New devices of the week - the attack of the sliders

Ro, 04 November 2018

October is over and November is upon us, but new smartphone releases don't seem to be slowing down. And we had some pretty interesting devices thrown our way this week.

The week kicked off with the OnePlus 6T with its under-display fingerprint reader that seems to be the best one around. The notch and the bezels are also slimmed significantly and with the new and improved camera software, the phone won many Android fan's hearts, at least according to our daily interest ranking.

On the next day, Apple dropped two new iPads with all new design, chipsets, Face ID and a multi-functional second-gen Apple Pen. Interestingly enough, the rumors were right all along - the new iPad Pro 11 and iPad Pro 12.9 are now charged over USB-C instead of Apple's proprietary Lighting Port.

Another exciting phone was the ZTE nubia X - a smartphone with not one but two displays. The main one is an LCD panel while the back one uses an OLED panel. But the screen-to-body ratio on the front is downright impressive (93.6% according to ZTE) with nearly no bezels around.

That's because there's no front-facing camera - the dual setup on the back can serve you selfie and video-calling needs thanks to the display below it. Oh, and if you are confused about the screens, don't worry. The nubia X comes with two fingerprint readers on the sides and depending on which one you use, the corresponding screen lights up.

Honor announced its Magic 2 smartphone with a sliding body. The bottom part hosts three front-facing camera sensors and an IR blaster for advanced 3D facial recognition. And if you don't dig it, an under-display fingerprint reader should do the trick for sure. Huawei's Kirin 980 chipset does the number crunching while a 40W Magic Charge-capable battery and power brick will fill up 85% of the 3,400 mAh in just 15 minutes.

And on Thursday, vivo's Y93 affordable marathon runner just popped up offering a large 4,030 mAh battery and one of Qualcomm's newly released chipsets - the low-end 12nm Snapdragon 439. The asking price of this one is just $215, which is around CNY 1,500 in local currency.

And for the grand finale, Lenovo closed off the week with its Z5 Pro smartphone. It might not check all the boxes for a full-fledged flagship as it features a Snapdragon 710 chipset, but the price will quickly make you forgive the lag of flagship chipset. It even makes the bold claim that it has the highest screen-to-body ratio (just over 95% as per official claims, but again those discount the frame as a part of the front) on the market.

The screen itself appears to be pretty impressive on paper - 6.39-inch Samsung-made Super AMOLED. And when you add the under-display fingerprint reader, the Sony IMX camearas and the 3D facial unlock function on the slider, the $287 price tag is pretty compelling.