Business Articles

Can this new 'free phone' concept work? (Source: Volk Fi)

A phone with free calls, texts and data? This is what the Volk One offers, apparently

Could a phone establish data connections and load webpages independent of either WiFi or a SIM card? Volk Fi apparently thinks so. This company is currently advertising its first smartphone, the Volk One, which can apparently form...

Deirdre O Donnell, 21 Mar 2019 19:01

The Redmi 7 is now available in Ukraine. (Source: Redmi)

The Redmi 7 makes it to its first Western market: Ukraine

Xiaomi has a thriving presence in Ukraine, with numerous physical stores and online sales through partner websites. This now extends to the new Redmi 7, the second device line to be sold under the OEM's latest sub-brand. Its avail...

Deirdre O Donnell, 21 Mar 2019 18:21

Google will give EU Android users a choice of search and browser apps in the future. (Source: Campaign)

Google will ask European Android users which browser and search engine they want in the future

Reports have just emerged that the European Commission has disciplined Google for anti-trust-related business practices. Coincidentally, the company has issued a new blog post outlining its new measures to ensure that there is "ch...

Deirdre O Donnell, 21 Mar 2019 16:30

As is becoming tradition, purchases come with a Huawei Watch. (Source: Tek.no)

Norwegian retailer leaks the Huawei P30 Pro in full

The Huawei P30 phones are billed to be launched on March 26, next week, but a Norwegian retailer has revealed all we could hope to know about the P30 Pro. Notable features include a triple rear camera setup and a ToF sensor, a 420...

Ricci Rox, 21 Mar 2019 09:12

Phil Spencer is preparing something big for Xbox at E3. (Source: Game Rant)

Microsoft's response to Google's Stadia: Going big at E3 with possible xCloud or Xbox announcements

A leaked email allegedly from Phil Spencer, the Xbox head executive, has given some ambiguous details about how Microsoft and Xbox will challenge Google’s recent massive announcement about its Stadia game-streaming service. It see...

Daniel R Deakin, 21 Mar 2019 08:36

The Spartan demigod Kratos is the main character in God of War. (Source: Mashable)

God of War wins the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year

God of War has won another “Game of the Year” title to add to its growing collection. This time, it was the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year that was given to the acclaimed action-adventure game. God of War, which...

Daniel R Deakin, 21 Mar 2019 07:10

Margrethe Vestager: The European Commissioner for Competition who today announced Google's third fine in under two years for antitrust violations (Image source: WIC News)

Google fined €1.49 billion by the EU for yet another antitrust breach

Today, the European Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion for abusing its market dominance of online search adverts. The company has now been fined over €8.25 billion by the Commission in less than two years for illegal practi...

Alex Alderson, 20 Mar 2019 19:30

Lenovo ThinkPad T490s using the same motherboard as smaller X390 may explain feature loss

As the release of Lenovo's newest business laptops of the well known ThinkPad brand comes closer, we discovered an interesting fact in the support documentation of the ThinkPad T490s and the smaller ThinkPad X390: Both use the sam...

Benjamin Herzig, 20 Mar 2019 19:29

The purported Xperia 4 compared to the Z5 Compact and XZ2 Compact. (Source: SumahoInfo)

The Sony Xperia 4 could be a disappointing successor to the Xperia Compact flagships

Sony is set to launch a new Xperia device, the Xperia 4, in the coming months. The Xperia 4 is said to be a replacement for the Xperia Compact flagship line, but it's looking more and more like a poor one.

Ricci Rox, 20 Mar 2019 14:26

OWC offers memory kits for the new 27-inch iMac. (Source: OWC)

OWC has prepared RAM upgrades for the 27-inch 2019 iMac already

OWC is a company that caters to iMac fans who want to upgrade their new Apple all-in-ones. It has announced its new Memory Kits for the 2019 27-inch iMac (the 5K model). As this new 2019 variant has 4 user-accessible slots, OWC is...

Deirdre O Donnell, 20 Mar 2019 14:25

The LumiCharge is back with wireless charging this time. (Source: Lumicharge)

LumiCharge II: The teched-out desk lamp returns with a wireless-charging upgrade

LumiCharge made a good impression among tech correspondents with its first-gen desk lamp. This product had an LED clock, not to mention ways to charge iOS and Android smartphones with built-in wired connections. Now, the company i...

Deirdre O Donnell, 20 Mar 2019 13:15

Q4 2018: Xiaomi's smartphone division sees 28% drop in revenue

A new report has detailed Xiaomi's sales numbers for the fourth quarter of 2018. The company managed to beat its profit estimates for the quarter but also suffered from a heavy quarter-on-quarter drop in revenue from smartphone sa...

