Microsoft's announcements yesterday can be divided into two categories: refreshes and new products. The former include the likes of Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Pro 7.
The latter was represented by the next year's Surface Duo smartphone but also a product that you don't have to wait another year.
It is the Surface Pro X, which is a slimmer and more mobile version of the Surface Pro lineup. What makes it very different from other Surface Pro devices is the CPU. This is the first Surface Pro with an ARM processor.
However, Microsoft assures that it is capable of performing like a full-fledged Windows 10 computer, a proper Surface Pro, should.
Surface Pro X features a 13-inch, 2880 by 1920 resolution display with what Microsoft calls the thinnest bezels in class.
The system-on-chip inside is a custom Qualcomm chip developed with the help of Microsoft. They call it Surface SQ1 and it's based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx that has found its way to laptops, for example in Samsung Galaxy Book S.
Perhaps the device that made Microsoft's Surface lineup what it is today, namely a success, got a revamp yesterday.
The device is of course Surface Pro 7, which was leaked ahead of launch revealing some of its most anticipated features. However, now we've got the whole story.
Surface Pro 7 features, just like the new Surface Laptop 3, finally a USB-C port, and, just like the laptop, it also still has the full-sized USB-A to go along with it.
In addition it has a microSD slot, magnetic Surface Connect charging port, a headphone jack as well as the magnetic connector for Type Cover keyboard.
In terms of design there's really nothing new here. The same sleek line has been retained with sharp edges, and color options are still black and platinum.
The display is also still the same 12.3 incher with 2736 x 1824 resolution, but processors have been updated to the new 10th gen Intel chips. You can choose from Core i3, i5, or i7.
The i3 comes with 4 gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigs of SSD storage, the i5 is available in 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB and 16GB/256GB options, and i7 as 16GB/256GB, 16GB/512GB, and the top of the line 16GB/1TB option.
Microsoft held their fall Surface event yesterday in New York City. By far the most surprising of the product announcements was the company's first smartphone since Windows Phones, but there were other interesting devices unveiled as well.
One of the most anticipated ones was the new Surface Laptop. Microsoft's competitor to MacBook got its third generation in Surface Laptop 3.
Most importantly the new laptop has finally a USB-C port, in addition to a traditional and full-sized USB-A. Other major addition was the new 15-inch version, which comes with a completely different CPU setup.
The 15-inch one is equipped with a custom Ryzen chip purpose-built for Surface devices with a little bit of extra graphics processing oomph. The 13.5 inch version still hosts a Intel chip, albeit one of the new and more powerful 10th gen CPUs.
Alcantara is now also optional depending on which model and color you choose. 15-inch model is solely metal while some color options (Platinum and Gold) of the 13.5 inch model are available in soft Alcantara.
There's not much changed in terms of design. The super sleek lines of Surface Laptop 3 make it one of the most minimalist devices available. Even the speaker grill and the lid opening slit have been removed in order to make the thing as neat a possible.
Microsoft has today unveiled their first smartphone in years. Surface Duo was announced at the company's Surface event rather surprisingly, in a very "one more thing" fashion.
The Redmond company of course has a very storied history with smartphones, and there has been rumors about an upcoming Surface Phone for years, but it's fair to say that pretty much nobody expected a smartphone announcement today.
However, Surface Duo announcement wasn't exactly a run-of-the-mill smartphone reveal. Instead, the company essentially teased a product that is still year away from launch.
According to Microsoft, Surface Duo is slated for 2020 holiday season release.
We did get some specs as well as a good look at the industrial design today though. Microsoft says that the device will feature two 5.6 inch displays that fold 360 degrees using a hinge in the middle.
Unlike all the other Surface devices, Surface Duo also runs Android, which means that Microsoft isn't ready or willing to join the mobile platform wars again with Windows.
However, you can expect Microsoft's own Windows-like experience from Surface Duo, and the company assured that it is a true Surface experience.
Current prototypes have used Snapdragon 855 chips but we can expect more up-to-date specs when launch is closer. That is pretty much all there is to say about the device so far.
Artificial intelligence has been developing in massive leaps and bounds in the recent years. This is probably most evident to customers in products like Google Assistant but there's a lot of influential work being done behind the scenes that advance the capabilities.
One of the companies working on improvements in AI is IBM. They are developing the algorithms and models that recognize speech patterns and styles. Their text-to-speech (TTS) modeling has advanced so much that it can create a nearly indiscernible and infinitely adaptable human voice from just 5 minutes of talking.
The speech synthesizer can improve itself even after this, and after 10 or especially 20 minutes of "listening" to sample speech it can reproduce the voice in whatever text very naturally.
