Dynabook Portégé X40L-K review: An ultra-light business laptop that gets a lot right

The Dynabook Portége X40L-K is a high-end business laptop that isn’t trying to do anything too fancy, and instead, it focuses on nailing the basics. To that extent, it does its job. It’s a super light laptop that offers almost everything you really need for a good experience. I really like a lot about this laptop. It has a nice display, the keyboard is phenomenal, and it manages to look good while still being subdued and professional. Even the speakers are really loud and great for media consumption or calls.

There are some downsides, and I’d say the biggest of them is that it still has a 720p webcam – a decision I can’t really get behind in 2022. I also wish the touchpad was a bit better, but on the whole, this is a really solid experience. The base price is also not too bad compared to other business laptops, so I’d say it’s certainly worth checking out.

Dynabook Portégé X40L-K

The Dynabook Portégé X40L-K is a lightweight business laptop with 12th-gen Intel processors and a 16:10 display.

Features:

Pros: Cons:

See at Amazon

Dynabook provided the Portégé X40L-K for the purposes of this review. However, the company didn’t have any input in its content or provide any sort of compensation for its production.

Navigate this review:

• Dynabook Portégé X40L-K: Pricing and availability
• Dynabook Portégé X40L-K: Specs
• Design: It’s super light and it looks great
• Display and sound: The screen is sharp enough, and the speakers get very loud
• Keyboard and touchpad: Typing is extremely comfortable
• Performance: What we’ve come to expect from the Intel P series
• Should you buy the Dynabook Portégé X40L-K?

Dynabook Portégé X40L-K: Pricing and availability

• The Dynabook Portégé X40L-K is available at Amazon or directly from Dynabook and its partner resellers
• Pricing officially starts at $1799.99, but this configuration is priced at $2,219.99

Dynabook first announced the Portégé X40L-K in March, and it launched a few months later with prices starting at $1,799.99 with an Intel Core i5-1250P processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. That price also includes three years of warranty with On-site support, which comes standard with most Dynabook laptops.

Pre-built configurations of the laptop can be found at Amazon or on Dynabook’s website, and you should also be able to get specific configurations built to order.

Dynabook Portégé X40L-K: Specs

CPU	Intel Core i7-1270P vPro (28W, 12 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.8GHz, 18MB cache)
Graphics	Integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics (96 EUs)
Display	14-inch IPS, WUXGA (1920 x 1200), 161 DPI, up to 400 nits, EyeSafe
Dimensions	312.4 x 224 x 15.9 mm (12.3 x 8.8 x 0.63 in) 1.05 kg (2.31 lbs)
Memory	16GB LPDDR5
Storage	512GB NVMe PCIe 4 SSD
Battery	65Wh battery
Ports	2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB4 Type-C ports (40Gbps) 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A (one supporting Sleep & Charge) 1 x HDMI 1 x RJ45 Ethernet 1 x microSD card reader 3.5mm headphone jack
Audio	Quad speakers with Dolby Atmos Dual 360-degree microphones
Connectivity	Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 Bluetooth 5.2
Camera	720p webcam with privacy shutter
Color	Tech Blue Metallic
Material	Magnesium Alloy
OS	Windows 11 Pro
Price	$2,219.99

 Design: It’s super light and it looks great

• The Dynabook Portégé X40L-K comes in a dark blue color that’s subdued, but unique enough to stand out
• It uses a magnesium chassis that’s very light, making it easy to carry around

Business laptops always have a tendency to look a little bit boring, and in my past experience, Dynabook didn’t do a whole lot to change that perception. Thankfully, with this model, things are a bit different. The Dynabook Portégé X40L-K comes in “Tech Blue Metallic”, which is to say it’s dark blue. It’s light enough that you won’t really be confused and think it’s black, but it’s dark enough for it to still be a great fit in an office environment and not get any weird looks.

Honestly, I think it looks great. It’s not exciting, but I appreciate little changes that help a laptop feel more unique. There’s a bit of sparkle to the surface when bright lights shine on it, too, which adds a bit of extra flair, but you wouldn’t notice it unless you look closely and you have a very bright light source. When you’re indoors, it’s not flashy at all.

Magnesium is very light, but it can feel cheap.

Another thing that’s great about this design is just how light it is, at 2.3lbs. It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a laptop this light, and it’s great to have something you can pick up so easily and take anywhere. That’s all thanks to the magnesium chassis, which is a very interesting material because it can offer the same durability as aluminum while being much thinner.

It comes with a downside, though, and that’s how it feels. While the build quality of the Dynabook Portégé X40L-K is good and it feels solid, aluminum just gives you that reassuring feeling of heft and sturdiness that’s really hard to match with magnesium. It’s a very superficial thing – this laptop still meets MIL-STD-810H standards for durability – but for some people, it also matters how a laptop feels. Personally, I’d rather have the added portability, but that may not be the case for everyone. There’s a reason why Apple refuses to stop using aluminum for the MacBook Air.

As for ports, you get quite a lot here for such a thin and light chassis. On the left side, there are two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB Type-A port, and HDMI. On the left, you get another USB Type-A port, RJ45 Ethernet, and a headphone jack, plus a microSD card reader, too. It’s hard to imagine a more complete setup than this, though I sort of wish there was a Thunderbolt port on each side.

Display and sound: The screen is sharp enough, and the speakers are loud

• The Dynabook Portégé X40L-K has a WUXGA display, which is sarp enough and doesn’t use a lot of power
• The quad-speaker system can pack a punch for media consumption

Dynabook has always been strangely conservative with its laptop displays. Even today, some of its laptops start with 1366 x 768 resolution, and you won’t find anything sharper than Full HD, or in this case, WUXGA, which is essentially the same as Full HD but with a 16:10 aspect ratio. This is totally fine, though, and it seems like Dynabook is really focused on just delivering a solid experience without overly fancy configurations, which is totally respectable.

A benefit of sticking with this resolution is that this panel doesn’t eat up the battery very quickly, which is especially beneficial when you use Intel P-series processors. We’ll get to battery life later, though.

