Month: November 2019

The Motorola Razr, which was a household name in the mid-00s at the height of the popularity of flip-phones, is getting a reboot from Motorola this year. The latest report says that the 2019 Motorola Razr will be launched on Wednesday, 13 November 2019 at an event in Los Angeles. Scroll down and you’ll see the video invite that was sent out for the event.

The return of the Razr became certain in mid-April 2019, when the new Motorola Razr was officially confirmed as existing and indeed called the “Motorola Razr” in an official Bluetooth certification body listing, which also confirmed that the phone would use Bluetooth 5.0 technology.

The re-imagined handset had been rumoured to be incoming ever since the hugely-successful relaunch of the Nokia 3310 two years ago, and will apparently combine the hinged design of the original 2004 flip-phone with a new folding OLED display.

The addition of a foldable display means the new Motorola Razr will compete directly with the likes of the Huawei Mate X, the Samsung Galaxy Fold, and the unnamed (and so far unreleased) dual-folding Xiaomi.

Plenty of information about the next-generation Motorola Razr has already landed, so read on to get up to speed on one of this year’s biggest folding phones. We’ll keep this article updated with every whisper, leak or educated guess that we hear, too. Stay tuned.

MOTOROLA RAZR PRICE

Unlike the rebooted Nokia 3310, which sells for £49.95, the Motorola Razr will be a high-end flagship smartphone with a price tag that competes with the latest iPhone models and the Samsung Galaxy Fold. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the revived Razr will cost in the region of $1,500 ( £1,170).

MOTOROLA RAZR LAUNCH AND RELEASE DATE

The Motorola launch date looks set for 13 November 2019 at an event in downtown Los Angeles.

However, that launch might not be followed by a worldwide release of the handset. According to a report from GSM Arena, the new Motorola Razr will be exclusive to US mobile carrier Verizon, with only 200,000 units available. It’s currently unclear whether the phone will even make it to store shelves outside of the United States.

As for the release date, Motorola VP Dan Dery originally said the company wanted to get its flexible device into customers’ hands “no later” than its rivals. Given that the Samsung Galaxy Fold was set to launch on April 26 in the United States and May 3, 2019 in the UK and Europe, while the Huawei Mate X was tipped to launch worldwide sometime in mid-2019, that meant we were expecting to see something from Motorola before summer 2019.

However, Motorola was given a bit of leeway there as the Samsung Galaxy Fold release has been delayed due to issues with the display, and the release date for the Huawei Mate X has apparently been delayed following the issues that Samsung faced.

In the unusually candid chat with Engadget, the technology company confirmed that it’s already working on a device with a pliable display and that it has “no intention of coming later than everybody else in the market”.

Motorola Vice President of Global Product Dan Dery added: “We started to work on foldables a long time ago, and we have been doing a lot of iteration.”

Motorola’s wish didn’t come true, though, as the Samsung Galaxy Fold is now on sale and the new Motorola Razr is nowhere to be seen. CNET is now reporting that the new Razr will be announced on 13 November 2019. The video invite for the event can be seen below.

MOTOROLA RAZR DESIGN AND FEATURES

Motorola is expected to keep the same industrial design of the original July 2004 Razr V3, albeit with a very modern twist. The schematics of the as-then unannounced Motorola-branded smartphone, now widely-believed to be the 2019 rebirth of the Motorola Razr, were spotted in a patent filing late last year.

These illustrations have since been transformed into a series of stunning high-resolution renders, as well as a glossy new concept video. Based on both, the new Razr will keep the iconic flip phone design seen on the original handset, as well as the secondary screen on the outside of the casing for notifications.

Then on 31 October 2019, a leaked image of the 2019 Motorola Razr broke cover. The picture was tweeted by leakster Evan Blass and can be seen below. How modern-retro cool does that look?

Just a few minutes later, a new series of Motorola Razr 2019 images leaked and then on Friday 1 November, a THIRD successive leak saw a hands-on image of the new Razr hit the internet courtesy of Mobile news site DroidShout.

That was followed by a fourth leak just a few hours before the 13 November launch event where images that were posted to the website of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) were spotted by Mysmartprice. They’re not the clearest of images but they do show the new handset in its folded and unfolded form and they match earlier leaks, leading us to believe that these are genuine.

