Month: August 2019

As we move closer and closer to the end of the year, Qualcomm will hold an announcement possibly announcing the Snapdragon 865, which we’re definitely excited for. However, it looks like before the latter is officially unveiled, a potential name of its successor, the Snapdragon 875 Mobile Platform has come forth and is expected to be made in partnership with TSMC.

TSMC Already Commenced Risk Production This Year, With Its 5nm+ Manufacturing Process Slated for Mass Production in 2021

According to a fresh report published on Sina, a few details surrounding the Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform have come forth. As most of you know, the company’s latest Exynos 9825 is made on the Korean giant’s significantly improved 7nm EUV process, and it looks like for the Snapdragon 865, Qualcomm has partnered with Samsung to use the same technology to mass production the upcoming chipset. For 2021, the report states that Qualcomm might return to TSMC for its 5nm node when it’s gearing to release the Snapdragon 875.

That is rather strange as Samsung announced back in April that it has successfully developed 5nm EUV nodes, resulting in a 20 percent reduced power draw. Whether or not the manufacturer continues to run into yield problems, we’ll find out in the future. A separate source claims that TSMC’s 5nm+ process will be ready for mass production in 2021, which could give Qualcomm additional confidence in re-collaborating with the chip manufacturing giant.

Additionally, TSMC’s 5nm design infrastructure is reportedly completed, giving lucrative clients such as Apple to experience the node’s benefits when rolling out its advanced A14 silicon, and it’s possible Qualcomm would have carried out some test runs too behind closed doors. Sadly, there were no other details shared regarding the Snapdragon 875, but the report does mention a few tidbits for the upcoming Snapdragon 865. Firstly, the latter will reportedly arrive in two variants, codenamed ‘Kona’ and ‘Huracan’, providing support for both LPDDR5x memory and UFS 3.0 storage.

It can be assumed for now that one version of the Snapdragon 865 will feature an integrated 5G baseband modem, while the other one won’t. This little detail was talked about earlier as well, meaning that manufacturers will have a choice whether to give their devices 5G connectivity support or not, depending on which markets that model will release in. The first of many Snapdragon 865 benchmarks look promising, revealing the SoC to have made modest gains over the Snapdragon 855.

Then again, it’s too early to draw up conclusions, and like always, we’ll recommend that you treat this info with a pinch of salt. Qualcomm is expected to announce new products in December later this year. Hopefully, we’ll get some clue as to what the company plans on doing for the Snapdragon 875.

Nvidia recently announced that their beta game streaming service, GeForce Now, would get the upgrade from Pascal to Turing and with it, ray tracing – only it didn’t. Not only were users reporting that ray tracing options were absent, but the performance was up to 50% worse, leading the more inquisitive to investigate and discover their games were running on a new GeForce RTX T10-8 GPU — along with a variety of new and inadequate CPU and memory configurations.

Ten days ago we wouldn’t have been able to say what the T10-8 is, but last week’s AIDA64 update included a reference to it as a variant of Nvidia’s flagship TU102 die, the powerhouse behind the RTX 2080 Ti. Ears were perked and the conclusion that a 2080 Ti Super was coming was reached, yet it now appears that the T10-8 will exclusively power GeForce Now RTX.

However, it took Nvidia less than a day to pull the plug and return users to the older Tesla P40 GPUs, with no ray tracing capabilities. Quite the whirlwind indeed. So, what could have happened?

Shortly after Nvidia’s announcement users noticed the switch to the T10-8, either via playing games that list the hardware, noticing severe performance drops, or both. One user had Ghost Recon Wildlands detect a dual-core system with 7 GB of system memory and an RTX T10-8 GPU with 8 GB of memory, all running on Windows Server 2012. That last part may explain the issues with ray tracing: Windows 2012 doesn’t support Microsoft’s DXR ray tracing implementation, and Nvidia’s initial fix might’ve not been as good as it needed to be.

A few other things didn’t add up, like the GPU’s average usage during the Ghost Recon Wildlands 1080p benchmark at 81% on a dual core CPU and just 8 GB of memory, so it’s possible (and this is just speculation) each user was given half a T10-8 to game on. There’s some evidence for this: one user found a 48% reduction in Fire Strike score between the P40 (equivalent to the GTX 1080) with a regular CPU and RAM configuration, and their T10-8 system with slightly worse CPU and RAM numbers. A few users who apparently didn’t witness any performance drop report their T10-8 systems as having 16 GB of memory.

What may have occurred is that Nvidia’s marketing team outdid their engineering team, building up enough hype about ray tracing on GeForce Now that every user decided to log on and test it out simultaneously, exceeding the number of supported systems. As an automatic fix, the software could have divided each system into two virtual ones, doubling the number of possible players but halving the performance.

