Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed below belong solely to the author.

Sea Ltd. is Singapore’s most successful startup turned major tech company.

Six months ago, it was going head-to-head with DBS for the title of the most valuable company in the city-state, exceeding US$100 billion in market capitalisation.

That number has now shrunk to just over US$40 billion.

This is despite the numbers it keeps reporting, which are, by almost any objective measure, excellent.

For the full year of 2025, Sea generated a net income of S$1.985 billion—which is more than three times what it earned in 2024—on the back of nearly S$30 billion in revenue (a 30% increase), as Shopee continues to dominate regional ecommerce with a reported 52% market share in Southeast Asia.

One could have understood the post-pandemic slide, when markets tumbled in late 2021, and money retreated from unproven companies burning billions of dollars raised from investors each year to fuel their unprofitable expansion. At one point, Sea had even lost nearly 90% off its peak 2021 value, and some questioned whether it is able to survive on its own.

However, after hitting its bottom valuation around 2023, it has made a successful turnaround and transformed into a mature business that not only is in control of its destiny but continues to grow at an impressive pace, while expanding its offer with financial services through its Monee arm, which has increased its lending by 80% over the past year.

Its survival is not under threat anymore, as it has amassed US$11 billion (S$14 billion) in cash stash that it can deploy to make investments into its future.

If it’s so good, then why is it so bad?

It’s not the company that’s unpredictable, but the market

Sea’s decline in value appears to be due to its continued treatment as a growth stock.

Despite market dominance, which saw Shopee push its main ecommerce rival Lazada to the sidelines, Sea is not treated as a household brand, but rather an exotic and unpredictable stock, regardless of its current performance.

Not the great news of today, but the uncertainty about tomorrow is what’s making people cautious.

The rapid rise of TikTok Shop across Asia—which has managed to grab double digit share in several countries (up to 40% in Vietnam)—may have spooked investors into thinking that Sea’s best days are over and that it may not be able to compete with the social media behemoth who has access to a captive audience that Sea has to pay for.

This may have encouraged stockholders to cash in on their substantial gains from the previous two years (when Sea outperformed alternative investments like crypto or Nvidia) and wait to see the results of the rivalry.

Shopee’s first few years in business were marked by competition with an already established Lazada, which was acquired by Chinese giant Alibaba as a foothold in Southeast Asia. The Singaporean startup has eventually defeated the incumbent to take its place.

Now that it has established itself as the market leader, it is facing a challenge from another competitor. Just like in 2023, when it had to prove it could stand on its own two feet, today, it has to show it can do more than just defend its holdings and continue to grow them at an impressive pace.

The bar set by the markets keeps getting higher. Forrest Li has managed to clear it every time. Can he do it again?

The future of his company, and his fortune, depends on it.

• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Featured Image Credit: Sea Ltd.

Google and Microsoft have long ruled the workplace productivity game, but, at the same time, they’ve built empires on your data, and Proton is done watching from the sidelines. On March 31, 2026, Proton officially launched its own workspace alternative, called Proton Workspace (they couldn’t have been more direct).

The Proton Workspace, as the company states, is a fully bundled productivity suite designed to give businesses a genuine, encryption-first alternative to those from the big tech companies. 

What’s so unique about Proton Workspace?

Proton’s Workspace includes several useful tools that people already use as part of their digital lives. They include Proton Mail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, and Sheets, VPN, and Pass. It comes in two tiers: Standard at $12.99 per month (billed annually) and Premium at $19.99 per month.

With the latter, you’ll also get 3TB of storage, higher video calling limits, and access to Lumo, the company’s privacy-focused AI assistant. The standout feature, for me, is Proton Meet, a brand-new encrypted video conferencing tool. 

It uses end-to-end encryption via the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol. In other words, not even Proton can listen in. Even if you don’t have an account, Proton says that anyone can host or join a meeting. This, in my opinion, makes the tool quite useful for journalists, activists, or anyone who needs to keep their conversations off the grid. 

