Like other online platforms, Pinterest reaped the benefits of an uptick in e-commerce advertising during the holiday season.
The image-sharing platform saw a 76 percent year-over-year jump in fourth quarter revenue, to $706 million, the company said Thursday. Pinterest had 459 global million monthly active users (MAUs) in the fourth quarter, up from 442 million in its third quarter.
Pinterest said in its letter to investors that its revenue growth was mostly driven by a robust holiday season and product improvements in advertising. It saw a six-fold increase in the number of businesses that used its shopping ads format during the fourth quarter.
“We welcomed over 100 million additional monthly active users to Pinterest in 2020, more than any other year in our history,” CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann said in a statement. During a call with analysts Thursday, Silbermann said the company was encouraged by its growth among Gen Z consumers, who he said are well-served by other social media platforms, but come to Pinterest “because they want spaces where they can explore their own interests and hobbies.”
Pinterest saw revenue in the US — its biggest market — rise 67 percent in the fourth quarter, to $582 million.
“Our investments in ad tools and sales coverage continued to pay off, especially during a strong holiday season. Advertising demand was healthy across different advertiser sizes and verticals, with retail demand further building off last quarter’s recovery,” the letter said.
In response to an analyst question about Pinterest’s roadmap for helping creators make money on the platform, Silbermann said the company was bringing on creators known for their ability to teach something rather than pure entertainment. And Pinterest content has a much longer shelf life than other online platforms, he said.
“[Pinterest] creators are in an environment where there’s a strong search dynamic, more like YouTube than other social spaces that tend to be more ephemeral,” he said. The company also is experimenting with things like sponsored story pins, Silbermann added.
The company’s growth comes amid allegations of a toxic work environment; a group of shareholders is suing Silbermann and other top Pinterest executives for “marginalizing women who dared to challenge Pinterest’s White, male leadership clique,” and hurting the company’s reputation, the complaint alleges. Several women sued the company last year, alleging racial discrimination, and its former COO said she was underpaid compared to her male colleagues.
Pinterest shares were up more than 10 percent in after-market trading Thursday.
Google has apparently blocked The Great Suspender extension from Chrome, with existing users now receiving a message that it has “been disabled because it contains malware.” It’s also been removed from the Chrome Web Store, with any links to it now leading to a 404 page. Some are worried about losing their tabs, but Reddit users have found a way to recover them (via XDA-Developers’ Mishaal Rahman).
The Great Suspender was a hugely useful extension — minus the malware, at least — for keeping your browser running smoothly. The tool would automatically shut down tabs that you hadn’t looked at for a while, replacing them with a blank gray screen. Return to the tab, and you could click to reload back to where you were. Given Chrome’s tendency to hog much of a computer’s memory, the extension was a simple way to keep your browser moving a bit faster, without actually forcing you to close old tabs.
The warning Chrome gives users if they have the extension installed.
If you used the extension and are looking to get your tabs back, the steps are simple, if a bit tedious. If the tabs were open, you can go to them and click into the URL bar. There will be a ton of text that looks something like this:
At the end will be the address for the page you were on. Deleting everything before the URL and hitting enter will bring the page back to life.
Reddit user avatar_ENG also discovered you can still get those tabs back by searching your Chrome history. It’s basically the same process as above: you search for the extension’s ID, klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg, then open the tabs and remove the junk. It may be an annoying process, but it’s better than losing any work or incredible memes you had open.
Neither Google nor the developers of the extension immediately responded to a request for comment.
Intel’s 12th-Gen Alder Lake chip will bring the company’s hybrid architecture, which combines a mix of larger high-performance cores paired with smaller high-efficiency cores, to desktop x86 PCs for the first time. That represents a massive strategic shift as Intel looks to regain the uncontested performance lead against AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series processors. AMD’s Zen 3 architecture has taken the lead in our Best CPUs and CPU Benchmarks hierarchy, partly on the strength of their higher core counts. That’s not to mention Apple’s M1 processors that feature a similar hybrid design and come with explosive performance improvements of their own.
Intel’s Alder Lake brings disruptive new architectures and reportedly supports features like PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 that leapfrog AMD and Apple in connectivity technology, but the new chips come with significant risks. It all starts with a new way of thinking, at least as far as x86 chips are concerned, of pairing high-performance and high-efficiency cores within a single chip. That well-traveled design philosophy powers billions of Arm chips, often referred to as Big.Little (Intel calls its implementation Big-Bigger), but it’s a first for x86 desktop PCs.
Intel has confirmed that its Golden Cove architecture powers Alder Lake’s ‘big’ high-performance cores, while the ‘small’ Atom efficiency cores come with the Gracemont architecture, making for a dizzying number of possible processor configurations. Intel will etch the cores on its 10nm Enhanced SuperFin process, marking the company’s first truly new node for the desktop since 14nm debuted six long years ago.
As with the launch of any new processor, Intel has a lot riding on Alder Lake. However, the move to a hybrid architecture is unquestionably riskier than prior technology transitions because it requires operating system and software optimizations to achieve maximum performance and efficiency. It’s unclear how unoptimized code will impact performance.
In either case, Intel is going all-in: Intel will reunify its desktop and mobile lines with Alder Lake, and we could even see the design come to the company’s high-end desktop (HEDT) lineup.
Intel might have a few tricks up its sleeve, though. Intel paved the way for hybrid x86 designs with its Lakefield chips, the first such chips to come to market, and established a beachhead in terms of both Windows and software support. Lakefield really wasn’t a performance stunner, though, due to a focus on lower-end mobile devices where power efficiency is key. In contrast, Intel says it will tune Alder Lake for high-performance, a must for desktop PCs and high-end notebooks. There are also signs that some models will come with only the big cores active, which should perform exceedingly well in gaming.
(Image credit: Intel Alder Lake-S Demo)
Meanwhile, Apple’s potent M1 processors with their Arm-based design have brought a step function improvement in both performance and power consumption over competing x86 chips. Much of that success comes from Arm’s long-standing support for hybrid architectures and the requisite software optimizations. Comparatively, Intel’s efforts to enable the same tightly-knit level of support are still in the opening stages.
Potent adversaries challenge Intel on both sides. Apple’s M1 processors have set a high bar for hybrid designs, outperforming all other processors in their class with the promise of more powerful designs to come. Meanwhile, AMD’s Ryzen 5000 chips have taken the lead in every metric that matters over Intel’s aging Skylake derivatives.
Intel certainly needs a come-from-behind design to thoroughly unseat its competitors, swinging the tables back in its favor like the Conroe chips did back in 2006 when the Core architecture debuted with a ~40% performance advantage that cemented Intel’s dominance for a decade. Intel’s Raja Koduri has already likened the transition to Alder Lake with the debut of Core, suggesting that Alder Lake could indeed be a Conroe-esque moment.
In the meantime, Intel’s Rocket Lake will arrive later this month, and all signs point to the new chips overtaking AMD in single-threaded performance. However, they’ll still trail in multi-core workloads due to Rocket Lake’s maximum of eight cores, while AMD has 16-core models for the mainstream desktop. That makes Alder Lake exceedingly important as Intel looks to regain its performance lead in the desktop PC and laptop markets.
While Intel hasn’t shared many of the details on the new chip, plenty of unofficial details have come to light over the last few months, giving us a broad indication of Intel’s vision for the future. Let’s dive in.
Intel’s 12th-Gen Alder Lake At a Glance
Qualification and production in the second half of 2021
Hybrid x86 design with a mix of big and small cores (Golden Cove/Gracemont)
10nm Enhanced SuperFin process
LGA1700 socket requires new motherboards
PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 support rumored
Four variants: -S for desktop PCs, -P for mobile, -M for low-power devices, -L Atom replacement
Gen12 Xe integrated graphics
New hardware-guided operating system scheduler tuned for high performance
Intel Alder Lake Release Date
(Image credit: Intel via YouTube)
Intel hasn’t given a specific date for Alder Lake’s debut, but it has said that the chips will be validated for production for desktop PCs and notebooks with the volume production ramp beginning in the second half of the year. That means the first salvo of chips could land in late 2021, though it might also end up being early 2022. Given the slew of benchmark submissions and operating system patches we’ve seen, early silicon is obviously already in the hands of OEMs and various ecosystem partners.
Intel and its partners also have plenty of incentive to get the new platform and CPUs out as soon as possible, and we could have a similar situation to 2015’s short-lived Broadwell desktop CPUs that were almost immediately replaced by Skylake. Rocket Lake seems competitive on performance, but the existing Comet Lake chips (e.g. i9-10900K) already use a lot of power, and i9-11900K doesn’t look to change that. With Enhanced SuperFIN, Intel could dramatically cut power requirements while improving performance.
Intel Alder Lake Specifications and Families
Intel hasn’t released the official specifications of the Alder Lake processors, but a recent update to the SiSoft Sandra benchmark software, along with listings to the open-source Coreboot (a lightweight motherboard firmware option), have given us plenty of clues to work with.
The Coreboot listing outlines various combinations of the big and little cores in different chip models, with some models even using only the larger cores (possibly for high-performance gaming models). The information suggests four configurations with -S, -P, and -M designators, and an -L variant has also emerged:
Alder Lake-S: Desktop PCs
Alder Lake-P: High-performance notebooks
Alder Lake-M: Low-power devices
Alder Lake-L: Listed as “Small Core” Processors (Atom)
Intel Alder Lake-S Desktop PC Specifications
Alder Lake-S*
Big + Small Cores
Cores / Threads
GPU
8 + 8
16 / 24
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
8 + 6
14 / 22
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
8 + 4
12 / 20
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
8 + 2
10 / 18
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
8 + 0
8 / 16
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
6 + 8
14 / 20
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
6 + 6
12 / 18
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
6 + 4
10 / 16
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
6 + 2
8 / 14
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
6 + 0
6 / 12
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
4 + 0
4 / 8
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
2 + 0
2 / 4
GT1 – Gen12 32EU
*Intel has not officially confirmed these configurations. Not all models may come to market. Listings assume all models have Hyper-Threading enabled on the large cores.
Intel’s 10nm Alder Lake combines large Golden Cove cores that support Hyper-Threading (Intel’s branded version of SMT, symmetric multi-threading, that allows two threads to run on a single core) with smaller single-threaded Atom cores. That means some models could come with seemingly-odd distributions of cores and threads. We’ll jump into the process technology a bit later.
