News

POCO Unveils New X5 Pro And X5 5G Smartphones

The company claims the handsets will offer amazing value and the most satisfying user experience of a smartphone under AED 1000.

Published

4 years ago

February 8, 2023

Nour Nasir

POCO

To celebrate its 5th anniversary, POCO has launched two new smartphones in the United Arab Emirates, the POCO X5 Pro and POCO X5 5G.

The handsets boast several upgrades over previous models and promise to delight tech enthusiasts looking for flagship features at a lower price point. While the Pro model packs in more advanced tech, the mid-range X5 5G also looks well-specced for its modest outlay.

Here are the specifications of both new devices:

POCO X5 Pro

The POCO X5 Pro comes with a 6.67″ Flow AMOLED display with a 120HZ refresh rate, similar to most modern flagship devices. The screen is said to be lighter and thinner than previous devices thanks to “flexible display technology” and promises ultra-smooth scrolling and stunning color reproduction.

The X5 Pro is powered by a Snapdragon 778G 5G chipset, which should make day-to-day operation extremely snappy, though POCO is keen to point out that camera processing will also be much more efficient. The tech firm claims that the 108MP camera has seen processing speeds and responsiveness jump by 69% for general photography and 38% for night mode shooting.

Finally, the X5 Pro will come in black, blue, or yellow colorways. There’s only one storage and RAM variant on offer, shipping with 256GB and 8GB, respectively.

POCO X5 5G

The POCO X5 5G is said to “redefine ideas about mid-range smartphones with everything Gen Z users need.” To that end, there’s a super light 6.67-inch AMOLED Dot display which helps the handset to achieve a weight of 189g.

poco x5 5g smartphone

The display gets the same smooth 120HZ refresh rate as the Pro model, though it sees a slight processor downgrade, utilizing the Snapdragon 695 chipset.

The POCO X5 5G will ship in green, blue, and black, with two RAM and storage variants: 6GB+128GB and 8GB+256GB.

Price & Availability

The X5 Pro will cost 1549 AED, while the X5 5G will set smartphone shoppers back between 799 AED and 999 AED, depending on spec.

Both handsets are available as of February 7th.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.