Are you excited about the changes in iOS 12?

A couple of days ago was one of the biggest days of the year for Apple. Technically speaking, the annual Worldwide Developers Conference is meant for developers, whether they're new to the scene or veterans, and not typically designed to appeal to the general consumer. At least, that's the case for the rest of the week-long event. The keynote, though, is definitely a different monster.

Apple's keynote is meant to go over what's coming down the pipe for not only iOS, but macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. There are usually some extra surprises, including hardware announcements. That wasn't the case this year, though, as Apple made sure the focus was set primarily on software across its ecosystem.

That's not a bad thing by any means. It just means anyone who is wanting to get their hands on new Apple-branded hardware will just have to wait until September to do it.

There was a lot to go through when the keynote wrapped up, but it wasn't too surprising that iOS got the majority of the attention this year. Apple unveiled plenty of new features, new Animoji and even Memoji (because why not), and even a new feature that's meant to help you keep tabs on how often you're using your phone and help you curb overuse, if you want that sort of thing.

The major takeaway for me was one of the briefest announcements on stage: grouped notifications. As I have mentioned in the past, notifications in iOS were borderline a train wreck, and literally any kind of change would probably have improved the overall experience. I've seen some say that grouped notifications were the easiest thing Apple could do. And that's probably right.

Still, it's better than nothing.

There is a lot to like about what's coming in iOS 12 later this year (I'm most excited about a legitimate system-wide dark mode in macOS Mojave, though), but for me it's a simple fix of the notifications that has me excited. Almost excited enough to actually download and install the first developer beta. Almost.

So, that's my favorite part of the keynote, as far as it goes related to iOS. What about you? Are you excited about grouped notifications? Let me know!

Apple

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Moto Z3 Play official with 6-inch display and Android 8.1

Motorola's Moto Z family is growing again today with another device that supports Moto Mods.

The Moto Z3 Play features a 6.01-inch 2160x1080 Super AMOLED display on its face with an 18:9 aspect ratio and 79 percent screen-to-body ratio. It's got an 8MP wide angle camera above that display that also offers face unlock. There's also a fingerprint reader on the side of the phone for added security.

Around back is a dual rear camera setup with a 12MP standard sensor with f/1.7 aperture and 5MP depth sensing camera. Moto offers pro controls for the cameras, too, like the ability to adjust focal length, white balance, shutter, speed, ISO, and exposure.

Inside the Moto Z3 Play's splash-resistant body is an octa-core Snapdragon 636 processor that's paired with 4GB of RAM, 32GB or 64GB of storage, and a microSD card slot if you need additional storage. There's also a 3000mAh battery included with the Moto Z3 Play and a 15W TurboPower charger that promises to get you half a day's charge in 30 minutes.

Like other Moto Z devices, the Moto Z3 Play includes connector pins on its backside that allow you to add Moto Mods. Motorola's got a wide range of Moto Mods available, including speakers, battery packs, a game pad, and a projector. In the U.S., each Moto Z3 Play will come bundled with a battery Moto Mod.

The Moto Z3 Play is launching in Brazil today for R$ 2,299 and will begin rolling out globally this month. It'll launch in the U.S. this summer, with releases on Sprint and U.S. Cellular. It'll also be sold unlocked in the U.S. by Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Fry's, and B&H Photo, and it'll be offered as an Amazon Prime Exclusive unlocked device, too.

Motorola's Moto Z3 Play looks like a solid upgrade over the Moto Z2 Play, offering a bigger screen, slimmer bezels, and 4GB of RAM standard. It's great to see Android 8.1 preloaded, too. It's disappointing that the Z3 Play won't be sold by Verizon, though, especially considering that the Moto Z2 Play and Moto Z Play were both offered by Verizon.  

Motorola

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MSI GF63

The MSI GS65 Stealth Thin is pretty much our favorite gaming laptop in every way, with a classy design and the performance of hyper car to match. However, its most limiting factor is price – and this is where the 15-inch MSI GF63 comes in to sweep you off your feet.

Sporting an almost identically sophisticated aesthetic, a nearly bezel-less display and respectable specs, the MSI GF63 is an ultra-slim machine designed for those on a budget.

Pricing and availability

Starting at only $999, the MSI GF63 will be one of the most affordable gaming laptops available later this June. MSI tells us that at this price the 15-inch gaming laptop will feature an Intel Coffee Lake Core i7 processor – there are plans for an even lower cost Intel Core i5 model in the future – paired with either a Nvidia GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti.

