Experts expect roughly 5.3 billion mobile phones to drop out of service in 2022. Stacked flat atop each other (assuming each device is around 9mm thick), the discarded phones would stand 120 times higher than the International Space Station and reach 1/8th of the way to the Moon. Despite containing valuable material like gold, silver, copper and palladium, experts believe most of the retired handsets will end up in junk drawers or closets....

Options range from running a Live USB drive outside of Chrome OS to installing a firmware mod for a traditional dual-boot configuration. And of course, you can also overwrite Google’s OS in favor of Linux. However, these routes are less practical than simply running Linux in the background of Chrome OS on a separate USB drive/SD card, which is what we’ll be focusing on here. The main reason for this being that few Chromebooks have more than 32GB of storage and you’d have to play it pretty conservatively to give Linux enough storage space, particularly so on the basic 16GB Asus C202SA we’ve been using for testing Chrome OS....

It was discovered in the early days of AMD’s Zen architecture that memory bandwidth and latency were crucial for maximizing performance of Ryzen processors. Manually tuning up the secondary and tertiary timings can consistently improve Ryzen’s performance in games. In other words, this is a comparison of Intel and AMD’s top desktop CPUs that do not belong to their HEDT series, with both processors tweaked for maximum memory performance....

Performance was much the same between the Raven Ridge APUs and the Ryzen 3 and 5 X models. The 2200G was slightly ahead of the 1300X while the 2400G was slightly behind the 1500X. When testing with 7-Zip we see that the 2200G lands just ahead of the 1300X, making it slightly slower than the Core i3-8100. Meanwhile, the 2400G was faster than the 1500X for the decompression test but quite a bit slower for the compression test....

If the sequential read performance of the Samsung 830 Series 512GB was outstanding then we are going to need a more colorful way to describe the sequential write performance. Perhaps I will leave that to the reader as it is hard to put the throughput of 404.6MB/s into words. This meant that the 830 Series 512GB was 34% faster than the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB and roughly 57% faster than the Crucial m4 256GB and Samsung 470 Series 256GB drives....

In the year that followed, Sabrent drives gained popularity and kept receiving positive ratings across the board. We noticed our review of the Rocket 4 kept getting a ton of traffic from those who were researching the drive before buying, and they sold like crazy. With both Samsung and Sabrent now out with updated product lines, the SSD 980 Pro and the Rocket 4 Plus, respectively, we’re back to see which drive is best....

When it comes to GPU performance, the Adreno 306 was fairly disappointing. While Qualcomm has focused on improving CPU performance by roughly 20%, essentially no gains were made on the GPU front, keeping this SoC firmly in the realm of 720p displays. On average, the Adreno 306 was just 1% faster than the Adreno 305, which is an insignificant difference. Interestingly, performance varied from around 10% faster to 10% slower depending on the benchmark, though I expect there will be no performance difference in games....

After a number of iterations over a number of years, the Surface Pro has grown into a popular option for consumers, particularly students that want a portable yet functional tablet. So it’s no surprise that various other companies are starting to emulate the Surface design in their own products. There’s a market out there, and Microsoft is welcoming the competition with open arms. The Surface competitor I’ve been using over the past few weeks is the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S....

It wasn’t long after the Z97’s arrival that Samsung moved to capitalize on the chipset’s M.2 support by announcing the XP941, a PCIe 2.0 x4 SSD with top speeds of 1170MB/s reads and 930MB/s writes. To date, no other M.2 device has challenged the XP941, however as attractive as the Samsung XP941 may be, it was meant as an OEM-only product. We recently reviewed Intel’s new SSD 750 Series 1....

Surprisingly, the Odyssey Neo G7 wasn’t one of the monitors that Samsung unveiled at CES earlier this year; the company showed off several displays at the show, including a 57-inch “8K” Mini-LED model and a 49-inch OLED. Samsung says the new monitor is its first flat Quantum Mini-LED model. According to the company, the technology enables ultra-fine and precise control of the densely packed LED, resulting in richer blacks, more expansive color expression and more detail, even in shadowy gaming environments....

