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- The Ars Technica System Guide, spring 2021: Gaming edition - Ars Technica
- Samsung's A Series, perfect phones for pandemic times, get the spotlight at Unpacked - CNET
- Fall Guys Getting Among Us Costumes With Mysterious, 'Unique' Features - IGN
| The Ars Technica System Guide, spring 2021: Gaming edition - Ars Technica Posted: 15 Mar 2021 04:30 AM PDT  Enlarge / Our two hands-on gaming rigs are the Lenovo Legion 5i (left, currently connected to the monitor) and HP Omen 30L (right). Jim Salter If you're planning to build a new gaming rig in 2021, we have bad news for you—that's going to be difficult to impossible, due to supply chain constraints imposed by COVID-19. But we also have good news: while you might not be able to build a gaming PC, you can almost certainly buy one. Don't get us wrong. If you have enough time and patience, you can still amass all the parts to build your own custom rig from the ground up. But that could take weeks or even months at this point in 2021. So instead of selecting parts lists, our next System Guide will focus on recent rigs from three of the major pre-built gaming PC vendors. HP and Lenovo provided us with an Omen 30L and Legion 5i Tower, respectively. We also wanted to review an Alienware Aurora R11—and although we weren't able to get a review unit from Dell, Senior Commerce Editor Jeff Dunn graciously took a few pics and ran some limited testing on his personal R11. Even at the big OEMs, the hardware that is available currently changes from week to week. But armed with component performance charts and a thorough review of these systems, you can make your own well-informed buying decisions. The contenders
 HP Omen 30L(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.) The HP Omen 30L came to us with a fluid-cooled Intel i9-10900K CPU and a GeForce RTX 3080 GPU. The Lenovo Legion came with a more modest air-cooled Intel i7-10700 and GeForce RTX 2070 Super. Both systems (along with Dell's Aurora R10/R11) are at least theoretically configurable to whatever performance levels you'd like, but again, COVID-19-constrained supply and demand tend to limit your options unpredictably from week to week.  Lenovo Legion Tower 5i(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.) Fan noiseThe Legion Tower 5i is generally quieter than the Omen 30L, despite the Omen's fluid cooler. Neither machine is loud in normal operation, but the Omen's fans have a slight rattly undertone. The Legion's fan noise did a much better job of fading imperceptibly into the background—I actually pressed my ear to the chassis the first time I powered it on to make sure it was booting.  Alienware Aurora R11(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.) I didn't have an Alienware Aurora R11 on hand, so I cannot compare it directly. Tom's Guide described it as loud and hot, which I wouldn't call either the Lenovo or HP rigs. I asked Ars Senior Commerce Editor Jeff Dunn to put his i9-10900K/RTX 3090 powered Aurora R11 through the same tests. During Time Spy, Dunn said his R11's fan speed increased significantly. He described it as easily audible from four feet away without being "brutal." It never went into the kind of raging beast mode that the Omen and Legion did during Cinebench R20. By spinning up earlier and more aggressively than the Omen or Legion, the R11 manages to avoid accumulating enough thermal buildup to require emergency high speeds on the fans later. With its smaller cooling capacity, it probably doesn't have much choice in the matter. The Omen and Legion, with considerably higher capacity, gamble that extreme thermal spikes won't last long enough to require increased fan speed and noise. The fact that they don't spin up until the end of a Cinebench run—and return rapidly to idle afterward—argues that they're correct about that, too. Users who prefer the R11's "a little more fan now, a lot less fan later" style tuning can adjust the fan curves in either of the bigger systems to match—which would be a very good idea indeed, if you plan to use your gaming system for long-term 100 percent CPU output like protein folding, hour-long compilation jobs, etc. The bling
