Business Articles

Although it might not affect all Dell XPS 15 9575 units that were patched with the latest BIOS update, it seems that at least some of this convertible's users are now facing a buggy trackpad. For now, the problem is being investigated by Dell's engineers, so a solution should surface as soon as possible.

Xiaomi's Director of Product Marketing, Zhi Zhiyuan, has confirmed that the company has no plans of releasing an Mi Max 3 Pro. Previous word claimed that the Pro variant of the newly launched Mi Max 3 would be powered by a Snapdragon 710.

God of War was released back in April and it has recorded some fantastic sales numbers on its way to becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation release ever.

Huawei has now launched its latest device in India. The Honor Play is notable for being the cheapest device to be released with Huawei's flagship Kirin 970 SoC.

The European Union is looking into the current fragmentation in smartphone connectors and has setup an inquiry to see if a single connector type can be mandated across all smartphones. While the issue of multiple plugs is almost passe, Apple's Lightning Connector differs from the standard micro-USB or USB-C connector that is common amongst Android smartphones prompting the EU to investigate if some sort of standardization can be achieved.

A recent smartphone sales report for the first half of 2018 by Sigmaintell Consulting shows that Huawei shipped more than 25 million handsets (out of a 100 million total) with a notched display during the given period, followed by Apple with over 20 million units. The third position goes to Chinese brand OPPO.

AMD has announced that its latest HEDT CPUs, the Ryzen Threadripper 2, are available for pre-order starting today for a retail launch on August 13. The second generation Ryzen Threadrippers come in multiple SKUs targeting different segments of the enthusiast gaming and content creation market with prices starting from US$649 for the Threadripper 2920X and going all the way up to US$1,799 for the Threadripper 2990WX.

Apparently, Motorola has two mid-range devices in the works. One is the Motorola One, and the other is the Motorola One Power. Both are Android One devices but it remains unknown what actually separates them.

The biggest headline from Counterpoint Research's newest report on the smartphone market may have been Huawei's dethroning of Apple to become the second-largest smartphone company in the world, but equally impressive is HMD's showing in the global market.

Sony has released its sales numbers for the first quarter of its fiscal year. According to the report, the company's PlayStation division saw sizeable rises in income and profit but the reverse was the case for the floundering mobile division.

The quad-core 3 GHz Ryzen CPU will integrate a 1.3 GHz Vega-based GPU with 24 Compute Units connected to 8 GB of GDDR5 VRAM. This particular SoC will debut on a gaming console designed specifically for the Chinese market by PC maker Subor. Prices are still unknown.

Microsoft MVP Susan Bradley has written an open letter to top management at Microsoft about the quality of Windows 10 patches. She has also pointed to results of her survey of IT admins who are admittedly not very happy with shoddy patches and that the Windows Insider program isn't helping in identifying issues. Microsoft, however, thinks otherwise.

The processor supplier MediaTek have posted an increase in second-quarter profits; however, its sales may have been unchanged compared to last quarter. Accordingly, the company's CEO has predicted a slight downturn in MediaTek's main market for the rest of 2018.

HMD may be set to open up shop in the US, with the Finnish OEM said to be sending out ads for a number of job positions based in the US. This move may mean we get to see more of the company's high-value devices in the US soon.

Samsung may be the biggest smartphone brand in the world but the company's policy on software updates is far from the best. According to a notice sent to users of Galaxy devices, a number of Galaxy A, J, and C smartphones will not receive the Oreo update till December—four months after the release of Android P.

OnePlus overtook Samsung and Apple to become the biggest smartphone brand in India's premium smartphone segment, with the OnePlus accounting for 30% of sales of premium devices in Q2.

HTC's smartphone sales have floundered globally over the past two years, and the company has finally closed shop in India. This is only relevant for smartphone sales, though, as the company's VR division still holds strong.

