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Over 13000 Vivo phones found to be using same IMEI number
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Smartphone’s IMEI is like a digital fingerprint that is unique to each and every device. It is used by the telecom companies to provide network connectivity on a SIM card and since the IMEI number of two devices cannot be the same, it is also used to track and trace lost devices or criminals.

However, in a bizarre case, the police in Meerut, located in Uttar Pradesh has stated that it has found not one but over 13,500 smartphones using the same IMEI number. Identifying this as a severe security issue, the cops have registered a case against the Chinese smartphone maker Vivo.

As per the reports, the case came into highlight after a Sub Inspector from Meerut Police got his smartphone back after repairs that cost him Rs. 2605 in September last year. However, even after the repairs, the phone showed a system error and he later found that the IMEI number of the device was changed.

A case was filed and notices were sent to the smartphone maker and due to the unsatisfactory response from Vivo, a complaint was filed with the cyber cell team. This is when the cyber cell team identified that there were 13,557 different Vivo phones with the same IMEI number operational across the country.

While IMEI number may sound rather irrelevant for a common user, however, it becomes a grave security concern as it makes it impossible for cops to intercept criminals.

Back in 2012, a similar incident was reported when 18,000 phones were found to be using the same IMEI number. Later in 2017, the federal government announced that tampering with the IMEI numbers is a punishable offence. Last year over a lakh stolen phones were found to be using the same IMEI number.

While this can be seen as negligence at the end of the company, the Meerut Police has already started an investigation in this matter. We have also reached out to Vivo and will update this story once we receive any response.

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How to design a secure home office
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Remote working has gone mainstream with large parts of the world, including the UK, now telecommuting. The data bears this out – for example, Microsoft saw users on their collaboration platform Teams generate 2.7 billion minutes of online meetings worldwide in a single day in early April, a new record and just under five times the amount generated just four weeks earlier.

While it is incredibly important to stay connected and keep physically distant, there are serious privacy risks that need to be addressed. Working from home can increase the risk of unauthorized data transfers and sharing. The privacy of users can also suffer if suddenly many new unfamiliar tools have to be used to get the job done. This is compounded by the fact that home networks are rarely as well secured as corporate headquarters. 

As an organisation, Mozilla has been focusing on the aspects of security and privacy in the home office for quite some time. Even before the crisis, half of all Mozilla employees (and 69% in the UK) were working permanently from home. Employers need to help their employees establish a secure home office environment to mitigate risks for both the individuals as well as the company. 

When it comes to security, there are three core areas that should all be given equal attention in designing a home office – IT security, data security and connection security.

IT Security

Large and small companies alike often prohibit the use of private hardware for work, be it a computer or just a USB stick. In the home office, however, people can quickly stop adhering to these strict rules. Private computers and devices are also more at risk as they are unlikely to have the same level of security measures in place as work devices. The latter tend to be supervised by an IT professional who has the right expertise to identify good antivirus software and firewall systems and ensure regular updates.

Therefore, it’s best to only use the devices provided by employers that have been secured in advance by the company’s IT department with common protection software. Business devices need to be protected in the home office – this means not using private USB sticks coupled with other private devices (via Bluetooth, for example) or private surfing on dubious websites during lunch breaks.

It’s wise to be especially careful when checking private emails at this time as well. Criminals are increasingly phishing and trying to spread malware in inboxes, both work and personal. This also highlights the importance of making sure your working device is up to date to protect against vulnerabilities – the browser and any other pre-installed software should always be kept up to date to do so.

Making sure you are password savvy is also important. Weak passwords can be more easily guessed or cracked through brute force attacks on networks, and if work passwords are the same or similar to the ones used privately, that could prove catastrophic for your place of work.

As such, when setting up work accounts, it is highly recommended to use strong, work-context only passwords that are different from those used for private browsing and personal online life. Some of our specific tips on this can be found here.

Data security

Given many of us will be accessing company resources from home at this time, one of the primary considerations for data security is the location of where data is stored. Especially as it’s expected that companies have access to their employees’ data at all times.

