MasHD Blog

OG Velvet As you may have heard, LG shut its doors on its smartphone division Last month (April) after excessive losses as sales dwindled in the face of increased competition and lack of interest. Although most of its phones were top notch, LG couldn't target a specific segment and thus were all over the place when it came to naming and designing, But as a last Hurrah - The LG Velvet seemed like an excellent product as it ditched the long complicated naming strategy and brought premium design and features which have now sadly disappeared into the history of Android. But what if LG didn't abandon ship, well, according to Insiders, LG is still selling phones, but now only to its employees in the form of an unannounced device called the LG Velvet 2 Pro . The LG Velvet Pro improves upon the current Velvet and is said to cost a decent $170, the catch being that  only 3000 have been built (before the shutdown) and its sold to LG employees who are prohibited from re-selling these devi...

Huawei has officially announced their flagship phone duo for 2018- the Huawei P20 Pro and the Huawei P20 , the two phones , powered by the Hisilicon Kirin 970 processors are basically identical for the most part, but the camera module(s) of the P20 pro are vastly superior to the smaller P20 as it features three camera modules with the main sensor boasting 40 megapixels and an f1.8 aperture. The P20 Pro is basically Huawei's flagship for 2018, the phone , designed to take on the Galaxy S9 and the iPhone X (it even has a "notch" to match) features jaw dropping specs out of the box. The design , which includes a blend of glass and metal, now features a IP67 water resistance and features no headphone jack as its apparently a trend in this day and age. The phone features a 6.1" display with a 2240x100 resolution AMOLED panel , this display features a 18.7:9 aspect ratio and has 408ppi , the display is somewhat split at top, and in the middle of a small notch , th...

Nokia (HMD) has officially announced their flagship spec Nokia 8 Sirocco smartphone today . the phone , designed to occupy a slot between the mid range Nokia 7 and the upcoming Nokia 9 flagship , features a Lumia inspired metal chassis and a 5.5" P-OLED display which has a resolution of 2560x1440 . The phone , like most high end products , features a IP 67 ingress protection rating and a healthy amount of RAM - 6GB in this case , paired with a 2.5Ghz Snapdragon 835 Soc with Adreno 540 GPU . Storage wise , the phone holds 128GB internally and this can be expanded to another 256GB via MicroSD . The phone , like most higher tier Nokia's of the past , features Carl Zeiss optics - which are now paired to two 12MP sensors of which the main module has an aperture of f1.75 and a 1.4 Micrometer pixel size and Optical image stability (OIS) , the second unit , which has a f2.6 Aperture , features no OIS onboard . The rear module of the Nokia 8 is capable of 4K recording at 30fps wh...

Sony has officially launched their latest flagship duo for 2018 - Xperia XZ2 and the Xperia XZ Compact . The two phones , which are said to take “the best of Sony” ,feature an all new design aesthetic and thus departs from Sony’s blocky designs which were first seen on the original Xperia Z from 2011 , the new designs, which has a somewhat of a HTC U11 vibe to it ,features a curved back , thinner bezels and no headphone jack (hmm) . Xperia XZ2  The phones ,just like Sony’s of the past , feature IP65/68 dust and water reststance ,the two displays feature Gorilla glass 5 protection and they are also HDR BT2020 ready with both the 5.7” and the 5” variants sharing the new de-facto 18:9 aspect ratio and 2160x1080 resolution . Under the hood , both devices also share a Snapdragon 845 soc (Adreno 630 GPU) with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage (expandable upto 400GB via microSD). Both devices also use Sony’s 19MP Motion Eye 1-2.3” sensor (IMX400), the unit features a f2 apertur...

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ are official ,the two phones , designed to refine the almost perfect S8/S8+ ,focuses on providing a better camera ,a faster heart and subtle design changes which are aimed at providing a better user experience (oh ,it still has Bixby - improved and more refined now ) . The design is still somewhat S8 esque ,the major difference is the fingerprint reader which now sits below the camera unit unlike the pervious version which had the reader placed at the side . Other design elements include IP 68 ingress protection , a headphone jack , and a front mounted 3D touch module for feedback .Both the front and back of the S9 and S9+ are covered with a sheet of Gorilla glass 5 and this the front panel provides protection to a new well placed IRIS scanner and a 5.8” 2690x1440p Super AMOLED panel on the S9 and a 6.2” 2960x1440p Super Amoled panel on the S9+ . Both displays support HDR10 . The main selling point of the New S9 and S9+ are its new camera modu...

XA2's Rear camera structure - (Xperiablog) Sony has officially announced their new mid range lineup for 2018 . The Xperia XA2 , XA2 ULTRA and the L2 sit below their XZ series brethren ,but new spec upgrades make these mid rangers easily capable of taking on phones of their same class . XA2 Ultra's new Dual front camera layout (via Xperiablog) Sony Xperia XA2 and XA2 Ultra . XA2 Ultra  The XA2 and XA2 Ultra are basically the same phone internally . Both phones have a metal unibody and are both designed with the Xperia SP aesthetics . The XA2 , which is the smaller variant of the two features a smaller 16:9 5.2” display with a 1080p resolution (424 ppi) . The screen is protected by a sheet of Gorilla glass 5 and it also houses a slot for the 8 MP front facing camera which has a f/2.4, , the sensor is said to be 1-4” model . The rear sensor , which is basically borrowed from the Z5 Compact - has a 23mp count (f2 1-2.3” sensor) and has HDR and 4K video bu...

Vertu Clou de Paris - a recent example of an Android powered Vertu phone With attention to detail ,precious gems , metals and skin from exotic animals , Vertu has always been the brand to go for if you have a boatload of money and limited tech know-how . The Company , which was established in 1998 by Nokia as a premium phone maker made luxurious and sometimes bespoke luxury phones which ran from about $6000 to a eye watering $360,000 for a phone which is basically a Nokia dumb phone wrapped in expensive stuff . So , did Vertu phones actually sell , ? to be honest , they kind of did , although they don't retail in the mass market sales numbers of today , the company at its heyday , appealed to everyone from dictators , oil barons , oligarchs and the elite right until around 2007 when Apple decimated the appeal of a expensive dumb phone with the fluidity of a touch screen display . The announceme...

OnePlus - a company that started out as a small smartphone venture has now grown to a point where their smartphones sit toe to toe with current gen flagships , the Oneplus smartphone range , which consisted of the One , Two , Three and the OnePlus X (4 is excluded as it sounds similar to the word "death" in many Asian cultures ) is almost 4 generations long , and their lineup , which has focused on delivering a unrivalled smartphone experience at about 2/3 the flagship price has so far worked well for the Chinese OEM and this has paved the way for their latest iteration - the OnePlus 5 . Design Its no secret that the OnePlus 5 looks almost similar to another flagship smartphone from a year back . The designs , camera layout gives the impression that the design has been based on other iPhone 7 design clones from China (Oppo comes into mind) anyways , the phone features a headphone jack which is good news in itself . The aluminum rear panel flows throughout the device ...