Microsoft recently unveiled DirectX 12 Ultimate, a rebrand for the DirectX 12_2 featureset. Graphics cards that are DirectX 12 Ultimate Compatible will have feature parity with the next-gen Xbox Series X.

Asus has equipped its compact Zenbook with a four-core processor and a dedicated graphics chip. There is a lot to like about the other features as well: Matte IPS display, NVMe SSD, 16 GB of RAM (dual-channel mode), backlit keyboard. On top of that, the battery life is outstanding.

The securities firm Wedbush has reportedly written to investors advising them that Apple will find its iPhone-derived takings reduced compared to earlier estimates. They may be down by as much as 14% in 2020, and by 10% in 2021. This is related to current events that may put some customers off buying new devices.

When shelling out up to the equivalent of US$1600 for a new phone, one would expect it to be the class-leading in performance, or at least better than last year's releases. Not the Galaxy S20, though, as a new test has shown the Exynos Galaxy S20+ getting absolutely destroyed by a Snapdragon 855-powered S10+ at gaming.

Following protracted speculation, Samsung has debuted the Galaxy A41. It has a 6.1-inch SuperAMOLED display with a U-shaped notch and a 3500mAh battery. It also has an IP68 ingress-protection rating and 4GB of RAM.

With the Wio Terminal, Seeedstudio has created a particularly inexpensive single-board computer that is Arduino, MicroPython and Raspberry Pi-compatible. The Wio Terminal comes with a dedicated display, Bluetooth 5.0 LE and 5G Wi-Fi among other components.

Xiaomi may be focusing on the release of the Redmi K30 Pro right now, but do not forget that a Zoom Edition of the Redmi K30 Pro is on its way too. The device has now made its way to Geekbench, suggesting that the Zoom Edition will come with a Snapdragon 865 and at least 8 GB of RAM, too.

The last few years have seen a scatter of articles about Surge, Xiaomi's supposed competitor to the Kirin or Exynos SoC series of the world in development. Now, however, there are indications that the Chinese OEM is finally giving up on this idea. However, it will continue with other, related projects that may produce chipsets for wireless communications.

The Redmi Note 9 Pro has gotten off to a great start, with Amazon selling out of stock within minutes in India. However, there are conflicting reports about whether the device supports L1 or L3 DRM certification. The device may not be capable of streaming Netflix in HD even if it has the former, though.

Hoping that Xiaomi would release an update for your Mi A2 that would the numerous bugs that Android 10 introduced? Think again, as Xiaomi has opted for a different tactic instead.

Users have been experiencing hinge issues on their months-old purchase that they are claiming to be a design flaw on the budget gaming laptop from Dell.

Following on from previous teasers, Xiaomi has now announced a new raft of features of the Redmi K30 Pro ahead of its launch on March 24. With 180 Hz touch sampling, 1,200 nit peak brightness and a 3,435 mm² stainless steel vapour chamber cooling the system, Xiaomi is not holding back. The breathing notification LED from the Redmi K20 Pro is making a return, too.

Geekbench 5's database has just turned up a new entry for a "Samsung SM-T307U". This model number may be for a tablet, in which case it would be a slate running on the Exynos 7885 processor and 3GB of RAM. As if to underpin this putative upcoming device's bargain nature, it is described as running Android 9.0 (Pie) rather than the newer 10 version.

The Mi 9 Lite and Mi CC9 have now started receiving a stable Android 10 update globally. Already rolled out to Chinese handsets, Xiaomi has now extended the Android 10 upgrade to Global and Russian devices. Those enrolled on the European branch of MIUI may be in for a wait until Android 10 reaches them, though.
Xiaomi has now rolled out the Android 10 upgrade to EU handsets.

The new A12Z SoC manages to impress us in a negative way. We were suspecting it would not be that much faster than the A12X, but we would have never guessed that it only has a 1% edge over the 2018 model. Still, the performance is well above anything available from the competitors, yet it does not necessarily recommend it as a worthy upgrade since Apple will release even better models in 6 months.

Not only has the successor to the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XI APEX been spotted on 3DMark, but so has the Core i9-10900K once again. This time, however, the 10 core Comet Lake S chip has reached 5.3 GHz.