What can just about be seen in these new images is a probable rear-mounted fingerprint sensor on the back beneath a Motorola logo, a camera on the rear, and a USB-C port on the bottom of the handset. What’s missing from the handset is a headphone jack and, although the pics are low res, we can’t see a front-facing selfie camera on the phone and we think it’s highly unlikely that there is one hidden under the screen.

Open up the new Motorola Razr and you can see just how the design has changed from the original. According to the patent schematics and rumours from the supply chain, the new Razr will have a foldable OLED display that runs the length of the handset and that’s what the leaked images confirm.

While the Razr will still have a hinge, it will be hidden from view by the pliable display whenever you’re using the smartphone. When the rebooted smartphone is open, it is expected to have an expansive screen with a widescreen aspect ratio so that you can watch the latest blockbusters without any of those troublesome black bars.

Like the iPhone XS Max and Pixel 3 XL before it, Motorola will use a notch at the top of the screen for the earpiece, and probably a selfie-camera, though that selfie camera is looking a bit doubtful based on the latest leaked images shown above.

Based on the schematics included in the latest patent from Motorola, and confirmed in the leaked images, there will be a single rear-mounted camera, as well as a fingerprint scanner just below it. Motorola recently moved every model in its new Moto G7 range to a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner to increase the size of the display.

According to a report from XDA Developers, this external screen will not be able to run every Android app installed on your smartphone. Instead, Motorola is believed to be limiting the touchscreen to a select few system apps, like Moto Display, Moto Actions, and the Moto Camera app. That is a very different approach to the Samsung Galaxy Fold, which treats its 4.6-inch so-called Cover Display as a traditional smartphone screen that runs anything the larger folding screen can – albeit it’s limited to two app multi-tasking, not three like the 7.3-inch Flex Display.

As well as core system apps, the external display on the Motorola Razr can be used to show up to six Quick Settings tiles. These will be similar to those in the dropdown available at the top of the display on all Android smartphones and will allow users to quickly toggle Airplane mode and the like without interrupting whatever they’re doing on the main screen. According to XDA Developers, it’s unclear whether Motorola will allow users to scroll to see more than the six tiles displayed on the screen at any one time.

Elsewhere, whenever the Google Assistant is triggered with the wake phrase “OK, Google” or “Hey Google” while the Razr is flipped close, the Assistant animation will be shown on the external display to notify users that the handset has heard the command. This option can be disabled in the settings, in which case the user will simply be prompted to “flip open to unlock” with a passcode, pattern or PIN.

XDA Developers believes that users will be able to set separate wallpapers for the main foldable display and the smaller touchscreen on the outside of the clamshell.

Apparently, Motorola also experimented with putting the folding screen on the outside of the device (as in this concept video) but the company seems to have abandoned that approach. When asked whether the product would be similar to the Huawei Mate X design, which has the foldable screen on the outside of the device, Motorola’s Dan Dery said: “We have been testing a plastic OLED device with plastic film on top. The fact that you’re touching [that kind of display] with your nails is scratching it. It has a short life right away; it starts dying the day you unpack it. But it’s beautiful. That first day, it’s beautiful.”

MOTOROLA RAZR SPECS

In terms of specifications, it seems the new Motorola Razr will not have anywhere near the same processing grunt as rival foldable phones like the Huawei Mate X and Samsung Galaxy Fold. According to a report from XDA Developers, the new Motorola will employ the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 system-on-a-chip coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. A model with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage will also be available, it claims.

Although this chipset does support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4+ technology, we don’t yet know what kind of fast charging the Motorola Razr will offer. However, we have heard that Motorola will kit out its bendy blower with a 2,730mAh battery cell.

That’s significantly smaller than the battery in the Mate X and Galaxy Fold. However, the Motorola Razr is a smaller device, so shouldn’t have a negative impact on the battery life of the handset. We can’t believe Motorola would fit its flagship foldable with anything other than all-day battery life, especially given its emphasis on battery with the recent Moto G7 series.

