Friday 31 May 2019

AMD Navi RX 5700 Brings RTX 2070 Performance at Half the Die Size

It’s been just a few days since AMD’s groundbreaking Computex 2019 keynote where CEO Dr. Lisa Su unveiled the company’s next generation Ryzen 3000 series CPUs and Radeon Navi RX 5700 GPUs. Despite the event ending several days ago, we’re still getting a steady trickle of exciting details pertaining to the company’s next generation products.
AMD Navi RX 5700 Series Bring RTX 2070 Performance to The Midrange With Half the GPU Die Size
Earlier today we’ve managed to confirm that the company’s upcoming Navi GPU, which was unveiled for the first time earlier this week and is set to power the company’s upcoming RX 5700 series graphics cards, is in fact only mid-range Navi with a die area of roughly 255mm².
That is comparable to AMD’s previous mid-range offerings from Polaris 10 (RX 480/580 232 mm²), Pitcairn before it (HD 7870/R9 270X 212mm²) and going back all the way to the extremely popular RV770 (HD 4870 256 mm²).
In comparison to NVIDIA, the RTX 2070 is powered by the TU-106-400 GPU which is 445mm² large. In fact the Navi RX 5700 series GPU is even smaller than the 284mm² TU116, which powers the NVIDIA GTX 1660 series graphics cards.
This massive disparity in chip size is due to the fact that AMD’s Navi graphics architecture is built on TSMC’s cutting-edge 7nm FinFET process technology, nearly a full node ahead of the 12nm technology that NVIDIA’s Turing chips are built on.
Thanks to this notable process advantage, mid-range Navi RX 5700 series graphics cards are expected to compete with the much larger TU106 powered RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 graphics cards from NVIDIA.
In fact, AMD demoed an early Navi sample outperforming the RTX 2070 by roughly 10% at its Computex 2019 keynote, although admittedly it was in a title that favors Radeon, Strange Brigade. Which means that we’re likely looking at RX 5700 Navi trading blows with the RTX 2070 rather than outright beating it.
AMD Navi RX 5700 – High-End Performance, Mid-Range Chip
Now, what’s very interesting about all of this is that AMD is publicly touting Radeon RX 5700 as a high-end gaming product and if the pricing rumors are in fact true, Navi RX 5700 cards will also be priced as high-end products. Based on the community reaction we’ve seen, this does not bode very well for AMD, as RTX 2070 performance at RTX 2070 pricing is simply not good enough, especially now that Turing has been in the market for a year.
The only way Navi is going to have a truly meaningful impact on the market is if this mid-range GPU is priced like a mid-range GPU. Imagine being able to get RTX 2070 performance at RTX 2060 prices, now that would be something to get excited about. Not this price-matching after nearly a year nonsense that the rumors allege.
Hopefully AMD has a trick up its sleeve, and we’ll know soon enough at E3. Meanwhile stay tuned for all the latest on Navi, we’re bound to hear a LOT more before AMD’s Next Horizon event.

Google Insider Leaks Stunning Pixel 4 Design

Google’s new Pixel 3a is by far the best sub-$500 smartphone you can buy. But the Pixel 4 is where all the most excitement lies and now it’s easy to see why.
In a new tweet, SlashLeaks, the site now run by remarkably accurate leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer, has revealed the Pixel 4 has an all-new design. And it shows Google will finally give the Pixel range some style with a perfect hybrid of the Galaxy S10+ and iPhone XS, following years of wrapping great tech in dated chassis.
Slashleaks obtained its images via case maker Skinomi, which is so confident in its sources that it is already taking pre-orders from customers. The bad news, however, is Skinomi is only selling a screen protector at this stage so we don’t get a look at the back of the phone. With Google widely expected to move the Pixel range to dual or even triple cameras (my understanding is dual), that’s a key point of interest.
Google accidentally confirmed the Pixel 4 back in March but, until now, the key details have largely remained a mystery. This is in complete contrast to the Pixel 3 which, arguably, was the most leaked smartphone of last year.
So at this point, we merely have a wishlist. Google nailing the design was one, but it is also essential that the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL come with more RAM than their predecessors, larger storage options and bigger batteries. Google’s Pixels still have the world’s best point and shoot smartphone cameras, while rivals have increasingly gone for gimmicks, but the rest of the phone now needs to step up.
You’ve cracked one piece of the puzzle Google. Now with Apple and Samsung both struggling, it’s time to deliver on the rest.

Hands-On With Apple's New 7th-Generation iPod Touch

Apple earlier this week introduced new iPod touch models, updating the 4-inch device for the first time since 2015. Not a lot has changed, but there's a new processor and updated storage tiers.
We thought we'd go hands-on with the new iPod touch to see if it still has a place in Apple's lineup in 2019 and who might want to purchase one.
The new 7th-generation iPod touch is now Apple's smallest device and the sole device that has a 4-inch display. The smallest iPhones (7 and 8) have 4.7-inch displays, so the new iPod touch is a good bit smaller and comparable to an iPhone 5s or SE.
Coming to a 4-inch iPod touch from a larger iPhone is quite an adjustment because most of us are no longer used to using a device with such a small display. It's tiny and it's made from a lightweight aluminum, which is nice if you need something you can just tuck in a pocket.
We have the iPod touch in blue, but it's also available in five additional colors: pink, (PRODUCT)RED, silver, gold, and space gray. As with the previous-generation iPod touch, there are thick bezels at the top and bottom of the device.
The bottom bezel houses a Home button, but unlike the iPhone, there's no Touch ID built in. There's also no Face ID, because the iPod touch has no biometric authentication system at all. You need to use a passcode for unlocking the device.
Camera tech hasn't been updated, so the new iPod touch is still using an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera, both of which are pretty far behind current camera technology in more modern Apple devices. For those who prefer wired headphones, there is a headphone jack.
The sole major update to the 7th-generation iPod touch is its new processor, which is an A10 Fusion chip that Apple first used in the 2016 iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The A10 Fusion chip is a good bit faster than the A8 chip that was in the 6th-generation iPod touch, but it's worth noting that it's underclocked in this new model compared to other A10 devices.
The A10 chip in the iPod touch is running at 1.6GHz compared to 2.3GHz in the 6th-generation iPad and iPhone 7, both of which use the A10 chip. Apple is undoubtedly underclocking the processor to save battery life. Since this is a 4-inch phone, it has a small battery.
The iPod touch earned a single-core Geekbench score of 2722 in our testing, and a multi-core score of 4695. That's a good bit slower than the 6th-generation iPad, which earned a single-core score of 3520 and a multi-core score of 6079.
It's faster than the 6th-generation iPod, though, which has a single-core Geekbench score of 1330 and a multi-core score of 2250. Apple also underclocked the A8 chip in the 6th-generation iPod touch, so having a chip that runs a bit slower in an iPod touch isn't new.
You can get the iPod touch with 32GB of storage for $199, while 128GB of storage will cost $299 and 256GB of storage (a new storage tier) will cost $399.
As for the question of who the iPod touch is for, it's not entirely clear. This is probably a good starter device for a younger child that needs access to games, FaceTime, iMessage, and other features, but there are also potential business applications, as this is an affordable device for something like mobile checkout. It could also be useful for schools looking for inexpensive Apple devices.
For the average person that has other Apple devices like an iPhone or iPad, you're probably not going to want to pick up an iPod touch unless you have a specific use case for it, such as listening to music with wired headphones while at the gym or something. Most people aren't going to have a use for an iPod touch over an iPhone, which is likely why it received only a modest processor update.
What do you think of the new iPod touch? Let us know in the comments.

