Business Articles

Huawei is rumored to release its first TV this year. Most recently, the outlet Nikkei Asian Review has reported that this product could have an 8K resolution when it comes out. It also alleges that the same device will have its own 5G connectivity.

LG had planned to release its first-ever 5G smartphone, the V50 ThinQ, by now. However, some less-than-specified technical difficulties obliged the OEM to delay this event. It has now announced a new launch date for the phone: May 10, 2019.

Intel is currently preparing for the release of its new line of discrete graphics cards. Today (May 1, 2019), the company's senior principal engineer has officially confirmed that these new GPUs will support ray-tracing on a hardware basis. This puts them directly in Turing's firing-line - or possibly vice-versa.

Samsung has unveiled a new line of TVs in South Korea recently. However, rather than being mere flat content-displays, this new line is apparently designed to fit into the 'millennial' lifestyle. To this end, one of them, the Sero, can be switched between horizontal and vertical orientations.

The Unisoc Tiger T310 combines 3 ARM Cortex-A55 cores and 1 A75 core. This arrangement, as the OEM claims, makes it the world's first quad-core 4G/LTE SoC for smartphones. Therefore, the new chipset is a potentially affordable way to gain near-state-of-the-art performance.

In one of the greatest Indiegogo fails ever, the Energizer "brick smartphone" with an 18,000 mAh only managed to gain 11 backers. The sum pledged was US$15,005 — not much more than 1 percent of the US$1,200,000 fixed goal that had to be reached for the Power Max P18K Pop to enter production.

Happy 50th Anniversary, AMD. The red team is celebrating half a century in business, having been founded on May 1, 1969. There are numerous celebratory products brandishing a flash of gold to enliven proceedings and Newegg is offering all sorts of goodies to those who buy an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X AMD50 Gold Edition – which at one point included entry into a prize draw to win a Matisse processor.

Foxconn's reported directions as regards display technology production have sparked speculation that the iPhones of the future may have microLED displays. This next-gen form of screen is starting to manifest in TVs at this point. However, Foxconn may think it is also the future of smartphone panels.

These affordable Precision laptops will carry a very wide range of processor options from a U-class Core i5-8265U up to an H-class Core i9-9880H. GPU options, however, will be limited to the Quadro P620 and the older Radeon Pro WX 2100. Wi-Fi 6, fingerprint reader, smart card reader, and IR camera are optional extras.

Dell is jumping from the Latitude 7390 and 7490 to the Latitude 7300 and 7400, respectively, for the 2019 refresh. These new models will be slightly thinner than before with Whiskey Lake-U CPUs and vPro in contrast to the Kaby Lake-R SKUs on last year's models.

The updated mid-range business laptops all get Whiskey Lake-U CPUs with H-class Core options on select SKUs. The new chassis designs are lighter and smaller than the last generation Latitude 7390, 7490, and 7590.

The new 13.3-inch Latitude 5300 series will offer a larger screen size than the 12.5-inch Latitude 5290 series while being thinner, lighter, and smaller due to having narrower bezels. It's likely that Dell will put the 5290 series on hold or even discontinue it altogether because of this reason.

The business-centric Vostro laptops offer single-sign on fingerprint reader, TPM 2.0, and a wide range of Dell Pro Support protection options. The new laptops themselves borrow the narrow-bezel design features of the XPS 13 and 15 lineup to better appeal to on-the-go business users.

The Latitude 3301 will succeed the Latitude 3000 designed for educational use and undemanding office tasks. The 13.3-inch laptop is joined by larger 14-inch and 15.6-inch models all launching this May.

Two Radeon Vega logos have been unearthed on the trademarks section of the Justia website. Surprisingly, there is no red present in the two trademark images: One of them is colored blue and the other is monochrome. It’s not known what product AMD might be planning on using the images with, if any.
An image sample from the USPTO and an AMD promo video show the 3D logo connected with the Radeon Pro WX 9100.

