Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra - FULL Review (after 2 months of use)

I’ve been using the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra for almost two months now and during this time, I’ve tested it to its fullest and now I am finally ready to give you guys the full, in-depth ZONEofTECH Review.

As you probably know, I test my devices for about a month, sometimes even more, before publishing our Review. So, even-though we’re never the first, we do try to make our Reviews as comprehensive as possible.

Therefore, this Review contains nine different sections:

• Lineup 

• Design

• Display

• Camera

• Performance

• Special Features

• Software

• Battery Life

• Value

Spoiler alert, the Note 20 Ultra is literally the highest-end, non-foldable Smartphone that you can buy right now, but it does have some issues. Get all those snacks ready, drinks as well, sit back and relax as this is going to be quite the Review. 

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Line-up

Starting off with the line-up and just like last year, where Samsung had two models of the Galaxy Note (the Note 10 & the Note 10+), Samsung now has the Note 20 and the Note 20 Ultra, with the ‘Ultra’ being the new ‘Plus’. This year, there are far more differences between the two models than in 2019.

Not quite iPhone 12 levels of barebones, but the box contents have been slimmed down.

The regular Note 20 comes with a 1080p Display with a 60Hz Refresh Rate, an inferior Camera, a higher latency for the S-Pen and, more importantly, it comes with a Plastic back. All this for $1,000. It is pretty safe to say, do not buy the Note 20. I feel like the only reason why that Phone exists, is to push consumers to buy the Note 20 Ultra, which offers so much more, for $300 more. 

Unfortunately, this year, Samsung has cut down on the stuff you get inside the box by quite a lot. Even with the Note 20 Ultra, there are no S-Pen tips in the box anymore, which I find quite odd. There are also no Headphones if you live in the US. You do still get headphones everywhere else though.  You don’t get the case in Europe and the US, but you do actually get it in some other regions. Definitely keep this in mind, that Samsung is offering different things for different versions of this Phone, as it will be a recurring theme throughout the Review.

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Design

Design wise, I was a massive fan of the Note 10+ from last year. That squared-off look and those sharp corners made it, in my eyes, the most beautiful Phone ever made. The Note 20 Ultra is even better now.

Gone is that super shiny and finger-printy Glass on the back and instead we get a Frosted Glass back, just like the iPhone 11 Pro’s, the Pixel 4, the OnePlus Phones and some others as well. The Samsung text on the back is engraved and it has a different texture than the rest of the Phone. For some reason, there is actually an engraved PO Number on the back of the Phone, which is quite interesting and funny at the same time.  Unfortunately, we only get this Frosted Glass back on the Mystic Bronze colour. If you get the Black or the White one, they still come with regular Glass, which is a bummer for me as those would have been my personal colour choices. 

Samsung has changed the position of the S-Pen, it is now on the left rather than on the right-hand side, which is quite inconvenient if you’re right handed so I’m actually not a fan of this at all. What I am a massive fan of though, is having both the Power and the Volume Buttons on the right-hand side. This way you avoid taking accidental screenshots, like you do on the iPhone, I can’t believe they still haven’t fixed that. 

Not that it was small to begin with, but the Display size has increased.

Aside from the texture on the back of the Mystic Bronze unit, Samsung has also updated the Camera Module’s Design. We get a similar style to what the S20 Ultra came with, more about the Camera once we get to that section, but now we also get these beautiful metal rings that surround the Modules which also match the colour of the Phone. Something else that I like about this Camera Module, which is just humongous in terms of both the size and the thickness, is that I can actually rest my finger underneath it and kinda use it as a pop-socket. This makes the entire Phone much more comfortable and easier to use. I’m not sure if this was intended by Samsung or not, but it is definitely a welcome ‘feature’.

Now, I have to say, if you’re not into big Phones, then this is not the Phone for you by any means. With a massive 6.9” Display, up from the already big 6.8” Panel of the Note 10+ from last year, a 0.2mm increase in thickness as well as a 12g increase in weight, the Note 20 Ultra is noticeably bulkier than the Note 10+. This is without me even taking that super thick Camera Module into consideration. Speaking of that Module, the Note 20 Ultra now wobbles on the table like crazy, because of it. So, if you’re the kind of person that uses their Phone flat on the table a lot, you still can on the Note 20 Ultra, it’s just that it is going to be super frustrating because of that wobble. 

Also, when you compare the Note 20 Ultra against some of the other big Smartphones on the market, such as the iPhone 11 Pro Max, the S20 Ultra and the Huawei P40 Pro, the Note 20 Ultra is still the big boy here. Also, whilst I am indeed a big fan of the squared-off form factor, it did end up hurting my palms after using it.

Overall, I do think that this is the most beautiful Phone on the market right now. Both from the front, with that full screen Bezel-less Display, as well as from the back, with that new Frosted Glass look. 

My only complaints Design wise are, firstly, the fact that the Frosted Glass look can only be found on the Mystic Bronze colour and also, with it so big and having those squared-off edges, it is honestly the most uncomfortable Phone I’ve ever held in my hands.

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Display

So, what about the actual Display? Well, just like with the Design, I do consider this to be the most impressive Display on any Smartphone at the moment. Not only is it larger now, but it is also taller, meaning that it can display more vertical content as well as being brighter. Samsung claims that it can go up to 1,500 Nits of peak Brightness, as opposed to about 1,250 Nits on the Note 10+.

We’ve used our professional XRite Display calibration & measure tool, measuring a peak Brightness on a 100% White Window of 977 compared to 530 on the Note 10+, or 780 on the iPhone 11 Pro Max. This is similar to what you would get outdoors, when browsing a website, as those do usually have a white background. DisplayMatte measured this Display up to 1,609 Nits of Brightness on a 10% White Window. Outdoors, I haven’t really been able to notice that much of an improvement over my iPhone 11 Pro Max. The Note 20 Ultra was perfectly visible outdoors though, even in direct sunlight, but it wasn’t noticeably brighter over any of the previous Phones that I’ve used before, at least not to my eyes.

The Note 20 Ultra, same as the Galaxy S20 series, now has a 120Hz Refresh Rate. As with the S20 series, you have to turn down the Resolution to 1080p if you want to use 120Hz. It still cannot do full Resolution at 120Hz, like the OnePlus 8 Pro (and many other Smartphones) can, which is a bit of a bummer. The good news however, is that I wasn’t able to see that much of a downgrade in Sharpness when using this in 1080p mode. Text is indeed a bit blurrier but not by as much as I was expecting.

The Z Fold 2 is the only other Smartphone to have this quality of Display.

Something new with the Note 20 Ultra, is the LTPO Panel, making this and the Galaxy Z Fold 2 the only two Smartphones out right now that come with a 120Hz OLED LTPO Display. What this means is that the Note 20 Ultra can dynamically adjust its Refresh Rate from 1Hz, all the way up to 120Hz, based on the content that you’re watching, which does help preserve the Battery.

I also love how the Display is still curved here too. I know that some people prefer having a flat Display, like we got on the regular Note 20 or the S20 Ultra, but personally I really do like the way this Display looks. Also, I haven’t really had any accidental touch rejection issues with the Note 20 Ultra, maybe just a few when watching videos on YouTube, but nothing major. Let me know in the comments if you prefer having a flat or a curved Display.

The colours on this are absolutely outstanding. The fact that we get an even higher brightness really shows the most when you’re playing back HDR content, HDR video on this simply looks breath-taking. Overall, I would very confidently say that this is the best screen on any Smartphone out right now. It’s very bright, colours are incredible and the viewing angles are superb on this. HDR content is noticeably better than the same content being played back on the iPhone 11 Pro Max or even the S20 Ultra from just a few months ago.

Now, something that this Display comes with, is Gorilla Glass 7, aka Gorilla Glass Victus. This provides up to a 2m drop resistance, up from 1.6m, as well as double the scratch resistance of Gorilla Glass 6. It’s not perfect, it’s not scratch-proof, but it is a noticeable improvement over anything that I’ve used in the past. My only complaint regarding the Display is the fact that we still don’t have 120Hz at Native Resolution. Other than that, this is the best Display that I’ve seen on a Phone. 

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Camera

So, what about the Camera? Well, buckle up because I have a lot to say here.

The Camera on the Note 20 Ultra is mostly identical to the one on the S20 Ultra, and that’s a good thing, right? If you’re aware of the S20 Ultra, you’re probably also aware of the very negative Reviews that this Phone received. There were two reasons for why that was. Firstly, the price. At a starting price of $1,400 and with promises such as a 108MP Resolution camera, 100X Space Zoom, 8K Video Recording and more, this Phone seemed like it was going to be the god of all Phones. Especially the Camera. Unfortunately, it had a lot of issues, with the main one being the Camera.

That 108MP Module was very poor in Low Light, it had focusing issues, 100x Space Zoom was basically unusable at 100x Zoom as everything looked like water-paint and 8K Video Recording was nice, but it was choppy. Not even to mention the pretty serious HDR Processing issues that it had to the point here the Galaxy Note 10 and S10 from a year prior, actually had a better Dynamic Range with many other Reviewers complaining about this too. 

With all of this, you would expect Samsung to just completely revamp the Camera in the Note 20 Ultra, but it turns out, this is mostly the exact same Camera that the S20 Ultra had. Luckily though, Samsung has actually fixed most of the issues this time. The Main Module is literally the exact same 108MP Sensor that we got with the S20 Ultra. Night Mode has been significantly improved, even photos of the Moon have a gigantic improvement from where the S20 Ultra was, at launch. Even when it comes to Low Light video, the Note 20 Ultra does indeed look better than the S20 Ultra did, 8K Video Recording is about the same, it’s sharp but still choppy, so I wouldn’t really be using this myself. 

There are a lot of similarities to the S20 Camera, but it’s not all bad news.

HDR Processing has also been significantly improved. The Dynamic Range still isn’t as good as on the iPhone 11 Pro Max or the Pixel 4 XL, but it is a major improvement over the S20 Ultra. My main issue was really that Dynamic Range, so I’m glad to see that this has gotten a big improvement over the S20 Ultra’s Processing. 

Something that I also absolutely love about this 108MP Main Module is that you get a natural Depth of Field, pretty much Portrait Mode but fully done through hardware, rather than through software. Photos taken on this Phone literally look like photos taken on a DSLR or Mirrorless Camera, they’re that good. You can also take photos in 108MP Resolution, which results in some insanely sharp photos. 

Unfortunately, the CPU isn’t fast enough to process the 108MP photos that quick and also do all the machine learning required to make them look better. So, you’ll notice that all the 108MP photos will lack that HDR Processing all together, the shadows will often be crushed and the highlights overexposed. The regular 12MP photos, which are actually using an 8:1 Pixel Binning method to combine eight pixels into one, don’t have this issue.

Another issue that the S20 Ultra had, was Focusing. That massive 108MP Sensor lacks the Dual Pixel Autofocus that made Samsung Phones the fastest on the market, in terms of Focusing, since the Galaxy S7 from 2016. We still don’t have Dual Pixel Autofocus now, but Samsung has indeed added a Laser Module for Focusing that has fixed most of the Focusing issues. The only time when it still struggles to Focus, is when you zoom in as the Laser would not be able to be used if you’re that far away from the subject. But it does work pretty well for anything that’s around 2-5m away from you. Overall, definitely a noticeable improvement in Focusing Speed, over the S20 Ultra. 

When it comes to the Telephoto Module, this one sees the biggest changes from the S20 Ultra Module. Resolution wise, this used to be a 48MP Module, but it is now a 12MP Module, meaning that it is much better in Low Light. But you do lose a lot of that Digital Zoom capability. Optically, the S20 Ultra had a 4x Zoom Module, while the Note 20 Ultra now has a 5x. What this means is that photos taken at 5x Zoom, and even at 10x, should actually look sharper than on the S20 Ultra. 

However, the S20 Ultra seemed to consistently take better zoom photos, which I was not expecting. My only guess is that maybe that 48MP Resolution on the S20 Ultra’s Telephoto Module actually matters more than the 1x increase in the Optical Zoom that the Note 20 Ultra brought to the table. 

Interestingly enough, Samsung has actually removed the 100x Zoom capability from the Note 20 Ultra, so the highest you can do now is 50x. I almost never used the 50x Zoom, at least not for photos as they’re not usable at that zoom level. But, I did use them once to see what some food vans had on their menu from my flat, which I couldn’t see with my naked eye. This is a much better use case for that 50x Zoom, being able to read signs from far away. 

The Front Camera is unchanged from the Note 10+ from last year, but it can do 4K60.

Finally, the third Module on the back is the Ultra Wide Angle Module, which is identical to the one on the S20 Ultra. It’s 12MP in Resolution, with an f/2.2 Aperture Lens. Combined with the new and improved Image Processing, we get the most impressive Ultra-Wide Angle shots that I’ve ever seen on a Phone, even more impressive than on the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Aside from this, I absolutely love the fact that you can take Night Mode shots using any of the Lenses. 

Samsung has now added a Pro Video Mode, which is amazing for Mobile Video Shooters, but you can only use it with the Main Module and not the Telephoto or the Ultra-Wide for whatever reason. The same thing applies to the Pro Photo Mode.

That’s a big issue for me and then another big issue is that you cannot record 4K60 Video from any of the other Modules, you can only do 4K60 from the Main Module on the back. What’s worse is that not only can you not switch between Lenses when shooting Video, but even when you’re not recording, if you want to see all three Lens options, you need to go into the Camera Settings and drop the FPS to 30. Samsung, please just release an update where we can still see all three Modules and if we select the Ultra-Wide or the Telephoto, the Frame Rate gets automatically capped to 30. I hate having to go into the Settings.

