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Samsung is rolling out a new update for Always On Display, pushing the app to version 5.2.05.8. It fixes a couple of bugs related to Dark Mode and Bluetooth-connected keyboards, and also claims to improve the layouts for some clock styles.

Before this update, Always On Display had an issue whereby the background would turn gray when using a Bluetooth keyboard. AOD settings were also difficult to see while Dark Mode was enabled on certain themes. These bugs have now been addressed with version 5.2.05.8.

You don’t need One UI 2.1 for this update

The update is rolling out now, and we can confirm that it is available at least on the Galaxy Note 10 (running One UI 2.0 and not the latest One UI 2.1 update). But the new Always On Display version should be pushed to more Samsung devices as we speak.

You can check which Always On Display version you’re running by opening Settings, navigating to Lock screen » Always On Display (don’t tap the toggle, but the text itself), and tapping About Always On Display. If the update hasn’t reached your phone yet, you may have to wait for a few more days. You can also launch the Galaxy Store on your phone, tap the ‘hamburger’ menu in the upper-left corner, and check if the new version is waiting for you in the Updates category.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 is shaping up to be an impressive phone. Rumoured to be launching in July, it’s sure to boast tech just as advanced, or even more so, as Samsung’s current flagship S20 series. It’s also due to come with new features such as a redesigned S Pen. 

With any phone, the camera is often the biggest draw, and Samsung doesn’t look set to disappoint here either. A new leak indicates the Note 20 will receive the same incredible camera as Samsung’s highest-end phone to date. 

WinFuture’s Roland Quandt suggests the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 will get the same massive camera array as the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, or at least a module of the exact same size. 

Quant compares a leaked mould for the Note 20 (referred to here as the Note 11) with the S20 Ultra case, which has an identical cut-out where the camera module can be installed. The suggestion is that both phones will use the same size module.

There’s a clear similarity here in both shape and size. If the Note 20 is getting the S20 Ultra’s huge camera, it could certainly do a lot worse: the Ultra is equipped with a quad-camera setup, include a huge 108MP camera sensor and 100x space-zoom functionality. It’s no wonder it was nicknamed “Hubble” during production.

The Note 20’s place as a premium phablet makes it suitable for a huge camera module too, with both the size and price point to justify it. The Note 20 has allegedly been nicknamed “Canvas” as a production codename, presumably due to its massive size.

The Note series, with its large size and in-built S Pen, is known for straddling the line between tablet and phone, taking a bite out of both markets. The S Pen allows you to create fine-point, sensitive illustrations on your phone and even has a touch-button, so you can use it as a remote control to take calls and cycle through slides in presentations. 

One of the best camera systems in phones today could only add to the Note’s value – although it would inevitably push up the price point. We’ll see exactly how much the next-generation phablet will really cost in July later this year. 

Looking for a camera that you can use to shoot pictures of the wildlife in your backyard, and anything else you can see? Then this neat Canon bridge camera could be just the thing to use as you sit in self-isolation. And it will be a great camera for travelling, as and when we are all free to roam the world again.

The big selling point of the Canon PowerShot SX540 HS is its huge 50x zoom… which offers an equivalent focal range of a 24-1200mm zoom. Now that is great for shooting wide-angle interiors – but also for getting close-up shots of that bird on a branch at the end of the garden. In fact, with so much optical power, it will give you jaw-dropping close-ups of the moon too. And there is built-in image stabilization too – so that you don’t have to panic about camera shake.

The camera offers a decent 20.3 megapixel resolution for stills – but can also offer HD video shooting at up to 60 frames per second.

There is a full range of exposure modes and metering options for those who want to take control – but you can also leave things in auto if you just want to point and shoot. And the images you take can be shared easily with the rest of the world via your phone using a WiFi or NFC link.

Other key features include:

– 3 inch LCD screen

– built-in GPS

– minimum focus 1cm

– ISO 80 – 3200

– shutter speed range 15 secs – 1/2000sec –

rechargeable battery

Multiple aftermarket MSI GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards with GDDR6 memory appeared in a Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) submission in February. Today, hardware leaker @momomo_us discovered two listings from German retailer PC Service Point that point to a GTX 1650 refresh en route. 

The graphics cards in question are the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 D6 OC and Gigabye GeForce GTX 1650 WindForce D6 OC. Similarly to the aforementioned MSI models, Gigabyte labeled the new graphics cards with the “D6” suffix, which we suspect is a sign it’s using GDDR6 memory instead of the current version’s GDDR5. 

The change is apparent if we compare the part numbers for the new GDDR6 variants with their previous GDDR5 counterparts. The regular models have 1650 in their part numbers. To distinguish the GDDR6 versions, Gigabyte swapped the fourth digit to a 6, so the new part numbers carry 1656.

The GTX 1650 debuted with 4GB of 8 Gbps GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit memory interface. This allows it to deliver a memory bandwidth of 128 GBps. PC Service Point’s listing doesn’t specify the speed at which the GDDR6 memory will operate. 

