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Mediatek to Bring a Premium 5G Chip to Empower the Cheaper Next-gen Smartphones

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The Taiwan based semiconductor company, MediaTek, has announced a 5G processor at Computex event, currently happening in Taiwan. The company has become the first to be launching a 7nm System-on-a-Chip (SoC) with an integrated 5G modem. In fact, the new chip will also have the company’ newly announced Cortex-A77 cores and new Mali-G77 GPU.

mediatek 5g chipset
Image Source: mediatek.com

The announcement seems to be quite unusual and un-prepared one, as the company did not give any details on the name, price, or its specifications, rather it focussed on how fast the chip is going to be. According to the company, the chip will be able to support 4.7Gbps download as well as 2.5Gbps speeds. It has also got support for Standalone (SA) and Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G infrastructure along with sub-6GHz spectrum.

The SoC is integrated with MediaTek Helio M70 5G modem and provides intelligent power management as well as support for all 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G. It also renders dynamic power sharing to offer the best connectivity. The chipset is also enabled to provide support for camera up to 80MP and is able to encode/decode 4K videos at 60fps.

“Everything about this chip is designed for the first wave of flagship 5G devices. The leading-edge technology in this chipset makes it the most powerful 5G SoC announced to date and puts MediaTek at the forefront of 5G SoC design. MediaTek will power rollouts of 5G premium level devices.” said Joe Chen, the President at MediaTek.

The chipset is going to be its kind and will challenge one of the biggest semiconductor company Qualcomm in the premium smartphone market. Though the latter has been the leader in the chipset manufacturing industry, empowering both modems and processors for computers and mobiles, with the new SoC, MediaTek has become quite confident on the challenging part. It also expects to power the first wave of high-end 5G smartphones to be released in 2020.

According to the company, it will release the samples of the new chipset for its client by Q3 2019, and it may be empowering many commercial 5G smartphones in the first quarter of 2020.

Apple Pay is the Next Payment Method Ride New York’s Subways

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Metro cards are over twenty years old, and it seems the time has come to say goodbye to them. From the time metro trains have been in existence, people have been using those cards and tokens to pay for their subway rides. But now it won’t be the only method for payment, as Apple has announced that people will be able to transit through metro by paying using Apple Pay instead of the MetroCard.

apple pay for nyc subway
Image Source: techhnews.com

Yes! To initiate the usage of Apple Pay for paying for the subway rides, Apple has announced that the very payment method is coming to Organizations Transportation Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). The new terminals have already been installed at a different New York City subway stations, including Union Square and Grand Central, such that for now, the riders will be able to pay for their rides on the subway’s 4, 5, 6 line through the Apple Pay app.

Starting from Friday this week, the passage where usually the metro card and the tokens are scanned, people will see a digital rectangular panel enclosed in blue light attached to the bottom part of the turnstile. Over the panel, instead of the metro card, the riders can scan their iPhone and even the Apple watch.

There are some compatibility criteria that one would need to fulfil in order to use the Apple Pay for the transit. First of all the OS for the iPhone must be updated at least up to iOS 12.3, and the watchOS must be 5.2.1 version. Apple Pay will reflect the Express Transit feature which will be available for iPhone 6s and SE or later. Same for the Apple watch, only the Apple Watch Series 1, 2 and 3, using NFC will be able to offer the feature. The user needs to authenticate their debit or credit card with the Express Transit features, such that to make payment through the Apple Pay app.

The method to use iPhone and Apple watch is quite simple and similar to the usage of MetroCards. The rider needs to place their iPhone or the Apple watch against the digital screen on the turnstile, and when the light turns green, a message of ‘Go’ is flashed on it, and the metal arm will be unlocked for the rider to pass through.

The same feature has also been announced by the other tech giant Google on its payment app Google Pay, that too will start operating from 31 May in select subway stations for the specific subway lines. In fact, for the Google Pay, the riders just need to download the app and attach the payment methods to it, and they can easily pay through their phones without opening the app or even unlocking their phones.