Interesting renders of a new handheld console have been posted by its manufacturer, Evercade. The device is still in the development phase, although apparently it’s in the later stages as the company has announced it will be available in 2019. The console offers straightforward cartridge-based gaming with retro games and publishers being targeted for inclusion.

In addition to the anniversary packaging, the Gold Editions of the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processor and Radeon VII graphics come with coupon codes for free copies of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 Gold Edition and World War Z. The AMD50 promotional period also brings various special deals — depending on the retailer — and is set to last until early June.

An alleged Dell roadmap showing XPS laptops in shipping, development, and concept stages has been acquired by the Dutch technology website Tweakers. The roadmap is dated from February 2018 and includes concept ideas for computers such as the XPS 15 7500 “Fiorano”, the XPS 17 7700 “Stradale”, and a dual-screen machine with the codename “Maximus”.

NVMe SSD and mobile storage prices are at an all-time low due to NAND memory oversupplies, and, even though this greatly benefits end users, chip makers are concerned about a possible market crash. In order to avoid such complications, Intel, Micron, SK Hynix, and possibly even Samsung are looking to reduce legacy node production and overall wafer output.

Massdrop has become increasingly well-known among the tech community as a company that makes or sources products based on the feedback given by its customers. This has released in novel electronics such as the Massdrop x Sennheiser audio range. It has announced a re-brand: it will simply be called Drop in the future.

The Royole FlexPai had been available in China in December 2018, but only in pre-order form. No new units have been offered in subsequent events - until now. The company had reportedly put the flexible phone back on the retail site Tmall in April 2019.

Intel's new chief executive officer (CEO), Bob Swan, has conceded that the company's "supply constraints" may still impact on the diversity of the chipsets it offers as this year goes on. Swan has admitted that this will be a "challenge", even in the 3rd quarter of 2019. Then again, he has also committed to never allowing this to affect customers again.

Today (28 April 2019), Nikon opens its "Capture the Savings" event. It offers "instant savings" on products such as the award-winning Z Series full-frame camera bodies, as well as the D-series DLSRs and many types of Nikkor lenses. Most of these deals are available until 1 June 2019.

In a recent FY19 Q3 earnings call, Microsoft expressed optimism about growth of Windows sales in the enterprise and has also eased up on worries about sales in the consumer segment, which the company said in January was affected due to Intel's 14 nm supply woes. The increased growth of AMD CPUs in mainstream desktops and laptops, and the ability of Windows 10 to run on ARM hardware means that Microsoft does not have to rely on Intel to push Windows sales.

It’s been reported that Dell’s powerful Alienware Area-51m gaming laptops will not be receiving panel upgrades to 240 Hz in 2019. More and more OEMs are turning to this particular refresh rate as a major selling point for updated notebooks, but it seems the Alienware Area-51m will be stuck at a maximum of 144 Hz for the time being.

The latest OPPO smartphones use OZO, a form of audio capture developed by Nokia. This claim can reportedly be found in the latter's first-quarter financial report for 2019. The rest of this report apparently makes for less intriguing reading.

Nintendo's latest earnings report covers the years ending March 2018 and 2019. They show generally positive results, including a 13.7% year-on-year increase in net sales. The text of this report also states that the release of Pokemon Shield, Pokemon Sword and the Link's Awakening remake are indeed set for this year.

Paradox Interactive has released a video on YouTube that shows an animated clan introduction to the upcoming game Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. After watching the clip, viewers are treated to a very short (and small) look at pre-alpha gameplay, giving gamers a vague idea of what to expect from the eagerly awaited title.

The device-diagnostics company Blancco claims to have bought over 100 second-hand hard drives on the eBay sites of 4 different counties, to see what data, if any, could be accessed on them. It claims that 42% of these drives still stored information from their previous owners that can be thought of as sensitive.

Intel has made its earnings report for the first quarter of this financial year (Q1FY2019) available to the public. In it, overall revenue is described as "flat" compared to Q1FY2018. Its "data" business has declined by 5% in the same terms, although its "PC-centric" revenues are up 4%.

