Android sticks and ultra-cheap tablets are often powered by an AllWinner chipset, typically one using an old Cortex-A8 CPU design. The Chinese chipmaker has now updated its lineup with three new chipsets based on the new and power-efficient Cortex-A7.

One chip of particular interest, the AllWinner A20, packs a dual-core A7 CPU, which is up to 5 times more power efficient and offers 50% better performance than the A8. It’s fully certified to run Android 4.2.2 as well. Read more »

New companies have joined ARM’s initiative to build powerful but efficient chipsets using the big.LITTLE architecture. A total of 17 companies have licenses to build chipsets that combine the powerful Cortex-A15 with the efficient Cortex-A7.

ARM didn’t provide a list of the newcomers, but among the companies with a big.LITTLE license are names like MediaTek and HiSilicon. MediaTek are best known for the chipsets in mid-range smartphones from smaller companies and HiSilicon is behind Huawei’s custom chips. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 comes with support for the MHL 2.0 standard, which aside from streaming high definition content to your TV or monitor set can also allow the external screen to charge the smartphone along the way. The Galaxy S4 is the first smartphone to offer the MHL 2.0 standard, which means that you no longer need to plug in a charger in your adapter.

Now, the good news is the first Samsung-made adapter is already available and can be yours for £33 or around $40. It still comes with a microUSB port for charging, so it’s backwards compatible with MHL 1.0 devices like the Galaxy Note II and Samsung Galaxy S III. Read more »

Samsung, among the world leaders in memory tech, will begin mass-producing 128Gb 3-bit multi-level-cell NAND Flash memory using a 10nm class process.

These new 128Gb NAND memory sticks will be used in SSDs and will be based on the toggle DDR 2.0 interface, boasting 400 Mbps per-second data transfer. Read more »

Nokia’s recent innovation known as High Amplitude Audio Capture (HAAC), allows you to record audio in noisy locations and then reproduce the audio with minimal background noise.

The novelty behind the High Amplitude Audio Capture is a microphone with two different sensitivity levels for recording. Later, the dual channel combines to give a broad dynamic range that sounds clear even if the audio is recorded with lots of distortion. Read more »

Qualcomm, designers of the highly popular Snapdragon series of chipsets plus a wide variety of wireless tech, is the fastest-growing semiconductor company according to Gartner. The two companies at the top, Intel and Samsung, were both affected by stagnation in the market in 2012.

Intel’s revenue slipped 3.1% year over year, but the company retained its leadership position for the 21st year in a row. Market share dropped a hair to 16.4% (down from 16.5%). Read more »

HTC’s camera expert, Symon Whitehorn, revealed why the HTC One comes 4 MP camera in a world believing a flagship should have at least a 13 MP sensor.

In an interview with ComputerWorld he talks about the magic number 4 and how it came to be, the benefits of OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) and addresses the issues some early HTC One units had with noise and processing. Read more »

If ever there’s a phone in need of a teardown the iFixit team is ready for action. This time the crew disassembled the HTC One and found that it’s no picnic.

The One ended up with a bad grade for repairability but received good marks for build quality and durability. We get to see the Snapdragon 600 CPU, the 4 “Ultrapixel” camera, inside the sweet looking unibody and those stereo speakers at the front. Read more »

The guys over at HI-TECH@mail.ru decided to go all scientific about screens and put the Samsung Galaxy S4′s 5″ 1080p Super AMOLED against the 4″ Retina of the Apple iPhone 5 and the 4.7″ Super LCD3 1080p display of the HTC One.

The review involved quite a few number of tests – from color reproduction, brightness, gamma, sharpness, viewing angles, the lot. And although a clear winner isn’t appointed your personal victor can be chosen based on the stuff you value the most. Read more »

The newest flagship device from BlackBerry, the Z10, was released last month alongside the company’s brand new BlackBerry 10 OS.

Now that the device is finally available in a large number of markets, iFixit, the people that just love seeing what makes gadgets tick, give us a look at what’s under the hood of the latest BlackBerry. Read more »

NVIDIA has included an interesting new feature with its fourth generation Tegra chipsets – the Computational Photography Engine, a.k.a. Chimera. It allows for things like always-on HDR (for still shots, videos and more) achieved with just a single shot.

The current approach is to snap multiple photos at different exposures and stitch them, but that leads to motion artifacts and has other limitations that Chimera solves by doing HDR in a single shot. Read more »

At their GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, NVIDIA revealed the roadmap for future Tegra-series processors, among other things. The roadmap highlights NVIDIA’s plans for 2013 and 2014 with two future processors, Logan and its successor, Parker, which continue NVIDIA’s tradition of naming them after the real last names of superheroes.

Logan will be the successor to Wayne, more commonly known as the Tegra 4 chipset, and will be appearing in devices in early 2014. Read more »

A recent Indiegogo project that has caught our eye is a nifty new virtual keyboard called Minuum that could forever change the way we type on a mobile device.

It does this by squeezing down the full QWERTY keyboard into one row, no longer forcing you to choose between precision and accuracy. Read more »

Samsung has posted the first Galaxy S4 promo video on YouTube. As usual the clips goes through the phone’s design, software and hardware perks, and does so with a catchy background music and a patterned background to match the pattern of the smartphone itself.

We get to see Air View, which lets you hover a finger over the screen and get a thumbnail preview pop up. Smart Pause, which can monitor if your eyes move away from the screen and pause a video for you. See the S4 operated with gloves and much more. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is just hours away from going official but we’ve already seen its screen, camera samples, benchmarks, heck we even read a full review.

Now the smartphone has even been given the teardown treatment. With the needed tools on tap and a camera with which to capture every single body part in detail it168 members walked us through the entire process. Read more »