Latest Tech News

A new year and a new ThinkPad X1 lineup. Lenovo has given the X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga a Comet Lake U refresh, along with other treats for display and keyboard fans too. The X1 Carbon Gen 8 and X1 Yoga Gen 5 will be available worldwide from US$1,499 and US$1,599.

Tipster @TUM_APISAK shared a leaked Userbenchmark GPU comparison between Renoir's iGPU and Vega 10. The benchmarks indicate that Renoir will feature substantially faster graphics performance than previous-gen APUs.

Lenovo showed off four new monitors at CES today. The star of the display show is the ThinkVision Creator Extreme, a professional-grade mini-LED monitor that boasts 1000 nits of brightness and is HDR1000 certified. The Creator Extreme's 4K panel covers 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. Lenovo also announced three other consumer-grade monitors.

The Lavie Vega is a new 15.6-inch thin-and-light from the Lenovo sub-brand. Boasting a bright 4K OLED HDR display and two Thunderbolt 3 ports (in addition to others), the Vega is well-suited for business users. Despite the name, the Vega does not opt for AMD's Vega GPUs.

NEC's latest All-in-One, the Lavie Home AIO, is targeted directly at families. The AIO sports a Core i7 Comet Lake-U CPU and a 27-inch FHD display. The Home AIO pumps sound through screen-mounted speakers thanks to LG's Crystal Sound Display technology. Users can turn the PC on with their voice and call out to Alexa or Cortana to launch apps.

For six years, Lenovo sold the "ThinkPad Compact Keyboard", the external ThinkPad keyboard with the iconic TrackPoint. Now Lenovo is replacing it – the new ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II is not a big revolution, but rather a small evolution.

The NEC Lavie Pro Mobile is an incredibly light laptop aimed at business professionals. The Core i7-8565U CPU is wrapped is a sleek Bordeaux case that weighs a mere 837 grams (1.85 pounds).

Lenovo's new ThinkCentre M90a AIO adds some security features to a sleek all-in-one form factor PC. The M90a uses Lenovo's Blur Screen Software and IR sensors to protect user privacy. The AIO can be configured with a 10th generation Intel Core U i7 with vPro and plenty of RAM and storage. The AIO also boasts quite a bit of I/O.

Samsung officially announced the Galaxy S10 Lite and Galaxy Note 10 Lite smartphones today. Both phones have similar FHD+ screens and run flagship-level SoCs. Both phones also sport triple-camera arrays, though the shooter setup differs between handsets.

Citing supply chain sources, Taiwanese outlet Apple Daily predicts that AMD is set to become TSMC's largest 7nm customer by the end of 2020, displacing Apple in the process. The spectacular success of Ryzen and Apple's move to 5nm are likely reasons.

Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting recently offered up juicy predictions about Nvidia's upcoming Ampere lineup. According to a report by the consultancy, Ampere may deliver 50 percent more performance than Turing, while consuming 50 percent less power.

Samsung is bullish about the 5G smartphone market in 2020 quoting figures from Counterpoint Research to support its view. According to forecasts the market for 5G smartphones is expected to undergo substantial growth and will account for 18 percent of total sales, up from just 1 percent in 2019.

We knew Samsung was working on a 5G variant of its current flagship tablet, the Galaxy Tab S6 but we didn’t know when it was coming. Samsung has now cleared things up at least a little by announcing it will hit the market in Q1 2020.

Brydge has announced a new line up of its popular tablet keyboards coming in 2020. New keyboards are in bound for the Surface Go and the Surface Pro X along with new wireless keyboards for Windows, a new iPad OS Trackpad and other accessories.

Chinese smartphone makers have had huge success globally, but one market they are yet to crack is the US. According to a new survey by Wave7Research, the US market is dominated by just two brands with Apple and Samsung swallowing up a whopping 90 percent of smartphone sales stateside.

Sina Mobile reports that Huawei managed to ship 12 million Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro units. The Chinese tech giant managed to ship these high volumes despite having been blacklisted by the US government. This raises questions about exactly where these units are being sold.

