Author: batteryforpc

The updates to Microsoft’s Surface hardware continue. Following on from the Surface Book 3 details revealed last week, the latest leak around the new Surface Go show it too will be picking up a refresh.

Update 24 March: The leaked specs for the upcoming Surface Go 2 have caught the attention of many, and the consensus is that the Surface Go is going into a head to head contest with the iPad Air.

Jesus Diaz for Tom’s Guide: “A new iPad vs Surface war is brewing… A new leaked spec list shows that the upcoming machine is ready to crush Apple’s slim tablet with some Windows 10-powered gut upgrades.”

Adrian Diaconescu for Phone Arena: “…as long as Microsoft gets the price right, this versatile new mid-ranger should prove to be a mighty adversary for Apple’s iPad Air (2019).”

Daniel Piper for Creative Bloq: “…A leaked spec list for the update to the Surface Go, Microsoft’s cheapest tablet, suggests we might have serious rival to the iPad Air on our hands.”

It’s going to be an interesting competition when the two meet. Which is the better approach, to upscale the iPhone to a tablet, or to downscale Windows 10 from a desktop? It’s going to be fun to find out.

The details on the presumptively named Surface Go 2 highlight two main configurations. The first comes with Intel’s m3-8100Y CPI, the second with a Pentium 4425Y. Both have been spotted on web-based benchmarking site 3DMark.

The Pentium chip represents a small step up from the current Pentium 4415Y in the Surface Go. The Intel Core m3 is a chip that has been available for nearly two years. Backed up with 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD in the former and a 256 GB SSD in the latter, the Surface Go 2 is not going to win any awards for high-end performance.

But it doesn’t have to meet that challenge, there are other Surface devices that can offer that (the Surface Pro being the obvious example in tablet form). The Surface Go (and presumably the Surface Go 2) address the needs of two groups.

The first is consumers looking for a lightweight and relatively inexpensive tablet running Windows. It might to have the power to run the last 3D action game, but for social media work, browsing, and creating documents and spreadsheets, the Surface Go was a solid choice. The Surface Go 2 is going to be an almost direct replacement, albeit with comparatively less power than the competition.

The second area is in enterprise. Here the Surface Go has proven to be useful in many areas, not least as a point of sale terminal, front-line hospitality needs, on the floor of warehouses for activities, and more. The Go does not need to be cutting edge, it just needs to have just enough power and be solid enough to be relied on.

This is where I think the Surface Go 2 will make a difference. Not in the specs (part of me wonders if the slight tweak in the CPU is down to the availability of parts over the next two years), but in increasing the uptime.

Although the Surface Go is one of the most robust Surface devices (the original design had increased protection against falls, a bonded screen, and waterproofing) any broken unit is going to go out of service and have an impact on workflow and costs.

If the Surface Go 2 can bring the modular repair design from the Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Pro X to this front-line enterprise device, allowing IT departments the ability to quickly switch out significant parts and reduce the downtime. 

There’s no indication yet that this will happen, but if it does then the Surface Go 2 becomes an attractive upgrade for enterprise.

If you’re having trouble concentrating on your work during self-quarantine, a set of quality noise-canceling headphones might be a good solution. You’ll likely get a lot of use out of them in the coming weeks (possibly months) at home. Best Buy is offering a $150 discount on Microsoft’s Surface Headphones, which are over-ear, noise-canceling wireless headphones. These usually cost $350, but now they’re $200.

This model stacks up well compared to Sony’s popular WH-1000XM3, even going beyond them with their ability to simultaneously pair to two Bluetooth devices. More expensive headphones have this feature, like the $400 Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, but it’s nice to have it with this discounted set.

Best Buy is also offering a nice discount on the Beats Studio 3 noise-canceling headphones, which usually cost $349. The sale price is $200, and if you’re picking between these and the Surface Headphones above, these are easier to pair with Apple products, like the Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro, thanks to their W1 wireless chip.

It’s understandable if $200 to spend on headphones isn’t in the budget right now. Anker’s Soundcore Life 2 over-ear, noise-canceling wireless headphones are just $40 at Newegg (via Skimlinks). These offer 30-hour battery life, optional wired mode with the included 3.5mm headphone cable, and they can easily fold up in their included hard case. Use the offer code ANKR25 to save.

