Apple has released iOS 14.2 update bringing in new emojis, wallpapers and a ton of bug fixes to iPhone and iPad. There are a couple of updates to HomePod and some specific updates for the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. The iPhone 12 Pro is already on sale in India and the iPhone 12 Pro Max is set to go on pre-orders later today.
Apple’s iOS 14.2 update brings in more than 100 emojis in categories like animals, food, faces, objects and more. It also adds eight new wallpapers that feature both light and dark mode versions. The update also adds audio level notification alerts to warn users when volume levels could impact hearing.
Some device-specific updates for the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max is the Magnifier’s ability to detect nearby people and report the distance using the phone's LiDAR sensor. The update also adds support for iPhone 12 Leather Sleeve with MagSafe connector. It also brings optimized battery charging to AirPods that ensures slow battery ageing.
HomePod and HomePod Mini are also receiving Intercom support for iPhone, iPad, AirPods, CarPlay and Apple Watch. The HomePod can now also connect to the Apple TV 4K for stereo surround sound and Dolby Atmos.
Apart from the feature updates, the new iOS 14.2 update also fixes a lot of bugs in the system. Some of these include instances when apps appear “out of order” on the home screen, camera viewfinder not responding, missing touch input on the lock screen and more. You can view the full list of bug fixes here.
The iOS 14.2 update has been released by Apple and iPhone users can check if they have received the update by following these steps.
Go to Settings and tap General.
Select Software Update from the list and you will see the latest iOS 14.2 updates.
Tap Download and Install and the update will be installed
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Just before announcing that WhatsApp is now allowed to enable UPI payments for users in India, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) set a cap of 30 per cent on the total volume of UPI transactions on Third Party App (TPA) providers. This will go into effect from January 2021 and will impact apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, WhatsApp Pay and the likes, which may cause them to fail more often than before, while first party UPI apps like Paytm and MobiKwik are expected to benefit from not having any such cap on transactions.
According to NPCI, UPI transactions have exceeded the two billion mark, and third party apps like Google Pay, Amazon Pay and the likes are responsible for the majority of such transactions. The cap has been put in order to “address the risks and protect the UPI ecosystem as it further scales up.”
Presently, the majority of UPI transactions happen through Google Pay and PhonePe, apps that are owned by Google and Flipkart and rely on banks to enable the UPI environment. On the other hand, first party apps like Paytm and MobiKwik are UPI service providers themselves and run their own environment of accepting payments. According to a report, Google Pay and PhonePe account for 40 percent each, of UPI transactions, while Paytm and MobiKwik together account for the remaining 20 per cent transactions. This, even as Government’s own BHIM app hardly has any market share.
The imposition of the cap was done so as to change the market to a more even distribution pattern. Most of the transactions that happen on Google Pay and PhonePe, as alleged by other players, are small-value transactions where people send amounts as small as Re. 1 to each other to win cashback. The 30 per cent cap will be calculated on the basis of the total volume of transactions processed as UPI payments during the preceding three months on a rolling basis. NPCI has allowed TPAs with more than 30 per cent market share a two-year window to comply with the guidelines.
Once the cap on transactions go into effect, it’s not immediately clear what will happen when a TPA will exceed the 30 per cent cap. Would the app be allowed to complete the payment? Would this lead to more failed payments on Google Pay and the likes? The announcement also comes just hours before WhatsApp was finally given the go ahead to enable UPI transactions. The instant messaging app owned by Facebook has a massive market share in India, which can also very well translate to UPI market share. Then again, NPCI has allowed a maximum user base of up to 20 million users for WhatsApp.
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Motorola Moto G9 Power and Moto G 5G have officially launched in Europe. The Moto G9 Power features a high-capacity 6,000mAh battery while the Moto G 5G, as the name suggests, is an affordable 5G smartphone in the mid-range segment.
The Moto G9 was launched in India back in August while the Moto G9 Plus debuted globally in September. The latest phone in the G9 lineup is the G9 Power that has a large battery and triple cameras on the back while the Moto G 5G is powered by a powerful Snapdragon processor that is compatible with 5G networks.
Motorola Moto G9 Power specifications and pricing
The Moto G9 Power features a 6.8-inch HD+ (1640 x 720 pixels) resolution display with a punch-hole cutout in the top-left corner. The phone measures 9.7 millimetres in thickness and weighs around 221 grams. It is fitted with a water-repellent coating but the phone has not received any IP certification.
