Business Articles

A new leak on the Huawei P40 series' pricing will likely excite fans of the series. The P40 is expected to be launched sometime in March, and will build on the groundbreaking camera performance that its predecessors offered.

The Modern 14 may be a lot cheaper, but it actually has a few advantages over the more expensive Prestige 14 including additional ports and expandable RAM.

Get Adobe Photoshop, Color, Exchange, Lightroom, Illustrator, Camera, Premiere Pro, and more at no additional charge if you purchase a Gigabyte Aero RTX laptop between now and May 2020.

Owners of the Huawei Y9 (2019) mounted a campaign against the company after it was revealed that their phones would not get the Android 10 update. That move appears to have been effective, as Huawei has now backtracked and promised the update for the phone. Sadly, that says nothing about other phones that were similarly snubbed, like the Nova 3 series and the Honor Play.

Rumor has it that GlobalFoundries could offload some of the low-power Intel CPUs, including Celeron Pentium and possibly Core i3 models in order to help with the ever-increasing demand for mid-range and high-end Intel CPUs. Further down the line, Intel may also collaborate with TSMC for the production of high-end Xe gaming GPUs.

The Canadian tech patent development group WiLAN has won a court case against Apple in which the former asserted that the latter had used its intellectual property without permission. However, the actual damages involved were to be re-assessed in a subsequent trial. This process has come to an end with the decision that Apple has to pay the plaintiff US$85.23 million.

Xiaomi has announced that it will keep its brick-and-mortar stores in China closed for several days from January 28, 2020. The OEM has stated that this is to co-operate with governmental efforts to contain the spread of a novel coronavirus that has already claimed numerous lives in the country. However, customers can still order products online if necessary.

Today, (January 28, 2020) Eve has finally launched the Spectrum, its crowd-developed 27-inch monitor which, as it turns out, has a 240Hz/QHD option. The company has also announced that its current pricing online applies to the first 500 units only. Therefore, it starts at US$349, but only perhaps for a limited time.

Byte has emerged from beta onto the Play Store and the App Store. It, much like its predecessor Vine, allows the user to make videos of 6 seconds in length. Both apps also have a creator in common, who hopes to bring a form of revenue-sharing to this platform soon.

According to a new leak, Redmi - which is usually known as a smartphone brand - will launch a fitness tracker soon. It may be of the kind that fits into a silicone wrist-band, and may also have a front-facing capacitive button. This device may have been certified for use in India already.

We have asked Lenovo some questions about the Thunderbolt controller failures in recent ThinkPads. Their answers confirm the suspicion that a problematic firmware version is the reason for the problems.

Comet Lake is the code-name for a possibly imminent series of upcoming Intel CPUs. Accord to some leaks, they will then be followed by Rocket Lake. A leaker claims to have uncovered a reference to a new ATX motherboard that may pertain to some of these chipsets.

What appears to be official promotional material for the Samsung Galaxy S20 phones has surfaced, confirming the names and designs of the S20+, S20 Ultra, and Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Buds+ TWS earphones. Those will pre-order the S20+ or S20 Ultra will get a free pair of Galaxy Buds+. S20 buyers, sadly, appear to be completely ignored.

For the first time, pricing details of the Samsung Galaxy S20 phones have been revealed. Going by the leak, the Galaxy S20 could share a base price tag with its predecessor, the S10, but things go downhill from there, with the most expensive device potentially costing up to US$1,699.

Smart TVs are already popular purchases, and may become more so in the future due to their role as smart-home hubs. The latest analysis of their market has found that their shipments may number about 266 million over the next 5 years. This is driven by 4K content and its increasing availability.

The latest report on the health- and fitness-tracker market shows that it may achieve a valuation of as much as US$5 billion by 2025. This may be driven by the increasing number of applications and functions for these devices. They may in fact improve to the point that they can be used to help diagnose and prevent illnesses in the future.

