Laptop, Smartphone, and Tablet News

An infographic depicting the alleged noise development of various consoles has been posted online showing the Xbox Series X to be apparently quieter than a whisper during operation. While the PlayStation 5 is not present, the divisive graph has the PS4 Pro at the wrong end of the scale closing in on the noise level of a hair dryer.

In addition to the Sprint and T-Mobile customers that receive the One UI 3.0 beta update on the Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra — alongside those who use the unlocked versions of these handsets — in the US. The good news is that this update is also rolling out in other markets, such as India and Germany.

Xiaomi has now launched its newest device, the Redmi K30S, in its home country of China. The Redmi K30S is, for all intents and purposes, a rebranded Mi 10T for certain markets, and it carries an appropriate price tag, starting at €325 versus the Mi 10T's €499.

5G networks are set to transform the mobile data experience. However, very robust 4G infrastructure means that people in some countries already have access to ultra-fast connectivity. Etisalat in the UAE tops the list, offering speeds of nearly 100 Mbps on average, 3 times higher than the US average of 33 Mbps.

The official unboxing embargo of the PlayStation 5 lifts today, but YouTuber Austin Evans got an early feel for the console's DualSense controller. While the actual PS5 demo is still some time away, Evans could pair the DualSense controller to a Surface Laptop Go and a Pixel 5. He could also game on the Pixel 5 using this controller via Microsoft xCloud. Teardown of the DualSense controller revealed a 1,560 mAh battery among other cool hardware.

Although it is not official yet, Samsung is expected to release the Galaxy S21 Ultra sometime in January 2021. The flagship will reportedly come with a 6.8-inch AMOLED panel clocked at 120Hz, a quad-camera array with two telephoto lenses, and a 5,000mAh battery that supports 45W fast charging. It is expected to retail at US$1,300 for the base variant with 128GB of storage and 12GB of RAM.

The CPU-Z benchmark results for the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Zen 3 are out and everything looks impressive: 11% faster than the Intel Core i9-10900K and 25% faster than the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X in single-core, as well as 10% slower than the Core i9-10900K and 17% faster than the Ryzen 7 3800XT when all cores are being used.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti's specs are all but confirmed, thanks to a new GPU-Z listing. It will feature a GA104-200 GPU, 4,864 CUDA cores, and 8GB of VRAM with a memory bandwidth of 448GB/s. NVIDIA is expected to launch the card sometime in November for around US$400.

A new development in OLED technology could result in ultra-high-resolution displays, thanks to the latest developments in increasingly thin, effective solar panels. It involves cutting-edge physics that could be relevant to both fields, which feature in a new paper co-written by R&D scientists at Samsung.

Even as the iPhone 12 is still pretty new, rumors about the iPhone 13 have already started making the rounds. The iPhone 13 (or whatever it will be called) may go completely portless in favor of the new MagSafe technology and is also likely to sport a 120 Hz displays. An in-display fingerprint sensor is a possibility a Qualcomm Snapdragon X60 5G modem is more or less confirmed.

Asus doesn't want to miss out on that lucrative holiday shopping season by launching not one, but eleven different Intel Tiger Lake laptop models and even more SKUs for users to choose from.

LG's display division has just released its financial performance figures for the third quarter of 2020 (3Q2020). It has posted a net profit of about US$9.7 million, whereas it reported losses in 2Q2020 and in 3Q2019. There are also year-on-year (YoY) and quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) gains in revenue and operating profits in this new report.

Initially announced as one of the Sony-published launch titles for the upcoming PlayStation 5 console, the vehicular combat game Destruction AllStars has had its launch date pushed to early 2021. The good part is that the game will come (almost) for free with a PlayStation Plus membership.

Vivo is rumored to launch its camera-centric successors to the X50 line of phones soon, perhaps before 2020 is out. These devices are also now thought to introduce a new Android skin developed by this company. This "Origin OS" is now slated to have the quality necessary to challenge rivals from OnePlus or Samsung.

LG now has a few generations of its TONE FREE AirPod-clones under its belt. Now, it has announced a new one. These buds look much like the old, except that they support active noise-cancelling (ANC) this time. Their series' UVnano self-disinfecting technology is also still here.

Redmi is set to add a new member to the K30 series tomorrow, albeit in China only. However, the rest of the world has apparently already seen this phone, as it is a rebranded Mi 10T. Nevertheless, it is projected to sell for prices in keeping with its budget-friendly flagship-killer kin.