If bling is your thing, HP's Omen 30L mid-tower is ready to be your favorite rig. HP didn't miss a chance to glow up any individual part of this system, and the result is a gaudy but pleasing discotheque vibe that just needs you to add some bass. The HyperX RGB RAM glows its way softly through the rainbow on a loop, the chassis intake fan and Omen diamond logo on the front throw pearlescent light out into the room, the GPU announces itself with more LEDs, and even the fluid cooling system's radiator has rope LEDs wrapped around it. That level of ostentation isn't to my personal taste, but the overall effect is well done. The light from the system's various elements melds together nicely, producing a soft, cool glow that feels sci-fi-movie cool. Next to the Omen 30L, Lenovo's Legion 5i seems pretty restrained. The Legion 5i has a yellow-tinted glass side panel, but the only light-up component inside is a custom GeForce RTX 2080 Super GPU cap. A large Legion logo on the front of the case appears white and unlit—until the machine goes to sleep, that is. With the 5i in sleep mode, the big Legion logo flashes bright blue in a roughly six-second on/off cycle that I found both pointless and obnoxious. I suspect that there's a control, somewhere, to change the behavior of that LED-lit Legion logo. But it didn't reveal itself to a casual search of the pre-installed Lenovo app in the system tray, and I didn't burn any more time looking for it. The Alienware Aurora R11 is the plainest system of the lot. The only light-up bling on the R11 is a slim LED trim ring on the front and an "Alienware" branding on the right side; there's no side panel, and the entire exterior shell is plastic, available in "Dark Side of the Moon" (dark, charcoal gray) or "Lunar Light" (somewhere between pale gray and pearl). It's also the smallest internally—the R11 is a micro-ATX system, while the other two are full-sized ATX. The mechanics
One of my biggest concerns about buying OEM-manufactured PCs—gaming or not—is the constant pressure their design department feels to innovate, innovate, innovate. With full control of their supply stack and plenty of money to throw at being "different," big OEMs tend to produce designs that violate standards, have a learning curve for getting elbow-deep, and aren't anywhere near as thoroughly battle-tested as "beige box" designs that have to work with a much wider range of components. Unfortunately, all three of these OEM gaming rigs fit this description to some degree. Although we didn't have one on hand ourselves, Dell's Alienware Aurora R11 seems to be the worst of the lot—it's got a micro-ATX board crammed into a funny-shaped case. One look inside (courtesy of Dell's service guide, or a review from Tom's Guide) gives me unpleasant flashbacks to a lot of other very proprietary Dell desktops over the years. This is a design that demands careful review of the service manual, specific Dell-branded parts, and plenty of hands-on experience. I couldn't definitively choose between the HP Omen 30L and Lenovo Legion 5i when it comes to ease of maintenance and upgrades. Each has its pros and cons, and neither satisfies nor dissatisfies me entirely. If you tried to force me to choose one as "better," I'd give you a slightly unhinged, thousand-yard sysadmin stare until you gave up and walked away. HP Omen 30L
Getting into the Omen 30L is quick and non-frustrating, with a large and smooth operating button on the back panel that pops the glass side door loose. Once loose, the glass door can be lifted up and away from the chassis. Actually detaching the panel felt a little janky but didn't present me with any real problems—and there's most likely a "magic angle" for the motion I just hadn't yet learned, since the panel goes back on very smoothly and easily indeed. Once inside the case, you have plenty of room to work on the CPU-side of the graphics card—but not so much on the other side. The second NVMe M.2 slot is located between the GPU and the power supply, and there's very little room to get at or work with it. It's probably best to pull the GPU entirely if you need to add or maintain a device in that slot. The Omen 30L also boasts two internal 3.5-inch hard drive bays, with tool-free caddies to make pulling and replacing the drives easier. I do not approve of these particular caddies—they have extremely soft, pliable plastic "ears" that look like levers you should flip to pop a latch free. In reality, you need to squeeze the "arms" of the caddy together to more directly pull small tabs farther down the arms from notches in the bay, allowing you to pull the drive directly upward. The problem is, those soft plastic ears are desperately in the way. I couldn't find any way to interact with them that actually released the drive caddy from its bay. Instead, I needed to carefully reach fingertips beneath them in order to squeeze the arms together. It was obnoxious, it was difficult, and if this was my system I suspect I'd end up bending the ears back and forth until they tore off the arms pretty quickly, whether I wanted to or not.