As long as I have to disable 4K60 for all but one of the three Lenses on this Phone, I cannot call this a 4K60 device. I ended up just leaving it set to 4K30, which is of course not ideal. 

The Front Camera is good, it has too dropped in Resolution to a 10MP Sensor, the same Module as on the Note 10+ from last year as opposed to the 40MP Module that the S20 Ultra got. The Front Camera Cut-out is now smaller than on the Note 10+, so I do really like that. Selfies are still sharp, very well exposed and HDR Processing on the front is surprisingly well done. Additionally, the Front Camera can actually do 4K60. 

Overall, the Main Camera Module is very good, only suffering from some occasional Dynamic Range issues, but nothing as severe as what the S20 Ultra had. The Zoom Module is the best I’ve seen on any Smartphone so far and the same goes for the Ultra-Wide Angle Module. My only major complaints here are not being able to use the Pro Modes on any of the non-Main Lenses and not being able to do 4K60 Video on all the Lenses on the back. Oh, and 8K Video Recording is still a gimmick, as it’s still capped at 24FPS.

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Performance

Moving on to the Performance, this is where I have some pretty unfortunate news. As you may be aware, there are different configurations of this Phone, which depend on which region you’re in. 

Some units come with the Exynos 990 Processor, mainly the ones made for the International market, while some units come with the much better Snapdragon 865+ Processor. This not only gives you 20% better Performance, which is a very gigantic difference, but it also runs cooler while giving you a better Battery Life. That’s absolutely nuts! 

The drop in Frames between the two models (credit: XEETECHCARE)

Even with the S20 line, there was a lot of backlash from consumers on the fact that the Exynos 990 models were slower, ran hotter and had a worse Battery Life than the Snapdragon 865 models. But now with the Note 20 Ultra, Samsung has bridged that gap even more by including the even more powerful Snapdragon 865+ variant in the US variants, while keeping the international models with the same Exynos 990. Not only that, but JerryRigEverything and iFixIt have both found that Samsung even uses two different cooling systems in the Note 20 Ultra’s, some copper based and others Graphite based. Probably the worst part is that in some regions, like India or Pakistan, you actually get less RAM (8GB compared to 12GB), while in the US you only get 128GB of base Storage, as opposed to 256GB like you get everywhere else. Long story short, it’s a mess!

The Note 20 Ultra is the Frankenstein of all Phones and depending on where you buy itfrom, you’ll end up with some very different components, some of which are inferior. Our model is the Exynos 990 version, with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of Storage. Personally, I haven’t really had any Performance issues on this, it’s been running perfectly smooth, but what I have indeed had issues with, was overheating.

On a number of occasions, I’ve found that my Note 20 Ultra was running so hot that I could barely even hold it in my hand. At one point, it was just sitting in my hiking back, I took it out and because it was constantly searching for a signal, it got so hot that I had to literally put it back in my backpack as I couldn’t even have it in my jeans pocket. This overheating, combined with the already weaker Performance of the Exynos 990, results in games getting up to 20FPS less on the Exynos variants, when compared to the Snapdragon 865+ model.

Luckily, I’m not a big gamer myself, but it is very frustrating knowing that you can get an inferior Note 20 Ultra depending on the region that you’re based in, while not necessarily paying less for it.

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Special Features

Moving on to Special Features, the Note 20 Ultra is literally packed to its teeth with features. You cannot get a Phone that’s more equipped than this.

Water Resistance, Wireless Charging, Reverse Wireless Charging, 5G and a Haptic Engine that now seems even better than the one on the Note 10+ from last year, resulting in one of the best typing experiences on a Smartphone. It also has some great, powerful Speakers. The Note 20 Ultra offers basically anything that you can think of.

The S-Pen is a major selling point for the Note 20 Ultra

But the main reason why you would want to get a Note over a standard Galaxy S Phone, or any other Phone for that matter, is the S-Pen. Samsung offers the best stylus experience on a Phone and the Note 20 Ultra is now even better than the Note 10+. The latency is now lower, at just 9ms down from 45ms, so everything feels incredibly smooth and pretty much just like writing on a piece of paper. There’s also a predictive algorithm now to make things even smoother, but I have noticed that sometimes it does indeed make the line jump, so I do think that it needs a bit more tweaking. There are a few new air gestures that the S-Pen supports now, allowing you to go back, go home and open up the multi-tasking menu just by using the S-Pen in the air, which is pretty cool.

I’m not a big hand-written notes taker myself, but where I have found myself using the S-Pen a lot was when using Photoshop or Lightroom. Being able to just use it as a brush or even as a small pointer to adjust the tools and brush size was absolutely amazing. However, because of that massive Camera Module, you cannot really use the S-Pen while the Note is flat on the table because of how much it will wobble, which I think is a massive downgrade to the S-Pen experience overall.

But something that is actually a big upgrade, is in terms of DeX. DeX being this Desktop UI that Samsung Phones will boot in once you connect them to an External Monitor. It’s an extremely underrated feature. Now, the Note 20 Ultra supports Wireless Dex, meaning that if you have a TV that supports the latest version of MiraCast, you can cast directly to your TV and then use your Samsung Phone as a Trackpad and Keyboard. You could also hook up external peripherals and kinda use this as your Desktop replacement to some extent.

You can run the Desktop version of Chrome as well as Microsoft Office so for some people, DeX can indeed replace their Computer. You can also open up all of your Android Apps in windowed and full-screen. I am a big fan of DeX, even though I don’t personally use it as much. 

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Software

When it comes to the Software Experience, the Note 20 Ultra runs on Android 10, with Samsung’s OneUI 2.5 Skin. I have to say, TouchWiz from back in the Galaxy S4 and S5 era was the most infamous Skin on any Android Phone, it was slow and laggy. OneUI 2.5 is for me at least, the best Skin on any Smartphone right now.

This is one of the best skins we’ve seen on any Android Phone.

It’s very fast, very fluid. The design is great and the reason why it is called OneUI is because you can use it with one hand, to some extent at least. My favourite part about OneUI is that you can have App Folders in the App Drawer too. This way, you can have a very minimalist Home-Screen while also having App Folders easily accessible for when you need them.

Also, Samsung allows you to run three Apps at the same time, with one being a picture-in-picture overlay, which makes this Phone, in combination with the S-Pen, one of the best Smartphones for productivity work. You can lock Apps in memory, you can have YouTube Player in the background in a tiny pop-up window if you have YouTube Premium, it’s just so good.

But…it’s not perfect. It does have some occasional Frame Rate drops when it comes to animations and I’m not a fan of the way Notifications are displayed at all. Some end up being in non-chronological order. In my case, where I get hundreds of Notifications per day, which I cannot really disable, it ends up being a complete mess and really difficult finding what I’m looking for. 

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Battery Life

Battery Life is not a strong point for the Note 2 Ultra

The Note 20 Ultra come with a 4500mAh Battery, this is 500mAh less than the S20 Ultra came with. But, we do have that LTPO Display, which does indeed save some Battery Life. From my usage, it was just about the same as on the S20 Ultra. But that doesn’t mean it was great.

I was getting about 3-4 hours of screen-on time, which was pretty bad, even after multiple weeks of use. On my Fold 2 for example, I’m easily getting around eight hours or so. I do have the Exynos variant and have heard that the Snapdragon variant isn’t quite as bad, but the Exynos variant is just not as good as it should be. Luckily, we still have Fast Charging but this has now dropped to 25W from 45W, like we had on the S20 Ultra. The good news is that it still charges to around 50% in just 30 minutes, so I don’t have any complaints in terms of that. 

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Value

So in the end, is the Note 20 Ultra actually worth it? Well, I can confidently say that if you’re looking for a non-foldable Smartphone, this is the best one that you can buy. You get an outstanding Display, an incredible Design, great Cameras and all the features that you can think of. 

But, you will have to pay for all of that. At a starting price of $1,300 or £1,180, the Note 20 Ultra costs as much as a pretty good Laptop and it isn’t that far off from the Galaxy Z Flip, which costs £1,300. You can even find the original Galaxy Fold for about £600-£800 or so, on eBay.

At that point you’ll have to decide. Do you want the ultimate standard Smartphone experience or do you pay a bit more and get into the Foldable Smartphone market? If you do decide to go for the Note 20 Ultra, try to get the Snapdragon 865+ variant as you’ll get a better Battery Life, more Performance, a better Gaming experience as well as a cooler device.

HP Envy 15 – A 4K OLED RTX Laptop!

We’ve been featuring some very interesting Laptops on the channel lately, and this is another very unique Laptop. HP has sent over their brand new HP Envy 15 and they also sponsored the video linked up top, for us to give you a closer look.

It comes with a 4K Touch-Display that’s also an OLED Panel, up to a 10th Generation Intel Core i9 and an NVIDIA RTX GPU. This Laptop is not just outstanding for Video-Editing, Photo-Editing and 3D Modelling, but it’s also a very good choice for Gaming as well.

So, without any further ado, get those snacks ready and here is our first look at the HP Envy 15.

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Design

Starting off with the Design, the HP Envy 15 is a 15” Laptop, hence the name. It comes in this really nice silver metal build, this is a fully metal body. There’s no plastic here at all, so it has a very premium build. I’m also a big fan of the silver colour, especially now when most Laptops are black or dark grey, seeing something different definitely makes it stand out. 

Rather than being a thick and heavy power Laptop, the Envy 15 is surprisingly portable. At a weight of just 1.81kg and a thickness of just 1.8cm, this is one of the thinnest and lightest power Laptops that I’ve ever seen. Also, the body itself is actually tapered, so it is thinner on the front, at just 0.5cm, and then it gets thicker towards the back. The sides are also very thin, they’re about the same thickness as the Ports. Overall the HP Envy 15 has this very thin look to it, no matter the angle that you look at it from.

The full-metal Body and tapered design make this look & feel very premium

In terms of the Ports, we have a microSD card slot on the left, alongside not one, but two Thunderbolt 3 Ports with 40Gbs/s Transfer Speeds. You can also use Thunderbolt to connect a powerful eGPU, something like an RTX 3080, and get some insane Gaming Performance out of this. It’s just incredible what you can do with Thunderbolt. You can also hook this up to a 5K Monitor via Thunderbolt, or even a 5K and a 4K Monitor at the same time, they all connect via this single cable. I’m a big fan of Thunderbolt and it’s really nice to see that we do get two of them rather than the usual one that we see on most Windows Laptops.

Aside from this, we get a full-sized HDMI Port, which is also HDMI 2.0, meaning it can do 4K60. Then we get a USB 3.1 Type A Port as well as the Power Connector, which uses a powerful 200W Power Adapter. On the right-hand side, we have a Vent, a second USB 3.1 Type A Port and a Headphone Jack. On the bottom, the HP Envy 15 has some pretty tall rubber feet in order to give it as much airflow as possible, which will be quite important when we get to the Performance section of this video.

I have to say, I really love how this Laptop looks from the bottom as well. I haven’t said this about many Laptops.It’s got this industrial look to it, with perfectly cut cut-outs for the Air Intake, the Air Outtake and the Speakers. So, Design wise, the HP Envy 15 is one of the most premium looking Laptops on the market right now. 

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Display 

When it comes to the Display, this is one of the most striking Displays you can find on a Laptop, and not just because this is a full 4K panel, which has a PPI of 282 across 15.6 inches.

The 4K OLED & Touch-Screen Display gives you everything you’d expect from a high-end Laptop

Since this is an OLED Panel, a Samsung manufactured AMOLED Display to be more precise, the Black Levels are perfect, the Viewing Angles are incredible alongside a 100,000:1 Contrast ratio, you get what is one of the very best viewing experiences on a Laptop. Whether you’re watching a movie or playing a game, the colour will be super vibrant and the overall viewing experience is going to be very impressive. The Display itself can go up to 400 Nits of Brightness and it also supports HDR.

This is also a Touch Display, which means that even though the Panel doesn’t go fully flat, for you to be able to use it as a drawing Tablet, you can indeed interact with the on-screen elements by just touching the Panel.

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Keyboard & Trackpad 

The Keyboard feels better than I expected. It’s soft to the touch, but you also get a clicky feel when you type. The Keyboard itself is Backlit but we do not have an RGB Backlight as this isn’t a Laptop dedicated to just Gaming, more about that in a bit. 

If you’re anything like us, you won’t miss that right Control Key.

We do have a Fingerprint Reader, which for the first time that I have ever seen on a Laptop, is actually a Key on the Keyboard. You cannot physically press it, but it does replace the right-hand side Control Key. That’s a Key that I don’t think I ever use, I mostly use the left Control Key and I think most of you do the same. To be honest, I actually do like having the Fingerprint Reader here as opposed to on the top, built-into the Power Button. It just makes it so much easier to reach when I’m using the Trackpad and I’m in an App that has Fingerprint Support. 

Speaking of the Trackpad, we get a Glass one rather than the traditional Plastic that we see on a lot of Windows Laptops, we get full support for the Windows 10 gestures as well as Windows Precision Drivers. The Trackpad is also a single Button and it uses a ‘Diving Board’ mechanism, meaning that it gets more difficult to press the closer you are to the top.

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Camera, Microphones & Speakers 

Check out the Video above to see & hear how these fair.

