iPhone 14 Pro again rumored to feature new 30W charger, most likely USB-C to Lightning connector
A week before the announcement of the iPhone 14 Pro, a rumor suggests this smartphone will feature a new 30W charger – doubling down on a previous report on a 30W GaN charger coming to Apple iPhones.
This time, Twitter user DuanRui, which has a mixed tracking record on Apple leaks, posted that the iPhone 14 Pro series may use 30W charging power due to a charger brand that started sending “new charger products to the media, and it will advertise in the experience video of the iPhone 14 series.”
He also says the “data cable given by the charger manufacturer is still the Lightning interface,” as Apple plans to change the port to USB-C in 2023 with the iPhone 15.
This isn’t the first time we have heard about a speedier 30W charger for the iPhone 14 Pro. In March, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo posted that “Apple may release its next GaN charger in 2022, which supports about 30W and has a new form factor design.”
Although the company has released new 35W GaN charger options for the redesigned M2 MacBook Air, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if the iPhone 14 Pro supports speedier charging capabilities, as many smartphone manufacturers offer crazy-fast charging time.
From 9to5Mac
Apple Watch Pro with big redesign might support satellite connectivity
Apple should unveil three smartwatch versions at its upcoming iPhone 14 launch event on September 7th. New models will include the Apple Watch SE 2, the Apple Watch Series 8, and the Apple Watch Pro, according to various reports.
The Apple Watch Pro will feature a larger screen, better battery life, and more rugged build quality. And now, a new report says that Apple wants to add satellite connectivity to the Apple Watch Pro. But unfortunately, the feature might not be ready for the first-generation model coming next week.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman recapped the expected announcements for Apple’s iPhone 14 event in his latest Power On newsletter. He addressed satellite connectivity for the upcoming models, repeating claims he has made in the past.
From BGR
Reliance Jio is using Samsung networking gear to spread 5G across India
Samsung Networks has been expanding its footprint in the global cellular network market over the past couple of years. It has already provided equipment for the rollout of 5G networks in Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the US, and some European countries. It has further improved its reach by partnering with Reliance Jio in India.
Earlier today, during Reliance Jio’s Annual General Meeting 2022, Mukesh Ambani revealed that the network operator has partnered with Samsung, among other networking brands, for its 5G network rollout in India. While it’s unclear which Samsung products Jio is using in its 5G network, it could be radios, core, or 5G vRAN.
Similarly, India’s leading network operator has partnered with Cisco, Ericsson, and Nokia. Jio is also working with Qualcomm to improve its 5G network and with Google to launch ultra-affordable 5G smartphones in the country. Reliance Jio plans to launch its SA (Standalone) 5G network initially in four Indian cities—Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai—by October 2022 and across India by the end of 2023.
From Sammobile
Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 specs detailed in new leak
Qualcomm rebranded its Snapdragon lineup of smartphone SoCs with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 late last year. The company extended the new branding to its mid-tier Snapdragon 7 series this May, with the launch of the new Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chip. While most Android OEMs are yet to launch devices featuring the latest Snapdragon 7 series chip, a new leak has revealed details about the upcoming Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 SoC.
The leak in question comes from Evan Blass, and it reveals pretty much everything about the next SoC in Qualcomm’s budget-friendly Snapdragon 6 series. Firstly, it confirms that Qualcomm will further extend its new SoC branding to Snapdragon 6 series SoCs and the upcoming chipset will go by the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 moniker. It also reveals that Qualcomm will use a 4nm manufacturing process for the SoC and offer a 2.2GHz Kryo CPU and an unspecified Adreno GPU. However, it does not highlight the number of CPU or GPU cores on the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1.
From XDA
Reality One and Reality Pro might be the names of Apple’s AR/VR headsets
Apple’s mixed reality headset is supposed to launch early next year, with sales to start a few months after the early January event. That’s what rumors say, as Apple hasn’t confirmed anything. But Apple’s names for the AR/VR headsets of the future might have leaked: Reality One and Reality Pro.
These reality-related names appeared in newly discovered trademark documentation in various countries. These moves indicate that the AR/VR headset’s launch is getting closer.
As discovered by Bloomberg, the trademark applications can’t be easily linked to Apple. That’s because Apple didn’t make the filings on its own, a practice the company used in the past.
From BGR
Samsung strives to make nearly all its home appliances Wi-Fi enabled, more energy efficient
Ahead of the IFA 2022 event, Samsung has revealed its plans for its upcoming home appliances and the SmartThings platform. JaeSeung Lee, Head of Digital Appliances at Samsung Electronics, penned an editorial and revealed how the company is striving to become the world’s most energy-efficient home appliances brand.
Lee said that users “have become more aware of the impact their choices are having on the environment and are practicing eco-conscious activities in their daily lives to compensate.” So, to cater to consumer needs, the company plans to make its home appliances more customizable, sustainable, and environment-friendly.
