Latest Tech News

The jump from 8-layer to 12-layer 3D TSV DRAM designs will enable AIB integrators to include as much as 96 GB of HBM2 DRAM on a single board, increasing the memory bus to 4,096-bit. The resulting increase in memory bandwidth will prove beneficial to AI, HPC and FPGA applications.

Lenovo updates its affordable ThinkPad E series with Intel Comet Lake. The new models ThinkPad E14 and ThinkPad E15 are more than simple CPU updates though, as Lenovo has redesigned them compared with their predecessors ThinkPad E490 and ThinkPad E590 as well.

Sony has officially confirmed its next-gen console — it will be called the PlayStation 5 and is slated to launch in holiday 2020. Sony also opened up on a few aspects of the console including support for hardware-level ray tracing, a new UI, and the DualShock 5 controller.

After being quiet for the best part of twelve to eighteen months, Andy Rubin’s Essential has surfaced with what appears to be a radical reinterpretation of a smartphone. The new mobile device looks to be focused on communication with visual content taking something of a backseat.

Realme has launched its new X2 device for the Chinese market today. As rumored, it has an updated processor compared to that contained in its pre-existing variant, the XT. This new version is also the one coming to Europe later this month.

TCL's 2019 8-series of TVs are based on QLED technology and integrate the Roku streaming platform. They are 4K HDR panels that support Dolby Vision and 100% of the DCI-P3 color space. The new TCL 8-series will become available through Best Buy in the US.

New research has shown that the market for semiconductors is estimated to grow to US$573 billion in 5 years. This may be driven by a demand for these materials in wireless communications, vehicles and online connectivity. However, the common-or-garden integrated circuit will continue to influence the market into the next decade.

New research has found that nearly 50% of all US households with broadband subscribe to 2 or more subscription-based services in 2019, whereas this figure was 33% in 2017 and only 20% in 2014. The apparent demand has driven the number of individual services to match in the country. It has grown by 1.4 times since 2014.

Rob Wyatt, the lead architect behind the Atari VCS console, officially resigned from the project on Friday, October 4th. Citing non-payment from Atari for six months, Wyatt's company Tin Giant, which was contracted to help design the console, has left the project. Additionally, sources familiar with the Atari VCS have claimed the console is little more than a generic Linux PC, which does not jive with Atari's marketing.

Announced earlier last month at IFA 2019, Razer will now be taking orders for its latest Blade Stealth refresh and it's going to cost you quite a bit. The Base Ice Lake SKU starts at $1500 USD while the GTX 1650 Max-Q version will be $1800 to $2000 if configured with a 4K UHD touchscreen.

The HP ZBook 15u G6 continues to offer the usual quality in terms of exteriors. However, some weaknesses that ought not to occur persist on the inside. Let's just hope the new AMD GPU can save the day.

DOOM Eternal has been delayed until March 20, 2020 in order to bring the game up to id Software's "standards of speed and polish." As an apology, id Software is including the upcoming DOOM 64 re-release as a pre-order bonus for DOOM Eternal at no extra cost. DOOM Eternal will also get a free DLC package shortly after launch that will let players enter another Doom Slayer's game as a playable demon.

Fedora 31, due for release on October 29th, will no longer be available as a 32-bit install. Rather, Fedora 30 is officially the last version of Fedora to support 32-bit hardware. Users on legacy hardware can expect full lifecycle support for Fedora 30 until May or June of 2020, at which time they will need to upgrade their hardware for continued official support.

Eve, the company behind the crowdfunded V tablet, has finalized the panel that will go into its crowd-developed gaming monitor, the Eve Spectrum. The Spectrum will use the same panel found in the LG UltraGear 27GL850-B IPS display, which is a 1 ms 144 Hz IPS panel. Eve will announce the final design of the Spectrum on October 18th.

Samsung might be done tinkering with the ARM core designs, as the Mongoose proprietary cores appear to be missing on the upcoming Exynos 9830. The Korean giant is rumored to drop its two homegrown high-performance cores for a couple of ARM Cortex-A77 cores in order to better match the Qualcomm competitors.

Intel has issued a new Product Change Notification (PCN) document that lists the Kaby Lake-G family as End of Life (EOL) citing market demand for other Intel products. The EOL date is effective from today and OEMs will not be able to order Kaby Lake-G products after January 31, 2020.

Intel’s NUC barebone kit computers have been popular with tech enthusiasts since they launched back in 2013. Ever since then it’s been a wait and see game to see whether AMD would launch a competitor, but it now looks like that wait is over.

