Latest Tech News

Motorola has been linked to a new series of budget phones code-named "Capri" and "Capri Plus" as of late. The latter of these - also known as the XT-2129 - has been approved for launch by the Thai regulator NBTC. It has also let its product name slip: Moto G30. Therefore, this may be a G10 replacement, although its specs speak against that idea.

Carl Pei is well known as the co-founder of the successful smartphone brand OnePlus. However, he has since left this company with plans to start another. It will launch on January 27, 2021; in the meantime, Pei has tweeted that he is giving 10 MacBook Airs with the new M1 chipset away, presumably to drive hype for his own new products.

A last-minute configuration change for the GA106 GPU seemed to have confused NVIDIA's add-in board (AiB) partners with respect to the RTX 3060's specifications, particularly the core clocks. We are also getting to know that the RTX 3060 may not arrive in a Founders Edition, and the render shown during NVIDIA's CES presentation was just a mockup.

Bloober Team, developers of The Medium, the first next-gen exclusive title to release on PC, recently shared update minimum, recommended, and ray-tracing system requirements for the game. PC gamers will require a GeForce RTX 1060 for a min-spec experience, with the GeForce RTX 3080 recommended for ray-tracing.

Redmi rivals Realme is set to launch its first phone with a Snapdragon 888 in the near future. The device, said to be the Realme Race Pro, will feature impressive specifications, with the most notable being a supposed 160 Hz QHD+ OLED and outrageous 125 W fast-charging support, with a release that will see it do battle with the Mi 11 Pro and Redmi K40 Pro.

The teardown experts at iFixit have disassembled the AirPods Max, revealing the complexities of Apple's latest headphones in the process. The AirPods Max achieved a repairability score of 6 points, which is much higher than most Apple products, AirPods and AirPods Pro included. The AirPods Max has a more complex construction than the Sony WH-1000XM4 and Bose NC 700, too.

One UI 3.1 debuted on the Galaxy S21 series, and now it has reached Samsung's most-expensive set of tablets. One UI 3.1 for the Galaxy Tab S7 series comes with Android 11 and a host of improvements, including the option of using the tablet as a second screen for a laptop.

LG is considering exiting the smartphone business despite teasing new devices as recently as CES 2021 last week. The company’s CEO Kwon Bong-seok has informed staff that all options are currently on the table including exiting the market, a potential sale or downsizing.

MediaTek has launched two new Dimensity-branded chipsets, the Dimensity 1200 and Dimensity 1100. The former is MediaTek's latest ARM Cortex-A78-powered flagship offering which performs on par with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, while the latter is a slightly more scaled-down version. The MediaTek Dimensity 1200 is expected to debut alongside a Realme smartphone soon.

CubiOs Inc. is on the cusp of launching one of the most interesting gaming systems we’ve seen. The WOWCube is in some ways a digitalized take on the famous Rubik’s cube on the surface, but beneath its eight distinct surfaces lies a lot of clever technology and software.

The latest 11.6-inch HP Chromebooks will have both Intel and MediaTek options. Users who favor battery life will prefer the latter while the former will excel in performance and ports.

Users who don't update might get a fancy 10th gen Xeon or Core i9 CPU running slower than a cheaper 9th gen Core i7-9750H. Luckily, all it takes is a quick download from HP to fix the issue.

Get brand name features without overpaying for the name. The EasySMX may not have everything, but its core experience is solid and reliable.

You can't call something "the best laptop in show" when you never actually went hands-on with any of them. These "awards" for CES 2021 are nothing more than lists and opinions based entirely off of manufacturer pictures and videos rather than the editors' hands-on experiences that they are supposed to represent.

AOC has introduced its latest curved gaming monitor, which supports high refresh rates and a peak resolution of 1440p. The AG323QCX2 offers a 1500R curvature and is VESA HDR400 certified.

According to a T-Mobile representative, the LG V60 ThinQ should start to see Android 11 within a few days. The publication of the Android 11 kernel source code for the Verizon model points to a wider OS upgrade being on the cards, too.

The ROG Zephyrus G14 will soon be available with up to an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Max-P, according to ASUS and two European retailers. Top-end SKUs will retail for as much as €2,299 and should start shipping by early February. There will be a Ryzen 7 5800HS and GeForce GTX 1650 edition, too.

The Snapdragon 888 is Qualcomm's latest flagship-grade mobile processor, and as such is only available in a tiny handful of phones to date. The first 2 of these, the iQOO 7 and Xiaomi Mi 11, have already exhibited thermal-management problems while in the hands of a reviewer. Hopefully, this is not a sign of things to come for the rest of 2021.

