Kang Gosol

Meizu is one of the Chinese vendors that we had covered early on over the last few years . One of the early issues with the company’s flagships is that they most often lacked the proper frequency bands for western networks, particularly the lack of B20 for European carriers, even though the company's mid- and low-range products are very much prevalent in some European markets such as France. The company last year looked to  address this issue, in coincidence with the switch from Samsung’s Exynos SoCs to Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragons, and introduced the Meizu 16 and 16 th  with the Snapdragon 710 and Snapdragon 845 with dedicated overseas models. Today’s announcement is about the new Meizu 16s – a full hardware refresh of last year’s models including the brand-new Snapdragon 855 and a new camera sensor, as well as an internal redesign to accommodate a notably bigger battery. Meizu 16s   Meizu 16s (Model M1971) SoC

Although TSMC expects demand for chips to increase going forward and despite an ongoing trend towards consolidation on the foundry market, the company has commented that it currently has no plans to make acquisitions to boost its production capacities.

A true cyclical market, the NAND flash business goes through periods of booms and periods of busts. Following a very profitable boom year in 2018, it looks like the market is in a down swing, as an oversupply is starting to impact the bottom lines of memory makers. To stem any potential for significant losses or an outright market crash, three major manufacturers of NAND memory — Intel, Micron, and SK Hynix — have announced that they will be taking measures to address the oversupply, such as reducing flash production, cutting down wafer starts, and/or slowing down ramp ups of new fabs. Furthermore it is highly likely thr another major manufacturer, Samsung, will follow suit. The rapid transition to high-capacity 64-layer and 96-layer 3D NAND memory devices has enabled NAND flash manufacturers to increase their NAND supply (as measured in bits) and ultimately saturate the market with loads of flash memory. Meanwhile, demand for servers in the recent months has been weaker than exp

Samsung this week said that it would postpone commercial launch of its Galaxy Fold smartphone following various issues uncovered by reviewers. The company, which intended to start sales of the Galaxy Fold on April 26, will announce the new release date in the coming weeks, so do not expect Samsung’s foldable smartphone to hit the market shortly.

Being among the largest contract makers of semiconductors and among leading developers of chips for various applications, Samsung Electronics wants to become the world’s leader in these industries. To do so, the company plans to invest a whopping KRW 133 trillion ($115 billion) in its Samsung LSI and Samsung Foundry businesses (i.e., non-memory operations).

ASUS is certainly not new to Chrome OS-based PCs. But throughout its history with Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, and other Chrome OS devices, the company has positioned them as entry level solutions. However, as Google and some of its partners are experimenting with more premium Chrome OS-powered devices, ASUS cannot stand still. To that end, the company has started to sell its Chromebook Flip C434, a premium Chrome OS 2-in-1.

Modern users tend to be very different and demand unique lifestyle devices with a distinctive design. To address certain audiences, companies need to take rather extraordinary measures and introduce quite unexpected products. Razer this year unveiled its 13.3-inch gaming laptop featuring a Quartz Pink color that was only made available in select countries. Since then, the company has launched a series of pink peripherals and is now expanding availability of the notebook.

Microsoft has introduced its new family of Surface Hub collaboration devices designed for conference rooms. The new lineup includes an all-new 85-inch model for those who need larger screens, as well as an all-new 50-inch model that can be powered by a battery. What is interesting is that the new collaborative PCs are upgradeable, unlike the first-gen Surface Hubs launched in 2015.

The emergence of 3D TLC flash has enabled a new class of budget-friendly bus-powered external SSDs. Flash memory has also seen a recent drop in prices, and this has made high-capacity drives affordable. These aspects have allowed vendors to introduce 2TB external SSDs at price points suitable for the mainstream market. Today, we take a comprehensive at two such drives - the LaCie Portable SSD, and the Western Digital My Passport SSD.

ASRock has introduced a new Mini-ITX motherboard based on Intel’s Whiskey Lake-U SoCs, which is aimed at embedded applications. The IMB-1216 mainboard is designed for applications like panel PCs, point-of-sales systems, kiosks, and digital signage, but can be used for regular low-power PCs in a Mini-ITX form-factor.

