After our extensive review of the Lenovo ThinkPad T490s with Intel CPU and the much cheaper Thinkpad T495s with AMD Ryzen CPU, we can pronounce an almost unrestricted recommendation for the AMD variant. Why this is and whether there may not be a catch here, read here.

The Redmi 7 was launched about six months ago and Xiaomi is set to release a direct successor. The Redmi 8 brings several tangible improvements over its predecessor but the SoC is a downgrade in terms of performance, and potential buyers may just be better served looking at the cheaper Redmi 8A.

The first plausible iPhone rumor for 2020 has emerged and it looks like it could solve one of the biggest design issues with the current iPhone design. Based on a rumored prototype design doing the rounds at Cupertino, the 2020 iPhone could go truly all-screen with the True Depth camera system embedded into the top bezel.

It has only been a week since the launch of the Mate 30 series in Munich, but it has already become clear that Google and Huawei have been working more closely together than perhaps the current US administration would like. Despite having no official access to Google products, the Mate 30 series can access services like Google Pay without issue. Read on to find out why this is the case and what Google and Huawei have done to work around the restrictions currently imposed on the Chinese company.

Nvidia is boosting the value of its GeForce RTX series with new features designed specifically for online social gamers. By utilizing the Tensor cores of its RTX GPUs, a normal webcam will be able to detect, track, map, isolate, filter, and augment faces in real-time for streaming or video chatting.

Be one of the first to own an XPS laptop powered by Intel's Comet Lake-U CPU series. The XPS 13 7390 is expected to be the first consumer Ultrabook available with a hexa-core processor, but it'll likely cost you north of $1800 USD.

Samsung has been unable to compete with Huawei in the camera hardware department but tables may be set to turn with the Galaxy S11, as a new report touts some monstrous camera hardware for the upcoming Samsung flagships.

Less than six months after the release of the Redmi 7A, Xiaomi has launched a successor, the Redmi 8A. The Redmi 8A offers a tangible upgrade over the 7A, with a bigger battery, fast charging, and a very interesting main camera being the biggest talking points, while still managing to keep its sub-US$100 pricing.

Xbox consoles are steadily upgrading in order to use the more popular virtual assistant platforms. The latest of these is Google Assistant. Those who wish to connect the two can join a forum group for a new public beta update and follow the instructions found thereon.

The Moto Z2 Play may finally have an update to Android 9.0 (Pie). However, this story is based on a forum post from a total of 1 user so far. Then again, this individual has supplied a number of screenshots that look convincingly like those for a new upgrade for this brand.

OPPO has announced that it will unveil the K5 in China on October 10, 2019. This phone is slated to have a quad rear camera, the main shooter of which will be 64MP in resolution. It is listed on some retail platforms already, which reveal it has 6GB of RAM and 128GB in fixed storage.

Recent Lenovo ThinkPad laptops have a throttling problem when users are running Linux-based operating systems on their devices. Lenovo has now admitted to the problem – and announced that it will be fixed. Newer ThinkPads like the X1 Carbon Gen 7 or ThinkPad T490 are affected.

The camera benchmark website DxOMark has a new number one smartphone camera, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro. The Mate 30 Pro scored an incredible 121 points, usurping the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G. The former's selfie camera apparently falls short of recent Samsung flagships and even the Sony IMX586 in the ASUS ZenFone 6, though.

Current PCBs are eating too much space and researchers think these can easily be replaced with a new silicon-interconnect fabric that would lead to more powerful devices in reduced form-factors. The use of such new fabrics would also cut production costs and improve heat dissipation. Smartphone SoCs and servers may also benefit from the more streamlined design introduced with the silicon-interconnect fabric.

Nintendo's latest title to hit the smartphone market exploded out of the gates yesterday. Mario Kart Tour launched on iOS yesterday and quickly hit the top spot in the App Store for 58 countries. However, the game's freemium pricing model has drawn the ire of critics and users alike, throwing the long term success of the kart racer into question.