OnePlus' two new low-cost smartphones are now up for grabs in Europe. The OnePlus Nord N10 5G comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 690 SoC, a quad-camera array, a 4,300mAh battery, and will cost €329. At €179, the OnePlus Nord N100 gets you a Snapdragon 460n, three rear cameras, and a 5,000mAh battery.

A reported update policy operated by Xiaomi in regard to MIUI and Android upgrades has shown the smartphone series favored by the Chinese OEM and which are more likely to be neglected. The unofficial list reveals that owners of Redmi (not Redmi K), Redmi Note, POCO M, and POCO C smartphones will receive the least upgrades.

Xiaomi is slowly continuing with the MIUI 12 rollout for the Snapdragon 720G-powered arm of the Redmi Note 9 family. The latest devices to receive MIUI 12 are the European variant of the Redmi Note 9S and the Indonesian model of the Redmi Note 9 Pro, keeping with reports from a week ago.

Looking through images that compare PlayStation devkits with the final products reveals a couple of things: Both the PlayStation 5 devkit and final design PS5 console are revolutionary in comparison to their predecessors, and a lot can be expected from the PS6 devkit now Sony has raised this particular bar.

Microsoft’s Surface Duo is already starting to see some relatively steep price cuts of up to US$200. Naturally, early adopters aren’t happy and Microsoft isn’t doing a lot to appease customers other than pointing then to the 60-day return policy.

Samsung could be finally bringing S-Pen support to its Galaxy Z Fold line with next year’s model. According to a new report, the Galaxy Z Fold3 will add the long awaited feature thanks to the introduction of thicker foldable glass and some other tweaks.

German smartphone manufacturer Gigaset has announced the Gigaset GS4, a new smartphone that occupies an interesting niche in its price class. For €229, you get an otherwise average device with wireless charging and a removable battery.

Microsoft's latest laptop is both a great netbook and a terrible Ultrabook. If you're thinking about spending $900 on the Surface Laptop Go, then you may as well just consider the more capable 13.5-inch Surface Laptop 3 instead.
Intel Core i5-1035G1 | Intel UHD Graphics G1 (Ice Lake 32 EU) | 12.4" | 1.1 kg

The now — unofficially, of course — declassified achievement list for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War contains no less than 44 items that cover various milestones that players need to reach in the campaign, multiplayer, and zombie modes. The platinum trophy gets awarded to those who hit 1,000 points.

With the Yoga Slim 7 14, Lenovo offers users the choice between AMD and Intel processors. We have tested both versions.
Intel Core i7-1065G7 | NVIDIA GeForce MX350 | 14" | 1.4 kg

A new research report has concluded that 63% of households with residential security equipment in the US are now considering buying a smart home device in the next 12 months compared to 40% of broadband internet-using households. Therefore, it seems that the trend toward integration with assistants such as Amazon Alexa among home-grade security OEMs is paying off in that respect.

Finding a decent laptop for under $500 USD is like walking into a field of landmines as OEMs will often cut deep corners or hide important drawbacks from potential buyers. This IdeaPad S340 15 deal isn't perfect, but it's one of the better laptops you can find for under $500.

Tipster @patrickschur_ reports that an AIB Radeon RX 6800 XT part boosts to 2.5 GHz and beyond when running 3DMark 11. The sample was listed as an engineering sample, indicating that retail clocks could go even higher.

According to a recent leak, NVIDIA is prepping multiple mobility-focused Ampere graphics cards. These include, among others, the GeForce RTX 3080 Max-Q, GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q, and GeForce 3060 Max-Q. Questions remain, though, about performance and power consumption.

A battery life test by Arun Maini of the YouTube channel Mrwhosetheboss found that the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max had significant leads in battery runtimes compared to the newer iPhone 12 and 12 Pro. The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro have a 2,815 mAh battery, which is not only lower in terms of actual capacity than the previous generation but also powers larger and higher resolution displays leading to lower runtimes.

iQOO has launched the uncharacteristically budget U1x smartphone in China. With its Snapdragon 662 SoC, relatively small HD display and 5000mAh battery, it should get a lot of screen-on time, at least. It has debuted alongside a new RAM/storage option for the more premium Dimensity 1000+-powered Z1.

New sales data from Mindfactory has revealed the continued success story that is AMD Ryzen. The top 13 places are occupied by Ryzen CPUs, with the evergreen Ryzen 5 3600 still selling by the truckload. With the Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 series launching soon, and rumors of a Ryzen 5 5600 for next year, Team Red will likely go from strength to strength.