Moving on to the Camera, the Microphones and the Speakers. The Front Camera is positioned on the top, so no weird angles from having the Camera on the bottom Bezels, or even inside the Keyboard.

I’ll let you be the judge when it comes to the Camera & Speaker Quality and the Microphones, you can check that out in the video linked at the top. The Speakers themselves are powered by Bang & Olufsen audio.

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Performance

So now that we’ve covered the Design, Display the Keyboard, Trackpad, Camera, Microphones and Speakers, let’s talk about my favourite section, the Performance. The model that we have comes with a 10th Generation Intel Core i7 10750H Processor. This is a Six-Core CPU with a turbo-boost of up to 5GHz. According to Intel, this offers up to 54% more FPS in Games, up to 44% better overall Performance compared to a 3 year old PC and up to two-times faster 4K Video & Rendering. 

It’s not a purpose-built Gaming Laptop, but it does a decent job of it

GPU wise, we get the RTX 2060 Max-Q Edition with 6GB of GDDR6 Memory. This, in combination with 16GB of DDR4 2933MHz Memory and 1TB of NVMe Flash-Storage, make it a very powerful device for not just 4K Video Editing and 3D Modelling, but also Gaming. The 2060 isn’t really a 4K Gaming Card, so you wouldn’t be Gaming in 4K Resolution, however, you can easily play pretty much any modern game in 1080p on maxed out settings and get a very stable 60FPS or higher. In some games, you can even bump the Resolution to 1440p. In Fortnite for example, I can play on fully maxed out (Epic) settings and get a solid 90FPS in 1080p. If I bump the Resolution to around QHD, I still get 70FPS while still having everything on Epic settings. 

Since we have an RTX GPU, this Laptop is actually very good in terms of 3D Rendering. If you use software such as Keyshot 9, that support GPU Rendering, we’ve seen a noticeable improvement in rendering times, even coming from our 32-Core Rendering PC. This Laptop, thanks to its RTX GPU, can render faster than our dedicated Rendering PC using CPU Rendering. 

Overall, I would say that this Laptop is still suited more for creative professionals, rather than people who are just looking for a Gaming machine. Think of the HP Envy 15 as a Creative Laptop that can also game pretty well.

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Battery Life

As with any PC of this variety, it is best to leave it plugged in to maximise Performance

In terms of the Battery Life, HP promises up to 16.5 hours of battery on the HP Envy 15. Obviously, that does depend on how you intend to use it. The HP Envy does actually support Fast Charging, meaning that you can charge it to 50% in just 45 minutes, which is pretty impressive. Now, I do have to mention that if you do want to use this at its fullest potential, you need to have it plugged in as when you’re on the go, the RTX 2060 would just be too power-hungry, depending on on if it’s utilised at its max Performance. 

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Value 

So in the end, who is the HP Envy 15 for and how much does it cost? Well, a similar spec’d model to our unit, that comes with the same i7 10750H Processor, RTX 2060 and 16GB of RAM, but 512GB of Storage rather than 1TB and an 4K IPS LCD Display rather than 4K OLED, costs around £1,800. I think that is pretty good considering that for this price, other Laptops don’t even come with a dedicated GPU at all, not even to mention a 4K Display.

Overall, if you’re a creative professional and you do Photo & Video Editing, 3D Modelling or 3D Rendering, I would definitely consider taking a look at the HP Envy 15 as it not only offers a stunning looking body, but also a stunning Display alongside some unrivalled Performance for its price.

Why Buying Bethesda Could Put Xbox On Top

As you all probably know by now, Xbox have made the unprecedented move of acquiring Zenimax Media, the Parent Company of Bethesda, for $7.5 Billion. The announcement was made in the early hours of September 21st by Phil Spencer and is a huge play in lead up to next-gen. It’s also no coincidence that Xbox announced the move a day before pre-orders went live for the Series X & S. So, what does this all mean?

Firstly, it means that all of the studios under the Zenimax Studios banner will now be absorbed into Microsoft Studios, these include: Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog and Roundhouse Studios. This pushes the total amount of studios they own to 23. Some of the more notable IP’s that are now the sole property of Xbox now include:

Phil Spencer made specific reference to Bethesda’s upcoming title ‘Starfield’ in his post announcing the move (Image Source: GamesRadar)

• Elder Scrolls

• Fallout

• Doom

• Wolfenstein

• Quake

• Dishonored

• Rage

• Deathloop

• Ghostwire: Tokyo

• Prey

• The Evil Within

• Starfield

If you’ve been paying attention to the recent PlayStation 5 developments, you will notice that ‘Deathloop’ & ‘Ghostwire: Tokyo’ are actually PS5 Exclusives. Xbox have already said that they will honour those studios’ existing commitments to Sony, meaning that Xbox will be making games that are exclusive to their rivals’ platform, go figure.

On the flip side of this, the question on everybody's mind is how this will work with regards to exclusivity on future releases. Phil Spencer has said that games made by these studios will be on Xbox, Windows and ‘other consoles’ on a ‘case by case basis’. Looking at that list, you’ve got some of the most successful and instantly recognisable franchises in gaming, not even to mention Halo. If the the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout were to be Xbox Exclusive, that would definitely make a lot of people at least consider the platform. Having the best titles split between two platforms could become quite expensive, so that would really suck for those who can’t afford to run two paid platforms. However, if you did have to choose one or the other, Xbox make a very good case with their Game Pass & All Access programs.

Xbox’s Game Pass is now one of the best deals in gaming, and it’ll keep getting better (Image Source: The Verge)

Exclusives (or high quality ones at least) are something that Xbox had a major shortage of in the last Console generation, with Sony running away with AAA titles that up until now, made it the biggest player going into next-gen. But that has all been turned on its head within the space of a day. Suddenly, Xbox Game Pass has evolved into one of the best deals in gaming with those heavy hitting titles that will be available on Day One of release, you might never have to buy a game again. It looks like Microsoft is slowly turning Xbox into a paid subscription, almost Netflix-esque type of service. There are over 100 games there already and that will continue to grow, this acquisition has made it abundantly clear that Game Pass is the future of Xbox. With the inclusion of the All Access program, you can have a Series S, Game Pass Ultimate for 24 months & EA Play for £20.99/month, or a Series X for £28.99/month with the same perks. Neither of these have an upfront cost either, making it perfect for entry level players or those without the money to buy a new Console upfront. Even if you can afford all of the upfront costs, Game Pass/All Access can effectively pay for itself just by saving you the need to buy games individually.

Also, I don’t think that Xbox are at all interested in playing out an ‘Exclusives’ war with Sony, they certainly have the means to go toe-to-toe with some of those huge titles (The Last of Us, God of War, Horizon etc), but that doesn’t mean they have to force that choice on the consumer. Sometimes the best use of that kind of power, is to not use it at all, or at least in the way Sony is currently flexing their First-Party titles. Xbox could easily allow all of their property to be available on all of the other platforms, but make their platform the best to have it on. As with their other First-Party titles, Zenimax releases would (very likely) be available on the Game Pass from release, meaning that you don’t have to buy it and it’s just there straight away. If it’s available on PlayStation, but you have to fork out for it when you could effectively have it for free, it might as well be exclusive. Additionally, Xbox could have a staggered release window with those properties releasing first on the Xbox with Game Pass, then collect the revenue from other platforms. It’s a win-win for them.

Playstation does have it’s alternative, but it isn’t nearly as flushed out or well supported as might ought to be (Image Source: GamesRadar)

Another thing to note is that Phil Spencer has a well-known stance of not believing in Exclusives, he thinks they are bad for the industry. This approach would certainly make a lot of sense in that regard as they would not box anyone in (for the lack of a better phrase), they would just make their platform the best that it can be, irrespective of what titles Sony has. Moreover, they can use these titles as bargaining chips and completely breakdown the concept of Exclusives, industry-wide. If there are certain games that Sony want to just be on the PS5, Xbox can potentially use the likes of Doom, Elder Scrolls & Fallout as bargaining chips to keep other companies hogging properties.

If Xbox were to use this responsibly, which I think they will, this could be a great thing for gamers in general and maybe help to bring down some of those pay-walls for content that everybody should be able to play & enjoy. They might surprise me, they have every right to play hardball and battle it out with Sony with a duopoly of the best & biggest titles currently out there. But this would go against what they’ve been doing with their Game Pass & All Access programs and how they’ve acted on this subject up until now. This may put companies such as Steam in a difficult position, with those titles at their disposal, Game Pass could be a very viable alternative to a paid store front. Only time will tell how they respond to this, or if rumours of an agreement between the two materialise.

There is also the subject of Sony, how do they respond to this? Do they continue with their current strategy, or do they start to prioritise Playstation Now in the same way that Xbox do with Game Pass? This could spark a new trend of Studios being founded and aggressively snapped up by either Microsoft or Sony, which could heavily limit the amount of independent game titles in the future.

What we do know is that this is one of the biggest power-plays the industry has ever seen and is sure to turn more than a few heads towards the Xbox Series X & S, especially over time.

Apple 'Time Flies' Event - Apple Watch Series 6, Watch SE, iPad 8, Air 4 & more!

Apple have just concluded their September Event and as well their usual slick & cinematic presentation, we got a whole host of announcements and updates. If you haven’t seen it yet, we’ve linked the replay of the livestream above.

Some highlights to note:

Apple Watch Series 6 (Source: Apple)

The iPad Air does not have a definitive release date as of right now (Source: Apple)

• Apple Watch Series 6 - Presented with a particular emphasis on Health & Lifestyle. The major upgrade that Apple pushed was the Blood O2 Meter. This starts at £370 and is available on 18/09.

• Apple Watch SE - Budget option with the S5 Processor. This will start at £269 and is available 18/09. They have also dropped the price of the Series 3 to £199.

• Apple Fitness + - New, pre-recorded work-outs each week, world-class trainers and metrics sent straight from the Watch in real-time. The subscription is £9.99/mo or £79.99/year and is coming in late 2020. You get 3 months for free if you buy an Apple Watch.

• Apple One - Combines Apple Services in one package and ranges from £14.95/month to £29.95/month.

• iPad 8 - This comes with the same Design as the last generation but includes an A12 Bionic Chip with a 6-Core CPU & a 4-Core GPU. This starts from £329 and is available from 18/09.

• iPad Air 4 - We get a new design with some new colours, improvements to TouchID and an A14 Bionic Chip. The starting price has been bumped to £579 and is available in October.

• No AirTag - Is this being saved until the iPhone announcement?

• iOS 14, iPadOS 14, WatchOS 7 - All of these are being released…tomorrow!

We’ll have a load of content covering all of this in more detail over the next week, so make sure you are Subscribed to the channel so you don’t miss out.

What are you most exited for?

Apple vs Fortnite - The FULL Story!

You’re probably aware that there’s a massive dispute going on where not only has Epic Games sued Apple, but Apple has now removed Fortnite from the App Store. I want to give you the full story and everything you need to know when it comes to what is probably one of the biggest ever battles between two tech companies. Get those snacks ready and enjoy! 

If you’ve been following me on Twitter (@ZONEofTECH), you probably know that I’m kind of on Apple’s side here. But, to be as unbiased as possible, I’m going to split it into four sections: Apple’s Side, Epic’s Side, My Thoughts and the Present Day. 

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Epic’s Side

Starting off with Epic’s side, Epic Games are now one of the biggest Game Development companies in the world, mostly thanks to their very popular game… Fortnite. But they were not always like that.

Whilst they were known for the first three ‘Gears of War’ games, Epic Games was mostly known for the Unreal Engine. This was not a game, but rather a Game Engine that Developers could use in order to develop games easier. I’ve used Game Engines before, mostly Unity. I have played around with Unreal Engine as well but long story short, Unity was originally aimed at Mobile Games whilst Unreal Engine was pretty much the most popular and advanced Engine for AAA Open-World games for PC and Console. Developers have been using Unreal Engine since it came out in 2001. Games such as the Tom Clancy series, the Batman Arkham Series, Borderlands, Fable, the Mass Effect series, Medal of Honor, the recent Mortal Kombat games, Darksiders and dozens more were all made using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine.

Fortnite isn’t the only game that Epic are known for.

But then in 2017, something happened. Epic Games had this game called Fortnite in the works and at that time, it was just a Co-Op RPG Shooter. But after Epic saw how successful PUBG’s Battle Royale mode was, they decided to add the Battle Royale mode in Fortnite as well. They released the game with the ‘Save the World’ beta, which was the original Fortnite game-mode and was only released as a full game three years later, in June 2020. 

Fun Fact, the Battle Royale mode in Fortnite was so simple to make, that it took Epic Games just two months to build it, whereas ‘Save the World’ was in development for many years prior to 2017. As you all probably know, Fortnite ended up being a world-wide success and overtook PUBG quite quickly. The main reason for it being so successful was that you could play it on literally any platform from PlayStation, to Xbox, to PC, Mac and even iOS and Android, Fortnite was basically everywhere. 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t going that well for PUBG, who tried to sue Epic Games for copying their Battle Royal idea. However, it was actually Minecraft that first introduced the Battle Royale genre with a mod, followed by an ARMA 2 mod in DayZ. Fun fact again, there was a Japanese movie called ‘Battle Royale’ from 2000, based on the 1999 novel by Koushun Takami, which was the very first to introduce the Battle Royale concept. This was even before ‘Hunger Games’. 

