Sunday, June 30, 2019
Latest Tech News
Apple News Plus, which you can pay $10 a month for in the US, is a big part of Apple's push into digital services, but a new report suggests that publishers aren't too enamoured with the platform so far – and that Apple is promising improvements.
According to Business Insider, publishers aren't getting anywhere near the levels of revenue that Apple suggested they might before the service launched in March.
Although initial uptake was apparently brisk, it would seem not many of those users have kept on their News Plus subscription beyond the initial free trial. It's difficult to know for sure, as Apple hasn't revealed a full breakdown of subscriber numbers.
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One of the issues with the service, Business Insider's sources say, is that readers are confused about what is and isn't included for free as part of Apple News: a small News Plus icon is usually the only difference.
Publisher problems
Publishers are concerned that the News Plus experience feels "unfinished" and want to see a "more intuitive" way for users to get around the app, apparently.
If the sources speaking to Business Insider are to be believed, magazines and newspapers also want Apple to make it easier for them to convert their digital content into a format that works inside the Apple News app.
For its part, Apple is listening to publisher concerns and wants to make improvements to the News Plus service in the various areas we've already mentioned.
Apple hasn't responded to the report publicly but will know it needs to keep publishers happy for News Plus to be a success. Later this year it's also launching Apple Arcade, a mobile games bundle subscription.
Via 9to5Mac
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Recent years have seen mobile photography pushed to new extremes. While mobile phones have all but replaced standard point and shoot cameras, they are now aiming at higher-end cameras with features such as bokeh effect, low-light photography and higher optical zoom ranges.
Oppo was the first mobile phone manufacturer to showcase prism-based camera technology, that allowed for much larger optical zooming than the 2x zoom found on most phones. The Oppo Reno 10X Zoom features a hybrid zooming mechanism that get you a 10x lossless zoom. If you really want to stretch it out, it can go as high as 60X digital zoom which is unheard of in a smartphone.
The Oppo Reno 10X Zoom is a flagship phone with top specs, such as the latest Snapdragon 855 processor with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It looks gorgeous with a full screen design on the front and Oppo’s ingenious shark-fin slider that hides the front facing camera. The phone is absolutely gorgeous and feels very premium in your hands. We especially recommend the Ocean Green color if you want to stand out.
One of our favorite features is the O-dot placed below the camera, that helps prevent the camera lenses from getting scratched. It’s a tiny design detail that not only looks good but serves a much needed function.
Let’s come back to the camera system consisting of a 48MP Sony sensor, an 8MP ultra-wide sensor, and a 13MP telephoto lens. This setup allows the Oppo Reno 10X zoom to take highly detailed pictures in daytime, naturally lit pictures at night, and very creative shots using the wide-angle lens or the very impressive zoom range.
While the camera is the highlighting feature, the Oppo Reno 10X Zoom is a flagship product from every other angle as well. It’s a phone that truly pushes the boundaries of what mobile phones are capable of.
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HTC expects mixed reality, the combination of virtual reality and augmented reality, to become the next “disruptive technology.”
“There are some technical hurdles now such as resolution and tracking the ability to move forward but we want to overcome that. Vive Reality is the ability for us to switch between real life, mixed reality and full virtual reality,” Graham Wheeler, president for HTC Europe, Middle East and Africa, told TechRadar Middle East after announcing the winners of the “VR & Beyond” competition held in collaboration with Burj Khalifa, HTC Vive and Dubai Future Accelerators.
The competition, themed around the Burj Khalifa, was initiated in November 2018 and received 115 virtual reality submissions globally. The winner – Game Cooks from the US - and runner-up estudiofuture from Spain, were honoured on Thursday.
With 5G and artificial intelligence coming into the picture, Wheeler said that the Vive Reality experience is going to change dramatically. “It is not because of the speed of 5G but because of the latency. We use machine learning in some of the development techniques, which I cannot elaborate on now, but the combination of 5G and AI will put VR as the next entertainment medium,” he said.
Moreover, he said that HTC’s to-be-launched premium PC VR headset Cosmos, has a halo design and has taken some of the feedback “we learned from our previous headsets”. “We believe that Cosmos is an exciting step in VR and opens it up to new audiences,” he said but did not reveal more details about the headset. According to HTC’s website, Cosmos has an LCD display with a resolution of 2,880 x 1,700 pixels, an increase of 88% over the original Vive, and 40% better lens clarity over the original model.