A 16-core Alder Lake-S processor from Intel has been spotted revealing some of its secrets on the SiSoftware database. Along with once again confirming support for DDR5 memory, the listing gave some details about the Xe Gen 12.2 iGPU and revealed a 30 MB L3 cache. Clock rates were measured at 1.8 GHz to 4.0 GHz.

The first Galaxy S21 disassembly video has arrived on YouTube, courtesy of the channel P3K. It suggests that repairing this base-model smartphone might not be too difficult, even though Samsung makes it look that way with its new rear panel. The device's thermal management system is also on show in this post.

The new Microsoft Surface Pro 7+ has made a couple of appearances on Geekbench that point to the convertible laptop being ideal for some light gaming sessions. The Iris Xe iGPU in the Surface Pro 7+ device’s Intel Core i7-1165G7 managed to outscore both the Nvidia GeForce MX350 dGPU and AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 8 (Ryzen 4000 class).

CAD models of two new iPad Pro models have leaked, offering a detailed look at Apple's upcoming tablets. Apple will stick with 11-inch and 12.9-inch sizes for the next iPad Pro, but little will separate them from the looks of last year's tablets.

The X60 Pro+ is a Snapdragon 888-powered variant of Vivo's latest flagship smartphone series. The OEM has confirmed that it will debut tomorrow (January 21, 2021) in China. A tech blog in the same country now claims that its first-ever tablet might be unveiled alongside it.

Apple's TV+ is its answer to other streaming platforms such as Netflix. One year's worth of free access to the service was bundled with compatible hardware bought at its September 2019 launch. That offer was then extended so as to end in February 2021 - however, the OEM has now prolonged it again until July.

Officially, the Xiaomi Poco M3 is available at a purchase price of only 150 Euros (~$181), which makes it one of the currently most affordable smartphones. Despite the mini budget, the 6.53-inch Android smartphone offers a lot of value. One of the main draws is the battery, which is very large, offering a capacity of 6000 mAh.

China's progress with the home-grown CPUs and GPUs is relentless. The new Big Island general purpose GPUs produced by Tianshu Zhixin are able to take advantage of TSMC's 7 nm tech and provide a competitive price/performance ratio. Internal benchmarks reveal that the Big Island GPUs are not yet on par with Nvidia's A100 or AMD's Instinct MI100, but the progress is remarkable.

With up to 12 hours of battery life and a MIL-STD 810H-certified rugged design, the Acer TravelMate Spin B3 convertible promises to deliver all that classroom use requires. This Windows 10-powered portable will hit China in February, EMEA in Q2, and North America in April, with prices starting at US$329.99.

A company insider has told a Russian news outlet that Honor is bringing GMS (Google Mobile Services) to its upcoming smartphones. However, it'll be a while before we see them in action, as they are slated to be launched this spring. It should help Honor regain some of the ground it lost over the past two years due to the lack of GMS on its devices.

NVIDIA's board partners have begun announcing GeForce RTX 30 series graphics card for the Mini-ITX form factor. Currently, Gainward, MSI and Palit have announced single fan versions of the GeForce RTX 3060, which has 12 GB of VRAM. All cards offer memory clock speeds of 15 Gbps and NVIDIA's GA106-300 GPU.

Sapphire has introduced a passively-cooled version of the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, which it has called the GPRO X070. The company intends professional users to purchase the card, but it does feature four display outputs. There is also an Efficiency Mode BIOS for running the RX 5700 XT at reduced clock speeds.

A brief hands-on video of the upcoming Asus ROG Phone 5 has leaked showing what appears to be an AniMe Matrix display on the back of the phone similar to the one seen in the ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop. The video confirms the 05 branding and also briefly reveals the Armory Crate app that can be used to customize the content on the AniMe Matrix display.

Huawei is set to release the P50 series within the next few months. Details of the P50 Pro and P50 Pro+ have now been revealed, with notable takeaways including a quad-curved 120 Hz AMOLED, a Kirin 9000, and 200x zoom for the range topper.

In addition to the security patch dated January 2021, the OxygenOS 10.5.9 software update for OnePlus Nord N10 handsets also comes with improved network stability and optimized power consumption. Sadly, there are no fixes for the broken pocket mode and AR services yet, as well as a few other minor bugs.

Rocket Lake-S will use the Tiger Lake Xe graphics core, but it will be named as UHD Graphics 730 (24 EUs) and UHD Graphics 750 (32 EUs), according to leaked driver listings. A UHD Graphics P750 for the enterprise is also seen. Rocket Lake-S will only offer up to 32 EUs in order to accommodate the larger CPU cores.