The latest Motorola Razr spec leaks come from XDA Developers Editor-in-Chief Mishaal Rahman, who on 1 November 2019 tweeted a summary of “basic Motorola Razr specs”:

* sdm710, likely Qualcomm Snapdragon 710

* Main display: 6.20″ 2142×876 by BOE

* Closed display: 2.69″ 800×600 also by BOE

* 4/6GB RAM

* 64/128GB storage

* Now believed to have 2510mAh battery

Those specs pretty much align with earlier leaks although the battery size, if correct, is now even smaller, at 2,510mAh.

MOTOROLA RAZR CONCEPTS

Ahead of the launch, designer Waqar Khan has been hard at work building a slick video the forthcoming smartphone based on the latest leaks and rumours.

The short clip, which can be viewed below, gives a pretty good glimpse at what the final product could look like…

MOTOROLA RAZR OFFICIAL PRESS IMAGES

On Sunday 28 April 2019, images purporting to be official press renders of the 2019 Motorola Razr briefly appeared on Chinese social networking site Weibo before being quickly pulled down. They were then reposted to Slashleaks.

The images show the folding phone leaning against its prism-shaped packaging. A second image shows the contents of the packaging, which seem to be a wireless charger, a USB-A to USB-C cable, a USB-C-to-3.5mm audio cable (which suggests that there will be no headphone jack on the new Razr), earbuds andthe Motorola Razr V4.

Are they genuine? To us, these renders look decidedly non-luxurious for a phone that is expected to cost in the region of $1,500. So if they are actually from Motorola, or a company acting on its behalf, they’re most likely early rough renders that were never intended to see the light of day. Or they’re fake with a capital F.

MOTOROLA RAZR ALTERNATIVES

On Tuesday 29 October 2019, Samsung took to the stage at the Samsung Developers Conference to tease its own clamshell concept. Unlike the Galaxy Fold, which folds on a vertical axis, the new concept phone folds on its horizontal axis, exactly like the Motorola Razr. Dutch site LetsGoDigital took the presentation slide and mocked up a 3D model which you can see below.

It’s not clear whether the Samsung concept would feature a smaller screen on the front, as the new Razr will have, or whether Samsung will even put this phone into production but given that Samsung has seemingly solved the problems with folding screens, the appearance of this concept is sure to cause a few worries at Motorola HQ.

Seagate has bulked up it range of storage for gamers with the launch of the new FireCuda 520 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD and the 4TB FireCuda Gaming Dock. The first of these products is pretty straightforward, it is a M.2 2280 double-sided PCIe Gen4 ×4 NVMe 1.3 SSD and will be made available in capacities of 500MB, 1TB and 2TB. The 4TB FireCuda Gaming Dock can be summarised as an external 4TB HDD that interfaces to your PC via Thunderbolt 3 – however it includes niceties such as an NVMe M.2 expansion slot, DisplayPort 1.4, RJ45 Ethernet, audio interface and more.

“Next-gen gaming is all about speed, compatibility, and flexibility,” said Jeff Fochtman, VP of marketing and consumer solutions for Seagate. “Our FireCuda storage solutions deliver the performance, simplicity, and ingenious design to help gamers realize peak potential.”

Seagate FireCuda 520 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD

Seagate promises “faster gaming” with its Seagate FireCuda 520 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD. It is designed for pro-level gaming, it says, and is nearly 45 per cent faster than previous gen M.2 PCIe devices from Seagate.

Moving onto harder tech information, the FireCuda 520 uses 3D TLC NAND and is capable of sequential read/writes up to 5,000/4,400MB per second. The M.2 2280 NVMe form factor storage stick plugs straight into AMD X570 chipset PCIe 4.0 motherboards for leading performance but is backwards compatible with PCIe 3.0 platforms.

Seagate is offering buyers of the FireCuda 520 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD a five year warranty with 1.8M hours MTBF, and up to 2,800 TBW (varies with capacity). In an email to HEXUS, Seagate said that the FireCuda 520 retails for £125.90 (500GB), £234.90 (1TB), and £409.00 (2TB) with immediate availability.

