Items tagged with Mobile
Dell has been updating its XPS line of laptops at a brisk clip as of late. Though we just showed you a recent update of the highly decorated Dell XPS 13 here, with Intel 8th Gen Kaby Lake R technology on board, we're back again today with yet another update to the XPS 13 family, and this time its beauty is not just skin-deep. What you're looking at above is the Rose Gold version of the latest XPS 13 with its Alpine White, woven glass fiber keyboard deck. The material for the palm rest is comprised of woven crystaline silicon fiber for low weight, high tensile strength and durability, combined with textured lattice fibers that provides a smooth, slightly hatched appearance and feel that's...
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A handful of Apple engineers fell from Cupertino's tree and into Google's hands earlier this year, and apparently 2017 wasn't about to end without another notable move taking place. Talented engineers commonly move around the industry, so many employer changes are uneventful, but when the person involved in a move is a top chip designer at a major player like Apple, things become a little more interesting. The man in Google's crosshair this go-around is experienced chip designer John Bruno, whose tenure at Apple lasted five-and-a-half years. Before that, Bruno spent over eight years at AMD, working on northbridges and their IGPs in his earlier days, and then moving on to deliver the Comal platform...
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A group of Japanese scientists have made an accidental discovery that could have a huge impact on smartphones and other gadgets in the future. The scientists developed a new type of glass that can self-heal, fusing itself back together when it cracks. This could mean the end to shattered smartphone screens and costly repairs. The discovery was made at the University of Tokyo while the scientists were studying new adhesives. Though this isn't the first claim of self-healing materials for phones, this new breakthrough material does seem to have significant merit. One of the scientists on the team noticed while he was studying a polymer for its usefulness as a glue that it had the ability to adhere...
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We've been warned about the potential risks of cell phone use due to radiation for ages, but to date, there hasn't been definitive information published that would warrant some sort of formal government or industry action. Nothing changes with that today, but California's Department of Public Health has deemed the risks to be high enough to issue a warning so that perhaps some users won't use these devices as much, as well as get out of the habit of regularly keeping them close to our bodies. The CDPH admits that the "science is still evolving", so again, there's no reason for immediate alarm here, but it goes on to say that many public health professionals are growing concerned about the constant...
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For the folks at Intel, all eyes are likely on Qualcomm today. While Intel has faced the toughest competition in recent years from AMD's Ryzen, Ryzen Threadripper, and EPYC family of processors, the company will soon be encountering a separate attack from Qualcomm. As we have reported multiple times, there is a new wave of Windows 10 PCs coming that will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, ARM-based processors. This improbable feat is made possible by Microsoft's support for full x86 emulation in Windows 10, which is why Snapdragon 835 (and future ARM-based SoCs from Qualcomm) will be able to run the operating system. And these PCs won't be limited to running Universal Windows Platform...
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At its Google I/O conference held this past May, the search and technology giant unveiled a neat new feature which would first roll out to its own Pixel devices. Called Google Lens, this new feature pays a bit of an homage to Google Goggles, a rather popular tool that allowed people to get quick feedback on real-world objects. Take a picture of a statue outside of a sports stadium, for example, and Goggles could have told you who it was, and why it was deserved. Google Lens is going to be far more capable than Goggles, though, thanks in part to the recent resurgence of employing deep-learning and AI to bolster our handset's brains. Currently, it appears most computation is done off of the device,...
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Almost as fast as the rumors began, talks of a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile have been officially called off. T-Mobile has announced that discussions on a potential merger, rumors of which surfaced first in September, of the Uncarrier and Sprint have ended because the two companies were unable to find mutually agreeable terms. Even if the two mobile carriers had been able to come to agreeable terms, they certainly would have needed regulatory approval. Historically, regulators have been unwilling to approve a merger that limits competition in the mobile market and with the "duopoly" already firmly in place, as TMo CEO John Legere likes to refer to his primary competition, another consolidation...