Acer has used the BETT education show to debut four new Chromebooks. Headlining the new models is the Chromebook 511 which includes LTE support and is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c, compute optimized chipset.

The 1080p monitor should pair nicely with any GeForce RTX 3060, 3070, or 3080 PC if your intentions are to reach a stable 144 FPS or greater. The Costco deal is expected to last until February 7.

Gigabyte has added a sort-of-new product to its graphics card range in the form of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Gaming OC PRO 8G (rev 2.0). Desktop PC builders will likely be intrigued by the revisions that have been made to this RTX 3060 Ti variant, but it appears the biggest difference to the original model is a height reduction.

The Windows 10 system will be an alternative to Chromebooks, but we highly recommend avoiding the TN panel option as it will likely render tablet mode almost unusable.

The High Court of Seoul, South Korea has sentenced Lee Jae-yong, who had held a key role at the electronics giant Samsung, to 2.5 years in jail. The court has ruled that the executive has been involved in leveraging political influence to lock down power within the company. Its decision will reportedly be appealed at a later date.

The OPPO Band is a 2020 fitness tracker with a blood-oxygen sensor that launched in China for about US$31. Now, it has reportedly acquired an EEC certification, which suggests that it may go on sale in Russia soon. Therefore, this could this be the first of further global releases for the device.

An image taken from an alleged Geekbench run for a MacBook Pro18,1 system has supposedly revealed the multi-core power of the rumored Apple M1X chip. The score of 18,520 is over 140% higher than our results with an 8-core Apple M1. But it seems more likely shenanigans are to blame rather than an appearance by a 12-core Apple part or 20-core monster.

A new leak suggests that MediaTek has a watered-down version of the Dimensity 1200 in the works. The MediaTek Dimensity 1100 will reportedly feature four Cortex-A78 cores clocked at 2.6GHz and four Cortex-A55 cores at 2.0GHz. MediaTek is expected to unveil it on January 20.

Xiaomi is now expanding its Android 11 rollout to include its mid-range devices, with the Mi Note 10 Lite being the latest to receive the update. The update doesn't bring MIUI 12.5 but it's slowly rolling out to the global variant of the phone. The global Redmi Note 8 is getting a spanking new update, too.

Not many rugged phones come in main colors other than black or have horizontally-oriented quad rear cameras. However, the F150 B2021 offers both. Its OEM has set it at a regular price of US200; however, it is down to $110 for its debut on Banggood or AliExpress.

The Huawei MateBook 14 2021 features many internal upgrades from last year's model, including a switch to Intel's Tiger Lake platform. The MateBook 14 is available with up to a Core i7-1165G7 processor, an NVIDIA GeForce MX450 GPU and 16 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM. Huawei only offers the MateBook 14 2021 with a 512 GB SSD though, and in two somewhat understated colours.

Huawei has updated the MateBook 13 to Intel's Tiger Lake platform. The MateBook 13 comes with a Core i5-1135G7 or Core i7-1165G7 processor, along with an NVIDIA GeForce MX450 GPU and a 13-inch display with a 3:2 aspect ratio. The MateBook 13 2021 starts at CNY 5,449 (~US$848), but little else has changed from its predecessor.

Huawei has updated flagship laptop, the MateBook X Pro. The company has upgraded the MateBook X Pro to Intel's Tiger Lake platform, which it will offer with 16 GB of RAM and up to a 1 TB SSD. The 1.33 kg machine also features a 13.9-inch 3K display and starts at CNY 8,999 (~US$1,389).

The Xiaomi Redmi K40 series is seemingly almost upon us, with Redmi General Manager Lu Weibing teasing the entry-level model's prospective battery life. The Redmi K40 is believed to feature a Dimensity 1200 SoC and may start for as little as CNY 2,999 (~US$462).

MediaTek's next Dimensity 1200 premium SoC may launch on January 20, 2021). However, its successor might be even bigger news. A leaker claims that this chipset, thought to be the OEM's first 5 nanometer (nm) product, will integrate next-gen Cortex X2 cores. It may be joined by A79 cores, while its GPU might be the Mali-G79.

One week after releasing the update for the Galaxy Z Fold 2, Samsung is bringing the Android 11-based One UI 3.0 software update to its predecessor as well. The Samsung Galaxy Fold is receiving the new firmware already in France and the UAE (LTE version), as well as Switzerland and the UK (5G version).