New leaked Google Pixel 5 images confirm 128 GB storage option and symmetrical bezel

It has been a few days since @japonton posted hands-on photos with a prototype of the Pixel 5, but they have now delivered yet more glimpses of the upcoming handset. On the one hand, the new photos provide a better look at the symmetrical bezels of the Pixel 5, which will make a change from the Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 series.

On the other hand, they also show that Google will sell the device with 128 GB of storage. This was to be expected, but it will be interesting to see if 128 GB will be the base level for the Pixel 5, or if the company will continue to offer a 64 GB storage option on its premium smartphones.

Little else can be gleaned from the three photos. However, recent FCC certifications suggest that Google will release mmWave 5G and Sub-6 5G versions of the Pixel 5. The handset is expected to launch with a Snapdragon 765G in a colour that Jon Prosser described as black and green. Google is expected to launch the Pixel 5 at US$699 too, which will be a sharp reduction from the prices it charges for the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL.

Redmi Note 8, Redmi Note 9S, Redmi Note 9 Pro billed to star the show in third phase of MIUI 12 rollout

Xiaomi has been sending out MIUI 12 updates for well over three months at this point. In that period, the company has rolled out MIUI 12 to most of its premium phones, including the previously-ignored Mi Mix 3 5G. For some reason, however, the Redmi Note 8 and Redmi Note 9 Pro series remain on MIUI 11. But not for much longer. 

Just last week, Xiaomi finally rolled the credits on the second phase of its MIUI 12 rollout. The second phase of the rollout saw updates sent out to phones like the Mi Mix 2, Redmi Note 9, and Redmi Note 7. The company has now entered the third phase, and going by previous information, should see devices like the Mi Max 3, Mi CC9e, and Mi Note 3 get the update. Even more importantly, the update should finally arrive for the Redmi Note 8.

Older information indicates that the Redmi Note 9 Pro, Redmi Note 9 Pro Max, and Redmi Note 9S will all get the MIUI 12 update in the fourth phase of the rollout. However, there’s official confirmation that the Redmi Note 9 Pro will start getting the stable MIUI 12 update in certain regions this month. It’s logical to assume that the other Snapdragon 720G-powered phones will also get the update at the same time—and likely as part of the third phase.

Samsung Galaxy S20 FE: The Galaxy S20 “for the fans” revealed ahead of official release

Samsung is yet to announce the Galaxy S20 FE officially but its Filipino sub-division did, albeit briefly. Nonetheless, the reliable Evan Blass caught the slip-up, essentially confirming that a full-on launch is imminent. The listing, which has now been taken down, showed the S20 FE in two colours and with 128 GB of storage. Additionally, it confirmed that the device will come with dual-SIM connectivity.

Unsurprisingly, the marketing renders on Samsung Philippines correlate with those published by Blass and Roland Quandt. According to a leak earlier this month, the flat display of the S20 FE will measure 6.5-inches and will have a 120 Hz refresh rate. The screen will be a Super AMOLED panel too and will operate natively at 2,400 x 1,080 pixels at a pixel density of 407 PPI.

A 4,500 mAh battery will also be on board, as will 6 GB of RAM. Samsung Philippines also confirmed that the S20 FE will be available in Cloudy Navy and Cloud Lavendar, but we already know that Samsung plans to release the handset in Green, Orange, Red and White, too. Finally, the S20 FE has been assigned the model number G780F and will come in 4G and 5G variants.

Microsoft’s Surface Duo dual-screen Android phone now available starting at US$1399, early reviews unimpressed

For those that have been anticipating Microsoft’s dual-screen Surface Duo, today is the day. The Android phone is now available, but it definitely doesn’t come cheap.

The Surface Duo’s main feature is its two 5.6-inch 1800×1350 AMOLED displays. The phone has a 2-in-1 style hinge that allows it to open into a tablet. In this mode, the full display area has an 8.1-inch diagonal with a combined resolution of 2700×1800.

Other specs include last year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC, 6 GB of RAM, and either 128 GB or 256 GB of non-expandable UFS 3.0 storage. The Surface Duo runs Android 10 and comes with a bevy of Microsoft and Google apps pre-installed.

Prospective purchasers can buy the Surface Duo either unlocked from Microsoft or from AT&T for US$1399 (128 GB) or $1499 (256 GB).

