Android

Three out of the five AnTuTu Android smartphone price-performance charts have been topped by devices from the Redmi K30 series. The Redmi 10X, Redmi 9, and evergreen Redmi Note 8 Pro add to the Xiaomi sub-brand’s dominance. Only the iQOO 5 Pro and Meizu 17 Pro hold back Xiaomi from achieving a clean sweep.

According to the latest renders, the Motorola Moto G10 Play will hit the market with a side-mounted fingerprint reader, an old-school 3.5 mm headphone jack located on the top, not to mention the 4,850 mAh battery capacity that was revealed by the TÜV Rheinland certification documents for the handset.

LG is currently said to have a next-gen phone in the works called Project B. It is rumored to have a rolling display, which means its screen can extend beyond the confines of its frame. Now, a new patent application submitted to the US Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO) may show how this concept is supposed to work in a real-world device.

The global MIUI 12 update for the Redmi Note 8 is now rolling out to all handsets, following its stint as a Stable Beta build. V12.0.1.0.QCOMIXM is rolling out to the global variant as an OTA, while V12.0.1.0.QFGRUXM has reached the Stable Beta stage for the Russian variant of the Redmi Note 7.

The Huawei Mate 40 RS is a special edition of its new flagship smartphone series with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage. A new report indicates that the latter spec is handled not by a standard mobile ROM module but by one developed by the OEM itself. It is allegedly faster than state-of-the-art UFS 3.1 flash memory found in some top-end 2020 devices.

The Lemfo LES4 is a cheap smartwatch with plenty of features. Lemfo has included 4G LTE and GPS modules, allowing the 1.6-inch smartwatch to be used independently of a smartphone. The Lemfo LES4 retails for US$109.99.

The Redmi 10X duo of 5G smartphones with the MediaTek Dimensity 820 processor have managed to retain the top two positions in AnTuTu’s latest midrange Android smartphone performance chart. However, the Redmi 10X Pro variant has now grabbed the top spot as the midrange sector remains reasonably static.

AnTuTu’s Android flagship smartphone table for October has produced a surprising new leader with the Huawei Mate 40 Pro 5G breezing past the Snapdragon 865 competition and snatching the top spot away from the iQOO 5 Pro. The performance-oriented Mate 40 Pro with a Kirin 9000 SoC could manage an even higher average score in the future.

The Station M1 and P1 are affordable and compact mini-PCs that can double as media centres. Both come with Rockchip SoCs, up to 4 GB of RAM and bags of connectivity.

Motorola is on the verge of releasing the Moto G 5G, its next mid-range smartphone. Powered by the Snapdragon 750G, the Moto G 5G will have a 5,000 mAh battery, 6 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage and a 6.66-inch display.

At 630 Euros (~$747), the costs for the Google Pixel 5 are relatively low for a flagship smartphone. There is only one hitch: the Pixel 5 is only 6 inches and uses mid-range hardware. However, as our test shows, the overall package is still right.

A recent leak has pointed to the launch of a phone called the Nokia 10 PureView. Now, a tech blog claims that is to run on the Snapdragon 875 processor and to be released in mid-2021. It is also now touted to have a display property not claimed by any OEM in quite a while.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 managed to beat Huawei's Kirin 9000 and the previous-generation Snapdragon 865+ in the Master Lu benchmark. While the Snapdragon 875's Cortex-X1 Super core (2.8GHz) managed to keep it ahead in the CPU department, things are a lot closer to the GPU front. The Kirin 9000's ARM Mali-G78 GPU managed to surpass the Adreno 660, which is quite impressive.

The Orange Pi Zero2 has finally made it to market, over a year after Shenzhen Xunlong Software unveiled it. The Raspberry Pi Zero competitor has been upgraded to a new chipset that supports Android 10 and multiple Linux distributions, including Debian and Ubuntu.

The Mate 40 Pro may not sell as well in many markets because of its lack of Google Mobile Services, but it is at least reasonably repairable. The Mate 40 Pro is modular for a modern flagship, especially considering alternatives like Apple's latest iPhones.

The limits of Google's strategy of pairing old camera hardware with excellent software have been shown in a series of camera tests published by DxOMark. There may well be some flaws in DxOMark's methodology, but it seems that Google should now move on from the 12 MP IMX363 camera that it has been using steadfastly for years.