This is an IPS panel and it goes up to 400 nits of brightness (officially), which is honestly very good. Outdoor visibility isn’t a problem at all, and indoors, I’ve mostly been comfortable with it sitting below 20% brightness, even during the day. As you can see below, the display is fairly consistent at different levels of brightness, and it can actually go a bit higher than the advertised 400 nits.

As for colors, I found this screen to work very well. Colors looked great, though I noticed the display looks a little cooler than some other laptops I have on me. On to more technical measurements, it covers 97% of the sRGB color space, so it’s certainly good for the kind of work this laptop is meant for. Other color spectrums aren’t as impressive, but this laptop really isn’t meant for creative work, so it’s not a big deal.

What I really like about this laptop is the quad-speaker setup, which I didn’t really expect from a business laptop. This is only a 14-inch laptop, but there are still top-firing speakers (two fire upwards, two fire downwards), and they get really loud. They still sound great at max volume, with no significant amount of distortion as far as I can tell. Voices still sound very clear and crisp.

Keyboard and touchpad: Typing is extremely comfortable

• The keyboard on the Dynabook Portégé X40L-K feels great to type on
• It has a large touchpad, but the surface is a little grippy

One of my favorite things about the Dynabook Portégé X40L-K is the keyboard. I’ve used some good laptop keyboards, with the recent Lenovo ThinkBook 13s being one of my favorites, but I think I might actually prefer this one. The keys have a nice and comfortable amount of travel, and they don’t feel harsh when they bottom out. It feels like it requires a bit more actuation force than other laptops, but I actually prefer that. It feels great to type on this keyboard, and it’s definitely one of the best I’ve ever used. On a side note, the power button is an odd exception to this – it feels mushy and kind of difficult to press, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen something like it.

Even with the somewhat cramped 14-inch size and already having speaker grills on the sides on the keyboard, Dynabook also managed to stick a few extra keys in here that I haven’t seen in a lot of laptops recently. The arrow keys have an inverted T layout instead of the typical setup where both vertical keys are sandwiched between left and right arrows, and you get dedicated keys for Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End. I use these somewhat often, and most laptops require me to press the Fn key along with one of the arrow keys, but not here. These are small things, but the fact that Dynabook still decided to include them make them all the more special.

Below the keyboard, there’s a very large trackpad, and again, I have to commend the great use of space by Dynabook with this laptop. It’s about as tall as it could reasonably be, and it’s great to have a large area for my fingers to move around.

It would have been even better if it felt a bit nicer to use, though. The surface of this touchpad is strangely grippy, so my fingers don’t glide around very smoothly, and that really hampers the experience. After a couple of weeks of use, I think skin moisture has helped smoothen it a bit, so maybe it’s something that actually gets better the more you use it. My impression has definitely become a bit more positive over time.

Performance: What we’ve come to expect from Intel’s P series

• This model is powered by an Intel Core i7-1270P processor and 16GB of RAM, so performance is great
• Intel’s P-series processors continue to take a toll on battery life

As you’d probably expect for a top-tier business laptop, performance is pretty great on this machine. It’s powered by an Intel Core i7-1270P processor, which means it has a 28W TDP, and it comes with 12 cores and 16 threads, and the P cores can boost up to 4.8GHz. That gets you plenty of performance for all kinds of work-related tasks, and having 16GB of RAM to back that up also helps, though it’s worth noting that RAM is soldered onto the motherboard, so you can’t upgrade it. I’ve never really wished for faster performance with this machine. You can see how it compares to similar machines below.

	Dynabok Portégé X40L-K Core i7-1270P	Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320 Core i7-1280P	Lenovo Yoga 9i Core i7-1260P
PCMark 10	4,878	5,481	5,616
3DMark: Time Spy	1,939	1,992	1,678
Geekbench 5 (single / multi)	1,742 / 9,195	1,700 / 10,293	1,736 / 9,525
Cinebench R23 (single / multi)	1,707 / 8,319	1,629 / 10,121	1,638 / 7,757
CrossMark (overall / productivity / creativity / responsiveness)	1,504 / 1,407 / 1,774 / 1,119	1,729 / 1,525 / 2,022 / 1,433

You also get integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics, so it can handle some lighter GPU workloads, including some light gaming if that’s something you’re interested in. This isn’t a big upgrade from the previous generation, though.

Battery life isn't great, but it could be worse.

The problem with these processors, as usual, is how much heat they generate, which affects battery life and sustained performance. A lot of these laptops coming with 28W processors are upgrading from CPUs that had a 15W TDP, but they aren’t really doing enough to accommodate the increased power consumption and heat output. Performance can vary a lot with Intel P-series processors, and this laptop gets hot, so getting consistent measurements is difficult.

And for battery life, well, it’s not great, but it could be worse. In general, I’ve managed anywhere between 4 hours and 21 minutes, and roughly 6 hours and 6 minutes with the screen on. There was one time where I only got about 3 hours and 38 minutes, but that was an off-shoot, and I never got anywhere near that low again. For the most part, battery life hovered around 5 hours, and oftentimes, a bit more than that. That’s not amazing,  but it’s much better than laptops like the Lenovo ThinkBook 13s or the Acer Swift 3, because those had Quad HD displays. Using a Full HD panel works out in Dynabook’s favor here, and you could actually consider taking this laptop with you to get some work done on the go. If it’s a full day of work, you’ll still need to plug in, but the bar has been set so low for me that this is still kind of good in comparison.

Should you buy the Dynabook Portégé X40L-K?

I was positively surprised at a lot of what Dynabook did with the Portégé X40L-K. It’s a very nice-looking laptop that’s also very light and easy to carry, it has a tall display perfectly suited for productivity work, and one of the best keyboards I’ve used. It even has a very loud speaker system, which I did;t expect to be a focus on a business laptop. Performance is also solid, and battery life, while not great, is a bit more tolerable than other machines I’ve reviewed.

