You don’t need the Galaxy S8!

Samsung just released their latest flagship phone with the Galaxy S8 /S8+  and Apple is going strong with their iPhone 7/7+

Do you really need it now?

The hype is real and quite frankly these 2 company sums up the mobile industry.

But stop and think for a while.

Give me 3 good reasons why you need it now.

No NOT one good reason, THREE!

If you can’t provide three, which 90% of you won’t be able to, then I’m pretty sure you do not need it.

You don’t need it! You just want it!

This is assuming you already have a smartphone.

But what if you don’t? And it’s gonna be you’re first phone.

If it’s a gift and someone just gave it to you…TAKE it!
Heck it’s their loss!

But to spend your own money to go full blast on a premiere flagship?

YES you can, but why?!

Again, give me THREE reasons!

I’m not telling you to not get a phone because it’s all evil, because it’s addictive, because it’s anti social.. NO! I’m saying don’t go 100% on something that brings back only 50% of the value you really need.

Why spend that much money when, you can get an S7 Edge at almost 2/3 of the price of the new S8? It still is an amazing phone!   You can just use the remaining 1/3 of the money to buy an online course and learn something new! Create value for yourself! Smart decisions.

Why spend that much money on the new iPhone 7 PLUS when you can get the iPhone 6s Plus and use the remaining cash to finally start that online shop business you wanted to try for so long? Smart decisions.

If you’re looking to save more, get the OnePlus3 or OnePlus3T. You’ll have a lot of cash left to spend on creating value. Find a way to improve yourself! Smart decisions.

Heck you can opt-in to buy a cheap Android Phone and go all in if you really found what you wanted to do! Go work and build that start up! The higher the risk the better the rewards. Smart decisions.

You see, I don’t care what phone you get

What I just want to say is that you don’t have to sacrifice a whole lot to get the same value from something that makes you feel good. Just make sure that whatever you are buying will create value for yourself. In all practicality, the latest flagship phones really are priced more than their actual value! That’s how businesses work. You can get the S8 next year after you’ve started the business that you love which came from the little capital you saved from passing up on it. Sounds good right? Good!

Imagine this, you get the S8 and then nothing, back to your normal life. While another person gets the S7 Edge and grabs an online course (they’re cheap BTW) on how to create Apps and after a few months, is able to get ‘extra’ income from building apps. He’s even able to maximize the use of the S7 Edge since that’s where you test and run  those apps!

But what if you’re not a techy person? Buy merchandise that you trust and sell them off Instagram or Facebook! Best thing here? You can do this business anytime, anywhere!

There is always something you can do! Find a way!

Always do something extra on the side!

Well, you can buy the flagship and do the same right? Technically, Yes! But you can still use that extra money for something else! Remember, Smart Decisions!

Good Phone +  Travel  is better than just a Flagship Phone

Good Phone + New Skills is better than just  a Flagship Phone

Good Phone + Your own business is better than just a Flagship Phone

I am not taking away anything from the Galaxy S8. It’s a marvelous piece of technology. Just make sure you will be profiting from its use and not something just for display.

I guess this is more of a value centered article but I saw the release of the Samsung Galaxy S8 as a good example of how individuals today consume their technology.

Well I guess, a little life advice wouldn’t hurt anyone.

So go ahead! It’s up to you to make those Smart Decisions, for YOU!

Cheers!

 

 

 

Let’s explore Shopee! – A site tour

Magandang Araw!

If you’re reading this post, I am 90% sure that for the past month or even the past week you have tried looking up something you wanted to buy online, right?

Oh, and I could be right that most of you tried to see if it’s available on the biggest online marketplace in the Philippines today, which is…. (drum rolls)… LAZADA!

Well for others, you may have searched through your favorite Facebook and Instagram sellers right?

So I guess it would be nice to introduce Shopee to all you online shoppers out there and probably provide insights about the platform.

