Technology

New Delhi, Oct 8 (IANS) Tech giant Microsoft is geared up for its fall event to showcase new Surface laptops and more, that will be held on October 12.

The event will showcase new versions of its 2-in-1 tablets and laptops.

The company is rumoured to showcase a new Surface Pro 9 that will come in both the traditional Intel configuration and also a Microsoft Arm chip version.

The ARM variant might be powered by the Microsoft SQ3, a custom Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SoC, reports The Verge.

The device might come in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB RAM options and 128GB, 256GB, 512GB or 1TB storage configurations.

In addition to the new device, the tech giant is likely to launch the Surface Laptop 5 at the event.

The new laptop might come in 13-inch and 15-inch versions with a choice of Core i5-1235U and Core i7-1255U processors, the report said.

The Surface Laptop is likely to have the same battery and design as its predecessors.

The new laptop is rumoured to come in green, black, blue, silver, and pink colour.

The tech giant is reportedly launching Studio Surface 3. It is an all-in-one desktop computer designed for creative professionals.

The Studio 3 is likely to have an identical design to its predecessor, the report said.

The new device might come with an Intel Core i7-11370H CPU and Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU and will come in single configuration-- 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

--IANS
aj/na

New Delhi, Oct 8 (IANS) Tech giant Apple has issued a new beta firmware for its AirPods to developers after the release of iOS 16.1 beta 4 earlier this week.

The new AirPods beta firmware comes with build number '5B5040', reports 9to5Mac.

The AirPods menu has been updated by Apple with iOS 16 within the Settings app to include a section that displays information about the most recent firmware.

With the release of iOS 16, the last AirPods firmware update featured the Personalised Spatial Audio function and enhanced Automatic Switching.

According to the company, Airpods can take up to 24 hours to update after enabling the pre-release Beta Firmware option.

For AirPods 2, AirPods 3, AirPods Pro, AirPods Pro 2, and AirPods Max, the firmware upgrade is now accessible.

Earlier, owners of the first-generation AirPods Pro and AirPods Max observed that the Adaptive Transparency option for these headphones was enabled with the release of iOS 16.1 beta 3 last week, the report said.

Later the company removed the option with iOS 16.1 beta 4, confirming that it was just a bug.

The Adaptive Transparency option helps minimising specific sounds while still letting users hear what's important around them.

--IANS
aj/na

New Delhi, Oct 8 (IANS) Tech giant Google launched Pixel Watch recently and now, the app of the new wearable device has gone live online.

The Pixel Watch won't pair with iPhones because it requires phone with Android 8.0 or newer, Google Account and internet access, reports 9To5Google.

The wearer can customise the watch face and info displayed on it.

The exercise and daily heart rate will be linked with Fitbit including the notification support, the report said.

It also feature Google Maps support that makes navigation a lot easier and safer.

As the app will work only with Pixel Watch users, if someone wants to download it will receive a prompt to purchase one with a link from the company's website.

The Wi-Fi version will cost $350, while the LTE will be $400. Although, it is free with a Pixel 7 Pro pre-order, the report said.

The Pixel Watch comes with Wear OS 3.5 and it is the first WearOS device that combines Google's helpfulness with best health and fitness insights from Fitbit.

Google Pixel Watch helps people keep tabs on their health with an ECG app to detect signs of Atrial Fibrillation (AFib), better understand sleep with Sleep Score and Sleep Stages, and receive guidance powered by Fitbit's 20 billion nights tracked.

--IANS
aj/na

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Micro-blogging platform Twitter on Friday started sending notifications to many users as they took screenshots of the tweets, nudging them to share the tweets instead.

Spotted first by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, Twitter has started sending pop-up notifications to some users when they take a screenshot.

"Twitter is trying to persuade me to Share Tweet or Copy Link instead of taking a screenshot of the Tweet," she posted.

Social media consultant Matt Navarra also spotted the new feature being rolled out to some users.

"Twitter doesn't want you to screenshot tweets anymore. It wants active users on platform viewing tweets Instead of via screenshots on rival platforms. One of these now pops up when you take a screenshot," he said.

The new feature appears to be an attempt by Twitter to bring more users to its platforms rather than just read forwarded screenshots.

Meanwhile, Twitter has started rolling out the 'Edit Button' feature for Blue subscribers in the US.

The platform has already rolled out 'Edit Button' for Blue subscribers in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. However, it did not mention the feature's availability for Indian audiences.

The new feature to edit tweets comes with some limitations. For example, users cannot edit tweets 30 minutes after they have been published.

Twitter Blue subscriptions are paid on a monthly basis, and priced regionally based on the current US price of $4.99.

--IANS
na/

New Delhi, Oct 6 (IANS) Google on Thursday announced that the all-new Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro with new-gen Tensor G2 chip are now available for pre-orders in India.

