Notebook, Smartphone, and Tablet News

The Exynos 990 has come in for a lot of criticism internationally. As we have discussed in our reviews of the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+ and Galaxy S20 Ultra, the Exynos 990 is a bit of a stinker. Samsung even dropped its in-house chipset from the Galaxy S20 series in South Korea, apparently leading to feelings of humiliation for the company's Exynos team.

The Exynos 990 being a significantly worse chipset than the Snapdragon 865—or even last year's Snapdragon 855—may as well be fact at this point. Samsung appears to disagree, though, for what it's worth.

Going by recent reports, LG has now killed off its flagship G-series, with the LG G9 ThinQ all but officially dead in the water. According to word on the grapevine, the replacement to the G9 ThinQ has now been penned down for a May 15 launch, and is touted to feature a Snapdragon 765G, four cameras in total, and a 4000 mAh battery.

Xiaomi has launched a new addition to a premium line of its TVs. This Mi Full Screen Pro is a 75-inch model with an aluminium mid-frame and a custom 1.9GHz processor from Amlogic. The Patchwall UI device has a 4K resolution, and also supports Dolby Audio, a voice assistant and smart-home control features.

The 8 Pro is rumored to become OnePlus' first flagship phone with wireless charging. Now, a prominent leaker asserts that the OEM will sell a power accessory to support this feature. This brand is also now rumored to have Bullets Wireless Z earphones in the works.

Samsung is now rumored to have a completely new type of Galaxy Bud in the works. According to a new leak, they will have a much larger shape that looks somewhat like a pair of beans. Some renders generated based on this idea suggests that they may have an improved range of sensors compared to the Buds+.

We think these subtle quality-of-life changes could make the 14-inch system easier to use and more appealing at the same time.
AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q | 14" | 1.6 kg

A slide from Asus has revealed that the manufacturer believed there would be an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super Mobile GPU coming from the graphics card company. However, even though there is a GeForce RTX 2080 Super Mobile part and a GeForce RTX 2070 Super Mobile GPU, it appears that there are no further plans for a 2060 variant at the moment.

Clevo has upgraded its barebones designs to feature the new Comet Lake-H and RTX 20 Super Mobile offerings. The new designs in the PB50 and PB70 series feature CPU options up to the Core i9-10880H and GPU options up to the RTX 2070 Super Mobile with some SKUs offering G-Sync displays. OEMs based on Clevo designs such as Schenker have already made available laptops powered by the latest Intel and NVIDIA offerings with more variants set to be available in the coming months.

Intel has witnessed a surprising reversal of fortune in Steam’s Hardware & Software Survey for March in terms of processor usage. While the chipmaker has been losing share against AMD consistently month after month, the latest data from Steam shows that Team Blue has now actually regained a significant amount of ground.

Huawei released the Mate 10 Pro in late 2017 and the P20 Pro about two years ago. The phones have received two major updates—although the EMUI 10 rollout is still ongoing—and while one would expect them to also get the EMUI 10.1 update, seeing as it's based on Android 10, Huawei seems to think otherwise.

It appears that Nvidia’s RTX cards are enjoying increased adoption rates among gamers if Steam’s results for its March Hardware & Software Survey are anything to go by. The top eight video cards by usage in terms of percentage share change are all from Nvidia and five of them are GeForce RTX 20 series cards. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 led the pack with +0.53% change.

The plug-and-play enclosure will set you back just over $100, but it gets the job done with the promise of a two-year warranty and a solid high quality metal chassis. We test the claimed 1000 MB/s transfer rate to see just how close the enclosure can get to this maximum.

The one-year old flagship launched in early 2019 for $950 USD; now it's down to just one-third the price. The version on sale is the North American variant with 64 GB of storage.

A new leak suggests that Vivo's Y series of phones will get a new model soon. It may be called the Y50, and have an in-display selfie camera. This new device is also thought to have quad cameras and to have 6 to 8GB of RAM.

Apple has filed patents that would allow a device's screen to respond to the user while immersed in water and that allow for rotation that adapts to a human face's orientation. These documents' images suggest that they are intended for mobile devices. Therefore, next-gen iPhones could come with these features.

Project Tempo is Amazon's upcoming game streaming service. It was expected to make its debut later this year, but got delayed due to the ongoing crisis. We can expect to know more about Project Tempo and the games that will be available on it in the coming months.

