Quick Shots-17

Twitter experiencing widespread outages

Twitter users in Canada and parts of the U.S. appear to be having trouble accessing the social media platform on Friday morning. Reports from third-party web monitoring service Downdetector indicate the issue is impacting users across Canada and mainly the eastern parts of the U.S. near the Canadian border, though users from more states continue to report outages as well.

The outage began at around 8:30 AM ET according to most reports, lasting for upwards of an hour for some users. As of just before 10 AM ET, it appears that service is restored for most, if not all based on information from users.

Read More Techcrunch

Get a free battery replacement for your OnePlus 3, 5, 5T, 6, or 6T in India

According to a Reddit thread, OnePlus India is now offering free battery replacements for the OnePlus 3, OnePlus 5, OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 6, and OnePlus 6T. All you have to pay is the labor cost for the replacement, which for one user’s OnePlus 5T amounted to just INR 473 (that’s about $6 or €5).

This applies when you walk into an official OnePlus store, and not for courier pickup which may incur extra charges. The reason for the move is apparently the fact that the company has been stuck with a lot of unused spare batteries for the aforementioned phones, and since they’re rather old right now, it’s not expecting to have a lot of demand for these batteries. Thus, it’s opting to make them available for (almost) free, which is probably going to net OnePlus some goodwill from its customers.

Read More at Gsmarena

India’s Redmi 10 Prime will use the same Helio G88 chipset as the global Redmi 10

Xiaomi’s Manu Kumar Jain confirmed that the Redmi 10 Prime will be powered by the same Helio G88 chipset as the Redmi 10. Furthermore, he described the new phone as a “significant upgrade” over last year’s Redmi 9 Prime and 9 Power.

The “Prime” was just a rebranded Redmi 9 for the Indian market, the only notable difference being the omission of NFC. The “Power” was a significantly different from the vanilla 9 with a Snapdragon 662 (instead of a Helio G80), a 48 MP main camera (instead of a 13 MP module) and a 6,000 mAh battery (up 1,000 mAh).

Read More at Gsmarena

Apple’s finally letting developers tell users about payment options outside iOS app

Apple is making some important changes to its App Store.

The company settled a class-action lawsuit by U.S. developers by agreeing to pay them $100 million and making a number of concessions regarding App Store rules.

The most important among these is letting developers communicate to their customers about payment options outside of their iOS app. This could mean savings for end users. Given that Apple takes a 30 percent cut from every App Store purchase (15 percent for smaller developers), a developer could offer a better price through other channels and offer it to users.

Read More at Mashable

Netflix begins testing mobile games in its Android app in Poland

Netflix today announced it will begin testing mobile games inside its Android app for its members in Poland. At launch, paying subscribers will be able to try out two games, “Stranger Things: 1984” and “Stranger Things 3” — titles that have been previously available on the Apple App Store, Google Play and, in the case of the newer release, on other platforms, including desktop and consoles. While the games are offered to subscribers from within the Netflix mobile app’s center tab, users will still be directed to the Google Play Store to install the game on their devices.

Read more at Techcrunch

Dell launches Alienware x15, Alienware x17, XPS 15, XPS 17, and G15 laptops in India

There’s a new lineup of gaming laptops in India brought from Dell that include the Alienware x15, Alienware x17, XPS 15, XPS 17, and G15. The new Alienware x15 R1 and Alienware x17 R1 are the newest addition to the Alienware lineup while the XPS 15 and XPS 17 have joined the existing XPS range along with the Dell G15 coming to the G-series.

The Alienware X-Series features the newest Cryo-Tech cooling technology along with the Legend 2.0 design. The Dell G15 comes with the newest Intel 11th Gen and AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors. And the Dell XPS 15 comes with up to 11th Gen Intel Core i9H processors. In comparison, the XPS 17 comes with up to 11th Gen Intel Core i9K processors.

Read More at Techradar

Western Digital admits it throttled write speeds with flash memory change

Western Digital has admitted that it swapped the NAND flash memory inside one of its most popular solid state drives (SSDs), which reportedly penalized performance by up to 50%.

The WD Blue SN550 is one of Western Digital’s best selling M.2 NVme SSD models, but Tom’s Hardware confirmed reports of an unannounced NAND replacement hurting the drive’s write speed, drastically reducing its performance. 

According to its analysis, the new inferior NAND is unable to keep pace with the controller’s writing requests, resulting in performance dropping from 610 MBps to 390 MBps in a 100 GB file copy test, once the 12GB SLC cache is exhausted. 

Read More at Techradar

Microsoft Azure flaw left thousands of cloud customers’ data vulnerable

A vulnerability in Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service left several thousand customers susceptible to cyberattacks. The tech giant has warned its clients of the flaw in its flagship database service Cosmos DB after it was discovered and reported by security company Wiz. In the blog post Wiz has published, it said it was able to use the vulnerability, which it has named “ChaosDB,” to gain “complete unrestricted access to the accounts and databases” of thousands of Azure clients.

Read More at Engadget

Windows 11 beta impressions: Stirred, not shaken

Windows 11 isn’t too big of a jump, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It stays familiar while changing enough to seem like an upgrade. Microsoft seems to tread lightly in regard to major changes following the Windows 8 debacle, which is great. Windows 11 feels stirred, not shaken, which leaves it with some inconsistencies, but also many familiarities. The beta has a few issues here and there, but we expect most of these little quirks to be fixed before the final release.

For example, a lot of the cosmetic bits that are inconsistent for now are very likely to be cleaned up before the final release. We’ll see more and more of the promised features make their way to Windows 11, including native Android app support via the Amazon App Store, and more gaming-centric features like Auto HDR and DirectStorage. The final release should be polished enough, although I don’t expect Microsoft to get rid of the legacy bits like Control Panel just yet. So it’s likely to be in with the new, without the out with the old.

Read more at Android Authority

Apple’s Tim Cook just made $355 million

Apple CEO Tim Cook just cashed in the final part of his decade-old compensation package: 5,040,000 Apple shares, worth roughly $750 million.

According to a SEC filing dated Tuesday, Apple withheld 2,653,560 shares for tax purposes, and Cook quickly sold the rest, meaning that he actually received around $355 million.

Cook received the compensation package in August 2011, when he took the helm of Apple. The amount of shares he would receive was tied to his performance, measured by the performance of Apple stock. And perform it did: Apple’s stock price went from roughly $13.50 in August 2011 to its current price of $147.54, with Apple becoming the world’s largest company, with a current market cap of $2.44 trillion.

Read More at Mashable