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WalkingCat has revealed that Microsoft plans to release a new version of the Surface Hub. Microsoft released 55-inch and 84-inch versions of the Surface Hub five years ago, but it opted to only bring a 50-inch edition of the Surface Hub 2S to market last year. However, it did announce an 85-inch model last April, which may be the version that we are looking at here.

According to the two images, the device has an 85.6-inch Pixelsense display that operates at 4K. The display also has a 16:9 aspect ratio and is coated anti-glare glass. It is only a 60 Hz panel though, unlike the 120 Hz ones that Microsoft offered with the original Surface Hub. Additionally, the screen has 32 mm thick bezels, which appear to be uniform.

The device itself measures 1130 x 1960 x 85 mm and weighs 85 kg. Moreover, Microsoft has included VESA 600 x 600 mounting screens, which can be seen below. The device also has USB Type-A and Type-C ports, along with Source, Volume and Power buttons. 

It is unclear if Microsoft will ever bring this version of the Surface Hub to market. The company postponed the Surface Hub 2X earlier this year, although Windows Central claimed that it would eventually ship with another variant of Windows Core OS, codenamed Santorini. Mary Jo Foley stated in February that Microsoft still planned to release the 85-inch version of the Surface Hub 2S in 2020, so there may still be hope for the project yet. As for a price, we expect Microsoft to launch the device for at least the cost of the 84-inch Surface Hub, which started at US$22,700. 

Chatter on the web is getting bigger that ZEN3 based desktop processors, might see a name change, not Ryzen 4000 but Ryzen 5000. This rumor has been ongoing for days now, and there’s more and more merit to that story.

A new tweet from Patrick Schur, software engineer, and a bit of a AMD Ryzen series news leaker, revealed that the Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 7 5800X processors will feature 12 and 8 cores respectively. He also suggests that the upcoming Zen3-based series will change its nomenclature to 5000. This information has been rumored for a few weeks since if AMD does not change its nomenclature, the names of Vermeer (desktop) would line up with Cezanne (mobile). Therefore, the 4000 series will remain exclusive to the Renoir (mobile) and Renoir AM4 (desktop) series.

On the other hand, what did attract awareness, was that Patrick revealed that the Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 7 5800X processors will get 12 and 8 cores respectively. This would keep the same number of cores as the current Ryzen 3000 series lineup. AMD announced that it will introduce the Zen 3-based processors on October 8 . In addition, the manufacturer has not yet confirmed the official name of the series.

Last month, I pointed out that a new Global Media Controls feature was in the works for Chrome OS 86. I didn’t say it at the time, but my hope was that this would remove the annoying (at least to me) media playback controls in the Notifications stack on my Chromebook. It looks like I may get my wish with Chrome OS 87.

Work has begun with a target version of 87 on media controls right in the system tray, as spotted by Chrome Story. Code only started appearing earlier this week, so much of what’s planned could be changed, but here’s a video demo of the current progress:

You can see that already the Chromium developers have replicated the media control functionality currently available today on Chromebooks; the difference is that the new controls are in the System Tray.

I won’t lie: That’s where I think they belong. Having a persistent view of media playback every single time I view notifications drives me nuts, personally.

This still has me wondering about that media icon to the left of the system tray space seen in early versions of Chrome OS 86.

Will that be a shortcut to open the tray?

Nah, that doesn’t make sense. Clicking either that icon or the tray area would open the Quick Settings in that case, basically replicating the same user action.

My bet is still on that icon being a shortcut to Kaleidoscope, the still-in-progress feature that will aggregate movies and television shows from online sources for browser playback. We’ll have to wait and see.

Sony is continuing its refresh of its smartphone line to focus on photography and video with the new Xperia 5 II. It’s the smaller sibling of the very tall and weirdly expensive Xperia 1 II, and this newer phone betters it in several regards. It’s cheaper, for one thing, going on sale on September 29th for $949. The other major improvement is that Sony has put in a high-refresh-rate 120Hz panel.

Oddly, though, Sony says it’s not shipping until December 4th and even more oddly, it will have 5G but won’t work with the 5G networks in the US — just like the Xperia 1 II.