As we can see above, a potential flagship model would come with eight Hyper-Threading enabled ‘big’ cores and eight single-threaded ‘small’ cores, for a total of 24 threads. Logically we could expect the 8 + 8 configuration to fall into the Core i9 classification, while 8 + 4 could land as Core i7, and 6 + 8 and 4 + 0 could fall into Core i5 and i3 families, respectively. Naturally, it’s impossible to know how Intel will carve up its product stack due to the completely new paradigm of the hybrid x86 design.
We’re still quite far from knowing particular model names, as recent submissions to public-facing benchmark databases list the chips as “Intel Corporation Alder Lake Client Platform” but use ‘0000’ identifier strings in place of the model name and number. This indicates the silicon is still in the early phases of testing, and newer steppings will eventually progress to production-class processors with identifiable model names.
Given that these engineering samples (ES) chips are still in the qualification stage, we can expect drastic alterations to clock rates and overall performance as Intel dials in the silicon. It’s best to use the test submissions for general information only, as they rarely represent final performance.
The 16-core desktop model has been spotted in benchmarks with a 1.8 GHz base and 4.0 GHz boost clock speed, but we can expect that to increase in the future. For example, a 14-core 20-thread Alder Lake-P model was recently spotted at 4.7 GHz. We would expect clock rates to be even higher for the desktop models, possibly even reaching or exceeding 5.0 GHz on the ‘big’ cores due to a higher thermal budget.
Meanwhile, it’s widely thought that the smaller efficiency cores will come with lower clock rates, but current benchmarks and utilities don’t enumerate the second set of cores with a separate frequency domain, meaning we’ll have to wait for proper software support before we can learn clock rates for the efficiency cores.
We do know from Coreboot patches that Alder Lake-S supports two eight-lane PCIe 5.0 connections and two four-lane PCIe 4.0 connections, for a total of 24 lanes. Conversely, Alder Lake-P dials back connectivity due to its more mobile-centric nature and has a single eight-lane PCIe 5.0 connection along with two four-lane PCIe 4.0 interfaces. There have also been concrete signs of support for DDR5 memory. There are some caveats, though, which you can read about in the motherboard section.
Intel Alder Lake-P and Alder Lake-M Mobile Processor Specifications
Alder Lake-P* Alder Lake-M*
Big + Small Cores
Cores / Threads
GPU
6 + 8
14 / 20
GT2 Gen12 96EU
6 + 4
10 / 14
GT2 Gen12 96EU
4 + 8
12 / 16
GT2 Gen12 96EU
2 + 8
10 / 12
GT2 Gen12 96EU
2 + 4
6 / 8
GT2 Gen12 96EU
2 + 0
2 / 4
GT2 Gen12 96EU
*Intel has not officially confirmed these configurations. Not all models may come to market. Listings assume all models have Hyper-Threading enabled on the large cores.
The Alder Lake-P processors are listed as laptop chips, so we’ll probably see those debut in a wide range of notebooks that range from thin-and-light form factors up to high-end gaming notebooks. As you’ll notice above, all of these processors purportedly come armed with Intel’s Gen 12 Xe architecture in a GT2 configuration, imparting 96 EUs across the range of chips. That’s a doubling of execution units over the desktop chips and could indicate a focus on reducing the need for discrete graphics chips.
There is precious little information available for the -M variants, but they’re thought to be destined for lower-power devices and serve as a replacement for Lakefield chips. We do know from recent patches that Alder Lake-M comes with reduced I/O support, which we’ll cover below.
Finally, an Alder Lake-L version has been added to the Linux kernel, classifying the chips as ‘”Small Core” Processors (Atom),’ but we haven’t seen other mentions of this configuration elsewhere.
Intel Alder Lake 600-Series Motherboards, LGA 1700 Socket, DDR5 and PCIe 5.0
(Image credit: VideoCardz)
Intel’s incessant motherboard upgrades, which require new sockets or restrict support within existing sockets, have earned the company plenty of criticism from the enthusiast community – especially given AMD’s long line of AM4-compatible processors. That trend will continue with a new requirement for LGA 1200 sockets and the 600-series chipset for Alder Lake. Still, if rumors hold true, Intel will stick to the new socket for at least the next generation of processors (7nm Meteor Lake) and possibly for an additional generation beyond that, rivaling AMD’s AM4 longevity.
Last year, an Intel document revealed an LGA 1700 interposer for its Alder Lake-S test platform, confirming that the rumored socket will likely house the new chips. Months later, an image surfaced at VideoCardz, showing an Alder Lake-S chip and the 37.5 x 45.0mm socket dimensions. That’s noticeably larger than the current-gen LGA 1200’s 37.5 x 37.5mm.
Because the LGA 2077 socket is bigger than the current sockets used in LGA 1151/LGA 1200 motherboards, existing coolers will be incompatible, but we expect that cooler conversion kits could accommodate the larger socket. Naturally, the larger socket is needed to accommodate 500 more pins than the LGA 1200 socket. Those pins are needed to support newer interfaces, like PCIe 5.0 and DDR5, among other purposes, like power delivery.
PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 support are both listed in patch notes, possibly giving Intel a connectivity advantage over competing chips, but there are a lot of considerations involved with these big technology transitions. As we saw with the move from PCIe 3.0 to 4.0, a step up to a faster PCIe interface requires thicker motherboards (more layers) to accommodate wider lane spacing, more robust materials, and retimers due to stricter trace length requirements. All of these factors conspire to increase cost.
(Image credit: VideoCardz)
We recently spoke with Microchip, which develops PCIe 5.0 switches, and the company tells us that, as a general statement, we can expect those same PCIe 4.0 requirements to become more arduous for motherboards with a PCIe 5.0 interface, particularly because they will require retimers for even shorter lane lengths and even thicker motherboards. That means we could see yet another jump in motherboard pricing over what the industry already absorbed with the move to PCIe 4.0. Additionally, PCIe 5.0 also consumes more power, which will present challenges in mobile form factors.
Both Microchip and the PCI-SIG standards body tell us that PCIe 5.0 adoption is expected to come to the high-performance server market and workstations first, largely because of the increased cost and power consumption. That isn’t a good fit for consumer devices considering the slim performance advantages in lighter workloads. That means that while Alder Lake may support PCIe 5.0, it’s possible that we could see the first implementations run at standard PCIe 4.0 signaling rates.
Intel took a similar tactic with its Tiger Lake processors – while the chips internal pathways are designed to accommodate the increased throughput of the DDR5 interface via a dual ring bus, they came to market with DDR4 memory controllers, with the option of swapping in new DDR5 controllers in the future. We could see a similar approach with PCIe 4.0, with the first devices using existing controller tech, or the PCIe 5.0 controllers merely defaulting to PCIe 4.0.
Benchmarks have surfaced that indicate that Alder Lake supports DDR5 memory, but like the PCIe 5.0 interface, but it also remains to be seen if Intel will enable it on the leading wave of processors. Notably, every transition to a newer memory interface has resulted in higher up-front DIMM pricing, which is concerning in the price-sensitive desktop PC market.
DDR5 is in the opening stages; some vendors, like Adata, TeamGroup, and Micron, have already begun shipping modules. The inaugural modules are expected to run in the DDR5-4800 to DDR5-6400 range. The JEDEC spec tops out at DDR5-8400, but as with DDR4, it will take some time before we see those peak speeds. Notably, several of these vendors have reported that they don’t expect the transition to DDR5 to happen until early 2022.
While the details are hazy around the separation of the Alder Lake-S, -P, -M, and -L variants, some details have emerged about the I/O allocations via Coreboot patches:
Alder Lake-P
Alder Lake-M
Alder Lake-S
CPU PCIe
One PCIe 5.0 x8 / Two PCIe 4.0 x4
Unknown
Two PCIe 5.0 x8 / Two PCIe 4.0 x4
PCH
ADP_P
ADP_M
ADP_S
PCH PCIe Ports
12
10
28
SATA Ports
6
3
6
We don’t have any information for the Alder Lake-L configuration, so it remains shrouded in mystery. However, as we can see above, the PCIe, PCH, and SATA allocations vary by the model, based on the target market. Notably, the Alder Lake-P configuration is destined for mobile devices.
Intel 12th-Gen Alder Lake Xe LP Integrated Graphics
A series of Geekbench test submissions have given us a rough outline of the graphics accommodations for a few of the Alder Lake chips. Recent Linux patches indicate the chips feature the same Gen12 Xe LP architecture as Tiger Lake, though there is a distinct possibility of a change to the sub-architecture (12.1, 12.2, etc.). Also, there are listings for a GT0.5 configuration in Intel’s media driver, but that is a new paradigm in Intel’s naming convention so we aren’t sure of the details yet.
The Alder Lake-S processors come armed with the 32 EUs (256 shaders) in a GT1 configuration, and the iGPU on early samples run at 1.5 GHz. We’ve also seen Alder Lake-P benchmarks with the GT2 configuration, which means they come with 96 EUs (768 shaders). The early Xe LP iGPU silicon on the -P model runs at 1.15GHz, but as with all engineering samples, that could change with shipping models.
Alder Lake’s integrated GPUs support up to five display outputs (eDP, dual HDMI, and Dual DP++), and support the same encoding/decoding features as both Rocket Lake and Tiger Lake, including AV1 8-bit and 10-bit decode, 12-bit VP9, and 12-bit HEVC.
Intel Alder Lake CPU Architecture and 10nm Enhanced SuperFin Process
Intel pioneered the x86 hybrid architecture with its Lakefield chips, with those inaugural models coming with one Sunny Cove core paired with four Atom Tremont cores.
Compared to Lakefield, both the high- and low-performance Alder Lake-S cores take a step forward to newer microarchitectures. Alder Lake-S actually jumps forward two ‘Cove’ generations compared to the ‘big’ Sunny Cove cores found in Lakefield. The big Golden Cove cores come with increased single-threaded performance, AI performance, Network and 5G performance, and improved security features compared to the Willow Cove cores that debuted with Tiger Lake.