AS SSD Benchmark’s sequential read/write performance matches what we saw when testing with CrystalDiskMark. When measuring 4K-64 thread performance, the Extreme Pro is able to match the 850 Pro, placing it among the fastest SATA SSDs we have tested. Despite its strong 4K-64 thread read performance, the Extreme Pro was much weaker when measuring write performance, delivering just 236MB/s – 23% slower than the 850 Pro. The Extreme Pro’s read access wasn’t particularly fast by SSD standards at 0....

OS Keyboard Shortcuts Windows macOS Chromebook Browser Shortcuts Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Mobile Shortcuts Android iPhone / iOS Note: This feature was originally published on 03/07/2016. We have bumped it because it’s always a good time to learn a new shortcut and simplify your workflow. Part of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative. Windows Shortcuts Windows 10 introduced some new shortcuts to take full advantage of the operating system’s features and interface. Here are some of the highlights:...

While standard keyboard shortcuts are impractical for mobile devices, there are other kind of shortcuts and workarounds that can be real time savers. Android in particular supports “shortcuts” in the form of homepage icons and widgets natively. Don’t miss out. Android home screen shortcuts A native Android feature supported by hundreds of apps. Start by tapping and holding on your home screen wallpaper. This may vary between Android versions but usually this is how you will find a menu for changing wallpapers, adding home screen widgets and shortcuts....

The heatsink in question was the Cooler Master Hyper TX3, which measures a relatively petite 5.47" (139mm) tall – a veritable dwarf compared to some of the beefier 6.29" (160mm) models. It is worth mentioning that the FT03 does accommodate CPU coolers as tall as 6.57" (167mm) so you can still use those massive high-end air-coolers (impressively), it just makes the installation process a little trickier than you’d experience otherwise....

Snap didn’t mention any specific features included with Snapchat+, but SVP of Product Jacob Andreou told The Verge that notable launch features include the ability to see who rewatched a story, an option to change the style of the app’s icon and the ability to pin a friend at the top of your chat history as a BFF. Andreou told the publication that “single-playerish” features such as the BFF pin will likely remain behind the paywall while wider-reaching features will eventually be rolled into the main Snapchat app....

When Sony announced it was buying Bungie, many thought about how this developer could help the Japanese company thrive even more in the game industry. Right now, Bungie is still creating content for Destiny 2, and we believe it’s also working on a new IP codenamed Matter. However, it seems Sony’s acquisition wasn’t just because of Bungie’s existing IPs. In its Q3 2021 earnings call, Hiroki Totoki, executive deputy president and CFO at Sony, shared with stakeholders the ambitious plans to use Bungie’s expertise to launch ten live service games within the next four years....

Sony has split its charts into two regions: the US/Canada and the EU. Looking at the current-gen PS5, NBA 2K22 tops the charts in the former area, while another sports game was the most downloaded in the EU last year—FIFA 22. But Call of Duty: Vanguard took the second spot in both locations. On the PS4, it’s amazing to find that, eight years after launching on the console, the most downloaded title in the US/Canada in 2021 was Grand Theft Auto V....

As far as Android phones are concerned, a 20-megapixel camera on-board is one of the highest resolutions you can find, and the differences in quality between a 13- or 8-megapixel camera is certainly noticeable. Downscaling a full-sized 20-megapixel image to 1080p gives the sharpest and clearest image I’ve seen from an Android smartphone, but what’s more surprising is comparing a 100% crop from the Xperia Z1’s camera to the 8- and 13-megapixel Exmor RS models....

Front page highlights include 75 percent off Doom Eternal, a full 85 percent off Tekken 7 and a whopping 90 percent off Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. Sports fans may be interested in grabbing FIFA 23 for 40 percent off in celebration of the ongoing World Cup in Qatar. Back 4 Blood, the co-op first-person shooter from the creators of the Left 4 Dead franchise, can be had for $19.79 after a 67 percent instant price cut....

“From the moment guests pass through the iconic green pipe, a journey filled with exploration, discovery and play awaits that is entirely unlike anything they’ve experienced before,” Universal Studios Hollywood said in a press release. Guests will be able to dine on delectable dishes like the Princess Peach Cupcake or the Mario Bacon Cheeseburger at the Toadstool Café and shop for merch at the 1-UP Factory. The starring attraction is a Mario Kart-inspired ride called Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge....