Notebook, Smartphone, and Tablet News

Xiaomi has announced that its software division will stop releasing global betas of its OS, MIUI, on July 1, 2019. This applies not merely to older and slower devices, but to all phones of its brand. However, the OEM has also stated that this decision will not affect the frequency of security-related updates.

Most SKUs of the Huawei P30 Pro flagship have 8GB of RAM. However, it appears that the OEM is about to release a further variant of this phone with an additional 4GB. Then again, this new, ultra-high-end device may be a Chinese-market exclusive.

A New Zealand startup has launched the BoringPhone on Kickstarter. As described, the phone is designed to be the anti-smartphone with the look of a smartphone, but without all the distracting apps that can just end up wasting precious time.

The escalating trade war between China and the United States has claimed a further victim as Nintendo allegedly begins production of new products in Southeast Asia. The Trump administration has hinted at extending new tariffs to Chinese-made smartphones, consoles and computers. However, this hasn't stopped Nintendo ensuring that two new models are ready for launch.

AMD could be launching 7nm Raven Ridge APUs sometime in Q4 2019, according to Wccftech quoting an insider source. Not much is known about the new parts, but it is assumed that 7nm Ryzen APUs will bring improvements in IPC and boost clocks along with increased graphics prowess for the integrated Vega GPU.

Apple could have refreshed or redesigned MacBooks inbound for later this year. Seven new model numbers have been registered with the Eurasian Economic Commission with hopes that at least one of them could be a redesigned MacBook Pro led by the new Pro Workflow Team.

The XPS 15 7590 is nearly upon us and Dell has confirmed even more details ahead of its arrival. The upcoming laptop will be the first XPS 15 to feature an OLED display, which Dell has confirmed it shares with the Alienware m15. A touchscreen variant may be on the way too.

The new ThinkPad T495 has finally arrived. It is Lenovo's first full-fledged AMD laptop within the popular ThinkPad T-series. Our test sample is equipped with the AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 3500U, which is beaten by the Core i5-8265U in the ThinkPad T490.
AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 3500U | AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 | 14" | 1.5 kg

The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Project Scarlett seem destined to be fierce competitors by the end of next year, and it appears to be rather tricky to divine which next-generation console is most likely to have the edge. We have compiled a comparison table populated by confirmed and rumored details about each console, just in time to report about new speculated launch prices that will make gamers giddy if they come true.

The implementation of mobile AMD processor is getting better and better, and Intel will definitely notice the stronger competition. The new Ryzen 5 3500U in the ThinkPad E495 consumes a bit less and is much faster than a comparable Core i5-8265U in the ThinkPad E490. Update: Power consumption corrected

References to AMD X590 chipset were spotted in the BIOS code of a Gigabyte motherboard by a user on the Computerbase.de forums. This follows the tease of X590 by known Ryzen enthusiast Yuri Bubly on Twitter. Not much is known about the X590 platform but speculation is that it could feature even more number of PCIe Gen4 lanes than what X570 offers.

"Shot on OnePlus" is an initiative by which users can upload their shots via a smartphone app or online. This is done via an API, which, when analyzed, was found to be a ready source of user emails and IDs. The company's response to this situation currently includes an overhaul of this interface.

Asus has introduced refreshes of the Vivobook 14 and Vivobook 15 in the Indian market. Both the Vivobooks feature Intel Whiskey Lake processors and offer NVIDIA GeForce MX230/MX250 GPU options as well. A backlit keyboard and a Windows Hello-compliant fingerprint reader are also in the offing for a reasonable entry price.

The POCO Launcher, originally designed for the Pocophone F1, has gained popularity due to its advanced customization options. Now, its makers at Xiaomi have released a 2nd version, which can be downloaded and tried out now. It mainly improves on the app drawer and dark theme of this interface.

The Huawei Mate X has reportedly appeared as a retail item on a Chinese retail site. This is highly suspicious, however, particularly as the OEM has announced that this foldable phone's launch will now be delayed. In addition, the price included on the order page in question is out of line with previous projections.

Innodisk's Fire Shield SSD(TM) has reportedly been developed to withstand extreme temperatures. It is apparently based on black-box technology in order to maintain 100% accuracy and integrity for the data on its NAND storage. So far, this new type of drive is available in a 3.5-inch SATA SSD form-factor.

For smoother scrolling and fast motions, IPS is still the one to beat. IPS panels are getting better and better every year especially in terms of refresh rates where OLED is still limited to 60 Hz. Jumping from 60 Hz to 144 Hz or 240 Hz is a tangible upgrade even for untrained eyes.

