Tech
Here are the OnePlus 8, iPhone 9, and foldable Pixel patent leaks from this past week – MobileSyrup
Images, renders and videos of upcoming smartphones are constantly leaking.
All of these leaks are often difficult to follow, so we’ve compiled a list of this past week’s hottest rumours. Specifically, any smartphone leak that has occurred from March 28th to April 3rd.
In this third week of COVID-19 quarantine, we’ve seen plenty of leaks about the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro and some leaks about Apple’s upcoming entry-level iPhone.
Apple
Apple’s rumoured iPhone SE — also often called the iPhone SE 2 and iPhone 9 — is expected to launch on April 15th.
iPhone 9 update ?
Per an internal meeting yesterday, Apple is now preparing for an April release.
Tentative dates:
– Announcement on April 15
– Shipments on April 22Keep in mind: we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and things could change.
Fingers crossed ? pic.twitter.com/egz8UWXd9F
— Jon Prosser (@jon_prosser) March 31, 2020
For more on the iPhone 9 announcement date, click here.
Apple’s online store accidentally updated a Belkin screen protector listing to state that it’s compatible with the 2020 version of the iPhone SE. This handset will reportedly feature a 4.7-inch screen, an A13 processor, 3GB of RAM and either 64GB, 128GB or 256GB of storage.
For more on the iPhone SE updated version listing, click here.
OnePlus
The OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro’s official cases leaked before the phones’ eventual launch later this month. The cases come in clear, nylon and two sandstone texture variants, ‘Sandstone Cyan’ and ‘Sandstone Purple.’ There’s also a new ‘Karbon’ case, that sports a carbon-fibre like finish.
For more on the cases, click here.
Leaked renders of the OnePlous 8 show that the phone is coming out in a ‘Glow’ colour variant as well as black and green.
For more on the OnePlus 8 and the Glow colour, click here.
The OnePlus 8 Pro will reportedly feature a 6.78-inch ‘Super Fluid Curved’ display with HDR10+ and 1400 nits of brightness. Additionally, the phone sports a 120Hz refresh rate and will feature improved haptics.
For more on the OnePlus 8 Pro display leak, click here.
Samsung
A reported image of the Samsung Galaxy Note 20+’s (or Note 20 Ultra) LED View Cover case mould leaked courtesy of Roland Quandt. From the model, it appears the handset’s camera placement will be the same as the S20 series. The mould also shows that the buttons are on the right side, which is different from the Note 10 series.
Here’s a fun one. This is a mold for an inlay for the official Samsung Galaxy Note 11 (Plus) LED View Cover. (Ignore the markings and the aspect ratio could be a little off, too). pic.twitter.com/kAZEFmTXhB
— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) March 31, 2020
For more on the Note 20+ mould, click here.
It looks like Google might be jumping on the flexible display bandwagon. A patent published by the tech giant indicates the company is also looking to patent a foldable device. The phone can bend in a way that features the screen next to the rear-facing camera sensor, according to the patent. The patent also outlines how the phone is able to fold at a 90-degree angle.
For more on the Google flexible display patent, click here.
Tech
PlayStation 5 Pro rumored to beef up GPU and ray tracing, bring AI acceleration
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The PlayStation 5 launched in late 2020, though it feels like it arrived later due to supply issues. A Pro model will reportedly arrive four years later with a much improved GPU, AI acceleration and other enhancements.
The GPU will be the biggest upgrade on the PS5 Pro. Rumors claim up to 45% higher rasterization performance and 33.5 TFLOPs of compute power. Future SDK versions will support resolutions up to 8K and higher frame rates with 4K @ 120fps and 8K @ 60fps being possible.
Ray tracing performance is set to include 2-3 times, even 4 times on some occasions. This is thanks to a massive increase from 18 BVH4 work groups to 30 BVH8. The so-called “Bounding Volume Hierarchies” help speed up ray intersection calculations (i.e. does this ray of light hit this object or not?). We will skip the technical details, but the digit after BVH means that each individual work group will be able to do more work.
The Pro will also feature the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution upscaling and antialiasing technology (PSSR for short). This will be especially helpful for ray tracing, which sees computation demands explode as resolution goes up.