If go we by a previous rumor, it’s possible that the GTX 1650 will receive 12 Gbps GDDR6 memory.That would mean the new variant could pump out 192 GBps of memory bandwidth, which equates to a significant increase of 50%.

Other than the memory swap, the GDDR6 variant probably won’t come with any more improvements. Only 384 CUDA cores separate the GTX 1650 from the GTX 1650 Super. With the GDDR6 memory upgrade, the revised GTX 1650 is on par with the Super variant in terms of memory performance. It’s unlikely that Nvidia will continue to improve it any further, as the graphics card would cannibalize the GTX 1650 Super.

As far as pricing goes, it seems that the refreshed GTX 1650 might be priced similarly or slightly cheaper than the original. For context, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 OC 4G and Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 WindForce OC 4G cost €187.99 (~$206) and €194.99 (~$214), respectively, at PC Service Point. The corresponding GDDR6 models are going for €185.99 (~$204) and €192.99 (~$214), respectively. 

The German retailer didn’t specify when the new GDDR6 variants will be available. For now, all we can do is wait.

The Huawei P40 and Samsung Galaxy S20 series’ are about to get some competition. We’ve seen a few designs and some leaked specs for the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer’s next generation of flagship phones, but we’ve not heard any official word on the handsets from the OnePlus camp. 

However, that’s all about to change, as OnePlus is gearing up to formally unveil its next handsets, and it’s provided a few tantalising new details on the phones.

OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro are set to be announced on Monday, April 14, at 11am EST. For UK smartphone fans, that’s 3pm GMT. The launch event will take place on the OnePlus site and on Youtube, but you’ll also be able to watch it all right here on T3.

OnePlus doesn’t go into too much detail, but it does tell us a 120Hz refresh rate will be introduced to its phones, boasting “an even more fluid and immersive viewing experience” along with “a handful of other new and exciting technologies”.

A 120Hz full-HD AMOLED screen would put the OnePlus 8 in the same category as the Samsung Galaxy S20 series, and above the Huawei P40’s 90Hz capability. We also know the phones will be 5G-capable, but that’s it as far as official confirmation goes. 

Although we’ve had little official information, we do have a leaked list of specs that do look fairly accurate, courtesy of noted Twitter leaker Ishan Agarwal. 

Google is offering price discounts on members of the Pixel family this Easter. The Pixel 3a and 3a XL will be £30 off when purchased from a few retailers including the Google Store, Currys, John Lewis, and Argos. This will knock the price of the smaller Pixel down to £299, and that of the larger Pixel to £369. This deal runs from March 31st through April 21st. If you’d prefer to purchase it on contract, EE will be offering 30GB of data for the price of 10GB. It’ll run from April 1st to April 30th.

Whe reviewing the Pixel 3a XL, we noted:

At $479 the Pixel 3a XL feels like a bit of a bargain. If you’re into smaller phones, the $399 Pixel 3a is even more so. These phones have maintained most of what makes the Pixel 3 series among the most enjoyable phones to use, and in my week-long testing, I’ve noticed none of the performance hiccups that sullied some of that luster.

I miss wireless charging, and the lack of waterproofing is a bit of a bummer, but otherwise the biggest compliment I can give to the Pixel 3a series is that it using it on a day-to-day basis is practically indistinguishable from the Pixel 3. That may be its biggest curse, too, but at under $500 people are likely to be a lot more forgiving.

The comment holds true at a lower price.

Alongside the Pixel 3a family, Google is also offering discounts on some of its home devices. Most notably, this includes the excellent Google Nest Mini, Google’s Nest Hub, and the Google Home Max and others like the Chromecast and Chromecast Ultra.

We already heard murmurings of a Kirin 820 chipset earlier this month, and now Honor has made it official by launching the Kirin 820-powered Honor 30s in China.

The new chipset is a reasonably heavy lifter on the CPU front, delivering four Cortex-A76 cores (one at 2.36Ghz and three at 2.22Ghz) and four Cortex-A55 cores (1.84Ghz). This should translate into better multi-core performance in theory than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 700 series.

HiSilicon’s new processor also sports a Mali-G57 MP6 GPU rather than Mali-G77 graphics as previously rumored. Otherwise, you can also expect an upgraded NPU as well as 5G capabilities.

What else does Honor 30s offer?

5G generally requires more juice than 4G, but the Honor 30s features a 4,000mAh battery that’s not exactly large compared to other 5G phones. Fortunately, 40W wired charging means you can hit 100% capacity in just over an hour, and 70% in 30 minutes (there’s no wireless charging though).

The phone is pretty solid in the camera field though, delivering a 16MP selfie camera in a punch-hole and a quad rear camera arrangement. The quad system consists of a 64MP main camera, 8MP 3x telephoto shooter, 8MP ultra-wide camera, and 2MP macro sensor.

Other notable specs include a 6.5-inch FHD+ LCD screen with an unspecified refresh rate, a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, USB-C, 3.5mm port, and storage expansion (yay!) via NM card (boo!). Don’t expect an IR blaster or NFC though.

