Quick Shots-133

Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 makes its way to India

Samsung introduced its new Galaxy Tab A8 tablet last month. Now it’s also launching it to India, with actual sales starting in 5 days.

The company confirmed the slate will be available in the Asia-Pacific country starting from Monday, January 17.

From Gsmarena

Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 series live images spotted in certification listing

Samsung will launch a trio of flagship tablets as part of the Galaxy Tab S8 lineup later this year. Over the last few months, we’ve seen several leaks about Samsung’s upcoming tablet lineup that have given us a glimpse of their design and highlighted some hardware specifications. While Samsung hasn’t shared any official information about the Galaxy Tab S8 lineup so far, live images of all three tablets have now surfaced online.

The following images of the Galaxy Tab S8, Galaxy Tab S8 Plus, and Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra are from unspecified regulatory filings, according to Sammobile. The images don’t reveal anything new about the tablets, though, and they only give us a look at their displays.

From XDA

Motorola Tab G70 goes up on Flipkart with an 11″ display, Helio G90T chipset

The Motorola Tab G70, which surfaced on the Google Play Console, is real – Indian retailer Flipkart put up a landing page for the slate and even though Motorola.in still makes no mention of the device, we have official confirmation of the most important details.

First, this will be a class above the Tab G70 in terms of screen and performance. That means higher price too, but that detail will have to wait for the proper launch. For comparison, the Tab G20 sells for INR 11,000 at the moment (31% off MSRP).

From Gsmarena

Samsung confirms Exynos 2200 launch delay, says chipset has no issues

There has been a lot of speculation recently about the Exynos 2200. This is Samsung’s latest flagship processor that was to be introduced with the upcoming Galaxy S22 series. Samsung normally unveils its latest high-end chipset a month or so before the new flagship lineup is announced.

It had planned to do that this time around as well. The company had previously revealed that it would unveil the Exynos 2200 on January 11. That was yesterday and the chipset wasn’t announced. Samsung has now confirmed that it has delayed the Exynos 2200 launch.

From Sammobile

Galaxy S22, Galaxy Tab S8 pricing summarized in new leak

According to tipster @chunvn8888, the Galaxy S22 series will be priced higher than the Galaxy S21 lineup. The vanilla Galaxy S22 could carry a price tag of $899, which is $100 higher than the Galaxy S21. Similarly, the Galaxy S22+ and the Galaxy S22 Ultra could cost $1,099 and $1,299, respectively. If this information is accurate, all these smartphones could debut with a $100 price hike compared to their predecessors.

The Galaxy Tab S8 could be priced under $850, while the Galaxy Tab S8+ could cost anywhere between $900 and $1,000. Samsung’s top-of-the-line tablet for 2022, the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, could come with a price tag of around $1,100. Of course, these prices are for the base variants, and higher storage and cellular variants could cost even more.

From Sammobile

iPhone 14 prices might end up being higher than anyone expected

The prices of Apple’s latest iPhone models have been relatively steady for the past three generations. In 2019, Apple launched the 128GB iPhone 11 mini for $699, the iPhone 11 for $799, the iPhone 11 Pro for $999, and the iPhone 11 Pro Max for $1,099.

A year later, Apple increased the prices of the unlocked iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 up to $729 and $829, respectively. These prices stayed the same for the four iPhone 13 models last fall.

Despite Apple’s dominance, it has to work to stay competitive. It faces increasingly stout competition from the likes of Samsung, Google, OnePlus, and a drove of Chinese vendors offering more affordable devices. That said, the company might be gearing up for higher prices. According to LeaksApplePro on Twitter, Apple is weighing a $100 price hike for all four iPhone 14 models.

From BGR

Future Wear OS smartwatches will finally cater to the lefties of the world

An entry in the Google Issue Tracker was discovered on Reddit (via Mishaal Rahman) with a user complaining that there’s no option to rotate the screen orientation.

my android wear watch has buttons on one side. and i would like to wear the watch upside down on my other arm (i am left handed.)

The issue was created in 2018 (hence the reference to “Android Wear”). However, a Google employee finally responded on Tuesday with some exciting news, saying that the feature had been implemented and would be available on “future new devices.

Being able to rotate the screen in such a way would be suitable for users that prefer to wear their Wear OS watches on their right hand, particularly left-handed users. That’s because buttons are usually found on the right side of the device, which can make operating watch buttons a bit awkward.

As a result, this could open up the platform to more users that maybe have hesitated to buy a Wear OS watch for this reason.

However, as noted in the Google employee’s response, the feature appears will be headed to “future new devices,” which appears to indicate that it may not come to any of the best Wear OS watches on the market right now.

Rahman points out the Lefty Wear OS app that essentially provides this same function, although as noted by the reviews, your mileage may vary. However, this may do until Google releases an official option for left-handed users.

From Android Central

The OnePlus Buds Pro wireless earbuds have just got even better

The OnePlus Buds Pro blew us away with their great sound quality and effective noise cancellation – and the true wireless earbuds have just got even better thanks to a new firmware update. 

The update will bring a new feature called Dual Connection, which gives you the ability to pair the OnePlus Buds Pro with two different devices at the same time, and switch between them seamlessly when music is played from either of the two Bluetooth devices.

In a post on the OnePlus forums, the company said that the update will initially reach a small percentage of users with a broader rollout taking place “over the next few days”. 

From Techradar

UltraRAM may one day be able to combine storage and memory into one

Scientists from the Physics and Engineering Department of Lancaster University in the UK have recently reported a breakthrough in their research into the subject of UltraRAM, a novel idea that would turn both RAM and storage into a single piece of hardware. According to the team of scientists, we are closer to being able to produce UltraRAM than it might seem.

According to the paper published on this matter (which was then reported on by Tom’s Hardware), UltraRAM is a technology that would combine the stability and non-volatility of data storage memory with the high speeds and energy efficiency of RAM. Although no such hardware has been produced yet, it should be possible — which is why there already have been attempts to make something along the lines of UltraRAM in the past.

Modern RAM and ultra-fast SSDs both use flash memory, but they also utilize it in different ways. Computer memory only stores currently used, non-persistent information: If you power off your computer, all the data will disappear. On the other hand, data storage devices such as SSDs store your information on a permanent basis. This type of memory is referred to as “non-volatile.”

From Digital Trends

PCIe 6.0 is coming for the speedy SSDs and GPUs of the future

PCI Express 5.0 has only just started arriving on the consumer side, but the specification for PCIe 6.0 has just been finalized. The PCI Special Interest Group has published the final specs for PCIe 6.0, doubling the bandwidth over the 5.0 version up to a theoretical maximum bidirectional speed of 256GBps on an x16 slot (128GBps in a single direction).

The first super fast PCIe 5.0 SSDs appeared just before this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, promising read speeds of up to 14GBps. That was already twice what we’re used to seeing with PCIe 4.0 drives, and with the doubling PCIe 6.0 brings we’d expect to see SSDs offer up to 28GBps in the future.

From The Verge