Along with the official launch, the first wave of reviews of the Surface Duo went live today. Initial impressions are fairly mixed; while many outlets praised the phone’s design and form factor, several found the software to be undercooked, resulting in numerous bugs. Reviewers found that several Android apps simply aren’t designed for dual-screen support, and others exhibit odd and buggy behavior. Even the built-in system tools, such as the keyboard, were found to act erratically.

Considering the hype surrounding the Surface Duo, it’s likely Microsoft will iron out many of these issues in a short time. However, it seems that at launch, the Surface Duo is an expensive phone for early adopters that are fine with testing software rather than enjoying a fully fleshed out dual-screen experience.

What do you think of the Surface Duo? Let us know in the comments below.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 series may also suffer from a green tint display issue

Green tint has slowly turned into a popular issue with recent OLEDs. There were reports with the Galaxy S20 Ultra earlier this year, with similar reports coming from OnePlus 8 Pro owners and then iPhone 11 Pro series. The most recent cases were with the new Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, Galaxy Tab S7, and Galaxy Tab S7+. It appears that the issue isn’t just peculiar to the current generation of smartphones, however.

Going by multiple accounts, the Galaxy S10 series also seems to be plagued by the green tint issue. It’s entirely curious, as the S10 series featured 60 Hz panels, unlike the high-refresh-rate panels used on most of the devices that have also suffered from similar ailments. 

It’s unknown what exactly causes this issue. Complaints from a first-hand owner seemed to imply that the tint appeared after installing the latest security update, but there have also been similar complaints from other owners way before this. Again, it’s important to point out that all of the phones with this issue sport OLEDs made by Samsung. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, of course, and the fact that Samsung makes most of the premium OLED panels on the market right now probably skews the odds.

Do you have green tint on your Galaxy S10 or any older Samsung device? Let us know in the comments below.

Huawei MateBook X and MateBook 14 come to Europe with 3:2 displays and compact designs

The Huawei MateBook X and new MateBook 14 are coming to Europe, following their launches in China last month. The MateBook X is the more premium of the two laptops, but the MateBook 14 has the performance edge. Both devices will be available to order from October 7.

The MateBook X has a 13-inch IPS screen with a 3:2 aspect ratio and a resolution of 3,000 x 2,000 pixels. The touchscreen display also has a pixel density of 278 PPI, a contrast ratio of 1,500:1 and a screen-to-body ratio of 90%. According to Huawei, the display peaks at 400 nits.

A 42 Wh battery is onboard, which powers an Intel Core i5-10210U processor, 512 GB of PCIe storage and 16 GB of LPDDR3-2133 RAM. The MateBook X includes Huawei’s new pressure-sensitive trackpad, which extends to the edge of its compact chassis. Huawei has integrated an NFC reader for multi-screen collaboration, too.

Meanwhile, the MateBook 14 has either the Ryzen 5 4600H or Ryzen 7 4800H, two 45 W APUs from AMD’s Renoir architecture. The device can be configured with 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM and a 256 GB or 512 GB SSD. The MateBook 14 also has the advantage of having DDR4-2666 RAM, although it only has a 3:2 screen with a 2,160 x 1,440 resolution.

The MateBook 14 also has a 56 Wh battery, along with a USB Type-C port for charging, two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports and a 3.5 mm jack. A full-size HDMI port is onboard, too. The device is 15.9 mm thick and weighs 1.49 kg.

The MateBook 14 starts at €849 for the Ryzen 5, 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB model. Huawei charges another €949 for the same processor with double the RAM and storage. If you want the Ryzen 7 4800H, then that will set you back €1,049. However, you get 16 GB of RAM, 512 B of storage and a touchscreen display.

Sony WH-1000XM4: First Impressions with an underwhelming upgrade

There was almost a two-year gap between Sony releasing the WH-1000XM3 and WH-1000XM4. The many retailer listings that surfaced earlier this year suggest that the worldwide pandemic probably delayed Sony somewhat, but we digress. We were itching to try the WH-1000XM4 following last month’s launch, so we purchased a pair of the Silver ones.

Sony continues to sell the WH-1000XM range in two colours, as it has for years now. Sadly, that consistency, or lack of imagination depending on how you look at it, sums up the WH-1000XM4. The headphones retail for US$349.99 and £349.99 in the UK, making the WH-1000XM4 just as expensive as the WH-1000XM3. However, the latter now cost around US$100/£100 less than Sony’s latest model, which is worth keeping in mind if you are upgrading from headphones other than the WH-1000XM3.