It’s no secret that 2025 was the golden age of budget phones. A year where you could get fast performance and capable cameras all for under ₹20k. Unfortunately, 2026 isn’t shaping up to be the year we all hoped it would be. It’s the year we’re starting to feel the consequences of AI in the form of sky-high RAM and storage prices. As you may have guessed, budget phones have fared the worst, given their already thin margins. OPPO has historically done well with its K-series, and this year the Chinese smartphone maker is back with the all-new K14 5G.

The K14 is an interesting phone, to say the least. It packs the Dimensity 6300 processor, a 50MP main camera, and a new design. The first point of comparison for many would be its predecessor, the K13. It was the favourite of many and still comes out as a better phone than the K14. But to me, that’s not the correct way to judge. Sure, the K13 launched at the same price of ₹17,999, but it now costs over ₹20k, so the two devices simply cannot be compared. This had me wondering: How does the new OPPO K14 justify its price tag? To answer this question, I asked OPPO to send the K14. This review sums up my experience with the device over the last two weeks, highlighting its pros and cons to help you make an informed decision.

Design & Hardware

Design has always been OPPO’s bread and butter, with some handsome-looking phones throughout its history. I can pretty much say the same things about the K14 as well. It’s a tried-and-tested design that just works for everyone. The white variant I received has geometric patterns on the back that catch the light in different ways. This adds a bit of style without being overly flashy. I handed the phone to some of my family and friends, and they all had the same opinion. The matte finish picks up no fingerprints, so the phone stays pristine at all times.

The sides are plastic, of course, but that’s not a problem. The silver finish matches the white frame well, and the in-hand feel is good, too. Don’t get me wrong, the K14 is a big phone, but with a slight curve to the frame, it’s manageable enough to use with one hand for someone with average-sized fingers. The back also includes the dual camera setup tucked inside an island. The design is fairly straightforward, but what I do love is that the camera lenses don’t protrude much, so the K14 doesn’t wobble on a table. The weight can range from 209–216g, depending on your color, and it’s distributed pretty well for a phone with a 7,000 mAh battery pack.

Security is handled by a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. It’s plenty fast and works with both wet and greasy fingers, unlike the optical ones. The K14 also gets the myriad of IP ratings, including IP68 and IP69, meaning you can go swimming with the K14 if desired. Though I would always be against that since water damage isn’t covered under warranty. Also, OPPO is heavily advertising the K14’s durability, which I put to the test when I accidentally dropped it from waist height. There was no damage whatsoever.

Display & Speakers

The OPPO K14 features a 6.75-inch HD+ LCD display with a 120Hz refresh rate. I’ll say it straight: the display isn’t a selling point for the K14. The 120Hz refresh rate is great, but the HD+ resolution simply limits everyday usability, and the text does feel noticeably less sharp. However, if you haven’t been testing flagship phones every month, then the K14 would feel right at home. The 1,125-nit peak brightness makes the screen visible outdoors without me having to squint much. The content experience is also fine, but nothing special.

The stereo speakers, on the other hand, are really good. There’s ample separation between instruments, and mids stay decently clear along the spectrum.

Performance

Performance is what makes or breaks the budget smartphone experience. The K14 features the Dimensity 6300 processor, featuring 2 Cortex-A76 cores running at 2400 MHz and 6 Cortex-A55 cores at 2000 MHz, along with the Mali-G57 MP2. In addition, my review unit came with 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.1 internal storage.

The Dimensity 6300 has been around for a long time and has proven to be plenty capable. The K14’s everyday performance is actually really good. ColorOS is my favourite Android skin, and that pays enough dividends. Both light apps and heavier ones like the camera open quickly, switching between tasks is smooth, and the RAM is enough to keep multiple tasks running at the same time.

The animations, while not as pretty on my Find X8, are still fluid enough to make the experience feel premium. The phone also gets a dose of my favourite AI features, including the likes of AI Portrait Retouching, Recompose, and Perfect Shot. All of them help you tweak the camera’s output for a better-looking photo. All that being said, there are many pre-installed apps, including the annoying “Hot Apps” folder, which you’ll need to remove manually.

