Western Digital has released an affordable budget SSD that is mainly intended for content creators and other price sensitive users who do not need every last bit of performance in order to securely store their data.

Facebook users are complaining of outages in their thousands. The social media giant reportedly developed these problems today (October 4, 2021), causing a loss of service on its main site, not to mention other popular apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp. A representative has acknowledged the apparently global issue.

More performance for one of Samsung's most popular smartphones, plus a fast AMOLED display; it seems like nothing can go wrong. Or can it?

Realme has only just debuted its second-gen Neo smartphone in its native China; now, a new leak asserts that the device is about to go international. The OEM is said to bring most of its RAM/storage configuration in all of its new colorways to Europe, although the exact date of this alleged event remains unknown.

ASUS and Noctua have finally revealed their collaborative graphics cards, both based on the GeForce RTX 3070. Supposedly, the pair are the quietest air-cooled graphics card in their class and should not exceed 35 dB(A) under load.

OnePlus is projected to launch second-gen versions of its more affordable Buds Z TWS earbuds soon. A new leak for these accessories hint at a considerable boost in total battery life, slated to reach up to 18 more hours between charges. However, this only applies when the Buds Z2s' new noise-cancelling feature is turned off.

Apple has confirmed when the Watch Series 7 will be available to pre-order and in which countries. The Watch Series 7 will start shipping a week after Apple opens its pre-order window. Someone has already published hands-on photos of their Watch Series 7, though.

A tech blog claims to have uncovered evidence of a new portable gaming device developed by Lenovo. This putative answer to the Nintendo Switch or Sony PSP goes under the Legion brand and runs Android - or, rather, it would have, had the OEM not chosen to cancel it ahead of its launch. Should it have made it to the market in 2021, it may have worked as a cloud and streaming machine too.

Intel has not started selling the Alder Lake-S series yet, but Amazon has revealed prices for all SKUs in multiple countries. The listings confirm a previous leak concerning retail packaging, too.

Samsung has confirmed the presence of ray-tracing technology on a future Exynos GPU. Ray tracing should produce images in games that create a higher immersion factor due to lighting and shadow refinements. However, the screenshot comparison provided by Samsung for Exynos ray tracing has been met with a mixed response.

Microsoft is preparing Microsoft 365 and Office 2021 for release on October 5 on Windows and macOS devices for business, personal and student customers. Office 2021 will inherit many of the existing components from Microsoft 365 subscription (formerly Office 365) and both will be updated with new features in time for Windows 11.

AMD has finally breached the 30% processor usage wall it had been facing on Steam’s Hardware & Software Survey. It is the strongest position AMD has held in the survey for over 16 months and seemingly reverses the trend for Intel's growth. Intel’s ambitions in this particular arena will now mostly lie on the success of Alder Lake.

It is well-known that Apple has a significant lead over the competition in terms of both the performance and efficiency of its Arm-based designs. However, even in low power mode, Geekbench 5 shows that the A15 powering the Apple iPhone 13 Pro is still powerful enough to embarrass the competition.

Apple’s new iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max smartphones are the first from the company to feature a 120 Hz refresh rate that it markets as ‘ProMotion’. Like competing displays from Samsung (which also supplies the iPhone 13 Pro panels), Apple’s ProMotion panels can refresh variably but with an important twist.

Motorola is now thought to have a Moto G30 successor in the works. Now, this device has allegedly turned up in live-image form at the Taiwanese NCC regulator. They show that the pre-launch smartphone will have a potentially high-end main camera and a large battery.

Apple launched the iPhone 13 Pro over two weeks ago with an MSRP of US$999. That happens to be the exact price tag as its close rival, the Galaxy S21+ but it appears Apple's new flagship costs a bit more to build.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 778G and MediaTek's Dimensity 1200 are the two current chipsets of choice across the mid-range and sub-premium segments. Some may wonder exactly what performance differences exist between the two chipsets; answers are, thankfully, here.

Xiaomi completed the global roll-out of the POCO M3 Pro in mid-2021. Now, a number of leaks suggest that a successor for this affordable 5G phone is incoming. The M4 Pro is said to have an SoC from the same OEM as its forebear, albeit with a new and upgraded charging rate.

Mobile app and game downloads combined declined slightly year-on-year in the third quarter of 2021 (3Q2021), as the pandemic-era boom in this area recedes. Nevertheless, the amount of money coming in on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store is still going up. The latest research indicates that TikTok is still #1 in terms of revenue.

The company SmallRig has launched something that might be for those in need of something besides the typical tripod or gimbal for their mobile photography or videography. The Fold P10 is a collapsible smartphone clamp designed to support two-handed use during filming. It also has cold-shoe mounts for a larger-scale set-up with external lights or mics.

The new version of Google Chrome 94.0.4606.71 released on September 30 for Windows, Linux and Mac platforms addressed pressing security flaws including two highly-rated exploits.

POCO has opened a public bug report in regard to the widely reported ghost screen issue that has affected many owners of the company’s smartphones. Although the report specifically mentions the POCO X3 Pro, many other Global devices have suffered from ghost touch problems. A user has offered up a fix for PUBG Mobile that might work for some.

