Author: batteryforpc

Canon’s RF mirrorless lenses have received lots of praise for pushing optical boundaries and for their great image quality. This great video review takes a look at one of those lenses, the RF 15-35mm f/2.8L IS USM.

Coming to you from Gordon Laing, this excellent video review takes a look at the Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8L IS USM lens. The 15-35mm f/2.8L comes with two Ultra-Low Dispersion elements for reduced chromatic aberrations, three aspherical elements for reduced spherical aberrations and distortion and improved sharpness, Air-Sphere Coating for reduced flaring and improved contrast, image stabilization of up to five stops, Nano USM for quick and nearly silent autofocus with full-time manual override, a customizable Control Ring, and fluorine coating on the front and rear elements to resist smudges. It also comes with a nine-blade diaphragm for smoother bokeh. Beyond the optical features and improvements, the RF version also comes with an extra millimeter on the wide end over its EF cousin, extending its versatility. Altogether, the RF 15-35mm f/2.8L looks like a fantastic upgrade over its EF predecessor and a great addition for many photographers using Canon’s mirrorless system. Check out the video above for Laing’s full thoughts. 

If you’ve shopped for a graphics card that is small enough to fit inside a mini-ITX case lately, you may have been frustrated with the results—there’s just not a lot of them available. Don’t blame PowerColor (not entirely, anyway). It just released its second mini-ITX graphics card in four months, a Radeon RX 5600 XT.

This newest entry follows the launch of a miniaturized Radeon RX 5700 XT last December. It was reported at the time that it would be exclusive to Japan, and that still seems to be the case.

In contrast, PowerColor’s shortened Radeon RX 5600 XT is listed at Scan for £299.99. A straight conversion puts it at around $372 in US currency. As our friends at Tom’s Hardware note, subtracting VAT puts the cost closer to $300 (which is more in line with regular 5600 XT cards), if and when it launches in the US. I’m guessing it probably will.

The listing doesn’t specify the dimensions. However, it’s not going to be bigger or longer than the ITX version of the 5700 XT, which measures 175mm x 110mm x 40mm (6.89 x 4.33 x 1.57 inches). Like that model, the 5600 XT occupies two PCI Express slots.

One other notable bit about this card is the memory. Though the dimensions are not specified, the listing indicates it ships with 6GB of GDDR6 memory at 14Gbps. 

The 5600 XT launch was a bit of a mess because AMD changed the specs at the last minute, from 12Gbps to 14Gbps memory. This left its hardware partners scrambling to update their designs to validate the new memory, and when possible, issue BIOS updates for existing cards that shipped with the slower memory. Neither of those headaches apply to this card.

What other options are there? I sorted Newegg’s GPU section to only show mini ITX cards and it only came up with just six models. Out of those, only half them showed up as being in stock, and all three were from marketplace sellers with inflated prices. No thanks.

Scan has a few more options, just be sure to check the listings to make sure the card is actually an ITX model (a search for ‘ITX graphics cards’ returned some results that were clearly not ITX). In case you’re not familiar, mini ITX cases are even smaller than micro ATX ones. They’re great if you’re dealing with limited space, they just require more careful component selection.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 is one of the most anticipated phones of 2020, which is why when an image of what appears to be a brand new Note phone was spotted on the South Korean maker’s own website, and that new phone had no notch or pin-hole camera to be seen on its screen, phone enthusiasts the world over got excited.

They got excited as the prospect of a Samsung Galaxy Note 20 smartphone equipped with a futuristic under-screen front-facing camera could of just crept a tiny bit closer.

The mystery Note-style phone is sandwiched between a Galaxy S10+ and Galaxy S20, and while its top-left hand corner of the screen cannot be seen, thereby holding the potential for a tiny pin-hole camera to be tucked away out of sight, the chances of Samsung abandoning its Infinity-O screens and moving the pin-hole from where it was positioned on the Galaxy Note 10 series, bang in centre, seems off.

And it especially seems off considering the mystery Galaxy phone looks so much like a Note phone. You can check out the image (which has now been taken down from the Samsung website) causing all the ruckus below and make up your own mind.

The new Samsung Galaxy phone image was first reported on by SamMobile, with one of the site’s readers spotting it on the Samsung Rewards section of the official Samsung website.

