Latest Tech News

Google has officially announced its Stadia cloud gaming service at the 2019 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Google Stadia will allow users to play games from any computer, smartphone, smart television or tablet that has an Internet connection. The GPUs that have been selected for the service’s hardware are custom Radeon chips from AMD.

An Alienware Area-51m laptop with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU and an Intel Core i7-9700K processor has recorded a very impressive score of 25,039 in 3DMark’s Fire Strike 1.1 test. According to the chart details for the run, this puts this particular system ahead of 98% of all other results. The Graphics score was 30,306.

Can a laptop equipped with the Core i9-9900K CPU and GeForce RTX 2080 GPU match or exceed the performance of a desktop PC with the same core specifications? If you have any other pressing concerns before investing in the pricey purchase, just let us know below.

A new patch for Shadow of the Tomb Raider has been announced that contains software for ray tracing and DLSS support. Users will need to have an Nvidia GeForce RTX 20-series GPU in their system to enjoy the new features. The action-adventure game was released in September 2018 with Nixxes Software developing the Windows port.

Xiaomi only released its first set of completely wireless headphones a few months ago, but it has now followed them up with the even more affordable Redmi AirDots. The headphones will be available in China from April 9 for CNY 99 (~ US$14.75) and look remarkably like the AirDots Youth Edition, which Xiaomi currently sells for CNY 199 (~ US$29.65).

Nvidia's own game streaming service is currently featuring more than 500 game titles, and users will be able to bring more games from platforms like Steam. Backed by new RTX blade servers with scalable RTX 2080 performance and blazing fast connections all across the world via the GeForce Now Alliance, Nvidia is aiming to provide the smoothest gaming experience for more than a billion systems that do not integrate gaming GPUs.

The game streaming infrastructure envisioned by Vectordash puts GPU-based cryptomining rigs to good use in order to bring a smooth gaming experience for computers that do not integrate dedicated gaming GPUs. The service will first be available only on the West Coast, but there are plans to expand support for the East Coast.

In a move that aligns with relevant rumors from days ago, Apple has upgraded its take on the all-in-one (AIO) PC. However, these new desktops are iMacs, not iMac Pros. Nevertheless, they now come with 8th- or 9th-gen Intel processors, graphics that go up to Vega 48s and new prices.

Xiaomi's sub-brand, Redmi, yesterday, launched its latest device, the Redmi 7, in China. The budget phone features a 6.26-inch display, dual rear cameras, a Snapdragon 632, and a massive 4000 mAh battery. Prices start at US$105.

Vivo has announced its newest devices in a Chinese event today (March 19, 2019). They are the X27 and X27 Pro. The X27 has 2 variants with either the Snapdragon (SD) 675 or 710, although they both have the same screen and single pop-up selfie camera. The Pro version has a larger display, and a more novel wider pop-up module with a dedicated flash.

Already available in China, the Xiaomi Mi Pay mobile payments service has been tested in India in the second half of 2018. In the meantime, the Chinese company obtained the approval of the Reserve Bank of India, and Mi Pay is now ready to take on PayU, WhatsApp Pay, and the other similar services.

After a rather long wait, the French and Italian vehicles are finally joining Armored Warfare as the offerings of a new dealer, named Francine De Laroche. The Arabian Nights campaign is now moving on with new events, but the 0.28 update also comes with Battalion Ranked Battles, new achievements, as well as many tweaks and fixes.

The ProBook 445 and 455 are barely three months old and they will soon be updated with faster models come this summer. Much like the upcoming Lenovo IdeaPad C340 series, the newer SKUs will have second generation AMD Zen APUs for potentially cheaper starting prices than the usual Intel U-class options.

HP will be bringing some of its previously exclusive Spectre features to its mid-range Envy lineup this year. The 15.6-inch Envy 15 in particular will get an AMOLED option while all models will have a physical camera kill switch to electronically disable the webcam.

Qualcomm has revealed the new QCS400 series SoCs dedicated for smart audio applications in smart speakers, soundbars, home theatre systems, AV receivers, and IoT hardware. The QCS400 series comes in four SKUs and offers a tri-radio coexistence, AI enhancements, up to 32-channels of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X decoding, low-latency streaming, and next generation voice capabilities. The higher-end SKUs also come with an Adreno 306 GPU for visual output. The QCS400 series aims to be more power-efficient and can be tailored by developers to offer specific experiences to the user.

In the second instalment of this two-part Shot on Galaxy S10+ story, I’ve spent the last couple of days in Melbourne at the Albert Park Street Circuit and in around town. The Galaxy S10+ has proved to be a reliable companion with excellent battery life and the ability to take great shots in a range of conditions.

