Latest Tech News

Asus has revealed that a wide range of its premium graphics cards and motherboards have had their prices increased. For example, the Asus ROG Strix Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 White OC Edition Gaming card now costs over US$2,100, and the ROG Strix LC AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT that was US$899.99 at launch is now priced at US$1,079.99.

The upcoming TACHYS VORTEX 15 gaming laptop offers the best price/performance ratio we have seen thus far from an AMD laptop. For only $1,100, you can get a powerful Ryzen 7 5800H APU coupled with 16 GB of DDR4 RAM and an RTX 3060 Max-P GPU, plus 1 TB of NVMe SSD storage. Expect to see similar builds and prices from more trusted brands at CES 2021.

AnTuTu has published its December 2020 Android flagship smartphone performance chart and the Xiaomi Mi 11 with the Snapdragon 888 has managed to take the top spot away from the Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ with the Kirin 9000. The Snapdragon 888 vs Kirin 9000 results were very close, but the Mi 11’s 2K 120 Hz display tipped the difference.

The upcoming Rocket Lake-S Intel Core i7-11700K has been proving its undeniable value on PassMark, with a first sample managing to snatch the lead in the CPU Mark single-thread performance chart. The i7-11700K zipped past its fellow 8-core rival AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and produced a score that was almost 15% more than the Comet Lake i7-10700K.

OnePlus has started officially teasing its upcoming fitness tracker that will feature useful tools such as SpO2 blood saturation monitoring and real-time heart-rate tracker. The alleged OnePlus Band price in India and its launch date have also been leaked along with some key specifications. The OnePlus Band is expected to cost around ₹2,499 (US$34).

The budget Lenovo laptop is now even more affordable than before to make it a respectable deal for shallow pockets especially if you're willing to upgrade the RAM on your own.

At CES 2021, LG will be showcasing two new OLED display technologies. One is what the manufacturer calls a Bendable Cinematic Sound OLED panel that can curve or flatten as per viewing preference. The other kind of display is a transparent OLED that enables simultaneous information display and transparency for use in homes and commercial settings.

According to PassMark's CPU usage data, which measures the percentage of CPUs running the company's benchmarks by brand, AMD briefly overtook Intel in total Desktop CPU usage share. However, this victory was short-lived. Intel also continues to dominate in the laptop and server arenas, according to PassMark's data.

For those worried about whether their TV stands or living room furniture can accommodate the arguably large PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X console, Ikea has come up with sizing guides that help clear all confusion. That being said, speculation is also rife about the possibility of a PS5 Slim hitting the market earlier than the norm to make up for some of the PS5's supply deficiencies and improve certain aspects of the hardware.

A new leak from Evan Blass tells us everything there is to know about the Samsung Galaxy S21 series' camera prowess. The Samsung Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21 Plus will come with an identical camera setup with three sensors. The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra will come with five lenses in total, including a laser autofocus module.

OnePlus has just posted an update about the status of its Android 11-based OxygenOS 11 update. Registrations for the OxygenOS 11 open beta will open up next week for the OnePlus Nord. The OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro will follow suit once OnePlus solves some problems with the OxygenOS 11 build for both devices.

A Microsoft job listing for the Windows Core User Experiences team seems to indicate the upcoming Windows 10 21H1 Sun Valley update will see a totally overhauled user interface including new icons, a revamped File Explorer, and more. Current Insider Builds are also showing some visual changes in the Settings app, which includes new battery usage graphs, camera settings, app archival, and more.

Qualcomm has launched its newest 5G-ready Snapdragon 480 chipset. It features an eight-core Kryo 460 CPU clocked at 2.0GHz, an Adreno 619 GPU, and comes with Qualcomm's X51 5G modem. According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 480 is expected to make its debut in 'early 2021.'

GTA VI (6) is currently in development at Rockstar, according to an insider leak. So far, the only clues to GTA 6 have been this particular leak and a previous teaser of GTA Online Cayo Perico surveil.exe. Also being speculated is that GTA V could arrive on the upcoming PlayStation VR 2, which could not only boost sales but also make VR a successful platform in upcoming PlayStation generations.

NVIDIA may distill-down RTX features to the x050 series with the GA107-based RTX 3050 GPU. A Lenovo PSREF page for the Legion R5 desktop PC confirms RTX 3050, RTX 3050 Ti, and RTX 3060 12 GB offerings are on the anvil in addition to several Turing and also an AMD Radeon RX 5500 option.

