Author: batteryforpc

Sometimes things happen that are unexpected – just ask Ned Stark. In a far less fictional event, Microsoft has posted an update on their DirectX Blog announcing that they’ve brought a form of DirectX 12 to Windows 7, via official support for the latest DX12 version of World of Warcraft on Windows 7. Where do we even begin?

For some background, Microsoft’s latest DirectX API was created to remove some of the CPU bottlenecks for gaming by allowing for developers to use low-level programming conventions to shift some of the pressure points away from the CPU. This was a response to single-threaded CPU performance plateauing, making complex graphical workloads increasingly CPU-bounded. There’s many advantages to using this API over traditional DX11, especially for threading and draw calls. But, Microsoft made the decision long ago to only support DirectX 12 on Windows 10, with its WDDM 2.0 driver stack.

Today’s announcement is a pretty big surprise on a number of levels. If Microsoft had wanted to back-port DX12 to Windows 7, you would have thought they’d have done it before Windows 7 entered its long-term servicing state. As it is, even free security patches for Windows 7 are set to end on January 14, 2020, which is well under a year away, and the company is actively trying to migrate users to Windows 10 to avoid having a huge swath of machines sitting in an unpatched state. In fact, they are about to add a pop-up notification to Windows 7 to let users know that they are running out of support very soon. So adding a big feature like DX12 now not only risks undermining their own efforts to migrate people away from Windows 7, but also adding a new feature well after Windows 7 entered long-term support. It’s just bizarre.

Now before you get too excited, this is currently only enabled for World of Warcraft; and indeed it’s not slated to be a general-purpose solution like DX12 on Win10. Instead, Microsoft has stated that they are working with a few other developers to bring their DX12 games/backends to Windows 7 as well. As a consumer it’s great to see them supporting their product ten years after it launched, but with the entire OS being put out to pasture in nine months, it seems like an odd time to be dedicating resources to bringing it new features.

Microsoft does say that DX12 will offer more features on Windows 10, which makes sense since the graphics stack was designed for it right from the start, but if you do play World of Warcraft on Windows 7, you’re going to get a free performance boost. You may still want to look into getting off of Windows 7 soon though, since this isn’t going to move the January 2020 end-of-support date back for gamers.

For Blizzard, the publisher of World of Warcraft, this is a huge win for their developers, since they’ll no longer need to maintain two versions of the game.

Overall, this an unanticipated and rather exceptional event for the state of Windows graphics APIs. And having reached out to one expert for commentary on Microsoft’s announcement, they seem to agree:

“This is a big deal” – Ryan Smith, Editor-in-Chief of AnandTech

Perhaps they are also working on Continuum and Windows Store updates for Windows 7 as well. They do have nine months after all.

We’ve reached out to AMD and NVIDIA for responses on whether there are specific driver versions that are required. NVIDIA has responded letting us know that Windows 7 users will just need the latest Game Ready Driver for this.

Picture this: you’re holding two glossy all-glass concept phones for a photo, then one slips off and shatters another unit on the table. The room goes quiet. Everyone looks on in awe. You are left red-faced not because you broke a phone, but because you broke one of the few rare units in existence. That was exactly what happened to me at yesterday’s Vivo APEXevent in Hong Kong.

To jog your memory, APEX is Vivo’s line of concept phones, with the edition that was announced earlier this year being its second model. The pitch? It was some crazy all-glass “Super Unibody” sans buttons nor ports, and boy did it look slick in the press shots. It wasn’t until yesterday — weeks after MWC wrapped — when I finally got to hold a unit in my hands. Just as I was starting to appreciate the premium feel of this rare device, though, my unit slipped off my hand and destroyed another APEX in a display case, an accident for which I apologized profusely.

To be fair, most glass phones would be unlikely to survive the impact of another phone landing on a corner. And yet, the fallen APEX remained intact, which suggests the “G2 curved-surface waterdrop glass” does serve its purpose. Specifically, the glass thickens around the phone’s bezel, hence the waterdrop shape in a cross-section. Still, such protection comes at a cost: it requires a complex process combining hot-bending techniques and CNC glass shaping methods.

Seemingly unfazed by the damaged prototype, product manager Ding Guanli told Engadget that there’s a good chance that Vivo will mass-produce an all-glass device like this. Given the unfortunate incident, Ding assured me that the mass-produced version will somehow be more resilient to external impact. Fragility aside, the APEX still serves its purpose of showcasing Vivo’s main areas of interest when it comes to future mobile tech. Or as the exec put it, “we want to do something that hasn’t been done before.”

This Android Pie device has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset, 5G radio, 12GB of RAM, 512GB of storage space and 12MP/13MP dual rear cameras, but none of that matters. It’s more about the list of “firsts” here, including the lack of ports and physical buttons; then in-display dual-fingerprint reader covering the entire FullView screen; the “MagPort” connector on the back to replace the conventional USB port; and “Body SoundCasting Technology” taking the place of conventional speakers.