Since this is a review, I also put the Dimensity 6300 through its paces with a series of benchmarks. The K14 scored 814 in Geekbench’s single-core and 1,981 in the multi-core test. In AnTuTu, the phone achieved 688,325 points. Moving on to gaming, I installed BGMI and played it at Smooth and Extreme settings. Overall, the experience was decent for the price, with stable 60 FPS gameplay and no dropped frames, even in intense situations.

Battery Life & Charging

If you ask me for just one reason to consider the K14, I’ll probably say it’s the 7,000 mAh battery. I couldn’t push the phone hard enough to drain it in a day, and that’s big praise. For context, I started my day at around 9 AM with 100% charge remaining. After my morning cup of coffee, I decided to run benchmarks on the K14. Once that was in order, I watched a few YouTube videos and hopped into a long BGMI gaming session with my friends. The evening was the usual struggle at the gym with the OPPO Enco Air 3 Pro+ connected to the phone. Lastly, I went shopping with my friends and took a few sample photos.

I ended that day with roughly 40% charge remaining. When I did eventually run out of juice the next day, the 45W fast charging came to the rescue. It can charge the battery from 0% to full in around 90 minutes. You can also use the K14 as a power bank to charge other phones with a cable.

Cameras

The K14’s cameras are headlined by a 50MP OV50D sensor paired with a 2MP depth sensor. Selfies are handled by an 8MP shooter. I didn’t expect much from the K14’s cameras, but they are better than expected. Give the main sensor enough light, and it captures some pretty photos, with ample sharpness and decent HDR. The same was true of daytime portraits, where edge detection was on point, and the shallow depth of field looked natural. Skin tones are also managed well. There were a few situations where highlights were slightly blown out, but that isn’t a big issue.

Nighttime is where the OmniVision sensor struggles. Don’t get me wrong, the images are decent, but they just lack details, and there’s noticeable noise. You can also expect to wait before the camera captures the image, since there’s a shutter delay at night, which can make it difficult to capture moving subjects. That said, the 8MP selfie shooter is more than enough to preserve detail while keeping skin tones natural. Videos being capped at just 1080p at 60FPS is a bummer, though.

Verdict

At ₹17,999, the OPPO K14 is the new reality of budget phones in India, and it’s something buyers will have to adjust to. The K14 is a good phone with a pretty design that’s more than capable of handling everyday tasks and even gaming, for that matter. However, it’s not perfect. I’d love to see better nighttime camera performance and a higher-resolution display, but neither is a deal-breaker.

“Good phones are getting cheap, and cheap phones are getting good” is the saying we’ve all heard from our good friend MKBHD. It’s a statement that’s stood the test of time, simply because budget phones have improved in performance, camera quality, and overall usability every year. Unfortunately, 2026 feels like a bit of an outlier. It’s the year of AI consequences, with rising component costs that have wreaked havoc in the smartphone world. As you may have already guessed, budget phones are the most affected. They already have razor-thin margins, and these new costs have driven prices up significantly. vivo’s T-series was one of my favourite budget phones of last year, because they understood the formula well. This year, vivo is back again with the T5x.

So, what is the new vivo T5x about? It’s about a new processor, the Dimensity 7400, a full HD+ display with a 120Hz refresh rate, and the ability to record 4K videos. All this at a price of ₹18,999 made me wonder where vivo has cut corners? To find out, I got the new T5x, swapped my SIM to it, and tested it for a couple of weeks. Here’s my experience.

Design & Hardware

The previous T4x was a handsome phone, with a big camera module and a pretty design. And I can pretty much say the same things about the T5x, except for the fact that its design is more mature. vivo’s T-series phones were some of my favourite budget phones. The back captures the light at different angles, making a wavy pattern. This matte finish picks up zero fingerprints, so you don’t have to spend hours cleaning the phone.

In 2026, everyone’s making phones with flat sides. That’s the trend, but people like me do miss the way backs melted into the frames, which was super comfortable. Well, vivo has apparently listened to us, since the back of the T5x has a subtle curve that blends into the frame. It’s a small touch that pays dividends in the comfort department. I had no issues using the phone for long hours or holding it while taking my evening walks. The back also houses the dual-camera setup, and its design resembles the V70’s, with a square camera island, and I quite like it.

