Quick Shots-59

Alienware’s new Aurora desktop gaming PC is cooler and quieter

Despite the additional cooling chops, Alienware says the new Aurora is even quieter than its predecessor. When idle, and using the liquid CPU cooling option,  the new Aurora is anywhere between 13% and 16% quieter, and during CPU-heavy workloads, it’s up to 9% quieter.  At the same time, the CPU is up to 3% cooler compared to the current Alienware Aurora models. The improved cooling also means better performance, with Alienware claiming up to 5% faster graphics performance with the same GeForce RTX 3090 GPU as the current model.

Read More at XDA

Canalys: Samsung shipped the most phones in Q3, but chip shortage caused market decline

Smartphone shipments during the July-September period fell by 6% compared to the same time last year according to the latest preliminary data from Canalys. Component shortages amidst the ongoing global chipset shortage are the main culprits here and according to some estimates, it will take at least another year before supply and demand balance out.

Samsung is once again at the top of the polls with 23% of all shipments for the period. Apple is second with 15% of the market which is 3 percentage points better than its share at the same time last year. Xiaomi slipped to the number three spot trailing Apple by just 1 percentage point while vivo (10%) and Oppo (10%) round out the top five players.

Read More at Gsmarena

G.Skill introduces its first DDR5 RAM kits

G.Skill has announced its flagship Trident Z5 DDR5 RAM, one of the first waves of commercially available kits designed for PC gamers. Alongside Teamgroup’s T-Force Delta kits, you’ll soon be able to buy RGB memory ready for the release of the next generation of motherboards and processors. 

G.Skill is especially favored by the PC gaming community owing to its creative designs, such as the aforementioned Z series and especially blingy Trident Z Royal kits. It announced DDR5 preparations a few weeks back via Twitter, but this is our first look at the memory modules that will be hitting the market in November 2021.

Read More at Techradar

Twitter wants to show you ads in the middle of conversations

In a fresh bid to maximize its revenue, Twitter on Wednesday announced it’s going to experiment with a new ad format. Twitter already displays ads between tweets, but as part of this new experiment, the company will start showing them in one more place: between tweet replies.

Twitter’s Revenue Product Lead Bruce Falck announced the experiment in a recent tweet. The new format will be tested globally, though only on mobile devices (Android and iOS). There’s no word if the change will eventually roll out to desktop users as well. The ad will appear after the first, third, or eighth reply under a tweet. The new ad format differs from the existing one in that it “aligns incentives for creators and advertisers.” Bruce also hinted at the possibility that creators will receive a cut of ad revenue if they opt-in, though he stopped short of revealing more details.

Read More at XDA

WhatsApp end-to-end encrypted backups are rolling out on both Android and iOS

Starting today, WhatsApp is adding end-to-end encryption to your cloud backups on both Android and iOS. While WhatsApp itself has been end-to-end encrypted by default for the past five years, until now if you chose to backup your chats to Google Drive (from the Android version of WhatsApp) or iCloud (if you’re on iOS), those backups wouldn’t be encrypted.

Now, however, you can turn on end-to-end encryption for your backups. The way WhatsApp owner Facebook describes this in its announcement, it seems like it won’t be on by default but you’ll have to actively choose to enable it by going to Settings > Chats > Chat Backup > End-to-end Encrypted Backup.

Read More at Gsmarena

TCL unveils Thunderbird Smart Glasses with a full-color transparent micro-LED display

There is a renewed push to make smart glasses the next big thing and these may be the most impressive yet – TCL unveiled the Thunderbird Smart Glasses Pioneer Edition. They use a micro-LED display with a wave guide that was developed in-house over the last three years. It’s a transparent color display, so these look and feel like regular glasses.

This sets them apart from Xiaomi’s concept smart glasses, which only featured a monochrome display also using micro-LED. In both cases the LEDs are tiny, just 4 µm in size, but TCL’s team developed a proprietary algorithm that enables the Thunderbird glasses to show a full-color image.

Read More at Gsmarena

The Samsung Galaxy S21 FE has yet another rumored launch date

The oft-leaked Samsung Galaxy S21 FE was supposed to be released by now, but it’s widely believed that Samsung delayed the release due to the global chip shortage. It’s even been suggested that the phone might not actually end up being released.

Now, tipsters Max Weinbach, Ross Young, and Jon Prosser have all reported that Samsung is gearing up to release the Galaxy S21 FE in January 2022.

Read More at Android Authority

Carl Pei’s Nothing will reportedly launch its first phone early next year

Nothing, which announced a new partnership with Qualcomm earlier this week, could be working on its first smartphone. According to a report from 91Mobiles, Carl Pei’s startup is planning to release the device sometime early next year to take the fight to the best Android phones.

While the report doesn’t include any details about the key specs or features of the phone, it is likely to be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. Nothing has already confirmed that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform will power its future tech products. You can also expect the phone to have a minimalistic design.

Back in January this year, Nothing acquired Andy Rubin’s Essential brand, including all its trademarks, logo, and patents. There’s a good chance that the brand’s first phone will use at least some of Essential’s tech.

Read More at Android Central

Google Search for mobile gains continuous scroll in search results

Google is doing a gradual rollout of its continuous scroll feature for most English searches on mobile in the U.S. The feature allows users to view up to four pages of results in Google Search before they reach a “See more” button. The new addition is coming to both the Android and iOS Google Search apps.

Users will still get a “See more” button once they scroll past the four pages of content mark. According to Google, the new continuous scrow feature allows users to get more ideas and inspiration for tasks like cooking. In addition, the new feature allows Google to place more ads that will be seen by its users.

Read More at Gsmarena

You might be able to listen to Apple Music on a PlayStation 5 soon

The PlayStation 5 is a pretty difficult games console to get a hold of, but it’s packed full of features. A favorite feature of many gamers is Spotify integration so that you can listen to music in supported games while you play, or even just listen to music while doing something else. There’s a stark lack of other services though if you want to listen to music. There’s no TIDAL, there’s no Deezer, and until recently, there was no Apple Music. That might be changing though, as it seems that Apple Music might be coming to the PlayStation 5 soon.

A user on the /r/AppleMusic subreddit (via The Verge) spotted the inclusion of an Apple Music setup button when making a new account on a PlayStation 5. The button didn’t work, however, and selecting it brought up a prompt stating “This app is playable only on PS4.” Eurogamer also tried to make the Apple Music account linking option appear on their PlayStation 5 and managed to trigger it by changing their console region to the U.S. When they tried to trigger it again, it didn’t appear. The error saying it’s playable only on PS4 is one that shows up when an app isn’t currently available on the PlayStation 5 and is standard, according to Eurogamer. Most apps on the PlayStation 5 are just PlayStation 4 apps running under backward compatibility.

Read more at XDA