Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite box with device image and key details revealed via FCC appearance

A listing by the Federal Communications Commission of the United States has revealed some information about the Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite. The details come from an image of the box for the Mi Watch Lite, which also features a render of the smartwatch. The wearable has a somewhat generic look, containing its 1.4-inch HD screen inside a square-faced display unit that has a physical button on the right-hand side.

Some of the features of the Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite have been revealed via the packaging, so it can be seen that the smartwatch comes with a handy built-in GPS, an abundance of fitness modes, auto-brightness for the display, and it’s waterproof (up to 50 m). The wearable, which will likely be priced at a very affordable level, also offers the practically obligatory heart-rate monitor.

The box also shows that the Mi Watch Lite sports a 230-mAh battery and that it is compatible with Android devices at operating system 4.4 and above and iOS hardware running at 10 or above. The multiple languages on the packaging imply that the Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite is going to go global, although with the model number “REDMIWT02” printed on the box it certainly seems that there will be some countries that will greet this device as the Redmi Watch.

OnePlus Nord N10 5G and N100 released in Europe; North American launch to follow soon

Rumors about OnePlus working on two low-cost smartphones have been around for quite some time now. Both phones leaked in their entirety a few days ago. The leak also prophesized that OnePlus would make the OnePlus Nord N100 and Nord N10 5G on October 26. OnePlus has slyly released both phones on its website, without the usual fanfare that has always accompanied its product releases.

The OnePlus Nord N10 5G is, for all practical purposes, a scaled-down OnePlus Nord. As foretold by earlier reports, it is the world’s first smartphone to run Qualcomm’s 5G-ready Snapdragon 690 SoC. However, its rear camera array is a tad better than the OnePlus Nord, as it employs a 64MP wide-angle lens as its primary sensor (the Nord has a 48MP lens). The remaining lenses -8MP ultrawide, 5MP depth, 2MP macro- are identical across both smartphones. The Nord N10 5G ditches its sibling’s dual-selfie camera setup and settles for a single 16MP lens.

OnePlus is one of the few OEMs that is committed to bringing high-refresh-rate displays to the mid-range. The Nord N10 5G comes with a 6.4-inch FHD IPS LCD panel clocked at 90Hz. A layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protects the display that has no official IP rating. Its 4,300mAh battery supports fast charging at up to 30W. At €329 (US$388), the OnePlus Nord N10 5G is only marginally cheaper than its better-specced sibling. There appears to be only one variant of the device with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. OnePlus will announce its North American price and availability soon.

Unlike the OnePlus Nord N10 5G, the OnePlus Nord N100 is in no way comparable to the original Nord. Retailing at €179 (US$211), it is the first ‘budget’ OnePlus phone to hit the shelves since the company’s inception. It bears all the marking of an entry-level device, with its Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 SoC, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. The marginally large 6.5-inch IPS LCD panel has an HD+ resolution and 60Hz refresh rate. One of the most significant differences between the Nord N10 5G and Nord N100 is in its cameras, with the latter using a triple camera array (13MP wide-angle, 2MP macro, 2MP depth) that is a lot less formidable than the former’s setup. Thankfully, the phone’s colossal 5,000mAh battery supports fast charging at 18W.

Apart from the obvious compromises in the type of panel used, camera setup, and hardware, the OnePlus Nord N10 5G and N100 also lack some minor features. The under-display fingerprint sensor is replaced with a rear-mounted capacitive model. Support for aptX HD is absent on both phones too. Interestingly enough, OnePlus has opted to ship these devices with stereo speakers, which the Nord lacks.

Xiaomi is slated to launch the Redmi K30S Extreme Commemorative Edition in China

The executive Lei Jun has reportedly announced that the Redmi K30S will debut in China tomorrow (October 27, 2020). As this brand’s parent company Xiaomi is still observing its 10-year anniversary, it is also to be known as the Commemorative Edition. However, it seems customers in other markets will not miss out on this phone.

Jun has also conceded that this ‘new’ phone is also known as the Xiaomi Mi 10T on the global market, thus confirming several leaks suggesting that is indeed the case. Therefore, it seems this K30S will make a departure from the round camera-hump motif of the rest of its series for the first time.