On the low-end, the MSI GF63 comes stock with a hard drive boosted by Intel Optane Memory for SSD-like performance as well as 8GB of RAM. From there, the next configuration includes an 128GB SSD that and can be specced up to 512GB.

Strangely, MSI tells us that users won’t be able to upgrade the MSI GF63, which makes it an oddity in the company’s otherwise upgrade-friendly lineup.

Interestingly, Asus announced an almost direct competitor to the MSI GF53 at Computex 2018 in the form of the Asus ROG Strix Hero II. Though it’s considerably more expensive at $1,699 (about £1,270, AU$2,240), it’s also potentially better equipped with an Intel Core i7-8750H, GTX 1060 with 6GB of memory, a Full HD 144Hz display, 16GB of 2,666Mhz RAM, 256GB PCIe SSD and a 1TB FireCuda SSHD.

Design

The MSI GF63 is practically a carbon copy of the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin, and that’s perfectly fine for us because that notebook had an absolutely brilliant design. Like its high-end cousin, this gaming laptop features a 82% screen-to-body ratio with bezels just 4.9mm, cramming a 15.6-inch display into a 14-inch frame.

Likewise, the two laptops share a nearly identical layout of body lines as well as keyboard and trackpad placement. The only real way of telling them apart, visually speaking, is the MSI GF63 carries on the classic gamer black with red trim color scheme – though the latter is kept to a much greater minimum than in years past.

Rather than having the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin’s intricate lattice of copper-toned metal around the vents, you’ll just fine some bit of plastic protecting this machine’s bare heat sinks.

Most of the laptop’s chassis is made of metal including the screen lid and keyboard deck. The bottom panel, meanwhile, is a mixture of plastic and metal – MSI explained it went this route to give the laptop some variance in feel and look.

Altogether, the MSI GF63 looks like a meld between the company’s current flagship gaming laptop and the outgoing MSI GS63VR Stealth Pro.

Performance

Although, we only very briefly got to play around with the MSI GF63 – in which we played around in Windows and launched a few applications – our experience with the Nvidia GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti leads us to believe this machine will have no problem handling eSports games and the most popular shooters like Fortnite and Overwatch.

We’re a little dubious as to how much faster Intel Optane Memory will make the hard drive storage feel, as our own testing in the past revealed a very slim difference on a desktop PC. MSI also promises more than seven hours of battery life, but as with all claims like these, we’ll remain skeptical about it until we can actually test it for ourselves.

Early verdict

MSI GF63 makes the portable, thin-and-light gaming laptop category more accessible than ever before.

Slim bezels are still a luxury even on Ultrabooks and to see it on a machine equipped with an Intel Core i7 CPU and discrete graphics is amazing.

We’ve got high hopes that this laptop will have all the power for gamers just starting out as this affordable price point is currently unbeatable.

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Moto Z3 Play

CyberLink U Meeting

Taiwanese developer CyberLink is best known as the company behind some powerful multimedia packages, from versatile media player PowerDVD to the excellent video editor PowerDirector.

CyberLink U Meeting is a more business-oriented service which offers simple cloud-based videoconferencing via Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices, with a browser-based option giving you instant access anywhere.

Pricing starts with a simple free product allowing up to 25 participants with meetings of a maximum 50 minutes. That's not going to be long enough to discuss anything complex, but it's sufficient to test the system, and it could work for quick meetings with family or friends.

The Pro 50 plan costs $9.99 (£7.13) per month per host, lifts the meeting time limit to 24 hours and allows up to 50 participants.

• Check out CyberLink U Meeting here

Pro 50 has an unusual bonus in CyberLink's PerfectCam 'Virtual Makeup Plugin'. PerfectCam is a plugin which works with video apps including U-Meeting, Skype, Skype for Business and Google Hangouts.

The Virtual Makeup feature uses facial recognition and smart video enhancement to smooth skin, (optionally) apply virtual makeup and generally smarten you up. CyberLink's video expertise means this typically works well, but you can customize the results if you don't like them, or even turn the feature off entirely.

The Pro 100 plan costs $19.99 (£14.29) per month per host, keeps the 24 hour meeting limit, but lifts the number of participants to 100.

If you're looking for presentation features, a separate CyberLink U Webinar service includes PowerPoint integration, support for video-on-demand and scheduled broadcasting.

