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Search around online and you’ll find the general advice is that you don’t need antivirus on your iPhone or iPad. And while the reasons for that advice are sound, the real answer is a bit more nuanced than an outright no.

Apple has designed iOS – and iPadOS – in such a way that it is very difficult for malware, including viruses, to penetrate its defences. This is a good thing, but remember that modern antivirus software does far more than detecting and blocking viruses.

In fact, calling it ‘antivirus software’ does it a disservice as the threats go way beyond viruses these days. The latest security software protects your device – and you – from a much wider range of dangers.

The people who create viruses are in a constant battle with the companies that make the operating systems (such as iOS and iPadOS), and have realised that it it’s far easier to trick the user into handing over their password and payment details than trying to make some malware that will achieve the same result.

After all, the criminals are after your identity and your money: that’s the end game.

So, this means that running an ‘antivirus’ app on your iPhone and iPad can be a very good idea indeed as it can protect your from yourself!

Here are some of the things that security apps can do – even on Apple devices:

• Warn you of potentially fake websites that might try to steal sensitive information
• Warn you of dangerous links in messages and emails
• Manage your passwords for you so you can have a strong, unique password for every website (and not use the same one for all accounts)
• Increase your privacy online by using a VPN
• Protect your identity by giving you early warning if any of your personal info is found on the dark web
• Protect your photos and videos so only you can access them

So while they won’t protect your iPhone or iPad from viruses (because they don’t need to), they are far from pointless and you should certainly consider installing one of them.

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Chipset company MediaTek has unveiled its latest flagship smartphone silicon: the Dimensity 9000+.

In case the name doesn’t give it away, this is positioned as an upgrade to the Dimensity 9000 flagship the company launched last November. Like that chip, this is high-end hardware intended for premium phones only.

This isn’t a true successor – expect that to arrive some time towards the end of the year – but a half-step upgrade, with enhancements made to the same base 4nm hardware.

The key change is an upgrade to the CPU’s Cortex-X2 prime core, which runs at 3.2GHz in the 9000 Pro – up from 3.05GHz in the regular 9000 – though the remaining seven CPU cores are unchanged from the previous iteration, resulting in an overall performance improvement of around 5%.

The GPU has had an upgrade too. The 9000+ still uses a Mali-G710 chip, but MediaTek says it’s made tweaks to deliver a 10% boost in graphics performance.

Those might not sound like dramatic gains, but they’re enough to bring the 9000+ right in line with rival Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, itself announced almost exactly a month ago. That chip also upgraded to a 3.2GHz clock speed on its prime CPU core, and boasts 10% GPU gains along with some power efficiency improvements.

As always, the big question is which phones will be powered by the Dimensity 9000+. While Qualcomm has already announced the 8+ Gen 1 will appear in phones from Asus, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and more, MediaTek usually waits a few weeks to announce OEM partners, so there are no phones or manufacturers confirmed so far – though the company has confirmed the first handsets should arrive in Q3 2022, aka July-September.

Despite excellent performance results in benchmarks, the Dimensity 9000 has suffered from surprisingly limited uptake so far. It can only be found in the Honor 70 Pro+, the Redmi K50 Pro, and the Vivo X80, along with special Dimensity editions of the Vivo X80 Pro and Oppo Find X5 Pro. Few of those have launched outside of China however, and none so far in Europe or the US.

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AMD is on a roll. The US chipmaker continues to eat into Intel’s CPU market share, hitting a record 25% by the end of 2021.

This progress has been driven by the strong performance of its Ryzen processors, which took a big leap forward with the Ryzen 5000 Series. 2022’s Ryzen 6000 Series only includes laptop CPUs, but AMD has already confirmed that its successor – the Ryzen 7000 Series – will also feature desktop processors.

But in this article, we’re looking even further ahead. The Ryzen 8000 Series might be well over a year away, but that hasn’t stopped AMD revealing some key details. Here’s everything we know so far.

AMD Ryzen 8000 Series release date
It’s not clear exactly when the Ryzen 8000 Series will officially launch, but we can take some clues from other AMD launches. The company has already confirmed that the upcoming Ryzen 7000 Series will debut in the ‘second half of 2022’, but mobile CPUs aren’t expected until CES in January 2023.