From Sammobile
Google Assistant tests persistent ‘Search this screen’ Lens button on Android
Just over a year ago, Google Assistant swapped out the “What’s on my screen?” button with a Lens-branded shortcut that could now be replaced by “Search this screen.”
Compared to “What’s on my screen,” the existing Lens button does not appear every time Google Assistant is invoked. It shows up in Chrome and Twitter (alongside “Read”), but availability is hit or miss in third-party apps. As such, it cannot be reliably used to perform visual searches or OCR (optical character recognition) for convenient copying, though you can use Android’s Recents menu as an alternative.
According to one report today, a “Search this screen” button is appearing in Assistant on Android. Lens-branded, though with the old icon, the key difference from what came before is how this button looks to consistently appear everywhere, regardless of app or context. Tapping should capture the current screen and let you access the Translate, Text, Search, Homework, Shopping, Places, and Dining filters.
From 9to5Google
Xbox has revamped the Games & Apps library with a new interface
The Xbox dashboard has seen a few interesting updates in recent times, most notably perhaps the inclusion of Discord as part of the Xbox Insider Program. This latest Xbox Insider Alpha Ring build has issued some notable changes to the Games & Apps section, which is typically where you go to browse all of your installed content and available games for download.
The new interface revamps the “Full Library” section of the dashboard, which was admittedly a little cluttered in the previous incarnation. Now, it sports a speedy tabbed interface with horizontal labels for different pools of content, separating “Owned games” that you’ve purchased outright from libraries like Xbox Game Pass or EA Play.
From Windows Central
Meta and Jio launch grocery shopping on WhatsApp in India
Meta and an e-commerce venture between India’s Reliance Retail and Jio Platforms are bringing grocery shopping to WhatsApp in what they said was a global-first end-to-end shopping experience on the popular instant messaging platform.
The launch of JioMart on WhatsApp follows Meta and JioMart beginning to test an integration with select users two years ago. If successful, a commerce engine could prove to be a major source of revenue for WhatsApp, which has largely avoided serving ads to app users.
Customers in India will be able to browse JioMart’s entire grocery catalog on WhatsApp, add items to cart, make the payments via local payments rail UPI without ever leaving the instant messaging service, the companies said.
WhatsApp, which is used by about half a billion Indians each month, got the approval to extend its UPI-powered payments service to 100 million users in the country earlier this year after several delays and setbacks.
“Excited to launch our partnership with JioMart in India. This is our first-ever end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp — people can now buy groceries from JioMart right in a chat. Business messaging is an area with real momentum and chat-based experiences like this will be the go-to way people and businesses communicate in the years to come,” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said in a statement.
Meta is a significant minority investor in Jio Platforms, the country’s largest telecom subscriber with over 421 million subscribers. On Monday, Jio also announced it will be spending $25 billion to debut 5G services in the country in October this year and aims to reach “every town” in the South Asian market by end of next year.
From Techcrunch
This Teenager Invented a Low-Cost Tool to Spot Elephant Poachers in Real Time
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When Anika Puri visited India with her family four years ago, she was surprised to come across a market in Bombay filled with rows of ivory jewelry and statues. Globally, ivory trade has been illegal for more than 30 years, and elephant hunting has been prohibited in India since the 1970s.
“I was quite taken aback,” the 17-year-old from Chappaqua, New York, recalls. “Because I always thought, ‘well, poaching is illegal, how come it really is still such a big issue?’”
Curious, Puri did some research and discovered a shocking statistic: Africa’s forest elephant population had declined by about 62 percent between 2002 and 2011. Years later, the numbers continue to drop. A wildlife lover, Puri wanted to do something to help protect the species and others still threatened by poaching.
Drones are currently used to detect and capture images of poachers, and they aren’t that accurate, the teenager explains. But after watching videos of elephants and humans, she saw how the two differed vastly in the way they move—their speed, their turning patterns and other motions.
Puri reached out to the computer scientist about her idea to catch elephant poachers using movement patterns, and Bondi-Kelly became her mentor for the project.
To create her model, Puri first found movement patterns of humans and elephants using the Benchmarking IR Dataset for Surveillance with Aerial Intelligence (BIRDSAI), a dataset collected by Bondi-Kelly and her colleagues using a thermal infrared camera attached to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in multiple protected areas in Africa. Sifting through the data, Puri identified 516 time series extracted from videos that captured humans or elephants in motion.
Puri used a machine learning algorithm to train a model to classify a figure as either an elephant or a human based on its speed, group size, turning radius, number of turns and other patterns. She used 372 series—300 elephant movements, and 72 human movements. The remaining 144 were used to test her model with data it hadn’t seen before. When tested on the BIRDSAI dataset, her model was able to detect humans with over 90 percent accuracy.
From Smithsonian Magazine