A free CyberLink U Webinar plan allows presentations of up to 60 minutes and 25 participants, and the base commercial plan gets you support for 100 participants and 8 hour events for $29.99 (£21.43) per month per host.

Getting started

Signing up for CyberLink U Meeting is surprisingly simple, especially for a business-oriented product. There's none of the usual prompts for phone number, company type or industry - you're only asked for your email address, password and the display name you'd like to use in meetings.

We entered our details, confirmed our email address, and were taken to a download page with links to the desktop and mobile clients.

Launching the Windows client presented us with a simple interface listing all its key actions: Start a Video Meeting, Start a Voice Call, Join a Meeting and Schedule Meeting. (There are also options to host and record a webinar, but they're only accessible if you sign up for the separate CyberLink U Webinar service).

There's no preparation required. If you're in a hurry, choosing the video meeting or voice call options takes you to the meeting window. You can then send alerts to other CyberLink U Meeting users, or send the meeting URL via email, or copy the URL to the clipboard for posting online or sharing via some other route with whoever you like.

Email recipients receive a message with the subject '<your name> has invited you to a meeting' with a meeting link in the form 'https://ift.tt/2kSW4lm' and meeting ID number.

Clicking the link opens a browser window at the CyberLink U Meeting site, the recipient can choose their display name and enter the meeting with a click. There's no signup required and nothing to download. As long as they give permission, you'll see their webcam stream, hear their audio and be able to share your screens and take part in basic text chat.

If your recipient has CyberLink U Meeting, entering the meeting ID allows them to access the meeting directly. They can join with voice only via VoIP, but aren't able to dial in via a telephone.

Overall, the client is relatively easy to use, mostly because it doesn't have that many features. We figured out most of it almost immediately, and when there were questions, it didn't take long to find an answer. If you've used any other decent messaging program, you'll have CyberLink U Meeting figured out within a minute or two.

Features

CyberLink U Meeting had created a good first impression, then, but we needed a closer look to get a true understanding of what it could do.

Meeting hosts have a simple Contacts system which enables building up lists of individual U Meeting contacts, organizing them into groups and inviting them to meetings. While this works, you're only able to add other U Meeting users. If other regular meeting participants can't or don't want to install U Meeting, you can't create a contact which includes an email address only, and will have to manually send them an email each time.

Starting a meeting works much like other conferencing software: webcam views appear as people log in and there's a separate list of participants. What you don't get is a log window to display a list of events. If one of your 50 meeting participants is cut off, for instance, the screen will tell you there are now 49, but there's no easy way to tell who left.

The program also lacks audio events for these logon, logoff or other events, meaning you must pay close attention to visual indicators to keep an eye on what's happening.

The meeting window is straightforward, displaying panes with the webcam stream of each participant if they've allowed it, a plain box if they haven't. Icons tell you if their microphone or camera are disabled, and both the meeting host and participants can toggle their audio and video on or off, or disconnect from the meeting with a tap.

Mobile users get a separate button for switching between front and rear cameras.

Anyone using a desktop client can share their desktop with everyone in the meeting (there's no way to choose just some of the participants.) Unfortunately, mobile apps can't do this at the moment.

We tried streaming HD video over Wi-Fi to an Android mobile to test CyberLink's claim that U Meeting can handle 30 frames per second. The desktop client complained that this might not work due to our low bandwidth network, but as we had a 76Mbps fiber connection on the outgoing side, it wasn't clear what the app was talking about. Fortunately, we were able to ignore the warning and the video played very smoothly and with no significant issues.

Windows clients - but none of the others - can start, pause and resume recording meetings at any time. Everyone else sees a 'Recording' alert to warn them this is happening. There are absolutely no settings or options to configure how this works - file size, quality, anything else - but it's at least easy to use, dumping an MP4 recording into your Videos folder (This PC > Videos > U Meeting Recordings) when the event is over.

A simple text chat system allows anyone to enter and share messages at any time. You can copy individual messages to the clipboard, but we didn't see any way to save the entire conversation, which could be annoying in some situations.

Basic? Yes. But CyberLink U Meeting at least ended on a positive note with its handy message scheduling feature. Set a date and time and you can choose to share your event via Outlook or Google Calendar, a useful extra which could save you a lot of setup time.

Final verdict

CyberLink U Meeting has limited features, and the mobile apps are even more basic (no recordings, or screen sharing). It works well as a basic conferencing tool, though, and there's nothing that can't be fixed with a little more development time.

