iQOO U5x announced with Snapdragon 680, dual camera, and 5,000 mAh battery
IQOO unveiled the iQOO U5 in December with 5G connectivity and Snapdragon 695 SoC, and today, the company followed it up with an ‘x’ model, which doesn’t support 5G networks, but costs less.
The iQOO U5x is powered by the Snapdragon 680 SoC, boots Android 11-based OriginOS Ocean, and has two RAM options – 4GB and 8GB. The smartphone comes with 128GB of storage onboard, and it also has a microSD card slot, allowing storage expansion up to 1TB.
The U5x packs a 6.51″ HD+ LCD with a notch for the 8MP selfie camera, and the rear panel of the smartphone, having a 3D grid pattern, sports an island housing two cameras – 13MP primary and 2MP macro.
The iQOO U5x features a side-mounted fingerprint scanner and a 3.5mm headphone jack, and fueling the entire package is a 5,000 mAh battery charged through a microUSB port at up to 10W.
The 4GB/128GB model of the iQOO U5x is priced at CNY899 ($140/€130), while the 8GB/128GB version costs CNY1,099 ($170/€160). The U5x is already on sale in China through the company’s official website in two colors, but availability in other regions is unknown.
From Gsmarena
Samsung Galaxy M33 is launching in India on April 2
The Samsung Galaxy M33 unveiled earlier this month will launch in India on April 2. It comes in three colors, but Samsung has only confirmed two right now for the Indian market – blue and green.
The 5G-ready Galaxy M33 is built around a 6.6″ FullHD+ screen and runs Android 12-based One UI 4.1 out of the box. It’s powered by a 5nm octa-core processor, but the company hasn’t revealed the chipset’s name. However, we do know that the Galaxy M33 will have two memory configurations in India – 6GB/128GB and 8GB/128GB.
The Galaxy M33 has five cameras onboard – an 8MP selfie shooter inside the notch, with the 50MP primary camera on the back joined by 5MP ultrawide, 2MP macro, and 2MP depth units.
The smartphone features a side-mounted fingerprint reader and packs a 6,000 mAh battery with 25W charging support. However, Samsung won’t provide a 25W charger with the retail package, so you’ll have to spend extra money to get faster charging speeds.
The Samsung Galaxy M33 will be sold in India through Amazon.in and the company’s official website. We’ll have more details about its availability and price next Saturday.
From Gsmarena
GDC 2022 provided a glimpse into the future of PS VR2 games
Sony may have been an official no-show at GDC 2022, but we know its developers were there behind the scenes in San Francisco, allowing game devs to try out the PS VR2. Anacrusis developer Chet Faliszek tweeted that “the world just feels different” after trying the headset, courtesy of former president Shuhei Yoshida and head of Playstation Creators Greg Rice.
While the media obviously wasn’t privy to these backroom demos, I did get to attend an intriguing GDC panel: ‘Building Next-Gen Games for PlayStation VR2 with Unity.’ Headed by Unity developers who ostensibly have PS VR2 dev kits of their own, the panel ran through the differences coding VR games for PS5 VR compared to current headsets like the Quest 2.
Sony already announced the PS VR2 would use eye tracking to support foveated rendering, consolidating the highest graphics in your line of sight. But Unity provided the first hard statistics of how much this improves performance: GPU frame time improvements are up to 2.5x faster with foveated rendering and up to 3.6X faster with both rendering and eye tracking.
From Android Central
OnePlus 10R rumored to drop the alert slider and have centered selfie camera hole punch
One of the many smartphones that OnePlus is apparently planning to launch this year is the 10R. According to recent rumors, this should become official in May. While perhaps not a 100% direct successor, the name makes it part of the same line as the OnePlus 9R and 9RT, but according to a new rumor the 10R will differ from those two in a couple of ways.
First off, the iconic OnePlus alert slider will be gone from this phone. While in the past all OnePlus devices had it, recently more and more OnePlus phones are launching without it, especially non-flagships. And the 10R will allegedly be no different.
Next up, it’s said to feature a centered hole-punch for the selfie camera, and the other R devices had that in the left part of the screen. The OnePlus 10R is reportedly codenamed Pickle, and it might be a rebranded version of the Realme GT Neo3 (although we’ve also heard that the Nord 3 would be such a rebrand, so we’re not sure exactly what to believe).
The OnePlus 10R is expected to have a 120 Hz display, a MediaTek Dimensity SoC (9000 or 8100 in case it’s just a GT Neo3 in disguise), as well as 80W fast charging.
From Gsmarena
Sony will unveil its Xbox Game Pass rival soon, new reports say
There’s still a lot that we don’t know about a finalized version of PlayStation’s Spartacus. However, sources have now told Bloomberg, that Sony plans to introduce the service as early as next week.
The sources say Sony will use Spartacus to combine PlayStation Plus, its premium online subscription, and PlayStation Now, its not-so-beloved streaming service. The new PlayStation Game Pass alternative will also reportedly offer multiple tiers of offerings. These tiers will give users access to both modern and classic games from previous PlayStation eras.
From the sounds of it, it looks like PlayStation is taking a note from Amazon’s strategy for Luna, its cloud-based gaming service. Luna offers multiple tiers, called “channels”, which give you access to different games depending on which channels you subscribe to. It’s an interesting approach, especially given that Xbox Game Pass gives you access to everything without locking games and content behind additional subscription tiers.
