Asus ROG Flow X13 review: The king of small gaming laptops?
The Razer Blade Stealth 13 was, for a long time, the smallest gaming laptop you could buy. The Asus ROG Flow X13 has something to say about that, though.
It’s the second 13-inch gaming laptop you can buy right now, but in some ways, it takes things even further. With up to an RTX 3050 Ti GPU and Ryzen 9 5900HS processor, you can rest assured that these are the most powerful components you could possibly stuff into a laptop of this size.
Read More at Digital Trends
Leaked renders give us our first look at the Vivo X70 and X70 Pro
Vivo is reportedly gearing up to launch the Vivo X70 series. The new series is expected to consist of three devices, and a fresh leak has shed more light on one of them: the Vivo X70 Pro.
OnLeaks and 91Mobiles have shared high-resolution CAD renders of the Vivo X70 Pro, giving us our very first look yet at the upcoming Vivo flagship. As you can see in the leaked CAD renders below, the Vivo X70 Pro doesn’t look substantially different from its predecessor, featuring a similar hole-punch display and a rectangular camera module. However, there are some smaller changes, like the relocation of the triple LED flash and the arrangement of the camera sensors.
The display appears to be slightly curved on its sides, and we’re told the phone has an aluminum frame. The camera module still protrudes a bit. In one of the renders, we can also see the ZEISS logo imprinted in the upper left corner of the camera module. This isn’t surprising, considering the Vivo X60 series also featured ZEISS branded cameras.
Read More at XDA
Fitbit Charge 5 looks like the best Fitbit (until we get the Wear OS watch, at least)
The Charge 5 checks heart rate and blood oxygen, tracks sleep and has GPS and Fitbit Pay contactless payments (but not Google Pay). It has a seven-day battery life — two days better than the recent Fitbit Luxe. It also adds an OLED color display, plus an ECG (also called EKG or electrocardiogram) sensor and EDA (electrodermal activity) sensor for stress.
Read More at Cnet
WhatsApp message reactions are on the way
If you spend enough time using social apps, you get used to certain UX patterns. One example is the ability to react to a message or post — think Instagram or Twitter DMs — but you don’t see it so much with more traditional chat apps. WhatsApp would like to change that, however, and is working to bring message reactions to its app.
According to WABetaInfo, reaction functionality is currently under development. Some users have received the below message that informs them they’ve received a reaction but cannot view it with their version of the app, suggesting it’s being tested internally or with a very small number of users on a build that’s not public.
Read More at Android Police
Xiaomi reports record 64% revenue growth, acquires Deepmotion for $77.3 million
Xiaomi reported a second-quarter net income of $1.28 billion on revenue of $13.56 billion following the Chinese technology giant’s strong surge in smartphone market share globally.
During the quarter that ended in June, Xiaomi said it saw a 64% year-on-year growth in revenue, and its net income surged over 80% from the same time a year ago.
The Hong Kong-listed firm said its smartphone revenue grew to $9.1 billion, thanks to a just as impressive jump in its smartphone shipment to 52.9 million units in the quarter, in which it topped Apple to become the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor, according to market intelligence firm Canalys.
Read More at Techcrunch
Canon EOS R3 gets rumored launch date, but when will it be available to buy?
The long-awaited Canon EOS R3 has been given a rumored launch date, six months on from its ‘development announcement’ in February. But the current signs suggest that the camera could be in short supply, even when it does finally land.
A new post from Canon Rumors suggests we’ll see the grand unveiling of the full-frame sports camera on September 14, which is just under three weeks away.
The site isn’t completely confident about that precise date, stating there “are now a few things lining up that seem to point to an announcement on or around September 14”. But it’s pretty certain that the full launch is now imminent.
Read More at Techradar
Intel Core i7-12700 leak shows a CPU that’s a potential threat to AMD
Now, the rumored Core i7-12700K is purportedly going to offer eight full cores plus four low-power cores, for a total thread count of 20, so if the spec info provided via Geekbench is correct, the vanilla 12700 will do away with the 4 ‘small’ power-efficient cores.
Clock speeds are indicative of a pre-release sample CPU with a base clock of 2.1GHz and boost to 4.8GHz, but that’s very common with early leaks (remember, Alder Lake isn’t due until later in the year, maybe around October going by the rumor mill).
As for the actual result – assuming it’s genuine – the Core i7-12700 managed a score of 1,595 in single-core, with 10,170 recorded in multi-core. The former score doesn’t look great, and indeed lags behind the current Core i7-11700, which is of course disappointing on the face of it (more on that in a moment).
Read More at Techradar
Messenger celebrates its 10th anniversary with new features and a plan to become the ‘connective tissue’ for real-time experiences
To celebrate its ten year anniversary, Messenger today announced a handful of new features: poll games, word effects, contact sharing, and birthday gifting via Facebook Pay. But beyond the fun features, Facebook has been testing a way to add voice and video calls back into the Facebook app, rather than on Messenger.
“We are testing audio and video calls within the Facebook app messaging experience so people can make and receive calls regardless of which app they’re using,” a representative from Facebook told TechCrunch. “This will give people on Facebook easy ways to connect with their communities where they already are.”
Read More at Techcrunch
The Google Pixel 6 phones to have in-display fingerprint readers
Google officially confirmed some details about the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro earlier this month and even shared images of the two upcoming phones. Unlike the Pixel 5, the 6-series shows no sign of a rear-mounted fingerprint reader. Where is the reader then? Built into the display, by the looks of it.
Hiroshi Lockheimer posted a screenshot, probably from the Pixel 6 Pro (Lockheimer is a founding member of the Android team). The post was deleted, but you can clearly see the fingerprint reader icon.
Read More at Gsmarena
What’s missing in Windows 11, according to Reddit
Windows 11 will launch later this year, and while it improves upon Windows 10 in many areas, some believe that it’s missing some features. A Reddit thread lists several features and options that people believe are missing from the new operating system.
Koken_halliwell shares the list of features they believe are missing from Windows 11:
- Drag and drop to Taskbar to open files with taskbar apps (WTF were they thinking when removing this??!). This is one of the main reasons that is preventing me to upgrade my everyday work PC.
- Move the Taskbar to whatever side we want (I use the left one).
- Combine only when the Taskbar is full (I need to see labels to work properly/efficiently). Also not combine at all for users who prefer it like that.
- Remove those ridiculous new “requirements” (I’ve tested myself my “unsupported” laptop works WAY better and faster with W11 than it ever did with W10). Not to mention the environmental disaster it’s gonna supose to our already destroyed planet. And BTW despite I can, not everyone can afford a new computer just because MS wants to play [b*tchy].
- Folders in start menu.
- Opening another instance of an already running app by shift-clicking the icon in the Taskbar (I think it’s ctrl+shift+click how I made that work in W11).
- Permanently remove the Recommended section and leave all that blank space for the pinned apps (I’ve always liked the idea of having an apps drawer in Windows besides the apps list). Maybe an option to swap the apps list for an apps drawer would be great (which will directly show up once you press the Windows button).
- I don’t want her back but it’s a shame the way Cortana ended and how useless she was in comparison to Alexa or other assistants. Anyway if she makes a comeback it should be 100% optional.
Read More at Windows Central