Anyway, I hope that this gives you a bit more of an insight into Epic Games as a company. They’re really more like a Game Engine company that then became massive thanks to Fortnite. Earlier this month, they launched a silent update to Fortnite on iOS where they purposely introduced a direct payment system. This meant that users could pay Epic Games directly, rather than the money going through Apple first, which would take a 30% cut. I’ll cover why Apple takes that 30% cut when I’m covering Apple’s side but essentially, Epic Games were not ok with Apple taking a 30% cut of their revenue, so they wanted to avoid paying it. Makes sense, right? 30% is quite significant.

Unfortunately, avoiding the 30% cut was against Apple’s App Store policies, so Apple took down Fortnite until they fixed the issue and as soon as Apple did that, Epic Games had a massive lawsuit ready and they sued Apple and even released a full-on anti Apple video. They even held a ‘#FreeFortnite’ tournament where you could get this ‘Evil Apple’ skin.

Epic knew that this would get them banned, so what’s their angle?

They had all of this ready on the spot, so it was pretty clear that they’ve been preparing for this for a while now and intentionally wanted to get banned in an attempt to get Apple to decrease, or even drop that 30% fee entirely. That makes sense. Fortnite made $1.8 billion in 2019, which makes it the most successful game of 2019 and also one of the most successful Video Games in history. Epic Games doesn’t share how many players they have on iOS, but if we estimate this as 10% of the total player-base, Apple would’ve taken $54 million in commission, and I’m pretty sure iOS, macOS and the iPadOS player-base is quite a bit larger than 10%. This is why Epic Games wants that commission to be decreased or even dropped, they want more profit. But according to them, the users would also benefit by the fact that the prices would be lowered.

When Epic Games introduced the direct payment method in Fortnite, the prices were $2 less, however Epic was still charging $1 more than the revenue that they were making after Apple’s cut. So they were still making more money this way than by going the Apple route. Tim Sweeney, the CEO, Founder and Prime Shareholder of Epic Games, actually sent an email to Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Craig Federeighi and Matt on June 30th, telling them that Epic is unable to provide consumers with certain features in their iOS Apps. They requested the following:

1. Allow Epic Games to have a direct payment method, without Apple taking that 30% cut.

2. Allow Epic Games to launch their own Epic Games Store App on iOS, to compete with Apple’s own App Store.

Those are some big requests, but I do see where Epic are coming from. They say that there are no other options on iOS for Game Developers other than going through Apple’s system. Epic are calling Apple a monopoly and they want others to be able to compete with Apple’s own App Store, on Apple’s own devices. Epic Games stated that on Android you can side-load Apps, so you can have a separate store that competes with Google’s own PlayStore, which Epic Games does actually have. On iOS, you cannot have another store, other than the App Store.

On August 13th, the day Fortnite launched the new direct payment method, Tim Sweeney emailed Apple again, basically making them aware that they will be launching the update today and if they do get their game blocked, they will follow the legal path in getting this resolved. So, this is pretty much what Epic wants. This is their side of the story. 

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Apple’s Side 

What’s Apple’s perspective on this? Well, Apple does indeed take 30% as a commission, but they do take this from every single Developer on the AppStore. Apple’s argument is that they created the iPhone, they created iOS and they also created the App Store, the world’s very first global App Store on a mobile device. For that 30% cut, Apple is giving Developers:

Apple announced the App Sore back in 2008, the first of its kind and now worth over $50 Billion a year (Source: Apple)

• Exposure to literally billions of Apple users.

• Hosting services on Apple’s store.

• Tools to build their App, with Xcode. 

• A programming language (Swift) that Developers can use. 

• Access to thousands of guides, tutorials and help.

• WWDC - an entire week full of workshops for Developers so that they can update their Apps and get it ready for when the new version of iOS gets released. 

On top of that, Apple manually verifies every App that goes onto the App Store for not just Malware, but also Performance issues and UI Design. They need to make sure that everything is consistent and high quality. For everything that Apple does, they feel like they deserve that 30% cut. It would not be fair for Apple to have to fund the AppStore through AirPods sales rather than AppStore revenue directly. When it comes to Epic’s second request, releasing a competing App Store, Apple’s argument is that they built the iPhone as well as iOS and in order to maintain that high quality and security that they praise themselves for, they need this to be their system. This is the reason why we only have Apple’s AppStore on iOS.

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My Thoughts

So, what are my thoughts on all this? When it comes to that 30% commission, Epic Games’s first issue, I’m sort of in the middle. I don’t agree with Epic, where they basically want this fee removed as Apple’s clearly providing a ton in return for that 30% commission. But at the same time, I don’t agree with Apple either here as 30% is quite a large chunk.

Initially, that 30% cut was only there in order to help Apple run the servers. But in 2008, Apple was only worth $75 Billion. Today, they are worth more than $2 Trillion! Fun Fact, Apple’s entire AppStore in 2019 alone made over $50 Billion in revenue. So in a single year, that 30% commission that Apple takes made them almost as much money as Apple was worth back in 2008, when the App Store was launched. Does Apple need that $50 billion, when they have $2 Trillion? Probably not. 

Apple are by no means the only ones charging 30%, but a change from them may trigger a drop industry-wide.

However, I’m not saying that Apple should drop the commission entirely, as they still deserve to charge some sort of commission from Developers, but I do think that 30% is far too much. I would say that 15% would be fair and anything lower would deeply benefit the Developers and to some extent, the customers as well. Now, the thing is, Apple isn’t the only one taking a commission. Google also takes a commission, the Playstation Store is also taking one, the Xbox Games Store, the Samsung Galaxy Store, the Nintendo eShop, Steam has one as well and even physical stores such as GameStop, Amazon, BestBuy and Walmart, they all take a commission if you want to sell your product through them. Take a guess what percentage all of these companies charge, as commission? That’s right, 30%.

They all charge 30%. Likely because of Apple being the very first, but the idea here is that no matter where you sell your product, you do pay a 30% commission, with only two exceptions. The first one being the Microsoft Store on Windows, which has recently dropped the commission to only 5%, then there’s the Epic Games Store, which is charging 12%. Other than that, everyone’s at 30%.

I do hope that Apple drops this to 15% or so as that way, all the other Stores will likely follow suit and drop the commission as well, in order to stay competitive. Interestingly enough, YouTube actually takes a 45% commission, which I do think is gigantic. But, I am happy to give YouTube that big of a share because without YouTube, I wouldn’t even have that income in the first place. It’s the same thing with the commission that these stores charge. Without any of these stores, you wouldn’t have any audience and if you do, your audience would be a fraction of what it could otherwise be. 

Epic isn’t only going after Apple, this is all part of a much wider mission (Source: The Verge).

Something that I do want to mention here, regarding the commission, is that there are a few stores that do make some exceptions. Samsung’s Galaxy App Store does take a 30% commission, but you can actually cut a deal with Samsung if you’re big enough. There are some reports that Epic Games has a 0% commission deal with Samsung, which I think is pretty messed up considering that you need to be big to strike a deal. Speaking of that, apparently Apple struck a deal with Amazon where Apple was not taking the 30% commission on movies bought by users who already had an Amazon Prime Membership. Only new Prime Members would trigger Apple’s 30% commission. I think that’s messed up, no store should make any exceptions whatsoever. 

When it comes to Epic’s second request, their own Epic Games Store on iOS, I personally don’t agree with that at all. It’s Apple’s own platform, why would they allow a competing store on it. Not even to mention the fact that this will affect the quality and security of the Apps available. Playstation doesn’t have an alternative to the PlayStation Store, Xbox doesn’t have an alternative to Microsoft’s Xbox Store either, so why should iOS have one? Epic’s argument here is that you can indeed install a third-party store on Android but you cannot do it on iOS at all.

But even with that argument, side-loading isn’t something that the average user would do. Epic already has a Game-Store on Android and then they decided to go on the PlayStore, but not before suing Google as well, in order to avoid Google’s 30% cut. Obviously that lawsuit didn’t go anywhere and they just gave up and stayed on the PlayStore in the end. Now, one counter argument to this would be: why do we have the Epic Game Store on macOS, but not iOS? MacOS doesn’t have as many limitations as iOS does but at the same time, take a look at the quality of Apps in the Epic Games Store or Stream for Mac, compared to the Apps that we get in the App Store.

The App Store games use metal, they run very smooth, they’re very well optimised, whereas Fortnite on Mac for example, even if you have a very powerful Mac that can play it well on Windows, on macOS on the same exact hardware, it has random freezes and many frame-drops that can make it unplayable. Still, Apple made the entire platform, from the hardware to the software, and if they don’t want to compromise on the quality and security of their App Library, I do support that entirely.

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Present

Now that I’ve covered both sides as well as my own thoughts, what is the status of all this, as of right now? Shortly after Fortnite got banned by Apple, guess what? Google banned it too, Fortnite had implemented the direct payment method on the PlayStore as well.

Epic Games basically had a lawsuit ready for Google, just minutes after the ban. Everything was carefully planned. But they haven’t targeted Google as much as they have with Apple. This is mostly because they do have their own third-party store on Android, it’s far more difficult to access, when compared to Google’s own PlayStore.

This dispute and very quickly, and very publicly turned sour and it’s the Players & Developers who are currently being affected the most.

Apple then gave Epic Games a deadline, August 27th, to release an update to their game to fix the direct payment issue. Otherwise, Apple would close Epic Games’s Developer Account, essentially taking all of their Games and products off the App Store. Luckily, Epic doesn’t have loads of Games. It’s just Fortnite and Infinity Blade but they do have the Unreal Engine, if you remember that from earlier in the video. What this ban meant, was that Apple was planning to revoke Epic’s Unreal Engine License on Apple products, meaning that no Developer could use Unreal Engine at all. So, all the games that I’ve listed before, would be banned on any Apple device (Mac, iPhone & iPad) and third-party Developers would be banned from updating and developing new Games using the Unreal Engine. This was really messed up and I was very against this from the moment I heard about it. These Developers shouldn’t be affected by Apple and Epic’s dispute at all.

Anyway, Apple and Epic had a court hearing and the judge basically ruled the Unreal Engine ban to be completely unfair so they forbid Apple from doing it, but they did give Apple the green-light to keep Fortnite off their platform if Fortnite doesn’t want to follow Apple’s rules and pay that 30% cut. The lawsuit is still ongoing and it looks like it might take a few years to get it fully sorted. 

In the meantime, Epic Games released a few more anti-Apple videos, just mocking Apple and trying to rally their Fortnite community against them. I think that’s messed up and completely unprofessional, so I’m not ok with mockery of any sorts. Apple’s keeping Fortnite blocked until Epic updates the Game. It’s good that Apple are still leaving that door open for Epic to return, when they want. The game is still playable if you have it installed, but you would not be able to download it again if you do not have it installed. If you open up the game, you’ll notice that all the in-app purchases are gone, the Battle-Pass is gone and the game is stuck to the pre-Season 4 update. Also, Apple has now started promoting PUBG on the front page of the App Store, probably in response to Epic mocking Apple so much.

In the end, it really does suck that the player-base is really the one affected the most here. Epic Games could stop this at any time they want really. But, I don’t think they will. I think they’re going to keep this going just to paint Apple in a bad way and if Apple drops the commission, that would be great as other stores will drop it as well. If they don’t, then Epic Games made a massive mistake as they will likely be losing hundreds of millions of dollars over the years.

iPhone 12 Pro, Apple Watch Series 6, iPad Air 4 – Latest Leaks & Rumors!

We haven’t made a Leaks & Rumors episode since July. This is mostly because I like to wait until we get a few more things to talk about and we haven’t really had a good amount of new leaks, until now.

We finally have some major updates on the iPhone 12 Pro, the Apple Watch Series 6, which is apparently launching next week, as well as the iPad Air 4 and the upcoming Apple Event. So, without any further ado, get those snacks ready, sit back, relax, and enjoy!

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iPhone 12 Pro 

In terms of the iPhone 12, you might remember the large number of leaks that we got suggesting the Frame was going to be squared-off, the Notch was going to be smaller and that the Triple Camera Module would now be a Quad-Camera Module with one of the Modules being that LiDAR Sensor. Even though these were “meh” changes, I would’ve loved to see the Notch be made even smaller or even removed entirely. Jon Prosser posted a CAD drawing of the iPhone 12’s Notch back in May, which appeared to show the Speaker Grill moving into the Bezel, making the Notch a bit smaller this way. 

This our idea of what the iPhone 12 will look like, check out "@ZONEofCONCEPTS’ for more.

Another leaker (@Choco_bit) posted an image of the iPhone 12 Pro, showing the smaller Notch, the Quad-Camera Module on the back (again with a LiDAR Sensor) and we also saw the iOS 14 Widgets. We did get the Widgets, but the other two changes would not be happening anymore. Jon Prosser posted, on August 26th, saying that the Notch is staying the same and the Bezels are getting noticeably thinner, so at least there’s that. The Notch will appear smaller on the 6.7” iPhone 12 Pro Max as the Display itself will be bigger. Jon also mentioned that FaceID will work from wider angles, even flat on the table, so that is indeed a nice improvement. 

The sides are flat, like we’ve seen in all the leaks. We’re going to get that iPhone 4 & iPhone 5 style Body, while the Glass will indeed have a slight curve, which will make it easier to use when it comes to Gestures. Jon is also saying that the entire Camera Module would now be 10% larger. I’m assuming that he’s referring to the big square housing for the Modules. In terms of that Back Camera Array, we’ve had a bunch of recent leaks. These are Case leaks that mostly show a Triple Camera Module Array, instead of the Quad that we’ve seen leaked before as the LiDAR Module would now be positioned in a very similar manner to how the Flash is. I think that’s a worse approach. Also, the LiDAR Module on the iPad Pro 2020 is quite a bit larger than the one on these iPhone 12 leaks. Maybe Apple can pull this off and compact it a bit more to make it smaller but in my opinion, I still think it would look nicer with a Quad-Camera Module Array.

