02 January 2014 ~ 0 Comments

Zopo ZP998 – the world’s first 8-core smartphone

Zopo, the fast-growing Chinese smartphone company, recently announced a world-first. The new ZP998 will be first true 8-core smartphone to be released. This will their flagship product and looks set to break all previous benchmark records. With this outrageous CPU, it’s likely to be one of the most powerful phones currently available.

The ZP998 is the the follow-up to the previous ZP980 which is currently the highest-rated phone we’ve reviewed so far. But this new model has been vastly upgraded in almost every way.

This phone is based on another MediaTek chipset but this time it’s the MTK6592. This comes with an 8-core A7 1.7 Ghz processor which should be overkill for almost anything you can throw at a smartphone these days. It also means it includes the Mali-450 MP4 GPU to run the amazing full-HD 1080p screen running with a pixel density of over 400 ppi.

It runs Android 4.2.1 and has a 14 megapixel back camera with flash (and an amazing f/2.0 aperture). For more info about all its specs as well as the general look and feel of the phone and its form factor please check out our video above. We also discuss some of the new features Zopo are introducing with some marketing materials bearing slightly dodgy translations which we tried not to mock too much. (At least we were kind enough to ignore their awful music taste).

Let us know what you think about the ZP998. Do you think it’s worth having eight cores rather than just four? Do you think that any of the ZP998’s new features are worthwhile or just gimmicks? And do you know of any other high-end smartphones that offer as feverish value? Are you tempted to buy it?

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01 January 2014 ~ 0 Comments

Welcome to 2014!

Have a wonderful year 🙂

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31 December 2013 ~ 6 Comments

Lenovo A850 first look

lenovo a850

Hot off the heels of their wildly-successful A820 and its follow-up, the A830, Lenovo just announced their latest Android smartphone a few months ago. Since then, we’ve been following the news and rumours and checking our mailroom every day for signs of the brand-new A850.

We’ve already given the in-depth review treatment to other the Lenovo A789 and the Lenovo A820, its A-series brethren, and they both scored very highly in our in-house tests.

However, the A850 looked to be really taking things to the next level. The screen size has been bumped up to a humongous 5.5″ diagonal and the new MT6582M chipset boasts a quad-core 1.3Ghz CPU. But we wouldn’t know much about the actual device until we got our hands on it.

Luckily, a mysterious looking parcel from China recently turned up at MNC HQ and we quickly made the following unboxing video of the stunning Lenovo A850. Check it out now for all the details and full specs of this phone:

Stay tuned for much more including a full benchmark test of the phone as well as our official review and, if you’re very lucky, some simple-to-follow ROM installation tutorials…

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