Latest Tech News

Narrow bezels are all the rage these days—so much so that some OEMs have been overtly exaggerating their claims through marketing material. We want users to be aware of deceiving product shots that are seemingly becoming more commonplace amongst smartphone OEMs.

About a month ago, Chiphell user Gtx9 leaked what he alleged was a Cinebench score of AMD's "Rome" server architecture. As Cinebench scores are easily manipulated, the weight behind Chiphell's leak was very weak. However, Gtx9 has returned with more convincing proof.

The new Whiskey Lake processors for laptops were announced at IFA. Lenovo used this opportunity to unveil the extremely thin Yoga S730-13IWL. Now, Lenovo will apparently launch another Ultrabook with Whiskey Lake in the near future - the new IdeaPad S530-13IWL should be much cheaper compared to the Yoga S730.

Some new images of the Google Pixel Slate tablet have appeared online, just ahead of the company’s hardware event that is taking place in New York City on October 9. The new device is expected to utilize Chrome OS and features a detachable keyboard and a stylus. The Slate will offer fresh competition for Apple’s iPads and Microsoft’s Surfaces.

Indian online retail giant Flipkart will be kicking off its annual Big Billion Days sales from October 10 to October 14 and has partnered with Asus to announce huge discounts on the ZenFone 5Z and the ZenFone Max Pro (M1) smartphones along with a few lucrative exchange offers. These discounts can also be clubbed with bank-specific offers for additional waivers on debit and credit card transactions.

The US Department of Homeland Security has issued a statement that seems to refute Bloomberg’s claim that a significant number of US companies had been compromised due to clandestine microchips reporting sensitive data back to China. Amazon Web Services and Apple have also rebuked the article’s content.

It has been reported that Skybound Games will take over work on The Walking Dead: The Final Season after original developer Telltale Games suffered from “majority studio closure.” Skybound Games was cofounded in 2010 by Robert Kirkman, who is better known as the man who co-created The Walking Dead comic book.

A user on Xiaomi's MIUI forums has reported that their Mi A1 went up in flames while they were sleeping beside it. Xiaomi is yet to respond.

The iPhone XS Max was recently unveiled with one of the heftiest price tags we've ever seen on a production smartphone. Thankfully, it offers a matching camera performance, but one still a touch below the absolute best. According to DxOMark, anyway.

Think the Google Pixels are great devices with slightly mortifying price tags? You may be interested in the new device Google is said to be working on, as it will most likely be a cheaper Pixel alternative.

While the market still lingers on dual rear cameras, some OEMs may be making the step up to a quad-rear camera setup.

The Pixel 3 XL is likely to include that most divisive of features: the notch. A new leak, containing a screen protector described as fitting the upcoming Google phone, may give an idea of its extent in real life. This leak also suggests that, otherwise, the Pixel 3 XL's front panel is not much different to that of the 2 XL.

AMD has announced that its 12- and 24-core Ryzen 2 Threadripper chips will be available on October 29. The new chips are counterparts to the more expensive 16- and 32-core chips in the Threadripper lineup and will appeal to enthusiasts looking for a balance between performance and price.

For the second time in a fortnight, Google has had to sit by and watch as one of its brand new devices gets sold in the wild ahead of its official unveiling. While a Chromecast 3 got sold early by accident, an unscrupulous Hong Kong store is cashing in by selling the Pixel 3 XL quite deliberately early.

A patent by Nintendo has been unearthed that appears to show a Game Boy cover for an electronic device, such as a smartphone. The patent was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in March 2018 and describes an attachable cover with operation buttons. Drawings included with the patent application look just like the iconic Game Boy console.

The Amazon Alexa app has received a much-needed redesign and now features a clearer user interface and a new Devices tab. Users will be able to go directly to a list of devices in their home that utilize the popular virtual assistant without having to switch between tabs. The app update is already available for iOS and Android.

A notice has been published on Microsoft’s support site for Windows 10 stating that the rollout for the scheduled update for October 2018 (version 1809) has been paused. It seems a number of users have reported grave issues with the update, including considerable loss of data and even detrimental effects on a device’s battery life.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider has only been on the shelves for a few weeks and Square Enix has already announced a new DLC adventure for Lara Croft. The Forge is scheduled for release on November 13 and will be available for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. A standalone purchase of the DLC will cost US$4.99.