Redmi has launched its first wearable: a smart band quite like that of Realme's initial foray into this market. It will be only 99 yuan (~$US14) when it goes on sale in China - or even cheaper during a crowd-funding event to be held beforehand. By contrast, the Mi Band 4 is about $8 more in this country.

Bemused why AIBs are now releasing GDDR6 versions of the GTX 1650? Well, NVIDIA has the answer, and its reasoning suggests that it has forgotten that it released the GTX 1650 SUPER.

A community project has turned the Raspberry Pi into a surprisingly practical mini PC. Called the Piputer, the project integrates a battery, keyboard and display.

The Pimoroni PIM486 Enviro is an expansion board for the Raspberry Pi, which has numerous sensors and its own LCD monitor. The HAT ships worldwide.

The big February update brought some internet connection problems for some users, especially when using a VPN. An unfavourable mistake in the age of the home office, in our opinion. Microsoft confirmed the bug and promised a quick update, which is now available to download.

Still waiting for a fixed Android 10 build on your Mi A2 Lite? Well, the device has lucked out once again, as Xiaomi has pushed a new frustrating update to the Android One handset. Android 10 may be on the horizon, but this certainly is not it.

Codenamed the OEMQN Product Name EV1, the Core i5-1035G1 is likely an entry-level version of the Surface Book 3. Sporting a 256 GB SSD and 8 GB of RAM this time, the long-awaited Surface Book 2 successor is expected to launch sometime this Spring.

The system integrates more multimedia and auxiliary functions on the keyboard including mic, camera shutter, HP Command Center and both Alexa and Cortana voice services.

Huawei's Atlas series is this OEM's take on the AI cluster, which delivers extremely high-volume processing for this area of computing. One of its latest variants, the 900, has just won a Red Dot Design Award for 2020. This group has conferred the prize on the cluster for its innovative form-factor and deployment mechanism.

The market for smartwatches is associated with an estimated 43.87 million unit shipments in 2018. However, this number is now thought to reach a possible total of 108.91 million by 2024. This growth may be driven by an increased demand for health- and fitness-management, as well as standalone connectivity, in these wearables.

The Surface alternative Eve V is back with a 2020 successor. Now, the company has revealed three concepts ahead of developing its next 2-in-1 and it is looking for community input. Claims of the project being another scam continue to dog the company, though.

The first DDR5 modules will be aimed at the server market, with consumer variants expected to hit the market in late 2021. Initial frequencies will be limited to 4,800 MHz, but, as the technology matures, frequencies will be hitting 6,400 MHz and even 8,400 MHz, while densities could reach 64 GB per single DIMM.

Rumours about the iPhone SE 2 hit critical mass this morning, with multiple sightings of the upcoming US$349 smartphone contradicting previous claims that Apple plans to launch the device on April 14. In a separate leak, the colours, storage options and first-party cases have been revealed, too. The iPhone SE 2 may not be called the iPhone SE 2 or iPhone 9 after all, either.

Motorola just unveiled the Moto G8 Power Lite earlier today. It features a 6.5-inch HD+ panel, a MediaTek Helio P35 SoC, a triple-camera setup at the back, and a 5,000mAh battery. The phone will retail at €169 ($185), and will be available first in Mexico and Germany.

Lenovo will allegedly introduce Legion R7000 / R7000P gaming laptops powered by AMD's Renoir APUs up to the Ryzen 7 4800H SKU. Some improvements include DDR4-3200 RAM, double NVMe M.2 slots and 80 Wh+ batteries, but there are some downsides too, like the inclusion of displays with 120 Hz refresh, 45% NTSC color and high response times.

According to a power draw comparison, Intel's laptop i9-10980HK draws almost 30 percent more power than the Ryzen 9 3950X, a 16-core 32-thread CPU meant for high-end desktop use. While the Comet Lake H flagship might power past Renoir offerings, it does at significantly higher power draw.

Intel is having a rough ride of it lately, with AMD giving the company another kicking with its Ryzen 4000 series APUs. Now, a 28 W Tiger Lake-U series processor has appeared on 3DMark Time Spy, the Core i7-1185G7. While the quad-core chip has a substantially higher base clock than its Ice Lake equivalent, its appearance raises more questions than it does provide answers.

An expertly created concept render of the PlayStation 5 retail box has been made by noted designer Giuseppe Spinelli. The authentic-looking packaging gives yet another glimpse at what the PS5 console could look like, presuming Sony and Spinelli are even slightly in synch in regard to design. Considering recent developments, the new render is a welcome positive note.

