Cricket Wireless can now offer the Nokia 3.1 Plus as a result of a new deal made with HMD Global. The budget smartphone will be sold at US$159.99 in its stores. However, it will have competition from the Alcatel Onyx, an equally budget device available at $119.99 through the same carrier.

XPS 15 9570 owners rejoice. We can confirm that Dell has finally fixed the NVIDIA GPU issue that has been plaguing some 9570 laptops for months with BIOS 1.7. Unfortunately, the update has introduced some fan peculiarities though.
Update: Dell has commented on the fan behaviour in BIOS 1.7.

Motorola released the Moto G4 Plus back in 2016 and promised it would receive two major updates. A while later, the company went back on its word and claimed the mid-range phone would not get the update, prompting a media outcry which forced it to once again promise to deliver Oreo. It's been 16 months since then, though, and the G4 Plus is still on Nougat.

Since early last year, there have been rumors of HMD Global's plans to launch a flagship phone with five rear cameras. The rumor mills may finally stop grinding, though, as the company is set to unveil the device next month in Barcelona.

Chinese underdogs Meizu are set to launch a high-value budget device next month. The Meizu M9 Note will feature a 48 MP Samsung sensor and will be powered by a Snapdragon 675. These, coupled with a US$150 price tag, ensure that it competes effectively against the Redmi Note 7.

Lenovo's lineup of ThinkPad laptops has not been updated at CES as in the last years. Thanks to a leak coming from China, we now know Lenovo's plans for 2019. The ThinkPad roadmap 2019 includes informations on when which models are to be released and which models will merely receive CPU updates.

PUBG Lite has been announced, and it is currently in beta testing but for players in Thailand only. The concept behind the battle royale title is to bring the PUBG experience to gamers who may not have the hardware requirements to play the full game. The developer team has also revealed that the game will be free to play.

Huawei has officially confirmed that it has a foldable 5G mobile device to show off at MWC this year. However, it appears that its sub-brand Honor is less enthusiastic about the new trend in phone design. Speaking at the View 20's international launch, the brand's president, George Zhao, could not say what a folding phone can offer just yet.

The well-regarded leaker Steve Troughton-Smith claims to have found references to unfamiliar iPads while diving into the code for the iOS 12.2 update. It suggests that new 11-inch iPads, as well as an iPad Mini, are on their way. The code also specifies an iPod Touch that could be of the rumored upcoming 7th generation.

The next Google I/O event is scheduled for May 7 to 9 2019, at the Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, California. These details were uncovered as part of some code relating to a cryptic Tweet on the subject. This conference may focus on the release of Android 10 (Q).

If you were hoping to pick up a Nintendo Switch but have waiting patiently for the price to drop, we have some bad news for you. Nintendo president Suntaro Furukawa has told Japan’s Sankei News that the company currently has no plans for either a price cut for the console or even a successor in the near future.

It seems that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S10 flagship smartphones could feature reverse wireless charging. Thanks to a photo of what looks like a demo booth controller, speculation has risen that the South Korean manufacturer will take a leaf out of Huawei’s book and include the capability to wirelessly charge other phones with its much-anticipated devices.

The specifications and renders of the upcoming Xiaomi Redmi Go smartphone have been leaked online. Teenage leaker Ishan Agarwal tweeted a spec sheet and some images of the budget-level device that had initially been spotted by Philippines-based tech site Revü. It is expected the smartphone will be released on the Indian market soon.

Intel’s current interim CEO, Bob Swan, has stated in an earnings call that he expects the company’s chip shortage to ease by the middle of the year. However, focus is expected to be on producing high-performance processors whilst the supply of “value end” silicon will remain limited. Intel also reported revenue of US$70.8 billion for 2018, up by 13% from 2017.

The first 5G smartphone made by LG will be revealed at MWC on February 24. It will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 SoC and will feature a bigger vapor chamber, suggesting the SoC will probably run at overclocked frequencies. Additionally, it will come with a 4,000 mAh battery, so there is a possibility of seeing a larger screen, as well.

The LG G8 ThinQ has leaked in the first official press renders of the device ahead of its official unveiling at Mobile World Congress next month. Despite a previous CAD render that was virtually identical to this latest leak being shot down as erroneous by LG’s head corporate communications, the latest leak confirms fears that LG has essentially rehashed the design of last year’s LG G7 ThinQ.

Some of the new features integrated in the 8 nm Exynos 9820 SoC include a better NPU for AI tasks, desktop-like performance via new octa-core tri-cluster and the Mali-G76 MP12 GPU, LTE Cat 20 modem, 8K video recording, HDR / 4K screen resolution plus support for up to 5 image sensors, and a new PUF security system.

HMD Global has announced new collaborations with North American carriers to bring Nokia phones to users in that continent. The Finnish company has made deals with Verizon and Cricket Wireless in the US and Rogers Communications in Canada so that the carriers will start offering their customers products from the Nokia range. The Nokia 3.1 Plus and the Nokia 2 V will be the first offerings from HMD.

In order to promote the capabilities of the iPhone XS camera Apple teamed up with Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke to make a film that was entirely shot on an iPhone XS. The result is the short film The Bucket, which was released today.

Will there finally be a Rose Gold or bright pink Razer Blade laptop? The OEM has been teasing pink mice, keyboards, and headphones for weeks and a pink gaming laptop would essentially complete the collection.

Can the fastest consumer desktop GPU available beat the fastest laptop with SLI graphics? Not quite, but it's at least 50 percent faster than any gaming laptop out there equipped with a single GeForce GTX 1080 GPU.

Facebook has just announced an initiative in which messages from its own Messenger, as well as from its acquisitions Instagram and WhatsApp, will be integrated using a singular infrastructure. This contravenes an earlier commitment on the part of the parent company that these 3 services would remain independent. This plan has also raised alarm among privacy experts and WhatsApp staff.