Unfortunately, pulling the GPU was a frustrating 30-minute chore. There's a plastic retaining bracket that sits on top of the front side of the GPU, bolted to the chassis with a couple of easily removed screws. Once the screws are removed, the bracket still doesn't budge—that's because of four studs that are supposed to slide up and down in retention grooves on the far side of the fan panel. These studs and grooves are completely inaccessible and appear at first glance to be more screws. In fact, I wound up popping off the front panel entirely to try for a better look. Once I had the glass front panel off, the fan panel still obscured them—but I could use my Pixel 2XL in Night Mode to get a better look at what was going on. I needed to pull the bracket straight up to move the studs into wider cutouts that would release them, after which the bracket could be pulled directly away from the fan panel. The studs were either oversized or effectively contact-welded to the panel—they would only slide about halfway to where they needed to go before binding hard. Even when applying much more force than I felt comfortable exerting on plastic components, they stopped dead at the same place every time, and the bracket wouldn't pop out. Finally, I dug around online until I could find the maintenance manual for the Omen 30L and scrolled through that PDF. All the manual had to offer was a wordless, Ikea-style diagram using a single, curved arrow to show the bracket sliding first up, then out—just as I'd determined already. This confirmed what I needed to do, but it didn't make it any easier. Normally, at this point I'd look for some place to insert a flathead screwdriver or other lever and carefully apply pressure. Unfortunately, the only thing I could lever against here would be my precious, unobtainium RTX 3080 video card! That wasn't going to happen, so I spent the next 15 minutes gronking the living hell out of it by hand, with what I can only describe as "shipfitter level" determination and force. Finally and violently, the cursed bracket broke loose, and I could slide it out through the wider top portion of the cutout. After this first success, the bracket operated reliably—although still not smoothly. I suspect that after a year of sitting quietly, it would again be extremely difficult to break loose. The GPU is the most key component—and the first one to "age out"—in a mid- to high-end gaming rig. It shouldn't be this hard to maintain or replace it. Lenovo Legion Tower 5i
The Legion Tower 5i's design is fairly straightforward and traditional. Its glass side door is secured by simple thumbscrews on the rear panel of the case (as is the blank panel on the other side). Once the screws are removed, the panel slides straight backward off the case. This might not be as "cool" as the Omen 30L's pop-out door, but it's well understood, simple to operate, and less mechanically complicated. The Legion's direct front-to-back airflow pattern is also simple and highly functional. Twin intake fans cover the entire case, and a vertically mounted CPU air-cooler blows directly into a large rear-mounted exhaust fan. Air only goes in one direction in the Legion Tower 5i—this helps ensure that "dead pockets" caused by eddies in circulation don't occur, potentially allowing unlucky components to sit in air warmer than the overall chassis ambient temperature. Access to RAM is a little more cramped than it was in the Omen, but it's still straightforward and easy enough. The drive caddies in the Legion's two 3.5-inch internal bays are an enormous improvement over the Omen's. They're still soft plastic, but their loop handle crosses the entire top of the drive—all you need to do is pull straight up to remove the drive. Both drive removal and replacement are smooth, consistent operations. The real downfall in the Legion Tower 5i's design doesn't begin to rear its head until you get to the NVMe M.2 drive. It's cramped hard between the tall, vertical CPU cooler and the top-rear exhaust fan, without enough room to work on it reliably. Properly, safely servicing this device should really be done after pulling the CPU cooler entirely. Can you pull and replace the NVMe without pulling the cooler? Maybe. But in my opinion, you really shouldn't. This brings us to the GPU. The Legion Tower 5i, like the Omen 30L, has a custom retaining bracket, which only fits the OEM version of the card that the Legion ships with. Unlike the Omen 30L, the bracket only has three simple screws to deal with and no balky studs. After removing the bracket, there's a hold-down bracket over the PCIe slot area on the rear of the case. A single screw on the inside-rear of the case secures the hold-down bracket, after which it would appear the bracket slides directly up—but it doesn't cooperate that way. Instead, you move around to the outside rear of the case, work a thumbnail or spudger beneath the lip of the bracket there, and lift upward. From here, the bracket pivots upward and inward pretty easily. Replacing the