Tech News Roundup for September 2, 2020
Taking a break from the heavier, less fun “technology in politics” news we’ve had recently, there was a bunch of honest to goodness product announcements all over the last couple days. This is the fun stuff.
nVidia Announces Next Generation Video Cards
This is not for the mainstream user, but nVidia has announced its next generation of high end video cards for PC gaming. The RTX 3000 series offers a significant improvement over the RTX 2000 series of cards. The $700 USD RTX 3080 promises up to 2x performance of the previous generation’s RTX 2080 Ti, which was priced at $1200 USD. So while this is a very expensive card, it offers a huge performance increase, at least according to nVidia. This should allow for 4k60 gaming capabilities as a lower price point.
nVidia also announced the RTX 3070, which is the more appealing card. For $500 USD it offers about the same performance of that afore mentioned RTX 2080 Ti, according to nVidia. That is a $700 discount for the same performance compared to the previous high end card. I expect that of the three cards announced today, the RTX 3070 will easily be the best selling of the bunch.
Lastly, the third card is not something the vast majority of people need. The RTX 3090 is a $1500 USD video card that nVidia claims can do 8k60 gaming. This 3090 is essentially a replacement for nVidia’s RTX Titan line, which was a limited edition card designed for high end workstation type workloads. Where the RTX Titan was a low volume card, it looks like nVidia will make more 3090’s to satisfy more demand, though this will still not be a high volume card.
If nVidia’s performance claims end up being anywhere close to true, these cards will offer incredible value compared to the previous generation cards, and offer the first real leap in graphics performance since the GTX 1000 series cards 4 years ago.
Personally, I’m excited for the eventual RTX 3060 which was not announced this week. The RTX 2060 was a more affordable card at $350 USD that offered a solid 1440p gaming experience. If the eventual RTX 3060 follows the same trajectory as the other 3000 series cards, it should offer amazing performance for a reasonable price.
Samsung Announces Galaxy Z Fold 2
Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G (just the Fold 2 from here on), the followup to last year’s Galaxy Fold. The Fold 2 appears to be an improvement on the Fold in every way. It features an ultra thin glass folding inner display with a hole punch camera instead of a giant notch. This display also runs at 120hz. The outer display now fills the entire front of the phone, which should make using the device in it’s folded mode significantly better. The cameras have been upgraded and should be roughly equivalent to the Galaxy S20 and S20+. And the hinge is reportedly significantly more sturdy, which allows it to be folded and stay at any angle.
This is, however, a very expensive phone. In Canada, it will retail for $2779. While that is very expensive, it should be noted that it is roughly the same price as the original Galaxy Fold, despite being a significantly better device. With the well known price hike that 5G capabilities have necessitated this year, the fact that the price did not increase is probably a win.
At almost $2800 this is not a mass market phone, but it represents a vision of the future. Like most new technologies, the initial cost is usually quite high and comes down over time. Folding phones will likely be no different, and in 2-4 years we should see the cost start to come down. I’m excited for these kinds of phones, and can’t wait for the day that one is within my reach.
Samsung Announces a Slew of Midrange Products
The polar opposite of the Galaxy Z Fold 2, Samsung announced a whole bunch of more affordable products. First up is the Galaxy A42 5G, Samsung;’s “cheapest 5G phone”.It will likely be cheaper than the $480 Galaxy A51.
Next up is the Galaxy Tab A7. This is a midrange tablet designed for media consumption. Samsung’s Tab A line has generally been less expensive, and good for that use case. Notably this is the first time Samsung has numbered a tablet in the A series. In the past it has just refered to them as the Tab A with the year it was released as the differentiator. It looks like Samsung may be trying to align the tablets into the same basic product family, where next year we may see a Tab A8 alongside the Tab S8.
Samsung also announced a new Wireless Charger Trio, which as the name suggests is able to charge three qi enabled wireless devices. Samsung’s example shows it charging a phone, headphones, and galaxy watch. Lastly, the company announced the Galaxy Fit 2, an inexpensive fitness tracker that competes with inexpensive fitbit devices like the inspire.
https://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-announces-galaxy-a42-5g-tab-a7-trio-wireless-charger-and-more
Intel Announces 11th Generation Tiger Lake Processors for Laptops
Intel has announced its next generation laptop processors, the 11th generation Tiger Lake line. These processors aim to improve on the limitations of the previous generation 10th generation 10nm processors. While those processors were low volume and had very low base clock speeds, the 11th generation processors offer significant base clock speed improvements, with only the low power 7W processors seeing base clock speeds near 1GHz. This should offer solid improvements in day to day computing in the thin and light laptop segment these processors are aimed at.
Intel is also debuting it’s Xe graphics processors with Tiger Lake. Some of the higher end Tiger Lake models come with the new Xe graphics, which Intel claims offers large improvements over the previous generation Iris Plus graphics and UHD graphics in previous generation processors. Intel claims that the Xe processor is faster than the dedicated nVidia MX350 graphics processor found in some thin and light laptops.
While the 11th generation processors are not revolutionary, they should offer a good step up from the 10th generation.
Intel Rebrands Project Athena to Intel Evo
Last year Intel debuted Project Athena, a certification process for Laptop manufacturers to state a certain set of specifications from laptops. Laptops that were project Athena certified had specific requirements for battery life, charging capability, and overall laptop capability.
Intel Evo is an expansion of Project Athena, and will be an actual brand that can be found on laptops, unlike Project Athena. Intel Evo branded laptops will have 11th generation processors, are supposed to get “real world” battery life of 9 hours, and be able to get 4 hours of use with a 30 minute charge. There are no details on how this “real world” battery life will be measured, but this is a good attempt from Intel to create a standard for thin and light laptops.
Intel has used similar brands and marketing before. In the early to mid 2000’s the Intel Centrino brand was used to certify that laptops had specific types of Intel Pentium M processors combined with a WiFi card, and in the early 2010’s the company debuted the term “ultrabook” which is what most thin and light laptops are today. Intel Evo is the next…. Evolution of the ultrabook. See what they did there?
ZTE’s Newest Phone Features a Selfie Camera Behind the Screen
With the desire to get more/bigger screens into our phones, for the last few years we have dealt with displays with cutouts to accommodate front facing cameras. These vary from the huge cutout on the iPhone, to small circular hole punches found in many Android phones today. For a couple years technology has been in development to place a camera behind the screen with no cutout, and ZTE has announced the first phone that features such technology. I’m really interested to see how well this works, since most of the “special sauce” to make it work is software to correct the distortions that will be found from the display layer over the camera. If it works well, we could see this hitting at least some mass market phones in 2021.
https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/09/01/zte-axon-20-5g-hidden-selfie-camera/