Latest Tech News

AMD has consistently beaten Intel in cost-per-core, but did AMD really need to pursue a chiplet design to make Zen 2 so affordable? New slides from a recent talk at ISSCC show exactly how much the company saved with this approach, and the results are very impressive.

India could finally get its first Apple Store in the near future. Tim Cook discussed this idea at a recent investor meeting. The store will likely be located in Mumbai, and is expected to be operational by 2021.

Kami - YI Technology's new home-security brand - has released its new Wire-Free Outdoor Camera. As it lacks the need for connectivity hubs and has batteries that can be recharged in a USB-powered holder, it can be installed anywhere the user wants. It has a 165-degree wide-angle camera that supports FHD video at 20 frames per second (fps).

The MediaTek MT3620 is the first microcontroller unit (MCU) to directly integrate the Azure Sphere security platform from Microsoft. This solution is used to connect a business' internet-of-things (IoT) system with Azure's cloud services. MediaTek has now detailed the MT3620's success, which include its uptake by global corporations and brands.

Realme will launch the 6 and 6 Pro smartphones in India on March 5, 2020. Its teasers for these phones indicate that this new series will have quad rear cameras, one of which will be 64MP in resolution. They are also now linked to 90Hz displays and unique light-catching colorways.

EINK-DISP-103 is a new E-ink display that is not only suitable for single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi or NVIDIA Jetson Nano but also general computers too. The 10.3-inch display can be used in a variety of projects and is ideal for reading long texts with minimal eye fatigue.

The Odyssey X86 is a new single-board computer (SBC) that supports Windows 10 and is compatible with Grove. The SBC even accepts M.2 drives.

Compatible with several version of the Raspberry Pi, a project can transform the versatile single-board computer (SBC) into a 3D laser scanner. Better still, the project is fairly cheap to build.

The combination of Snapdragon 865 and a 5G external modem was always going to hurt battery life, even with a 5,000 mAh battery. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra falls short of its peers like the Apple iPhone 11 Pro, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus and even the Galaxy S10 Plus. Now, Tom's Guide has demonstrated just how poorly the S20 Ultra fares, especially with its display running at 120 Hz.

Qualcomm has launched the Snapdragon XR2 Reference Design headset, the first such XR (as in, virtual, mixed or augmented reality) device that supports 5G. It does so via its in-built X55 modem, which is part of its latest hardware platform for this category of media. Therefore, OEMs may now start building their own headsets based on this new "boundless" artificial-reality tech.

NVIDIA has issued its TV devices with a new update. This version of SHIELD Experience (8.1.1) includes a host of new features and bug-fixes. The most prominent of these may be the limited-time opportunity to upgrade the free GeForce Now subscription to a Founder's membership instead. The upgrade also adds XBOX Elite 2 controller support, as well as improved multiple Bluetooth device connections.

Is Microsoft trying to prove that sounds exhibit the same wave-particle duality as light rays? Probably not. This is most likely a clever marketing gimmick that feeds off of the growing popularity of ray traced graphics and mainstream gamers are not even supposed to benefit from it.

The YouTuber JerryRigEverything (or Zach Nelson) has conducted his traditional post-durability test teardown of the Motorola Razr 2020. This video revealed how its maker intends to keep the internals free of dust, as well as other possible destructive forces. This means it has some unusual attributes that the equally foldable Galaxy Z Flip lacks.

Google is now seeking to obtain a license from the U.S. government in order to resume its business with Huawei. This could prove to be a breath of fresh air for Huawei and it could restore access to Google's Mobile Services on mobile headsets like the Mate 30 and the mate Xs.

Samsung's second-generation foldable phone was launched along with claims that the OEM had made some strides in keeping this form-factor clear of potentially destructive dust and debris. A new video by teardown specialists iFixit may have called this marketing into question with a colorful experiment.

A Geekbench 5 listing of the AMD Ryzen 5 4500U powering an unnamed Lenovo laptop seems to indicate that Renoir has enough muscle to beat the Intel Core i7-10710U Comet Lake-U with very good sustained performance. Although not indicated, the Lenovo laptop could, in fact, be an upcoming IdeaPad model.

Xiaomi is at it again, and has dropped more hints that Android 10 is almost ready for the Mi A2 Lite. Now, the company has published the device's Android 10 kernel source code, a sure sign that the OS upgrade is on its way. The progress of Android 10 for the Mi A3 would suggest otherwise, though.