A strict separation of work and private computing devices, from laptops to smartphones and beyond, is therefore highly recommended. If it’s not possible, then data should be stored separately at the very least. Many companies already rely on secure cloud storage solutions such as Dropbox, Box, Onedrive or iCloud. For those, users must consistently observe the company's internal regulations, especially if they use a private device. Businesses should be encouraging users to take care when storing documents, and in particular not to store them on their private devices.

This also applies when transferring data to third parties, for example clients or service providers. Failure to use secure platforms such as professional email accounts, WeTransfer or Firefox Send can risk your data leaking into the wild and jeopardizing business continuity.

Connection security

Since working remotely means that people often have to exchange even more data with their colleagues than before, the way that data gets transferred is extremely important. Many companies use a business VPN, a virtual network, for access to the internal company network, which stores all documents and programs. This is particularly well-protected against the interception of data – which is critical when working from home.

At home, people usually access the internet via their private home Wi-Fi. In most cases, this is not very well protected against attacks. While free networks (in cafés, train stations, etc.) are known for being very vulnerable to attacks if not secured by a VPN, the home Wi-Fi is also a weak point. Most people use their routers after purchase by plug & play, with the standard provided password and a weak Wi-Fi key. This isn’t ideal for private usage, but definitely insufficient for professional work.

A secure connection strategy for a home office is multi-pronged. In terms of your home network, it’s recommended to use at least WPA2 encryption for your WI-FI router, or WPA3 if you have access to it on your device. Making sure all related software and firmwares are up to date is also useful here. As is making sure you only access company data via a VPN and avoiding the use of public Wi-Fi networks unless a VPN is used.

Designing a secure home office, above all, is about consciously de-risking as many potential privacy and security factors as possible. Whilst not an exhaustive list, focusing on the above three areas will help employees and employers alike to have greater peace of mind and focus on the things that are business critical during this challenging time.

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It is a very exciting time to be in high-performace computing market: AMD chief
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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su said that it is a "very exciting time" to be in the high-performance computing market.

Speaking at the "Masters of Leadership Series” webcast, organised by Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) and Consumer Technology Association, she said that Covid19 has seen difficult times across the world but what has helped is the power of computing for remote working and remote learning.

“I am very excited about where high-performance computing (HPC) is going in the future compared to where we are today. HPCs could do amazing things in solving difficult problems and making our daily lives different,” she said.

Computing is really important in certain large markets, she said and added that the PC market is worth more than $ 30b while the data centres market is valued at more than $ 30b and the gaming market is worth about $ 12b.

“There are really large opportunities out there and they all require more computing horsepower. We were able to do some good things during Covid19 such as providing capacity to data centres and have seen a large interest in laptops,” Su said.

Moreover, she said that households which had one PC have changed completely and people have realised that it has become one of the fundamentals of communication and connectivity.

“I am excited about how computing can do to accelerate solutions to some of the problems and we have been participating with the White House computing taskforce for pandemic research,” she said.

Pushing the envelopes of technology

AMD has donated seven petaflops of supercomputing clusters to New York University (NYU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Rice University and these clusters utilise AMD technologies such as Epyc CPUs and Radeon Instinct GPUs to help accelerate the development of potential therapeutics and vaccines. 

“Once the Covid-19 crisis is over, the HPC systems will support future medical research. I am lucky right now that I am running an important company in technology but at the end of the day, I love building things and pushing the envelopes of technology,” Su said.

Su was born in Taiwan and her family migrated to New York when she was two years old.

“I am a New Yorker at heart,” she said and added that the thought process was there are a few companies in the US that are doing high-performance microprocessor design.

After spending eight years at Boston at MIT and a large portion of her career at IBM in building semiconductor and microelectronics, Su joined the 51-year-old AMD in 2014.

“I started in that area and wanted to be a semiconductor CEO and AMD was my dream job. My interest in semiconductors is how we can use the technology to do a lot of good things,” she said.