bracket later is also pretty trouble-free. Unfortunately, this leaves the retention tab on the PCIe slot of the motherboard itself. In order to pull the GPU after removing the brackets on both ends, you'll need to press down pretty firmly on that tab to release the card—and it's solidly obscured by the monster air cooler on the CPU. A technician in a fully equipped repair shop will sometimes have a long-shanked flathead screwdriver that has been dipped in a soft-ish rubber compound for just this task—but without that tool, you're again left needing to pull the CPU cooler so that you can get a finger or thumb tip directly on the tab with a decent amount of leverage. I very strongly do not recommend trying this with a screwdriver whose head hasn't been dipped in rubbery coating—if you do, you'll almost certainly lose purchase, skid down the surface of the tab, and stab your motherboard violently with the screwdriver. It'll probably survive one or two such stabbings... but I don't recommend taking the gamble. Performance, components, and youIt's easy to get confused about the relationship of various components in your system to its performance. As we covered in the spring 2018 guide, different people have different ideas about what "performance" means. Since this is a gaming PC guide, we're mostly going to focus on raw game performance, as measured in frames per second (FPS).If you're going to use your gaming PC like an unusually large, expensive console—that is to say, the only thing you do is play games on it—any CPU at or above the "high end, recent i5" level will do just fine, and increasing the CPU spec won't do much to increase most game frame rates. RAM, likewise, isn't going to provide much direct benefit beyond 16GiB. But in my experience, very few gamers actually use their rig that simply. There are likely to be browser tabs and/or email clients open in the background. When a gaming rig is also the daily driver, anything goes. There are pitfalls and gotchas even for a completely dedicated rig—for example, game streaming. If you're recording your sessions and/or livestreaming them, you'll need a lot more CPU oomph (and RAM) beyond what's required just to play the game. If you plan to stream your games—or use your gaming rig as a daily driver—you'll benefit strongly from a Core i7 or even Core i9 processor and at least 32GiB of RAM. The AMD side of CPU choices is considerably more forgiving. For marketing purposes, a Ryzen 5 competes with Intel's Core i5, Ryzen 7 with Core i7, and Ryzen 9 with Core i9—but a Ryzen 5 5600X already beats a Core i7-10700, in both single and multi-threaded testing. Despite that advantage, we recommend going with a Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9 for multi-purpose systems, if you can afford the upgrade. Storage will almost never directly impact a game's frame rate. With that said, more storage means more games (and other stuff) installed at once, and faster storage means quicker boots, quicker game launch, and quicker game save and load times. Larger storage can also mean the difference between being able to just keep running on the same Windows install for five years straight, versus needing to wipe and reinstall down the road due to bloat of the SxS directories. The GPU is the true heart of the gaming rig
Now that we've geeked out about what these rigs look like, what it's like to go elbow-deep in them, and how to evaluate the relationship of components to frame rate... let's talk turkey. The single most important component for higher frame rates in almost all modern games is the GPU. If you have a fixed budget, and you want the maximum frame rates, every other component is an "it just needs to be good enough" component. I can demonstrate this by yanking the heart out of our super-powerful HP Omen 30L—its Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics card—and replacing it with the RTX 2060 Super from the machine on my open-air dry bench. The RTX 2060 Super is just a tiny bit less powerful than the RTX 2070 Super in the Legion 5i, while the Core i9-10900K in the Omen is massively bigger and meaner than the Legion's i7-10700. The difference in CPU, it turns out, doesn't much matter. When we compare the Omen 30L with RTX 3080 GPU to the Legion 5i with RTX 2070 Super, we see a commanding advantage to the Omen... but when we replace the RTX 3080 with an RTX 2060 Super, the advantage shifts back to the Legion despite its much less powerful processor, and by roughly the same proportion as the performance delta between the GPUs. These differences in Time Spy scores map very closely to real-world frame rates. The current version of 3DMark Time Spy offers you automatically generated estimates of 1440p or 1080p frame rates for several AAA games. We compared Time Spy's estimates for Battlefield V at 1440p to Guru3D's real-world measurements and found all to be 95 percent or more accurate. That's not a "plus or minus" accuracy level, either. In each comparison between Time Spy's estimates and Guru3D's