Ricci Rox, 20 Mar 2019 11:55

The Alienware Alpha R2 PC/console hybrid could be fitted with a GPU from Nvidia or AMD. (Source: Dell)

Dell's Frank Azor says no to Alienware gaming phones and more consoles

During a visit to India where he has been discussing newly launched Dell and Alienware laptops for the Indian market, Dell executive Frank Azor had time to make a few interesting comments about what direction Alienware won’t be ta...

Daniel R Deakin, 20 Mar 2019 10:31

Dell's G7 15 gaming laptop has a 15.6-inch FHD (1920x1080) IPS 144 Hz display. (Source: Dell India)

Dell launches G7 15, Alienware m15, and Alienware Area-51m gaming laptops in India

Dell has announced that the G7 15 gaming laptop, the Alienware m15 notebook, and the powerful Alienware Area-51m computer are now available to customers in India. The devices can currently be ordered from the website for Dell Indi...

Daniel R Deakin, 20 Mar 2019 09:40

New iMacs are now available. (Source: Apple)

Apple has updated its iMac line-up for 2019

In a move that aligns with relevant rumors from days ago, Apple has upgraded its take on the all-in-one (AIO) PC. However, these new desktops are iMacs, not iMac Pros. Nevertheless, they now come with 8th- or 9th-gen Intel process...

Deirdre O Donnell, 19 Mar 2019 19:50

Xiaomi Mi Pay hits India (Source: Android Authority)

Xiaomi finally launches its mobile payments service in India

Already available in China, the Xiaomi Mi Pay mobile payments service has been tested in India in the second half of 2018. In the meantime, the Chinese company obtained the approval of the Reserve Bank of India, and Mi Pay is now ...

Codrut Nistor, 19 Mar 2019 18:08

Upcoming HP ProBook 445R G6 and 455R G6 will carry AMD Ryzen Zen+ processors

The ProBook 445 and 455 are barely three months old and they will soon be updated with faster models come this summer. Much like the upcoming Lenovo IdeaPad C340 series, the newer SKUs will have second generation AMD Zen APUs for ...

Allen Ngo, 19 Mar 2019 16:00

The developer kit version of the Nvidia Jetson Nano costs just US$99. (Source: Nvidia)

Machine learning from US$99: Nvidia unveils tiny Jetson Nano AI computer

Nvidia has launched the Jetson Nano, a small computer that offers machine-learning capabilities at an entry-level price. The developer kit costs US$99 while a production-ready module will cost US$129. The Jetson Nano module offers...

Daniel R Deakin, 19 Mar 2019 05:50

The latest LG OLED TVs will be available for purchase soon. (Source: LG USA)

LG announces US availability of 2019 OLED TVs - and that they will be super expensive

LG has stated its US dollar prices for its new OLED TVs. These state-of-the-art panels were previewed at CES 2019, and come with Dolby Vision, ThinQ AI and inbuilt Google Assistant. They start at US$2,499 - and work their way up t...

Deirdre O Donnell, 19 Mar 2019 00:34

Kingston introduces DC500R and DC500M, two new SATA SSDs aimed at the enterprise market

Kingston has just announced two new lines of enterprise-grade SATA SSDs. The drives offer similar features of other enterprise-level flash storage solutions, including ECC, onboard power loss protection, and more. Compared to othe...

Sam Medley, 18 Mar 2019 21:35

The Black Shark 2 has been released. (Source: GizmoChina)

The Xiaomi Black Shark 2 is now available: SD 855 and Pixelworks HDR for US$477

The Xiaomi Black Shark 2 has been launched today (March 18, 2019) in China. As expected, it is powered by the Snapdragon 855 processor, has a 6GB RAM base model and has a 6.39-inch FHD+ AMOLED display. This panel has some interest...

Deirdre O Donnell, 18 Mar 2019 19:26

We won't be getting a successor to the Poco F1 for months at least. (Source: BBC)

Geekbench listings of the Poco F2 and Poco F1 Lite were just social experiments after all

A number of recent Geekbench listings alluded to the existence of two new Pocophone devices: The Poco F1 Lite and Poco F2. We were skeptical in our coverage of both stories and it turns out were right to be, as it was all just a r...

Ricci Rox, 18 Mar 2019 15:20

Intel's Jason Waxman at the Intel Open Compute Project 2019 Keynote. (Source: Intel)

Facebook is helping Intel in designing Cooper Lake for deep learning

Intel took to stage at the OCP Global Summit 2019 to announce new Xeon Scalable platforms for servers based on the upcoming Cascade Lake and Cooper Lake architectures. The new Xeon Scalable processors will now be available in four...

Vaidyanathan Subramaniam, 17 Mar 2019 16:31

The company hopes the day never comes. (Source: Gizbot)

Huawei confirms that it has built its own proprietary mobile OS...just in case

There have always been rumors that Huawei was working on its own OS. Those have now been confirmed by the company, with Huawei CEO Richard Yu affirming that the Chinese monolith has a working mobile OS all geared up and ready to g...

