Fail

The Honor Play was released just over a year ago and has received one major update: Android Pie. That will apparently be the end of the road for the device, which is unfair to owners of the Kirin 970-powered phone. Even worse, though, is Huawei's justification for the decision.

The Google Pixel 4 phones don't have support for shooting 4K60fps videos even though Android phones have been able to do that for well over a year. Google has now explained the rationale behind the decision but it's woefully unconvincing.

It's been almost a week since Google unveiled the Pixel 4 phones in New York but it's still baffling just how poor the phones are—the smaller Pixel 4, in particular. In fact, some choices by the company were so off the mark that one could almost be led to believe that the entire thing was a joke.

A carrier-provided list of Sony Xperia devices billed to get the Android 10 update has surfaced, and will be sure to leave owners of Sony's older flagships infuriated, as apparently, the Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact will not get Android 10.

If you own a Pixel 3 and were about to use the Pixel 4's trade-in program to get Google's latest device for significantly cheaper, think twice. You see, Google seems to be of the opinion that the 128 GB Pixel 3 XL is worth a measly US$295, and that's a load of nonsense.

At launch, Google's Stadia Controller will not be usable with a PC or compatible mobile device without the use of a USB connection. While the controller will work wirelessly when playing through a Chromecast Ultra, PCs and mobile devices will require a USB HID connection for the Stadia Controller to work properly. This is odd, as the Stadia Controller connects directly to Google's servers over WiFi and sends inputs to the cloud rather than a local device.

The Pixel 4 series only uses face unlock for biometric authentication; it is that secure. Or is it? Well, a video of one device unlocking to closed eyes suggests otherwise, as does the possibility of someone who merely looks "a lot like you" authenticating payments with your face data. Is the face unlock on the Pixel 4 series not so secure after all?

The Surface Book 2 and Surface Book 2 15 may be innovative devices, but they have suffered from two critical problems in recent months. Microsoft now claims to have fixed the NVIDIA dGPU disconnects and BD PROCHOT-related throttling issues that have affected some machines since at least the summer. The fixes should prompt the re-release of Windows 10 version 1903 for the Surface Book 2 series too.

At the turn of this year, LG promised to deliver Android 9.0 Pie to the G6 and V20 by Q3 2019. Has it delivered? If you are a G6 owner then possibly, but many are still awaiting Pie on their handsets as we head ever deeper into Q4. By contrast, LG has offered only the faintest of glimmers for the V20, with all variants missing the self-imposed Q3 deadline.

Rob Wyatt, the lead architect behind the Atari VCS console, officially resigned from the project on Friday, October 4th. Citing non-payment from Atari for six months, Wyatt's company Tin Giant, which was contracted to help design the console, has left the project. Additionally, sources familiar with the Atari VCS have claimed the console is little more than a generic Linux PC, which does not jive with Atari's marketing.

DOOM Eternal has been delayed until March 20, 2020 in order to bring the game up to id Software's "standards of speed and polish." As an apology, id Software is including the upcoming DOOM 64 re-release as a pre-order bonus for DOOM Eternal at no extra cost. DOOM Eternal will also get a free DLC package shortly after launch that will let players enter another Doom Slayer's game as a playable demon.

Fedora 31, due for release on October 29th, will no longer be available as a 32-bit install. Rather, Fedora 30 is officially the last version of Fedora to support 32-bit hardware. Users on legacy hardware can expect full lifecycle support for Fedora 30 until May or June of 2020, at which time they will need to upgrade their hardware for continued official support.

Intel has issued a new Product Change Notification (PCN) document that lists the Kaby Lake-G family as End of Life (EOL) citing market demand for other Intel products. The EOL date is effective from today and OEMs will not be able to order Kaby Lake-G products after January 31, 2020.

In a recent article, we pointed out that we have yet to see a laptop with the Intel Core i9-9980HK outperform the MSI GE75 GS9, which runs the cheaper (and theoretically less powerful) Intel Core i9-9980H. A forum user by the name of littlezipp has posted evidence that the 9980HK in his Alienware m15 R2 thoroughly beats the 9980H in a 30-loop test of Cinebench R15. However, littlezipp nabbed this performance by way of a good undervolt and repasting his CPU with liquid metal.

With Dell recently releasing a BIOS revision to improve the thermal stability of the XPS 15 9570, pictures of a decimated XPS 15 doing the rounds online may be concern those who are either considering the series for their next laptop or already own an XPS 15. The cause of the damage can affect any laptop though, and does not appear to be XPS 15 specific.

Sony has unveiled another device, the Xperia 8. The Xperia 8 is a mid-range phone that raises more questions over the logic in Sony's naming scheme while simultaneously managing to offer an overwhelmingly disappointing package at a ridiculous price point.