One of the most recent rumors swirling the technosphere has been who is going to be sourcing the modems for Apple’s first generation of 5G smartphones. Despite the fact that there appears to be at least six different companies planning to offer 5G modems over the next couple of years, only a few companies had ever been in the running to get an extensive Apple contract. Today, at Huawei’s Analyst Summit, Huawei took itself out of the running.

With today’s announcement out of Apple and Qualcomm that the two fierce rivals have buried the hatchet for good , the situation immediately put into question the fate of Intel’s modem business. As Intel’s only major smartphone modem patron, Apple’s business and enormous order volume made Intel’s smartphone modem business an all-or-nothing affair. Now, as Apple and Qualcomm are seemingly reconciling towards Apple once again using Qualcomm’s modems, Intel has sent out an announcement this afternoon that they are bowing out of the 5G smartphone modem market entirely. In the brief announcement, Intel stated that it was scrubbing its plans to launch 5G modems for smartphones, including modems planned for next year, i.e. the smartphone version of XMM 8160. Intel’s rationale here, while not mentioning the Apple/Qualcomm deal, is rather simple, with Intel’s CEO, Bob Swan, noting that the company doesn’t see a “clear path to profitability and positive returns.” Without a major customer, the

CyberLink's PowerDVD remains the only legitimate Blu-ray playback software in the PC space. Over the last few years, the company has been trying to add value to the software with extra features such as support for VR HMDs and 360° videos . PowerDVD 19 is being launched today. It continues CyberLink's tradition of incremental improvements to the playback software. The improvements in PowerDVD 19 include the ability to play 8K videos, video postprocessing enabled for higher-resolution videos compared to PowerDVD 18, and the transition to a 64-bit playback engine. The new version also brings support for the HEIC/HEIF image format, and can play back HDR videos without taking over exclusive control of the desktop's HDR configuration. PowerDVD 19 also makes improvement in the YouTube interface, allowing for the selection of the video quality before making a title available for watching offline. While 8K playback is looking more into the future, CyberLink's ad

Antivirus software is getting more robust, but so does malware. In a bid to make its PCs more secure, HP is introducing a set of hardware and software-based methods that include use of deep learning AI.

One of the characteristics of Intel is its investment into new IP. This usually takes several forms, such as internal R&D, investing in other companies through Intel Capital, or outright acquisitions. Today Intel is announcing that is has acquired Omnitek, a UK based company that has a portfolio of video acceleration and inferencing IP built for FPGAs, as well as a customer base built on vertical integrations and custom solutions.

It is always quite amusing when retailers pre-announce products before the company actually pushes out a press release. Embargo or not, the retailers want to advertise the fact they will be getting stock and want to sell early – in the gaming industry, people pre-order games, but in the PC industry, you rarely pre-order hardware. Nonetheless, today’s news comes from online retailer Kikatek, which has already listed all of Intel’s 9 th Generation Core 35W CPUs as coming out on May 15 th .

AOC is working on its new flagship display aimed at demanding gamers. The new Agon 35-inch ultra-wide display will not only feature a 200 Hz variable refresh rate, but also peak brightness of 1000 nits. The monitor will carry VESA’s DisplayHDR 1000 badge and will cover 100% of the DCI-P3 color space.

AMD on Monday introduced four new processors aimed at commercial laptops. The new AMD Ryzen Pro 3000-series and AMD Athlon Pro 300-series processors pack up to four x86 cores as well as AMD’s Radeon Vega integrated graphics. Because of improved power efficiency, AMD says that laptops powered by its latest Ryzen Pro APUs will work for up to 12 hours when used for general office workloads.

Acer has introduced its brand-new series of gaming laptops aimed at casual gamers. The Nitro 7 notebooks combine performance, a 15.6-inch display with 144 Hz maximum refresh rate, a metallic chassis, and a sub-2 cm z-height (0.78 inches). Just like other Nitro-series products, the new laptops will be relatively cost effective.

Sharp this week demonstrated its first 31.5-inch HDR display featuring a 7680×4320 resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate. The monitor uses the company’s IGZO technology and the manufacturer evaluates plans to release this LCD commercially.