Wednesday 29 May 2019

OnePlus 7 review: designed to make you want the OnePlus 7 Pro

OnePlus pulled some sleight of hand with its naming of the OnePlus 7 series. It announced the 7 Pro like it’s the new addition to the lineup, and that is indeed a phone full of new things, but the novelty for OnePlus’ strategy is that the company is now doing an Apple-esque upcycling of older models as its entry-level offering. That’s what the OnePlus 7 is: a OnePlus 6T with an update to a Snapdragon 855 processor and a 48-megapixel camera and not much else.
Am I complaining? Only a little. The 6T had the fastest and smoothest performance of any Android device until the OnePlus 7 Pro arrived. It had a reasonably sized notch and slimmer display bezels than you’ll find on an iPhone XS Max. But OnePlus has now made those compromises less acceptable by hiding the selfie cam in a mechanical pop-up module, throwing in a gorgeous 90Hz screen, and turning the side bezels into pencil lines on the OnePlus 7 Pro. None of the original good things about the OnePlus 6T change in the 7, for better or worse, but the 7 Pro is just constantly there, mocking you with its superiority and availability. If you can afford it. In the UK, the OnePlus 7 with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage costs £499, while the same spec in a 7 Pro is £649.
Outside of OnePlus’ portfolio, the £499 price point has become much more competitive recently. Google’s £399 Pixel 3A undercuts the 6T by a nice margin while having a vastly superior camera. And the Black Shark 2 and Razer Phone 2 both offer beefier gaming performance, with the latter also having a 120Hz screen like the new OnePlus flagship. Where does the OnePlus 7 fit into this highly competitive landscape?
From the point of view of the naive phone buyer, the OnePlus 7 is pretty great. It costs less than the most expensive smartphones while performing every bit as smoothly and looking every bit as glamorous. Granted, I detest the fingerprint magnet that is the glossy glass back of this phone, but that’s another quality that it shares with super premium devices. The main point is that if I hand a OnePlus 7 to an uninformed consumer, they’d be rather delighted with it for a starting price of £499 (₹32,999 in India or €559 in EU) or even at £50 more with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
This is the classic flagship-on-a-budget that OnePlus is known for, and to get the in-depth account of all its intricacies like battery life, performance, display quality, and ergonomics, I direct you to my OnePlus 6T review. If you don’t care beyond the question of whether this is a good phone, it is, and since so little has changed since the 6T, that review is all you need.
But value is the slippery fish that we’re all trying to capture when making a considered purchase like a smartphone. It’s not enough for it to merely be good, it has to be worth the money, and that can only be judged in the context of the broader market.
So let’s not dodge the obvious confrontation here: is the OnePlus 7 worth it when compared against Google’s cheaper Pixel 3A or 3A XL? The spec sheet would tell you “hell yes”: the 7 is one of the most affordable Snapdragon 855 devices, it comes with at least 2GB more RAM than Google’s meager 4GB, has a larger 6.41-inch screen, and the Pixel is stuck with only 64GB of storage that isn’t expandable. Dual-SIM enthusiasts should also write the Pixel off straight away and find a cozy home for their cards in the OnePlus phone.
Despite the OnePlus 7 having the rehashed 2018 design, it’s the Pixel 3A and 3A XL that look like they’re from last year. That speaks to the design leadership of OnePlus as well as the corresponding weakness of Google’s bezel-tolerant aesthetic. If I were buying a phone as a gift, I’d go for the OnePlus 7. But shopping for myself, I’d opt for the Pixel 3A XL.
It’s not because the Pixel is faster. Even the premium Pixel 3 can’t match the fluidity of OnePlus’ keenly tuned performance. And it’s not because the speaker or display is better — both are good for the price and on par with the OnePlus 7 — or even because the Pixel 3A models have headphone jacks. No, friends, it’s almost entirely about that unparalleled Pixel camera. I am willing to tolerate slightly slower performance, chunkier bezels, and a worse multitasking interface from Google just to get my hands on the best camera to ever grace the market below £500. OnePlus uses the extremely popular 48-megapixel Sony sensor that produces 12-megapixel shots of decent quality. Its secondary lens is for a 5-megapixel depth sensor to help with portraits, though the Pixel camera still takes better portraits even without dedicated depth equipment.
There are other advantages to taking up the Pixel path, too. While both the 3A XL and OnePlus 7 have a 3,700mAh battery and a 1080p screen, the smaller Pixel display drains that battery more slowly and makes that phone a bit of an endurance champ. I may be in the minority, but I also really enjoy the lighter feel of the plastic Pixel 3A devices. They’re easier to handle and operate, and I’m really not sure how we came to this point of believing that phones weighing in excess of 180g / 6.4oz, as the OnePlus 7 does, are normal. It’s like we’ve all developed collective amnesia about the glorious, polycarbonate-clad Nokia N9.
The OnePlus 7 does have one particular design feature that bothers me, and that is its camera bump. It’s far more pronounced on this phone than it is on the 7 Pro, Pixels, Galaxy devices, or anything Huawei or Apple make. The Huawei P30 Pro and iPhone XS Max both have nicely softened edges to their pill-shaped camera modules, and their designers have the good sense to place those bumps off to the side of the phone. OnePlus sticks this big, almost sharp slab in the middle of an otherwise very polished and soft shape, and it’s a persistent irritation in the hand.
Turning to the gamer-oriented Black Shark 2 and Razer Phone 2, both now priced identically to the OnePlus 7, I find another situation where my experience disagrees with the specs. Only this time, the other phones are the ones with juicier specs, whether it’s the Black Shark 2 and its souped-up cooling system or the Razer Phone 2 and its extra buttery 120Hz screen. Both have light-up logos on the rear, used to signal notifications, the engagement of gaming mode, or their user’s complete disregard for good taste. Both have great speakers. Both can be handled roughly without worry. And both are ridiculously heavy to be considered reasonable everyday phones.
The OnePlus 7 is a dainty feather compared to that pair of beefy brutes, and yet it still has that top-tier Snapdragon system-on-a-chip to make light work of any gaming task. Its 1080p resolution comes in handy here, helping to assure good battery life by not overworking the GPU. It has most of the gaming capability of the Black Shark and Razer Phone, but doesn’t scream about its performance might the way that the other two do.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the Xiaomi Mi 9, arguably the most similar phone to the OnePlus 7, featuring the same 48-megapixel sensor, albeit in a more capable triple-camera arrangement. Xiaomi also fits the Snapdragon 855 and wireless charging inside the Mi 9, but that phone is a total non-starter for me because of EMUI. OnePlus simply does the best version of Android, and I might even include Google’s original flavor in that statement. Plus, OnePlus has committed, in both words and deeds, to delivering prompt and long-term Android updates for its phones. Xiaomi’s still living in the 2012 era of Android skins.
My abiding impression of the OnePlus 7 is that it’s a OnePlus 7 Pro Lite. The Pro has the 90Hz screen, which is not just smoother, but also more accurate. That phone also gets the 30W Warp Charger in the box, whereas the OnePlus 7 has the same fast charger as you could’ve got with the OnePlus 3T. And though both phones have the 48-megapixel sensor and UltraShot camera tech, the 7 Pro has a wider aperture on the main camera, ultrawide and telephoto cameras, and the ability to take slightly better shots. On the aesthetic front, you only get the fingerprint-loving mirror black option on the 7 (with a red edition for India with the higher memory spec), whereas the 7 Pro has that gorgeous matte blue and an upcoming almond edition, the latter of which I’ve seen and very much like.
Two points work in the OnePlus 7’s favor in comparison to its prettier, bigger, more powerful sibling. First is the size, as the OnePlus 7 still exists in the “large phone” category, whereas every reviewer who’s wrestled with the OnePlus 7 Pro for longer than a day has remarked on its big-unit proportions. The other thing is the absence of the curved screen sides. The OnePlus 7 still has the so-called 2.5D Gorilla Glass, but that’s just a softening of the very edge, whereas the 7 Pro has some gratuitous slopes on its sides that make it harder to grip and easier to accidentally palm something on screen. The Huawei P30 is a similar example of the cheaper edition of a phone having the better screen ergonomics by virtue of its designers simply not having the budget to fiddle too much.
It feels like OnePlus invested all its time designing the 7 Pro, and then the company trickled down what it could fit into the OnePlus 6T chassis and budget space. I’m perfectly okay with that. I think the OnePlus 7 is a phone that most people will enjoy using, though it might be a frustrating reminder of the 7 Pro’s existence for the geekier among us.

Samsung Galaxy Fold gets delayed once more, may arrive in July

Following the Samsung Galaxy Fold's initial delay, it was expected that the troubled foldable device would arrive sometime in June. Now, it appears the smartphone-tablet hybrid may arrive a month later in July, according to comments made by a Samsung Electronics official.
As reported by Yonhap News Agency, the Samsung representative stated that the Galaxy Fold's "release schedule has not been decided, and we are in a position to announce the launch schedule in a few weeks."
Due to the uncertain future of Huawei's Mate X foldable following strict US sanctions that have been placed on the Chinese company, it's believed that Samsung is taking some extra time to make sure the device's durability problems are taken care of.
Originally slated for an April 26 launch, the Galaxy Fold's release was put on hold following screen-related problems experienced during the early review phase, including display damage caused by the removal of a protective layer.
In the meantime, US Samsung Galaxy Fold pre-orders will be canceled on May 31 unless customers offer their express permission to keep their order active.

A New Collection of HP Envy Convertible Laptops with Wooden Palmrests

On the opening day of Computex, HP introduced its first laptops and convertible notebooks featuring premium wooden inlays on their palmrests. The new HP Envy PCs will be available later this year in a variety of configurations.
The look and feel of laptops in general and convertible laptops in particular are no less important than their performance and display quality. Makers of PCs tend to experiment with various materials, but when it comes to high-performance premium PCs, it generally all comes down to various alloys of aluminum. Late last year HP introduced a notebook featuring leather inlays for a premium feel. This time, HP decided to do it differently, wedding an aluminum body and a wooden palmrest.
Set to be available in two form-factors — notebook and convertible notebook — HP’s Envy Wood Series collection will include Envy 13, Envy x360 13, Envy x360 15, as well as the range-topping Envy 17 Wood Series (the 17-incher even has an ODD). Depending on exact SKUs, HP will be offering three types of wood, including Nightfall Black with Natural Walnut, Ceramic White with White Birch, or Natural Silver with Pale Birch
The systems will be based on a selection of processors from 2nd Gen AMD (with Radeon Vega GPU) and 10th Gen Intel Core, yet HP does not name the exact models. Meanwhile, since we are talking about 2019 systems, expect the latest CPUa as well as RAM/SSD/I/O configurations.
Without any doubts, wood is a premium material and HP deserves a kudos for using it (not from nature activists though, but still). By using leather or wood on its notebooks, HP clearly differentiates its premium machines from those by competitors. Since customers willing to pay extra for PCs demand quite a lot, it is simply crucial for HP to offer something they can actually feel. Of course, it remains to be seen how durable wood is when it comes to palmrests, but this is something only time will tell.
It is noteworthy that HP is not the first company to experiment with wood on the laptops. One of the first things that comes to mind is the ASUS Bamboo laptop from 2007. While it was demonstrated at CeBIT back then and even released, the company for some reason decided not to refresh this product line later on, even though it looked and felt very well. Perhaps, the consumer was just not ready back then?

