Latest News - Page 2227

Vivo, the company that just launched the first smartphone with a fingerprint sensor embedded under the display, is all set to launch the successor to its X9.

The X9 is still one of the best-selling smartphones in the Chinese market and the company has announced a teaser revealing that the will launch the X9S and X9S Plus on July 6th.

There have been no leaks about the Vivo X9S, but there are some rumors floating around about the X9S Plus.

Alcatel's new mid-range smartphones are now official. The company has launched three smartphones - the Idol 5S, A50, and A30 Plus.

The Alcatel Idol 5S is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 625 and comes with 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage. The phone features a 5.2-inch 1080p display and has a 12MP rear camera and 8MP front shooter. Other features include a fingerprint sensor and a 2,620 mAh battery. The phone is priced at $280.

The Alcatel A50 is powered by MediaTek's MTK6738 processor and comes with 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage, expandable with a microSD card. The device features a 5.2-inch 720p display and has a 13MP main camera, plus a 5MP selfie shooter. The phone also features a 2,800 mAh battery. The A50 has a $150 price tag.

At MWC Shanghai, Qualcomm made a series of announcements including their new Snapdragon Wear 1200 platform. This platform is an addition to their current Snapdragon Wear 1100 and 2100 platforms which currently are in the majority of smart bands and Android Wear 2.0 watches.

The Snapdragon Wear 1200 is designed to offer less expensive IoT LTE M1 and NB1 connectivity to devices like kids watches and pet trackers. That way the devices can always be connected to the network but don't cost more than $150 and have very inexpensive service plans. Previously pet trackers cost upwards of $30 a month and the devices used to cost hundreds of dollars. Now the devices can cost less and the services much less.

ODMs like Borqs and Qanta are already onboard helping to develop reference platforms for manufacturers in China to speed up design and deployment. In China, kids watches are extremely popular and Snapdragon Wear should broaden the audience that can afford them. In Western countries, we will see this Snapdragon Wear 1200 platform being used more in elder care and pet tracking in order to ensure that neither your parents nor your pets get lost.

UPDATE: The video points fingers at not just Intel and GIGABYTE, but also ASUS and MSI X299 motherboards. The video stated that the X299 Aorus Gaming 3, Prime X299-A, and MSI's X299 Gaming Pro Carbon VRMs throttled when all cores were overclocked to 4.6GHz on a test bench. It was also pointed out that with proper airflow, the VRMs do much better and shouldn't throttle. These motherboards are at the entry-level to mid-range side of each brands' X299 line up.

Intel's new X299 platform is now out, with various issues towed behind it, professional overclocker 'der8auer' says the platform is a complete "VRM disaster".

It's not just Intel that get the blame, but motherboard makers as well with der8auer saying that the blame is "50/50" on both Intel and motherboard companies. Intel's problems lie in the new X299 platform launching two months early, as it was meant to be released in August and came out in June. This forced motherboard makers into overdrive, with der8auer adding the companies had "almost zero time for developing proper products".

AMD's new Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card is now here, with some consumers getting their cards a little early - and making me feel like I'm missing out on one of the most exciting technology product releases of 2017... boo. YouTuber 'JERICO JERICO' has received his Radeon Vega Frontier from SaberPC on 6/27 with overnight shipping... receiving it, and unboxing it - as you can see in the embedded video below.

As you can see in the video, the card comes as a pretty barebones package, but once it's out of the packaging the true beauty is shown. The beautiful blue and yellow mix is absolutely vibrant, with the 'R' logo in the upper corner next to some GPU tach LEDs that light up blue. The 'Vega' logo is on the front of the card, looking like a cow being stamped with its branding - and I really dig it.

I can't wait to get an AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition in my hands, but it's next to impossible right now.

Nintendo has expressed interest in bringing more of its massively popular mainline IPs like Yoshi to cross-media experiences like anime.

During Nintendo's 77th annual meeting for shareholders and investors, the company answered a number of questions from stakeholders. One of those queries was about the future of Nintendo's cross-media focus and whether or not more key IPs and series will get anime adaptations like Kirby's recent Kirby: Right Back At Ya! and the Super Mario Bros Super Show and Legend of Zelda cartoon series from the 80s.

