Kang Gosol

Last week we published our initial review of Apple’s new iPhone SE . In the piece, I had remarked that the camera was relatively disappointing and suffered from a lack of detail in photos, with the phone’s camera seemingly suffering from optical weaknesses that manifested in partially blurred out shots. This was quite puzzling as the iPhone SE’s camera module should be of the same design as that of the iPhone 8, which produced sharp images. I had notified Apple of the results ahead of the publication of the article, and the company communicated back that they had not seen such results before, and that they were not what was expected of the new iPhone SE’s camera abilities. The company decided to dispatch out a new phone, and to collect my initial unit for analysis. I exchanged units earlier in the week, and was able to retest the new phone’s cameras. In the new camera samples, we can see a dramatic improvement in sharpness of the pictures, and the new phone exhibits none of the o

As the tech industry gears up for the launch of the new USB4 standard, a few more parts first need to fall into place. Along with the core specification itself, there is the matter of alternate modes, which add further functionality to USB Type-C host ports by allowing the data pins to be used to carry other types of signals. Keeping pace with the updates to USB4, some of the alt modes are being updated as well, and this process is starting with the granddaddy of them all: DisplayPort Alt Mode. The very first USB-C alt mode, DisplayPort Alt Mode was introduced in 2014 . By remapping the USB-C high speed data pins from USB data to DisplayPort data, it became possible to use a USB-C port as a DisplayPort video output, and in some cases even mix the two to get both USB 3.x signaling and DisplayPort signaling over the same cable. As a result of DisplayPort Alt Mode’s release, the number of devices with video output has exploded, and in laptops especially, this has become the preferred mo

Off the back of the release of two new Blade 15 series (NVIDIA GeForce RTX and Intel 10th Gen models), Razer has also unveiled two new variations of its slightly smaller Blade Stealth 13 models. Splitting them down the middle, one is designed for gamers, while the other is for content creators on the go, with both featuring an Intel Core i7-1065G7 quad-core processor, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1650 Ti 4 GB graphics card, and a 512 GB PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 storage drive.  Kicking things off with the main differences between the two new models, the gamer-focused Razer Blade Stealth 13 model comes with a high-spec 13.3-inch FHD 1080p screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate. For those looking for a creator-focused notebook, the new Blade 13 is also available with a 13.3" 4K touch display, with both models variants including factory display calibration with 100% sRGB coverage, and 4.9 mm slim side bezels. The other minor difference between the two new variants is that the 4K touchscreen does

Last week we detailed an article covering MediaTek’s seemingly widespread default inclusion of a benchmark whitelist in their chipset BSP (board support package) – a mechanism that enables more aggressive performance tuning of a device’s power management once it detects that a benchmark application is running. Yesterday, UL, the developers of the PCMark and 3DMark benchmarking suites, have followed up on our investigation and analysed a wider range of devices, and have made the decision to temporarily delist all devices powered by a wide range of MediaTek SoCs, a list of over 50 devices from over 25 different vendors. We had worked with UL early on in the investigation, with them providing us alternative anonymised versions of the benchmarks which bypass the whitelist detection, thus exposing the cheating behaviour. The UL news post  states: “ Using hidden mechanisms to detect benchmarking apps by name and make app-specific performance optimizations is not an "accepted i

Just under a month ago, I put out the call : AnandTech's readers were needed once more to defend the honor of the site in the most nerdy of contests: a Folding@Home race. The distributed computing platform has been around for over a decade now, and it has taken on a new life as the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has shut down a significant part of society. In light of the now global pandemic, the project has turned its eyes to trying to simulate the virus and potential treatment avenues for it , in order to hopefully speed up the development of a cure. A task that has been met with great enthusiasm from the public, as the combined power of the Folding@Home project has recently surpassed 2.4 ExaFLOPS , making it over an order of magnitude more powerful than any supercomputer in the world. Overall, the project’s coronavirus research has come not a moment too soon, as many of us find ourselves essentially confined to our homes. And, after more than a month of this, we’re all start

