Samsung informs partners of its 200MP camera plans for Galaxy S23 Ultra
Motorola snagged the “world’s first OEM to have released a smartphone with a 200MP camera” title last week. Samsung can no longer claim that title, even though the Motorola X30 Pro features the Samsung-made 200MP ISOCELL HP1 sensor. Nevertheless, the Korean tech giant is not out of the game. It can and supposedly will upgrade the resolution of its mobile cameras next year, starting with the Galaxy S23 Ultra.
Another industry report reiterates Samsung’s alleged plans to equip the upcoming Galaxy S23 Ultra with a 200MP camera. According to industry rumors, Samsung’s Mobile Experience division has confirmed these plans with its major camera partners in preparation for the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s release next year. (via ETNews)
From Sammobile
Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro get shown off in an early hands on
We don’t know exactly when the Google Pixel 7 and Google Pixel 7 Pro are going to get a full launch – September or October seem like good bets – but in the meantime a hands on video showing off prototypes of both phones has emerged.
The revealing video is from Unbox Therapy (via 9to5Google) and gives us a good long look at both the standard and premium versions of Google’s upcoming flagship. However, there’s no working software on these devices, which appear to be developer handsets.
While it’s important to remember that these aren’t retail versions of the phones, the specs could well carry over: we’ve got 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage on the Pixel 7, and that goes up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage on the Pixel 7 Pro.
From Techradar
Google may begin supporting Wear OS smartwatch backups to Google One
As we start to see new Wear OS devices trickle into the market, Google’s efforts to improve the overall experience on Android devices is revealed in the latest APK Teardown by the folks over at XDA-Developers.
New strings in the beta version 22.32.12 build of the Google Play Services app reveal that Google is preparing to add support for backing up smartwatch data when switching to a new device. One string is titled: companion_backup_opt_in_title which contains the prompts: Back up your device with Google One/ Backup by Google One/ Choose backup account.
From Gsmarena
Entire 13th-gen Intel Raptor Lake starting lineup specs leak online
With Intel Raptor Lake set to release in the coming months, it looks like the entire launch lineup for the next-gen processor series from Team Blue have leaked ahead of their announcement.
A user going by the name Extreme Player on the Chinese social media site Bili Bili posted the specs for 14 SKUs in total, covering Core i3 to Core i9 processors (first flagged by Wccftech).
The topline numbers show a 24-core i9 processor (eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores) with 32 threads,which doubles the number of efficiency cores as the flagship Alder Lake i9-12900K. The rest of the specs are below, as posted on Bili Bili.
Obviously, these specs haven’t been announced by Intel, so they need to be taken with a grain of salt, but the specs are in line with other rumors we’ve heard.
From Techradar
Apple extends iPhone 12 ‘no sound’ speaker service program
Apple is adding another year to the eligibility window for an iPhone 12 service recall program it launched last year. The service program applies to iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro devices that experience “no sound issues” due to a faulty component in the receiver module.
Apple first launched the service program in August of 2021. At the time, the company explained that a “very small percentage” of iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro devices “may experience sound issues due to a component that might fail on the receiver module.”
When the service program first began, Apple said that the program covered affected iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro devices for 2 years after the first retail sale of the unit. In a quiet update to the support document today, Apple extended that to three years after the first retail sale of the unit. This gives iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro users an extra year of coverage for this issue.
Apple says that affected devices were manufactured between October 2020 and April 2021. The only other eligibility requirement is the your iPhone “not emit sound from the receiver when you make or receive calls.” If you meet that criteria, Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will fix the issue at no cost.
From 9to5Mac
Chrome Will Revamp Its Forgotten App Menu, to Match Edge
Google is now working to overhaul the Apps menu in Chrome, according to information on the Chromium Gerrit spotted by Chrome Story. The browser’s development team plans to add more options, including the ability to change which permissions a web app can access, and quickly opening the settings for a given app (if available). There’s also an updated design with rounded app icons and more spacing, matching the appearance of Chrome OS.
The new apps page will also improve multi-device management, similar to recent changes with web apps in Microsoft Edge. Chrome already synchronizes your list of installed web apps, just like your browser history and extensions, but they are displayed with a monochrome icon when they are not installed on your current computer. It will still be easy to re-install a web app shortcut (they won’t be automatically installed), and Google will add a menu option to uninstall a specified web app from all your devices.
From Howtogeek
YouTube’s new watermarks for Shorts are here to discourage cross-posting to TikTok and Instagram
Scrolling through your social media feed and encountering TikToks cross-posted to Instagram as Reels (before eventually, everything ends up on YouTube) isn’t exactly something out of the ordinary. Sure, maybe you’ve already seen the creator’s work on its original platform, but users in general don’t seem to mind the repetition. Developers are another story, and we’ve already seen attempts to watermark videos to discourage cross-posting. Unlike TikTok, YouTube hasn’t been placing a watermark on Shorts videos thus far, but that’s all changing now.
In a support thread announcing the changes to the platform, YouTube notes that the watermark will be added to Shorts creators download from their accounts before sharing it to other platforms (via TechCrunch). The change is already going live on the desktop, and mobile users will also see the change in the next few months.
Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, among others, have struggled to curate original short-form video content, mostly because creators making videos for one platform are eager to reach as many eyes as possible, and that means posting on multiple platforms to maximize engagement. Rather than starting fresh on each, it makes a lot of sense to just edit your footage once, and then re-upload.
From Android Police
Twitter Profited From Users’ Data Without Their Consent, Lawsuit Alleges
Twitter is facing more legal woes for allegedly providing advertisers user phone numbers and email addresses without their consent. In 2019, the company disclosed that personal information users handed over for a security feature may have been used for targeted advertising.
On Thursday, two Twitter users sued the social media company in a proposed class action lawsuit filed in a federal court in Northern California. In the 38-page complaint, Texas resident Christina McClellan and California resident Billy Moses say they wouldn’t have provided Twitter personal information such as their phone numbers and email addresses if they knew the company was going to use this data for targeted advertising.
The lawsuit is the latest consequence Twitter is dealing with over alleged privacy violations. In May, Twitter agreed to pay a $150 million penalty for allegedly violating the Federal Trade Commission Act and a 2011 order by the FTC by misrepresenting how it would use nonpublic user contact information. Twitter users in other states such as Washington have also sued the tech platform for violating their privacy.
Twitter encouraged users to provide their phone numbers and email addresses for an extra layer of security known as two-factor authentication but didn’t inform them that data could be used for targeted advertising.
“As a result of Twitter’s deceptive practices, consumers surrendered valuable personal information that they expected to remain private and to be used only for security purposes,” the lawsuit states. “Consequently, consumers were deprived of the ability to control how this information is used and who possesses it.”
The lawsuit alleges Twitter profited from this data without user consent because advertisers could use emails and phone numbers to figure out a potential customer’s identity and learn about where they live, what products they purchase, where they shop and other valuable information.
“The more intimate and private details that Twitter can collect or induce its users to provide, the more revenue it derives,” the lawsuit says.
There are other risks that come with providing phone numbers and email addresses because they can be used to identify a person. Hackers, the lawsuit notes, can use an email to try to access a user’s social media accounts or collect other information for identity theft.
The lawsuit also alleges the company violated California’s Unfair Competition Law and its contract with users. Twitter’s privacy policy at the time said it doesn’t share information such as email addresses and phone numbers with its partners but the data it provides could be linked to other data if a user provides consent to that partner.
As part of the lawsuit, Twitter users are demanding a jury trial and that the company take other actions such as disclosing to users whether and how their personal information was used.
Twitter said it didn’t have a comment about the lawsuit. The company’s legal troubles have been mounting after billionaire Elon Musk tried to back out of buying the social media platform for $44 billion.
From Cnet
Audi Teases Activesphere Concept Ahead of 2023 Debut
Audi will add a fourth car to its series of Sphere concepts: the Activesphere. Previewed in a teaser image on Friday, the Activesphere looks to be a sleek coupe or sedan with lots of ground clearance and chunky tires. Think something like the earlier Grandsphere concept but with an all-terrain vibe.
Like the Grandsphere, Skysphere and Urbansphere concepts, the Activesphere has an electric drivetrain and is designed to support autonomous driving. We’re expecting it to look pretty cool, and hopefully the interior will have a few neat design tricks, similar to the Activesphere’s siblings.
Audi isn’t releasing any other details about the Activesphere at this time, and we won’t even see the full thing for quite a while. The Activesphere will be fully revealed in early 2023, but no doubt there’ll be a few more teaser shots between now and then.
From Cnet
Microbatteries much smaller than a grain of rice for a smart dust future
(Nanowerk Spotlight) ‘Smart dust’ is a vision of the networked future where intelligent networks of trillions of minuscule sensors continuously feel, taste, smell, see, and hear what is going on in their surrounding environment, communicate with each other and exchange information. Smart dust networks are the ultimate Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices (read more about what smart dust is and what it does here in our primer).
One of the challenges of realizing smart dust concepts, as well as nano- and microrobotics in general, is a lack of equally small on-chip power sources for ubiquitous anytime anywhere operation.
One solution would be energy conversion systems harvesting external energy such as micro-thermoelectric or triboelectric nanogenerators, or on-chip photovoltaics (read more: “Solar-powered smart dust”). However, these systems tend to be dependent on specific times and locations, greatly limiting on-demand operation of smart dust and microrobots in many environments.
Another solution would be to provide the smart dust chip with on-board energy storage, i.e., a battery. Already, researchers have demonstrated that microbatteries that are smaller than a grain of salt can be produced in large quantities on a wafer surface and are suitable for powering dust-sized computers.
“Current limitations in fabrication strategies mean that on-chip microbatteries cannot achieve high energy density and small footprint simultaneously,” Dr. Minshen Zhu from Prof. Dr. Oliver G. Schmidt’s research group at TU Chemnitz, tells Nanowerk. “In contrast, the most successful design in the bulky battery world is to comprise many layers of the electrode material into a limited volume. For instance, Tesla is using so-called Swiss roll cylinder batteries for its electric cars.”
However, Tesla’s cylinder batteries have a diameter of 1.8 cm – much too large for being integrated with microscale systems.
From Nanowerk
