Quick Shots-43

Facebook is pressing pause on its ‘Instagram Kids’ project

Facebook announced on September 27 that is temporarily pausing the work on “Instagram Kids” — an Instagram experience designed specifically for users under the age of 13. The company says the move will give it more time to “work with parents, policymakers, and regulators, listen to their concerns, and demonstrate the important of the project for younger teens.”

While the work on “Instagram Kids” has been paused, Facebook is working on introducing new parental supervision tools that will allow parents to “oversee” their children’s accounts. Facebook says it will more to share on the opt-in supervision tools in the coming months.

Read More at Android Central

Oppo K9 Pro is official with Dimensity 1200, 60W fast charging

The front panel is a 6.43” OLED with Full HD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate and 180Hz touch sampling rate. It covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color space, supports HDR10, and has 430 nits typical brightness and up to 800 nits peak. That’s the very same panel used on the Dimensity 1200-powered Realme GT Neo.

The two phones also share the triple camera on the back including 64MP main, 8MP ultrawide and 2MP macro units. The selfie camera has 16MP sensor.

The K9 Pro also shares its 4,500mAh battery with the Realme GT Neo, but it comes with 60W fast charging. Interestingly enough, this is the first Oppo with such rates, which is between the more typical 50W SuperVOOC and the 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 standards.

The device is advertised as a powerhouse, and as such, it needs some extra cooling, and that’s why Oppo has installed a 14,000 sq. mm. vapor chamber cooling that lowers the temperature by 17 degrees Celsius. The UI is ColorOS 11.3 with Android 11 underneath.

Oppo K9 Pro arrives in Obsidian Black or Glacier Blue colors. Prices are CNY2,199 for the 8/128 GB variant and CNY2,699 for the 12/256 GB option, and sales are already open on Oppo China’s website, as well as major online retailers.

Read More at Gsmarena

Xiaomi Civi unveiled with Snapdragon 778G, 6.55″ 120Hz OLED display and 55W fast charging

It is powered by the Snapdragon 778G, one of the more exciting chipsets to launch recently. Fabbed on TSMC’s 6 nm process, it is an alternative to the 780G (Samsung 5 nm) and features four big Cortex-A78 based cores as well as a high-end Adreno 642L GPU and a X53 5G modem (3.3 Gbps, also Wi-Fi 6E is supported for 3.6 Gbps). Nine layers of graphene keep the chip running cool. Also, the Adreno supports Variable Rate Shading, which can boost performance with minimal image quality loss.

This 1080p+ OLED display supports both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision and comes with excellent calibration – deltaE is around 0.36. The display can hit a peak brightness of 950 nits.

Moving on to the camera, the main module is based around a 64 MP sensor (1/2.0”). It has 0.7 µm pixels natively, which can grow to 1.4 µm with binning, and it sits behind an f/1.8 lens. There’s no optical stabilization.

The next camera has a 120º ultra wide-angle lens (f/2.2) and an 8 MP sensor. Last on the back is a 2 MP macro camera. For selfies, the Xiaomi Civi comes equipped with a 32 MP shooter with an autofocus lens.

The phone runs on a 4,500 mAh battery, which Xiaomi says will be enough of just over 24 hours of use. Afterwards, it can be fully charged in 45 minutes thanks to the 55W wired charging support.

Read More at Gsmarena

Leaks show the Galaxy S22 and S22+ will look a lot better than the Ultra

Are you disappointed with the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra design based on the leaked renders? Well here’s something that might cheer you up. The Galaxy S22 and S22+ renders have also made their way to the internet, and they look substantially better than their Ultra sibling.

The leaks come courtesy of 91Mobiles, Zouton, and OnLeaks, with the latter having a reputation for being spot on with his renders. They show that unlike the boxy design of the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the Galaxy S22 and S22+ will feature a design that’s largely unchanged from their S21 counterparts.

