Latest Tech News

We are currently reviewing the brand-new Dell XPS 15 7590 and the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 2019, which is almost identical to the multimedia laptop ThinkPad X1 Extreme. We want to share our initial impressions and measurements of the screens. Very good: Both 1080p screens are very bright and show accurate colors.

This year's fifth edition of the Untold festival came with a 5G VR live streaming test conducted by Samsung and Orange Romania. This test has managed to bring 5G connectivity at the disposal of many consumers eager to take the new technology for a spin. Just as expected, the speeds reached exceeded 1 Gbps.

Huawei will announce EMUI 10, its custom version of Android Q, on August 9 at its 2019 Developer Conference in Dongguan City, China. However, several promotional images have appeared on Weibo, the Chinese social media giant, which hint at a holistic GUI redesign and some new features.

Huawei’s much ballyhooed in-house operating system HongMeng OS (aka Oak OS) could be revealed this week according to a Chinese report. Although there has been confusion about its capabilities, the same report also suggests we can expect a Huawei smartphone to run the operating system to hit the market before the year’s end.

Although Samsung's flagships usually achieve excellent results when visiting DxOMark and taking other mobile photography tests, Huawei's sensors are larger. However, this proves once again that the Chinese tech giant still has to improve its camera software to properly take advantage of its better sensors.

Intel's upcoming Xe GPUs will feature support for multi-GPU setups, according to a recent Linux kernel driver update. Xe will be able to form hybrid GPU pairs with integrated and discrete Xe SKUs. There is a possibility of multi-GPU support scaling up to additional Xe discrete GPUs as well.

Gaming smartphones are about to get a lot more serious in a couple of years. Samsung has confirmed that its first AMD-powered SoCs are tentatively planned for a 2021 reveal. A potential Galaxy smartphone with Radeon graphics could give it a huge performance edge against competitors.

A new patent, allegedly found on the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) Design Database, has led to speculation that Xiaomi is working on a phone with an array of solar-conversion cells on its rear panel. However, its apparent design suggests other uses for this component.

The LG V10 and G5 were released well over three years ago, so it's something of a surprise to see them listed on LG's service bulletin as being eligible for updates. It's even more surprising when one remembers that this is LG, a company notorious for awful software support.

Huawei will launch the Mate 30 phones in the coming months and a new leak touts the Mate 30 Pro to continue the trend of pushing the envelope with progressively impressive camera hardware. Apparently, the Mate 30 Pro will feature two massive 40 MP sensors alongside a 5X optical zoom telephoto lens.

Samsung has confirmed that it will release a new SoC on August 7, alongside the Galaxy Note 10 phones. That SoC is expected to be the Exynos 9825 and will power the upcoming flagships. New information also claims that the regular Note 10 could be cheaper than the S10+.

Renders of Samsung’s next Windows on Snapdragon device have surfaced thanks to Slashleaks. As we surmised when it first made an appearance in GeekBench, it is an ultrabook and it looks very thin and appealing particularly if you’re a fan of Lenovo’s similar Yoga C630.

Xiaomi has been showing off the Mi Gaming Laptop 2019 at ChinaJoy 2019, with Xiaomi insider xiaomishka publishing some photos of the device ahead of its unveiling tomorrow. Early pricing has appeared online too, with the series expected to start at 7,499 CNY (~US$1,086).

The Viper is the latest mouse from Razer. It is a lightweight peripheral which, as the OEM asserts, is optimized for competitive gaming. It also integrates the 5G Advanced Optical Sensor and Razer Synapse 3.

HTC initialized a roll-out of Android Pie for a 2017 phone, the U11, in May 2019. However, not all users were served with this update before it was suspended due to technical issues. It seems the OEM has rectified them, as U11 owners in Europe have reported the successful installation of this update.

OPPO has allegedly registered a new phone design with the World Intellectual Property Office. As with the Find X, this device hides its front-facing sensors behind an edge-to-edge screen. Unlike the existing flagship, however, this part of the phone involves a discrete part of the rear panel that slides upwards.

The 5G tech market is now thought to be capable of hitting US$667.9 billion by the middle of the next decade. This is particularly impressive as it is also projected to accrue only $5.54 billion by 2020. This growth may be driven by a demand for streaming and for improved connectivity among industrial buyers.

Samsung is internally working on an Exynos 9610 successor called the Exynos 9630 to power its next generation mid-range Galaxy A51 and A71 smartphones. The Exynos 9630 is expected to be fabbed on the 8nm process and could bring in improvements to power consumption and performance over the current generation.

