Latest Tech News

Apple is facing a lawsuit pressed by 3 plaintiffs in the United States. It concerns a claim that the company has breached Californian advertising and representation laws in selling Macbook and iMacs. These plaintiffs assert that Apple's allusions to longevity and robustness when marketing its devices are contrary to their experiences of reduced or impaired functionality in their devices.

A slide from Gigabyte's internal presentation has leaked and it shows that the AMD X570 chipset will be launching at next year's Computex. The X570 chipset will support the Ryzen 3 CPUs and also bring support for PCI Express Gen 4. The presentation also indicated information about Intel's next HEDT CPU, Glacier Falls, and new Intel chipsets — the B365 and H310C. It also mentions 'KF' variants of the 9th gen CPUs such as the Core i9-9900KF, Core i7-9700KF, and a few non-K variants such as the Core i5-9400F and the Core i3-8100F.

Motorola will apparently release a new model in the Moto G7 series next year. The device, the Moto G7 Power, could be powered by a Snapdragon 632 and also sport a huge 5000 mAh battery.

An image of the Samsung Galaxy S10’s screen protector has been leaked via Twitter by Ice universe. The tweet in question features the lone word “Beyond,” which is the codename Samsung uses for the S10 line-up. As can be seen in the picture, the screen protector has barely visible bezels and there is no sign of the much-maligned notch.

The first noticeable result of the new strategic partnership that involves Xiaomi and IKEA will come forward next month when IKEA's line of smart lighting products will be connected to the IoT platform of the Chinese company. Obviously, more IKEA smart home products should get the Xiaomi treatment in 2019.

Bitcoin has closed at a price of US$3,964.89 today, keeping the well-known digital currency under the US$4,000 mark. Its value actually dropped to a low of US$3,505 on November 25 but has managed to gain a little over the last few days. However, a market analyst for IG Group has stated that the virtual currency is coming close to a crucial “capitulation moment.”

3DMark's long awaited ray tracing benchmark Port Royal is finally coming out in January of next year. After Battlefield V, it will be the world's second ray tracing compatible application that focuses on gaming and the world's first dedicated ray tracing benchmark for gamers.

Anthem is now very close to its final release, as the developers just announced the Alpha test scheduled for December 8-9. Unfortunately, spots for the test are limited and those who do not get selected for this test could still participate in the beta test that is scheduled for early February, if they pre-order the game.

Microsoft has become more valuable than Apple in terms of market capitalization. At the time of writing, Microsoft’s value stood at US$846.76 billion compared to Apple’s US$844.39 billion. The Redmond-based company has passed Apple a number of times over the last few days, only for the Cupertino rival to temporarily bounce back.

MediaTek started out as a provider of mobile SoCs for emerging Chinese smartphone makers. Up until now, the Taiwanese company presented solid entry-level and mid-range solutions, but, with the upcoming Helio P90, MediaTek is aiming to compete with the best SoCs from Qualcomm, Apple and Samsung. The Helio P90 SoC was recently teased as a "powerful" and "efficient" chip with "groundbreaking AI."

Intel has announced that it will introduce a new medium called Universal Windows Drivers (UWD) to update the integrated graphics the company supplies to current Microsoft OS-running hardware. The institution of UWD will mean that all other methods to install updates for these graphics drivers may become invalid.

QNAP's new HS-453DX silent NAS is a storage accessory for home users that sports an Intel Celeron quad-core processor, 4K real-time transcoding, and 10 GbE connectivity. The best part of it all is that these capabilities are provided via a fanless set-top design that is perfect for living rooms and home theater setups.

It was discovered recently that AMD's Athlon 200GE processor, which is regarded as a great budget option, can actually be overclocked despite being officially a locked part. Overclocking enthusiasts discovered that MSI, perhaps by accident, allows the 200GE to be overclocked on its B350M Gaming Pro motherboard.

Although the FCC documents only mention that the Samsung Galaxy A8s sports Bluetooth 5.0 and a few other connectivity-related details, the rumors claim that this handset will hit the market with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 processor under the hood, a 6.39-inch Infinity-O display, a triple camera setup on the back, and a 24 MP selfie shooter.

For much of 2018, increasingly convincing leaks indicated that Qualcomm would be dropping the 'SD 8xx' nomenclature for its premium line of smartphone CPUs. However, the latest rumor is that the anticipated new name of '8150' is for internal use only, and not what the SD 845's successor will be marketed as at all.

