Apple has announced that this year’s WorldWide Developers Conference will take place from the 7th to the 11th June. Like last year’s WWDC, the event will go ahead online.
The big news is typically revealed at the keynote speech on day one. Apple CEO Tim Cook will get the ball rolling from 6pm BST / 10am PDT this year, live from the tech giant’s Apple Park HQ. Fans will be able to stream the event via Apple.com and the company’s YouTube channel.
“WWDC21 kicks off with the unveiling of exciting new updates coming to all Apple platforms later this year”, reads Apple’s schedule. That likely means previews of Apple’s new iOS 15, iPadOS 14, MacOS 12, WatchOS 8 and tvOS 15 software.
As for hardware, we could see the latest ‘Pro’ Macs featuring Apple’s processors (the company ditched Intel’s processors last year). There’s also a (slim) chance we could see the company showcase the rumoured AirPods 3 wireless earbuds.
Following the keynote, WWDC21 will serve up “200 in-depth sessions, one-on-one labs, and more”, so that developers can learn about the latest tools to help rustle up the next generation of iOS apps.
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Lenovo’s Tab P11 Pro is the company’s top-tier Android tablet. With an 11-inch OLED screen, quad speakers, and snap-on keyboard, it’s meant to go head to head with Samsung’s Tab S7 and Apple’s iPad Air. But while the Tab P11 Pro is excellent for watching movies — that OLED screen and the Dolby Atmos speakers are quite nice — it’s considerably less impressive when you attempt to use it for productivity.
Pricing for the Tab P11 Pro is aggressive, particularly when you add up everything you get. The list price for a base model with 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM is $499.99, but thanks to Lenovo’s frequent discounts, you can buy one for $375 right now. The model I’ve been testing has 6GB of RAM and comes with a detachable keyboard and active stylus pen in the box. That one’s list price is $599.99, but it’s currently discounted to $460 on Lenovo’s site.
Considering the similarly sized iPad Air starts at $599 before you add a pen or keyboard to it, the Lenovo has a lot of value on its side. No matter which model you opt for, you get the same 11-inch 2560 x 1600 OLED screen; Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G processor; quad JBL speakers with Dolby Atmos tuning; 128GB of storage with the ability to expand it with a microSD card; and premium aluminum unibody design.
The screen and speakers are really the stars of the show here. The OLED panel is not as bright as you can get on an iPad, so it isn’t as good in direct sunlight. But in almost every other scenario, including outdoors in the shade, it looks fantastic. Colors are rich, blacks are deep and inky, and the resolution is sharp. It provides a great experience for watching movies or any video, really.
The P11 Pro’s OLED screen looks great, and the quad speakers sound fantastic.
Similarly, the quad speakers are loud, punchy, and immersive. The Tab P11 Pro’s speakers outclass the iPad Air’s dual speakers and easily hang with the excellent sound system on Apple’s higher-end iPad Pro. Unfortunately, Lenovo is taking the same route as Apple and omitting a headphone jack, so you have the option of using a USB-C dongle (not included) or wireless headphones for personal audio.
Combined, the OLED screen and quad speakers provide the best movie-watching experience on a tablet anywhere near this price. To get something better, you’re going to have to pay a lot more money.
But Lenovo isn’t pitching this as just a couch potato tablet — it’s following Apple and Samsung’s lead in presenting the P11 Pro as a tablet that you can also get work done on. And that’s where the P11 Pro falls on its face.
Starting with the keyboard and pen accessories that are included with the top-end bundle, there’s as much to dislike as there is to like. The snap-on keyboard has a nice fabric cover and comes in two pieces: a back cover with a built-in kickstand that attaches via magnets and the keyboard itself that communicates with the tablet through pogo pins on the bottom edge of the P11 Pro. It’s a similar design to what Samsung uses on the Tab S7 line, and I like the flexibility it affords. I can use just the back cover to prop the tablet up for movie watching without having to have the keyboard in the way all the time. It’s great to have this flexibility when you’re using the tablet on a cramped airplane tray table.
Unfortunately, the typing experience on the keyboard itself leaves a bit to be desired. The layout is as cramped as expected with an 11-inch tablet, and there’s no backlighting available. The trackpad is small and has palm rejection issues — even just using the keyboard to write this relatively short draft was an exercise in patience, as my cursor would randomly jump around any time my left hand brushed against the trackpad as I typed. There’s also very little software support; I can’t adjust the scrolling direction on the trackpad as I can do with a laptop or other tablets.
The bundled stylus is nice to have, but it, too, falls behind the competition. It has many levels of pressure sensitivity, and it writes smoothly enough for my basic note-taking needs. But it doesn’t charge on the back or side of the tablet like Apple or Samsung’s pens (you instead need to plug it in via a USB-C port on its end), and there’s nowhere to safely store it on the tablet. Lenovo includes a rubbery holster for the pen that you’re supposed to stick to the back of the P11’s case with adhesive. But the adhesive is weak, and the pen holder falls off very easily. It all just feels like an afterthought.
Similarly, the software support for the pen is weak. Lenovo includes the Squid notes app (the basic free version, not the full version) for jotting down notes, and you can download many other options from the Play Store. But the pen doesn’t integrate into the system like it does on Apple or Samsung tablets. You can’t use the pen to take quick notes from the lock screen or easily capture screenshots and mark them up like you can on the iPad Air or Tab S7.
The P11 Pro’s “productivity mode” leaves a lot to be desired.
When you attach the keyboard to the tablet, Lenovo’s custom productivity mode launches. This is designed to provide a desktop-like interface, similar to Samsung’s DeX feature. But it’s a mess: few apps can be launched full-screen with it, and every app opens in a tiny, windowed box that you have to resize each time. I was able to successfully create a split-screen between a Google Doc and another window, such as Slack or the browser. But in general, the productivity mode feels like a tacked-on afterthought, just like the pen, and really isn’t a great experience.
