Thread: Anandtech News

It appears that carriers in the United States are getting their Android update testing done in a timely manner for once. Yesterday we reported on the Android Lollipop update that was released for the Galaxy S5 on Verizon, a carrier that is normally notoriously slow to get Android updates out due to their testing and network certification processes. Today it has been confirmed that two devices on Sprint will be receiving their updates to Lollipop.
The first of these two devices is the Galaxy S5. As Samsung's flagship smartphone, it was expected that the Galaxy S5 would receive an update to Lollipop. The surprise is that two US carriers have pushed the update to devices in a relatively reasonable period of time. The update for the Sprint Galaxy S5 will be very similar to the Verizon carrier variant, and so users who are interested in taking a look at what specific changes Lollipop will bring to the S5 can take a look at the story from yesterday.
The second device being updated to Lollipop is the HTC One (M7). HTC had just recently put out a statement saying that they would miss their planned 90 day update deadline for the One (M7) and One (M8) due to issues with the source code provided by Google. It looks like those issues have been resolved for the most part, and one can hope that the Lollipop update will be available soon for the unlocked HTC One (M7) and other carrier editions.
Source: Mo Versi of HTC and Samsung

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Back in January, Microsoft revealed what the next versions of Office will look like. There will be a traditional, full featured desktop client, including the entire suite of Office applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, and Publisher. But up until now, there has not been a publicly available version of Office for touch based Windows computers. This changes today, with the Office for Windows 10 universal apps now available in preview form.
The new universal apps will be available on Windows 10 PCs, phones, and tablets, with the latter two versions being made available in a few weeks. That is no problem, because the Windows 10 for phones preview is not yet out.

These share a common look and feel with the Office for iPad and Office for Android versions that have been released. It has been a bit odd that there was no touch first version of Office for Microsoft’s own platform, but the company has certainly shifted its strategy to ensure they have their software available across all platforms.

Much like the other mobile versions, Office for Windows 10 will have a free version, and to unlock all of the features, an Office 365 subscription will be required. At the moment, it just says “some functionality will require a qualifying Office 365 subscription” so we will have to wait and see what features do require that, and if it matches up with the iOS or Android versions.

The preview apps are propagating through the store, and will only be available to those on the Windows 10 Technical Preview. If you are having issues finding it in your store, these direct links should provide you the downloads.
Word Preview
Excel Preview
PowerPoint Preview
Source: Office Blog

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For any user interested in performance, memory speed is an important part of the equation when it comes to building your next system. This can apply to any user, from integrated graphics throughput to gaming and prosumer environments such as finance or oil and gas. Individuals with an opinion on memory speed fall into two broad camps, from saying faster memory has no effect, to the ‘make sure you get at least XYZ’. Following on from our previous Haswell DDR3 scaling coverage, we have now secured enough memory kits to perform a thorough test of the effect of memory speed on DDR4 and Haswell-E.

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With the various pieces of Microsoft’s latest API finally coming together, today we will be taking our first look at the performance of the future with DirectX 12. The API is stabilizing, video card drivers are improving, and the first DirectX 12 application has been written; Microsoft and their partners are finally ready to show off DirectX 12. To that end, today we’ll looking at DirectX 12 through Oxide Games’ Star Swarm benchmark, our first DirectX 12 application and a true API efficiency torture test. Does DirectX 12 bring the same kind of performance benefits we saw with Mantle? Can it resolve the CPU bottlenecking that DirectX 11 struggles with? How well does the concept of a low-level API work for a common API with disparate hardware? Let’s find out!

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Silicon Motion has practically become the new SandForce. Almost every tier three manufacturer (i.e. one with no controller/firmware IP or NAND fab) has released an SM2246EN based drive in the past ten months and recently Silicon Motion scored two major tier one partners (namely Micron/Crucial and SanDisk) as well. To be honest, this hasn't come as a surprise because the SM2246EN is a really solid controller with good performance and more importantly it's been mostly issue free (which is something that cannot be said about SandForce). Mushkin's Reactor combines the SM2246EN with Micron's latest 128Gbit 16nm MLC NAND, and this is actually the first time we've encountered a non-Micron/Crucial SSD with Micron's 16nm NAND. Read on to find out how the SM2246EN performs with Micron's latest NAND!

