Latest Tech News

Working with all major internet providers in the country, Russian authorities are planning an interesting - and quite disturbing - experiment that involves disconnecting all local users from the internet. The purpose of this experiment is to get feedback and maybe provide modifications to a law proposed back in December 2018.

Market intelligence analyst Sensor Tower has estimated that Fortnite has amassed over US$500 million in revenue in less than a year on iOS alone. The battle royale smash hit from Epic Games has been making about US$1.53 million a day since it was released on the App Store. Android gamers have contributed another US$100 million on top of that.

The GPU in the Razer laptop has a 22 percent faster base clock rate than the same GPU on the Gigabyte Aero 15 X9. The result? Consistently faster gaming performance on the Razer Blade 15 by 10 to 15 percent.

A listing for an hitherto unknown Intel Core i3-9100F CPU has surfaced on the SiSoftware database. The Core i3-9100F shares similar specs with the Core i3-8100 but does not come with integrated UHD Graphics. While Core i3s are known for lack of Turbo Boost, a Dell listing tells us otherwise.

This new dating trend originates from Samsung and shows just how handy the integrated camera in its Family Hub refrigerators can be. Instead of having to swipe through dating profiles plastered with snapchat filter modified photographs; users pick their partners based on the contents of their refrigerators alone.

The first pictures of the Sony Xperia XA3 have leaked ahead of MWC 2019 via a Chinese website that has managed to grab snippets from a leaked video. The Xperia XA3 will be an upgrade to Sony's mid-range offering and will supposedly be powered by a Snapdragon 660 SoC. The main draw of the phone, however, could be its unusually tall display.

A new piece in Bloomberg has cited sources allegedly close enough to Activision Blizzard to allege that the gaming company will let "hundreds" of staff go. The firm is apparently taking this action to maximise profits and to "centralize functions". An announcement to this effect is expected on February 12, 2019.

A Redditor claims to have access to a Canadian database in which the upcoming LG G8 ThinQ is shown alongside the number 1199. Assuming this figure is its price in the country, this means the phone could cost about US$900 at launch. Considering LG's typical release strategies for its mobile devices, this is more or less plausible.

Dell has had to recall certain versions of its portable charging device, the Hybrid Adapter + Power Bank, because of the risk of electric shock. Apparently, the casing of the black adapter part of the accessory can break, which in turn exposes metal components that could pose a hazard. Dell has already received 11 reports of this occurring.

Samsung has caused a bit of a splash in the mid-range smartphone segment with the recent launch of the Galaxy M10 and M20 range of smartphones in India. Set for a wider rollout, the M10 and M20 will also be joined by the Galaxy M30, details of which have just leaked out.

The medals awarded at the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games being held in Tokyo, Japan will be made of recycled electronics, including old laptops and smartphones. The project to collect the required metal for gold, silver, and bronze medals commenced in 2017, and organizers have stated that they are well on course to hit the necessary targets.

The latest stable version of Chrome OS (72) brings a considerable re-design for the Assistant interface on this platform. It also updates the version of Android used within it to 9.0 (Pie), which adds the ability to search for apps and use new Assistant settings. Chrome OS redirects Cast set-up to the Google Home app, and adds picture-in-picture video to webpages.

AMD has released its final financial report for 2018. It shows that the company had made nearly US$6.5 billion for this year, which is a 23% increase compared to 2017. The company also claims to have posted a net income of $337 million, whereas it had made a net loss the previous year. Analysis has also shown that AMD has increased its share of server and PC markets.

Google might be working on building its own brand of wearables. A job posting looking for a VP of Hardware Engineering for Wearables was recently announced that could mean that the Mountain View is looking to expand its hardware offerings into next generation wearables. A posting for a Wearables Design Manager is also in the offing.

Thanks to the votes of The Steam Community members, PUBG is now holding the Game of the Year Award for 2018. However, CD PROJEKT RED, the Polish company behind the successful Witcher franchise, was crowned as The Best Developer. PUBG competed for this prize against Monster Hunter World, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Hitman 2, and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

We test how much of a performance boost DLSS can provide for a laptop equipped with RTX 2060 graphics and the results are surprisingly similar to the RTX 2070 Max-Q. The proprietary RTX-only anti-aliasing feature can't come soon enough for retail PC games.