4TB FireCuda Gaming Dock

Docking systems are pretty convenient for people on the go but most are aimed at the professional mobile workforce and similar. Seagate hopes that its new 4TB FireCuda Gaming Dock can have a strong pull on a different demographic – PC gamers. As is obvious from its name, this Thunderbolt 3 connecting device comes with 4TB of storage built-in. However this is HDD storage. Not to fret though, as the dock has a slot for an PCIe Gen3 NVMe M.2 SSD for frequently accessed files – your current favourite games or active projects perhaps.

A Dock wouldn’t be a dock without providing a plethora of fixed ports. Once you have plugged in the Thunderbolt 3 cable the new Seagate device will provide a Thunderbolt 3 accessory port, DisplayPort 1.4, RJ45 Ethernet network port, a 3.5mm audio-in/mic port, 3.5mm audio-out port, four USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, and a USB 3.1 Gen2 charge port – as well as the built-in and optional storage. However, please note that this dock doesn’t provide power to laptops, whatever power port you might have on your portable.

RGB LEDs take this device deeper into gaming territory. Of course the LED lighting is customisable and software lets you easily choose colours and effects.

Seagate told HEXUS that the Gaming Dock will start to become available later this month for £379.99. Buyers get a three year warranty.

Cray has said it will build a family of supercomputers for government research labs and universities. The kicker? The exascale machines will be powered by Arm-compatible microprocessors.

The HPE-owned biz has partnered with Fujitsu to roll out the beefy big iron. Fujitsu will supply its homegrown A64FX processors – understood to be 48-core 64-bit Armv8-compatible beasts – to drive applications on the systems, while Cray will integrate the chippery into its line of CS500 supers.

It’s still early days, so the full specs aren’t out yet nor even the codenames for the exaFLOPS-grade computers. The exascale kit is expected to ship from 2020 to the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, as well as Stony Brook University in New York. Elsewhere in the world, other institutions including the RIKEN center for computational science in Japan, and the University of Bristol in the UK are eagerly awaiting the toy sets.

RIKEN is due to receive its own highly customized A64FX-powered exascale super, dubbed Post-K, from Fujitsu; the Cray-built one will sit alongside it.

Cray’s gear, in recent times anyway, usually houses x86 processors, such as Intel Xeons and lately AMD Epycs. These latest additions to its portfolio of machines, however, will be decked out with Arm-based CPU cores.

Fujitsu’s A64FX supports for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and Arm’s Scalable Vector Extensions, a set of instructions to accelerate matrix calculations, making it ideal for physics simulations, machine-learning workloads, and such number-crunching. The maximum theoretical HBM RAM bandwidth will be greater than one terabyte per second, Cray claimed.

The new supercomputers will likely be used to model complex 3D systems, from the weather and materials to nuclear energy and weapons.

“The most demanding computing work at Los Alamos National Laboratory involves sparse, irregular, multi-physics, multi-link-scale, highly resolved, long running 3D simulations,” said Gary Grider, deputy division leader of the HPC division at Los Alamos National Laboratory on Wednesday. “There are few existing architectures that currently serve this workload well.”

You can read more details and technical analysis over on our HPC and AI sister site, The Next Platform. Also, tune into TNP for coverage of Supercomputing 2019 next week. 

It’s that time of the year again: X019, Microsoft’s annual celebration of all things Xbox, is upon us once more. This year the global Xbox celebration is taking place in the Copper Box Arena, London with Microsoft promising the event will be “filled with news, first looks and surprises, and Xbox FanFest, all livestreamed and starting on Inside Xbox”.

Last year’s event saw Microsoft announce the big news that Obsidian Entertainment and inXile Entertainment had joined Microsoft Studios, alongside Xbox Game Pass updates, some Black Friday deals news and a bunch of new Xbox One game reveals.

However, with Xbox Project Scarlett due for release in late 2020, we’re expecting X019 to be a much bigger show – we may even get a closer look at Microsoft’s next-generation hardware.

TechRadar will be reporting live from X019 in London, bringing you the biggest announcements as they happen.

X019: what is it?

Outside of E3 2019, X019 is Microsoft’s biggest event of the year. Marketed as “the annual global celebration of all things Xbox”, the event is typically Microsoft’s way of updating fans on the things it announced at E3 as well as making big new announcements or providing first looks at upcoming games and/or hardware.

