Microsoft is offering a sneak peek at its Black Friday deals for 2018. They include US$330 off the Surface Pro 6 bundled with its Type cover (in any color so long as it's black) and $310 off the Surface Pro Core M. There is also a range of XBox offers, including a Game Pass for $1 to new users.

Wear OS is getting a new update. Known as "H", it adds a new battery-saving mode to Android-powered watches. The new update also overhauls how a watch reboots or shuts down, as well as how it resumes apps and handles the switch to sleep mode.

PlayStation 4 players who have been waiting for Warhammer: Vermintide 2 to hit their consoles since early March can now take this title for a spin, although this console version is still in a Beta phase. Its release date has been set for December 18 — more than five months after the arrival of the Xbox One version.

Asus claims its PC builder business (mainly the motherboard sales) has suffered due to Intel's 14 nm CPU shortages. Overall profits have seen a 39% year-over-year decline and the next few quarters will continue to hit Asus's profits, as the shortages are expected to last until Q2 2019. The gaming PC and server businesses are unaffected by these problems, however.

The year 2018 is coming to a close. Time for new ThinkPad laptops: With the ThinkPad E490 and the ThinkPad E590, the first models of the upcoming generation have surfaced on sites of Korean registration-offices.

Microsoft reaffirmed the company's presence at E3 2019 via its official Xbox Twitter handle shortly after Sony confirmed that they are pulling out of E3 for the first time in the show's 24 year history. We aren't sure of Microsoft's plans for the event but expect a lot of information on upcoming consoles and exclusives.

Although Microsoft Translator supports over 60 languages and 12 speech languages, the next-gen Neural Machine Translation improvements are only available for Chinese and German from/to English translations for now. More languages will be supported by the new system — which brings an 11 percent in overall quality — starting in early 2019.

The British regulator Ofcom has announced that it has fined EE and Virgin Media £6.3 million (~ US$8.035 million) and £7 million (~ US$8.928 million) respectively. The regulator has fined the two companies principally for overcharging early-exit fees to hundreds of thousands of customers and for not explaining contractual terms clearly enough.

According to the specs revealed on TENAA, the Honor 10 Lite will retain the 6.21-inch 1080p display from the original Honor 10 model, but the 24 MP selfie cam notch will be smaller. The mid-range smartphone will be powered by the Kirin 710 SoC coupled with 4 or 6 GB of RAM and 64 or 128 GB storage. The rear dual-cam will only get 13 + 2 MP sensors.

References to a new AMD APU, the Ryzen 7 3700U, have been spotted online leading to speculation as to whether this could be a Zen+ or a Zen 2 part. The Ryzen 7 3700U sports the same clocks and core counts as the Ryzen 7 2700U and most of the evidence so far suggests that this could be the Zen+ APU as the previous 2000U series were based on Zen.

Acer's top-of-the-line Predator 700 laptop with GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q Graphics will be $700 off next week along with at least a dozen other models. The promotion will apply to major retailers including Newegg, Amazon, Costco, Best Buy, Fry's, and more.

Sony has confirmed that it will not be part of the E3 2019 trade show. The organizer of the event, the Entertainment Software Association, has issued a press release to highlight which companies will be in attendance, including Sony’s console rivals Nintendo and Microsoft. According to a press statement, the PlayStation maker is apparently searching for new ways of engaging with its community.

The relatively steep 30 percent price cut comes 9 months after the initial launch of the smartphone. Honor says the deal will only apply to North American users for now with no plans to extend the promotion overseas.

Red Magic is an 'alternative' gaming phone developed by Nubia in order to compete with the likes of Xiaomi's Black Shark. Now, the second generation of this device, which may be called the Red Magic Mars, has started to show up in benchmarks. It has reportedly beaten the Black Shark Helo variant by about 20,000 points on Antutu so far.

Apple’s stock price seems to have stabilized and even briefly bounced back after days of steep decline. The NASDAQ community has offered a “bullish” rating for the stock, implying there is still plenty of optimism in the company’s recovery. However, it’s unlikely Mark Zuckerberg is going to be investing in the Cupertino-based firm any time soon.

