Back in October last year, there were reports that Samsung is planning to invest a whopping 15.6 trillion won (over $14 billion) in a new chip-making factory located in Pyeongtaek, which is 75 km south of Seoul (South Korea). At that time, it was expected that the plant will start production in the second half of 2017, however, Samsung has now said that production will begin in H1 2017.

The South Korean company is also said to invest an additional 10 trillion won on the plant to boost capacity, although it isn’t yet clear when. As for what the factory will create, it is being said that while Samsung is planning to produce DRAM memory chips, some capacity could also be allocated to mobile processors if required. Read more »

Mediatek’s latest chipset, dubbed the MT6797 Helio 20 is almost ready to hit consumer markets and the Chinese company is already promoting its new silicon. With the chip, the manufacturer hopes to build on its recent success in the mobile market and secure more supplier contracts, both with local and international brands.

In order to give prospective buyers a clearer picture of what the MT6797 Helio 20 SoC has to offer, Mediatek has pit it up against Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 in a comprehensive stats comparison chart. As it turns out, the new MT chip has a lot to offer and has a few significant improvements over its predecessors. Read more »

Microsoft acquired the technology behind the digital pen that’s available for Surface 3 and Surface Pro 3. The solution was developed by the Israel-based company N-trig Ltd.

Earlier this year, it was reported that the Redmond giant tried to acquire N-trig Ltd. entirely. Read more »

As most of you surely know, today is the first day of Microsoft’s biggest annual developer conference. Build 2014 promises to bring a lot of new information on Windows 10, as well as other exciting Microsoft projects. The keynote speech is set for 8:30 AM PDT and we will surely be covering the exciting announcements, so check back later for more info.

But the conference might bring about some interesting hardware news as well. There have been a lot of rumors floating around about the next Surface device. Seeing how the Sufrace 3 is still quite new, its successor is unlikely to come anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean that Microsoft can’t share some information about the future of the tablet line today. So here’s to hoping! Read more »

The leather back cover of the upcoming LG G4 will be a bona fide luxury item. LG revealed that the 100% vegetable-tanned hide on the back of its flagship smartphone takes up to twelve weeks to process.

In addition to being environmentally friendly, vegetable tanning is apparently “the most traditional and the most recognizable” tanning method available. Read more »

As we told you a few weeks ago, the Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition is now up for pre-order in Japan. If you’re in the US, though, you only have to wait until tomorrow to get in your pre-order. Samsung has officially announced that starting on April 24, Best Buy will have the virtual reality headset available for pre-order for interested customers.

The Gear VR Innovator Edition will be in stock on May 8, both at Best Buy and at Samsung’s own online store for the US. In-store availability will follow on May 15. Read more »

A rather interesting slide has surfaced today on Weibo, which seems to reveal ARM’s future roadmap for processor core designs. From the looks of things, the company’s lineup is in for a major overhaul, which is sure to affect the whole mobile industry, as ARM’s Cortex designs are widely employed by most mobile chip makers.

The graph suggests that there will be five new core designs, all bearing catchy Greek mythological names. But, besides an optimization for smaller production processes, like 16nm FitFET and 10nm, the new cores also fill the gap between the current Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 with a whole new tier of chips. Read more »

Imagination, the company behind the PowerVR GPUs found in iPhones and iPads among other smartphones and tablets, is excited about the future of mobile GPUs and has prepared an infographic for a crash course on how they will be used.

The company introduced its Series7 family of GPUs and they will soon reach consumers, coming first on the MediaTek MT8173 chipset (which might also be the first one with Cortex-A72 cores). Read more »

April has been a busy month for the folks from iFixit. After tearing down HTC One M9, Samsung Galaxy S6, and Galaxy S6 edge, the handy people picked apart the sleek new Apple Macbook with 12” Retina display.

The new addition to Apple’s notebook lineup received the rather horrific repairability score of 1 out of 10 from iFixit. Read more »

Apple acquired the small camera technology company LinX Computational Imaging Ltd. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Cupertino giant paid about $20 million for the Israel-based company.

LinX specializes in making ultra-compact camera sensors for slim smartphones. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy S6 is the latest flagship smartphone to receive a teardown from by iFixit. A week ago, the device’s shinier sibling, Samsung Galaxy S6 edge got the same treatment.

The SM-G920 received a below average repairability score of 4 out of 10 by iFixit, which is slightly better than than the 3/10 rating received by Samsung Galaxy S6 edge. Read more »

LG is working on a foldable phone-watch hybrid device. As per a patent awarded last week to the Korean giant, the device is basically a mobile phone with ornamental design.

The concept is about a super slim smartphone which can bend backwards to wrap itself around a band. Read more »

Yesterday, we mentioned about a breakthrough in aluminum battery by Stanford University scientists. Shortly thereafter, Google revealed that a small team of scientists working on a next-generation battery technology for consumer electronics.

As part of the Google X research lab, Dr. Ramesh Bhardwaj is working with three other scientists on about 20 different battery-dependent projects. Read more »

Back in March, Samsung announced the new Gear VR Innovator Edition headset alongside the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge. This new version of its Oculus-powered VR accessory is made specifically to work with those two devices only, just like the original Gear VR is tailor-made for the Galaxy Note 4.

Now that the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge are almost up for grabs globally, the Korean company has announced when it’s going to take pre-orders for the Gear VR Innovator Edition as well. One caveat, however: the following information applies only to Japan. It’s unclear why Samsung chose to give us the launch details for this market first. Perhaps the interest for the new Gear VR has been the highest over there. Read more »

Scientists from the Stanford University made a breakthrough in the aluminum batteries – an area that saw very limited innovation in the last decade. The new prototype aluminum battery is flexible, thinner, much safer, charges super-fast, and its lifecycle is 7.5 times better than Li-Ion batteries.

Today the Li-Ion batteries seem to have reached their full potential and the only improvement lately is the fast charging technologies provided by companies like Oppo and Qualcomm. The lithium batteries aren’t getting any thinner, smaller and their capacity increases at very modest rates. We need something better and the aluminum battery at Stanford might be just the discovery we need today. Read more »