Xbox Series X, Series S to Support Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos for Gaming

The Xbox Series X and Series S will be the first consoles to support both Dolby Vision (in 2021) and Dolby Atmos (at launch) for gaming. Sony has yet to reveal if the PS5 will do that too, though it has its own variant of Dolby Atmos in “Tempest 3D AudioTech”.

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Would you pay Instagram to let you put a link in your posts

Clickable links may finally come to Instagram captions, but only if you can pay for it. Instagram is one of the most popular social networks and it primarily revolves around images and videos as posts. However, the platform does not allow users to promote website links as openly as Facebook. Only users with more than 10,000 followers are allowed to post links on their Instagram Stories, while everyone else has to rely on the profile bio to add a link. That may soon change with a new patent filed by Facebook.

A new patent application filed by Facebook dated September 8 2020, shows a payment pop-up appear when a user adds a link to a caption and make it clickable, asking the user to pay $2 (roughly Rs 150). The patent reads, “If the online system detects the text content of the caption includes a string of link text identifying an address, the online system prompts the posting user to pay a fee in exchange for generating a link.”

The patent states that this fee of generating a link in the image caption may either be flat, or change based on the number of users connected to the posting users in the platform. The fee may also depend on the profile which is posting the caption. Businesses may be needed to pay a fee, while individual users with non-business accounts may not have to pay.

By having a fee in place, Facebook argues that this would prevent users from posting content with links in the caption as alternate advertisements without incurring additional costs. Making it a premium feature would also prevent over usage of links.

How soon this feature will be readied for mass rollout remains to be seen. As of now, it’s only a patent, but it does throw a light at what Facebook may be planning to do with Instagram in the future. Monetizing the social media platform has been a focus for the company, and a host of new features including Instagram Shopping, and promoted posts are aimed at turning the platform into a profiteering proposition.

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Sony WH-1000XM4 India launch date confirmed

The Sony WH-1000XM4 is no longer much of a secret and the company is expected to officially announce the headphones in India on September 18th via a Livestream on YouTube. If you’ve been waiting for these headphones to launch in India, the date announcement date is now confirmed.

The Sony WH-1000XM4 has already been launched in international markets for a price tag of $350, the same as the price of the older 1000XM3 (Review). However, the headphones could see a slight bump in price due to the weak Rupee over the last few months. If Sony manages to price the headphones the same as they did the previous model, then its nothing but a win-win for consumers.

The Sony WH-1000XM4 doesn’t bring a basket-full of big changes but instead incorporates a large number of refinements over the previous generation of noise-cancelling headphones from the company. There are, however, a few notable features that should attract new buyers. First, Sony seems to have finally figured out multi-device pairing, which allows you to have the headphones connected to two devices simultaneously. This means you could be listening to music with the headphones paired to your laptop, but the headphones will switch over to your smartphone automatically when there’s an incoming call. The lack of this feature was the biggest criticism for the Sony 1000XM3. There’s now also a proximity sensor which would play or pause your music automatically depending on whether you're putting on or taking off the headphones. The headphones now also support Sony’s LDAC codec. What remains mostly unchanged is the design and battery life. The noise cancellation is handled by the same chip that’s found on the 1000XM3, although Sony says the algorithms on the QN1 chip used in the 1000XM4 are new.

The Sony WH-1000XM4 are going to be announced by Sony on September 18th, with the headphones being available soon after. The company had recently launched the WH-SP800N (Review) and WF-1000XM3 (Review), both truly wireless IEMs, but were made available a few days after their announcement date.

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PS5 Showcase Event Announced for September 16

Is PS5 price in India and launch date incoming? Sony has announced a ‘PlayStation 5 Showcase’ event for Wednesday, September 16 at 1pm PDT — for us in India, that translates to Thursday, September 17 at 1:30am IST.

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Nvidia buying ARM could mean GeForce GPUs are coming to smartphones

What has been mostly rumours in the air has turned out to be true. SoftBank has sold the processor architecture company, Arm to NVIDIA for a deal valued at $40 billion. Reports about NVIDIA’s interest in Arm were doing the rounds earlier this year with many suggesting the company was in advanced talks to acquire the the semiconductor company.

NVIDIA will be putting in a mix of cash and stock options, which includes $21.5 billion in NVIDIA stocks and $12 billion in cash. NVIDIA will be paying $2 billion at the time of signing the deal, along with $1.5 billion in equity to Arm employees and $5 billion in cash or stock to Softbank.

