New phones of the week - October keeps on giving

George, 28 October 2018

This October has proven pretty hectic - more so than usual, and phone announcements have been flying our way by the dozens. While we're waiting for the OnePlus 6T on Monday and some iPads on Tuesday next week, this past one kept us busy too.

We'd call the Xiaomi Mi Mix the highlight of the week (you know, hence the header image) - an all-screen bezelless slider with a 6.4-inch AMOLED display, dual cameras front and back, up to 10 gigs of RAM, and a bundled 10W wireless charger as the icing on the cake. We even got to spend some time with it too.

Two days earlier, Xiaomi announced the Black Shark Helo. The company's gaming phone packs a 6-inch AMOLED display (no 120Hz refresh rate, sadly), front-facing stereo speakers, dual heat pipes, illuminated logo and sides, and comes with one or two snap-on controllers depending on which version you get.

Now, since we're in the specialty devices category, let's also mention the HTC Exodus 1 - a blockchain-focused phone you can only buy with Bitcoin or Ethereum, and you can use as a wallet for all your Satoshis.

In the realm of more mainstream offerings, the Meizu Note 8, announced this week, will bring you a 6-inch tall notchless display, dual pixel main camera with an extra one for depth detection, and an 8MP selfie shooter. A Snapdragon 632 chip is in charge and with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage it all sounds plenty for the asking price of CNY 1,300 ($185/€165).

Samsung had a couple of announcements too, in the ever-growing Galaxy A-series. The A6s is the company's first phone not be manufactured in its own factories, but it'll still have a signature SuperAMOLED display, 6 inches of it, a Snapdragon 660 chipset, 6GB of RAM and at least 64GB of storage, so what if it's made elsewhere?

The Oppo R15x also went official in China this week (sort of, because we don't have the full specs yet) - a rebadged version of the K1 with a couple of spec bumps here and there.

In neighboring India, Panasonic unveiled a couple of Eluga Z1's - a regular one and a Pro. The Pro, in this case, only means more RAM and storage with the rest of the specs being identical - a 6.19" 720p display, Helio P22 chipset, and a generous 4,000mAh battery capacity.

For the detailed specs of all these, make sure to follow the links below.