Software

The Nubia Alpha is an innovative device that may pioneer a trend of wrap-around displays on wrist-worm devices. Its latest trick is to have appeared on the JerryRigEverything channel for durability testing. Can this much really be expected of a wearable with a flexible screen?

The X is Realme's next smartphone release. Previous leaks about this phone have suggested that it will have premium camera specs, in that its main sensor will be 48MP. This has been confirmed by its OEM ahead of its launch. Furthermore, the module in question will be the high-end Sony IMX586 that also graces the Redmi Note 7 Pro.

According to some recent rumors, Motorola will release a phone called the One Vision. It is touted as a combination of a punch-hole display, a dual camera that incorporates a 48MP sensor and Android One. Its latest leak shows it in a new color, which makes only 2 for the prospective device so far.

Vivaldi 2.5 is now live and this update turns Opera 12's spiritual successor into the first browser to feature full integration with Razer Chroma — the world's largest lighting ecosystem for gaming devices. Other noticeable changes are the ability to resize Speed Dial thumbnails and improved Tab Selection options.

Google I/O is now in full swing, and it will be until May 9, 2019. However, at least one major hardware-related announcement is out of the way already. The new mid-range Pixels are here, and they start at US$399.

The new Linux kernel update integrates support for using persistent storage as regular system memory, a new Linux Security Module (LSM), live patching, as well as multiple minor tweaks and fixes. All these will be included in the first point release that should go live later this month, but those in a hurry can grab the sources and compile the new kernel right now.

ZTE's newest Axon-brand flagship, the 10 Pro, has been released for sale in China. It is touted as the world's first phone to be powered by the Snapdragon 855 and have the F2FS filesystem. Otherwise, the phone has a 48MP main camera, stereo speakers and a 5G variant.

Microsoft has revealed some of its upcoming plans for the new Chromium-based Edge browser at Build 2019. Future builds of the new Edge browser will offer a Collections pane to neatly organize and export research, a new user-friendly privacy dashboard, a built-in IE mode, and improved developer tools for working with WebView and PWAs. These features are yet to make their way to public builds, but users can try out existing builds from the Dev and Canary channels to get a feel of the new browser.

At the Build 2019 developer conference that kicked off today, Microsoft announced that it will soon introduce a Windows Terminal app that consolidates all command line interfaces including PowerShell, Command Prompt, and WSL into a single interface that supports tabbed views, GPU acceleration, and emojis. The company also announced that WSL 2 will also be made available later this year that will bring improved filesystem I/O, faster Linux startup, and native Docker container support.

The Financial Times claims that its sources have told it that the EU will indeed probe Apple's potential anti-competition business practices. The decision follows 'surveys' of interested parties such as Spotify, who claim that the Cupertino company rigs music consumption on the iOS platform in its own favor.

Nebra put its innovative projector, the AnyBeam, up as a reward for its crowdfunding campaign. The start-up claims that this product is the "world's first pocket laser projector". This, apparently, was quite the draw among backers, as this project has gained 1.57 times its original goal.

The open-source OpenGL and Vulkan Linux drivers for the upcoming Intel Gen11 GPU are now considered to be complete according to code updates spotted by Phoronix. The drivers will be a part of the Linux 5.2 kernel and are said to be working at full performance.

Those who use the latest version of Firefox (66.6) may have noticed that their usual extensions have disappeared. This is due to a bug in this browser in which an expired certificate gives the impression that all of these add-ons are corrupt. Mozilla has stated that a fix is being rolled out at present.

Spotify has reportedly rolled out a new kind of ad to grab user attention in the United States. The messages involved apparently encourage the user to give a voice command in order to navigate to relevant sponsored content. These ads are scarce at present, but could conceivably become more common should Spotify find them successful.

Following up on a promise to combat cheating in Apex Legends more than ever, developer Respawn announced in a blot post today that the company has banned over 770,000 players for cheating so far. The company also banned over 4,000 spam accounts in the past 20 days alone.

The World Video Game Hall of Fame welcomes four new inductees this week. Windows Solitaire, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Kart, and Colossal Cave Adventure were chosen from a group of 12 finalists for their impact on the gaming world and society as a whole.