Ricci Rox, 17 Mar 2019 12:08

New Geekbench listing teases a purported Poco F1 Lite

A few days ago, a Geekbench listing showed what appeared to be a Poco F1 Lite running on Android Pie with 4 GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 660. We are leery of the whole thing, though.

Ricci Rox, 17 Mar 2019 12:08

Renders of the Xiaomi foldable phone. (Source: LetsGoDigital)

Xiaomi's upcoming foldable phone will cost half the price of a Samsung Galaxy Fold

Samsung's Galaxy Fold and Huawei's Mate X foldable phones may rightfully dominate the headlines but they come with the caveat of outrageous prices. Xiaomi is set to join the foldable race in the coming months and will, in typical ...

Ricci Rox, 16 Mar 2019 23:06

Renders of the Huawei P30 Pro. (Source: Techenguru)

The Huawei P30 and P30 Pro will feature OLED displays made by Samsung

The Huawei P30 and P30 Pro will be launched on March 26, and while the devices' selling points remain photography, both will still feature top of the line displays—in the form of Samsung-made OLED panels.

Ricci Rox, 16 Mar 2019 23:05

The Redmi Note 7 is the first Xiaomi phone to come with an 18-month warranty as standard. (Source: Xiaomi)

Xiaomi plans to make 18-month warranties a standard for its smartphones

Xiaomi usually offers a 12-month warranty for its phones to customers in its home country of China. However, this was turned on its head somewhat with the release of the Redmi Note 7. The company gave an extra 6 months' worth for ...

Deirdre O Donnell, 16 Mar 2019 16:00

Qualcomm has won a legal case against Apple. (Source: Qualcomm)

Qualcomm beats Apple in multi-million-dollar patent infringement case

Qualcomm has successfully pressed its latest legal complaint against Apple in a San Diego court. Its jury has ruled that the Cupertino company did in fact use 3 patents that did not belong to it in the making of its 2016-2018 iPho...

Deirdre O Donnell, 16 Mar 2019 15:25

This selfie camera's oneday successor may not even be visible within the display. (Source: AndroidPIT)

Samsung's next-generation displays are set to engulf and hide cameras completely

The Galaxy S10s are Samsung's first flagships in which the front-facing cameras peek right through their high-end OLED displays. However, their future replacements may not even require the cut-out in order to fit around a camera. ...

Deirdre O Donnell, 15 Mar 2019 18:58

Qualcomm's mid-range and high-end SoCs are ready to support the upcoming 64 MP and 100 MP cameras scheduled for late 2019. (Source: Blackberry)

Qualcomm's mid-range and high-end SoCs already supporting the 64 MP and 100 MP cameras scheduled for late 2019

Qualcomm's Sr. Director of Product Management Judd Heape revealed that a few OEMs are already planning to release 64 MP and 100 MP cameras in some late-2019 smartphone models, and these will easily be handled by the company's exis...

Bogdan Solca, 15 Mar 2019 18:46

The Sony Xperia 1 is now listed on Amazon US with a hefty US$999 price tag

The Sony Xperia 1 has now been listed on Amazon. The device is listed with a US warranty, so it's almost definitely the unlocked model for the US market. Sadly, it also comes with a US$999 price tag, and apparently doesn't ship un...

Ricci Rox, 15 Mar 2019 14:19

Facebook's temporary outage proved to be a blessing for competing services such as Telegram. (Source: Boostability)

Huge Facebook outage results in 3 million new signups for Telegram

Facebook and its subsidiaries suffered a temporary outage of services yesterday leading to inconvenience for users and advertisers alike. The company clarified that the outage was a result of a server configuration change and is n...

Vaidyanathan Subramaniam, 15 Mar 2019 11:06

AMD's Radeon RX 590 is a competitive challenger for the new Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660. (Source: eTeknix)

AMD comes out fighting: Pick up a Radeon RX 590 for US$219.99; Vega 56 spotted again at US$279.99

AMD could be planning on some serious product discounting soon. A Gigabyte Radeon RX Vega 56 GAMING OC 8G card has been priced at a very tempting US$279.99 on Newegg for limited time sales, and there has been an RX 590 Special Edi...

Daniel R Deakin, 15 Mar 2019 07:42

ZOTAC's GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 is currently available for US$219.99. (Source: Newegg)

Turing technology for US$219: Nvidia announces the GeForce GTX 1660

Nvidia has officially announced the GeForce GTX 1660 graphics card, the latest addition to the company’s GTX 16-series. Like the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, the new product is based on Turing architecture and comes at the competitive pri...