MediaTek's New 5G-Ready Chip Is Exactly the Kind of Competition Qualcomm Needs

We’re still in the early days of 5G, but if you take a quick look around the smartphone world, it’s clear Qualcomm has gotten a head start when compared to other chipmakers. Nearly every 5G phone on the market today is powered by a Qualcomm modem, and while Qualcomm recently got slapped for violating antitrust laws, with its next high-end mobile chip MediaTek could finally deliver some well-needed competition in the 5G space.
While the chip itself doesn’t have an official name yet, MediaTek claims that its upcoming SoC (system-on-a-chip, AKA processor) is the “world’s first fully-integrated 7 nanometer 5G SoC” and with it, the company hopes to bring down the price of future 5G smartphones and mobile devices. That’s an enticing idea, because anyone who has taken a look at the starting price of phones, like the $1,300 Galaxy S10 5G and $1,150 LG V50 5G, knows it’s hard to ignore the hefty premium that comes with today’s 5G-ready handsets.
On top of that, MediaTek’s 5G SoC will also be the first chip to feature ARM’s recently announced Cortex-A77 CPU and Mali-G77 GPU. The Cortex -A77 is a follow up to ARM’s A76 CPU and features improved efficiency in addition to a newly redesigned architecture, and if past releases are any indication, this may be the same CPU core we see in Qualcomm’s next flagship chip later this year. Elsewhere, MediaTek’s 5G SoC will also come with support for camera sensors with up to 80-MP resolutions and speedier AI processing thanks to the chip’s third-gen APU.
And when it comes to 5G performance, MediaTek boasts that its chip can hit sustained download speeds of 4.2 Gbps and uploads speeds of up to 2.5 Gbps. However, there is an important caveat regarding MediaTek’s chip, as its integrated modem only supports 5G on the sub-6GHz and 2.5-GHz bands. That means for carriers like AT&T and especially Verizon (which exclusively uses mmWave frequencies on its 5G network), MediaTek’s chip isn’t really an option, because in order to deliver optimal data speeds, 5G modems and their antennas often need to be tuned for a specific set of radio frequencies.
But that might be OK, because there are a couple of other carriers planning on using either the sub-6GHz or 2.5-GHz spectrums when they light up their 5G networks later this year: T-Mobile and Sprint. This puts MediaTek in a good position to compete with Qualcomm when it comes to supplying 5G chips for future T-Mobile and Sprint phones, particularly if T-Mobile and Sprint’splanned merger gets approved.Though in the end, it will ultimately fall on phone makers instead of end users to choose which chip is the best fit for their devices. At least there’s a choice.
Either way, with only a handful of chipmakers worldwide having the ability to even make 5G-ready chips and SoCs, its nice to know that there might be at least one alternative to all those Qualcomm-powered 5G phones coming soon. That said, soon is somewhat relative, as even MediaTek doesn’t expect any consumer-ready devices featuring its new 5G Soc to be available until Q1 2020.

Intel's beautiful dual-screen concepts show what laptops could be in 2 years

The company had dual-screen versions of productivity and gaming laptops.
Laptops have gotten thinner and smaller, but their basic design hasn't really radically shifted. Intel thinks that will change within two years.
At Computex 2019, the chipmaker brought several proof-of-concept devices that show what laptop makers like Asus, Dell and HP can do with its tech. The common denominator across the devices? Dual screens. Keyboards, it seems, will soon be so2019.
First up is the Ultrabook concept, Twin Rivers, a futuristic take on thin-and-light laptops like the Dell XPS. It combines two 12.3-inch touchscreen displays, with the bottom display having an on-screen keyboard, like one you get on a tablet. However, the concept also comes with a physical bluetooth keyboard that fits atop the display for longer sessions.
This concept isn't unheard of. Lenovo's Yoga Book series is comprised of laptops that have onscreen, e-ink keyboards rather than a physical one. Jim Johnson, general manager at Intel, told me attachable keyboard design was inspired by feedback from Lenovo. He also said we'd see designs like this on the market "imminently," but another Intel rep gave a more tempered "one to two years" timeframe.
Twin Rivers works in laptop form, tent form and cookbook form, the latter of which Intel showed off with a comics app. These were developed using Intel's Whisky Lake CPUs, and a rep from Intel said the newly announced and more efficient Ice Lake chips will make devices like this easier to craft.
The second concept, deliciously titled Honeycomb Glacier, is for gamers. It combines a 17.3-inch display with a second "12.3-inch" screen (it's not as deep as a traditional display of that size) that's propped up by some ergonomic wizardry.
The most impressive feature is eye tracking. The second display can hold three programs, and there's a camera in between the two screens that tracks where you're looking. It knows what window you're looking at, whether it be on the top screen or on the bottom screen, and automatically puts you in control of that window. That makes navigating the two screens easy, in a very futuristic sense, and also means you don't have to use the shirked-to-the-right trackpad as much.
Dual-screen gaming laptops are already a reality. The newest HP Omen has a 6-inch display above the keyboard, and Asus' new ZenBook Pro Duo has an impressive 14-inch 4K screen below its 15.6-inch main display that essentially acts as a screen extension. (The ZenBook Pro Duo isn't marketed as a gaming laptop, but it can be configured with an Nvidia RTX 2060 so it's not not a gaming laptop.)
However, unlike Twin Rivers, Intel wouldn't say when we can expect something like this on the market. The screen technology is already there, as the aforementioned ZenBook Pro Duo has basically the same setup, but the ergonomics may be harder to figure out -- at least from a marketing and simplicity-of-use perspective.
Again, Intel isn't manufacturing these laptops, they're just concepts (for now). Intel did announce a bunch of actual products at Computex though, including new 10th-generation Ice Lake CPUs, which introduce AI features to laptops, plus the Project Athena class of devices.

Tuesday 28 May 2019

INTEL ANNOUNCES THE CORE I9-9900KS CPU WITH ALL CORES RUNNING AT 5 GHZ

At its Computex Kickoff Event, Intel previewed its latest products including a new special edition 9th Gen Intel Core i9-9900KS processor and a sneak peek of the performance of its upcoming 10 nm ‘Ice Lake-U’ CPU that comes integrated with its new Gen11 graphics.
Intel Core i9-9900KS features
The Intel Core i9-9900KS is a special edition desktop CPU with eight cores and 16 threads. This will be the first every processor where all the eight-cores will be running at a turbo boost frequency of 5 GHz. This means whether the system runs on a single-core intensive workload or a multi-core workload, all the eight cores will be running at 5 GHz on turbo boost. Essentially, gaming performance will be better on the new CPU when it’s utilising all the cores.
It follows the existing 14 nm++ process and Coffee Lake architecture present on the Core i9-9900K. Although there isn’t much of a difference between the two CPUs, the i9-9900KS comes with a higher base clock frequency of 4 GHz compared to 3.6 GHz on the i9-9900K. Intel hasn’t revealed the TDP of the unit and considering the higher base clock, it’s safe to assume that the TDP will be higher on the i9-9900KS than the 95 W TDP on the i9-9900K. Price and availability are yet to be revealed.
Intel 10 nm ‘Ice Lake-U’ CPU
The company also previewed the performance of its delayed 10 nm Ice Lake-U CPUs that are integrated with its new Gen11 graphics and Sunny Cove cores. This CPU will be powering Intel’s upcoming mobile CPU platform.
Intel compared the 1080p gaming performance of Gen11 integrated graphics first with its previous own Gen9 graphics. Although we don’t exactly know the settings of the games, it showcased the performance jump from one generation to the new one. In CS:GO, at Low settings, there was a performance boost by 1.72x while in Fortnite, the gain was by 1.43x. Between the two generations, there was a performance boost of up to 2.08x.
The company also compared the gaming performance with an AMD equivalent CPU, the Ryzen 7 3700U. As Anandtech reported, Intel claimed that none of AMD’s latest 15 W APUs were actually running at 15 W. So, in order to make the comparison fair, the company boosted one of the Ice Lake-U processors to a TDP of 25 W. While the performance wasn’t better in all the games and benchmarks, the report mentions the average performance gain was somewhere around four to five percent.
More details about the new CPU are expected in the coming days of Computex 2019 with the possibility of some vendors releasing their own Ice Lake-U devices.