Borderlands 3 is down to just $20 for the Xbox One and PS4 at Amazon. This game regularly costs $60, and at this price, you’ll get the physical version. If you’d rather have the digital code for Xbox One, it costs $30. This game could suit you well if you want an open-world FPS that lets you team up with friends to face off against waves of enemies and collect loot.

If you recently got a Nintendo Switch to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons and now find yourself amassing more games than the console’s 32GB of onboard storage can handle, pick up a micro SD card. SanDisk’s 400GB model is down to $52.99, which is less than the cost of a new game. With a storage card this big, you probably won’t have to think about upgrading it ever again — at least, not for a while. This isn’t a huge deal, but it always pays to have storage when you need it. And around this time last year, these cost about $30 more.

The Kindle Paperwhite is back on sale for $95 (usually $130). Amazon had this sale just a few weeks ago, but it’s here again in case you missed out the last time. This isn’t the most affordable e-reader you can buy, but it’s one of the best, thanks to its waterproofing and great backlit display.

T-Mobile is gifting its customers with two months of complimentary YouTube Premium service as a thanks for staying inside during the novel coronavirus pandemic. This service eliminates advertisements, enables background play, and allows you to download videos to your phone. T-Mobile customers using Android can access the offer starting tomorrow in the T-Mobile Tuesdays app, and iOS users can find it on t-mobiletuesdays.com. The fine print states that you have to redeem this offer by May 1st, and if you forget to unsubscribe, you’ll be charged once your two months of service are up.

We all said RIP to the AirPower wireless charging mat when Apple officially killed the product last year. At the time, Apple said whatever prototypes it had been working on simply hadn’t met the company’s high standards. That said, it would appear that Apple has revived the project from the dead.

Leaker Jon Prosser took to Twitter over the weekend to cryptically claim that Apple’s trying to re-engineer the project from the ground up, focusing on wireless coils that would “displace heat more effectively” and that prototypes were being made. In the thread, he noted that none of the current prototypes support the Apple Watch, which presents the biggest hurdle as the company refuses to release a wireless charging mat that can’t work with its popular smartwatch.

According to MacRumors, Prosser has a decent record when it comes to Google leaks but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo did say a smaller wireless charging mat would be on deck as a major new hardware product for the first half of 2020. Prosser’s tweets do seem to address some of the rumoured issues that eventually led to Apple pulling the plug on the AirPower in the first place – namely poor heat management. Trying to cram 20 some odd coils into a sleek, tiny charging mat led to devices getting too hot and bugs with accurate battery level reporting.

But the revived AirPower mat isn’t the only Apple rumour coming from Prosser. Last week, he also tweeted that Apple has begun mass production on the iPhone 9. While the naming is not yet official, there’s been plenty of rumours that Apple is working on a successor to the popular iPhone SE. Basically, it’s understood to be the same form factor as the iPhone 8, but with updated guts and a markedly cheaper price point of roughly $400/£400. A recent report also noted that it’s likely we’ll also get an iPhone 9 Plus as well.

Prosser claims that Apple is currently working with China’s BYD to speed up production, but there’s been no official word from Apple. That’s possibly because Apple was forced to cancel a planned March event due to concerns surrounding the novel coronavirus. That hasn’t stopped Apple from releasing new products, however. Last week, it announced a new iPad Pro, MacBook Air, and the Powerbeats 4. As for a 5G iPhone 12? Prosser claims it’s still happening, but it’s likely to face significant delays, possibly until November.

In a nutshell: Intel’s first-generation Lakefield processors are not due out until Q4 2020, but some have been getting their hands on early silicon providing us with a glimpse of what kind of performance to expect. The latest leak shows an SoC designated “Core i5-L15G7” that Geekbench rated better than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835.

Benchmarks have leaked for another Intel Lakefield SoC. A tweet from InstLatX64 on Saturday revealed Geekbench tests on a Core i5-L15G7. It appears to be a lower-spec version of the Core 15-L16G7 that was spotted in UserBenchmark tests back in January.