Elsewhere, the software is standard Android (version 10; there’s no update to Android 11 as of the date of this review, though the P11 Pro does have the latest security patch available), which works best when you’re watching a full-screen video or playing a game, and doesn’t have as many tablet-oriented apps as iPadOS. The Snapdragon 730 processor isn’t as powerful as you get in Apple or Samsung’s tablets, but it’s not really a bottleneck here. You’ll be limited by the lack of tablet-optimized apps way before you hit the performance ceiling of the chip.
In all, the Tab P11 Pro is the tablet to get if you are looking for an excellent movie watching experience and don’t want to spend more than $400. You won’t find a better display or speakers for this price. I’d personally skip the pen and keyboard bundle entirely (even though that does mean you give up the handy back cover and its kickstand) and just use this tablet for what it does best: entertainment.
In an attempt to get more developers to build software for Windows 10 on Arm, Qualcomm is debuting a Snapdragon Developer Kit. The company announced the small desktop PC today ahead of Microsoft’s Build developer conference.
The new system was built “in collaboration with Microsoft” and will run Windows 10. While Qualcomm refers to the system as “cost-effective,” it hasn’t listed a price for the system, which will run on the Snapdragon 7c platform. It will be available for purchase in the Microsoft Store sometime this summer, and is part of an effort to have developers port software to native ARM64.
Qualcomm told members of the press that developers won’t need to return the system, an apparent dig at Apple’s Developer Transition Kits for the M1 processor, which needed to go back to the company.
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(Image credit: Qualcomm)
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The Snapdragon developer kit resembles an Intel NUC or Apple’s Mac Mini, in that it’s a small, low-profile desktop. Thus far, every Windows on Arm device has been a laptop, as one of Arm’s benefits is long battery life. Miguel Nunes, senior director of product management at Qualcomm said in a statement that the “developer kit provides an affordable alternative to other consumer and commercial devices. With the smaller desktop configuration, this kit gives developers more flexibility than notebook options, and at a lower price point.”
Qualcomm’s kit has a large power button on top and a sparse selection of ports, including USB Type-A and an SD card slot on the side.
In December, Microsoft started adding x64 emulation to Windows on Arm Insider Builds. But the developer kit is an attempt to kickstart more Arm-native apps. Today, Zoom is announcing an optimized version of its video conference app, which is coming this summer.
There are a number of existing native Arm apps for Windows 10, including VLC, Twitter, Firefox, Edge, Microsoft Office, Netflix, Twitter, Skype and Windows 10. But the number that will be able to be emulated when x64 hits mainstream Windows will increase significantly. Still, native apps will perform even faster.
Without information liek price and full specs, it’s hard to even surmise what kind of effect this will have with the developer community. Qualcomm is teasing that more information will be shared at a Build session entitled “What’s new for Windows desktop application developers.”
Qualcomm also announced its Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 system on a chip today for entry-level Windows PCs and Chromebooks. The company was light on details, but promised laptops using it will start at $349 and offer multi-day battery life depending on use.
Radxa have announced that it has updated its Raspberry Pi alternative, Rock Pi 4 line of single-board computers with the Rockchip OP1 processor, onboard eMMC storage, and a pre-installed version of Twister OS to create the new Rock Pi 4 Plus family of products. Via CNX-Software.
Camera connector for camera (possibly the Raspberry Pi official camera)
Gigabit Ethernet with PoE support (Model B and additional HAT required)
Dual-band 802.11ac WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.0 (Model B)
2 x USB 3.0 ports
2 x USB 2.0 port
40 Pin GPIO
Real Time Clock
USB C PD
There are two models of the Rock Pi 4 Plus at launch, the Model A and Model B, that can both be configured with either 2GB of LPDDR4 memory and 16GB of onboard eMMC storage or 4GB of LPDDR4 memory and 32GB of onboard eMMC storage.
We noticed on the Aliexpress listing that the primary difference between the Model A and Model B is that the latter offers wireless connectivity out of the box and POE support via a HAT.
The inclusion of the community created Twister OS is an interesting addition. Twister OS has been with us for around a year and has seen some success as an alternative to Raspberry Pi OS. It is a solid operating system that comes with plenty of extras.
Radxa did say these new models will be 11% faster than their predecessors thanks to the OP1. It’s not clear how that would be the case, however, because OP1 appears to be a brand name for the RK-3399 SoC used in the original models. Radxa may have upgraded the Rock Pi 4 Plus to the RK-3399Pro, which adds a 2.4 TOPS NPU to the base SoC, but that doesn’t mesh with the company’s claim that the “OP1 brings faster performance on both CPU and GPU” to the new models.
Radxa said all of the original Rock Pi 4 accessories will be compatible with the Rock Pi 4 Plus. The new models are supposed to be available via AliExpress, Allnet, and Amazon, but at time of writing the storefronts only offer the Rock Pi 4 Plus Model B.
Tesla has been ordered to pay 136,000 kroner ($16,000) each to thousands of customers in Norway for slowing down charging speeds, according to Nettavisen via Electrek.
A 2019 software update was found to have affected the battery life in Tesla Model S vehicles manufactured between 2013 and 2015, sparking a complaint by dozens of Norwegian Tesla owners to the country’s conciliation council, according to Nettavisen. As a result, customers were reporting diminished range and slower charging speeds at the company’s Supercharger network. Tesla did not file a response, and the case was decided in the plaintiffs’ favor on April 29th.
Tesla is ordered to pay each customer roughly $16,000 to settle the complaint. Nettavisen notes that this particular Model S has been sold around 10,000 times during the period in question, making it a potentially very expensive judgment for Tesla.
It’s unclear how the company will respond. (A spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment; Tesla dissolved its PR department last year.) The order, which was announced on May 17th, gives Tesla until May 30th to pay the fine. Otherwise, the company can file an appeal with the Oslo council.