With Xbox Project Scarlett releasing in late 2020, we think (and hope) X019 will be dominated by news on Microsoft’s next-generation console.

X019: when is it?

X019 runs from November 14 to November 16. The annual celebration begins with the fifth anniversary of Xbox FanFest, which kicks off at the Copper Box Arena, London at 7pm GMT / 2pm EST / 11am PST on November 14. This is a ticketed event, but it will be streamed as well.

Shortly after, a special Inside Xbox stream will take place at 8pm GMT / 3pm EST / 12pm PST on November 14.

The rest of the annual event is broken into sessions – which tickets are required for. Morning sessions will run from 10am to 2pm GMT / 5am to 9am EST / 2am to 6am PST, while afternoon sessions will run from 3pm to 7pm GMT / 10am to 2pm EST / 7am to 11am PST.

Most of X019 will be available to watch online.

X019: how to watch

If you haven’t got a ticket, you can watch X019 from the comfort of your own home (or sneakily at work).

X019: what we’re expecting

Here’s everything we’re expecting from Microsoft’s Xbox X019 (and what we’re not):

Xbox Project Scarlett

As much as we’re hoping we’ll hear more about Xbox Project Scarlett, it doesn’t actually look all that likely. For one, it’s probably not a great plan for Microsoft to reveal Xbox Scarlett this close to Black Friday and Christmas when the company will be aiming to shift as many current-gen consoles as possible.

Secondly, in reply to a fan asking if X019 will focus on games or just controllers, Xbox Games Marketing general manager Aaron Greenberg replied with the following:

Whether that means X019 will have a primarily games focus is up for speculation, but that has often been the case in previous years. However, we’re still holding out hope for some juicy new details on Xbox Project Scarlett – and its launch title, Halo Infinte.

Black Friday deals

Yep, every year Microsoft uses the event to announce its annual Black Friday Xbox One deals.

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Game announcements/first looks

We’re definitely expecting some game announcements at X019, especially based on Greenberg’s tweet. We’re hoping for a closer look at Halo Infinite and maybe even a few surprise announcements, alongside DLC for the likes of Gears 5.

Surprises?

In an interview with Twinfiniteat Gamescom 2019, Xbox’s Aaron Greenberg stated that there is some big news coming at X019 for titles coming in early-mid 2020.

“We have some surprises planned,” he said. “I’ll just leave it at that. But yeah, I think that we’ll have a great show. We also have a lot of games coming out in the spring. It’s I think the biggest lineup of games we’ve ever had in the spring. In that window of time between X019 and E3, we have a lot of stuff to show, and people can get hands-on with it and talk about it.”

Related product: Microsoft Xbox One X

Our Verdict:

☆☆☆☆☆

The Xbox One X does what no console has done before: native 4K HDR gaming. However, while games look stunning – with a fantastic level of detail accentuated by the console’s HDR support – their larger file sizes will mean that the 1TB hard drive fills up fast. Memory issues aside, the Xbox One X fulfills the promise of 4K HDR gaming and offers the most premium gaming experience on a console, bar none.

FOR Native 4K HDR gaming

4K Blu-ray player built-in

Improves 1080p experience

AGAINST 1TB HDD fills up fast

Games aren’t always 60fps

Skewed price-performance ratio

Asus Japan announced this week that it’ll show off two new single-board computers at the upcoming ET & IoT Technology 2019 event kicking off November 20 in Yokohama, Japan. The latest Tinker Edge T and Tinker Edge R are designed specifically for IoT (Internet of Things) and edge AI applications.

The Tinker Edge T measures 85 x 56mm, which is around the size of a credit card. The Tinker Edge R adheres to the Pico-ITX form factor (100 x 72mm). Both single-board computers depend on a small heatsink with an accompanying cooling fan to stay cool during operation.

