smartphone News - Page 21 of 75 - CNX Software

November 2, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Nubia X Dual Screen Smartphone Drops the Selfie Camera

Consumers don’t seem to be fans of bezels, so manufacturers try to keep them as small as possible, and many phones are now launched with a notch for the front-facing camera, and some with a front-facing camera that pops up during use. The former is not eye-pleasing to some users, and the latter may not feel robust. Nubia X smartphone does away with either simply because the company dropped the front-facing camera, instead relying on the rear camera plus a second screen on the back for selfies. This setup enables an utra-slim bezel on all four sides. Nubia X specifications: SoC – Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor with 4x Kryo 385 Gold cores @ up to 2.65 GHz, 4x Kryo 385 Silver cores @ up to 1.80 GHz, Adreno 630 GPU System Memory + Storage – 6GB LPDDR4X + 64GB storage, or 8GB LPDDR4X + 128 GB storage Displays 6.26″ main […]

October 24, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

MediaTek Helio P70 Launched as an Upgrade to Helio P60 Processor

MediaTek Helio P60 processor was introduced earlier this year as one of the first Arm Cortex A73 processors from the company, and also integrated NeuroPilot AI technology for faster or more complex A.I. workloads. The company has now launched an upgrade with Helio P70 that comes with many of the same features combined with incremental performance and power consumption improvements. MediaTek Helio P70 key features and specifications with highlights in bold showing differences over Helio P60: CPU – big.LITTLE octa-core with four Arm Cortex-A73 up 2.1 GHz and four Arm Cortex-A53 up to 2.0 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G72 MP3 at 900MHz Multi-core AI processing unit (Mobile APU) – 280 GMAC/s; offers deep learning facial recognition, object and scene identification, user behavior-informed performance and other AI and AR application enhancements. System Memory – Up to 8GB, dual-channel LPDDR4x @ 1800 MHz, up to 4GB LPDDR3 @ 933 MHz Storage – […]

October 23, 2018October 23, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 Cortex-A76 based Processor Targets High-Tier Mid-Range Smartphones

Last August, Qualcomm unveiled Snapdragon 670 processor with performance and efficiency Kryo 360 cores believed to be based on Cortex-A75 and Cortex-A55 cores, but the company has just announced an update with Snapdragon 675 mobile platform powered by Kryo 460 cores which are based on Arm Cortex-A76 according to Anandtech, and so far, Cortex-A76 was only found in “premium” processors such as HiSilicon Kirin 980. Beside the upgrade cores, the company also claims the processor brings “outstanding gaming, a leap in artificial intelligence (AI) capability and a cutting-edge camera”. Snapdragon 675 main specifications: CPU 2x Kryo 460 (Cortex-A76 based) @ 2.0GHz with 256KB L2 6x Kryo 460 (Cortex-A55 based) @ 1.8GHz with 64KB L2 GPU – Adreno 612 DSP – Hexagon 685, Qualcomm AI Engine Display – Support for FHD+ display Camera – Spectra 250L ISP with triple-camera support Audio – Qualcomm aptX and Aqstic Modem – Snapdragon X12 LTE […]

October 23, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Linux 4.19 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures

With Linus Torvalds taking a leave from the Linux kernel project, Greg Kroah-Hartman was the one to release Linux 4.19 last Sunday: Hi everyone! It’s been a long strange journey for this kernel release… While it was not the largest kernel release every by number of commits, it was larger than the last 3 releases, which is a non-trivial thing to do. After the original -rc1 bumps, things settled down on the code side and it looks like stuff came nicely together to make a solid kernel for everyone to use for a while. And given that this is going to be one of the “Long Term” kernels I end up maintaining for a few years, that’s good news for everyone. A small trickle of good bugfixes came in this week, showing that waiting an extra week was a wise choice. However odds are that linux-next is just bursting so […]

October 10, 2018October 10, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Google Launches Pixel 3 & Pixel 3 XL Smartphones for $799 and Up

Google just hosted a Made by Google hardware event, where they announced several products, and it’s always interesting to check out what they come up with. In this post, I’ll check out Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL premium smartphone from the company, and see if they implemented any significant “innovations”. Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor with 4x Gold cores (Cortex A75 based) @ up to 2.50 GHz, 4x Silver cores (Cortex-A55 based) up to 1.60 GHz, Adreno 630 GPU, Pixel Visual Core, and Titan security chip System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4x Storage – 64GB or 128GB UFS storage Display Pixel 3 – 5.5″ FHD+ (2160×1080) flexible? always-on OLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 Pixel 3 XL – 6.3″ QHD+ (2960 x 1440) always-on OLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 Cameras Rear camera – 12.2MP dual-pixel camera with […]

September 10, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Make Your Phone Readable under the Sun with Anti-glare Covers, Sunshades, etc…

So I rented a bicycle to have a small cycling trip, and since I like to take smaller roads, and did not know the way, decided to use my phone as GPS. This works normally well while walking, but I realized this “solution” is rather a disaster while cycling. I don’t have a phone holder for bicycle, so instead I used a armband on my forearm, until somehow my phone fell and I broke the glass screen, and moved it up to my upper arm. The reason I first moved it to my forearm was because it’s easier to read, but in any cases, I really struggled to look at the GPS map due to the brightness of the phone – set to the maximum – as sunlight and resulting glare, especially when looking at an angle made it impossible to use. So I had to wait for the rare […]

September 6, 2018September 6, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Nubia–α Wearable Smartphone is a Smartwatch with a Long Curved Display

We have smartphones, we have smartwatches. and we have… Nubia-α that is something in between, and which the company (Nubia) promotes as a “wearable smartphone”. The device comes with a long curved display, and you’d wear it around your wrist just like a watch with access to fitness apps, and music, but just like in a phone, you could make phone calls and send SMS thanks to 4G connectivity, as well as taking selfies or making video calls with its built-in camera. We don’t have the specifications yet, but the thing is real as it was showcased at IFA 2018, although for the eyes only, i.e. no hands-on or even touching the Nubia-α. Engadget reported about the device, and while the reporter clearly did not like the largish camera on the side, she seems impressed by the brightness and colors coming out of the Flex OLED display. The watch / […]

September 3, 2018September 3, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

HiSilicon Unveils Kirin 980 Octa-core Cortex A76/A55 Processor with Mali-G76 GPU

Arm announced Cortex A76 CPU core and Mali-G76 GPU in June of this year, and in the past, we normally had to wait about a year between the announcement and the actual launch of SoC with the new IP core. But courtesy of HiSilicon (Huawei), we already know of one Cortex A76 processor with Kirin 980 processor featuring three clusters with two high performance Cortex A76 cores, two Cortex A76 cores clocked at a low frequency, and four Cortex A55 efficiency core. The company also added the new Mali-G76 GPU for good measure. Kirin 980 specifications and key features: CPU (DynamIQ clusters) 2x Cortex A76 cores @ up to 2.60 GHz with 512KB L2 cache 2x Cortex A76 cores @ up to 1.92 GHz with 512KB L2 cache 4x Cortex A55 cores @ 1.80 GHz with 128KB L2 cache 4MB shared L3 cache GPU – ARM Mali-G76MP10 @ 720 MHz […]