The basic idea of the Xperia 5 II is that it’s a phone with a tall 21:9 screen, but it’s relatively small at 6.1-inches. That sounds big, but since it’s so tall it works out to only about 2.68 inches wide. It’s a much more pocketable phone than the Xperia 1 II.

It features fairly standard flagship specs for 2020: a Snapdragon 865 processor, 4,000 mAh battery, and the aforementioned 120Hz refresh rate display. Sony is also sticking with dual front-facing stereo speakers and a traditional headphone jack, both of which are formally classified as endangered species now. Unfortunately, there’s no wireless charging.

As for cameras, the Xperia 5 II has the now-standard three-camera array on the back. Sony’s focus on photography means that it prefers to label them with their 35mm focal length equivalents: 16mm, 24mm, and 70mm.

Sony is claiming to be the first smartphone to be able to record slow motion at 120FPS in 4K HDR. I’ll be curious to see how that works and also to see if the Xperia 5 II improves on the video quality in the previous one. Sony’s pro video app lets you have a lot of control over video settings and to package clips into projects for easier editing.

Really, though, the Xperia line’s claim to fame with the camera is with auto focus and capture speed. Like the Xperia 1 II, the Xperia 5 II features Sony’s best-in-class autofocus, which can lock on to a human or pet’s eye and keep that focus tack sharp with surprising speed — up to 60 times per second. It can also do burst mode shooting at 20fps.

Maybe the most interesting photography feature is that you can set the Xperia 5 II to be a direct tethered upload machine for one of Sony’s newer mirrorless cameras. It’s not the equivalent of full USB tethering on a desktop, but it is much faster and more efficient than the usual Wi-Fi solutions offered on cameras these days.

Sony is also talking up the Xperia 5 II’s gaming features — and for the first time in forever I think an Android gaming phone might have features that are more than just gimmicks. Sony’s angle is that the 120Hz refresh rate includes a 240Hz touch scanning rate, but that’s not the big deal to me.

Sony has a game enhancer mode, like many phones, but its mode has some genuinely useful features. That’s not something I ever expected to write about game enhancer software on an Android phone.

You can directly set and lock the screen’s refresh rate, motion blur, and touch response speed. More interestingly there is a power bypass feature — it lets you set the phone to draw power directly from a USB-C cable without charging the battery. That significantly reduces heat, which means all the silicon can run better. Sony also has added a graphene heat sink to draw heat away from the main board.

In all, the Xperia 5 II sounds like a fascinating phone with unique features and infuriating drawbacks. But if you’re deep into Sony’s camera ecosystem, it could be a good choice. A better choice might be to wait for the Xperia Pro, which has been announced but still not detailed beyond one key photography feature — using your phone as an external HDMI monitor for a video camera. Presumably by the time the Xperia 5 II launches in December, we’ll have heard more.

New photos of alleged AMD Radeon RX 6900XT leak

A YouTuber RedGamingTech has leaked more photographs of the alleged Radeon RX 6900XT graphics card. It seems that the source of the photographs is the same as JayzTwoCents’s who also shared some of these photos yesterday.

It is worth noting that the graphics card name has not been confirmed. It is only alleged that the highest-end model will be called RX 6900XT. AMD is likely to unveil multiple graphics card SKUs based on RDNA2 architecture. The flagship model should feature Navi 21 GPU (known as Big Navi), while the rest of the stack could adopt Navi 22 or Navi 23.

The photos are likely showing a prototype as even the I/O vents are blocked, which is very unusual for a graphics card. Although the render of the graphics card in Fortnite game also lacked the venting holes.

The model is equipped with dual 8-pin power connectors. This configuration is also seen on a dual-fan model, which was revealed by JayzTwoCents yesterday.

Tech YouTuber JayzTwoCents recently shared an image of what appears to be another Radeon RX 6000 (a.k.a. Big Navi) graphics card that may eventually contend for a spot on our best graphics cards page.