The world's first pop-up-camera phone, the Vivo Nex, is set to launch in Europe soon. According to a new report, it may cost as much as €849 (about US$967) in this region. On the other hand, as this is mainly based on rumor so far, this story should be treated at least a little skeptically at this point.

Huawei, in partnership with the New Zealand telecommunications company Spark, has had its proposal to provide 5G hardware for the country blocked. This action was taken by the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). The body stresses that this decision was not specifically related to any possible connection between Huawei and the Chinese government.

Foldable phones will surely be one of next year's highlights for revolutionary tech. Most of the big names have already scheduled showcasing events for their foldable phones. Samsung and LG will present their models at CES in January, while Chinese manufacturers like Huawei and, more recently, Oppo are expected to reveal their handsets at MWC 2019 in February.

Even though the crypto market is at it its lowest this year, getting some cryptocurrency as passive income never hurt anyone. Asus and Quantumcloud joined forces in order to make it easier for Asus GPU owners to mine cryptocurrencies when the graphics cards are mostly idle. At current prices, the profits are pretty minimal, but no one knows when the next big swing would hit the crypto world and turn those modest profits into small fortunes.

Apple became the world's first trillion dollar company this past August. Since then, the Cupertino giant has struggled to hit sales targets for its latest iPhone family. Despite this, Apple VP of product marketing Greg Joswiak said that the iPhone XR has been "the most popular iPhone" since its launch. However, "most popular" does not mean "selling well."

For just under $200 USD, the 10.1-inch Android tablet promises 3 GB of RAM, 4G LTE, expandable storage, dual-SIM slots, a metal body, and a 10-core processor. It's certainly one of the more ambitious tablets from a Chinese manufacturer.

A previous render for the Sony Xperia XZ4 suggested that it might have a triple-camera setup and a flat display rather than curved as in previous generations of this phone. A new leak showing a case linked to the XZ4 appears to confirm these indications and also shows some more design tweaks for it.

Dell has published a press release that will be of some concern to customers that use its network. The company suffered from a recent cyber attack, and although the attempted hack was apparently “detected and disrupted” it is possible that some information was stolen. The attack targeted names, emails, and hashed passwords; credit card details were not extracted.

It has been claimed that Microsoft is mulling over using AMD chips in a future Surface Laptop refresh. Apparently, the Redmond-based company has become frustrated with Intel, especially over the chipmaker’s long delay in shipping 10 nm Cannon Lake processors. It would be a considerable coup for AMD if Microsoft went ahead and utilized the red team’s upcoming Picasso APU.

Fresh details about Microsoft's first store in the UK have emerged online. Published on the City of Westminster's planning portal, Microsoft has confirmed the size of its London store's retail floor space and offered more details about its layout.

Amazon Web Services has announced the development of its own in-house CPUs to power the next generation of its cloud and deep learning services. These processors, called the Graviton and Inferentia respectively, were unveiled at this year's AWS re:Invent conference. As with Google's TPUs, customers will buy time on what is run by these CPUs rather than the chips themselves.

Nine people and two companies in South Korea have been charged with selling Samsung technology to a Chinese rival. It is believed bendable OLED technology, which is expected to be incorporated in the South Korean company’s upcoming foldable smartphone, was included in the criminal exchange. The Chinese company that received the information has not been named.

Advertised as a "Salute to Speed," the upcoming OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition will be unveiled on December 11, at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking. This limited edition handset is expected to be the first OnePlus device to feature 10 GB of memory and 256 GB of internal storage space.

The fourth major update for Microsoft's Sea of Thieves arrives under the "Shrouded Spoils" banner and includes new Merchant Alliance items, six new skeleton forts (in addition to the three existing ones), improved skeleton ships, new custom ship items, more frequent Kraken appearances, new Megalodon variants, and more.

Although the TIDAL music streaming app is now freely available for Windows 10 users via the Microsoft Store, to access the entire library of over 60 million tracks and 244,000 music videos, a paid membership is required. The two choices available are the US$9.99/month Premium plan and the US$19.99 HiFi membership.

The US Army looks set to take augmented reality headsets into battle with a special variant of the Microsoft HoloLens. The US$480 million contract will see Microsoft bring night vision and other state-of-the-art technology to its headset with a view to giving soldiers the edge on the battlefield.

Earlier this year, third-party developers started receiving PS5 development kits, but Sony claimed that the hardware specifications were not the final ones. A new leak coming from a Russian site depicts what looks like one of the development kit PS5 consoles running in bootloader mode. While the design seems credible, the bootloader screen is iffy at best.