Foreseeing the future of VR
Wheeler said that the VR market is growing at a rapid rate. “The growth curve is brilliant for us and nothing is a success overnight. With governments, venture capitals and companies coming to the forefront of investing in the content, the market has a bright future down the lane,” he said.
HTC’s Viveport has more than 3,000 apps, with more local content developers set to be added in. Wheeler noted that many companies are turning to VR to drive education, training, design and retail sales.
According to research firm International Data Corporation, worldwide spending on augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) is forecast to reach $160 billion in 2023, up from the $16.8 billion in 2019. The research firm said that the worldwide shipments of AR/VR headsets are forecasted to reach 8.9 million units in 2019.
By 2023, virtual reality headsets are expected to reach 36.7 million units while the AR headset market forecast to reach 31.9 million units in 2023.
Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobile Device Trackers, said that new headsets from brands such as Oculus, HTC, Microsoft and others will help fuel the growth in 2019 and beyond.
However, he said that it's not only the new headsets that will drive the AR/VR market forward but also the latest chipsets from Qualcomm.
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343 Industries has confirmed that the first public beta test for Halo: Reach, part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, is underway but it’s currently only accessible to fewer than 1000 Halo Insiders.
343 Industries has taken to the Halo Insider forums to announce that this first test is “just the beginning” and that it’s being kept “very small”, so if you did sign up for the Halo: Reach flighting tests and didn’t get an invite, you’re not the only one.
“We’ve had a massive amount of opt-ins to the Insider program which is awesome,” 343 explains, “but it’s way more people than we can comfortably accommodate in our first flight out the door.”
Taking flight
The first flight is running from June 28 until July 1 and includes the Halo: Reach campaign mission Tip of the Spear, which is an updated build of the demo shown at E3 this year.
Given it’s still a work-in-progress, the build is apparently missing a few features and has several known issues. The main aim for 343 Industries for this first flight is to test the best way to launch more builds on Steam at a larger scale and get some player feedback on the mouse and keyboard controls.
Despite the invite-only status of the build, it has been reported that pirated versions of the build are being leaked online. 343 Industries and Microsoft have stated that they are aware of the issue and are cracking down on anyone that distributes or plays any illegal copies.
In a tweet, Community Support and Engagement Coordinator at 343 Industries, Tyler Davis, said that those who do play the illegal beta will have all of their associated accounts banned and will be removed from any “all current or future 343 programs”.
Given the beta only includes one mission and isn’t at optimal playing condition, playing a pirated version hardly seems like a worthwhile risk to take for fans of the franchise.
It’s been promised that over time, there will be more test flights on both PC and Xbox with a larger number of people and a wider range of content from not just Reach, but more games that will be in the Master Chief Collection.
In the meantime, 343 Industries has released 15 minutes of 4K gameplay footage for fans to pore over, no piracy needed. You can watch that for yourself below.
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Any smartphone can take a picture, but only the best handsets can take a great picture, and the OnePlus 7 Pro and Huawei P30 are two of the most high-end devices for photography.
Each has three rear snappers – one standard, one ultra-wide, and one for long distance pictures – and they also come with an AI scene optimization tool to take the very best pictures possible.
But which is the absolute best? It's a hard question to answer, so instead of picking a phone, we took them both out on a few adventures, so we can compare pictures taken with each of the devices.
These are the results of the test. The images you see below are of the OnePlus 7 Pro – click on the arrow on each image to see the Huawei P30 equivalent.
A word on the cameras
The OnePlus 7 Pro has a 48MP main camera, joined by a 16MP ultra-wide snapper and an 8MP sensor with telephoto lens that supports up to 3x optical zoom.
The Huawei P30 only has a 40MP main sensor, and like the OnePlus phone it has a 16MP ultra-wide lens and 8MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom.
The main difference between the two cameras is this first sensor, as the OnePlus 7 Pro has a slightly better megapixel count, but you won't necessarily notice that in many pictures taken – and it's really the scene optimization software that does a lot of the work too.
'Normal' photos
There wasn't a huge amount of difference between 'normal' pictures taken – by that we mean, at 1x zoom with no effects or filters.
The OnePlus 7 Pro photo was a tiny bit darker, but in general the pictures were very similar, both in terms of color range and quality, and the actual field of view and depth.