Samsung has introduced the Galaxy Tab S4, which is aims to satisfy those who swear by Android tablets for personal and professional use. The Galaxy Tab S4 comes with the S-Pen, Snapdragon 835 SoC, and DeX support. The asking price of US$650 gets you the S-Pen but doesn't include the Book Cover Keyboard.

Its still not clear when Lenovo will announce the upcoming ThinkPad P1 – but an official release might be in sight, as two new official renders of the ThinkPad P1, a thinner 15-inch workstation laptop, have appeared on the internet.

Thanks to record-breaking P20/Pro smartphone sales and additional support from the secondary Honor brand, Huawei snagged Apple's second place for most handhelds sold in Q2 2018. The Chinese company also aims to break into the U.S. market, a move that could pose some serious problems for Samsung's leading position.

Logitech and Blue Microphones have both announced the collective agreement for Logitech to purchase Blue and add them to their family of companies. Logitech's wider portfolio already includes Ultimate Ears, Jaybird, and Astro Gaming so Blue's range of microphones will complement existing audio products.

Approximately 23 percent of all current smartphone users in the United States are using a Samsung model. Sales of the latest Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus smartphones, however, have been sluggish with a worldwide userbase that is less than one-third of the iPhone X.

AMD, today, unveiled the B450 chipset aimed at mainstream Ryzen customers. The B450 offers good value for money while also offering some of the features of the more expensive X470 chipset. The B450 chipset is compatible with all Ryzen CPUs and even supports overclocking with low-end motherboards.

Although he previously stated that the Intel Core i5-powered XPS 15 9570 would get the 97 WHr battery option, Frank Azor has recently revealed that those who want this power pack should "move up to the next config" to get it. This means a US$500-worth jump to the cheapest Intel Core i7-driven model.

Samsung Electronics has announced its Q2 2018 results and the company has posted operating profits of KRW 14.87 trillion and a Q2 consolidated net profit of KRW 11.04 trillion. Samsung did acknowledge low sales of the Galaxy S9 but wants to make up for it by launching the Galaxy Note 9 early and adopt new technologies in the next Galaxy device including 5G.

The Intel Core i7-8550U-powered Dell XPS 13 9370 ultrabook is now available with Ubuntu Linux 18.04 onboard. The first XPS 13 Developer Edition arrived more than five years ago and back then it had Ubuntu 12.04 installed. The new XPS 13 Developer Edition is only available in the US for now, but Europe and Canada will follow soon.

Sources in the industry are saying that Huawei is looking to beat Samsung in the run up to launching the first foldable smartphone. The flexible OLED panels for this device will be made by BOE and Huawei is expected to launch such phones in limited quantities much before Samsung in early 2019.

A list of Asus motherboards that will sport the upcoming Intel Z390 chipset were revealed in an Asus support document. The Z390 is spread across the Maximus XI, Strix, Prime, TUF, and Dragon brands.

What better way to show off the power of the Exynos 9820 by letting gamers stream and play Fortnite on the Galaxy Note 9? Samsung wants to associate its upcoming flagship smartphone with the most popular multi-player game on Twitch.

Systems powered by Intel 10nm CPUs might hit shelves just in time for the holiday season in 2019. The 10nm part will first be made available to client systems followed by datacenter products. However, Intel feels that 14nm will continue to play a significant role next year as well.

While the Dell XPS 15 9570 that uses the high-end Intel Core i9 processor comes with vPro disabled, some users are afraid of the AMT-related vulnerabilities that could allow a remote attacker to gain control of their machines. Frank Azor confirmed that the issues have been patched already and the machine should be immune to such attacks.

Meizu's upcoming Meizu 16 flagship has made its way over to popular benchmark platform AnTuTu, and recorded some pretty impressive numbers in the process.

Huawei has announced the Nova 3 and 3i for the Indian market in a launch event today. The Nova 3 will compete directly with the OnePlus 6 and Asus Zenfone 5Z for the 'affordable flagship' crown while the Nova 3i is the first to sport the Kirin 710 SoC. Pre-booking for both the models has started with shipping dates in August.