Mi Fans in China can also expect a 6.67-inch display with a 144Hz refresh rate, even if it is also LCD. It may have 12GB RAM options paired with the Snapdragon 865 SoC. Despite these flagship specs, however, it is rumored to go for an attractive price.

Currently, it is thought to start at around 2499 yuan (~US$372). By contrast, the Mi 10T started at €499 (~$590). Xiaomi’s CEO has also noted that it will be released during China’s annual 11.11 sales event, which may indeed set the promise of a good price for this Commemorative Edition in stone.

A whole bunch of Asus ZenBook and VivoBook laptops are now shipping with 11th gen Intel Tiger Lake CPUs

Intel Tiger Lake laptops were set to debut before the end of this month and, as promised, most OEMs have already begun shipping. Asus has just announced at least ten different models with several SKUs each all equipped with 11th gen Core i5 and Core i7 parts.

The Asus-provided table below summarizes the new Tiger Lake models. Note that all of them are merely refreshes of existing 10th gen Ice Lake laptops and so none are sporting new chassis designs. The ZenBook Flip S UX371 is particularly noteworthy as it is Asus’ first laptop to be certified under the Intel Evo platform.

We’ve already complained about the confusing naming convention of the latest laptops, but we can at least attempt to summarize it here for users interested in a new Asus. The VivoBook series is aimed at budget-conscious users while ZenBook models are more luxurious. The ZenBook S is different from the ZenBook 13 is that the former sports a 3:2 display aspect ratio while the latter is a more traditional 16:9 offering. Prices range from $700 USD for a VivoBook up to $1700 USD for a ZenBook S.

iPhone 13: rumored portless shift to MagSafe, 120 Hz display, possibility of an in-display fingerprint sensor, and a confirmed Snapdragon X60 5G modem

The iPhone 12 series is still fresh from the oven, but rumor tidbits about next year’s iPhones have already started making their way online. This year’s iPhones sport great hardware no doubt, but they disappointed prospective buyers in one major aspect — lack of high-refresh rate displays, which has almost become a staple feature in the Android world today. The iPhone 13 (or whatever it will be called) may finally include high-refresh rate displays similar to the iPad Pro.

Replying to YouTuber Sam Sheffer on Twitter, known Apple leaker Jon Prosser seems to be confident that the iPhone 13 will indeed sport 120 Hz displays. Prosser also ruled out the possibility of USB-C and predicted a 50-50 chance for an in-display fingerprint sensor on the next wave of Apple iPhones.

While many expected Apple to move to a more universal USB-C charging solution, the iPhone 12 still uses the company’s proprietary Lightning connector. However, with Apple introducing the MagSafe ecosystem that enables easy wireless charging and hooking up compatible accessories, we may not see a USB-C port on the iPhone at all. In fact, Prosser even goes on to say that Apple may make upcoming iPhones completely portless. Of course, this also depends on how well the MagSafe ecosystem matures in the next year or so.

The other new feature that will surely make its way to the iPhone 13 (at least on the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max models) is Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X60 5G modem. The iPhone 12 series uses the Snapdragon X55 5G modem since that was the latest available Qualcomm offering during the iPhone 12 development process. Now, an excerpt from the Apple-Qualcomm settlement filing unearthed first by Danny Walsh on Twitter and posted by MacRumors reads,

Apple intends to commercially launch (i) New Models of Apple Products during the time period between June 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021 (the “2020 Launch”), some of which use the SDX55 Qualcomm Chipset, (ii) New Models of Apple Products during the time period between June 1, 2021 and May 31, 2022 (the “2021 Launch”), some of which use the SDX60 Qualcomm Chipset, and (iii) New Models of Apple Products during the time period between June 1, 2022 and May 31, 2024 (the “2022/23 Launch”), some of which use the SDX65 or SDX70 Qualcomm Chipsets (each a “Launch” and collectively the “Launches”).”

For those not in the know, Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon X60 5G modem in February this year. The Snapdragon X60 is fabbed on TSMC’s 5 nm process and can aggregate 5G mmWave and sub-6 GHz bands while also supporting aggregation of sub-6 GHz TDD and FDD bands so that carriers can maximize spectrum usage and capacity by combining the high performance of mmWave with the wider range of sub-6 GHz. The Snapdragon X60 modem also supports Voice over New Radio, which alleviates the need to fallback on 4G for voice usage.