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A little less than two weeks ago OCZ released critical firmware updates for the ARC 100 and Radeon R7 SSDs, so I figured I would give the owners a heads up along with a more detailed explanation of the contents of the update. First things first, the word critical in this context doesn't mean that the drives are subject to a major issue or bug that turns the drive into a brick, so there's no need for mass hysteria here.
The first and only observed issue is related to DRAM corruption. In the old firmware a DRAM refresh could happen during a what is called the training period, which is the duration of DRAM timing calibration during the controller power on. That lead to potential DRAM corruption that could jeopardize the drive's reliability, so the new firmware simply moves the DRAM refresh outside of the training period. This is a rather corner case issue and only applied to the 480GB ARC 100 and Radeon R7, but it's an important fix nevertheless.
The second fix in the new firmware is improved robustness of uncorrectable error handling. This is a fruit of OCZ's robustness testing and improves the firmware recovery in worst case scenarios.
The third and final fix improves read-retry on bad block list, which enhances the security of the bad block list. As the list is stored in NAND like any other data, it's susceptible to the standard NAND failures, so the update puts improvements in place in case the NAND blocks storing the bad block list went bad and required read-retry routines. This is more of a theoretical "what if" scenario, but as always any and all reliability improvements are welcome.
Basically, the error handling and bad block list enhancements were engineered for the upcoming Vector 180 and are now making their way into the existing Barefoot 3 based SSDs. Neither of them are related to any known issues, but are simply a part of OCZ's continuous firmware development and support. The Vertex 460A will also be getting the update with more robust error handling in the near future.
The update carries a version number 1.01 and is available on OCZ's website.

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Word comes out of China this evening that an ongoing anti-trust investigation into Qualcomm has come to an end. Ruling against Qualcomm, China’s National Development and Reform Commission has found Qualcomm guilty of violating Chinese anti-trust laws, and has fined the company $975 million alongside imposing new licensing rules on the company.
At the crux of the matter has been Qualcomm’s patent licensing program in China, portions of which the NDRC has asserted violate Chinese law. As Qualcomm owns a number of standards-essential 3G and 4G patents, Chinese firms must in turn license these patents for their phones and cellular-enabled tablets. To that end, Qualcomm’s bundling of various patents has been under extreme scrutiny, particularly the bundling of other patents with the standards-essential 3G and 4G patents, a process that would force Chinese manufacturers into paying more to license additional patents they did not need.
As a result of the NDRC’s ruling, Qualcomm is being fined 6.088 billion yuan ($975 Million) and is having new royalty rules imposed. Resolving the immediate problems that lead to the ruling, Qualcomm will now be required to offer the standards-essential 3G and 4G patents separately, putting an end to the bundling practice. Meanwhile new royalty rates and procedures are also being set; Qualcomm’s rates in China will be similar to the rest of the world, and the rates will be calculated against 65% of the total value of the device.
Overall the $975 million fine is the largest in Chinese history, and while it will put a dent into the company’s pockets in the short-run, it is still less than half of the company’s $1.97B net income for their most recent quarter. More significant is the ongoing revenue impact from the reduced licensing revenue, which has already caused the company to reduce their 2015 earnings forecasts by $0.58 per share. More than half of Qualcomm’s net income comes from royalties from patent licensing, so anything that impacts their patent licensing business has a significant impact on their bottom line.
Finally, Qualcomm will not be appealing this fine, having entered into it as part of an agreement with the NDRC to end the anti-trust investigation.

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Sony has two fairly well defined lines of smartphones. Their Xperia Z smartphones and tablets represent their flagship Android devices, while their Xperia E line targets a more budget oriented market. Sony launched their Xperia E3 in September of last year, around the same time as the announcement of the Xperia Z3. Now, not even six months later, Sony is announcing the successor to the Xperia E3, the E4. From a purely aesthetic point of view, the Xperia E4 is larger and thicker than the E3, but has significantly smaller bezels surround the display. This means that the size of the device does not increase as much as one would expect from a shift to a 5" display from a 4.5" one. Moving past aesthetics, the specifications of the Xperia E4 have been laid out below.