However, she said that what AMD is really good at is building high-performance computing with an incredible amount of horsepower in people’s hands but it takes time to build the foundation and “we took time to build the foundation and reach where we are today”.

Highest paid CEO in 2019

When asked about being the highest-paid CEO in S&P 500 companies and the first woman to top the list, she said: “It is all about opportunities and there are a lot of smart people in this world but the fact is that you not only need to be smart but you also have to be in the right place at the right time and the right circumstance”.

According to a study conducted by Associated Press and Equilar Fee Analysis Executive Company, since it began in 2011, Su earned a total of $ 58.5m in 2019, nearly $ 13m more than Discovery Inc David Zaslav, who earned $ 45.m, the next highest-paid male CEO.

The study found that the average compensation for female executives was $ 13.9m compared to $ 12.3m for males, although there were far fewer women than men on the list.

 “I was very lucky because I had mentors and gave me good opportunities and I was able to capitalise on these opportunities but when we look at the diversity aspect of it, we haven’t done enough as much progress there has been and still there are not enough women in the leadership positions.

“I believe that it is because opportunities are not necessarily being presented in such a way,” Su said.   

When asked about the working norms after Covid-19, she said that working norms will change and “we all talk about what the new norms might be. Some of the changes are clearer than others. One thing is clear is that we are not going to travel and we have learned that we can do a lot by using communications tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx even though it is not quite the same as face-to-face meetings”. 

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Huawei could be forced to use Snapdragon chipsets
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Huawei has been dragged in the dirty tug-of-war that has been going on since some time between both the US and the Chinese governments. The Trump Administration has time and again introduced sanctions making it difficult for the Chinese company to work with American companies.

Continuing its clampdown on Huawei further, the U.S. Commerce Department introduced a new export rule mandating all the chipmaker companies, who plan to supply components to Huawei, to apply for an additional license thus controlling the crucial supply chain of the Chinese company.

This sanction means that Huawei cannot get its HiSilicon chipsets made by chip-making TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). For the uninitiated, TSMC is the world’s largest contract chipmaker that makes chipsets on contract for companies like Apple, Huawei, Qualcomm and MediaTek etc.

No more HiSilicon SoCs on Huawei phones?

As per this report, TSMC will not be allowed to ship chipsets to Huawei after September 14 which leaves Huawei with only enough time to procure the new 5nm HiSilicon Kirin SoCs for its next flagship smartphone Mate 40.

Since it will be up to the U.S. Government to permit TSMC or any other company to supply components to the Chinese smartphone maker, it leaves Huawei in a fix as the company may not be able to source enough SoCs for the phones that are scheduled to launch in 2021. The company is scheduled to release phones like the P50 and Mate 50 series as well as all other phones for Huawei and its sub-brand Honor. Hence it may be forced to look for an alternate

In a bid to reduce its dependency on TSMC, Huawei has proactively started working with another Taiwanese company MediaTek that is known for making chipsets for budget and entry-level smartphones and has a capacity to produce 5G chipsets even for cheaper phones.

Some rumours suggest that Huawei may try to scout chipsets from TSMC indirectly using its newfound ally, MediaTek. However, there is always a fear that the Trump administration may come up with another ruling to tap this workaround.

Apart from MediaTek, Huawei is also said to be working with a relatively lesser-known company -SMIC. Despite being China’s biggest foundry, SMIC does not have the required technology to make advanced 5nm chipsets. It is still said to be struggling to come up with the 7nm and 8nm process due to the unavailability of required equipment.

Hence the only company left that is both capable and has the requisite technology ready to manufacture and supply flagship-grade SoC’s to Huawei is Qualcomm.

Will Trump govt allow Qualcomm to supply chips to Huawei?

Like any other company, even Qualcomm will have to follow the licensing route to supply chipsets to Huawei, however, it is quite likely that the US-based chipmaker may get the nod to do so. Interestingly, even Qualcomm’s chipsets are manufactured by TSMC.

Allowing Qualcomm to supply chipsets to Huawei may have multiple benefits. Since Huawei is a huge company and despite all the clampdowns it still sells a lot of smartphones, partnering with it means a huge economical gain for any company.

Secondly, Qualcomm holds a major chunk of the chipset market and this deal could only strengthen its position against its competitor brands like MediaTek.

Lastly, working with Huawei may allow US companies to gain in terms of technology transfer as Huawei is still a global leader in terms of 5G technology. Even the Pentagon had once countered the Trump Administration’s decision to put additional blocks on Huawei by stating that the money received from selling components to Huawei could allow the US companies to invest in critical functions like R&D.

However, it will have to be seen if Huawei wants to work with a US company like Qualcomm since it has been trying to distance itself from American companies and wants to overcome these sanctions on its own conditions.

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EOFY 2020: the best tech deals from Australia’s end-of-financial year sales
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The end-of-financial-year sale is one of the biggest shopping events in Australia, with a wide range of products discounted quite steeply, including cars, household appliances and, of course consumer electronics.

Shopping during Australia’s end-of-financial-year sales means you’ll be able to get your finances in order before filing your tax paperwork as a lot of the discounted items will be tax deductible. So not only will you save some cash on the purchase, you’ll also be able to pocket some extra savings in the form of your tax returns.

And while lockdown restrictions are slowly being lifted, it’s still a very good idea to shop online. After all, you’ll be able to stay off your feet and shop from the comfort of your own home, and you’ll have more time and energy to trawl through various online storefronts for the best offers. Or, you could let us do the hard work.

TechRadar’s Australian team is on hand to sift the chaff and find the best bargains on electronics over the entire month of June. We’ll list them all right here and keep this page updated with new offers as and when they’re made available. There is a strong possibility that a lot of the EOFY sales will end before June 30, so you will need to be quick to snag a great deal.

Retailers offering EOFY deals

EOFY 2020 deals

EOFY 2020 sale: what and when is it?

Unlike the calendar year, Australia’s end of financial year is June 30. That means, from July 1 to the end of October, individuals and businesses will need to file their tax forms with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). Prior to that retailers will be racing to shift old stock to make way for fresh ones, and they’ll be slashing prices on plenty of items, many of which will be tax deductible.

Australia’s EOFY sales traditionally begin June 1 and end on June 30, although many retailers tend to jump the gun, offering a few tempting morsels to lure shoppers in. However, the best EOFY offers are during the month of June, although not all retailers have month-long sales. Moreover, the offers also change through the month, so you will need to keep checking back to see if whatever you need is being discounted or not.

Australia's EOFY 2020 sale: what to expect

If you’re looking to save some money on electronics during Australia’s annual EOFY sale, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve had our finger on the pulse of tax-time deals for a few years now and can safely predict what you can get for a cheaper price.

So, what kind of tech can you find during EOFY sales Down Under? Plenty. From computers to gaming gear, the best flagship smartphones to personal audio. To get an idea of what to expect in 2020, let's take a look at what was on offer last year.

Laptops and PCs: Computing gear has always been some of the most popular items to purchase during EOFY. Manufacturers like Microsoft, Lenovo, Dell and HP will host their own sales on their sites, but you’ll also be able to grab laptops and desktop PCs from major retailers as well, with average discounts of about 15% to 20%. You’ll even be able to snag bargains on accessories as well, with printers, keyboards, SSDs and external hard drives all going on sale during this time.

Gaming
From Nintendo to Sony and Microsoft – there were plenty of deep discounts on gaming gear last year and we’re expecting to see more of the same again in 2020. The best price we saw on the Switch during EOFY 2019 was AU$ 379, which isn’t quite as low as it’s gone during other big sales like Black Friday, but it’s still a darn good price. There’ll also be some blockbuster gaming titles available for cheap, if you’d like to expand your gaming library, but keep an eye out for console bundles.