Apple has just launched the new iPad Air and iPad mini tablets, and it seems one of them may have already been tested on Geekbench. Apparently, the integrated A12 Bionic chip scored an incredibly high multi-core score of 11,607, putting it way beyond the reach of even the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 or the Exynos 9820 variants of Samsung’s Galaxy S10+.

Call of Duty Mobile is now official and should hit Android and iOS handsets later this year. Although there will not be a battle royale mode at launch, Activision has confirmed that this free-to-play title should offer this treat at some point in the future. Obviously, this "unique Call of Duty battle royale experience" will be accompanied by more content.

An MSI GeForce GTX 1650 GAMING X 4G graphics card has been spotted in a listing on the website for the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC). Scant details are offered in regard to the product; however, it does seem to confirm that Nvidia will be adding to its GTX 16-series soon. There is also a rumor that a GeForce GTX 1650 Ti card is in the works.

Although Samsung will reveal at least three Galaxy A models on April 10, some members of this family are already available for purchase here and there. The latest arrival is the ~US$215 Exynos 7884-driven Galaxy A20, a 6.4-inch device with an Infinity-V display, 3 GB of memory, and 32 GB of internal storage.

The team behind the much-delayed Atari VCS has announced an APU replacement for the game console. Previously, a customized A10 chip from AMD’s Bristol Ridge series was going to be installed, but perhaps wisely the developer has now upgraded that choice to a more modern dual-core Ryzen processor. Graphics will be processed by a Radeon Vega GPU rather than the R7 GPU.

Nvidia has launched the Jetson Nano, a small computer that offers machine-learning capabilities at an entry-level price. The developer kit costs US$99 while a production-ready module will cost US$129. The Jetson Nano module offers 472 GFLOPS of computing performance in a 69.6 mm x 45 mm package. Worldwide distribution for the module version will begin in June; the developer kit is available now.

Nvidia has announced that a number of Pascal-based graphics cards will soon be enabled to utilize DirectX ray tracing (DXR). GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB cards and higher will receive a Game Ready Driver update, which is currently expected in April, to allow their users to enjoy limited ray tracing technology in certain games.

LG has stated its US dollar prices for its new OLED TVs. These state-of-the-art panels were previewed at CES 2019, and come with Dolby Vision, ThinQ AI and inbuilt Google Assistant. They start at US$2,499 - and work their way up to US$12,999.

In an embarrassing admission, Myspace has confirmed that it has lost every piece of music that users uploaded between 2003 and 2015, which equates to over 50 million files. The company reports that there is no way to recover the lost data.

Kingston has just announced two new lines of enterprise-grade SATA SSDs. The drives offer similar features of other enterprise-level flash storage solutions, including ECC, onboard power loss protection, and more. Compared to other enterprise solutions, Kingston's drives are competitive and look to be aimed at smaller cloud service providers.

Currently available only with a Full HD display option, the Alienware Area-51m gaming laptop will get UHD as an option in six to eight months, according to Frank Azor. He also said that the arrival of this option "wasn't supposed to take this long" so the machine was not designed for DIY display upgrades.

The Xiaomi Black Shark 2 has been launched today (March 18, 2019) in China. As expected, it is powered by the Snapdragon 855 processor, has a 6GB RAM base model and has a 6.39-inch FHD+ AMOLED display. This panel has some interesting HDR features, touted to enhance gaming and media experiences.

Snapchat is likely to launch its gaming platform for developers and content partners next month. Codenamed "Project Cognac", the platform will allow third-party developers to create games that run within the Snapchat app. With Snapchat's acquisition of game studios Prettygreat and PlayCanvas, first-party titles can also be expected.

Not long after the successful completion of the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign with twice the initial goal of US$100,000, the UMIDIGI S3 Pro is now available globally. The price tag has gone up to US$279.99, but this Helio P70-powered handset with a 48 MP main camera setup remains an attractive handset.

Although Apple has already announced a March 25 event, it seems like the updated tablets will not be there, because the Cupertino-based tech giant has just introduced the new 10.5-inch iPad Air and 7.9-inch iPad Mini. However, there is still no official info regarding the rumored iMac Pro upgrade.

ZTE could be set to push the innovation envelope in the coming months. The company is said to be working on a flagship, the Axon S, which will feature 5G support, a side sliding mechanism, a 95% screen to body ratio, and five cameras in total.

A number of recent Geekbench listings alluded to the existence of two new Pocophone devices: The Poco F1 Lite and Poco F2. We were skeptical in our coverage of both stories and it turns out were right to be, as it was all just a ruse by the enthusiast community to see how the media would handle the false information.

