Around last week, ARM came into limelight when it said it would pull back its support for Huawei. And this time, ARM made the headline again. This time, the British company made a headline because of its newly announced CPU and GPU architecture. At its annual TechDay event, the chipmaker unveiled new ARM Cortex-A77 CPU core architecture and a new Mali-G77 GPU architecture.
ARM Cortex-A77 CPU
The Cortex-A77 is the successor of the Cortex-A76 CPU cores, which was launched last year. The Cortex-A76 CPU architecture was used on popular chips like HiSilicon Kirin 980 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 855. The CPU promised a 20 to up to 35% boost in performance back then. And implementing the design, Qualcomm gained 45% upsurge in performance on SD855 when compared with SD845.
This new chip is based on that same efficient Cortex-A76 GPU template. The company says that the Cortex-A77 is the second generation of the design we saw on the Cortex-A76. And it will be still be based on 7nm architecture. But still, there will be a 20% improvement in performance over the last year’s model. ARM achieved this significant upgrade in performance by increasing IPC (Instructions per Clock/Cycle). This means that the new core can work with more set of instructions at a time. And to achieve this, ARM adopted wider core and made improvements to keep the CPU core fed with things to do.
20% IPC gain is a huge feat here because even while sticking to the same thermal and power constraints as before, the performance increases nonetheless. This is even more commendable in the case of ARM because AMD has just managed to achieve 15% IPS boost between Zen2 and Zen+. And in the case of Intel, it has remained virtually static over the last few years.
Continuing with the performance, A77 promises to deliver a 23% increase in integer and a 35% increase in floating point performance in the SPEC2006. ARM has also improved the memory latency by 15% and the company believes that the clock speed on the A77 will max out at 3.0GHz, just like on the A76.
To decrease the bottleneck in the back-end and to increase the core’s performance, ARM has also included a new ALU in the A77’s back-end. The A77 also gets dedicated issue ports on its L1/L2 Data Caches for store-data pipelines and improved engines to ensure improved power efficiency. Alongside the power efficiency, this results in an improvement in data prefetching.
Mali-G77 GPU
On to the GPU part, ARM has implemented a new architecture called Vallhall. And implementing this new architecture, ARM claims to achieve a 40% boost on the GPU performance. With this new microarchitecture, energy efficiency also increases by 30%. The Mali-G77 GPU also offers 30% better performance density allowing the chipmakers to accommodate more power into less space.
Addressing the growing use of the AI-related features in recent days, ARM has also increased the machine-learning performance by 60%. The company believes that it will significantly boost inference and neural net (NN) performance for advanced on-device intelligence.
With this new CPU and GPU, the company hopes to facilitate the adoption of 5G, Internet of Things, AI, and autonomous driving tech. And the new Cortex-A77 CPU and Mali-G77 GPU look and sounds amazing. However, the chip-making companies like Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Huawei can implement this design only the Q3/Q4 of 2019. So we may only be able to see smartphones/tablets with Cortex-A77 based chips in late 2019 and on 2020.
AsusTek Computers Inc, a company based in Taiwan, which also happens to be the venue for the ongoing Computex 2019. It’s only fair they show some love for the world’s largest computer hardware event. And Asus did not disappoint, with two new laptops dubbed the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo and the Asus ZenBook Duo. Both offer a secondary display which Asus calls the ScreenPad Plus.
ZenBook Pro Duo
As the name suggests, this one is the superior product among the two. It features a primary bezel-less 15″ 16:9 3840x2160px OLED (89% screen to body ratio) panel accompanied by a secondary display. The “ScreenPad Plus” is a 14″ 2840x1100px resolution panel which sits right on top of the keyboard. Both the displays are touch sensitive, covers 100 percent of the DCI P3 color space, supports HDR content.
The ScreenPad Plus can be used as any standard secondary display in Windows. The laptops come with ScreenXpert control software pre-installed which enables multi-screen window, app management and brings in a few extra controls like an App Switcher, View Max, and App Navigator. Then there is the Task Group function to open multiple tasks with a single touch. Plus you get a stylus bundled in the box.