Asus Tinker Edge T

The Tinker Edge T utilizes a NXP i.MX 8M SoC, consisting of a quad-core Cortex-A53 up to 1.5 GHz with one Cortex-M4F real-time core. The system also relies on the Vivante GC7000 Lite 3D graphics engine and Google’s Coral Edge tensor processing unit (TPU), which is optimized for Tensorflow Lite and boasts performance up to 4 tera operations per second (TOPS).

Asus Tinker Edge R

The Tinker Edge R employs a Rockchip RK3399 Pro system on chip (SoC) that boasts a three-in-one design. The chip combines the dual-core Cortex-A72, which runs a clock speed of up to 1.8 GHz and quad-core Cortex-A53 up to 1.4 GHz with a quad-core Mali-T860 GPU at up to 800 MHz. It’s also equipped with a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of delivering up to 3 TOPS of performance.

Asus’ announcement states that the Tinker Edge R and Tinker Edge T are compatible with the Debian and Android operating systems. However, we expect them to support other Linux distributions and operating systems, such as Windows 10 IoT Core or FreeRTOS.

With a focuses on AI processing, both boards face competition in Nvidia’s Jetson Nano, which features a quad-core Arm A57 at 1.45 GHz, along with Nvidia Mawell graphics.

Asus didn’t reveal the pricing or availability of the new single-board computers.

Microsoft is allowing Surface Pro X owners to get access to early native ARM copies of its Edge Chromium browser today. The software giant is making the ARM version of Edge available in the daily Canary channel, and it will mean that devices like the Surface Pro X will gain access to a more capable and more performant browser.

Microsoft released the Surface Pro X earlier this month with the older Edge browser preinstalled, but owners have so far had to use an x86 copy of Chrome or Edge Chromium in emulation mode. This hits battery life and performance on ARM-powered devices significantly. The Verge has been testing early Canary versions of the ARM64 Edge Chromium release, and it’s far better for performance and battery life than using Chrome in emulation.

We’ve seen big improvements in switching tabs, rendering web content, and scrolling speeds. While the speed improvements are obvious, this is an early copy of Edge Chromium for ARM and tabs do occasionally crash. Still, it’s worth trying out if you own a Surface Pro X.

While the ARM64 version enters into the Canary channel today, Microsoft revealed last week at Ignite that a final version of Edge Chromium won’t launch on ARM in time for the January 15th release. Microsoft will make Edge Chromium available on Windows and macOS in January, with an ARM64 release to follow. You can download the ARM64 Edge Canary version over at Microsoft’s Edge Insider site.

Videocardz has done it again. Looks like Intel is working on a powerful new Xe-based 7nm GPU codenamed “Ponte Vecchio” – after an old bridge in Florence, Italy. A quick Google search of the codename also comes up with a Linkedin recruitment ad for an Engineer that will be working on Arctic Sound/Ponte Vecchio-based solutions. Intel’s 7nm Xe-based Ponte Vecchio GPUs will be featured in Project Aurora – an exascale supercomputer from Intel which is expected to go online in 2021.

Intel Ponte Vecchio GPUs will be featured in Aurora Exascale Supercomputer – based on 7nm Xe GPU architecture

Videocardz states that up to six Ponte Vecchio GPUs will be utilized in an upcoming exascale supercomputer called Aurora in conjunction with two Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors. The GPUs will be connected using CXL (Compute Express Link) with a OneAPI software stack. The leak further states that Ponte Vecchio GPUs will utilize Foveros packaging technology along with CXL. While Ponte Vecchio is not a gaming GPU, it will feature ultra-high cache and high memory bandwidth.

Intel’s Ponte Vecchio GPU will have high double-precision FP throughput as well. The company also further mentioned all the other segments that Xe GPUs will be operating in including HPC/Exascale, DL/Training, Cloud GFX, Media Transcore Analytics, Workstation, Gaming, PC Mobile and Ultra Mobile. WhyCry mentions that Intel is planning to reveal more details about its upcoming 7nm based Xe GPU ‘Ponte Vecchio’ on November 17, 2019.

I did a bit of googling and the codename turns up several Linkedin job listings including the word “Ponte Vecchio” along with the already-known codename “Arctic Sound”:

This not only shows that Ponte Vecchio is something Intel has been working on for a while now, but also indicates that P.V is a derivative of the Arctic Sound GPU family – which was targetted directly at the Data Center. While you will have to wait for the 17th for the full disclosure according to VCZ, we can assume that this is going to be a bleeding-edge product that is not going to be aimed at gamers.