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After an almost mind-boggling number of security and privacy issues that have deluged into our lives over the past handful of years, you'd think that companies would begin to take their customers' private data seriously. Still, there are some who just don't seem to "get it", and apparently, OnePlus has proven to be one of these late bloomers. Earlier this week, we wrote of security researcher Chris Moore, who discovered data that was being sent to OnePlus' Amazon AWS instances without permission, and without an option to turn it off. While much (or perhaps all) of the data that was transmitted is pretty simple in the grand scheme of things, personal user information is tied to it. Offering no...
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We are not trying to spark of war of words between iOS and Android users, but when it comes to platform fragmentation, it does not really exist in the iPhone community. What is equally remarkable, however, is how quickly iPhone owners adopt major iOS updates. According to the latest data from Mixpanel, iOS 11 has found its way onto around half of all iPhone (and presumably iPad) devices in less than a month.The data trend shows iOS 11 and iOS 10 both bouncing around the 44 percent, but at its peak earlier today, iOS 11 adoption reached 49.28 percent, versus 46.58 percent for iOS 10, and just 4.15 percent for all other versions of Apple's mobile operating system. That is good news for developers,...
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Sony has taken various stabs at handheld gaming over the years. Remember the PlayStation Portable? How about the followup PlayStation Vita? Now would be a good time to introduce yet another handheld console, if that was the direction Sony wanted to go. But with smartphones now both powerful and ubiquitous, Sony sees little reason to go down that path, even with the Nintendo Switch proving incredibly popular. Andrew House, president and global CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), touched on the topic of mobile gaming and the Nintendo Switch in an interview with Bloomberg at last week's Tokyo Game Show. Image Source: Flickr (MiNe-5DII_105-3350U) "The Nintendo device is a hybrid device and...
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The Galaxy Note 8 is an important product for Samsung. Not only because the Note 8 is the company’s newest, flagship, large-screen smartphone, but because it also carries the additional burden of righting all of the wrongs associated with the company's Note 7 snafu. For some people, there is a certain stigma attached to the Note series now that could be erased if the Note 8 is a success and resonates well with consumers. We can tell you this up front -- all of the right technology seems to be in place. And from a design standpoint, the Note 8 sure is a looker. But good looks and the right specs don’t automatically make for a killer product. Hopefully, by the time we're done testing and exploring...
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It's no secret that Apple and Qualcomm are at odds right now, as legal battles continue to be an unfortunate reality for both companies. At this point, it really doesn't seem clear who's in the right, or more importantly, who will reign victorious. At least for now, Qualcomm has decided to have a little bit of not-so-subtle fun. In a post made to its website today - the same day as the new iPhone reveal - Qualcomm pats itself on the back for creating a number of technologies that continue to ride the Android wave. In its list, Qualcomm lists specific technologies it's invented, and then gives some sample devices that the feature was found on. One of the most popular technologies is, of course,...
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Here's the long and short. Huawei’s Mate 9 may no longer hit all the high notes on the cutting-edge smartphone release circuit, but it still remains more than competitive on performance and stocked with impressive base-level features, including rear dual-camera capabilities.In his fascinating book The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas J. Stanley discusses the propensity of millionaires to buy their cars used rather than new. The reasoning is as obvious as it is practical: You get nearly all the benefits from buying used at a fraction of the cost, and the money saved can be invested with compound interest, which ultimately adds up to tens of thousands of dollars over an adult lifetime. We could apply...
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Over the past handful of years, Google has really amped up its efforts to keep users safe on its Android Play Store. However, it often feels like the more protections Google puts in place, the more fierce the malware gets. Today we learn of yet another piece of malware that has managed to permeate itself throughout the Play Store, and the implications of being infected with it are downright scary. Called "SonicSpy", this piece of malware has found home in a huge number of different apps found throughout the Play Store. Most recently, it found its way into an app called Soniac, a messaging app based on another called Telegram that works as intended, but introduces some dastardly software...
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