You should buy the Dynabook Portégé X40L-K if you:

• Want a lightweight laptop you can easily take with you anywhere
• Spend a lot of time typing on your PC
• Watch or listen to a lot of media
• Want a laptop with great performance

You shouldn’t buy the Dynabook Portégé X40L-K if you:

• Need all-day battery life
• Use your webcam often

One of the biggest downsides with this laptop is definitely the webcam, though you can work around that if you’re ok with buying one separately. The battery life is also not amazing, but I’d say five hours is still acceptable for a lot of people, so it’s not necessarily a reason to reject it right away. Still, you can always check out the best laptops you can buy today if you want to look at some alternatives.

Dynabook Portégé X40L-K

The Dynabook Portégé X40L-K is a lightweight business laptop with 12th-gen Intel processors and a 16:10 display.

Features:

Pros: Cons:

See at Amazon

The post Dynabook Portégé X40L-K review: An ultra-light business laptop that gets a lot right appeared first on XDA.

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Dear Samsung, it’s time to make a Galaxy Z Flip “Fan Edition” with a cheaper price tag

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 and the Galaxy Z Fold 4 are the latest additions to Samsung’s foldable lineup. The Galaxy Z Folds continue to remain the premium, flagship-grade phones in Samsung’s foldable lineup, whereas the Galaxy Z Flips have established themselves as supremely fun phones for those who are dipping their toes into the world of foldables. The $999 price tag — compared to an eye-watering $1,800 for the Galaxy Z Fold 4 — also makes them more accessible. Add some kick-ass deals on top to make it significantly easy to purchase the new flipping phone compared to a lot of other foldables on the market right now.

But that’s not to say the Galaxy Z Flip 4 isn’t expensive (unless you opt for the wonderful trade-in deals that Samsung offers during pre-orders). Standalone, the Galaxy Z Flip 4 still starts at $999 which may be affordable by foldable standards but it very much belongs to the upper echelons of smartphone pricing. The company may not have an option but to keep its prices static. A “Fan Edition” phone with a relatively affordable price tag, however, would turn more buyers into foldable lifers. Hear me out on this one!

Samsung’s “entry-device” to foldables needs to be cheaper

Samsung’s Galaxy S20 “Fan Edition” phone arrived during the unfortunate times of a global pandemic. But it was arguably the right time for a phone with differentiated features for the price people were looking to pay during a pandemic with less purchasing power. None of Samsung’s “Fan Edition” phones established themselves as one of the best phones to buy, but they offered a lot of bang for the buck. A similar approach in the foldable space might just turn the tide for Samsung and attract a lot of new customers.

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4 carries a sky-high $1,800 price tag, making it one of the most expensive smartphones you can buy right now. Only those with deep pockets can afford the Galaxy Z Fold 4, an exclusivity that makes it more exciting in the smartphone space. It essentially generates a lot of buzz and attracts eyeballs toward its foldable lineup, which can then be converted into potential customers. So what Samsung is cooking behind the scenes right now seems to be perfect — use the more expensive and niche device that’s out of reach for all but the deep-pocketed consumers to spur interest and sell the exciting proposition of using a unique device to make people buy the entry-level foldable.

Getting an “entry-level device” at the hands of consumers now will potentially turn them into foldable stans who would eventually upgrade to more premium options in the lineup. Samsung is dominating the foldable space right now, and getting as many people into its ecosystem will only help it cement itself in a category that others will find difficult to break into. But this “entry device” needs to be something a bit more attainable than the Galaxy Z Flip 4, especially in markets where Chinese phone makers are delivering excellent phones at a significantly lower price.

This is why a Galaxy Z Flip FE makes more sense to enter the foldable scene with cheaper parts. A more affordable Galaxy A series foldable would mean the world to economical shoppers, but it seems too early to expect an “affordable” foldable as most OEMs are still playing catch up to Samsung’s dominance in this space. But how do you go from a $1,000 Flip to, say, a $600 or even a $700 Flip FE?

Cutting the right corners on foldables

The supply chain plays a big role in adding numbers to a price tag. You can’t make a cheaper phone if the parts that go into making that phone aren’t cheaper themselves. If you know anything about supply chains then you probably already know that the parts can’t get cheaper until they’re made at scale. Samsung is selling more foldables than it used to but they definitely don’t sell nearly as many foldables as, say, a normal Galaxy S series flagship. That’s one of the reasons why it can’t cut down the price of its existing foldables.

Samsung can, however, build a new foldable by cutting the right corners. It’s one of those things that is easier said than done, but I’d only rely on a big player like Samsung to get the job done. A lot of Android OEMs lead by example when it comes to making quality phones without demanding a lot of money. This includes almost all the Chinese smartphone manufacturers with a laundry list of phones capable of delivering an incredible experience for a fraction of the price. Samsung itself makes a lot of great phones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg, so it’s no stranger to cutting corners when the product demands for it.

Reuse old smartphone chips

Judging by what Samsung has managed to achieve with its “Fan Edition” phones, they don’t necessarily have to compromise with the chipset. All the “Fan Edition” phones in the past drew power from the same chipset used in their flagship counterpart. That being said, there’s no shortage of reliable chipsets in 2022. Older chipsets may not get the same attention as the new Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 or the latest Exynos processors, but there’s still plenty of value to be found in those chips.

Older chipsets may not get the same attention as the new ones do, but there's still plenty of value to be found in those chips.

A Snapdragon 778G or the slightly altered version of it powering the Nothing Phone 1 is a great example to consider. Qualcomm has also repurposed many of its older chips in the past. The Snapdragon 870 SoC, for instance, is really just a better-optimized version of the Snapdragon 865 SoC. Many of these chips are at the forefront, powering some solid devices in the Android space in 2022. Samsung can also turn to some of its older Exynos chipsets to clear its inventory, something which we’ve already seen a lot of manufacturers do.

Cheaper build materials

The rumors about Samsung making a cheaper foldable can be dated back to 2020 when the company was said to be working on a Galaxy Fold Lite. It was said to have a non-UTG folding display, which costs less. This cheaper foldable never became a reality but Samsung can always use cheaper materials for the other parts of its phone. The Galaxy S20 FE’s plastic back with the matte finish mimicked the look and feel of premium devices, and the same playbook can be applied here too.

The Galaxy S21 is also an excellent phone to mention here which I think looks just as good as its siblings with a glass back. There’s also the Pixel 6a which easily ranks among the best-looking phones of 2022 in my books. There are so many other phones I can think of with a plastic back that looks more expensive than what their price tag may suggest.