Tesla is facing similar complaints in the US, where customers have filed a class action lawsuit against the company alleging slower charging speeds in older model vehicles. The lawsuit, which was filed in Northern California federal court, alleges fraud and seeks class action status for the owners of older-generation vehicles whose range has been curtailed, some by as much as 40 miles.
Norway is one of the largest EV markets in the world, with battery electric vehicles accounting for more than half of all cars sold in the country last year. Tesla was the top seller in the country for many years but recently was overtaken by Volkswagen. Norway uses huge tax incentives to help achieve its goal of ensuring that all new vehicles sold are zero emission by 2025.
(Pocket-lint) – Lockdowns around the world led to a boom in indoor cycling, with training and virtual racing taking off. For many this has meant buying a smart turbo trainer – such as the excellent Wahoo Kickr or Tacx Neo 2T Smart – and hooking your bike up to it before riding off into the virtual sunset.
However, if you have the space and the money there’s another option: the indoor smart bike. This is where the Wattbike Atom – here the 2020 model, described as the ‘Next Generation’ product by the maker – comes into play. But, at 10 times to price of a ‘dumb’ exercise bike, is it worth the outlay?
Much like mobile phones, there’s a big difference between budget and flagship. The Wattbike Atom 2020 uses top-of-the-range internal components, while it looks like a thing of relative beauty compared to a clunky budget spin bike. But more important than that, it’s designed to integrate seamlessly with third-party apps such as Zwift to allow training, social riding and racing in the virtual world.
So how does the Wattbike Atom ‘Next-Generation’ stack up in the world of dedicated indoor trainers?
Design & Setup
Footprint: 1.24 x 0.5m (4′ x 1’7″) / Weight: 40kg (88lbs)
Connectivity: Bluetooth, ANT+, FTMS
This is the second-generation Atom, arriving 3 years after Wattbike’s first foray into the smart bike home market. Out of the box the Atom is pretty much ready to go, which is not the case for its competitors that require a larger degree of assembly.
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The only things you need to do are attach the pedals – a flat pair are included, but you’ll most likely be installing your own – clip in the aerobars (which double as a tablet holder) and, if you’re so inclined, add the aerobar resting pads. Once you’ve heaved it into position (it’s very heavy, but has two small carriage wheels at the front which are helpful when you need to move it), you’ll need to fit the bike to your geometry.
Anyone who’s had a professional bike fit will be a step ahead of the game here, but Wattbike’s website will take you through what you need to do if you haven’t. The saddle and handlebar height and forward/backward position are fully adjustable, as is the tilt of the saddle, meaning that the vast majority of riders will be able to replicate their road bike position.
However, it’s not possible to adjust the crank length at all, so you’re stuck with 170mm – which for most people won’t be a major issue, but it won’t please everyone (as typical setups are usually 172.5mm or 175mm – both of which you can match on the Tacx Neo Bike Smart, for example).
As we’ve already mentioned, the Wattbike Atom comes complete with aerobars that double as a tablet holder. They’re fairly rudimentary, but they provide a snug fit for your tablet and there’s no worry that it’s going to slide out mid ride.
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Rather frustratingly, there is no USB port at the front of the bike to be able to plug your screen into though, which is an annoying oversight on Wattbike’s part and means you end up trailing an extension socket to the front of the bike when you need a power boost.
On the frame there are two water bottle cages, which is practical given how hot riding indoors can get.
Under the hood
Resistance: electromagnetic
Gears: 22
The mechanics of the Wattbike Atom are where the major upgrades over the previous version have happened. In particular the electromagnetic drivetrain that allows for super-quick gear changes and smoother variations in resistance to simulate climbing/descending or interval training.
Linked to this are the electronic gear shifters that you press to simulate changing gear by changing the resistance to the motor. The gear shifters are battery operated by a coin cell, which of course means you’ll have to change these periodically, but more irritatingly it means they don’t offer any vibrating feedback when you change gear – which we felt would have improved the overall experience.
Pocket-lint
Coupled to this, there is no way of telling which gear you’re in when you’re on the bike – except in compatible apps, of which there are few – and an LED display of this would be useful.
All in all, it feels as though there have been some compromises made with the gear system, perhaps as a consequence of trying to achieve the relatively low price point of the Next Generation Atom. Go up the ranks to the priciest-of-the-lot Wahoo Kickr Bike and you get a much more true-to-life (well, Shimano) gear shifter setup.
On the (virtual) road
Maximum power: 2500W
Power accuracy: +/-1%
Our time on the Atom started well. Wattbike provided us an iPad with Zwift, Sufferfest and the Wattbike app all preinstalled and ready to go – and we found our first ride on Zwift, a gentle noodle around Watopia, to be as smooth as we would hope. The Bluetooth setup worked flawlessly.
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The resistance changes as we hit the slopes felt good, gear changes were near instantaneous, and there was a useful gear indicator shown in the top corner of the Zwift screen. Similarly, we found Wattbike’s own app to be seamless, providing a range of interesting and helpful data on pedalling dynamics, as well as a range of interval training workouts.
Pocket-lint
The power data was accurate and consistent when we compared it to our Garmin Vector 3 pedals, as was the cadence.
But the Atom isn’t a bike for gently cruising around the great indoors on, it’s a thoroughbred racing machine, so we decided to put it through its paces in a Zwift race. As you might expect, race conditions expose the differences between the Atom and the turbo trainer/bike setup that we’re used to using.
The first thing we noticed was that finding the correct gear was not as intuitive or easy as we would have liked, particularly in situations where you might want to drop a few gears in quick succession. That lack of feedback from the button press gear changers is noticeable.