Galaxy S21 Ultra: Samsung’s upcoming flagship will allegedly come with two telephoto lenses, support for S Pen inputs, and more

The torrent of Galaxy S21 series leaks that we’ve seen in the past few weeks almost certainly confirm that Samsung plans on releasing it early (mid-January 2021, by some estimates) this time around. Several leakers have emphasized that the devices will come with a flat display, with the notable exception of the Galaxy S21 Ultra, which will feature a ‘slightly’ curved screen, if a new leak is to be believed.

Twitter leaker @not_koh suggests that the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s display will be more or less identical to that of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra with marginally better color accuracy and support for Dolby Vision. As foretold by several reports, the Galaxy S21 Ultra will be the first of its kind to support S Pen inputs. Whether or not it will ship with an S Pen out of the box remains to be seen. The screen might even be able to run at 1440p 120Hz, but that remains unconfirmed. Support for variable refresh rate operation is allegedly in the books, too. Another leaker weighs in stating that it will have a diagonal length of 6.8-inches. Both tipsters agree that the Galaxy S21 Ultra will cost around US$1,300.

Samsung appears to have taken a page or two from Huawei’s playbook while designing the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s cameras. The primary 108MP ISOCELL HM2 Bright sensor will be assisted by a 16MP ultra-wide-angle lens, a 10MP (2x optical zoom) telephoto lens, and a second 10MP (5x optical zoom) periscope telephoto lens. Unfortunately, we have to wait a bit longer for an under-display camera, as the Galaxy S21 will use the tried-and-tested hole-punch approach to house the 40MP selfie shooter. As is the case with new Samsung releases, the entire Galaxy S21 series will come with some new camera features such as the ability to capture 4K video at 60 FPS on all cameras, WDR support along with HDR, and more. The features will eventually make their way to older devices via the One UI 3.1 update.

Not much seems to have improved on the storage/memory front. The Galaxy S21 Ultra will come in three variants with 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB of storage coupled with 12/16GB of RAM. Much like its predecessor, the smartphone will come with a 5,000 mAh battery. The smartphone will come with a 25W charger out of the box and support fast charging up to 45W. Despite one report stating otherwise, Samsung doesn’t plan on bringing back the headphone jack with the Galaxy S21 series.

Prima facie, the Galaxy S21 Ultra seems like a marginal upgrade over its antecedent. Most of the specifications are identical across the board, with minimal improvements in the camera and battery department. However, the phone’s Exynos 2100 SoC promises to deliver a significant performance boost over last year’s Exynos 990. The leaker rounds things off by saying that that the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold series is where the real upgrades will be at.

iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro’s battery runtimes fail to impress when compared to the iPhone 11 Pro

Apple unveiled the iPhone 12 series recently with added functionality and a new A14 Bionic SoC. However, details of the battery capacities of these phones were not obvious from the official spec sheets apart from the usual video and audio playback runtimes.

Arun Maini of the YouTube channel Mrwhosetheboss compared the battery life of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro with older models such as the iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPhone 11, iPhone XR, and the 2020 iPhone SE. In his tests, which had all the test iPhones running at the same brightness, battery health, and other settings without the SIM card installed, the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro fell behind the iPhone 11 Pro Max and iPhone 11 Pro in terms of offering long runtimes.

In Arun’s testing, the iPhone 11 Pro still had about 18% battery remaining at the end of 6 hours and 35 minutes whereas the iPhone 12 Pro had already run out of juice by then. The phone that trailed behind all others was the iPhone SE 2020. His battery results ranked the iPhone models as follows:

iPhone 11 Pro Max: 8 hours 29 minutes

iPhone 11 Pro: 7 hours 36 minutes

iPhone 12: 6 hours 41 minutes

iPhone 12 Pro: 6 hours 35 minutes

iPhone 11: 5 hours 8 minutes

iPhone XR: 4 hours 31 minutes

iPhone SE (2020): 3 hours 59 minutes

A recent teardown revealed that the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro shared the same 2,815 mAh battery, which is smaller than what is available on the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro models (3,110 mAh and 3,046 mAh, respectively). It is possible that Apple would have had to reduce physical battery size to make room for the added 5G components.