OnePlus has officially launched the OnePlus 7T in India featuring a 90 Hz AMOLED HDR10+ display, Snapdragon 855+, and a triple-camera setup. The OnePlus 7T also features a new design and is the first new smartphone launch to feature Android 10 out of the box.

The efforts to reduce the dependence on U.S. technology are constantly fueled with new developments endorsed by the Chinese government. After the Jhaoxin CPUs and the Jingjia Micro GPUs, China is now preparing to enter the memory market with the ChangXin DRAM modules that are expected to be available in 2020.

There have been rumors about Microsoft debuting Windows Core OS next week at its Surface hardware event on October 2, potentially on foldable devices codenamed Centaurus and Pegasus. Now, a Geekbench listing has appeared that shows Core OS running a mysterious Intel Lakefield processor. Have we just seen the first sight of Microsoft's return to mobile devices?

Amazon has introduced a new Echo Studio speaker and Echo Buds in-ear wireless headphones. Both feature the latest sound technologies including support for Dobly Atmos in the former and Bose active noise-cancelling circuitry in the latter.

Facebook has announced several updates for its Oculus Quest standalone headset that are likely to greatly broaden its appeal. The company has announced that it is introducing wired PC support for the headset as well as hand tracking that extends its capabilities significantly.

Remember AMD Dual Graphics, Acer FrostCore, or the Lenovo UltraBay? We look back at some of the failed features that major OEMs have tried pushing onto their gaming laptops.

Apple insider Ming-Chi Kuo has revealed that the 2020 iPhone will draw inspiration from the iPhone 4 with its squared off and flat design. The possibility rings true given the 2018 iPad Pro redesign also adopts a similar design approach to what Kuo suggests. Regardless, the 2020 will be certain to feature the first all-new iPhone design in three years.

Xiaomi normally releases fitness bands or watches that run proprietary apps rather than a dedicated, familiar OS. A tech blog may have found evidence that this may change soon. It claims to have detected code in the Wear OS phone app that points to upcoming compatible products from this OEM.

Canon has released a new mirrorless camera that can record 4K vertical videos and then share them directly to social media. The EOS M200 has a 24.1MP APS-C sensor and CMOS auto-focus. It can also record in 60fps FHD and has a lightweight, convenient build.

Music is a rather unique Apple app in that it is cross-platform (or, in other words, has an Android version). Its latest updates also make it compatible with Google's Chromecast. It has also acquired a dark mode, presumably to align with iOS' new system-wide option.

Atlas is a code-name that has popped up in a few Chromebook-related leaks over the past few months. It is linked to development by Google and has been thrown around as a Pixelbook successor. Now, 9to5Google's sources claim that it is indeed part of this series, but not perhaps as some may have assumed.

Xiaomi has followed up on the success of last year's Mi AirDots Pro with a suitably named successor, the Mi AirDots Pro 2. The headphones will be available in China from September 27 for CNY 399 (~US$55) and look uncannily like the AirPods, which Apple currently sells for between US$159 and US$199.

Yet more of the Cascade Lake-X product stack has appeared on Geekbench, with someone now testing the successor to the Core i9-9920X. The processor in question looks to be an engineering sample based on the clock speeds that Geekbench reports, but the 12 core and 24 thread CPU can already match the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and outscore the Threadripper 2920X by up to 22% in multicore workloads. Albeit, the Core i9-10920X will probably cost up to 3x the price of comparable AMD chips.

As promised, we have tested the Modern Standby Performance Improvement Package application for the XPS 15 9750 to determine what it has changed on Dell's prosumer 15.6-inch laptop. The package rolls together several existing updates as we previously reported but makes one important change too. Dell seems to have fixed Modern Standby for the XPS 15 9750, albeit by removing one feature that some people may find useful.