While the Mi 9 SE may be one of the last in the Mi 9 series to receive Android 10 builds of MIUI 11, the wait for the OS upgrade is over. The update is available to download now, although it will only appear as an OTA for select handsets pending a wider rollout.

Huawei's first P40 phone is here, in the form of the Huawei P40 Lite. It comes with a 7nm Kirin 810 SoC, 6 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage, a quad-camera setup, and a 4,200 mAh battery that can be charged at 40 W. You can pre-order it now from Huawei's website for €299($326).

A new peek function for the upcoming Microsoft Surface Duo foldable device has been leaked. A couple of short video clips have been shared on Twitter that show the smartphone being opened only slightly but still allowing the user to “peek” at notifications and call information on the far right-hand side of the display.

With the Xiaomi Redmi K30 5G and the OnePlus 7T Pro, we have the two current Sony IMX generations competing against each other. Our camera comparison of the two Sony camera sensors will determine how big the differences between the new IMX686 and the IMX586 are in everyday life.

Samsung has definitively confirmed that neither the Galaxy S8 nor the Galaxy Note 8 will receive an update for Android 10 and One UI 2.0. There was some confusion in regard to whether these devices would receive the latest operating software upgrades, but it’s now official that they will not. Both the Galaxy S8 and the Note 8 were released in 2017.

Kazuhisa Hashimoto, the creator of the famous Konami Code, has passed away at the age of 61. Today, the world mourns his death and honors his life with memories of the most famous code in gaming culture.

The games distribution platform GOG updated its refund policy today, expanding it to a flat 30-day refund period. This even applies to games that have been played, though GOG has stated it retains the right to review individual refund requests and deny them should it find a reason to.

LG has announced that the latest generation of its Gram notebook line is now available to buy from itself and from its official retailers in the US. This new line-up includes 17- and 15-inch models, as well as the 2-in-1 showcased at CES this year. They have 10th-gen Intel SoCs with Iris Plus graphics.

The Fairphone 3 features everything most users will need to master everyday life. However, it cannot keep up with its competitors' arms race, and given its high price many a customer will decide against sustainability.

The latest headphone and earphone market research projects that this compound device category will "generate revenues of over US$45 Billion" between now and 2025. This growth is thought to be driven by several factors, which include the rise of the TWS earbud, the demand for "smart" features, as well as noise isolation, in this category.

MediaTek has made the Helio P95's page on its website live. By its name, this chipset sound like an iterative upgrade over its current 4G/LTE flagship. However, it boasts the AI Processing Unit (APU) 2.0, which, as the OEM claims, will improve its benchmarking in this area compared to its predecessor. Otherwise, the CPU has 8 cores with a max clock of 2.2GHz.

Huawei has introduced the MateBook X Pro (2020) earlier this week. The MateBook X Pro continues the same design language of the last year model, including the odd webcam placement, with the only notable differences being the new Emerald Green color option and upgraded internals to Intel Comet Lake-U and NVIDIA GeForce MX250 graphics.

Excusing its ridiculous name, the LG V60 ThinQ 5G has a lot going for it. Design is not one of them. Resembling a mid-range smartphone crossed with the back of a Galaxy S10, the V60 ThinQ 5G has one foot firmly in the past. Its Snapdragon 865, expandable storage, 5,000 mAh battery, 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC and Dual Screen-connectivity should help the V60 ThinQ 5G appeal to smartphone fans, though.

The wait for Android 10 on the Mi A3 drags on. Xiaomi continues with its vagaries, having originally claimed that the Mi A3 would be on the first smartphones to receive Android 10. Blaming the coronavirus for delays, the company has managed to push out a security patch update. Unsurprisingly, fans are not buying Xiaomi's excuses.

Although many of those who loved it until the legendary version 12 consider it to be a dead horse nowadays, Opera 67 might be a step in the right direction. The latest release of this troubled web browser — available for Windows, Linux, and macOS — comes with Workspaces, tab cycling, a Sidebar setup panel, and more.

Recently, a GitHub driver page was spotted that lists upcoming Lenovo ThinkPad laptops. Among them are two models not announced or leaked before: The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Next and the ThinkPad X1 Nano. What could these devices be?

The dual-core / dual-thread R1102G and dual-core / quad-thread R1305G CPU models are 14 nm chips based on the original Zen architecture featuring the lowest TDPs in AMD's Ryzen Embedded roster. These will be featured in Simply NUC's new Red Oak and Post Oak mini PC systems along with Sapphire's latest NUC motherboards.

