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Chrome is about to be more forgiving with accidentally closing your tabs
An upcoming Chrome change instantly loads recently closed tabs
We've all made that annoying mistake of accidentally closing our Chrome browser tabs and windows. It's especially a hassle to wait for Chrome to reload them — it takes even longer depending on your network and how heavy the webpages are. Accidental closers won't have to grieve much longer, as Google is working on a nifty "magic trick" to remove the time spent waiting for Chrome to reload your tabs.
The Asus ROG Phone 5 will have a stupid amount of RAM
A press release from a chip supplier says it's coming with 18GB
Asus has scheduled an announcement for the ROG Phone 5 tomorrow, March 9th. But one of its corporate partners has spilled the beans a little early. SK Hynix, a South Korean chip supplier, issued a press release Sunday that said it's sending its first 18 gigabyte mobile LPDDR5 RAM modules to ASUS for the new ROG Phone.
Samsung has started mass-producing the first 16GB LPDDR5 DRAM chips
Coming soon: More memory than your phone could ever need
In the same way that Samsung makes most of the best smartphone displays — even those in Apple's iPhones — they also make many of the RAM chips used by other OEMs in their handsets. Advancements made by the South Korean company led to the first phones with 12GB of RAM, and now 16GB versions are on the horizon.
It's almost comical how much RAM some Android devices have at this point. The Asus Zenfone 6 Edition 30, Xiaomi Black Share 2 Pro, and Redmi K20 Pro Premium Edition all have 12GB of RAM, and now Samsung is joining the you-can-never-have-too-much-memory club.
With increasing capabilities such as 4K video recording, better processing power, and faster download speeds, smartphones are beginning to require more storage space. A few years ago, it was customary for a phone's base version to offer 8GB of internal memory. This figure has evolved over the years, with last year's Galaxy S9 offering a minimum of 64GB, and powerhouses such as the Note 9 having up to 512GB of internal space.
Samsung is not only easily the world’s number one smartphone vendor, but also the top chipmaker, having recently surpassed Intel. There’s a pretty good reason for that, and it has something to do with breakthroughs like announcing the industry’s "first 8Gb LPDDR5 DRAM for 5G and AI-powered mobile applications."
Chrome 55 was released for the desktop a few days ago, and now the Android version has followed suit. If you've been using Chrome 55 beta, most of this should already be familiar, but there are a few new changes in store as well.
Samsung just announced that it has begun mass manufacturing of the industry's first 256GB Universal Flash Storage chips for high-end mobile devices. The new memory is nearly twice as fast as typical SATA-based SSDs found in PCs. Using two lanes of data transfer, the new chip can move data at up to a blistering 850MB per second.
The nice thing about having a huge public beta test is that, well, you get to test stuff. Apparently the reaction to the new dedicated Memory section of the Settings menu wasn't everything that Google had hoped for, because it's been given a notable redesign in the brand-new version 2. The most striking change is a new overview screen that appears when you first tap Memory. Now it shows you the total memory in use with a readout in MB or GB, instead of breaking it down by apps. You can view the readout by hour increments: three, six, twelve, or an entire day.
At the moment Android does a pretty decent job of managing its memory... but not a very good one of telling you exactly how it does that. The "Running" portion of the Apps menu in Lollipop shows what's being used by your system and your apps, then a list of apps' RAM usage (with numerical readouts only), and that's it. Starting with the Android M Developer Preview, this screen is much more informative, breaking down both the current and recent RAM usage on a per-app basis.
Before every MWC event, Samsung gradually unveils bits and pieces of its semiconductor innovations that not-so-suprisingly end up inside its line of imminent Galaxy S devices. So far this year, the company has announced its 8Gb LPDDR4 RAM chip (with 4GB of RAM) and 14nm FinFET processor (to be introduced in the company's Exynos 7 Octa), both of which promise faster speeds and more power efficiency.
The mobile hardware arms race is about to get a new super-weapon. According to a blog post on Samsung Tomorrow, the company's electronics division has begun production of the world's first run of 8Gb (that's gigabit, not gigabyte) memory modules designed for mobile devices. The 8Gb LPDDR4 chips are roughly twice as dense as the previous generation of mobile memory. The first OEM product offered using the new design will be a 4 gigabyte RAM module.
So here's one we haven't asked you before, and it's pretty straightforward: how much internal storage (read: not including SD card or other expandable options) does your current phone have? We've asked you how much storage you need, and whether you have to have an SD card, but not what you're working with right now.
Unlike a lot of Android OEMs, Samsung makes many of the components that go into devices in-house. Its chip powers not just Samsung devices, but a large chunk of all phones. Samsung's newest memory chips rely on new manufacturing tech that packs in a full gigabyte of RAM on a single die. That would make it economical to get a whopping 4GB of RAM in a phone or tablet.
For many users, memory cards are a very important part of mobile life. They provide extra storage when it's most crucial, allowing users to carry around thousands of songs, hundreds of TV shows, or dozens of movies to watch in their downtime. Depending on the model of phone in which they reside, they could also mean the difference between having enough space for Grand Theft Auto instead of Angry Birds.
If you're looking for flash-based storage to beef up those ever-hungry gadgets of yours, today is the day to go shopping on Amazon. If you think the Father's Day SanDisk Gold Box sale on Amazon had good deals, wait till you see what Amazon and SanDisk stuffed into the Gold Box today. The selection is slightly slimmer compared to last time, but to make up for that, the prices are way sweeter.
PSA: No, You Don't Need To Defragment Your Android Device And Yes, Android Defrag Apps Are Nothing But A Scam
Earlier today, an eager marketing person suggested we review an innovative new app that every Android user like totally needs, dude - Android Defrag. Created
Earlier today, an eager marketing person suggested we review an innovative new app that every Android user like totally needs, dude - Android Defrag. Created by Enlightened Software House, the app promised to "Increase your Android Mobile & Tablets Performance Speeds, Battery and Memory Today." There was a Pro version too, and it only cost a buck - what a deal! Here, check out this gem's full description:
The Great Android Police Storage Benchmark: 11 Modern Devices Compared In 13 Tests
A week ago, I posted a head-to-head comparison/buyer's guide of the Asus Transformer Pad (TF300), Transformer Prime (TF201), and Transformer Pad Infinity
A week ago, I posted a head-to-head comparison/buyer's guide of the Asus Transformer Pad (TF300), Transformer Prime (TF201), and Transformer Pad Infinity (TF700). The most upvoted comment: how is the internal storage performance? So I sat down to benchmark 6 devices.... and with the help of the team, ended up benchmarking 11:
SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB UHS-I microSD Review: Like An F-22 For Nerds
For most, a generic off-the-shelf microSD card is probably just fine. It may slow things down and take a little longer to access, but that's alright in
For most, a generic off-the-shelf microSD card is probably just fine. It may slow things down and take a little longer to access, but that's alright in return for lower cost. For some people, though, having their device slowed down by a budget microSD card isn't an option. Other people need high performance for recording 3D and 1080p video. It's those two groups that the SanDisk Extreme Pro microSDHC UHS-I card is for.