A patent for a Xiaomi smartphone with a full-screen display that extends halfway down the device’s edges has been spotted by LetsGoDigital. The same publication has crafted impressive renders of an elegant-looking smartphone based on the drawings included in the patent. Little additional information is offered in the patent filing.

The American telecommunications company Sprint has filed a lawsuit against AT&T in relation to the latter’s use of the term “5G Evolution”. Obviously, there is a lot of excitement about 5G connectivity and major brands are naturally trying to take advantage of consumer interest. Sprint believes AT&T is involved in outright deception.

We knew that Essential is still a thing, but the info on the successor of the PH-1 phone was really limited still. New schematics uncovered by Slash Gear suggest that the upcoming PH-2 will get some innovative tech similar to what Samsung is trying to implement in future devices, including in-display selfie cams with light sensors that make the display translucent and in-display fingerprint sensors.

Opera has introduced a new beta version of its Android mobile browser with a built-in VPN. Even better, it is a free feature inclusion that doesn’t log user data that travels through Opera’s servers.

A listing for a Google Pixel 4 device has turned up on Geekbench that shows some surprising details and unimpressive benchmark results. The smartphone, which has the codename “sargo” associated with it in the Geekbench post, will apparently offer 2 GB RAM and an octa-core processor with a base clock of 1.80 GHz.

Apple was supposed to completely fix the eavesdropping vulnerability triggered via the Group feature in the FaceTime app last week, but it looks like the company found a few more bugs and fixed them as well. One bug is related to the Live Photos feature in FaceTime, while the other two are related to memory corruption flaws occurring in the IOKit and Foundation.

Respawn Entertainment’s Vince Zampella has posted some news on the Electronic Arts website to share information about how the new battle royale game Apex Legends is doing. Apparently, over 10 million people have now tried the game within its first 72 hours of release. Apex Legends is set in the Titanfall universe.

A new set of images allegedly pertaining to the Asus Zenfone 6 (2019) Pro show a phone with triple rear cameras. However, they fail to confirm the rumored off-centre 'droplet' notch alluded to in other upcoming Zenfone leaks. In fact, with its relatively thick bezels, sensor bar and chin with fingerprint sensor, the front panel shown in this new post looks decidedly out of place in 2019.

Many Skype users may be reluctant to take a call due to how messy or inappropriate their surroundings may be. Now, however, the app's latest update adds a toggle that blurs everything but the caller out of a camera's shot. This new 'background blur' option is generated by AI, and should function on most PCs.

Recently, Facebook had gone public with its intentions to merge user data from its own Messenger app with that of WhatsApp and Instagram. Yesterday, the German federal corporate trust-monitoring office ruled against Facebook's license to do so in the country. It cited the fact that Facebook can only pool data as it wishes if the user of each respective app consents to this activity.

Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's chief executive officer (CEO), will deliver the keynote speech at this year's GPU Technology Conference (GTC). This event will take place in several locations in San José, California, from March 17 to 21, 2019. Huang will present on his company's recent breakthroughs in AI, robotics and self-driving tech during his speech.

The first reviews for the 7 nm AMD Radeon VII GPU are out and they all seem to give an impression that AMD has managed to take the fight to the RTX 2080's pavilion. With a whopping 16 GB of HBM2 VRAM and a 1 TB/s memory bandwidth, the Radeon VII seems to focus more on raw power and compute performance versus niceties such as ray tracing or AI supersampling. Is the added power enough to move past the RTX 2080? The initial reviews seem to say, not just yet.

The Android Go handsets Samsung Galaxy J2 Core and Galaxy J4 have recently been certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance with Android Pie firmware onboard. However, the arrival of the update might take a while. The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 were certified back in November with Android 9.0 onboard, but the update is not ready for them yet.

Motorola has launched its highly anticipated 2019 G-series line up. Although not a flagship lineup, it is the company’s most popular smartphone series bringing high-end features to the more affordable mid-range smartphone segment.

Samsung has apparently got imaginative with the available color schemes for the upcoming Galaxy S10e variant of the expected flagship smartphone series. We already reported on a Canary Yellow version, and thanks to talented tipster Ishan Agarwal, we can now see what it’s actually going to look like. If you are reading this post on your device with the display at full brightness then you might want to turn it down a few notches first!

Everything was normal until our glass display suddenly cracked. If you're planning on getting a cheap Android from a Chinese OEM, then hopefully you won't be unlucky as we are. We're just glad that nothing caught on fire.

