OnePlus 8T cameras reviewed by DxOMark, rated as high as Google Pixel 4a

The OnePlus 8T has been nuts and bolts reality for a while now, and since its launch, the phone has been quite popular with buyers. The OnePlus 8T's success is based on a number of factors, including its core hardware, cameras and fast refresh rate display. Of these, the cameras have now been put through an in-depth review, with DxOMark comparing it to other popular camera phones in the market.

DxoMark in its camera review of the OnePlus 8T has given it an overall score of 111 points, putting the device on par with the Google Pixel 4a and the old Huawei Mate 20 Pro. This Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC phone offers decent power in the camera department, however, as per the review, the phone's overall performance isn't too great.

According to DxOMark, the main issues with the phone's camera is inaccurate color reproduction and noise across almost all shooting scenarios, especially in low-light. It also adds that the Dynamic range is also not up to the mark, with telephoto shots lacking detail and producing noise. The review also points out issues with videography on the phone, with videos needing better focus in low-light conditions.

However, the review does mention that the phone offers good exposure metering and a wide depth of field that ensures a sharp background. Additionally, the review also praises the phone's ability to shoot bokeh shots which offer an accurate and convincing depth effect.

OnePlus 8T specifications and features

Talking about the cameras of the phone, the OnePlus 8T is equipped with a quad-camera setup on the back that consists of a primary 48MP camera with a Sony IMX586 sensor and f/1.7 aperture. This is followed by a 16MP ultra-wide-angle camera with 123-degree field-of-view, a 5MP macro camera and a 2MP monochrome lens. The primary camera supports OIS that assists in recording 4K UHD videos at upto 60FPS and super slow-motion videos at upto 240FPS. The camera app offers features like video night scape, video portrait and Pro mode, to name a few. On the front, there’s the same 16MP selfie camera that uses Sony IMX471 sensor with an f/2.4 aperture. The front camera can record 1080p videos and also helps in face unlock and more.

On the front, there’s the same 16MP selfie camera that uses Sony IMX471 sensor with an f/2.4 aperture. The front camera can record 1080p videos and also helps in face unlock and more.

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Man buys PS5, reportedly gets it installed as a 5G router to fool his wife

While Indian gamers are fighting scalpers selling the PS5 at exorbitant prices, it looks like some are looking to bring the console into their homes without their better half finding out. It doesn’t help that the console is quite huge, but what helps is that it looks like a Wi-Fi router, kinda.  

Information making the rounds on Vietnamese Facebook networks tells the story of one such individual who wanted to bring home a PS5 and had to deceive his wife. He has reportedly installed the console as a 5G Wi-Fi router in his house. According to the report by Gizmochina, “The man is said to have instructed the guy from Sony who was going to install the console to dress up in the uniform of a local network service provider. They didn’t stop there, a sticker of the network’s after-sales service contact was pasted on the side of the PS5 to further douse any suspicion the wife might have”.

It looks like the individual has gone through a lot of trouble to hide the true nature of the console from his wife. But the question remains, what will happen when she catches him playing a game on the console? Or what if the internet stops working, and she decides to switch the console off and on? 

What further remains to be seen is whether the individual was inspired by the following video, which features a PS4 Pro being passed off as a router and is installed by a professional “networking” representative. Take a look and laugh. Remember to switch on the English subtitles.

In other news of wives not letting their husbands game on a PlayStation, a Taiwanese man was forced to sell his PS5 when his wife discovered it wasn’t an air purifier. You can read the details of that story here. If you are looking to get your hands on a PS5, you can check out our review of the console here and our comparison between the PS5 and Xbox Series X here. 

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OnePlus Nord 2 leak reveals MediaTek Dimensity processor, could launch in Q2 2021

OnePlus Nord 2 will be the name of the successor of the OnePlus Nord, one of the best-selling phones in the premium mid-range segment, according to the latest leak. The OnePlus 9 series could launch in the coming few weeks and the company is teasing an announcement on March 8. The OnePlus 9, OnePlus 9 Pro and OnePlus 9 Lite/OnePlus 9R have been leaked in the past few weeks revealing their key specifications and real-life images. 

According to a report by Android Central that cites “reliable insider sources”, the OnePlus Nord 2 is going to be the name of the successor of the OnePlus Nord. What’s more, the OnePlus Nord 2 will be the first smartphone by the company to be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 processor which is a 6nm chipset that was launched earlier this year.

OnePlus Nord 2 could rock Dimensity 1200 under the hood

We are still months away from the launch of the purported OnePlus Nord 2 and there’s a lot that could potentially change between now and when the phone officially launches. That said, it is an interesting move for OnePlus that, until last year, stuck to Qualcomm’s flagship 8-series processors. Then came the OnePlus Nord, a mid-range phone powered by the Snapdragon 765G which went on to sell like hotcakes, especially in India.