The frame is plastic, of course, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. They are flat, which is good, but the corners are rounded, so they do not dig into your palms. The 215g weight is surprisingly low for a 7,000 mAh battery, and the center of gravity is perfectly centered.

Beyond the basics, the vivo T5x features a side-mounted fingerprint scanner that works well with both dirty and wet fingers. Another major selling point of the T5x is the IP ratings. The device supports IP68, IP69, and IP69+. All these fancy terms mean that you can submerge your phone underwater for over 30 minutes. As always, I’d warn against doing so, since water damage isn’t covered under warranty and nobody wants a dead phone.

Display & Speakers

The vivo T5x features a 6.76-inch 2344×1080 FHD+ display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Yes, the panel is LCD, meaning you won’t get the inky deep blacks, but it fared pretty well in my testing. I used the phone both indoors and outdoors, where the 1200-nit peak brightness kept everything legible without me needing to squint. The panel covers about 83% of the NTSC color gamut, which means plenty of accurate colors for watching Netflix or YouTube. Speaking of the speakers, they are decent. I wouldn’t describe the audio quality as full, but it’s okay if you just want to listen to something on the go.

What I’m not a big fan of, though, are the bezels. They are uneven, and the chin at the bottom is fairly large for the price. In other news, vivo hasn’t stated the type of glass used for protection. Fortunately, there’s a pre-installed screen protector, so I’d recommend keeping that on.

Performance

Performance is what makes or breaks the experience on many budget phones. Fortunately, vivo hasn’t fumbled this with the T5x. Under the hood, the T5x houses the MediaTek Dimensity 7400-Turbo processor, an octa-core chip built on the 4-nanometer process technology. Beyond that, my review unit came with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage.

I’ve enjoyed using the new OriginOS skin on several vivo phones this year. Interestingly, none of them have been budget smartphones, so I was quite excited to see how vivo has optimized its UI. The answer? Pretty well. The T5x, coupled with the 120Hz refresh rate, breezes through opening and closing multiple apps without a hitch. The animations, while not as smooth as on the X300 Pro, are still fluid enough. The 8GB of RAM is also enough to hold multiple apps in memory. There’s also the AI eraser that helps effectively remove people from the shot.

That being said, there are some pre-installed apps and the infamous “Hot Apps” folder, though everything can be removed in a matter of minutes. vivo has promised two years of major Android updates and four years of security patches.

To push the Dimensity 7400-Turbo to the limits, I also ran a series of benchmarks. The T5x scored 1,039 on Geekbench’s single-core test and 2,833 on the multi-core test. On the flip side, in AnTuTu, the device scored 1,189,871 points. But benchmarks rarely tell the full story, so I also ran a series of games, including BGMI. In Smooth+Extreme settings, the phone maintained a steady 60 fps gameplay without dropping frames. The phone also includes gaming-centric features such as 4D vibration (exclusive to BGMI), bypass charging, and the ability to cycle through different performance modes.

Battery & Charging

If you need one reason to buy the vivo T5x, it’s probably the mammoth 7,200 mAh battery. It’s a phone that’s impossible to kill in a day. Trust me, I’ve tried. On the first day after I charged the phone to full, I went shopping with my family, where I took about 15-20 photos and left the camera running for more than 30 minutes. After I got home, I played a couple of BGMI games with my friends for an hour, then did a gym session with my Bluetooth earbuds connected to my phone. I ended the day with my favourite activity — doomscrolling on Instagram — and still had about 45% of the charge remaining.

When I ran out of juice, the 44W fast charging came to the rescue. It helped recharge the battery from 20% to 80% in just under an hour, which is plenty fast.

Cameras

Given the current situation, I honestly didn’t expect much from the T5x’s cameras, since corners have to be cut to accommodate the high RAM prices. But the T5x’s cameras are more than good enough for the price. The camera setup includes a 50MP Sony IMX852 main sensor paired with a 2MP depth sensor. Selfies are handled by a 32MP shooter.