Brief Background

Shopee is much like Lazada in a way that it caters to the Southeast Asian market as a marketplace platform. This must be a coincidence,  but  I have noticed that they also carry the same color for the brand. There must be something about the color orange, right? In their site they put emphasis on being a mobile-first marketplace. This fits very well to today’s trend of everything becoming mobile.

Speaking of mobile, you can get their mobile app below,

   

Note: PutekPH is in no means affiliated with Shopee 🙂

Now Shopee has increased their social presence in the previous months trying to get a share of the massive audience that online shopping has here in the Philippines ( yeah, the malls still ain’t enough!) and it looks like they are doing a great job in doing so.

The way I see it, they are trying to target first those selling their products online through Facebook, Instagram, Blogs etc. and eventually convert them to Shopee sellers together with the benefit of easier transactions and product logistics. And again, I can see that its working! Shopee is gaining traction in their online presence.

With that said let’s go and explore Shopee.ph!

The Main Page

Shopee’s Main Page

Looking at the main page, we get the typical promotions for some of the products in their catalog.

LOOK Free Shipping! Somehow the free shipping promotion is intended to sellers and buyers. Looks like Shopee is really working actively to increase the number of sellers for their site. And look , at the upper left there is a specific link name “SELLERS” which I think is part of Shopee’s goal of attracting more items to their catalogs.

Incentive for Sellers

Let’s take a look at the Free Shipping promotion for sellers, clicking on the banner gets us to a page that promotes what advantages you can get as a seller. You can view the whole page here while its active: Free Shipping Promo for Sellers

Looking at the third item on the navigation bar on the top there’s a link named “Instagram Import”. This must be (obviously) for Instagram sellers who wants to be a part of Shopee. Another active strategy set up by Shopee which is kinda nice, let’s take a peek into it.

The link takes us to this page right here which is pretty eye catching, definitely something that helps out Instagram sellers become part of Shopee. Pretty cool strategy!

If you have friends that sell on Instagram you can try suggesting selling on Shoppe because it looks like they are really willing to take them on board.

Okay, so let’s get back to the main page.

Searching for a product

Let’s try looking up some products. Me personally, I would shop for consumer electronics, so lets try searching for headphones.

So here we have our search results. I like how they have these “Preferred” labels on some items. Maybe it’s because the item is a top seller or the actual seller is a trusted one. Either way, this would help you in making a decision on which items to choose.

Online Buyer Advice:

These results could end up to be 50 pages long so I don’t really recommend searching using a generic keyword like “headphones” (Unless you are just window shopping). I just did for demonstration purposes.

What I would recommend is try searching Google first for the specific item that you are looking for  and once you went through the reviews and finally got a choice, that’s when you search for that specific item. Really prevents you from impulse buying and losing yourself to the massive variety of items like the one’s you see in our results.

The Product Page

Let’s try clicking on a product, I tried searching for a recent wireless headphone I found interesting which is the Jabra Move Wireless, but unfortunately there were no results. Too bad, but anyways it could be there in the future so let’s just look at another product,

The Xiaomi Hybrid Pro HD‘s, a very decent pair of earphones, the product page contains what a product page should contain. The product price is easily noticeable, the ratings are visible.

It is nice that there’s a Chat Now feature, if you want to communicate with the seller. And a “Shopee Guarantee” appears at the bottom indicating that you can get your money back if you don’t get your items. Pretty nice. A brief summary of the seller’s profile is also available.

The Product Details, Ratings and Comment sections are contained in a single window with each having its own tab.

In my opinion, I think the Rating should be the default tab shown because when I’m looking at a product I always go straight to the reviews first before I check the product details. I don’t know, it could just be me, it might be different for others though.

Tell us how you choose your products in the comments below.

But looking at the product page as it is, it looks fine. very concise and informative. I imagine this being very effective when viewed from a smartphone (which I think is the preferred device for the platform), I’m at my laptop here as you can see.