Dell reportedly sat silently on a critical SupportAssist vulnerability for nearly 6 months, according to the security researcher that reported it to the company. If you have the software installed, then chances are that your laptop will be affected, and it will be open to attackers unless you have recently updated SupportAssist.

Are you a fan of open source? Do you like making things? If so, then the SmarchWatch, a homebrew smartwatch, could be the ideal project for you. You will need a 3D printer and plenty of patience though.

Launched in India back in January 2017, Samsung Mall will apparently go down on June 30. This piece of bad news reached the users of this service in the shape of a notification message on their handsets. However, the official website still does not show any information regarding its imminent closure.

Google will release its first mid-tier smartphones on May 7, 2019. It has been all but confirmed that they will be called the Pixel 3a and 3a XL. New tips on the subject claim to have more details on their prices in USD, as well as a new possible Geekbench score for the 3a.

The latest BIOS updates (version 1.4.0 and above) to the Dell XPS 15 9575 2-in-1 have become a cause for concern as they seem to render the keyboard and touchpad unresponsive whenever a user tries to login to the Linux desktop environment. Those who have filed this bug have confirmed that this is indeed a BIOS issue as the problem was resolved upon downgrading to the older 1.2.0 BIOS version.

With the 1.5 update, World of Tanks brings a few new Swedish medium tanks that feature hydropneumatic suspension, the ability to choose which map to avoid in standard battles, changes — mainly nerfs — to Japanese heavy tanks, the infamous FV 4005, and the artillery branch. A special deal for Twitch Prime members is also available.

Huawei is rumored to release its first TV this year. Most recently, the outlet Nikkei Asian Review has reported that this product could have an 8K resolution when it comes out. It also alleges that the same device will have its own 5G connectivity.

LG had planned to release its first-ever 5G smartphone, the V50 ThinQ, by now. However, some less-than-specified technical difficulties obliged the OEM to delay this event. It has now announced a new launch date for the phone: May 10, 2019.

Intel is currently preparing for the release of its new line of discrete graphics cards. Today (May 1, 2019), the company's senior principal engineer has officially confirmed that these new GPUs will support ray-tracing on a hardware basis. This puts them directly in Turing's firing-line - or possibly vice-versa.

Samsung has unveiled a new line of TVs in South Korea recently. However, rather than being mere flat content-displays, this new line is apparently designed to fit into the 'millennial' lifestyle. To this end, one of them, the Sero, can be switched between horizontal and vertical orientations.

The latest update for the Galaxy Note 9 makes it easier to switch between taking regular and wide-angle selfies. The firmware updates the device to the April Android security patch too and introduces an option to automatically schedule Night Mode. Frustratingly, not all devices will receive these features this month though.

Anki, the startup which attempted to make robotics mainstream through tiny, but relatively expensive, toys has folded. Based in San Francisco, CEO Boris Sofman broke the news to emotional staff that all 200 have been laid off with just one week of severance pay.

In addition to the anniversary packaging, the Gold Editions of the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processor and Radeon VII graphics come with coupon codes for free copies of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 Gold Edition and World War Z. The AMD50 promotional period also brings various special deals — depending on the retailer — and is set to last until early June.

Today (28 April 2019), Nikon opens its "Capture the Savings" event. It offers "instant savings" on products such as the award-winning Z Series full-frame camera bodies, as well as the D-series DLSRs and many types of Nikkor lenses. Most of these deals are available until 1 June 2019.

Some users of Android smartwatches have complained that Google Maps fails to show any information following its newest updates. This issue was originally thought to affect Ticwatch devices only, but has also been reported on watches from other OEMs. To date, it appears that uninstalling updates is the only valid fix.

Firefox for Android will begin to fizzle out later this year. Mozilla is moving their ailing mobile browser into an extended-support update scheme in order to focus on a new mobile browser: Fenix. Firefox for Android will continue to receive minor updates until Fenix is ready to launch, at which point Firefox will move into end-of-life.

Motorola has just released the kernel source code for Android 9 Pie for the Moto G6 Play. This release should make it much easier for modders and developers to create Android Pie-based custom ROMs for the handset, extending its life a bit. Motorola is one of the few companies left that still routinely releases source code for its handsets.

A law firm has filed a suit against Epic Games on behalf of its client, a musician who believes his trademark appearance and moves have been stolen in order to build one of the Emotes found in the game Fortnite. These Emotes are Battle Royale features that often require micro-transactions in order to be enabled.