Daniel R Deakin, 15 Mar 2019 06:16

Samsung's new 12GB LPDDR4X module. (Source: Samsung)

Samsung is about to mass-produce its 12GB LPDDR4X mobile DRAM module

Samsung has announced that it is ready to start producing its highest-capacity RAM module for mobile devices. It has a 10-nanometer architecture and should deliver data speeds of up to 34.1 gigabytes (GB) per second. This 12GB low...

Deirdre O Donnell, 14 Mar 2019 21:57

Western Digital launches inexpensive SN500 NVMe SSD for the masses

NVMe technology is slowly trickling down to more affordable SSDs. The WD Blue SN500 will performance faster than any other drive before it in its family while costing less than a high-end WD Black SSD.

Allen Ngo, 14 Mar 2019 20:41

The Xiaomi Mi 9 also has a 'transparent' option. (Source: XDA)

Xiaomi cancels Mi 9 Transparent Edition sales at the last minute

Xiaomi had planned a sales event for the Mi 9 Transparent Edition, as well as the Mi 9 SE, for today (March 14, 2019) in China. However, reports that it has been abruptly cancelled have come in from that country. The OEM cited uni...

Deirdre O Donnell, 14 Mar 2019 19:42

The Oculus Rift VR headset was released in 2016. (Source: PCMag)

Oculus Rift is the most popularly used VR headset on Steam

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset has been surveyed as the most popular VR hardware utilized by Steam users. The rival headset from HTC, the Vive, also has a commanding share of users, but it has seen the gap between itself ...

Daniel R Deakin, 14 Mar 2019 07:46

Upcoming TravelMate X514-51 will be Acer's thinnest professional laptop yet (Source: Acer)

Acer TravelMate X514-51 launching this June to replace the TravelMate X3410

The new 14-inch business laptop will have the distinction of weighing less than 1 kg while still offering Gorilla Glass touchscreen, 15 W ULV Intel CPU options, and a magnesium-lithium magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis that promise...

Allen Ngo, 13 Mar 2019 23:12

Can you get your phone back after it goes missing? (Source: Asurion)

An insurance company publishes its report on successful stolen or lost device recovery research

A mobile insurance and device company, Asurion, has announced its findings on a study about missing devices and cases in which their owners managed to get them back. The company reported that having a lockscreen showing a contact ...

Deirdre O Donnell, 13 Mar 2019 19:32

The Your Phone app on the new Insider preview can mirror your Android's screen. (Source: Microsoft)

New Windows Insiders build allows for native Android screen-mirroring on PC; only works with certain phones so far

The latest build of Windows 10 available via the Insider program expands the functions of the Your Phone app on the OS. This service, which formerly gave Android users a more convenient way to move their files on their PCs, now su...

Deirdre O Donnell, 13 Mar 2019 17:48

Redmi 7 billed for March 18 launch, retail box teased

Xiaomi's Redmi sub-brand is set to launch its fourth device this year, the Redmi 7, at an event in Beijing on March 18. The budget device will feature a Snapdragon 632, dual rear cameras, and up to 4 GB of RAM.

Ricci Rox, 13 Mar 2019 08:37

The China-only AMD Radeon RX 560 XT graphics card has 5.7 billion transistors. (Source: AMD)

AMD launches the midrange Radeon RX 560 XT graphics card for the Chinese market

AMD has announced the availability of the Radeon RX 560 XT graphics card for just the Chinese market. The GPU bridges the wide gap between the Radeon RX 560 and RX 570 and offers a base clock of 973 MHz and a boost clock of 1073 M...

Daniel R Deakin, 13 Mar 2019 07:13

The Asus ZenBook 14 has a Harman Kardon-certified audio system. (Source: Asus)

Asus launches ZenBook 14 (UX431) with Whiskey Lake CPUs and upcoming GeForce MX150 configuration

Asus has announced the ZenBook 14 (UX431). Two configurations of the laptop are currently available, with a third higher-specced option coming in the second quarter of the year. The usual slim ZenBook aesthetic is present with the...

Daniel R Deakin, 13 Mar 2019 05:33

The new Motorola 'RAZR' logo emerges in new leak alongside its alleged specs

A slew of leaks and speculations have pointed to the resurrection of the RAZR product line in the release of the first foldable under the Motorola brand. A new post on SlashLeaks consists of the new logo for this putative phone. I...

Deirdre O Donnell, 12 Mar 2019 18:21

Update: G4 Plus, Android 8.1 | Eighteen months after the merry-go-round, the Moto G4 and G4 Plus are finally receiving the Oreo update

Motorola promised Oreo for the Moto G4 Plus when it launched in 2016 and went back on its word a year after. Media outcry over that betrayal forced the company's hands, making them promise Oreo as initially agreed. It's been eight...

Ricci Rox, 12 Mar 2019 12:27