"We hold the Kirby IP and it's growing in Europe. It's selling in Spain and is watched in places without out game hardware," Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto answered when asked about new non-gaming content such as video and anime. "We want to make anime for Pikmin, Star Fox, Yoshi, etc. and distribute it freely, or integrate into games," he said.

AMD's new Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics cards are slowly getting into consumers' hands, with one user showing us everything: the box, the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition itself in the beyond gorgeous blue/yellow design, and some very early benchmarks.

WCCFTech commentor 'Klaudius' has the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition card, running it on his Core i7-4790K processor, ASUS Maximus VII Impact motherboard, 16GB DDR3, and Samsung 850 EVO SSD with Windows 10 installed. He installed the new Radeon Vega Frontier optimized drivers from AMD, which allow Radeon Vega Frontier owners to switch between Pro and Gaming Modes.

Benchmarks were run, with 3DMark Performance/Extreme/Ultra benchmarks run. The new Radeon Vega Frontier Edition loses to the GTX 1080 overclocked, with a 4K benchmark score in 3DMark FireStrike Ultra of 5216 - compared to around 5000 that the GTX 1080 is capable of. This is at 4K, where HBM2 and HBCC should shine, but I'm sure AMD are still weeks away from final release drivers which should have plenty of optimizations included.

Halo Wars 2 now has multi-GPU support, something that was baked into its rather packed update, alongside a slew of new changes to Halo Wars 2.

The new update will provide an update UI, new AI, art, buildings, and units. The big news is multi-GPU support for Windows 10 users, and owners of NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards in either SLI, or CrossFire. We've got the full patch notes below:

Note:

The news of Ubisoft working on a new Splinter Cell game has been floating around for a while now, but Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot virtually confirmed a next-gen Splinter Cell game is in the works.

At E3 2017 earlier this month, Guillemot was asked about a new Splinter Cell game, where he said: "What we can say is we're receiving a lot of sketches and proposals around the brand and we're going to pick one up. I think you will be able to see something, but you will have to wait for that". It's not confirmation, but if the developer is looking at sketches and proposals, and then says that we'll be able to "see something" but we'll have to "wait for it"... all I can do is get excited.

Splinter Cell was one of the first largely successful Tom Clancy-based games, but a new game with next-gen lighting and shadows alongside a next-gen engine could be truly awesome.

Microsoft is taking to Skynet for its fight against malware, cyberattacks, and viruses - with the upcoming Fall Creators Update for Window 10 using all internet-connected Windows 10 computers along with machine learning to fight off threats like WannaCry.

The global malware hits with WannaCry and Petya have woken Microsoft to a new world of attacks, prompting them to push the Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection system that uses machine learning powered by the massive 400 million Windows 10 PCs throughout the world. Director of Program Management Enterprise and Security said: "If Word were to start allocating memory in big chunks, when it never does, we would be able to detect that. We built the machine learning models around common applications like Word".

This new initiative will reportedly stop viruses from spreading as fast as they currently do, with enterprise customers being the first to receive this new feature. The consumer version of Windows will receive it sometime in the future, hopefully not too long from now... until you remember that Microsoft is using every Windows 10 user to make this happen. Will we be able to disable it?

Star Wars Battlefront II is sure to be one of the biggest games of the year, and with so much riding on its success, a massive alpha and beta process is sure to take place.

But the surprise news for Battlefront II fans is that the alpha will be made available to all game platforms, and not just the Xbox One or PC. Star Wars Battlefront Community Manager 'Sledgehammer70' posted on the official Star Wars Battlefront II forums, where he said if you have "a bug or issue to report within the Star Wars Battlefront II Alpha" that you follow a few steps, including which platform you have: PS4, PC, or X1.

The post was quickly removed, but Reddit user 'CaptainPhantasma21' took a screenshot which we've embedded above. If the news of the alpha hitting PS4, Xbox One and PC happens, we'll let you know the second it's announced.

Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate has confirmed that there will be a closed beta of the game next month, which will be available to anyone who has pre-ordered.

As of next month, you will be able to enjoy Escape from Tarkov's new features, game mechanics, and everything else inside of the FPS. This will include:

New Gameplay Features in the Closed Beta

Toshiba today announced its new high-end BiCS flash memory built on QLC technology (quadruple-level cell), offering a 50% increase in per-package capacity up to 1.5TB.