The OnePlus 5 and 5T have been updated to OxygenOS 9.0.5, a software update that raises the 2017 flagships' security patch level to April 2019. It also addresses some problems with calls in third-party apps reported by users. This update also makes the first-party phone app more stable.

The latest OPPO smartphones use OZO, a form of audio capture developed by Nokia. This claim can reportedly be found in the latter's first-quarter financial report for 2019. The rest of this report apparently makes for less intriguing reading.

Nintendo's latest earnings report covers the years ending March 2018 and 2019. They show generally positive results, including a 13.7% year-on-year increase in net sales. The text of this report also states that the release of Pokemon Shield, Pokemon Sword and the Link's Awakening remake are indeed set for this year.

An upcoming feature that recently debuted in the latest Android Q beta may not be officially seen until next year. Scoped Storage, a feature that hopes to curtail app permission issues by sandboxing applications, has been found to break legacy applications under some common circumstances.

Six apps from Chinese developer DO Global have been found to secretly collect user data and send it to Chinese servers. While these apps have now been removed, this issue has once again turned a spotlight on a serious privacy problem that continues to plague the Google Play Store: unwarranted app permissions.

The device-diagnostics company Blancco claims to have bought over 100 second-hand hard drives on the eBay sites of 4 different counties, to see what data, if any, could be accessed on them. It claims that 42% of these drives still stored information from their previous owners that can be thought of as sensitive.

Need an original twist on the common-or-garden wireless speaker? The start-up Coolgeek might have you covered with their new Soundesk product. It is a round glass coffee table with a conical aluminum stand - that also houses a 360-degree speaker. The Soundesk can work via Bluetooth or an AUX cable for allegedly clear, high-quality sound.

The May 2019 update is set to be the next major upgrade to Windows 10. However, those with older machines may have particular trouble with getting it to work after installing it. This is because Microsoft has raised the minimum recommended hard-drive storage to support doing so to 32GB.

Using several pieces of A.I-based upscaling software, a modder has upscaled about 15,000 textures used in Fallout: New Vegas. The textures have a 4x upscale (2x horizontal, 2x vertical), giving New Vegas a sharper, cleaner look. This isn't the first instance of a mod team using A.I to upscale textures; Final Fantasy VII received an upscale mod earlier this year.

Microsoft is currently investigating an inappropriate drive reassignment bug that prevents Windows 10 1903 or the May 2019 update Setup from proceeding and as such, is not offering the update to devices that have USB storage devices plugged in. The issue will be resolved in a future servicing update and in the meanwhile, a workaround is to remove all external storage devices before initiating the update procedure.

Creative has finally joined the true wireless earphone market with the new Outlier Air buds. They boast IP5X ingress protection, 10 hours of playback on a single charge and graphene in their driver-diaphragms. These Bluetooth 5.0 buds retail for US$79.99 on the OEM's own website.

The latest figures on the global premium smartphone market reportedly show that OPPO increased its share of it by a stunning 863% in 2018. This stripped out comparable performances on the part of competitors such as Xiaomi and even Huawei. On the other hand, it did not threaten Apple's place at the top of this market.

The LG V35 ThinQ is now receiving the Android Pie update in certain markets. The device, alongside the V40 ThinQ and V30 were scheduled to receive Pie this quarter, and we expect the two of them to get their share of Pie in the coming weeks. Users of the V20 will, of course, have to wait until Q3.

Microsoft had announced a plan to finally put the legacy app Paint to rest in future versions of Windows. However, as with the last time the company tried this, it was met with user pressure to retain the beloved old drawing utility. As a result, it has subsequently been revealed that it will make it to 1903.

NVIDIA's latest GeForce Game Ready driver update — labeled 430.39 — comes with day-one support for Mortal Kombat 11, an SLI profile for Anthem, noticeably improved Vulkan performance in Strange Brigade, as well as support for the new GeForce GTX 16-series GPUs and more G-Sync Compatible gaming monitors.

By analyzing the latest Shield Experience software, the XDA Developers team has discovered that a new desktop-mode software feature is in the works alongside what appears to be a new hardware product. Codenamed "mystique," this device could be a 2-in-1 convertible that would compete with the Microsoft Surface Book and other similar pieces of hardware.