Smartphones and tablets
While there’s usually not a lot of variety when it comes to smartphone discounts, there are always some very intriguing offers to consider during EOFY if you’re looking to upgrade your handset. Last year saw some great discounts on Samsung’s flagships, as well as the Google Pixel 3, so if you’re an Android user, you may be able to score a new phone without having to pay full retail price. 

It’s also a great time to see if you need a tablet as well, as more often than not they too are tax deductible if you use them for work.

Home entertainment and personal audio
There were plenty of TVs, sound bars and speakers on sale during the last couple of EOFY sales, and we don't expect that trend to change any time soon. And with some excellent 4K UHD smart TVs already seeing price drops outside of big sales, we're looking forward to seeing how much more affordable they'll be during the 2020 tax-time sale.

It's not just home entertainment setups that you'll be able to save on but portable Bluetooth speakers and the best wireless headphones as well. The premium audio products retail for about AU$ 500 a pop, but there's a good chance you'll see them drop well below the AU$ 400 mark. While discounted prices may not match Black Friday offers, tax-time deals still see a decent chunk of change saved on premium products.

Cameras
The EOFY sales are also a great time for photographers – beginners, pros or hobbyists – to grab the latest gear. Last year saw plenty of cameras go on sale, particularly from Fujifilm and Nikon. In 2018, we saw action cameras also drop in price, so keep your eyes peeled for some excellent bargains on DSLRs, compacts and more. If you’re happy with the camera body you already own but need some accessories, we’re also expecting lenses, tripods, filters, bags and SD cards to see some decent price drops as well.

Smart home devices
These nifty voice-activated products have been flooding the market – from internet-connected lights to smart security systems, and the speakers and displays to control them all. Amazon discounted its Echo range of smart speakers last year and we're quite sure that will happen again, along with the other smart devices the e-commerce giant stocks, such as Philips Hue smart lights. You'll also find plenty of retailers offering discounts on Google's range of smart speakers as well.

Home appliances
If you’re looking to renovate your home, the EOFY sales will help you save plenty on the new appliances you’ll need. You can expect to see bargains on not just Dyson vacuum cleaners, but also fridges, dishwashers, washing machines and plenty more.

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The TCL 10 Pro isn’t the best phone of 2020, but it’s exciting nevertheless
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The TCL 10 Pro isn’t the best smartphone in the world – and in fact, it didn’t even break into our main list of the top 15 phones you can buy right now – but nevertheless, I'm excited to see it on virtual shop shelves.

The TCL 10 Pro received three stars out of five from TechRadar, and we called it “not a bad phone” with a further (and more damning) clarification that “you can get so much more for the money, whether you’re minded towards Android or iOS.”

For clarity, I didn’t review the TCL 10 Pro for TechRadar so I haven’t used the handset extensively, but I’m excited because this phone shows there’s still space for new entrants in the mobile market.

Welcome to a new contender

That quote from our review is quite damning, right? But that doesn't mean we want TCL to give up. In fact, I want TCL to see that criticism (and it’s not just us, a lot of our rival tech publications seem to agree with our review of the phone) and run further with a sequel.

TCL entering the phone game with its own branding is an exciting move. Previously, the company has produced handsets through its sub brands of Alcatel and BlackBerry, both of which catered to a very different niche than TCL is trying to target with the 10 Pro.

BlackBerry handsets under TCL haven't thrived, but they've consistently offered a business-focused experience that you can't really get anywhere else. Alcatel on the other hand has been consistently producing some of the best affordable phones on the market.

With the TCL brand becoming more and more recognized in the TV market, it makes sense for the company to apply the name – and the methodology associated with it – to smartphones too.

That methodology involves offering a quality product, but making some necessary cuts to ensure it comes in at an affordable price, which is what it has tried to do with the TCL 10 Pro.

TCL 10 Pro

The rear cameras on the TCL 10 Pro

The TCL 10 Pro isn't looking to compete with the very top-end handsets for a lower price. This isn’t going to be the phone you consider instead of a Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra or iPhone 11 Pro Max, but it may be an alternative to a Samsung Galaxy A90 5G or even something like the OnePlus 8.

