Samsung officially announces its chip factory in Taylor, Texas

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal reported that Samsung is looking into building a chip factory in Taylor, Texas and is in talks with the local government. Well, we didn't have to wait long for the official confirmation as today, the Korean tech giant announced its new project. As part of a $205 billion investment plan, Samsung is building a $17 billion factory that will provide around 2,000 high-tech jobs producing 5G, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence hardware. The company will start building the factory in 2022 and will kick off actual production sometime in...

Source: https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_announces_its_chip_factory_in_taylor_texas-news-51980.php

Snapdragon 8 Gen1 phone may have just scored 1 million points in AnTuTu

The next-generation Android flagships will post scores of over 1 million points in AnTuTu – a result coming from the soon to be unveiled Snapdragon 8 Gen1 chipset seems to have achieved just such a score. The result was spotted by Weibo blogger Technology at 8 o’clock and has not been verified by the AnTuTu team yet. For comparison, current Snapdragon 888(+) devices score in the mid-800,000 at best, some even fall below 800,000. So this is shaping up to be a solid generational improvement. There are as many as four Snapdragon 8 Gen1 powered devices that may be announced before the...

Source: https://www.gsmarena.com/a_snapdragon_8_gen1_phone_may_have_just_scored_1_million_points_in_antutu-news-51982.php

Xiaomi reports 25% increase in net profit in Q3, MIUI now has 500M users

The Xiaomi Group posted its Q3 report, revealing some pretty impressive numbers. There are 500 million monthly active users of MIUI, and the brand is #1 in the Chinese TV market. In the world of smartphones, the company pushed 43.9 million devices, despite the shortage of components, which is a 4.4% increase yearly. Xiaomi Q3 Results The total revenue for Q3 2021 was CNY78.1 billion, 61% (or CNY47.8 billion) from smartphone sales. The yearly growth is 8.2%, but the net profit is CNY5.2 billion, 25.4% more than Q3 2020. According to Xiaomi, 18 million of the shipped devices...

Source: https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_reports_25_increase_in_net_profit_in_q3_miui_now_has_500m_users-news-51986.php

Four unknown Nokia phones surface, two show off a new design

Images of four unknown Nokia smartphones have surfaced, shared by Evan Blass. And while we don’t know much about them – not even their names, just their model numbers – they do hint at a change in design language. We’ll start with the N150DL and N1530DL. Two clearly related devices, they have their camera bump in the upper left, a rounded rectangle that is visibly split into two parts. Given the notch, these are probably mid-range devices. The side-mounted fingerprint reader suggests an LCD and we also notice a 3.5 mm headphone jack on top. Unfortunately, we cna't make out the label on the...

Source: https://www.gsmarena.com/four_unknown_nokia_phones_surface_two_show_off_a_new_design-news-51984.php

Six-year-old Fairphone 2 is getting Android 10

Dutch phone maker Fairphone has announced it's updating its six-year-old Fairphone 2 with Android 10. Fairphone has already kicked off Android 10 beta testing and aims to release the final build in early 2022. The Fairphone 2 was announced in 2015 with Android 5.1 Lollipop and later picked up Android 6 Marshmallow, Android 7.1 Nougat, and Android 9 Pie updates. And once the final build of Android 10 is released, the Fairphone 2 will be the first Android smartphone to receive seven years of software updates, which is pretty impressive even though Android 10 is two years old since Apple is...

Source: https://www.gsmarena.com/fairphone_2_android_10_beta_update_fairphone_3_3_plus_android_11_beta_update-news-51985.php

Apple's digital ID program delayed for early 2022

With iOS 15 Apple ushered in plenty of new features yet some of those that it promised are still not available to users. Like Apple’s digital driver’s license and ID function for participating U.S. states that lets you scan your documents and have them on your Wallet app at all times. It was supposed to arrive in late 2021 initially but Apple now lists the feature as “coming in early 2022” on its iOS 15 page. Revised ID cards rollout date on iOS 15 homepage The digital ID system is still in its infancy and only Arizona and Georgia will support it at launch while Connecticut, Iowa,...

Source: https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_digital_ids_delayed_for_early_2022-news-51979.php