The PlayStation 5 Pro will also bring a custom machine learning architecture. An AI Accelerator will offer up to 300 TOPS of 8-bit and 67 TFLOPS of 16-bit floating point computation. This might be the most interesting part as modern generative models can create realistic textures and speech, write out text based on a prompt and so on – what can developers do with this?
The console will also come with a modest boost to the CPU, which will have a “High CPU Frequency Mode” that goes up to 3.85GHz (from 3.5GHz), a 10% increase. By the sound of it, the PS5 Pro is very close to thermal limits, so this mode will drop GPU frequency by 1.5% (resulting in 1% performance loss).
The Pro model will have faster RAM that does 18 gigatransfers per second, a 28% increase from 448GB/s to 576GB/s. This is needed to feed the beefier GPU.
The audio subsystem will also get a boost with 35% more performance that can be spent on higher quality sound effects.
The PlayStation 5 Pro is expected to have 1TB onboard storage and a detachable Blu-ray drive similar to the slim models. Sony might release the Pro model in Fall 2024, but there has been no official acknowledgment of the console.
Tech
Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is for lower-tier high-end phones – MobileSyrup
Qualcomm has a new Snapdragon 8-series chip aimed at devices that aren’t quite flagships but are not quite mid-range either.
The new chip offers manufacturers more options but also further contributes the Qualcomm’s increasingly weird and confusing product lineup. The new 8s Gen 3 is like the opposite of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ chips, which typically offer a little more than the company’s annual flagship product.
The 8s Gen 3 matches most of what Qualcomm’s current Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 flagship offers, but with just a little less. For example, the chips have a similar GPU, but the 8s Gen 3’s version has one less performance core and runs at a lower frequency. Additionally, the 8s Gen 3 uses the previous generation Snapdraogn X70 5G modem with Wi-Fi 7 support, compared to the X75 modem in the 8 Gen 3.
Since AI capabilities were one of the major highlights of the 8 Gen 3, the 8s Gen 3, unsurprisingly, also sports similar (but not quite as good) AI chops. The 8s Gen 3 can support generative AI on-device and is capable of running large language models (LLMs) of up to 10 billion parameters. That includes LLMs like Llama 2 and Gemini Nano.
While that’s all well and good, it’ll be interesting to see how manufacturers use the 8s Gen 3, and how consumers respond to the new chip. Flagships will likely keep going for the flagship Qualcomm chips, like the 8 Gen 3 or inevitable 8+ Gen 3, whenever it arrives. But Qualcomm also offers the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, just a hair below the new 8s Gen 3. Will the 8s Gen3 offer enough to make it a worthwhile choice over the 7 Gen 3? If you’re already looking at the 8s Gen 3, does it make sense to just go for the 8 Gen 3? Only time will tell.
Qualcomm expects the 8s Gen 3 to land in devices from Honor, iQOO, Realme, Redmi and Xiaomi in the coming months, though notably, none of those brands sell phones in Canada.
Header image credit: Qualcomm
Source: Qualcomm Via: The Verge
Tech
Google partnership 'missing piece' in Apple AI strategy – analysts – Proactive Investors USA
News of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL, ETR:APC) and Google’s discussions over the rollout of the latter’s Gemini AI chatbot on iPhones sent shares higher and prompted positive feedback from analysts on Monday.
Apple climbed 1.4% on the reports that it would license Gemini to power new features in its latest iPhone software, while Google owner Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) jumped 4.6%.
As per Wedbush, such an agreement is the “missing piece” in Apple’s artificial intelligence strategy, due to materialise with the release of IOS 18 software for its products this year.
Such plans could involve the introduction of an AI App Store, as per Wedbush, alongside the incorporation of new features into the iPhone 16, expected in September.
These may well be among features unveiled by Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, such as homegrown large language models.
“This is a major win for Google to get onto the Apple ecosystem and have access to the golden installed base of Cupertino,” analysts said in a note.
Indeed, some 2 billion-plus Apple devices are said to currently be in circulation globally, with Wedbush also highlighting a likely “major license fee” attached to the deal.
“For Apple, this will give them the foundation and technology blueprint to double down on AI features currently being developed,” the bank continued.
This should help “make sure that iPhone 16 will be a potential game changer iPhone release around AI functionality”.
Though details of the deal, reported by Bloomberg, are slim, Wedbush said more could be expected before June’s conference, while reiterating an ‘outperform’ rating for Apple.
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