Geekbench listings of the upcoming Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo GX551QS and HP Omen 15 laptops featuring RTX 3080 Mobile and RTX 3070 Mobile GPUs, respectively confirm some of the specs of these mobile Ampere parts that we've already known so far. The RTX 3080 Mobile is a complete GA104 GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores. The RTX 3070 Mobile is also a GA104 part but with 5,120 CUDA cores.

Poco has teased what could be the long-awaited sequel to its flagship killing Pocophone F1. The “F2” is briefly mentioned in a video thanking fans for a successful 2020 suggesting that we could see a Pocophone F2 in 2021. Unfortunately, early indications are it won’t be quite the flagship killer that made the original famous.

Samsung has officially confirmed that its next Galaxy Unpacked event will happen on January 14 as widely expected. Headlining the event will be the company’s all-new Galaxy S21 range although other upcoming products like the Galaxy Buds Pro are also expected to be announced.

Supposed Google Pixel 5a live images have been leaked online. Four photos of the smartphone reveal a few interesting tidbits about the rumored device; however, there is something fishy about the real-life pictures. It has been suggested that the Pixel 5a could be launched in May although a release in the second half of 2021 is more likely.

A WCCFTech investigation into AIB Z590 partner boards indicates that Intel’s new platform will only support the PCIe 4.0 standard with Rocket Lake S processors. While Comet Lake S owners will be able to use Z590 boards, they’ll be missing out on this key feature that Ryzen 3000 and Ryzen 5000 parts already support.

Tipster @LeaksApplePro recently claimed that Apple is set to release a new 12-core Apple Silicon Mac lineup this year, with an announcement as early as this March. While unconfirmed, this part could potentially propel Apple Silicon to multithreaded dominance over mobile Ryzen.

The Xiaomi Mi 11 has already been selling by the truckload in China, where it is currently on sale from 3,999 yuan (€505/US$618/£452) for the 8 GB + 128 GB model. While the Chinese OEM has declared the Mi 11 will be going global soon, those eager to get their hands on one before then can preorder the smartphone from €579 (US$709/£519).

The Mi AX6000 router is a powerful new source of home Wi-Fi that Xiaomi will release for the first time on January 8, 2021. The OEM has hyped this cutting-edge product by seeing which device could use its up-to-800Mb/s signal first: an iPhone 12 Pro Max or a brand-new Mi 11.

With CES 2021 coming up, retailers are likely trying to clear stock ahead of all the inevitable announcements. Now would be the time to find a lot of deals on both last generation and current generation laptops.

New AMD variants viz. XTXH, XLE, and Nashira Point have been discovered on the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) website. It is not yet clear whether these are Navi 21 or Navi 22 parts. However, the XTXH variant could potentially be a Navi 21 GPU with HBM2(E) memory support.

Some recent leaks point to new TWS earbuds that are to accompany the Samsung Galaxy 21 series at the next Unpacked event. Now, an official webpage has confirmed that they definitely won't be introduced as the Buds Beyond. These Pros are said to have improved ANC at a higher price-tag on their release.

Motorola is now said to have a second-gen Moto G Stylus in the works. All of its previous leaks have pointed to a chassis for this phablet with quad rear cameras in a vertical orientation. A new tip from OnLeaks contradicts this, however, although it leaves its putative updated screen intact.

The Steam hardware and software survey for December 2020 has thrown up a surprising result in regard to processor usage. According to the currently published data table, Intel has snatched over 2% of the Windows share back from AMD. However, that’s nothing compared to the huge change in the color chart that shows AMD losing over 7% share in one month.

Foxconn is said to have successfully completed durability testing for two different Apple iPhone foldable prototypes. According to Taiwanese supply chain rag, Money UDN, the two prototypes are said to resemble the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip respectively in design approach.

The USB-C enclosure is as simple as it gets with no screws or external power source to worry about. If you have an old 2.5-inch drive sitting around, then the Baseus will almost certainly come in handy.

It has been rumored that Nvidia is working on even more Ampere-based graphics cards to join the growing GeForce RTX 30 series. Although the names for the two new parts are not currently known, it has been suggested that they could be the GeForce RTX 3070 Super and GeForce RTX 3080 Super cards.

If you plan on buying a new 11th gen Intel Tiger Lake laptop, then you might want to keep in mind that the cheaper Core i5-1135G7 can actually match or outperform a handful of Core i7-1165G7 laptops in raw CPU performance.

AMD could be offering multi-chip module (MCM) designs in GPUs in the near future. A patent filed in 2019 details how an MCM design can help lower costs and improve yields. Since most GPU-bound programs work best with monolithic cores, AMD's patent describes how the MCM design can be made oblivious to the CPU thereby alleviating the need to rewrite code to take advantage of this design.

