Latest Tech News

Remember the touted Snapdragon 675-powered Xiaomi phone? Well, rumors say it could be the Redmi Pro 2, a direct successor to 2016's Redmi Pro. The Redmi Pro 2, if released, would be the top of the line Redmi phone.

Chinese company Gionee has finally filed for bankruptcy and is set for liquidation. The company is said to owe over US$3 billion to banks and suppliers, a situation compounded by reports of CEO Liu Lirong squandering over US$140 million at a casino last month.

According to a report published online, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S10 series will feature devices with the names "Galaxy S10 Plus," "Galaxy S10 Lite," and somewhat surprisingly, "Galaxy S10 Edge." The same report lists the flagship smartphones as having preinstalled transparent screen protectors. The post does not mention the expected 5G variant of the S10 line-up, though.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has published a patent application filed by Google Technology Holdings LLC for an “electronic device having pivotably connected sides with selectable displays.” This could be a joint project with Motorola, as some of the drawings included in the application show the company’s famous batwings logo.

Lemmings, the classic PC puzzler, has launched on iOS and Android. The smartphone port retains many of the gameplay elements of the original, but controls and level design have been optimized for mobile gaming. The levels themselves will be procedurally generated, but there will (sadly) be a variety of in-app purchases.

Microsoft has issued a patch to fix a day-zero security flaw in Internet Explorer that affected a myriad of versions and systems. The flaw, which affected IE's scripting engine and how it handles memory, could allow attackers to break into a targeted system and assume full control. Attackers could then view and edit data, install programs, and create administrator accounts. Google alerted Microsoft to the vulnerability earlier this month.

Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google (Alphabet Inc.) have been experiencing further depressions in the stock market, according to recent NASDAQ data. Apple has seen its stock price fall under US$160 as Microsoft continues to lead in terms of market capitalization value. The Cupertino-based iPhone maker also has had bad news in regard to “Bendgate 2.0” and a legal battle against Qualcomm.

Qualcomm's patent war against Apple has escalated this December following bans in China and now Germany on the sale of iPhones. Intel has now accused Qualcomm of "stifling competition" in a scathing Intel Newsroom article that alleges Qualcomm's actions will only serve to "reduce innovation and increase prices."

The current Windows Insider Preview build (or Windows 10 19H1) has been updated to include support for the 'shruggie' and other emojis of its types in the OS' hotkeys. This may finally bring a welcome end to workarounds with keyboard shortcuts and so on. 19H1 should be available in early 2019.

The 2018 MacBook Air may be a good option for those who want the Apple-ultrabook looks for a more moderated price. B&H Is currently holding a sales event for this device, which takes between US$100 and $150 off most of its SKUs. However, these offers are only valid until December 22.

A number of Pixel 3 and 3XL owners have reportedly taken to the Google Product Forums to complain about issues with voice-calls on their devices. These problems apparently include low-quality in-call audio, connection issues and more. On the other hand, there are claims that the December Android 9.0 software update is a solution in some cases.

NVIDIA's Titan RTX, the best-spec'd (and most expensive) iteration of Turing architecture out there, has been reportedly overclocked and benchmarked. A Twitter enthusiast has claimed that it achieved just over 41,000 in the graphics portion of 3DMark Fire Strike. However, JayzTwoCents asserts that his own Titan RTX did not break 37,000 in the same sub-test, and that it was not much faster overall than an overclocked RTX 2080 Ti.

Thanks to the 7.10 patch, the list of Android phones officially supported by Fortnite now also includes the Nokia 8.1, Oppo R17/R17 Pro, Samsung A8s/A9, Vivo Z3, and the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE. The update also comes with the "14 Days of Fortnite" holiday special event, but the Driftboard has been delayed.

The My Office app will soon be replaced by a new piece of code that Microsoft has decided to simply name "Office" and that will be delivered as an automatic update in the coming months. The new app will also be available for download from the Microsoft Store, but its launch date is still unknown.

Famed leakster Ishan Agarwal shared a picture of an internal OnePlus meeting talking about a new phone prototype. This could be the 5G OnePlus phone that the company plans to launch in early 2019. The picture shows the device sporting a circular camera bump and presence of red and light grey variants. If news so far is true, this phone could launch as a distinct lineup with its own set of premium features and pricing.

Samsung's 6.3-inch camera-centric mid-ranger that features no less than four cameras on its back is now finally ready to hit South Korean shelves. The 6 GB/128 GB memory/storage variant will be available for purchase in South Korea starting December 21 for the equivalent of around US$530.

The Android Pie update for the ZenFone 5 series is expected to arrive in January 2019 but an early version of the ROM is now available for manual download. The ROM appears to be intended for the Brazilian market but can actually be installed on any international variant. Those who have tested this ROM say that users will encounter a few bugs and they should rather wait for the official FOTA rollout.