And while the TCL 10 Pro isn't entirely successful, with the experience of making that phone behind it, whatever comes next from TCL may be a true contender for the very best mid-range phone that money can buy.

No matter what, we now have another major manufacturer with a lot of money behind it – along with experience in the consumer tech market – going full throttle and developing 5G handsets for the mid-range mobile phone space. 

That's exciting, and while I won't be recommending the TCL 10 Pro itself to people, I'm excited to see what the company is capable of doing next.

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Little-known Japanese CPU threatens to make Nvidia, Intel and AMD obsolete in HPC market
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Sandia National Laboratories has announced it will be the first Department of Energy labs in the US to deploy the Fujitsu A64FX, the only ARM-based processor designed from ground up for HPC projects and supercomputers.

Fujitsu is known primarily for its business laptops, tablets and desktops, but is a behemoth in its own right when it comes to processors, having been in the business for well over half a century.

Launched in 2019, the CPU has 48 cores, a theoretical peak performance of 3.38 TFLOPS, runs at 2.2GHz and has 32GB HBM2 memory on the die itself.

What makes it ideal for the HPC market is that it provides far higher bandwidth performance between memory and the CPU – up to 1TBps. Moving data to and from the CPU is the biggest obstacle by far to what researchers refer to as exascale computing.

What makes the A64FX even more exciting is that Fujitsu wants the technology to trickle down to hyperscalers and major cloud computing giants so that the masses can benefit too.

Given it is based on ARM architecture, it can (and has) run Linux distributions out of the box and even Microsoft Windows.

It is considered a general purpose CPU, but surpasses even GPUs from Nvidia and AMD on the all-important metric of performance per watt. Indeed, a 768-CPU prototype sits on top of the Green500 list – the leaderboard for supercomputers that deliver the most power per watt.

The A64FX was designed expressly to power the successor of Japan’s main supercomputer, the K, which was decommissioned back in August 2019. 

Its replacement – the Fugaku – is expected to be 100 times faster when it launches later this year, will run on a Linux distribution called McKernel and will reach a staggering 400 petaflops. The aim is for it to be the first supercomputer to hit one exaflop when fully deployed with half a million processors buzzing.

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This rugged smartphone has a massive 10,000mAh battery and it’s on sale right now
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The presence of a large battery in a modern smartphone often means you'll have to compromise on other features; but not so with the Oukitel WP6. You've probably never heard of the brand, but we reviewed one of its rugged smartphones back in 2018 (the WP2) if you want to get a feel for the devices.

The WP6 is available in both orange and black for $ 213.59 (£243.99/AU$ 443.78) at AliExpress. Despite its entry-level status, it sports some rather high-end features, such as 6GB of RAM and 128GB onboard storage.

It also boasts a 6.3-inch display with a 1080 x 2340 pixel resolution, which is higher than most laptops.

Another notable feature is its massive 10,000mAh battery – one of the largest we’ve seen in a rugged smartphone. With an 18W charger, you should be able to fill it up fairly quickly, and you can also use the WP6 as an emergency portable battery charger if you get caught short.

It also features an eight-core Mediatek Helio P70 CPU, 48-megapixel Sony camera sensor, IP68 rating, 16-megapixel front facing camera and Android 9.0.

It's worth noting, the device doesn't support wireless charging nor NFC, and we wouldn’t count on Oukitel to provide more than one Android update. 

If you're after an alternative, the Blackview BV9100 has an even bigger battery (13000mAh) and NFC, but costs more and has a significantly inferior set of components (slower CPU, a third less memory, half the storage, and a lesser camera sensor).

Bear in mind

  • If this product comes from mainland China, it will take at least a month to reach either the US or UK (and potentially more). You may be levied a tax either directly or through the courier.
  • If you've managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new, let us know and we'll tip our hat to you.

