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If there is one area that Apple has been seriously lagging Google, it is in the effective application of AI technologies to advance its flagship iPhone. Enter Google's former head of Machine Intelligence, John Giannandrea, who is now Apple's first official Chief of Machine Learning and AI Strategy.

Expected to launch in China later this week for a price starting around the equivalent of US$150, the upcoming Nokia X5 is powered by a yet-to-be-revealed MediaTek processor and sports a 720p 5.86-inch notched display. This handset will launch with Android 8.1 Oreo onboard and will obviously receive Android P once it becomes available.

The $1900 USD Blade 15 GTX 1060 configuration is both slower and cheaper than the Blade 15 GTX 1070 and yet it brings several benefits not available on the more powerful SKU. Our tests reveal that the 60 to 70 W GTX 1060 Max-Q option is less demanding than the 80 to 90 W GTX 1070 Max-Q for noticeably cooler core temperatures and longer battery life.

The fifth-generation V-NAND memory chips by Samsung use the "Toggle DDR 4.0" interface for the first time in the industry and provide a data transfer speed of up to 1.4 Gbps — an impressive increase of 40 percent over the previous generation. These new 256 Gb chips will soon be followed by 1 Tb offerings.

According to a recent trademark filing with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, the next-gen Huawei Mate device will be the Mate 20. This is still a bit far from an official confirmation, but it definitely minimizes the chances to see the Mate 11 showing up first, as some rumors have been suggesting.

After a successful first month, sales of the Samsung Galaxy S9 devices have flatlined. Going by the current trend, sales of the duo are expected to peak at an underwhelming 31 million shipments, making them the worst-selling Galaxy S devices since the Galaxy S3 that was released back in 2012.

HTC’s fall from grace continues without hitting terminal velocity. The company released its June sales numbers, with the figures showing a 68% year-on-year drop in revenue.

Sony’s Xperia XA2 Ulta mid-ranger made the trip to popular photography benchmark platform DxOMark last week, and recorded a set of bang average results in the process.

Samsung's Galaxy S10 has been tipped to pick up the company's next-generation ARM-based silicon. Expected to be called the Exynos 9820, the successor to the Exynos 9810 will also be fabricated on Samsung's all-new 7nm FinFet node.

Samsung Electronics' expanded mobile factory was inaugurated by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Noida, Uttar Pradesh in the presence of South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The factory is billed to be the world's largest facility for smartphone manufacturing with a capacity of producing 120 million units a year.

Google is currently offering its Pixel 2 XL models at US$100 off their regular price. The sale also includes other products in its hardware lineup and runs until July 17 while stocks last.

Sony's XZ2 Premium is up for pre-order in the US, but won't ship until July 30. To help ease the blow of its US$999 price tag, Sony is throwing in a set of its futuristic Xperia Ear Duos for customers who pre-order the device.

Microsoft has launched the Surface Go, a US$399 Windows 10 tablet targeted at the students, schools and the entry-level tablet market dominated by the Apple iPad. As rumored, the device is powered by an Intel Pentium Gold chip instead of an ARM-based chip as could have been the case for this type of device.

The deal will run until the end of this month and it will also include a single FandangoNow digital movie rental for free. The G3 gaming laptop is Dell's entry-level gaming system equipped with GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti options ranging from $700 to $1000 USD.

After the changes brought by the post-meteor strike Season 4, Season 5 of Fortnite is now on its way and will kick off on July 12 at 4 AM EDT (08:00 GMT). The strange rift events that have started to appear after the recent in-game missile launch will probably play a role in Season 5 as well, but the details are not public yet.

The Vivo Nex flagship, which is widely known for its fullscreen display design with a pop-up selfie camera and an in-display fingerprint reader, is expected to hit Russia, Malaysia, Taiwan, India, and Hong Kong by the end of the month. Sadly, its availability for other markets has not been confirmed yet.

The yet to be announced OPPO A3s seems to be a re-branded OPPO A5 and features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor, 2 GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage, a dual camera setup on the back, as well as a massive 6.2-inch notched display. Sadly, the screen resolution is very low for this size — only 1,280 x 720 pixels.