Improvements for the upcoming Kirin 820 mid-range SoC include an integrated 5G modem, upgraded ISP and NPU units, plus a more powerful Mali-G77 GPU. Huawei decided to keep the same 7 nm manufacturing process and the ARM Cortex-A76 performance cores will not be upgraded to any newer versions.

Due to arrive later this year, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 SUPER mobile series has already been spotted in a leaked presentation slide. Four GPUs have been benchmarked on 3DMark too, including Max-Q versions, revealing clock speeds, expected performance and TDPs.

Because of the Corona-Breakout a large number of people is staying home causing Internet usage to climb up. Although the data usage it is not yet absolutely critical, the EU is already discussing ways to restrict data traffic in favor of essential services. This led to the suggestion that Netflix could temporarily lower its video resolution to SD level.

In the first tests it was noticed that the autofocus of the Galaxy S20 models does not work optimally. Samsung is now rolling out the second firmware update for the new series and this time the South Korean manufacturer is also taking care of the auto focus problems.

The Watch GT 2e has leaked online in all its 46 mm glory. Due to be unveiled alongside the Huawei P40 series, the GT 2e will feature a 1.39-inch AMOLED panel and a Kirin A1 SoC. The smartwatch comes with 16 MB of RAM, 4 GB of storage and a battery that Huawei promises will last up to 14 days between charges.

Amid all the fuss surrounding the launch of the new iPad Pro range and MacBook Air, Apple also gave the Mac mini a surprise boost. Although the CPUs and RAM configurations remain the same, it has doubled the standard storage at no additional cost (at least in the US).

The Fitbit Charge 4 fitness tracker has made a couple of online appearances recently. One of them was for an FCC certification and the other was on a retailer site. Unfortunately, no images of the Fitbit Charge 4 were leaked, but the prices and colors of the fitness tracker were revealed, as well as the fact it features NFC technology and is water resistant.

Annoyingly, Vari-Bright is enabled by default to automatically limit the maximum brightness of the screen when not on AC power. Though it's supposed to be a power-saving feature, it can also make outdoor visibility more difficult for the end-user.

It’s possible the Xbox product page just revealed the Xbox Series X release date. At the bottom of the page is the Xbox Series X logo and the slogan “power your dreams”. However, some regional variants of the site had the additional text “coming Thanksgiving 2020” underneath the slogan. An Xbox executive has reported the potential reveal as “inaccurately listed”.

Realme India Tweeted out a teaser for a new line of smartphones called Narzo. The company claims that the devices will be centered around 'uniqueness' and 'high-resolution cameras'. The phones are expected to compete with the likes of Redmi, Poco, Xiaomi, and the likes. We can expect Realme to tell us more about its Narzo-branded phones in the coming weeks.

Purism has launched its Librem Mini small form-factor mini PC, with preorders for the device now being taken. The tiny computer comes with a Whiskey Lake Intel Core i7-8565U processor and can be configured with up to 64 GB RAM. PureOS is offered as the operating system, with PureBoot and Librem Key support included for extra privacy and security.

Sony is equipping the PlayStation 5 with a revolutionary Tempest 3D audio engine that focuses a lot on positional audio experiences using HRTF methods. The PS5's Tempest Engine actually leverages an entire GPU compute unit for audio processing. Sony will be further improving audio in the years to come, and this may involve creating HRTF profiles based on the photo of a user's ear or head.

One of the defining features of the PlayStation 5 and one that Mark Cerny stressed a lot upon is the console's storage. Sony's custom flash controller has performance equivalent to that of nine Zen 2 cores and can deliver up to 5.5 GB/s of raw and up to 9 GB/s of compressed throughput. The PlayStation 5 will also be compatible with both USB and NVMe external storage solutions, but Sony prefers waiting it out before existing NVMe M.2 drives can be validated for the console.

Realme has confirmed leaks pointing to a Helio G80-powered phone with the launch of the 6i in Myanmar. Unlike the rest of its new series, this phone has an HD+ display, although it outdoes the rest with a 5000mAh battery. It also features a novel "pinstripe" rear panel in 2 new colors.