The deal is subject to regulatory approvals in US, UK, China and EU and is expected to take around 18 months to complete. So, sometime in 2022, Arm will officially come under Nvidia.

What does the NVIDA-ARM acquisition mean for mobile users?

The deal could bring about a tighter integration of Nvidia’s technology with Arm’s IPs. That could mean a GeForce-powered SoC design from Arm in the future, but whether that would bring about a change in the licensing models that Arm has in place with silicon makers, remains to be seen. It’s likely that Nvidia won’t disrupt the previously established status quo to preserve licensing revenues.   It’s Arm’s intellectual property that powers mobile processors for Samsung, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Apple and Huawei, while Nvidia is a leader in GPUs in PCs. Both companies release their roadmaps every year. Arm outlines the mobile CPU and GPU IPs, which are then used by fabless chip designers like Apple, Qualcomm and MediaTek to design their custom chips for mobile devices. NVIDIA also attempted to make mobile CPUs once upon a time with its Tegra lineup of chips, but it never became quite popular and is presently used in the Nintendo Switch. And while the deal should eventually get NVIDIA into the mobile computing side of things, the company states that its main focus is going to be on data centres right now.

There’s also movement in the opposite direction. With Apple going public with its plans to power MacBooks with silicon-based on Arm IP, NVIDIA’s acquisition might do the same for Windows PCs as well. There are already Qualcomm chips available for PCs, but we aren’t seeing very many devices powered by those chips yet.

According to the deal, Arm will continue to be headquartered in Cambridge, UK with NVIDIA investing in a new AI research centre there. In fact, NVIDIA has signalled the acquisition is done to set up the next stage of AI computing.

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WhatsApp beta update to add Doodles and Wallpaper Dimming to chat wallpapers

There’s a new beta update for WhatsApp that actually allows you to change the way your chat wallpaper looks. The new update adds the option that allows users to adjust the opacity of the chat wallpaper as well giving you the option of removing the wallpaper doodles which are in the background. As of right now, the features are in the beta testing phase but knowing how the company works, we should be getting a stable update sometime down the line. 

On the bottom of the chat wallpaper editing screen, you will then use a sliding interface that will allow you to decrease or increase the opacity of the background wallpaper. In fact, with the beta version 2.20.198.5, WhatsApp gave users the ability to even search for stickers. In addition to letting users search for stickers, there are also tabs that club different stickers under one head. So under the happy, love, sad, angry, etc tab, you will see different stickers housed experiment the relevant emotion. This will also make it easier for those that what to use stickers from different packs find and use them. 

WhatsApp also launched its own security disclosure portal. As the name would suggest, the website’s purpose seems to be the official disclosure of vulnerabilities found on WhatsApp to the public. The launch of the website finds 6 new vulnerabilities already listed on it. You can read more about that story here. 

 

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Sony is hosting a PlayStation 5 event on September 16, could reveal price and launch date of the console

With the 2020 console wars getting spicier with each passing day, Microsoft took the initiative and announced the launch date and price of the Xbox Series X and Series S. It was a loud and clear shot that put the ball squarely on Sony’s court. And, for what it’s worth, we’re getting the return salvo by Sony and it’s scheduled for Wednesday, September 16. The company is hosting a special event centred around the PS5 and the presentation will be about 40-minutes long. We’ve already seen the console, but we don’t know how much it’ll actually cost. That’s what Wednesday’s presentation will hopefully address. 

PlayStation 5 Showcase broadcasts live this Wednesday at 1pm Pacific Time: https://t.co/W4gkVp7pdv pic.twitter.com/Nn33RT0yki

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) September 12, 2020

Sony has had a habit of pulling off ‘mic drop’ moments at the very last second and could potentially counter the hype of the Xbox Series X with the right pricing for the Sony console. We should also be getting a release date of the PS5 as well. At least, we hope we do. Sony has said that it will showcase more first-party as well as third-party games at the presentation but again, we have our fingers crossed that we’ll get the price and launch date of the console. With the Xbox Series X priced at Rs 49,990 and the Series S coming in at Rs 34,990, we could see Sony undercut Microsoft by lowering the price of the PlayStation 5, but this is just all speculation until Sony official reveals the details. 

The announcement by Microsoft could spur Sony to really get competitive with its PS5 pricing and really get the console wars going again. For older gamers, this is literally our version of the Sega Genesis vs the Super Nintendo all over again. So, stay tuned to Digit as we all eagerly await for Sony’s presentation on September 16. For all you guys who to see how the two consoles stack up against each other, you can head on over here. 

 

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