Mobile Devices - Page 57

Apple's new iPad Pro is a tour-de-force of technology, powered by Apple's new M1 processor, 5G connectivity, and a beautiful Liquid XDR mini-LED display to boot... but don't you dare drop or damage your new 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

Why? Cos it'll cost you $699 to repair it -- where for $100 more you could just buy yourself a new 11-inch iPad Pro. That $699 cost is ballooned out that high for the sole reason that if you don't have AppleCare+ warranty, then you'll be paying an arm and a leg to get your 12.9-inch iPad Pro repaired.

The mini-LED display is the reason Apple is charging a wallet-busting $699 to repair the 12.9-inch 2021 iPad Pro without AppleCare+ but if you do have AppleCare+ then that $699 repair cost drops to just $49. You'll also find yourself with 2 x accidental damage repairs every 12 months, too. You can also split up the AppleCare+ payment with a subscription service at $7.99 per month, which works out to $149 over the course of two years.

Phase one of the Federal Communications Commission's mandatory 10 digit dialing will begin on April 24, and here's what it means for you.

The reason for the 10 digit mandatory dialing is because the FCC is implementing a new 3-digit number, "988". When dialed, 988 will reach the National Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline, and is for people that are experiencing a mental crisis or are thinking about committing suicide. Due to many areas already having a 3-digit prefix of 988, the FCC needs to implement 10 digit dialing.

Local area calls that already have 988 as a working prefix will "have to be dialed using all 10-digits of the phone number, even if they are in the same area code", according to DFTCommunications. A local call will require the area code + telephone number (or 1+ area code + telephone number depending on dialing plan). Currently, these calls only require seven digits, but the mandatory change of phase one will begin on April 24.

Apple has finally announced its new 2021 iPad Pro which packs a next-gen mini-LED display, 5G connectivity, and up to 2TB of storage.

The new 2021 iPad Pro is available in two sizes with the 11-inch and 12.9-inch while being new 2021 iPad Pro models in the same family, are very different underneath. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro packs the new mini-LED display, while the smaller 11-inch iPad Pro does NOT have a mini-LED display -- that's a very big difference. If you want the best, you'll need the larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro and you'll pay a premium for it.

The 11-inch Liquid Retina display is an LED-backlit display with IPS technology, a native resolution of 2388 x 1668 with 264 PPI. The bigger and meaner 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display is the star of the show here, with a mini-LED-backlit display with a native resolution of 2732 x 2048 with 264 PPI.

Samsung is rumored to be bringing up the reveal date for its next-gen Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 2 foldable smartphones, where the company could launch them as soon as July.

The latest rumors are coming from South Korean outlet The Elec, which reports that Samsung will unveil the two new foldable smartphones at its Unpacked event in July. We are to expect upgrades across the board, with Samsung using smaller batteries in the new Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 2 over their predecessors.

Rumor has it the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 will have a 6.2-inch cover display, and 7.5-inch internal display but overall the phone will be more "compact" through thinner bezels and an under-display selfie camera. Samsung will also have better thermals in the new Galaxy Z Fold 3 smartphone as it is reportedly using its in-house low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) thin film transistor (TFT).

Apple is poised to launch its next-gen 2021 iPad Pro in the coming weeks, with the introduction of exciting new Mini LED display technology.

According to new rumors the 2021 iPad Pro will be launched in mid-April, so just a week or so away from now with the Wi-Fi only model launching first and a 5G-capable iPad Pro launching in the weeks after. The new leaks are coming from leaker 'Kang' who says the Wi-Fi only 2021 iPad Pro launches in mid-April, 5G-powered one in the weeks after.

We are to expect Apple's next-gen A14X processor inside of the new 2021 iPad Pro, with the aesthetics and design of the new 2021 iPad Pro expected to be the same as previous-gen iPad Pro models, all of the new goodies will be inside. The new Mini LED display will be the big point here with the 2021 iPad Pro, but we should have camera upgrades, speakers upgrades, slimmer bezels and a few other tweaks like usual from Apple.