More users of Xiaomi smartphones have been reporting issues with battery drain after installing the MIUI 12 update. The problem had already been mentioned on social media in connection to devices like the Redmi Note 8 Pro and Xiaomi Mi 9, with POCO F1 owners also recently complaining about the hitch. Xiaomi may address the issue with future firmware builds.

Xiaomi and Amazfit appear to be preparing an update for a number of their wearables that will allow the devices to take their user’s temperature. The fitness trackers that could end up receiving such a firmware update include the Mi Band 5 and other SKUs from the Mi Band line and the Amazfit Band 5, which comes with blood oxygen level measurement.

The iPhone 12 series comes with dedicated components to support the new MagSafe system, which consists of a range of magnetic accessories, a compact wireless charger included. Now, it has emerged that this product may permanently disfigure the leather cases the OEM has designed for the same mobile devices.

Some evidence of Samsung's next-gen super-budget smartphones has appeared in a new tip. It concerns a phone thought to be called the Galaxy A02s, which appears to be a 3GB RAM version of the also-rumored Galaxy A02. Oddly, however, the new benchmarking leaks for both possible phones lack SoC data.

New smartphones are constantly outbidding each other with ever faster displays. The newest example is the OnePlus 8T. But do 120-Hz panels really make sense in a smartphone?
Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 | Qualcomm Adreno 650 | 6.55" | 188 g

ARM's newest Mali-G78 GPU has been tested alongside the Kirin 9000 on a Huawei Mate 40, and the results look alarming. Although the GPU manages to hit 1 TFLOPS under peak load, the accompanying power consumption can go as high as 14W. Its average power usage seems to be around 9W.

A newly unearthed Xiaomi patent depicts an intriguing device with a design that would fit well with a future Mi Mix 4 (or Mi Mix 2021) thanks to a combination of foldable technology and a slider mechanism. It appears Xiaomi is pushing ahead with work on producing a foldable smartphone that will likely feature an external secondary display.

Eve Devices is adamant that it should not ship its upcoming Spectrum monitor "until it is ready". To this end, it has revealed that the shipping date for its QHD/240Hz and 4K/144Hz SKUs has been pushed back to February 2021. This, apparently, will give it time to iron issues with its production out.

The Ryzen 5 5600X has flexed its muscles on PassMark, leaving Zen 2 and Intel processors in its wake. AMD's budget Vermeer and Zen 3 chip outscores all before it by at least 10% in PassMark's single-threaded test and is 47% faster than its predecessor.

Canonical has brought Ubuntu Desktop to the Raspberry Pi. The humble single-board computer can now be pre-loaded with Ubuntu 20.10, albeit only on the Raspberry Pi 4.

A Sony executive's latest blog post has revealed that 6 different major content-streaming platforms will be compatible with the PlayStation 5 from day 1. They include Spotify, YouTube, Disney Plus and Netflix, which will get their own dedicated buttons on the console's also newly-announced Media Remote. Other apps may become available thereafter.

Apple is now slated to finally unleash its long-awaited AirTags in 2021. These new products are currently widely accepted to be this OEM's answer to products such as Tile anti-loss wireless accessories. However, according to leaks of new patents obtained by the Cupertino company, their applications may go far beyond that.

Fancy some origami while you wait for your Xbox Series X to arrive? Well, Microsoft is offering Papercraft Kits with some Xbox Series X pre-orders, albeit only Germany. You can print out your own Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S 'Papercraft Kit' worldwide, though.

The first benchmark result for the RTX A6000 is in, and it does not look good for NVIDIA's enterprise card. Based on a full-fat GA102 GPU with 10,752 CUDA cores supported by 48 GB of VRAM, the RTX A6000 only managed 11% higher scores on average than the RTX 6000.

Intel CEO Bob Swan has confirmed that the first dedicated Xe graphics chip is now shipping and should be delivered before the end of the year. Its gaming desktop counterpart, the DG2, will not follow for a few months, though.

Gaming peripheral maker Genesis recently announced the Krypton 550 ultra-light gaming mouse. The Krypton 550 features RGB lighting, Huon switches, and an 8000 DPI sensor in a diminutive 70-gram package. The mouse is expected to hit the market by the end of October

Four independent sources reveal that that the RX 6800 XT cards perform up to 19% better in the Firestrike tests, and up to 3% faster in the Time Spy tests, but still trail behind the RTX 3080 in the Port Royal tests that focus on ray tracing performance. One of the sources claims that the AMD cards can even beat the RTX 3090 in the Firestrike tests, but we are suspecting the source is actually confusing RX 6800 XT with the more potent RX 6900 XT in this case.