Hands-On with Industry’s First 5G Laptop: A Lenovo with Qualcomm’s 8cx SoC and X55 Modem

Lenovo and Qualcomm introduced the world’s first laptop with an integrated 5G modem at Computex. The convertible notebook is based on Qualcomm’s latest platform for Windows 10 on Arm systems, the Snapdragon 8cx, and further includes the company's upcoming Snapdragon X55 5G modem. The PC is expected to be available later, but Lenovo is not disclosing its exact launch timeframe.
While Qualcomm and Lenovo have always promoted these devices as being super-efficient for ‘always connected’ workflows, leveraging the smartphone modem inside, these devices have actually seen more success when advertised for all-day battery life: by putting a smartphone chip in something the size of a laptop, the substantially larger battery makes the laptop last all day, and then some more. If there’s one thing that the Qualcomm always connected PCs (ACPCs) resonates with the tech press, it’s the phenomenal battery life. Now Qualcomm wants to pair that with a slightly more powerful chip, extending the capability in CPU and GPU.
Outfitted with what seems to be a 13-inch display featuring a Full-HD resolution (for now, Lenovo says it can install any screen, even an Ultra-HD one), the Lenovo 5G notebook (or 5GPC as the manufacturer calls it) is as thin and light as the company’s convertible Yoga C630 based on Qualcomm’s previous-gen Snapdragon 850. The Yoga design housing the new Snapdragon 8cx is the same chassis design as the previous generation (the Yoga C630). This is a super thin and light laptop that I really like. The downside of the older version was always the responsiveness, and the 8cx with its higher turbo performance promises to solve some of those issues. Similar to the previous ACPCs, a full version of Windows is being used, with Windows standard software and services being optimized for the Arm cores inside the Snapdragon SoC. The complaints about the previous models were mostly in ‘instantaneous performance’ – the performance that matters most when opening up programs and affecting the user experience. The new 8cx has a higher thermal envelope and can turbo higher – the chip has a can be set to a wide all-core TDP, over and above 10W, making a substantial difference.
Overall, the laptop feels to be a bit lighter than the majority of 13-inch notebooks on the market, possibly due to the lack of a sophisticated cooling system that normally accompanies x86 CPUs used in such PCs.
Meanwhile, the computer has a keyboard that feels rather nice: the keys are easy to press, yet they are located far enough from each other to minimize typos.
Qualcomm's new 8cx chip will feature a 4+4 Kryo 495 design, paired with 10MB of L3 cache and a large shared system cache. The GPU in this case is the Adreno 680, which is a much larger version of the Adreno 640 we see on the top end Snapdragon 855 which has powered most of the major 2019 smartphones. This chip is built on 7nm, and Qualcomm states is 60% more efficient than the Snapdragon 850 in the current generation of ACPCs.
As far as specifications are concerned, Lenovo says that it can equip its 5G notebook with up to 16 GB of RAM as well as a PCIe or UFS 3.0 SSD with up to 1 TB capacity. Since the product is set to be available later, Lenovo is being pretty flexible with its specifications, but it is likely that the company will offer multiple versions of its 5G-enabled notebook priced and speced differently.
When it comes to connectivity, the Lenovo 5G supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi (this is what the 8cx SoC supports), Bluetooth 5.x, and, naturally, 2G/3G/4G (Cat 22) and 5G via the X55 modem. It is noteworthy that the notebook exclusively uses Qualcomm’s X55 modem even for non-5G networks as the manufacturer believes that this is more power efficient. On the wired side of things, the Lenovo 5G notebook has two USB Type-C ports as well as a 3.5-mm headphone jack.
At present, Lenovo is not disclose anything about the actual launch date, price, or even launch countries. As far as availability goes, the linchpin would appear to be the X55 modem, as this is Qualcomm's next-generation 5G modem that's yet to ship (as the first X50-based devices only started shipping a couple of months back). As for pricing and availability, Lenovo still has some work to do to feel out the market for what kind a premium users are willing to pay for a 5G laptop, and then where 5G service is even readily available. This is one of the reasons why Lenovo does not want to disclose an exact launch timeframe, as the company wants 5G networks to roll out first and then release the laptop once demand is there.

NVIDIA Releases Quadro RTX, Quadro T, and Quadro P620/P520 GPUs for Notebooks

Along with today’s NVIDIA Studio branding announcement, NVIDIA is also using Computex to update their lineup of Quadro GPUs for notebooks and mobile workstations. Along with bringing some of the existing Quadro RTX desktop parts to the mobile space, the company is also launching a sub-series of parts under the Quadro T series, and finally a pair of new Quadro P series graphics adapters for the low-end.
Starting things off, we have the mobile Quadro RTX parts, which are all new for the mobile space. Like NVIDIA’s GeForce mobile counterparts, these Quadro RTX mobile parts are essentially the same chip configurations as their desktop siblings, but put into a mobile form factor and with their TDPs and clockspeeds turned down accordingly. As a result the mobile Quadro RTX parts pack all the features and VRAM of the desktop parts that NVIDIA has previously launched, while retaining a good deal of their performance and all of the Turing architecture's functionality.
Owing to the tighter TDPs of mobile, NVIDIA’s mobile Quadro RTX stack doesn’t go quite as high as it does on the desktop. For mobile the fastest part is the Quadro RTX 5000, which is based on the same TU104 GPU as the desktop version. This part replaces the Quadro P5200 as NVIDIA’s flagship mobile Quadro part. Meanwhile below that we have the Quadro RTX 4000 and RTX 3000, which appear to be based on a cut-down TU104 and full-fledged TU106 GPU respectively.
In terms of performance, the RTX 5000 will top out at 9.4 TFLOPs, followed by 8 TFLOPs for the RTX 4000 and 6.4 TFLOPs for the RTX 3000. NVIDIA’s peak clockspeeds seem to vary a bit depending on the processor – we’re estimating anywhere from 1.39GHz to 1.56GHz – though these are still fairly aggressive for a mobile part. Sustained performance will be lower, of course, with that varying with the cooling capabilities of the host laptop.
Meanwhile in terms of memory, the situation is again a mirror of the desktop. The RTX 5000 gets 16GB of GDDR6 – a full complement of memory for a mobile TU104 part – while RTX 4000 and RTX 3000 drop down to 8GB and 6GB respectively. NVIDIA continues to treat memory capacity as a feature differentiator between the Quadro and GeForce families and even among Quadro cards, so the 16GB RTX 5000 is a halo part in this respect. The flip side, however, is that RTX 5000 doesn’t improve on its predecessor here as far as capacity goes, as both the old and new cards are 16GB.
It is interesting to note that while performance has gone up and memory capacities have at least held even, power consumption is actually down generation-over-generation. Starting with the mobile Quadro RTX series, NVIDIA is providing a range of max power values instead a single value, but even at the top of this range, none of these cards passes 110W, well below the 150W that the older P5200 peaked at. The RTX 4000 and RTX 3000 parts don’t see quite the same savings as their own predecessors, but the range is still there. NVIDIA seems increasingly focused on getting high-end GPUs into ever thinner and lighter notebooks, so bringing down their TDPs is a huge component of how they’re going to get there.
Overall, the Quadro RTX series is the flagship series in terms of features. Of particular note here, all of these parts include NVIDIA’s ray tracing hardware acceleration – hence the RTX moniker – so they benefit the most from all of NVIDIA’s efforts to get ray tracing incorporated into various content creation applications. They also have a full tensor core complement for their size, which along with helping RT performance also means they can hold their own in neural network simulations and other tensor-related tasks.
Quadro T Series – T2000 and T1000
Also new to the mobile Quadro family are the Quadro T series parts, the Quadro T2000 and Quadro T1000. These parts slot in below the Quadro RTX parts in terms of performance, power consumption, and features, providing a clear progression downward in terms of price versus functionality.
Both of the new Quadro T series parts are based on the same TU117 GPU, which is NVIDIA’s smallest Turing architecture GPU. As a result there’s a pretty significant gap in performance between the T2000 and RTX 3000; performance drops by around 45%. At peak clockspeeds, this translates to around 3.5 TFLOPs and 2.6 TFLOPs of FP32 performance respectively.
In terms of memory, both cards come with 4GB of GDDR5, which is clocked at 8Gbps and attached to a 128-bit memory bus. These are very much low-end cards, so it looks like NVIDIA is aiming to be cost-efficient rather than offer more memory, which would start undercutting the RTX 3000 and its 6GB of VRAM. Meanwhile TDPs are down to a max of 60W for the T2000, and a max of 50W for the T1000. These are again ranges, depending on what the laptop OEM designs for, and performance will scale accordingly.
Overall these are Turing parts, but they are based on we’ve been calling NVIDIA’s “Turing Minor” GPUs. Turing Minor parts have the same core architecture as Turing – so all of the performance optimizations and new rasterization/shading features that come with the Turing architecture – however they forgo the ray tracing hardware acceleration and tensor cores. As a result these parts are leaner and meaner, however they are hardly the part of choice if ray tracing acceleration is needed. This is a level of feature differentiation that past generations of the Quadro family has lacked, since they’ve typically been based on a single, unified GPU architecture (outside of the very cheapest parts).
Quadro P Series Expanded – P620 and P520
Finally, bringing up the rear of the new mobile Quadro product stack are the Quadro P620 and Quadro P520. As hinted at by the name, these parts aren’t Turing based at all. Instead, they are minor refreshes of the existing Pascal-based P600/P500 parts. Since NVIDIA’s Turing GPU stack doesn’t go below the TU117 used in the T2000/T1000, for these smallest and cheapest of parts, NVIDIA instead relies on their bottom-tier Pascal GPUs.
Relative to their immediate predecessors, both the P620 and P520 do see some fairly decent performance bumps, thanks to NVIDIA enabling more CUDA cores this time around. Still, with the fastest part topping out at 1.5 TFLOPs, there’s a clear jump in performance between the P series parts and the new T series parts.
In terms of memory speeds, both the P620 and P520 are receiving GDDR5 clocked at 6Gbps, up from 5Gbps the generation prior. However the P5xx parts all retain their 64-bit memory bus, so unlike their fastest 4GB siblings, the cheapest P520 gets just 2GB of VRAM and all of 48Gbps of memory bandwidth. Meanwhile power consumption is being held constant from the last generation, at 25W and 18W respectively for the P620 and P520.
On the whole, the refreshed Quadro P series parts are meant to serve as the entry-level parts in NVIDIA’s mobile Quadro product stack, and it shows. They will be cheap and will become a common feature in low-end productivity laptops, but they bring equally limited performance, and they don’t come with any of Turing’s new features.