While LG may have earned its reputation for being one of the slowest Android OEMs to deliver software updates, an honourable mention should go to Huawei. While the company claims to have upgraded the P30 Pro to EMUI 10, for example, multiple handsets remain on EMUI 9.1 for no apparent reason.

The Intel Comet Lake-H Core i9-10880H has surfaced in Geekbench in two listings with slightly varying boost clocks. The scores indicate that the Core i9-10880H may offer anywhere between a 7.5 to 13% performance improvement over the Core i9-9880H making it on par with a desktop AMD Ryzen 7 3800X.

On the back of a sighting of the Ryzen 5 4600HS comes an appearance of the Ryzen 9 4900HS. Again, the Renoir processor has appeared in an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, paired with a QHD display, a 1 TB SSD, 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU.

The leaks about the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro keep arriving online. Now, a screenshot of the "About phone" of the OnePlus 8 Pro has been posted, along with TPU case designs for both handsets. You have every right to be sceptical though, as is one respected leaker.

The Nexus 6P and the first-gen Google Pixel were subjects of class-action lawsuits over bootloop issues and faulty microphones respectively. Months after the cases were decided in court, the settements for both lawsuits are now being sent out. The Nexus 6P's tops out at US$400, while the Pixel has a US$500 maximum payout.

A GitHub page for the Intel Media Driver for Video Acceleration API (VAAPI) has surfaced detailing the multimedia capabilities of Intel iGPUs including the Xe DG1 in Tiger Lake. From the video encode-decode support matrix, we get to see that Xe DG1 will support native 12-bit HEVC encode-decode along with decode support for 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 chroma sub-sampling, and VP9 12-bit and 12-bit 4:4:4 decode.

Samsung is apparently testing out an Android 11 update for the Galaxy S10+. An S10+ running on the new operating system was recently spotted on Geekbench. While Android 11 won't even be released until May 2020, this indicates that Samsung's making a strong push to get the OS on the Galaxy S10 series as early as possible.

3DMark 11 scores were recently leaked for the Ryzen 7 4700U. The 15W mobile part posted 5446 on the graphics test, substantially higher than Nvidia's discrete GeForce MX250. It also posted a physics score on par with a desktop system equipped with the 65W i7-6700.

Hot on the heels of leaked Ampere GPU specifications comes information about what could be the Radeon RX 5950 XT. Possibly part of the RX 6000 series instead, the leaked information states that the RDNA 2 GPU will feature 24 GB of HBM2e VRAM and 5,120 shading units. The D32310/15 will apparently include 80 CUs and will operate on a memory bandwidth of 2,048 GB/s, too.
Updated: SK Hynix denounces the leak as fake news

Another smartphone from Xiaomi has reportedly already broken the AnTuTu benchmark record recently set by the Chinese manufacturer’s Mi 10 Pro. The latest smartphone to snatch the performance crown is the upcoming Black Shark 3 Pro 5G device, which made good use of its Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC to reach a new high score of 620,952 points.

More rumors have cropped up in regard to when the PS5 reveal date could be, although some of the sources being used are certainly less reliable than others. However, those eager for news about the upcoming next-gen PlayStation console will be interested to learn about a patent for the DualShock 5 controller that involves measuring a user’s biological reactions while gaming.

Qualcomm has listed several upcoming flagship phones that will be powered by the Snapdragon 865 5G Mobile Platform. For the first time, we are seeing the Asus ROG Phone 3 and the ZenFone 7 getting an official mention. Surprisingly, the highly anticipated OnePlus 8 series and the LG V60 ThinQ do not feature in this list.

Not satisfied with third or fourth generation PCI Express speeds? Leapfrogging 5.0, the latest revision of PCI Express has been released for prototype designs ahead of its final launch in 2021. Featuring 4 times the bandwidth of PCIe 4.0, it may be a while before the standard reaches consumer products.

Xiaomi fans can breathe a sigh of relief for the Mi Watch is officially coming to Europe, a representative has confirmed. The Wear OS smartwatch is powered by a Snapdragon Wear 3100 SoC, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of eMMC flash storage.

With the Pimoroni Pirate Audio, you can now transform a Raspberry Pi into a media player with Spotify integration. The Pirate Audio integrates a headphone amplifier, a DAC, a 3.5 mm jack, a 1.3-inch IPS colour display and four physical buttons.

The Honor nX line of smartphones has only just been updated worldwide. Now, it seems its series' 2018 flagship will finally get a stable build of EMUI 10 based on Android 10. This may be confirmed by some new Geekbench 5 benchmarking results.