As the world is in quarantine, smartphone companies aren’t standing still and are still moving forward with their new product launches. We’ve seen almost every other company on the market release their 2020 flagships – but one important vendor has been missing from the line-up: OnePlus. Today, the company is finally revealing its newest OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro phones, offering improvements and technology advancements at the highest levels. Particularly the new OnePlus 8 Pro seems to be the company’s most prestigious flagship device ever, including a new QHD+ 120Hz display, a new generation 1/1.7” camera sensor from Sony along with interesting ultra-wide angle and telephoto modules, the company’s first time adoption of wireless charging – all new features on top of the existing ones that made the OnePlus 7 Pro a great phone in 2019.

Alongside today's launch of AMD's new EPYC 7F32, 7F52, and 7F72 processors, stalwart server motherboard and chassis vendor Tyan has officially announced their support for the new chips. Complimenting AMD's announcements, Tyan is adding support for the chips to select models of their Transport HX barebones servers, which are designed for high-performance computing and server data-driven workflows. On the back of a new range of EPYC 7002 processors focused on higher core frequency , Tyan has added support to three models. This includes the Tyan Transport HX TN83-B8251, the TS75A-B8252, and the TS75-B8252. Each model follows a 2U2S design for rack mounting and is offered in barebones form with dual SP3 sockets.  The Tyan Transport HX TN83-B8251 officially supports the new AMD EPYC 7F32, AMD's 8 core, 180 W TDP chip with base clock of 3.7 GHz and a maximum turbo of 3.9 GHz. The TN83-B8251 comes barebones style inside a TN83 chassis, offering sixteen memory slots with

Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) has announced that it's developed its new 128-layer 1.33 Tb QLC 3D NAND memory chip, the X2-6070. The new chip is based on its Xtacking architecture which enables it to run with super high I/O while maximising the density of its memory arrays. YMTC has also unveiled its plan for a 128-layer 512 Gb TLC chip, the X2-9060, designed to meet more diverse application requirements. We first reported on the China-based company YMTC entering its 3D NAND memory chips into production back in 2018, when it unveiled its Xtacking Architecture at the Flash Memory Summit . While it didn't disclose technical details of its announcement, it did state the Xtacking architecture has the capability to run the I/O with speeds of up to 3 Gbps. Fast forward to 2019, and it announced that it planned to start volume production of its 64-layer 3D NAND which we also reported on . Using its Xtacking architecture at the forefront of production, both the new X2-6070

In what has become a busy month for HP, the company has continued to update its array of laptops and other portable PCs with new Intel processors. The latest HP laptops to get the refresh treatment are the Pavilion x360 14" convertibles, which are being retooled to use Intel's 10th generation Ice Lake processors.  Launching today, the two new HP Pavilion x360 14 series models are aimed at increasing productivity on the move with a couple of interesting features, including optional support for 4G LTE offering better connectivity on the go. Based on an improved lightweight design, the new HP Pavilion x360 14 is one of its thinnest yet, with a depth of just 18 mm and weight of 3.55 lb. The new HP Pavilion x360 14 will be available in two configurations – a mid-range config and a low-end config – both sharing the same compact and lightweight frame, but with differing specifications. Both feature a 14" diagonal IPS touch screen panel which can be flipped 360 degrees to be us

While HP’s Spectre lineup is what HP would probably consider their top-tier brand, the ENVY series has quietly become a very potent competitor, with premium-grade materials, and even discrete graphics, while still coming in sometimes hundreds of dollars less than the Spectre models. For 2020, HP is ramping up the ENVY lineup, refreshing all of the models, but the company has put special focus on the 15.6-inch ENVY 15 for this year. ENVY 15 The creator market has become one of the new battlegrounds in the PC space, and for 2020 HP is clearly focusing the ENVY 15 on that market. The new ENVY 15 is the powerhouse in the ENVY lineup, with Intel’s H-Series processors coupled with NVIDIA graphics. Offering up to a Core i9 with 8 cores and sixteen threads, coupled with NVIDIA GPUs up to the RTX 2060 Max-Q gives the new ENVY 15 some serious performance for creative workflows like Lightroom, or video rendering. The ENVY 15 is also a member of the NVIDIA Studio program, meaning it offers t