The mysterious Intel Core i5-8265UC processor has reared its head again, and this time it has done so in some style. The chip has been spotted on numerous benchmarks and has performed well in all of them, outpacing both AMD’s Ryzen 5 2500U and Ryzen 5 3500U in some cases. Intel’s processor offers four cores and eight threads for CPU performance.

It appears GPD has gone into marketing overdrive in preparation for its crowdfunding campaign for the GPD P2 Max pocket-sized laptop. The Chinese manufacturer is now calling the P2 Max the “world’s smallest Ultrabook” and is comparing it favorably with some of the industry’s major players. The company has also announced there will be a third variant that will come with a 1 TB SSD.

Brydge is a company that makes premium external keyboards for tablets from OEMs such as Microsoft and Apple. Most recently, it has released the 'Pro', a Bluetooth accessory for the 2018 iPad of the same name. It is made of aluminium and has variants for the 11- and 12.9-inch SKUs of its corresponding device.

Xiaomi has confirmed that nine of its recent smartphones will be getting the MIUI 11 update based on Android Q in Q4 2019 with two others, the Redmi Note 7 and Redmi Note 7 Pro, slated to get the update by Q1 2020. The present availability is with regards to the Chinese ROM and information about global variants is not yet clear.

Several leaks have hinted at the release of the Huawei MediaPad M6 and new Samsung Galaxy Tab-line devices in the recent past. Now, new certifications appear to lend yet more weight to these rumors. One of these listings makes overt references to the probable 2019 MediaPad, whereas another contains new, yet partially familiar, Samsung model numbers.

A new certification from the Moscow-based Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) requested by the OEM Sony has come to light. It is for a "mobile phone" with the model number J9210. As it matches that of the Xperia 1 closely, it may refer to the rumored Xperia 2. On the other hand, it could also simply be a new variant of the 1.

Samsung has allegedly secured a trademark for a new product called the "Portable SSD T7 Plus". Should this leak prove true, it appears that a successor for the T5 is on its way. This putative product may at least maintain a trend towards max speeds of 540 MB/s, 256-bit AES encryption and a USB 3.1 Gen2 interface in a form weighing just 0.11 pounds.

Semiconductors are commonly used in energy transfer for electronics and other related fields. The current state of the art are applications of gallium nitride or silicon carbide rather than conventional markets. The potential improvements and advancements to be gained from this transition could drive their market's worth to as much as US$3 billion by 2025.

Xiaomi has issued a recall of its Mi Electric Scooter (or M365) product. This request to return items does not apply to all units of the personal transport accessory, however, but to a subset of the same sold in certain countries. These devices have a hardware fault that could affect their function and the safety of their users.

Pixel 4 leak season is truly upon us. It has been less than 48 hours since Google took to Twitter to reveal the Pixel 4, and now pictures of something that looks like a real-life version of its next flagship have appeared online. Coincidence? We think not.

Huawei is still developing EMUI 10, despite rumours about it developing an AOSP-based fork for its future smartphones. Better still, early beta versions are being compiled with Google Play Services, indicating that it may not be all doom and gloom for the Chinese company yet. An early beta is now available to download for the P30 Pro too.

Sony and Microsoft are both working with AMD to provide 7 nm graphics for their next-gen consoles, but the results of which may not be equal. According to multiple reports and perhaps even AMD itself, the next PlayStation and Xbox will be a generation of graphics performance apart.

XDA dev Max Weinbach spotted the Galaxy Note 10 Pro 5G model powered by the 7 nm Exynos 9825 SoC in Samsung's internal benchmark listings. Not much is known about the upcoming Exynos 9825 chip, except for the fact that it is built on the 7 nm EUV node that will also be used for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 SoC and Nvidia's Ampere GPUs.

The Strawberry4Pi 2 is an IoT HAT designed for the Raspberry Pi with a difference. The HAT costs just US$29 but comes pre-installed with its own OS and a mobile app that can control your internet connected devices. No coding required. The Strawberry4Pi 2 is available to order on Kickstarter and will ship in August.

Huawei has announced that it is pushing back the launch of its vaunted foldable Mate X smartphone. Where it looked like it might beat the Samsung Galaxy Fold to market, its launch has been pushed back until at least September.

LG has revealed its latest gaming monitors and they are ground breaking. The company claims that its new UltraGear Nano IPS Nvidia G-Sync monitors are the first gaming monitors to achieve a 1ms response rate.