Payment Options

Let’s take a peek at the payment options that Shopee has. Most of the products that you will find at Shopee at the moment are fashion products. So let’s click on one.

At the checkout page, as you can see, (depending on the seller), Shopee allows Cash on Delivery, Payment Centers, Over the counter payments and also Bank Transfer

Here’s the list of Payment Centers available:

Over the counter payments is basically just depositing the money personally to the specified account, here are the supported banks:

So going back to the main page, let us have one more final look.

Scrolling down we see a section where you can discover products in the catalog.

Like I said, majority of the products at the moment are fashion products as you can see.

I also like how the site switches to a minimal layout when you reach this page.

So for the final verdict,

Should you Shopee?

Shopee is a good platform for those wanting to improve their stores knowing that its easy to become a seller and the advantages of being one. But for the buyers, still shop with care because although Shopee and any other marketplace platform try their best to assure everyone of quality products, the actual item itself would still be coming from the seller and they would only act as a bridge.

Looking at the type of products they have now, majority are fashion items. Hopefully they’ll be able to increase their offering as the time goes.

Looking at it as it is, Shopee looks like a very solid competitor on the online shopping scene here in the Philippines and surely a thing to watch out for as it grows.

Go ahead and check them now at Shopee.PH

See ya!

 

Gadgets, when should you charge them?

To start, if you have a habit of waiting for your phone to tell you that it’s running low on battery before you charge…nako!

STOP and continue reading!

Quick Notes:

1. Avoid Fully Charging and Fully Draining your Battery

2. Batteries today don’t suffer from memory effect – its okay to charge whatever percentage it is at.

3. Small trickle charges are better than 0% to 100% charging

4.  You don’t have to be overly protective of your batteries. You won’t be able to monitor it all the time. But it’s good to know a few guides that actually help your batteries.

Proper battery care is essential to prolong the life, not only of the battery, but also the gadget you are using. That’s why it is important to have a little guide to help you decide when to charge your devices. Unless you’re trying to get rid of your phone to get a new one. HA!

Majority of the batteries used for electronics today are Lithium-ion batteries. Smartphones typically last a day with moderate use before they get drained. Take note you should not do this – waiting for the battery to reach a critical level before you charge it.

The lifespan of batteries most of the time are measured in the number of charge cycles it can take. Charge cycle is the process of fully discharging and fully charging the battery. The reason why they measure it like this is because charge cycling does the most stress to a battery. With this it is safe to say that charging from 10% to 100% is considered to be very stressful to the battery rather than say,  50% to 85% which is very minimal stress.

Charge whenever you can!

Photo from androidcrush.com

Knowing the fact mentioned above, let’s imagine a situation,

You are about to go out with your phone at 70%. Your friend says he/she will be ready after 30 minutes, then for 30 minutes you played with your phone until you’re friend is ready. Now it’s down to 50%. You go out and  you have to send a message to someone through messenger, so you open your data and you send it there, and of course you would not resist a few minutes of  Facebook scrolling as well, down to 40%. Arriving at your destination a lot of photo ops takes place and maybe you get excited to upload it, it now goes down to 25%. This is almost a critical level. From here you’ll start avoiding using your phone and save as much as you can until you get home.

You could have avoided this dilemma if you have used that 30 minutes to charge up to maybe 90% . Lesson here is, if you have time to spare just charge it whenever possible.

TLDR: Charge whenever you have time! Its fine to charge multiple times a day

Do not charge from 0% to 100%

As mentioned, the amount of stress the battery experiences to go up from 0% to 100% is very..well, stressful. And charging it like this as a habit will severely decrease your battery life. You should only do so once every 1 or 2 months

A go to guideline would be, when you see it’s below 40%, charge it! Stay away from the critical low levels, when you do so, you also stay away from stressing the battery.

Remove the plug when it’s 100%!