Jon Peddie Research informs that the GPU market is doing relatively well, even though the AIB GPU sales saw a significant decline. The overall GPU sales (including iGPUs and mobility GPUs) were up 10.64% compared to Q2 2018, and Intel is still dominating the iGPU/embedded GPU maret with an increase of ~13%.

Launching for users in North America only for now, the Eurocom service promises to update your laptop software, BIOS, anti-virus, operating system, and more for a small fee. A "deep cleaning" of the fans, hinges, and motherboard is also an option even for difficult-to-service laptops.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 phones are still months away from an official announcement, so Samsung is set to sate the desires of its expectant fans with the upcoming Galaxy A8s, a sub-premium phone with an impressive specifications sheet.

According to word on the grapevine, the Samsung Galaxy S10 could feature up to 12 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, both of which have never been seen before on a smartphone. It's unknown what model of the device will boast of such firepower, though.

Two days ago, Huawei finally brought its Mate 20 Pro flagship to the Indian smartphone market. The device is billed to go on sale on December 4, and with an MSRP that translates to just under US$1,000.

DriveSavers, one of the world's leading data recovery companies, now offers a service for unlocking smartphones and tablets that have a locked passcode, including iPhones and iPads. DriveSavers claims to be the only company that offers this level of device unlocking and data recovery outside of law enforcement, but the service costs a staggering US$3900.

Fluent design updates for the start menu, clock synchronization added, microphone notification area refinements and more are rolling out to the Insider Preview Fast ring in the latest 19H1 build. Build 18290 is available to download now from Windows Update.

DigiTimes reports that Intel will be holding a conference for discrete GPUs in December, specifically about Arctic Sound. Raja Koduri will be presenting in the conference but went on the record to explicitly state that it is an "architecture day, not a DGPU day."

It seems HMD has an internal Android Pie beta for the Nokia 8, presumably in the process of working on a stable version for the 2017 flagship. However, this build is now out there for the public to download, thanks to an XDA leaker. It can be tested via this website's forum for the phone.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 636-powered Nokia 7.1 has been around for only a few weeks, but it arrived with Android Oreo onboard. Now, this Android One device is already receiving the Android Pie treatment as promised, and the units located in all regions of the world should get the new software in a few days.

PUBG Mobile managed to eclipse Fortnite’s earnings for two days in a row on iOS, according to market analyst SensorTower. This is the first time the Tencent game has managed to beat out the effort from Epic on Apple’s platform in terms of global player spending. Last week was a good week overall for PUBG Mobile, with revenue rising 166% from the previous week (total for iOS and Android).

The BLU Vivo XL4 is a 6.2-inch Android handset with a MediaTek Helio P22 processor inside, next to 3 GB of memory and 32 GB of internal storage space. Sporting a generous 4,000 mAh battery (thankfully featuring 5 V/2 A fast charging) and a 13 + 2 MP main camera setup, this handset can be acquired from Amazon for US$149.99.

A group of trademark applications to the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) have been discovered by LetsGoDigital that offer a number of names for an upcoming foldable smartphone from LG. The selection of names goes from the rather prosaic XF and XB, to the much more colorful Solid, Solidis, and Bendi.

Nubia has released the second generation of its Red Magic gaming phone, the 'Mars'. The device is as expected based on several leaks and rumors: it is powered by the Snapdragon 845 chipset, runs Android Pie and has a 10GB RAM variant. The Red Magic Mars also follows the RGB trend.

Among the Windows 10 October update's many bugs, Apple's iCloud stopped working and could not be installed on the build. Microsoft and Apple had announced that they would collaborate to resolve this bug. With iCloud's newest update, it appears that this has been achieved.

The refreshed models have a brand new design inspired by the Spectre and Envy series. In other words, the new systems have 180-degree hinges and narrow bezels for a slimmer and sleeker look without sacrificing key ProBook features like BIOSphere Gen 4 and 4G LTE connectivity.

Just in time for their winter break, students can enjoy YouTube Music and YouTube Premium at affordable prices. The special plans come for US$4.99 a month for YouTube Music Premium and US$6.99 for YouTube Premium, but those who sign up by the end of January 2019 can get YouTube Premium for the special rate of US$5.99.

Canadians are friendlier than Americans. You hear this stereotype again and again all over the USA. But at least on Twitter, there seems to be something true about it.