benchmarks

There might have been a collective sigh of relief when Google announced its upcoming self-designed Tensor processor and Pixel 6 phones. It seemed that, after a hiatus, Google is ready to once again turn the Pixel into a premium smartphone brand, both in looks and in specs. The Tensor chip, however, has so far been wrapped in mystery and machine learning buzzwords, language that will likely confound most consumers asking the simple question of whether it's powerful enough or not. The Pixel 6 Pro has finally surfaced in a benchmark to provide that answer, but it's still too premature to draw any conclusions from it.

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Although it's hard to take them at face value, benchmark sightings, especially on Geekbench, have often become indirect sources of information for upcoming phones and computers. They mostly reveal information about the device's processor and RAM, but they might also hold clues about other specs. At the very least, they can give an idea of how powerful or weak an upcoming device might be. That seems to be the case with this Geekbench entry for what is believed to be the Samsung Galaxy S22+, provided you take the numbers with a grain of salt.

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One of Windows 11's biggest highlights won't be available when the newest version of Windows launches next month. While end users will probably have to wait until next year to see Android apps running on Windows in action, Insiders might be getting a preview earlier than expected. It seems that Microsoft is preparing what it calls the Windows Subsystem for Android, and a batch of benchmarks paints a promising but potentially confusing picture of what performance to expect when the feature does finally roll out to the public.

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Most people only start to fret about their Internet's download speeds once those actually dip to the point of being noticeable. Ookla's Speedtest has long been regarded as one of the go-to tools for benchmarking those speeds, though not without some controversy and criticism. These days, however, raw download and upload numbers are less important than how those speeds will affect their video streaming binge. That's why Ookla expanded its Speedtest app to include tests for video streaming, a feature that is finally available on Android months after its initial announcement.

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The earliest glimpses we've had of an unofficial Windows 11 build focused mainly on what users will see first. Those revolved around the very visible changes to the Start Menu and Taskbar and some small nudges to the theming and multitasking features of the platform. With just a few days remaining before its official announcement, analyses of Windows 11's inner working are also starting to pop up, and the good news is that there might be some substantial improvements in performance where every CPU clock cycle counts.

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Elon Musk envisioned that SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation would be able to deliver Internet to areas underserved by most carriers. The service, however, would have to cater to a broad range of users and locations located in a narrow band of areas where those satellites could actually reach. Starlink promised speeds faster than your average DSL or fiber Internet and Speedtest creator Ookla discovered that be true but only for certain areas. In others, it actually did worse than what consumers already had.

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Although it isn't exactly terrible, Samsung's performance in the mobile photography department can be described as inconsistent at best. It does take great photos and videos but, at least as far as DxOMark is concerned, it simply isn't the best by a long shot. Every new generation of the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note flagships are expected to bring improvements in that arena but that didn't seem to work for the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G which actually fared worse than its predecessor.

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Last year, ZTE boasted about having accomplished what even the likes of Samsung still failed to do. It brought the world's first commercially available under-display camera on a smartphone and explained how it pulled off this difficult trick. As much excitement as it generated, it also raised doubts on how it would work in practice. Early feedback was less than encouraging but perhaps the most damning comes from DxOMark's review that almost put the ZTE Axon 20 5G at the bottom of its selfie list.

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Apple's M1 processor and Macs were undoubtedly the biggest tech news that closed last year. Its performance, especially for a first try at a desktop-class ARM-based processor, left many questioning Intel's supremacy in that space. There are, of course, still things that Apple's silicon may not be capable of at this time but that is also just a matter of time. Meanwhile, Intel is seemingly going on the offensive with a set of benchmarks that it claims show how actually inferior the Apple M1 is.

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The iPhone 12 mini is really the odd one out of the iPhone 12 series. It shares many things in common with the main iPhone 12 model but packed in a more compact form that Apple is hoping will appeal to fans of the iPhone SE series. It might not be turning out to be the case but those that did invest in the entry-level iPhone 12 option won't have anything to worry about, at least not in terms of photography performance based on DxOMark's rating.

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Samsung's Exynos has been the subject of much controversy and drama in the past months, especially as its performance gap with Qualcomm's equivalent Snapdragon chips became more prominent. The company's semiconductor business has been trying to turn that ship around quickly, especially with a favorable outlook for the new Exynos 2100. That said, the real highlight might still be coming later this year, especially if the combined powers of Samsung and AMD are indeed able to run circles around Apple's 2019 A12 Bionic chip.

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Samsung said that it created the Galaxy S20 FE, short for Fan Edition, to give Galaxy fans the smartphone they want. In its mind, those fans wanted near-flagship specs, a decent camera, and an accessible price tag. To some extent, Samsung was actually able to deliver those, much to the chagrin of owners of the Galaxy S20 base model. That said, you really can't have everything and the Galaxy S20 FE's performance on DxOMark reveals what you have to give up for that price, at least as far as the cameras are concerned.

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