Pocket-lint
There is an option to change from the standard 22 gear set up to 11 gears, but rather than recreating a well mapped out 1×11 set up, the Atom just gives you every other gear from the 22 gear set up. This is disappointing, as is the fact that you can’t customise the gears through Wattbike’s app to create your own ratios – we would like to see Wattbike make customisation an option through firmware update.
The other thing that became more obvious as we pushed the bike hard was that it’s rock-solid stability was, well, rather too rock solid in some ways. The bike was literally rooted to the spot and, try as we might, it didn’t offer even the slightest feedback during all out sprints. On the one hand this is reassuring – we don’t want to be wobbling or worrying about stability during a race – but on the other, many riders want a little side-to-side movement to give a more realistic ride feel, to relieve fatigue, and to avoid a numb rear!
To some extent this is about personal preference, but we found that this rigidity made the Wattbike Atom better suited for jumping on and doing a 30 minute or hour-long interval session, rather than anything longer. A bit like a spin bike session, really.
Furthermore, we found that the Wattbike wasn’t quite as quiet as we had expected. Compared to the whisper quiet high-end turbo trainers we’ve tested, the Atom is definitely a little more noisy, giving a similar level of hum as a washing machine on a mid-speed spin.
Pocket-lint
Another niggle that that we found with the Atom – and this must be a huge frustration for Wattbike – is its integration with third-party apps. When we linked the bike up to our own Zwift account on our laptop, rather than using Wattbike’s pre-loaded iPad version, the Bluetooth kept dropping out, meaning we’d repeatedly lose power for 20-30 seconds every few minutes. Then something went very wrong and the bike wouldn’t connect properly to anything on the laptop or the iPad, which was only solved when we reinstalled the Wattbike app on a third device.
When speaking to the people at Wattbike about this they explained that resolving these problems is a priority, but they are also reliant on the app developers to work with them to do this. So it should happen, but it’s a bit of a waiting game.
From then on we stuck to using the iPad, but still some minor issues remained. Using both the Trainer Road and Sufferfest apps, we found that at the beginning of each interval the Atom would “surge” – demanding more watts from us for a couple of seconds, then drop below the target, before it started to stabilise. This same effect happened when riding in Road Grand Tours, with the start of every incline feeling tougher than it should, which, combined with the slightly difficult-to-master gear shifting, could be frustrating.
Verdict
At first glance the idea of paying the price of a mid-level road bike for one that goes nowhere might seem a little indulgent, but the market for this technology is growing, and Wattbike has put out a really solid offering at a price point quite a bit below the competition.
This means there are a few compromises – but nothing that would stop us seriously considering the Atom from a hardware point of view. There are some software integration issues with third-party apps, though, which we’ve found frustrating.
Overall, the smart bike market is continuing to grow and evolve. Some people may think that a smart turbo trainer is still the better option for indoor training at the moment, whereas others will see the benefits of a dedicated training bike like this one.
Wattbike has created a good offering in the Atom and it’s priced a fair bit less than the key competition, which certainly makes it a contender if you want to take this next step in your indoor training.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Tacx Neo Bike Smart
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The Tacx Neo Bike Smart is an obvious rival to the Wattbike Atom. It’s more expensive, and you’ll encounter similar shifting and rigidity issues with it. But third-party software integration is no problem at all, which makes it a more stable offering.
Last week, Apple announced that lossless audio was coming to Apple Music, but it was also revealed that not all Apple devices would be compatible. We now know that the HomePod and HomePod Mini will in fact support these higher-quality music streams. We just don’t know when.
All Apple has revealed on its new lossless audio support page is that “Support for lossless is coming in a future software update”.
The page also reiterates that the new Apple TV 4K 2021 doesn’t currently support the Hi-Res Lossless format, although the use of the word “currently” could suggest it might change in the future.
Apple’s page also runs down how to listen on other devices, and repeats what we told you last week, that Apple’s AirPods, AirPods Pro and AirPods Max don’t support lossless. That’s no great surprise for the true wireless earbuds, but more of a blow for the AirPods Max, as some had assumed their wired connection would enable lossless.
Apple’s iPhones and iPads support Apple Music’s two lower tiers of lossless, namely CD quality (16-bit/44.1kHz) and Apple Music Lossless (24-bit/48kHz). If you want to listen to Apple Music tracks above 24-bit/48kHz on your iPhone/iPad, you’ll need to connect an external DAC and use a wired pair of headphones. Check out our guide for how to listen to hi-res audio on an iPhone.
There’s better news for Apple fans looking to enjoy the Spatial Audio feature also coming to Apple Music next month. It’s much more widely supported on Apple devices including AirPods headphones and HomePod speakers.
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Ford has revealed a version of its new F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck aimed specifically at commercial customers. It’s called the F-150 Lightning Pro, and it starts at $39,974 for a version with an estimated 230 miles of range. Extended-range versions of the truck, which are expected to get 300 miles on a full battery, will start at $49,974.
Much like the retail version of the electric F-150, the Lightning Pro stands to win Ford a lot of business as long as the company executes well when the truck starts shipping in 2022. Fleets all over the country are already considering a switch to electric vehicles, either to get ahead of zero-emission guidelines at the state or federal level, or in an attempt to take advantage of what should be a lower total cost of ownership with electric vehicles. Ford claims the Lightning Pro could cut maintenance costs up to 40 percent over eight years and 100,000 miles of use compared to a 2.7L EcoBoost F-150.
Multiple electric pickups are coming to market over the next year or two, including Tesla’s Cybertruck, the GMC Hummer EV, and the Rivian R1T. But almost none are geared specifically towards commercial fleets. One of the only examples is the electric pickup truck being developed by Ohio startup Lordstown Motors. That truck is supposed to go into production later this year, but it will start at around $52,000, and the company doesn’t have anywhere near the track record of an established automaker like Ford. Paired with the E-Transit van, the Lightning Pro gives Ford a potent one-two punch in the fight to electrify the commercial market.