Older Android devices that still run Jelly Bean (JB) - or the versions of the OS from 4.1 to 4.3 - will no longer be able to run Google Chrome. The minimum API level for this app is being reset to 4.4 (or KitKat). This may not seem like a big deal; however, millions of devices out there still run JB.

The Huawei Mate 20 series' distributor-price structure at launch may have been revealed in a new leak. On the other hand, this leak is Swiss, and, thus, the prices are in francs. However, it may yet be a decent indication of how much the new phones may cost in other markets.

An internal service document recently leaked from within Apple states that no-one but company staff and Authorized Apple Service Providers (AASPs) can repair or replace most MacBook 2018 and iMac Pro components without the devices becoming inoperable. However, iFixit has claimed to have done so with a MacBook Pro - and nothing happened.

The Galaxy S10 will be the biggest smartphone launch after the iPhone X that was released a year ago, in part due to the triple rear camera setup the device will feature. Details of those three cameras have now surfaced.

Initial CAD renders of Sony's upcoming Xperia XA3 mid-range phone have surfaced. The device will sport dual rear cameras, a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, and a clean, eye-catching design.

The Moto G7 may be quite a while away from launch but renders and details of the device have surfaced, showing us a device with one of the most distasteful front designs we've seen this year.

Panos Panay opened up on why the Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop 2 lack a USB Type-C port while the Surface Studio 2, Surface Go, and even the Surface Headphones have one such port. Panay insisted that USB Type-C will not be at the expense of the traditional USB Type-A port, which still is the connector of choice for most USB devices today. The Type-C connector will eventually make it into future devices but Microsoft is in no hurry to make it happen.

Elon Musk, the CEO of e-automotive company Tesla, has sent a Tweet seeming to criticize the US Security and Exchange Commission. It was posted shortly after this body's decision to fine Tesla and strip Musk of his position on its board. The tweet may be linked to a subsequent 7% drop in the company's share price.

After selling more than 20 million Switch units, Nintendo is on its way to the launch of this handheld gaming console's second iteration, which is expected to arrive next summer. Although it will probably not make the move to an OLED panel, the Nintendo Switch 2 should feature an improved LCD display and upgrades in all the essential areas.

HMD Global is bringing premium features like an HDR10 screen and Zeiss optics for the rear dual-cam to its mid-range lineup. The display features the infamous notch, but, other than that, the specs are quite compelling for the affordable price point, as the Nokia 7.1 is powered by the Snapdragon 636 SoC coupled with 3 or 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 32 or 64 GB storage.

Even though Huawei is certainly not the only 5G modem manufacturer on the market, the Chinese company submitted a new report to the U.S. FCC, in which it explains why the freshly launched Verizon 5G infrastructure would not be used by too many customers, as the 5G handheld costs may rise because of trade bans imposed by Trump.

First announced at Computex, the (overclocked) Qualcomm Snapdragon 845-powered Asus ROG Phone is now finally ready to take on the North American market. This gaming handset with 8 GB of memory and up to 512 GB of internal storage space will be launched in the area during an event that is scheduled to take place in New York on October 18.

KRY, a company that describes itself as a "digital healthcare provider", is the world's first group to offer treatment for public-speaking phobias in VR. This form of therapy is to be made available to adults of 18 and older. It involves doing therapeutic 'exercises' using a VR headset worn at home.

The Internet of Things (IoT) market is now estimated it will attain a value of just under US$1,500 billion by 2024. This is particularly impressive as it was worth $334 billion in 2016. A new report attributes this potential growth to the general demand for state-of-the-art technology.

The National Library of Norway plans to digitize everything that was ever published locally, starting with ancient manuscripts and also including movies, books, maps, photos, and so on. This project has been around for 12 years already and current estimates claim it will take three more decades for it to reach the end.

According to some core files buried deep in the Android 9 core, Samsung's foldable phone gets an interesting codename, while it looks like the rumors regarding a new naming scheme for the upcoming Snapdragon SoCs were indeed spot on. Moreover, the Galaxy S10 is as good as confirmed to get the Snapdragon version in addition to the Exynos one.

Do your best to show off how Lucky the dragon can look when fused with the Venom Symbiote and you could win a new MSI Trident 3 mini PC or 27-inch curved gaming monitor. The contest celebrates the release of the movie Venom starring Tom Hardy in the titular role.