Essentially, Sony has made hardly any design changes with the WH-1000XM4. The headband is slightly thicker the one on the WH-1000XM3, for example, while Sony has re-named the NC/AMBIENT button “Custom”. Similarly, the hinge mechanism has been redesigned, but these changes are only noticeable with the WH-1000XM3 side-by-side for comparison.

So, if Sony has not made many external changes in two years, then it must have improved the WH-1000XM4 in other ways? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, the WH-1000XM4 can connect to two devices simultaneously, which is a welcome change from past WH-1000XM series headphones. Sony has also included an IR sensor, which allows the headphones to pause or play automatically if you remove the headphones from your head.

Additionally, the WH-1000XM4 has a “Speak-to-Chat” function that amplifies ambient sounds if you begin talking. In our experience, holding the right earcup to amplify ambient sounds is more intuitive, making Speak-to-Chat feel more like a gimmick than anything else. Likewise, Sony claims that the WH-1000XM4 will automatically power off when not in use. However, the WH-1000XM range has done this since at least the WH-1000XM2, so this is nothing new. Sony has implemented “Precise Voice Pickup” technology too, which uses five of the microphones inside the headphones to optimise call quality. Finally, the WH-1000XM4 supports Bluetooth 5.0, an upgrade from the Bluetooth 4.2 of the WH-1000XM3.

All that sounds promising, but it is poorly implemented. Firstly, the WH-1000XM4 cannot connect to two devices simultaneously over LDAC. Conversely, the equaliser within the Sony Headphones app now works with LDAC, which is handy. Theoretically, the IR sensor should work well, too. However, we encountered multiple issues on Android and Windows 10 where the headphones would do the opposite of what we wanted them to. For example, pausing the WH-1000XM4 when connected to a Windows 10 laptop and removing them for our head caused the headphones to resume whatever was playing. Putting the headphones on again resulted in the music stopping. However, pausing the music manually while the headphones were removed resolved the issue. We only experienced this on iTunes, but it is not something we would expect from US$350/£350 headphones.

Setting that niche gripe aside, Qualcomm aptX and aptX HD have been removed from the WH-1000XM line as Sony has switched to a MediaTek chipset. While this does not post any practical restrictions for Android smartphones or iPhones, macOS and Windows 10 do not support LDAC. Similarly, we could not get the WH-1000XM4 to stream in LDAC on the LG V60, so we had to make do with AAC. We had no issues with the Pixel 4 XL though.

Battery life remains unchanged from the WH-1000XM3, too. This is not necessarily a bad thing as the WH-1000XM3 has exemplary battery life. We would have expected at least some improvements in almost two years, though. Android Authority actually found that the WH-1000XM3 outlasted the WH-1000XM4 by around four hours.

We noticed no discernable improvement in call quality, either. It is a similar case with noise cancellation. Android Authority has demonstrated that the WH-1000XM4 has better noise cancellation at higher frequencies, but we have not been on public transport in the past month to notice a difference. Unquestionably, the WH-1000XM4 has excellent noise cancellation, though.

Verdict – Not worth the two year wait

Overall, the WH-1000XM4 feels somewhat of a sideways step for Sony. The company made some decent improvements from the WH-1000XM2 to the WH-1000XM3, but the same cannot be said for the WH-1000XM4. Perhaps we would feel differently if Sony had released the WH-1000XM4 a year after the WH-1000XM3, but its latest effort feels staid almost two years on from its predecessor.

The features that Sony has added feel half-baked too, like the inability to connect to multiple devices using LDAC. Worse still, Sony is yet to address call quality, one of the worse aspects of the WH-1000XM2 and WH-1000XM3. In our experience, even the Surface Headphones 2 has better call quality than the WH-1000XM4, which is unforgivable considering the gulf in price.

In short, if you already have a pair of the WH-1000XM3, then do not upgrade to the WH-1000XM4. And if you do not own the WH-1000XM3, pick these up instead and save yourself around US$100/£100.

LG Velvet durability test confirms the origin of the screen in its Dual Screen accessory

The LG Velvet comes in two flavours, although a third is on its way. At the time of writing, LG has released a 5G and Snapdragon 765G-powered edition, along with a cheaper 4G model that has a Snapdragon 845. By contrast, a T-Mobile version has the new MediaTek Dimensity 1000C, which also has a 5G modem. All models have that same 7.9 mm thick case though, which does not necessarily inspire confidence as to its structural rigidity, especially if you have watched JerryRigEverything’s recent OnePlus Nord video.