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
Alder Lake’s smaller Gracemont cores jump forward a single Atom generation and offer the benefit of being more power and area efficient (perf/mm^2) than the larger Golden Cove cores. Gracemont also comes with increased vector performance, a nod to an obvious addition of some level of AVX support (likely AVX2). Intel also lists improved single-threaded performance for the Gracemont cores.
It’s unclear whether Intel will use its Foveros 3D packaging for the chips. This 3D chip-stacking technique reduces the footprint of the chip package, as seen with the Lakefield chips. However, given the large LGA 1700 socket, that type of packaging seems unlikely for the desktop PC variants. We could see some Alder Lake-P, -M, or -L chips employ Foveros packaging, but that remains to be seen.
(Image credit: Intel)
Lakefield served as a proving ground not only for Intel’s 3D Foveros packaging tech but also for the software and operating system ecosystem. At its Architecture Day, Intel outlined the performance gains above for the Lakefield chips to highlight the promise of hybrid design. Still, the results come with an important caveat: These types of performance improvements are only available through both hardware and operating system optimizations.
Due to the use of both faster and slower cores that are both optimized for different voltage/frequency profiles, unlocking the maximum performance and efficiency requires the operating system and applications to have an awareness of the chip topology to ensure workloads (threads) land in the correct core based upon the type of application.
For instance, if a latency-sensitive workload like web browsing lands in a slower core, performance will suffer. Likewise, if a background task is scheduled into the fast core, some of the potential power efficiency gains are lost. There’s already work underway in both Windows and various applications to support that technique via a hardware-guided OS scheduler.
The current format for Intel’s Lakefield relies upon both cores supporting the same instruction set. Alder Lake’s larger Golden Cove cores support AVX-512, but it appears that those instructions will be disabled to accommodate the fact that the Atom Gracemont cores do not support the instructions. There is a notable caveat that any of the SKUs that come with only big cores might still support the instructions.
Intel Chief Architect Raja Koduri mentioned that a new “next-generation” hardware-guided OS scheduler that’s optimized for performance would debut with Alder Lake, but didn’t provide further details. This next-gen OS scheduler could add in support for targeting cores with specific instruction sets to support a split implementation, but that remains to be seen.
Intel fabs Alder Lake on its Enhanced 10nm SuperFin process. This is the second-generation of Intel’s SuperFin process, which you can learn more about in our deep-dive coverage.
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
Intel says the first 10nm SuperFin process provides the largest intra-node performance improvement in the company’s history, unlocking higher frequencies and lower power consumption than the first version of its 10nm node. Intel says the net effect is the same amount of performance uplift that the company would normally expect from a whole series of intra-node “+” revisions, but in just one shot. As such, Intel claims these transistors mark the largest single intra-node improvement in the company’s history.
The 10nm SuperFin transistors have what Intel calls breakthrough technology that includes a new thin barrier that reduces interconnect resistance by 30%, improved gate pitch so the transistor can drive higher current, and enhanced source/drain elements that lower resistance and improve strain. Intel also added a Super MIM capacitor that drives a 5X increase in capacitance, reducing vDroop. That’s important, particularly to avoid localized brownouts during heavy vectorized workloads and also to maintain higher clock speeds.
During its Architecture Day, Intel teased the next-gen variant of SuperFin, dubbed ’10nm Enhanced SuperFin,’ saying that this new process was tweaked to increase interconnect and general performance, particularly for data center parts (technically, this is 10nm+++, but we won’t quibble over an arguably clearer naming convention). This is the process used for Alder Lake, but unfortunately, Intel’s descriptions were vague, so we’ll have to wait to learn more.
We know that the 16-core models come armed with 30MB of L3 cache, while the 14-core / 24 thread chip has 24MB of L3 cache and 2.5 MB of L2 cache. However, it is unclear how this cache is partitioned between the two types of cores, which leaves many questions unanswered.
Alder Lake also supports new instructions, like Architectural LBRs, HLAT, and SERIALIZE commands, which you can read more about here. Alder Lake also purportedly supports AVX2 VNNI, which “replicates existing AVX512 computational SP (FP32) instructions using FP16 instead of FP32 for ~2X performance gain.” This rapid math support could be part of Intel’s solution for the lack of AVX-512 support for chips with both big and small cores, but it hasn’t been officially confirmed.
Intel 12th-Generation Alder Lake Price
Intel’s Alder Lake is at least ten months away, so pricing is the wild card. Intel has boosted its 10nm production capacity tremendously over the course of 2020 and hasn’t suffered any recent shortages of its 10nm processors. That means that Intel should have enough production capacity to keep costs within reasonable expectations, but predicting Intel’s 10nm supply simply isn’t reasonable given the complete lack of substantive information on the matter.
However, Intel has proven with its Comet Lake, Ice Lake, and Cooper Lake processors that it is willing to lose margin in order to preserve its market share, and surprisingly, Intel’s recent price adjustments have given Comet Lake a solid value proposition compared to AMD’s Ryzen 5000 chips.
We can only hope that trend continues, but if Alder Lake brings forth both PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 support as expected, we could be looking at exceptionally pricey memory and motherboard accommodations.
Starting next month, YouTube will no longer be natively available to stream on the third-generation Apple TV, first released in 2012. 9to5Mac reports that a message is being displayed to users warning them of the upcoming change. The fourth-gen Apple TV HD and fifth-gen Apple TV 4K, the two streaming boxes Apple currently sells, are unaffected.
Here’s the full message being shown to users (via 9to5Mac):
Starting early March, the YouTube app will no longer be available on Apple TV (3rd generation). You can still watch YouTube on Apple TV 4K, Apple TV HD, iPhone, or iPad. With AirPlay, you can also stream YouTube from your iOS device directly to any Apple TV (3rd generation or later).
While it will soon no longer be possible to natively run YouTube on the third-generation Apple TV itself, owners will still be able to stream the service from an iPhone or iPad using AirPlay. We’ve got a guide on how to do so right here.
Other streaming services have also gradually been dropping support for older Apple TV models. Last year, HBO pulled its HBO Now app from second- and third-generation Apple TV boxes, after initially delaying the move due to the pandemic. These apps won’t be the last, either. While its newer devices run tvOS and feature a built-in App Store, the built-in apps on Apple’s old TV boxes relied on streaming services working directly with Apple to offer support.
If you own an old Apple TV and simply can’t live without the YouTube app, then it might be time to replace your streaming device. Our current top picks for the job are the Roku Streaming Stick Plus and Roku Premiere, which are both more affordable than Apple’s current lineup of streaming devices.
As of February 2021, Spotify boasts 155 million Premium subscribers and 345 million monthly active users. The platform has long been the world’s most popular music streaming service, and with good cause – it got in on the ground floor and its simple interface and vast library make it a compelling choice even in the face of stiff competition from Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, YouTube Music, Amazon Music Unlimited and others.
But are you getting the most from your Spotify membership?
We’ve compiled a list of our favourite Spotify features, tips and tricks to help you get the most out of the service – from mastering offline listening to getting the best possible sound quality, sharing your music to filtering your recommendations. Some of these are only for Spotify Premium subscribers only though, so if you want the full experience, you’ll have to cough up the £9.99 per month…
Spotify Connect: what is it? How can you get it?
Tidal vs Spotify: which is better?
Set up
1. Get the best sound quality
First things first: head to the settings menu (below your account name, top right, and although it’s set to ‘automatic’ by default, you can change the music quality – choose Low (24kbps), Medium (96 kbps), High (160 kbps) or Very High (320 kbps). Admittedly, these aren’t going to sound as sweet as lossless Tidal Master or Qobuz files, and taking the Very High path might take up more of your data allowance to stream. But that’s a small price to pay for better listening.
2. Save music for offline listening
Spotify Premium users can download tracks to listen to offline. Not only does this save you valuable data, it also means you can listen where you don’t have mobile reception. Win-win. Save your playlists in the best possible quality, naturally. Hit the three dots then select ‘download’ on Android, or select the playlist then hit ‘download’ at the top on Apple.
3. Create a new playlist
To create a new playlist, head into the playlist category in ‘Your Library’. At the top you’ll find an music icon with a plus sign on it (Android), or tap ‘Edit’ and then ‘Create’ (iOS) start your brand new playlist. On the desktop app, you’ll see a plus-sign and ‘New Playlist in the bottom-left, underneath any playlists you’ve already created.
4. Transfer your music from other apps
You can transfer your existing playlists on other music services to Spotify. The Soundiiz website is a great way to get it done and supports all the services you’d expect.
Interface
5. See your stats
Click on your profile icon in the top left to see who’s following you and who you’re following. It will also show your most recently listened-to artists and public playlists.
6. Sort your now-playing queue
Cue tracks in Spotify by selecting ‘add to queue’ from the three dots next to the track title. On iOS? You can also swipe right on a track to add it to your now-playing playlist.
7. Search for your favourite tunes
Want to find a track from your own library? On mobile, pull down on the screen when you’re in any of the sub-categories (albums, playlists, artists) in the ‘Your Library’ tab to reveal a search bar at the top, complete with filter options. This searches your own saved tracks rather than the whole of Spotify (which is done via the main ‘Search’ icon at the bottom).
8. Listen using the web interface
Not allowed to install software on your work computer? No problem. Head to play.spotify.com and you can listen without installing the Spotify desktop app (or relying on your phone). Take that, overzealous IT department.
9. Master keyboard shortcuts
Did you know you can control Spotify using just your keyboard? The Space bar is play/pause, next track is Control-Right (Control-Command-Right on a Mac), back is Control-Left (Control-Command-Left on a Mac), Volume is Control-Up or -Down (Command-Up or -Down on a Mac) and to create a new playlist press Control-N. And that’s just scratching the surface.
Check out the full list here.
Organising your music
10. Build your own library
There are a couple of ways to build your music library. Adding your favourite tracks to playlists is one way, saving music to your own library is another. Add tracks, albums, artists radio stations, podcasts and playlists by hitting the plus/save sign (either next to the song in the desktop app, or by tapping the three dots on mobile), then access your music via ‘Your Library’.
11. Add music that isn’t on Spotify
Missing out on those artists that are absent from Spotify? Add them yourself. Go to Spotify’s ‘Preferences’ on the desktop app, scroll down and click ‘Add a Source’, then select a folder containing your own music files. You can then see them in your Spotify library – they’ll be under ‘Local Files’ in the left sidebar.