Since the initial release several days ago, however, the reports of poor performance and broken ray tracing have ceased, so it seems likely things are working as they should for most players.

The bottom line is there’s no RTX 2080 Ti Super coming to the mass market for now. This isn’t a huge surprise considering Nvidia can’t squeeze another configuration between the 2080 Ti (4352 cores) and the Titan RTX (4608 cores) without drastically sabotaging one. On the flip side, GeForce Now users should get a nice performance boost with the T10-8 once the bugs are ironed out.

Google’s gotten a lot of grief for its messaging strategy, and rightly so. While Facebook and Apple have seen their messaging platforms become indispensable to users and businesses alike, Google has launched a litany of apps whose pithy names (Buzz, Wave, Allo, Hangouts, and the list goes on) couldn’t save them from the dustbin of chat history.

But lately it seems like the search giant has got its messaging groove back.

Getting to RC-yes

By now you’re probably familiar with RCS, the new telecom standard that’s supposed to rescue old fashioned text messaging from the flip-phone era. RCS stands for Rich Communication Services and it comes with modern messaging features like read receipts, typing indicators, and verified business profiles. In other words, it looks and feels like iMessage or WhatsApp, but works over your cell phone network instead of the internet, à la SMS.

For the last year or two, Google has been spearheading a campaign to get global telcos and device carriers to support RCS and stymie its messaging competitors in the process. Now it’s finally taking matters into its own hands.

Android users in France and the UK (and soon elsewhere) are now able to opt in to RCS services provided directly by Google instead of waiting for their telco to flip the switch. While this may sound like a minor development in the decade-old RCS saga, it’s actually a “huge shift in strategy,” explains The Verge: it’s not quite the Google equivalent of an iMessage service for Android users, but it’s close.

Paranoid Android

Google’s gambit solves one of the major hurdles for RCS success, which is that up until now it depended on global carriers and device makers to play nicely with each other. The other hurdle is even bigger. Unlike WhatsApp, iMessage, and other internet-based (OTT) chat apps like Telegram and Signal, RCS does not boast end-to-end encryption — a fact Amnesty International raked Google over the coals for last year.

For privacy-conscious users, end-to-end encryption has become table stakes, as Mary Meeker showed in her latest internet trends report. The good news is that Google finally seems to get it. Sanaz Ahari, the product director responsible for Android Messages assured The Verge it’s committed to finding a solution.

Place your (Alpha)bets

As I’ve argued before, here on TNW, RCS is only half of Google’s two-pronged strategy to dominate B2C messaging. The other is Google business messaging, which the company is quietly integrating into Maps and search — two areas where it’s no laggard.

Meanwhile, as VentureBeat’s Khari Johnson observes, the company’s voice messaging strategy is “ubiquitous and comprehensive,” boasting both AI (Google Assistant, Google Duplex) and hardware (Google Home) that puts it at the top of the conversational class.

In Johnson’s view: All of this adds up to one fact: By some measure, Google may have already won the chat wars.

Bose has long been a huge player in the world of portable speakers – and its latest model, the Bose Portable Home Speaker, should serve to cement that reputation even further.

The new Bluetooth speaker packs wireless connectivity, a 12-hour battery life and 360-degree audio into a super compact form, coming in at just 2.3 pounds (around 1kg).

The best portable speakers of 2019

All the best wireless speakers we’ve reviewed

Staying close to home? Check out the Bose Home Speaker 500

The Bose Portable Home Speaker, which will be available in black and silver from September 19, will cost $349 / £369.95 / AU$499.95 – ever so slightly less expensive than the pricey Bose Home Speaker 500.

No sweet-spot necessary

Measuring 7.5 inches tall, the portable speaker is wrapped in an anodized aluminum enclosure. Inside, there are three passive radiators, a high-excursion driver and a proprietary deflector that Bose says deflects “clear, lifelike sound evenly in every direction”.

Despite it’s small size, Bose says its latest speaker delivers powerful bass, and, “unlike conventional speakers, there’s no sweet-spot for placement or listening” – that means you can sit wherever you like in relation to the speaker, and it should still sound fantastic.

With 12 hours of battery and an IPX4 rating, it’s suitable for listening to outside and on-the-go (although you probably shouldn’t take it to the pool), and its rugged design means it should survive slight knocks and bumps.

If you like to listen with your hands full, you can use your voice to control the Bose Portable Home Speaker, with both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa built-in to access “playlists, podcasts, news, weather, smart home devices, and more,” according to Bose.

iPhone and iPad owners will be able to stream their music via Apple AirPlay 2, while Spotify users can stream via Spotify Connect.