Apart from a pair of 4k displays, the laptop has a lot more to offer. Specs include up to a 9th Gen Intel Core i9 processor, the Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU, up to 32GB of RAM and a 1TB PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD. There is even a number pad that doubles as a trackpad. It also comes with Amazon Alexa voice support with a dedicated light bar at the front, similar to the one on those Amazon Echo speakers.
Additionally, Asus brought another laptop with a smaller 14-inch FHD nano edge display and another 12.6-inch FHD ScreenPad Plus. This one tops out at a Core i7 processor alongside an Nvidia GeForce MX250 GPU. Both the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo and the ZenBook Duo includes Wi-Fi 6 while only the pro model gets a Thunderbolt 3 supported USB-C port. No word on the pricing yet, though availability will begin from Q3 this year.
When it comes to smartphone sales and smartphone market share, Chinese companies are doing remarkably well. And that success story might have inspired ByteDance. ByteDance is a China-based company, which made the popular TikTok app. This is one of the most successful startups in recent times. The app has already received over 500 million downloads in Play Store. After the massive success with the TikTok app, the company is reportedly shifting its focus towards the smartphone territory. The two sources quoted by the Financial Times have highlighted the new smartphone from ByteDance would come preloaded apps from the company itself. That includes news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, an unreleased music streaming service, and the obviously the fan favorite TikTok.
According to the Financial Times, the CEO of ByteDance Zhang Yiming has long dreamt of building a smartphone full of preloaded apps. So the company seems to be aggressively working on its own set of apps first. And we have heard quite a lot of the music streaming service. This music platform is said to go head to head against the likes of Spotify and Apple Music. The music-streaming app is said to make its debut first in the emerging markets like India. ByteDance has even sealed the deal with T-Series and Times Music, which are the major music labels in India.
The Chinese startup also launched a new chat app this month. Dubbed as Feiliao or Flipchat, the app lets the users communicate with instant messages and chat groups that match their interests.
We also saw the company launching a new app named Duoshan back in January. This video chatting app shares most of its features with Snapchat.
With already a handful of apps on their arsenal, the company is now striding forward to bring a new smartphone. ByteDance has already reached an agreement with Beijing-based Company Smartisan. With the deal, ByteDance also acquired a patent portfolio and some of the Smartisan employees for their new endeavor.
These reports claim that the smartphone seems to be on the works. However, no solid details about the smartphone have been out yet. And the report has not revealed anything about its targeted markets. Since TikTok is blooming in India with around 300 million users countrywide, we can expect that the company could give major importance to the Indian market.
AMD just announced a total of five Zen 2 based 3000-series Ryzen CPUs at Computex 2019. The announcement includes the flagship Ryzen 9 3900X that offers 12 cores for just $499. The bottom of the list (as far as the announcement is concerned) was the Ryzen 5 3600, which offers six cores for just $199. And while these sound great as it is, the Zen 2 cores and the x570 chipset will add a lot more reasons to opt for AMD, now more than ever.
Zen 2
All 3000 series Ryzen processors are based on AMD’s new Zen 2 microarchitecture. The company claims that its new Zen 2 Cores will deliver 15% more IPC as compared to its predecessor. Another improvement includes doubling the floating point engine while offering twice the cache size as compared to its previous version. In simpler words, this new architecture will significantly boost the performance of their new Ryzen and EPYC processors.
3000 series Ryzen Processors
A total of five CPUs were announced at the event today. With the cheapest of the bunch sporting six cores climbing all the way up to 12 cores, a first for any gaming CPU in the market yet. All five of them offer 40 PCIe lanes. That includes the CPU’s 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes plus the x570 chipset’s 16 lanes. Among the CPU’s 24 lanes, 16 are for the GPU, 4 for storage and 4 for the chipset. All of the following CPUs will start shipping from July 7.
Model
Cores/
Threads
TDP (Watts)
Boost/Base (GHz)
Total Cache (MB)
PCIe 4.0 Lanes*
MSRP
Ryzen 9 3900X
12/24
105W
4.6/3.8
70
40
$499
Ryzen 7 3800X
8/16
105W
4.5/3.9
36
40
$399
Ryzen 7 3700X
8/16
65W
4.4/3.6
36
40
$329
Ryzen 5 3600X
6/12
95W
4.4/3.8
35
40
$249
Ryzen 5 3600
6/12
65W
4.2/3.6
35
40
$199
AMD vs Intel
Comparing the newest and greatest from AMD with what Intel has to offer. And for the first round, we compare the Ryzen 3700X and it’s 8 cores 16 threads with the i7 9700k and it’s 8 cores no hyperthreading. The Ryzen 3700X unsurprisingly beats the 9700k in real time rendering test by a humble 1% in single-threaded performance and a whopping 30% in the multi-threaded test. Then there was the Ryzen 3800X, matching the game play performance of the 9900k over PUBG.
