Latest Tech News

The Intel Core i7-9700K made its way to the SiSoftware database and looks like it will be a non-Hyperthreaded part. Intel looks to reserve Hyperthreading for the Core i9 SKU from the next generation onwards, which makes the Core i7-9700K, the first Core i7 CPU to lack Hyperthreading making the Core i7-8700K a better choice for multi-threaded workflows.

The Watch Party feature for Facebook Groups has been tested over the last few months, and now it is finally available for all users of the notorious social network. Thanks to it, people within a group can watch a video together — it works for both live and pre-recorded content — and interact via comments and reactions.

Microsoft has re-opened the Skip Ahead ring for Windows Insiders with a new build from the 19H1 branch alongside a new Redstone 5 build for Fast Ring Insiders. These builds come with a new Mixed Reality Flashlight feature that allows a quick peek at the outside world without having to remove the headset. Also included are a slew of improvements to Microsoft Edge, time accuracy, Kiosk Setup, and new update experiences.

In the backdrop of Qualcomm's earnings call for this quarter, the company stated that Apple intends to use only Intel modems in the coming iPhone release and thus, Qualcomm will not be supplying modems for the next iPhone. It remains to be seen if Intel would be the preferred supplier or Apple would be looking at alternatives such as MediaTek.

Samsung has officially revealed its latest flexible OLED panel technology. The new ‘Unbreakable Panel’ as the company is referring to it, has passed multiple US military standards for drop testing and shatter resistance.

The upcoming Motorola One Power has been the subject of quite a few rumors and leaks over the last few weeks, but now it has just surfaced on TENAA. According to this fresh listing, the 6.18-inch handset features a massive 4,850 mAh battery, up to 6 GB/64 GB of memory/internal storage, a dual camera on the back, and more.

Counterpoint Research and Canalys have posted their quarterly reports on the business standings of the Indian smartphone markets, with both agreeing that Samsung has rebounded brilliantly in Q2 after a slump in the first quarter of the year.

The Honor Note 10 has, over the past week, made appearances on certification websites and retail outlets, giving us a clearer idea of what we'll be getting from Huawei's next premium device.

The VideoLAN team has blocked Google Play Store access for the widely popular VLC app for newer Huawei phones alleging poor background task management. The aggressive power management in EMUI seems to abruptly stop background playback in Huawei phones resulting in users leaving 'unfair' reviews.

Samsung is bundling both a $200 11.6-inch Chromebook 3 and a $200 256 GB EVO MicroSD card with every new purchase of an unlocked Galaxy S9 or S9 Plus for a limited time.

The Meizu 16 will feature a 6-inch screen, a Snapdragon 710 SoC and a 2,950 mAh battery, while the 16 Plus model will come with a 6.5-inch screen, a Snapdragon 845 SoC and a 3,570 mAh battery. Both models get thin side-bezels, no notch, dual rear camera setup and curved glass backs. The official launch date is scheduled for August 8.

The latest Bluetooth vulnerability may affect many more devices than last year's BlueBorne, because it can affect smartphones as well as laptops that integrate Apple, Google, Intel, Broadcom or Qualcomm hardware. Due to insufficient encryption validation during the pairing process. Microsoft claims that Windows 10 is not affected, but all the other companies are releasing fixes as soon as possible.

After more than a month without making the Android distribution numbers public, Google reveals that Oreo is finally above the 10 percent barrier — at 12.1 percent, to be accurate — while Nougat has begun to descend, dropping by just 0.3 percent when compared to the 31.1 percent of the market it controlled during the week that ended on May 7.

Qualcomm teased something related to the Snapdragon 845 for today and it seems that it is about the Snapdragon 845 itself and not any Adreno Turbo technology as was speculated. The campaign was to promote the Snapdragon 845 in the ChinaJoy tech expo and the company posted a video on Weibo highlighting the features of the chip for gaming and entertainment.

AMD's marketing appears to be in turbo mode, literally. The company has put up a series of ads in San Jose airport highlighting its Epyc series CPUs while trolling Intel Xeons and comparing them to relics. The ads are fun to see and remind us of the Intel-AMD CPU wars during the 90s and early 2000s.

The new stable Steam Client for Windows, Linux, and Mac brings an all-new chat feature that is also available for web browsers, GPU acceleration in web views by default, support for the PlayStation 3 controller, 15 Xbox controllers, and more. In the near future, Windows XP and Vista will no longer be supported by the Steam Client.

Lenovo is apparently preparing a big announcement for its ThinkPad laptop line, a completely new model to compete with Dells XPS 15. The new ThinkPad X1 Extreme was leaked by known leaker Roland Quandt and it might be released at IFA 2018.