Further complicating matters is that the iPhone 12 series have bigger and higher resolution displays compared to last year’s models, which further strains the battery. The only respite here is the new A14 Bionic chip, which is touted to be have much improved power efficiency owing to the 5 nm process.

The numbers can be expected to further go down by another 20% when the new iPhone 12 models are used on 5G networks. We will still need to see how the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the iPhone 12 Mini fare in these tests for a complete picture. Right now, it looks like users will have to compromise a bit on battery life in exchange for advanced hardware.

Big Navi ASUS ROG STRIX Radeon RX 6800XT allegedly boosts to a remarkable 2.5 GHz in 3DMark 11

According to tipster @patrickschur_, a custom ASUS ROG STRIX Radeon RX 6800 XT part can boost as high as 2.5 GHz when running 3DMark 11. Interestingly, the engineering sample Schur talked about seemed to spend a lot of time at high clock speeds. In an update to his original post, Schur claimed that the ROG STRIX Radeon RX 6800 XT was running at clock speeds higher than 2.3 GHz 85 percent of the time. 

These figures, coming just days before the Big Navi announcement, reinforce the possibility of the RX 6800 XT matching or getting close to the Ampere GeForce RTX 3080. Unconfirmed reports indicate that the RX 6800 XT isn’t AMD biggest Big Navi part, with a higher-end RX 6900 XT expected to match or even beat the GeForce RTX 3090 in raster workloads. 

The AIB RX 6800 XT clock speeds hint at AMD’s approach to Big Navi. Rather than going “wide and low” like Ampere, Big Navi could leverage fewer functional cores running at a far high clock speed, thanks to the TSMC’s 7nm process. With occasional boost clocks appearing to touch 2.5 GHz, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not 2.5 GHz game clocks are possible with a bit of overclocking on Big Navi. We should learn during AMD’s event on October 28th. 

Lenovo IdeaPad S340 15 with 10th gen Core i5, 8 GB DDR4 RAM, 256 GB SSD, and 1080p display on sale for $470 USD

One of Lenovo’s already cheap entry-level multimedia laptops is now even cheaper this week at Office Depot down to just $470 USD. Though the 15.6-inch IdeaPad S340 deal won’t net you a luxurious Yoga experience, the specifications and size are nonetheless respectable considering the low asking price.

The configuration comes with a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS display, Intel Core i5-1035G1 CPU, 8 GB of removable DDR4 RAM, 256 GB storage, Wi-Fi 5, SD reader, and a backlit keyboard. There is even space to add a secondary internal storage drive. In comparison, most other 15.6-inch laptops in the sub $500 range typically come with slower Core i3 Celeron CPUs, lower resolution TN displays, and no keyboard backlight.

In our full review of the IdeaPad S340 15, we found the system to be easily upgradeable and with good display quality for the price. However, the small battery and middling CPU performance for a Core i5 may turn off some power users.

See our review of the device here to learn more about the Lenovo device.

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 14 with the Nvidia GPU is better for gaming

We had already tested the Yoga Slim 7 14 with the Ryzen 7 4800U processor, and we were especially surprised by the very high CPU performance. However, there are still delivery issues with this processor. Alternatively, Lenovo offers even slower Ryzen CPUs as well as Intel CPUs. This is also the case with our test device that is equipped with the Core i7-1065G7 (Ice Lake, 10 nm). The performance of the quad-core processor is decent in the Yoga Slim 7, and AMD and Intel are still about equal in single-core performance, but the Ryzen CPUs have a clear advantage in the Multi tests.

To further increase graphics performance, Lenovo combines the Intel processor with a dedicated graphics card from Nvidia. The GeForce MX350 is a low mid-range chip, and the new integrated GPUs already come quite close to this performance level. Especially the RX Vega 8 of the Ryzen 7 4800U is very fast. Overall, the Intel/Nvidia combination is better suited for gaming in this case.

However, the additional graphics card also has a negative effect on emissions, since on the one hand, the fan becomes much louder under load, and on the other hand, the surface temperatures are also significantly higher. The battery life is on par, though.