Intel's NUCs have managed to develop a strong market for ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF) machines since they were introduced in the early 2010s. Each CPU generation has seen Intel put out stronger versions of the NUC (both in terms of performance and features) in a regular cadence. In parallel, we have seen experiments with slightly larger form-factors (such as the Skull Canyon and Hades Canyon NUCs). Today, we are looking at Intel's flagship in their regular NUC category - the Core i7-based Bean Canyon (NUC8i7BEH).

Lexar this week introduced its first external SSDs featuring a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C interface. The SL100 Pro drives are lightweight, miniature, and offer a read speed of up to 950 MB/s, maxing out capabilities of the interface.

GIGABYTE this week announced plans to offer its top-of-the-range Intel Z390-based motherboard with Intel’s Core i9-9900K processor in a combination package. The CPU is handpicked and pre-tested to run at 5.1 GHz on all cores, while the motherboard is fitted with a pre-made water block for the power delivery and processor. The Z390 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce 5G Premium Edition Bundle will be available shortly, but its price is currently unknown.

Among the many data center announcements today from Intel, one that might fly under the radar is that the company is launching a new family of controllers for 100 gigabit Ethernet connectivity. Aside from the speed, Intel is also implementing new features to improve connectivity, routing, uptime, storage protocols, and an element of programmability to address customer needs.

Logitech this week has introduced its new keyboard cases for Apple’s latest 3 rd Gen 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro tablets. The Logitech Slim Folio Pro keyboard features backlighting and has a row of shortcuts supported by Apple’s latest iOS. Furthermore the protective case is also designed to allow for easier sketching using Apple Pencil stylus.

Apple today has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, citing the difficulties the company has encountered in getting the mat to meet its ‘high standards’. The company emphasized that wireless technology projects like this one might be a part of its future roadmap, but at this time it has decided to refrain from releasing the AirPower.

Slipped in to the briefings for Intel's mountain of announcements today are two new enterprise SSDs at opposite ends of the product line: a new Optane SSD and a new QLC NAND SSD. Intel Optane SSD DC D4800X The new Optane SSD DC D4800X differs from the existing P4800X by adding support for dual-port PCIe operation (for high availability) when attached through a PCIe fabric that provides redundant data paths. Most of Intel's NAND-based enterprise NVMe SSDs have dual-port counterparts, but this is the first time this feature has shown up in the Optane product family. Dual-port support is a relatively niche feature, to the point that many of the current-generation dual-port drives aren't listed on ark.intel.com, and we don't have detailed specifications. Performance will be a bit constrained when using just one of the PCIe 3.0 x2 links, but most of Optane's advantages in latency and random IO throughput will be retained. While the performance-oriented P480

Microsoft is a bit of an enigma in the PC space. There is little doubt that they offer some stunning hardware, but after being the first PC maker to jump on Intel’s Skylake platform, and then being burned by the power management issues that chipset had, they’ve been more cautious with their offerings ever since. Thanks to their somewhat unusual launch windows, that can mean that they use older hardware for longer. Such was the case with the Surface Book 2 when it launched in 2017. The Core i7 model shipped with the 8th generation Intel Core, meaning Kaby Lake Refresh, which means quad-core over the dual-core in Kaby Lake. But the Core i5 model shipped with a dual-core Kaby Lake i5-7300U processor, meaning it had a sizeable performance delta to the top tier model – far greater than we typically see in a Core i5 to Core i7 comparison. Microsoft Surface Book 2   13.5 No GPU 13.5 GPU 15 CPU Intel Core i5-7300U

As SATA SSDs slowly give way to M.2 SSDs, so too have the SSDs' use cases. Besides internal storage, of course, SATA SSDs have also commonly been used as both temporary and permanent external storage thanks to cheap SATA-to-USB adapters. And now that M.2 drives are rising in popularity, similiar adapters are popping up for SATA drives in the new form factor. The latest of these being SilverStone's recently launched MS10, a SATA M.2 SSD adapter that supports 10 Gbps USB transfer rates.

The latest update in Huawei’s P series smartphones are the new P30 and P30 Pro handsets, launched today in Paris. These new devices hope to push the reason why the P series exists – to go above and beyond when it comes to photography. The P30 and P30 Pro include Huawei’s new rear SuperSpectrum camera that allows more light into the sensor, and a front facing 32MP camera for better selfies.