The QLED panel will provide OLED-like colors at a fraction of the price. Samsung is hoping that its aluminum-clad convertible will kick-start a generation of QLED laptops and tablets to better compete against the IPS and OLED laptops already in market.

The playable demo for Final Fantasy 7 Remake was recently found within the PlayStation Network and was subsequently distributed around the Internet. Along with the demo, there were also multiple assets (including music, storyboards, and character models) included in the package.

Zotac will show off the new VR GO 3.0 backpack PC at CES next week. The updated wearable gaming computer can now be configured with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 GPU, which should greatly improve the VR experience.

A Redditor reported that, after connecting his Xiaomi Mijia security camera to Google Nest Hub, his security feed started showing random images from other peoples' houses. Google swiftly disabled Xiaomi Nest Hub integrations after finding out.

Donald Trump recently signed off on the TRACED Act. The Act, which received bipartisan support in the US Congress, imposes stiffer penalties on robocallers. It also seeks to tackle the issue of caller ID spoofing.

Leaked 3DMark scores spotted by _Rogame show what appears to be the RX 5600M paired with the unannanounced Ryzen 7 4800H. The mobile Navi card seems to perform in the same ballpark as the laptop RTX 2060. Is the purported 5600M set to become 2020's bang-for-buck laptop GPU?

Chinese phone maker Xiaomi stated that it does not have an expected release date for its Mi Mix Alpha concept phone. The limited edition device, featuring a wraparound display panel, looks less and less likely to launch as attention increasingly shifts towards foldables. Will the Mi Mix Alpha ever come out?

Much like the XPS 9000 series, the new Latitude 9000 series will prioritize sleek and lightweight form factors aimed at business users as a direct response to the ultra-thin Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and HP Elite Dragonfly.

Dell goes all out with the new 2020 Dell XPS 13 9300. The new XPS laptop has a redesigned chassis, the new Ice Lake CPUs and it receives the 13.4 inch 16:10 screen of the XPS 13 2-in-1 7390 as well. Dell has even managed to make the screen bezels even smaller than before, too.

If you thought the new XPS model names have become too confusing, you're not the only one. Dell will be returning to the XPS 9xxx naming convention again after experimenting with the XPS 7xxx to make it easier for consumers to understand.

Dell Technologies is expanding its Dell Cinema service with the new Dell Cinema Guide application. The manufacturer describes it as a “streaming entertainment search engine” that aims to simplify the hunt for a particular television series or movie for users who have access to multiple streaming sites. The software will be offered free of charge in 2020.

Dell is promising further integration with its Mobile Connect application for those who have devices running on iOS. Currently, the iOS version of the service lags behind what is offered for Android users, but a free update scheduled for spring 2020 will give fans of Apple smartphones and the like an equal amount of functionality.

Dell's new line-up of UltraSharp monitors are all USB type-C this year. They are headlinded by the 43-inch U4320Q, a 4K panel that can be split between up to 4 separate devices via the OEM's Picture-by-Picture (PBP) feature. There are also 27- and 25-inch models in this year's productivity-focused screen series.

The Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor sports a 25-inch FHD (1920x1080) IPS display with a 240 Hz refresh rate and 1 ms response time. The panel covers 99% of the sRGB color gamut and is compatible with AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync. The monitor will launch on March 11, 2020, for $499.99.

The Dell 86 4K Interactive Touch Monitor is a monster 85.6-inch touch display targeted at boardrooms and collaborative workspaces. The monitor supports 20-point multitouch, allowing multiple people to work at the board at once. It also supports an array of ports.

It will also be a hair lighter and smaller by 3 percent and 2 percent, respectively, when compared to the last generation design while sporting the same chassis materials for that familiar look and feel.

Tipster @TUM_APISAK outs specs for the rumored Ryzen 7 4800H. The APU will supposedly feature eight cores, sixteen threads, and sport 2.9 GHz/4.3 GHz base/boost clocks. 3DMark Physics scores indicate that it's set to become one of the fastest laptop CPUs on the market.

Klipsch has taken the wraps off its first pair of wireless over-ear noise-cancelling headphones. The segment is a popular one that is currently dominated by Sony with its WH-1000XM3 and Bose with its Quiet Comfort 35 II model.

