Items tagged with Qualcomm
Is your Bluetooth connection secure? Researchers recently discovered a Bluetooth vulnerability that could allow hackers to intercept and manipulate a user’s communications. The researchers tested and found seventeen vulnerable Bluetooth chips in devices from companies such as Intel, Apple, Lenovo, and Qualcomm. The findings were presented at the USENIX Security Symposium by researchers from the Center for IT-Security, Privacy and Accountability (CISPA). The vulnerability has been nicknamed “Key Negotiation Of Bluetooth” or “KNOB”. Every time two Bluetooth devices establish a connection, they also create a new encryption key. Unfortunately, not every device has a...
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2019 is the year of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 (and soon, the Snapdragon 855 Plus) with respect to Android smartphones. But the tech industry doesn't stand still, which means that a new SoC is on the way to replace the Snapdragon 855 family. If Qualcomm's naming scheme stays intact, that means that we will see the release of the Snapdragon 865 later this year. Given that we're already over half-way through 2019, it should come as no surprise that we're now beginning to see early benchmarks for the alleged Snapdragon 865. In this case, we're looking at Geekbench figures, which you can see in the screengrab below: The first thing that we notice is that the Snapdragon 865 get a healthy boost in...
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Today might have been the moment in the spotlight for Samsung's new Galaxy Note 10 family of flagship smartphones, but the South Korean electronics giant had another trick up its sleeve as well. The company officially announced the Galaxy Book S Always Connected Windows 10 PC, which first leaked last week. Unlike most notebooks available today which run on x86-64 processors made by either Intel or AMD, the Galaxy Book S makes uses of Qualcomm's most potent PC-centric ARM processor: the Snapdragon 8cx. The Snapdragon 8cx in this particular device is an 8-core processor with four high-power cores clocked at 2.84GHz and four low-power cores clocked at 1.8GHz. Samsung isn't giving...
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After a week of teasing and a few leaks, ASUS is getting officially official with its ROG Phone II gaming phone. As ASUS confirmed last week, the ROG Phone II is powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 855 Plus, which a binned version of the existing Snapdragon 855 with higher CPU and GPU clocks. The Snapdragon 855 Plus will primarily be used in gaming phones -- like the ROG Phone II -- and features CPU (single "Prime" core) and GPU clocks that have been boosted by 4 percent and 15 percent respectively. So not only will the ROG Phone II have a performance advantage over its predecessor, which featured a Snapdragon 845, but it should also outperform all previously released...
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Hot on the heels of Qualcomm announcing an enhanced version of its mighty Snapdragon 855 system-on-chip (SoC) called the Snapdragon 855+, ASUS has confirmed that it will be implanting the new chip into its upcoming ROG Phone II. This will give the handset some additional grunt for gaming, compared to the regular Snapdragon 855 that is so commonly found in today's flagship phones. In case you missed our previous coverage, the Snapdragon 855+ is basically a bolstered version of the non-plus variant. It is still an octa-core SoC with a main "Prime" core, three high performance cores, and four efficiency cores, and it continues to be built on a 7-nanometer manufacturing process. However, the Prime...
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For flagship Android smartphones that have launched during the first half of 2019, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 has been the go-to option to get the best performance. The Snapdragon 855 is used in everything from the Samsung Galaxy S10 family to the OnePlus 7 Pro to the ASUS ZenFone 6 to the LG G8 ThinQ. However, out of left field, Qualcomm has dropped a bombshell on the tech community with the announcement of the new Snapdragon 855 Plus. The Snapdragon 855 Plus is not a huge departure from its "non-Plus" counterpart, but it does offer a Kryo 485 Prime core with a clock speed of 2.96GHz (up from 2.84GHz). In addition, the Adreno 640 GPU sees its performance improved by roughly...
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Qualcomm first gave us a taste of its new PC-centric Snapdragon 8cx SoC back in late December, and touted its performance chops with benchmarks against an Intel Core i5 (Kaby Lake-R) processor late last month. We’re now getting word that Microsoft may be eying the Snapdragon 8cx design as an option for future Surface devices. This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard about an ARM SoC being destined for a Surface product. The Surface Go was rumored to use an ARM processor until Intel made Microsoft an offer that it couldn’t refuse. According to sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans, the company has been working closely with Qualcomm...
