Xiaomi overtakes Apple in smartphone shipments during Q2 2021

For the first time, Chinese tech company Xiaomi has overtaken Apple in the global smartphone shipments ranking for the second quarter of 2021 with 17% of the market share. According to Canalys research, smartphone shipments grew 12% last quarter as COVID-19 vaccination programs are happening worldwide. 

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Valve's Steam Deck is a handheld gaming PC

Source: Valve

Valve's long-rumoured Switch-like handheld device is now official. But the Steam Deck is more a handheld PC gaming device than a direct competitor to Nintendo's handheld console. 

It runs on an AMD APU with a quad-core Zen 2 CPU with eight threads and eight compute units' worth of AMD RDNA 2 graphics. It has 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and three storage tiers: 64GB eMMC storage (USD 399), 256GB NVMe SSD (USD 529), and 512GB high-speed NVMe SSD (USD 649). You can also expand storage with a microSD card.

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Google Play Books gets custom shelves

A "top request from Play Books readers" finally comes to the Google Play Books app. You can now create custom shelves to arrange your library better. It gives you the option to organize your books into "themed collections." You can access this new feature via Library > Shelves. You can access it between the "Your books" and "Series" sections. At the bottom of the new Shelves tab, there's a "Create new" button where you can name your new shelf. After you long press on ay work, it will surface an "Add to shelf" button.

If you want alerts on discounted wishlist items, you have to make sure you've opted into receiving marketing emails from Google Play. Once you've done that, Google will email you if a title on your wishlist gets discounted.

Source: 9to5Google

Cixin Liu's 'The Three-Body Problem' is now a serialized podcast

Stephan Martiniere's cover for 'The Three-Body Problem' (Image: Tor Books)

Maybe you've heard about the Cixin Liu and his acclaimed Remembrance of Earth's Past sci-fi series, but you haven't dipped your toes in it yet. Well, the first book, The Three-Body Problem, is now a serialized podcast. Tor Books and Macmillan Audio partnered to release this ongoing podcast through Macmillan's Stories From Among the Stars show, which is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Over the next few weeks until August 6, you'll get new chapters of the book every Tuesday and Thursday. You can listen to the entire book until September 10. Gizmodo noted that this book-as-a-podcast approach feels like it's influenced by Netflix's upcoming adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, and we honestly don't mind it.