AMD has a very favorable position on the CPU market, especially now that Intel is going through rougher times caused by shortages. The red team should be able to increase the market share with the release of its 7 nm Ryzen 3000, Threadripper 3000 and EPYC "Rome" CPUs, plus the Instinct GPUs in early 2019.

The iPhone XS and XS Max models have collectively outdone their predecessors when it comes to capturing a share of Apple customers in their launch year. They have also exceeded the iPhones 8 and 8 Plus when it comes to gaining this share in the week after their launch. However, the iPhone 7 Plus remains the most popular Apple smartphone.

PCs that run on processors that are of the Skylake or later series are reportedly displaying obstructive messages in the course of their update to the October version of Windows 10. This is due to an older Intel Display Audio driver that may cause instability if still present when the machine has finished upgrading itself.

A developer has created an app that can test the 60fps rendering capabilities of the S4 SIP, the processing platform found in the 4th-gen Apple Watch. He has reported that the watch equals the iPhone 6S in this test. The watch also used less than 70% of its processing power while running this app.

Nokia devices have had impenetrable bootloaders for a while now, especially after the unofficial blackhat method was patched last month. HMD has finally remedied that, though, by launching its bootloader unlock program.

Huawei has launched its latest device in a long line of nigh-indistinguishable mid-rangers. The Huawei Y9 (2019) comes equipped with a big 6.5-inch FHD+ display, dual selfie cameras, dual rear cameras, and a Kirin 710.

The Razer Phone appealed to a large enough crowd that Razer has confirmed it will be releasing a successor to the gaming device. Renders of the Razer Phone 2 surfaced a short while ago, showing a device that looks identical to its predecessor bar a few changes.

Microsoft has begun seeding the Windows 10 October 2018 Update in a staggered manner and one of the important aspects of this update is that it comes with the latest version of DirectX 12 that supports DirectX Raytracing (DXR) thereby, enabling the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards to perform their best in raytracing-enabled games. What this also means is that cards from other companies such as AMD will also be able to take advantage of this new API.

Dell has taken a page from its lauded XPS 15 series to create one of the strongest 15.6-inch narrow-bezel gaming laptops we've seen so far. The brand new design is 38 percent lighter, 17 percent thinner, and 30 percent smaller than the Alienware 15 R4. The system is even 20 percent lighter and 14 percent thinner than the current Alienware 13.

802.11n, 802.11ac, and 80211ax will now be known as Wi-Fi 4, Wi-Fi 5, and Wi-Fi 6, respectively. Wireless products launching in 2019 or later will use the new naming convention in their specifications list to better help customers compare and contrast wireless features.

First announced before the RTX 2000-series gaming GPUs, the new Quadro professional cards based on the Turing architecture will start shipping in a few weeks. The Quadro RTX 6000 flagship card is now up for pre-order with a "decent" US$6,300 price. It features a slightly more powerful TU102 core plus 24 GB GDDR6 VRAM.

The Surface Pro 6 tablet is now available in black, as well as the usual platinum color option. Users can now choose among Intel's i5-8250U and i7-8550U ULV CPUs, 8 or 16 GB of RAM and 128 GB/ 256 GB/ 512 GB/ 1 TB PCIe NVMe storage capacities. The USB-C connector is still missing, but at least Microsoft lowered the prices for the high-end variants.

The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K has just been announced. It may be able to deliver HDR10+, as well as Dolby Vision, in order to stream content. Amazon has also included object-based Dolby Atmos surround sound, for material that supports it. At just US$49, it may be a significant problem for the upcoming Chromecast update.

The third generation of the Huawei Watch, which may be named the Watch GT rather than the Watch 3, is the subject of new image leaks at WinFuture. The watch may have a larger display than its predecessor, and may have more than one version. It has also reportedly been approved by the FCC.

At the recently concluded XDC 2018 conference, Intel's Linux graphics kernel developer, Manasi Navare touched upon the support for DisplayPort 1.4a and Display Stream Compression capabilities of the upcoming generation of Intel integrated graphics. The Gen 11 iGPU is slated to be a part of the 10nm 'Ice Lake' CPU family expected to launch sometime in holiday 2019.