The 4K display standard is likely to be immediately succeeded by its 8K counterpart in the fullness of time. ResearchandMarkets has estimated that, even though this next-gen solution only pulled in about US$2 billion worldwide in 2017, this will increase to just over $68 billion in 2026.

Need an original twist on the common-or-garden wireless speaker? The start-up Coolgeek might have you covered with their new Soundesk product. It is a round glass coffee table with a conical aluminum stand - that also houses a 360-degree speaker. The Soundesk can work via Bluetooth or an AUX cable for allegedly clear, high-quality sound.

Sony has released its consolidated financial results for the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2019 (FY2018). Although hardware sales for the PlayStation 4 have slowed down, they are still selling at an impressive rate. Total sales for the PS4 stand at 96.8 million units and should easily top 100 million before the PS5 is released.

A record for a processor that utilizes the Glacier Falls platform has been spotted in SiSoftware’s Sandra database. “Glacier Falls PCH” was mentioned in a leaked Gigabyte presentation slide in December and was categorized as “Extreme” with availability starting in Q3 2019. The High End Desktop (HEDT) processor in this particular case could be a member of the upcoming Cascade Lake-X series.

China Unicom has deployed a 5G network in an area of Shenzhen called the Qianhai-Shekou Free Trade Zone. This makes China one of only 3 countries with the new generation of wireless networks. The carrier is now planning exhibitions of 5G applications in the Zone.

The Samsung Galaxy Fold was supposed to see an official release tomorrow (April 26, 2019). However, as many of us know by now, teething problems uncovered by reviewers have postponed the launch of this next-gen smartphone. A tweet allegedly referencing an AT&T email suggests that it will now take place in June.

Lenovo officially launched the Z6 Pro, a new flagship smartphone, in China only 2 days ago. Now, the OEM has released a celebratory poster on Weibo claiming that this device has attracted over 200,000 reservations already. Then again, these clicks do not necessarily presage actual orders, which will begin on April 29, 2019.

The South Korean manufacturer is reportedly switching production of its flagship smartphones from its home country to an existing plant in Vietnam. The move is an effort to reduce manufacturing costs amid seven consecutive quarters of losses. LG currently manufacturers up to a fifth of its smartphones in South Korea.

OnePlus will launch its new OnePlus 7 phones on May 14. This will be the first time the company launches a Pro model and it looks increasingly like an attempt to move upmarket, as the top trim OnePlus 7 Pro is now being touted to have an MSRP north of US$800.

Rockchip announced a new 8-core mobile SoC yesterday. The RK3588 will feature four ARM Cortex-A55 cores and four ARM Cortex-A76 cores and will be manufactured on an 8nm process. Rockchip claims that the new manufacturing process will increase performance by up to 30% while reducing power consumption by 40%.

It has been projected that Nintendo is preparing 2 new versions of its latest console this year. One of them, a 'budget' model, has been slated for a release in 2 months in a new Bloomberg report. It also states that the other 2nd-gen Switch will be a "modest upgrade".

Top comments include the omission of spyware, data collection, and bloat. Users also don't want to see yet another GeForce Experience copycat where account creation is required just to use the software.

The latest figures on the global premium smartphone market reportedly show that OPPO increased its share of it by a stunning 863% in 2018. This stripped out comparable performances on the part of competitors such as Xiaomi and even Huawei. On the other hand, it did not threaten Apple's place at the top of this market.

The Taiwanese OEM is squeezing every ounce of performance it can from its Aero 15 design. This latest "Classic" model boasts the new octa-core Core i9-9980HK for improved multi-thread performance over the hexa-core Core i9-8950HK. Here's hoping that throttling will be kept to a minimum considering the very thin chassis and powerful hardware.

Those who have been missing Vine — and/or have been not happy with TikTok — can now fill the void with Byte. The new looping video app comes from Vine's founder and it is currently undergoing closed beta testing. For now, only 100 testers are able to take it for a spin, but more people should be invited soon.