Technology - Google News

It's finally here: This is the ugliest smartphone in the history of smartphones
XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy review: Pedal to the heavy metal
Apple makes SIM-free version of iPhone XR available in the United States

It's finally here: This is the ugliest smartphone in the history of smartphones

Posted: 15 Nov 2018 05:46 AM PST

If there’s one thing Android users love, it’s the notch. That’s why diehard Android fans were so excited when just about every smartphone maker on the planet decided to copy Apple’s iPhone X design earlier this year.

Just in case it wasn’t clear, we’re being sarcastic and hardcore Android fans have historically hated the notch. Apple wasn’t the first smartphone maker to cut a notch out of its display, of course, but it was the first to use the notch design seen on the iPhone X. And of course that’s the design every Android phone company decided to copy, for obvious reasons — if Apple does something, they have to do it too. The worst part is they copied the design for no practical reason. Apple only needs such a large notch because of all the components in the TrueDepth camera system. Android phones don’t have complex 3D face scanning features, so all along they could have been using a much better and smaller notch design like the one on the OnePlus 6T. But hey, then they wouldn’t be copying Apple!

Of course, some companies aren’t content with just copying Apple, and on Thursday Sharp decided to turn things up a notch. Sadly, pun intended.

Behold: the ugliest smartphone in the history of smartphones. That’s right, folks… it’s finally here!

Image Source: Sharp

Sharp on Thursday morning unveiled its upcoming Sharp Aquos R2 compact smartphone, a monstrosity that might haunt your dreams for the rest of your life. It has not one but two notches… and they’re different shapes! The notch on the top houses the selfie camera, and it’s a teardrop shape like the one on the Essential PH-1. Then there’s a notch on the bottom for a home button, of all things, and it’s shaped like Apple’s notch from the iPhone X, iPhone XS, and iPhone XR. When combined, they make for a design that is downright hideous.

As for specs, the Aquos R2 compact features a 5.2-inch 2280 x 1080 IGZO LCD screen, a Snapdragon 845 chipset, 4GB of RAM, a 22.6-megapixel camera, a 2,500 mAh battery, and Sharp’s skinned version of Android 9.0 Pie. Thankfully, there is a tiny bit of good news to be found in this story. Sharp’s Aquos R2 compact is expected to be released sometime next year, but it’ll never make its way to US shores.

You’ll find a video embedded below so you can really take in the R2 compact’s full splendor.

[embedded content]

Image Source: Sharp

Let's block ads! (Why?)

XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy review: Pedal to the heavy metal

Posted: 15 Nov 2018 06:01 AM PST

How can improvements to the GPU manufacturing process make graphics cards better? There’s no one solution, and today’s launch of the $280 Radeon RX 590 shows that Nvidia and AMD took two wildly divergent paths in the shift to the 12nm process.

Nvidia’s used the extra space and process improvements to cram its GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards with radical, futuristic hardware devoted to driving adoption of real-time ray tracing and machine learning in games. The downside? The cheapest RTX option, the RTX 2070, starts at $500. AMD took a different tack: The Radeon RX 590 is essentially identical to the $240 8GB Radeon RX 580 under the hood, but shifting from 14nm to 12nm let AMD eke out much higher clock speeds than before—and prep a new graphics card that challenges the massive price gap between the $250 GTX 1060 and $370 GTX 1070.

Well, new-ish. AMD’s (rightfully) touting the price advantages of the Radeon/FreeSync ecosystem alongside the Radeon RX 590’s release, bolstered by an aggressive bundle of three hotly anticipated upcoming games, but how much more can the company squeeze out of the Polaris GPU architecture? The Radeon RX 580 was already a slightly faster version of the Radeon RX 480, after all. Let’s find out what happens when you dedicate GPU process improvements to cranking clock speeds to 11.

AMD Radeon RX 590 specs, features, prices

There’s no need to delve deep into tech specs since the Radeon RX 590 is, for all intents and purposes, a faster version of the Radeon RX 580 (and RX 480). The clock speeds are the only significant difference, with the Radeon RX 580 topping out at 1,340MHz. That makes the new Radeon RX 590 more than 200MHz faster. (AMD says the Radeon RX 570 and RX 580 will remain on the market alongside the Radeon RX 590.)

radeon rx 590 vs polaris specs — Radeon RX 590 vs RX 580 vs RX 570 tech specs. (Click to enlarge.)