With all those features packed in to such a small package, Bose will surely be looking to fend off competition from the yet-to-be-released Sonos portable speaker – we’ll have to wait a little while to find out which brand will win in the next battle of the Bluetooth speakers, but we’re excited to find out. 

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G will be available online and in stores tomorrow. Just in time, the folks at iFixit are sharing a peek inside the new device. Most notably, the phone borrows one major design queue from the iPhone, and it won’t be super easy to repair.

Like the iPhone X, the Note 10+ positions the motherboard at the top half of the phone. While this allows the battery to be wider, it requires cables between mother and daughterboard. Those block access to the battery. They can be moved to the side, but they’ll add a challenge to repairs.

Speaking of repairs, iFixit points out that every repair requires un-gluing the fragile glass rear cover. Replacing the glued-down battery is difficult, and common display repairs “require either a complete teardown or replacing half the phone.” Overall, iFixit gives the Note 10+ a repairability score of 3 out of ten.

The device also has a new vibration motor, which breaks Samsung’s trend of using the same circular motor in all of its phone buzzers. As iFixit says, that could mean Samsung is taking haptic feedback more seriously — or not. And of course, there’s no headphone jack or Bixby button. You can take a look at the full teardown here and read our first take on the phone here.

Google just announced Android Q will be called Android 10, and that we should expect its official release in a few weeks. Software and operating system updates like Android 10 add new features and capabilities and can be refreshing if you’re growing tired of your phone. Google released the first beta of Android Q in March, and more recently, released the sixth — and final — beta before the official launch.

With each beta release, Google has added new features to Android 10 beyond what the company announced and previewed at Google I/O in May. There’s a Bubbles notification feature, full-on gesture navigation, improved privacy settings and a slick Live Caption feature.

If you’re interested in helping Google test Android 10, you can sign up right now. Just keep in mind that this is still a beta release, and there are issues. Some apps simply won’t work, and battery life has taken a hit. In the meantime, here are some exciting new features in Android 10.

Bubbles

Do you still use Facebook Messenger’s Chat Heads feature? If so, then you’re going to love Android 10’s new Bubbles feature. Bubbles work just like Chat Heads, with a circular notification floating above whatever is on your screen. Google wants developers to be mindful of what types of apps use Bubbles simply because a stream of notifications showing up on your screen, regardless of what you’re doing, would get real annoying real fast.

As you can see in the screenshots above, Bubbles is working with the Google Phone app. I triggered Bubbles by leaving an active call, after which a small circle showed up with the contact’s picture. While dragging the Bubble around, two options showed up at the bottom of the screen: Hide and End Call. Dragging the icon to either option caused that action. A single tap on the Bubble revealed a few more options, such as enabling the speaker or muting the call.

Wi-Fi and QR codes

Sharing your Wi-Fi network password with friends or asking for theirs can be awkward. Android 10 has a new feature that lets you create a QR code for your Wi-Fi network or scan a QR code to join a Wi-Fi network, directly in the device’s Wi-Fi settings. To use this new feature, go to Wi-Fi settings and then select your home network, followed by the Share button with a small QR code just above it.

Undo app removal

Ever accidentally remove an app from your home screen, and then realize you can’t remember which app was there? I have.

With Android 10, you have a few seconds after an app has been removed to undo the change. You’ll find the undo button along the bottom of the screen. Press it and bam, the app is back where it belongs.

Location control

Android is finally getting more granular control over how an app can use location information. Currently, you can give an app access to your location either all the time or not all. With Android 10, you will gain the option of letting an app access your location information only while you’re actively using the app. Not only is this a privacymatter, but it’s sure to help save on battery life.

Privacy settings

With Android 10, there’s now a dedicated Privacy section in the settings app. Opening it will reveal the various permissions apps can request for things like calendar, location, camera, contacts and microphone.

Android has lacked a clear-cut way to view what apps have access to what data on your device. The new section makes it easy to discover and revoke permissions for specific apps. Take a few minutes to learn exactly what can be done in the new Android 10 Privacy settings page. Trust us, it’s worth it.

Better notification controls

When you long-press an alert, you’re now given two different options: Alerting and Silent. Selecting Alerting will allow the app to make sound with each new alert. Silent will not make a sound or cause your phone to vibrate. You can further tailor how notifications behave by going into Settings > Apps & notifications > Notifications.

This is a small but important feature because you no longer have to dig into the Settings app to figure out how to customize an app’s alerts. You simply long-press, pick an option and you’re done.

Live Caption

As a way to make Android more accessible, Google developed Live Caption. The feature will live-caption any video that’s being played, without a data connection. We cannot wait to try this feature when Android 10 launches.