7 Days is a weekly roundup of the Editors" picks of what"s been happening in the world of technology - written with a dash of humor, a hint of exasperation, and an endless supply of (Irish) coffee.
What a week it’s been. There’s been almost no end of exciting news, intriguing insights and spicy rumors from all over the tech world – but don"t worry that you might have missed something, because 7 Days is here once more to walk you through what’s been happening, and bring you up to speed.
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It was a big week in the world of computing power, as AMD announced its new Ryzen processors, promising more power than Intel"s top of the line chips at half the price. The 1800X model went on to break benchmarking records.
But AMD wasn"t the only one that announced a new chip; Samsung announced the Exynos 8895. With four custom and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, it"s actually the first mobile chipset to support recording 4K video at more than 30fps.
But if power isn"t your thing and data speeds are, there"s even more news, as Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon X20, promising download speeds of up to 1.2Gbps. Intel wasn"t to be left out, as it launched a gigabit modem, promising 225Mbps upload speeds, exceeding Qualcomm"s 150Mbps.
Snap Inc. is finally selling its Spectacles online - rather than from vending machines in random locations - for $129.99. They still don"t work with Windows phones.
We learned quite a bit about Nintendo"s Switch console this week. It turned out that the unboxing video that floated around last week was of a stolen console, but no worries, Nintendo released its own. If you just can"t wait for it, you can claim your User ID right now.
As it turns out, some game downloads will require an SD card right out of the gate; however, those downloads won"t include Virtual Console games, as the feature won"t be offered at launch. If you buy the physical game though, the cartridge will be even smaller than a standard SD card.
Google opened up registrations for its I/O 2017 developer conference, which will be held from May 17th through 19th. Tickets will run you $1,150.
A number of devices were upgraded to Android Nougat this week. Samsung"s Galaxy S7 and S7 edge saw the update on AT&T, and later on Sprint. The LG G5 also got Nougat on AT&T, and the HTC 10 saw Android 7.0 on Sprint.
Devices outside the US saw some nougaty goodness as well. The HTC 10 finally got the update in India, and the One M9 got it in the UK.
Finally, the Nexus 6P got the Android 7.1.2 beta over three weeks after other supported devices, which include the Nexus 5X, Nexus Player, Pixel, Pixel XL, and Pixel C. Sorry Nexus 6 and 9 users.
Hey, remember the Samsung Galaxy Note7? If you"ve traveled recently, that"s the thing that they tell you about a dozen times that you can"t bring on the plane. Well, earlier this week, it was rumored that Samsung might re-release the handset with a smaller battery that likely won"t explode. Later, Samsung India confirmed that no, this won"t happen, indicating that the firm knows what we were all thinking, that such an idea would be absolutely insane.
Images of HTC"s One X10 showed up this week. As we can see, it will most definitely be a rectangle with rounded corners.
Lenovo"s Moto G5 also leaked, and it"s exactly the same as it was when the full specs leaked last week.
Huawei unveiled the Honor V9, which feaures a 5.7-inch QHD display, 4GB or 6GB of RAM, a dual 12MP camera, and a Kirin 960 processor.
NuAns announced the Neo Reloaded this week, its successor to its Windows 10 Mobile device, the Neo. In a turn of events that shouldn"t be shocking to anyone, the company has ditched Windows in favor of Android.
Microsoft Garage released a major update for beta testers of its Android app Arrow Launcher. Version 3.0 will bring the option between vertical and horizontal scrolling, and more customization features.
Skype Lite is also new to Android, and it"s meant to be optimized for 2G and unstable network connections.
Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates thinks that as robots start to replace humans in their jobs, they should start paying taxes.
European authorities are once again concerned about Windows 10 collection. As it turns out, the new privacy settings in the out-of-box-experience (OOBE) in the Creators Update don"t really do anything.
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A new Book Settings app showed up in the Windows Store, indicating that Samsung is going to release a Galaxy Book. Later on, it was reported that the device will feature an S Pen, along with the Air Command feature that"s been found in the Galaxy Note series.
Speaking of Samsung, you"ll soon be able to unlock your Windows 10 PC by using the fingerprint scanner on your Galaxy handset.
AdDuplex released its latest tracking statistics this week, showing that WXGA is the most popular screen resolution for Windows 10 PCs, Surface Pro 4 is still the most popular Surface, the vast majority of Windows phone users are on Windows Phone 8.1, and other things that we already knew from previous reports.