The MediaTek Dimensity 1200 processor has an integrated 5G modem with an octa-core CPU with a prime Cortex-A78 core clocked at 3.0GHz, three Cortex-A78 performance cores running at 2.6GHz and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 2.0GHz. MediaTek claims that the processor is 22% faster and 25% power efficient than previous generation processors. This is supported by Mali-G77 GPU and up to 16GB LPDDR4x memory.

It supports up to a 200MP camera or two cameras of 32MP and 16MP respectively with features like 4K UHD HDR video recording and five-core HDR-ISP. The Dimensity 1200 supports Full HD+ displays at up to 168Hz refresh rate with MediaTek HyperEngine 3.0 gaming features like boosting touch response, better graphics and are power-efficient.

OnePlus Nord 2 could launch in Q2 2021 which is anytime between April and June. The OnePlus Nord was launched in July and there is a high possibility that we may get the Nord 2 around the same time. For now, the company is likely focused on launching the OnePlus 9 series.

Also Read: OnePlus 9 series launch in India: Everything we know so far

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Nintendo Switch May See a New Model With Bigger Samsung OLED Display

Nintendo plans to unveil a model of its Switch gaming console equipped with a bigger Samsung OLED display this year, hoping the larger touchscreen can prop up demand in time for the holidays, people familiar with the plan said.

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AMD announces Radeon RX 6700 XT for Rs 46008 to compete with NVIDIA RTX 3070

AMD is expanding the Radeon RX 6000 family of graphics cards with the addition of the RX 6700 XT mid-range graphics card. The RDNA 2 RX 6000 series now includes the Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, RX 6800 and the RX 6700 XT. This new card is positioned to compete against the NVIDIA RTX 3070 (Ampere) and is reportedly optimal for 1440p gaming. It features 40 Compute Units (CUs) and will have 12 GB of GDDR6 memory. The RX 6700 XT will go on sale in India on March 18, 2021. It’s been a little over three months since the high-end RX 6000 series launched and AMD has been plagued by severe shortage of SKUs in the market. The global silicon shortage is showing little signs of improving any time soon but AMD has stated that they are taking steps to reduce the supply-demand gap. They are reportedly refreshing stock on a weekly basis and promise to have significantly more cards available for sale at launch.

In India, the official AMD website points to popular e-tailers and retailers who have stock of the cards. However, the cards are still sold at exorbitant prices by retailers across the country. AMD had previously declared the MSRP for their RX 6000 cards so as to educate customers and curb the price gouging that’s happening in India but those efforts have borne little results. NVIDIA has also been plagued by poor stocks of their RTX 30-series cards but their situation isn’t as bad as AMD’s. NVIDIA even sells Founders Edition cards directly to consumers via their partner RPTech at the actual launch prices. However, the cards are only restocked once a month and quantities are often limited to 30-40 per SKU for the entire country. NVIDIA’s partner cards being sold via retailers are often seen being sold at twice their actual prices.

AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Specifications

The Radeon RX 6700 XT is based on AMD's RDNA 2 microarchitecture and uses 40 Compute Units (CUs) which sport clock speeds of up to 2424 MHz. Since each Compute Unit hosts one Ray Accelerator, the RX 6700 XT ends up with 40 Ray Accelerators which make use of the Microsoft DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) feature. Compared to the RX 6800 family, the 6700 XT comes with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory which is connected to a 192-bit interface and has a peak memory bandwidth of 384 GB/s. The card also includes 96 MB of Infinity Cache, a local L3 cache equivalent that's meant to help reduce latency.

Unlike the 6800 cards, the 6700 XT is a double slot graphics card with a twin-blower cooling solution. Lastly, it has a total board power of 230 Watts and will draw power via an 8-PIN and 6-PIN PCIe power connectors.

AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Performance claims

AMD is positioning the RX 6700 XT to go up against the NVIDIA RTX 3070 and both cards are aimed at 1440p gaming. The following chart shared by AMD showcases some of the video game benchmarks across popular AAA titles pitting the RX 6700 XT vs RTX 3060 Ti vs RTX 3070.

These are all benchmarks running at 1440p resolution and they portray the RX 6700 XT beating the RTX 3070 across all tested games except in Gears 5 and Watch Dogs Legion.

AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Availability and Price

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT will be available for purchase in retail stores and via online stores starting March 18, 2021. The card is priced at $479 USD globally and in India it will be priced at INR 38,990 + 18% GST. This works out to INR 46,008. AMD has put up a shop page on their Indian website to guide customers to online stores which are currently stocking Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards. Globally, AMD sells their reference cards on their official website.

AMD teased board partner cards during the launch livestream and it appears that most of them will have a custom cooler design.

