lilbits: Strange new AI phone, Apple re-relief MacBook Air, Intel Arrow Lake is business class, Postmarketos is looking for a new name

Would you be willing to allow smartphones with access to a vast amount of personal dates to develop personalized AI assistants that will help you get things done? Without a doubt, that may already be doing it if you’re using an Android phone, but the startup called Newnal is taking things to a new level with a phone that can generate AI avatars you can communicate with, as well as for some reason giving another screen on top of the phone’s primary display.

This AI-powered mobile phone uses personal data to build custom AI avatars/assistants that hang out on a small screen above the primary display. It’s a bit creepy, but might it be useful if it works? The $375 price also looks surprisingly low, but this makes me a bit suspicious.

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– liliputing (@liliputing.bsky.social) March 5th, 2025, 2:04pm

In other recent tech news from around the web, Apple is offering processor upgrades to the MacBook Air while lowering its starting price. This is an amazing surprise. Intel has announced new versions of the Core 200 “Arrow Lake” mobile and desktop chip with Intel VPro technology for business and enterprise use. Qualcomm may be developing a desktop version of the Snapdragon X processor with more CPU cores. The first microprocessor on the Raspberry Pi can be configured to operate as high as 200 MHz (up from 133 Hz). Mobile Linux Distribution Postmarketos is searching for new names.

The new MacBook Air with the M4 chip is now available for pre-orders for over $999 (a $100 price drop from the previous Gen). It should be available on March 12th and comes with a 13-inch or 15-inch display and up to 32GB of RAM. The new webcams are also new.

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– liliputing (@liliputing.bsky.social) March 5th, 2025, 3:03 pm

Intel is introducing a desktop chip with Core Ultra 200 U, H, HX and S series “Arrow Lake” mobile and a VPRO for commercial PCs.

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– liliputing (@liliputing.bsky.social) March 5, 2025, 1:58pm

Marketos after mobile Linux distributions will not be called Postmarketos for a long time. The team is looking for new names that reflect that *not only *once on phones that no longer get official software updates.

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– liliputing (@liliputing.bsky.social) March 4, 2025, 5:55pm

Qualcomm appears to be working on a “High TDP” Snapdragon X Elite Gen 2 chip (SC8480XP) with 18 CPU cores. Can be designed for desktops (or perhaps high-performance mobile devices). The hardware samples include 48GB RAM and a 1TB SSD.

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– liliputing (@liliputing.bsky.social) March 2, 2025, 2:36pm

With the update to the Raspberry Pi Pico SDK, the RP2040 microprocessor can run at speeds up to 200 MHz. Previously it was limited to 133 MHz. The new RP2350 should continue to offer better performance, but this is still a great software-based spec bump.

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– liliputing (@liliputing.bsky.social) February 28, 2025, 2:10pm

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