The Former Google and Amazon Executive Suresh Kumar is the New CTO and CDO at Walmart

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walmart
Image Source: courier-journal.com

A veteran from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, Suresh Kumar now holds the post of CTO at Walmart. Walmart announced today that it has hired Suresh Kumar, who is an ex-Google executive, for the position of chief technology officer and chief development officer.

Suresh Kumar is a former IITian and has got a B.Tech degree from IIT Madras. He also holds a PhD degree in Engineering from Princeton University. His work history has been quite terrific, as he has already worked with the biggest tech giants in the world, Google, Amazon and Microsoft in his 25 years long career.

Suresh Kumar worked as the corporate vice president of Cloud Infrastructure and Operations at Microsoft for over three years. He recently left Google, where he was working as VP and general manager of the display, video, app ads and analytics, for past one year. He has also been a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

The most important job role that he did hold in the past was while working with Amazon, the biggest rival for Walmart. He has worked with Amazon for over 15 years, holding the various positions in this long span of time. Before leaving the company, he worked as Vice President of the Worldwide Retail Systems and Retail Services department at Amazon.

At Walmart, as the CTO, Suresh Kumar has replaced Jeremy King, who has now joined as the head of engineering at Pinterest. Suresh Kumar will be reporting to the Walmart CEO Doug McMillon directly, and all the Walmart’s major wings including the Walmart U.S./WalmartLabs, Sam’s Club, International technology and Global Business Services, will be under his charge. With the help of Suresh Kumar’ vast experience, Walmart wants to enhance its eCommerce business and utilize the investment it has done in the past few years in the same field.

“Suresh has a unique understanding of the intersection of technology and retail, including supply chain, and has deep experience in advertising, cloud and machine learning. And, he has a track record of working in partnership with business teams to drive results,” said McMillon in the announcement.

ByteDance the TikTok Owner Company Working to Bring its Series of Smartphones

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The smartphone market is full of tech companies, that are constantly working to bring better options for their users. With the rise of various Chinese smartphone manufacturing companies, including Vivo, Oppo, Xiomi, the competition has also become tougher. Meanwhile, another Chinese tech giant, and the parent company of the famous video sharing app TikTok, ByteDance, is also planning to try its hands in smartphone manufacturing.

ByteDance smartphone
Image Source: rollingstone.com

ByteDance is one of the most successful Internet technology company from China, founded in 2012 by tech entrepreneur Zhang Yiming. The company gets credit for many famous apps, including TikTok, Musical.ly, TopBuzz, Toutiao, etc.

There has been the latest trend for app makers to manufacture smartphones having in-built famous apps, the partnership of Meitu and Xiomi being the biggest example. This way, it becomes easy for the app makers to attract their app audience towards buying their home production smartphones. In a similar way, ByteDance may also bring a new smartphone that might have all its famous apps, including TikTok and even its unreleased music streaming app.

The news was first reported by Financial Times, citing two unnamed sources, but the company has still not given any comments on the news. In the January month this year, ByteDance joined hands with the smartphone manufacturing company Smartisan, which confirms it all. In fact, the company acquired a patent portfolio and even hired a few employees to work with from Smartisan. While after the deal, ByteDance said that the deal was to “explore the education business”, there are no chances that any of the two companies have ever worked in the field of education.

According to the news, it was a long time dream for Zhang Yiming to build a smartphone preloaded with ByteDance apps, but since we have already seen the cases with tech giants like Facebook and Amazon, it is difficult to say that this is a good idea for ByteDance. Though ByteDance’s apps are popular, people are already using apps by downloading them through app stores. The report from FT does not give any indication on the price, design or release date of the smartphone.

Additionally, ByteDance has been facing issues with the operations of its TikTok app, as it had faced a temporary ban in India. Also in the U.S., the Chinese companies are already struggling for their position. So, being a Chinese company, it may be difficult for ByteCode to expand its smartphone service in the U.S. too.