12. Recover a deleted playlist
Spotify’s Account website can help restore playlists that you’ve deleted. Log in, go to ‘Account Settings’, and select ‘Recover Playlists’. Hey presto.
13. Find clean and explicit versions of songs
If you think a lyric sounds unlike the witty line you remember, chances are an expletive was swapped out in favour of a less explicit word. Spotify can help you track down the original. Scroll down and select the pull-down menu on the right-hand side. If it says ‘1 More Release’, that could well be the explicit version.
Music curation
14. Follow some friends
Is your pal always first with the best new music? You can piggyback off their hard work by following them on Spotify. This way you’ll be able to see what they’re listening to, and pass those killer tracks off as your own discoveries. (We suppose they are, in a way.) Select ‘Find Friends’ to locate them, and instantly expand your listening.
15. Share music with friends using Spotify Codes
Spotify Codes is another way to share music. Scan a code on your friend’s phone to download a tune, or import a code posted by an artist to hear their latest single. You can also scan a code from a poster, flyer or billboard. Tap the ‘…’ context menu next to a song, and you’ll see a Spotify Code appear at the bottom of the album artwork. Use the ‘Camera’ icon to scan it, or tap the Code-enhanced artwork and save it to ‘Camera Roll’ for uploading to a social network.
16. Make a collaborative playlist
Maybe you’re putting together a set list for a friend’s wedding or a party. Start a collaborative playlist and everyone can chuck in their tuppence-worth, no matter how misguided. Right-click on the playlist name, and it’ll give you the option of making it collaborative. Then grant friends access to it, and brace yourself for some terrible choices. Alternatively, you can make a playlist secret, too.
17. Let the Radio option open your ears to similar artists
Stuck for what to listen to? ‘Radio’ can help. On desktop, select it from the left-hand pane, then choose ‘Create new station’ and pick an artist, album or playlist you like. Radio will then serve up a selection of artists/songs similar to your choice, that you’ll (hopefully) like. On mobile? Hit the three dots top right when on an artist, album or song and then select ‘Go to Radio’.
18. Filter out the chaff
Yes, of course you want to listen to James Brown. No, you don’t want anything from his Lost ’80s years. Thankfully you can filter out the wilderness era. Type the artist name in the search bar followed by the years that you want to hear (with no spaces). For example “James Brown year:1970-77”.
19. Sort out your search
Use the word “Not” after your search term to omit artists you don’t want, and the “+” symbol or “And” to include those you do.
20. Listen to Spotify’s Weekly Discover Playlist
This is a playlist of 30 tracks Spotify compiles based on your listening habits. It tends to be scarily good. It updates every Monday and sits in the ‘Made For You’ section (or in Browse – Discover, or you could simply type ‘Discover Weekly’ into the search bar). There’s also the Release Radar playlist that updates every Friday with brand new music releases.
21. Listen to your Daily Mixes
Too impatient to wait a whole week? Spotify now offers six Daily Mix playlists that are tailored to users’ listening habits.
22. Check out the What Hi-Fi? playlist
And we have to mention our own playlist… Each month, we update our Spotify playlist so you can see what we’ve been listening to over the past four weeks. It’s a great mix of tunes we use to test our review kit, as well as a few personal favourites from the team. You know it makes sense.
Connecting other devices
23. Listen through your home cinema speakers
Using the Google Chromecast streaming dongle, you can play Spotify through the speakers attached to your TV. Just select ‘Chromecast’ from the ‘Devices Available’ section of the Spotify app and get playing.
24. Control it with your voice
Good news. The Amazon Echo and Echo Dot speakers play nice with Spotify. Just connect your Spotify account in the Alexa app, and then start barking commands like “Alexa, play me some Bowie on Spotify!” and the Echo will do as it’s told. You’ll be grooving to Let’s Dance in no time. If you set Spotify as your preferred streaming service, you won’t even need to request Spotify by name, either. Apple users can control music playback by asking Siri, too.
25. Send music to your speakers with Spotify Connect
Premium subscribers can use their phone as a remote control and play music on connected Spotify Connect speakers, such as Sonos – although certain devices (the PlayStation 4, for example) are happy to work with Spotify Free. Play a song on your phone and make it fullscreen. Select the ‘speaker’ icon at the bottom of the screen, then select your speakers. Instant house party.
26. Listen in your Uber
Connect your Spotify account in the Uber app and you can then take control of your car’s stereo (assuming your driver has allowed it). They’ll love your choice of music, we’re sure…
More features
(Image credit: Spotify)
27. Share songs instantly with anyone
Heard a song you just have to send to a friend? Tap the three dots, then ‘Share’, then send it on to the social media platform (Facebook, Instagram Stories, Skype even), your WhatsApp groups, or simply copy the song link.
28. Preview music on iOS
Tap and hold the title of a track, album or playlist, and you’ll get a preview. On a playlist or album you’ll see the first five tracks – slide over each piece of cover art and you can preview each song.
29. Use private listening to hide your guilty pleasures
Not everyone needs to know about your love of Wang Chung. If you want to keep your listening private, click ‘Settings’ (top right), then ‘Private Session’ on Android or ‘Settings’ then ‘Social’ then ‘Private Session’ on iOS. That way, friends won’t know you’ve spent all morning blissing out to big-haired saxophone-heavy ’80s cheese.
30. Make a playlist tailored to your running speed
Spotify can also pick tracks that are close to the same tempo as your running speed. Start running, pick a running playlist from the ‘Browse’ screen, and Spotify will use your phone’s sensors to select songs to suit your stride. See it in action here.
31. Link to a specific part of a track
If there’s a great solo you want to alert someone to, you don’t have to tell them to skip to 2:53 in the track. Just send them a link and they’ll jump right in at the relevant part. On desktop, copy the track’s URI (uniform resource identifier) by right-clicking the track and selecting ‘Copy Spotify URI’. Then paste it into an email or text message, and add ‘#time2:53’ to the end. When the respondent clicks it, they’ll be transported to exactly the part you were talking about. Magic.
32. Find out about live gigs
OK, large gatherings aren’t the thing right now, but looking ahead: Spotify can help you see your favourite act in the flesh. To see when an act might be playing near you, click ‘Browse’ on your desktop app, then ‘Concerts’ to see which acts you’ve listened to are playing nearby. Going to be out of town? Just change your location to see what’s happening near you.
33. Listen to podcasts
Did you know you can listen to your favourite podcasts on Spotify? Well, now you do. Head to ‘Browse’ and then ‘Podcasts’ (on desktop) to follow your faves, and go to the Podcasts section in ‘Your Library’ to find all your saved podcasts.
Best music streaming services 2021: free streams to hi-res audio
11 of the best Spotify playlists to listen to right now
Robinhood is running its first Super Bowl ad, just as the company faces a growing brand crisis. CNBCreports that the commercial marks Robinhood’s biggest brand campaign, and it focuses on the idea that anyone can be an investor. That’s been at the center of Robinhood’s message since it was founded seven years ago, but recent stock restrictions have undermined Robinhood’s entire brand.
Robinhood temporarily banned small investors from buying stock in companies like GameStop last week, before placing restrictions on stocks associated with r/WallStreetBets — including GameStop, AMC, and Nokia. The move angered thousands of Robinhood customers trying to buy stocks, and the company’s app got review-bombed on the Google Play Store. While Google initially tried to salvage the app’s rating, it plummeted back down to just one star yesterday.
Robinhood is also facing dozens of lawsuits over the GameStop stock freeze, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) also called on Congress to investigate the Robinhood app. Robinhood claims the restrictions were put in place due to clearinghouses suddenly requiring much higher deposits, but the company hasn’t specifically explained the cryptocurrency restrictions it also put in place.
This new Super Bowl commercial doesn’t address any of the controversy around Robinhood right now, making it rather awkwardly timed. CNBCreports that Robinhood’s chief marketing officer, Christina Smedley, says the ad is designed to let people know more about the app. “It felt like this was a great stage for us to remind people about what we stand for and remind people about why the company was put into existence in the first place,” says Smedley.
Robinhood has disabled comments on the YouTube version of the commercial, but a version on Twitter is already seeing negative responses to this new Super Bowl ad.
Epson’s EH-LS300 UST projector is practical for everyday use, with some limitations, as well as for truly immersive bigscreen movie nights.
For
Powerful bright image
Free-to-air TV catch-up services
Convenient way to get a really large picture
Against
No Netflix or Prime support
No Ethernet
1080i/50 and 576i/50 issues
Sound+Image mag review
(Image credit: Future)
This review originally appeared in Sound+Image magazine, one of What Hi-Fi?’s Australian sister publications. Click here for more information on Sound+Image, including digital editions and details on how you can subscribe.
Ultra-short-throw projectors are going great guns. Even mainstream companies not previously or not recently involved in projection (LG, Samsung, Hisense) have realised that a projector sitting on a bench can deliver a large-screen ‘TV-like’ experience with a convenience that a conventional projector cannot when it has to be pushed back in the room or hung on a ceiling.
As a consequence the ultra-short-throw is rapidly evolving. Since it’s going to work like a TV, shouldn’t it have speakers? Shouldn’t it be smart, like a TV? Yes it should. So here comes Epson, a company which declares itself the world no.1 in projection (on the reasonable basis it has been declared so by Futuresource Consulting for the last 17 consecutive years), with models for just this space. The ‘4K Pro UHD’ EH-LS500 arrived first, and now this EH-LS300, which offers Full-HD resolution of 1920 x 1080. With such underlying expertise, but a lower resolution, does it deliver the promised new age of UST?
Build
Ultra-short-throw projectors use a combination of lenses and mirrors to cast the picture up onto a screen almost immediately above them. The Epson EpiqVision EH-LS300B is a fairly compact specimen at 467mm wide and 400mm deep. Inside there are three 15.5mm LCD projector panels using Epson’s C2 Fine technology, and a laser diode. That kind of light engine works by firing the laser into some phosphor, which then produces a bright white light.
The use of this kind of light engine means several good things. Firstly, long life. The projector is rated at 20,000 hours of lamp life. Secondly, the projector turns on fast – 5.5 seconds when in standby, according to our stopwatch, or 6.5 seconds if it has been disconnected from power. It goes off fast as well.