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There aren’t a lot of obvious differences between the Lightning Pro and the retail versions of the electric F-150 that Ford revealed last week. Like the retail version, it only comes in a four-door SuperCrew cab and 5.5-foot bed configuration. Buyers can choose to equip the Lightning Pro with the standard or extended range battery. The standard range version will have a max 7,700-pound towing capacity when equipped with the optional towing package, while the extended range can pull up to 10,000 pounds. Both versions use a dual-motor, all-wheel drive setup, with the standard range truck maxing out at an estimated 426 horsepower, while the extended range version can make around 563HP.
Both Lightning Pro trucks have onboard power available, which can run electric tools or other accessories, though buyers will have to pay more for extra outlets (including a 240 volt plug in the bed) and higher total output. The extended range option also comes with an 80-amp charging station that can pretty much help refill a truck’s battery overnight. All versions of the commercial truck come with the massive, water-resistant front trunk, which has 14.1 cubic feet of storage and its own set of electrical outlets.
There is one big difference between the commercial and retail versions, though: the Lightning Pro will come with Ford’s commercial telematics software, which makes it easier for fleet owners to keep tabs on the location, charging status, or health of their vehicles.
“It’s actually complimentary for customers, and it gives insights such as: what’s your odometer [at]? What warning lights and diagnostic trouble codes are there? And we’re going so far as to provide preventative and proactive prognostics,” says Alex Purdy, the head of connectivity on Ford’s business operations side. Purdy says Ford even offers a data service that works with any other third-party fleet telematics software businesses might already have up and running.
Ford’s fleet software will also help operators tackle some of the more unconventional issues that might crop up as they switch to electric vehicles. For instance, some workers take their fleet vehicles home at night, fill up the gas tank on their own, and get reimbursed by their employer. Ford could help install home chargers for those workers, Purdy says, but the company has also written into the fleet software a way to let employers reimburse workers for the cost of at-home charging.
“These are the kinds of things that make Ford different,” Purdy says. “We say that we know how people use their vehicles, and it feels like a hollow thing — it’s not actually hollow in this case at all, because there are unique challenges with making an electric vehicle, relevant, useful, and adoptable by commercial customers.”
Samsung’s Smart Monitor range is expanding. The company’s line of Tizen-powered smart computer displays now includes a 43-inch 4K M7 model as well as a 24-inch 1080p M5, marking the biggest and smallest Smart Monitors to be made available to date.
Samsung introduced the Smart Monitor last year and describes it as a “do-it-all” display designed for both work and entertainment. The screens have built-in speakers and smart TV functionality through Samsung’s Tizen platform, meaning you can run video apps like Netflix directly on the device, as well as remote desktop access and productivity software like Office 365. The Smart Monitors have a remote control that works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Bixby, and there’s also wireless support for DeX, Samsung’s desktop-style environment that runs on Galaxy smartphones.
The M7 series now includes 43-inch and 32-inch 4K options. The M5 series uses 1080p panels and comes in 24-inch, 27-inch, and 32-inch sizes. Samsung is also introducing a white version of the 27-inch and 32-inch M5 Smart Monitor.
Samsung hasn’t announced pricing yet for the new models, but for context, the 32-inch M7 was released at $399.99 while the 27-inch M5 was $229.99, so you can probably expect prices slightly above and below those two extremes.
A social media campaign by pro-Palestine activists has pushed down the ranking for Facebook’s app in Apple and Google’s app stores, NBC News reported. The activists are seeking to protest Facebook’s alleged censorship of Palestinian accounts on its platform, and are instructing people to leave Facebook’s app a one-star review.
According to NBC News, Facebook is treating the situation as a high-priority issue internally; one software engineer wrote in a post on an internal Facebook message board that “users are upset with our handling of the situation,” adding that the users “have started protesting by leaving 1-star reviews.” Facebook has reached out to have the reviews removed, but so far, Apple has declined the request to remove the reviews. It’s not clear how or if Google responded to the request.
The rating for Facebook’s iOS app on the App Store as of Sunday afternoon was 2.3 stars out of 5, with 1-star ratings far outpacing others. In the Google Play store the situation was similar; the Android Facebook app had a slightly higher 2.4 rating, with the majority of the reviews 1-star.
Apple and Google did not immediately reply to requests for comment Sunday.
Facebook did not reply to a request for comment from The Verge, but a spokesperson said in a statement to NBC that the company does not censor it users, but applies its policies equally “regardless of who is posting or their personal beliefs.” The spokesperson added that the company has a dedicated team that includes Arabic and Hebrew speakers who are “closely monitoring the situation on the ground, who are focused on making sure we’re removing harmful content, while addressing any enforcement errors as quickly as possible.”
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The Kyocera DuraForce Ultra 5G is a rugged phone that doesn’t require you to give up too many modern conveniences to gain the benefits of extreme durability. It’s common for rugged phones to feature older processors and lack modern features — these phones often have specialized uses, like barcode scanning or taking payments, and more or less just need to keep working in harsh environments.
The DuraForce Ultra 5G includes both the durability of a rugged phone and modern features like 5G, wireless charging, a high-quality processor, and dual rear cameras. At $899, it’s an expensive phone — you can buy a very nice non-rugged phone for that much — but if durability is a must and you don’t want to sacrifice performance or convenient features, the DuraForce 5G is (quite literally) a solid choice.
Kyocera DuraForce Ultra 5G rugged features
Pick up the DuraForce Ultra 5G and you’ll know right away that you have a rugged device in your hands. The top and bottom of the phone are wrapped in thick plastic bumpers, the sides feature a texturized finish, and at 278g (9.8oz) it’s much heavier than your standard smartphone. The screen itself isn’t very big — just a 5.45-inch 1080p LCD panel — but the sizable bezels and thick chin make it a chunky device overall.