Finally, the $500 Ryzen 3900X crushed the 12 core i9-9920X in Blender Render by 16%. These are of course numbers shared by AMD themselves so maybe wait until a few of the known reviewers get their hands on these processors. But then again, this does clearly show the end of Intel’s dominance, not only under multi-core intensive tasks but now over single-threaded workloads as well. The red team has always enjoyed superior pricing.
The story doesn’t end here. Even though the new set of CPUs still mounts to the same AM4 socket, there is a new chipset in town. The new X570 is the world’s first PCIe 4.0 chipset with over 50 new motherboard models from ASRock, MSI, and Gigabyte. With so many motherboards soon entering the market, there is surely a lot of trust building over the 3000-series Ryzen processors. Going by what we know, they should surely sell well, plus AMD is pushing new buyers to opt for the newer X570 chipsets as well (for obvious reasons).
MSI recently unveiled three new laptops while the MSI GT76 Titan went completely official today at Computex 2019. The new range of laptops which included the new GT76 Titan, the GE65 Raider, and the P65 Creator, all of which was a refresh to their existing predecessor. While all three were pretty interesting, the MSI GT76 Titan was the most interesting among the bunch.
MSI GT76 Titan
The MSI GT76 Titan is a refresh to their existing GT75. This one starts at an astonishing $3,699 and packs some serious internals, while the exterior also got a much-needed refresh. What hasn’t changed is the weight, which comes in at 3.9Kgs.
The display sees a couple of options, starting with an FHD 144Hz panel. There is also a 4k option while the actual display sizes at 17.3-inches. The bezels are of XPS level and no information about the display technology was announced.
So for the specs, this one offers a desktop-grade Intel Core i9-9900K and claims it can maintain overclocked speeds of 5GHz. Additionally, it gets a GeForce RTX 2080 GPU, 64GB of RAM and a total of three PCIe SSD. Other specs include Wi-Fi 6, 2.5GBps Ethernet and Killer DoubleShot Pro.
With all those specs and promises, it will need all the cooling it can get. And thus, a total of 4 fans and 11 copper heat pipes. Even with that, we don’t know if the laptop can cool itself, but it’s taken MSI over four years to perfect.
Conclusion
This laptop looks to be a new product for MSI’s healthy selection of gaming laptop portfolio. While the laptop does look a lot similar to the Alienware Area 51m, MSI didn’t say anything about upgradable processors and GPUs. Either way, with a fresh new design, some of the fastest internals and improved cooling, this looks promising.
Although Xiaomi is known for its value for money smartphones, that’s not the only thing it makes. The uprising Chinese smartphone maker also makes other electronics devices on time and often. They have a whole variety of electronics devices in their lineup. From headphones/earphones and power banks to air purifiers and electric bicycles, they show quite a versatility while producing the gadgets. And this time around, the company released yet another portable power bank to expand its electronics’ lineup. But this is not an ordinary power bank. This new power bank from the company also comes with a makeup mirror and 12-high brightness LED lights attached to it.
Although the product received limelight with the name of Xiaomi, it’s not directly manufactured by Xiaomi. The product came from one of the companies on Xiaomi’s ecological chains. But it’s the product that really matters right?
Being a portable power bank, this 2-in-1 device comes with a small factor yet packing an electrical juice on the inside. This power bank comes with a 3000mAh capacity, which accepts powers and charges the devices at 5V/1A. Since the capacity is not really overwhelming, it can be understood that it is targeted just for emergency use. But apart from the power, the device comes with a makeup mirror included inside. And this feature has made this power bank somewhat quirkier in its category. The company has especially targetted this product for women customers. And since this device comes at a size of 85 x 76 x 17mm and weighs merely 145 grams, it easily fits on the ladies’ purses.