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Epic Games Buys Fall Guys Developer Tonic Games Group

Fall Guys’ developer Tonic Games Group is being acquired by Epic Games, of Fortnite fame. This is Epic’s third recent acquisition after Houseparty and Rocket League. It will be also be coming to Nintendo Switch and Xbox soon

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Realme Narzo 30 Pro Review

The Realme Narzo 30 Pro packs a very familiar set of hardware; MediaTek Dimensity 800U SoC, a 48MP primary camera, a 120Hz IPS-LCD display and not to mention a 5000mAh battery. However, each of those features manages to falter in some way or the when it comes to the phone. The Dimensity 800U doesn't clock the highest benchmark numbers and neither yields the best gaming experience. the camera out is fairly average and the display, while having a 120Hz refresh rate, happens to have poor colour accuracy. Frankly, you'd be better off stretching your budget a bit and going for the Mi10i instead.

We’re not even into the third month of the year 2021, and Realme has already launched as many devices. The fourth smartphone to join the ranks this year is the Narzo 30 Pro, coming right on the heels of the Realme 7X Pro (Review), the Realme 7X and the Narzo 30A. Narzo has been about offering relatively more powerful devices at price points that are typically lower than comparably spec’d devices. The Narzo 30 Pro might feel like a rebadge of the Realme X7, but let us straight away clarify that it is not. The Narzo 30 Pro does offer more for less on paper, but let’s figure out just how much of those promises it lives up to.

Realme Narzo 30 Pro Performance

The Realme Narzo 30 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 800U processor an octa-core chip. Accompanying this MediaTek chip is 6GB of RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage. We have already tested this chip out in the Realme X7, so we have a fair idea of what to expect. However, the Narzo 30 Pro is its own device, so it went through the paces, without any presumptions. First up, we have synthetic benchmarks. The Realme Narzo 30 Pro posts decent numbers across the board, with an AnTuTu score of 340508, and GeekBench 5 numbers hitting 584 and 1776 on single core and multi-core tests respectively. The multiple tests that comprise of the GFXBench benchmark also post decent numbers for the Realme Narzo 30 Pro. However, we have to take all these numbers with a large grain of salt. This is because the MediaTek chipset is boosting the CPU and GPU clocks to their maximum, disregarding thermal limits and more importantly, disregarding the load being put on them. When we profile the CPU using GameBench while running AnTuTu and GFXBench’s Car chase benchmarks, we see all cores on the MediaTek Dimensity 800U get clocked up to max. MediaTek has been known to employ this trick to get their chipsets to rank higher on benchmarks and while the company says what they are doing is “well within accepted practices,”we are of the strong opinion that it is not. Benchmark tools allow us to put devices on an even playing field, and this practice by MediaTek is frankly, unfair. When running our CPU throttle test, the Dimensity 800U comes down to 85 percent of its performance by the end of the run, which isn’t too bad. However, taking a closer look at the graph shows that the chipset with its corresponding cooling solution is not capable of sustaining peak clock speeds for any decent period of time. The chip drops down to the 80s rather frequently and we’re not too happy about it.

When it comes to real-world usage, let’s start with actual gaming performance. CoD Mobile can only go up to Medium graphics preset and delivers a median 56 fps with a stability of 84 percent. Asphalt 9 manages to hit its 30fps mark, but the game does suffer from some janks every now and then. Operations like editing photos in Lightroom were also on the slower side, with some lag, but not making the experience unbearable. Performance-wise, the Realme Narzo 30 Pro left us unimpressed. It's not so much about the price, but also about the fact that having “Pro” in the name is definitely misleading with respect to performance.

As a daily driver, the Narzo 30 Pro manages to perform decently, with only a few minor hiccups while gaming. If you’re not an ardent gamer, then the phone should provide an adequate amount of performance for basic things including your social media frenzy.

Realme Narzo 30 Pro Display

One of the things that sets the Narzo 30 Pro apart is its IPS-LCD display, which rocks a 120Hz refresh rate. As an IPS LCD panel, one would automatically expect this to be a fairly colour accurate panel, but in reality, that is not the case.

We ran the Narzo 30 Pro’s display through a full-colour profile analysis and walked away with some very interesting results. The phone doesn’t offer any display modes, instead only offering the ability to adjust white balance between warm, cold and default. At the default setting, the display’s white balance sits at 7231K, causing a strong blue-bias. The average deltaE2000 value is 4.9 and while the average Gamma is 2.232. A closer look at the gamma curve however reveals that the display isn’t capable of maintaining the smooth gradation at different luminance points. Switching the display over to the “warm” white balance setting, we see the RGB balance become better, with the colour temperature coming down to a more nominal 6529.