Despite its dimensions it’s actually easy to use one-handed, since the screen itself is relatively small. The phone will fit in a jacket pocket, but it’s too bulky for any of my jeans pockets. Haptics are aggressive, even at the “medium” default setting, which is a good thing in a phone you might be using with gloves. Otherwise, you can turn touch vibrations down to low or off.
The phone is both IP65 and IP68 rated, meaning there’s generous protection against water intrusion both from jets and immersion (up to 6.5 feet for up to 30 minutes). The DuraForce Ultra 5G meets the Military Standard 810H specifications and includes protection against vibration, blowing dust and sand, extreme temperatures, drops from five feet onto concrete, high altitudes, and plenty of other hostile conditions.
I couldn’t test it against all of those conditions, but I did subject the phone to plenty of abuse including an hourlong stay in the freezer, water immersion for 30 minutes in the kitchen sink, exposure to sand, and a drop from about five feet onto driveway asphalt. Aside from some minor scuffs acquired in the driveway test, the DuraForce Ultra 5G merely shrugged at my efforts and kept on working just fine. Kyocera does include a two-year warranty with purchase, so as long as you use the phone within the conditions it’s rated to withstand, you shouldn’t be putting your purchase at risk.
In addition to rugged features, the DuraForce Ultra 5G is just loaded with buttons. There’s a power button with embedded fingerprint sensor, three programmable keys, and a large volume rocker that’s easy to press with gloves on. I frequently pressed one of the programmable buttons accidentally when I grabbed the phone — they’re in easy reach when you’re using the phone, but that unfortunately means a lot of unintentional presses, too. These buttons do require a long press to bring up whatever shortcut function you’ve assigned to them, so a brief press won’t do anything. You can also assign any of them to “do nothing” when pressed if you’d rather not use them.
Kyocera DuraForce Ultra 5G screen, performance, and battery
Aside from the obvious difference in appearance and ergonomics, the DuraForce Ultra 5G handles pretty much the way any other Android device does. The screen looks a little low on contrast in comparison to your standard display — likely because the panel is optimized for viewability in bright sunlight. That’s probably more important to the phone’s target user than a rich multimedia viewing experience, and the panel is indeed usable even in very bright direct light.
The screen’s protective “Sapphire Shield” remained free of scratches during my testing, but it does pick up reflections easily outside, more so than other phones with Gorilla Glass. It wasn’t enough to bother me, but someone planning to use the phone outside in bright light often might find it distracting.
The DuraForce Ultra 5G ships with Android 10; Kyocera says it will provide an update to 11, but that the timeframe is still being determined. Android 10 is fine for now, but given that Google is readying Android 12 for the public, it’s definitely a step behind. Kyocera says it will provide a minimum of two years of security updates, which is a common if not terribly generous policy.
The DuraForce Ultra 5G uses a Snapdragon 765G processor with 6GB RAM, which puts overall performance on par with a midrange phone. There’s some slight stuttering when scrolling quickly through screens with lots of images and video, and a noticeable pause after taking a photo in the camera app, but other than that it keeps up well — especially considering the lower performance bar in the rugged class.
There’s a 4,500mAh battery built into the DuraForce Ultra 5G. It’s a comparatively large battery for the class, and it got me through a full day of moderate to heavy use. The phone supports Qi wireless charging, which is uncommon among rugged phones. The phone was a little finicky on my stand-style Belkin wireless charger, but it eventually worked when set on the charger in landscape orientation.
And of course, there’s one of the DuraForce Ultra 5G’s namesake features: 5G. This model works with both widely available sub-6GHz frequencies and hard-to-find but much faster mmWave spectrum (also called Ultra Wideband by Verizon, hence the UW in the phone’s name). It’s only sold through Verizon in the US, which makes sense: the company has been pushing mmWave much harder than the other major carriers and does offer more coverage, though it’s still relatively scarce. Verizon’s 5G network is kind of lackluster overall at this point, though it will improve over the next couple of years. It’s a good feature to have on a phone you’re going to hang onto for a while, but definitely don’t buy this (or any phone, really) just for mmWave since you’ll probably have a hard time finding a signal anyway.
Kyocera DuraForce Ultra 5G camera
The DuraForce Ultra’s rear camera array consists of a 24-megapixel f/1.8 standard wide and a 16-megapixel f/2.2 ultrawide, plus a time-of-flight sensor. Around front, there’s an 8-megapixel f/2.0 selfie camera. That’s a cut above what’s offered on many rugged phones. Picture-taking likely isn’t a high priority for prospective DuraForce Ultra owners, and image quality is certainly not up to what you’d find on conventional $900 phones, but it does the job.
Taken with ultrawide camera.
Taken with ultrawide camera.
Photos in good light look fine, if a bit on the low-contrast, washed-out side. Exposure and color can shift noticeably between two images taken with the same camera at slightly different angles, and I noticed some odd misses here and there, like a blurry shot of a static subject where it looked like the camera had tried to apply too much HDR. But most of the time in bright light, photos are perfectly fine, and a cut above what I’d expect from a rugged phone.
There’s also a mode that will overlay live information on your still image or video about whatever extreme situation you happen to be in, including location, altitude, speed, and G-force. Extreme activities are generally not recommended in your second trimester of pregnancy, so I didn’t really test this out. I imagine if you’re into something like mountain biking or climbing and you want to record that kind of information with your activity, you probably have a better way of doing so already. In any case, it’s there, and it’s definitely more of a casual, fun feature than it is practical.
If you’re merely curious about living a rugged phone lifestyle, the DuraForce Ultra 5G isn’t for you. The phone’s extremely hardy specifications would be appealing to anyone who’s nervous about dropping their phone or occasionally brings their phone to rough environments like beaches or backcountry camping. If that’s you, spend your $900 on a good standard phone (many are IP68 rated) and a rugged case. You’ll get better performance, a better camera, timelier software updates — basically, a lot more for the money.