Apple has entered into a new licensing agreement with Imagination Technologies to use a wider range of the company’s extensive mobile GPU and AI patent portfolios. The two companies had previously been close partners before Apple ended the GPU supply partnership to start developing mobile GPUs for its iPhones and iPads in house in 2017.

The Core i7 and GeForce Super mini PC offers 270 degrees of ventilation in a chassis size of just 5.85 L. The new white color is similar to the white color used for the Razer Studio laptops and MSI Prestige laptops.

It may be $100 to $200 cheaper than the Surface Go, but the Microsoft tablet will likely last you a lot longer. Knock-offs or clones look great from a distance before you begin noticing the cut corners and lack of detail.

In- or under-display fingerprint sensors are becoming more and more common among mobile devices. However, they are also mostly confined to AMOLED panels, which means getting this spec is likely to entail spending more on a new phone. Goodix, a company that makes these components, has announced that it is ready to mass-produce sensors that can work in LCD panels.

A new report published by a Chinese media outlet asserts that the flexible-display maker Visionox has agreed to supply its displays to the OEM Huawei. This agreement will apparently take effect from early 2020. Therefore, this brand (not to mention its subsidiary Honor) could start producing devices with next-gen screens very soon.

Realme is now touted to launch a new phone called the 5i in Vietnam in 2020. A Geekbench listing that might correspond to this phone shows that it runs Android 9.0 on 4GB of RAM and the Snapdragon 665 processor. Therefore, this device might be the brand's first budget offering of the year.

Smoke for Steam is a new app for the Apple Watch that lets users access some of the features of Steam on their wrists. Smoke allows users to look at their library, view achievements, check the status of their friends, and read news articles pertaining to titles they own. Otherwise, the app is limited; it doesn't even allow users to manage their game libraries or purchase new titles.

The slightly more potent sibling of the record-breaking Threadripper 3970X has surfaced in the support list of CPU-Z. According to it, this unconfirmed processor sports 48 cores and 96 threads, as well as a TDP of 280 W. If the Threadripper 3990X arrives next month, it would not be surprising to see the 3980X arrive in a month or two.

With the Tab M7, Lenovo shows that “low-priced” does not always mean “cheap”. The build quality of the Tab M7 is very good and the modern design makes all other low-priced tablets look obsolete. Unfortunately, the system performance is not very high, because of the intended purpose of the device.

OPPO has announced that there is now a "Trial Upgrade" of ColorOS 7 for the F11 smartphone series. This OS is based on Android 10, and is the first version to become available for these devices. Their users can apply to join this new beta via their Settings menus.

The latest research on smart-home tech uptake has shown that 29% of all broadband-using households in the US polled owned at least 1 such device. This is a change of 20% compared to 2018. However, concerns about personal data remain a major barrier to this category doing even better.

The Realme X50 is one of the first phones that will launch with the new, 5G-capable Snapdragon 765G processor. A new Geekbench leak may have spilled more of this phone's specs. It seems that it will have 8GB of RAM and probably feature the latest ColorOS Android skin.

Leaked slides detailing upcoming Intel 10th generation Comet Lake-S SKUs seem to indicate new changes to Intel's mainstream desktop lineup. These SKUs are led by the flagship Core i9-10900K, which is a 10C/20T part with a 20 MB cache and can boost up to 5.3 GHz thanks to Thermal Velocity Boost technology and a 125 W TDP. All SKUs feature support for hyperthreading, UHD 730 graphics, and new platform features of the Intel 400-series chipset.

OnePlus recently released a stable OxygenOS 10.3.0 update for the OnePlus 6 and OnePlus 6T. The update fixes a number of bugs and introduces improvements to camera and fingerprint scanner performance.

Are you still hoping for a successor to the Pocophone F1? Well, one may be arriving sooner rather than later, according to one Xiaomi executive. 2020 may be the year of Poco, after all.

A data leak from an independently verified source indicates that the PS5 and Xbox Series X may boast GPU performance at or beyond RX 5700 XT levels. If confirmed, the next-gen consoles may deliver a true generational leap.