Items tagged with Mobile
Another Apple iPhone launch event has come and gone, with the company's latest flagship and mid-range phones already shipping to customers, arriving on front porches just a few short days ago. In a second consecutive year of component shortages, Apple's deep resources and influence seemed to mitigate any potential issues securing chip fab space, which means there's plenty of iPhone supply to go around. This year's devices bring a mix of needed catch-up features, improvements and interesting bonuses that are designed to set the company's smartphones apart from its Android-bearing rivals. Despite that, it kind of feels like some of the magic has worn off. These days it's easy to get...
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Much of the conversation surrounding AMD’s continued assault on Intel has revolved around the desktop and server markets, where the company’s Ryzen and EPYC processors have consistently increased in popularity and adoption, gen over gen. AMD has, however, also made significant inroads in the mobile space, with both high-end gaming notebooks – like the excellent ASUS ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage Edition – and in the thin-and-lite space as well, with a variety of Ryzen 5000U series based machines. We’ve actually had the notebook we’ll be showing you today, the ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED (model UM325S), on hand for quite a while now and can say without question, that...
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In a letter to shareholders, Netflix confirmed it is indeed in the "early stages of further expanding into games," and discussed a little bit what that will entail. The company did not go into great detail, but it did say that games added to the mix will be available at no extra cost to subscribers, likening the effort to adding new programming genres. "We view gaming as another new content category for us, similar to our expansion into original films, animation and unscripted TV. Games will be included in members’ Netflix subscription at no additional cost similar to films and series," Netflix stated. That is great news, if not a bit surprising when you consider that gaming is huge industry...
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Last week, Intel officially unveiled its Tiger Lake-H45 based H-Series 11th Gen Core processor line-up, for high-performance gaming laptops and mobile workstations. The flagship consumer processor in the family is the Core i9-11980HK. The Core i9-11980HK is an 8-core / 16-thread processor, with a base clock of 2.6GHz and maximum turbo clock of 5GHz on one or two cores, when Intel’s Turbo Boost technology kicks in. The Core i9-11980HK supports DDR4 memory at speeds up to 3,200MHz, but this particular “HK” processor is also fully unlocked and overclockable via Intel’s XTU utility. The platform features all of the latest IO and connectivity technologies as well, like Killer...
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Lenovo was among the first partners to announce support for AMD’s Ryzen 4000 U-series mobile processors. When it initially unveiled the processors, AMD also revealed the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7, which was the first thin-and-light, ultrabook-class machine to pack an 8-core / 16-thread processor. To date, all other notebooks in this category featured dual or quad-core processors, with support for up to 8-threads. That kind of bump in core count could mean big things for the kind of multi-threaded workloads that are increasingly becoming more common among content creators and heavy multi-taskers. Thanks to Lenovo’s choice of platform, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 also features integrated...
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The increasing cost of flagship smartphones over the last couple of years has put them out of reach for many consumers. We all knew it was coming in late 2018 when Apple priced the iPhone X at a cool $999. It wasn't long afterward that Android handset makers capitalized on the new normal of flagship phone pricing as well, but not everybody wants to toe the line with four-figure purchases for a smartphone that will be quickly outclassed and potentially obsolete after a couple of years, especially should they stop receiving updates. In 2019, Samsung's upper-mainstream device was the $750 Galaxy S10e. This year, the Galaxy S20 Fan Edition lands in a similar position in Samsung's line-up, and it...
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Qualcomm is kicking off its Snapdragon Tech Summit today, a two-day event to talk about all things Snapdragon, and the company's plans for keeping the pedal firmly pushed to the metal in mobile hardware designs and features. In the more immediate future, those plans include the Snapdragon 888 5G mobile platform. Why call it "888," you might be wondering? Qualcomm understandably has a special fondness for that particular digit, because "for over a decade, the number eight has stood for premium." Indeed, the Snapdragon 800 series has typically been best-in-class, powering generations of flagship smartphones and other hardware devices. What's interesting about the path forward is that it is...