Indeed, the Ryzen 5000 Series was announced in October 2020 before laptop chips were added in January 2021.

A similar schedule is likely for the Ryzen 8000 Series. That would suggest an initial release of late 2023 – potentially October – then mobile processors at CES in January 2024. But as is often the case, AMD is likely to continue releasing new Ryzen 8000 Series chips in the the subsequent few months and even years.

Remember, AMD hasn’t confirmed any of this yet. We know the company is working on the Ryzen 8000 Series behind the scenes, but no release window has been revealed.

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Sony has unveiled a raft of new gaming hardware, but hold your horses – this isn’t the PS VR2, PS5 Pro, or whatever other upcoming gear you’ve got your heart set on. In fact, you won’t find the PlayStation logo anywhere.

That’s because the new tech – a trio of gaming headphones and a pair of gaming monitors – mark the debut of a whole new PC-focused gaming brand: Inzone. Or INZONE, if you prefer Sony’s excited capitalisation.

With Sony increasingly moving to port its biggest PlayStation games to PC, it’s no surprise that it wants to catch a portion of that market. The bigger surprise is that it’s launching a new hardware line to do so, rather than leveraging the power of the PlayStation brand.

While the new Inzone hardware may not boast PlayStation branding, it does boast plenty of tech borrowed from the company’s console line, and is clearly designed to appeal to PC gamers who also have a PS5 in the living room – or would if they could buy one – with features optimised for both gaming PCs and Sony’s latest console.

Take the headsets. The H3, H7, and H9 vary in specs, features, and price, but all three feature one common element: 360 Spatial Sound, a 7.1 surround sound system based on the Tempest 3D audio found inside the PlayStation 5 – and it’ll work with that console too. You can even personalise the sound profile using either a 360 Spatial Sound smartphone app or the new Inzone Hub PC app.

Beyond 360 sound, the headsets impress. All three use 40mm drivers, and have Discord-approved bi-directional boom mics that you can flip up and out of the way to mute. They also feature a dedicated button to shift the audio balance between game audio and chat.

The $99/€100/£89 Inzone H3 is the most basic, with a wired connection and nylon earpads – typical for budget gaming headsets. The $229/€230/£199 H7 switches to Bluetooth 5.0, and delivers an impressive 40-hour battery life.

Most impressive – but most expensive – is the $299/€300/£269 Inzone H9. These cans ditch the nylon for the same synthetic leather earpads used by Sony’s flagship XM5 over-ear headphones, and like those also offer active noise-cancellation. Sony has even thrown in some RGB lighting, though the knock-on effect of that is a drop to just 32 hours of battery – and even less if you use the ANC.

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Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30 Series offered a significant jump in performance compared to the RTX 20 Series, and rumours suggest we could be seeing a similar jump from the next-gen RTX 40 Series currently in development behind closed doors at Nvidia HQ.

The latest leaks point towards a 5nm process node running Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace GPU architecture that could offer a 2x jump in performance, and whispers suggest release could be closer than expected. Here’s all there is to know about the Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 Series right now.

When will the Nvidia RTX 40 Series be released?
Nvidia’s next-gen RTX 40 series of graphics cards were originally rumoured for release sometime in late 2022 – and given the two-year gap between the RTX 20 series and RTX 30 series, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Twitter leaker @Greymon55 claimed back in July 2021 that the graphics cards will launch “no earlier than end of 2022”. That aligns with previous Nvidia graphics card releases, which tend to appear towards the end of the year, although the leaker has also suggested that this could potentially slip into Q1 2023, which runs from January – March.

However, reliable leaker @Kopite7kimi suggested in April 2022 that the AD102 GPU – the GPU expected to power the top-end RTX 4090 – had entered the testing phase. If true, it’s a good sign that development of the next-gen range is coming along nicely, and barring any unforeseen testing issues, the design of the GPU is likely finalised.

The leaker has followed up his claim, teasing in May 2022 that a release could be on the cards as soon as early Q3, and in a reply to a follower, the leaker clarified that release could be as soon as “mid-July“.

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