Save for the 5G connectivity and an eSIM feature which I couldn’t test, those features worked surprisingly well during my hour-long demo. What impressed me most was the new full-display fingerprint scanner, which can read two fingerprints simultaneously anywhere on the 6.39-inch FHD+ AMOLED screen. Better yet, the registration process only required two taps for each fingerprint, which is a huge improvement over the 10-plus taps required on existing phones with similar tech.

Another benefit of having an all-screen in-display fingerprint reader is that you’ll be able to unlock and toggle an app in just one tap. Imagine the screen waking up automatically as you lift the phone, and it shows your favorite apps or shortcuts on the unlock screen, then it’s just a matter of tapping a registered finger onto your desired icon to launch the app right away.

As awesome as this beefed-up in-display fingerprint reader sounds, Ding admitted that this essentially requires an array of optical sensors covering the entire screen, which translates to a notable bump in production cost. As such, there’s no word on when we’ll see this technology baked into a mass-produced smartphone.

I would have also liked to test this new fingerprint reader under varied lighting conditions, mainly because this became a pain point on my OnePlus 6T and Huawei Mate 20 Pro. That said, I’ve been mainly using the NEX Dual Display Edition over the past few days, and its fifth-gen in-display fingerprint reader has so far been a godsend. As such, Vivo likely won’t disappoint when it eventually brings the full-display version to the masses.

The APEX’s seemingly more polished features worked fine too. The three invisible buttons — for volume and power — along the right edge each use a capacitive sensor, but they also rely on pressure sensors for optimal touch sensitivity. It’s a pretty clever solution, and the buttons here were more pleasant to use — though perhaps just a tad too sensitive — than the pressure-sensing ones on the HTC U12+. There’s tactile feedback provided by a linear motor, and whenever the buttons are touched, the screen temporarily shows visual cues to help those who aren’t yet familiar with them.

The MagPort is probably the least exciting feature here, but it’s probably the most practical one as well. Even though we’re now living with the convenience of reversible USB-C plugs, I started growing fond of just casually slapping the magnetic connector onto the pogo pins on back of the APEX — with a near 100-percent alignment success rate as well.

However, the APEX only does a modest 18W charging, and it’s a sub-3,000mAh battery on the inside, but Ding said there’s no stopping them from throwing in something better on a mass-production model. After all, Vivo does have its very own 44W Super FlashCharge tech, as featured on the company’s gaming-centric iQOO range. As to why not use wireless charging here to rid the pogo pins, Ding once again said that it’s all about trying something new; though he also admitted that pins are still required for wired USB data transfer, as there’s no viable wireless alternative at the moment.

Last but not least: audio. The “Body SoundCasting Technology” relies on actuators closely attached to the glass back, so it was no surprise that music sounded crisp when I held up the APEX. It was loud enough, but with a strong treble bias due to the nature of the sounding material. Luckily, I got the full range back when I placed the phone on the table — a bit like the “Boombox Speaker” feature introduced on LG’s G7 ThinQ — and it sounded surprisingly good. At least it did with that one pre-loaded soundtrack on the device.

It’s worth noting that I didn’t get around to trying the APEX’s invisible earpiece. Here’s hoping that it’s much louder than the piezoelectric implementation on Xiaomi’s original Mi Mix, which I struggled to use out on the streets.

And yes, I did notice the baffling absence of the front-facing camera on this APEX. While last year’s model offered a motorized pop-up selfie camera (which has since been trickled down to the NEX and the V15 series), this successor omitted that feature entirely. I grilled Ding on this subject, to which he put on his PR hat and pointed at how Vivo pioneered the pop-up camera, while also toying with dual-screen body along with various notch designs to get around this problem.

When I pushed further, Ding hesitated for a moment, and then dropped an interesting hint with a grin: “There could be other options. You may use your wildest imagination.” Perhaps Vivo has already figured out how to hide the front camera underneath the screen? That would be the holy grail of all-screen smartphone design. But before that happens, I’ll happily take the full-screen fingerprint reader for the time being.

Windows appears to be getting a little smarter about updates that go wrong. A newly published support page (spotted by Windows Latest) describes what the operating system does when a recent update causes a boot failure. First, Windows will uninstall the update and revert to a configuration that should work correctly. It will then block the update for 30 days.

The page states that this approach will be taken for both driver updates and the regular monthly Patch Tuesday updates. It’s not unusual for Microsoft to have to issue blocks for these updates to prevent them from being distributed to certain system configurations after problems are found. But this policy allows for more fine-grained blocking, wherein systems will impose a temporary block on themselves should they have to. In most cases, when problems with updates are discovered, they’re fixed and the updates are re-issued within a few days or weeks. So a 30-day block should typically give enough time for the update to be fixed prior to the attempted reinstallation.

It’s not clear if this approach will be used for the twice-yearly feature upgrades or just the regular monthly Patch Tuesday updates. Microsoft’s terminology usually distinguishes between “updates” (which are the things released on Patch Tuesdays) and “upgrades” (which come out twice a year). The description only mentions updates and driver updates. The install mechanism used by upgrades is completely separate from that used by updates, with its own separate rollback logic, so we’d suspect that nothing has changed for those.