It has been a while since the Indian government banned PUBG Mobile in India. However, this doesn’t seem to have dented the game’s popularity. Following the announcement of PUBG Mobile India back in November 2020, the gamers’ hopes were raised once again. But since then, the developers have gone quiet once again. Reports suggest that the developers have since been trying to get permission from the Indian Government to launch the game in India. How though, it looks like the game might come to India in a whole new avatar, or at least with a new name.
The guys over at Gemwire have unearthed a poster that suggests that the game will be called Battlegrounds Mobile India. According to their post on Instagram, the poster was found via an embed link to a video on Vimeo. The post notes that this was previously used to host the ‘Diwali Coming Soon’ creative. It was further noted that there was another private video in their asset collection on Vimeo with the image.
Gemwire also notes that Krafton Inc recently registered the battlegoundsmobileindia.in domain on April 7. This seems to suggest that the confirmation of the name change and the return of the game is just around the corner. The changing of the name to differentiate the game from the global variant is nothing new for PUBG. The Chinese version of the game was tweaked to please the Chinese government and is now called, Game for Peace.
This also ties in with a recent post by popular PUBG Mobile player Aaditya ‘Dynamo’ Sawant. In his video, he notes that the trailer for the game will be released on a “double-digit” date and will be followed by the actual release of the game on a “single-digit” date. The information is as cryptic as it can get and there is no confirmation on the exact month of the launch yet. We will advise our readers to take this information with more than a pinch of salt as such rumours have been floating around the Internet for quite some time now.
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Weapon rebalancing is pretty much a constant feature in multiplayer gaming. As new weapons are added, older weapons get tweaked to maintain relevance. As such, some weapons are nerfed, while others see a buff. This is done to ensure balance and ensure variety in gameplay. Activision has announced that it will be introducing a number of balancing changes to the weapons in Call of Duty: Mobile.
In its post over on Reddit, the developers note that the idea behind the upcoming weapon rebalance is not to nerf weapons. Rather, it is to ensure weapon types fulfil their speciality roles.
Call of Duty: Mobile - When will the weapon rebalancing update happen
While the exact date isn’t yet revealed, the developers note that it will be a part of the next major in-game update that will be released just before Season 4. This means that the update will arrive in less than a month.
Call of Duty: Mobile - Upcoming weapon rebalancing players can expect
There are the weapon changes players can expect based on weapon type.
SMG
SMGs are generally known for the close quarter’s prowess and the upcoming update will augment that ability. SMS will offer increased damage and mobility post the update. Bullet trajectory will also be optimised to ensure viability at longer ranges.
Assault Rifles
Assault rifles are supposed to be the jack-of-all-trades in gaming at the upcoming update may build upon that. The new update is designed to improve the categories mid-range skills through changes to bullet trajectory, handling and recoil,
LMG
LMGs are designed to offer suppressive fire to pin down and decimate opponents foolish enough to rush. The developers aim to improve the accuracy and damage efficiency of LMGs to ensure suppression at 30m away. They also plan to strengthen the overall capabilities of the weapon type.
Snipers
Snipers are all about range. So the rebalancing is designed to weaken the advantages of sniper rifles in close-range combat. The developers also plan to optimise the attributes of sniper attachments with more possibilities of combinations.
Marksman Rifles
The developers say that they aim to make marksman rifles more nimble and agile via increased movement speed. This would be possible via various weapon attachments.
Activision has also listed each major weapon and talked about how each of those weapons will be impacted by the upcoming changes in Call of Duty: Mobile. You can read more about that here.
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Apple’s folding phone seems like a pipedream but according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, we could be seeing the device sometime in 2023. As we reported earlier, Apple's folding iPhone could be Apple's flagship in 2023 alongside the usual iPhone releases. The folding Apple iPhone could have a screen between 7.5 and 8 inches. Now, in a note that was addressed to investors, Kou stated that Apple has planned about 15 to 20 million units in 2023.
Kuo goes on to state, “Based on our latest industry survey, we forecast that Apple will likely launch a foldable iPhone with an 8-inch QHD+ flexible OLED display in 2023, with SDC as the exclusive display supplier and Samsung Foundry as the exclusive DDI foundry provider. Based on Apple's requested capacity plan, we predict that the foldable iPhone shipments will reach 15-20 million units in 2023. We expect that the foldable iPhone will adopt TPK's silver nanowire touch solution because of its several advantages over SDC's Y-Octa technology”. He also states that folding phones could be the bridge between tablets and smartphones. We will just have to wait and see if his prediction is true.
