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Samsung’s new 200MP camera module could debut in some surprising phones

Image: Android Police

Who the heck needs 200 megapixels on their camera? Smartphone manufacturers, of course. It’s always a race to the next big number on a spec sheet and it seems that a surprise contestant is tipped to be in the lead for 200 million pixels’ worth of bragging rights.

The longtime Chinese tech blogger who goes by Ice universe now believes Motorola, subsidiary of Lenovo, will be the first to sport a 200MP camera on a phone sometime in the first half of next year. This will be followed by Xiaomi later on, and then Samsung “by 2023.”

From Android Police

Intel could bring out new GPUs every year to take the fight to AMD and Nvidia

Image: Shutterstock

Intel’s Arc Druid graphics cards, which would be the 4th-gen models, following on in alphabetical order from 1st-gen Alchemist, could be out in 2025, an employee has hinted – meaning that Intel could set a seriously fast pace for releasing new product lines in the GPU world.

This comes from VideoCardz, which spotted a tweet from Intel’s Arc Community Advocate and Driver Guru, who posted regarding the relative importance of components in a PC build, to which somebody replied with a joke about Nvidia’s RTX 6000 series being out in 2025 with colossal wattage demands.

As you can see, Bryce took the opportunity to tease the possibility that Intel might just have Druid GPUs launched in that year, all being well.

While we obviously have to take that with huge piles of condiments, it does seem to indicate that Intel’s plan is to get a new generation of graphics cards out every year.

We have Arc Alchemist coming early in 2022, or at least mobile versions, followed by desktop GPUs in Q2 according to the rumor mill, and if Druid is slated for 2025, that means Battlemage and Celestial, the generations in-between as confirmed by Intel’s official roadmap, will slot in for 2023 and 2024 – in theory.

Indeed, Battlemage has already been rumored to start weaving its magic in 2023 going by the GPU grapevine.

From Techradar

Here’s when the Sony Xperia Pro-I will be released

Here's when the Sony Xperia Pro-I will be released
Image: Gsmarena

Sony announced the Xperia Pro-I with its huge “1.0-type” sensor back in October, and if you’ve been waiting for its release date ever since, you’re in luck – now we finally have one.

The Xperia Pro-I will become available in the UK and France on December 2, in Germany on December 7, and in the US on December 10. So it’s looking very likely that you can make someone happy this holiday season by getting them one. Or maybe that someone is yourself? You decide.

From Gsmarena

Samsung Galaxy A13 4G production allegedly starts in India

Samsung Galaxy A13 5G leaked renders
Image: @onleaks

Samsung is expected to unveil the Galaxy A13 in the following weeks, either before the end of this year or in early 2022. This phone will come in two versions – the Galaxy A13 and A13 5G. Images of the latter have purportedly leaked already, and you can see one of them below.

The same can’t be said for the 4G version, but today a new rumor claims that this one will feature four cameras on the back – that’s one more than its 5G sibling. These will be arranged vertically like in the Galaxy A52s 5G. The Galaxy A13 4G is also said to have a glossy, entirely plastic build, which is no surprise really at its projected entry-level price point.

The phone will have a 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom, next to the USB-C port and speaker grille. The power button and volume rocker will unsurprisingly both be found on the right edge.

Allegedly, production of the A13 4G has already started in India at the Greater Noida factory, which means launch is fast approaching. The Galaxy A13 5G will be priced at around $250, and the A13 4G should definitely be cheaper than that.

From Gsmarena

ZTE allegedly has three upcoming flagships with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset

Leaked ZTE nubia models
Image: @passionategeekz

According to a new leak, ZTE is in the running as well. In a rather expected development, the new Qualcomm flagship chip will likely be powering the company’s next gaming phone line – namely the nubia Red Magic 7 and Red Magic 7 Pro. These are expected to sport the NX679J and NX709J model numbers, respectively.