We recommend double-checking the specifications to make sure you are getting exactly what you are buying. The GT 1030 DDR4 costs about the same as the superior GT 1030 GDDR5 while performing significantly slower in games. HTPC builders amd gamers ought to take caution.

The affordable Microsoft tablet — most likely the one known as Lex and supposed to arrive this fall — will apparently land in stores this Friday. According to insiders familiar with the matter, this 10-inch Windows slate will start at US$399 for education customers and will go up to US$829 (without accessories).

The Samsung Galaxy Amp Prime 3 is a 5-inch handset that features low-end specs such as a resolution of just 1,280 x 720 pixels, 5 MP and 8 MP cameras, 2 GB RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage. On the other hand, many users will enjoy having a removable 2,600 mAh battery, Bixby support, as well as Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box.

The upcoming Xiaomi POCOPHONE landed at FCC with two variants, both featuring 6 GB of memory. However, one of them sports 64 GB of internal storage space, while the other offers 128 GB. The draft of the handset's back also reveals a vertical dual camera setup. Sadly, there is not much else to talk about yet.

A typo in the build script of AOSP-based custom ROMs for the Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones is reportedly causing the photo uploads from Google Camera to count against the Google Photos storage limit. The bug, however, is fixed now and users running custom ROMs on first gen Pixel phones should be able to use the unlimited Google Photos storage as usual.

The two 10.1-inch Huawei slates MediaPad M5 Lite 10 and MediaPad T5 10 run Android Oreo and use the same HiSilicon Kirin 659 octa-core processor, although there are some differences easily noticeable in the battery and camera departments. In Italy, their prices start around the equivalent of US$235.

A dual camera for selfies and a tri-camera setup on the back — this is the mobile photography hardware rumored to be used by Samsung for the upcoming Galaxy S10+ flagship. Currently codenamed "Beyond 2," this handset is expected to become — alongside the S10 — the first Samsung phone with a triple camera setup, as well as the first S series device with two front cameras.

Sony's new Xperia XZ2 Premium flagship is one of the heaviest smartphones hitting the market. At 232 grams, it even out beefs the hefty iPhone 8 Plus and Samsung's Galaxy Active.

The new Samsung Galaxy Tab Advanced2 and the Galaxy Tab Advanced2 XL are expected to hit the market soon with Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box, thinner bezels than their predecessors, as well as without a physical Home button. Both are very likely to arrive at the end of August, just in time for IFA 2018.

Samsung's next generation smartwatch is likely to skip its 'Gear' branding in favor of new 'Galaxy Watch' branding. The realigned brand is also expected to coincide with a switch in operating system from Samsung's Tizen OS to Google's Wear OS.

Seagate has launched a new range of BarraCuda SSDs for notebooks and desktop PCs. Targeted at the consumer market, the new SSDs come in capacities ranging from 250GB to 2TB.

Huawei is set to release the latest version of its TalkBand. The TalkBand 5 can be worn as a watch, but also features a pop out ear piece for taking and making calls on the move.

Those waiting for a Coffee Lake refresh for the latest Alienware 13 gaming laptop should give up all hope because Frank Azor has just confirmed that such a thing is not in the cards. The models currently available on the market use 6th and 7th generation Intel processors, as well as NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050/1050 Ti/1060 graphics.

Dell wants to be a key player in the growing eSports scene by supplying professional players with PCs and monitors, giving away prizes to audience members, and running competitions and drawings involving social media.

DigiTimes reports that Nvidia may be experiencing some problems with the current GTX 10 GPU overstock and might postpone the launch of the GTX 11 family for a few months, despite already being in possession of around one million next gen GPU cards. This could mean that the custom-made AIB and mobility versions could launch almost at the same time as the Founders' editions.

AI, machine learning and computer vision application will be getting a boost via the new NGD Catalina 2 programmable SSDs. Coming in 2.5-inch / add-in-board form-factors, these solutions integrate Toshiba's 3D NAND memory chips and benefit from the PCIe 3.0 X4 speeds with peak sequential read/writes capping at 3.9 GB/s. The programmable part is handled through a Xilnix FPGA.

Ming-Chi Kuo is back with Apple predictions and expects the 2018 iPhone range to pack several new color options including blue, red, gold and orange. The new colors will vary according to model, with the gold color reserved for the 2018 iPhone X sequel.