Ditch the less important features

Ditching the less important features like wireless charging to cut down the price is a textbook move that Samsung has used in the past. It’s a trade-off that I think a lot of users would be willing to take in exchange for more important features. Samsung hasn’t made any strides in the battery department, so it’s not like they have some huge expectations to meet, especially on a cheaper phone. In fact, I don’t mind going back to the 15W charging speeds of the Galaxy Z Flip 3 if I don’t have to spend that much money. It’ll become an easier pill to swallow in the case of a relatively cheaper phone.

While this doesn’t look like an exhaustive list of changes to make to the existing foldables to make them more affordable, it’s enough for Samsung to set things in motion. The truth is — Samsung doesn’t really have to put a lot of effort to make a great affordable foldable. They already have some solid budget phones and affordable flagships, and it’s only a matter of time till we see something similar in the foldable space. Perhaps global competition in the foldable space is what they need to make some moves. Not only will it allow Samsung to acquire a bigger piece of the pie, but it might just help generate more demand and make more expensive parts for the foldables at scale.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 is Samsung's latest foldable flip phone, now upgraded with a better camera, better battery life, and a new chipset.

Buy from Samsung

What are your thoughts on Samsung potentially making a cheaper foldable? Let us know by dropping a line in the comments below. 

The post Dear Samsung, it’s time to make a Galaxy Z Flip “Fan Edition” with a cheaper price tag appeared first on XDA.

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Dear Samsung, it’s time to make a Galaxy Z Flip “Fan Edition” with a cheaper price tag

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 and the Galaxy Z Fold 4 are the latest additions to Samsung’s foldable lineup. The Galaxy Z Folds continue to remain the premium, flagship-grade phones in Samsung’s foldable lineup, whereas the Galaxy Z Flips have established themselves as supremely fun phones for those who are dipping their toes into the world of foldables. The $999 price tag — compared to an eye-watering $1,800 for the Galaxy Z Fold 4 — also makes them more accessible. Add some kick-ass deals on top to make it significantly easy to purchase the new flipping phone compared to a lot of other foldables on the market right now.

But that’s not to say the Galaxy Z Flip 4 isn’t expensive (unless you opt for the wonderful trade-in deals that Samsung offers during pre-orders). Standalone, the Galaxy Z Flip 4 still starts at $999 which may be affordable by foldable standards but it very much belongs to the upper echelons of smartphone pricing. The company may not have an option but to keep its prices static. A “Fan Edition” phone with a relatively affordable price tag, however, would turn more buyers into foldable lifers. Hear me out on this one!

Samsung’s “entry-device” to foldables needs to be cheaper

Samsung’s Galaxy S20 “Fan Edition” phone arrived during the unfortunate times of a global pandemic. But it was arguably the right time for a phone with differentiated features for the price people were looking to pay during a pandemic with less purchasing power. None of Samsung’s “Fan Edition” phones established themselves as one of the best phones to buy, but they offered a lot of bang for the buck. A similar approach in the foldable space might just turn the tide for Samsung and attract a lot of new customers.

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4 carries a sky-high $1,800 price tag, making it one of the most expensive smartphones you can buy right now. Only those with deep pockets can afford the Galaxy Z Fold 4, an exclusivity that makes it more exciting in the smartphone space. It essentially generates a lot of buzz and attracts eyeballs toward its foldable lineup, which can then be converted into potential customers. So what Samsung is cooking behind the scenes right now seems to be perfect — use the more expensive and niche device that’s out of reach for all but the deep-pocketed consumers to spur interest and sell the exciting proposition of using a unique device to make people buy the entry-level foldable.

Getting an “entry-level device” at the hands of consumers now will potentially turn them into foldable stans who would eventually upgrade to more premium options in the lineup. Samsung is dominating the foldable space right now, and getting as many people into its ecosystem will only help it cement itself in a category that others will find difficult to break into. But this “entry device” needs to be something a bit more attainable than the Galaxy Z Flip 4, especially in markets where Chinese phone makers are delivering excellent phones at a significantly lower price.

This is why a Galaxy Z Flip FE makes more sense to enter the foldable scene with cheaper parts. A more affordable Galaxy A series foldable would mean the world to economical shoppers, but it seems too early to expect an “affordable” foldable as most OEMs are still playing catch up to Samsung’s dominance in this space. But how do you go from a $1,000 Flip to, say, a $600 or even a $700 Flip FE?

Cutting the right corners on foldables

The supply chain plays a big role in adding numbers to a price tag. You can’t make a cheaper phone if the parts that go into making that phone aren’t cheaper themselves. If you know anything about supply chains then you probably already know that the parts can’t get cheaper until they’re made at scale. Samsung is selling more foldables than it used to but they definitely don’t sell nearly as many foldables as, say, a normal Galaxy S series flagship. That’s one of the reasons why it can’t cut down the price of its existing foldables.

Samsung can, however, build a new foldable by cutting the right corners. It’s one of those things that is easier said than done, but I’d only rely on a big player like Samsung to get the job done. A lot of Android OEMs lead by example when it comes to making quality phones without demanding a lot of money. This includes almost all the Chinese smartphone manufacturers with a laundry list of phones capable of delivering an incredible experience for a fraction of the price. Samsung itself makes a lot of great phones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg, so it’s no stranger to cutting corners when the product demands for it.

Reuse old smartphone chips

Judging by what Samsung has managed to achieve with its “Fan Edition” phones, they don’t necessarily have to compromise with the chipset. All the “Fan Edition” phones in the past drew power from the same chipset used in their flagship counterpart. That being said, there’s no shortage of reliable chipsets in 2022. Older chipsets may not get the same attention as the new Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 or the latest Exynos processors, but there’s still plenty of value to be found in those chips.

Older chipsets may not get the same attention as the new ones do, but there's still plenty of value to be found in those chips.