Powered by Google's next-generation Tensor G2 processor and shipping with Android 13, Pixel 7 is priced at Rs 59,999 and Pixel 7 Pro is priced at Rs 84,999 in the country.

Both devices will be available for purchase starting October 13, said the company.

The company said that limited-time launch offers for Google's Pixel 7 and Pixel & 7 Pro in India include Rs 6,000 cashback on Pixel 7 and Rs 8,500 Cashback on Pixel 7 Pro.

Pixel 7 Pro has a 6.7-inch immersive display, a polished aluminium frame and a camera bar in three colours: Snow, Obsidian, and a new Hazel colour.

With a 6.3-inch display and smaller bezels, Pixel 7 packs advanced features and improvements into a smaller profile in three colours: Snow, Obsidian, and a new Lemongrass colour.

"Android 13 on Pixel 7 offers the best Android experience yet. It's fast, smart and secure. Plus, the fresh new style and customisation capabilities makes it feel unique to each user. Users can recolour the look of their app icons to match the aesthetic of their phone's wallpaper, and even assign specific languages to individual apps," explained the company.

Tensor G2 is the next-gen processor custom built for Pixel with Google's advanced machine learning and speech recognition.

It makes both the devices faster, more efficient, more secure and even more helpful.

It delivers Pixel's best photo and video quality with next-gen Super Res zoom, up to two times faster Night Sight processing, sharper photos with Face Unblur and new features like Cinematic Blur, said the company.

The Pixel 7 Pro also comes with Macro Focus, which delivers Pixel HDR+ photo quality from as close as three centimetres away.

"Photo Unblur", a feature coming first to Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, will use machine learning to improve blurry pictures — even old ones.

Users can also touch up those photos and easily remove distractions with ‘Magic Eraser'.

With Pixel 7's speech recognition technology, the phone will be able to transcribe audio messages on Google's Messages app, so users can easily read them as soon as they receive them, said the company.

With Tensor G2 and the Titan M2 security chip, Pixel is built with multiple layers of security to help keep users safe and secure.

The company said that average battery life during testing was approximately 31 hours which was conducted on a major operator network.

--IANS
na/

New Delhi, Oct 6 (IANS) Apple on Thursday announced the availability of iPhone 14 Plus, featuring a 6.7-inch display, an upgraded dual-camera system, Crash Detection, Emergency SOS via satellite, A15 Bionic and improved battery life, in India and other countries from Friday.

The customers in India can purchase iPhone 14 in colours like midnight, blue, starlight, purple, and (PRODUCT) RED in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB storage starting from Rs 89,900.

Customers who pre-ordered iPhone 14 Plus online will also begin receiving deliveries from Friday.

"iPhone 14 Plus brings the larger 6.7-inch display and the best battery life ever on an iPhone to more people," said Kaiann Drance, Apple's Vice President of Worldwide iPhone Product Marketing.

"This is a great option for customers who want a much larger screen in a light and durable aluminium design with big enhancements to all cameras, excellent performance, essential safety capabilities, and 5G," Drance said in a statement.

iPhone 14 Plus features a durable and sophisticated aerospace-grade aluminium design.

The larger display, combined with A15 Bionic with a 5-core GPU - faster than the competition at any price point - makes iPhone 14 Plus a go-to device for gaming.

According to the company, the advanced camera system on iPhone 14 Plus offers Photonic Engine, the new enhanced image pipeline.

iPhone 14 Plus features the new Action mode for incredibly smooth-looking handheld video that adjusts to significant motion during filming, and supports Dolby Vision HDR recording.

With gimbal-like video stabilisation, Dolby Vision HDR, and Cinematic mode in 4K at 24 fps and 30 fps, iPhone 14 Plus is a powerful creative tool.

The A15 Bionic chip with 5-core GPU brings pro-level performance to iPhone 14 Plus.

--IANS
na/vd

Seoul, Oct 6 (IANS) Samsung Electronics is not considering a cut in production of its memory chips despite slowing demand amid concerns over a global economic recession, a senior company executive has said.

"There is no internal discussion (about a cut in memory chip production) at the moment," Han Jin-man, executive vice president and head of the memory global sales and marketing at Samsung Electronics, said at the annual Samsung Tech Day in San Jose, California on Wednesday.

"Samsung's basic position on this matter is that there should not be artificial production cuts," he said, while stressing that Samsung "is trying to make sure there is neither a chronic shortage nor oversupply of chips in the market."

His comments came as US chipmaker Micron Technology said it would cut capital spending by up to 30 percent and chip equipment spending up to 50 percent to slow supply growth in fiscal year 2023, reports Yonhap news agency.

It is "prudent" to "bring our supply in line with demand" in the current "unprecedented" environment that has impacted demand and caused "the unprecedented level of inventory adjustments by our customers," Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said during the company's earnings call late last month.