Acer Slovakia seems to have published the details of the Nitro 50-100 gaming desktop tower that features the AMD Ryzen 5 2500X processor. The Ryzen 5 2500X and the Ryzen 3 2300X were not mentioned during the Ryzen 2 unveiling making this the first official appearance of the CPU.

The upcoming Xbox console could come in two versions — a conventional console with top of the line hardware and a streaming-only version that has lower compute ability and streams games from what is internally being referred to as the 'Scarlett Cloud'. 'Scarlett Cloud' could mean that gamers will be able to stream Xbox games on virtually any device with an internet connection.

Honor yesterday announced the arrival of the Honor 9N for the Indian market. The midrange handset will be exclusive to Flipkart and is essentially identical to the Honor 9i. Shipments start from July 31 with prices starting from ₹11,999 (US$174).

Sony's forthcoming flagship refresh, the XZ3 has leaded in fresh renders. Not only will it get a curved edge display, it looks like it will be the recipient of Sony's new 48MP camera module.

Apple has issued a supplemental update to macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 that addresses the throttling issues exhibited by the 2018 MacBook Pro. Those who have installed the update report that they are seeing improved performance in the Core i9 model and that the CPU is now at least able to sustain the base clocks.

Apple reacts to all the criticism of the last week and just released a software update, which is supposed to improve the CPU performance. We updated our test models of the MacBook Pro 13 as well as the MacBook Pro 15 and have some benchmark results. Especially the smaller MBP 13 benefits from the update.

iFixit has discovered in its recent teardown of the 2018 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar that Apple has removed the Customer Data Migration Tool connector from the logic board. The connector helped in transferring data to a functioning MacBook in the event of a logic board failure but it now looks like customers should use inbuilt backup options such as Time Machine on a frequent basis to safeguard their data.

Although the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 — one of the few Chrome OS-driven tablets unveiled so far — arrived back in March, it took a while for it to finally become widely available. Now, those interested can acquire this 9.7-inch slate with a Rockchip RK3399 processor inside for a starting price of US$330.

In a survey conducted from July 16 through July 20, half of Google employees claim to be underpaid while nearly 14 percent of Facebook employees say they are making too much money.

A Reddit user has managed to find out the reason for the high throttling seen in the 2018 Apple MacBook Pros with the Intel Core i9 CPU and it turns out that it is due to power throttling of the VRM than thermal throttling of the CPU. The user has managed to manually alter the turbo power limit for the VRM and thus, was able to achieve steady turbo boost without throttling.

It looks like Nvidia's AIB partners have already been notified about the upcoming GTX 11 launch schedule. First to launch will be the GTX 1180 flagship at the end of August. Then after 1 month the overclocked GTX 1180 cards will be launched along with the GTX 1170. Late October will see the launch of the GTX 1160 and the mobility variants will most likely come in late November.

When compared to 64-bit 3D flash, Toshiba's 96-layer BiCS flash technology promises to consume 4.7 W less power while providing potentially higher storage capacities. The OEM intends to launch its XG6 series soon for high-performance client PCs and laptops where competition from Samsung, Lite-On, and SK Hynix is fierce.

According to Chinese site ITHome, the Kirin 980 will integrate a quad ARM Cortex-A77 core cluster clocked at 2.8 GHz and one ARM Cortex-A55 core cluster. The GPU will be developed by HiSilicon and it is said to be 50%faster than the Adreno 630. The next gen SoC will not support 5G communications, but it will get an updated NPU for AI applications.

The official Asus Bangladesh website is listing the ROG Strix GL503 with Whiskey Lake Core i5-8265U and i7-8565U processor options. It could simply be a mistake, but with IFA 2018 right around the corner, it could also be hinting at a host of Whiskey Lake laptops just waiting to be announced.

Details of new 8-core 16-thread Intel Coffee Lake CPUs have leaked online. The top-end Core i9-9900K can boost up to 5 GHz out of the box and has a TDP of 95W. The other SKUs in the lineup include the 8-core Core i7-9700K and the 6-core Core i5-9600K both without Hyperthreading.

Google is expected to unveil quite a few new pieces of hardware in October: the Pixel 3 and 3 XL handsets, the second-generation Pixel Buds, a Pixel-branded smartwatch, and now an updated PixelBook with narrow bezels is joining the list as well. Sadly, nothing is official yet.