measurements, Time Spy was consistently 5 percent low. Choosing a GPU Enlarge / These are all the Nvidia GPUs you're most likely to encounter for sale, and their corresponding Time Spy GPU scores. (Scores marked * were referenced from Guru3D.) Now that we understand all of that, you're ready to pick your poison on GPUs according to your performance desires and wallet comfort level. The above chart shows you Time Spy GPU scores for all the Nvidia GPUs you're most likely to encounter while shopping. Scores for the RTX 3080, RTX 2070 Super, and RTX 2060 Super were generated on our Omen 30L and Legion 5i as shown—scores marked with an asterisk were sourced from Guru3D's RTX 3070 Founder's Edition review. Exactly which GPUs are available—and how badly you'll be skinned in the process of buying them—unfortunately changes depending on the day, the week, the manufacturer, and probably the phase of the moon at this point. But you can use the chart to decide for yourself which cards are acceptable. What about Radeon?So far, we've only talked about Nvidia GPUs—and we unfortunately just don't have the time or space to go into as much detail here about AMD Radeon. The short version is, they're great with solid drivers, beautiful graphics, and frequently lower prices than the nearest Nvidia competitor. They also offer vastly higher quality and less painful Linux support, if that's something you're into! Unfortunately, that all goes away if you want real-time raytracing or machine learning. For right now, Nvidia is the clear, real-world winner for those two niche categories. For general-purpose 3D gaming, you can just refer to the Time Spy Graphics score and plan accordingly. Guru3D offers an extremely comprehensive chart showing Time Spy scores of every graphics card under the sun as measured on an i9-9900K system. If you're shopping Radeon cards—or run into an offering of some Nvidia card we didn't cover here—I strongly recommend heading on over so you can figure out just how good any given card really is. About frame rate and perceptionIf you're not sure what frame rates to shoot for, I have some general-purpose advice to share. Thirty frames per second is sufficient for a generally immersive cinematic experience... but it's a bare minimum. At 30FPS, you will easily see artifacts such as screen shudder when panning left or right, and in some cases even when strafing left or right. Any dip below 30 fps will present even more very immediate and immersion-destroying visual problems. At 60 fps, you reach the threshold of a truly immersive experience—but again, this is a bare minimum. At 60 fps, even camera panning left and right won't produce much screen shudder, particularly at slow panning speeds where it's most noticeable. The higher you go beyond 60 fps, the less of this sort of thing you'll experience—particularly with a high-refresh gaming monitor. Beyond 90 fps, you're unlikely to keep seeing significant improvements. Frame rates higher than 90 are mostly useful because they represent further to fall before a temporary performance problem intrudes on your experience. Along the same lines, a game that runs exactly 60 fps should really be thought of as running in the 30+ bracket, and a game running at exactly 30 fps should be thought of as running very poorly—because there will be occasional frame rate drops, and if any drop puts you into the lower bracket, it'll jar you significantly. ConclusionsAs much as I'd love to recommend you build your own gaming rigs right now, piece by artisanal piece, that's just not realistic in March 2021. If you need to game right now, both Lenovo Legion and HP Omen are pretty solid rigs, available with a selection of high-end parts you're unlikely to be able to find piece by piece. More importantly, they aren't more expensive than a solo build—the comfortable markup they charge doesn't add up to any more than the scalper prices you'd already be paying for the best GPUs, CPUs, motherboards, power supplies, and chassis (even if you could find them). I have more trouble recommending the Alienware Aurora R11. For one thing, I wasn't able to go hands-on with one myself. But even apart from that, its oddly shaped chassis combined with microATX architecture make for a seriously cramped build with minimal fans. I have no trouble believing Tom's Guide that it runs loud and hot—almost certainly both louder and hotter than the two machines tested here. The HP Omen 30L and Lenovo Legion 5i are close enough in overall quality that I can't recommend one over the other in a one-size-fits-all manner. If you like bling, you'll love the Omen. If you prefer a more restrained aesthetic, the Legion is a good system. Both are quiet and cool in normal operation, and both are easy to work on... except when they're not. The Lenovo Legion 5i is generally a little cheaper than the HP Omen 30L if you can configure them with the same components. Naturally, you can't do that currently; did I mention there's a pandemic on and supply issues are insane right