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UltraCart

UltraCart is a quirky but highly customizable PCI-certified web store platform for the more experienced user.

The service gets you off to a quick start with a small set of professionally-designed responsive themes, each of which can be previewed in full before you start (there's a sample site here).

The baseline themes can be tweaked in UltraCart's editor. At a minimum you can click on images or text blocks to edit them in place, or you can extend the page by adding content blocks of various types: an image slider, your Twitter feed, a signup form, whatever it might be.

Experts can go much further by drilling down into the templates and directly editing site HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. 

• Sign up for UltraCart here

UltraCart's product catalog supports both physical and digital items. A comprehensive checkout system includes customer accounts, automatic shipping rates, abandoned cart recovery and support for 57 standard payment gateways and assorted other methods (PayPal, Amazon, Bitcoin and more).

A long list of reporting and analytics tools are on hand to help you understand how your business is performing. Areas covered range from basic sales, expense and profit reports to the sales attributed to different marketing campaigns, breakdowns for your site visitors (traffic source, location, more), and Google Analytics offers even more.

UltraCart pricing starts with an unusual free-for-a-year plan. This has some significant limits - 250 products, 100MB storage, 1GB per month bandwidth, a maximum of $50,000 (£35,700) a month revenue - and there's a 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee if you use UltraCart's own payment gateway (USA and Canada only, external gateways are free).

But there are a lot of features which might be regarded as premium with other services: sales tax support, calculated shipping rates, customer reviews, coupons, email marketing integrations, even a free SSL certificate. Overall, it's an excellent risk-free route to help you find out more about how the service works.

There are multiple other plans from a $49.95 (£35.68) a month for small businesses, to $499.95 (£357.11) for an industrial-strength enterprise-level storefront which supports revenue of up to $500,000 (£357,140) a month.

Taking UltraCart's most popular Medium plan as an example, it raises limits to 1,000 products, 3GB bandwidth and $100,000 (£71,430) monthly revenue, and enables selling via Amazon, eBay and Google Products. There's better reporting, more automation possibilities via an API, and integrations with multiple business services, including QuickBooks, Salesforce, Ontraport, UltraShip and more. It's priced at $79.95 (£57.11) a month.

If that seems a little expensive, rival Volusion has a Plus plan that offers a powerful web store with similar 1,000 product and 3GB bandwidth limits for only $35 (£25) a month. Beware, though: that doesn’t include Amazon, eBay or Google Products support, and SSL certificates aren't free either – expect to pay from $6.21 (£4.40) a month for a two-year certificate.

• We’ve picked out the best website builders

Getting started

UltraCart offers a free 15-day trial with no credit card details required, and a straightforward signup procedure ensures it's very easy to get started. Hand over your name and email address, choose a store name, username and password and your store is ready to go within moments.

UltraCart's web console is colorful and good-looking, but it's also absolutely stuffed with panels and options. A sidebar gives you access to six store management areas, a Getting Started panel organizes its functions into seven tabs, there's a Statistics section with eleven graphs to chart your store's performance, summary panels for Accounts Receivable and Shipping Department, and more.

Take a moment to explore, though, and you'll find UltraCart is easier to use than it appears. Tap the Arrange Widgets button and you're able to remove any of these dashboard panels, or maybe add others (Quote Requests, Sales Summary, Affiliate Management, and more).

Type a keyword such as Order in the Search box and the console displays a menu of matching functions, reducing the need to hunt around. If you're still stuck, there's a vast amount of documentation available (check out the description of the Main Menu page here for a good example).

Creating your store

UltraCart's Getting Started panel takes an interesting wizard-based approach to helping you construct your store. This simplifies the individual steps - adding items, setting up shipping, payments and more - and it also provides some options that you won't often see elsewhere.

You don't have to set up a complete web store, for instance. UltraCart also supports providing a checkout only for a website you're hosting elsewhere, or you can use UltraCart's WordPress plugin to add a checkout to your blog, or any other WordPress-based site.

We opted for the full web store and moments later were browsing a tree of our site pages. Yes, a text-based tree - no immediate WYSIWYG editing here. By default, for example, inserting an image requires typing a text img tag and link into a box and tapping a Preview button to see the results (see the official Help site explanation here). There's a basic WYSIWYG option, but it's limited when compared to the competition.