IBM says that the trick to the impressive performance is the modular architecture of the neural speech synthesis. This means that the system detects and trains each aspect of the voice independently.
This makes the result retain the original character of the voice.
But you don't have to believe us, here you can listen to the samples (5 min, 10 min, 20 min) for different voices. You can also make them speak text of your choice here.
Microsoft is preparing a Surface event for tomorrow, and they've gotten away without leaking their devices all the way til today.
Unfortunately for the company, and perhaps luckily for us, The Verge in association with the famed leaker Evan Blass have released some photos of the upcoming devices ahead of the launch event.
The pictured devices include the likes of Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop in two sizes (13" and 15") as well as a yet unnamed new ARM based 2-in-1 device.
The pictures don't really reveal anything out of ordinary. For example, there is no Surface device with two displays present. Nor is there any folding displays.
Also, there are no specs revealed but we do get to see some of the features of the devices in the pictures. The new 2-in-1 device has at least two USB-C ports, camera in the back, and a vertical kickstand. It also supports stylus input.
The Surface Laptop's design seems fairly conservative, and perhaps reminds a little bit like a touch screen version of MacBook Air.
We can also confirm that Surface Pro 7 will still have the same USB-A and USB-C ports on the right side and same docking ports and pins.
It has been just few months since Stranger Things' season 3 ended, but now Netflix has already released the first official teaser trailer of the upcoming Stranger Things 4 in its social media accounts.
Very short teaser wont reveal much, but according to the post, "we're not in Hawkins anymore".
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform with over a billion users around the world. While most of these users have a fairly up-to-date Android phone or iPhone, many are using the service with older devices.
In fact, one of the many reasons WhatsApp became so immensely popular was because it supported all kinds of devices from the popular to the niche. Every now and then, however, some of the older devices will no longer be supported by the messaging app.
This will again happen at the start of February, 2020. The support will end this time for Android 2.3.7, more commonly known as Android Gingerbread, as well as iOS 8.
Fortunately this means that it only affects around 0.3% of Android and iOS users alike.
Also, this doesn't mean that you won't be able to use the app at all, but official support, including updates, are no longer going to be appearing on those devices.
In addition, ou will no longer be able to activate a new account with aforementioned devices.
One subsection of smartphones that won't have a working WhatsApp is Windows Phone. The service will no longer be available on Windows Phone starting December 31, 2019.
Apple's newest iPhones are barely out but, to be honest, they were a little bit of a let down, right? So, no wonder that the first iPhone 12 rumors are already circulating.
Rumors suggest, and as tradition would dictate, that Apple is revamping the iPhone design for next year. Famed Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is also of the mind that next year will be a big upgrade, something we haven't seen in three years.
Everything isn't going to be new, though. In fact, Kuo suggests that Apple is planning a return to an old design language which would provide better radio reception.
In addition, a new leak suggests that whatever the industrial design is, it is going get rid of the notch. Leaker Ben Geskin has revealed what he calls a 2020 iPhone prototype.
While the new design would have no notch it would still have the Face ID functionality. This means that Apple would have to cram all the sensors in the top bezel of the phone.
One could expect that the bezel is going to be at least slightly larger than in iPhone 11 and its predecessors. Also, to make it look symmetrical, Apple would have to enlarge at least the lower bezel, likely all sides, too.
This would make it fairly sizable as the 6.7 inch display in itself is larger than display on the iPhone 11 Pro Max.
A new exploit has been found on iPhones dating from 2017 with iPhone X and iPhone 8 all the way back to iPhone 4S from 2011.
The security hole is said to be unpatchable by the community. The exploit, aptly named checkm8 by the hacker axi0mX, could allow jailbreaking of hundreds of millions of iPhones consistently and without a possibility of a patch to close it.
Jailbreaking was a popular community effort to unlock the iPhones, especially in the early days of smartphones. Nowadays jailbreaking has become harder as Apple's continuous patches break the exploits.
This one is said to be unpatchable due to the fact that the affected part of the system is the boot ROM which means that it is a read-only memory and thus can't be patched with a simple software update.
Unfortunately for the jailbreak community the exploit does not cover the most recent phones, including last year's iPhone XS and this year's iPhone 11 models. However, this might make iPhone X and earlier iPhone models more attractive choice for users that appreciate homebrew and tinkering with their technology.
Finding the exploit is only the first step. Now the community has to figure out how to create a jailbreak to unlock each affected iPhone model. Even though this exploit could potentially allow a jailbreak, it is not necessarily possible.
Apple first unveiled their streaming video platform early this years, and just a few weeks ago the company announced the pricing and availability alongside the introduction of new iPhones.
Well, so far the catalog of content for Apple TV+ hasn't been expanded too much, so the concern is certainly warranted. However, Apple has a different kind of strategy for the movies it produces.