It looks like the Triple-Camera Array is staying for the iPhone 12.

So, no smaller Notch or Quad-Camera Module Array, any other updates? Well, we still don’t know for sure what is happening with the high Refresh Rate Display. We’ve had countless leaks saying that it will happen and countless leaks saying that it won’t. But luckily, it seems like there is some hope. Jon Prosser posted a bunch of photos and even a full hands-on video of an iPhone 12 Pro PVT unit. These are the Production Validation Test units and they’re basically tested by Apple employees in order to ensure that they’re working correctly. They need to undergo a bunch of tests and if they pass all tests correctly, these are the units that will be mass produced. In most cases, these are exactly what the retail units would look like.

Interestingly enough, there is actually a toggle in the Settings to enable High Refresh Rate on these, but there is also a note telling employees to check if their PVT unit supports high Refresh Rate. It seems that Apple has manufactured some units with 120Hz, and others without. Display Analyst Ross Young reports that, based on his sources, it is way more likely for Apple to release the iPhone 12 Pro with just a 60Hz Panel. It looks like Apple has managed to get the 120Hz Panels in the end, but not the 120Hz Driver.

So, we’ll have to wait and see what happens but in my opinion, a high Refresh Rate on the iPhone 12 Pro is a must. We’ve had high Refresh Rate Smartphones since 2017. The first Phone to come with it was the Razer Phone, which featured a 120Hz Panel. Since then, more and more Smartphones have started including this to the point where even mid-range Smartphones in 2020, such as the OnePlus Nord, come with a 90Hz Panel.

Apple is late to the party with higher Refresh Rate Displays.

I know that Apple wants to wait until they get it working properly. They want to use an LTPO Panel so that they can adjust the Refresh Rate from 120Hz, all the way down to 1Hz, just like the iPad Pro’s ProMotion Display does. That is an LCD Display, rather than an OLED. The only Smartphones out right now with an LTPO Display, are Samsung’s Note 20 Ultra and Z Fold 2. That’s it. Samsung has already made it clear to Apple that they would not be able to provide them with an LTPO Panel in 2020. It seems like that has changed, or at least Apple has found a different solution for that. Judging from the PVT units, it seems like they can only switch between the 60Hz and a 120Hz Refresh Rate, which could point towards this not being an LTPO Panel, but rather a standard 120Hz Panel like we’ve seen on most 2019 and 2020 Smartphones. On those Phones, you can indeed switch between 60Hz and 120Hz, but nothing more than that. Anyway, if this iPhone doesn’t have 120Hz, then it would be a major disappointment in my eyes. 

Camera-wise, we haven’t really had any massive leaks aside from a new Sensor that Apple will be using to enable better Low-Light Performance, as well as Night Mode with the Ultra-Wide Angle Module. Aside from that, Jon Prosser showed us that the Camera will indeed support 4K120 as well as 4K240, both of which are likely to be used in slow-motion, or at least the 4K240 mode will as that’s listed as Slow-Mo. That’s pretty nuts for a Phone. There’s no other Phone, other than the iPhone 11 Pro, that can shoot 4K60 and all Lenses. Now, the iPhone 12 Pro will bump that up to 4K120 and even 4K240. It’s pretty nuts what Apple’s Processor is capable of. But that’s mostly it.

There will be no Charger in the box, that’s already confirmed. ‘LoveToDream’ reported that the Lightning Cable will now be braided, so at least there’s that.

In terms of the Release Date, Jon Prosser has posted the timeline for Apple’s upcoming releases. Do keep in mind that Jon has been 100% accurate in the past, in terms of actual Release Dates. According to Jon, Apple will launch the new Apple Watch next week, followed by a new iPad. Then the iPhone 12 event will be in mid-October, followed by the iPhone 12 release on October 19th, followed by the iPhone 12 Pro release sometime in November. 

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Apple Watch Series 6

What about the Apple Watch Series 6? If you’re enjoying this, we have some really awesome content coming in the next few days so it would be great if you could Subscribe so you don’t miss out, it’s free to do so. 

Well, my top request would be for Apple to redesign the entire Watch and make it into a Circular Design, or at least offer a Circular Design as well. That’s my personal request and I would love to see that happen. Unfortunately, it will not happen this year. The Series 6 would look identical to the Series 5. There will only be one major improvement, the addition of a Blood Oxygen Level Meter. This will show you the saturation of Oxygen in your blood. If it’s between 95% and 100%, then that’s all good. Anything lower and you might want to go and see a Doctor. Also, COVID does affect the Oxygen level in your blood so the Series 6 might even be able to give you a notification in case you have signs that could point to you having COVID. So, that’s the main feature.

The Circular Design may come one day, but not this time.

The Battery is getting larger, but only from 296mAh, to 303.8mAh. The Performance is going to be improved thanks to the Apple Watch S6 Processor. I am hoping that the Battery Life will be improved quite substantially because the Series 5 was actually a downgrade over the Series 4. The Series 4 could easily last me two days, whereas the Series 5 has even died on me mid-day when I was cycling for like four hours with GPS enabled and Cellular enabled. Workouts kill off the Battery like crazy. Now that Sleep Tracking has been added in watchOS 7, Battery Life is more important than ever.

We’ve also seen reports that Apple is working on an Apple Watch SE, essentially updating the Apple Watch Series 3 with a more recent Processor and selling that for around $200. Mark Gurman from Bloomberg has reported on this as well. Overall, it seems like they’re just making as few small changes as they can until they can really re-design this thing. The Series 4 was really the big change, back in 2018. The Series 5 only added a Display Controller, which in combination with the LTPO Panel, which the Series 4 also had, allowed it to have an Always-On Display. The Series 4 could’ve easily had it as well, it only needed that tiny Display Controller.

It seems like the Series 6 will be another minor upgrade, with the biggest change just being the Oxygen Level Meter, which could’ve been easily added to the Series 5 and even the Series 4.

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New iPad 

Finally, it seems like there is also a brand new iPad that Apple will be launching as early as next week, according to Jon Prosser. But which iPad is this? Is it a new iPad Pro, or a new iPad Air or a new entry-level iPad? Well, it’s definitely not a new iPad Pro as we just got one earlier this year.

It will either be a new iPad Air (the iPad Air 4) or a new entry level iPad, (the iPad 8th Generation), ‘mydrivers.com', which has a mixed track record, reports that this will come with an 11” Display, an A14 Processor and 128GB of Baseline Storage. Essentially, identical to the 2018 iPad Pro in terms of Design, just with a more powerful Processor. ‘91mobiles’ posted a few schematics of this new iPad, showing some slightly thicker Bezels than on the iPad Pro and a slightly smaller 10.8” Display. 

We don’t know exactly which iPad this will be, just that it won’t be new ‘Pro’ model.

FaceID will be included, as opposed to just TouchID on the Power Button, which a leaked manual was apparently showing. A Smart Connector does appear to be present on these schematics, which would allow support for Apple’s Magic Keyboard.

Mark Gurman and Debby Wu of Bloomberg have both written a fairly comprehensive report outlining Apple’s plans for this quarter and according to them, this iPad would indeed be a brand new iPad Air with pretty much the same Design style as the iPad Pro. It would make sense for the Display to indeed be an 11” Panel, rather than something smaller with slightly thicker Bezels just to make the iPad Pro look a bit better.

I have to say, I am a bit unsure in terms of the Processor. Some reports are saying that it will come with an Apple A14X Chip, while some are saying that this will be an A14 Chip. The A14 would make sense but only if Apple also updates the 2020 iPad Pro with the A14X. Otherwise, it would just be weird having an A14 in this new iPad Air and a slower A12Z, at least slower on the CPU side, on the iPad Pro. That just wouldn’t make that much sense. That’s my personal prediction, a CPU update for the 2020 iPad Pro with the A14X.

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AirPods Studio

The New AirPods Studio could be right around the corner.

Now, here’s a bonus item. A brand new pair of AirPods. Mark Gurman and Debby Wu also report that Apple is preparing a new pair of AirPods, those AirPods Studio that we’ve been hearing about for a few months now. The leaker ‘Komiya’ reports that the AIrPods Studio will come in White and Space Grey. The Audio Quality and Active Noise Cancelling would be “very high”, according to Komiya.

Apparently, they will also come with Apple’s new H1X Chip, some new Equaliser Settings and Ear Detection, so just like the regular AirPods. They may have some sort of Hand Gesture, like the HomePod does.

The Price will be $350, likely £350 in the UK, and they will ship in September/October and announced via a press release on Apple’s website. From the looks of it, it seems like these could be announced next week when Apple also launches the Apple Watch Series 6 and the new iPad Air 4. Jon Prosser even posted the time of the release, which according to him would be on Tuesday, September 8th between 9-12 EST when Apple will be holding *something* on their website.

Note 20 Ultra & Galaxy Buds Live – Some Unexpected Findings!

The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is finally here. It is Samsung’s highest-end Smartphone for 2020. They do have the Fold 2 as well, but the Camera system is said to be inferior to the one on the Note 20 Ultra and it won’t have an S-Pen, so as a whole package, the Note 20 Ultra is the most equipped Samsung phone of 2020.

Samsung has sent both the Note 20 Ultra and the Buds Live in some really nice packaging, so massive thanks to Samsung for that. I’ll talk about the Note 20 Ultra first and then I’ll move onto the Galaxy Buds Live as well.  I’ve been using the Note 20 Ultra for over a week now, and the Galaxy Buds Live for about three days, so here’s some of interesting things that I’ve discovered!

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Design

If you liked the Design of the Note 10+, you’ll love the Note 20 Ultra.

The unit that I have right here is the European model, which comes with the Exynos 990 Processor, but something to point out is that there are no extra S-Pen tips in the box anymore. We do get the Fast Charger, Headphones and the Charging Cable, but nothing else.

Design-wise, I was a massive fan of the Note 10+. That was, in my opinion, the best designed Phone ever…until now. The Note 20 Ultra’s Design is actually even better. First of all, it is just a bit bigger than the Note 10+, the Bezels are about the same size and we still have the curved screen, which I’m honestly a big fan of. I love how it looks and I personally haven’t had any accidental touch issues since the S9, please do keep that curved Display in, Samsung. I also love the new back. 

I’ve been wanting Samsung to add a Frosted Glass back for years now, just like what Google, Apple, OnePlus and many others already have. They’ve finally done it, but only for the Mystic Bronze colour. If you buy the Black or the White colours, those would still be regular Glass. Usually, I’m not a fan of Gold colours on Smartphones, I think they’re just too tacky, but this one’s actually quite nice. It’s a very pale Gold that doesn’t stand out as much. Still, I would’ve loved to see a Black Frosted Glass back on this.

The Camera Module itself is very similar to the S20 Ultra’s Module, I’ll talk more about the Camera in just a bit, but Samsung has actually changed the way it looks. It sticks out even more now, but it’s also sharper, which means that I can almost use it as a pop-socket and hold the Phone from there. Also, I’m big fan of the metallic circles that Samsung has added to the Lenses themselves. 

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Display

We do get 120Hz, but not at Native Resolution.

With the Display, we do get 120Hz, but this is still stuck at 1080p Resolution. If you want to use this Display at its native 3088x1440 Resolution, you can only use it at 60Hz. This is a bit disappointing as the OnePlus 8 Pro, which costs significantly less, can indeed do 120Hz at Native Resolution. I’m quite disappointed that this still hasn’t been fixed, even though we do have a Dynamically Adjustable Refresh Rate, which can go from 120Hz, all the way down to 1Hz, in order to save Battery Life.

Now, Samsung has made this Display brighter by 25%. I can’t say that I’ve noticed any improvements, but we’ll actually measure the Brightness using our professional display measuring tool and tell you all about that in the Full Review, so definitely subscribe so that you don’t miss out. The Note 20 Ultra also comes with Gorilla Glass Victus. Again, I’ll be testing that more over the next few weeks and let you guys know how it holds up.

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Camera

Right, the Camera. We still have the same 108MP Sensor from the S20 Ultra, but Samsung has now added a Laser Focusing Module to help fix some of the focusing issues. I can definitely say that focusing feels faster, but if you zoom in, the Laser won’t be able to reach and it’s still going to be just about as slow as it was on the S20 Ultra. Dual Pixel Autofocus would’ve been great, but unfortunately, this 108MP Sensor does not have it. As long as you don’t zoom in, the Focus is pretty good. 

The Camera is definitely an improvement on the S20 Ultra.

Speaking of zooming in, Samsung has now improved the Optical Zoom to 5x, from the 4x we had on the S20 Ultra. However, they have decreased the Digital Zoom Level from 100x, to 50x. I honestly don’t mind that, I think it’s a great change as that 10x Zoom Factor was really the best place to be, on the S20 Ultra anyway, and that’s now even better. Low-Light Performance is actually better now, Samsung has improved their Night Mode considerably since the S20 Ultra came out and I’m impressed. Is it as good as on the Pixel or the iPhone? The full comparison will be in the Full Review.

