Notebook, Smartphone, and Tablet News

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.

A new leak has revealed just how expensive the Galaxy Z Flip will be. Those who were expecting Samsung to release a more reasonably-priced foldable smartphone will be left disappointed, with the Galaxy Z Flip set to be pricier than even the Galaxy S20 Ultra.

Were you hoping that the iPhone SE 2 would be a more compact version of the iPhone 11? Well, Apple may be returning to the design of the iPhone 8 after all, according to Evan Blass. The outbreak of the coronavirus may effect mass-production of what may become the iPhone 9 too, according to Bloomberg.

The RTX 20 SUPER refresh for laptops is right around the corner, and initial benchmarks show what the RTX 2070 SUPER could offer. The card, which will NVIDIA's third most-powerful laptop GPU of 2020, offers up to 10% better performance the current RTX 2070 and will launch on March 16 alongside the rest of the company's refreshed roster.

The Geekbench tests reveal an Android 10 device featuring 12 GB of RAM and what appears to be a Snapdragon 865 SoC, judging by the single-core and multi-core scores. The existence of a stylus also means that Motorola is looking to provide some competition for Samsung's Galaxy Note lineup.

Xiaomi's latest build of MIUI 11 for the Mi 9T and Redmi K20 may be re-issue Android 10 to both devices, but there have also been reports of the update causing heavy battery drain for some handsets. There is a workaround though, with some Xiaomi software potentially being at fault.

2020 marks the sixth year of Intel's 14 nm process, and the fifth for its 14 nm H-series chips. The Core i5-10300H will be one of Intel's Comet Lake-H chips, and a new independent benchmark result for the quad-core chip underlines why Intel desperately needs to move on from 14 nm.

Sony has recently applied to register a trademark for “PS5” with the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property. This may not be a huge deal in itself, but the fact that the application has now been made points to the impending arrival of a PlayStation 5 reveal event. There is some evidence this could take place in New York on February 29.

Corsair has revealed a couple of new AMD-powered gaming PCs to its lineup. The Vengeance 6180 and Vengeance 6182 both feature a Ryzen 3000 series CPU in the form of the 8-core Ryzen 7 3700X while graphics processing is carried out by the Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 XT GPU. Naturally, there are more RGB lighting options than you could shake a stick at.

It's not comforting when the laptop in your backpack or bag would heat up to over 50 C or 120 F seemingly out of nowhere. Microsoft's latest feature can be undesirable in most cases especially to users who are unaware of the differences between Modern Standby and traditional S3 sleep.

It appears Motorola wasn’t pulling a stunt when it claimed the delay in launching its foldable Razr flip phone reboot was due to stronger than anticipated demand. Despite holding off on pre-orders for a month to better prepare for the launch, pre-orders are already backed up to mid-February at its online store, according to The Verge.

iMacs of the future could be made entirely of a single sheet of curved glass, if a recent Apple patent is anything to go by. According to the patent, the iMac could have a radical design overhaul with a foldable glass keyboard deck, dual trackpads, and more. The patent also shows a possible design of Mac accessories that allow for a MacBook to dock directly into the glass surface to allow for a larger working area.

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.

The Xiaomi Black Shark 2 Pro was one of the first phones to be launched with the Snapdragon 855+. While it offers impressive performance, it would appear that the company cut corners on its audio hardware, with the phone posting terrible scores on DxOMark's audio tests.

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.

In a price category inundated with slow Atoms, Core i3, and Ryzen 3 laptops, the IdeaPad S340 stands out from the crowd with its 10 nm Core i7-1065G7 that's barely half a year old. Intel's latest 10 nm Core i7 CPU can now be found on even the cheapest of models.

POCO may have confirmed the arrival of the POCO X2, but it has been caught using images of the Pocophone F1 to advertise its next device. Expected to be a modified Redmi K30, the POCO X2 will launch on February 4.

ASUS has officially unveiled its next single-board computer (SBC), the Tinker Edge T. The new model should convince SBC fans with its Google Edge TPU and could be used as an alternative to a Raspberry Pi.