now? At the moment, HP has more in-stock configurations than Lenovo does, but that could easily change by the time you read this. You'll need to do some shopping, and possibly a little waiting, for your ideal configuration to become available. Dell currently has the widest availability of RTX GPUs—and it also has Ryzen CPUs in stock in the Aurora R10, up to and including the fabled 5950x. Its prices seem generally competitive with Lenovo's, as well—at the cost of a smaller, almost certainly louder and less upgradeable system. Although I can't tell everyone the best machine to buy right now, hopefully the testing and advice here will help readers with a broad range of budgets choose and configure the right gaming rig for themselves. Listing image by Jim Salter |
| Samsung's A Series, perfect phones for pandemic times, get the spotlight at Unpacked - CNET Posted: 15 Mar 2021 05:00 AM PDT  Samsung's Galaxy A series includes the A51. Sarah Tew/CNETSamsung tends to use its splashy Unpacked events to show off the newest high-end gadgets in its Galaxy S, Galaxy Note and Galaxy Z families of phones. But it's the company's midrange A Series, which last year started at $110, that will take center stage at its next big product event. On 7 a.m. PT Wednesday, Samsung is set to host its second virtual Unpacked event of 2021. Samsung called Wednesday's event "Galaxy Awesome Unpacked" and said it will explain how it's "bringing Awesome to everyone." (Yes, capital "A" Awesome). Its first Unpacked, in mid-January, marked the introduction of Samsung's flagship phones for the year, the Galaxy S21, S21 Plus and S21 Ultra. All come with 5G, and the devices start at $800, which is $200 less than their predecessors. The Galaxy S may be Samsung's most high-profile flagship lineup, and the Galaxy Z foldables are its future, but neither offers the most popular devices the South Korean giant sells. That title goes to the Galaxy A, which represented more than three out of every four Samsung phones shipped around the world last year, according to Strategy Analytics. The line's quiet rise as a major contributor to sales for Samsung underscores the notion that while high-end specs and cutting-edge features are nice for attention and buzz, people still care about what they're spending on phones -- especially in these times.  Watch this: Samsung sets phone event for March 17, Sonos reveals... 1:08 Samsung will bring more attention to the lineup than ever when it makes the Galaxy A the focus of Wednesday's Unpacked. When Samsung first jumped into the Android market in 2010, it was with its Galaxy S devices, which propelled the Korean company to the position of world's biggest phone vendor, a title it's held for most of the past decade. Similarly, the Galaxy Note ignited a trend for jumbo phones and the Galaxy Fold touched off a new wave of foldables. Generating much less fanfare is the Galaxy A lineup. The phones have been viewed as devices for people who are more price-sensitive -- if anyone thought about the A Series at all. They've been sold internationally for years but didn't come to the US as a full lineup until 2020. In the past, "every time [Samsung] rolled out the S series, even after carrier subsidies disappeared, that was what sold," Strategy Analytics analyst Ken Hyers said. "Things like the A Series or equivalent product, those were for the people who didn't have the money for a premium phone." Last year's Galaxy A lineup included four 4G LTE phones and two 5G models. They ranged from $110 for the Galaxy A10 to $650 for the Galaxy A71 5G on Verizon's network (it's $600 at other carriers without super-fast 5G millimeter-wave connectivity). All came with some high-end features, though they weren't nearly as premium as the specs found in the Galaxy S, Note and foldables. And none came close to the price tag for Samsung's premium phones, which started at $1,000 for the Galaxy S20. Though the Galaxy A lineup may not have the flash of Samsung's high-end phones, what it does have is a lot of buyers across the world. In the US, where there's often a bigger market for pricey phones than in many other regions, the A Series' shipments surpassed those of the S Series, 26% to 19%, according to Strategy Analytics. In the key fourth quarter of the year, nearly half of Samsung's phone shipments in the US came from the A Series. That included models like the $180 Galaxy A11, $250 Galaxy A21 and $500 Galaxy A51 5G. People are increasingly choosing less expensive phones, even if they can afford the pricier models like the Galaxy S, Strategy Analytics' Hyers said. Today's phone market looks very different from the industry a few years ago. In the past, many consumers bought the latest and greatest on a regular two-year cadence, and Apple and Samsung made $1,000 the standard starting price for high-end phones. Now people in the US are content holding onto their phones an additional year, and when they upgrade, they're often seeking out less expensive phones. Today's mainstream devices ship with