Oversaturation: US smartphone ownership reaching peak levels in 2018 says new report

The oversaturation of smartphone markets around the globe has been apparent for years, and perhaps the issue is most evident in the largest consumer market on the planet - the USA. But what do the numbers show?

According to the latest data by Pew Research Center, 99% of adult Americans aged 18-49 currently own a cell phone, while 91% of people in the same group are smartphone owners. The total number of US adults who own a cell phone is estimated to be at around 95% and internet adoption stands at 89% (97% for the 18-49 group).

Interestingly, ...

Huawei Mate 10 Pro scores stable Android Pie update in Europe, global spread to follow

The world’s second-largest smartphone vendor is not usually the fastest company to bring the newest Android versions to its previous-gen flagship models, but in anticipation of a fast-approaching Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro announcement, Huawei has a very pleasant surprise for Mate 10 Pro users.

That’s right, the increasingly affordable 6-inch Kirin 970 powerhouse is ready to leave Oreo behind, at least on the old continent, according to as-yet unconfirmed reports across the web.

We don’t know exactly what European markets are currently looking at an official over-the-air Android ...

LG V40 ThinQ rumor review: specs and release of LG's 4th flagship for the year

The LG V35 ThinQ may be the harbinger of the V40 ThinQ to be released October 3 in terms of overall looks, but not so much in specs. LG's project "Storm," the V40, will be its fourth flagship for the year, turning it into a Sony of sorts, but on steroids. First, there was the V30S, which started the whole ThinQ thingy, and enriched the V30 with AI shenanigans, then came the G7 ThinQ, then the V35 ThinQ, so let's preview the next ThinQ.

Design

Thankfully, on the V35 LG didn't run with the wildly-annoying notch trend it went with ...

Samsung Galaxy A6s specs revealed to include 6-inch screen, 6GB RAM

Samsung’s mid-range smartphones don’t usually make a lot of noise in the rumor mill prior to being officially unveiled, but the Galaxy A6s (formerly known as Galaxy P30) is pretty special from that standpoint.

Unfortunately, early speculation about the handset possibly paving the way for next year’s Galaxy S10 with in-display fingerprint recognition technology has proven as phony as a three-dollar bill.

Still, we were curious to see what the Galaxy A6s wanted to do to stand out from the Galaxy A6 and A6+, which has already come to light, thanks to China’s FCC-equivalent Tenaa ...

Full Microsoft Surface Pro 6 details paint an iterative update picture

In case you were wondering why we didn’t hear much about the next Surface Pro generation until just last week, it probably wasn’t because Microsoft did such a tremendous job keeping leaks in check.

Instead, there simply wasn’t a lot to leak, as suggested by images depicting a Surface Pro 6 retail unit that looked pretty much identical to last year’s variant. A rock-solid insider then claimed the new model would come at the same price as its predecessor with marginally “updated” hardware, and now, Roland Quandt is here to elaborate for WinFuture.

If Quandt’s inside information ...

The Mi 8 Explorer Edition's 'transparent' back is, sadly, a prop (video)

Xiaomi announced the souped-up Mi 8 Explorer Edition back in the spring as it top-shelf handset, with FaceID-styled 3D scanning at the front, an in-display finger reader and... transparent back that allegedly showed the Snapdragon chipset beneath. 

Well, that transparency turns out to be fake, as many suspected - the picture was just too neatly arranged to be true for anyone who has peeked inside a smartphone's innards.

As you can see in the video above, the "transparent" back is simply a prop that can be scrubbed off, and the real innards ...

The first 7nm chipset on Android still trails Apple's A12 benchmarks, despite lofty claims

Android's 7nm processor era will soon be upon us, with the introduction of Huawei's Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro about two weeks from now. As we witnessed with Apple's A12 Bionic in the iPhone XS and XS Max, the era will be fast, and it will be powerful, all without taking a further toll on battery life.

The first Geekbench result of Huawei's Kirin 980 chipset, built with the 7nm production node, has just appeared, straight from the upcoming Mate 20. The handset scored 3390 points on the single-core test, and 10318 on the multi-core. That's way above ...