Month: March 2020

A leaked presentation for the Honor 30 shows that its main camera will have a large Sony sensor – 1/1.3″, essentially the same size as the 1/1.33″ sensor of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra.

However, the Sony sensor will have larger pixels, 1.2µm (up from 0.8µm on the Samsung). This should give the Honor the edge in low-light shooting. And it should have an advantage over the Oppo Find X2 Pro too, which uses a Sony-made 1/1.43″ sensor (48MP resolution, 1.12µm).

The resolution is not listed, but it should be 48MP as the sensor and pixel sizes match up with this 48MP sensor from OmniVision. However, the unnamed Sony IMX chip might have some advantages, e.g. the new 2×2 OCL autofocus system (which Oppo calls “omni-directional AF”).

Note that this is for the Honor 30, not the 30S that is coming on March 30 with the fast Kirin 820 5G chipset. Looking at the Honor 20 vs. 20S, the chipset and camera were the main differences and this 1/1.3″ sensor may be one of the things that separate the Honor 30 and the 30S.

In addition to iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4, Apple is also releasing watchOS 6.2 to the public today. The update brings in-app purchase support to Apple Watch apps, ECG features to more countries, and more. Read on for the full details.

Apple says that watchOS 6.2 finally brings support for in-app purchases to Apple Watch applications. This means you can make in-app purchases directly from your Apple Watch, which is excellent news for the growing number of completely independent Apple Watch apps.

watchOS 6.2 also brings the ECG app to three new countries: Chile, New Zealand, and Turkey. Irregular heart rhythm notifications are also now available in those three countries.

The ECG application allows users to take an electrocardiogram, measuring the electrical pulses of your heart. Irregular heart rate notifications do not require an active ECG to be taken. The watch will analyze heart rate readings continuously in the background and trigger an alert if something seems off.

Finally, Apple says watchOS 6.2 includes a bug fix that could affect music playback when switching from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth connectivity.

Here are the full release notes for watchOS 6.2, which is rolling out now:

watchOS 6.2 includes new features, improvements, and bug fixes:

Introduces in-app purchases for Apple Watch apps

Fixes an issue where music playback could pause when switching from Wi-Fi to

Bluetooth connectivity

ECG app on Apple Watch Series 4 or later now available in Chile, New Zealand, and Turkey

Irregular heart rhythm notifications now available in Chile, New Zealand, and Turkey

To update your Apple Watch to watchOS 6.2, you can open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and tap General then Software Update. You can also update directly from your Apple Watch by opening the Settings app and tapping General then Software Update.

Apple is also releasing watchOS 5.3.6 today for people using an Apple Watch with an iPhone not capable of running iOS 13.

What new watchOS 6.2 feature are you most excited to try out? Let us know down in the comments!

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff.

Quarantine, isolation, social distancing — no matter what the occasion for you to be apart from your nearest and dearest, it’s never easy. But luckily in this day and age it’s easy to find solutions to keep up digitally. And while that’s no substitute for the real thing, sometimes a WhatsApp group might be what you need to keep in touch with your friends, family, and colleagues.

So here’s how you can get started with your own Whatsapp group.

To start, go to your chat tab in WhatsApp and select “New group.” Then select who, from your contact list, will be part of the group. From the next screen, you’ll be able to name the group and add an icon if you desire.

And there you go, you now have a WhatsApp group. That’s the gist of it, but let’s go through some of the things you can do within a WhatsApp group.

Much like almost every other form of communication, you can tag members of the group in messages by using the @ symbol. You can also visit each member’s profile and start a private chat with them by tapping on their icons.

Within the group settings — which you can access by tapping on the group name at the top of the screen — you can search for what kinds of links and photos you’ve sent to each other, as well as find individual messages with Chat Search. You can also mute the chat — also helpful depending on how large the group is.

Depending on how large the group is, it might be helpful to appoint another user to be an admin, who are permitted to make changes to the group. You can also find individual members from the list of participants.

When you want to leave a group chat, you can go to the group settings, and scroll to the bottom of the screen, where you’ll see the option. You can also archive a group by swiping left from the chat list, which will hide it and help keep things organized.

And there you go: everything you need to set up a WhatsApp group with your friends, family, and colleagues. Good luck!

With the Honor 30S set to release in just five days, we’re getting some more details about its more expensive sibling, the Honor 30. While it’s not yet unknown when the latter phone will be released, we do know that it will be able to hold its own in the camera department, possibly even against Samsung’s most expensive offering yet, the Galaxy S20 Ultra.

Leaked slides released by Slashleaks (via GSMArena) shows the phone’s primary sensor will about the same size as the Galaxy S20 Ultra’s. The two phones come in at 1/1.3″ and 1/1.33″. For those whose math is a little rusty, since the denominator for the S20 Ultra is slightly larger, the Honor 30’s sensor should actually come out as slightly ahead in size between the two.

Far more significant, however, is the difference in the pixel size of each sensor. The Galaxy S20 Ultra’s Samsung-made image sensor’s pixels are 0.8µm, while the Honor 30’s Sony sensor comes in at 1.2µm, where a larger number is better. That’ll certainly give the Huawei sub-brand an advantage in low-light photography.

Where the Samsung phone will win out hands-down, though, is the megapixel count. It’s one of the very few phones in the market right now with a 108MP camera — why Samsung is charging the big bucks for it — while the Honor 30 sports a more typical 48MP shooter.

Also, while the Honor 30 will likely match the S20 Ultra in the number of cameras on its back (four, at least), it remains to be seen just how the entire package comes together. For example, Samsung’s used some amazing engineering to achieve crazy levels of optical zoom on its phone, and it’s unlikely Honor will offer the same level of imaging fidelity. For that, you’ll probably need to hold out for Huawei’s P40 lineup.

Ever since last year’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday season ended, it has been rare to find gaming laptops with Nvidia’s GTX 1660 Ti graphics card for under $900 or so. Thankfully, one Asus TUF laptop with that GPU has now dropped to $849.99 at Walmart—a savings of $250 from the original price.

The model on sale includes a 4-core/8-thread AMD Ryzen 7 3750H processor, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe SSD, and a 15.6-inch 1080p display. You also get a backlit keyboard with 1.8mm travel distance and a “reinforced chassis.”

While the GTX 1660 Ti graphics card in this laptop will handle most titles just fine, Asus did make a few other cutbacks to reach the $850 price point. The 8GB RAM is the main problem—some newer games won’t work smoothly without 16GB. The 256GB SSD is also small given the large download sizes that come with most open-world games.

Thankfully, Asus makes it easy to upgrade most of the components in its TUF laptops, so you can add more RAM or replace the main drive later if you wish. The product description for the model on sale doesn’t mention any extra drives, so it seems like the 2.5-inch bay might be empty. If that’s the case, you can put in an extra SSD or hard drive later on, as long as it fits the 2.5″ form factor.