Latest Tech News

Google Nest - the new name for this company's smart-home arm - has partnered with the Reeve Foundation to help members of the community built around this organization. They are individuals affected by paralysis or movement loss disorders. As many as 100,000 of them will receive a free Home Mini as a result of this collaboration.

The 7 is an updated version of the 6T that launched alongside the OnePlus 7 Pro flagship smartphone. It was originally sold in SKUs with either 6 or 8GB of RAM. Now, it is also available with 12GB - but this model is for the Chinese market only.

AMD's VP of Radeon Scott Herkelman recently revealed in an interview that the company keenly observed NVIDIA's launch of the RTX 20 Super series and revised the pricing of the new RX 5700 series GPUs to undercut NVIDIA's RTX 2060 and 2070 Super GPUs. The initial pricing of the RX 5700 series was deliberately kept higher to trick NVIDIA into reducing its launch prices.

The Nintendo Switch has been extremely receptive to mods so far and the good folks over at XDA-Developers have taken things up a notch with a new release that allows Switch users to flash an Android 8.1 ROM on their consoles.

Over six months after the Nokia 9 PureView was launched to mixed reactions, HMD Global will bring a refreshed flagship with upgraded internals. The Nokia 9.1 PureView will feature 5G support and sport improved cameras while trying to fix the issues the original Nokia 9 had.

Honor now plans to release its first smart TV in the near future. This product is to be called the Vision, and will be powered by a newly-announced SoC, the Honghu 818. It will also incorporate a pop-up camera for user authentication.

The latest Counterpoint Research report has found that OnePlus was able to knock Samsung off the top in the premium sector of the Indian smartphone market in 2019's 2nd quarter (2Q2019). However, Xiaomi still leads this market as a whole. Nevertheless, Realme, Nokia and Asus have found space to exhibit rapid growth in this quarter.

An upcoming Samsung smartwatch with the model number SM-R830 has been approved by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This registration shows that the watch has a 40mm variant, and will come in stainless steel or aluminium casings. It also confirms that this device will not have the adjustable crown seen in earlier watches of this series.

T-Mobile and Sprint have been granted the license to amalgamate into 1 company. This move by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) is effectively the final hurdle to the carriers' long-planned merger. They do so under the condition that both parties divest themselves of certain aspects of their respective businesss to a 3rd company, Dish.

Huawei has released the new Nova 5i Pro and it bears a striking resemblance to two of the company's current flaships: the Honor View 20 and the Mate 20 Pro. Design aside, the Nova 5i Pro packs some impressive hardware and isn't excessively priced either. It also manages to give us our first look—of sorts—at the Mate 30 phones.

According to Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, the company saw over 100% year-on-year growth in sales of its Pixel phones. That success is almost definitely due to the launch of the mid-range Pixel 3a phones in May.

Apple has been caught in a fresh privacy scandal as first reported by The Guardian. According to an Apple contractor, Apple just like Google and Amazon have been busted doing, uses contractors to analyze and assess the accuracy of its Siri voice assistant by listening into people who are unaware this is happening.

An Intel graphics driver has leaked online that provides information about the company's upcoming integrated and discrete GPUs. The next generation Gen12 GPU will be fabbed on a 10nm process and will be seen in CPUs such as Tiger Lake and Xe discrete graphics. Also on the anvil are new CPU families including Rocket Lake, Jasper Lake, and an unknown CPU named ATS.

The TicPods Free are some of the most prominent AirPod alternatives out there. They are made by Mobvoi, also known for the Ticwatch Pro. This OEM is selling their wireless earbuds at US$99.99, or $30 less than their recommended price.

These Asus TUF laptops just keep getting cheaper. The similar TUF FX705 and FX505 with Ryzen 7 and faster GTX 1650 graphics are also on sale for $600 to $700 USD likely for a limited time. These are Asus' latest budget models unveiled at CES 2019.

Vivo is set to release a phone that will not only support 5G, but will also feature the latest flagship processor from Qualcomm. A promotional image supposedly associated with this phone (the iQOO Pro 5G) has leaked via Weibo. It alleges that it will have 8GB of RAM and 128GB in fixed storage, and will cost 4498 yuan (US$654) - however, ROG may have an answer to this already.

The PineBook Pro has been a long time coming, with PINE64 first announcing the device in January. The 14-inch Linux laptop comes with a Rockchip RK3399 SoC, 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 64 GB of eMMC 5.0 flash storage and weighs just 1.26 kg thanks to its magnesium alloy design. The PineBook Pro is available to order directly from PINE64 now for US$199.99 and ships globally.