Micron is the world's third-largest DRAM maker with a 24.8 per cent market share, trailing behind industry leader Samsung with 42.7 per cent and runner-up SK hynix Inc. with 27.1 per cent, according to global market researcher Omdia.

Samsung shared its memory chip development plans, stating that DRAM with a gate width of 12 nanometers will go into mass production in 2023. Its most recent, eighth-generation vertical NAND flash will go into mass production this year, while the ninth-generation vertical NAND will come out in two years.

The world's largest memory chip maker also unveiled a vision to become a total chip solutions provider by "maximizing the synergy between" its wide range of products, around 900 in total, that include System-on-a-Chips (SoCs), image sensors, modems, display driver integrated circuits (ICs) and power management ICs.

"In an age that requires machines to learn and think as people do, the importance of logic chips, which play the roles of the brain, heart, nervous system and eyes, is growing to unprecedented levels," Park Yong-in, president and head of Samsung's System LSI Business, said.

"Samsung will converge and combine its technology embedded in various products like SoCs, sensors, DDIs and modems, in order to lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution as a total solutions provider."

Samsung said it will focus more on developing technologies for better performing neural processing units and graphics processing units going forward, which are key to the development of artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things and quantum computing.

On the memory chip front, Samsung said it will strengthen collaborations with partners, partly to advance in intelligent mobility solutions.

--IANS
na/

San Francisco, Oct 6 (IANS) Twitter is rolling out a new feature that lets users combine gifs, photos, videos and memes in a single tweet on both Android and iOS devices.

The company said it is giving everyone the ability to share multiple types of media in a single Tweet.

"This feature will roll out globally to iOS and Android, with a chance to see mixed media Tweets on the web," the company said in a blog post late on Wednesday.

The feature was first spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi in April.

Previously, anyone who wanted to share different media formats would have to do it in different Tweets or threads.

Now, when people open the Tweet composer, they can select and upload a combination of up to four types of media - photos, memes, GIFs, and videos - and publish them all together.

"They can also rearrange the layout of their media while composing the Tweet," said the micro-blogging platform.

"Tap the photo icon in the Tweet composer to start mixing your media," it added.

The Explore tab video carousel currently helps people find more videos they would like alongside Tweets and Trends that might interest them.

It is currently available to people in select countries using Twitter in English on iOS and Android.

The company said that the updated immersive media viewer expands videos to full screen with a single click, allowing people to easily access the full, immersive viewing experience.

"To activate it, people who access Twitter on iOS simply need to tap or click on a video in the Twitter app," it said.

--IANS
na/

San Francisco, Oct 6 (IANS) The latest performance tests of tech giant Appleas A16 Bionic GPU have shown a less than significant improvement over its predecessor A15.

According to GizmoChina, when squared up against the A15 Bionic, the new Apple chipset was only 5 per cent more powerful and 20 per cent more efficient.

The A16 Bionic powers the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models. The chipset was put through the paces of GPU tests and it did not deliver noticeable improvements over its predecessor, the A15 Bionic.

It debuted with the iPhone 14 series and has been put through several benchmarking performance tests.

The current performance tests sought to examine how much better the new chipset is over its predecessor and other flagship chips like the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.

The tests were carried out by Golden Reviewer and the A16 Bionic chalked a score of 3,359 on 3DMark's Wildlife Extreme test, higher than any other tested chipset.

However, its 444.1 efficiency score was less than that of MediaTek's Dimensity 8100 and Dimensity 9000 SoCs. The A16 Bionic is also about 20 per cent more powerful than the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and also slightly more efficient.

A few other benchmarking tests have put the A16 Bionic as the most powerful mobile chip in terms of GPU.

--IANS
vc/shb/

New Delhi, Oct 5 (IANS) Google has started rolling out its widgets for the iOS 16 Lock Screen, including popular apps like Gmail and Google News.

With Apple launching of iOS 16, Google had also announced to roll out new features that will allow users to place widgets directly on their iPhones' lock screen.

Google users can now add Lock Screen widgets for popular apps like Gmail and Google News but widgets for Search, Maps and Calendar are yet to arrive.

The new Gmail widget comes in all three sizes: circular, rectangular and inline.

The first two are meant to be placed below the clock on the Lock Screen, while the inline widget appears above as a line of text, reports The Verge.

The Google News widget brings short headlines to the Lock Screen as a rectangular widget.

The company last month announced to help users customise Lock Screen with the iOS 16 launch.

"Your Lock Screen is the first thing you see when you pick up your phone, and Lock Screen widgets for lots of Google apps are on the way. You'll be able to unlock your device to access your favorite Google features in just one tap — and even see some updates right on your Lock Screen," the company had said.

With the Maps Frequent Trips widget, the users will get real-time traffic updates and estimated travel times to places like home and work right on their Lock Screen.

They can also find restaurants, shops and other favorite nearby spots by tapping the Maps Search widget.

--IANS
na/