Qi Charging Qi (pronounced “chee,” from the Chinese word for “vital force” or “energy”) is a wireless charging standard for smartphones and other mobile devices. Qi chargers use inductive charging to deliver electricity from a charging pad to a compatible mobile device over a short range — about 15 mm — without a physical connection …
Quad-Core A quad-core CPU has four processing cores in a single chip. It is similar to a dual-core CPU, but has four separate processors (rather than two), which can process instructions at the same time. Quad-core CPUs have become more popular in recent years as the clock speeds of processors have plateaued. By including multiple …
Repeater A repeater is an electronic device that relays a transmitted signal. It receives a signal on a specific frequency, then amplifies and rebroadcasts it. By amplifying the signal, a repeater increases the transmission range of the original signal. Repeaters have many applications, but in computing they are most commonly used in wireless networks. For …
Resistor A resistor is an electrical component that limits the flow of electric current. One or more resistors can be used to provide the correct amount of current to specific components within an electronic device. Resistors are often soldered onto a printed circuit board to limit the amount of current that flows to different electrical …
Retina Display The term “retina display” is a hardware term coined by Apple in June, 2010. It describes a display that has a resolution of over 300 dpi. The iPhone 4, which was also announced in June, 2010, has a screen resolution of 326 dpi and was the first Apple product to include a retina …
Router A router is a hardware device that directs traffic between networks and devices. It receives incoming data packets from another network and routes them either to the packet’s destination computer on the local network, or to the next network along its path. A router can also keep logs of activity, run a firewall, and …
S/PDIF Stands for “Sony/Philips Digital Interface” (and is pronounced “spid-if”). S/PDIF is a digital audio transmission standard for transferring audio between two devices. It is uni-directional (one-way) and supports uncompressed stereo audio and compressed surround sound audio. A S/PDIF audio signal may be transmitted over coaxial or fiber optic cable. Coax transmissions use RCA connectors, …
Scanner A scanner is an input device that scans documents such as photographs and pages of text. When a document is scanned, it is converted into a digital format. This creates an electronic version of the document that can be viewed and edited on a computer. Most scanners are flatbed devices, which means they have …
Screen Burn Screen burn or “screen burn-in” is a residual image left on a screen after displaying the same image for a long time. It is a faded version of the image or “ghost image” that covers part or all of the screen. Screen burn is usually caused by video or graphics with content that …
Screen Tearing Screen tearing is graphics distortion that occurs when the graphics processor is out of sync with the display. It causes a horizontal line to appear during video playback or gameplay in a video game since the top section is out of sync with the bottom. When the GPU is under a heavy load, …