Xiaomi is now rumored to have updates for its Mi Gaming notebook line in the works. The 2019 versions of these laptops may be powered by either the RTX 2060 or GTX 1660 Ti. This is not much of a stretch, as last year's models were powered by their effective predecessors.

The benchmarking authority AnTuTu has released its first set of results for the upcoming Xiaomi Black Shark 2 Pro. They indicate that the phone has made what may be significant gains over its early-2019 variant. This is due to the graphics performance conferred by the 2 Pro's new SoC: the Snapdragon 855 Plus.

Since many major software suites are slowly moving to an online-only approach, it is not a big surprise that Microsoft has decided to rename its Office Online suite by removing the "Online" part. However, the branding change does not apply to the following server products: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Project Online, and Office Online Server.

Released back in August 2016, Worms W.M.D is closely related to Worms Armageddon in terms of gameplay, adding new features such as tanks and buildings that can be used for protection. Available for multiple platforms, Worms W.M.D is available for free on Steam until Sunday, but those interested can buy it for 66 percent off until the end of the month.

A clever developer has created a hack to allow the MacBook Pro's Touch Bar to act as a touch-enabled "Task Bar" when running under Windows 10 via Bootcamp.

Motorola announced the release of its latest device, the Moto E6, today. The E6 is positioned under the Moto G7 Play at the bottom of Motorola's pecking order. There's one big issue with the E6, though: it costs US$150, and at that price point, it'd be laughed at anywhere outside North America.

Huawei sent out its new EMUI 9.1 update to current-gen flagships like the P30 and Mate 20 phones a while ago. Older Huawei and Honor phones got the beta a few weeks ago and are now receiving the stable version of the software.

Some XDA contributors have posted on new mods that increase the display refresh rate of the Redmi K20 (or Xiaomi Mi 9T) and K20 Pro to 75 hertz (Hz). This mirrors earlier unofficial development work on the Mi 9. By all accounts, these mods work well, but may be detrimental to battery life.

Honor released its current flagship, the 20 Pro, in a May 2019 event. However, it has not been available to buy outside of China since. This will change soon, as the company has announced that it will release this phone to other markets, starting with Russia.

With up to 60 auto-focus (AF) or auto-exposure (AE) calculations per second and 20fps shooting, Sony claims to have packed flagship speeds into its latest compact camera. The RX100 VII has a 20.1MP Exmor RS sensor and the latest generation BIONZ X image processor. It also has native 4K recording and real-time Eye AF capabilities.

As with last year, Xiaomi is projected to update its gaming phone with a mid-year upgraded variant. It is likely to be called the Black Shark 2 Pro in 2019. It already has a reservations page on the retailer JD.com, which has let a heretofore-unknown detail slip: the phone's display will come with "DC dimming 2.0".

The renowned leaker Ishan Agarwal claims to have heard that Nokia will release its first phone with a pop-up selfie camera soon, and that it will be the 8.2. The sensor to be housed in this module may be a 32MP shooter. The 8.2 is now also said to come in an 8GB RAM/256 storage variant, and to run Android Q out of the box.

Some new trademarking applications associated with the OEM Samsung have reportedly been filed with UK and EU authorities. They are for "Smart ISO" and "AI ISO", and apply to Class 9 equipment. This suggests a new dimension of control over light sensitivity in upcoming smartphone cameras.

Think of the Creoqode LYRA as a more affordable version of a Smach Z, GPD Win or GPD Win 2. The 5-inch handheld packs a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 Lite that integrates a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU and 1 GB of LPDDR2 SDRAM, giving it the power to emulate practically any retro games console. The Creoqode LYRA costs £149 (~US$186) and has already reached its funding goal on Kickstarter, with Creoqode aiming to ship to backers in December.

During the Honor 9X and 9X Pro launch event Honor also unveiled the MagicBook Pro, a 16.1-inch touchscreen and GeForce MX250 powered laptop. The device comes with up to a Core i7-8565U processor, 16 GB of RAM, a 1 TB SSD and will be available to order in China on July 29 from 5,499 CNY (~US$800).

Netflix has announced a new price-tier for its subscription plans in the Indian market. It goes for just INR 199 (about US$2.88) per month. For this, the user can only use the app on 1 device, which could be either a smartphone or a tablet.

A 10-core 20-thread Intel Cascade Lake-X CPU belonging to the Glacier Falls platform has surfaced on UserBench. Not much information is gained from the listing itself, but we do see the CPU being listed with low base and boost clocks.