In a surprise move, LG has just announced that it is shutting its mobile business down -- LG's board of directors approved the decision that will allow the company to put its efforts into other areas of its business.

LG will now put more of its efforts into other industries it has it already works in: electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart homes, robotics, artificial intelligence, business-to-business solutions, as well as platforms and services. As for LG's official statement on pulling out of the mobile business, LG explains:

"Current LG phone inventory will continue to be available for sale. LG will provide service support and software updates for customers of existing mobile products for a period of time which will vary by region. LG will work collaboratively with suppliers and business partners throughout the closure of the mobile phone business. Details related to employment will be determined at the local level".

You may not know it, but the security passcode that you use for your phone, whether it be iPhone or an Android, could be a very simple combination for a hacker to guess.

In the entirety of this article, you will find a list of the most common guessable passcodes that have been published by security expert Tarah Wheeler. Wheeler noted back in 2019 that almost 30% of all iPhones that have been broken into are using one of these twenty different passcodes, which is why it's recommended to change your passcode to something else if you find it on the list.

If you are still worried about your phone passcode being guessed by someone, you can always enable Face ID/Touch ID or whatever is equivalent to your Android device. These forms of security make it much more difficult for someone to try and get into your phone as they cannot be randomly guessed. Digital security is important, and the more you adopt technology into your life, the more important it is to make sure it's secure becomes.

Google will unveil its next-gen Pixel 6 smartphones later this year, with 9to5Google reporting that the new Pixel 6 will be one of the first devices running on Google's own in-house "GA101" Whitechapel chip.

The new Whitechapel chip has been rumored since early 2020 and would see Google building and using its own in-house SoCs to power their Pixel smartphones and Chromebooks. This is similar to how Apple uses its own chips inside of the iPhone and Mac and Samsung splits its Galaxy smartphones with some of them running the in-house Exynos chip while the others use a Snapdragon chip from Qualcomm.

9to5Google reports that we could see the first Whitechapel-powered smartphone with the release of Google's next-gen Pixel 6 family of handsets, with "GS101" possibly standing for "Google Silicon". Another tip is Whitechapel is "used in connection" with the codename Slider that 9to5Google found in the Google Camera app.

Samsung's current flagship Galaxy S21 Ultra already has an incredible camera, as my personal daily driver smartphone it has an amazing camera -- but the Galaxy S22 Ultra might pack a huge 200MP sensor that will take things to the next level.

A new Galaxy S22 Ultra concept has been teased by Technizo Concept where it looks identical to the current Galaxy S21 Ultra and its bulky camera-packed rear bump, but with a gigantic almost comically big 200-megapixel camera. The reason for the size is that the huge 200MP sensor would allow a huge amount of light in, allowing for some ultra-detailed images in some super-dark lighting conditions.

The concept also has Samsung's infamous S-Pen working with the Galaxy S22 Ultra concept smartphone, with the current Galaxy S21 Ultra packing S-Pen support I'd be disappointed to see Samsung suddenly nix it in the Galaxy S22 Ultra. The huge sensor would look stupidly big on the Galaxy S22 Ultra at first, but boy would it me a talking point if that turned out to be real.

Samsung has a number of foldable smartphones on the market right now, and it seems the South Korean electronics giant is not slowing down one bit.

Fresh rumors suggest Samsung is working on a new "double-folding" smartphone, which would see the smartphone fully unfolding into bigger smartphone with an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 18:9. Why is this important? The scaling issues with Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 2 should be a thing of the past with the "double-folding" display.

Nikkei Asia is reporting that Samsung is "betting heavily on foldable smartphones, with plans to sharply increase production and a new, double-folding model under development". Samsung has already confirmed it will be skipping over the release of the Galaxy Note this year, while in its place foldable smartphone announcements increase.