Nreal has unveiled the Nreal Air, a budget pair of augmented reality glasses. This headset is designed for consumers to watch TV and play games on a big-screen display on the move. The Nreal Air glasses are due to launch in December 2021.

The Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are expected to debut on October 19. While prior leaks have revealed a lot about the Pixel 6 Pro, a new leak from China lays bare all essential details of the duo as well as the chipset they will feature—Tensor.

The Redmi K50 series will succeed the Redmi K40 series as Xiaomi's more affordable premium phone lineup. A new leak has now revealed important details of the three phones in the series, the Redmi K50, Redmi K50 Pro, and Redmi K50 Pro+, ahead of launch.

Motorola may be working on smartphones for the rest of 2021 or even 2022 already. This is indicated by some new leaks detected on several official databases. Most of them specify a novel model number from the OEM, although one lets a name to go with them slip.

The ZTE Axon 30 5G positions itself in the upper mid-range and features a well-hidden UDC. It also scores points in the test with other strengths, but it also has to face some criticism.

Asus' ZenFone 8 is one of 2021's very few true compact Android flagships. It normally runs on ZenUI based on Android 11; however, the OEM has now officially announced it is working on a major upgrade for this software. Users who would like to get a sneak peek at this new interface are invited to enrol in its new beta program.

Counterpoint Research has announced the results of its analysis of the smartphone processor market during the second quarter of 2021 (2Q2021). They indicate that MediaTek "dominated" the space for those 3 months, taking a share of over 40% for the first time. On the other hand, Qualcomm did well out of the 5G baseband sector, thanks to iPhone sales.

It's going to be another year until Apple's iPhone 14 generation will be released, but there are already rumors about the expected upgrades to Apple's new flagship smartphones. A sketchy leak from China now claims that Apple will offer the iPhone 14 Pro models in a massive 2TB storage configuration.

A tech blogger has posted unofficial renders of the Intel Arc Alchemist desktop graphics card reference design. It’s claimed the images of the dGPU were not based on guesswork and accurately represent the test cards. The same source also gave some idea of when both the laptop and desktop variants of Intel Arc Alchemist could be released.

Xiaomi has now listed its new phones like the Xiaomi Pad 5, Xiaomi 11T series, and Redmi 10 in its list of devices eligible for beta recruitment. The company has also started the Global stable ROM Android 12 beta-testing, kicking things off with phones in the Mi 11 series.

Google Japan has posted a new teaser video for the upcoming Pixel 6 smartphone. The clip offers a good look at the user interface (UI) of the latest Pixel device but only delivers a “coming soon” launch timeframe for the eagerly awaited phone. The custom Tensor SoC of the Google Pixel 6 also gets in on the teaser action.

Nvidia did not do itself a favor with the strongly varying TGPs of the current Ampere generation. Even though the XMG Focus 15 races past most other laptops with the RTX 3050 Ti, the RTX 3060 is clearly the better choice for gamers.

The backlight on the older Alienware m15 keyboard would light up all keys and symbols, but this is not true on the Alienware x15 or x17 for reasons unknown.

Xiaomi is now gracing its premium phones, the Mi 10, Mi 10T, and Mi 10T Pro with their first tastes of MIUI 12.5 Enhanced Edition in Europe. The updates for the three phones deliver the September security patch, as well as all of MIUI 12.5 Enhanced's features.

A leak has revealed some of the features that Mobvoi will integrate in its future smartwatches. Reputedly, the TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra, TicWatch GTH+ and TicWatch GTH Pro will support advanced heart tracking features.

The insidious malware has sneaked into the Google Play Store via legitimate looking apps and has apparently caused significant financial damage for millions of Android users. But a little bit of caution is all that is necessary to thwart the plans of the malicious GriftHorse trojan.

The Sony Xperia 5 III is now available in the UK and with WH-H910N headphones as a pre-order bonus. Unfortunately, the smartphone is only available through EE, O2 and Vodafone with expensive contracts.

iFixit has disassembled the iPad mini 6 and has explained why some people perceive the jelly scrolling effect when using the tablet. Unsurprisingly, Apple's latest tablet is difficult to repair, as is the case with current and past iPads.

Sony has renewed its objections to Huawei selling 'GT' branded smartwatches. While Huawei has released the Watch GT and GT 2 series so far, Sony has taken the Chinese company and EUIPO to the European General Court to prevent the release of the Watch GT 3 or any future models bearing the GT name.

MediaTek has unveiled a new "high-performance" series dedicated to the latest standard of wireless connectivity. It now consists of the Filogic 830 and 630, the line's first examples of system-on-chips (SoCs) and network interface cards (NICs) respectively. They are slated to confer top-end Wi-Fi specs on devices such as PCs, smart TVs and peripherals.

The colorful action adventure The Touryst is making history. At least on paper, it is the first ever console game to run at a 8K resolution and 60 frames per second. A new video by Digital Foundry has now explored the technical details of this historic occasion.

The iPhone maker has just released a small update for its mobile operating system iOS. Especially users of an iPhone 13 and an Apple Watch should install the update to fix an annoying bug with the unlocking feature.