Differential sync is coming to OneDrive sometime next quarter. This feature will only sync the parts of files that change, rather than the whole thing, saving users time and bandwidth.
Microsoft released a critical security update for Flash, which is interesting, since it won"t even be releasing this month"s security updates for Windows until next month.
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Microsoft released Minecraft: Pocket Edition for Windows 10 Mobile, which is great news for users of the platform, since it"s already ended support for the Windows Phone 8 app.
The company also announced a major update for Outlook Mail & Calendar, which will bring features like Focused Inbox and Interesting Calendars to the app over the next couple weeks.
If you were hoping for a new HoloLens model that"s cheaper than the $3,000 Development Edition, you"re going to be waiting for a while. Microsoft has canceled version two in favor of accelerating version three, which should now arrive in 2019.
The good news is that we have a good two years before we have to worry about getting a new picture of Andy wearing one.
Windows 10 for PCs build 15042 and Mobile build 15043 were released to the Fast ring, which were the first new builds in over two weeks. Since we"re pretty close to the don"t-call-it-an-RTM build now, there wasn"t much in the way of front-facing features. Interestingly though, this is the first Creators Update build that drops the watermark and expiration date.
- PC build 15042 fixes, improvements, and known issues
- Mobile build 15043 fixes, improvements, and known issues
Build 15039 was also released to the Alpha ring of the Xbox Insider Program. The Beta ring actually got the same build today, but it also adds built-in Beam streaming and the Beam app, which the company confirmed would arrive this week. Oh, and if you"re wondering why there"s no Beam app for Windows 10 Mobile, co-founder Matt Salsamendi says it"s because the team hasn"t had time.
Six more Xbox 360 games were added to Xbox One Backward Compatibility this week, bringing the grand total for the list to 339 titles.
Some new games were released as well. Halo Wars 2 is a much-anticipated Xbox Play Anywhere title, which means that you can buy it once and play it on Xbox One and Windows 10. There are also a pair of Neo Geo classics: World Heroes and Neo Turf Masters.
Microsoft"s upcoming Project Scorpio console will likely use a new Motion Design Language, rather than the Project Neon that"s expected for Windows 10 in Redstone 3. That"s exactly all we know about it.
Apple purchased a Tel Aviv-based facial recognition company called RealFace. This will definitely be interesting in a couple years when the features actually start showing up in iPhones.
There are some rumors, however, that the upcoming iPhone 8 will have a front camera that has 3D sensing capabilities. Another rumor says that the base model will have 64GB of storage, rather than the current 32GB, which seems insanely unlikely.
But speaking of new devices, we might get new iPads next week, including a 12.9-inch, 10.5-inch, and 9.7-inch model. There also may be a new red iPhone 7 and a 128GB iPhone SE.
And speaking of iOS 10, new usage stats show that it"s now running on 79% of active iOS devices, with iOS 9 running on 16%.
Apple"s new spaceship campus is almost ready, and we now what it will be called: Apple Park.
Instagram is finally allowing users to upload multiple photos or videos to a single post, which seems to be a really basic feature for a social network that revolves around images. It"s live for Android and iOS now, and it"s coming to Windows...at some point.
Yup, Verizon is still buying Yahoo, despite the data breaches that Yahoo failed to disclose. Verizon will be getting a $350 million discount though.
There"s a new Futurama mobile game, called Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow. It seems like it will be similar to Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff.
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Bonus content
Before we wrap things up for another week, let me first highlight a couple of extra bits around the site that I hope you’ll enjoy reading.
This Week in Science is a new weekly feature at Neowin that"s written by Gabriel Nunes. This week, he discussed the first magnetic resonance microscope, new Earth-sized planets, and more.
Timi Cantisano reviewed Huawei"s Honor 6X, giving it a 7.5 out of 10. While it has a $249 price point, great performance, battery life, and the camera takes nice pictures, video quality is lacking, and he took issue with the speakers and the display.
Timi also spent his first 24 hours with the ZTE Blade V8 Pro, and he"s been pretty impressed with it so far.
Stay tuned to Neowin in the days ahead for what’s sure to be another exciting week, filled with official news, lots of updates, and plenty of insights from around the world of technology.
For now, though, there’s lots more to read across the site – including all sorts of interesting discussions over on our forums.