Apple has mired itself in a new bending device controversy. The latest structural integrity issue affects the new 2018 iPad Pro models, some of which are shipping out of the factory to customers with slight bends in the chassis. According to a statement it provided The Verge, this is apparently “normal” and is something the company doesn’t consider a defect.

The Honor View 20, or V20 as it is known in China, has appeared on the Huawei Vmall online shop. The device will be available to pre-order in China from 10:08 Chinese Standard Time (CST) on December 20.

A simplified Start menu, Windows Sandbox, Kaomoji and more are rolling out to the Insider Preview Fast ring in the latest 19H1 build. Build 18305 is available to download now from Windows Update.

Tencent Games has asserted that it has drawn level with Epic Games' Fortnite in terms of mobile user numbers for its own game, PUBG. This means that PUBG has made it to about 200 million users. It is estimated that both games also have the same approximate number of users who play at least once a day (30 million).

HTC might only be a shadow of its former self nowadays, but it looks like 2019 will not bring any noticeable changes. Even worse, the company's president, Darren Chen, has recently revealed that the next HTC flagship will be "an extension of the latest U12 Plus" instead of an entirely new device.

Have an hour to kill and want a free copy of Assassin's Creed Odyssey? Google is giving a digital copy of the game to users who demo Project Stream, the search giant's venture into the world of online game streaming services. Project Stream is currently an invite-only program, but its free to sign up. If you can log an hour of gameplay before January 15th, Google will send you a download code for Assassin's Creed Odyssey via Ubisoft's Uplay service.

Chinese brand UMIDIGI will soon hit us with another "flagship killer" that sports a main camera setup made by Sony that combines a 48 MP IMX586 sensor and a 12 MP telephoto shooter. The upcoming UMIDIGI S3 Pro also features a 6.3-inch full HD+ display with a waterdrop-style notch, a 5,150 mAh battery, and a luxury ceramic design.

Are you tired of using Photoshop to clear the background from your photos so you can replace it? The makers of remove.bg clearly thinks you are. It offers a service in which its AI identifies the main subject matter of any image, then makes the background around it transparent.

Earlier in the year, reports of some party or parties purporting to be Elon Musk in order to bilk Twitter users out of Bitcoin surfaced online. Now, it seems that this tactic is back, in the form of Facebook comments this time. This scheme involves replying to posts under branded names and profile pictures, asking for a certain amount of Bitcoin in return for entry into a competition for much more of the cryptocurrency. So far, The Verge and Bitmain have been reportedly imitated for this scam.

Samsung is planning to release a 5G version of the Galaxy S10 that is currently codenamed "Beyond X", according to details that have emerged online. The device will be the flagship Galaxy S10 model, which the company could announce at its Galaxy UNPACKED event next February.

A Forbes reporter had a replica of his own head, made via 3D-printing, commissioned from a company that specializes in the same. He was able to use this object to unlock four Android phones (from different OEMs), but not an iPhone X. This suggests that Face ID remains the more powerful device-security tool.

Leaving aside the waterdrop notch, the recently teased Xiaomi Play looks like just another mid-range offering that sports a dual camera and a circular rear-mounted fingerprint reader. The leaked specs include an unnamed octa-core processor, up to 6 GB of memory, and 32 GB to 128 GB of internal storage space.

Dell has backtracked on its decision that the XPS 15 9570 does not have an NVIDIA GPU issue. The company has informed us that it is working on a fix that it aims to roll out via an updated BIOS by the end of this month.
Update: Dell changes its tune once again.

While many people still think that Turing is trying to get some more money without delivering anything solid and the HubblePhone will turn out to be nothing else but vaporware, the company has just promised to compensate the customers who paid for a Turing Phone Dark Wyvern and have not been refunded yet.

Microsoft will soon be introducing Windows Sandbox as an optional feature in upcoming builds of Windows 10 19H1. Windows Sandbox offers a secure, isolated, and disposable environment to test out suspicious programs and prevent them from affecting the main OS installation. Windows Sandbox will be offered in Professional and Enterprise SKUs of Windows 10 and does not require any additional addons or VHDs to run.

The upcoming Xbox 'Scarlett' family of consoles will feature two variants codenamed 'Anaconda' and 'Lockhart' as successors to the Xbox One X and the Xbox One S respectively. Lockhart is expected to be as powerful as the current gen Xbox One X while Anaconda is aimed at providing a more cutting-edge experience. Apart from Scarlett, Microsoft is also expected to announce the disc-less Xbox One console as early as 2019.