ASUS unveils limited edition ZenFone 6 Edition 30 with 12GB RAM, 512GB storage

ASUS is launching a special variant of the ZenFone 6 to commemorate its 30th anniversary.
ASUS is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and to commemorate the occasion the Taiwanese manufacturer rolled out a series of limited edition products, including motherboards and laptops. On the phone side of things, ASUS is introducing the ZenFone 6 Edition 30, a special variant of the ZenFone 6 with an "exclusive design" at the back that's reminiscent of older ASUS devices.
The limited edition phone is backed by a 30-month warranty, and comes embossed with the Edition 30 logo at the back. The main change on the hardware front is the addition of 12GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage. The rest of the hardware is similar to that of the standard ZenFone 6, including a notch-less 6.4-inch display backed by Gorilla Glass 6, Snapdragon 855, 48MP rotating camera, and a massive 5000mAh battery with Quick Charge 4.0.
ASUS will sell just 3,000 units of the ZenFone 6 Edition 30 globally, with pricing and availability information to be detailed at a later date. But with the standard ZenFone 6 retailing for $500, there's going to be a considerable markup.

HyperX announces first gaming keyboard with its own switch design

HyperX has been making gaming keyboards for a few years now, and like many other manufacturers has mostly been using Cherry MX or Kailh keyswitches depending on the price point. Today at Computex, however, HyperX is announcing its first keyboard to use a new keyswitch design from the company itself.
The keyboard is called the Alloy Origins, and as you can see from the above photo, HyperX’s switches are based on typical reds, which are a popular choice for competitive gamers because of their high responsiveness. HyperX has tweaked the red design further, however, shaving the travel distance and actuation point down to 3.8mm and 1.8mm respectively. That’s 0.2mm lower than a standard Cherry MX red switch.
All of this is to say that if you really like red switches and wished they felt... redder, the Alloy Origins might be worth a look. It certainly felt snappy in my brief hands-on, though it’s hard to pass judgement on a keyboard in a few minutes. But it won’t be the best choice for most mechanical keyboard enthusiasts who use them for typing more than gaming.
Here’s what the Alloy Origins itself looks like. It’s a full-sized keyboard with a trim aluminum frame, and it’s pictured here with HyperX’s “black pudding” translucent keycaps, which I have to say I kind of dig. You can, however, get the keyboard with more demure black caps if you don’t want your desk to look like a scene from Enter the Void.
The Alloy Origins will be available in the third quarter of this year for $109.99. That’s the same price as HyperX’s similar Alloy FPS RGB, which uses Kailh switches.

Monday 27 May 2019

After 5 MacBook 'Butterfly' Keyboards: My Verdict (12-Inch MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air)

I've had five Apple "butterfly" keyboards.
Let's see, two 12-inch Retina MacBooks: first*- and second-generations, a 15-inch MacBook Pro (mid-2017), a 13-inch MacBook Pro (mid-2017), and 2018 Retina MacBook Air.
So, in short, I've used every generation of butterfly keyboard on five different MacBooks save the very latest on the updated 2019 MacBook Pro announced May 21.
tl;dr: I've never had the problem described widely in the media (e.g., keys that aren't responsive or failure in general) with any of the Butterfly keyboards on the MacBooks listed above.
I used all of the MacBooks above extensively but I submitted the first-gen 12-inch MacBook and mid-2017 15-inch MacBook Pro to special abuse, i.e., hauling them around the country, using them on planes/at airports, in coffee shops/restaurants, in the car, in the mountains/desert etc.
Plenty of opportunity for dust, dirt, mud, food, liquid to break the Butterfly mechanism or render the keyboard unusable. Maybe I just got lucky. Or maybe there are other people like me out there that haven't had a problem.
The obvious disclaimer is, I'm not saying that MacBook owners haven't had issues with the Butterfly keyboard. AppleInsider said it "found out in April 2018 the failure rates were double that of previous mechanisms."
I'm just saying I've been using the butterfly keyboards since the very beginning and not had issues. So it shouldn't necessarily be a deal breaker if you're considering a new MacBook.
Finally, I will say that I typically clean my laptop keyboard every few days. Nothing major -- takes two minutes. With a vacuum, I gently suck out (or blow it out if I don't have access to the vacuum) all of the dust, dirt, food, or whatever has landed in the keyboard over the course of a few days. And then clean it with a special cloth. More tips here.
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*The 2015 first-gen 12-inch MacBook was the first keyboard with a Butterfly mechanism from Apple. All new MacBooks now come with keyboards with the butterfly mechanism.

With Huawei’s and Samsung’s current troubles, is the foldable phone trend cursed?

After years and years of rumors, patent filings and promises, 2019 was supposed to be the year a foldable smartphone with a flexible display would finally go mainstream. Two of the biggest phone makers in the world, Samsung and Huawei, both announced plans to launch foldable phones: the Samsung Galaxy Fold and the Huawei Mate X.
In just the last few weeks, it now looks like the foldable phone trend is in deep trouble — for reasons that we could not have predicted back when both of these devices were first revealed. After reports of display failures on the Galaxy Fold from a few media outlets hit the internet in late April, along with bumps appearing below the screen, Samsung quickly delayed the planned April 26 launch of the phone. So far, the company has yet to reveal a new release date for the Galaxy Fold.
The folks at Huawei must have been happy when Samsung announced the delay. It seemed to paving the way for the Mate X to beat the Galaxy Fold to market. What Huawei didn’t anticipate was the U.S. government blacklist it last week, meaning U.S. businesses could not supply hardware or software to Huawei devices.
On Sunday, Google said it would comply with the U.S. government’s order. While the U.S. Commerce Department has since allowed Google and other companies to offer software updates for current Huawei products until August 19, that exception does not currently cover future devices, which would indeed include the Mate X.
While Huawei is reportedly working on its own mobile operating system, it may not be ready for new devices until sometime this fall. There’s also no word on if this OS will work with foldable phones. That’s something Google already added to Android. Huawei may not be able to supply that kind of extra functionality in the Mate X for its upcoming OS.
Is the foldable phone trend cursed?
These developments are just the latest in the rather troubled history of trying to bring foldable phones. Samsung and other companies have been showing prototypes of these devices for literally years, but it appears that creating these kinds of devices with a foldable display on a large scale has been difficult until just recently.
Even now, some worry the plastic foldable displays of the Galaxy Fold and the Mate X won’t last very long. To be fair, both Samsung and Huawei claim results from their testing labs show the flexible displays on the Galaxy Fold and the Mate X should last for several years. However, as most people might know, conditions in a lab are very different than the real world. People can always create situations that cannot be tested for or even predicted in the lab, as we saw with the display failures in some of the review Galaxy Fold units.
There’s been work on creating foldable displays made of glass, but no word when those will be available. Corning, makers of the tough Gorilla Glass displays found on so many smartphones, says it has prototypes of flexible glass screens working in its labs, but we may have to wait a while before they will be put into future smartphones.
Of course, as we mentioned before, no one could have predicted the fate of the Mate X would be put in jeopardy by a U.S. government ban on Huawei. It’s the kind of left field development that, unfortunately, has become a part with the foldable phone trend.
What about the Motorola RAZR foldable phone?
With the Galaxy Fold and the Mate X currently in limbo, the only other foldable phone that might be released in the near future is the Motorola RAZR. Even that phone has encountered its own delays. The phone, which is supposed to have a clamshell design much like the original classic RAZR mobile phone, was first reported in January by The Wall Street Journal, who added that it might go on sale as early as February.
That timeframe came and went with no such announcement. During MWC 2019, Motorola VP of Global Product Dan Dery stated the company had “no intention of coming later than everybody else in the market” when it came to the foldable phone trend. It looks like Motorola isn’t in a hurry to launch a competing device anymore. In May, Motorola’s parent company Lenovo showed off a render video of what it said was the foldable RAZR phone to some members of the media. As it turned out, that video was made mostly by a fan, who was not contacted by the company for the use of his creation beforehand.
It’s now late May, and we have no clue on when Motorola will actually announce, much less release, the foldable RAZR smartphone. It’s possible it has decided to test the phone a while longer, so it doesn’t have the same problems Samsung encountered with the Galaxy Fold.
Did LG have the right idea all along?
Perhaps we should have listened more closely to another company’s take. LG has been working on its own foldable displays for some time, and it was supposed to show off its own foldable phone prototype in early 2019 at CES. However, in February, the company issued a statement saying it didn’t see a favorable market for “an expensive, first-gen foldable smartphone.”
Based on what we know now, LG could have encountered issues with display durability when testing its own foldable phone prototype and decided it was not the right time to release such a device. Indeed, recently Lenovo announced plans to launch a Windows-based laptop with a foldable flexible display, with that screen made by LG. However, that product won’t come out until sometime in 2020.
In the end, there’s no need to rush
In an earlier commentary, we remarked on how Samsung didn’t need to rush to beat Huawei in the foldable phone race. Now that Huawei may have its own delay for the Mate X, and there’s no telling when Motorola will launch its RAZR phone, it’s more important than ever that Samsung takes its time and makes sure the Galaxy Fold doesn’t run into any problems. In fact, Samsung should just go ahead and wait for Android Q to install in its first foldable phone.
As far as Huawei’s situation, it’s possible the current trade war between China and the U.S. will cool off, and Huawei will once again get access to Android in its future phones. However, we would not bet on that happening anytime soon. It seems like Huawei’s foldable phone plans for the Mate X are in flux, much like its entire smartphone business.