Xiaomi has made the Mi A2 and Mi A2 Lite official at a Madrid event today. The European launch of the Mi A2 signals the arrival of the Chinese smartphone maker on the global arena and the Mi A2 looks to build upon the success of its predecessor. These new Android One smartphones will soon launch in 40 markets worldwide.

Leakster @MMDDJ_ on Twitter has tweeted that Samsung is preparing a gaming smartphone. No other details were posted but the leakster did say that the gaming smartphone will not be named the 'Galaxy X'.

Qualcomm China has put out a teaser related to a 'faster', 'cooler', and 'smarter' Snapdragon technology on its official Weibo page. While details are still scarce, all indications point to Qualcomm announcing its version of Huawei's GPU Turbo feature, which will in probability be called Adreno Turbo.

Microsoft has released a strong set of financial results for the fourth quarter of the 2017/2018 financial year and equally impressive results for the full fiscal 2017/2018 year. Growth was strongest in cloud services (matching the third quarter results), but gaming and Surface also showed good increases.

Qualcomm unveiled the QTM052 mmWave antenna module that can fit into a smartphones using the Snapdragon X50 to provide 5G NR connectivity. The QTM052 is accompanied by the announcement of new sub-6 GHz RF modules that smartphone makers can incorporate to provide gigabit speeds as the industry begins its transition to 5G networks.

Sony has unveiled the new IMX586 imaging sensor for smartphones that packs an effective 48 MP with a pixel size of 0.8 microns. The CMOS sensor features a Quad Bayer color filter array that bins adjacent 2x2 pixels to yield sensitivity equivalent to a 1.6 micron 12 MP sensor.

The eye-catching Blade 15 officially starts at $1900 USD, but the cheapest configuration sits at $2200 due to insufficient stock. There have been no announcements on when we can expect the sub $2000 configuration to be available.

Just as previously rumored, the Nokia X5 handset will hit the global market as the Nokia 5.1 Plus. Although HMD's Global Chief Product Officer, Juho Sarvikas, confirmed its arrival on Twitter, the details are not public yet, but we expect this to happen soon.

The leaked 3DMark picture shows some outstanding specs for the GTX 1170, besides the benchmark score. Apparently, the next gen GPU will come with as much as 16 GB of GGDR6 VRAM running at 2.5 GHz, which already sounds a bit exaggerated. Upon closer inspection, one could find a few red flags that signal faked information.

The fourth generation Z2 Mini workstation series from HP is bringing refreshed specs like the Intel 8000-series desktop CPUs and the more advanced Xeon E 2100-series for professional designers. The new SFF systems support up to 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, up to 1 TB NVMe SSDs, Intel Optane memory and up to 1 TB SATA HDDs, plus a choice between Nvidia’s Quadro P600/P100 and AMD’s Radeon Pro WX 4150 GPUs.

Qualcomm published a blog post that it's X20 LTE modem-equipped Snapdragon 845 SoC offers superior mobile connectivity than other modems such as the Intel XMM 7480 and Intel XMM 7360 found in various iPhones. The data has been gathered from Speedtest.net results on AT&T and T-Mobile.

The upcoming OS 12 update for the Apple HomePod is slated to bring a slew of new features to the smart speaker including the ability to make and receive calls when paired with an iPhone and set multiple timers. With the upcoming MacOS Mojave update, the HomePod can also be controlled directly from the Mac.

The current Dell XPS 15 9570 is available with hexa-core CPUs. The performance utilization of Dell's 15-inch multimedia laptop is already decent ex-works, but there is more potential with some tuning. We show how it works and analyze the results.

Introduced back in November 2014 as the result of Snapchat's collaboration with Square, Snapcash ended up as a payment service mainly used for trading adult-oriented content online, far from the initial goal of allowing friends and family members to quickly transfer money while using Snapchat.

Although most details are still unknown, we heard that the AMD Picasso APU is a 12 nm Zen+ chip that might launch as an individual family of products instead of a mere Raven Ridge refresh. Unfortunately, AMD's current roadmap mentioned a 2019 release date, so it will probably take at least a few good months until more official details show up.

Those who are still using Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" should now update to the version 18.04 (nicknamed "Bionic Beaver") of this popular Linux distribution. Ubuntu 17.10 arrived on October 19, 2017, and it only received 9 months of support — as it happens with all non-LTS Ubuntu Linux releases.

The Surface Go created a bit of a splash when Microsoft announced it two weeks ago. The ultracompact 10-inch 2-in-1 is the spiritual successor to the non-Pro Surface 3, but with the advantage of using a higher spec'd x86 processor for smoother performance. CostCo is now advertising a new configuration that wasn't announced at launch, including the Type Cover at no additional cost.