Hot on the heels of the One Mix 3 and 3s comes the 3s Platinum Edition, an 8.4-inch UMPC equipped with a Core i7-8550Y processor, 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD. The One Mix 3s Platinum Edition is available to order for US$1,199.99 on Geekbuying and will ship on July 9.

The upcoming Galaxy Tab A 8.0 (2019) looks to be Samsung's answer for Amazon's budget-friendly Fire tablets. The 8-inch display comes with ticker bezels, 1280 x 800 resolution, and a selfie cam at the top, while the internal specs include a Snapdragon 429 SoC coupled with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB storage. This model will have LTE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, but it will be missing NFC and fingerprint scanning.

Exquisite new concept renders from product designer Jonas Daehnert are receiving widespread approval from his followers, including fellow concept designers. No ugly Pixel 3 XL notch this around, but the thinking is still that the Pixel 4 will have comparatively large display bezels.

The Banana Pi BPI-M4 is a mouthful, but it packs a punch thanks to its quad-core Realtek RTD1395 SoC with ARM Mali-470 MP4 graphics, 1 GB of DDR4 RAM and 8 GB of eMMC flash storage. The developer board is a dead ringer for the Raspberry Pi 3B+ and is compatible with most HATs too. The Banana Pi BPI-M4 currently ships worldwide from AliExpress for US$35.

Once considered something impossible, Microsoft Edge's availability for Linux is now in sight. According to the developer team behind it, Microsoft's browser is not ready for Linux yet, but there is no technical difficulty that can keep this piece of code away from the Unix-based open source operating system.

After applying the latest Wear OS update, those using compatible smart wearables will be able to manage the tiles from the connected smartphones, as well as from the smartwatches themselves. The list of tiles that can be added includes Google News Headlines, Google Fit Goals, Google Calendar Next event, and so on.

A system record apparently for an HP ProOne 600 G5 21.5-inch All-in-One enjoying the company of Intel’s Core i9-9900T processor has been discovered on UserBenchmark. The focus of the benchmark is clearly on the processor as the rest of the system does not seem to be fully completed yet. The Coffee Lake desktop CPU has eight cores and 16 threads.

An apparent screen protector for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 10 has been leaked online, and if it is genuine then the rumors about the vaunted phablet having a bezel makeover are justified. The Galaxy Note 9 is a terrific device but it has a considerable chin to it, which seems to be something the Galaxy Note 10 won’t be emulating.

KaiOS is the most prominent alternative to either iOS or Android on mobile devices. Its CEO, Sebastien Codeville, has just given an interview outlining this platform's directions and goals for the immediate future. They include greater functionality, more form factors and new markets.

Remember the HTC Wildfire? Well, the Taiwanese company is seemingly giving the series a new lease of life, having registered ten new device names in Russia. Just when we thought HTC was about to give up the ghost itself.

Huntkey is known as a maker of power bricks and other similar accessories. However, it also makes other devices, monitors included. Its latest model is the X2471C, which is a 1080p, 144-hertz (Hz) 23.6-inch 1800R-curved panel. This model has a white housing, 2 HDMI ports and 1 Display Port.

ZTE has already launched its flagship smartphone for this year, the Axon 10 Pro. However, it also had a 5G-enabled variant, which had not been available in its domestic market despite having been released into others. Now, the OEM has announced that this will be rectified in July 2019.

These eye-catching concept renders of the Mate 30 Pro may act as a salve for Huawei fans with the company still embroiled in a trade war with Donald Trump and his US administration. Watch out for that huge camera bump though, it bites.

AMD is looking to shake up the processor market once again with a new 64 core and 128 thread chip, which it is planning to bring to market in Q4 2019. The HEDT processor will be based on the upcoming X599 platform and looks set to succeed the Threadripper W2290X.

The Chuwi MiniBook will feature an Intel Core m3-8100Y or a Celeron N4100 processor, 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD in a compact UMPC form factor. The convertible will be available to order from next Wednesday for US$499 for the Core m3-8100Y model.

With NVIDIA apparently announcing its GeForce RTX 20 Super series next week, multiple insider sources are pointing towards a mid-July launch. Specifications for the three Desktop GPUs have now been confirmed too.

Even if Huawei's CEO of consumer division himself confirmed the MateBook X launch is going to be postponed amid the U.S. - China trade wars and an earlier report was warning that Huawei could stop producing laptops altogether, the Chinese media is now claiming all the alarming reports are blowing things out of proportions, since Huawei is still ready to launch new Windows-on-ARM laptops in July.