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3DMark has long been used to test and compare the performance of various kinds of devices. However, there is now a new and improved way to benchmark devices. 3DMark Wild Life allows users to test the graphics performance of Android, iOS, and Windows devices. 3DMark Wild Life includes two kinds of tests. The 3DMark Wild Life benchmark evaluates the device’s ability to provide “instant performance” over a short period of time. This particular benchmark mimics mobile games where the gameplay tends to focus on “short bursts of activity.” This benchmark will provide users with a single score. The second test is called the 3DMark Wild Life Stress Test and is intended to...
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Don’t let the Pixel 4a 5G’s name fool you into thinking this device is the same as the Pixel 4a that was released back in August, with the sole addition of 5G support. Although the branding may be somewhat quizzical, the Pixel 4a 5G is a completely new device, with a larger form factor (it’s actually bigger than the Pixel 5), newer processing platform, additional rear camera, and a few other bells and whistles. The new Pixel 4a 5G does look nearly identical to the “older” Pixel 4a, but that is by design. Google has embraced an overall aesthetic with its Pixel devices that’s distinctly similar across all its devices from the last couple of generations. Depending...
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It’s been a rough few years for LG. The company has experienced steadily diminishing phone sales and market share as of late. Yet not too long ago, it was hot on the heels of fellow Korean giant Samsung. Over the last decade, LG even brought us many features and innovations we take for granted today, like the first QuadHD screen (LG G3 - 2014), the first ultrawide camera (LG G5 - 2016), and the first 18:9 aspect ratio display (LG G6 - 2017). The G6, and the LG V30 that followed later that year, established LG’s fresh (at the time) new aluminum and glass sandwich design, which is still evident in the company’s latest flagship, the V60 ThinQ 5G. Unfortunately, this look -- not...
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Samsung announced its latest flagship, large-format smartphones -- the brand-new Galaxy Note 20 5G and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G -- at this month's Galaxy Unpacked Event, along with a host of additional wearable and tablet products. As is typically the case when Samsung updates its premiere line of devices, the new Galaxy Note 20 family offers an array of enhancements and improvements over the previous generation. For example, these new Galaxy Notes are built around a more powerful processing platform, they have numerous camera and video updates, offer support for new Ultra Wide Band wireless technology, and they have deeper Microsoft app integration, among several other new features. Both of the...
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Samsung just announced the brand-new Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, along with a host of additional wearable and tablet products, at its latest Galaxy Unpacked Event. The new Galaxy Note 20s bring with them an array of enhancements and improvements over previous generation offerings -- including even the current flagship Samsung Galaxy S20 -- like a faster processing platform, camera and video recording updates, Ultra Wide Band wireless support and deeper Microsoft app integration, among many other features. The new Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra are both built around Qualcomm’s most powerful Snapdragon 865+ 5G mobile platform, which should make them killer performers. At its...
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Intel’s 11th Generation Core processors for upcoming notebooks and ultrabooks, codenamed Tiger Lake, are due to arrive sometime in the next few months. Intel has an event planned for early September, at which it’s expected that all of Tiger Lake’s secrets will be revealed. For now, however, much of what has been discussed are preliminary specifications Intel has disclosed or simply rumor and speculation. Among those rumors though, it has been suggested that Tiger Lake will offer some serious performance gains over its predecessors, and if a leak that just hit the web is true, that certainly appears to be the case. The SiSoft SANDRA results database was updated earlier today...
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You can probably stop hoping for a Super Mario Run 2, because barring a sudden change in fortune and/or strategy, it does not look like Nintendo is super interested in mobile gaming. Sure, at one point it was, with hopes of cashing in on a lucrative market. But following the launch of the Switch console and recent events, mobile gaming just does not appear to be high on Nintendo's radar. It is an interesting pivot for Nintendo. Three and a half years ago, we wrote about Super Mario Run being downloaded over 40 million times during its first four days of availability. Not too shabby, especially since all of those downloads came exclusively from Apple's App Store, as Super Mario Run launched to...
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AMD announced its Zen 2-based Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors a couple of months back at CES 2020. The information disseminated at AMD’s press conference, however, was relatively high-level, and as it turns out, wasn’t quite complete. Since the show, we’ve been made privy to much more information regarding the Ryzen 4000 series mobile line-up, including a couple of new processor models that haven’t been officially disclosed just yet. Though the Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors won’t be widely available for a few more weeks, some of AMD’s partners are going to begin taking pre-orders for notebooks powered by these new processors. As such, AMD is...