Now, whether the phone is genuine and what we’re looking at here is a teaser image of the Galaxy Note 20 remains unclear. The image is obviously a mock-up of sorts, and Samsung has past form using made-up concept phones in its advertising imagery, so it is definitely worth taking with a grain of salt. And especially so as the design leaks we’ve seen so far show the Note 20 with hardware buttons on the right hand side of the frame, which in this image remains completely clean.

However, there have been rumours that Samsung is working on underscreen camera technology and that it is going to launch a phone with the technology this year, so this image certainly can’t be ruled out entirely. After all, the Note series is Samsung’s technical leader and it would make perfect sense for a new technology of such magnitude to debut on a Note phone.

Other World Computing (also known as OWC) is a very Apple-centric company. Its products are typically designed for Mac computers, such as the iMac, Mac Pro, and MacBook to name a few. Hell, the company’s website is MacSales.com — what does that tell you? Despite primarily focusing on Apple products, its offerings aren’t exclusive to Mac. Many of its storage, memory, and docking products are compatible with Windows and Linux computers too.

OWC’s latest storage product is sure to be cross-platform, as it is merely a solid state drive. The SSD is a very fast M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe variant, but that isn’t what makes it so exciting. Actually, it is the capacity — an insane 4TB! And yes, as you can expect, the 4TB Aura P12 M.2 NVMe SSD (S3DN3P2T40) is quite expensive.

ALSO READ: PATRIOT PXD is a PCIe USB-C SSD

“The Aura P12 SSDs give users the freedom to dramatically up their game, utilizing 3D NAND flash memory and security features including TCG Opal and TCG Pyrite. These SSDs are engineered to give users the best and longest working life, with read speeds up to 3400MB/s and write speeds up to 3000MB/s, a perfect blend for media-heavy projects, on-location downloads and faster previews, renders and processing in audio and VFX programs,” says OWC.

Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO, explains, “Our SSDs have traditionally been a knockout with professionals and prosumers across industries, especially those who have a truly demanding workflow in rugged environments or studio spaces. We are very excited to be the first to offer this 4TB Aura P12 SSD to expand our Envoy Pro EX, ThunderBlade and Accelsior 4M2 line-ups. We know that users will get the highest performance they’ve ever experienced and can continue to count on OWC for superior reliability.”

OWC shares specifications below.

Capacity: 3840GB useable

NAND: Toshiba Triple-Level Cell (TLC) 3D NAND Flash

Form Factor: M.2 – 2280 “M Key”

Interface: PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3

Formatted Capacity: 3576GiB

Controller: Phison E12 with 7 percent over-provisioning

RAID Support: Yes

SMART Attributes: Standard

Native Command Queuing (NCQ): up to 32 commands

RoHS Compliant: Yes

Height: 1.2mm (0.047″)

Width: 22.0mm (0.866″)

Length: 80.0mm (3.150″)

Weight: 7 grams (0.247 oz)

So, how much does the OWC 4TB Aura P12 M.2 NVMe SSD cost? A sky-high $1,149.88. Yes, that costs more than many computers. But hey, if you have the need for it, I am sure you are willing to shell out the bucks. You can score it here now.

While it isn’t the newest idea to hit the smartphone world, the pop-up selfie camera is certainly a novel way of decluttering the handset’s face and allowing for an uninterrupted display in doing so.

A few manufacturers have already implemented this trick – the OnePlus 7 Pro and Oppo Reno are some notable examples – but the latest leak suggests that Samsung will be joining them in the near future.

A number of renders have been ‘acquired’ by design website Pigtou in collaboration with veteran leakers OnLeaks, showing off the alleged Samsung handset from all angles.

The renders show a phone with a fingerprint scanner on its rear, as well as a triple camera array, so it’s likely that the device won’t be in Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S series, and will more probably be in the mid-range Galaxy A series.

The selfie camera is contained in a small, squared-off protrusion that pops up from the top edge of the phone, slightly offset from the handset’s centre. Some other details that can be gleaned from the renders include a USB-C port, lack of headphone jack, and an all-display design with some minor top and side bezels and a slightly larger chin bezel.

Given that any evidence of this handset’s existence lies purely in the form of some leaked renders, there’s no telling if it’s accurate at this point, let alone when it will release. 

In the past, we’ve seen rumored Samsung prototypes of the Galaxy A series turn out to be wildly different than the final design, so we can’t be certain of the veracity of these renders.