cooperation and the necessary conditions alongside from trends, transformation and future expectations for EdTech.
The event highlights and some other nitty-gritty details can be acquired through the official recap video down below.

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How to maximize Mi Note 10’s cameras with Pro Mode

The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 is the world’s first smartphone with a 108MP camera sensor. I think even though we’ve talked about this smartphone for a few times, I think that there are more things we can do with that 108MP camera sensor. Instead of going through the laundry list of usages, I’m going to share with you how to take pictures using the pro mode. Some of you might know this as manual mode.
From all the smartphones we’ve reviewed in the past, Xiaomi’s pro mode is quite advanced in comparison. By using the Mi Note 10 and maybe a tripod with a little bit of Photoshop, these are the images we manage to get. We have resized all the images to 1080p, by the way. We’ve uploaded the full-sized images to Google Drive instead.

How to use the pro mode
At first glance, the pro mode is daunting. There are a lot of settings popped up at once – but let’s go through them one by one.
There are only a few settings that we are going to focus on:

ISO – sensitivity of the sensor (affects noise)
Focal length (F) – determines focus of the subject
Exposure time (S) – affects brightness and motion blur

To begin, it is generally best to set the ISO to the lowest. The exposure time can compensate back for the low ISO by increasing the exposure time. However, this works only for certain scenes like light painting and still objects.
The focal length determines if your subject is in focus or not. Xiaomi’s camera UI is unique in this aspect because you can enable peaking to see which part of the scene is in focus. This is especially useful since the buttons on-screen are massive while the screen is small.
Those red outlines tell us which part of the scene is in focus.
For the Xiaomi Mi Note 10, you can also enable RAW mode by tapping on the button at the top left corner, or enable 108MP instead. We took all these pictures using 108MP.
Capture images in either 27MP DNG format or 108MP JPG format.
Another personal preference of mine is to enable grids. Grids make it easier for me to frame the shot.
Set 1 – night sky
It was a rainy day, but the sky cleared up at night. It cleared up so much that we can see the clear night sky – and a few stars from far beyond. Believe it or not, this was an impromptu photography session.
I was unpacking stuff from the pack at night while I saw this – so I whipped out the Mi Note 10 and dialed these settings:

ISO: 100
Focal length: infinity
Exposure time: 32 seconds

Original
Photoshop’d
With 108MP, I can actually crop and readjust the framing to suit my taste. That’s the beauty of high megapixel count of a camera.
Set 2 – Textures
I love talking about textures. They’re images that we can feel. I recently got a new keyboard and I absolutely love the texture of it. Every keystroke feels like I’m touching something that’s organically grown.
So, I took out my tripod and started shooting. I dialed in these settings instead:

ISO: 100
Focal length: focused on the “enter” key
Exposure time: 1/4 seconds

Original
Photoshop’d
And hey – I love how this image turned out. The shadows hitting on each key with some glow at the face of the keycap make the texture pop.
Set 3 – Going back to auto…
Sometimes, using auto is perfectly fine – like sceneries in broad daylight. Take these two shots for example. The auto mode knows how to prioritize ISO to 100, then adjust the other settings.

And they look good as it is.
Set 4 – Swapping out the sky
But the pictures I took in Set 3 was during a gloomy day. How can I make it look like a bright sunny day instead? Or maybe taken during a sunset?
Well, The Mi Note 10 does have one particular feature that’s new to MIUI 11 – the ability to literally swap out the sky, and we can adjust the intensity of the new “sky”. Take a look at these pictures.

I literally lok the pictures shown in Set 3 and swapped them for “rainbow” and “sunset” skies respectively. Looks convincing, doesn’t it?
To achieve this look, it literally took me just a few taps to apply the filter and it totally changed the image’s look.
Be familiar with the settings
Pro mode offers a lot of control – but sometimes, these controls are unnecessary since the auto mode can outperform a human in terms of speed and accuracy, as shown in broad daylight shots.
Once you get familiar with the settings, you can exploit these camera settings to take some amazing pictures. For example – light painting requires a long exposure time, and you’ll definitely need to use pro mode and a tripod for that.
Where to buy?

Mi Note 10:

Lazada: http://bit.ly/2QQjTf4
Shopee: http://bit.ly/2Ld3lKL

Mi Note 10 Pro:

Lazada: http://bit.ly/35G2euu
Shopee: http://bit.ly/2XVJqoM

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[UPDATED] Cheating Benchmarks & Deception: Why Honor Play Overheats & What’s GPU Turbo

Here’s an interesting development for the Honor Play. We know that the Honor Play is actually the first ever “flagship specs for killer price” of 2018 – as it was announced to be RM1,249. They also touted impressive benchmark scores as GPU Turbo is here to boost your gaming performance. To add depth to your gaming experience, Honor touts “4D Gaming Experience with Smart Shock” too.

