Most Chromebooks today are running Intel processors, but chipmaker Mediatek wants to change that as it sees an opportunity to expand its market beyond Android tablets and smartphones. MediaTek’s new high-performance mobile chip, the Helio X10, already supports Chrome OS, said Kevin Jou, vice president and chief technology officer at MediaTek, in an interview on Sunday ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Besides powering Chromebooks, the chip is also a fit for other thin-and-light laptops and hybrid laptop-tablets, he said. Chromebooks are growing in popularity as a low-cost alternative to Windows PCs for users who do most of their computing while online. Most Chromebook applications require Internet connectivity, though more applications are moving to offline functionality as well.
The world’s biggest maker of Android phones launched a major challenge to Google Wallet on Sunday, saying it will soon launch a rival phone-based payment system. Samsung Pay will appear first in the summer in the U.S.—later in other markets—and will allow consumers to make tap-and-go payments with a smartphone. It is being introduced as Google is moving to strengthen its position in the mobile payments market to better compete with Apple Pay. The system will first be available on the Galaxy S6, Samsung’s flagship smartphone that was launched on Sunday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It will rely on the contactless NFC payment infrastructure already used by competitors including
When Samsung tries something new, I don’t usually think to myself, “Well, that’s revolutionary!” Flagship phone after flagship phone, the Galaxy S devices have never really been, as the slogan suggests, “the next big thing.” But with the Galaxy S6, Samsung is finally changing the narrative. The new flagship phone is a bold departure from the detestable polymer-body handsets Samsung has been throwing at us lately. With the Galaxy S6, it feels like Samsung preserved all the previous flagship ingredients that actually worked, and then stuffed them into a stunning new glass-and-metal body. Frankly, the S6 is the Samsung phone we should have had a year ago.
Behold! Samsung's prettiest phone yet, the Galaxy S6, from every angle.
And let’s face it: We need more nice Windows tablets. The Surface Pro 3 is too rich for many budgets, but the The ideapad MIIX 300 offers some nice perks for the price. Instead of the TN displays you’ll find on many low-cost models, the ideapad MIIX 300 has a 300-nit, 1280x800 HD IPS screen. Some lower-cost models are saddled with inadequate storage, but the ideapad MIIX 300 comes with up to 64GB. While it’s safe to assume the base-price model will have less storage than that, the IPS screen still matters a lot for everyday use.
Are you a fan of the HTC One M8? Are you such a big fan that you hope HTC never changes the design? Then good news, because the new HTC One M9 is here, and it looks exactly like the M8. Okay, it’s not At the heart of the M9 is an upgrade to the system-on-chip. Moving from the Snapdragon 801 to the 810 will provide a measurable increase in performance, especially for graphics, photo, and video. RAM is boosted from 2GB to 3GB, too.
If you look at this year’s Porsche 911, it looks a lot like last year’s. It looks a lot like the one Porsche made 10, or even 40, years ago. Though the car continually undergoes major improvements, inside and out, it maintains a look that is easily distinguishable and iconic. This is what HTC is attempting to do with its One line of flagship smartphones. Brace yourself, then, for a new One M9 phone that, for better or worse, looks a If this were an iPhone, it would be the every-other-year “S” model.
I went hands on with the HTC Grip at Mobile World Congress, and what I saw didn’t immediately scream innovation. Aesthetically, the Grip will speak mostly to sporty types, and that’s about it. I can see hardcore runners and hikers wearing this during workouts, but unlike the
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If you thought HP’s impending corporate split would make it slink away from the PC game, you’re wrong. If anything, the company’s new Spectre x360 laptop, announced on the eve of Mobile World Congress, seems intent on proving HP will be as frisky as ever once its PC and printer division is pushed off the HP lifeboat this summer. The Spectre x360 features an exquisite milled aluminum body. The edges of the lid and frame are polished to a near-mirror finish. And beneath the surface, the system was built practically in lockstep with advice from Microsoft. It’s a tale of hardware-software nerd collaboration that we’ll get to soon. Inside the 15.9mm-thick Spectre x360, there are no component surprises. You can option Intel’s latest Broadwell U Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, as well as M.2 SATA SSDs sized from 128GB to 512GB. For WiFi, 2x2 802.11AC is standard. The display is a 13.3-inch panel that comes in both “full HD” (aka 1080p) or QHD resolutions. Ten-point touch is standard.
Need to do a little last-minute fine-tuning to that video of your cat before you upload it to YouTube? If you’re an Android user, you can now trim your video clips directly from the YouTube app before you upload. According to the In addition, YouTube says the new version will upload videos more quickly than it had in previous versions.
But I did spend about an hour tooling around with a pre-release build earlier this week, and it only seems right to give you an idea how this spin-off strategy game (of sorts) is shaping up. You know that absurdly-complicated board game Ben Wyatt comes up with in