In a paper presented at a biometric securities conference, a research team from NYU showed off a new algorithm for cracking fingerprint readers. The system, named "DeepMasterPrints," operates in similar fashion to a dictionary attack for passwords. DeepMasterPrints uses a library of fingerprint images and permutes them until it finds a match.

SK Hynix has published a press release to announce the development of 16 Gb DDR5 DRAM, the first in the industry that meets JEDEC standards. The South Korean memory manufacturer has managed to lower the operating voltage for the DDR5 DRAM in comparison to DDR4. The new generation of DRAM is also considerably faster than its predecessor.

When the Turing based RTX series launched in October, zero games supported RTX technology. However, that finally changed with this new RTX focused patch for Battlefield V, the world's first RTX compatible game. However, "RTX on" doesn't come very cheaply to Turing GPUs.

Google Pixel users — and the lucky ones who are using other handsets — on Android Pie can finally enjoy the Digital Wellbeing app, which has just rolled out of Beta. As more handsets get updated to Android Pie, the list of Digital Wellbeing-supported devices should also receive new entries.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus have been reported not to be in line for official upgrades to Pie until January. In the meantime, some users do have access to a version of the OS, in exchange for some beta-testing. In Korea, the latest of these betas replaces Samsung Experience with One UI.

The United States and South Korea are the countries most strongly linked with the earliest widespread roll-outs of the new mobile data-transfer standard, 5G. AT&T is one of the US networks engaged in the upcoming national 5G distribution program. However, reps from the carrier have warned against getting too excited about it right now.

Recent FCC filings for an XT1952 and an XT1965 have sparked rumours that Lenovo Motorola is preparing to release new Moto devices. These documents come in the wake of the Moto G6 series, which Lenovo Motorola released earlier this year, prompting speculation that the company is preparing a G7 series.

Intel has announced that it is opening a new development center in Hyderabad in the state of Telangana, India with a capacity to host about 1,500 staff. Raja Koduri, who is now leading Intel's graphics division, said that the upcoming India Development Center will help in augmenting its existing Indian sites in graphics hardware and software development efforts.

After this year's earlier AI-related acquisitions that involved Semantic Machines (May), Bonsai (July), and Lobe (September), Microsoft is up for another round. Its latest purchase is XOXCO, a software product design and development studio that has been developing conversational AI and bots so far.

While we're still coming to terms with the distressing fact that notches may be a long-term feature in smartphones, Japanese OEM Sharp has gone the extra mile by including two notches on its new flagship. And no, that is not a joke.

The Snapdragon 8150, Kirin 980, A12 Bionic, and a few other SoCs were intensively tested on AnTuTu, with the results showing the Snapdragon 8150's overall dominance. The A12 Bionic managed to hold the high ground in a few departments, though.

The EPYC Rome server-grade CPUs have just been revealed to have 64 cores and 2.35 GHz clocks, but it looks like AMD is already working on the successor that will be based on the Zen 3 architecture. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the upcoming CPUs will be known as the EPYC Milan, will have more than 64 cores, and will be featured in octa-CPU nodes along with Nvidia's 'Volta-Next" GPUs in the Perlmutter supercomputer.

The RTX 2000-series has been around for a few months now, and it was just a matter of time until the small form-factor models would start popping up. MSI is among the first to release an ITX Turing card with the RTX 2070 Aero ITX, but more models are expected from Gigabyte and Zotac. MSI's ITX card is missing a few connectors and gets stock clocks.

The award-winning creators of Skyrim and Fallout 4 are back with Fallout 76, an online prequel to the epic series of post-apocalyptic RPGs that was introduced by Interplay Entertainment back in 1997. Fallout 76 is now available via the Microsoft Store as an Xbox One X Enhanced title and also comes as a Tricentennial Edition with various in-game bonuses.

The LG 17Z990, 17ZD990, 17ZB990, 17ZG990, and 17Z99 are all probably pointing to a new series of 17-inch devices as part of its existing family of Gram laptops. With CES less than two months away, there's a good chance that LG will have something up its sleeve to announce.