The G9 Power is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor with an octa-core CPU running at 2.0GHz clock speeds and Adreno 610 GPU. This is paired with 4GB RAM and 12GB storage and the phone has a microSD card slot for further storage expansion. The phone runs on stock Android 10 with My UX customisations.
Moto G9 Power has a triple camera setup on the back that consists of a primary 64MP camera with an f/1.8 aperture, a 2MP macro camera and a 2MP depth sensor. The rear cameras can record in 1080P at upto 60FPS. On the front, there’s a 16MP selfie camera housed within the notch cutout.
The Moto ‘batwing’ logo on the back doubles up as a fingerprint reader. The Moto G9 Power is equipped with a 6,000mAh battery that supports 20W fast charging out-of-the-box.
Moto G9 Power is priced at EUR 199 for European countries but there’s no word on an Indian launch yet.
Moto G 5G specifications and pricing
The Moto G 5G features a 6.7-inch Full HD+ (2400 x 1080 pixels) resolution display with a punch-hole cutout in the middle for the selfie camera. This gives the screen a 20:9 aspect ratio with the screen being certified for HDR10 playback. The Moto G 5G measures 9.9 millimetres in thickness and weighs 212 grams.
Moto G 5G is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G processor with an octa-core CPU running at up to 2.2 GHz speeds and Adreno 619 GPU. This is paired with 4GB or 6GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of storage options to choose from. Like the Moto G9 Power, the Moto G 5G also supports microSD cards for further storage expansion.
There’s a triple camera setup on the back that consists of a primary 48MP camera with an f/1.7 aperture, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle camera with 118-degree-field of-view and a 2MP macro camera. The rear cameras can record in 4K UHD at 30FPS and is backed by electronic image stabilization (EIS) system. As for the selfies, there is a 16MP selfie camera on the front housed within the notch cutout in the middle.
The fingerprint reader finds its place on the rear panel and the Moto G 5G is equipped with a 5,000mAh battery that supports 20W fast charging. It is priced starting at EUR 299 but is unlikely to launch in India given the non-availability of 5G networks in the country.
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The Apple iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max will be up for pre-orders in India after their launch on October 14 alongside the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro. The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are already on sale in India and starting later today, the most compact iPhone along with the most premium iPhone this year will be up for grabs.
The iPhone 12 Mini is one of the most compact iPhones in recent times and has the same new flat-edge design that’s reminiscent of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5s. Both the 12 Mini and 12 Pro Max are powered by the A14 Bionic processor with multiple camera setup on the back with the Retina display protected by a layer of ceramic shield. The iPhone 12 Pro Max takes it a bit further with a LiDAR scanner and additional photography chops that makes it the flagship iPhone to buy this year.
Here’s everything you should know about pre-booking the iPhone 12 Mini or iPhone 12 Pro Max in India.
How to pre-order Apple iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max in India?
The pre-bookings for the iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max in India is scheduled to start from 6:30 PM IST on November 6. Interested buyers will be able to pre-order either of the two phones from Apple Store Online or through other e-commerce channels apart from offline distributors and resellers.
The iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max will be available starting November 13 in India which is when the pre-orders will start shipping. Both phones are also listed on Amazon India and Flipkart, however, pre-orders details for the same are not available yet. We will update this post once Amazon and Flipkart reveal the pre-order details for the iPhone 12 Mini and 12 Pro Max.
Apple iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max launch offers
HDFC Bank credit and debit cardholders are eligible to receive an instant cashback of upto Rs 6,000 on pre-booking the iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max. HDFC Bank credit cardholders will get a discount of Rs 6,000 on the phones while debit card users are eligible to receive Rs 1,500 off.
Apple iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max pricing
The Apple iPhone 12 Mini is priced starting at Rs 69,900 in India for the base variant with 64GB storage followed by the 128GB storage variant priced at Rs 74,900 and the maxed-out 256GB variant at Rs 84,900.
It is available in white, black, blue, green and Product Red edition colours to choose from.
As for the iPhone 12 Pro Max, it starts at Rs 1,29,900 for the 128GB base variant in India followed by the 256GB variant at Rs 1,39,900 and the maxed-out 512GB storage variant at Rs 1,59,900. The iPhone 12 Pro Max is being offered in four colours-- Graphite, Silver, Gold and Pacific Blue, to choose from.
To know more about the iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 you can read this and for more details on the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max go here.