It will be a five-core x86 hybrid similar to a Lakefield SoC that leaked last September. It will have one “big” Sunny Cove core on a 10nm process, and four “little” Tremont cores on a 22nm Foveros base die. Foveros is an Intel technology that allows the stacking of different chips on one another. The SoC should have a TDP from between five and seven watts. The Geekbench report also indicated the the Core i5-L15G7 has 1.5MB of L2 cache and 4MB of L3 cache.

The 3DMark scores posted for the Lakefield spotted in September indicated a boosted frequency of around 3.1GHz. The Geekbench tests on the Core i5-L15G7 showed a base clock speed of around 1.38GHz, with the Lakefield part hitting as high as 2.95GHz. So it appears that it might be a different chipset, but that’s just an educated guess.

In any event, the processor seems to be a bit more powerful than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 SoC. In single-core tests, the Core i5-L15G7 scored 725, an increase of more than 104 percent over the Snapdragon 835. However, in multi-core workloads, Intel’s chip only boasted a small advantage against Qualcomm’s — 1,566 points versus 1,533 points, respectively — a gain of just over two percent.

Keep in mind, these tests are on unreleased hardware. First-generation Lakefield chips are not due out until this holiday season. Although, Tom’s Hardware reports seeing the Core i5-L16G7 in a teardown of a Lenovo X1 Fold, which is due out mid-year. Even still, Intel could have already made performance improvements to the i5-L15G7 in question. Keep your eye out for TechSpot’s benchmarks when we get our hands on the new silicon.

HP today announced it is building a new VR headset, called Reverb G2, in collaboration with Valve and Microsoft.

There’s very little to go on, as the only thing available right now is a single teaser video. Here it is, in all its ambiguous glory:

HP also left us with this statement, which may give us at least one clue as to what we’re seeing here:

“Through this collaboration, Valve, Microsoft and HP are bringing a more immersive, comfortable and compatible VR experience,” an HP spokesperson told Road to VR. 

Healthy speculation: by the looks of it, the Reverb G2 may make use of Microsoft’s Windows MR optical inside-out tracking, which is available on a host of Windows MR headsets dating back to the first generation of devices in 2017, including the original HP Reverb.

Launched just last summer and aimed at enterprise users, the HP Reverb was an impressive piece of kit despite the compromises on its generally tepid Windows tracking quality and aging WMR controllers. It includes 2,160 × 2,160 per-display resolution, which is a big step up over the next highest resolution headsets in the same class—the Valve Index, showcasing a resolution of 1,440 × 1,600 per display, and HTC Vive Pro’s dual 1,440 × 1,600 AMOLEDs, making the OG Reverb an impressively pixel-dense headset.

The “more compatible” part of the statement however might just point to the inclusion of SteamVR tracking as a secondary standard, embedded within the headset’s exterior. Windows MR headsets are already compatible with SteamVR by default, and their controllers have a standard input layout, so making it “more compatible” from a software perspective seems like a moot point.

Here’s a better look, brightened for clarity.

If it includes SteamVR tracking, where are the dimples then? Although HTC Vive and more recently Vive Cosmos Elite contain characteristically dimpled faceplates for SteamVR tracking, Valve’s Index has them invisibly embedded, so there’s no telling what lurks underneath that front portion of the headset.

Another bit of speculation: the headset’s integrated audio looks strikingly similar to Valve Index’s, which might suggest an off-ear headphone design. Should that be the case, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they’ve also borrowed some of Valve’s optics as well.

What definitely isn’t clear is whether Reverb G2 will come with the aging Windows MR controllers, or whether that reveal will come later with a prospective Windows MR/SteamVR tracking combo. We’ll have our eyes peeled for more info on Reverb G2, which symbolizes Valve’s first headset collab outside of the original HTC Vive from 2016.

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Is HP pushing out another enterprise headset, or heading HTC off at the pass with an impressively speced headset which could potentially trump the Vive Cosmos’ modularity? We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled in the coming weeks for more info on Reverb G2, so make sure to check back soon.