Good luck, commanders! EA announced today that Command & Conquer, the grandaddy of RTS games, will be getting a 4K remaster in the future. EA will work with Petroglyph Games, a studio founded by some of the original developers of C&C when Westwood Studios closed down.

Specs and pricing information for the upcoming AMD Radeon RX 590 based on the Polaris 30 architecture are now available. The Radeon RX 590 is said to have an MSRP of US$279. According to presentation slides accessed by Videocardz, the RX 590 will offer 12% better performance than the current RX 580. It is expected to be offered with a 'blockbuster launch bundle' with three free titles.

Corsair has announced that its wide range of gaming keyboards and mice will support the Xbox One. Microsoft recently announced keyboard and mouse support for the Xbox One and developers can choose to support their game for such input if desired. Corsair also said that the Elgato Stream Deck can now be integrated with Mixer for improved live streaming.

The October update for Windows 10 is currently being rolled out to the general public. For those in the Fast ring of the Insider Preview program, however, the build of the future is available to try out. This update, known as 19H1, includes an improved Light Theme and some other things Microsoft had promised.

While both Zen 2 and the Zen 2 based Rome processor were officially announced by AMD at its Next Horizon event, little information was given on things like clock speed, IPC improvements, and other performance figures and specifications. At this year's Supercomputing conference, however, we got some details on Rome's clock speeds.

Samsung is rumored to be preparing multiple varieties of its upcoming S10 series, one of which will be 5G-enabled. The well-regarded leakster Roland Quandt believes that, if this SKU is to exist, it will come with the new Exynos 9820 chipset only, to go with its Samsung 5G-NR modem.

Apple has released new models of the 15-inch MacBook Pro with AMD Radeon Pro Vega GPUs. The new MacBook Pros can be configured with either a Radeon Pro Vega 16 or Radeon Pro Vega 20. The new GPU option is only available for the most expensive 15-inch Macbook Pro and will start at US $3,049.

The latest update to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is a massive one and comes with a rather long list of changes, which includes Nuketown, Daily Tier Skip, Blackout with Nuketown Island zombies and the Bowie Knife, stability tweaks, and much more. The update is already rolling out to PlayStation 4 consoles, and the other platforms should get it next week.

The mobile game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite has finally received a teaser trailer, just over a year after its development was announced. There are plenty of games based in the Harry Potter world, but this one is particularly newsworthy because of the developer involved: Niantic. The American software company is probably best known for its work with Pokémon Go.

It has been claimed that Apple will be releasing the successor to its AirPods product before the end of the year. There has been speculation that AirPods 2 could feature a case that can be charged wirelessly, but nothing has been confirmed from Cupertino yet. Leaked images of stacked AirPods cases have added fuel to the fire.

Google Glass was the search giant's first attempt at smart glasses, and could clip onto transparent spectacles to deliver info and shots from its camera via an eyeball-level LED. It was not a popular release, not least because of its ultra-high price tag. Nevertheless, Google is developing second-gen Glass, which is to target corporations rather than consumers.

The Fairphone 2 has finally received an update to Android 7.1 Nougat, a two-year-old version of the mobile OS. Considering the Fairphone 2's age and the slow rollout of supported software, the handset may be entering its end-of-life.

The successor of the original Razer Phone will go on sale this Friday directly online from AT&T's website, but those in a hurry will also be able to grab it from the San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and Seattle flagship stores. Even more, these locations will host special gaming events dedicated to the Razer Phone 2.

NVIDIA has released a new Game Ready driver that is available to download for RTX and GeForce GPUs. The new driver brings optimisations for Battlefield V, Fallout 76 and Hitman 2. The Game Ready driver also adds support for real-time ray tracing in Battlefield V for GeForce RTX GPUs.

Google Chrome Labs has just revealed Squoosh, an in-browser image compression tool that can use non-browser image codecs to compress images without much loss in quality. The app can also be run offline after it is loaded in a browser at least once. Squoosh is aimed at web designers that hope to reduce web page load times by using compressed images.