Asus to Ship its New ZenBook Series Laptops with a Secondary Screen

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Asus is still celebrating its 30th anniversary and taking the advantage of its hometown trade show, Computex, it launched its new ZenBook Duo, ZenBook Pro Duo and ZenBook Edition 30, along with the refresh of ZenBook 13, ZenBook 14, and ZenBook 15, at the event.

zenbook
Image Source: pcworld.idg.com

The dual screen on the laptops is the biggest highlight of the ZenBook series. The company has always amazed its customers with the edgy design of its products, and now, it has brought an extra screen on every ZenBook series laptop. No, it is not a separate screen, but the second screen is placed alongside the keyboard, above its Function keys, sliding the ScreenPad to the right of the keyboard.

All the new ZenBooks will be shipped with ScreenXpert ScreenPad 2.0, having a 5.65-inch touchscreen located on the right of the keyboard. The main screen of the ZenBook Pro Duo is a 15” 16:9 OLED 4K panel, whereas the second screen is a 32:9 ScreenPad with a height half of the main screen. The ZenBook Pro Duo is powered by Intel Core i9 eight-core processor. It provides up to 32 GB DDR4 RAM and 1 TB PCIe x4 SSD storage. Another fancy feature that the laptop has is the support for Amazon Alexa voice assistant.

For all the ZenBooks, the main screen is also a touch screen. For the ZenBook Duo, Asus has rendered a main FHD screen size of 14-inch, and the secondary screen is 12.6-inch FHD screen. It is powered by up to Intel Core i7 processor and is shipped with a 16GB Ram as well as 1 TB PCIe x4 SSD storage.

On the other hand, the three refresh laptops will be available in three different variants, having 13.3-inch, 14-inch, 15.6-inch screens, respectively, and the second screen for all of them will go half in height like the ZenBook Pro Duo. All the three ZenBooks are powered by 8th generation Intel Core i7 processor and will also be available in an Intel Core i5 variant.

The two screens, though, are interconnected through the ScreenXpert software, the user can do multitasking with the two. For example, a user can watch a video on the main screen, and at the same time, edit documents on the secondary. There is a stylus along with every laptop, using which the user can operate the secondary screen. According to the company, ‘ZenBook Pro Duo is made for creators and professionals’.

Asus has nor given any details on the pricing of any of the laptops, but the company will start shipping them by the third quarter of the year.

AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 GPU is Faster, Efficient and Better than its Rivals

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AMD has participated for the first time in the Taipei’s annual computer expo, Computex, and it seems like it is all set to compete with its rivals Nvidia and Intel with the new chip series it is going to launch. The AMD CEO Lisa Su addressed the conference at the event on Sunday evening, and in her keynote, she revealed the latest Navi Radeon GPU range that the company is going to launch soon.

AMD Navi RX 5000 GPU
Image Source: pcfiend.com

The next-gen graphics architecture, the RX 5000 series, also known as RDNA, is suitable for PCs, consoles and cloud. It will render the all-new 7nm RDNA architecture and is faster than its previous GCN architecture, providing up to 1.25x performance per clock and 1.5x performance per watt.

The new architecture has got a multi-level cache hierarchy as well as a new streamlined graphics pipeline. This way, AMD has claimed that the GPU will render reduced latency, higher bandwidth and lower power consumption. It features a new computing unit, GDDR6 memory and support for PCI-E 4.0, which will result in better efficiency.

During the keynote, the company tested the performance of the RX 5700, by making it compete with the Nvidia’s RTX 2070 through a live-streamed demo. And, as expected, the demo concluded the performance of RX 5700 was better than the RTX card. The demo showcased a 10% better performance advantage of the AMD card over the Nvidia card. Though the company did not reveal on which AMD card it used to compete with the RTX card.

AMD did not reveal any additional details on the other features of the GPU architecture as well as its pricing but has stated that it will be launching the architecture in the coming month of July. AMD revealed that it will be discussing about the architecture in detail in the E3 stream on June 10.

Performance wise we can expect much more from this GPU architecture, as the giant game producers Sony has also opted for the same to integrate it into its next-gen PlayStation.