Intel’s plans for gamers remain up in the air and while we know that the company will be launching in late-2020, it is unclear whether this is going to be a gaming GPU or just a data-centric one. Chances are that Intel is going to launch with a low powered training vehicle (DG1?) before ramping up to something powerful that can potentially take on NVIDIA’s TITANs and give AMD a run for its money in the entry-level segment as well.

Over the past few years, we’ve spilled a fair amount of digital ink talking about what a Chrome OS phone could or should look like. (If someone were to take the initiative to make one.) For the most part, I’ve imagined a device that looks and functions just like any other smartphone, only running Chrome OS and Android in tandem. That device would work as a phone but then be able to dock and extend a full version of Chrome OS to another display.

It seems that one company has decided to take the leap into this arena but have come up with a very unique twist on the concept and I must say, I am very intrigued. castAway™ Case has launched on IndieGoGo and is offering to turn your smartphone into a foldable, dual-screen workhorse that matches a Chromium OS-powered tablet with your Android or iOS device. The concept is quite fascinating as it solves a number of problems that have often come up when talking about bridging mobile and desktop.

The tablet side of the device features an OP1 processor, 4GB of RAM and 32Gb of storage. This is all shoved into a tiny 6.3″ or 5.8″ QXGA touchscreen. Essentially, we’re looking at the same internals found in the original Samsung Chromebook Plus or the Acer Chromebook R13. The case cradles the tablet and your phone and connects them with castAway’s “magic” magnetic hinge system.

On the software side, the tablet and phone will be synced using castAways’ MultiTask+™ app which allows them to “communicate over encrypted Wifi.” Even when the tablet is detached and functioning as a standalone PC, it will continue to sync with your phone via the MultiTask+™ application. The team is also working on a dock for the castAway tablet that features power, LAN and HDMI connections which means you could seriously use this as not only a companion to your smartphone but your desktop device, as well.

I’ll be interested to see castAway in action. As a prototype that’s built on a low-powered ARM platform, you shouldn’t expect a premium Chrome OS experience but I don’t think that’s the big takeaway here. The castAway crew will be creating an Open Source project around their MultiTask+™ to encourage developers to find new and inventive ways to leverage this concept. With Qualcomm headed to Chrome OS, I could imagine a newer ARM-based version of this concept could be very appealing to a variety of users.

If you’re interested in learning more or perhaps supporting this project, you can get all the details on castAways’ IndieGoGo page where you can reserve yours. The castAway case is slated for launch in May of 2020. Looking forward to seeing how this one pans out. The only missing piece is support from Google that would allow an official build of Chrome OS to run on the tablet.

According to the most recent leaks, Tokina is preparing to reveal a redesigned 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens for Canon and Nikon full-frame DSLRs very soon. The lens will allegedly replace the brand’s current 100mm f/2.8 AT-X M100 AF Pro D seen above.

The news comes to us from the ever-reliable Nokishita, who tweeted about the upcoming lens last night. “It seems that Tokina will announce ‘ATX-i 100mm F2.8 FF MACRO’ in the near future,” reads the translated tweet. “The mount is Canon EF and Nikon F.”

According to Nikon Rumors, the lens will feature Tokina’s more modern Opera design found in lenses like the Opera 16-28mm f/2.8 FF and Opera 50mm f/1.4 FF, and based on the model name it will be the second ATX-i lens from the brand, joining the Tokina ATX-i 11-16mm CF f/2.8 for crop-sensor DSLRs.

This is good news for everybody, since Tokina’s latest lenses tend to punch above their price point, and neither Nikon nor Canon have released a new full-frame, 100mm DSLR-mount macro lens in over 10 years—Nikon’s 105mm f/2.8 Macro lens was released in 2006, and Canon’s 100mm f/2.8L USM Macro in 2009.

Stay tuned for the official release “in the near future.” If previous experience is anything to judge by, Nokishita’s leaks often come within weeks, if not days, of an official announcement from the brand.