The Honor View 20, which was released internationally a few days ago, is the first device from that brand to feature a punch-hole selfie camera. At this event, the OEM's president, George Zhao, was quoted as saying that this form of display was the "better solution". Therefore, Honor's next flagship, the 11, will probably follow the new trend.

A new report by ResearchAndMarkets.com indicates that the wireless headphone market will continue to show healthy growth into the year 2024. At that point, it could be worth as much as US$34 billion. The report indicates that this could be driven by increasing sophistication in wireless audio features and technology.

Unveiled back in 2018, the QNAP TR-004 is finally available for purchase. This storage accessory is a 4-bay hardware RAID storage expansion device that sports USB 3.0 Type-C connectivity and can be attached to a PC or a NAS. When connected to a NAS, the TR-004 can be used as external storage or as an expansion storage device.

A WCCFTech correspondent claims to have exclusive news from various sources confirming that some laptop manufacturers are prepared to pick up AMD's new 7nm mobility line-up when it comes out - and that others are not. According to this report, ASUS, HP and Acer are open to adopting these new chipsets.

Huawei held a press conference in Beijing yesterday, in order to familiarize its attendants with its plans for MWC and the roll-out of its 5G technology. The company's consumer business CEO, Yu Chengdong, announced that the company's long-awaited foldable phone would be unveiled at the international tech show. He also reported that Honor, Huawei's popular sub-brand, had exhibited a year-on-year growth of 170%.

Xiaomi sent out the January update to the Android One Mi A2 earlier this week, and there have now been multiple reports of bricked devices after installing the OTA. Unpolished updates may be becoming a theme of Xiaomi's Android One phones.

A new Geekbench listing has revealed what appears to be Google's Pixel 4, running on Android Q and sporting both 6 GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 855.

Notorious financier and philanthropist George Soros thinks that China's push in the AI field — which involves the plan to overtake the US by 2030 — is a severe threat to open societies. He also said that the social credit system "would give Xi Jinping total control over the people" if it became operational.

Thanks to its arrival on the Mac App Store, Microsoft Office 365 can now be downloaded and installed by Mac users with a single click. This cloud-connected office suite includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and OneDrive. Office 365 for macOS supports Dark Mode, Continuity Camera, OneDrive Files on Demand, and more.

Samsung Korea has announced that it will release the phone formerly known as the Galaxy A8s for sale in the country in February. To date, this punch-hole display phone has only been available in China. It will be re-named the Galaxy A9 Pro (2019) for its new market, and cost approximately US$535 on its South Korean debut.

Citus Data was founded eight years ago, and now this Turkish company that focuses on building upon PostgreSQL and its open and extensible ecosystem is joining Microsoft. Unsurprisingly, neither of the two parties involved bothered to reveal the financial terms of the deal to the public.

The Legion Y540 is coming next month while the Legion Y740 will launch in May when Intel is expected to ship its successor to Coffee Lake-H. The Legion Y7000 offshoot, however, is nowhere to be found with no comments from Lenovo about its current whereabouts.

The engineering sample spotted by Tum Apisak in the UserBenchmark database has a designation that is consistent with previously leaked codenames. As far as specs go, the early sample can boost to 3.7 GHz on a 105 W TDP, and also features 32 MB of L3 cache. In single-core tests, the 12-core CPU is 13% faster than the Ryzen 7 2700X.

Former Toshiba ultrabook division Dynabook has just launched its new G-Series models powered by Intel's Whiskey Lake-U CPUs. These are some of the lightest ultrabooks out there thanks to special magnesium alloy chassis that come in Pearl White and Onyx Blue colors. All models feature Sharp's IGZO 13.3-inch FHD display and the top models offer additional features like fingerprint scanners and preinstalled Windows 10 OSs.

A new device has been added to Dell’s Project Sputnik line-up: the XPS 13 9380 Developer Edition. Dell had already announced the XPS 13 9380, and the listed operating systems in the technical specifications sheet included Ubuntu 18.04. The Developer Edition of the laptop is now available in the US, Canada and Europe regions, with a price starting at US$739.99.

Our last report on the Apple AirPods 2 covered rumors that they could have been released by now, at least. However, their maker failed to live up to this leak, and the 2nd generation of these wireless earbuds has yet to appear. A newer article in DigiTimes alleges that these wearables will be here by July 2019.

DeepMind Technologies will be celebrating after its AlphaStar AI managed to defeat two human opponents in the popular RTS game StarCraft II. Five versions of AlphaStar were created to compete against each other, with the AI winner taking on highly ranked professional players. DeepMind, which is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., has already managed to create a program that beat some of the world’s best players at Go.

OnePlus' co-founder, Carl Pei, has made a rare appearance on the company's fan community website. Pei created a post asking for feedback on a new possible initiative in which the OEM would pre-load stubs for apps that support HDR streaming. On one hand, this may improve content consumption on future OnePlus devices; on the other, it may compromize their current low-bloatware appeal.

There has been a report published stating that the American consumer electronics manufacturer Sonos is planning a foray into the headphones market. The company is probably best known for its work with smart speakers and other home-based sound equipment. Rumor has it that Sonos will be targeting the top end of the market where headphones can cost hundreds of dollars.

These inexpensive and versatile subnotebooks will start as low as $250 USD with options for 1080p and 64 GB eMMC storage. Dual-band Intel 9560 wireless comes and USB Type-C charging will come standard similar to many mainstream Ultrabooks.

Everything appears to be on track to fulfill Nvidia's promised January launch window for the next generation of gaming laptops. Media, YouTubers, and everyone else in between will be posting their hands-on impressions in just a few short weeks.