Yesterday, we reported on a catastrophic failure related to a setting in the UEFI-firmware of recent ThinkPads. Essentially, if the users changed a certain setting in the UEFI of their ThinkPad, there is a good chance that the machines is bricked in the process. Now, a user of an affected machine has managed to repair it. Doing so does however require some know-how, as well as the right tools.

A press release from Epic Games has announced that the company has managed to raise US$1.25 billion from a group of investors. Undoubtedly, the massive global impact of Fortnite will have contributed to the success Epic has had in securing such a large investment amount. A separate report has valued the creators of the Unreal Engine at nearly US$15 billion.

The creators of Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar Games, are back with the second game in the Red Dead Redemption series. Red Dead Redemption 2 comes with access to Red Dead Online, and those who download it from the Microsoft Store by October 29 will get pre-order bonuses such as The War Horse, The Outlaw Survival Kit, and more.

The Santa Clara giant reported the best quarter in its entire 50-year history, even though the company was not able to meet the outstanding market demand. The 14 nm shortages will continue throughout the rest of the year and Intel expects this situation to worsen, as it is slowly shifting focus to the 10 nm node.

Western Digital just announced the largest mechanical hard drive in the industry, a 15TB helium-sealed monster. Designed for data centers and cloud storage services, the 15TB HDD is intended for enterprise customers in need of densely compacted, reliable storage. Pricing and availability haven't been announced, but don't expect the drives to come cheap.

As online streaming becomes more popular, the need for specific hardware is also rising. Twitch partner Streamlabs and Intel have joined forces with mini PC OEMs like Shuttle, SimplyNUC, Zotac and Acer to bring streaming-ready systems for aspiring influencers and pro gamers. First streaming-ready concept system will be showcased by Acer at TwitchCon this weekend.

Less than a month after the release of the 2.0 major update, Vivaldi 2.1 arrives with noticeable improvements to the popular Quick Commands feature. Notes can be created directly in Quick Commands, Page and UI Zoom can both be adjusted via Quick Commands, the browser now supports the AV1 standard, and more.

The OnePlus 6T is set to launch in less than 3 days from now. It has experienced quite an uptick in its leak-rate. We now have a list of full press images, specs and pricing to check against during the October 29 event. The latest rumor suggests that OnePlus will add purple to its color SKUs for this device.

The Core XE variants of this year's Intel chipset lineup have been announced, but are not available yet. The top flight of this series, the i9-9980XE, is the subject of an apparent leak. It consists of a 3DMark Time Spy score for the processor.

Samsung and India's Department of Telecommunications teamed up to conduct the first large-scale 5G trial in the country, which is scheduled to take place in the first quarter of 2019 if everything works as planned. Samsung made the announcement at the India Mobile Congress 2018 earlier this week.

Although LG Electronics has reported a profit of almost US$668 million for the third quarter of 2018, the LG Mobile Communications Company had to face a weakening demand and increasing competition and reported an operating loss of roughly US$130 million. However, LG mobile branch seems to be on the right path.

Also known as the M8 Note, the Meizu Note 8 is a 6-inch Qualcomm Snapdragon 632-driven Android handset that comes in blue, red, purple, and black. This handset sports a rather common 12 + 5 MP dual camera setup on the back, and will go on sale in China next week for the equivalent of about US$185 (4/64 GB configuration).

AMD is now feeling the full hit of the GPU-based crypto mining decline that started back in Q1. Instead of a projected US$50 million downturn in GPU sales, the red team reported losses of US$150 million, thus triggering a share drop of 24%. On the other hand, CPU sales are stronger than ever.

The first official press photos and a video ad of the Honor Magic 2 were recently posted on The Verge site. As shown in the promotional material, the Huawei Honor Magic 2 will sport a pop-up selfie cam, no notch, and rumors have it that the model will come with an OLED display, a Kirin 980 SoC, 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage.