MSI announced new laptops such as the GS66 Stealth, GE66 Raider, and Creator 17 at CES 2020 and has now detailed their full specifications. MSI is also upgrading the its entire gaming and creative product lineup with the latest Intel 10th gen Comet Lake-H and NVIDIA RTX 20 Super Mobile offerings. All laptops will be available for shipping from April 15.

Amazon has launched the Blink Mini, it’s latest home security camera. The diminutive device integrates seamlessly with Amazon’s other Blink products as well as its Alex line of voice-controlled devices.

Naughty Dog and PlayStation have announced delays for The Last of Us Part II and Marvel’s Iron Man VR. According to statements from both companies, the current worldwide crisis has created logistical problems that mean the titles have to be put on hold “until further notice”. The Last of Us Part II had been scheduled for release on May 29.

Fortnite maker Epic Games has teamed with Star Wars director J.J. Abrams on a new mobile game for iOS and Android. Dubbed ‘Spyjinx’, the new game will pit players against each other in a multiplayer that mixes action-strategy with RPG character development.

A controversial post about the PlayStation 5 has rapidly spread across social media and forums due to its content. Although the claims made are currently unverifiable and the poster has made previous desultory comments about PlayStation hardware, the post has been successful in unsettling many concerned about a potential PS5 delay.

After a brief announcement earlier at CES 2020, Intel has now detailed the 10th gen Comet Lake-H processor lineup that is expected to make its way to more than 100 laptop designs this year. Comet Lake-H finally breaks the 5 GHz barrier at 45 W with four out of the six SKUs in the lineup touted to have a single-core boost at 5 GHz or above thanks to Thermal Velocity Boost. How well this works in real life depends on a lot on the OEM's cooling implementation and chassis construction.

Android 10-based One UI 2.0 update is now making its way to Galaxy Tab S6 owners. It brings forth all the standard One UI 2.0 and Android 10 features, and is bundled with the March 2020 Android security patch. Currently, it is only available in Germany for the LTE variant of Samsung's flagship tablet. A wider rollout should commence in the coming weeks.

The external drive is about two times faster than most SATA III SSDs by using the wider bandwidth available from USB Type-C ports.

Recently, a Dell XPS 17 9700 listing surfaced on Userbenchmark indicating that Dell would finally bring back the 17-inch form factor to the XPS lineup. The XPS 17 9700 in this listing is indicated as being powered by the Core i7-10750H processor and 32 GB of RAM. While there's no discrete GPU mentioned, it is likely that the XPS 17 9700 will feature at least a GTX 1660 Ti or, if Dell is benevolent enough, an RTX 2060 Mobile option as well.

Acer's 17.3-inch workstation shines with a lot of processing power, a 4K touchscreen display with an included Wacom digital pen and a Thunderbolt 3 port. The configuration is excellent otherwise as well: 32 GB of RAM, 16 GB of VRAM, NVMe SSD (1 TB).
Intel Core i9-9980HK | NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 (Laptop) | 17.3" | 4.5 kg

One of the big differences between the Galaxy S20+ and the regular Galaxy S20 is Samsung's inclusion of a fourth rear-facing camera. Does this, the larger display or the bigger battery make much a difference overall, though? From our time with both, we would suggest that at least one of those offers little practical use in daily life.
Samsung Exynos 990 | ARM Mali-G77 MP11 | 6.7" | 188 g

Samsung's Galaxy S20 series revealed some startling weaknesses in addition to its plethora of pros. We already knew very early on that the 120 Hz refresh rate will only be available in the lower FHD+ resolution. What surprised us were the gaming incompatibilities.
Samsung Exynos 990 | ARM Mali-G77 MP11 | 6.9" | 219 g

The alternative WWDC should be where Apple showcases some new hardware delicacies, according to one very active leaker. Apart from new over-ear headphones, Apple is set to unveil the long-rumoured Bluetooth tracker "Air Tags" and a new MacBook Pro, likely the overdue 14-inch variant.

Fancy turning your Raspberry Pi into an air quality detector with a GUI? Well, now you can with a new project. Utilising an MQ-135 air quality sensor, the project promises to deliver accurate readings, which can be interpreted with an onscreen GUI.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are popular tools among those who want to safeguard their internet usage and the data involved. The sudden and widespread need to work from home has given them a new dimension of necessity, however. Now, their uptake in the US and Canada has reportedly increased 35% in March 2020.