News & Reviews:   Weekly TechNave

This week quite a lot happened as Huawei came out with their Honor Magic concept phone for sale with all the sides and corners curved. Wiko announced their Ufeel Go phone with 4000 mAh battery for just RM599 and the ASUS ZenWatch 3 also got announced for RM1199. You can also pre-order Apple's AirPods for RM849.

Again, last week had no really dominating news but there were some notables. Caving in to the pressure, Microsoft have announced that the full Windows 10 experience may soon run on Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. Fitbit are buying Pebble, effectively marking an end to the initially crowd-funded Pebble smartwatch.

This weekly TechNave we've had quite a number of small but potent bits of news like Nokia smartphones coming in 2017, Huawei making a breakthrough in graphene-assisted heat resistant li-ion batteries and a well-known print magazine like Sports Illustrated actually using a smartphone for the image of its cover. Netflix now allows offline viewing and MediaTek announced new Helio X23 and X27 deca-core processors.

This week the biggest news has to be the Malaysia launch of the vivo V5, complete with Dato Siti Nurhaliza as the brand ambassador. Wiko launched their UFeel Prime smartphone for Malaysia and there was also a move to combat software pirates with online marketplaces while local events look to decrease as year-end approaches.

While there wasn't any clear big event or device this week, the sheer number of announcements was huge with Vivo announcing their V5 (set for an official announcement in Malaysia next week) along with their X9, X9 Plus and XPlay 5 devices. The more powerful OnePlus 3T got announced rather quietly alongside the downgraded Huawei Mate 9 Lite while Huawei also announced the Huawei Mate 9 Pro for China. Check out the rest in the article.

This week Huawei dominated the news with their latest and greatest Huawei Mate 9 and Porsche Design Huawei Mate 9 smartphones to go with a Huawei FIT smartwatch as well. Xiaomi managed to slip in their Redmi 4, Redmi 4A and Redmi 4 Prime smartphones while Olympus announced their OMD E-M1 Mark II DSLR will be going on sale in December 2016. The Meizu Pro 6S and Meizu M5 were officially announced while the Samsung w2017 flip phone officially arrived in China.

Last week saw the official refresh of the long awaited Apple MacBook Pro with a faddish "new" feature while Microsoft announced their Surface Studio, Surface Dial and Surface Book. However, the biggest news of the week was probably the announcement of the Xiaomi Mi Note 2 and their first unique looking smartphone, the fully ceramic Mi MIX alongside their Mi VR headset.

This week Malaysia saw the Bajet 2017, with a proposed increase in broadband speeds at the same price rate from January 2017, while Malaysia's telcos all came out with their respective Apple iPhone 7 deals. This includes Maxis with their trade up and RealView stock checker, along with U Mobile and their UPackage plan.

This week we launched our own GadgetBook Giveaways so you can win or own a floating Bluetooth speaker with more weird, trendy and fun gadgets coming soon. However, most of the tech news this week involved the official arrival of the Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 plus and their subsequent deliveries or bundled launches with Celcom, Maxis (which involved interrupting a band), Digi and U Mobile along with GemFive.

The biggest announcement of the week remains the Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones along with their Daydream View headset and a number of other devices. As the first wholly made by Google devices they look to phase out the Nexus range but you can check out all the highlights in our Google Pixel under 6 minutes video.