Something that hasn’t changed though, is the HDR Processing. While the Shadows are not as crushed as they originally were on the S20 Ultra, they’re still darker than what we’re used to, compared to the HDR modes on the iPhone or the Pixel, which makes me think that this is actually a look that Samsung has intentionally decided to go for. The Front-Facing Camera has dropped in Resolution, from the S20 Ultra. It is now the same 10MP Camera that the Note 10+ used, as opposed to a gigantic 40MP Sensor. I don’t mind that. The smaller the Resolution, the bigger the Pixels on the Sensor are and the better the Camera is in Low-Light. 

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Performance

Maybe it would have been better to make the UK version better, than to make the US one worse? (Source: Samsung)

Now, when it comes to the Performance, this Phone is fast. That 120Hz Display, Exynos 990 Processor and 12GB of RAM make it feel like one of the fastest Phones I’ve ever used. The OnePlus 8 Pro did feel faster as the animations were simpler and more fluid, but after using it, the Note 20 Ultra definitely feels amazing. Unfortunately, if you live in Europe, you would get the Exynos 990 Processor inside, rather than the Snapdragon 865+ Processor. Whilst this might not matter that much, because you do get a very fast and fluid Phone anyway, it still matters as in the US, you pay as much as in the UK, even less actually, and you get a more powerful Processor. It also gets better Battery Life, which is very unfair for the European customers.

However, Samsung has now limited the US variants of the Note 20 Ultra to 128GB of Storage, while you do get 256GB in the UK, so they have crippled the US version in that regard. Fun fact, the Note 10+ from last year came with 256GB of Storage in all regions. 

Something that I do want to point out is that my Note 20 Ultra overheats pretty heavily after about 5-10 minutes of use, I did a full restore and I’m still having this issue. I’m not sure if it’s still indexing the files, so I’ll keep an eye on this and tell you guys my findings in the Full Review.

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Special Features

The Haptic Feedback is as good, if not better, than you’d expect.

When it comes to Special Features, the S-Pen now features a 9ms Response Time, which definitely shows when compared to the 42ms we previously had. Writing and drawing feels so much more realistic now, I’m a big fan of this. There are also a few new gestures that you can now do with the S-Pen. I’m not really into those myself, as I can control my Phone much quicker by just…touching the actual Display. Unfortunately, Samsung did move the S-Pen to the left, meaning that it’s just a bit tricky to take it out now, since I’m right-handed myself. 

The Haptic Engine feels a bit stronger now, the Note 10+ already had an incredible Haptic Engine, so I do like that. I’m not sure if it’s a new Engine or if it’s literally the same one with a software tweak that makes it feel stronger. Regardless, the Haptics on the Note 20 Ultra have been improved. 

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Battery Life

Not a world-beating Battery Life, but you can get the most out of it at 60Hz.

What about the Battery Life? Well, I do have the Exynos model here and it’s been…fine. I was getting about 4-5 hours of screen-on time, which is what Tomi/GadgetsBoy was getting as well. It’s good, but it could’ve been so much better. I’m pretty sure that the Battery is better on the Snapdragon model, just like it was with the S20’s. On the Exynos model, if you do want to improve the Battery Life, your best bet is to drop the Refresh Rate to 60Hz.

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Price

Finally, this is a very expensive Phone at $1,300, or £1,180 in the UK, it is one of the most expensive non-folding Phones that you can buy. But, I think that, if you’re looking for the ultimate Smartphone experience, the Note 20 Ultra packs everything that you could wish for and more! 

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Galaxy Buds Live

Onto the Galaxy Buds Live. To start off, they are comfortable, but they do take some time getting used to. They’re very different to any other Headphones that I’ve used as they don’t have a stem and they just slide in. Once you get the fitting right, they’re the most comfortable Headphones that I’ve ever used.

Design-wise, these things look like jewellery. In my opinion, they’re the most elegant Earbuds on the market right now. I’m not a fan of the Mystic Bronze ones though, I think they look too tacky and are a bit too much for my taste, but you can indeed grab these in Black and White too, if you wish. 

The Buds Live are some of the best all-round Earbuds you can get.

The Sound Quality is good, not as good as the AirPods Pro, but these are also significantly less expensive than the AirPods Pro. If you need an outstanding sounding pair of Earbuds, with a very good ANC, then get the AirPods Pro or the Sony WF’s, as these are just not as good. But, considering that they cost $170/£180, they’re actually a very good competitor to the original AirPods. Compared to those, the Buds Live simply blow them out of the water. 

The case is incredibly small as well, while still offering a 29 hour Battery Life. So, if you’re looking for Earbuds that don’t seal you in and you can still hear what’s happening around you, these are by far the best choice on the market. Anyway, I feel like I want to talk about these more, so I’ll use them for a few weeks as I’ve only been using them for about three days at this point, and either do the review of the Buds Live in the Review of the Note 20 Ultra, or I’ll do a separate, even more detailed Review in a different video. Which one you would prefer?

Definitely Subscribe & Enable Notifications for both of these In-Depth Reviews  as they’re both going to be insanely detailed and thorough, just as you came to expect from our videos.

MSI GS66 Stealth (2020) - A 300Hz Portable Gaming Laptop!

Meet the MSI GS66 Stealth Laptop, a Laptop that comes with a 300Hz Display, but unlike some other 300Hz Laptops, this one is actually very portable. It comes with a 15” Display, it’s thin, light and it also comes with pretty much the highest-end specs that you can find on a Laptop.

MSI sent this over, and sponsored this entire video, for us to take a closer look at probably the most powerful portable Laptop that you can buy. 

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Design

Starting off with the Design, the MSI GS66 Stealth is an absolutely stunning looking Laptop. It’s got this very stealthy Matte Black look, which MSI is calling Core Black. The logo itself is laser etched into the body of the Laptop, so from certain angles it’s not even visible and you just get a slab of black metal. When closed down, the GS66 Stealth is simply just a straight piece of metal. I really love how this Laptop looks, it’s a very anonymous Laptop so to say, it’s definitely deserving of its ‘Stealth’ branding.

At some angles, you can’t see the MSI logo at all.

It’s also surprisingly portable. With a weight of just 2.1kg and a thickness of just 1.9cm, this is really the thinnest and most portable high-end Gaming Laptop that I have personally seen. The whole idea of the GS66 Stealth is that you have a very powerful Laptop when you’re at work, then you just pack it in your bag and take it to your place and use it as a high-end Gaming Laptop there. It’s really the best of both worlds, work and Gaming.

The Port selection is also very generous on this. We have a Thunderbolt 3 Port, which allows you to connect this Laptop to 5K Monitors or even connect an External GPU for even more Performance in case you need it. You get a full sized HDMI 2.0 Port, three USB 3.2 Type A Ports, as well as one USB 3.2 USB C Port and an Ethernet Port as well. The Cooling on this Laptop is very extensive as well. We have Vents on each side, in the Hinge as well as under the Laptop itself. You’ll see why this is important when I get to the Performance section of this video. 

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Display

Now, the Display. The model we have comes with a 15.6”, 1080p, IPS Display with a 300Hz Refresh Rate. Usually, Laptops have a 60Hz Refresh Rate, meaning that they can display up to 60FPS. Some of the higher-end Gaming Monitors that you can buy have something like a 144Hz Refresh Rate, or 240Hz as a maximum. This one has an insane 300Hz Display, more than on any Desktop Monitor that you can buy as of right now. So, if you’re a competitive Gamer, this Display is going to make a massive difference as you’ll be able to see five times more frames per second, compared to a standard Display. 

This model has a 1080p Display, but there is a 4K option.

Now, if you’re not a competitive Gamer, MSI does have a 4K option of this Display. This gives you more sharpness at a more standard 60Hz Refresh Rate. If you’re a Content Creator and not an E-Sports Gamer, I would recommend that version, but if you need an insanely high Refresh Rate, you do have this option on the GS66 Stealth. 

When it comes to the quality of the Display Panel itself, it’s a pretty great Panel. The Viewing Angles are great and the colours pop. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any calibration happening at the factory, at least not for the 1080p Panel. The Bezels are very thin, with the exception of the pretty noticeable chin. I would’ve loved this to be as thin as the other three Bezels, but of course that that would’ve required a 16:10 Aspect Ratio Display, which isn’t really that common on Gaming Laptops. 

Something that I really like about this Display is that you can tilt it all the way down and the Hinge itself, just like the entire Laptop, is fully made out of metal, giving the entire Laptop a very premium look and feel. 

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Keyboard & Trackpad

It just wouldn’t be a Gaming Laptop without RGB.

What about the Keyboard and the Trackpad? I’ll start with the Trackpad because this is far simpler. You get a very wide Trackpad with the GS66 and there are no individual Buttons on it, it’s all just a single Button. Just like on most other Windows Laptops, it does indeed use a Diving Board mechanism, which means that it’s fairly easy to press near the Button and then it gets harder, the higher you go. We do have Windows Precision Drivers, so the tracking is really good, I don’t really have anything to complain about here.

Now, when it comes to the Keyboard, we do have a full RGB Keyboard, with each Key being individually back-lit. The Keyboard Backlight is provided by ‘Steel Series’ and there’s a ton of different effects that you can have and tweak, based to your liking. In terms of how it feels, it’s a very rubbery Keyboard so it’s soft to the touch rather than ‘clicky’. So, if you’re into that, you’ll definitely love this Keyboard. 

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Camera, Microphones & Speakers

Before I talk about the Performance, which is what you’re all probably here for, we did some tests with the Camera, Microphones and Speakers in the video above. If that’s of interest, be sure to give it a watch.

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Performance 

Right, time for the Performance. CPU-wise, we get the highest-end 10th Generation Intel i9 10980HK Chip, which is Intel’s most powerful Processor for a Laptop. It has eight Cores and can Turbo Boost up to 5.3GHz. As for the GPU, this model right here comes with the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super Max-Q, with 8GB of GDDR6 Memory. With the RAM, our unit has 16GB of 2666MHz DDR4 Memory, but you can actually configure this to up to 64GB of RAM. Storage-wise, our unit has 1TB of NVMe Flash Storage, with Read Speeds of just over 3GB/s. So, these specs are pretty much the highest that you can get in a Laptop, normally stuff that you see in a large, thick 17” Gaming Laptop. But as you can probably tell, the GS66 is very thin and very portable, considering the specs that it packs. 

If you’re looking for a Gaming Laptop, you can’t get much better specs than these.

So, now let’s run some real world tests and see how it performs. In Fortnite, I was playing this game on maxed-out settings and I was getting around 120FPS, which is nuts for a Laptop. But, keep in mind that you do have that insane 300Hz Refresh Rate, so if you drop the settings a bit, you can actually get close to, or even exceed that 300FPS mark and take full advantage of what this Display has to offer.

In Call of Duty Warzone, I was getting around 120FPS. This was on ‘Epic’ settings with everything maxed out, except for Ray-Tracing, which was disabled. In Overwatch, I was getting 160FPS on ‘Epic’ settings and after dropping the settings to Medium, I got to 300FPS. I then decided to cap the Frame-Rate to 60 and, holy smokes, I was shocked to see how laggy 60FPS looked, compared to 300FPS. Next up, I tried Starcraft 2, one of my personal favourites and on the highest possible settings, I was getting between 200-220FPS. It’s unbelievable that we can do all of this on a Laptop that can easily fit in your bag.

Now, with this insane Performance, you can also use this Laptop for actual work. So, I loaded ‘Keyshot’, which is what we use for all the concepts and renders that you see on the channel, and the GS66 rendered our ZONEofTECH benchmark in just 29 seconds. This is using the GPU. For example, rendering the same project at the same exact settings, on the 2019 maxed out iMac that has an Eight-Core i9 9900K Processor, took 5 minutes and 50 seconds. This is why having an RTX Card in your computer makes such a massive difference. 

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Battery Life 

That Thunderbolt Port could come in handy if you’re looking for the best performance on the go.

The MSI GS66 Stealth features a 99WHr Battery, which is the largest Battery that you can legally carry with you on an Plane, so MSI have really gone all the way here. Since we do have a Thunderbolt 3 Port, we can actually charge it via any USB C Charger. In fact, you can even charge this Laptop on the go, via a USB C Power Bank. 

According to MSI, you can get up to 9 hours of productivity use out of it. This will of course drop if you’re Gaming or if you’re doing anything intensive. Also, because of how power hungry the NVIDIA GPU and the Eight-Core CPU is, you will need to have this Laptop plugged in if you want to take full advantage of its Performance. Otherwise, on Battery, it will run at about 50% of its full power.

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Value

Ok, how much does the GS66 cost and what do you get for that money?

Well, at the moment you can get it for as low as £1,550 and for that price you get a Six-Core, 10th Gen, i7 Processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, an RTX 2060 GPU with 6GB of Video Memory and a 240Hz Refresh Rate. It’s not 300FPS, but it is very close.

That’s the configuration that I would personally recommend. It’s still extremely powerful and with that Thunderbolt 3 Port, you can indeed connect a Desktop Class GPU in case you do need more Performance.

The Future of the MacBook Pro (2020 & Beyond)

The MacBooks are changing. Apple is on the verge of completely revolutionising the computing industry, not just in terms of the Macs, but also in terms of CPU Design.

We made a video back in June in which I talked about the switch to ARM in detail, so definitely give that video a watch if you want to learn more about the CPU itself. But here, I’ll be focusing on the future of the MacBook & MacBook Pro. We’ve had a ton of recent leaks that give us a glimpse at what Apple is aiming for with these devices, so without any further ado, here is The Future of the MacBook Pro (2020 and Beyond).