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The concept of a purpose-built gaming phone is still somewhat in its infancy, though we are starting to see generational upgrades, such as the ASUS ROG Phone II. As the name implies, this is the second generation of ASUS' gaming handset. Like the original ROG Phone released last year, the ROG Phone II combines bleeding edge hardware with gaming-centric software optimizations. ASUS sprinkles in some nifty features (like Air Triggers) and then surrounds it all with optional accessories to amp up the experience. What ASUS has essentially created is not just a gaming phone, but a smartphone gaming ecosystem. For this second act, ASUS sets the stage with some notable upgrades. One that perhaps stands...
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Over that last few years, OnePlus has earned a reputation for offering well-appointed, high-performance mobile devices that compete with other contemporary flagships, but with highly aggressive pricing. When we looked at the OnePlus 7 Pro back in June, or the OnePlus 6T before that, we declared both handsets leaders, in terms of value and performance. With the upcoming OnePlus 7T, which is due to start shipping in just a few days, OnePlus is trying to capture that status again. Looking at the OnePlus 7T’s list of features and hardware specifications, it appears to be a premium Android phone in every sense of the word. The device is built upon Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 855+ mobile...
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The first batch of Navi cards are solid efforts by AMD—both the Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 do a good job of competing with comparatively priced graphics cards from NVIDIA. That said, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is still the king of the hill. AMD does not have a card to compete with that beast, but company CEO Dr. Lisa Su confirmed that high-end Navi cards are coming. We already had more than an inkling of that, of course—it is widely expected that a separate round of Navi cards will bolster performance and introduce ray tracing support. The latter has already been confirmed by Sony, with regards to the custom Navi GPU that will be inside its PlayStation 5 next year, and the...
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Generally speaking, pricing on flagship smartphones has continued to climb, because all of those fancy bells and whistles found on the top-end models do not come cheap. Not everyone has or is willing to spend a grand or more on a top-shelf handset, though, and some of the cheaper alternatives make too many sacrifices to hit a lower price point. That is not the case with Samsung's Galaxy S10e. The Samsung Galaxy S10e is the least expensive model in the Galaxy S10 family, the others consisting of the regular Galaxy S10, the larger Galaxy S10+, and the decked out Galaxy S10 5G. Make no mistake, however, even though the Galaxy S10e is positioned at the rear of the pack, it is not a budget or entry-level...
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The OnePlus 7 Pro is one of the most highly anticipated Android phones to hit the market this year for a number of reasons. At first blush, it was about a few stand-out specs. The phone's 6.7-inch display supports a speedy 90Hz refresh rate and a super-tight 3120x1440 QHD+ resolution in punchy, HDR10+ certified OLED technology. The new OnePlus phone is also powered by the fastest Qualcomm chip on the market currently, the Snapdragon 855, but it's also backed up but up to 12GB of RAM as well as up to 256GB of snappy new UFS 3.0 based Flash storage. Oh, and the aforementioned display is not marred by either a notch, nor a bullet-hole punch-out for its front facing camera -- nothing, nada, just...
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Intel has officially unveiled its new line-up of 9th Generation Core Mobile processors today, along with an array of adjacent products and technologies. In addition, Intel's 9th Generation Core Desktop processor line-up is been refreshed today as well, with a wide array of SKUs that cover the gamut from a new Core i9-9900 all the way on down to low-power dual-core Celeron and Pentium Gold processors. The new flagship of the 9th Generation Core Mobile processor family is the Core i9-9980HK, designed for what Intel is calling “Musclebooks” – we’ll call them powerful desktop replacement and gaming notebooks. The Core i9-9980HK is a 45 watt, 8-core / 16-thread processor,...
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Before the advent of smartphones and tablets, using the bathroom meant getting cozy with a paper magazine, newspaper, or heck even a shampoo bottle to pass the time. Now it's Angry Birds and scrolling through Facebook. It should come as no surprise, then, that your smartphone may be contaminated with fecal matter. As gross as that sounds, a new study for Global Handwashing Day (which is apparently thing) found that one in six smartphones are contaminated in such a manner. "This study provides more evidence that some people still don't wash their hands properly, especially after going to the toilet. I hope the thought of having E. coli on their hands and phones encourages them to take more care...
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