The Honor 30s is listed at 2,399 yuan (~$338) for the 8GB/128GB model via Tmall, and 2,699 yuan (~$380) for the 8GB/256GB variant.

To one extent or another artificial intelligence is practically everywhere these days, from games to image upscaling to smartphone “personal assistants.” More than ever, researchers are pouring a ton of time, money, and effort into AI designs. At Google, AI algorithms are even being used to design AI chips.

This is not a complete design of silicon that Google is dealing with, but a subset of chip design known as placement optimization. This is a time-consuming task for humans. As explained by IEEE Spectrum (via LinusTechTips), this involves placing blocks of logic and memory (or clusters of those blocks) in strategic areas to make the most of the available real estate, both for performance and power efficiency.

It might take a team of engineers several weeks to map out the ideal placement because it’s a complex task with a ton of variables. In stark contrast, Google’s neural network can produce a better design for a Tensor processing unit in less than 24 hours. This is similar in concept to the Tensor cores that Nvidia uses in its Turing-based GeForce RTX graphics cards, just with different goals in mind.

That’s interesting in and of itself, but equally so is the type of AI Google is using. Rather than leverage a deep learning model, which requires training AI on a large set of data, Google is using a “reinforcement learning” system. The short explanation is RL models learn by doing.

There is a reward system involved, so RL models proceed in the right direction. In this case, the reward is a combination of power reduction, improvements in performance, and area reduction. I’m simplifying a bit, but basically, the more designs Google’s AI does, the better it becomes at the task at hand (making AI chips).

“We believe that it is AI itself that will provide the means to shorten the chip design cycle, creating a symbiotic relationship between hardware and AI, with each fueling advances in the other,” Google’s researchers explain. If this works out for Google, it seems inevitable AMD, Intel and Nvidia will eventually try the same approach, too.

Users on the web interact with checkboxes, dropdown menus, and other UI elements on a regular basis. Google is now redesigning these HTML form controls in Chrome to improve touch-friendliness and accessibility.

One issue with native form controls, however, is the inconsistency in their styling. Older controls, such as <button> and <select> were styled to match the user’s operating system. Form controls that were added to the platform more recently were designed to match whatever style was popular at the time.

In Chrome, this results in “mismatched and sometimes outdated” controls that force developers to spend additional time and code customizing the defaults. Over the last year, Google worked with the Microsoft Edge team to “retheme and improve the functionality of the built-in form controls on Chromium browsers.”

This results in new UIs that are consistent and “easier to perceive.” Overall, it does away with gradients and leverages modern flat design principles for checkboxes, buttons, text fields, dropdown menus, progress indicators, and sliders.

In terms of accessibility, there is a “more visible” focus ring that helps “people using a keyboard or switch device to identify which element they’re interacting with.” The new design features a thick dark ring with a thin white outline. Another tweak improves color pickers by making them fully accessible with keyboards and switch devices.

Enhanced touch support results in larger tap targets. One example sees date pickers have better flyouts and support for swiping and inertia when scrolling.

These changes are already available on Edge for Windows, and can be enabled on Chrome 81 with the following flag:

chrome://flags/#form-controls-refresh

This controls redesign will roll out to Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS with version 83 in mid-May. A similar revamp is coming to Android later this year.

We’ve finally got our hands on the new AMD Renoir Ryzen 9 4900HS, and if the ROG Zephyrus G14 is anything to go by, it looks like AMD’s success in desktops is going to continue in the laptop space. There’s plenty to like about the new laptop from Asus, but it’s that processor which really stands out as an absolute monster. The kind of monster that upsets the exclusive party Intel has enjoyed for, well, pretty much forever. Intel, you really need to up your game. 

The big news with the Ryzen 9 4900HS is the fact that it is an eight-core, 16-thread processor. Not only that but the operating frequencies are healthy too, with a single-core turbo of 4.3GHz, and 3.8GHz when all the cores are being thrashed together. So the single-core performance is strong, but the multi-core performance is even stronger. 

By way of example, Cinebench R20 produced an overall score of 4,183 pts using all the cores, while the single core performance of a 486 pts is impressive too.

If you’re in the mood for more comparisons, then Geekbench 4 produced a Single-Core Score of 5,343, while the Multi-Core Score of 29,920 is impressive. You have to keep telling yourself that these results are from a laptop processor, not a hulking desktop chip that’s being cooled by an all-in-one water cooler. The slightly more up to date Geekbench 5 meanwhile returned a Multi-Core Score of 7,871 and a single Core result of 1199.

The take away from this is that if you’re in the market for a new laptop, then things have suddenly got a lot more complicated.

Where traditionally you had one option of manufacturer, and a wealth of confusingly labelled chips, you now get to choose between AMD and Intel, and then drill down for the balance that works for you. If you’re in the market for a single, small form-factor machine that has the raw power for serious number crunching, and you like to enjoy the odd game, then the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 isn’t a bad option at all.