We don't expect this folding iPhone to come out anytime soon, so don't get your hopes high just yet. Even the 2023 launch date mentioned by Kuo seems to be dependant on Apple being able to tackle out the mass production issues. Apple will most likely tackle those issues without much of a hassle. If not, then we just have to settle for an iPhone with a 120Hz ProMotion display, at least for now.
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Skate City review: an endless skateboarding game that first debuted on Apple Arcade, has made its way to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, Nintendo Switch, and PC. However, it doesn’t do much else. The graphics aren’t greatly enhanced, the gameplay has nothing notably different.
A lot of WhatsApp users actually use the voice messages feature a lot. Whether it’s just a passing message or even when it comes to work, WhatsApp voice messages are a convenient way of communication. Well, according to a report on WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is now developing a new feature that will allow users to actually review their voice message before they send it. You can now listen to your message before sending it. It’s not a complete surprise, as WhatsApp already has a similar feature but you do have to jump through a bunch of hoops to access it. This meant switching over to a different section to just review that particular message.
This new feature, however, will add a REVIEW button that you can click on to review your voice message. The feature is currently under development and will be released through an update to both Android and iOS devices. WhatsApp has also been testing out a feature where you can change the speed of your messages as well. There are three-speed options, namely 1x, 1.5x and 2x. WhatsApp has also been working on multiple device support where a user will be able to send and receive messages from any of their devices without their primary device being connected to the internet. It looks like the migration of chat between iOS and Android will help in ensuring uniformity and continuity of the chat with multiple device support.
WhatsApp is also testing self-destructing photos. The feature is currently in development and is expected to launch for both iOS and Android. You can learn more about it here. Users can also mute a video before sharing it on WhatsApp. You can learn how to mute a video before sharing it here.
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The Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 is the company's most decked out gaming laptop, purpose made for those of you who are either into e-sports or looking to get into the genre. These machines usually carry the best hardware, and in our case, we get a machine that's powered by the the pariing of an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 with 17GB VRAM. Our testing concludes that gaming on this machine is in every way a total treat, but there are a few caveats. For starters, no game currently leverages the 16GB VRAM on the RTX 3080. Second, while the display is definitely great from a gaming perspective, it lacks colour accuracy and proper colour management. Given its wide-gamut nature, there is no way to lock it into sRGB mode, making colour treatment difficult.
Last year, Asus made big bets by committing their most unique form-factor to AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series processor, but it’s a bet that paid off real big. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 was received rather well world over, however, our own review was marred by a unit that got as hot as a toaster. Regardless, this year, Asus is doubling down on its bets, giving AMD a significant presence across its entire laptop portfolio. One laptop of particular note is the e-sports-centric Scar 15, which comes powered by the newest Ryzen 5000 series processors and finally, high-end Nvidia GPUs. Our unit is completely decked out, with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, 32GB DDR4 memory, 2TB NVMe storage and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 with 16GB VRAM. There’s also a 1440p 15.6-inch IPS-Level panel, with a refresh rate of 165Hz. On paper, this machine is every bit a beast, but how does it translate to real-world performance? You could watch the video below or read our essential analysis.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 Performance Review
While the specs on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 are impressive, of particular note here is the GPU. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 we have here comes with 16GB of GDDR6 memory and a TGP of 115W with an addition 15W of boost. We put it against the MSI GS66 Stealth we have in our labs some months ago to give you a clear picture of where the Scar 15 stands.