Libra Association, the 28-member nonprofit organization that was formed back in June 2019 to oversee the creation of Facebook's cryptocurrency and its consumer rollout, has just lost one of its supporters. Sadly, the brand that has decided to pull out of the project is one of the most popular providers of online money transfer solutions — PayPal.

Apple has initiated a recall for certain iPhones of the 6S series, saying that it has found that the relevant units may become unable to start under certain circumstances. The Cupertino-based OEM will not disclose which aspects of the phones causes these potential failures, but has announced that it will rectify it if those who own these device send them for servicing.

The Google Pixel 4 phones are just about a week away from their official launch event. A new leak has revealed some previously unknown details about the phones and a particular specification of the smaller Pixel 4 may just leave fans seething.

There have been multiple reports of Pokemon GO handing out strikes preventing play to those who own certain Redmi devices. This pattern has been linked to MIUI 10.3.2.0, a recent firmware update for the phones affected. Niantic, the AR game's developer, has announced that it is now working on trying to revise them.

The Mi Mix 4 has been a rollercoaster so far. The flagship was hyped up to high heavens but it turned out that most of those rumors were for the Mi Mix Alpha concept phone instead. A recent leak may have led Xiaomi fans to keep faith in the future launch of the Mix 4 but Xiaomi has now doused the flames of those hopes in brutal style.

Recent Lenovo ThinkPad laptops have a throttling problem when users are running Linux-based operating systems on their devices. Lenovo has now admitted to the problem – and announced that it will be fixed. Newer ThinkPads like the X1 Carbon Gen 7 or ThinkPad T490 are affected.

Remember AMD Dual Graphics, Acer FrostCore, or the Lenovo UltraBay? We look back at some of the failed features that major OEMs have tried pushing onto their gaming laptops.

(Update: All fixed!) Asus could definitely be a little more careful next time around. According to the ZenBook 15 UX534 product page, the "ZenBook 16" will have a MicroSD reader and a Thunderbolt 3 port that could potentially fool the average consumer.

LG launched the V40 about a year ago as a Galaxy Note 9 competitor. That sounds good on paper and the hardware does compete, but all of that falls apart when one realizes that a host of V40 users are still on Android Oreo, the same version of Android the device was released with.

AMD has already brought its Radeon Image Sharpening (RIS) algorithm to its Polaris GPUs, but Vega architecture GPUs may miss the cut. Enough demand for RIS from owners of an RX Vega 56, RX Vega 64 or Radeon VII may sway the company, as may response from Navi and Polaris users. AMD is making no promises for the time being, but it is actively seeking feedback from the gaming community.

Don't buy a laptop with GeForce RTX 2060 graphics if you want to maximize performance-per-dollar. The cheaper mobile GTX 1660 Ti is only about 5 percent slower than the mobile RTX 2060 while retailing for hundreds less. The mobile RTX 2060 can be up to 25 percent slower than the desktop RTX 2060 compared to "only" 10 to 15 percent between the mobile RTX 2070 and desktop RTX 2070.

People suffering from trypophobia have been posting negative comments on social media about the new iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max due to their rear main camera arrangements. It wasn’t that long ago that another flagship smartphone was causing unease in the trypophobia community, with HMD Global thoroughly upsetting sufferers due to its Nokia 9 PureView’s penta-lens pattern.

It is not something new that more cameras are not always better, but many of those into mobile photography had high expectations from the Nokia 9 PureView. Sadly, Nokia's flagship with five cameras on the back failed to impress and only scored 85 points overall in DxOMark's test — 88 for still photography and 80 for video shooting.

Lilu (also known as Lilocked) is a relatively new ransomware that is specifically targeting Linux servers. The ransomware has been infecting systems since mid-July and has so far attacked at least 6700 systems. Lilu targets specific file types (like HTML, PHP, and image files) and alters their file extension to ".lilocked." The ransomware also leaves a note instructing affected users to access an Onion site and pay either 0.03 BTC or US $325 to decrypt file affected files.

Although it is not cheap at all, the Galaxy A90 5G is Samsung's first non-flagship handset with support for the fastest mobile connectivity standard available for the masses (depending on region, of course). Sadly, although it is more expensive than most 4G flagships currently on the market, the Galaxy A90 5G will only get a new security patch every four months.

AMD has posted a declaration on its Ryzen Twitter account in regard to reports of 3rd Gen Ryzen processors not offering the levels of performance that were expected by users. The post states that the company is working on a BIOS update that should deal with the boost performance issues that had been affecting SKUs such as the Ryzen 9 3900X.