On the Galaxy S21+, Samsung curved the chassis to create an illusion that the camera frame blended with it. That does not seem to be the case on the Galaxy S22+, as in the renders, the camera housing is clearly distinct from the chassis. The front of the device is dominated by the display surrounded by symmetrical bezels, with a centered punch-hole for the selfie camera located at the top.

Read More at Android Police

Oppo challenges Garmin and Fitbit with its latest super-cheap smartwatch

Oppo has unveiled a new cheap fitness tracker that seems to be taking the big players Garmin and Fitbit head-on, at a much lower price point. The watch’s design leaked a few days ago (as reported by Wareable) but now we know its full specifications – and they look impressive.

The Oppo Watch Free, unveiled on September 26, has the usual array of workout tracking modes, but its sleep tracking is what really stands out. The watch will monitor SpO2 levels and heart rate variability overnight, which it will use to sleep stages. In the morning, you can check your sleep stats right on your wrist, without opening the smartphone app.

That’s not all, though. Fitbit has just begun rolling out snore detection for the Fitbit Sense and Versa 3, but the Oppo Watch Free will offer the same feature at launch, albeit implemented slightly differently.

Read More at Techradar

REDMAGIC 6S Pro’s 165Hz display and advanced cooling system are enough to make even PC gamers drool

Striking looks aside, what’s under the hood is even more impressive. This thing is powered by a cutting-edge Snapdragon 888+ processor. You have your choice of 12GB of RAM with 128GB of storage or 16GB of RAM with 256GB of storage, depending on the model you choose (more on that later).

Other notable specs include a large, nearly-edge-to-edge 6.8-inch AMOLED display tuned for maximum gaming performance (we’re talking 165Hz refresh rates here). You’ll also get a massive 5050mAh air-cooled battery with up to 66W quick charging capabilities, ensuring your device is always juiced up and ready to rumble.

Read more at Android Police

WhatsApp might soon offer a cashback on payments

It’s been a while since WhatsApp rolled out its payments service, WhatsApp Pay, in India and Brazil. Although the service is yet to make its way to all users, the messenger has already started testing new features to promote adoption. In August this year, WhatsApp started testing a new button in the chat bar that brought WhatsApp Pay to the forefront and allowed users to make payments with a single tap. Now, it’s reportedly working on a cashback feature to reward users for making payments.

WABetaInfo spotted the in-development feature (via Android Police) in the latest WhatsApp beta release (v 2.21.20.3). As you can see in the attached screenshot, the feature adds a new payment shortcut at the top of the Chats tab. The shortcut states: “Get cashback on your next payment.”

Read More at XDA

Apple DISABLES FaceID if you change the screen yourself – EVEN WITH AN OEM SCREEN!

Samsung wants to reverse engineer human brain and replicate it on 3D chip

Samsung has announced a new way to reverse engineer the human brain and mimic it with semiconductor chips. The world’s biggest memory chip maker has collaborated with Harvard University researchers to share a new approach that takes the world one step closer to making neuromorphic chips.

Harvard scholars and Samsung engineers have published a new perspective paper titled ‘Neuromorphic electronics based on copying and pasting the brain’ on Nature Electronics.

The research paper is co-authored by:

1. Donhee Ham, Fellow of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) and Professor of Harvard University
2. Professor Hongkun Park of Harvard University
3. Sungwoo Hwang, President and CEO of Samsung SDS and former Head of SAIT
4. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics

Read More at Sammobile

Digital health ID for every Indian – We explain how it will work

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today unveiled the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission that will connect the digital health solutions of hospitals across the country with each other. Under this, every citizen will now get a digital health ID and their health record will be digitally protected.

“Today we are launching a mission that has the potential of bringing a revolutionary change in India’s health facilities”, the Prime Minister said.

Modi also said that with 130 crore Aadhaar numbers, 118 crore mobile subscribers, about 80 crore internet users, about 43 crore Jan Dhan bank accounts, there is no such big connected infrastructure anywhere in the world. “This digital infrastructure is bringing everything from ration to administration (Ration to Prashasan)  to the common Indian in a fast and transparent manner.”

Read More at Techradar