Today marks the 30th anniversary since Benjie Tan connected the Philippines to the world wide web. It is this time every year that I am drawn to an article written by a dear friend, Jim Ayson (may his soul rest in peace), who chronicled the evening before the Philippines went online. It involved a $70,000 Cisco router the size of a filing cabinet from by the DOST, a slow drive to the PLDT Ramon Cojuanco Building, and a celebration with pizza. This piece has been lost in the ethers of the Internet, and Benjie Tan has also since passed away…
Author: Jayvee Fernandez
Jayvee Fernandez
Technology Editor for The Philippine STAR and founder of A Bugged Life. Seasoned content marketer and Anvil Awards juror.
As a child of the 80’s I was born into the world of the terrestrial landline. In my teens, mobile carriers were the new fanfare of the world as Nokia phones slowly populated the pockets of my classmates in college. As far as I can remember, the one constant gripe as a teenager was how two telcos seemed to dominate the space. There were repercussions for us youngsters who didn’t have a lot of budget for newfangled things such as “prepaid load.” Down the line, competition for user acquisition heated up, bringing forth the unli-text era where SMART and Globe…
I’ve been a realme convert for about a year now. Last year, I was using the realme 11 Pro+ 5G as my main phone. It was great — faux leather design, heavy 200MP camera. Everything was decent. It was a midrange phone that performed just as well as other flagships at half the cost. The 2024 refresh, the realme 12 Pro+ is exactly that but with a much better camera system. The realme 12 Pro+ focuses on new Street Mode filters and the periscope camera (so funny that their website says that “next gen imaging doesn’t rely on ultra-high MP”…
As a fan of venn diagrams, the Lenovo Legion Go caught my eye, as it defines a new category in productivity and gaming.
What’s to love: It’s a good year for foldables. Although we have seen HONOR’s Magic V2 in the Chinese market months ago, one can argue that the device still holds up to be fresh even by today’s standards because, well, not all phone brands make these folding screens regularly. Despite being a 2023 device released this Q1 2024, the Magic V2 is fresh, elegant, and a performer. A quality entertainment and productivity package At the core of the device is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor. In this day and age, the Gen 2 seems to be the processor of…
When I turned the device on for the first time, I was quite elated to hear CHERRY’s iconic beeping alert for Android devices. CHERRY is back, baby! On to the review. If you’re like me, having been around the tech desk for a while, one of the industry lows was when CHERRY left the mobile phone market a number of years ago to focus on IoT products like security cameras and smart appliances (their portable projector is awesome). Well, it’s 2024 and we’re all bouncing back from the pandemic — CHERRY is bouncing back and has released a pretty solid…
I have a confession! This year 2024 is the first time I’ve actually held onto a Reno device. Since 2016 I have been an OPPO loyalist, having owned an F1 and the A9 2020 Edition that I got in late 2019. It was the phone I had used to shoot the 2020 Japan Olympics, and at that time, OPPO was abuzz with pride over both wide angle and night mode photography. The first of the Reno series came out around that time and the tech world was gaga over the pop up hardware camera. Then the pandemic happened. Stuck at…
The last time I wrote about Internet connectivity at home was in 2006. It was a much simpler world, albeit with more complex nuances when it came to rigging up your house with WiFi. It was a world where the origins of coffee shops as co-working spaces began, as free WiFi was the dangling carrot for people to spend hours being productive while sipping a grande latte. A decade and a half later, we’re at a new turning point. 100 or even 200Mbps home connections on Fiber are not new: they’re the norm. But we’re actually looking forward to the…
I have returned from a quick three day trip to Bangkok to bear witness to Xiaomi’s huge Q1 launch with their Redmi Note 13 series. I happened to have their top of the line model, the Note 13 Pro+ 5G. I wanted to test the device’s superb night mode, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and tour a speakeasy bar that was recommended by a local friend. Enter Rabbit Hole, a consistent dean’s lister in Asia’s 50 Best Bars, placing 34th in 2019 and 31 in 2020. Upon arriving via Grab, it took me about 3…
At the center of the POCO X6 Pro 5G is the MediaTek Dimensity 8300 Ultra chip. It’s only the first month of 2024 and we are already seeing huge gains in POCO’s Q1 lineup.