A Snapdragon 778G or the slightly altered version of it powering the Nothing Phone 1 is a great example to consider. Qualcomm has also repurposed many of its older chips in the past. The Snapdragon 870 SoC, for instance, is really just a better-optimized version of the Snapdragon 865 SoC. Many of these chips are at the forefront, powering some solid devices in the Android space in 2022. Samsung can also turn to some of its older Exynos chipsets to clear its inventory, something which we’ve already seen a lot of manufacturers do.

Cheaper build materials

The rumors about Samsung making a cheaper foldable can be dated back to 2020 when the company was said to be working on a Galaxy Fold Lite. It was said to have a non-UTG folding display, which costs less. This cheaper foldable never became a reality but Samsung can always use cheaper materials for the other parts of its phone. The Galaxy S20 FE’s plastic back with the matte finish mimicked the look and feel of premium devices, and the same playbook can be applied here too.

The Galaxy S21 is also an excellent phone to mention here which I think looks just as good as its siblings with a glass back. There’s also the Pixel 6a which easily ranks among the best-looking phones of 2022 in my books. There are so many other phones I can think of with a plastic back that looks more expensive than what their price tag may suggest.

Ditch the less important features

Ditching the less important features like wireless charging to cut down the price is a textbook move that Samsung has used in the past. It’s a trade-off that I think a lot of users would be willing to take in exchange for more important features. Samsung hasn’t made any strides in the battery department, so it’s not like they have some huge expectations to meet, especially on a cheaper phone. In fact, I don’t mind going back to the 15W charging speeds of the Galaxy Z Flip 3 if I don’t have to spend that much money. It’ll become an easier pill to swallow in the case of a relatively cheaper phone.

While this doesn’t look like an exhaustive list of changes to make to the existing foldables to make them more affordable, it’s enough for Samsung to set things in motion. The truth is — Samsung doesn’t really have to put a lot of effort to make a great affordable foldable. They already have some solid budget phones and affordable flagships, and it’s only a matter of time till we see something similar in the foldable space. Perhaps global competition in the foldable space is what they need to make some moves. Not only will it allow Samsung to acquire a bigger piece of the pie, but it might just help generate more demand and make more expensive parts for the foldables at scale.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 is Samsung's latest foldable flip phone, now upgraded with a better camera, better battery life, and a new chipset.

Buy from Samsung

What are your thoughts on Samsung potentially making a cheaper foldable? Let us know by dropping a line in the comments below. 

The post Dear Samsung, it’s time to make a Galaxy Z Flip “Fan Edition” with a cheaper price tag appeared first on XDA.

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Honor 70 Review: Great photos, mid-range everything else

Honor has been making a bit of a resurgence in recent times, launching the flagship Honor Magic 4 Pro in the west back in May. That came after the company’s first solo western venture in the form of the Honor 50, which was a mid-range phone with not a lot else to offer. The Honor 70 is now available in the west, having launched in China a few months back. It packs a Snapdragon 778G Plus, a 120Hz AMOLED screen, and a 54MP Sony IMX800 primary camera, meaning that it’s certainly no slouch. There’s a kicker though — this phone comes in at €549.

The Honor 70 is a really good phone that I think anyone can love, but the problem is that there are so many other options available for less. The company’s Magic UI is pretty polarising, and the rest of the hardware, while good, isn’t revolutionary, The Snapdragon 778G Plus is a great performer, but it’s roughly on par with a Dimensity 1300 or even Tensor if you want to go the Pixel 6a route.

Is the Honor 70 worth buying? To be honest, probably not. It costs a lot of money, and you don’t get much bang for your buck. €549 is a tall asking price for a smartphone that has a worse camera experience than the Google Pixel 6a, a chipset on par with it, and a worse software experience. The only thing the Honor 70 has up its sleeves is the display, and if that’s something that draws you in, then you should probably just get something like the Nothing Phone 1 instead as it has basically the same specs for less. Unless you really love Honor or want some of the talked-about video features, the Honor 70 doesn’t have a great value proposition.

Honor 70

The Honor 70 is a mid-range smartphone with some decent specifications, though it's a costly smartphone that you may find better alternatives for.

Features:

Pros: Cons:

See at Honor

	Honor 70
CPU	Snapdragon 778G Plus 5G
Dimensions and weight	161.4 mm x 73.3 mm x 7.91 mm 178g
Display	6.67 inches OLED 58°curved punch Display4 1.07 Billion colors, 100% DCI-P3, HDR 10+ 120Hz
Camera	54MP wide, IMX8000, f/1.9 50MP ultra-wide, f/2.2 2MP depth sensor 32MP front-facing camera
Memory	8GB RAM, 128GB
Battery	4,800mAh
Network	LTE: Enhanced 4X4 MIMO, 7CA, LAA, LTE Cat. 20 5G
Sensors	Optical in-display fingerprint sensor, Accelerometer, Barometer, Gyro sensor, Geomagnetic sensor, Hall sensor (analog), Proximity sensor, Light sensor, Wacom layer for stylus input
Ports	USB-C
OS	Android 12 with MagicUI 6.1 on top
Colors	Midnight Black, Emerald Green, Icelandic Frost
Price	Starts at £479.99

About this review: I received the Honor 70 for review from the company on the 9th of August, 2022. While the company provided us a unit for review, it had no input into the contents of this review.

---

Honor 70: Design

The Honor 70 is quite similar in design to the Honor 50 and is also quite reminiscent of some Huawei devices like the Huwaei P50 Pro. Obviously, an element of that goes out to the fact that it’s clear that Honor was beginning to work on these designs when it was a part of Huawei, but it only tends to give naysayers of the company more ammo in accusing it of making use of Huawei’s resources.

It's a pretty beautiful phone

However, it’s a pretty beautiful phone, feeling light in the hand and showing a more “striped” design on the back when the light hits it in a certain way. It looks good, feels good, and I think that it’s still a unique enough design that differentiates itself from the rest of the market. The two camera circles house the “Super Sensing” IMX 800 camera, along with the 50MP ultra-wide and the 2MP depth camera.

In the display, the Honor 70 doesn’t really do anything super special. It’s curved on each side, and the front-facing camera is a hole in the center of the status bar. It’s a 120Hz AMOLED panel that supports HDR10+, making it pretty good for content consumption. It’s a pretty standard display in that it’s just a glass slab, though it has some pretty good specs that make it one of the most high-end aspects of this smartphone. It’s only full HD, which is one of the biggest sticking points.

