Top Insights of the Week: Most Powerful Smartphone, iPhone 2019, and Xiaomi's Dog Calorie Tracker

The main event of this week was the gaming exhibition E3 2018. It featured a lot of promising games, including The Elder Scrolls 6, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, Just Cause 4, Beyond Good & Evil 2, Battlefield V and more. Judging by the abundance of numbers in the titles, they are basically going to entertain us with sequels and remakes of the already well-known game series.

It seems that major developers of computer and console games are experiencing a crisis of fresh ideas or are simply afraid to experiment. However, they can be understood: the production of modern computer games of the AAA category in terms of cost, complexity and price is already comparable to Hollywood blockbusters, so the risk here can be dear.

Against this background, the mobile games market looks young and vigorous. He gushes with fresh ideas, is not afraid of crazy projects and bold attempts. Yes, in appearance, mobile games are still far behind their computer counterparts, but the gameplay is often such that you simply do not pay attention to all these shaders and pixels. Moreover, mobile hardware does not stand still either.

Asus ROG Phone named the most productive smartphone

We have already announced the imminent release of the Asus ROG Phone, a smartphone designed specifically for gaming. And now there is information that this device is the most productive smartphone in the world. Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, OnePlus 6, HTC U12 +, Sony Xperia XZ2 / XZ2 Compact and Galaxy S9 + are slightly lower in the ranking.

In the popular Geekbench 4.1 benchmark, the Asus ROG Phone scored a record 2,547 points in the single-core test and 9,534 points in the multi-core test. Recall that it uses a modified version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, which is overclocked from 2.8 GHz to 2.96 GHz operating frequency. A special cooling system was developed for it, which allowed this chipset to fully demonstrate its capabilities.

The official announcement of the device is scheduled for the third quarter of this year.

The new iPhone will have a USB Type-C connector

After years of using the proprietary Lightning connector in the iPhone, Apple may be moving to the more common USB Type-C port. The news came from China, where analyst firm DigiTimes analyzed supply chains from the component's manufacturers.

Recall that in 2016, Apple completely transferred MacBook Pro laptops to USB Type-C connectors, explaining this decision by considerations of ergonomics and unification. New iPhones and iPads with USB Type-C next year will make life much easier for Apple device users by eliminating the need to use different plugs and adapters.

It is only surprising that this sensible decision came to the mind of the developers so late, because today even the cheapest Chinese smartphones are equipped with this connector.

Xiaomi Mi Max 3 will receive a flagship camera

Before the start of sales in China, all smartphones are registered in the state register. The data of this registry is open, so it constantly becomes a source of information on the technical characteristics of fresh smartphones.

The new Xiaomi Mi Max 3, according to this information, will be equipped with a huge 6, 99-inch screen with Full HD + resolution and have an aspect ratio of 18: 9 and thin bezels. Inside, the Snapdragon 710 chipset will work together with 4 or 6 GB of RAM.

Responsible for photography is a dual main camera using a Sony IMX363 sensor with a resolution of 20 megapixels. Interestingly, the same camera is installed in the new flagship of the company Xiaomi Mi 8, which allowed it to enter the top five camera phones according to the version of the DxOMark website.

The novelty will receive a battery with a capacity of 5,500 mAh, as well as support for quick charging Quick Charge 3.0. The smartphone is running Android 8.1 Oreo with the MIUI 10 shell.

The start of sales of Xiaomi Mi Max 3 is expected in July this year.

Other news

Samsung has succeeded in toppling the iPhone X from its top-selling smartphone pedestal in the first quarter of 2018. This was made possible by the release of the Galaxy S9 + and Galaxy S9 models, which now occupy the first two lines in the ranking of sales.
Uber has released a lightweight version of the Uber Lite app, which weighs only 5MB, saves traffic and works even on budget smartphones with slow connections. The program is currently only available in India, but will soon appear on Google Play for other countries as well.
Google Translate mobile for iOS and Android now supports offline neural machine translation. The function is available for 59 languages, including Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian. According to the developers, this should significantly improve the quality of the translation.
Google has officially confirmed that the next version of Android will be able to use a dark theme.
Huawei has developed a technology that allows its smartphones to run a full-fledged desktop Windows 10. This is implemented by connecting to a virtual cloud machine Huawei Cloud PC. The feature is currently only available in China.
Xiaomi has released Petbit, a smart dog collar that helps track their location. In addition, the device counts steps and calories burned, which will come in handy if your veterinarian instructed your pet to move more.