Two big reasons why the 2020 iPhone might be worth the wait

Apple’s most recent patent filing reveals plans to beef up Touch ID and bring it back to the iPhone in 2020 along with 5G connectivity. Also, the most important updates to Apple's new MacBooks.
In today's roundup, we're dissecting Apple's latest patent filing, which reveals new details of a revamped Touch ID that could come to the next generation of iPhones. We're also breaking down all the most important changes to the new MacBook Pros, including what the company's doing about the keyboard. And in case that wasn't enough, Apple also sent out WWDC invites this week revealing some potential clues about what it will announce at its next developers' conference.
Apple could bring Touch ID back to the next iPhone
There have been plenty of rumors about an in-screen fingerprint scanner on the next iPhone, dating back to the pre-Face ID days. But Apple's latest patent all but confirms the company's plans to bring back Touch ID in the future. Just maybe not all that soon.
The latest patent, published in Patently Apple, shows how the company plans to embed pinhole cameras behind the screen of the phone, which would be capable of creating a 3D map of your fingerprint regardless of where you position your finger.
Apple likely wouldn't be replacing Face ID anytime soon, but this new in-screen Touch ID could be used as a supplementary form of biometric identification to make your iPhone even more secure.
What's exciting about this patent is that it shows pictures of a working prototype, meaning Apple is pretty far along in the development process. The bad news is that it likely wouldn't be ready to go into mass production until the 2020 cycle. This is also the year Apple is rumored to be bringing 5G connectivity to the iPhone after reaching a settlement with Qualcomm to use its 5G chips. And 2020 can't come soon enough.
This year's iPhone 11 is rumored to have few major changes, aside from a three-camera array on the back and reverse wireless charging. An in-screen fingerprint scanner might have helped entice users to upgrade with the next iPhone release.
Apple's new MacBook Pros get a power boost
Apple announced its new MacBook Pros this week with important but practically imperceptible upgrades. On the outside they could be easily confused with last year's models, but they're now powered by Intel's ninth-generation Core i7 and Core i9 CPUs, in both six-core and eight-core versions, making them the first MacBooks with an eight-core processor, the most powerful ever.
As for the keyboard on the new machines, they still have the traditional butterfly switch mechanism that has caused so many keyboard issues for Apple in previous models, but this time around it's using a new material Apple says will help solve its sticky key problem.
Apple was vague about details regarding the changes in material, but a few days later, repair site iFixit had already published its own teardown of the machine detailing the changes. According to the report, Apple seems to have swapped out the silicone membrane found underneath each key that helps protect against dust and other "contaminants." iFixit also said that the "metal dome" -- what gets pushed down when you press a key, then pops back up when you release -- also may have been changed, but it is less certain of that switch.
But even with the full teardown, it's hard to know how these subtle changes will affect the performance of these new keyboards and the jury's still out on Apple's latest fix.
Apple's plan to fix its keyboard issue for good
The new material wasn't Apple's only attempt at fixing its keyboard problems. The same day the company launched the new MacBook Pros, it also announced it would be extending its Keyboard service program to replace all MacBooks' faulty keyboards from 2015 onward, and that the repair program would be sped up to get users back up and running faster.
In 2015, Apple switched from the traditional scissor mechanism to a butterfly-switch keyboard. This new solution debuted on the 12-inch Retina Macbook and allowed Apple to build a thinner machine. Soon after, users began to complain about unresponsive or sticky keys and letters or characters that would repeat unexpectedly when typing or would just flat-out refuse to type.
After years of brushing the issue aside, Apple finally acknowledged in June of last year that " a very small percentage of keyboards" were experiencing issues and offered free repairs.
But the fix only covered first-generation and second-generation keyboards, and repairs could take over a week. The news now extends the repair program to all models, including third-generation keyboards as well as the ones in the newest MacBooks. And those who've already paid for repairs can contact Apple for a refund.
Apple sends out official WWDC 2019 invites
We've known the dates of Apple's next developers' conference for a while now: the first week in June, just like every other year. But this week the company sent out the official invitations for its opening keynote, which is set to take place at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose on June 3 at 10 a.m. PT.
This is where the company usually announces its new software updates for iOS, MacOS, WatchOS and TVOS, and this year will be no exception. But the details of each update are still vague, which is why the invite is important. Apple often likes to hide clues as Easter eggs hinting at what it will announce in the invitation. And if you like teasers, CNET editor Patrick Holland disusses what Apple's WWDC 2019 invite teasesabout the next iOS and MacOS in this article. 

ARM's latest chip designs promise 60 percent faster AI on phones

ARM isn't boasting about PC-crushing performance like it did in 2018, but it still has plenty of swagger going into Computex 2019. The designer has unveiled two new chip architectures that promise giant strides in performance, especially for AI. The Mali-G77 GPU touts 40 percent faster overall graphics than the G76, and a whopping 60 percent increase in machine learning speed. Your phone could handle computer vision, device optimization and similar tasks far more gracefully. The G77 might also avoid killing your battery when it's 30 percent more energy-efficient and uses 40 percent less bandwidth.
The Cortex-A77 CPU design is ultimately a refinement of last year's 7-nanometer A76, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The new hardware claims 20 percent faster instructions-per-clock performance without hurting efficiency, and that translates to roughly 35 times faster machine learning performance than the old A55 (for context, ARM was celebrating a 28-fold boost in February).
As with any ARM design, just when you'll see these in shipping products will depend on chip manufacturers like Qualcomm, Samsung and others implementing the technology in processors. Likewise, don't be surprised if the exact performance gains vary sharply from chip to chip, not to mention device to device. Whatever you get, it's safe to presume that A77-based phones will feel tangibly faster.

AMD Ryzen 3000 Announced: Five CPUs, 12 Cores for $499, Up to 4.6 GHz, PCIe 4.0, Coming 7/7