There are similar usability issues everywhere, even in the most basic of website fundamentals. When a session expires, for instance, a warning bar appears to let you know and ask you to log in again. But unlike the alerts just about everywhere else, it doesn't have boxes to enter your username and password, it doesn't have a login link, and there isn't even a login option on the page. We had to choose the Log Out option - even though we weren't logged in - before we saw a Login link.

If you can live with annoyances like this, you do get some interesting advanced features. Head off to the StoreFronts page, for example, and you'll find options to enter custom CSS, import WordPress blog posts into your site blog, precisely customize how your store Search engine works, remap old website URLs to point to new pages, even use a File Manager to browse and play around with the files which make up your site.

Once you've managed to sort out the look of your store, UltraCart's Items Manager enables creating your product catalog. A powerful Import option allows you to map the fields of a source CSV file to UltraCart's item attributes, and there's an extensive Item Editor for making manual tweaks. Both have usability issues, though you'll still figure them out in time.

Setting up your payments seems more straightforward, fortunately. PayPal Express is enabled by default, and the (US and Canada-only) WePay-powered UltraCart Payments can be enabled in a click or two. There's support for Amazon Pay and many other systems, too. As usual, UltraCart finds a way to make the process more confusing (you're asked whether you want to configure single or 'multiple rotating transaction gateways'), but you are getting more functionality than you'll see with other e-commerce platforms, and experienced users may be impressed.

Running your business

UltraCart's documentation suggests its 'robust back office systems' are one of the most powerful features of the product, and the company just might have a point. A single screen gives you access to every possible step in its order cycle: pre-orders, quote requests, accounts receivable, pending clearance, fraud review, shipping, completed orders, recurring orders, chargeback disputes and case management.

As with just about every other UltraCart feature, this isn't designed for ease of use. These steps aren't all named sensibly. You won't need most of them, most of the time, and the key modules - like shipping - tend to present you with every possible option upfront, rather than attempting to guide you through the necessary steps. There's still a vast amount of power here, but also a considerable learning curve before you'll be able to exploit it properly.

Simple stats and charts on your store performance are displayed on the dashboard, but there's a more customizable set of reports available if you're looking for additional detail (check the full list in UltraCart's documentation).

At a minimum you can click a report, choose a date range along with a few other details, and view the results. You can also schedule some reports to be generated automatically and emailed to one or more recipients.

If you run into difficulties, there's a decent amount of web documentation available, although we suspect some of it is a little dated (we noticed a page or two with broken image links). But if that doesn't help, then beware, free support is only offered Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:00pm Eastern Time. If your store is broken and you don't know why, that could become a real issue.

Final verdict

A flexible e-commerce service with some advanced features, but often complicated and with too many usability issues for all but the most experienced users.

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Unihertz Atom

(Update: The Kickstarter page is now up and has already reached $376,000, collected from nearly 1,800 customers, with 34 days left. The original goal was only $50,000).

Today marks the launch of the Kickstarter campaign for the Unihertz Atom which is billed as the world’s smallest 4G rugged smartphone. It is the second attempt from Unihertz at a crowdfunded smartphone; the first try, Project Jelly, saw nearly 11,000 backers pledging more than $1.25 million (around £950,000). With Atom, the company is aiming for something even bigger.

Note that the estimated delivery date for the Unihertz Atom is October 2018, which is four months away at the time of writing. The unit that we were sent for testing was a production-grade model.

Design

The Atom is unlike any smartphone we’ve seen up until now – it is tiny (97 x 45 x 19mm) and weighs just over 100g. Think of it as a rugged smartphone that has been squashed and compressed into something stockier, which should, in theory, help it survive being dropped better. With rubber used all over its chassis, the Atom feels solid and durable.

Where others would have used yellow lines to accentuate its rugged looks, Unihertz chose red as the accent color for the Atom. At the front of the device is a camera and three capacitive buttons, one of which also doubles as a fingerprint reader.

A USB Type-C connector, an audio port (both not covered by any flaps), a dual nano-SIM tray, two volume buttons, a power button  and a dedicated push-to-talk button can be found on the four sides of the Atom.

The back – which is textured – hosts another camera with flash, a speaker grill and the Unihertz logo. There’s also a notch that can be used to attach accessories or a neckband.

Specifications

The device has been IP68-certified which means that it has been tested and should easily withstand life outdoors, and be capable of dealing with its fair share of water, dust, shock, vibration and extreme temperatures.