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Arm reveals the hardware that will power the smartphones of 2021
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Arm has unveiled its next generation mobile CPU the Cortex-A78 and GPU the Mali-G78 which will be used to power the flagship smartphones of 2021.

The UK-based company provides the chip designs that Qualcomm, Huawei, Samsung and other chipmakers license and then use to to create their own customized system-on-a-chip designs that are found in high-end Android smartphones, tablets and now even laptops such as Microsoft's Surface Pro X.

The new Arm Cortex-A78 CPU will provide increased performance gains as well as greater power efficiency. According to Arm, the new CPU is its most efficient Cortex-A CPU ever designed for mobile devices. The Cortex-A78 will also be able to deliver more immersive 5G experiences as the result of a 20 percent increase in sustained performance over Cortex-A77-based devices with a 1-watt power budget.

The performance-per-watt of the chip will make it better suited for the greater overall computing needs of foldable devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Fold and devices with multiple screens like the LG V60.

Cortex-X Custom program and Mali-G78

Arm also announced a new engagement program called the Cortex-X Custom program which will give its partners the option of having more flexibility and scalability to increase performance. This will allow its partners to develop solutions for providing the ultimate performance for specific use cases.

The Arm-Cortex-X1 is the program's first CPU as well as the most powerful Cortex CPU to date. It features a 30 percent peak performance increase over the Cortex-A77 and offers an even more competitive solution for flagship smartphones as well as large-screen devices.

Last year Arm introduced the Mali-G77 GPU based on its new Valhall architecture and the company's new Mali-G78 builds on the advancements it made to deliver a 25 percent increase in graphics performance over its predecessor. The new GPU supports up to 24 cores and will help extend the battery life of mobile devices.

Finally, based on demand from partners, Arm made the decision to introduce a new sub-premium tier of GPUs. The first GPU in this new tier is the Arm Mali-G68 which supports up to 6 cores and has all the latest features from the Mali-G78.

It will still be some time before the Arm's partners begin to release chips based on its new designs but based on the information the company released, flagship smartphones in 2021 will likely have improved battery life, graphics and 5G performance.

Via The Verge

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Nearly 100 Apple Stores in the US will reopen this week, but most won’t let you inside
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Almost 100 more Apple Stores are reopening in the US this week, but in most locations, they still won’t let you walk inside: instead, they’re offering curbside or storefront service only.

Apple Stores began reopening in early May with a four-state rollout, which expanded to 11 states later in the month. The next wave of openings will enlarge that list to 28 states, with the majority of locations located in Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas, according to 9to5Mac. 

It’s not totally clear why some locations are permitting in-store service while others aren’t, but it likely depends on local laws in various state, which have had different approaches to reopening public spaces as the coronavirus outbreak continues. Most of the Apple Stores reopening this week are restricted to curbside and storefront service only, but those that allow in-store service are almost all located in California, Florida, and Texas.

It’s also not clear when locations that only offer storefront and curbside service will open further to allow customers inside, but in the meantime, they’ll still permit order pick-ups (say, if you order an iPhone 11 for in-store pickup) and Genius Bar appointments so long as folks engage in state-required protective measures, like wearing masks and/or submitting to temperature checks.

  • iPhone SE 2020: the long-awaited mid-range redux from Apple
  • MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020): our thoughts on the newest version of the powerhouse 
  • iPad Pro (2020): our hands-on with the newest iPad Pro

Apple Store reopenings: a different case in different countries

Following the course of the coronavirus outbreak, Apple Stores in China closed in February and began reopening in March right as the company confirmed that US stores would be closed ‘until further notice.’

While that seemed indefinite, a leaked internal memo revealed Apple had set a target of early May for reopening US stores, and has followed that projected window. Given the company has safely reopened Apple Stores across countries recovering from the Covid-19 outbreak, we’ll likely see more US locations turn their lights back on in the coming weeks. 

  • iPhone 12: the most powerful yet affordable iPhone on the market

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