GPU Turbo – what is it and how does it work?
I was suspicious at first. What’s GPU Turbo and how does it actually work? We were actually at the local media briefing and preview of the Honor Play – and they focused a majority of the time towards GPU Turbo. When asked questions about it, we weren’t given answers, but instead was redirected via a red herring and we were presented with more questions. Frustrated, we set off to the internet to look for answers – and we pieces that talked highly about GPU Turbo but never go in-depth about how it actually works and improved graphical and gaming performance – until we stumbled upon AnandTech’s article.
AnandTech’s article struck a few notes and rang coherently with our in-depth review of the Honor Play, which you can read it here.

Let’s first talk about AnandTech’s article where they explained how GPU Turbo actually works. By utilizing a neutral network to “learn” how a specific app behaves, the neural network can predict when the app will require more power and vice versa. Combining with a technique called called dynamic voltage and frequency scaling, or DVFS for short, it can be called “adapting performance on the fly”, with the help of what the neural network learned.
Summary of how GPU Turbo works. Source: AnandTech
AnandTech’s article found out the deception that Huawei/Honor is trying to pull off, it was found out that Honor touts an amazing 60% performance increase and 30% power waste reduction. Sounds like magic, doesn’t it? It does – and magic doesn’t exist. Because AnandTech found out that on Honor Play’s product page, they had a footnote stating that the 60%/30% values were compared with Kirin 960.

Source: Honor’s website | Cached webpage
Instead of comparing with Kirin 970 with and without GPU Turbo for a controlled test, Huawei/Honor decided to compare it with Kirin 960, their previous generation chipset! That is one big red flag.
Checking Honor’s official GPU Turbo webpage on their website, we can see the same 60%/30% that they’re touting once again – but this time, there’s no footnote at all. This is a sign of deception and to mislead customers.
Source: Honor’s website | Cached webpage
We’ve also cached both the webpages so that Honor doesn’t just edit out the information like what Huawei did with the P10 eMMC/UFS issue.
Another website was found on Honor Malaysia’s blog posts (cached version) where it talks about GPU Turbo and once again mentioned the 60%/30% benefit but does not have the aforementioned disclaimer.
GPU Turbo itself doesn’t really improve much in terms of performance, as shown in this graph. Once again with Huawei/Honor’s own data set, they did show GPU Turbo increases performance by only a little with the new Kirin 980 chipset that was announced a few days ago.
Source: AnandTech

UPDATE: Huawei did not have a disclaimer during their Nova 3 launch event.
Our friends at Pokde.net also shared us an interesting Instagram post. During the Huawei Nova 3 (which also uses Kirin 970) local launch event, they mentioned GPU Turbo and showed the 60%/30% improvement. Once again, there is no disclaimer.

 View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Pokde.net (@pokdedotnet)

Another update from Honor Malaysia here. They just published a new campaign where you can win the Honor Play Player Edition gift box by participating their latest contest. In this contest, you’ll need to complete the “Click the link to complete the “How loyal are you?” quiz. One of the question asked about the benefit of GPU Turbo.

Seriously? Even after so many posts regarding Huawei’s deceptive claim about GPU Turbo, yet Honor Malaysia is still doing this?

What about cheating benchmarks?
This is nothing new and definitely not the first time a smartphone brand cheats in benchmarks, by the way. And unfortunately, it won’t be the last time either.
When we played highly demanding games on it – like Honkai Impact 3 and PUBG Mobile on highest graphical settings – the phone warmed up but did not show any signs of overheating.
In another article also by AnandTech, Honor Play was caught pumping extra power their Kirin 970 SoC for benchmarks. Huawei was caught to be detecting whatever app that is running, and “unlocked” the floodgate to enable more power to the SoC. Essentially, it’s like a secret higher TDP that is only enabled for a few apps.
BM means benchmark detection. Once benchmark is detected, the average power pumped to the SoC nearly doubled. Source: AnandTech
Pumping more power to the SoC did result in better benchmark scores – but it also made the phone overheat. Remember in our full in-depth review of the Honor Play, the Honor Play overheated when we looped 3DMark benchmark. Let’s not forget that the Honor Play does not have a heatpipe either.