Huawei's flagship phones have tended to go by names along the lines of Px0 in the past. However, the OEM's latest European trademarking applications appear to indicate that this may change in the future. For a start, these alleged filings suggest that the P30's successor will not be called the P40.

Comparative benchmarks between AMD Ryzen 9 3900X systems running Windows 10 1903 and Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS show that Microsoft's work in optimizing the OS for MCM CPUs such as Ryzen has paid off. Although Linux does have an overall lead, the scheduler improvements in the latest Windows version have managed to narrow the performance gap significantly.

OPPO's sub-brand, Realme, will debut a new device on August 8. The phone will feature a quad-camera setup with the main shooter being a 64 MP sensor, the first of its kind on a smartphone. We expect the sensor in question to be the Samsung ISOCELL Bright GW1.

HMD Global shipped 4.8 million smartphones in the second quarter of 2019, 800,000 more than it managed over the same period last year. That will likely be considered a big success by the company at a time when public perception of the brand isn't at its finest.

While full-power GeForce RTX 2080 laptops don't come cheap, this limited-time deal on Asus' most powerful gaming laptop makes it one of the least expensive in its category. The $2400 price point is several hundred dollars cheaper than competing systems from the MSI GE75 series or the Acer Predator series.

Dell has once again missed its release date for the new XPS 13 2-in-1, having already delayed it by almost a month. The company only came clean after people online were left wondering why the upcoming convertible had not launched on August 2. Now multiple sources are suggesting an additional delay of at least a few weeks, with the device potentially not shipping in some key markets before the end of the month.

UPDATE 8/2: Intel has responded with a clarification of Raja Koduri's statement. See below. In a recent interview with a Russian YouTube tech channel, Raja Koduri (chief architect at Intel) stated that Intel's upcoming Xe GPU will start at a competitive $200 and that at least some models will use HBM. While it's unlikely that the $200 entry-level Xe GPUs will have HBM (due to the high cost of HBM), the GPUs are looking more competitive than ever.

Several listings for an announced new variant of the HP OMEN 15 have appeared on Chinese retailer Jingdong (JD.com). As its name suggests, the OMEN 15 Air will be a lighter and more compact version of the current OMEN 15 with a lighter and more subdued look to boot. Prices range from 9,499 CNY (~US$1,369) for the GTX 1660 Ti model to 16,999 CNY (~US$2,450) for the RTX 2080 Max-Q variant. All SKUs are equipped with an Intel Core i7-9750H too.

Dell's recent BIOS update for the XPS 15 7590 fixes the GPU throttling issue that was reported earlier. As observed by a Redditor, the new update apparently does not allow the GTX 1650 to cross the 71 °C while also offering some headroom for overclocking with a minimal undervolt.

OPPO and Qualcomm have collaborated in order to unveil 2 new gaming-centric features at the China Digital Entertainment Expo and Conference. They are Game Color Plus and Dual Wi-Fi. The former uses the Snapdragon's platform's latest technology to enhance aspects of content quality in gaming. The latter allows a phone to use 2 sources of Wi-Fi at once.

Samsung has generally offered its flagships in two flavors: Snapdragon in North America, Latin America, and China, and Exynos for the rest of the world. The Note 10 could see a paradigm shift, as word on the grapevine claims all Note 10 models, bar the Verizon ones, will be powered by an Exynos SoC, likely the Exynos 9825.

Google has announced that app developers will start seeing their ads in YouTube searches, as well as during video-streaming itself. In addition, developers can also now distribute their ads to Discover. This is the latest version of the Google Feed, and is still found on multitudes of homescreens.

The Indian smartphone market as a whole saw some growth in Q2 2019 but it's the premium segment of the market that really offered a surprise, with sales of devices in that segment rising by 33% year-on-year. That growth was likely due to the immense success of the OnePlus 7 phones, and deals on the Galaxy S10 and iPhone XR.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10s are not likely to be far from launch now. A new report indicates that both Notes will be sold in India via Flipkart. They are rumored to be offered in a total of 4 new colors, and with internal storage SKUs of either 256GB, 512GB or 1TB.

Apple has suspended a controversial Siri grading program that allowed contractors to listen to recordings of customers using the voice recognition software. The purportedly privacy focused company was caught out by a whistleblower who revealed details of the program that raised serious user privacy concerns.