Is Matrox going to follow Intel's example to rise against Nvidia and AMD in the gaming GPU market? Probably not, as the Canadians are still focusing on professional and enterprise GPU solutions, but it is interesting to see the Canadian company's choice of allying with Nvidia. The joint venture has designed a custom embedded Quadro GPU that supports up to four 4K commercial wall displays.

PNY has launched a new version of its 48GB NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 graphics card. This one, however, lacks a fan of any kind. Nevertheless, the OEM asserts that it is still capable of a memory bandwidth of 624 gigabytes per second (GB/s) and 14.9 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

Industry sources report that Intel could be implementing a phased price reduction strategy this year starting with OEMs in H2 2020 to counter AMD's aggressive pricing strategy and market share increase of Ryzen CPUs. How far will this impact end-user pricing and to which processors this applies to, is still unclear.

The latest PN62 models come equipped with business-grade features like optional Thunderbolt 3 ports and WiFi6 connectivity. Powered by Intel's Comet Lake CPUs up to the i7-10710U hexa-core, the slightly bulkier devices also support up to 64 GB DDR4-2666 RAM and up to 1.5 TB of HDD + SSD storage combos.

Samsung has dumped DJ Koh as head of its mobile division on the eve of the launch of the Galaxy S20. In his place, the Korean tech giant has appointed 20-year company veteran Roh Tae-moon who was the second-in-charge of the division.

ASRock has a new mini-PC board ready to go. As it appears to be designed for the Intel Pentium Silver J5040 chipset, it may be pitched at the lower end of this market. It can drive up to 3 displays and has an HDMI port that supports 4K at 60 fps, but no USB type-C ports.

A study published in The Lancet has concluded that Fitbit use was associated with significant improvements in a technique used to detect influenza and similar conditions. This is due to the heart rate- and activity-monitoring features in these wearables. Therefore, fitness trackers may play a greater role in public health in the future.

Samsara is a company that harnesses the trend towards tech-enhanced luggage. Its latest product is of the newly-expanded 23-inch carry-on size. It is the first from its OEM to have its own Wi-Fi hotspot. The suitcase also supports wireless charging for phones and has GPS for "more accurate" tracking should it get lost.

Facebook has encountered serious opposition to its intentions to use WhatsApp for ad revenue-building purposes. Now, a new report has indicated that the social media giant has ultimately dropped its efforts to achieve this aim, which apparently included disbanding a corporate team that was dedicated to this contentious task.

Microsoft's president, Ben Smith, has publicly acknowledged the scientific consensus that is anthropogenic climate change. Accordingly, the executive has announced an initiative by which the company aims to throw its carbon emissions into reverse. This will include reducing them to negative values by 2030.

Huawei has released its performance for 2019 to the Chinese media. It claims it shipped approximately 240 million units in total that year, 6.9 million of which had 5G. For context, Samsung has announced that it shipped about 6.7 million of the same kind of phone in the same time-frame.

Is NVIDIA worried about AMD's RX product stack? Well, its latest round of price cuts would suggest so. The company has unexpectedly dropped the RTX 2060 Founders Edition from US$349, conveniently just ahead of the release of the RX 5600 XT.

Alphabet has become the US fourth company to crest the US$1 trillion market cap. This puts it up there with Apple, Amazon and Microsoft which are the only other companies to achieve the milestone.

Once, long ago, Blu-ray was touted as the gold standard in media playback. Now, however, it has sunk into obscurity among a world's worth of streaming services compatible with high-res displays. The format's market value is now thought to fall considerably until 2025.

OPPO has released the F15 to the Indian market. It is technically a new device, although it ships with an older chipset: the MediaTek Helio P70. It costs the equivalent of US$280 and will ship from January 28, 2020.

AMD has just announced the release of the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition (20.1.2). It confers support for Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, as well as Vulkan 1.2. It also fixes a problem for some UE4-based games in which they could not load under its predecessor.

PC shipments increased by a small percentage in 2019 and this is mostly due to Microsoft discontinuing support for the venerable Windows 7 OS. 261 to 267 million PC system shipping throughout 2019 are nothing to scoff at, but these figures pale in comparison to the amount of smartphones shipped solely in Q3 2019.

