This Energizer phone has an 18,000mAh battery

Energizer teased this phone ahead of MWC 2019, but in case you haven't seen it yet. Here's a quick look at this brick of a phone from French company Avenir Holdings. The Energizer P18K Pop has a gigantic 18,000mAh battery—and it shows. It basically looks like a power bank attached to the back of a smartphone. What do you get by having this big, chunky boy? You're promised up to 50 days on standby, 90 hours of calls, or two straight days of video. You need a full eight hours to completely charge its battery.

In front, you get a 6.2-inch edge-to-edge display. The lack of a notch is because the camera is hidden and just pops up when you need it (thus, the Pop in its name). It has two front-facing cameras and three at the back. The Energizer P18k Pop runs on a MediaTek Helio P70, Android Pie, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB expandable storage. It also comes with a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, which is wise because trying to wrap your hand around and get to a fingerprint reader in the back isn't ideal. According to a rep from Avenir Telecom, we could expect to see this phone as early as June 2019 with a starting price of around €600 (around CA$900).

Source: 9to5Google

MWC 2019: Google Assistant is coming to Android Messages

Google is rolling out "over the coming months" an easier way to pull up information when you're on Android Messages. The messaging app is getting Google Assistant support. This means you'll be able to see a Google Assistant button appear in the smart replies section of the app. When you tap it, it'll ask Assistant a question and give you options of what you can answer in your thread. Like if you want to find out about restaurants in the area where you're meeting up with a friend. For starters, the feature is limited to English.

Google claims it isn't reading your messages. The only information that gets sent to Google is the text of the Google Assistant button you tap. The "suggestions chips" are based on a local analysis of what's in your conversation thread. When you tap on a chip it'll send you a card with information and options. From there you can send the results of your search to the chat. This feature basically helps you do your search right from within the thread.

Source: The Verge

MWC 2019: Nokia 9 PureView brings 5 rear camera setup to the masses

In terms of novelty, HMD Global has the upper hand now in the smartphone space. It has this new five-camera setup at the back that reminds us of spider eyes. It looks like there are seven lenses but the one spot is for the flash, while the other is for a time-of-flight sensor for depth mapping. The five cameras we do get include three 12-megapixel monochrome cameras and two 12-megapixel RGB sensors, all f/1.8, 28mm lenses. 

These extra sensors aren't meant to be used for extra zoom levels. Instead, these are designed to capture a big amount of data for HDR and depth-based photography. It'll allow you to edit depth after the fact, even when using Google Photos' depth editing feature.

Click to read more ...

MWC 2019: LG launches G8 ThinQ phones

Aside from its 5G phone, LG has two new variants of its new flagship, the G8 ThinQ. It doesn't stray from the design language of the G7, but has a few features up its sleeve that might be interesting. Its notch houses a new Z Camera time of flight camera tech to implement gesture-based navigation as well as Hand ID authentication. Yes, you can unlock the phone with your palm, specifically the veins on them, by having your palm hover over the camera. LG promises this is a secure way to unlock the device. But there's still Face Unlock as well as a fingerprint sensor in the back.

LG gets rid of the speaker in the notch but turns the display into a speaker itself with LG tech it calls Crystal Sound OLED, which we believe is present in some of the company's TVs.

Click to read more ...