Toshiba's new third-generation QLC BiCS flash is the world's first 3D NAND memory built on 4-bit-per-cell technology, enabling capacities of 96GB, the largest the memory industry offers to date. Toshiba affirms that QLC BiCS flash can be stacked in 16 dies per package, enabling up to 1.5TB of storage capacity in a single package.

Forward Insights analyst Greg Wong assets that Toshiba's new QLC flash will be tremendously beneficial for datacenters.

North American gamers are expected to spend more money on average in per-user mobile game purchases than other worldwide regions throughout 2017.

Mobile gaming is expected to rake in $46 billion in worldwide revenues, and account for 46% in total gaming revenues of $108.9 billion for 2017. Although China is leading in smartphone games revenues with $27.5 billion expected for 2017, North American mobile gamers actually spend more money in mobile games on an average per-user basis.

According to a new infograph published by Newzoo and AppLift, North American mobile game players will spend an average of $108.36 per paying user every year, the highest of all other global regions.

Google's Pixel smartphone was one of the best phones of last year, and the company confirmed that its successor would come this year.

We haven't heard many rumors about the upcoming flagship, until now. According to a new report, the Pixel 2 will feature a 5-inch display with a 1920x1080 resolution which is the same as the first Pixel.

The phone should be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 and come with 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal storage.

Meizu is expected to launch the Pro 7 this summer, probably on July 26th.

The Meizu Pro 7 should be powered by MediaTek's Helio X30 processor, and feature a 5.2-inch 1080p display. The phone should come with dual rear camera setup (12MP + 12MP) and a 16MP front shooter.

The interesting thing about the phone is that it will have a secondary display on the back of the device.

Dragon Age Creative Director Mike Laidlaw affirms that something is indeed happening with Dragon Age, which we've known about for quite some time, but we thought it pertinent to cover all bases any time a BioWare exec teases new info about the game.

I've been reporting on BioWare's new Dragon Age game for over a year now and it sounds like the team is still chipping away at the core framework of the game. In the past we've said the new Dragon Age game could be a spin-off strategy game to help buffer sales as the core Mass Effect Edmonton team works on their new IP, Anthem, but information has also come to light that it could be a mainline AAA sequel as well.

"Something is happening with Dragon Age. That much has been said and I'm totally comfortable with that being out there but I can't talk about what it is. But I will say that one of the things I am doing right now is hiring," Dragon Age series Creative Director Mike Laidlaw said in a recent interview with Josiah Renaudin on the podcast show The 1099.

At MWC Shanghai Qualcomm announced a bunch of new products including the new mid-range processor, the Snapdragon 450.

This processor is designed to be put in mid-range smartphones, with a heavy focus on the Chinese market and Chinese manufacturers.

The Snapdragon 450 has an improved CPU and GPU with a 25% increase to both over the Snapdragon 435. It will feature an eight-core processor and Adreno 506 GPU which should offer better performance at lower power thanks to also being a 14nm FinFET chip.

Xiaomi Redmi Pro was launched back in July last year, and it seems that the company is almost ready to launch its successor, the Redmi Pro 2.

A new leak reveals the specs of the upcoming device. The Redmi Pro 2 should come with 3GB of RAM, but the report doesn't mention the internal storage size.

The processor is also unknown, but it is expected that the device will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 660.

Samsung should announce the Galaxy Note8 this summer, and Evan Blass recently revealed some specs about the upcoming phone.

According to him, the Note8 will feature a 6.3-inch AMOLED display with 18:5:9 aspect ratio. It will come with an S Pen stylus and a dual rear camera setup. Blass reports that the phone won't be powered by Qualcomm's yet to be announced Snapdragon 836, but will instead feature Snapdragon 835, the same processor as the Galaxy S8. However, the device will come with 6GB of RAM. The Note8 is also expected to have a 3,300 mAh battery, which is less than what the Galaxy S8+ has, which seems odd.

There are some questions that are yet to be answered about the phone, the biggest one being - what is happening with the fingerprint sensor? When Samsung revealed the Galaxy S8 and S8+, one of the biggest downsides of the phone was the position of the fingerprint sensor, placed right next to the camera on the back of the phone. We know that Samsung has planned to embed the fingerprint sensor under the glass on the front of the device, but due to certain problems, they had to give up on the idea.