ADATA, one of the leading manufacturers of DRAM and NAND products, has just unveiled its latest memory modules. The new ADATA DDR4-3200 32 GB parts are available in both UDIMM and SO-DIMM format with an operating voltage of just 1.2 V. This is just the ticket for adopters of the new Ryzen 4000 Mobile platform looking to run high-capacity memory without compromising on throughput performance.  Back at Computex 2019, ADATA showed off its DDR4-2666 SODIMMs for the desktop market. Fast forward to now and it looks to push performance even higher with its new 32 GB DDR4-3200 modules.  Touching more on the design, we know the ADATA DDR4-2666 modules we saw at Computex were using Micron 16 Gb ICs to build its 32 GB UDIMMs. It is unlikely that ADATA has changed this, but we can't confirm this at present. The lower operating voltage over conventional DDR3 at 1.5 V according to ADATA equates to around 20% less power being drawn, which in turn generates less heat.  Potential use cases fo

ASRock has announced its latest ITX graphics card for small form factors, the Radeon RX 5500 XT Challenger ITX. This new mini-ITX card is based on AMD's Navi 14 GPU and offers 8 GB of GDDR6 memory attached to a 128-bit bus, with the same core and memory clock speeds as a reference model. Finding a graphics card for a small form factor system can be tiresome with very little on the market to choose from. One of the big trade-offs of graphics cards designed for small form factor systems is that beefier models such as AMD's RX 5700 XT, and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 Ti are too large in design to accommodate such a small PCB, which is where smaller cards designed particularly for the ITX form factor come in. Focusing on the ASRock RX 5500 XT Challenger ITX 8G, it is very small for its power with dimensions of 190 x 139 x 42 mm, meaning that it is just under 7.5 inches in length. It features a single 10 cm cooling fan on its front, embedded in a white and silver dual-slot c

Apple’s last “classic” iPhone release was the iPhone 8 back in 2017, with the 2016 iPhone SE (Special Edition) being the last iteration donning the iPhone 4 design language. It’s safe to say both these devices had been getting a bit long in the tooth, and there’s still plenty of people out there which loved the 4.7” form-factor – and possibly unwilling to update to the newer bigger models. Luckily, Apple seemingly agrees that this market is worth covering, and today announced a refresh of the 2016  iPhone SE . The new 2020 special edition model takes its design cues from the iPhone 8, essentially taking it as a blueprint for the shell of the phone, and crams in the latest hardware technology that were premiered with the iPhone 11 series. Most importantly, Apple is offering this new small fierce package at an incredible price point starting at $399, significantly cheaper than even the “lower-end” iPhone 11. The combination seems an outright winner, let’s go over the specifications:

I've noticed of late that certain companies are 'relaunching' older parts in new designs. We've seen it recently with some of the older AMD APUs finding their way into new motherboard designs, but here it's a case of a base GPU returning to the market. ASUS  has listed on its website a 'new' GT 710: this is a super low end graphics chip with 192 CUDA cores on the 87 mm2 GK208 Kepler die that originally launched in late 2015 / early 2016. The goal of this sort of graphics card us to supply basic video outputs to machines that do not come with any integrated graphics on the processor. What's different about this card, which comes with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, is that it has four HDMI video outputs. On a modern graphics card you might expect a DisplayPort or two, but here it's all just HDMI. Despite the GK208 GPU not supporting HDMI 2.0 natively, this is the sort of card that is going to take advantage of NVIDIA opening up 4K60 with 4:2:0 subchroma sa