Hewlett Packard's mobile workstation features good input devices and a great display. This is joined by a docking port, good battery life and a Thunderbolt 3 port. There are problems with performance.

AMD recently unveiled a roadmap for its EPYC line of server-grade CPUs. The Zen 3 ("Milan") and Zen 4 ("Genoa") EPYC CPUs look like they will continue to pressure Intel's enterprise business. While Milan looks more like a refinement of the current Rome EPYC CPUs, Genoa may bring support for DDR5 RAM and PCIe 5.0.

The high launch price of $1650 for the Core i7 XPS 13 7390 2-in-1 is now just ~$1200 after taxes, discounts, and gift cards. The Dell convertible is notable for being the first to ship with Intel's new Ice Lake Core i7-1065G7 CPU and also one of the few convertibles with a 16:10 display.

The ASUS ROG G703GXR bucks the slim bezel trend and delivers a no-compromises gaming platform with plenty of ports and decent performance. We have put the 17.3-inch gaming laptop through its paces, which you can find in our accompanying review.

The Acer ConceptD 7 and 9 models have won at this year's Good Design awards. Unsurprisingly, this is due to their innovative, creator-focused form factors. Acer have also won 2 more of these honors for the Swift 7 and TravelMate P6 laptops.

Turtle Beach has released the Atlas Edge, a new USB adapter for any conventional wired headset. It is intended to enhance any headset connected to it with an in-house panel of software called Control Studio. This suite is designed to convert audio through the Atlas Edge into a "full panoramic 3D audio experience".

The latest Insider's version of Windows 10 updates the Your Phone app so that it is compatible with the Samsung Galaxy S10 series, as well as the Galaxy Fold. This allows a user to monitor battery levels, screen-mirror and sync data. However, Microsoft has stated that these new features will be available to certain regions only to start off with.

With the ThinkPad L580, Lenovo offers an affordable office notebook that is mainly able to convince with its keyboard. While you look for any more highlights in vain, the 15.6-inch notebook does not commit any real blunders either.

Amazon updated the Fire HD 10 with a faster processor and a new USB Type-C charging port that supports fast charging. There are a few additional upgrades as well. Thankfully, the price tag remains constant at US $149 for the standard model and $199 for the Kids Edition, which includes a bumper case, a two-year replacement program, and a year of Amazon's FreeTime service.

AMD announced two new GPUs today. The Radeon RX 5500 and its mobile equivalent, the Radeon RX 5500M, will make their debuts in various machines before the end of the year. The RX 5500M, in particular, will appear in the MSI Alpha 15, which we should get in our lab later this month. The RX 5500M should offer performance somewhere between the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q and the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, which would make it suitable for gaming at FHD/High settings.

In a recent article, we pointed out that we have yet to see a laptop with the Intel Core i9-9980HK outperform the MSI GE75 GS9, which runs the cheaper (and theoretically less powerful) Intel Core i9-9980H. A forum user by the name of littlezipp has posted evidence that the 9980HK in his Alienware m15 R2 thoroughly beats the 9980H in a 30-loop test of Cinebench R15. However, littlezipp nabbed this performance by way of a good undervolt and repasting his CPU with liquid metal.

AMD and Microsoft have since confirmed that the Ryzen Surface Edition processors are custom versions of the Ryzen 5 3500U and Ryzen 7 3700U, and now examples of the former have appeared on UserBenchmark. While the Ryzen 5 3580U fares well compared with the Core i5-8265U, it appears to fall short of the Core i5-1035G7 in multi-core workloads.

The One Mix 3 Pro is One-netbook's latest ultra-mobile PC (UMPC), and the first that we have seen with an Intel Comet Lake-Y series processor. The 8.4-inch device also has 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB SSD and weighs just 0.66 kg. The One Mix 3 Pro is available to pre-order now from Chinese retailer JD.com for 6,999 CNY (~US$979). One-netbook may bring the UMPC to other markets too.

Scheduled to arrive globally this week, the PlayStation 4 system update labeled 7.0 is expected to bring Remote Play to smartphones and tablets running Android 5.0 Lollipop or later, 16-player parties, chat transcription, enhanced audio, an improved backend that should take care of most connectivity issues, system-level HDR tuning, and more.

Intel has hinted that the first of its eagerly anticipated Xe discrete GPUs will launch in June 2020. The launch date has been discerned from a cryptic tweet posted by the head of the project and former AMD GPU chief Raja Koduri.