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As most of you probably know already, Apple is ditching Intel in favour of their own Processors. Apple are already using their own Chips in the iPhones and the iPads so it makes a ton of sense to also use their Processors in the Macs, as that way they will have an entirely unified system.

So, what benefits will we get from this transition and how will these affect future Macs?

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Performance

The most recent iPad Pro has shown us what Apple’s Chips are capable of.

The biggest improvement that we’ll see is when it comes to the Performance. Apple’s A12X Processor, the one that’s inside the 2018 iPad Pro, is already more powerful than the 2020 MacBook Air and the baseline MacBook Pro. In fact, we even did a full video comparing the 2018 iPad Pro with the 2020 (high-end) 13” MacBook Pro in real-world tests such as Video Editing. The MacBook Pro exported a five minute, 4K60 timeline in 7 minutes and 27 seconds, while the iPad Pro only took 2 minutes and 52 seconds. Now, keep in mind that this was on a Tablet that was using a two year old Processor and didn’t even have a Fan. It was passively cooled and yet it was significantly thinner than the MacBook Pro, which had a Fan and was using Intel’s latest 10th Generation Processor. 

By Apple using a modern and more powerful A-series Chip, specifically designed for the Mac, they could significantly improve their Performance over even the iPad Pro. 

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GPU and Memory

The use of SoC’s in Apple’s smaller devices greatly reduces latency between the separate components.

The second change would be when it comes to the GPU and of course, the Memory. 

On regular computers, such as a Desktop PC or a Laptop, the CPU, GPU and RAM (or the Memory) are all separate Components which are slotted into the Motherboard. The GPU, for example, uses a PCIe Interface to communicate with the CPU. The only problem here is that there is quite a bit of Latency when it comes to the CPU accessing the data from the GPU, which is determined by the speed of the PCIe Slot. Smartphone Processors, since there’s not that much room inside, actually combine all of these Components onto one single Chip, which is called a ‘System On a Chip’ (SoC). 

This is what Apple is using in their iPhones and iPads. Since the CPU now has direct access to the Memory and the GPU, the Latency is greatly reduced and therefore the overall Performance is greatly increased. I’ve had a look through Apple’s developer presentations for their upcoming transition to Apple Silicon and there was no mention of the GPU. In fact, Apple was even talking about how much they can improve the Performance by building an SoC inside their Macs. What this means is that we would not be getting any separate GPU options inside future MacBooks. This makes me wonder…what about the different SKU’s?

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SKU’s 

Well, if we take a look at the Macs, there are many different CPU models that you can choose from. The MacBook Air has three CPU options: an i3,  i5 and an i7. But, the MacBook Pro has four options with the first two being Intel’s 8th Generation Chips, while the last two are Intel’s 10th Generation Chips. So, how many SKU’s will Apple have, when it comes to the next-gen Macs? If we take a look at the iPhone, Apple only releases one CPU model every year and all iPhones have that exact CPU model.

On the iPad side, we do have the X variant, which does pack more GPU power than the non-X variant that we get inside the iPhones. The last X variant that we got was back in 2018, so these do take a while to make and we only get those on the iPad Pro’s as the regular iPads still use the exact same Chips as the iPhones do. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that for the MacBooks at least, Apple will either have one SKU or two, at most.

The use of SoC’s will limit the amount of SKU’s and likely follow a pattern similar to the current iPad Pro’s.

My prediction is that the MacBook Air would be using the exact same Chip that the iPhones use, the Apple A14, and whatever comes next. While the MacBook Pros will be using a more powerful version of that to give them the “Pro’ name. Not only that, but I predict that the 13” and the 16” MacBook Pro would be identical in terms of the performance and the only advantage that the 16” model will have, would be when it comes to its Display Size, just like we have on the iPad Pro’s right now. We have two models, the 11” and 12.9”, both with the same Performance and the only difference being the Display size.

So, what about the RAM? Well, since the CPU would now be an SoC, it would be very difficult for Apple to give us multiple RAM options when we configure our MacBooks, like we get now. I believe that the MacBook Air would come with, like I said, an A14 Processor but more RAM than the iPhones do. Possibly 16GB of RAM, while the MacBook Pro’s would come with more than that. Maybe the 16” would come with 64GB of RAM by default and the 13’ would come with 32GB, that would be the one and only RAM option. As we know from the iPhone and the iPads, Apple’s Processors are extremely efficient in terms of Memory, and so is iOS, so you won’t need as much RAM as we have on the Intel Macs now. 

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Design Changes

The next big change that this transition would bring, is when it comes to the Design. As Apple’s Processors are an entire SoC, you’re saving up a ton of space inside as there’s no need for a separate GPU and Memory. Not only that, but Apple’s Processors are also Fan-less. While Apple might add a Fan to some of their Macs to increase the Performance even further, by overclocking the Processors, the idea here is that they don’t necessarily require a Fan. Instead, they can use that extra internal space for a bigger Battery or a slimmer Chassis.

We sat down and brainstormed how Apple could design such a MacBook from scratch. This is our vision as to how we think Apple could realistically design a future MacBook now that they’ve made the transition to their own Processors.

We’ve modelled our own Concept of what we think these new MacBook Pro’s will look like.

We’ve designed the Display so that it matches the aesthetic of the iPad Pro. This means a uniform Bezel that also features curved corners which actually match the Design style of the upcoming macOS Big Sur. We’ve also made the Bezels a bit thinner than on the iPad Pro as we do think that those are indeed a bit too thick. This new MacBook Pro Design is finally in line with the modern 2020 Laptop Designs. The Aspect Ratio is still 16:10 and we’ve also added FaceID into the top Bezel as this has been recently leaked to be coming in all next-gen Macs moving forward. FaceID on a Mac makes so much more sense than having a TouchID Sensor. 

Now onto the Body. You can probably tell that this looks incredibly thin and that’s because we’ve actually used the same Body size as the iPad Pro. That means a thickness of only 5.9mm and a chassis that’s symmetrical and flat, so no more wedge shape MacBook Air style Design. We’ve added a USB Type C Port on each side and in case you’re wondering, these are indeed Thunderbolt 3 Ports, which are supported by the new USB 4 standard. So, Apple would not be losing Thunderbolt 3 by switching to their own Chips. We’ve also added two Speaker Grills on each side, with the same Design style as on the iPad Pro. 

The Trackpad is shorter now, as the Body is shorter as well, thanks to the Bezels being so thin now. This is how we designed it, but of course Apple could easily make the Display taller, maybe change the Aspect Ratio to a taller 3:2 Panel, just like on the Microsoft Surface Laptops, and have more room for the Trackpad in that case.

Colour-wise, we’ve kept Apple’s classic Space Grey and Silver colours but we’ve also added a brand new Matte Black colour, which I think looks amazing. I really hope that Apple gives us a darker colour option for this new generation as that’s definitely something that I would personally be going for.

For more Concepts and behind the scenes, be sure to check out our secondary ‘ZONEofCONCEPTS’ accounts on Instagram & Twitter.

When it comes to the Keyboard, obviously we have a Scissor Mechanism here but we have made the keys a bit thinner than on the current MacBooks, just to make it look better. Apple can easily keep the same thickness or just have the Keys deeper so that they travel more while also keeping this fairly thin Design, from the outside. The Touchbar is pretty much the same as before, so no changes here. The separate Escape Key is there, as well as an individual Backlight for each of the Keys. Apple, if you like what we’ve done, just get in touch.

Do let me know what do you guys think of our Design and if you want to see more of our concepts, it would be amazing if you could subscribe and also give us a follow on our ‘ZONEofCONCEPTS’ Instagram & Twitter pages. 

But, which MacBook is this? Is it the 12”, the Air or the Pro? Well, here’s what I’m thinking. Since Apple will have their own SoC now, and they’ll likely only have one or two SKU’s at most for these, they could unify the entire lineup, Design-wise. What I mean by this is that they could easily just call this the new MacBook, then have this in a 12” 14” and 16’ size, with the 14” and the 16” sizes being the MacBook Pro variant. These would also come with that more powerful A Series Processor that I mentioned, while the 12” would come with the same Chip that we have in the iPhones.

Personally, if I were Tim Cook, this is what I would do. I would create this beautiful singular Design, that would be instantly recognisable as a MacBook Design, and as use that for the entire lineup. Let me know in the comments what your thoughts are on this are. 

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Battery Life

Another big improvement that the new MacBooks would feature thanks to the switch to Apple Silicon, is the Battery Life.

Battery Life is likely to get a huge bump in upcoming releases.

Most MacBooks from 2010 have claimed to offer a 10 hour Battery Life, which is exactly what the iPads have claimed since the original iPad came out in 2010 too. Personally, my iPad lasts me for about seven hours, while my MacBook Pro lasts me for around five hours. 

Apple leaker ‘KomiyaLeaks’ tweeted a few details about an upcoming 12” MacBook. I’ll get into these in just a bit, but probably the most surprising thing here is the Battery Life, which is now expected to be up to 20 hours. So, in real world usage, if we go by the iPad’s Battery Life, this should now translate into around 15 or so hours of actual usage, which is a pretty gigantic jump from the current five or so hours that I was personally getting. We’ve also had a leak on a supposed MacBook Air Battery, likely the new MacBook Air. This Battery is very similar to the one that we have on the current model, just with a brand new model number on it. 

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Unified OS

Could a unified OS bring Touch Screen Support to future Macs?

The next big advantage of this transition, is a unified OS. Apple has already announced that iOS apps will now be able to be run natively, on the Mac. Meaning that you can run all of your favourite Apps, including ones that have zero optimisation, such as Instagram for example, directly on the Mac with no tweaking needed.

Apple has even demoed Final Cut Pro X and even Maya, running on a Mac Mini with an Apple A12Z Processor, the same Chip as in the 2020 iPad Pro, which is almost identical to the 2018 iPad Pro’s A12X Processor. This also means that iOS devices, such as the iPhone and the iPad, could easily run Mac software. Final Cut Pro X on the iPad is likely to be a possibility. In fact, Jon Prosser even stated a few months ago that XCode is actually coming to the iPad. This also makes me think that Apple could potentially add Touch-Screen support to the Mac, which would make a ton of sense as the iPad did get Mouse & Keyboard support. Also, macOS Big Sur does bring the Control Centre amongst other features, which are all Touch friendly. 

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More Frequent Updates

I also expect to see more frequent updates to the Mac as Apple would not have to wait for Intel to release new Chips anymore. Instead, they can move the Macs to a yearly update cycle, just like they already do with the iPhones. 

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Lower Prices 

Since Apple will be designing their own Chips, the prices of future Macs could in fact go down. ‘KomiyaLeaks’ reported that the new 12” MacBook would cost $800, making this the most affordable new MacBook that Apple has ever released. But at the same time, all the savings could go into Apple making these devices even better, so it’s not 100% guaranteed that the prices will indeed go down. 

In terms of what to expect in the near future, we’ve seen quite a few reports that we would see either a 12” MacBook or a new MacBook Air by the end of the year. Some reports even mention Apple releasing a 13” MacBook Pro with the same exact Design that we have now, just with an Apple Processor. Komiya reports that the Butterfly Keyboard will be coming back, which I personally don’t buy. He also reported that there is no Apple Event planned for October, which is where Apple would unveil these new Macs, so they could indeed be delayed until next year. What we do know for sure is that Apple is indeed planning some major redesigns with pretty much all of these upcoming Macs, including the iMac. 

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 - 30 Things You Didn't Know!

The Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 has now officially been unveiled by Samsung. This is by far the Phone that I’m most excited for this year so, without any further ado, here are 30 things you probably didn’t know about it! 

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1) New Hinge Mechanism 

There is a brand new Hinge mechanism that now allows the Fold to stay open at pretty much any angle that you want, just like the Z Flip did. This means that you can actually prop it up and take a selfie or a group photo using the Front, or even the Back-Facing Camera Module. There are over 60 individual components in this new Hinge and Samsung said that they’ve tried over 100 different prototypes and approaches to make this possible. 

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2) Video Controls 

Something else that you can do with this, is keep it semi-open and have certain video controls on the bottom screen while you’re watching a video on the top screen. This could easily be updated for Games as well so that you get the controls on the bottom and the Game itself on the top Display. 

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3) Personalise the Hinge

Speaking of the Hinge, when you order your Galaxy Fold 2, you can now customise it. This isn’t live on 'samsung.com' just yet, but you will be able to change the colour of the Hinge when you order your Fold 2 through their website. 

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4) Dust Protection

The technology in the Hinge has been massively updated in the Z Fold2 (Source: Samsung)

Something that I was hoping to be improved with the Fold 2, and it finally has, is Dust Protection. Samsung is calling this the most advanced Hinge design ever, even more so than the mechanism that the Z Flip introduced, with the whole structure of the Phone reinforced to make the Fold more durable to drops and dust.

In fact, they even showed ‘JerryRigEverything’s’ dust and dirt test for the original Fold to point out that they’re now using smaller sweepers in the Hinge, similar to the ones used by Dyson Vacuum Cleaners to keep the debris out. 

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5) Water Resistance 

Water Resistance is here too, to some extent at least. Even-though Samsung has not confirmed this directly, Max Weinbach says that the Fold 2 has an Anti-Erosion Waterproof Coating on the main internal components of the Motherboard. It’s not waterproof per se, but it will help survive a quick drop in water or possibly even withstand rain, if you get caught in it.

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6) No Wireless Earbuds

Unfortunately, if you were a fan of the free Galaxy Buds that came in the box of the Fold 1, Samsung would not be including any free Headphones inside the box of the Fold 2. Personally, I was hoping of some free Galaxy Buds Live this time, but it seems like this won’t be the case. 