Sony's Mark Cerny spoke in detail about the PlayStation 5's GPU, which is a custom designed AMD RDNA 2 chip. The PS5's GPU has a lower CU count than the Xbox Series X but has higher clocks and boosts differently compared to PCs and the Xbox. Sony intended to drive home the point that TFLOPs alone do not account for all the factors that collectively impact GPU performance.

(Update: The feature will be coming to the Sony PlayStation 5.) The AMD-only feature can give you "free" CPU and GPU performance by dynamically optimizing the power budget between the processors. Laptops with Nvidia or Intel hardware need not apply even though they make up the vast majority of the gaming laptops in the market.

While GTC 2020 may be dead and buried for the time being, that does not mean NVIDIA will be holding off on unveiling its Ampere architecture for long. While rumours are floating around that it will be Q4 2020 before we RTX 3000 series GPUs, NVIDIA may showcase Ampere GPUs as early as next month.

If previous teasers about the Redmi K30 Pro have not whet your appetite, then the latest might. Xiaomi has now shown off a vibrant white version of the device, along with its notchless display. The AMOLED panel may also be HDR10+ capable, while Xiaomi has hinted at some impressive camera hardware too.

Advanced Protection is a program offered by Google to those potentially in need of enhanced mobile-device security. The Mountain View giant has announced some new changes to its policies. They include a built-in blocker for side-loaded, non-Play Store apps.

Sony offered details into how the boost clocks of the Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU in the PS5's SoC are regulated. Sony's approach of using a constant power but varying frequency should allow all PS5 units to process data in the same manner irrespective of ambient temperature. It also allows the GPU to boost way higher than anything that is available from AMD in the PC space.

Redmi has just announced a launch date for a phone called the Note 9S in Malaysia. Now, a new entry on the Geekbench 5 website for this device returns the same specs as the Note 9 Pro. This suggests the 2 products are one and the same.

Sony has finally taken the wraps off the PlayStation 5's much anticipated specs. PS5 Chief Architect Mark Cerny, in a pre-recorded webcast, talked in detail about the various hardware choices in the console and how they affect gaming. On paper, the Xbox Series X looks to have the edge in this generation, but it is too early to conclude anything before testing out some real games.

Apple has debuted a refreshed pair of Powerbeats for 2020. These new products look much the same as their predecessors, although they have comparably extended battery life and Audio Sharing. They are available from now for ~US$150.

Did Apple just release a Surface Pro? No, it is the new iPad Pro, the first that Apple has released in almost eighteen months. While largely resembling their predecessors, the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch tablets include new camera hardware and a tweaked SoC. Apple has launched the Magic Keyboard simultaneously too, which finally brings an integrated trackpad to the iPad Pro lineup.

Samsung announced the Galaxy M21 today. The budget-oriented handset shares many of the same specifications with the slightly more expensive Galaxy M31. However, the Galaxy M21 cuts back on cameras to hit a lower retail price. The Galaxy M21 will launch in India on March 23.

Now starting at US$999, the new MacBook Air is more than just a refresh as last year's model was. Upgraded to quad-core 10th generation Intel Core processors, Apple has also brought over the Magic Keyboard from the MacBook Pro 16. Available to order now, the MacBook Air 2020 can be configured with up to 16 GB of LPDDR4X RAM and a 2 TB SSD.

The Steam Game Festival: Spring Edition may be the cure for your quarantine boredom. The festival, which kicks off today, will showcase over 40 demos of new and unreleased games, all of which will be available to download for free.

Intel recently stated that it would be “narrowing” its Cooper Lake family of Xeon server CPUs. The move comes in the context of rapid AMD gains in the segment and the impending arrival of EPYC Milan.

There is a lot to like about the new iPad Pro. Its new LiDAR scanner is certainly cutting-edge and its new Magic Keyboard accessory is everything Apple fans have been wanting. But its battery life continues to be stuck at 10 hours all these years after its launch.

Instead of using a standard 3D ToF sensor for its new iPad Pro, Apple has upped the ante by using a LiDAR scanner instead. It has opted for the more advanced technology to take the augmented reality capabilities of the iPad Pro to the next level.