Google has just unveiled its second-gen smart display with the new Nest Hub that has some new sleep-detecting features that will help you better understand your sleep. Google calls this new technology Sleep Sensing, which they explain in the video below:

Inside, the new Google Nest Hub speaker has the same audio technology as Nest Audio but now packs 50% more bass over the original Hub. These upgrades in audio are welcomed as the Nest Hub makes for the perfect device to play your music through Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Pandora -- as well as TV shows and movies on Netflix, Disney+ and YouTube TV.

All of the normal goodies and brains of Google Assistant that were in the original Nest Hub are in the new second-gen Nest Hub, with Google upgrading this area with a new dedicated on-device machine learning chip that the company says "moves some Assistant experiences from our data centers directly onto the device, so responses to common commands become faster over time". This is unfortunately only for the US for now.

Anyone who has lost their smartphone into an ocean, river, or lake would think it is gone forever -- well, not for this iPhone 11 which survived at the bottom of a lake for 6 months.

The iPhone 11 was discovered at the bottom of a lake in British Columbia, and once it was discovered it was taken out and cleaned -- it was turned on and discovered to work. In an interview with CNBC, Chilliwack free divers Clayton Helkenberg and his wife Heather said that they were looking on the bottom of the lake for lost items... and what a find.

They discovered many other lost items including other smartphones, but this particular iPhone 11 had survived 6 months and was lost by Fatemeh Ghodsi. Once the iPhone 11 was recovered from the bottom of the lake, it was returned to the owner who explained it had been dropped during a boat ride.

We've been hearing about the upcoming ASUS ROG Phone 5 gaming smartphone with its teased 18GB of RAM, but Nubia has stepped way ahead of that and revealed their new RedMagic 6 gaming smartphones with 18GB of RAM, but there's a catch...

Nubia's new RedMagic 6 gaming smartphones are split into the RedMagic 6 and RedMagic 6 Pro, which both sport a 6.8-inch 1080p AMOLED display at an insane 165Hz -- a world-first. The 1080p 165Hz mobile panels have "the industry's highest touch sampling rate" which is 500Hz for single finger and 360Hz for multi-touch.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 888 chip powers the new Nubia RedMagic 6 gaming smartphones, offering some of the best performance on a mobile chip as well as 5G and Wi-Fi 6E technology. There's some tricky marketing going on here because the Nubia RedMagic 6 gaming smartphones actually have 12GB of physical RAM but Nubia says "RAM Boost memory compression technology" expands virtual memory so it acts as 18GB. Alrighty.

ASUS is cooking up its next-gen ROG Phone 5 gaming smartphone, which we last heard rumors it would pack 16GB of RAM but now new rumors suggest it will cram a record-breaking 18GB of RAM.

The new ASUS ROG Phone 5 would be the world's first smartphone to feature 18GB of RAM, with a new model turning up on Geekbench 5 suggesting the 18GB of RAM in the ROG Phone 5. The new Geekbench 5 entry of the purported ROG Phone 5 has it featuring 18GB of VRAM versus previous entries with 16GB and 8GB but there are other reports that suggest we'll also see a 12GB version of the ASUS ROG Phone 5, too.

Inside, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip will be powering the ASUS ROG Phone 5 offering up some incredible performance I'm sure. We should see the new ROG Phone 5 packing the highest-res and highest refresh rate display available, something I'm sure we'll hear much more of in the coming weeks.

The rumblings of Apple's future foldable iPhone have been coming in larger numbers over the last few weeks, with a new rumor that Apple has LG helping it with display tech for its foldable iPhone.

DigiTimes reports that LG will be collaborating with Apple on its foldable iPhone with its future foldable OLED technology, instead of Samsung which was the company most thought Apple would use for the display side of things on the foldable iPhone. It seems LG will instead be helping with the foldable iPhone development with some foldable OLED panel tech.

The new report is just that -- LG is reportedly working with Apple on the foldable iPhone, but we don't know anything apart from that. It's been reported that there are a couple of foldable iPhone prototypes in the wild, one of them being a clamshell design similar to the Galaxy Z Fold from Samsung.

The very latest rumor on Apple's first foldable iPhone is that it will release sometime in 2023, with an OLED display ranging between 7.3-inch to 7.6-inch and would support the Apple Pencil, too.