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iPhone and iPad users could soon be able to play Fortnite again via Nvidia’s cloud gaming service. Nvidia has reportedly developed a version of its GeForce cloud gaming service that runs in the mobile web browser Safari.
The WhatsApp payment service was introduced in 2018 but it was not available to everyone. Just like PayTM or Google Pay, WhatsApp payments let you transfer money using UPI (Unified Payments Interface). The feature is now live to all users in India.
In a blog post, WhatsApp says, “Starting today, people across India will be able to send money through WhatsApp. This secure payments experience makes transferring money just as easy as sending a message. People can safely send money to a family member or share the cost of goods from a distance without having to exchange cash in person or going to a local bank”.
In a video post, Mark Zuckerberg says, “Now you can send money to your friends and family through WhatsApp as easily as sending a message. There’s no fee, and it’s supported by more than 140 banks. And because it’s WhatsApp, it’s secure and private too. Digital payments are really important right now. It’s safer than handing someone cash and eliminates the need from standing in line at the bank. So, you can quickly send money to families and friends that may be miles away across the country”.
UPI payment is supported by 160 banks and if the sender and receiver both have UPI linked bank account, they will be able to send and receive money.
How to send money using WhatsApp
To send money, users need to click on the attachment icon in a chat window. This is the same one used to send contacts, media, location, etc.).
Here, click on the option called payments. If your contact does not have payments enabled in WhatsApp, you can send them a message to set it up.
To set up your own payment, go into settings, then payment and follow the onscreen instructions.
Once you and the receiver have set up payment, you will be able to send money. It’s as simple as sending an attachment.
If you already have a UPI ID, you will be prompted to enter your UPI pin before the transaction is complete.
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This is voodoo magic at work. AMD has managed to improve performance in the last few domains where it was lagging behind Intel in the gaming and content creation space. Essentially, we’re looking at much better gaming performance and equally notable improvements in content creation applications as well. All that remains is to see how Indian retailers will price the new Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X. The Intel Core i9-10900K is priced at INR 52,000 on Amazon of all places and the AMD processors we’ve reviewed are priced at INR 50,000 (5900X) and INR 72,000 (5950X). You can see that there’s little reason for getting the Intel desktop flagships anymore. There are still applications which make use of proprietary Intel tech where Team Blue continues to shine but for all other applications under the sun, AMD is the clear winner.
AMD processors have been making huge improvements every year, be it in the form of increasing core counts or improving power efficiency. While the Ryzen processors have made massive IPC improvements over the older Bulldozer and Piledriver microarchitectures in the initial years, Intel still had the leadership in that domain. With Zen 3 a.k.a. Vermeer a.k.a. Ryzen 5000 series, AMD is finally taking leadership in the last remaining bastion of performance metrics. Team Red is claiming a 19 per cent IPC improvement with Zen 3 over Zen 2 which is quite a notable achievement considering that AMD has not switched to a smaller node but has managed to include improvements to power efficiency and performance which are otherwise normally obtained with a node change. In this review, we’re looking at the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and the Ryzen 9 5900X which are the two best processors from the new Ryzen 5000 series. The former is a 16-Core / 32-Thread processor priced at around INR 72,000 and the Ryzen 9 5900X is a 12-Core / 24-Thread processor priced at around INR 50,000.
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
Zen 3 Microarchitecture
AMD has overhauled several aspects of the Zen 2 microarchitecture to arrive at Zen 3. For starters, there’s the way the cores are arranged and linked within the die. With Zen 2, each compute die (CCD) had two core complexes (CCX) and each CCX would have four cores / eight threads which were given a 16 MB L3 cache to work with. In Zen 3, each CCD has a single unified CCX with eight cores / 16 threads and 32 MB of L3 cache. Also, each package is limited to 2 CCDs so the maximum core count that you’ll see with Zen 3 is 16 which is the same as Zen 2 which means we can’t expect higher core counts this generation. AMD has transitioned to a ring architecture for the cores to communicate with each other. Another popular architecture is to use a mesh interconnect for the cores which helps reduce core-to-core latencies and is usually used in processors with high core counts. This doesn’t necessarily mean that with the ring architecture AMD would face higher latencies, the unification of the CCX presents with much higher latency reductions than what a mesh architecture alone would have achieved.