Panasonic has released two new Toughbook-branded rugged handhelds. On paper, the 5-inch phone and 7-inch tablet look underpowered. However, both devices are running Android 8.1, bear some high-rated durability certifications, and can swap batteries without turning off.

The Q2 2018 financial report presents revenues totaling US$1.75 billion, of which US$166 million represents net profits. Year over year comparison points out to a 64% increase, even though total revenues are down 3% compared to Q1 2018. Moreover, the crypto market decline took away only 4% from the GPU sales.

According to a leak roadmap presented by Intel at the Chinese University of Changsha City, The Ice Lake scalable processors were pushed to 2020 due to some 10 nm fabrication process issues. Meanwhile, Intel will launch the Copper Lake scalable Xeon CPUs a few months before the Ice Lake family. The roadmap also shows the 28-core Cascade Lake HPC CPU scheduled for an early 2019 release.

The Watch Party feature for Facebook Groups has been tested over the last few months, and now it is finally available for all users of the notorious social network. Thanks to it, people within a group can watch a video together — it works for both live and pre-recorded content — and interact via comments and reactions.

Counterpoint Research and Canalys have posted their quarterly reports on the business standings of the Indian smartphone markets, with both agreeing that Samsung has rebounded brilliantly in Q2 after a slump in the first quarter of the year.

The Honor Note 10 has, over the past week, made appearances on certification websites and retail outlets, giving us a clearer idea of what we'll be getting from Huawei's next premium device.

After more than a month without making the Android distribution numbers public, Google reveals that Oreo is finally above the 10 percent barrier — at 12.1 percent, to be accurate — while Nougat has begun to descend, dropping by just 0.3 percent when compared to the 31.1 percent of the market it controlled during the week that ended on May 7.

Lenovo is apparently preparing a big announcement for its ThinkPad laptop line, a completely new model to compete with Dells XPS 15. The new ThinkPad X1 Extreme was leaked by known leaker Roland Quandt and it might be released at IFA 2018.

In a survey conducted from July 16 through July 20, half of Google employees claim to be underpaid while nearly 14 percent of Facebook employees say they are making too much money.

It looks like Nvidia's AIB partners have already been notified about the upcoming GTX 11 launch schedule. First to launch will be the GTX 1180 flagship at the end of August. Then after 1 month the overclocked GTX 1180 cards will be launched along with the GTX 1170. Late October will see the launch of the GTX 1160 and the mobility variants will most likely come in late November.

According to Chinese site ITHome, the Kirin 980 will integrate a quad ARM Cortex-A77 core cluster clocked at 2.8 GHz and one ARM Cortex-A55 core cluster. The GPU will be developed by HiSilicon and it is said to be 50%faster than the Adreno 630. The next gen SoC will not support 5G communications, but it will get an updated NPU for AI applications.

Xiaomi has made the Mi A2 and Mi A2 Lite official at a Madrid event today. The European launch of the Mi A2 signals the arrival of the Chinese smartphone maker on the global arena and the Mi A2 looks to build upon the success of its predecessor. These new Android One smartphones will soon launch in 40 markets worldwide.

Microsoft has released a strong set of financial results for the fourth quarter of the 2017/2018 financial year and equally impressive results for the full fiscal 2017/2018 year. Growth was strongest in cloud services (matching the third quarter results), but gaming and Surface also showed good increases.

Qualcomm unveiled the QTM052 mmWave antenna module that can fit into a smartphones using the Snapdragon X50 to provide 5G NR connectivity. The QTM052 is accompanied by the announcement of new sub-6 GHz RF modules that smartphone makers can incorporate to provide gigabit speeds as the industry begins its transition to 5G networks.

Sony has unveiled the new IMX586 imaging sensor for smartphones that packs an effective 48 MP with a pixel size of 0.8 microns. The CMOS sensor features a Quad Bayer color filter array that bins adjacent 2x2 pixels to yield sensitivity equivalent to a 1.6 micron 12 MP sensor.