If you need a rugged phone on the job as a frontline worker, first responder, or construction worker, for example, then the DuraForce Ultra 5G makes a lot more sense — especially if it’s going to be your primary phone off the job and you’d really like some extra bells and whistles. The inclusion of 5G, wireless charging, and processing power that’s a cut above the rest of the class makes it a good tool on and off the job site.
However, $900 is an awful lot to spend on a phone, and I think that very specific kind of customer for this phone is a pretty small group. You could buy a less expensive rugged phone with more limited functionality like Kyocera’s own DuraForce model from last year and a darn good midrange phone for around the same price. You probably can’t get mmWave 5G that way, but that’s no great loss.
Still, the DuraForce Ultra 5G represents a convenient option for a particular type of person if two phones feels like too much fuss. It certainly handled everything I threw it at, and functioned well as a daily companion for more pedestrian tasks like scrolling social media and navigating trips across town. If extreme durability is a must and you don’t want to give up too much to get it, then the DuraForce Ultra 5G is a good choice.
As reported by TechPowerUp, Nvidia will stop supporting Kepler graphics cards with the upcoming R470 drivers. Although the driver update roadmap corresponds to Nvidia’s data center products, it’ll likely translate over to the company’s GeForce gaming graphics cards, too.
Nvidia first launched Kepler in 2012, so it has been a good nine-year run for the architecture. For those who have forgotten, Kepler debuted under the GTX 600-series, although Nvidia used the moniker for some previous Fermi models as well. The chipmaker released a Kepler refresh under the GTX 700-series branding, which coincidentally housed some Maxwell models.
Nvidia had already discontinued support for Fermi with the R390 drivers, so it was logical that Kepler would be next in line. Nvidia typically uses a driver revision for a few months. For example, the R460 drivers came out at the end of last year. The current version is 466.47, so it’s very plausible that the R470 driver will land before the year is over. The change should affect all GeForce, Quadro, and Tesla products based on the Kepler architecture.
Besides bug fixes and performance improvements, updated drivers also usher in support of new games on the market. Since R470 is the last driver for Kepler, GTX 600-and 700-series graphics cards owners won’t have access to subsequent titles that are launched after the release of the R470 driver. The Kepler discontinuation shouldn’t have a big impact on the gaming population in general. According to the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey, the total Kepler participation is less than 5%.
Looking at Nvidia’s roadmap, Maxwell (GTX 900-series) and Pascal (GTX 10-series) are the next architectures on the chopping block. It should be a while before Nvidia pulls the plug on those two, though.
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) has announced the first details about the Orion storage subsystem of its upcoming Frontier exascale supercomputer set to go online in late 2021. Being the industry’s first 1.5 ExaFLOPS supercomputer, Frontier will need a very fast storage subsystem. It looks like it is set to get one with up to 700 Petabytes of storage, 75 TB/s of throughput, and 15 billion IOPS (yes, billion) of performance on tap.
“To the best of our knowledge, Orion will be the largest and fastest single file POSIX namespace file system in the world,” said Sarp Oral, Input/Output Working Group lead for Frontier at OLCF.
The Frontier supercomputer will actually have two storage sub-systems: an in-system storage layer featuring massive sequential read performance of over 75TB/s and around 15 billion read IOPS, as well as a center-wide file system called Orion that offers a whopping 700PB of capacity.
The Orion Global File Storage System Layer: 700PB Capacity at 10TB/s
Since Frontier relies on HPE’s Cray Shasta architecture, its global file storage system will largely rely on the ClusterStor multi-tier architecture that uses both PCIe 4.0/NVMe solid-state drives as well as traditional hard disk drives.
The Cray ClusterStor machines use AMD EPYC processors and can automatically align data flows in the file system with the workload and shift I/O operations between different tiers of storage as needed. Such shifting makes applications believe that they are accessing high-performance all-flash arrays, thus maximizing performance.
As for the software side of matters, Orion will use an open-source Lustre parallel file system (used by loads of supercomputers worldwide, including OLCF’s Titan and Jaguar) as well as ZFS with a volume manager.
In general, Frontier’s center-wide Orion will have three tiers:
A metadata tier comprising of 480 NVMe SSDs with 10PB of capacity.
An NVMe storage tier that uses 5,400 SSDs providing 11.5PB of capacity, peak read-write speeds of 10TB/s, and over 2 million random-read input/output operations per second (IOPS).
An HDD storage tier based on 47,700 PMR hard drives offering 679PB of capacity, a peak read speed of 5.5TB/s, a peak write speed of 4.6TB/s, and over 2 million random-read IOPS.
OLCF says that Orion will have 40 Lustre metadata server nodes and 450 Lustre object storage service (OSS) nodes, a total of 1,350 OSTs systemwide. Each OSS node will provide one object storage target (OST) device for performance and two OST devices for capacity. In addition, Orion will employ 160 nodes for routing that will offer peak read-write speeds of 3.2 TB/s available to other OLCF resources and platforms.
“Orion is pushing the envelope of what is possible technically due to its extreme scale and hard disk/NVMe hybrid nature,” said Dustin Leverman, leader of the OLCF’s High-Performance Computing Storage and Archive Group. “This is a complex system, but our experience and best practices will help us create a resource that allows our users to push science boundaries using Frontier.”
The In-Storage Layer: Up to 75TB/s at 15 Billion Read IOPS
Frontier’s in-storage layer comprises of SSDs installed directly into compute nodes and connected to AMD’s EPYC processors using a PCIe Gen 4 interface. These NVMe drives will offer an aggregate performance of over 75TB/s read speed, over 35TB/ write speed, and over 15 billion random-read IOPS.
The OLCF did not disclose the capacity of the in-storage layer, but this is just local storage, so do not expect tens of petabytes here.