To increase the functionality of the device, Xiaomi has also used 2x magnifying glass design. So the objects look closer and clearer without any distortions. And the users can see even the tiny details on the face while putting on the makeup.
apart from that, this makeup houses with 12 high-brightness LED lamp beads. The company claims that these beads can emit a color temperature and light that stimulates the natural light. Also, this 2-in-1 device promises to project a uniform and natural light beam. With these features, the company points out that it could even be usable in environments with low light settings.
And talking about the lights, they can be turned on by pressing a button for a short time. Once the button is pressed, the fill light gradually glows on and completes its glowing process in 1 second. The brightness of the LEDs increases from low value to its maximum value within 3 seconds. Similar is the case while turning off the lights. Once the button is pressed, it takes a second to turn off the lights completely. But you can also close the mirror if you want the lights to go off automatically.
The device comes in Marine Water, Coral, and Green color variants and is priced at 129 Yuan ($18 or Rs. 2000). It is currently available for purchase in China through AliExpress.
Putting the weird pop up selfie camera to the sideline, the OPPO Reno Z just went official in China. This one offers a water drop notch as opposed to its siblings. The OPPO Reno, Reno 10x Zoom and Reno 5G are definitely interesting smartphones, and this one is no different. What’s special here you ask? It’s the $168 price tag that it carries, inserting “Reno” into unfamiliar pricing territories.
OPPO Reno Z Overview:
A 6.4-inch FHD+ AMOLED is what you get, with a water drop notch of course. That might look nice for $168, but this one sweetens the deal with an in-display fingerprint sensor. Add a Snapdragon 710 SoC with 6GB of RAM and 128GB (unexpandable) of storage to the equation and this looks to be a very impressive package.
A 5MP depth sensor plays support to the 48MP IMX 586 sensor protected by an O-Dot ceramic point for extra protection. The front gets a 32MP sensor tucked within the water drop notch. Furthermore, it also packs a huge 3950mAh battery with OPPO’s 20W VOOC 3.0 fast charging on board.
ColorOS 6.0 on top of Android 9.0 comes pre-installed out of the box. Connectivity options include 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, 4G VoLTE, GPS, USB-C and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Finally, dimensions come in at 157.3 x 74.9 x 9.1 mm and weighs 186 grams. The phone will be available in Ocean Green and Jet Black. Availability outside China for the Reno Z remains uncertain for now.
In a market filled with budget-conscious buyers, the Galaxy M series was Samsung’s savor. Following the strategy of its Chinese counterparts, the M series offered a lot of performance for a lot less. And it worked out well for Samsung. Although there were a few compromises made, one of which was the Android version. Sure the A-series came with the latest Android 9.0 Pie, the M-series were stuck with Android 8.1 Oreo.
Well, that’s about to change starting June 3 with the rollout of Android Pie update for their M series devices in India. The new firmware will see the owners bump up the Android version and bring in OneUI. Samsung has also announced that the update will improve the device’s performance and will bring security patches. However, a complete changelog isn’t available just yet.
While using the latest Android version does feel nice, the inclusion of OneUI seems to be a more important addition here. It also shows how much Samsung has grown in terms of UI, the same company that started with TouchWiz. With this, there is now one more reason to buy an M-series phone.
The Galaxy M30 isn’t available in Nepal, but the M10 and M20 are two stellar options. The former brings in a 6.2″ LTPS display with Exynos 7870, 2GB of RAM and dual cameras for Rs 13,790. With competitive pricing, a good list of specs on paper, the Galaxy M10 is still one of the best phones to buy for under Rs 15,000.
The Galaxy M20 further ups the VFM (Value for Money) factor here with a 6.3″ FHD+ display, Exynos 7904 and 3GB of RAM. It also gets a huge 5000mAh battery with fast charging and similar camera setup as the M10. The phone is currently up on sale for Rs 18,490.
When Xiaomi launched the Redmi 7 a couple of months back, maybe they realized they missed something. Because, just after a month of that release, they launched the Redmi Y3, which is almost identical to the Redmi 7, except for a high-res 32 MP selfie camera. And apart from that, everything else is the same. So, does this 32 MP selfie camera phone help them any? Find out in this review.