The camera benchmark website DxOMark has just released its in-depth analysis and extensive review of the rear-facing and selfie cameras in the Xperia 1, and it is not good news for Sony fans. As we discovered in our recent review, the Xperia 1 has sub-par cameras for a modern flagship.

AMD has finally agreed on a settlement for the false advertising of its Bulldozer and Piledriver processors, after eight years of litigation. Claimants will be eligible to draw from a pot of up to US$12.1 million, but there are certain caveats including from where you bought the processor and which SKU you bought.

RGB lighting is great and all, but it's not very useful if it doesn't light up each and every key symbol. There's no reason why secondary fn key symbols on flagship Gigabyte laptops should be unlit even after two years in the market.

In yet another episode that will go down in the list of embarrassments for Apple, its new-fangled titanium Apple Card credit card can apparently become permanently discolored if it makes contact with fabrics like leather and denim. Given that many users will keep the card in a leather wallet or even slip it into a jeans pocket, the revelation appears to beggar belief that it could be so impractical to carry.

Are you unable to download Android 9.0 Pie to your LG V30? Well, the South Korean has apparently pulled the update from its FOTA and LG Bridge servers. This may prove a temporary measure, but there is no word when LG will continue offering Pie to the V30.

An oversight by Apple caused an old security bug to be reintroduced with iOS 12.4. While the bug had been patched in iOS 12.3, the exploit is present in the latest operating system from Apple and can be used for jailbreaking on compatible devices. On the flip side, the security hole presents new risks; the bug can be used by malicious parties to hack into an iPhone or iPad running 12.4.

According to employees familiar with the practice, Facebook has been hiring outside contractors to listen to and transcribe user audio. While Facebook claims the transcriptions were done to improve the voice-to-text transcription features of its Messenger app, the company's data use policy makes no mention of humans listening to or transcribing audio.

Tumblr is a blogging platform that has been part of Yahoo (or Oath, as it is now) since 2013. However, the parent company in this case - Verizon - has reportedly been trying to palm it off for some time. It has now successfully found a buyer: Automattic Inc, the same company behind WordPress.

A new report by security experts at Check Point Research demonstrates a glaring vulnerability in modern DSLR cameras: Photo Transfer Protocol. Worse yet, the researchers were able to exploit vulnerabilities in PTP/IP, which transfers photos from a DSLR to a computer wirelessly. This allowed the researchers to infect a nearby DSLR wirelessly and encrypt all of the camera's photos.

Samsung launched the Galaxy Note 10 phones a few days ago and the devices have received mixed reviews, most notably for the lack of a headphone jack and the...well, the general existence of the Note 10.

While the rest of the world still waits, China has become the first country where the long-awaited XPS 13 2-in-1 7390 has gone on sale. Prices start at 12,999 CNY (~US$1,850) for the Core i5-1035G1 model and rise to 16,999 CNY (~US$2,419) for the Core i7-1065G7 version. No Core i7-1068G7 SKU or simultaneous worldwide release as Dell previously promised though.

The ASUS ZenFone 6 won plaudits for its almost stock Android experience, but a recent software update has been causing havoc with some handsets. According to an ASUS engineer, the update has caused some motherboards to malfunction, resulting in crashes, reboots, bootloops or dead devices.

A new publication by Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center points out an increasingly popular avenue used for cyber attacks: the Internet of Things (IoT). The publication states that researchers discovered a new attack that exploited vulnerabilities in simple IoT devices like a printer and a VOIP phone to access an enterprise network.

Dell has once again missed its release date for the new XPS 13 2-in-1, having already delayed it by almost a month. The company only came clean after people online were left wondering why the upcoming convertible had not launched on August 2. Now multiple sources are suggesting an additional delay of at least a few weeks, with the device potentially not shipping in some key markets before the end of the month.

Apple has suspended a controversial Siri grading program that allowed contractors to listen to recordings of customers using the voice recognition software. The purportedly privacy focused company was caught out by a whistleblower who revealed details of the program that raised serious user privacy concerns.

A new video from the popular YouTube channel JerryRigEverything shows that foldables that keep their displays on the outside of their case are at severe risk for damage. Simple items like keys or extreme heat could permanently mar the display of a foldable smartphone.

WhatsApp and Telegram are popular secure messaging apps that feature end-to-end encryption to keep messages safe. Even still, the apps have a glaring backdoor that could allow attackers to alter media files sent through the apps. Both apps can store media to publicly accessible file directories, which leaves them vulnerable to manipulation.

Google has decided to focus its efforts on the AdSense mobile web interface and discontinue the mobile apps. Those using AdSense on mobile devices were probably expecting this, since the Android app has not been updated since December 2017 and the iOS AdSense app received its latest refresh on November 2017.