From BGR
Custom iPhone 13 Pro Max has USB-C, double the battery, and a fan
For years, we’ve wondered whether Apple will make the switch from Lightning to USB-C on iPhone. But that hasn’t happened yet, even though Apple transitioned almost every iPad in its lineup to USB-C. The iPhone 13 USB-C rumors came like clockwork, but Apple never went that way.
Naturally, rumors then said that the iPhone 14 models might be the first ones to feature a USB-C, especially considering pressure from the EU for all vendors to embrace the same charging port. But it seems more likely that Apple will move to a wireless-charging-only iPhone rather than embrace USB-C.
That said, engineers who aren’t afraid to mess with the iPhone’s internals have added USB-C connectivity to the iPhone by themselves. We saw an iPhone X with USB-C connectivity selling for thousands of dollars online a few months ago.
This wasn’t even the first crazy iPhone hardware hack. A different engineer added a headphone jack to the iPhone 7 a few years ago. He did it without changing the phone’s overall design, save for the 3.5mm port that had to be added to the chassis.
If you’ve witnessed those custom iPhones, you won’t be surprised to see what’s possible with the iPhone 13 Pro Max. An engineer from China gave the handset a massive makeover that includes USB-C connectivity and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
From BGR
WWDC Invites Could Be Sent Out Next Week: Here’s What We Know
In 2021, Apple sent out digital invitations for its 32nd Worldwide Developers Conference in late March. Given that an all-digital conference is expected to occur again this year rather than an in-person event, we could see Apple send invitations as soon as next week.
Apple last year sent out invitations to developers and the press for WWDC on March 30, with the dates of the conference being June 7 to June 11. During the conference, Apple announced iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, watchOS 8, and more.
Apple used to hold its Worldwide Developers Conference in the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, but since 2020, all of Apple’s events have been digital with no in-person attendance. It’s unclear when the next in-person Apple event might be, but it’s likely not to be WWDC this coming June.
During WWDC, Apple will announce iOS and iPadOS 16, macOS 13, watchOS 9, and possibly some new hardware. Apple last announced hardware during WWDC in 2019, when it unveiled the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR. Apple is working on an updated version of the Mac Pro with Apple silicon which could be announced during WWDC.
From Macrumors
Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti leak gives us an idea of just how fast the GPU is
Nvidia’s RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, which is rumored to arrive imminently, could offer a performance boost of around 10% compared to the vanilla RTX 3090, according to the latest leak.
This comes from the developer of the CapframeX utility (used for frame times capture and analysis), who posted some “first impressions” of the RTX 3090 Ti that they’ve apparently got hold of – apply the usual caution and skepticism, naturally.
According to the dev, the Ti version is in the ballpark of 10% faster than the base 3090 at 4K resolution, though what performance metric(s) we’re talking about isn’t elaborated on (presumably an average of some overall testing).
The tweet also lets us know that the GPU offers 2GHz boost clock speeds, and a power consumption of 450W, the latter of which has been rumored for some time now.
In terms of specs, the RTX 3090 Ti graphics card is expected to have 10,752 CUDA cores (which is 256 more than the RTX 3090), with the same 24GB of GDDR6X memory, but it’s faster VRAM.
From Techradar
Google issues Chrome update fixing mysterious zero-day exploit
Earlier this month, we learned about the zero-day Chrome exploit that state-sponsored hackers based in North Korea were able to access for just over a month before a patch was issued in mid-February. In that case, the hackers were able to fool the unwary with compromised real websites and sites they’d spoofed by securing similar domain names. Now, for the second time that we know of in 2022, there’s another Chrome zero-day and Google is rolling out yet another fix.
A new stable channel desktop Chrome update for Windows, Mac and Linux became available Friday. In a Chrome Releases Blog post (found via Bleeping Computer) Google explains that there is one security update in the release, for zero-day exploit CVE-2022-1096, first reported to the company by an anonymous tip on March 23. The zero-day is a weakness in Chrome’s JavaScript engine that can be used by hackers to inject their code into your browser. It’s exactly the kind of thing that malicious actors love to use against their targets. Google won’t provide much more information other than admitting there have already been attacks leveraging this zero-day weakness.
The company explained keeping some information away from the public as a safety measure, stating that full details on how the exploit worked won’t be made public until most users have the fix. Fortunately, this time Google was apparently able to issue a patch before the exploit became widely known. Users should update to Chrome version 99.0.4844.84 as soon as possible.
From Android Police
Malicious apps are being used to steal crypto from iOS and Android users
The antivirus maker and internet security firm ESET has uncovered a sophisticated malicious cryptocurrency scheme that has been targeting mobile users on Android and iOS since May of last year.
The scheme itself is believed to be the work of one criminal group and it uses malicious apps distributed through fake websites in order to steal Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from unsuspecting users. These malicious apps mimic popular cryptocurrency wallets including Metamask, Coinbase, Trust Wallet, TokenPocket, Bitpie, imToken and OneKey.
Those behind the scheme use ads placed on legitimate websites with misleading articles to promote the fake websites that distribute these copycat wallet apps. However, the cybercriminals have also recruited intermediaries through groups on Telegram and Facebook. While the main goal of the scheme is to steal users’ funds, ESET Research has mainly observed Chinese users being targeted but with cryptocurrencies becoming more popular, the firm’s security researchers expect the techniques used in it to spread to other markets.
From Techradar