Today at Computex, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su is announcing the raft of processors it will be launching on its new Zen 2 chiplet-based microarchitecture. Among other things, AMD is unveiling its new Ryzen 9 product tier, which it is using for its 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X processor, and which runs at 4.6 GHz boost. All of the five processors will be PCIe 4.0 enabled, and while they are being accompanied by the new X570 chipset launch, they still use the same AM4 socket, meaning some AMD 300 and 400-series motherboards can still be used. We have all the details inside.
A lot of people have been after details about AMD’s next generation Ryzen platform for several months, ever since AMD teased the Matisse Ryzen 3000 design at CES back in January. Most of that information is coming out today, with Ryzen 9, Ryzen 7, and Ryzen 5 processors in the mix. All of these processors will be officially launched on July 7th (which is 7/7), correlating with the fact that the core chiplets of these products are built on TSMC’s 7nm process. This is technically a Sunday, but AMD doesn’t mind too much. In reality, it means users might even get them in the mail on the following Monday.
Before talking about features, let’s go straight into the CPU list, as that’s what most of you are here for.
The New Flagship: Ryzen 9 3900X
The Ryzen 3000 series will debut a new product tier for AMD: Ryzen 9. In this case, the Ryzen 9 3900X will be AMD’s first mainstream desktop 12-core processor. The processor is the only one of the group that uses two chiplets, in a 6+6 configuration. The 3900X will have a base frequency of 3.8 GHz, a turbo frequency of 4.6 GHz, and line up with 6 MB of L2 cache and 64 MB of L3 cache. This confirms that each chiplet has 32 MB of L3 cache, doubling what we saw on the first generation of the Zen microarchitecture. This CPU has a TDP of 105W, which for AMD processors is usually a good measure of all-core power consumption, and will be enabled with 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes (16 for GPU, 4 for storage, 4 for the chipset).
The Ryzen 9 3900X will have a suggested e-tail price of $499, and it will come with a cooler (more details in the coming weeks). AMD compared this processor in its presentations to Intel’s 12-core HEDT processor, the Core i9-9920X, which has an MSRP of $1199 and doesn’t come with a cooler.
In this comparison, AMD provided Cinebench R20 performance data comparing the two processors (it should be noted that we can’t confirm these results at this time). AMD states that in single thread performance, the 3900X beats the 9920X by +14%, and also wins in multi-threaded performance by 6%, all while having a lower TDP (165W vs 105W).
The Ryzen 9 3900X is the new mainstream desktop flagship, although AMD clearly has enough headroom on this design to enable a full 16 cores. Most users will expect this to come in the future, so it will be interesting to see if AMD will strategically play this card.
Mainstream Madness: Ryzen 7 at 65W
For the Ryzen 7 lineup, AMD is keeping this for the 8-core versions. These CPUs only have a single chiplet inside, and no dummy chiplet. Of the two CPUs in this segment, the one that gets a big shock from us is actually the cheaper model.
The Ryzen 7 3700X is an eight core, sixteen thread CPU with a 3.6 GHz base frequency and a 4.4 GHz turbo frequency. It has 4 MB of L2 and 36 MB of L3 (half the L3 compared to Ryzen 9, because it only has one chiplet), but the amazing thing is that this chip has a TDP of just 65W. Just on paper, it looks like this processor is one of the most efficient x86 performance desktop processors ever made. This is likely the CPU configuration that AMD used in its Cinebench R20 demo back at CES, where it showed R20 equivalent multithreaded performance for 40% less system power. And the price for all this performance? Only $329. If I put my reviewer hat on and look at these specifications at a high level, the Ryzen 7 3700X promises to be the mainstream chip of choice for a substantial number of high-performance PCs this year.
Like with the Ryzen 9 3900X, AMD also ran a Cinebench comparsion with the 8 core Ryzen 3700X versus Intel's mainstream Core i7-9700K. Here they scored 4806, verus 3726 for the 9700K in R20's multithreaded test.
The other CPU in this bracket is the Ryzen 7 3800X. This is going to be the direct upgrade from the current Ryzen 7 2700X, comes with eight cores and sixteen threads, with a base frequency of 3.9 GHz and a boost frequency of 4.5 GHz. It doesn’t seem overly impressive compared to the 3700X with its larger 105W TDP for only a few hundred MHz more on the base frequency, however as we’ve seen with the 2nd Gen Ryzen, that extra TDP headroom usually helps with technologies like XFR that manage the boost frequencies. AMD hasn’t said anything new about how XFR or Precision Boost works in the new generation yet, we have to wait until nearer launch for that information. However the extra frequency and extra TDP will cost an extra $70: the Ryzen 7 3800X will retail for $399.
Budget Builds: Ryzen 5 with Six Cores
Not mentioned during the keynote, but discussed in the press release, AMD also gave information about its new Ryzen 5 processors.
These are still very competitive – users can now buy a six-core processor for under $200. The processor frequencies are consummate with the position in the stack, along with the pricing, and both CPUs will support all the same technologies (PCIe 4.0, etc) as the bigger chips. These chips still use a single chiplet, not a dual chiplet design.
Performance Numbers
AMD provided some performance numbers to compare AMD to Intel CPUs. All of these tests are using Cinebench R20, which should be noted is a floating point rendering test that AMD already does well on, but there aren’t any specific optimizations here for each CPU.
Direct chip to chip comparisons put AMD’s single thread performance against Intel at +1%. Though it should be noted here that something like the Ryzen 7 3800X, which boosts to 4.5 GHz, is being compared to an Intel CPU that boosts to 5.0 GHz. That would put IPC on this test firmly in the hands of AMD. Multi-threading results are a similar scenario, although the margin of difference tends to drop the more cores that AMD has access to, perhaps because more cores are fighting to get to the memory with a slightly extended memory latency compared from Intel.
Comparing Zen 1 to Zen 2, AMD is promoting that the Ryzen 9 3900X offers +32% better single threaded performance over the Ryzen 7 1800X. Given that we saw a 40-52% IPC increase from pre-Zen to Zen 1, another +32% on single threaded performance is a good amount to have, although that 32% does include frequency uplift. When we get the chips in, we’ll do an obvious comparison test to find the IPC difference. In multi-threaded results, AMD is promoting +100% multithreaded performance, which is helped by +50% more cores, 2x better FP throughput per core, and higher frequencies.
Other Features and X570 Motherboards
Aside from the 7nm chiplets, and the monumental price comparison to Intel, there are some other features to mention. AMD is promoting a +15% direct IPC increase from Zen 1 to Zen 2, due to microarchitecture improvements and cache size doubling on the L3. The CPU has 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes: sixteen for the GPU (or other PCIe cards), four for storage, and four for the chipset. The four for storage will likely be linked to the top M.2 slot. Given that some companies are advertising PCIe 4.0 SSDs here at Computex, we expect more to follow in due course.
The new X570 chipset has 16 lanes, four for the upstream connection to the CPU, and twelve downstream for other devices. There is some discontinuity here – we heard from partners that AMD actually removed four PCIe lanes from the chipset design in order to bring the TDP of the chipset down from 15W to 11W; but the full-fat 15W version will be on the next editions of the high-end desktop (which would suggest that Threadripper isn’t dead, contrary to a lot of reporting – this is a question we will be asking Lisa Su later today). We have already seen a number of X570 motherboards ready to enter the market, and we expect around 25 new X570 models in total. It is clear that motherboard manufacturers are now getting serious on AM4 – some of these boards are likely to retail up to $600. These manufacturers are clearly expecting AMD to hit Intel hard, and have designed the motherboards to match the best that they make for Intel's CPUs.
One bit of information not disclosed is memory support, however given our discussions with AMD’s partners, this is likely to be DDR4-3200 in one module per channel mode. This is a small bump over 2nd Gen Ryzen, but still a welcome one. It will be interesting to see how the memory controller works on this design for pushing that frequency. The memory frequency and Infinity Fabric frequency are still linked as before, so bumping up the memory frequency has additional benefits.
Finally, the release date for all these CPUs is going to be July 7th. We’re waiting on AMD to disclose the sampling time frame, but our aim is to get our review up on day one. Suggestions for the review are most welcome.

Friday 24 May 2019

Systems administrators: You need to know about this Windows 10 1903 patching change

Microsoft is changing how WSUS and Configuration Manager will handle patches as of Windows 10 1903. Here's what admins need to know.
Administrators who manage Windows updates should know about a change Microsoft has made to how patches will be handled starting with the May 2019/1903 update. The change is connected to work Microsoft is doing underpinnings to the Microsoft update systems infrastructure.
I first learned about this change thanks to Configuration Manager architect Bryan Dam who runs the damgoodadmin.com site. Microsoft blogged about the change late in the day on May 23, a couple of days after Windows 10 1903 and Server 1903 began rolling out.
Those using System Center Configuration Manager or Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) to patch their systems need to make a one-time change to the settings around getting updates and patches for Windows 10 1903 and Server 1903 or later, as Microsoft noted in its blog post today.
Admins/users need to manually configure the settings for 1903 in ConfigMan and WSUS, according to Microsoft, because of work it's doing around the Unified Update Platform (UUP). From Microsoft's post:
"With Windows 10, version 1903, we are introducing new product categories to enable future support for the Unified Update Platform (UUP) for on-premises management solutions, which provides improved delivery technologies for Windows updates. A configuration change is, therefore, required for environments running the latest public release of Configuration Manager, as well as for environments using WSUS (without Configuration Manager) for updates. (Note: UUP for on-premises management solutions is not yet available. We will have future news regarding UUP, including a public preview, at a later date.)"
In order to deploy updates to Windows 10 1903 or Server 1903, Configuration Manager version 1902 or later is required, Microsoft's post notes. Admins will not have to select a new option each time a feature update is released for Windows 10, Server and/or Configuration Manager; Microsoft officials said they plan to automatically add this new catory to software update synchronization and existing automatic deployment rules as of the next version of Configuration Manager.
Updates for Windows 10 1903 and Windows Server 1903 -- and their future follow-ons -- are being released under new version-specific product categories, as Dam explained in a May 22 blog post. And those using Configuration Manager or WSUS need to know this so they can manually change required settings.
The Windows 10 1903 and Server 1903 feature updates were both published under the existing Windows 10 product category. But starting with the first updates for these feature updates, the product categories change to version-specific.
As Dam noted in his own blog post this week, if admins don't make these changes manually this time around, "the OS updates for the 1903 versions may not sync/apply/deploy/whatever if the technology you use to apply updates filters by the product category in any way."
His advice: "Every ConfigMgr or WSUS administrator on the planet will need to manually enable these new categories if they plan to deploy updates for them," Dam said.
There's not a lot of published information that I could find about UUP. But here is one story from last year's Ignite conference about UUP, which said UUP is meant to enable companies to use servicing instead of "media-based" technologies for feature updates. As of Ignite last fall, Microsoft was saying UUP would be in public preview for WSUS and ConfigMan customers before year end. UUP is already the default for customers using Windows Update, the story said.

