eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Today’s topics include rumors of Google’s Pixel 3 smartphones, and Microsoft releasing performance-enhanced .NET Core 2.1.
The next generation of Google Pixel smartphones, likely to be called the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, are rumored to be coming this October, according to Bloomberg. The larger Pixel 3 XL could include an almost edge-to-edge screen and screen cutout at the top of the display, while the smaller Pixel 3 may look like the current Pixel 2.
Google’s original Pixel XL and Pixel smartphones first arrived in October 2016, and were followed in October 2017 by the current Pixel 2 XL and Pixel 2 models. However, while Google priced these newest handsets to compete with Samsung’s Galaxy S9 smartphones and Apple’s iPhones, sales are mediocre and may not improve much even after the rumored Pixel 3 models hit the market, according to analysts.
Rob Enderle, principal analyst with Enderle Group, said the next generation of Pixel phones will likely continue to be stalled by Google’s lack of adequate marketing for its handset initiatives.
Microsoft on May 30 released version 2.1 of .NET Core, the company’s open-source, cross-platform implementation of the .NET framework, supported on Windows, Mac and several popular Linux distributions.
Microsoft Program Manager Rich Lander said his group focused on slashing the time it takes .NET Core to complete various tasks, particularly incremental builds, and showed how an incremental build of a large project shrank from 107 seconds in version 2.0 to a mere 10.1 seconds in version 2.1.
Lander also said that in terms of networking performance, not only is the new SocketsHttpHandler event handler more efficient due to runtime performance improvements, but it also behaves more consistently across operating systems.