After keeping us waiting for 69 days after it was originally due to launch, Samsung has finally revealed that the Galaxy Fold will go on sale in September. The device will still retail for the originally advertised price of US$1,980 but will come with several fixes to ensure it is more robust this time around.

The Vivo Y90 has nothing out of the ordinary since it is a handset tailored for budget-conscious consumers. This MediaTek Helio A22-driven smartphone features only 2 GB of memory, 16 GB of internal storage, and no dual camera or Android Pie. However, it also has a price tag equivalent with around US$101.

An overclocked AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT can give good competition to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 in synthetic benchmarks as was discovered by a Redditor who managed to crank up the 5700 XT all the way to 2.1 GHz. At this frequency, the 5700 XT scored higher than the RTX 2080 FE in Fire Strike Ultra indicating that the RDNA architecture has good potential for overclocking.

The Miami-based custom PC builder just got supplier leverage and an injection of resources with the help of Corsair. Expect to see more Origin PC systems equipped with Corsair components coming soon.

Best Buy has teamed up with AT&T, Sprint and Verizon to offer up to US$500 off an unlocked Galaxy S10e, S10 or S10+. The sale applies to all colours and storage variants, with the Galaxy S10e costing as little as US$349. Alternatively, AT&T and Verizon are offering a second device for free, but only when you buy the first at full price.

Well, well, well. We might have just got our first sight of an AMD Threadripper 3000 series processor, courtesy of a posting on UserBenchmark. The processor, which we expect to see before the end of the year, is compatible with the TR4 socket and existing X399-based motherboards. It leaves the Threadripper 2950X and Ryzen 9 3900X in its wake in multi-core tasks too.

The Moto E series has often been a compelling option for those in the market for a budget smartphones. It seems, however, that its next upcoming generation may fail this promise in 2019 somewhat. The Moto E6 is now listed on an official Google database as a 2GB RAM device without NFC or a fingerprint scanner.

The CHUWI MiniBook is the focus of an extremely successful campaign on Indiegogo. The device in question is a UMPC with an 8-inch screen, a Lenovo Yoga-like hinge and as much as 16GB in RAM. The OEM is celebrating an important milestone in its funding by offering its backers a 45-watt (W) charger.

The result of a recent partnership between DeNA and The Pokemon Company, Pokemon Masters is a new strategy game that throws into 3-on-3 real battles sync pairs that consist of a Trainer and a Pokemon. Those interested can pre-register for this free-to-play mobile game on both the App Store and Google Play.

Samsung is now linked to the release of the Galaxy A10s, a possibly upgraded version of the pre-existing A10. Its latest mention comes courtesy of the Android Enterprise Recommended website, which lists often cost-effective mobile devices for business. The specifications listed here suggest there is little esthetic difference between the 2 lower-end Galaxy As.

Gallery Go was introduced earlier today during a special event held by Google Nigeria. This app is optimized for Android Go devices and focuses on offline capabilities while offering some machine learning-based capabilities already present in Google Photos. Gallery Go has only 10 MB in size and works on devices powered by Android 8.1 Oreo or later.

If you already own a Core i7-8750H laptop or are planning to upgrade from an older model, don't even bother with the 9th gen Core i7 series. The raw performance benefits are as minor as they can get between the two generations based on the 25+ 9th gen Intel laptops we've tested thus far.

A PC hardware simulation of the upcoming Sony PlayStation 5's purported hardware specs offers some insights into the likely performance and power draws that can be expected from the console. The OP undervolted an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and the Radeon RX 5700 XT to simulate the PlayStation 5 specs as much as possible. While the performance can be matched to an extent, the final console has the potential to perform even better at even lower power draws.

Although the upcoming 16-inch MacBook Pro will target professionals who have a generous budget and is rumored to start at US$3,000, we are also hearing that Apple will not move to an OLED panel. The yet-to-be-confirmed portable is expected to feature an LCD panel with a resolution of 3,072 x 1,920 pixels.

Around a month since the introduction of the Nova 5 series, Huawei is ready to unleash the Note 5i Pro. This phone with a 6.26-inch display and a HiSilicon Kirin 810 processor will be unveiled in China on July 26 with a price tag of CN¥2,000 — around US$290. Unfortunately, there is no information about its global release yet.

Having a 5.65-inch 2160 x 1080 resolution display is innately more useful than the unusual aspect ratio and resolution of the Apple Touch Bar. The Asus ScreenPad is the better option if you just want to get more things done.