Redmi Y3 Specifications:
Display: 6.26-inch IPS HD+ display (720 x 1520 pixels), Gorilla Glass 5 Protection, 19:9 aspect ratio @ 269PPI
Rear Camera: Dual camera – 12 MP, f/2.2, 1.25 μm, PDAF + 2 MP, depth sensor; LED flash
Front Camera: 32 MP with f/2.2
Chipset: Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 632
GPU: Adreno 506
RAM: 3 GB / 4 GB
Storage: 32 GB / 64 GB; Expandable up to 512 GB via SD card (dedicated slot)
Battery: 4000 mAh with Quick Charge 3.0 support; Uses Micro USB 2.0 port
Colors: Elegant Blue, Bold Red, Prime Black
Price: Rs. 17,999 (3/32GB) | Rs. 20,999 (4/64GB)
Camera
Let’s start with the selfie camera, obviously. By default, the Redmi Y3 uses pixel binning to take 8 MP photos from its 32 MP lens. But it also lets you shoot pictures in 32 MP resolution. Of course, higher resolution doesn’t mean better images. And so, at first glance, it’s really, really hard to tell the difference between them.
Redmi Y3 8 MP vs 32 MP selfies
1 of 8
8 MP
32 MP
8 MP
32 MP
8 MP
32 MP
Low light 8 MP
Low Light 32 MP
The only visible difference is when you try to zoom in the images, which is natural. When zoomed in, the 32 MP shots preserve details on the subject, while the 8 MP cannot. But the background looks slightly sharper on the 8 MP images, which is, thanks to pixel binning. But that’s about it. And since we don’t really zoom the pictures after, you can say there are, virtually, no differences between them.
Redmi Y3 HDR selfie samples
1 of 4
8 MP HDR
32 MP HDR
8 MP HDR
32 MP HDR
But sometimes, when the HDR is turned on, in both modes, the 32 MP cannot capture the shadow details, highlights, and low lights properly, while the 8 MP does. And again, when the lighting conditions are great, the 8 MP shots make for a better background. In other scenarios, they’re pretty much the same…even in low light shots like these.
Redmi Y3 portrait selfie
1 of 3
Group portrait selfie
One thing, however, is that you cannot take portrait selfies with the 32 MP camera. Having said that, the 8MP default mode does a good job of edge detection and blurs, so, they can take good portrait selfies.
Redmi Y3 Beauty Mode 4.0
1 of 6
Beauty Mode Off
Beauty Mode Medium
Beauty Mode Max
Off
Medium
Max
And yes, the Beauty Mode, here, dubbed the Beauty Mode 4.0 is something they talked extensively about in the launch. But, to be honest, this beauty mode looks just like any other to me. What the beauty mode does is smoothens the skin tone, and removes dark areas and other unpleasantries. So, not really something to hype about, is it?
Now I didn’t really get a chance to compare the selfie camera with that of the Redmi 7. However, since this phone’s 4 GB variant and the base 3GB model of the Redmi Note 7 costs about the same, I thought, why not? But to be fair, the Redmi Note 7 packs a lot better specs than this one. So, I only tested the selfie camera of these two, just to see if the 32 MP camera really is better.
And the results were, more or less, as expected. The 32 MP camera does a better job than Note 7’s 13 MP camera. See for yourself. When compared side by side, the Note 7’s selfies are washed out. The colors have this cold tone to them, and there is not enough dynamic range.
Redmi Y3 vs Redmi Note 7 Selfie
1 of 6
Redmi Note 7
Redmi Y3
Note 7
Y3
Note 7
Y3
The Y3, on the other hand, takes more vibrant pictures and looks true to life. Portrait images, too, look better on the Y3, from colors on the subject to the background, and down to edge detection. When you zoom in, the details are slightly better on the Note 7. But the Y3’s selfies are better to look at, so, that’s that.
As for the rear cameras, they’re again very similar to the Redmi Y7’s camera configuration. It packs a dual camera setup comprising of a 12 MP primary camera and a 2 MP depth sensor. Classic budget phone!
Redmi Y3 Rear Camera Samples
1 of 9
Portrait
And they take decent photos, just like the Redmi 7. Pretty good for a budget device, that is. Saturation is on point, while there’s a bit of a cool tone in the images. Details in the photos are also, only okay. They look good at first glance, but zooming reveals, that it cannot preserve the details all that well.