What to expect at the 2019 WWDC from iOS 13 and watchOS 6

It's going to be a big year for iOS and that's not just wishful thinking, that's based entirely on what we know is coming. Here's what the evidence says Apple is bringing to our iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches.
Nothing is certain until Tim Cook steps out on stage at WWDC 2019 and says "Good morning." Yet if this year there are very many hopes for what Apple will reveal at San Jose's McEnery Convention Center on June 3, there is also a lot that is as close to certain as can be.
Here's what Apple will definitely announce for iOS, plus what strong evidence says they may also cover.
The new iOS 13
Apple is believed to be chiefly focusing on the speed of iOS 13, and in significantly building on several of the company's recurring themes such as health.
Sources have said that the Health app will have a redesigned home page that displays your daily activity more prominently. There's also expected to be a new "hearing health" section which, in part, will provide details about how loud the environment or the music we're playing is.
There's to be a more comprehensive and detailed menstrual cycle section in Health, too.
Reminders is also getting a new look with a grid showing different types of tasks. Then Apple Books is believed to add a rewards system for encouraging people to read more, and the Maps app will improve how it handles favorite locations.
A key update to the Messages app will see it adopting a WhatsApp-like system where you can both choose a new profile picture for it and decide who does, or does not, get to see that image.
Apple is to further develop Screen Time with more parental controls and it's possible that iOS 13 will also see an update to Bedtime. That should see your phone doing more or offering more options for dimming the screen and switching on Do Not Disturb on a schedule that helps you sleep. It may also incorporate a sleep-tracking feature to refine these choices, though that's at least as likely to be a 2020 feature as 2019.
Hardware features
It's likely now that Apple will introduce its own version of the functionality offered by Luna Display. That's a hardware and software system that lets you use an iPad as a second monitor for a Mac.
Also mixing hardware and software should be an update to Apple's Find My Friends and Find My iPhone apps. Perhaps at least because Find My iPhone now actually locates iPads, Macs, Apple Watches and AirPods too, it's being reworked. Reportedly known as "GreenTouch" within Apple, these will be combined into one app but also possibly add physical devices, similar to iBeacons or the Tile dongle.
While it's never said so publicly, Apple does seem to concentrate every other year on iOS improvements that particularly benefit the iPad and 2019 is one of those. Many such improvements also appear on the iPhone, but they're aimed at iPad users and in this case they're expected to include better multitasking options including multiple windows in an app.
There is also expected to be a Dark Mode for iOS, similar to the one Apple introduced on the Mac with macOS Mojave.
And you can add new emoji faces to the list of updates that are certain to come. You can do that because emoji are not random, they are not done at Apple's whim, they are actually determined by a standards body. Apple might do them nicer than anyone else, but there is an official set and it's been added to.
Watch out
We obviously know for certain that watchOS 6 is going to be unveiled at WWDC 2019, but there's very strong evidence for a lot its forthcoming features, too.
Perhaps the most significant is that now Apple Watch apps are to get their own App Store.
It appears that Apple itself is taking advantage of this app store, too, with new health applications, an audiobooks one, and reportedly a calculator.
In theory, giving the Watch its own App Store could mean that the device is being opened up more to third-party developers, but we'll have to see. Right now you can make an Apple Watch appso long as you also make an iPhone companion to it. This is how there is already an excellent Apple Watch calculator in the form of PCalc, for instance.
If Apple does allow Watch-only apps, that would simplify development a little. However, if Apple goes further, if it truly allows third-party developers to do more, this could even be the year we see other companies providing Apple Watch faces.
That's starting to head into wishful thinking, though, and for once this year, we have an enormous amount of detail of what is actually going to covered at WWDC. 

First 8-core MacBook Pro performance gains spotted in Geekbench results

The first Geekbench results have landed today for the new 8-core MacBook Pro. Both the single-core and multi-core scores show improvements for the new notebook over the last generation MacBook Pro, with the multi-core result coming close to Apple’s claim of up to 40% faster performance.
Spotted by MacRumors, performance results for the new 8-core MacBook Pro were posted to Geekbench today. The single-core score came in at 5879 for the new notebook compared to 5348 for the 2018 MacBook Pro. That’s almost a 10% increase in performance.
Meanwhile, the 2019 MacBook Pro saw a multi-core score of 29184 as it leveraged the new 8-core Intel i9 processor, showing a roughly 29% improvement over the 22620 that the 6-core 2018 MacBook Pro earned.
Apple is touting that the new 8-core MacBook Pro can offer up to a 40% performance improvement with certain workflows like 3D renderings in Autodesk Maya. It also says the new machine is up to two times faster with render speeds than a quad-core 15-inch MacBook Pro. Time will tell as the 8-core variant hits the market if some applications will see these gains.
When it announced the new MacBook Pros, Apple also gave some examples of performance gains for other applications comparing the new 8-core model to the previous quad-core 15-inch MacBook Pro in its testing.
Music producers can play back massive multi-track projects with up to two times more Alchemy plug-ins in Logic Pro X.
3D designers can render scenes up to two times faster in Maya Arnold.
Photographers can apply complex edits and filters up to 75 percent faster in Photoshop.
Developers can compile code up to 65 percent faster in Xcode.
Scientists and researchers can compute complex fluid dynamics simulations up to 50 percent faster in TetrUSS.
Video editors can edit up to 11 simultaneous multicam streams of 4K video in Final Cut Pro X.
Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro with the 8-core Intel i9 processor starts at $2799. But be sure to check out how to save up to $400 on the new MacBook Pros with an exclusive deal with our sister-site 9to5Toys has with Apple Authorized Reseller, Expercom.

MSI puts Intel Core i9 processors and Nvidia RTX GPUs into its Trident desktops

Computex 2019 is right around the corner, and besides massive announcements like the expected release of AMD's Ryzen 3000 CPUs and Navi graphics cards, plenty of other companies have kit to show. MSI is one of them, as it has upgraded its small form-factor gaming PC, the MSI Trident X, with new internals from Nvidia and Intel.
The new MSI Trident X Plus comes alongside upgraded models of two MSI laptops, the GE65 Raider and GT76 Titan.
The new Trident model will feature Intel's 9th-Generation Core i9 processor (CPU) and Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics for the best gaming performance, and that's all going into a 10-liter case.
MSI claims this makes the new Trident X Plus the smallest gaming desktop in the world powered by a 9th-Gen Core i9 processor. To keep all those components cool despite their close proximity, the Trident X Plus is designed with MSI's Silent Storm Cooling 3 technology, which separates the CPU, graphics and power supply to have their own distinct channels for airflow.
The previous generation of the Trident X proved to be one of the best gaming PCs, so the new model could have a strong shot at ranking. We'll have a better idea of just that once MSI releases the pricing and availability information for this bad boy.
Other peripherals for pairing
A gaming desktop is only as good as the peripherals you use it with, and MSI has a whole suite of them to pair with its latest computers.
The company has new keyboards and mice coming, but we haven't found the company to offer the best gaming keyboards or best gaming mice in the past. However, it also has a few new monitors on offer, and an earlier MSI Optix monitor ranked among our best gaming monitors.
MSI has a new Optix 4K monitor with a 31.5-inch, curved display. It's positioned as a small TV replacement with FreeSync and sub-10ms input lag. There's also the super-fast Oculus NXG25R monitor with a Full HD display that boasts a 240Hz refresh rate and a 0.5ms response time.
At the more premium end, MSI also has the new Optix MPG341CQR monitor with a wide, curved 3,440 x 1,440 display boasting a 144Hz refresh rate and 1ms of input lag for smooth gaming. It also has a 21:9 aspect ratio for a cinematic experience that's furthered along by support for HDR with HDR 400 (we presume this is VESA's DisplayHDR 400 certification).
MSI is rounding out its offerings with two new series of PC cases as well. Again, pricing and availability information is not yet available, something we hope to glean from MSI while on the show floor in Taipei.

Apple Suddenly Confirms Three New iPhone Models

We already know a lot about the upcoming iPhone 11 and iPhone XR2 and their controversial design changes. But now Apple has helpfully confirmed all three of its new iPhone models.
Spotted by the ever-alert 9to5Mac, Apple has chosen to publicly file model numbers for the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Max and iPhone XR2 in the Eurasian database, an official regulatory body. The model numbers are: A2111, A2160, A2161, A2215, A2216, A2217, A2218, A2219, A2220, A2221 and A2223 and there identify two clear product lines: the A21 and A22.
Coming in three variants, the A21 line-up will be the new iPhone XR, which ships in three storage sizes and uses a slower Intel modem. The A22 line-up is comprised of the iPhone 11 and 11 Max and each of their three storage sizes plus two additional model numbers which, I suspect, refer to different component suppliers worldwide since Apple did the same thing last year.
How do we know the model numbers aren’t simply registrations for the recently released 2019 iPad Air and iPad mini 5? Because Apple registered those devices in the Eurasian database in January, two months before their March launch. Furthermore, the numbers follow the format Apple previously registered in the Eurasian database for the iPhone XS and XR.
Lastly, given the Eurasian database is an official regulatory body, it is never wrong. So, despite being obsessed with secrecy, Apple can’t dodge the database.
Interestingly, while we already know what the new iPhones will look like(for better or worse), the details of their biggest upgrade and incremental improvements, but their launch names remain a mystery. So iPhone 11 and iPhone XR2 are simply convenient placeholders.
That said, Apple is ready to hit the ground running. Its Eurasian data filing was until July last year, so those new iPhones were already running the iOS 12 beta launched at WWDC 2018 in June. WWDC 2019 also takes place in June, so expect iOS 13 to be unveiled next month, though the company’sbiggest secrets will stay off the radar for now.

Thursday 23 May 2019

Cheap Acer AP1503K Li-ion Laptop battery, Brand New AP1503K replacement battery for Acer Aspire S13 S5-371 Series

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