Unlike the beefy Radeon RX 6000 that AMD teased in Fortnite, this newly leaked variant features a less substantial cooling solution, insinuating that it could be a SKU that’s on the lower end of the Big Navi spectrum. It’s plausible that AMD might use the triple-fan configuration for the flagship model, such as the Radeon RX 6900, while saving the dual-fan setup for something like a Radeon RX 6800 or RX 6700. This is all just speculation, of course.

The concept behind the dual-fan Radeon RX 6000 seems to be the same as its bigger brother. The shroud exhibits a contoured design with a black and silver theme. In this render, however, the silver color looks white, which may just be a reflection. The Radeon logo and red highlights are still present to complement the graphics card’s body. Now that we are seeing a dual-fan design, it’s even harder to shake off the perception that it looks similar to Nvidia’s last-generation Founders Edition shroud.

There are high hopes that AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture will deliver improved power efficiency over RDNA. The triple-fan Radeon RX 6000 surfaced with two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, which isn’t shocking for a high-end graphics card. Nvidia’s own GeForce RTX 3080 is rated for 320W, but the chipmaker craftily disguises it with a single 12-pin PCIe power connector. But the presence of the pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors on the dual-fan Radeon RX 6000 may raise the alarm for some users.

The combination of the PCIe slot and two 8-pin PCIe power connectors is good for a power delivery up to 375W. Once again, having two 8-pin PCIe power connectors is one thing, but actually drawing the maximum power from each is another. We see manufacturers overprovision the power connectors on graphics cards all the time.

Regardless, we have a little over a month to wait until we know more officially. AMD will be livestreaming its Radeon RX 6000 announcement on October 28 at 10 a.m. PT. Nvidia has landed the first stike with Ampere, and now the ball is in AMD’s court.

If you haven’t already read our full RTX 3080 review, I would recommend doing so first. That will give you an idea of how this new GPU compares to the likes of the RTX 2080 Ti, GTX 1080 Ti and more. In this article, we are only looking at performance of the RTX 3080, but tested on different CPU platforms.

Here, we are comparing three sets of data. First of all, the data we used for our review – the RTX 3080 Founders Edition tested with an Intel i9-10900K overclocked to 5.1GHz, restricting us to PCIe 3.0 due to the Z490 platform. To give us an idea of PCIe Gen4 performance with this GPU, we turn to AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900XT and the X570 platform. As a final data set, we also force PCIe 3.0 while testing with the Ryzen 9 3900XT.

GPU	RTX 3090	RTX 3080	RTX 2080 Ti (FE)	RTX 2080 SUPER	RTX 2080 (FE)
SMs	82	68	68	48	46
CUDA Cores	10496	8704	4352	3072	2944
Tensor Cores	328	272	544	384	368
RT Cores	82	68	68	48	46
Texture Units	328	272	272	192	184
ROPs	112	96	88	64	64
GPU Boost Clock	1695 MHz	1710 MHz	1635 MHz	1815 MHz	1800 MHz
Memory Data Rate	19.5 Gbps	19 Gbps	14 Gbps	15.5 Gbps	14 Gbps
Total Video Memory	24GB GDDR6X	10GB GDDR6X	11GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6
Memory Interface	384-bit	320-bit	352-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	936 GB/Sec	760 GB/Sec	616 GB/sec	496.1 GB/sec	448 GB/sec
TGP	350W	320W	260W	250W	225W

Lenovo no longer lists the AMD Ryzen-powered IdeaPad 5 on its own site, and we don’t know why. Fortunately, the laptop is still available at Walmart – and at a seriously affordable price too.

On paper, the IdeaPad 5 (model numbers 81YM0060US, 81YM005YUS or 81YM0061US) has a lot going for it. With a rock-bottom price, the machine significantly undercuts the previous cheapest AMD Ryzen 8-core laptop.

What do you get for your money? A choice of three colours, a 14-inch full HD IPS display, an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U CPU, 8GB of DDR4 memory (soldered), a 256GB PCIe SSD and a 57WHr battery that should last up to 14 hours.