And the lamp can be controlled in level to help darken scenes. Epson says that the dynamic contrast ratio is as much as 2.5 million-to-1 (on the datasheet) or 1.5 million-to-1 (in the US manual we found online).
There are two HDMI inputs, a USB socket for playing back video content from a USB stick, and Wi-Fi for the smart TV stuff. Surprisingly, there’s no Ethernet connection – we’d prefer that option rather than having to rely on Wi-Fi in our somewhat RF-congested modern environments. But it is dual-band Wi-Fi – 2.4GHz and 5GHz – supporting the 801.11ac standard, so it may well outperform the usually-installed 100Mbps Ethernet of many devices. (Our 100Mbps test clip was pretty choppy… but we do have an extremely busy Wi-Fi environment.)
Best projectors 2021: Full HD, 4K, portable, short throw
(Image credit: Epson)
Sound
A nice touch: built-in sound that is quite good. As always, we believe that the sound of your system should match the scale of the video. Since the Epson EpiqVision EH-LS300B delivers big vision, a decent external sound system should be in order. But absent that, we were quite impressed with the audio built into the projector. Epson relied on the audio expertise of Yamaha for this: a 2.1-channel forwards-firing audio system with 20W of power, better than any actual TV that we’ve used – and we’ve used plenty. We also checked the Audio Return Channel capability via HDMI to a connected home theatre receiver, and it worked perfectly well.
Setting up
The projector is available on its own at £2500 ($2000, AU$4000). But in Australia you can also get it as a package with an ‘Ambient Light Rejection’ screen in 100 inches (AU$5099 package) or 120 inches (AU$5699). These employ a surface treatment which reduces the reflection of light coming from above or directly in front, increasing their contrast ratio when there’s light in the room. These screens weren’t available to us at the time of review, so we used our regular viewing screen.
Epson EH-LS300 tech specs
(Image credit: Epson)
Projection technology: 3 x 15.5mm C2 Fine LCD panels
Resolution: 1920 x 1080 pixels
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Lamp: Laser diode
Lamp life: 20,000 hours (Normal and Quiet modes)
Brightness: 3600 lumens (both white and colour); 1800 lumens (ECO mode)
Inputs: 2 x HDMI, 1 x USB, Wi-Fi
Outputs: Optical digital audio
Control/other: Mini-USB (Service)
Dimensions (whd): 467 x 133 x 400mm
Weight: 7.2kg
In a couple of ways an ultra-short-throw projector is a little trickier to set up than a regular projector. There is no zoom lens, for example, so the size of the picture is determined entirely by the distance between the projector and the screen – far less than a conventional projector, but still significant for the largest screen sizes. For a 100-inch screen, the distance from the wall to the back of the projector (the side facing the wall) should be 26.6cm. With the largest recommended screen size of 120 inches, the distance is just 38.6cm. The projector itself is getting on for 40cm deep, so its front will end up more than 75cm from the wall – which is a lot of bench depth.
The other slightly tricky thing is that the image is cast at such an extreme angle you have to adjust everything with better-than-millimetre precision. The slightest angle to one side and you have a marked trapezoid of a picture. You really don’t want to be nudging the projector when you’re dusting.
But there is a clever adjustment system for picture geometry. There’s even a dedicated button on the remote. With this you can drag the corners of a box to make sure everything’s square. It’s kind of like a supercharged keystone correction system. But like keystone correction, it’s done digitally, which means that Full-HD input signals are no longer directly mapped onto the display pixels, so detail is lost. So it’s best avoided if you can.Get the physical placement right instead.
Last thing on physical set-up: we found the focus adjust lever quite spongy, so a bit tricky to get the focus exactly right. With perseverance we did succeed. (One of the oddities about this kind of projector: focus adjustment has basically no effect at all at the bottom of the screen, which is always in focus, and a massive effect at the top.)
As for the smart set-up, Android TV has this well under control. You just use the Google Home app on your phone – it works on iPhones as well – which talks you through with very little fuss. We had the unit connected within a couple of minutes.
(Image credit: Epson)
Performance
It turns out that 3600 lumens allows a surprisingly viewable picture even under the full glare of our room’s fluorescent tubes! Not that we did any kind of critical viewing that way, we hasten to add. But we suspect that kids would be perfectly satisfied with afternoon cartoons served this way, especially onto an Epson directional screen. And it’s fine for the news and such. So consider this not just a home cinema device, but a (kind of) everyday TV.
Then, when night fell, we started to use it as a real home cinema projector. And we were impressed. What impressed us? The colour and the black levels. The subjective black levels were entirely satisfying. Which is to say that with all the material we viewed – including HDR content from 4K Blu-ray – the black elements of the picture seemed, well, entirely black. And yes, 4K Blu-ray, because even though the projector delivers 1080p output, it supports Ultra-HD inputs including HDR (and Dolby Vision, which it treats as HDR).
We jammed in as much night-time viewing as we could in the time available, and we must say that we found it entirely satisfying: bold, accurate colours; sharp, detailed image.
The EpiqVision quickly demonstrated that it’s not really one for interlaced video in Australia. With both 576i/50 and 1080i/50, it seemed simply to assume that all such signals were video-sourced. So it applied motion-adaptive deinterlacing, rather than checking to see if a simple weave might be better for any given bit of video. Most of the time you won’t notice this, but occasionally there’ll be some lines or grid in the picture which adversely interact with the processing and develop distracting moire patterns. The solution, as always: use a source with good quality deinterlacing.
Best portable projectors: the best mini projectors 2021
Network streaming
When you first set the Epson up, you’re offered a default bunch of apps, including (in Australia) TV station apps such as iView, SBS On Demand and so on. There’s YouTube, Google play Movies & TV, Disney+ and Stan, Vimeo, Spotify and Tidal and a whole lot more. Even after we’d finished the setting up, it took a little while to download and install them one by one. It was kind of fun watching them pop up in the list of apps as they were loaded. When it had finished, we went to fire up Netflix – one of the paid video services to which we subscribe. We couldn’t find it.
So we figured we’d try Google Assistant to help us find it. A press of the microphone button on the remote and the utterance of the word Netflix, and the projector announced in the familiar Google Assistant voice, ‘Here’s Netflix on the Google play Store’. And there was, indeed, the play Store entry for Netflix. Only problem was, at the bottom of the screen it said, ‘Your device isn’t compatible with this version.’ This was also the case for Amazon’s Prime Video.
We checked the projector’s website and, sure enough, there it was in the fine print: “Not all streaming apps are natively available on the EpiqVision EH-LS300B. An external streaming media device is required to stream some services, including Netflix. Netflix cannot be streamed using Chromecast from Android TV, iOS, Mac or Windows devices.” (We assume by that ‘Android TV’ that Epson actually means Android, as in an Android phone.)
In other words, not only does this projector not support Netflix, apparently you can’t stream Netflix from your phone to the projector via Chromecast. We tried. In fact, we could kind of stream Netflix from our phone, but only in the slowest, choppiest most broken-up way. To compare, we plugged an actual Chromecast with Google TV device into one of the EpiqVision’s HDMI inputs, and found that Netflix would stream fairly smoothly via that route.
YouTube, by contrast, streamed smoothly via either route, as did iView and SBS On Demand and Stan. We did find it quite puzzling why any version of Android TV would not support Netflix and Prime, the second and fourth most popular streaming services (that’s counting YouTube as being number one).
Apparently the projector is also able to support video calls using the Epson Online Meeting app – powered by Zoom. You’ll need to plug a camera and microphone into the USB socket for that.
(Image credit: Epson)
Verdict
Aside from the inability to play Netflix and Prime Video direct, we were impressed. The Epson EpiqVision EH-LS300B delivers a bright and impressive image to a large screen – and we would indeed recommend using a screen such as one of Epson’s, rather than a non-flat non-reflecting bit of wall, because we assure you, walls will never get the image truly flat. Plus the good quality sound and the extremely long-life light source makes this unit practical for everyday use, with some limitations, as well as for truly immersive bigscreen movie nights.
Performance for Nvidia’s RTX 3060 mobile has been difficult to understand, with the 3060 (as well as RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 mobile) being capable of running in a range of power configurations depending on the laptop model. Now we have some actual data on how much faster or slower the different TDP configurations are. (Note: We’re using “TDP,” aka Thermal Design Power, and “TGP,” aka Total Graphics Power, interchangeably. Basically, we’re talking about the total amount of power the graphics card subsystem is design to dissipate.)
Hardware reviewer Techspot (known as Hardware Unboxed on YouTube), recently checked out a pair of RTX 3060 equipped laptops and ran them in an assortment of gaming benchmarks. The notebook used was the XMG Apex 17 with two different configurations, one with a Ryzen 7 5800H CPU and a 115W configured RTX 3060, the other equpped with an Intel Core i7-10870H and an 80W configured RTX 3060. (Side note: the 5800H probably has more thermal headroom than the 10870H.)
Keep in mind, both notebooks feature Max-Q Dynamic Boost, which can give the RTX 3060 mobile up to an additional 15W of power when CPU utilization is low enough, so the TDP listed for each RTX 3060 mobile is simply the baseline spec.
(Image credit: TechSpot)
Comparing all the gaming results together, TechSpot found that the performance gap between the higher and lower-powered RTX 3060s was on average 11%, with a few outliers in the 20% range and others in the <5% range.
Of course, the processor choice affects these results somewhat. TechSpot does say that most of the games tested were primarily GPU bottlenecked, but there are certainly games that still favor Intel’s architecture.
As expected, the performance differences — at least for the 80W vs 115W model — will vary based on the games you play. That’s especially true with Dynamic Boost 2.0 working in the background, which is also affecting these results.
Unfortunately, TechSpot wasn’t able to test the 60W RTX 3060, and frankly, that model is probably the most interesting to test. At 60W, you are almost cutting the 3060’s power consumption in half when compared with the 115W model. It will be interesting to see how well that configuration does within the power contraints.
We’re working to get RTX 30-series laptops in for review as well, and we’ve already looked at the Asus Flow X13, Alienware m15 R4 and Alienware m17 R4. Unfortunately, none of those are equally equipped when it comes to hardware. Not surprisingly, the specific laptop design will impact the performance quite a bit.