A list of proposed rules put out by the U.S. Copyright Office would make jailbreaking devices like smartphones and smart speakers completely legal, if adopted. Jailbreaking, or circumventing DRM, is currently in a legally grey area. If these rules are implemented, then people could create their own tools to jailbreak a device for repair purposes. However, jailbreaking tools could not be distributed under these rules.

Buried in the latest iOS 12.1 beta code are instructions for users to hold their iPad in portrait orientation so that Face ID can be set up. If legitimate, this code would confirm rumors that Face ID is indeed coming to the next iPad Pro, widely rumored to be announced at Apple's event next week.

After years of users complaining about spam and irrelevant ads, Google will finally shut down the Nearby Notifications system on December 6th. Google said that the service did not meet the "high bar" the company holds to when delivering a user experience and will be shuttering the feature this winter.

The apparent full specification details of the upcoming OnePlus 6T smartphone have been shared online, along with some new marketing images of the device. The handset will be officially launched at a special event taking place in New York on October 29. Unsurprisingly, the spec sheet lists the device featuring a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC and running on Android 9.0 (Pie).

Bethesda has announced the minimum and recommended PC specifications for the upcoming title Fallout 76. PC gamers are advised to have at least the equivalent of an i7-4790 or Ryzen 3 1300X CPU, and when it comes to the GPU an Nvidia GTX 780, AMD Radeon R9 285, or equivalent should be present. 8 GB of RAM and 60 GB of storage are also required.

HP's best 12.5-inch convertible will be taking a hiatus in order to focus on the 13.3-inch EliteBook x360 1030 series. All of its features will be integrated into the EliteBook x360 1030 including Sure View and its super-bright backlight for outdoor viewing. HP says its 13.3-inch offering is small enough to fully replace the 12.5-inch model for the time being.

A leak on Weibo claims that the Galaxy S10 lineup will consist of 4 versions of the phone rather than the usual 2. One of these will be a 5G variant - with 12GB RAM. The Weibo poster also believes that the Huawei P30 Pro will have this spec.

With less than a week to go until its next major launch event, it appears that OnePlus has gained what could be a significant advantage for its next phone, the 6T, in the United States. The company has reportedly succeeded in its application for Verizon LTE certification.

Most people who own connected devices appear not to need them in their everyday lives. This is one of the findings of a new study into IoT use in the home and similar settings. 29% of these users were unsure of how their data was used across all their devices.

The set of new features that have just been added to Google Files Go includes — but is not limited to — the following: advanced file browsing, secure app installs, faster sharing, and even a built-in media player that supports both audio and video files, as well as background audio playback.

Although it sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor and up to 10 GB of memory, the 6.4-inch Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 launches without facial recognition or an in-display fingerprint reader, and the 5G variant is only supposed to hit the market in the first part of 2019. Nevertheless, this is an interesting device that starts below the US$500 threshold.

Some modern ThinkPad laptops apparently have an issue with the UEFI-BIOS. When a certain setting is activated, this action can potentially brick the laptop. The only fix in this situation: Exchanging the motherboard.

Samsung has teased a device called the Galaxy A8s at a recent launch event held in China for the Galaxy A9s and A6s. An image of the unexpected third smartphone was displayed at the event, which seemed to show a handset with a completely bezel-less and notch-free design. However, it has been rumored that the Samsung Galaxy A8s could utilize a hole rather than a notch for the front-facing camera.

In the last week before the OnePlus 6T's release, the leak- and rumor-mill around the device is still going strong. Most recently, a phone with a model number that could correspond to the phone has appeared on Antutu Benchmark. It scored about 10,000 more points than the OnePlus 6.

Lyft, the second most popular ride-sharing business, announced its first acquisition centered around autonomous cars. The company will purchase Blue Vision Labs, an AR startup, for US $72 million (with an additional $30 million option). This marks Lyft's first major push into self-driving cars, a space currently ruled by juggernauts Uber, Tesla, GM, and Ford.