Sony's original plan was to launch the PlayStation 5 on November 19, 2020; however, they fell through with no sign of the console in the country since. It has now at least released details on its re-scheduled launch, as well as the start of pre-orders with channels such as Flipkart.

AMD may possibly bring back 16-core SKUs to the HEDT Threadripper lineup with the upcoming Threadripper 5000 series as indicated by a cryptic tweet from developer 1usmus. The 16-core Threadripper SKU, which may be called the TR 5955X, is likely to be similar to the mainstream Ryzen 9 5950X but with support for quad-channel RAM and additional PCIe lanes.

OPPO has adopted a complicated approach to releasing its Reno smartphone series worldwide. The devices might have different SoCs for different markets, for example. However, there is now evidence that the well-spec’d new generation recently launched in China will make it into other countries unmodified.

According to a slew of recent certifications, Samsung has a new product called the Galaxy Smart Tag in the works. It, as the name suggests, is a Tile- or AirTag-like gadget that can connect to a phone via Bluetooth in order to locate it, or the other way around. It might be ready to debut alongside the OEM's new flagship phones.

With a daily low of less than US$29,000 and a maximum price of no less than US$31,388.38, today is a very exciting day for Bitcoin investors. The value of this cryptocurrency is now 25% higher than a week ago, and the monthly growth is an impressive 63.95%. Considering these, the "US$100,000 in 2021" predictions no longer seem outrageous.

The office convertible holds a few trump cards: It is quiet, sturdily built, has good input devices, a nice display, an excellent microphone, a fast card reader, and component maintenance is no foreign concept either. Will you hold all the trump cards with the Latitude 5310?

It has been rumored that a HiSilicon Kirin 9010 chipset based on a 3 nm manufacturing process could be released in the second half of 2021, possibly to feature in a Huawei Mate 50 smartphone. On top of that, it’s also believed Qualcomm will produce a Snapdragon 888+ SoC at around the same time.

After a fascinating showing at CES 2020, the conceptual product will probably not make an appearance at CES 2021 next week. We're not crossing our fingers on any official news at all about the UFO either, at least in the short term.

The Rocket Lake Intel Core i9-11900K processor has turned up another astonishing CPU-Z benchmark score, with an overclocked sample with all cores at 5.2 GHz managing higher single-thread and multithread test results than the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X. But the power cost for a slight improvement might be too high for many.

First benchmarks of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888-powered Xiaomi Mi 11 available via various Weibo posts show significant performance improvements compared to the Snapdragon 865 seem comparable to the Apple A13 Bionic. However, the Snapdragon 888 seems to consume more power than expected leading to increased temperatures and throttling particularly with the Cortex-X1 core.

As powerful as the freshly-launched Mi 11 is, some may have been disappointed when its also-rumored Pro sibling did not debut alongside it. However, the reliable tipster Digital Chat Station asserts that its own launch is still on. It will apparently take place after the Chinese New Year.

The VivoBook scores points with a Tiger Lake processor, 16 GB of RAM (dual-channel mode), a GeForce MX350 graphics core, and a Thunderbolt 4 port. This is complemented by good battery life. The display is not convincing, though.

Huawei had reportedly removed all Tencent games from its first-party mobile app market, AppGallery, following an objection from the software giant as to how much of the takings it retained from sales of the app in question. This remuneration structure has also led to disagreements between the OEM and other developers.

Xiaomi launched a new, cost-effective 6000mAh phone it called the Redmi Note 9 4G in China recently. It then proceeded to re-brand the device as the 9 Power for the Indian market. Now, a new leak suggests it has yet another new name for an imminent debut in Thailand and possibly Europe.

The Realme 7 series launched as 2020 phones with a combination of mid-range SoCs and premium specs. Now, there are hints that their maker has replacements for them in the works. They come in the form of new Geekbench listings based on a 5G Dimensity platform.

Modder Romelsalwi's optimized settings for Cyberpunk 2077 could enable greater performance when ray-tracing is on. As we wait for CD Projekt Red's performance and stability optimizations to role in, the mod could enable better framerates for RTX graphics card owners.

Xiaomi received over 226,000 pre-orders for the Mi 11 and those have translated sweetly to actual sales, with the company announcing that it sold over 350,000 units of the new flagship in just five minutes. That works out to right about US$230 million in sales, no doubt in part due to the Mi 11's outstanding value proposition.