Google parent company Alphabet weathered the tail end of 2020 to post better-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter of the year. But the bigger story is that Alphabet broke out Google Cloud’s sales for the first time ever, revealing an eye-popping $5.6 billion annual loss last year, but a nearly 50 percent jump in revenue (to $13 billion) compared to 2019. And Google Cloud maintained that growth well into the fourth quarter, when the division generated $3.8 billion in sales. That’s a 46 percent jump from the fourth quarter of 2019.
Those numbers are notable for a few reasons: Google Cloud lags behind the competition, in particular Microsoft’s Azure platform and Amazon’s dominant Amazon Web Services, the CEO of which was just promoted to run the entirety of Amazon now that co-founder Jeff Bezos is stepping back into an executive chairman role in a surprise announcement this afternoon. But the division’s fast-growing revenues, second only to the search giant’s core ad business, suggest Google could become a major cloud player and fiercer competitor to Azure and AWS in the years to come.
The message is now clear: cloud computing is the dominant business for these major tech titans, and the execs who can excel in the cloud industry are stepping in to take the reins of the entire business. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella famously ran Azure before he took over for Steve Ballmer, and Google Cloud chief Thomas Kurian was a top exec at Oracle before replacing VMWare co-founder Diane Green in the top Google Cloud role. These are the people running the show at the most important divisions of the most important tech companies, until they get promoted to steer the entire ship apparently.
In many ways, Google’s cloud business is going through the same growing pains its competitors once did; it took AWS nearly 10 years to become profitable for the first time, and it’s now a more than $45 billion annual business. But Google is facing an uphill battle, one that will take a considerable time and financial investment to come to fruition.
Thankfully, Alphabet is not dependent on Google’s cloud business, as Amazon relies on AWS, to make considerable profit every quarter, thanks to Google’s dominant ad business that brought in a staggering $52.9 billion in revenue last quarter alone and nearly $170 billion for the year.
The Google Services division’s profit margins there are immense — Google made more than $19 billion in net income for the fourth quarter of 2020, a 41 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2019. YouTube also continues to grow at a steady clip. The video site posted more than $6.8 billion in revenue last quarter, a 47 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2019.
The always fluctuating Other Bets division — which includes Alphabet’s X lab, Waymo, and other non-Google companies — took in $196 million last quarter and $657 million in all of 2020, but it also posted an operating loss of $4.48 billion for the year.
A speed demon that prioritizes raw performance, the Alienware m17 R4 puts plenty of pop into a sleek but bulky chassis.
For
Unrivaled performance
Snappy keyboard
Attractive design
At present, RTX 3080 is the fastest laptop graphics card around, but not all RTX 3080-powered laptops are created equal. Many vendors use Nvidia’s Max-Q technology, which prioritizes power efficiency and low fan noise over high performance. Alienware’s m17 R4, however, seeks to pump out every possible frame, deploying a special cooling system and eschewing Max-Q to make its top-of-the-line configuration one of the best gaming laptops,
But the Alienware m17 R4 is not just a speed demon. Starting at $2,106 ($3,586 as tested), this laptop has a snappy keyboard, a sleek sci-fi inspired design with plenty of RGB and an optional 360 Hz screen. You just have to live with a heavy chassis and the occasional bout of fan noise.
Editor’s Note: The Alienware m17 R4 review unit we tested came with a 512GB boot drive and 2TB RAID 0 storage drive. While this hardware is for sale, it is normally shipped to consumers with the 2TB RAID 0 drive as boot drive.
3x USB Type-A 3.2, 1x HDMI 2.2, 1x mini DisplayPort 1.4, 1x Thunderbolt 3, 1x microSD card reader
Camera
1280 x 720
Battery
86 WHr
Power Adapter
330W
Dimensions (WxDxH)
15.74 x 11.56 x 0.87 inches
Weight
6.6 pounds
Price (as configured)
$3,586
Design of the Alienware m17 R4
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The Alienware m17 R4 has the same sci-fi inspired “Legend” design as both its immediate predecessor, the m17 R3, and its sibling, the Alienware m15 R4. Available in “lunar light: white or “dark side of the moon” (black), the m17 R4 looks like a giant starship, rocketing through space. The body (ours was white) has a black rear end that juts out like the jet engine on the back of an imperial cruiser. The number 17 on the lid appears in a sci-fi font that you might find adorning a secret warehouse at Area 51.
There’s a honeycomb pattern for the vents on the back, above the keyboard and on the bottom surface. We can only assume that Alienware aliens live in some kind of hive where they are all doing CUDA core calculations.
And, of course, there’s lots of RGB lights to brighten the mood in outer space. The keyboard has four-zone RGB and there are customizable lights on the back edge and in the alien heads on the back of the lid and the power button.
The chassis is made from premium materials: a magnesium alloy with matte white or black paint, covered by a clear coat for extra durability. The interior uses Alienware’s cryo-tech cooling technology which has 12-phase graphics voltage regulation, 6-phase CPU voltage regulation and a CPU vapor chamber.
At 6.6 pounds and 15.74 x 11.56 x 0.87 inches, the Alienware m17 R4 is not exactly light or thin, not that would you expect that from a 17-inch laptop with a Core i9 CPU and RTX 3080 graphics. By comparison, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G (5.95 pounds, 15.9 x 10.8 x 1.0 inches) and Razer Blade Pro 17 (6.1 pounds, 15.6 x 10.2 x 0.8 inches) are both significantly lighter, though the Aorus is thicker. The Asus ROG Flow X13, which we’re also comparing to the m17, is much thinner and lighter (2.87 pounds, 11.77 x 8.74 x 0.62 inches), because it’s a 13-inch laptop that gets its RTX 3080 graphics via an external dock.
The Alienware m17 R4 has plenty of room for ports. On the right side, there are two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, along with a micro SD card reader. The left side contains a Killer RJ-45 Ethernet 2.5 Gbps port, a 3.5mm audio jack and another USB Type-A port. The back holds a Thunderbolt 3 port, a mini DisplayPort 1.4, an HDMI 2.1 connection, Alienware’s proprietary graphics amplifier port and the power connector.
Gaming Performance on the Alienware m17 R4
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Sporting an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU and an Intel Core i9-10980HK CPU, our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 is as fast of a gaming laptop as you can get right now. Thanks to Alienware’s strong cryo-tech cooling solution and the company’s willingness to include a full version of the RTX 3080, rather than the Max-Q variants in some thinner notebooks.
When I played Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra RTX settings, the game ranged between 61 and 72 frames per second, depending on how intense the action was at any given time. The frame rate improved to between 85 and 94 fps after I changed to Ultra settings with no RTX. In both cases, the fan noise was really loud by default. Changing the fan profile to quiet improved this somewhat while shaving only a couple of fps off, and only in intense scenes.
The Alienware m17 R4 hit a rate of 120 fps in Grand Theft Auto V at very high settings (1080p), eclipsing the Gigabyte Aorus 17G and its Max-Q-enabled RTX 3080 and Core i7-10870H CPU by 20%. The Asus ROG Flow 13 with its Ryzen 9 5980HS CPU and external RTX 3080 dock, was also a good 13% behind while the RTX 2080 Super-powered Razer Blade Pro 17 brought up the rear.
On the very-demanding Red Dead Redemption at medium settings, the m17 R4 achieved an impressive rate of 79.7 fps, besting the Aorus 17G and ROG Flow X13 by more than 20%. Saddled with last year’s card, the Razer Blade Pro 17 was a full 29 % behind.
Alienware’s behemoth exceeded 100 fps again in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, hitting 103 while the Aorus 17G and the ROG Flow X13 hovered in the mid 80s and 60s. On this test, surprisingly, the Razer Blade Pro 17 came close to matching the m17 R4.
Far Cry New Dawn at Ultra settings also provided a great example of the Alienware m15 R4’s dominance. It hit a full 105 fps where its nearest competitor, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G could only manage 92 fps with the Asus ROG Flow X13 and Razer Blade Pro 17 were both in the 80s.
To see how well the Alienware m17 R4 performs over the long haul, we ran the Metro Exodus benchmark at RTX, the highest settings level, 15 times at 1080p. The laptop was remarkably consistent, averaging 75.6 fps with a high of 76.2 and a low of 75.4. During that time, the average CPU speed was 4.19 GHz with a peak of 5.088 GHz. By comparison, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, got an average frame rate of just 59.6 fps with an average CPU speed of 3.47 GHz and the Asus ROG Flow X13 managed a slightly-higher 65.2 fps with an average CPU speed of 3.89 GHz.
Productivity Performance of Alienware m17 R4
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With its Core i9-10980HK CPU, 32GB of RAM and dual storage drives, which include both a 2TB RAID 0 PCIe SSD (2 x 1TB) and a 512GB SSD, and that RTX 3080, our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 can be a powerful work tool.
On Geekbench 5, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall performance, the m17 R4 got a single-core score of 1,318 and a multi-core score of 8,051, which wa slightly ahead of the of the Core i7-10870H-powered Gigabyte Aorus 17G on both counts but behind the Asus ROG Flow X13 and its Ryzen 9 5980HS on single-core performance while creaming the Razer Blade Pro 17, which we tested with a Core i7-10875H.
The storage in our review unit came misconfigured slightly, with a 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD as boot drive and a significantly faster 2TB RAID 0 drive made from two 1TB NVMe PCIe SSDs. Dell sells this hardware, but consumers receive units with the 2TB as boot and the 512GB SSD as a secondary, storage drive.
In our tests, copying about 25GB of files, the 512GB drive managed a mediocre 379.7 MBps, but the 2TB drive hit an impressive 1305.5 MBps, which beats the Aorus 17G (869 MBps), the ROG Flow X13 (779.5 MBps) and the Blade Pro 17 (925.2 MBps).
The Alienware m17 R4 took just 6 minutes and 44 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake. That time is 21% faster than the Aorus 17G, 18% quicker than the Flow X13 and a full 29% ahead of the Blade Pro 17.
Display on Alienware m17 R4
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The Alienware m17 R4 comes with a choice of three different, 17-inch display panels: a 1080p panel with 144 Hz refresh rate, a 4K, 60 Hz panel and the 1080p, 360 Hz panel in our review unit. Our panel provided sharp images and accurate but mostly unexciting colors, along with smooth, tear-free gaming.