With Dell recently releasing a BIOS revision to improve the thermal stability of the XPS 15 9570, pictures of a decimated XPS 15 doing the rounds online may be concern those who are either considering the series for their next laptop or already own an XPS 15. The cause of the damage can affect any laptop though, and does not appear to be XPS 15 specific.

Sony has unveiled another device, the Xperia 8. The Xperia 8 is a mid-range phone that raises more questions over the logic in Sony's naming scheme while simultaneously managing to offer an overwhelmingly disappointing package at a ridiculous price point.

Libra Association, the 28-member nonprofit organization that was formed back in June 2019 to oversee the creation of Facebook's cryptocurrency and its consumer rollout, has just lost one of its supporters. Sadly, the brand that has decided to pull out of the project is one of the most popular providers of online money transfer solutions — PayPal.

Nvidia’s successor to the Turing architecture powering its current line of Turing based RTX 20 series GPUs isn’t far away. According to the latest rumors, the graphics powerhouse will be releasing its new chips based on Samsung’s 7nm EUV process in the first half of 2020.

We are currently reviewing Lenovo's new mobile workstations including the ThinkPad P53 with the extremely powerful Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 as well as the two slimmer models ThinkPad P53s & P43s.

Computational photography - or imaging that depends at least as much on software as on hardware - was worth US$7.9 billion as a market in 2018. However, the latest analysis indicates that this valuation will grow to $29 billion over the next 5 years. This market is led by companies such as Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Alphabet and Apple.

Apple has initiated a recall for certain iPhones of the 6S series, saying that it has found that the relevant units may become unable to start under certain circumstances. The Cupertino-based OEM will not disclose which aspects of the phones causes these potential failures, but has announced that it will rectify it if those who own these device send them for servicing.

The Mi Band is a popular fitness wearable series worldwide, albeit with one potential drawback: many units sold outside China come without NFC. Its maker, Xiaomi, will reportedly address this deficiency in its next generation. This device is also now said to be more durable and sophisticated that its predecessor.

Sony has launched its latest alpha-series flagship, the a9II. This new 24.2MP premium unit is distinctly pitched at professional photographers in sports reporting and other fast-moving fields. It is designed for continous shooting while still delivering top-flight auto-focus and auto-exposure.

The Google Pixel 4 phones are just about a week away from their official launch event. A new leak has revealed some previously unknown details about the phones and a particular specification of the smaller Pixel 4 may just leave fans seething.

The MSI GL75 offers everything one would expect from a mid-range gaming laptop in 2019. Its high-refresh-rate display and excellent gaming performance are, unfortunately, marred by some annoying flaws. Loud fan noise spoils an otherwise adequate package.

Dell is currently offering two Inspiron laptops for less than US$200. Shoppers can pick up an AMD-powered Inspiron 11 3000 for US$179.99 or plump for the larger Intel-based Inspiron 14 3000 for just US$199.99. There’s also a terrific deal to be had on the Inspiron 11 3000 2-in-1 laptop, which has seen its price reduced by 37%.

The blog ChargerLab claims to have found that some wireless chargers are being restricted to 5 watts (W) of power while iPhones are placed on them with the new iOS update, whereas the same devices could deliver 7.5W under the older software version. However, this apparently does not affect those brands that are sold in the Cupertino giant's stores.

Original camera samples from the Pixel 4 have leaked out, once again proving that the Pixel phones are the ones to beat when it comes to mobile photography. The samples show photos from a variety of camera modes the most interesting of which is the Astrophotography mode that lets users take stunning pictures of space.

Some launch prices for the Google Pixel 4 and 4XL flagship smartphones have been posted on Twitter by well-known tech insider Evan Blass. The prices are for the Canadian market, which show that the entry-level Google Pixel 4 with 64 GB storage will cost CAD$1,049.95 (~US$788), while the 128 GB storage variant of the Google Pixel 4 XL will allegedly cost CAD$1,359.95 (~US$1,022).

There have been multiple reports of Pokemon GO handing out strikes preventing play to those who own certain Redmi devices. This pattern has been linked to MIUI 10.3.2.0, a recent firmware update for the phones affected. Niantic, the AR game's developer, has announced that it is now working on trying to revise them.

Realme has announced that its upcoming flagship, the X2 Pro, will have dual stereo speakers. Furthermore, they will be equipped with Dolby Atmos and "hi-res" audio. The brand has not given a launch date for this phone, but is now clearly aiming it at the European market.

Google has announced that Red Dead Redemption 2 will come to its Stadia platform on it November 2019 launch. The wildly popular Rockstar game will thus be available for streaming via the new service from its very first day. At present, it is not clear if this title will allow saving across platforms.