First official Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 image leaks as the launch gets closer
The Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 first surfaced back in September, then a couple of weeks later a detailed spec sheet leaked out. This will be a new affordable tablet with a 10.5” LCD that will (allegedly) target the $260 price point.
Its launch draws near and leakster Evan Blass has managed to find the first official image of the slate, here it is:
According to the leaked specs, the display will be a 10.5” 1,920 x 1,200 px LCD (16:10) with 60 Hz refresh rate and there will be four speakers with Dolby Atmos around the sides. The tablet will will also feature a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a USB-C port, its body will be made out of aluminum.
It will be powered by the Unisoc Tiger T618, something that was confirmed in a Geekbench result yesterday. Two results, actually, there is the Wi-Fi only SM-X200 and the LTE-enabled SM-X205.
From Gsmarena
Samsung is working on a new Exynos 1280 chipset for budget phones
Despite Qualcomm’s dominance over the mobile chipset segment in recent years, Samsung has been persistent at pushing its Exynos lineup of processors in its phones. The South Korean manufacturer equips most of its phones with its series of homegrown chipsets, and if a new leak is to be believed, Samsung is developing a new Exynos chipset for entry-level phones. This leak comes on the back of rumors that Samsung wants a majority of its 2022 devices to run on Exynos processors.
The name of the new processor is believed to be the Exynos 1280 mobile chipset. Now, there’s a lot we don’t know about this mysterious processor, but the leak has revealed that the Exynos 1280 is a step down from the Exynos 1080. Samsung unveiled the Exynos 1080 late last year, and it is by no means a slouch. In fact, it’s a powerful midrange chip used in Vivo’s X60 series of flagship phones. Given all this, it is a bit puzzling to understand what the tipster means by “entry-level” phones. Moreover, it is also possible that the Exynos 1280 debuts on a non-Samsung phone, similar to the Exynos 1080.
From Digital Trends
Asus returns to the world of Chromebooks with three very similar laptops
Asus’s lineup of premium Chromebooks has been killing it lately, with the Flip CX5 and Flip CX9 offering visions of the high-end Chrome OS devices we’ve always wanted. If those price points feel just a little too high for you, perhaps one of the company’s new series of entry-level laptops will fit your budget a little bit better.
All three 11.6″ Chromebooks are positioned perfectly for low-cost users like students and families (via Liliputing). If you’re shopping for yourself, the Asus Chromebook CX1 is the laptop for you — it’s part of the company’s ever-growing CX series, but likely at a much more affordable price point. Although we have yet to see how much it’ll cost once it hits retail, the smaller, more portable size — not to mention the slower specs — seem to guarantee it’ll come in far lower than the CX5’s $900 tag.
From Android Police
Widespread Security Risk Identified in Phones and Bluetooth Devices
Apps that track the locations of phones have proven to be useful in so many ways. Apple’s Find My app for finding a misplaced phone, for example, or for contact tracing COVID-19 transmissions during the pandemic. But a group of researchers at the University of California San Diego has discovered a troublesome security flaw in the Bluetooth hardware that apps such as these rely on, which they estimate may affect roughly 40 percent of mobile devices. The findings, first reported in a story by the Register, will be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in 2022.
“These applications require frequent and constant transmission of Bluetooth beacons to be detected by nearby devices,” explains Nishant Bhaskar, a PhD student at the University of California San Diego who was involved in the research. “Unfortunately, this also means that an adversary can also find out where we are at all times by simply listening to the Bluetooth transmissions from our personal devices.”
From Ieee Spectrum
Your Amazon Fire TV device is getting at least four years of updates
According to Amazon’s update policy on its streaming devices, Fire TV owners won’t have to worry about support ending for their devices any time soon.
SlashGear spotted the policy which states that Fire TV devices “receive guaranteed software security updates until at least four years after the device is last available for purchase.”
That means some of the best Amazon Fire TV sticks and other products will remain secure for quite some time.
In Amazon’s exhaustive list, the company names its streaming sticks, Recast devices, TV sets, and soundbars that will be supported “through 2025,” including the Fire TV Stick Basic Edition from 2016.
Amazon makes sure to highlight that the policy guarantees at least four years of updates, meaning support could extend beyond that. Additionally, Amazon makes the distinction that it extends to “after the device is last available for purchase” instead of when the device initially went on sale, like what many companies do.
From Android Central
AMD Zen 4D rumored to repeat the success of Intel’s Alder Lake hybrid design
YouTuber and leaker Moore’s Law is Dead revealed new information regarding AMD’s future architecture plans. According to leaks, AMD is working on a “dense” version of Zen 4 called Zen 4D. Zen 4D is basically a fork of Zen 4 that strips out features and reduces clock speeds.
It will also feature a newly designed cache system. All of this is to slightly reduce single-core performance in exchange for greatly increased multi-core performance. This would also allow AMD to increase the chip density, hence the “D” in the name.
From Digital Trends
Google’s Pixel foldable coming in 2022, cameras will be a step down from Pixel 6
Overall, it looks like this first Pixel foldable will take a step down in camera quality by comparison to the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. This is actually normal for foldable phones of this form factor especially, as even the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 does not have the same high-end camera specs as the Galaxy S21. The most likely reason for this is to reduce the thickness of the phone, as phone makers are currently trying to make their foldables smaller each year, and a thick camera visor like on the Pixel 6 would do just the opposite.
Knowing that the Pixel foldable is not going to use the same camera sensors as the Pixel 6, it only makes sense that Google would opt for sensors that they’ve used previously. This hardware reuse allows them to also reuse the machine learning models crafted for those cameras, which is where most of the Pixel series’ photography magic comes from.
In other files associated with the Google Camera app, we’ve found the first real signal of when this long awaited “Pixel Fold” should arrive. Within the code, there is a reference to “isPixel2022Foldable.” Generally speaking, the Google Camera app will refer to various generations of Pixel phones with these kinds of designations.
From 9to5Google
Xiaomi introduces Loop LiquidCool tech, promises to double the cooling efficiency of vapor chambers
Smartphone chipsets keep getting faster year after year, but despite continued improvement in silicon nodes, they keep running hotter too. This is why cooling solutions have become a major factor with vapor chambers (aka heat pipes) being a common part of the cooling stack.
Xiaomi has developed the Loop LiquidCool technology that improves on basic heat pipes in two ways and the result is double the cooling efficiency. This technology is expected to appear in Xiaomi products in the second half of 2022.
From Gsmarena
New York’s next mayor wants to be paid in Bitcoin
Eric Adams, mayor-elect for New York City, has said he would like his first three pay checks in bitcoin.
The former police captain was elected this week to take over at the end of mayor Bill de Blasio’s term in January.
Mr Adams said on social media that he wanted to signal his intention to make New York the “centre of the cryptocurrency industry”.
From BBC
Brain Implant Offers Artificial Vision To The Blind
Nothing makes you appreciate your vision more than getting a little older and realizing that it used to be better and that it will probably get worse. But imagine how much more difficult it would be if you were totally blind. That was what happened to [Berna Gomez] when, at 42, she developed a medical condition that destroyed her optic nerves leaving her blind in a matter of days and ending her career as a science teacher.
But thanks to science [Gomez] can now see, at least to some extent. She volunteered after 16 years to have a penny-sized device with 96 electrodes implanted in her visual cortex. The research is in the Journal of Clinical Investigation and while it is a crude first step, it shows lots of promise and uses some very novel techniques to overcome certain limitations.
From Hackaday