As evident from the samples, the sensor produces pleasing images with ample details, accurate colors, and good-enough HDR in daylight. vivo’s portrait mastery also shines on the T5x, with photos that look aesthetic and fairly accurate edge detection in both daytime and nighttime conditions. There were a few situations where highlights were slightly blown out, but that isn’t a big issue.

Speaking of nighttime, I did notice some noise creeping in when capturing the night sky. There’s also a shutter delay at night, so capturing moving subjects could be an issue. That said, after giving the sensor enough time, the results were detailed enough, and the colors weren’t washed out. Selfies, on the other hand, were solid in both daytime and nighttime scenarios, and I had no complaints. Beyond that, I love the 4K video support on both the front and back cameras. The video quality isn’t the best when compared to more expensive phones, but it’s decent enough to capture a family gathering.

Verdict

At ₹18,999, the vivo T5x surprisingly gets a lot of things right. The design looks great, especially in the silver finish. The display, while not OLED, is serviceable and bright in all conditions, and the performance is more than good enough. Not to mention the stellar battery life that lasts more than a day, and cameras that actually capture good photos. Sure, it’s not all perfect, but given the current market conditions, it’s certainly one of the better budget phones I’ve tested this year. And if you’re shopping in the segment, you should check it out.

A series of letters sent by autonomous-vehicle (AV) developers to Democratic US senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts sheds the most light yet on the human side of robot vehicle operations. In the documents, submitted to Markey as part of an investigation into self-driving-vehicle technology and released on Tuesday, seven companies, including Tesla, Amazon-owned Zoox, and Uber- and Nvidia-funded Nuro, released new details about their “remote assistance” programs.

All the companies that responded to the senator’s office say they use remote assistants—humans charged with responding to autonomous vehicles when they get confused, stuck, or in emergencies. The programs, experts say, are an important part of any autonomous vehicle company’s safety considerations, a backstop for a technology that’s becoming safer by the year but will continue to run into new situations on the road indefinitely.

In a report also released Tuesday, Senator Markey said the new details were not enough. “Every autonomous-vehicle company refused to disclose how often their AVs require assistance from [remote assistants]—hiding key information from the public about their AV’s true level of autonomy,” he wrote. “This information is critical for lawmakers, regulators, and the public to understand the potential safety risks with AVs.”

Markey called on the nation’s top federal road safety regulator to look more closely into autonomous vehicle companies’ remote assistance programs, and said he would soon introduce legislation responding to the “safety gaps” his investigation found.

Remote-Controlled Robotaxis

The responses from the autonomous vehicle developers show that, in one critical way, Tesla is an industry outlier. Six of the firms insisted that their remote assistance workers, who work across the US and even, in the case of Waymo, in the Philippines, never actually drive the vehicles directly. Instead, the humans provide input that the autonomous vehicle software then decides to use or ignore.

Not so for Tesla. “As a redundancy measure in rare cases … [remote assistance operators] are authorized to temporarily assume direct vehicle control as the final escalation maneuver after all other available intervention actions have been exhausted,” Karen Steakley, Tesla’s director of public policy and business development, wrote to the senator. The automaker’s remote assistance workers can “take temporary control of the vehicle” at speeds up to or less than 2 mph and can remotely drive a Tesla Robotaxi at up to 10 mph if the vehicle’s software permits it to do so, Steakley said. “This capability enables Tesla to promptly move a vehicle that may be in a compromising position,” she wrote.

Tesla, which has pivoted its business away from making cars and toward autonomous vehicle technology and robots, launched a small ride-hailing service in Austin, Texas, last June. In most of the 50 or so so-called robotaxis operating today, human safety operators sit in the front passenger seats, ready to take over or intervene if something goes wrong. A handful of the vehicles reportedly operate without safety operators. The automaker says its remote assistants are based in Austin and Palo Alto, California.

Autonomous vehicle developers usually avoid direct remote control of their vehicles for several reasons. Small delays between what a human remote assistant is seeing and what’s happening on the road in real time, even by just a few hundred milliseconds, can lead to slower reaction times, an issue exacerbated by network latency. This increases the potential for accidents. “Your ability to drive a car without being in the car is only as stable as the internet connection that connects you to it,” a self-driving-vehicle engineer told WIRED last year.