Gears of Wars 5 running in 8K is too much even for the most expensive gaming GPUs out there. While 4K @60 fps is starting to look "doable" these days, running Gears 5 in 8K at 30 fps is already an impossible task for GPUs like the Titan RTX. 8K displays are not exactly mainstream either, so we might see GPUs properly handling the monstrous resolutions in 2-3 years.

Introduced back in May with a Snapdragon 855 onboard, the gaming handset Nubia Red Magic 3 is now ready to receive two essential performance upgrades (as the Red Magic 3S): the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ processor and high-end UFS 3.0 storage. The global launch of both 8 + 128 GB and 12 + 256 GB variants is set for October 16.

Microsoft is expected to unveil at least the Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Pro 7 at its hardware event on October 2. A recent FCC filing suggests that the company may also have a new Surface Pen in the works, though. The certified accessory has an interesting detail that existing Surface Pens lack too.

The OnePlus 7T will be launched tomorrow, and OnePlus has confirmed that the device will run Android Q straight out of the box. That would make it the second device to launch with Android Q, behind the Huawei Mate 30.

Samsung has launched a new smartphone camera sensor. The ISOCELL Slim GH1 is a 43 MP camera designed to have a small physical footprint, making it perfect for use as a selfie camera. It uses Tetracell technology to output 10.9 MP images and supports 4K video recording, PDAF, EIS, and HDR.

Xiaomi has quietly brought its Mi LED TV range to Europe, having listed the Mi Smart TV 4S 55-inch on Amazon.de on Monday. The affordable big-screen TV runs Android 9.0 Pie, has 2 GB of RAM, 8 GB of storage on which to install apps. The 4K TV supports HDR, DTS, Dolby Audio and comes with Google Assistant built-in. The Mi Smart TV 4S 55-inch is currently on sale at €399.99 (~US$439.98), with Amazon claiming that it will typically sell the device for €699.95 (~US$769.93). The TV is available in Russia too.

(Update: All fixed!) Asus could definitely be a little more careful next time around. According to the ZenBook 15 UX534 product page, the "ZenBook 16" will have a MicroSD reader and a Thunderbolt 3 port that could potentially fool the average consumer.

A 3DMark entry for an apparent Microsoft Surface 7 Pro device has been spotted, with the benchmark record providing various details about the specifications of the upcoming 2-in-1 detachable. The unit was tested on the Sky Diver 1.0 benchmark, which listed the presence of a 10nm Ice Lake processor from Intel but only 16 GB RAM.

A Southeast Asian retail website has listed two Acer Nitro 5 laptops sporting AMD Ryzen 5 3550U processors. The new APU has been mentioned on various sites in the past but has not been made official by the red team yet. It’s expected the Ryzen 5 3550U APU will feature a powerful Vega 9 iGPU and offer clock rates ranging from 2.1 GHz to 3.7 GHz.
Update: Acer has contacted Notebookcheck to confirm that these SKUs will actually come with AMD Ryzen 5 3550H processors.

LG Electronic's solar energy solutions are in show at the 2019 Solar Power International expo. They include the new NeON R ACe Solar Panel, which comes with its own AC micro-inverter so as to be compatible with conventional power circuits. It will be available in markets such as the US soon.

Google has announced that future updates will make it more difficult to activate the Assistant by mistake. The company has also taken pains to reassure users that their audio data will not be collected by default in the same release. A specific opt-in determines whether the same will be analysed by humans or not.

Samsung has finally released its new Galaxy A20 variant to a few select markets such as Malaysia. It goes for a price of RM 699 (or about US$167) in this country. For this, the customer gets 13+5+8MP rear cameras, 3GB of RAM and the Snapdragon 450 processor.

The new 495 chipset only brings a faster OPI COU interface that is capable of 4.2 GT/s data transfer speeds, Wi-Fi 6 and expanded Intel Optane memory support. Nothing new on the port selection and PCIe lanes side, unfortunately. Even though Ice Lake was supposed to introduce support for USB 4.0, there is no mention of this feature, either.