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Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has pretty knowledgeable sources deep within Apple's supply chain, and has a good track record with respect to identifying features and specs for upcoming hardware. Given that the 2019 iPhones are just a few months away, we already have a good idea about what they will look like, and what features they will have, Kuo is focusing his attention to next year. According to Kuo, there will be three distinct iPhones models released in 2020, and for those that prefer a smaller device, there's good news in store. The flagship models will be available in either a 5.4-inch or 6.7-inch OLED configuration. This is shift from the current iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, which have...
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Right now the chipset that reins sumpreme in the high-end flagship smartphone performance department is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 SoC. Despite that chip still being quite new, there are already rumors of a next-gen chip coming that will bring even more performance to the table of course, as well as additional Qualcomm-powered 5G capabilities. We have reported on the existing of the rumored Snapdragon 865 before, but today some new rumors have just turned up. The new rumors come from Roland Quandt over at Winfuture. He claims that Snapdragon 865 is what Qualcomm employees are calling the next-gen SoC (SM8250). Quandt claims that there are two versions of the new SoC with one going by...
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Earlier this month, Microsoft released the Windows 10 May 2019 Update to the general public in waves, and for the most part, things have gone relatively smoothly (at least if you aren’t running RAID on a Ryzen-based system). Microsoft allowed an extra month for testing with Windows Insiders and has taken additional steps to ensure that the May 2019 Update wouldn't be as disastrous as the preceding October 2018 Update. With that being said, some users have still encountered some nagging issues; namely with regards to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. Microsoft has updated its "Known Issues" page for Windows 10 to confirm that it has discovered an incompatibly problems...
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In this episode of HotHardware’s Two And Half Geeks, Marco, Chris and Dave chat about Intel's hot new 10nm Ice Lake CPUs, Intel's wild and crazy Odyssey 2035 GPU concepts, AMD's Ryzen 3000 Zen 2 CPUs, and Dr. Su's other announcements from her Computex keynote address, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx benchmarks, and Google's totally affordable Pixel 3a XL Android phone! Show Notes: 08:10 - Intel 10nm Ice Lake Architecture And Project Athena Laptops To Drive Exciting New Mobile PC Experiences 28:18 - Ice Lake-U Gen11 Performance Data Shows Intel Leaving AMD's Integrated Vega Graphics Behind 36:58 - Intel Odyssey Futuristic 2035 GPU Collection Is Totally Wild, Driver Advancements, Game Updates...
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Qualcomm has been talking a big game when it comes to its upcoming octa-core Snapdragon 8cx Compute Platform which will power Windows 10 notebooks and convertibles. In fact, Qualcomm thinks that the 7nm SoC has the muscle to go toe-to-toe with x86-64 Core processors from Intel, which is something that we couldn't say for the preceding Snapdragon 835 and Snapdragon 850 platforms for Windows 10 PCs. Today, Qualcomm is backing up that talk with some actual benchmark numbers, and things are looking very promising. Qualcomm has picked the Core i5-8250U (Kaby Lake Refresh) as the primary competition for the Snapdragon 8cx. The Core i5-8250U is a quad-core processor (8 threads) with a...
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If you thought that the Snapdragon 855 was a monstrous beast of a smartphone SoC, there’s more where that came from. Arm -- the technology company behind the chip designs that power mobile SoCs from Qualcomm, Samsung and Huawei -- has announced two major components that will go into next-generation SoCs. The first is a new Cortex-A77 CPU, which will drive a 20 percent uplift in IPC performance compared to the Cortex-A76 used in the Snapdragon 855, while memory bandwidth has increased by 15 percent. Arm says that it has also managed to improve machine learning performance over the past two generations of high-end Cortex CPU designs by 35x. Like the Cortex-A76 before it, Cortex-A77...
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It's been a while since we've talked about Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8cx platform for Windows 10 PCs. Like the Snapdragon 835 and Snapdragon 850 that came before it, the 7nm Snapdragon 8cx is a rather peculiar platform in that it is based on ARM architecture rather than an Intel- or AMD-based x86-64 platform. Today, we're witnessing the announcement of the world's very first 5G-enabled PC, and it of course comes packing the Snapdragon 8cx Compute Platform. It's Lenovo’s Project Limitless and it takes the form of a 2-in-1 convertible Windows 10 PC. Lenovo Project Limitless Looking at the device, it seems like a pretty standard-fare convertible design that would fit neatly...
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