Batteries at 100% are stressed. Even though the charger cuts down on charging when full, it still does continuous trickle charging to keep it at 100%. Take note you are keeping the battery at a high-stress, high-tension state which will eventually ruin the charging capacity of the battery if you do it repetitively. I know sometimes we tend to leave it charging overnight, doing so will not actually damage the battery instantly but avoid doing so if you want to prolong the life of your battery.

Actually, don’t aim for it to be 100%

You don’t have to aim to get a full charge every time. It’s okay when you do but its better if you don’t. A fully charged battery is at its highest voltage,

High voltage = High STRESS

STRESS = BAD

Keep your battery COOL

Another factor that affects your battery is temperature. It loses charge and degrades faster at a high temperature compared to a lower temperature. So if your device starts heating up, try resting it for a little bit, close unnecessary apps if it’s a smartphone and let it cool for a few minutes.

CONCLUSION

• Stay away from stress levels (0% and 100%)

• Always try to keep batteries in the 40% – 80% range

• Don’t be afraid to charge it multiple times a day

• Keep the temperature and stress low

Happy Charging!

Be sure to check out our post “[PH]Top Budget Earbuds You Can Get Right Now!” if you are looking for a new set of ear buddies!

If you’re looking for a trusty powerbank for charging. Check our recommendations below!

• Anker PowerCore+ 10500mAh     

• ROMOSS Sense 15 15000mAh

[PH] TOP BUDGET EARBUDS YOU CAN GET RIGHT NOW!

Getting your first pair? Replacing an old one? Try these out!

You maybe looking for your first pair of earbuds or your previous one got lost and you need new ones. But you want them to sound GOOD without spending too much, so you go to the internet and you Google:

“BEST BUDGET EARPHONES”

“TOP 5 CHEAP EARPHONES 2017”

“BEST SOUND AND PRICE EARPHONES”

Yeah you get the amazing products and reviews but you wonder,

“Are these even available in the Philippines?!” – if it is,

“Where the f#$! do I buy them?” – you still ain’t sure if it is in stock if you did know

What we did here is we did the research for you and we’ll give you the best mix of price, quality and availability for the ear buddies that fits your lifestyle!

Links are included so you don’t even have to go out just to get them. Links will direct you to Lazada since [in our opinion] it is the most accessible store at the moment for the general public. (They even have Cash on Delivery!)

If you have your own SUKI or preferred audio shop, you can just ask them if they have the items listed here (your choice). We just want to share these SULIT finds!

*We could do a post for earphone/headset dealers here in Manila. If that would help you in making a decision, let us know in the comments below!

LET’S START!

BUDGET AUDIOPHILE – Xiaomi Hybrid

Photo from tuxiaomi.es

The underrated earbuds…

For those who haven’t heard of Xiaomi’s earphones, let me introduce them to you. In a nutshell, they provide great quality earphones at an affordable price! This is what they have been known for. To think that this is the 4th generation of their earbuds means they continue to improve and set the bar higher for their own product.

The quality you can get from these could rival those “Branded” headsets that could cost you 2,000php – 10,000php.

This set of buds are very durable, the 3rd gen Xiaomi Pistons were encased in plastic but this one is all metal which makes it much tougher to abuse. The cable is wrapped in a kevlar type fabric which splits into two flexible and tangle free rubber.

This is really worth your money, I own the 1st gen and 3rd gen of these earbuds and we just can’t help but to root for these babies!

If you’re still unimpressed with the Xiaomi Hybrids, another candidate would be the SoundMagic E10. Although they go for around 2,000php to 2,500php and is quite a challenge to find, you may be looking for something closer to what Audiophiles want which the SoundMagic E10’s could get you.

Buy them now!

GAMERS – Gigaware Kotion G2000 /G9000

Photo from gadgetviper.com

Get your game on with these headset!