However, an even bigger sticking point is the single-firing speaker at the bottom of the phone. I would’ve thought that dual speakers would make sense, especially with the inclusion of an HDR10+ display. That isn’t the case, and in fact, the single-firing speaker isn’t all that high-quality either. It’s a mid-range phone, sure, but I thought that the company was clearly poising this device to be more for media consumption.

The build quality of the phone is nice (even if it is plastic) and the haptics are good. Overall, it’s a nice phone with a good design, but I’m a bit confused as to what the philosophy behind its creation is.

---

Honor 70: Camera

The Honor 70’s camera is touted as special thanks to the IMX800 that’s included, but to be honest, we’re well past the point of sensors being the most important part of a smartphone photography experience. Smartphones like the Google Pixel 6a can still punch above their weight thanks to the incredible software processing algorithms that are employed, and while a new sensor helps in some aspects, you can use a new sensor and still have terrible photos.

I was greatly impressed with the pictures that I got

With that in mind, it’s important to approach the Honor 70 for what it is: a mid-range smartphone with a flagship sensor. I expected to have poor results, but I was greatly impressed with what I got. Honor did an excellent job with its HDR in particular, and I was surprised with what this phone is capable of. If you want a mid-range phone that’s capable of taking great shots, then this is certainly one of them. The phone may falter in other aspects (or may simply be okay), but this is where it really shines comparatively.

To be clear, the photos shown below are compressed. If you want to see the full uncompressed images, be sure to check out the Flickr album at the bottom of this section.

This first photo was taken at the Gorillaz concert in the 3Arena in Dublin. It does a great job at balancing the bright parts of the image with the dark, without overexposing any particular part of the image. I was impressed by this, as I know a lot of similar mid-range phones would struggle in this instance.

This is one of the most impressive pictures that I took, and it’s because of how the phone handles the reflections off of the building. It has just the right amount of sharpness and contrast without making the photo look unnatural. I expected the phone to struggle, but it did a pretty good job here.

I expected the Honor 70 to struggle with this photo too, and I’m impressed that it didn’t. The sun visible atop the building was actually filling the phone’s viewfinder entirely, and I couldn’t see a lot of the detail captured here until I actually took the photo. The bird in the sky is perfectly shown too, with the photo balancing the brightness from the sun very well with the darkness and shadows in the lower part of the image.

Overall, this phone did a fantastic job. I also tested with a short recording from the concert, and the audio quality is excellent for those who may want to record in loud venues.

Honor’s “Solo Cut” video mode is an important feature of the Honor 70, and it will let you pick out a person in a crowd. You select your subject, and it’ll show the person in an extra cut on the right-hand side, even if they’re in a group of people.

I’m really surprised by the camera here. It’s not the best phone camera that I’ve ever used, but it does a lot better of a job (particularly in HDR) than I expected from a mid-range smartphone. If you want a phone that takes decent photos, then this is a pretty strong contender in its price category. I’m not sure I’d call it a flagship camera, but it’s pretty close.

---

Honor 70: Performance

The Honor 70 packs a Snapdragon 778G Plus, and to be honest, it’s pretty good. It’s powerful, it’s fast, and I’m impressed by this particular chipset. It’s obviously not a flagship chipset, but that’s not what most people need anyway. For what it’s worth too, this phone feels more fluid than the flagship Honor Magic 4 Pro did, though I demonstrated that Honor was heavily restricting the performance of that smartphone. I don’t have any fluidity issues when it comes to opening the camera or using the launcher, unlike last time.

As for tests and benchmarks, this phone is obviously very powerful. It’s not flagship level, but it’s performant enough (and funnily enough, looks close to being on par with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the Honor Magic 4 Pro) that you won’t notice most of the time that it lacks in flagship performance. The most evident form of that will be when gaming, as the GPU is what will really take a hit. We also tried to run our jank tests, but the app would crash when trying to export the results. Because of that, we can’t scientifically deduce how smooth (or laggy) the phone is, but I will say that it feels fluid in normal usage, and nothing has particularly made it feel like I’m using a mid-range smartphone.

You'll not have any issues whatsoever with using this phone for your normal day-to-day activities

As you can see from the benchmarks above, the phone does a pretty good job both in thermals and in general processing power. It does a great job at pretty much any normal workload you can throw at it and is definitely an argument for not everyone needing a full-on flagship phone. The Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 is a surplus to requirements for most people, and this phone pretty much proves it. You’ll not have any issues whatsoever with using this phone for your normal day-to-day activities.

However, when it comes to gaming, this is absolutely not the chipset that you should use. The Adreno 642L GPU struggles with some pretty basic workloads, and you won’t be getting into any hardcore gaming on this phone as a result. It struggles to run Genshin Impact on the lowest settings at times, so that gives you an idea of the kind of power (or lack thereof) that this phone has in that department.

---

Battery life and Charging

The battery life of the phone is good though, and it can deal with a whole lot. The Snapdragon 778G Plus is a pretty efficient chipset, and the phone doesn’t heat up a whole lot when using it. I’ve had really good battery life considering what I’ve been putting this phone through, including a litany of tests and other heavy usages. With a ton of CPU Throttling Tests to run down the battery, I still got nearly five hours of screen on time. You can expect this phone to last you all day, and as a daily driver, that’s exactly what it did for me.

As for charging, the 66W charging is pretty fast and aims to get the phone up to 60% in just 20 minutes. That’s really quick, and given the efficiency of the phone as well, it’ll last you a long time if you need to charge your phone in a pinch. With leaving the screen on though, I noticed that it charges nowhere near as quickly. To make use of that 66W charging, it seems that you can’t be using your phone at the same time.

---

Should you buy the Honor 70?

The Honor 70 is merely just a mid-range phone with some additional extras, and that means it’s not a particularly unique or special smartphone. It does a good job at pretty much everything, but there are phones that are a whole lot better than it at various different tasks. Want a good camera? Get a Pixel 6a. Want cleaner software (though with a bit of an unproven track record)? Then the Nothing Phone 1 might be worth it. Then there’s obviously the likes of the OnePlus Nord 2T and the litany of options from Poco and other device manufacturers, and you end up in a situation where the Honor 70 just seems overpriced.