Zoomed photos
When we took pictures at 3x zoom, which is the optical zoom limit for both phones, the Huawei P30's had more vibrant colors and a bigger contrast between the dark subject and light background – but that's perhaps not the greatest thing, as details and complexity was lost.
Of course if you want insane levels of zoom the P30 is the best answer though, as its 30x zoom will get you as much pixellated glory as you want.
Ultra-wide photos
The Huawei P30's ultra-wide photo is shocking – look at all that blue sky! Not only is it unprecedented for London, it's quiet a change from the limited blue-ness of the zoomed pictures.
The OnePlus 7 Pro's photo is a little paler, both in terms of the sky and the bridge, but that means, like the zoomed picture, you get a lot more detail.
Both handsets have roughly the same field of view in these shots though, so are neck-and-neck in that regard.
Macro photos
These pictures are fairly similar looking, if we're being honest. The background is blurred appropriately for how far away it is, the textures are captured well, and color tones are easy to differentiate between.
The main difference is in how we actually took the pictures – the Huawei P30 felt a tiny bit slower in focusing on the rock than the OnePlus 7 Pro, so it was quicker to take the picture on the latter phone.
Night sight
The Huawei P30 has a RYYB sensor, as opposed to the RGB in the OnePlus 7 Pro and most other smartphones. This means it picks up on red-yellow-yellow-blue, instead of red-green-blue, and for the purposes of this camera test, that means it 'sees' light a lot better.
You can tell in the night-sight test, as the Huawei P30's picture has a noticeable amount more detail, and it's brighter all around.
The OnePlus 7 Pro's contrast between light and dark is certainly artistic, but you can't see half of it.
Color perception
For a phone that's meant to have amazing color perception, the Huawei P30 let us down – that's because the scene optimization tool wanted to capture the panoramic shot of the umbrellas as much as it did the fruit, and it couldn't tell what the focus of the picture was.
Because of that the fruit is darker, compared to the OnePlus 7 Pro's pictures, with a lighter and brighter dish. The Pro also knew to apply appropriate background blur, to emphasize this shot.
Capturing greenery
What do you want in a picture – natural and realistic looks, or something a little – ahem – spruced up? (Yes, we know this isn't a spruce.)
The Huawei P30's image has a distinct yellow tone, thanks to the RYYB sensor, which make the whole picture look exciting and vibrant. However that's not how the bush actually looked in real life.
The OnePlus 7 Pro photo is a little dull and lifeless, which is exactly how the bush looked in real life, and while it won't win any 'Bush Photograph of the Year' awards, it's an accurate depiction of the boring bush.
Verdict
The camera test was a mixed bag, and after spending time with the two devices, we really don't have a distinct winner – even over the course of writing up this comparison, and analyzing the picture, our preference kept shifting.
The OnePlus 7 Pro took detailed pictures, that were sometimes a little simplistic, but they benefited from that. They were often a little pale though, compared to the competitor.
The Huawei P30's photos like to toy with color and brightness quite a bit – sometimes that works, and makes vibrant pictures, and other times it robs detail from its subjects.
So there's no 'better' camera phone, and for once we wouldn't actually say 'pick a phone that has features that suit you better'. Instead, it's better to choose a handset whose disadvantages are you can overlook more easily.
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There are signs of a thaw in the ongoing US vs Huawei saga, with President Trump announcing that Huawei will once again be able to buy technology from US suppliers – with certain limits.
"US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei," Bloomberg reports Trump as saying at a G20 news conference. "We're talking about equipment where there's no great national security problem with it."
It would appear the US and Chinese governments are prepared to press pause on the ongoing trade war happening between the countries, which should give companies on both sides of the Pacific some breathing space.
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As yet it's not clear exactly what the change in policy will mean: Huawei remains on the Commerce Department's Entities List, which means any deals will need approval from the US authorities. Further talks are planned this week.
Details to follow
It would appear the US is prepared to give Huawei some concessions when it comes to developing smartphone and laptop devices, while still keeping the Chinese company out of its 5G infrastructure.
Whether or not the deal means Huawei can carry on developing phones as normal, Android and all, hasn't yet been established. The fine print is still being discussed, and we should hear more this week.
Huawei has been scrambling to respond to the threat of having its US software and hardware suppliers cut off – even going as far as developing its own Android replacement in the event that it can't use Google software any more.
The full effects of the ban weren't due to come into effect until August anyway, so with President Trump's announcement at the G20 conference, it could now be business as usual for Huawei – at least for some of its products.
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