According to sources close to the matter, Apple is going to first release the movies to theaters and only after a few weeks of screening would they come available on your Apple TV+ subscription, WSJ reports.
The information suggests that Apple is trying to elevate the brand, not so much raise money, and this requires theater screenings, which many of the influential and highly regarded creators and producers Apple wants to recruit want.
The latest security breach is affecting iOS and Android app DoorDash users, a blog post by the company reveals. According to the post, nearly 5 million users or partners have been affected by the data leak.
DoorDash servers were attacked and the attackers managed to get ahold of personal information of around 4.9 million accounts. This includes both customers and merchants, as well as Dashers, the delivery personnel of the food delivery service.
The unauthorized access was recorded on May 4, 2019 and the company received the information earlier in September.
The customer infomation accessed includes names, email addresses, delivery addresses, order history, phone numbers and encypted passwords. According to the post, no full credit card information was stolen, although some last four digits might have been accessed.
Dashers had also their driver's license numbers accessed.
DoorDash said that it will contact all affected users directly, and let them know what information of theirs was accessed. They've suggested everyone change their passwords nonetheless. The company has put in efforts to ensure better security practices in the future.
Google has tried to capture the music market with different iterations of streaming services for quite a while without much success. Previously Google Play Music was their bid for music supremacy, now it's time to move toward YouTube Music.
This summer YouTube Music managed to pass 15 million subscribers. It's not nothing but it's a far cry compared to 60 million from Apple Music or well past 100 million paid subscribers from Spotify.
The search giant has decided now to promote YouTube Music more aggressively in replacing Google Play Music. The company has announced that YouTube Music will now be pre-installed to all new Android devices, be it equipped with Android 9 or Android 10.
This also means that if you prefer still using Google Play Music, although they are clearly trying to kill it, you will have to install it yourself.
Tesla has yesterday announced the largest software update to its vehicles in some time. In fact, the version 10.0 update is the largest ever, and introduces new features to the Tesla displays and more.
One of the more anticipated features not linked necessarily to the displays is Smart Summon. The software update brings autonomous parking lot driving to all Teslas that have Full Self-Driving Capability or Enhanced Autopilot.
New additions in the smart displays on the other hand include car Karaoke feature Caraoke, addition of Spotify Premium, I'm Feeling Lucky and I'm Feeling Hungry nagivation/adventure features, Cuphead action game in Tesla Arcade, and Tesla Theater with Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu support.
Furthermore Tesla improved the Dashcam and Sentry Mode USB support and brought browser support to Model 3.
The company said that Tesla owners worldwide would start now waking up to the new update, so while the update has rolled out it might take a few days for you to get it, perhaps depending on the market.
Is it worth ditching your OnePlus 7 or OnePlus 7 Pro for a new OnePlus 7T, unveiled today? Let's take a quick peak at the notable differences.
OnePlus unveiled the OnePlus 7T in India today, an upgrade over the OnePlus 7 released in May. A more powerful OnePlus 7T Pro is very likely to be unveiled on October 10 in an event in London, which would be an update to the OnePlus 7 Pro. While details on pricing are still unavailable, we can still look at the key differences over the previously released handsets.
A quick glimpse tells you that some of the changes in the OnePlus 7T are more like the OnePlus 7 Pro, so in essence we expect it is an upgrade that makes it more approximate to the previous Pro model, but with a price closer to the previous basic model. It is ever so slightly heavier, coming in at 190g compared to 182g for its predecessor. The design is pretty much the same as the OnePlus 7 and the 6 and 6T before it, so there isn't much to be said there. OnePlus 7T also comes with an Oxygen OS based on Android 10, but the OnePlus 7 can update to the newer OS.
Under the hood, it trades in the Snapdragon 855 for an 855+ SoC. Unlike before, there is no 6GB of RAM option, the OnePlus 7T comes with 8GB RAM, no more no less. For the display, OnePlus 7T is slightly larger than the OnePlus 7 display at 6.55-inch, compared to 6.41-inch. Size isn't everything though and unlike the OnePlus 7, the 7T screen supports a 90Hz refresh rate and HDR10+. This was also the case with the OnePlus 7 Pro, though the higher resolution of the Pro and curved screen are not present in the 7T.
Microsoft's announcements yesterday can be divided into two categories: refreshes and new products. The former include the likes of Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Pro 7.
Perhaps the device that made Microsoft's Surface lineup what it is today, namely a success, got a revamp yesterday.
Microsoft held their fall Surface event yesterday in New York City. By far the most surprising of the product announcements was the company's first smartphone since Windows Phones, but there were other interesting devices unveiled as well.