The faster reference clock speed doesn’t tell the whole story. AMD isn’t shipping a reference version of the Radeon RX 590, instead relying on its board partners to distribute custom-cooled models. Some, like the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy that we’re testing today, ship factory-overclocked—to 1,580MHz out of the box, in the Fatboy’s case. XFX says the card will overclock to 1,600MHz no problem, if you feel like tinkering, as that’s the frequency setting the company’s labs use during testing and qualification as part of XFX’s OC+ program. A card in the box explains how to use AMD’s Radeon Wattman tool to activate the higher clocks.

Pushing AMD’s Polaris GPU architecture this hard doesn’t come easy, it seems. Upgrading the Radeon RX 480 to the RX 580 made an already power-hungry GPU even more so, and turning the Radeon RX 580 into the RX 590 seemingly demands even more energy despite the shrink to 12nm. All four of the custom cards confirmed for the Radeon RX 590’s launch—the XFX Fatboy, Asus ROG Strix, Sapphire Nitro, and PowerColor Red Devil—feature ferocious, high-end cooling solutions bristling with fans and heavy metal to tame this GPU’s higher power draw (which we’ll detail later in the benchmarks section).

The XFX Radeon RX 590’s “Fatboy” cooler is basically the XFX RX 580’s GTS cooler on steroids—hence the name. The dual large fans on the sculpted shroud still make the card look kind of like a surprised owl. But the primary heatsink is much, much thicker: 25.96mm on the Fatboy, compared to 16.96mm on the RX 580 GTS models. That gives the heatsink a total surface area of 368,866mm², or nearly 125,000mm² more than the RX 580 GTS. Thick composite copper pipes snake throughout the thick heatsink, which sits atop a unibody VRM heatsink that facilitates better heat transfer to the main cooling apparatus.

This is a serious cooler—and, no surprise, a triple-slot graphics card. XFX equipped the Radeon RX 590 Fatboy with a branded backplate to keep all that heavy metal from sagging and help dissipate heat.

An always-welcome dual-BIOS switch lets you choose between maximum performance or quieter noise levels. Our testing was done using the default Performance BIOS, though the Quiet BIOS hushed the Fatboy much more effectively.

XFX loaded the Radeon RX 590 Fatboy with a trio of DisplayPorts, an HDMI port, and DVI-D. You’ll need an 8-pin and a 6-pin power connector to run the graphics card, and XFX recommends a 600-watt power supply, up from the 550W recommended for XFX’s GTS RX 580 GPUs.

The XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy will launch at $280 Thursday at Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy, Walmart, Fry’s, Microcenter, and Memory Express. But the graphics card isn’t all you’ll get for your money: AMD’s including “the Blockbuster Game Bundle” with all Radeon RX 590s sold at participating retailers. The bundle gives you free codes for The Division 2, Devil May Cry 5, and Resident Evil 2. You won’t be able to play them right away, though, since all three of these hot triple-A games are scheduled to launch early in 2019.

With that, you know everything you need to know about the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy. Now let’s see how it handles.

Next page: Our test system, gaming benchmarks

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Apple makes SIM-free version of iPhone XR available in the United States

Posted: 15 Nov 2018 07:27 AM PST

Apple has started to offer the iPhone XR in a SIM-free option in the United States, with the most recent iPhone release now able to be acquired without it being provisioned for one of the country's four major carriers.

The online Apple Store showing the SIM-free iPhone XR option

New iPhone releases are usually offered to customers in the United States as being activated to work on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, or Verizon's networks, with the carrier selectable during the ordering process. A separate option to "Buy without a carrier" provides customers with a SIM-free device, which can be activated with any carrier at a later time.

For the release of the iPhone XR in the United States, the SIM-free option was notably missing, with customers forced to select a carrier if they were ordering through the online Apple Store. For customers who want to use a different carrier, this caused problems as the carrier-specific versions offered are not necessarily compatible with the other networks when unlocked, with varying support for different LTE bands.

On Thursday, Apple added the option to acquire the SIM-free version for U.S.-based customers. The SIM-free variant is usually the most compatible option for most mobile networks, and is also the handiest for travelers who would prefer an unlocked device so they can easily swap the SIM card out for a local carrier when in a foreign country.

It is unclear exactly why the SIM-free version was delayed for the iPhone XR in the United States. In other markets, SIM-free model options were offered right from when the iPhone XR was first made available.

The SIM-free version of the iPhone XR costs the same as the carrier-specific versions, priced at $749 for the 64-gigabyte capacity model and rising to $899 for the 256-gigabyte variant. </span>

Let's block ads! (Why?)