As per the source, a mainstream flagship nubia Z40 is also in the pipeline with the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip. Though, given that the current nubia Z30 Pro was announced fairly recently back in May, we have to wonder whether the Z40 – NX701J is coming any time soon. Finally, the leaked list of devices does also mention an M2 Play phone – model number NX90J7. It probably won’t be rocking the same Qualcomm flagship chipset, though. Plus, its name is rather confusing since some of you might remember that ZTE already has a nubia M2 Play from all the way back in 2017.

In any case, the Qualcomm flagship chipset race seems to be heating up.

From Gsmarena

A mysterious Chinese GPU firm with deep pockets is gunning for Nvidia and AMD

Image: Moore Threads

Little is known about Moore Threads, a Chinese tech company that just celebrated its first birthday, and now wants to double the number of concurrent threads every two years. But rather than doing it in a CPU, the company is planning to do it in a GPU, putting it in direct competition with the likes of AMD, Intel and Nvidia.

The company has just secured a second funding of $313 million from a number of investors mostly based in China. This comes after an earlier funding in February 2021 worth “billions of yuan”. One particular investor, Tiktok owner Bytedance, is also developing its own Cloud AI and server chips based on ARM.

Moore Threads has already rolled out its first generation of GPU products, which it is describes as “a standard GPU that includes graphics rendering, universal parallel computing, video codecing [sic], high-precision parallel computing and AI reasoning training for a variety of integrated computing power, which can effectively build a super computing platform”. 

From Techradar

Nvidia RTX 3050 could arrive in Q2 2022 for more budget GPU options

Image: Nvidia

Nvidia’s long-rumored desktop version of the RTX 3050 (as opposed to the existing laptop model) could be here in the second quarter of next year, so perhaps as soon as April 2022.

The prospect of the arrival of this lower-end Ampere GPU in perhaps just over four months has been floated by VideoCardz, which has had its ear to the grapevine and heard the possible launch date from the same source which imparted the (original) rumor around the resurrected RTX 2060 with 12GB of VRAM (that’s supposedly due on December 7).

From Techradar

WhatsApp Pay gets approval to double its userbase in India

A new Reuters report details that WhatsApp requested the NPCI to remove the cap altogether. However, the regulator has supposedly allowed the company to double its userbase to 40 million instead. Due to the restriction, WhatsApp has not widely rolled out or promoted its payment service. In fact, it is yet to reach the initial 20 million user limit. Nonetheless, while the new 40 million user cap will give the Meta-owned platform some breathing room, it still won’t be sufficient as the service has over 500 million potential users for WhatsApp Pay in the country.

From Android Police

Mind-blowing tech could let humans travel from New York to Los Angeles in 1 second

Speed of light in the city of London
Image: YiuCheung/Adobe

Traveling at a percentage of something might not sound like much. However, even at just one percent of the speed of light, we’d be able to travel close to seven million miles per hour. That means it would take a little over a second to travel from New York to Los Angeles. That’s roughly 10,000 times faster than traveling on a commercial jet.

Of course, harnessing that power isn’t going to be easy. While scientists are working on things like warp drives the tech we already use in spacecraft could give us a chance to achieve faster speeds.

In 2010, we started using things called solar sails on some spacecraft. The idea behind solar sails is to capture the power of light from the sun and use it similar to how normal sails use wind. There’s a lot of complex math behind the tech, but if we were able to transition it to more commercial transports, we could have a breakthrough in how we travel.

Solar sails are essentially just thin sheets of plastic that attach to the vehicle. They use the sunlight they capture to push them forward, and some scientists believe they could one day propel spacecraft to 10 percent the speed of light.

From BGR

This is what scientists found when they peered deep beneath the surface of Mars

mars insight
Image: NASA/JPL

New data from the exploration of Mars has provided more evidence of Mars’ volcanic past.

The new study, which was published in Nature Communications, details how scientists used NARA’s InSight Mars Lander to record vibrations in the ground. This allowed them to map roughly 600 feet beneath the surface of the planet. Here they discovered data that appears to note the existence of stacks of ancient, dried lava flows.

From BGR

I’m a tech savvy person who occasionally cook and party. I am an engineer by profession and tech enthusiast by passion.
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