When I watched a trailer for upcoming volcano-disaster-flick Skyfire, the red-orange of lava bursts was lively and the green trees in a forest seemed true-to-life. Fine details like the wrinkles in actor Jason Isaacs’ forehead also stood out.
In a 4K nature video of a Costa Rican jungle, details like the scales on a snake and colors like the red on a parrot’s feathers were also strong, but not nearly as strong as when I viewed it on the 4K, OLED panel from the Alienware m15 R4 I tested recently. On both videos, viewing angles on the matte display were strong as colors didn’t fade even at 90 degrees to the left or right.
In Cyberpunk 2077, details like the threads on a rug or the barrel of a gun were prominent and colors like the red and yellow in the UI seemed accurate but didn’t pop.
The Alienware m17 R4’s display registered a strong 316.2 nits of brightness on our light meter, outpacing the Aorus 17G (299.6), the Razer Blade Pro 17 (304.4) and the Asus ROG Flow X13 (281.6). According to our colorimeter, the screen can reproduce a solid 80.6% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is about on par with the Aorus 17G and slightly behind the Razer Blade Pro 17, but miles ahead of the ROG Flow X13.
Keyboard and Touchpad on Alienware m17 R4
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
With a deep, 1.7mm of travel, great tactile feedback and a full numeric keypad, the Alienware m17 R4 offers a fantastic typing experience. On the tenfastfingers.com typing test, I scored a strong 102 words-per-minute with a 3% error rate, which is a little better than my typical 95 to 100 wpm and 3 to 5% rate.
Not only does the keyboard have a full numeric keypad, but it also sports four customizable macro keys above the pad on the top row. The Alienware Command Center software allows you to set these to launch a program, enter text or use a pre-recorded set of keystrokes when you hit them. I found programming them very unintuitive, however.it. Alienware Command Center also allows you to set RGB colors or lightning effects for four different zones on the keyboard.
The 3.1 x 4.1 glass touchpad, which uses Windows precision drivers, offers great navigation with just the right amount of friction. Whether I was navigating around the desktop or using multitouch gestures such as pinch-zoom or three-finger swipe, the pad was always accurate and responsive.
Audio on Alienware m17 R4
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The Alienware m17 R4’s audio system outputs sound that’s loud enough to fill a mid-sized room and rich enough to dance to. When I played AC/DC’s “Back in Black” with the volume all the way up, the sound was mostly accurate, but some of the high-pitched percussion sounds were a little harsh. Earth, Wind and Fire’s bass-heavy “September” sounded great, with a clear separation of sound where instruments such as the horns section appeared to come from a different side of the notebook than, for example, the drums.
Gunshots and the sound of my NPC friend Jackie yelling at me to stay down sounded sharp and clear in Cyberpunk 2077. However, I had to turn the volume way up to compensate for the fan noise when the system was on high performance settings. Even on the “quiet” thermal setting, fan noise was quite prominent.
The preloaded Alienware Command Center app has an audio section that lets you tweak the sound settings and choose among profiles such as Music, Movie, Shooter and Role Play. I found that the default “Alienware” profile sounded about the same as the Music one, but disabling the audio enhancement definitely made the sound flatter.
Upgradeability of the Alienware m17 R4
(Image credit: Future)
The Alienware m17 R4 has three different M.2 SSD slots, all of which are accessible and user upgradeable. The first slot is an short 2230 length and the other two are both the normal 2280 size. Unfortunately, the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard and therefore not replaceable.
Opening the Alienware m17 R4 should be easy: there are eight Philips-head screws, some of which come out and the others of which you can just loosen, on the bottom panel. In our testing, getting the screws loosened was easy by prying off the bottom panel was challenging and required several minutes with a spudger. Once the panel is off, all three SSDs are visible, but are covered by copper heat sinks you can easily unscrew.
Battery Life on Alienware m17 R4
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Forget about using the Alienware m17 R4 without a power outlet for any length of time. The laptop lasted just just 2 hours and 5 minutes on our battery test, which involves surfing the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. That’s awful in comparison to all of its competitors as both the Gigabyte Aorus 17G and Razer Blade Pro 17 lasted for an identical 4 hours and 41 minutes. But this is a 17-inch, 6.6-pound laptop so portability isn’t a primary concern.
Heat on Alienware m17 R4
The main touchpoints on the Alienware m17 R4 stay relatively cool when you’re not gaming and remain warm but tolerable when you are. After we streamed a YouTube video for 15 minutes, the keyboard hit a reasonable 35.5 degrees Celsius (95.9 degrees Fahrenehitt), the touchpad was a chilly 26.2 degrees Celsius (79.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and the underside was just 36.6 degrees Celsius (97.9 degrees Fahrenheit).
After running the Metro Exodus benchmark for 15 minutes to simulate gaming, those temperatures were obviously higher. The keyboard hit 35.5 degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit), the touchpad measured 35 degrees (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and the bottom hit 50 degrees (122 degrees Fahrenheit).
When I played Cyberpunk 2077, the area around the WASD keys measured about 40 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) but the key caps themselves didn’t feel uncomfortably warm to touch. At performance settings, the fan noise was extremely loud.
Webcam on Alienware m17 R4
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The Alienware m17 R4’s 720p webcam is nothing special. Even when I shot it in a well-lit room, an image of my face was filled with visual noise and fine details like the hairs in my beard were blurry while colors such as the blue in my shirt and the green on the walls were muted. You’ll get by with this built-in camera if you need to, but you’d be better off springing for one of the best webcams.
Software and Warranty on Alienware m17 R4
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The Alienware m17 R4 comes preloaded with a handful of useful first-party utilities.
Alienware Mobile Connect allows you to control your Android handset or iPhone from your laptop, taking calls and texts for the desktop.
Alienware Command Center lets you control all the RGB lighting effects, set keyboard macros, tweak audio settings and even modify the performance settings and thermals to go for better performance or quieter and cooler temps. You can even change the max frequency, voltage and voltage offset for the CPU manually if you have an unlocked CPU and want to try overclocking.
As with any Windows laptop, there’s also a small amount of preloaded bloatware, including a trial of Microsoft Office, links to download Photoshop Express and Hulu and free-to-play games like Roblox.
Alienware backs the m17 R4 with a standard one year warranty on parts and labor that includes in-home service (if there was already a remote diagnosis). You can pay extra to extend the warranty up to five years and you can add accidental damage protection with no deductible.
Configurations of Alienware m17 R4
When you purchase the Alienware m17 R4 from Dell.com, you can custom configure it with your choice of a Core i7 or Core i9 CPU, RTX 3070 or 3080 GPU, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 4TB of storage. You can choose white or blackcolor options and you can also pay extra to get per-key RGB lighting instead of the standard 4-zone lighting we tested.
You also get a choice of screens that includes 144 Hz and 360 Hz 1080p panels, along with a 4K, 60 Hz panel that promises to hit 100 % of the Adobe RGB color gamut. If you value image quality over fps, we recommend the latter, because the color on our 360 Hz panel was ok, but not exciting.
Our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 currently goes for $3,586.79. For that price, you get the Core i9-10980HK, RTX 3080 graphics, the 360 Hz display, 32GB of RAM and a combination of storage drives that includes two, 1TB M.2 PCIe SSDS in RAID 0 and a 512GB M.2 SSD by itself for a total of 2.5TB of storage. Dell lists the RAID drive as the boot drive in its store but our review model came with the 512GB drive as boot and the 2TB RAID drive as storage, which seems odd.
Bottom Line
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
At this point, it’s hard to imagine someone making a gaming laptop that’s significantly more powerful than the Alienware m17 R4 we tested unless they use desktop parts. The RTX 3080 is currently the fastest mobile GPU around, especially since Alienware didn’t opt for Nvidia’s more power efficient Max-Q technologies.. Using a strong cooling system, pairing it with a Core i9-10980HK, and you have performance that’s often 20% faster than competitors that also use RTX 3080s.
In addition to its strong performance, the Alienware m17 R4 offers a deep, tactile keyboard and a unique, attractive design that’s all its own. The 360 Hz screen is more than capable, but unless you’re a competitive gamer, you can go with the default screen or, better yet, go for the 4K panel which promises much richer colors.
The biggest drawbacks for this epic laptop are those which are kind of inherent to any 17-inch laptop which turns the performance volume up to 11. It’s heavy, has short battery life, emits plenty of fan noise. It’s also quite expensive. It would be nice if, for this price, you got a better-than-awful webcam, but most laptop webcams are terrible.
If you want to save a few dollars or you need a little more battery life, consider the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, which goes for $2,699 with similar specs (but just 1TB of storage) to our Alienware m17 R4. The 17G lasts more than twice as long on a charge and weighs 0.65 pounds less than the m17, but its gaming performance isn’t as good.
If you don’t feel attached to the 17-inch form factor, consider the Alienware m15 R4, which has the same design and keyboard but is much more portable, albeit hotter. It also has an optional, 4K OLED panel which has incredibly vibrant output. However, if you want the ultimate 17-inch gaming rig right now, the Alienware m17 R4 is your best choice.
As you can see in the video below, creator Cass 3D Designs turned his old PC motherboard into a coaster, with its LGA 775 socket and Intel chip front and center.
When I retired my old PC from my student times, I cleaned it out and rebuilt it into the oh-so-beautiful Phanteks Evolv Shift 2, installed some old games on it that I used to play, and kept it on display in the living room. But not all old hardware still works, nor would everyone want to keep an entire PC around for nostalgia’s sake.
After running across the parts of his first PC build in storage, rather than throwing them out, he wanted to turn it into a memento, inspired by a friend’s project.
He used a Dremel to cut out a square of the motherboard, but the edges didn’t end up looking so great. To cover these, he designed and 3D-printed a trim piece for around the motherboard to cover up the edges, and then hot-glued the two together.
After test-fitting, he then made a silicon mould to put the board and trim piece together and then poured Epoxy resin into it to create the final product.
Of course, by this point, only half the work was done. Anyone that’s worked with Epoxy will know that to create a nice clear view into it, the top layer needs to be sanded down, sanded down, and sanded down… and then polished to a crystal clear finish.
All things considered, this is a nice project to occupy some time without costing a ton of money — this coaster will certainly be a conversation starter when friends are allowed over again. The only thing missing is being able to power up the chip to heat the coffee. And perhaps some RGB bling, too.