The mid-range ProBook series will be refreshed with AMD's latest Ryzen 4000 U-series APUs for SMBs. HP is promising BIOS-level security features including Sure Start and Sure Sense to make up for the fact that there are not yet 3rd gen AMD Ryzen PRO processors for mobile yet.

Intel has announced a shake-up in its line of Xeon scalable processors. The OEM will cease sales of the M variants of these server-grade SoCs (the Xeon Platinum 8280M, for example) will. However, their L (the Platinum 8280L, and so on) counterparts will take their place in this tier of chipsets.

Asus goes over core details on the upcoming VivoBook S series, Chromebook Flip C436, TUF Gaming A15/A17, G-Sync-enabled TUF Gaming VG27AQL1A monitor, ROG Strix GA35 gaming desktop, and the Zephyrus G14 laptop equipped with 4th gen AMD Ryzen H series CPUs.

MediaTek has announced the Helio G70 and G70T, a pair of processors that, like the G90s before them, are aimed at gaming-phone OEMs. However, the new chipsets are also intended for a lower tier of that market compared to their predecessors. They have 8 cores made of ARM Cortex-A75 and A55 cores, 4G connectivity and "HyperEngine game" technology.

Google researchers unveiled their AI-based "precipitation nowcasting" solution, which can predict rainfall at a 1km resolution, 6 hours ahead of time, with just 5-10 minutes of calculation. The new approach could mean better crisis management and reduce life and property loss.

The tech billionaire tweeted a picture of a Model 3 Tesla driving by as its speakers play a brief audio clip that says "Well don’t just stand there staring, hop in." The clip hints at Musk's plan to turn all Teslas into a giant fleet of autonomous taxis.

Samsung is expected to release a new foldable phone at its Galaxy Unpacked event on February 11. Information points towards the phone sporting a Motorola RAZR-esque design, and it will apparently be called the Galaxy Z Flip.

The media outlet Android Police asserts that the OnePlus 8 will be compatible with Verizon's 5G network when it is released to the US market. Not only that, in fact, but it will also apparently launch through this carrier. However, the OEM already has such a partnership with T-Mobile in the same country.

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has announced that it is adding laptops to its MarQ sub-brand with the Falkon Aerbook. The Falkon Aerbook is a thin and light laptop for professionals and students made in collaboration with Intel and Microsoft. The Aerbook will be powered by the 8th gen Intel Core i5 processor and will be available on January 17 starting from ₹39,990 (US$564).

A study of device repair in Germany for the year 2019 found that 30.7% of those conducted by users were carried out on Apple phones. Samsung was second in these terms at 29.7%, followed by Huawei at 21.6%. Owners were most likely to replace their phones' batteries by themselves, and to resort to a professional for screen repairs, last year.

CTL has launched its new NL71 series of education-focused Chromebooks. They are intended to be durable, and some are also convertible PCs with touchscreens. These devices are also capable of advanced connectivity thanks to their up-to-date processors.

The Smarter Camera platform is an AI-powered solution for the future of industries such as security, logistics and retail. It has been developed by the company AnyConnect, which has just announced a partnership with Asus to deliver it to the market. This will be done using the Taiwanese OEM's Tinker Edge hardware.

The Wacom One is a new, 13-inch digital-art display. It has an FHD panel and in-built, foldable legs for various modes. It is aimed at those looking to get into electronically-enhanced or -generated art, and can also leverage Microsoft Office features with its corresponding pen.

iPhone sales in China leapt to 3.18 million units in December, a year-over-year increase of 18.7%. While many analysts are excited about what this could mean for Apple's sales in China, it should be noted that October and November were terrible months for Chinese iPhone sales.

Initially expected to hit the market in late 2019, the DDR5 RAM standard will first be introduced to server systems in the second half of 2020, as Micron is currently sampling RDIMMs for its industry partners. DDR5-6400 modules are expected to be 85% faster than current DDR4-3200 modules, but DDR5 memories can certainly be pushed to even higher frequencies.