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
We can see that within a CCX, the Core-to-Core latency has increased because we’re looking at a much longer path for certain cores to talk to each other. However, across CCXes, we can see an overall reduction in latencies thanks to the consolidation. AMD states that these improved core-to-core and core-to-cache access times (read lower latencies) are quite effective at improving performance in certain video games. Dota 2, for example, benefits from reduced inter-core latencies as well as with reduced latency between the CPU cores to the GPU. AMD says that the average gaming performance between Zen 2 and Zen 3 is 26 per cent as a result of this transition.
AMD 4th Gen RYZEN 9 / 7 / 5 Vermeer (Ryzen 5000) Lineup and Specifications
The new AMD Ryzen 5000 processor lineup consists of four SKUs - Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 5 5600X. Compared to their Ryzen 3000 series counterparts, the Ryzen 5000 processors feature slightly lower base clocks but higher boost clocks. Since applications tend to operate at base clocks for longer durations over time, this is an interesting shift and also gives a hint at the kind of performance improvement that has been achieved.
One of the most popular processors globally right now is the Ryzen 5 3600X and its Ryzen 5000 counterpart is the Ryzen 5 5600X which features a 100MHz reduction in base block and a 200 MHz increase in boost clock. However, the Ryzen 5 5600X is a 65W TDP CPU whereas the Ryzen 5 3600X is a 95W CPU. Combined with the IPC increment, this would be a sizable improvement in performance.
AMD RYZEN 9 5950X and 5900X Performance
The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X only have to do very little to be deemed better than the competition so the following results should hardly be a surprise. There's still scope for improvement with the core clock speeds and we might see the "XT" processors if AMD wants to bring them out. Also, Intel's Rocket Lake is around the corner so that's an additional reason for us to expect more from Zen 3 in the months to come. But for now, let’s see how the new Ryzen 5000 processors perform.
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Desktop Processor
We tested the unit on the following configuration: AMD RYZEN TEST RIG CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X Motherboard: ASRock X570 Taichi SSD: Samsung 970 PRO 1TB HDD: Seagate FireCuda 2 TB ST2000DX002 RAM: Corsair Dominator PRO 16GB (2x 8GB) @3200 MHz Cooler: Corsair H115i Pro PSU: Corsair HX1050
As always, we begin with Cinebench 20 to see how the processor fare in single threaded and multithreaded performance. In the single-threaded benchmark, The AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT ends up with a massive lead over its own Zen 2 processors as well as Intel Core processors. These scores are in the 630-640 range which is the first time that we've ever seen anything go this high. The multithreaded run obviously scales really well and we can see the same in the results.
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X Cinebench R20 1T
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X Cinebench R20 nT
POV-Ray being a multi-threaded benchmark sees the Ryzen 9 5950X scale really well and maintain a healthy lead over the 5900X and the 10900K.
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X POV-Ray 1T
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X POV-Ray nT
Our Handbrake run basically consists of transcoding a 4K video clip from one CODEC to another without changing the resolution. Handbrake is quick to incorporate new CPU encoding engines and is favoured among the ‘creator community’. The 5950X shows a 17 per cent reduction in encode times compared to the Ryzen 9 3900X and about 10 per cent compared to the 10900K.
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X Handbrake
Blender is a fairly well known open-source rendering software. In this benchmark, we're looking at the time taken for a run to finish rendering. So the lower the score in this test, better the CPU. The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X scores a significant lead over the 3900X as well as the 10900K. However, this difference is only brought out when running multiple iterations of the same workload. In a single run, the difference is barely there.
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X Blender
The 7-zip decompression benchmark places the Ryzen 9 5950X at the top of the chart along with the Ryzen 9 5900X. It scales quite well and we see a significant lead over the 3900XT as well as the 10900K.
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X 7-Zip
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X Gaming
In our gaming benchmarks, the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X perform at par or better in most of the benchmarks. Essentially, we're looking at the best performing gaming processors right here.
Verdict
This is voodoo magic at work. AMD has managed to improve performance in the last few domains where it was lagging behind Intel in the gaming and content creation space. Essentially, we’re looking at much better gaming performance and equally notable improvements in content creation applications as well. All that remains is to see how Indian retailers will price the new Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X. The Intel Core i9-10900K is priced at INR 52,000 on Amazon of all places and the AMD processors we’ve reviewed are priced at INR 50,000 (5900X) and INR 72,000 (5950X). You can see that there’s little reason for getting the Intel desktop flagships anymore. There are still applications which make use of proprietary Intel tech where Team Blue continues to shine but for all other applications under the sun, AMD is the clear winner.
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