Lenovo has teased a trio of new Chromebooks with 8th gen Intel silicon on board. The new models come in an 11.6-inch convertible, a 14-inch 180-degree and a 15.6-inch convertible with the latter focused on business productivity

Internal Asus documents point to at least two AMD X590 boards in development. This was confirmed by an Asus source to Videocardz. Not much is known about the X590 chipset at the moment apart from the fact that AMD could be aligning its launch to that of the 16C/32T Ryzen 9 3950X in September. Also on the anvil is an AMD X599 Zenith II Extreme for the upcoming Threadripper 3000 series.

Sony has invented a product called the Reon Pocket. It is a device that can change a user's personal temperature (or their perception of it, at least) while worn on the body. This unusual product is currently a part of the OEM's crowdfunded First Flight project, by which its chances of manufacture is determined by its ability to attract backers.

Although reverse wireless charging has been around for a while, Xiaomi still has to introduce this feature. The good news is that — at least according to the information discovered in the latest beta MIUI build — the Chinese OEM is working on it and the feature might arrive sooner than expected.

Drone racing is a rapidly emerging trend in applications for civilian aerial robots. DJI has announced plans to improve its support for this new sport with the first-person-view (FPV) goggles and controller set. It allows a given competitor to see and direct a race from their drone's point of view.

An Android blog has posted new leaked images of a phone with the hallmarks of Samsung's Galaxy Active design and the AT&T logo. Accordingly, it seems that this carrier may start selling this new putative toughphone soon. However, given its retrograde appearance, it is hard to see how the company will manage this.

If the latest renders that surfaced online turn out to be the real thing, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 will be available in silver, black, and rose gold. This smart wearable will be Samsung's first one to feature Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity and is expected to arrive next week.

Intel has detailed a total of 11 new CPUs in the 10th gen 10nm Ice Lake family across the U and Y series. While the U-series is aimed at performance ultrabooks with 15W, 25W, and 28W TDP configurations, the Y-series focuses on battery life with 9W and 12W variants. Most U and Y-series sport the Gen11 Intel Iris Plus Graphics and come with Thunderbolt 3 integrated in the SoC and Wi-Fi 6 integrated in the PCH along with optimizations for AI and local voice applications.

AMD has reasons to worry. Intel Ice Lake represents the biggest leap in performance for the Core U series since Kaby Lake-R in 2017. Our preliminary numbers reveal significant GPU gains over the old UHD Graphics 620 while maintaining a 15 W envelope. Meanwhile, the higher-end 25 W Core i7-1065G7 will be even faster than the Zen+ Ryzen 7 3700U on all tested accounts.

Although most Apple MacBook Pro-related rumors we keep hearing these days involve a 16-inch model, the model A2159 that was recently spotted on the website of the FCC seems to be an update 13-inch model. Since Apple still has to update the 13-inch MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar, this is what the aforementioned model could be.

A Tiger Lake Y series processor has appeared on UserBenchmark with some incredible benchmark results. The Ice Lake successor is 25% faster than the Ryzen 7 3750H in single and multi-core tasks while being 11% faster than the Core i7-8750H too. Core i9-8950HK level single-core performance from a 5 W chip? Colour us impressed, if not slightly sceptical.

A leaked image on Reddit has revealed Huawei's supposed update roadmap for Android Q. Last-gen phones like the P20 Pro and Mate 10 Pro are billed to get the update, but devices in the Nova 4 and Nova 5 range are suspiciously missing.

The baby of the upcoming Comet Lake U series and its new iGPU have appeared on GFXBench, leaving the Core i5-8265U and Ryzen 7 2700U in its wake. The Core i3-10110U even edges the NVIDIA GeForce MX250 in some benchmarks, which is mighty impressive from a 15 W integrated GPU.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10 will be launched on August 7, and the company has now opened reservations for purchase of the flagship in the US. The terms of the trade-in program have also been released, with potential buyers being able to trade in their flagship phones and get up to US$600 off the price of the Galaxy Note 10 phones.

The Honor 20 went on sale in the UK last month, and it's finally set to be joined by its more impressive and expensive sibling, the Honor 20 Pro. The Honor 20 Pro will go on sale in the UK today with a £549 price tag that sees it compete against the OnePlus 7 while being a better device by most metrics.

Samsung has officially launched the Galaxy Tab S6, its latest attempt to stay in the tablet game by offering features that aim to deliver what the iPad Pro doesn’t. In doing so, it also includes some new features that will also help make it a potential alternative to Microsoft’s successful Surface Pro range.

Unless if you plan on exploiting DLSS or the ray-tracing capabilities of the GeForce RTX 2060, then there's little reason to own an RTX 2060 laptop over a GTX 1660 Ti laptop especially from a performance-per-dollar perspective. The gain in raw graphics potential is minor at under 10 percent compared to the larger price markup.