The news is coming from Chinese investment research firm EqualOcean which predicted the foldable iPhone will launch in 2023. The report reads: "Omdia, a global communications and digital media research organization, predicts that Apple may launch a 7.3-7.6-inch foldable OLED smartphone in 2023 and add an activity pen to its foldable iPhone".

We heard back in October 2020 that the foldable iPhone could even have self-healing display technology, which was teased in a new patent at the time. The foldable display would be protected against small scratches from being placed in and out of your pocket or bag, or onto the table for example.

Qualcomm has just announced its next-gen Snapdragon X65 5G modem, which offers a great leap over the last-gen Snapdragon X60 5G when it comes to download speeds.

The last-gen Snapdragon X60 5G modem is built into the new Snapdragon 888 chipset, but the new Snapdragon X65 5G modem offers super-fast 10Gbps download speeds... up from the 7.5Gbps offered on the Snapdragon X60. You might need to wait until networks catch up to offer that insane 10Gbps, but Qualcomm is ahead of the curve -- as always.

Qualcomm also says it is first with the Snapdragon X65 to support the upcoming 3GPP Release 16 specification, otherwise known as "5G phase 2" that will have improvements including MIMO connectivity, improved power consumption, and so much more. It will also help 5G networks move from just consumers to more commercial and business users through support for unlicensed spectrum and non-public networks.

ASUS has always crammed some serious mobile gaming hardware inside of its ROG Phone gaming smartphones, with the next-gen ROG Phone 5 to reportedly be powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 888 chip.

According to new Geekbench 5 results the next-gen ASUS ROG Phone 5 gaming smartphone will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and not the upcoming, tweaked Snapdragon 888+ processor. The details from Geekbench have a codename of Lahaina, which is the Snapdragon 888 while Lahaina+ is the Snapdragon 888+ chip.

The new ASUS ROG Phone 5 should pack up to 16GB of RAM which is insanity, right up there with kick ass gaming laptops and gaming desktops that pack 16GB of RAM. We should have more information on the next-gen ASUS ROG Phone 5 over the coming months, but so far it's shaping up to be a beast -- and we should expect nothing less from ASUS.

The last we heard about Apple and securing 5nm chips from TSMC in 2021 were previous rumors that it had 80% of the 5nm capacity from TSMC in 2021 -- but new reports suggest Apple has over 50% of the 5nm supply from TSMC this year.

New information from Counterpoint Research says that TSMC started mass production of its 5nm process in Q1 2021, with competitor Samsung following through but they were 6-9 months behind. Counterpoint Research says: "Apple is the top customer (with all orders to TSMC) in 5nm this year (see Exhibit 1), including both for iPhones (A14/A15) and the newly released Apple Silicon".

Counterpoint Research continued: "Qualcomm will be the second-largest 5nm customer as the iPhone 13 may adopt its X60 modem. TSMC is expected to book $10-billion revenue from 5nm in 2021".

Samsung is continuously reaching for the stars with its Galaxy smartphones, with the new Galaxy S21 here and the flagship Galaxy S21 Ultra topping out at 8K 24FPS video shooting abilities... but the new Galaxy S22 is rumored for beyond-cinema 8K 60FPS video shooting abilities.

In a new tweet, tipster Mauri QHD reports that the new Galaxy S22 will be able to shoot 8K 60FPS video -- but for only 5 minutes. The reason? It "gets too hot to the touch" so even if we do see 8K 60FPS video shooting on Samsung's next-gen Galaxy S22 family of smartphones, it's going to be a journey to get there.

We might have to wait it out until the Galaxy S23 series in 2023 for full 8K 60FPS video shooting without 5-minute limits. The other issue is that even shooting 8K 24FPS video on the Galaxy S21 will take up 600MB per minute of footage, which means 3GB per 5-minute video. 8K 60FPS is going to be bigger again, so hopefully the new Galaxy S22/S23 also have 1TB+ storage by then.