Is Google making a Pixel tablet to rival the iPad Pro?
It’s not just the Android 12L that suggests Google wants to adapt improve the Android experience on devices with bigger screens, whether they’re tablets or foldables. Google is also recruiting engineers for a newly formed “Android Tablet” initiative. Among several job listings, 9to5Google found a one for a “Senior Engineering Manager, Android Tablet App Experience.”
“We believe that the future of computing is shifting towards more powerful and capable tablets,” the ad reads. “We are working to deliver the next chapter of computing and input by launching seamless support across our platforms and hero experiences that unlock new and better ways of being productive and creative.”
From BGR
Samsung patents dual-fold smartphone with S Pen slot
According to the leak from LetsGoDigital, the phone will have two hinges to support its three display parts. It suggests that one part of the phone can be folded forwards, and the other backwards, to form a Z-shape. Toward the run-up to the 2021 Society for Information Display event (SID), Samsung unveiled this double foldable concept, which was termed the “S-Foldable.” The display screen was 7.2-inches, exactly the same length as the Galaxy Z Fold 3’s screen.
From Digital Trends
Don’t believe the rumors: It is unlikely Oxygen OS to be rebranded as ‘H2OOS’
Yesterday, a rumor started on Twitter. The rumor centered on what the new name might be for OnePlus’ and Oppo’s combined operating systems. OnePlus’ is currently called Oxygen OS and Oppo’s is currently called Color OS, but we know they will combine under one banner at some point this year.
Mukul Sharma posited that this new name might be “H2OOS.” This would be a combined version of two names OnePlus has used: Oxygen OS and Hydrogen OS. The latter of those is what OnePlus called Oxygen OS in China before it started using Color OS in that country.
Sharma’s evidence of this rumor is a trademark OnePlus filed for the H2OOS name. This would seem to be pretty strong evidence. However, there’s just one problem: OnePlus filed that trademark seven years ago. For the record, that’s around the time the OnePlus 2 launched.
From Android Authority
Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti graphics card could be getting a new version
Nvidia’s RTX 3060 Ti could be coming in a new version built around a different GPU, if what we’re hearing from the rumor mill is correct.
The existing RTX 3060 Ti uses the GA104 chip, but the purportedly incoming new version of the desktop graphics card will switch to the GA103, a beefier GPU, as per a tweet from HXL.
As you can see above, the Twitter leaker spotted the 3060 Ti with GA103 GPU as a new entry in the release notes for the latest beta of benchmarking tool AIDA64.
Take all this with the usual helping of condiments, naturally, and consider that maybe someone at AIDA64 has made a mistake here. However, that doesn’t seem likely, as we have heard this rumor before, with the GA103 listed for the RTX 3060 Ti in an Nvidia Studio driver. (Further note that the GA103 has been spotted as the engine of an RTX 3080 Ti laptop card).
It’s also important to make it clear that while the GA103 is a higher-end GPU than the existing GA104, it will be cut-down so the spec of the theoretical new model of the RTX 3060 Ti will be the same (4,864 CUDA cores). Obviously you couldn’t have a 3060 Ti with a beefier spec than the models already on sale (or sold).
From Techradar
Universal Control is finally here, and it’s blown my mind
In case you missed it, Apple touted Universal Control at its WWDC 2021 conference as a feature that lets you control several connected Apple devices — an iPad, a MacBook Air, and an iMac, for example — with just one mouse and keyboard. You just place your devices next to each other, then move your pointer to the edge of one screen and it “bursts through” onto the next one, enabling you to copy files between them or type on one Mac with a different Mac’s keyboard.
And now, it’s finally come out in beta on MacOS Monterey, so of course I decided to take it for a spin. And, despite some teething problems, it was even better than I’d hoped.
From Digital Trends
Samsung and Apple dominated the smartphone market in 2021
Despite the supply chain issues last year, the smartphone market managed to grow year-over-year, according to a pair of reports from Counterpoint Research and Omdia. The overall winners of the market were the usual duo of Apple and Samsung, the reports noted, with Samsung coming out ahead in 2021 overall while Apple dominated in the last three months of the year.
Who won and who came in second depends on a matter of perspective. Looking at the market as a whole annually, both Samsung and Apple came out on top with 271 million units and 238 million units sold, respectively. Toward the end of the year, the iPhone dominated with 87 million products sold. While Samsung’s 67 million to 69 million units for that same period isn’t shabby, the iPhone 13’s price difference over something like, say — the Galaxy A52 — means that Apple would have benefited more even if the pair had sold close to the same numbers.
From Digital Trends
WhatsApp Chief Confirms iPad App is a Possibility: ‘We’d Love to Do It’
There could be a WhatsApp app for iPad coming in the near future, according to WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart. In an interview with The Verge, Cathcart said that people have long been asking for an iPad app, and that the company would “love to do it.”
Though Cathcart did not commit to a release date for a WhatsApp iPad app, the Meta-owned company already has the underlying structure in place for creating one. “We did a lot of work on the technology for supporting multiple devices,” he said. “Our web and our desktop apps now have that. If I have multi-device on, I can turn my phone off or lose my network connection and still get messages on my desktop. That would be really important for a tablet app, to be able to use the app even if your phone isn’t on. So the underlying technology is there.”
From Macrumors
Microsoft partners with NASA to take quantum computing into space
The advances in quantum computing that are happening are, in some ways, similar to the space race: huge investment by giant entities in futuristic technology designed to take humanity to the next level.
Today, NASA and Microsoft are taking that to the next level with a partnership that will hopefully help the US space agency more easily coordinate its spacecraft, a difficult process as any on earth. The ultimate goal? Reducing the time it takes to transmit instructions from hours to just minutes, powered by quantum technology.
“As NASA launches more frequent and complex missions into space, managing communications with the growing number of spacecraft is becoming increasingly challenging,” says Microsoft in a blog post. “NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has turned to Azure Quantum to explore ways to communicate more efficiently with spacecraft exploring our solar system and beyond.”
From Techradar
Azure stops biggest DDoS attack ever, according to Microsoft
Microsoft saw an ‘unprecedented level’ of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks in the second half of 2021. The company explains in an Azure blog post that both the complexity and frequency of DDoS attacks reached new levels during that time. In the second half of the year, Microsoft mitigated an average of 1,955 attacks per day. A total of 359,713 unique attacks were stopped by Microsoft in the final six months of 2021.
DDoS attacks essentially spam a website to prevent it from working properly. They are often used by gamers to harm other people’s networks to ensure victory. Last year, DDOS attacks targeted Blizzard games, Titanfall, Final Fantasy 14, and several other big-name titles. DDoS attacks can also be used for more malicious purposes, such as shutting down a retail website during the holidays.
From Windows Central
SpaceX’s derelict rocket will crash and create a worrying new Moon crater
It’s not often that the sudden appearance of a new impact crater on the Moon can be predicted, but it’s going to happen on March 4, when a derelict SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will crash into it.
The rocket launched in 2015, carrying Nasa’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) probe into a position 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth, facing the Sun. But the expended upper stage of the rocket had insufficient speed to escape into an independent orbit around the Sun, and was abandoned without an option to steer back into the Earth’s atmosphere. That would be normal practice, allowing stages to burn up on re-entry, thus reducing the clutter in near-Earth space caused by dangerous junk.
From The Next Web