A recent report in TechCrunch has revealed that a number of companies use a service that allows 'session replay', which can effectively translate into recordings of what users do on their iOS apps. This data can include on-screen taps and text field inputs. Apple has responded by insisting that all developers disclose their use of these services.

Previous rumors about launch supplies of 5,000 units might not be too far off, as new sources cite very limited Radeon VII availability at least for Europe. Overclockers UK cite 100 units available for Great Britain, while France and Spain would be getting only 20 units each. The reasons for reduced allocations seem to be the Lunar Year celebration in China and AIB partners not having enough time to come up with custom cards.

Microsoft has announced in a blog post that the Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2, and Surface Studio 2 devices are now launching in 20 more markets worldwide. The tech giant also revealed that its Surface Headphones will be coming to eight new markets starting in March, including Canada, New Zealand, and Germany.

The year 2019 brings us a new generation of business laptops. One of the first specimens of this new wave has made it to our testing-labs: The Lenovo ThinkPad L390, an affordable ThinkPad laptop for companies and students.

Last December, the steep depreciation of Nvidia's stock complicated the company's predicament to the point where its largest investor threatened to sell its entire stake. It looks like the green team could not convince the investor to keep its stake, and SoftBank went ahead completing the sale of shares worth US$3.6 billion in January.

Qualcomm has released the Snapdragon 712 processor; however, it seems not to be much more than a refreshed 710 SoC. On one hand, the 712 may be 10% faster compared to its prececessor; on the other, both have the same GPU, Hexa DSP and X15 LTE modem. However, it supports Fast Charging version 4+ rather than 4.

The next Oculus VR headset to be released is rumored to be called the Rift S. The latest leaks on this device suggests that it will come with its own onboard tracking cameras, rather than rely on USB-connected sensors. It may also fix the original Rift's problems with the appearance of 'god rays' on the lenses, and adjust for room lighting with 50-to-60Hz modes.

The OPPO K1 is now available on the Indian market. This phone may compete with others such as the Redmi Note 7, as it has many specs in common with this device, but also has an in-display fingerprint reader. The K1 is exclusive to Flipkart, which sells it for about US$237.

Zack Nelson of JerryRigEverything has done it again and disassembled another smartphone, this time the Vivo NEX Dual Display. The teardown is not without its issues though.

Windows 7 is far from dead; with around a third of the market share, the operating system is primarily used by businesses. Official support will end next year, but can be extended for another three years – at a price.

The crowded traditional Ultrabook space just got a new contender from a gaming laptop manufacturer. MSI's uncommon combination of an ULV Intel CPU and a Max-Q GPU gives it some interesting advantages over the Dell, but it still falls a bit short on some key areas.

A leaked alleged press render of the upcoming Nokia 9 PureView flagship smartphone seems to have confirmed what most were expecting: That the device will sport an impressive rear-facing quintuple camera setup. That’s a whole two more sensors than anything in Samsung’s Galaxy S10 line-up. However, the Nokia 9 also features some hefty bezels.

Some live photos of the upcoming Vivo V15 Pro have been published by MySmartPrice, along with a very brief hands-on video. The Chinese manufacturer has provided the upcoming V15 smartphones with still uncommon pop-up selfie cameras, and the video shows the Pro version with a unique black and red gradient finish on the rear cover.

A new set of leaks concerning the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S10 has appeared, including information and a picture of a brand-new product. There are some live photos of two different Galaxy S10 devices in the hand, and there is an image of a pair of wireless earbuds in their case that look like they are being reverse wirelessly charged by an S10+.

Zotac has introduced the Zbox Magnus EC52070D, which is a new, and compact desktop PC. The company has made a few compromises to pack such a powerful GPU within a small form-factor case, but it remains a powerful pre-built system that has plenty going for it.

Our recent reviews demonstrated that the Huawei P Smart Plus is a worthy alternative to the P Smart 2019. The price difference between the two devices varies, but it is often minimal, so the question is, which is the better buy?

The MXCHIP EMW3060 is a small Wi-Fi board that integrates an ARM processor, which can help developers deliver small IoT projects affordably. The EMW3060 may have less flexibility than its Arduino alternatives though.

Xiaomi's new patent filings may cause a stir if they come to fruition. The company has filed several designs at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) that point towards it producing a smartphone with dual punch-hole front-facing cameras.