Lenovo has a new Android gaming phone, and the Legion Phone Duel 2 is aiming to not only deliver the power for full mobile gameplay, but the media credentials modern streamers demand. The unusually-shaped smartphone includes a twin-fan cooling system and a larger-than-average battery, to keep it running at maximum speed for longer.
Any PC gamer enthusiast who has been wanting to build a new gaming PC with high-end hardware inside, like the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, knows it's all but impossible to get your hands on some PC hardware right now. About the only way to get one of the cards is to pay a scalper an exorbitant amount of money over the MSRP. Yesterday, AMD announced a new version of its RX 6800 XT video card called the RX 6800 XT Midnight Black.
A new and malicious Android malware was discovered on the Google Play Store. The malware was disguised as a Netflix content enabling app called "FlixOnline." The malware spreads itself via malicious automatic replies to WhatsApp messages sent to the user. Payloads for the malware are received from a remote command and control server.
Given how powerful smartphones have become today, people expect more from their devices and sometimes push them to their limits. Of course, there are consequences to those and heat along with battery life are the biggest costs of taxing smartphones hard. Most of the time, though, only the most extreme use cases can really run a phone hot to the point of becoming dangerous but it seems that owners of the OnePlus 9 Pro are experiencing it more frequently than they should.
Amazon really turned the retail industry on its head and even until now big shot competitors from brick and mortar businesses are still trying to catch up to it. One of Amazon's biggest weapons is Prime membership and its perks and rivals are still trying their hand at offering their customers something similar. After Walmart's own Walmart+, Best Buy is now testing its own paid subscription program but with a more "human" spin to set it apart from Amazon Prime.
Mozilla as an organization has been having trouble finding ways to generate revenue without betraying its principles and its community. One of the steps it has taken to keep operating despite that is to consolidate its resources to focus on efforts that have a bigger ROI. That involves restructuring, layoffs, and dropping projects it may no longer consider worthwhile. One of those, it seems, is the version of Firefox for Amazon devices which will no longer be supported after April.
Out of all of Google's major Android apps, the Play Store is the one that perhaps sees the most number of redesigns, most of them coming without warning. Long before even the likes of Gmail and Calendar embraced it, the premier Android app marketplace began toting Material Design elements and principles, sometimes not to users' satisfaction. Google Play Store is undergoing yet another redesign, perhaps in the name of cleanliness and visual simplicity. Unfortunately, it could actually end up being more cumbersome to use with everything hidden behind groups and menus.
LG's official exit from the smartphone market has been one of the biggest and perhaps saddest news in the mobile market, especially considering LG's history and lineage. For owners of its phones, however, the announcement also brings with it worries about the future of their devices as far as software updates are concerned. To allay those fears, LG is making a very public commitment to continue supporting some of those phones for up to three years, of course with some important caveats to take note of.
Although it was really inevitable, the foldable phone train was, at least for a while, delayed by last year's more pressing global events. Things seem to be moving forward now, though, with Huawei finally launching its true second-gen foldable and Xiaomi finally jumping on board with the Mi Mix Fold last month. Those, however, aren't the only phone makers with foldable ambitions, and, according to some sources, OPPO and Vivo will also be joining the fray sooner rather than later.
Clubhouse seems to be the new darling of the social networking world, which means everyone and anyone is trying to copy it if they can't buy it. Facebook, or at least its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has already been reported to have expressed intent to develop something to rival Clubhouse and has set its New Product Experimentation (NPE) team to work on a few options. One of those to come out of the woodworks is Hotline and, curiously enough, it may actually be able to stand on its own and not be labeled as a direct Clubhouse clone.
Smartwatches have become portable mini diagnostic centers, in no small part thanks to Apple's push for sensors that keep track of various aspects of the wearer's health. Those sensors have come a long way and are now able to track not just heart rate but also blood oxygen levels, sleep quality, and even ECG. There are, however, still a few biometrics that can't be easily measured using just a fitness tracker or smartwatch, like glucose levels or blood pressure, and Fitbit's research Labs is trying to find a way to make at least the latter easier.
In a webcast today, T-Mobile announced a new free 5G phone upgrade offer and the 'Great Unlimited Trade-Up,' a program that gives competitors' non-unlimited customers the chance to switch to T-Mobile's unlimited plan for up to the same price they're already paying. The announcements joined T-Mobile's Home Internet launch and its T-Mobile Hometown 5G commitment to rural American communities.