The YouTuber PBK Reviews has conducted a Pixel 5 teardown on this channel. It seemed relatively easy to do so, possibly showing that several individual components can be replaced with ease. Then again, the vlogger could find no sign of the widely-reported "lifting display" hardware issue.

An industry insider suggests that Xiaomi is all set to unveil the Redmi Note 10 series sometime in November 2020. It will consist of three devices, namely the Redmi Note 10, Redmi Note 10 Pro, and Redmi Note 10 Pro Max. At least one of the smartphones (most likely the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max) is expected to ship with a 108MP Samsung ISOCELL HM2 camera sensor.

The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra has been put through a series of charging tests and has come up short with the promise of 120 W fast charging. The Mi 10 Ultra did manage to refill its battery from 0 to 100% in just 21 minutes, but this came at the cost of some soaring temperatures.

After successfully completing the internal testing stage, Diablo Immortal is now ready to being the external regional testing. To make it all even better for Blizzard fans, the company's president and COO, Daniel Alegre, has also confirmed that more mobile games are currently in the works.

OnePlus has officially unveiled its eagerly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 Special Edition version of its well-received 8T smartphone. The device features a completely redesigned rear case and comes with a custom UI and a number of tailored accessories.

With a starting price of US$9.99 per month, eligible Google One plans in the US will include the VPN service for free. However, this handy feature will be available only in the Google One application for Android. In the coming months, Google's VPN might become available in other markets as well.

Xiaomi released the Redmi K30S last week. The phone, essentially a cheaper, rebranded Mi 10T, went on sale yesterday, with Xiaomi recording 100,000 purchases in just one minute. That translates into over US$34 million of sales, at the listed discount base price tag of CNY 2,299 (US$343).

The Huawei Mate 40 series was released for sale via e-tailers such as JD.com in China on October 30, 2020. A new report claims that it took this site only 11 seconds to sell out of the new phones completely on this first day. It released light-up drones which synchronized in air to spell out celebratory messages over its Beijing headquarters to mark this event.

Google has exciting hardware in the works for 2021, according to company representatives. One of these devices could be a flagship Pixel smartphone, which will reputedly launch as early as March 2021.

Video doorbells enable the user to see who is at their door on their smart screens or mobile devices. A recent study indicates that 10% of US households with high-speed internet surveyed owned one of these devices in the second quarter of 2020, compared to 7% in 2017. This increased popularity has driven doorbell OEMs to improve innovation and integration with other smart things over the years.

Huawei's premium sub-brand Honor is now slated to launch its flagship V40 series in December 2020. The leaker @RODENT450 claims to have dug the more prevalent of its specs up in a new Twitter post. They include a 50MP primary camera, its parent's new 66 watt (W) charging system and a 120 hertz (Hz) FHD+ screen.

The smartphone brand Realme has had an excellent third quarter in 2020 (3Q2020), according to the latest data from Counterpoint Research. Not only did it post a growth of 132% compared to 2Q2020, it also crossed the 50 million units shipped mark. Realme took only 2.25 years to achieve this milestone, meaning that it has officially beaten all other OEMs in this respect.

There is a possibility that Xiaomi will reveal details about MIUI 13 in the company’s upcoming Mi Developer Conference (MIDC). There is no official eligibility list for MIUI 13 yet, but it has been predicted it will include the Redmi Note 8 and Note 9 series smartphones, all the Mi 10 range, and the POCO X2 and X3 devices.

A new leak suggests that MediaTek is working on two new chipsets that use ARM's latest Cortex-A78 cores. It will likely succeed last year's Dimensity lineup and set a precedent for subsequent MediaTek releases in 2021. The hardware is expected to make its debut alongside a Chinese-origin smartphone in the coming weeks.

Latest display technology? Extremely fast memory? Wi-Fi 6? The Nokia 8.3 5G doesn't have any of that, and the manufacturer is even charging quite a lot of money for it. Why might it still be interesting for some users?

OnePlus' CEO has reportedly affirmed via Weibo that the Cyberpunk 2077-themed special edition of the 8T premium smartphone will launch in China on November 2, 2020. Little is known about this device, except the obvious point that it has a new brand partner. There are hints that it will share the style of the game's teasers thus far.