Despite its low price, the Atom is kitted out with components usually found on mid-range handsets: an 8-core CPU, 4GB of RAM and 64GB on-board storage. There’s no microSD card slot, though, and no 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

The screen is a 2.45-inch display, offering around a quarter of the surface area of a device like the Vernee Active (with a 5-inch display). The difference is even more obvious when it comes to sheer resolution: a Full HD display has 21x more pixels to manage compared to the 99,360 pixels on the Atom’s screen.

The 2Ah battery is powered by a 5V,1.5A power supply unit. The battery was one of the compromises that had to be made because of the limited space available in this handset.

Unihertz plans to follow GoHero’s example and offer a few accessories for outdoorsy types. Three will be available to begin with: an armband for $13 (£10), a bike mount costing $15 (£11) and a clip priced at $12 (£9), or it’s $20 (£15) for all three when purchased with the Atom.

In use

The small size and low resolution of the display means the GPU on the Atom didn’t have to work as hard as other handsets. That helps explain why it managed to significantly outperform many other rugged smartphones that are powered by similar system-on-chip solutions.

The screen – which is oleophobic and covered with Corning Gorilla Glass – has its own issues, all associated with its small size. It is usable but don’t expect the same level of comfort as a bigger model – on the default setting, the text is absolutely tiny and will strain your eyes, especially if you wear glasses.

Starting and swiping apps works okay but typing on-screen is a proper hassle with keys on the virtual keyboard that are just a few square millimeters in size. Writing emails or typing on WhatsApp will be a major pain, you have been warned!

It’s all not bad though. We were surprised to find that the Atom is powered by the very latest version of Google’s mobile operating system, Android 8.1 (Oreo), and that it even comes with NFC and face unlock.

There’s also a toolbox that comes with a sound meter, a compass, a bubble line, a picture hanging app, a heart rate measuring app, a plumb bob and a protractor.

One thing we did notice is while the small screen will help save juice, the smaller battery capacity translates into a much shorter usable battery life, as the components used here are still standard ones.

The competition

The Atom has no real rival: it is the only 4G smartphone of this size, and it is by far the cheapest IP68 device with the popular 4GB/64GB of memory/storage combination.

Final verdict

We had mixed feelings about the Unihertz Atom. On the one hand, it is very affordable, quite compact and very capable. And on the other hand, the small battery capacity and the screen size and resolution just do not feel right. You won’t be able to use it for most tasks that require typing.

That said, it will appeal to outdoor users, and we can foresee use cases where the device will be used with a plethora of accessories to address its shortcomings: laptop docking stations, Bluetooth headsets etc.

For now, we’d love to see Unihertz try its hand at a more conventional form factor. A 4-inch Android IP68 device maybe? One to replace the likes of the Sony Z5 Compact.

• We’ve picked out the best rugged smartphones

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Lenovo Z5 official with 6.2-inch display and a notch

Over the past month, Lenovo has been teasing a new phone called the Z5 with super slim bezels. It was expected that the Lenovo Z5 would have an all-screen design, but it turns out that that's not quite the case.

The Lenovo Z5 is now official, and like many other recent Android phones, it's got a notch at the top of its screen. There's a bit of a chin at the bottom of the screen, too, and so while it does have some slim bezels on its sides, the Lenovo Z5 isn't quite the all-screen device that some may have expected.

When it comes to specs, the Lenovo Z5 features a 6.2-inch 2246x1080 display with an 8MP front-facing camera, and around back there's a dual camera setup with 16MP and 8MP sensors. An octa-core Snapdragon 636 processor powers the Z5 along with 6GB of RAM, up to 128GB of built-in storage, and a microSD card slot.

Also included with the Lenovo Z5 is a rear fingerprint reader, a 3300mAh battery, and a USB-C port to charge that battery. There's a 3.5mm jack for your headphones, too, along with dual SIM slots.

The Lenovo Z5 will be sold in China at a starting price of 1299 yuan ($203 USD) for the 6GB/64GB model. Pricing will go up to 1799 yuan ($281 USD) for the 6GB/128GB model.

Some may be disappointed to learn that the Lenovo Z5 isn't quite the all-screen phone that's been teased over the last month, but this is still a nice-looking phone as long as you don't mind notches. The side bezels are pretty slim, the bottom chin doesn't look too big, and the specs are pretty nice, especially considering the price of the Z5.

What do you think of the Lenovo Z5?

Lenovo

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