The teaser image that comes with the invite to Samsung's launch event that will take place on April 10 in Bangkok, Milan, and São Paulo suggests that at least three new Galaxy A handsets with different screen shapes will be the stars of the show. However, there are no technical details to talk about at this stage.

Samsung’s latest Galaxy S10 models pack a serious punch and have been getting very positive reviews on the whole. This includes the Galaxy S10+, which picks up dual-front facing cameras to go with its triple-rear facing camera array. But there is one thing missing from Samsung’s camera equation that is letting it down when compared with the iPhone.

Unveiled earlier this year at CES 2019 and still expected to hit the market, the EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti KINGPIN Hybrid graphics card has recently topped the 3DMark Portal Royal benchmark thanks to a massive overclock — 2.7 GHz core and 17 GHz memory — that resulted in a bandwidth of over 750 Gbps.

A leaked press render revealed that the Galaxy A lineup will become the second family of Samsung handsets to include at least one Android Go-driven smartphone. This Exynos 7870-powered phone will probably launch on March 22 in India and other emerging markets, such as South Africa — where the support page for the Galaxy A2 Core is already online.

A listing for the purported Xiaomi Poco F2 has surfaced on Geekbench and while we are expecting a Snapdragon 855-powered flagship killer from Xiaomi this year, the scores do not seem to reflect such high aspirations. Going by the RAM, SoC identifier, and the base clock, we feel this could be a mid-range variant of the Poco F2 or a renamed Poco F1 Lite... or even a fake leak.

Roland Quandt has posted a new article in which he claims to set out every detail on the upcoming Huawei P30 and P30 Pro prior to their launch. This includes nearly every major spec and detail of the phones, including their relative RAM capacities, camera counts, new color schemes and battery capacities.

Intel took to stage at the OCP Global Summit 2019 to announce new Xeon Scalable platforms for servers based on the upcoming Cascade Lake and Cooper Lake architectures. The new Xeon Scalable processors will now be available in four and eight-socket reference designs later this year. Cooper Lake will also integrate the Bfloat 16 format that is being developed in collaboration with Facebook for accelerating AI applications.

A few days ago, a series of renders pointed to a Pixel 4 XL design with a dual selfie cam set into its screen. Now, a Twitter-based leaker alleges that the smaller device from the same upcoming line will also follow this trend. However, its punch-hole will be circular rather than pill-shaped.

There have always been rumors that Huawei was working on its own OS. Those have now been confirmed by the company, with Huawei CEO Richard Yu affirming that the Chinese monolith has a working mobile OS all geared up and ready to go, just in case.

A few days ago, a Geekbench listing showed what appeared to be a Poco F1 Lite running on Android Pie with 4 GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 660. We are leery of the whole thing, though.

Until now, we'd been led to believe that Google's upcoming mid-range devices would be called the Pixel 3 Lite and Pixel 3 XL Lite. Apparently not, as Google code points towards the devices being named the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL. Reminds us of the Samsung Galaxy S10e, in fact.

Samsung's Galaxy Fold and Huawei's Mate X foldable phones may rightfully dominate the headlines but they come with the caveat of outrageous prices. Xiaomi is set to join the foldable race in the coming months and will, in typical fashion, offer a product that heavily undercuts the competition in price.

The Huawei P30 and P30 Pro will be launched on March 26, and while the devices' selling points remain photography, both will still feature top of the line displays—in the form of Samsung-made OLED panels.

The 2019 Pavilion x360 15 in particular will be nearly 14 percent thinner (.94-inch to .81-inch) and 15 percent lighter (5.1 lbs to 4.3 lbs) than the 2017 Pavilion x360 15. A fingerprint reader, which has become standard on costlier models, will now be an option for the Pavilion laptops.

Xiaomi usually offers a 12-month warranty for its phones to customers in its home country of China. However, this was turned on its head somewhat with the release of the Redmi Note 7. The company gave an extra 6 months' worth for this phone; now, it reportedly intends to roll this out to more of its future devices.

Qualcomm has successfully pressed its latest legal complaint against Apple in a San Diego court. Its jury has ruled that the Cupertino company did in fact use 3 patents that did not belong to it in the making of its 2016-2018 iPhones. Qualcomm can now collect the US$31 million that, as it asserts, Apple needs to pay for this infringement.

The Samsung Galaxy S10+ is a great phone with a great camera. What better way to test it out in the real world than on a road trip in a Tesla Model S from Sydney to the see the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix in Melbourne?