What we find to be rather surprising is that the MSI GS66 Stealth, with its Intel Core i7-10875H processor takes the edge over the Scar 15 in come games, despite having a the same GPU, but with a lower TGP. We also noticed another interesting, but distressing occurrence. In all of our game testing, at both 1440p and 1080p resolutions, we never saw the GPU VRAM usage go over about 8GB. We reached out to Asus to figure out if this was a localized machine-based issue. They investigated our data logs and ran their own tests, concluding that our findings are indeed correct. At the time of testing, no game was able to leverage the massive VRAM pool, which honestly, feels like a waste of resource.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 Display Review
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 comes with an IPS-Level display with Asus claiming 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage. Our analysis of the panel right out of the camera reveals that the panel has 96.1 percent DCI-P3 coverage, which isn’t bad. The display showed a peak brightness of 333 nits, but a black luminance level of just 0.35 nits, yielding a contrast ratio of 935:1, which isn’t bad by any means for an IPS display. However, where the display falters really bad is the out-of-the-box calibration. It has a very strong blue-boas, with an average colour temperature of 7558K, and extremely poor Gamma tracking. Our ColourCheckr analysis also reveals an average DeltaE of 4.7 and a maximum error of 9.5. Pretty much all the colours on the gamut are shifted by a notable marging, except a few shades of light blue. We tried calibrating the display a number of times, but didn’t get a much different result, leading us to believe that this is not the right panel for content creators or anyone wanting to do colour-sensitive work. This is a real pity because the 16GB VRAM on the Nvidia RTX 3080 could have easily been leveraged by content creators, but due to the panel’s poor accuracy, its not something we recommend.
Calman Analysis for Colour Gamut
Calman Analysis for Colour Accuracy
Calman Analysis for greyscale and gamma tracking
Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 Thermals
It is no secret that the Scar series is some of the most robustly cooled machines in Asus’s portfolio. These have to be well cooled since they’re aimed at e-sports players, who cannot be bogged down by any kind of throttling. And this is where the Scar 15 gives mixed results. In all our testing, neither the Ryzen 9 5900HX nor the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 throttle, but the Ryzen 9 chip did hover around the 98-101 degree Celsius range for a large duration of our gaming sessions. Surface temperatures, however, were a little bit more of a concern. The area just above the keyboard registered 48 degrees while the center of the keyboard recorded a temperature of 46.4 degrees C. Perhaps the most concerning was the 41.8-degree on the WASD keys.
Conclusion
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 is an impressive spec’d laptop and the top-tier variant that we've reviewed here definitely sheds a light on the future of portable gaming. The proliferation of high-resolution high-refresh-rate displays is definitely commendable. The Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 packs the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, a beefy 8-core 16 thread processor that's bound to find favours with anyone who needs peak performance. However, what was sorely disappointing was no game being able to take full advantage of the 16GB VRAM on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080. Hopefully, this would change in the future, but for now, it is what it is. The display, while impressive for gaming, has very poor colour accuracy and no way to switch between the DCI-P3 and sRGB colour spaces, making colour management for colour sensitive tasks a no-go.
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Netflix has really upped the ante on anime content on the platform, From Ultraman, Kengan Ashura, Godzilla and the might Castlevania, Netflix has acquired some excellent shows and movies. And, to that end, the company has now just announced that we will be getting a fourth and final season of Castlevania. Netflix released a new trailer for the fourth season of Castlevania and from what we can see, it looks to follow the violent and dark tale of the Belmonts. In our review of season 3, we stated that “Castlevania was always a show that really caught the attention of the hardcore geek and nerd. It appealed to the anime crowd as well as the gaming community as the series is based on one of the most celebrated gaming franchises of all time. Castlevania, with its violent action and adult, mature themes quickly rose in popularity to warrant 3 whole seasons.” You can check out the new trailer below.
As you can see, the animation quality has really been taken up a notch. The action looks smoother, fast-paced and more visceral. We also get a look at a new kind of armour that as a Berserk fan, looks eerily similar to the Berserk armour from that acclaimed manga. Not taking anything away from the show, the fact that it’s been influenced by Berserk is a good thing. I mean, we wouldn’t have the Dark Souls franchise if it wasn’t for Berserk. We also get a brief look at Alucard and Issac and how their stories will intersect with the main characters. There’s also a brief tease of the return of Dracula for the final season. We can’t wait for May 13.
This is what Netflix has to say about the fourth and final season of Castlevania, “Wallachia collapses into chaos as factions clash: some attempting to take control, others attempting to bring Dracula back from the dead. Nobody is who they seem, and nobody can be trusted. These are the end times.”. Other reports have also stated that Netflix could continue with the Castlevania anime with a different set of characters set in the same universe. When that will take place has not been announced yet.
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Calman Analysis for Colour Gamut
Calman Analysis for Colour Accuracy
Calman Analysis for greyscale and gamma tracking