Sony Xperia E4
SoC	MediaTek MT6582 1.3GHz 4 x Cortex-A7 + Mali-400MP2
Memory and Storage	8GB NAND + MicroSDXC, 1GB RAM
Display	5" qHD (960x540) IPS LCD
Cellular Connectivity	2G / 3G (21.1Mbps HSPA+)
Dimensions	137 x 74.6 x 10.5 mm, 144g
Camera	5 MP Rear Facing, 2MP Front Facing
Battery	2300 mAh
Other Connectivity	802.11 b/g/n + BT 4.1, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS
SIM Size	MicroSIM (Dual SIM SKU available)
Operating System	Android 4.4.4 KitKat

As you can see, the specifications of the Xperia E4 are strictly in the lower end of the mid-range. Unlike the Xperia E3 where Sony opted to use a Snapdragon 400 SoC in their mid-range phone, Sony has used MediaTek's MT6582 in the Xperia E4. MT6582 is a quad core Cortex-A7 part with a peak frequency of 1.3GHz paired with ARM's Mali-400MP2 GPU. Looking beyond the SoC, the other internal specifications of the Xperia E4 include 1GB of RAM, 8GB of NAND with MicroSD support, and a 2300mAh battery. Some of these specifications may be outclassed by other smartphones at the higher end of the mid-range segment, and so pricing will definitely be a key factor in making the Xperia E4 appealing to potential buyers.
On the back of the device we have a 5MP camera, and on the front we have a 2MP camera. The front is also home to a 5" 960x540 IPS display. Sony's effort to put in an IPS panel is definitely appreciated, but in 2015 a display with a pixel density of 220pi may be a hard sell when there's competition from devices like the Motorola Moto G with smaller display sizes and higher resolution. However, this again comes down to pricing. If Sony prices the Xperia E4 accordingly, then they should have no trouble making sales in their target market.
On the connectivity side, there's no LTE support to be seen. Network speeds max out at 21.1Mbps downstream and 5.76Mbps upstream on HSPA. There is support for Bluetooth 4.1, but WiFi connectivity is limited to 2.4GHz 802.11n. Like many mid-range devices, the Xperia E4 will come in a dual-SIM variant in certain markets where that feature is desired.
The Xperia E4 will be launching later this month in certain markets. There's currently no word on pricing or availability in North America.

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It's been a few months since Josh had the opportunity to review the Note 4. The defining characteristic is that this was the variant with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 805 SoC running as the heart of the device. This version is found in devices shipping in North America, Western Europe, China and Japan. While these markets have now been served by Qualcomm's silicon offerings, Samsung is now back on track at trying to expand its market-share of in-house Exynos SoCs. As such, all other markets (with small exceptions) seem to be getting served Exynos variants of the Note 4. To find out how this version performs, read on for the full review.

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Today Eurocom announced some interesting news. They are now selling new upgrade kits for existing laptops which feature a MXM 3.0b graphics card. This will let owners of older laptops, who are not interested in a complete upgrade, obtain the power of the new Maxwell 2 based GPUs from NVIDIA in their laptop.
MXM, or Mobile PCI Express Module, is a standard graphics interface for low power and small form factor systems, and was introduced to make it easier for OEMs to integrate a GPU into a system. They feature up to 16 PCIe Gen 2 lanes, up to a 256 bit memory interface, up to 4 dual mode Display Ports with HDMI support, in a standard package.

Although not inexpensive, it will allow customers to get some extra mileage out of their laptop, especially with the major improvements in performance we have seen with the Maxwell 2 based GTX 980M and GTX 970M. And overall while MXM was designed to allow just this kind of upgradability, it's actually fairly rare that we see upgrade cards released in this fashion, so it's nice to see this upgrade offered.
The kits come with all of the required hardware to make the swap, and each kit is tailored to a specific laptop make and model. Obviously this will only apply to systems that utilize MXM 3.0b card for the GPU.

If you are not afraid to open up your laptop, and you are looking for a graphics boost, you may want to check out the kits which can be found at Eurocom’s site.
Source: Eurocom

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