The processor has eight threads and seven GPU cores with a base clock speed of 2GHz, 12MB cache and a default TDP of only 15W. The graphics subsystem is not too shabby either, thanks to the integrated Vega GPU – great for anyone looking for a business laptop or mobile workstation.

A fingerprint reader is integrated with the power button and there’s a privacy shutter to block the webcam when it’s not in use. Small features like this could be a boon for small businesses and professionals looking for a powerful laptop that takes security seriously.

It is a shame, however, that it doesn’t include Windows 10 Pro, but you can always upgrade from Windows 10 Home (albeit at a cost).

Connectivity and expansion capabilities include an SD card reader, audio connector, HDMI port, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, two USB ports and a USB Type-C that provides power as well.

Intel launches two new Comet Lake-H processors.

Meet Intel Core i7-10870H and Core i5-10200H

There were no official announcements, but Intel has added two SKUs to the Comet Lake-H lineup. A fourth 8-core high-end processor has been launched according to Intel’s own website.

Interestingly, the processor was allegedly launched due to supply issues of the higher-end model, the Core i7-10875H. This processor is very popular among high-end gaming notebooks. After all, this is the fastest Core i7 processor in the lineup.

Compared to the 10875H, the 10870H offers a 100 MHz lower base clock. This does not sound like a huge difference, but it might be something worth considering as many enthusiasts are often encouraged to disable Intel Turbo. This is due to the fact that turbo does not provide significant performance improvement, but it comes at the cost of much higher temperatures.

On Reddit, the Schenker XMG team today announced the upcoming supply issues of the higher-end CPU model (10870H). It’s worth noting that XMG laptops (Neo 15/17) should not see supply issue for the next 2-3 months:

[…] there is a CPU supply bottleneck on i7-10875H on the horizon. This situation is similar to the Desktop space where the Intel Core i9-10900K is out-of-stock everywhere and is being replaced in most sales channels by the new Intel Core i9-10850K which has almost the same performance (same cores, threads, cache etc.) but 0.1GHz lower clock rating. […]

Meanwhile, we seem to have secured enough CPU supply so we can continue to deliver i7-10875H in XMG NEO for the next 2~3 months. Not sure yet what happens after this, we’ll see.

XMG Schenker announcement on Reddit

Additionally, Intel also launched a new quad-core CPU, which is the slowest processor in the ‘H mobile Series’ – the Core i5-10200H. This CPU has a 100 MHz lower base clock than 10300H and a 400 MHz lower turbo clock.

Apple is lining up its next flagship with the upcoming iPhone 12, but despite news of an improved A14 processor giving the innards an overhaul with a 15% boost in performance, and 30% less power draw, the chassis leaves a lot to be desired. 

Still touting the candybar design, and a sizeable notch, not a lot has changed with Apple’s aesthetic, but its classic form factor is beginning to look outdated compared to Android competitors, and Samsung’s plans for its own future flagships will either force Apple to rethink its approach, or see it left in the dust.

Samsung made waves with the Galaxy Fold last year, despite some major teething problems, and followed up with the Galaxy Z Flip clamshell, which did away with the issues that plagued its predecessor. 

The company has just unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold 2, with the foldable ‘Z’ branding taking centre stage, representing Samsung’s “commitment to expanding the category to offer a variety of experiences.” 

But it looks like that commitment will see Samsung’s foldables take precedent as the Korean tech giant’s new flagship, pushing aside the S and Note series. 

Noted Samsung leaker, Ice Universe, has indicated that the Galaxy S21 might not be as powerful as fans anticipate, adding that the Note and S Series won’t see specs on a par with Samsung’s future foldables; the next iteration of the Galaxy S20 and Note 20 won’t be as impressive, with the Z series becoming Samsung’s “true flaghip”.

Combined with some of the more elaborate smartphone designs that are emerging, like the LG Wing, Apple’s rectangular iPhones with their thick bezels and large notches are quickly slipping from iconic to archaic. 

Apple has filed foldable smartphone patents of its own, and may simply be perfecting its tech so it doesn’t run into the same problems Samsung faced; but either way, it needs to catch up soon before its iPhones are abandoned for more radical options from its competition.