The revival of G4, a network focusing on video games with programs like X-Play and Attack of the Show!, is underway. The company announced today that it’s launching weekly series B4G4 on Friday, January 29th. The series will air on Twitch and YouTube.
B4G4 is part of the lead-up to the network’s return this summer. It will feature original sketches, music parodies, game reviews, and more. Viewers will also be able to provide feedback on that content via the network’s Reddit community.
Twitter accounts for Attack of the Show! and X-Play teased G4’s revival last year during the digital version of San Diego Comic-Con; both shows are expected to return. The network has been hunting for talent via a Twitter campaign.
Facebook content moderators in Ireland met with Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar today to demand work-from-home rights. They say the company forced them back into the office, even as COVID-19 cases spiked.
“We should be working from home just like employees,” said Ibrahim Halawa, a former political prisoner and law student who works as a Facebook content moderator. “We should have the same mental health care they get, the same benefits—but we don’t. Facebook can’t exist without us, and it should stop treating us as second-class citizens.”
Since December 30th, Ireland has been in a level five lockdown, meaning household visits are banned and nonessential retail businesses are closed. The country currently has 192,645 confirmed COVID-19 cases.
In August, Facebook announced employees would be able to work from home until July 2021. Two months later, content moderators working for the subcontracting firm CPL in Dublin were told to return to the office. The company had categorized them as essential workers, according to The Guardian. High-risk contractors were exempt, but those with vulnerable family members had to comply. Moderators had previously been told the office would close for 72 hours if there was a confirmed COVID-19 case. But The Guardian reported that after three cases, the office remained open.
During a press conference today, Halawa said Varadkar agreed to send a letter to Facebook and Covalen, a CPL subsidiary, inquiring about the disparate treatment between contractors and employees.
“They’ve made it abundantly clear that our health & safety and lives don’t matter to them,” said Paria Moshfeghi, another Facebook content moderator. “They’re forcing us into the office, putting us and our families at risk of COVID-19, even though our colleagues keep getting COVID. Facebook employees working on the similar content as us are safe and allowed to work from home. Why aren’t we?”
Both Halawa and Moshfeghi stressed that other Facebook moderators want to come forward but are scared because of the strict NDAs workers are forced to sign.
Tech companies have faced mounting pressure to moderate content during the coronavirus pandemic. In March, YouTube announced it would be relying more heavily on AI to enforce its content moderation policy. In September, the company said it was bringing back human moderators, noting AI hadn’t been as effective.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge.
The iPhone 12s Pro gets a renewed screen with a smaller notch and an under-display Touch ID sensor. Renders show the new Apple smartphone in detail.
New Apple smartphones are being released every year around September. The iPhone 12 series was introduced last year. Relatively minor changes are expected in 2021, therefore Apple may decide not use the name “iPhone 13”, but will opt for “iPhone 12s” instead. Regardless of which model name Apple chooses, there seem to be four models in the planning. Just like last year, a mini, a base model, a Pro and a Pro Max is expected.
Although it will take several months before Apple will announce the new models, a lot of information has already appeared online about the iPhone 12s series. One of the most frequently heard changes compared to 2020; the notch finally seems to be getting smaller. In this publication we will limit ourselves to the Pro model.
iPhone 12s Pro with updated screen and Touch ID under the display
The design will remain almost identical, after all, the design of the iPhone 12 series has already been renewed. The display size of the iPhone 12s Pro will probably remain the same, however the 6.1-inch OLED display will be improved. The new Pro models will support a high 120 Hertz refresh rate for the first time. It is an LTPO display, which enables an adaptive refresh rate. This allows considerable savings on battery consumption.
Another important change from previous years; Apple will likely implement an under-display fingerprint sensor. The Touch ID functionality that Apple incorporated in the home button for years was praised for a long time. Afterwards, Apple started to focus on advanced 3D Face ID technology. As a result no iPhone models have been released with a fingerprint sensor since 2017 – except for the iPhone SE 2020.
The iPhone 12s Pro / Pro Max will likely be the first smartphones from the US manufacturer to feature a fingerprint sensor under the screen. Apple will probably use a sensor from chip manufacturer Qualcomm. The 5G modems that Apple uses also come from Qualcomm. The Face ID functionality will be maintained, which will simply give users additional options to secure and unlock their smartphone.
The Dutch designer Jermaine Smit, aka Concept Creator, has made a new YouTube video in collaboration with LetsGoDigital in which the expected iPhone 12s Pro can be seen from all sides. The product renders used for this publication are also designed by Jermaine.
Improved camera and new hardware
Apple also seems to make the necessary changes when it comes to the camera. Industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported some time ago that the two Pro models will have a greatly improved ultra-wide angle lens (f / 1.8) with autofocus. In addition, Apple seems to want to use larger image sensors this time.
In terms of design, no major changes are expected, although the camera system may be slightly thicker. In addition, in contrary to last year Apple will not make any difference between the camera system of the iPhone 12s Pro and that of the Pro Max. Thus, these two models will mainly differ in display size and battery capacity.
It goes without saying that the new models will also be equipped with the latest hardware and software. The Silicon Valley company seems to integrate a 5nm A15 Bionic chipset this time that makes 5G and WiFi 6th support possible. The iPhone 12 models already offered 5G support, but WiFi 6E is new.
The recently introduced Samsung Galaxy S21 smartphones also support the new WiFi 6E technology. As with WiFi 6, this allows you to achieve higher performance, lower latency and faster data rates. The improved WiFi 6th variant uses the 6Ghz band, which offers more space than the existing 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz frequency bands.
With the new 6Ghz band it is easier to send a lot of data in one go, but the range is more limited than with the already existing 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz frequency bands. The latter bands also remain available with WiFi 6e.
Battery and MagSafe charging accessory
As for the battery, last year the Pro model was equipped with a 3,046mAh battery. This guarantees 17 hours of video watching or 11 hours of video streaming. The device supports 20W wired charging and 15W wireless charging. The 12s Pro will probably have similar battery specs.
It has long been rumored that Apple wants to introduce at least one phone model without a charging port. This device will only support wireless charging. This is where the new MagSafe charging system comes in handy, which was announced at the time of the iPhone 12 series. With this accessory you can charge the device wirelessly with a maximum charging power of 15W.
Incidentally, it recently became known that both the iPhone 12 smartphones and the MagSafe accessories can pose a danger to people with a pacemaker or other medical implants. The many magnets can create an electromagnetic field, which disrupts pacemakers and defibrillators.
Apple therefore advises to keep a minimum distance of 15 cm between the pacemaker and the mentioned Apple products at all times. A minimum distance of 30cm is recommended during wireless charging. Obviously, it is not only iPhones that suffer from this. Electronic products are increasingly fitted with magnets, all of which can pose a hazard to medical devices.
You will probably have heard that since the launch of the iPhone 12, Apple does not include a charger or EarPods in the sales package. Now that Samsung has also decided to no longer supply a charger or earplugs with the Galaxy S21 series, this trend seems to be continuing. Despite this decision, Apple can look back on a very successful launch, the sales numbers of the 12 series are significantly higher than in previous years.
Recently published quarterly figures show that the sales numbers of the 12 series are no less than 17% higher than those of the 11 series, in the same period a year earlier. Consumers have therefore not punished Apple for omitting the charger and earphones. In contrast, the addition of 5G seems to have been a reason for many to buy a new iPhone.
iPhone 13 or iPhone 12s series?
When it comes to the naming, earlier this month Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman reported that Apple is considering opting for an “s” upgrade this year as no major changes are being made. This is partly due to COVID-19, due to the continuing pandemic Apple engineers can only be found a few days a week, in limited numbers, at the Silicon Valley offices. This makes product development a lot more complicated.
Shortly after the publication of Gurman, Apple analyst Jon Prosser confirmed that this time the name will indeed be iPhone 12s. Obviously nothing has been confirmed yet, but it does not sound entirely unlikely. After all, Apple has used the addition “s” more often when it came to minor upgrades. Consider, for example, the iPhone 6s / 6s Plus and the more recently introduced iPhone Xs / Xs Max.
Jon Prosser also claims that Apple will probably never release an iPhone 13 series. Superstition would play an important role in this. Because “13” is an unlucky number in Western countries, Apple would immediately want to opt for iPhone 14 next year.
No concrete information is yet known about the price of the new iPhone models. The iPhone XS, the one year later announced iPhone 11 Pro and the even more recent iPhone 12 Pro all came at a starting price of € 1,160. With the latter model, the minimum storage capacity was doubled to 128GB.
The iPhone 12s Pro will probably have a similar suggested retail price and will also be offered in the same memory variants: 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. Apple is expected to announce the four new smartphone models in September 2021.
Note to editors : The product images in this publication are created in collaboration with Jermaine Smit, aka Concept Creator. These 3D renders are for illustrative purposes only. This product is not for sale, Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 2021 series in September. The images are copyright protected. Feel free to use these materials on your own website, please be so respectful to include a source link into your publication.
As you can see in the video below, creator Cass 3D Designs turned his old PC motherboard into a coaster, with its LGA 775 socket and Intel chip front and center.
When I retired my old PC from my student times, I cleaned it out and rebuilt it into the oh-so-beautiful Phanteks Evolv Shift 2, installed some old games on it that I used to play, and kept it on display in the living room. But not all old hardware still works, nor would everyone want to keep an entire PC around for nostalgia’s sake.
After running across the parts of his first PC build in storage, rather than throwing them out, he wanted to turn it into a memento, inspired by a friend’s project.
He used a Dremel to cut out a square of the motherboard, but the edges didn’t end up looking so great. To cover these, he designed and 3D-printed a trim piece for around the motherboard to cover up the edges, and then hot-glued the two together.
After test-fitting, he then made a silicon mould to put the board and trim piece together and then poured Epoxy resin into to create the final product.
Of course, by this point, only half the work was done. Anyone that’s worked with Epoxy will know that to create a nice clear view into it, the top layer needs to be sanded down, sanded down, and sanded down… and then polished to a crystal clear finish.
All things considered, this is a nice project to occupy some time without costing a ton of money — this coaster will certainly be a conversation starter when friends are allowed over again. The only thing missing is being able to power up the chip to heat the coffee. And perhaps some RGB bling, too.
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