In our opinion the more you spend on a Gaming Headset the less value you are getting back from it. You are really better of going in the middle, where you are maximizing the value (functionality , quality and durability) of the product without sacrificing the cost. I am aware of the massive number of gamers out there so before you rant against the less value thought, I think this only applies for those starting to get serious in gaming or just looking for a backup or replacement headset. Disclaimer set! haha

To start, the Gigaware Kotion G2000  and G9000 looks really cool with the LED lights! Really gets you in the mood for playing. The cord is braided which makes it durable. The foams are soft and a thick one is present on the top for support and protection which is nice. It also feels sturdy so you won’t really have a problem putting them on and off and on and off again and again. The ear cushions actually provide some noise cancelling which is a plus. Sound quality is… come on, this would not be here in the first place if the sound quality was bogus. They sound quality are actually good!

If you plan to take gaming seriously, / don’t have a gaming headset yet/looking to replace your broken one. Our suggestion? Get this!!

Buy G2000 now!

Buy G9000 now!

BASS LOVERS – Awei ES-900i

Photo from AliExpress.com

I was wrong in judging these as crappy buds..

Look, to be honest, we have been seeing Awei headsets a little too much lately and always said they were just cheap and generally, hyped up earphones. In short, we didn’t like them. But one model really got our attention.

If you are really into thumps and bumps of bass. You would surely enjoy these buds. They give you solid bass experience without breaking the bank. You can turn the volume up without getting a bloated bass sound. Perfect if you are into hip-hop and club music.

It’s cable are flat and tangle-free. The build is a mix of metal and plastic which makes it feel sturdy and durable. They fit nicely in the ears (but still, I guess we have different ears..soo..)

You really just have to try these baby’s out to appreciate them. Getting them won’t really hurt your pocket too!

Buy them now!

MOBILE/BUSINESS  – QCY Q26 Mono Headset

Photo from BangGood

Business Meeting? On the Go lifestyle? Missing a call is never an option?

This is the match for you. I know you’re seeing other cheap small bluetooth earphones that sell for around 200php-300php. But most often than not, they’ll last for only about a month or two. Some does not even work out of the box and the battery life is..let’s not even talk about it. This is where the QCY Q26 comes in.

This bluetooth mono headset comes from QCY. It has a standby time of 70 hours (*take note it is STANDBY time), continuous music playback would be 3 hours and charging time takes less than 2 hours. And it is also rated IPX2, which makes it sweatproof! That’s a really nice feature.

It can be easily paired and relatively hassle-free just like any bluetooth device. The single button is able to do different tasks either while on a call or listening to music.

Now don’t get us wrong, this bud still delivers great sound quality compared to wired buds at much higher price point, so you can still enjoy your music while on the go.

I think the only downside is that this is only a single earpiece, but for the purpose of those people always on the run. This is PERFECT!

Buy them now!

SPORTY/ACTIVE – JBL GRIP 100 In-Ear

Photo from Lazada MY

Finally decided to live the active lifestyle and need pumping from music?

Or maybe you’re already active and want to get extra motivation from kicking out your favorite Spotify playlist?

JBL is a very known brand in the audio community, at least in the mainstream one. But they do know their audio and tech. That’s why it was to my surprise that they have great quality earbuds at around 1,000php

They are advertising that it “Never Falls Out” hence the name Grip. And I must say it does hold up to shakes and bumps of running/training.

What I can say here is for the functionality that you’re getting – the grip, the quality and the “Brand” *ehem. You really can’t go wrong with these. Go ahead and let them be your running buddies. HAHA

Buy them now!

**BONUS
In Ear Monitors /Studio – KZ-ATE

Photo from Amazon

BONUS FIND!! HiFi sound for the cheap!

Look we found these babies searching for a decent pair of buds and when we stumbled with the KZ-ATE‘s, it really got us hyped!

True to the hype, this buds really give you the sound quality that more expensive in ear monitors give you.

Don’t believe us? Go ahead look it up on Google.

We just wanted you to know that the KZ-ATE exists! Just waiting for you to try them out!

Buy them now!

Hope this list helped you out!

Cheers!!