There’s not a whole lot more to really add, to be honest. The phone is a good one, but it costs a lot for what you get. Why spend so much on a phone that’s only a little bit better than some phones that cost 20% less? If this phone ever goes on sale, I’d consider it then, but otherwise, the other phones that it competes against are already available for a lot lower price. Google services and the echos of a Huawei-driven smartphone aren’t enough to coast off of when commanding a premium price — there needs to be more. Honor does well with what it has, but to charge a price that much higher than the rest of the space, it needs to do more.

Honor 70

The Honor 70 is a mid-range smartphone with some decent specifications, though it's a costly smartphone that you may find better alternatives for.

See at Honor UK

As a result, I love the Honor 70, but it’s hard to justify its price. If it goes on sale, then it’s hard to pass up on it. However, there are so many good options that simply cost less, that it’s hard to argue that this is the phone you should get instead.

The post Honor 70 Review: Great photos, mid-range everything else appeared first on XDA.

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Honor 70 Review: Great photos, mid-range everything else

Honor has been making a bit of a resurgence in recent times, launching the flagship Honor Magic 4 Pro in the west back in May. That came after the company’s first solo western venture in the form of the Honor 50, which was a mid-range phone with not a lot else to offer. The Honor 70 is now available in the west, having launched in China a few months back. It packs a Snapdragon 778G Plus, a 120Hz AMOLED screen, and a 54MP Sony IMX800 primary camera, meaning that it’s certainly no slouch. There’s a kicker though — this phone comes in at €549.

The Honor 70 is a really good phone that I think anyone can love, but the problem is that there are so many other options available for less. The company’s Magic UI is pretty polarising, and the rest of the hardware, while good, isn’t revolutionary, The Snapdragon 778G Plus is a great performer, but it’s roughly on par with a Dimensity 1300 or even Tensor if you want to go the Pixel 6a route.

Is the Honor 70 worth buying? To be honest, probably not. It costs a lot of money, and you don’t get much bang for your buck. €549 is a tall asking price for a smartphone that has a worse camera experience than the Google Pixel 6a, a chipset on par with it, and a worse software experience. The only thing the Honor 70 has up its sleeves is the display, and if that’s something that draws you in, then you should probably just get something like the Nothing Phone 1 instead as it has basically the same specs for less. Unless you really love Honor or want some of the talked-about video features, the Honor 70 doesn’t have a great value proposition.

Honor 70

The Honor 70 is a mid-range smartphone with some decent specifications, though it's a costly smartphone that you may find better alternatives for.

Features:

Pros: Cons:

See at Honor

	Honor 70
CPU	Snapdragon 778G Plus 5G
Dimensions and weight	161.4 mm x 73.3 mm x 7.91 mm 178g
Display	6.67 inches OLED 58°curved punch Display4 1.07 Billion colors, 100% DCI-P3, HDR 10+ 120Hz
Camera	54MP wide, IMX8000, f/1.9 50MP ultra-wide, f/2.2 2MP depth sensor 32MP front-facing camera
Memory	8GB RAM, 128GB
Battery	4,800mAh
Network	LTE: Enhanced 4X4 MIMO, 7CA, LAA, LTE Cat. 20 5G
Sensors	Optical in-display fingerprint sensor, Accelerometer, Barometer, Gyro sensor, Geomagnetic sensor, Hall sensor (analog), Proximity sensor, Light sensor, Wacom layer for stylus input
Ports	USB-C
OS	Android 12 with MagicUI 6.1 on top
Colors	Midnight Black, Emerald Green, Icelandic Frost
Price	Starts at £479.99

About this review: I received the Honor 70 for review from the company on the 9th of August, 2022. While the company provided us a unit for review, it had no input into the contents of this review.

---

Honor 70: Design

The Honor 70 is quite similar in design to the Honor 50 and is also quite reminiscent of some Huawei devices like the Huwaei P50 Pro. Obviously, an element of that goes out to the fact that it’s clear that Honor was beginning to work on these designs when it was a part of Huawei, but it only tends to give naysayers of the company more ammo in accusing it of making use of Huawei’s resources.

It's a pretty beautiful phone

However, it’s a pretty beautiful phone, feeling light in the hand and showing a more “striped” design on the back when the light hits it in a certain way. It looks good, feels good, and I think that it’s still a unique enough design that differentiates itself from the rest of the market. The two camera circles house the “Super Sensing” IMX 800 camera, along with the 50MP ultra-wide and the 2MP depth camera.

In the display, the Honor 70 doesn’t really do anything super special. It’s curved on each side, and the front-facing camera is a hole in the center of the status bar. It’s a 120Hz AMOLED panel that supports HDR10+, making it pretty good for content consumption. It’s a pretty standard display in that it’s just a glass slab, though it has some pretty good specs that make it one of the most high-end aspects of this smartphone. It’s only full HD, which is one of the biggest sticking points.

However, an even bigger sticking point is the single-firing speaker at the bottom of the phone. I would’ve thought that dual speakers would make sense, especially with the inclusion of an HDR10+ display. That isn’t the case, and in fact, the single-firing speaker isn’t all that high-quality either. It’s a mid-range phone, sure, but I thought that the company was clearly poising this device to be more for media consumption.

The build quality of the phone is nice (even if it is plastic) and the haptics are good. Overall, it’s a nice phone with a good design, but I’m a bit confused as to what the philosophy behind its creation is.

---

Honor 70: Camera

The Honor 70’s camera is touted as special thanks to the IMX800 that’s included, but to be honest, we’re well past the point of sensors being the most important part of a smartphone photography experience. Smartphones like the Google Pixel 6a can still punch above their weight thanks to the incredible software processing algorithms that are employed, and while a new sensor helps in some aspects, you can use a new sensor and still have terrible photos.