For hi-res images of the camera samples, click here>>
Performance
Since the selfie camera is the only notable difference on this phone compared to the Redmi 7, I didn’t really do an extensive test on other aspects. I did play around with it a little, but it more or less yielded the same results.
From the internal hardware to the displays, and everything…down to the benchmark scores, it’s the same phone. And that should be obvious, because, this phone runs on the same chipset – Snapdragon 632.
Geekbench 4
Single-Core: 1226
Multi-Core: 4322
AnTuTu 7
103970
AndroBench
Sequential Read: 291.04 MB/s
Sequential Write: 122.82 MB/s
So, nothing new to be expected either. Games like PUBG and Asphalt 9 run on medium settings, smoothly, and multi-tasking runs without a hitch, too. It even has the same issues as the Redmi 7, taking a while to load some apps.
Design
Redmi Y3 Design
1 of 4
Back
Buttons
Ports and Grills
IR Blaster / Headphone jack
Another small difference is the colors this phone is available in…I don’t know if it matters all that well, but I’m just putting it out there for the record. The design is identical to the Redmi 7 – same kind of curved body with plastic construction. A bit big to fit snugly in your hands, but nothing so uncomfortable.
Display
The display, too, is the same at 6.26” with HD resolution. At this size, again, HD display is not what I would want, but I cannot demand more for the price, either. But what it gives you for this price, is Gorilla Glass 5 protection on the display, which, I cannot even say the same for some other mid-range phones, let alone budget ones!
Battery
Battery life is pretty good, similar to the Redmi 7. The 4000 mAh battery lasts like a day and a half, easily. The problem, here, is the 10 Watt Charging. So, do yourselves a favor and get a faster charger.
Conclusion
Overall, the Redmi Y3 is a good phone, just kinda unnecessary. Maybe they should’ve included the better front camera on the Redmi 7 itself. It just seems like there are too many choices, and Redmi 7 is competing with its brother in the market! But hey, that’s my view. Everything else depends on your preference.
The Y3 is available in 2 variants: 3/32 GB and 4/64 GB. And the Y3 is slightly more expensive than the Redmi 7, a difference of about Rs.1500. That extra premium is what you pay for the selfie camera, I guess. However, as I already said, the 4 GB model costs as much as Redmi Note 7’s base model.
So, if you’re thinking of getting the 4 GB version of the Redmi Y3, you should get the Redmi Note 7 instead. It’s a lot better than this one, except for the selfie camera.
So, would you go for the Redmi 7, or the Redmi Y3… or the Redmi Note 7? Do let us know.
Samsung’s line up of smartphone has changed in 2019. Ditching all the series, the company was focusing only on M-series, A-series, S-series, and Note-series devices only. And in that run, the South Korean giant has already released over a dozen handsets. Still, Samsung is not done with releasing budget smartphones. Samsung Galaxy Xcover 5, the successor to the Xcover 4 launched in March 2017 recently received FCC certification. This hints that the smartphone would be launching anytime soon. The listing also revealed some of the major specs of the device.
The new Galaxy device appeared in FCC bearing the model number SM-G398FN/DS which is expected to be the Xcover 5. While going through the certification process, the listing also revealed that the phone would carry a 10.78Wh battery at 3.85 volts. These ratings imply that the battery on the device would of 2800mAh capacity. That’s the same value as the previous model.
FCC did not reveal further details about the phone. However, some hardware details came from Geekbench, which cues it to be a budget phone. The information from Geekbench points out to an Exynos 7885 chipset with 3GB RAM on the performance front. The phone would boot on Android Pie out of the box. And like most of the Samsung phones out there, this one too will ship with One UI atop the Android Pie.
Although most of the rumors about this new Galaxy phone converges to the Xcover 5, a Dutch retailer Centralpoint listed the SM-G398 on their website with the moniker Xcover 4S. So that arises an extra bit of confusion here. The device was listed on the website with the price tag of €250. Further details also came into the limelight about the launch date of the phone. It is said to launch on June 4, 2019. So if it launches then, we will know about its actual name, pricing and more of the info.