many higher-end features -- like fast processors, big screens and several camera lenses -- that consumers deem to be good enough, especially for the price. Samsung even cut the starting price of its Galaxy S lineup by $200 for this year's S21 models. "The price of premium products has gotten out of whack with what people think is justifiable for a smartphone," Hyers said. "And midtier phones like the A51 ... don't feel like you're making a compromise." Samsung declined to comment ahead of Wednesday's event. The new A SeriesThis year, Samsung is expected to introduce Galaxy A52 and A72 phones, successors to last year's A51 and A71. The devices likely will come with 4G and 5G variants right away (last year's 5G models arrived after the 4G versions) and several improvements over the older models. The A52 is rumored to sport a bigger battery, a better processor and more RAM, while keeping the 6.5-inch Super AMOLED display found in the A51. And the A72 is believed to feature a new camera design, with five back lenses, a first for any Samsung device. It also may become the first midrange phone with optical image stabilization to optimize shots. Refreshing the higher end of the A Series could have a lower boost on Samsung's unit sales than introducing newer cheap models. It's the company's least expensive Galaxy A models that have proved to be the most popular with consumers, said Mark Bachman, lead tech and telecom analyst at M Science. His firm tracks how well phone models sell. Looking at the first 20 weeks of sales for each device, the data analytics provider found that the budget models, like the $180 Galaxy A10e and A11 or the $250 A20 and A21, sold in higher numbers than the higher-priced $500 A51 5G and $600 A71 5G (or $650 at Verizon). US consumers bought nearly 2.5 million units of the A11 in its first five months of sales, while they purchased only about 300,000 Galaxy A51 5G units. "While the launch of the A52/A72 series will refresh Samsung's midrange offerings, we believe these phones will have less impact to Samsung's sales in the US when compared to their budget A series and premium priced S series handsets," Bachman said. Still, Samsung hasn't yet said what its new A Series devices will cost. It could lower the prices for the models, like how it cut Galaxy S pricing. Hitting the 'sweet spot'Samsung highlighting its less expensive phones follows a trend found across the mobile industry. The first 5G devices on the market in 2019 cost significantly more than their 4G counterparts. Samsung's Galaxy S10 5G and Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G both retailed for $1,300. That's $400 and $200 more than the 4G variants, respectively. But the coronavirus pandemic has forced companies to reevaluate their launch plans and drop pricing for 5G phones much more quickly than expected. In September, Samsung introduced its Galaxy S20 FE for $300 less than its S20 sibling. Then in January, Samsung said its new Galaxy S21 models would cost $200 less than their Galaxy S20 sibling from a year earlier. It's partly because component costs have fallen but also recognition that it's getting harder to convince people to shell out $1,000 for a phone. The Galaxy S21 lineup meets "sweet spots" in the market when it comes to pricing and features, Drew Blackard, Samsung Electronics America's vice president of product management, said in an interview ahead of January's Unpacked event. And he said the lower starting point is likely here to stay. The Galaxy A devices are even more affordable, without having to sacrifice features like strong cameras. A new smartphone that won't drain your bank account may be worth the trouble of all that Unpacked fanfare after all. |
| Fall Guys Getting Among Us Costumes With Mysterious, 'Unique' Features - IGN Posted: 15 Mar 2021 07:01 AM PDT  Developer Mediatonic tells IGN that the red costume will be available on Day 1 of Season 4, and will be a part of the season's Fame Path rather than bought with Crowns – the bottom half at rank 21, and the top half at rank 26. However, the developer also teased to us that this wasn't the only Among Us costume, and that they'll come with secrets and quirks for players to discover when they arrive. Coupled with the tease that the Impostor warning could be more than a trailer joke, and it raises the idea that the costumes will add Among Us-themed features. Perhaps players could be given extra tasks, perhaps to eliminate others in their games?Fall Guys costumes have always been strictly cosmetic, so any extras will likely not affect the games themselves, so it'll be interesting to see what Mediatonic and Innersloth have up their sleeves. Fall Guys and Among Us are a natural fit, with both games emerging last year as major gaming phenomena. Other Fall Guys crossovers have included Doom, Cuphead, Godzilla, and more. Check out our Fall Guys wiki for tips on how to claim those crowns. Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. |
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