The well-received Mate 10 Pro flagship can be had for $500 unlocked and with no strings attached. Here's hoping that stock will last for more than just a few minutes when the deal goes live in just over a week.

Laptop webcams are being pushed aside so laptops can be smaller around the edges and thus lighter and more portable. If these latest laptops are any proof, then more OEMs are beginning to value webcams less and less in order to achieve a sleeker and more eye-catching "frame-less" look.

AnTuTu's list of the best-performing handheld devices updated for June shows a clear Chinese dominance. Of the ten featured devices, only three are non-Chinese (Samsung Galaxy S9+/S9 and Sony Xperia XZ2). Topping the chart is Xiaomi's Black Shark gaming smartphone, while the last position is occupied by another gaming smartphone - the Nubia Red Magic.

The Ryzen 5 2500X managed to get similar scores to Intel's gen 7 i7-7700 CPU, making it an excellent solution for budget desktops. It is the only quad-core/8-thread CPU in the Ryzen 2000 family and it should be a best buy at only US$20 over the Ryzen 3 2300X ~US$140 price. Additionally, it can easily be overclocked to 4.3 GHz on air, probably eevn higher on watercooled solutions.

Prominent Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley has learnt that Microsoft is still working out the nitty-gritty of the long-rumored Surface Phone or 'Andromeda' device, whose leaks and renders have been doing the rounds on the Internet. The delay in launching the device is apparently being attributed to the unfinished state of the 'Andromeda' shell and other quality and scheduling issues.

Xiaomi’s growth has been meteoric. The company made advances into Europe last year and is set to pay the US a visit in 2019, if company Vice President Wang Xiang’s words are anything to go by.

A post of Xiaomi’s MIUI forums has revealed what devices will receive the MIUI 10 update. Of course, only a select few of those devices will receive a MIUI 10 based on Android Oreo.

HTC is set to lay off 1500 workers from its Taiwan manufacturing unit by September. The company has seen a consistent drop in sales figures over the past year or so, and it’s about time we came to terms with the fact that the Taiwanese company could close shop soon.

The LG G6 is currently receiving its Oreo update. This is an update to Android 8.0 and, considering how long it’s taken to be sent out, will likely be the only major update the last-gen flagship receives.

A German engineering student has designed a 'mobile airbag' case that protects your phone by detecting when it has been dropped and deploying springs to cushion the fall. The prototype has won a national mechatronics award in Germany, and the product will be launched in Kickstarter later this month.

The rising prominence of eSports has prompted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to contemplate on including it as part of the Olympic Movement and is hosting an eSports forum to discuss the possibilities with all stakeholders. The forum will discuss various aspects of eSports and how they differ from traditional sport federations and the associated challenges.

Baidu's new Kunlun processor is advertised as "China's first cloud-to-edge AI chip" that will be used in both cloud and edge scenarios, including data centers, autonomous vehicles, and public clouds. The chip uses 14 nm Samsung engineering, providing 512 GB/s and 260 TOPS for a power consumption of 100 W.

A patent for a new foldable LG smartphone has surfaced. Unlike the impending Samsung Galaxy X, which folds into a quasi tablet, LG's approach is more akin to a foldable flip phone that fold small enough to comfortably fit into a shirt pocket.

Latest rumors claim that Samsung's first foldable phone - the Galaxy X - will be getting flexible batteries with capacities between 3,000 and 6,000 mAh. The foldable 7.3-inch OLED displays that will be featured with the Galaxy X are scheduled to enter production later this summer, and the devices should be ready for launch in Q1 2019, along with the Galaxy S10 models.

The unannounced Ryzen 3 2300X is running at 3.5 GHz by default and can go up to 4 GHz via boost frequencies. On default air cooling it may be pushed to 4.3 GHz without any problems, but liquid coolers may be able to help push it even further. The processor managed to score 690 points in Cinebench R15, placing it right between Intel's i3-8100 and i3-8350K.

The mid-range version of the Moto Z flagship, Lenovo's Moto Z Play has been unveiled back in August 2016 with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow onboard. Now, the Verizon Wireless variant of this Qualcomm Snapdragon 625-powered smartphone is finally receiving the long-awaited Android 8.0 Oreo update.