I was greatly impressed with the pictures that I got

With that in mind, it’s important to approach the Honor 70 for what it is: a mid-range smartphone with a flagship sensor. I expected to have poor results, but I was greatly impressed with what I got. Honor did an excellent job with its HDR in particular, and I was surprised with what this phone is capable of. If you want a mid-range phone that’s capable of taking great shots, then this is certainly one of them. The phone may falter in other aspects (or may simply be okay), but this is where it really shines comparatively.

To be clear, the photos shown below are compressed. If you want to see the full uncompressed images, be sure to check out the Flickr album at the bottom of this section.

This first photo was taken at the Gorillaz concert in the 3Arena in Dublin. It does a great job at balancing the bright parts of the image with the dark, without overexposing any particular part of the image. I was impressed by this, as I know a lot of similar mid-range phones would struggle in this instance.

This is one of the most impressive pictures that I took, and it’s because of how the phone handles the reflections off of the building. It has just the right amount of sharpness and contrast without making the photo look unnatural. I expected the phone to struggle, but it did a pretty good job here.

I expected the Honor 70 to struggle with this photo too, and I’m impressed that it didn’t. The sun visible atop the building was actually filling the phone’s viewfinder entirely, and I couldn’t see a lot of the detail captured here until I actually took the photo. The bird in the sky is perfectly shown too, with the photo balancing the brightness from the sun very well with the darkness and shadows in the lower part of the image.

Overall, this phone did a fantastic job. I also tested with a short recording from the concert, and the audio quality is excellent for those who may want to record in loud venues.

Honor’s “Solo Cut” video mode is an important feature of the Honor 70, and it will let you pick out a person in a crowd. You select your subject, and it’ll show the person in an extra cut on the right-hand side, even if they’re in a group of people.

I’m really surprised by the camera here. It’s not the best phone camera that I’ve ever used, but it does a lot better of a job (particularly in HDR) than I expected from a mid-range smartphone. If you want a phone that takes decent photos, then this is a pretty strong contender in its price category. I’m not sure I’d call it a flagship camera, but it’s pretty close.

---

Honor 70: Performance

The Honor 70 packs a Snapdragon 778G Plus, and to be honest, it’s pretty good. It’s powerful, it’s fast, and I’m impressed by this particular chipset. It’s obviously not a flagship chipset, but that’s not what most people need anyway. For what it’s worth too, this phone feels more fluid than the flagship Honor Magic 4 Pro did, though I demonstrated that Honor was heavily restricting the performance of that smartphone. I don’t have any fluidity issues when it comes to opening the camera or using the launcher, unlike last time.

As for tests and benchmarks, this phone is obviously very powerful. It’s not flagship level, but it’s performant enough (and funnily enough, looks close to being on par with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the Honor Magic 4 Pro) that you won’t notice most of the time that it lacks in flagship performance. The most evident form of that will be when gaming, as the GPU is what will really take a hit. We also tried to run our jank tests, but the app would crash when trying to export the results. Because of that, we can’t scientifically deduce how smooth (or laggy) the phone is, but I will say that it feels fluid in normal usage, and nothing has particularly made it feel like I’m using a mid-range smartphone.

You'll not have any issues whatsoever with using this phone for your normal day-to-day activities

As you can see from the benchmarks above, the phone does a pretty good job both in thermals and in general processing power. It does a great job at pretty much any normal workload you can throw at it and is definitely an argument for not everyone needing a full-on flagship phone. The Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 is a surplus to requirements for most people, and this phone pretty much proves it. You’ll not have any issues whatsoever with using this phone for your normal day-to-day activities.

However, when it comes to gaming, this is absolutely not the chipset that you should use. The Adreno 642L GPU struggles with some pretty basic workloads, and you won’t be getting into any hardcore gaming on this phone as a result. It struggles to run Genshin Impact on the lowest settings at times, so that gives you an idea of the kind of power (or lack thereof) that this phone has in that department.

---

Battery life and Charging

The battery life of the phone is good though, and it can deal with a whole lot. The Snapdragon 778G Plus is a pretty efficient chipset, and the phone doesn’t heat up a whole lot when using it. I’ve had really good battery life considering what I’ve been putting this phone through, including a litany of tests and other heavy usages. With a ton of CPU Throttling Tests to run down the battery, I still got nearly five hours of screen on time. You can expect this phone to last you all day, and as a daily driver, that’s exactly what it did for me.

As for charging, the 66W charging is pretty fast and aims to get the phone up to 60% in just 20 minutes. That’s really quick, and given the efficiency of the phone as well, it’ll last you a long time if you need to charge your phone in a pinch. With leaving the screen on though, I noticed that it charges nowhere near as quickly. To make use of that 66W charging, it seems that you can’t be using your phone at the same time.

---

Should you buy the Honor 70?

The Honor 70 is merely just a mid-range phone with some additional extras, and that means it’s not a particularly unique or special smartphone. It does a good job at pretty much everything, but there are phones that are a whole lot better than it at various different tasks. Want a good camera? Get a Pixel 6a. Want cleaner software (though with a bit of an unproven track record)? Then the Nothing Phone 1 might be worth it. Then there’s obviously the likes of the OnePlus Nord 2T and the litany of options from Poco and other device manufacturers, and you end up in a situation where the Honor 70 just seems overpriced.

There’s not a whole lot more to really add, to be honest. The phone is a good one, but it costs a lot for what you get. Why spend so much on a phone that’s only a little bit better than some phones that cost 20% less? If this phone ever goes on sale, I’d consider it then, but otherwise, the other phones that it competes against are already available for a lot lower price. Google services and the echos of a Huawei-driven smartphone aren’t enough to coast off of when commanding a premium price — there needs to be more. Honor does well with what it has, but to charge a price that much higher than the rest of the space, it needs to do more.

Honor 70

The Honor 70 is a mid-range smartphone with some decent specifications, though it's a costly smartphone that you may find better alternatives for.

See at Honor UK

As a result, I love the Honor 70, but it’s hard to justify its price. If it goes on sale, then it’s hard to pass up on it. However, there are so many good options that simply cost less, that it’s hard to argue that this is the phone you should get instead.

The post Honor 70 Review: Great photos, mid-range everything else appeared first on XDA.

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