Calman Greyscale sweep for Narzo 30 Pro on default colour profile

Calman Greyscale sweep for Narzo 30 Pro on warm colour profile

The colour reproduction on the other hand is another area of the problem. In both the white balance presets we see deltaE2000 error of 4.15 and 4.33 for the warm and default settings respectively. Interestingly, the panel on the Narzo 30 Pro shows a that despite the inaccurate colour representation, it handles the various shades of brown corresponding to skin tones rather well. It falters with the reds and blues, oversaturating both while also exhibiting luma error when it comes to blues. Thankfully, the colour shift isn’t too bad is barely noticeable, but those of you with a discerning eye will be able to make out that some shades of red and blue aren’t what they should be.

Calman sRGB color checker puts the DetaE error at 4.33, with notable issues with some shades of red.

The Narzo Realme 30 Pro's display has best colour reproduction with the white balance set to warm when tested using the Calman ColorChecker.

The display otherwise is rather bright, tipping the scales at 419nits of brightness, making it easily legible outdoors under bright light. The pre-applied screen protector does cause some reflections but taking it off solves the problem completely.

Realme Narzo 30 Pro Camera

The Narzo 30 Pro’s camera stack is one of the most standard configurations available in this segment: a triple camera setup featuring a 48MP primary camera with an aperture of f/1.8. The secondary camera is an 8MP ultrawide lens while the third lens is a 2MP macro camera.

The primary 48MP camera is a reliable shooter thanks to the pixel binning which allows the camera to output images with an acceptable level of quality. For anyone thinking or expecting that the Narzo 30 Pro would bring ground-breaking innovation or improvements to the camera stack, that just isn’t the case. What you instead get is a camera whose output is very homogenous with other smartphones that offer a 48MP camera below the 15K segment. As long as you’re shooting in the default binned mode, you get lovely, well exposed, generously saturated images. There are some minor issues with the reproduction of the colour fuchsia, but that’s a common problem across most smartphones these days. In fact, this particular colour gives the otherwise reliable AF system on the Narzo 30 Pro a difficult time.

 

Shooting in low light situations is where we see the camera’s weakness. The night mode bundled into the camera app does produce nice, bright images which will totally be social media worthy. However, zoom into them or try to crop into them and you will quickly notice the absolute lack of detail. The ultrawide angle camera offers decent daytime shots. The corners a little on the softer side, but nothing too concerning since it’s normal behavior. Do note that the ultrawide angle camera has a rather small aperture of f/2.4 and hence, low light performance is on the poorer side. Then there’s the 2MP macro camera, which, quite frankly, is just as good as not being considered as present. You’re going to struggle a lot to get a decent usable image out of the macro camera, and at the end of it all, it won’t be worth it.

Realme Narzo 30 Pro Battery Life

The 5000mAh battery powering the Narzo 30 Pro manages to last a little over a day. The supplied charger tops up the battery from zero to 50 percent in 30 minutes an to a 100 percent in under 70 minutes flat. When it comes to endurance, you’re going to want to keep the display at the 60Hz refresh rate. When using the phone at 120Hz, the battery needs a recharge every night for sure. However thanks to the 30W fast charging, you're not going to find yourself in a power pinch as long as you remember to charge your phone every night.

Realme Narzo 30 Pro Build and Design

The Realme Narzo 30 Pro utitises a tried and trusted dsign, with a few standout featuers. The first of these is the side-mounted fingerprint sensor which sits on the right side of the frame. Unlike other phones with the same feature like the Realme X7 Pro, the volume rockers are placed on the left side of the frame. We are partial to this design choice because it makes all relevant buttons easily accessible. The back of the body uses polycarbonate and the silver finish that we have feels nice to the touch. The matte finish is nice to the touch, although you're most likely never going to get to really feel it since the phone is most likely going to live in the supplied TPU case. Besides that, the phone is surprisingly well built, with the heft adding to the perception of good build quality. For the price, there's nothing real to complain about and users should expect a decent quality device.

Conclusion

The Realme Narzo 30 Pro is a decently spec'd smartphone when you consider the price point. The choice of the MediaTek Dimensity 800U processor is definitely going to be a controversial one since you can get a Qualcomm Snapdragon powered smartphone (like the Mi10i) for just a little higher. The gaming performance of the smartphone is decent and normal, light usage such as email, taking photos, listening to music and general multi-tasking does work without much of a hitch. The cameras on the other hand feel just about average, with low light performance being particularly disappointing. the battery life on the phone is definitely commendable, as long as the display is left at 60Hz, although that shouldn't discourage you from using the 120Hz mode given the availability of 30W fast charging. Overall, the Narzo 30 Pro doesn't feel like a very inspired device, and feels more like one whihc has taken the "safe" approach instead.

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