Apple iPhone X's 5.8-inch screen is actually smaller than the 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus display
Well, if that’s AI in action, we won’t be asking Cortana to organize our next birthday bash – not unless we decide to hold it in a brewery, in which case, we’d like to test a theory… Huawei knocks up the best laptop in the world It’s not often that a notebook – or indeed any device – comes straight out of left-field and completely blows us away, but Huawei’s MateBook X Pro certainly did that as one of the highs of 2018. When this laptop was first revealed at MWC, sporting a neat trick for hiding away the webcam, it caused gasps from the assembled press. And when the MateBook X Pro went on sale, it immediately grabbed the coveted number one spot on our best laptops list, ousting our previous firm favorite, Dell’s XPS 13, and indeed the MacBook Pro (to which the Huawei machine bears more than a passing resemblance). Yeah, so it looks MacBook-esque, plus the display’s aspect ratio is unconventional, and the aforementioned clever webcam is actually flawed in some respects – but these are but tiny niggles. In the big picture, the MateBook is a beautifully designed portable built around a gorgeous screen, stuffed with powerful components, yet still managing to offer superb battery life, and a relatively competitive price. All this from a firm which is known for its phones – not notebooks – making the MateBook X Pro the biggest and most pleasant surprise of 2018 for us. More of this, please, Huawei.
Intel’s cannon fails to fire (again) One major drag in the past year was Intel’s announcement in April that – once again – its 10nm Cannon Lake processors were going to be delayed. Yes, these are the same CPUs which were expected to succeed Skylake (6th-generation) chips way back in 2016, and were subsequently delayed multiple times. While Cannon Lake silicon is actually shipping in very tiny amounts, mass production is where it’s at, and this year, we discovered that won’t happen until 2019. Why? Intel simply can’t hone its 10nm manufacturing process to get yields where they need to be. This constant stalling is a rather worrying state of affairs, and indeed late this year, a rumor even floated around that Intel had cancelled Cannon Lake, forcing the company to come out and clarify that it was still making ‘good progress’ on the silicon. Although that’s obviously a relative term, given the history here.
Exploring No-Fuss Programs For cell phones - Apple iPhone X's 5.8-inch screen is actually smaller than the 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus display
Volume production of these CPUs is expected to start in the second half of 2019, although PCs with the processors inside probably won’t be on sale until the very end of the year. Assuming all goes well, that is – but Intel can hardly afford for another round to jam in the chamber next year, as Cannon Lake being delayed until 2020 would be a major embarrassment. We should underline that it’s not like Intel doesn’t have any competitive CPUs right now – the firm has managed to eke a good deal of mileage out of its current manufacturing processes – but the chip giant is clearly slipping, as we’ll see with our next high point… AMD pulls off CPU coup with Ryzen 2nd-gen AMD pulled out all the silicon stops in 2018 when it came to the launch of its Ryzen 2nd-generation processors. These CPUs were regarded as nothing short of a triumph, with the beefy Ryzen 7 2700X giving Intel a serious whipping in terms of its price-to-performance ratio, and storming right to the top of our best processor chart.
For those looking at a more palatably priced mid-range processor, the six-core Ryzen 5 2600X offers immense performance for around the £200 or $200 (about AU$280) mark. The Ryzen 3 2200G was also our pick of the budget CPU crop this year, with AMD sweeping the board in the categories where it really matters. Perhaps it’s no wonder we’ve recently seen figures suggesting that AMD is making great gains in terms of taking processor turf. Google’s AI becomes hair-raisingly honed When it emerged in May, we dubbed Google Duplex as the first real AI gamechanger.
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