In the wake of AMD’s RTX 5600 XT launch, Nvidia instituted a heavy RTX 2060 price-cut, bringing 2060 prices down to $299. The RTX 2060, the cheapest RTX part, now offers viable competition to the 5600 XT. How exactly did Nvidia manage this? Reports indicate that TU104 GPUs are being repurposed in heavily cut-down form in some of the new RTX 2060s.

LG did the unexpected a few weeks ago by releasing Android 10 for the V50 ThinQ early, but it seems that LG UX 9.0 offers more than we had initially thought. The update brings Samsung Dex and Huawei Desktop Mode-like functionality to the V50 ThinQ, which is a welcome bonus.

The Nokia 9.1 is dead, long live the Nokia 9.2. That is the latest rumour about Nokia's next flagship, which may come as no surprise. More excitingly, Nokia has ditched the Light camera technology from the Nokia 9 PureView in favour of a conventional camera setup. The Nokia 9.2 PureView will apparently arrive in 1H 2020, too.

NVIDIA is fleshing out its mid-range laptop GPU offerings this quarter, with the GeForce GTX 1650 and GTX 1650 Ti set to take on the AMD Radeon RX 5500M and RX 5300M. The GTX 1650 refreshes will both sport 4 GB of GDDR6 VRAM running at 12 Gbps along with up to 50 W TGP. NVIDIA looks to be basing the two cards on different GPUs, though.

Today, the world seems filled with screens of high enough resolutions to consume the content they can show regardless of their size or portability. However, a new report shows that TVs have still managed to retain the greatest share (over 50%) of videos watched among respondents in the US. They spend an average of 20 hours per week using their TVs, compared to 4 hours watching phones.

Known as Torchlight Frontiers during its Alpha stage, the successor of Torchlight and Torchlight II is now on its way to being launched as — obviously — Torchlight III. Even more, the game will drop the free-to-play business model and will be available at launch via Steam instead of Arc.

Chuwi may be best-known for its Microsoft Surface clones; however, it has decided that it will also do HTPCs now. This Herobox has a Gemini Lake chipset with the Intel UHD Graphics 600 necessary for 4K video playback. It also has 8GB of RAM, a 180GB SSD and it runs Windows 10.

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.

In an unexpected move, Microsoft will issue another public update for Windows 7. The update, which comes almost two weeks after Microsoft officially ended support for the OS, will fix a bug affecting desktop wallpapers. The bug was introduced with the last official security patch released on January 14.

Those who use TCL's latest triple-camera smartphone, the PLEX, may be pleasantly surprised by a new OTA update that confers Android 10 and the January 1, 2020 security patch on these devices. This download is 2.7GB in size, and that is because of all the other features found in the new OS, which include a Modern Combat title and numerous UI tweaks.

Eve, the company behind the Eve V 2-in-1, has just announced a crowd-sourced gaming monitor. The 27-inch display will come in three variants: a 1440p display with a 144 Hz refresh rate, a 4K model with a 144 Hz refresh rate, and the world's first 1440p IPS panel with a 240 Hz refresh rate.

Lenovo's 14-inch Chromebook has an IPS touchscreen display, silent operation and a good battery life. Some sacrifices will have to be made in terms of RAM and storage size.

As Sony looks to revitalise its Xperia sub-division this year, rumour has it that it will attempt to do so by releasing the world's first 5G and 4K OLED smartphone. The company's next flagship, supposedly called the Xperia 2, will feature a host of other flagship hardware too.

The news that Xiaomi may not bring Android 10 to the Mi A2 Lite has clearly annoyed some people. Hundreds of people have responded by petitioning the company to do so, with representatives seemingly on hand to calm fears. Xiaomi still does not know when the Mi A2 Lite will receive its final OS upgrade, though.

The Galaxy S9 and S9+ have been eligible for beta versions of One UI 2.0, Samsung's custom version of Android 10, for months now. The arrival of Android 10 on the Galaxy Note 9 brought hope to the idea of Samsung honouring its January release schedule for the S9 series too, but that no longer appears to be the case.

Motorola’s Razr reboot with foldable pOLED display is up for pre-order, but it looks like it could carry the same caveats as Samsung’s Galaxy Fold. Ahead of its widespread availability the company has posted several videos including a care video that suggests it’s not going to offer a care-free user experience as promised by execs at its launch event.

POCO is continuing to pull out the surprises, this time by revealing that the POCO X2 smartphone will be launched at 12 PM on February 4. POCO India has used the light-hearted slogan “Bruh, it’s #SmoothAF” to announce the upcoming unveiling of its new device on the company’s official Twitter account.

A new draft of a government resolution in Russia mandates that all electronics sold in the country carry pre-installed software from Russian companies that espouses the "formation of the priority of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values." However, these values are not explicitly defined in the resolution. The document is a followup to legislation signed into law last year forcing all smart devices and computers sold in Russia to be pre-installed with Russian-made software.

Some news about Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has leaked on Reddit, including a possible release date, cast of characters, and even a morsel of information about the tech behind its development. Some may have been expecting the superhero title to launch at the same time as the PlayStation 5 for Holiday 2020, but it appears fans will likely have to wait quite a bit longer.

NexDock has started shipping its NexDock 2 to Kickstarter backers. The device is a ‘dumb’ terminal for connecting to, and working, off the brains of smartphones and micro PCs like the Raspberry Pi.

Gamers who have dual or triple monitor gaming rigs will be keen to check out the latest accessory from the Asus ROG gaming team. The new ROG Bezel-Free Kit (ABF01) is designed to be placed at the corners of one of more monitors to create an optical illusion to make it seem as though the bezels disappear as if by magic.

A new rumor from French website iPhonesoft claims that iOS 14 will be compatible with the iPhone 6S, 6S Plus, and original iPhone SE. However, the upcoming version of iPadOS will supposedly drop support for the iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 4. Apple is expected to announce the new versions of their mobile operating systems at WWDC in June.

The Motorola Razr foldable smartphone is now available for pre-order from Verizon Wireless. The phone boasts a Snapdragon 710 and Android 9.0 Pie, both of which seem outdated considering the phone's $1500 price tag. However, buyers will primarily be paying for the foldable form factor in addition to some nostalgic bragging rights.

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.

Huawei has confirmed that the Huawei Y9 (2019) will not receive the Android 10-based EMUI 10 update, and owners of the phone are, well, unhappy about that decision. Rightfully so, too, as the Honor 8X, another mid-range phone, was released around the same time and will be getting the update.

Action cameras are a popular device category, particularly among those who want to record their rugged pursuits wherever they go. A new report indicates that the market in question will grow to be worth US$8.9 billion in the next 5 years. This is thought to be influenced by similar performance by the travel and adventure-sports markets worldwide.

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.

ChargeLabs has designed the HyperDisk to be a tiny external drive housing super-fast memory. This OEM claims that it has read-speeds of up to 960 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write-speeds of 920MB/s. It comes in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB SKUs, and has attracted over US$600,000 of crowd-funded backing.

Recently, the Google/Huawei Nexus 6P was the subject of a class action lawsuit in which the claimants experienced a disproportional amount of battery drain, bootloops or both. This case was settled, and the beneficiaries have now been informed that they will receive their respective compensation. It should be issued from now until February 29, 2020.

Thanks to accumulated experience and cheap hardware, Blackview’s rugged smartphone is able to go head to head with the established competitors. The inclusion of an infrared camera tells us that Blackview is going after a specific manufacturer.

AMD recently cleared the air about the online presence of a number of counterfeit Wraith Coolers, some with a different heatpipe configuration. None of the knock-offs has official sanction and AMD plans on “enforcing its rights.”

An AMD Ryzen 7 4700U running on a Lenovo laptop has recently surfaced on Geekbench. The APU seems to have posted impressive single-core and multi-core scores finally giving the Intel Core i7-1065G7 and Core i7-10710U some good competition indicating the improvements brought forth by Zen 2 and the transition to 7nm.