Although there is no official information about the upcoming Huawei P30 series, a few Olixar protective cases have been listed for pre-order by MobileFun already. These accessories reveal that the P30 Pro is a handset that sports a display with a waterdrop-style notch, as well as a quad main camera setup.

Supporting both Purism's own PureOS Linux-based operating system and Ubuntu Touch, which is now being developed by the UBports team, the Librem 5 smartphone is supposed to hit first customers next year, in April. However, the first developer kits are already shipping to those who already placed orders.

Less than two years since it launched the Oath subsidiary, Verizon has decided to rebrand it as Verizon Media Group. This change will become effective on January 8, which also happens to be the day when next year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will open its gates for the public (after two days of media-only events).

Yesterday, NASA revealed that a possible compromise of its servers where personally identifiable information was stored has been under investigation since October 23. The servers have been secured since then, but NASA and its cybersecurity partners are still working on determining all the details of the data exfiltration.

A new post to the Android Developers Blog details the measures Google is taking to address the issue of fake reviews or ratings on the Play Store. They are described as a combination of AI and human expertise. The post claims that they have already resulted in the removal of millions of reviews from the Store.

A new leak based on a purported internal Apple document reiterates the rumor that Smart Battery Cases are coming back. This one suggests that this product will be compatible with the iPhone XS and XS Max only. On the other hand, the slightly disputable evidence does not match the leaked watchOS icon on which the earlier leak is based.

The latest JEDEC standards for high-bandwidth memory (HBM2) allows for 24GB rather than 8GB of memory, as well as speeds of up to 307GB per second, per stack. This effectively increases the amount of memory NVIDIA or AMD can put on a single HMB2 card to as much as 96GB, with bandwidths of 1.2 TB per second.

Less than 40% of all smartphones are thought to have LCD (or a variation on it) these days. This was reported as part of a new release from the analysis firm IHS Markit. It indicates that the type of panel once only associated with high-end Samsung phones are becoming much more commonplace and popular with manufacturers.

At an event in Beijing today, Lenovo announced the flagship Z5 Pro GT — the world's first smartphone to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC and also the first to feature 12 GB of RAM. Apart from the raw processing power, the Z5 Pro GT is very much identical to the Z5 Pro that was launched in China last month. Lenovo has also announced the mid-range Z5s sporting a rear triple camera setup. These handsets are competitively priced but are currently exclusive to the Chinese market.

HTC has released a new phone, the Desire 12S, the latest in a brief list of smartphones to come out of the company's stables this year. Like the Desire 12 duo that was released at the start of the year, though, the Desire 12S doesn't get quite a few things right.

Huawei may have found stiff opposition from a number of governments since the new year but the company's smartphone division is definitely on the up. The company has confirmed that it will have sold 200 million smartphones this year by Christmas, a massive 30% increase from last year's 153 million figure.

A spec sheet of the HP ZHAN 66 Pro 14 G2 has leaked online that lists the notebook sporting an NVIDIA GeForce MX250 GPU with 2 GB GDDR5 VRAM. This is the first listing of the MX250 in the wild and from the information we have, it is just a rebranded MX150 with slightly higher clocks. So, while the RTX 2000 Turing GPUs will be getting mobile versions, NVIDIA could still continue to offer a rebranded Pascal GPU for entry-level notebooks and ultrabooks.

Razer has released a teaser video to accompany the launch of the first wireless keyboard and mouse combo for Microsoft’s Xbox One console. The launch of the video has brought to light an accompanying image of the actual keyboard and mouse that Razer first revealed a couple of weeks ago, but which slipped under the radar.

It's no secret that Cortana is losing favor with the PC-using public, and possibly also with Microsoft developers in some departments. A well-regarded Windows-focused leaker claims to have found evidence that the digital assistant may be replaceable in future versions of the OS. This is also somewhat corroborated by the fact Amazon's Alexa is now available in Windows' Store.

The Xiaomi POCO F1 has reportedly received an update to official stable Pie, following a recent beta to test the same. However, it's not all good news for fans of the device: some users have claimed that it no longer includes an option to hide the notch in the UI. The update has brought other apparent problems, most notably unusual battery drain.

The Galaxy S10 rumour mill is in full swing, and now the device has supposedly been seen on a South Korean subway. The device in question sports the Samsung Infinity-O display that the company recently announced with the Galaxy A8, but the camera cut-out is in a different position to other recent Galaxy S10 leaks.

Many Android phones, flagships and budget flagships included, often fail to integrate Widevine L1 support into their software. As a result, they lack the ability to play DRM-protected content such as that provided by Netflix in full HD or HDR. The Mate 20 series was one of these; however, this series has finally acquired the ability to stream in HD, while the Mate 20 itself can do so in HDR.