The LG Velvet does flex under severe pressure, but it did not crack or shatter. A small gap between the chassis and display did appear that probably reduces the device’s water resistance, but this test is way beyond what most people would do to their smartphones. Likewise, the LG Velvet did not succumb to burned, either.

Additionally, JerryRigEverything determined that the LG Velvet and its Dual Screen accessory share identical displays. A brief teardown revealed that the screen in the Dual Screen accessory even has a cut-out for an in-display fingerprint scanner, as you can view in the view below. JerryRigEverything opines that LG did this to reduce costs, which makes sense considering the relatively affordable price of the Velvet. We have already reviewed the LG Velvet too, should you wish to find out more about the device.

Update: Launched, leaks confirmed | The Motorola Razr 2020 5G has a full specs leak and an unboxing ahead of its official launch

Motorola has now made the Razr 2020 5G official via its various online channels. Its leaks are spot-on, as it happens, down to the 2800mAh battery – which the OEM describes as “all-day” (somehow). It will be made available in “fall 2020”, for US$1399. Interested consumers can register for pre-order updates on motorola-mall.com.

Original Article: Motorola is slated to launch a foldable Razr phone at 23:00 CET today (September 9, 2020). However, it is not a true second-gen product, but rather a refresh of the original 2020 device with the Snapdragon 765G and a potentially enhanced design. This is in accordance with its leaks thus far, at least.

The latest of these corroborates this detail, and purports to fill the rest of them in as well. WinFuture now asserts that it will be an 8GB RAM device with 256GB of non-expandable storage. As with its quasi-predecessor, it has a single camera that can be used for selfies in closed mode or main-sensor functions in its unfolded mode. However, it is to be 48MP this time.

The Motorola Razr 2020 5G is also now said to have a 6.2-inch 2142 x 876 POLED inner screen with a 21:9 aspect-ratio. Its external “Quick View” screen may be a 2.6-inch “gOLED” 600 x 800 panel. It will come with Motorola’s expanded software feature set for this aspect of the Razr 2020, as it will have its specialized build of Android 10 out of the box.

Roland Quandt also claims that the Motorola Razr 2020 5G will be IPX8-rated, and have a 2800mAh battery (this may be relatively meagre for its new connectivity). Its USB type C charging is also set at a relatively low 15 watt charging rate.

Thus far, Motorola has handed units of this phone to vloggers such as Unbox Therapy and MKBHD, who appear to confirm most of these specs, and also reveal the refreshed foldable’s colorways: Blush Gold, Polished Graphite or Liquid Mercury. The device’s fingerprint sensor has also migrated from its front chin into a logo on the lower half of the rear of the phone.

As to its price, well, it is yet again a good thing it is has a flexible display, or current projections of €1499 (or US$1399) for its decidedly mid-range properties would be completely unbelievable. Full reviews may help determine whether they can be rationalized this time or not.

AMD announces launch dates for Zen 3 CPUs and RDNA 2 “Big Navi” graphics cards

AMD’s Zen 3 and RDNA 2 are perhaps the most anticipated computing platforms for 2020. Now we have a firm date on when we will see them.

AMD posted a teaser video for its next generation of GPUs. The Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs, which are built on the RDNA 2 architecture, will officially launch on October 28. Nicknamed “Big Navi,” these graphics cards will be AMD’s answer to Nvidia’s recently released GeForce RTX 3000 series cards.

AMD has a big task in front of it; Nvidia’s new Ampere cards seem to be a sizable upgrade over the RTX 2000 series. The RTX 2000 cards, built on Nvidia’s Turing architecture, beat AMD’s RDNA 1 (Navi) cards by a fair margin. AMD has a big gap to make up in order to outperform Nvidia. The veil will officially be lifted on RDNA 2 on October 28.

A curious note in the teaser video for the RDNA 2 launch is the mention of support for “PCs and consoles.” This should remove most of the doubt as to whether or not the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will use RDNA 2 GPUs. It seems that this will indeed be the case. 

AMD will also officially launch its next CPU architecture, Zen 3, on October 8. Stating that “it’s going to be an exciting fall for gamers,” AMD CEO Lisa Su posted a teaser video of Zen 3 on Twitter. There’s not a lot we know about Zen 3, but current speculation is that it will be built on the same (or similar) 7 nm process as Zen 2 but may reconfigure how the chip is arranged, most notably the L3 cache.

We reported yesterday that the upcoming Ryzen 4000 chips (codenamed Vermeer) will feature up to 10 multithreaded cores and may include improved overclocking features, something that will entice gamers. We’ll know more about Zen 3 when it officially launches next month.