AnandTech caught Huawei and Honor cheating their benchmark scores red-handed when they used custom version of the benchmark tool and compared with the version in Google Play Store. Huawei and Honor are using a whitelist system where they detected apps and allowed the SoC to receive more power to run these apps. We’re unsure about the long-term effects of “overclocking” SoCs, but in the PC DIY segment of things, it’s going to kill the chip and reach a premature death.
Huawei/Honor’s response
AnandTech also discussed the issue with Dr. Wang Chenglu, President of Software at Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, at IFA. The response from Dr. Wang himself was “others do the same testing, get high scores, and Huawei cannot stay silent”.
UL Benchmarks, the owner of Futuremark who created 3DMark, just published a blog post announcing that they have delisted several Huawei and Honor smartphones. The list includes:

Huawei P20 Pro
Huawei P20
Huawei Nova 3
Honor Play

Now, Huawei is saying that they’re going to give users an option to enable “performance mode” so that users can get that extra juice if they wish to do so.

UL Benchmarks & Huawei issued a joint statement here. Honor Malaysia also stepped out and issued a statement.

Let’s look at ASUS with the AI Boost on the ASUS ZenFone 5 and ZenFone 5z. It did prompt us to enable AI Boost to run benchmarks for higher score, but it showed zero to minimal advantage. We are able to debunk that because we can disable and enable the AI Boost at our own will.
We can’t do that for GPU Turbo. It’s enabled by default once you get the firmware update and there is no option to disable it and do the benchmark yourself in an apple-to-apple comparison. You’ll have to find two similarly-specced smartphones to do an independent test – which is a hassle.
We discourage such deceptive marketing to mislead customers.

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Get 5GB of free data for every RM50 spent on Shopee with YES DATABACK

YTL Communications announced that they are launching the 4th pillar on its YES Kasi Up initiative – which is the YES DATABACK in partnership with Shopee. In short, the YES DATABACK is literally what it means – it’s a databack when you start shopping at Shopee.
The mechanism is simple – Shopee customers can earn 5GB of free data with every RM50 spent on Shopee, and you can get up to 100GB each month.

And for a limited time, you can also get a special YES Kasi Up Prepaid 15 plan for only RM1. You can order the special YES Kasi Up Prepaid 15 plan which comes with 10GB of data and 30-day validity period over at Shopee, and it’s free delivery too.
Click here to head over to Shopee and order your RM1 SIM card.

One of the main reasons why YES is doing this is because of how impactful the COVID-19 pandemic is. Everyone needed to be online or they’ll be left out. That made internet connectivity a necessity. And this is pretty much YTL’s role to make us stay connected.
And better yet, once you purchase a YES SIM for only RM1 and have it delivered for free to their home, remember that you can also invite your friends and family to use the YES Kasi Up plans and earn an income through the Kasi Up Refer & Earn program.

The income they earn from the Kasi Up Refer & Earn programme, coupled with the great value shoppers find on Shopee, means they can be better positioned to meet their family’s needs. And when they spend, they earn free data. The free data helps them to keep learning, to keep their business going, to participate in the internet economy, and to shop for their needs online. It is about creating a constant flow of cash and data for every Malaysian. Everyone earning, everyone going digital, everyone connecting, and everyone shopping.
–  YTL Communications Chief Executive Officer, Wing K Lee
YES DATABACK is the 4th pillar in the YES Kasi Up campaign. We have the YES Kasi Up Prepaid 15 whereby RM15/month offers the market’s lowest-priced plan with the highest amount of data and the longest validity; Kasi Up Postpaid 49, which comes at RM49/month for 100GB of data, with 6 months free on a two-year contract, as well as YES Kasi Up Refer & Earn, which allows YES subscribers to earn up to RM50 each time they refer YES to friends and family, with their friends and family earning too.
Yet again, click here to head over to Shopee and order your RM1 SIM card.
To learn more about YES DATABACK, click here.

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Students have won prizes and improved their English skills thanks to Maxis eKelas HIP competition

Here’s everything you need to know about the Maxis eKelas HIP (Highly Immersive Programme) English Competition which is designed to help students improve their English skills.

The eKelas HIP English Storyfest Competition was first launched in 2019 by Maxis with the goal of helping participants improve their English proficiency and also being able to win various prizes as the reward. Students had won prizes comprising smartphones, tablets, headphones, and gift boxes containing exclusive eKelas merchandise from the competition.

The programme is open for all Year 4 to Form 5 students in schools nationwide annually, providing students access to virtual coaching via content, workshop, and practice which aims to boost their confidence, while the Abang Portal(Community Manager) assists students with questions and content guidance.
Thanks to the enjoyable and interesting manner of learning that the eKelas HIP Competition provides, more students participated in the competition every year. The number of submissions has increased from 1,800 in 2019 to more than 3,500 in 2021.

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