Samsung launched the Exynos 880 5G mobile device processor earlier in 2020. Now, there is a hint it will get a successor in 2021. This 980 SoC has been mentioned in a Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) certification, which indicates it is capable of supporting the newer 5.2 standard.

In the shift to 5G, manufacturers are leaving behind certain features. The Oppo Reno4 Pro is no exception.

Recently, an upcoming OPPO device with a pleasant dark blue finish and quad rear cameras appeared on the Chinese regulator TENAA's website. Subsequent leaks indicate that it is the K7x 5G, a 90Hz display device slated to launch on November 4, 2020 in the same country. It is set to run on the Dimensity 720 SoC, up to 8GB of RAM and a 5000mAh battery.

The OEM Ulefone has launched its new Watch series, which support continuous heart-rate tracking, multiple sports modes and 5ATM water-resistance. There is also a blood-oxygen sensor in the Pro model, whereas the Watch GPS has additional activity-tracking features. They start at US$49.99, or even less with a limited-time introductory offer.

Smartphone gaming is slowly becoming more of an important issue for smartphone manufacturers. Besides Asus and Xiaomi, Nubia is now also driving development in this area.

The Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise represents the absolute best hardware seen in a Chromebook to date. The Comet Lake Core i5 CPU and zippy NVMe SSD make this one of the most powerful Chrome OS devices on the market, but the operating system itself is still limited compared to Windows or macOS.

Xiaomi has started pushing out the MIUI 12 beta stable ROM for users of the Global variant of the Redmi Note 7. At the present, the Android-based software should start arriving on some selected Redmi Note 7 smartphones as an over-the-air (OTA) update. Devices with the Indonesia or Russia ROM should follow soon.

MiHoYo's well-received free-to-play action RPG Genshin Impact will be receiving a PlayStation 5 version with "enhanced graphics," according to the developer. This comment comes shortly after the release of the mobile-centric game's version 1.1 update and could indicate plans for next-gen consoles.

Recent rumors have hinted that Qualcomm will release a 'lite' version of the Snapdragon 875 flagship SoC on its launch. Now, a new leak asserts that this "870" has in fact been secured by OPPO for use in its upcoming devices only. It is said to be faster than the 865, although the two processors may have similar architecture.

The usual dark mode that has been available for a while on the desktop and iOS versions of Facebook is finally ready for a public test, although there is no release date to talk about at this stage. Since Instagram and WhatsApp got this visual theme a long time ago, Facebook for Android will probably go dark for everyone as soon as possible.

Samsung has released a teaser for the Galaxy W21 5G, its next foldable smartphone. To be released on November 4, the Galaxy W21 5G has already been spotted at the TENAA, confirming many details and the design of the upcoming handset. The Galaxy W21 5G will be available exclusively in China.

LG is an OEM that designs and fabricates its smartphones through its own production lines. However, a new report indicates that it is poised to change tack somewhat for 2021, by farming more of their manufacture out to original design manufacturers (ODMs) than usual. These devices include some that the Korean giant normally makes in-house.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 has made what seems to be its first-ever appearance on AnTuTu. It nets an overall score of 874,868, making it over 30% faster than the Snapdragon 865+. The increased performance is likely due to its Cortex-X1 Super Core.

MIUI 12 code has confirmed that Xiaomi has a foldable smartphone in development, codenamed 'cetus'. The device also has a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset and a 108 MP primary camera and runs Android 11.

Like its predecessor, the ZenFone 6, the Asus ZenFone 7 Pro is equipped with a flip camera that removes the need for a display notch. This time, the resolution has been increased from 48 to 64 MP and expanded to include three lenses. The ZenFone 7 Pro also offers several other new and improved features.

Shortly after taking down Xiaomi to become India's biggest smartphone brand, Samsung has also managed to leave Amazon behind in the global tablet market. With an impressive year-over-year growth of almost 90 percent, Samsung managed to ship 9.4 million tablets in the third quarter, which accounted for a market share of 20 nearly percent.

Introduced as a new part of the SmartThings app, SmartThings Find is now available for all Samsung users worldwide. This is a new way to locate a range of select Galaxy smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and earbuds at once thanks to the Bluetooth Low Energy and ultra-wideband technologies.