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Today’s topics include LG’s latest smartphone model that will come with a more powerful processor and a better screen, OnePlus’ latest high-end smartphone model, Xiaomi’s acquisition of 1,500 patents from Microsoft and Dell’s development of a water-cooling system for hyperscale data centers.
LG has unveiled its LG Stylus 2 Plus smartphone, which includes key performance and feature improvements compared with its earlier Stylus 2 sibling. The new handset was launched in Taiwan on June 1 and is expected to roll out to other markets, including Asia, South America, Europe and North America soon, according to the company.
The updated LG Stylus 2 Plus has a faster 1.4GHz octa-core processor; a Full HD 5.7-inch In-Plane Switching Quantum touch-screen display; a higher-resolution, 16-megapixel rear main camera with dual flash; and 2GB to 3GB of memory depending on the market.
Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus will unveil its latest premium smartphone, the OnePlus 3, in an online “virtual reality” event on June 14. During the first two hours of the event, the phones can be ordered through the OnePlus “Loop” page with open sales of the latest phones beginning at 3 p.m. EDT that day on OnePlus.net.
OnePlus officials say that for the first time, buyers will be able to get their new phones without having to obtain an “invite” to make a purchase. Company co-founder and CEO Carl Pei revealed the launch date in a June 1 post on the OnePlus product forums Web page. “In addition, invites are gone forever from future OnePlus product launches,” Pei wrote.
Six-year-old Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi is buying 1,500 technology patents from Microsoft and will preinstall the Microsoft Office productivity suite and Skype on its Android-based smartphones and tablets under a new partnership deal announced by the two companies. The deals, unveiled on May 31, will bring Xiaomi a wide assortment of patents relating to wireless communications, video, cloud technologies and multimedia, a Microsoft spokesman told eWEEK in an email reply to an inquiry.
“This agreement reflects the deep respect Xiaomi and Microsoft have for intellectual property rights,” the spokesman said. “The companies are committed to a healthy patent system and standing against the abusive practices we’ve seen at times in our industry.”
The companies also will cross-license some of their technologies, according to their joint announcement, but no details of that deal were released.
Dell engineers have been working with Intel and online auction site eBay for the past six years to develop a custom system that uses water to cool servers in hyperscale data centers. Now the tech vendor is ready to unveil the water-cooling system to the industry. Dell officials on June 2 introduced the system—code-named Triton—created by the company’s Extreme Scale Infrastructure (ESI) unit, which developed it as a proof-of-concept for eBay.
The ESI group designed the cooling system for hyperscale and near-hyperscale environments, where power efficiency and CPU performance both are critical metrics. Triton is the latest technology to come out of Dell’s ESI unit.