Summary
Overall, the in-storage layer provides Frontier a whopping performance of 75TB/s, whereas the center-wide Orion offers a capacity of around 700PB. Combining this dual-layer and multi-tier storage subsystem provides just what a 1.5 EFLOPS machine with a 20MWatt power consumption needs: unbeatable storage performance to feed data to CPUs and GPUs and the ultimate capacity to store the large datasets that the supercomputer is made to process.
In a new support document on its website, Apple dives a little deeper into the details around the upcoming launch of lossless audio on Apple Music.
Apple now says that both the HomePod and HomePod Mini will support lossless audio after a future software update. That’ll be good news to people who’ve invested in one or a pair of Apple’s smart speakers. Two HomePods grouped in stereo playing a lossless source? Yeah, that’s going to sound wonderful. Apple isn’t yet giving any timetable for when this software update will be released, however.
The document also clarifies that the Apple TV 4K will only support standard lossless audio when the ALAC files become available in June. Apple has said that in most cases, the “Hi-Res Lossless” tier will require external devices like a USB DAC.
Apple uses the document to tout its “commitment” to providing customers with the best possible listening experience. It talks up both AAC — claiming that the format has become “virtually indistinguishable from the original studio recording” as encoding methods have evolved — and its Apple Digital Masters initiative. I continue to think that Apple is much more excited about spatial audio and Dolby Atmos mixes coming to Apple Music than anything to do with lossless itself.
The document also reiterates what Apple told The Verge earlier this week in regards to the AirPods Max: when listening to audio via the Lightning-to-3.5mm cable, the company says it’ll sound fantastic, but it won’t technically be “lossless” due to an analog to digital conversion that occurs in the cable. Apple again confirms that lossless quality will be exclusive to Apple Music:
Can I redownload my iTunes purchases in lossless?
If you subscribe to Apple Music, you can redownload music in lossless only from the Apple Music catalog.
The straightforward answer to the question as written is really a flat “no,” but obviously Apple wants to nudge people towards its subscription service. Apple Music will offer over 20 million songs in lossless quality at launch in June, and that total will reach over 75 million by the end of 2021.
The Epic v. Apple trial was bookended by Tims. Epic Games called its CEO Tim Sweeney as the first witness nearly three weeks ago. Yesterday, Apple called Tim Cook as the last to take the stand, before both sides make their final case to a judge on Monday. Cook was supposed to bring home Apple’s defense of its ecosystem. He did it by laying out Apple’s most high-minded principles — but also its hard financial calculations.
Epic v. Apple covers two separate issues: whether the market for in-app purchases within the App Store is unfairly monopolistic, and whether iOS itself is a monopoly that should be opened up to third-party stores and side-loaded apps. Cook addressed both with an appeal to user safety and privacy. “Privacy from our point of view is one of the most important issues of the century, and safety and security are the foundation that privacy is built upon,” he explained to an Apple attorney, echoing countless iPhone ad campaigns. “Technology has the ability to vacuum up all kinds of data from people, and we like to provide people tools to circumvent that.”
Supporting side-loaded apps would remake iOS, and it’s much easier for Cook and Apple to outline the potential downsides. Giving users control creates risk, and Cook argued that people choose iOS specifically so they won’t have to make risky decisions with sensitive data. “We’re trying to give the customer an integrated solution of hardware, software, and services,” he said. “I just don’t think you replicate that in a third party.”
Epic mustered its own arguments: people can still choose to keep their phones locked down, and they might want to access stores with even more carefully curated apps or even better privacy controls. It’s previously accused Apple of hypocrisy, pointing out anecdotal failures to catch specific apps (like a game called Ganja Farmer: Weed Empire) that violate App Store guidelines. “It’s not 100 percent. It’s not perfect. You will find mistakes being made,” Cook said when Apple’s counsel asked about those incidents. “But if you back up and look at it in the scheme of things, with 1.8 million or so apps on the store, we do a really good job.”
Luckily for Apple, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers hasn’t demonstrated much interest in completely opening up iOS. She’s asked a steady trickle of questions about in-app purchases, anti-steering provisions, and the structure of individual apps like Roblox, but rarely about third-party app distribution or sideloading. (One of those rare incidents seemed critical of Epic, too.) While Rogers’ questions don’t necessarily indicate how she’ll rule, there’s a fairly conspicuous lack of requests for more detail or clarification.
But losing mandatory in-app purchase commissions would still be a big blow for Apple. Cook used more privacy and safety claims to defend that system, saying it would be both insecure and inconvenient to let apps process payments separately. He was also, however, a little blunter about Apple’s own interests. “IAP helps Apple efficiently collect a commission” — for payment processing, but also customer service and the use of Apple’s intellectual property. Without in-app purchases, “we would have to come up with another system to invoice developers, which I think would be a mess.” If Apple let developers tell users about other payment methods, Cook said later, “we would in essence give up our total return on our IP.”
Apple called an expert yesterday to describe how its multibillion-dollar research and development costs help developers, including through APIs like Metal and CoreML. It’s not necessarily sinister for Apple to profit from these investments. But unlike better privacy and safety features, higher profit margins don’t directly improve consumer welfare, the key standard in antitrust trials. Judge Rogers ended Cook’s testimony with some of her most interesting questions yet, grilling Cook on whether in-app game purchases — like Fortnite V-Bucks and Candy Crush gold — were effectively subsidizing the rest of the App Store.
Rogers doesn’t seem to personally like video game microtransactions; she’s mused multiple times about potentially predatory impulse buys. But it matters that she singled out games. Epic has pushed to make this suit cover all App Store purchases, while Apple has been trying to limit it to digital video game sales. (That’s why witnesses spent so much time trying to define a game.) Cook’s interrogation suggested that even if iOS stays intact and “gamers” are the only audience in question, Apple still has battles left to fight.
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