Lenovo Z5 comes officially with Snapdragon 636 and anotch

The Lenovo Z5 was just announced in China. The phone did not live up to the expectations of a true bezel-less experience and brought a notch on the top, a chin on the bottom of the screen, a Snapdragon 636 chipset and an average dual camera setup. The screen measures in 6.2” with a tall 19:9 ratio.

The processor has eight Kryo 260 cores, clocked at 1.8 GHz, coupled with an Adreno 509 GPU. There are six gigs of RAM as the only option, but at least there is a choice between 64 GB and 128 GB storage. The 4 TB rumor appeared to be a separate announcement of a hard drive.

Lenovo followed the trend of branding everything with AI and now the dual camera is 16 MP + 8 MP with AI capabilities. The selfie camera is in the cutout of the display and has an 8 MP sensor that is also artificially intelligent, bringing machine learning of the face shape.

The Lenovo Z5 arrives with 3,300 mAh battery that supports 18W fast charging through a USB-C port. As promised, it has ZUI 4.0, the very same interface that was previously seen in the ZUK smartphones. It is based on Android 8.0 Oreo, but Lenovo VP Chang Cheng promised an update to Android P once the OS is announced. ZUK owners should rejoice because the promise was also made for the Z2, Z2 Pro and Edge phones.

The phone is offered in Black, Blue, and Aurora that shifts under different lighting. There are two memory variants with varying price tags - the 6/64 GB version goes for CNY1,299, while the 6/128 GB one will cost CNY1,799. The prices are equal to $202/€173 or $280/€240, and hopefully, we’ll see the device hit the global scene. The domestic market launch will be on June 12.

    
Lenovo K5 Note & Lenovo A5

Lenovo also announced two ultra-affordable phones called Lenovo A5 and Lenovo K5 Note. The first has 4,000 mAh battery pack and costs just CNY599 (less than $100/€80). The latter has a dual camera setup and a tall screen with a sweet price of $155/€135 for the more powerful 4/64 GB variant.

INTEL IS DESIGNING THE FUTURE OF DUAL-DISPLAY PCS INSIDE ITS LABS

We peeked at the future of PCs—at least, Intel’s vision of it—in a large room called the Client Experience Design Studio at the company’s Santa Clara, California headquarters. 

Rows of tables fill the space, many of them draped with black cloth to conceal Intel’s other secrets from public view. On one table, though, Intel has revealed all: a pair of prototype PC devices with not one, but two screens, surrounded by a number of iterative prototypes that led to the final result.

Meet Tiger Rapids, the two-screen PC for your hand

One of the prototype devices has been blessed with a public code name: Tiger Rapids, which might be called today’s two-screen PC. This is no pie-in-the-sky concept: At least two designs from Asus and Lenovo at the Computex show in Taipei will be inspired by the Tiger Rapids design, explains Gregory Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Client Computing Group. Intel has worked about two years to refine this design, which it has provided to select partners.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Intel’s Tiger Rapids prototype, which combines an ordinary PC with an EPD surface for easy inking.

Bryant explains how the prototypes express a design goal he defines as adaptable form factors. "Conceptually, it’s not a one-size fits all world," Bryant says. "You’re going to see secondary products of different shapes and sizes, people are going to do secondary displays, obviously we’re going to work on longer-term things like bendables and foldables."

Bryant emphasized that the motivation behind these designs was to make the PC bend to its user, not the other way around. "It’s not doing it because you can do it. It’s creating these adaptable form factors that fit the work that you’re trying to do," Bryant added.

Intel

“Our technology is being designed to help them connect with other people,” Bryant says of Intel’s users.

Competing against pen and paper

Intel’s lab is led by Murali Veeramoney, a soft-spoken but passionate man who is eager to describe in detail exactly what his small team has accomplished. (A second lab resides in Hillsboro, Oregon.) From among the prototypes of metal and plastic, he holds up something you wouldn’t normally expect to see at a technology company: a traditional pen-and-paper Moleskine notebook.

“This is a purpose-built device,” Veeramoney said, scribbling on the lined paper with a pen. “There is only one single thing you can do. So the combination of a purpose-built device with a multi-function device is what we wanted to bring.”