Web service provider Yahoo has agreed to pay out US$50 million in damages in response to the huge data breaches the company suffered from in 2013 and 2014. Once the settlement has been legally approved, Yahoo accountholders affected by the breaches will be able to make financial claims against the company and gain free access to a credit-monitoring service.

Inside sources claim that AMD's Navi GPUs are performing better than expected and could be launched in the first half of 2019 rather than the second. Previously rumored to be slower than the GTX 1080 from Nvidia, it looks like the red team managed to tune a few things and boost the overall performance. MSRPs are rumored to be in the US$250 zone.

A week before the official unveiling of the Nubia X anniversary flagship, the Chinese company posted an infographic describing eight key features that recommend the upcoming model over the competition. Apart from the front and rear displays, the Nubia X will be featuring a flexible OLEDs, no selfie cam on the front (no notch), wireless charging, gaming-friendly specs and more.

Expected to roll out to Android and iOS devices in the coming weeks, Facebook Messenger 4 comes with a simplified white interface that only sports three tabs, and it also comes with the ability to add color gradients to chat bubbles. In the future, this mobile app is also expected to get a Dark Mode.

Pine64, the team behind the US$99 Pinebook, has announced it will begin working on a cheap Linux-based smartphone. Dubbed the PinePhone, the handset will be built around Pine's low-spec, low-cost Pine A64 single-board computer. Designs haven't been finalized, but dev kits are set to be released on November 1 with a projected device release date of mid-2019. The PinePhone is estimated to sell for US$100.

The latest Apple flagship smartphones are facing yet another issue that means they do not work out of the box as described. This time, it seems that one of their dual speakers does not fire while playing audio. The bug has been reported numerous times on several different types of forum by now.

Rockstar Games has announced the Companion App for its upcoming release, Red Dead Redemption 2. This app connects an Android or iOS device to the console in question, and allows the player to view maps, stats and progress on their phone or tablet while gaming.

The Pixel 3 XL's display notch is a matter of taste at best, and a matter of tolerance at worst. Google's own rules for notch support in the latest version of Android stipulate only one of them per screen edge. However, some Pixel 3 XL owners claim that the software is not complying with them.

The XDA has gotten its hands on what appears to be the most recent beta for Android 9.0 (Pie) on the Samsung Galaxy S9. This build does not exactly introduce new features, but is reported to have fixed the significant bugs of the previous beta. They include failing navigation gestures and incomplete native night theme.

Although both were supposed to enter production in the second half of this year, it looks like the next-gen UFS storage solutions and LPDDR5 will not hit the market as soon as expected. While the UFS 3.0 memory will arrive in the first half of next year, the LPDDR5 DRAM chips will only roll out — if everything works as planned, obviously — in 2020.

The new H133W-MY 2-in-1 convertible integrates a Snapdragon 835 SoC, as Weibu was unable to get hold of Intel's Gemini Lake ULV CPUs due to the ongoing shortages. Apart from the not-so-well-received SoC, the compact laptop packs 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage and a 13.3-in IPS screen with touch capabilities.

With prices starting at just US$229, the Asus Chromebook C223 and C423 both use the Intel Celeron N3350 processor and feature USB Type-C connectivity, dual-band WiFi, a microSD slot, 4 GB of memory, and 32 GB eMMC internal storage. The 11.6-inch C223 is one of the thinnest Chromebooks on the market, but lacks a touchscreen option.

The first smartphones to use the Helio P70 are set to debut in November. MediaTek is promising numerous improvements over the P60 especially in regards to AI and deep-learning facial detection (DL-FD) for better camera performance.

The 10 nm process gave Intel quite a bit of a headache in the past few years. It was supposed to arrive in 2017 initially, but the fabrication process had to be delayed because of design problems, and it looks like Intel may not be able to launch the 10 nm CPUs come 2H 2019 in large amounts either.

iFixit has announced that it has partnered with Motorola to supply users with official DIY repair kits for its recent smartphones. The kits include either a battery replacement or a screen digitizer assembly replacement and give users the ability to extend the life of their device considerably.