OnePlus 7 Pro Teasers, Pixel 3a Launch, Nokia 4.2 India Release, Realme X, and More Tech News This Week

OnePlus released a number of new OnePlus 7 Pro teaser this week, Google I/O 2019 saw Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL announcements, and Xiaomi started teasing a launch of a new phone in India.

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PUBG Mobile Season 7 Leak Tips New Skins, Weapon, Royale Pass Rewards, and More

PUBG Mobile’s Season 7 is set to kick off next week, but details about new items, skins and Royale Pass have already been leaked.

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Fortnite Season 9 Adds New Locations, ‘Slipstreams’ for Quicker Transportation, ‘Fortbytes’ for Battle Pass Owners, and More

Fortnite’s Season 9 has now gone live, adding new locations and in-game elements like ‘Slipstreams’ and ‘Fortbytes’ to name a few.

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TSMC may have begun production on Apples A13 chipsets

Chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) may already have started production of Apple’s new chipsets, which will power this year’s iPhones. According to a report by Bloomberg, the processors went to early test production in April, with mass production slated for this month. The processor will most likely be dubbed the A13 and will power this year’s devices.

A few days ago, TSMC announced that it had started risk production for 5nm chips, which would go into mass production by the first half of 2020. The company also noted that they would start production of 5nm+ chips by 2021. The 5nm process uses a laser with the wavelength of 193nm to project a pattern onto the die through a mask. The new 5nm chips are said to be almost 45% smaller than the current 7nm chips while offering up to 15% performance gains. The 5nm+ process will use Extreme Ultraviolet Laser (EUV Lithography) with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometers, requiring very few masks as compared to the normal 5nm process. This process is said to improve upon these numbers even further by delivering 6-12% better power efficiency.

So it is pretty evident by that new Apple A13 SoC will not utilise the new 5nm process. However, the 2020 iPhones might. TSMC is the sole supplier of Apple’s chipsets and the new 5nm process might also interest Qualcomm, who used its 7nm for the Snapdragon 855 SoC. Now that TSMC has announced a 5nm process, expect Samsung to follow suit with something similar in order to keep up with the competition.

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New Pokemon game may be coming to mobile soon: Report

It looks like we will soon be getting another Pokemon game for smartphones. According to an investor brief posted on Twitter by Takashi Mochizuki, the developers, DeNA will work with The Pokemon Company to launch a new mobile game this fiscal year, possibly 2020. However, details about the game are still not yet known, but it is noted that information for the same would be announced “later.”

 

DeNA: teamed up with Pokémon Co. to release a smartphone game by March next year. More to be announced when appropriate. pic.twitter.com/8XjhyOmebw

— Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) May 10, 2019

 

DeNA already has considerable experience in working with Nintendo to launch mobile games based on its intellectual properties. The developer has already launched games such as Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and more. DeNA is also developing a mobile version of the popular Mario Kart racing franchise, called Mario Kart Tour.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Pokemon would make their way to smartphones. Pokemon Go became a phenomenon a few years ago which players the world over going crazy catching virtual creatures. However, the popularity of the game died down within a few months. Regardless, developer Niantic has been releasing updates for the game pretty regularly. 

Speaking of Pokemon. The new Detective Pikachu movie has just hit theaters, but not before the movie’s lead actor, Ryan Renolds and Warner Brothers decided to troll those looking for pirated copies. A few days ago, a ‘leaked’ copy of the movie was posted on YouTube, complete with a watermark of the person who leaked it… Which in this case was apparently Renolds himself. The video was nothing more than Pikachu dancing non-stop for over an hour. Well played sir… well played.

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Google adding 53 gender neutral emoji to Android Q

The Android Q beta for the Pixel phones will be receiving 53 new emoji, which will be added to the final Android Q build for all phones later this year. The new emoji follow a “gender-fluid” theme, that is, they are designed to be ambiguous in the genders they represent. This is a part of Google’s attempt to make the emoji more universal and inclusive.

Since their introduction in 1999 as the “little yellow man” the emoji keyboard has expanded to over 3000 characters. While many of these are new, some are an expansion of existing characters based on gender and race, again, designed to be more inclusive of people of different colours. While this has led to more representation on the emoji keyboard, it has also made it bloated and hard to navigate at times.

There is, however, one problem with Google’s inclusions. When a new emoji si created, it may not be a part of the core Unicode standard. What this leads to is an emoji swap. For example, certain emoji on Android, which were made by Google, do not translate over to iOS, because those emoji are not part of the core Unicode standard.

Google is still championing the cause of inclusion, with the newest set of emoji being gender-neutral, in as many a ways as possible.” There’s no singular way of getting it right,” admits Google designer Jennifer Daniel to Fast Company. “Gender is complicated. It is an impossible task to communicate gender in a single image. It’s a construct. It lives dynamically on a spectrum. I personally don’t believe there is one visual design solution at all, but I do believe to avoid it is the wrong approach here. We can’t avoid race, gender, any other number of things in culture and class. You have to stare it in the face in order to understand it. That’s what we’re trying to do–to [find] the signifiers that make something feel either male or female, or both male and female.”

For now, the new emoji are exclusive to Google smartphones and if you were to send them to a user who is not using a Google-made phone, the emojis would be assigned a gender. Google hopes that these emojis would become universal with time, but for now, inclusivity still remains a work in progress.

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India opens antitrust investigation against Google over alleged abuse of Android: Report

It looks like India will be joining the European Union in investigating Google for allegedly abusing the  dominant position of Android to block competition. Sources have told Reuters that in mid-April, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) decided to launch a full probe into the complaint. The report notes that the probe will be complete in about a year, and executives from the company would likely be summoned before the CCI. Back in February, the same publication had reported that the CCI had received complaints and was said to be investigating.

Reuter’s also notes in its report that the precise details of the complaint against Google could not be determined, but the sources say that it is similar to the one filed against the company in Europe. In that case, the regulators had complained that Google forced manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Chrome browser, as well as its app store on Android devices, which gave it an unfair advantage. If found guilty, the CCI can impose a penalty of up to 10% of the company’s three-year annual average turnover.

Back in July last year, Google was fined around $5 billion by the EU antitrust regulators for abusing its Android platform. The fine resulted in Google changing its policies in the EU and the company then said that it would start charging a fee for the Google Play store and allow smartphone makers to use other versions of Android.

This isn’t the first time Google has had a run in with the CCI. last year, Google was fined Rs 136.86 Crore for abuse of its dominance and biased search practices in India.

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