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7) Free Galaxy Buds Live 

Or is it? Speaking of the Buds Live, if you pre-order a Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, you do get a pair of Galaxy Buds Live for free. Samsung hasn’t said if they will be doing the same thing for the Fold 2, but I would expect them to do so.

If you do get your Fold after the pre-order window has closed, you would not be able to claim the free Galaxy Buds Live anymore. 

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8) Premium Box

However, the box that the Fold 2 comes in is still as premium as before. It’s a gigantic box, which makes me think that Samsung has bundled a few things inside, possibly a free case again. The box itself opens in a unique way so the unboxing experience itself is indeed very premium.

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9) Thinner 

Now, one of my main complaints with the Fold 1 was that it was quite thick, especially when closed down. Luckily, Samsung has made some massive improvements here.

First, the entire device is thinner when unfolded. It was still pretty thin before at just 6.9mm, but now it is just 6mm when unfolded.

When folded or closed down, Samsung has managed to make the Hinge close flatter, so the gap that was previously quite big is now noticeably smaller, making the device thinner when closed due to both of these improvements. 

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10) Heavier 

Unfortunately, there is no way of making so many improvements to a device without increasing its weight. The Fold 2 is now heavier at 279g, compared to the 263g of the Fold 1. 

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11) Camera System

This is very similar to what we saw on the S20’s, but it’s hard to complain at that.

Speaking of improvements, I’m a bit disappointed when it comes to the Camera Module. Rather than this being the Note 20 Ultra’s Camera System, it is actually the same Camera Module as on the Galaxy S20, for the most part. We have a Main 12MP, f/1.8 Aperture Module, which is the same exact one as on the S20’s, with larger Pixels and a larger Sensor overall. I’m very happy with this, as that was an incredible Camera.

The second Module is a 12MP, f/2.2 Aperture, Ultra-Wide Angle Module, the same as on the S20’s. However, the Telephoto Module is not quite as good. 

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12) No 64MP

On the S20’s, we have a 64MP Telephoto Module with which you can have 30x Digital Zoom. Unfortunately, the Fold 2 only has a 12MP Module, which gives you a 2x Optical Zoom and 10x Digital. 

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13) No 8K

Not only that, but because there is no 64MP Module, there is also no 8K Video Recording on the Fold 2. This is something that we’ve had on all the S20’s as well as both Galaxy Note 20’s. 

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14) Why No S-Pen?

Now, one of the early rumors was that the Fold 2 will include an S-Pen, this was one of my main requests as well. I’m not a massive user of the S-Pen myself, but I do have to say that having it on a device as big as the Fold 2 would make a lot of sense.  Unfortunately, there is no S-Pen at all.

Samsung did actually make an official statement on this, saying that they engineered the Fold 2 to have its own special qualities that are suited for Foldables, which makes me think that they couldn’t do it as of yet. My initial guess was that they couldn’t do it, as they would need to make the tip of the S-Pen extremely soft in order for it not to damage the Display. But, if it is really soft, it would flex when you press harder and then the plastic body of the S-Pen itself could touch the Display, which would easily damage it. 

It could also be a case where Samsung wanted to make a thinner Fold 2 and they just couldn’t have done that if they had the S-Pen inside.

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15) 120Hz 

Now, one of the big improvements that the Fold 2 gets is a 120Hz Refresh Rate Display, which is absolutely nuts on such a massive Display. 

This jump in Refresh Rate is definitely something you’ll notice.

We don’t yet know if the Display will be able to run at Native Resolution whilst also running at 120Hz.The S20’s can only run at 120Hz if you turn down the Resolution to 1080p and the exact same applies to the Note 20’s, including the Note 20 Ultra. Now, the Fold 2 has a much larger Display, it’s pretty much a compact Tablet really, so we definitely do need this Display to run in Native Resolution as even the text on the Galaxy S20 Ultra was a bit blurry when running the Display in 1080p. We don’t know if Samsung will allow us to do this, but the good news is that the Resolution on the Fold 1 was fixed, you couldn’t change it. So, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a Native Resolution at 120Hz. 

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16) One CPU Model

Now, what gives me hope in terms of this, is the fact that the Fold 2 would only come with one CPU model, as opposed to the Galaxy S20’s or even the Note 20’s. These come with either an Exynos 990 Processor, if you buy the International Version of those Phones, or the Snapdragon 865.

The Fold 2, same as the US Version of the Note 20 Ultra, will feature the Snapdragon 865+ Processor. Since there’s no Exynos at all, and the Snapdragon is around 20-30% more powerful, we could see 120Hz at Native Resolution. 

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17) Inner 60Hz 

The Inner Display would still be a 60Hz Panel. 

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18) Outer Display Improvements

However, this Display has received some massive improvements, with the biggest one being in terms of the size.The Fold 1 had a tiny 4.6” Display with gigantic Bezels that I was almost never using, but this time we have a 6.23” Bezel-less Display with just a single Punch-Hole Camera Cutout, making this Panel fully usable now. 

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19) Inner Display Improvements

The Inner Display is now bigger, more fluid and has that Notch is now gone (Source: Samsung).

But, there are also big changes are on the Inner Display. 

Aside from the 120Hz Refresh Rate, this Display is also getting larger from 7.3”, to 7.6”. Not only that, but that massive Notch has been replaced by a single Camera Cutout, just like on the front, and Samsung has also made this Display way more durable. Just like on the Z Flip, Samsung is using UTG (Ultra-Thin Glass). 

So, the Display assembly is now: a Plastic Layer, then the UTG underneath that, then the Display Panel itself and then the UMC (Under-Metal Cushion). All of these make the Display much more durable than ever before. 

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20) LTPO

Speaking of the Display, the Inner Display is also an LTPO Panel, meaning that it can dynamically adjust the Refresh Rate based on the content that you’re watching. It can go from 120Hz, all the way down to 60Hz, 30Hz or even 1Hz, in order to improve Battery Life.

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21) Battery 

In terms of the Battery, this is now a larger 4500mAh Battery, compared to the 4235mAh that we had on the original Fold. 

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22) Faster Charging

Speaking of the Battery, Fast Charging has also been improved with support of up to 25W Charging, compared to the 15W we had on the Fold One. 

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23) Storage Dropped

The amount of Storage that you get has been dropped to 256GB from 512GB, which I think that’s fine. But there are rumors that this wasn’t made to decrease the price, but rather to be able to keep the price the same as before. The price itself is not known yet.

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24) SD Support

Speaking of Storage, there is no SD Card Support on the Fold 2 and since 256GB is apparently the only capacity that Samsung will be offering, you will be stuck with that amount of Storage. 

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25) Fingerprint Reader 

No In-Display Fingerprint Reader, but we do have the next best thing (Source: Samsung).

Now, in case you’re wondering if we’re getting an In-Display Fingerprint Reader this time, the answer is no. This is still a Side-Mounted Fingerprint Reader. But, Samsung have indeed mounted it onto the Power Button, as opposed to having a Power Button and then a separate Fingerprint Reader Sensor next to it, like they did with the Fold 1. 

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26) Frosted Back

Source: Samsung

The back of the Fold does indeed have a Frosted Glass texture, but we don’t yet know if this is just on the Gold Model or the Black one as well. The press images seem to show the Black Model as being Frosted as well, while Samsung’s own 3D Viewer on their own website seems to show this as Regular Glass. 

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27) New Leather Case

Apparently, there is a new Leather Case that is now made out of a single piece, rather than two pieces, and I believe it stretches over the Hinge rather than leaving it open, like we had with the Fold 1’s Leather Case. 

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28) Thom Browne Edition

As with the Z Flip, the Z Fold2 is part of a Limited Edition ‘Thom Browne’ set (Credit: Samsung).

Just like the Z Flip, Samsung will be selling a more exclusive Thom Browne version of it, which will be more expensive. But, you also get a Thom Browne Edition Galaxy Watch 3, as well as Thom Browne Galaxy Buds Live, included in that gigantic box. 

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29) 2011

Samsung has stated that work on their first Fold started in 2011, which is the same year that Samsung demoed their Flexible Displays at CES 2011 for the very first time. 

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30) 5G and Foldables 

Moving forward, Samsung has confirmed that their main focus would be on Foldable devices, as well as 5G, with more more Foldables being released in the future. 

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31) Updates for Three Generations

Finally, interestingly enough, Samsung has also confirmed that you would be getting software updates for the next three Generations moving forward, which is an incredible move.

PS5 vs Xbox Series X – The Complete Buyer’s Guide!

PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X? Which one is the better Console and which one should you guys get? Well, spoilers, they’re both very good Consoles. You’ll be extremely happy with either of these two.

But, there are quite a few differences that might make you pick one over the other. We did a similar comparison back in March, but that was before we knew the Design of the PS5, or even the Games and Graphics reveals, so there’s tons of new details in this video.

So, without any further ado, here is the ultimate PS5 vs Xbox Series X comparison, covering the Design, Specs, Games, Graphics, Special Features and finally…Price.

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Design

Starting off with the Design, the PS5 and the Xbox Series X couldn’t have been more black and white, literally. The Xbox Series X has this very elegant and classy look in all Matte Black. It is bigger and fatter than the Xbox One X, but that’s because of the massive Cooling System that this Console needs. 

In terms of the Ports, we have three USB Type A Ports, all are USB 3.2. We have one on the front and the other two are on the back. In addition, we have a HDMI 2.1 Port, which supports 4K120 as well as 8K60, an Ethernet Port and a Kensington lock so that you can lock your Xbox in place. This is very useful for public spaces, as well as the Expansion Slot for the first party SSD Expansions, which I’ll be covering in just a second. 

The Digital-Only Version of the PS5 is definitely the better looking of the two.

The PS5 on the other hand, is completely different. First of all, it comes in this really nice Matte White colour, with Glossy Black accents and a blue LED strip which I’m assuming would change its colour based on the different states that your PlayStation can be in, such as Rest Mode, Sleep, Powered-On and so on. Size-wise, the PS5 is gigantic. It is much taller than even the Xbox Series X and also taller than pretty much any Console ever made. It is also said to be very heavy at 4.8kg, however, the PS5 is slimmer than the Xbox. 

When it comes to the Ports, the PS5 features one USB C Port on the front, as well as a USB Type A. We don’t really know any other details and Sony hasn’t shown us the back of the Console just yet. It is safe to assume that it will have an HDMI 2.1 Port, an Ethernet Port, a PSVR 1 Port and likely even a PSVR 2 Port, which will allow the External Receiver for that to be connected. The PSVR 2 will be a completely wireless Headset. Also, I do expect a few more USB A Ports on the back. 

Now, there will be two models of the PS5, a Regular Version and a Digital Only Version, which lacks the Blu-Ray Drive. This Digital Only Version looks much better as it’s perfectly uniform. The Disc Version looks like it has this tumour that grew on its side, it doesn’t look good at all and it’s pretty obvious that when Sony designed the PS5, they designed the Digital Version first as that’s really the future. Speaking of models, there is a rumoured second model of the Xbox Series X just around the corner, this is the Lockhart / Xbox Series S, with this possibly having a very square and boxy design. Personally, I really do like both but I am leaning more towards the Digital Version of the PS5’s Design. Something about it just makes it look more futuristic and high-tech, I’m really into that.

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Specs

When it comes to the Specs, both of these Consoles feature an AMD CPU and GPU alongside hardware based Ray-Tracing and a very fast SSD. So, you would assume that these Consoles are identical in terms of the Performance, but that’s not really the case.

The Series X splits its RAM into two chunks, at different speeds.

CPU-wise, both feature an AMD Ryzen Processor based on the Zen 2 Architecture. These are basically Desktop class CPU’s that you would find in AMD’s latest offering. They’re both 8-Core Processors, however, the Xbox Series X is clocked at 3.8GHz, while the PS5’s CPU is clocked at 3.5GHz. Not only that, but Sony has confirmed that the PS5’s CPU will be running at a Variable Frequency, meaning that while the Xbox will be running at a constant 3.8GHz, the PS5 can go up to 3.5GHz, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it would run this high all of the time. This was apparently done so that the PS5 has more power to divert to the GPU, when needed. Otherwise, the CPU might consume a ton of power even when the Game itself doesn’t actually require that much. 

On the GPU side, both GPU’s are based on AMD’s new Navi/RDNA 2.0 Architecture, which isn’t even out for PC yet. The Xbox GPU has 52 Compute Units, or “Cores” that each clocked at 1.825GHz, while the PS5 has 36 Compute Units, clocked at 2.23GHz. This translates to the Xbox having 12.15 TFLOPS of GPU Compute Power, while the PS5 has 10.28 TFLOPS. That’s a 1.87 TFLOP difference. Fun fact, the difference between the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X was 1.8 TFLOPS, so this is quite significant. 

RAM wise, both have 16GB of GDDR6 Memory, but they’re both using it in a fairly different way. For example, the PS5 has a 448GB/s Memory Bandwidth for the entire 16GB chunk. The Xbox, on the other hand, has 560GB/s but only for 10GB, while the other 6GB are running at a slower 336GB/s. 

At this point, it seems like the Xbox Series X is superior, Performance wise, to the PS5, which is indeed correct. However, the PS5 does have one big advantage when it comes to the Storage. Both Consoles now have a Flash Storage Module, or an SSD, compared to the mechanical HDD’s that the current-gen Consoles have.

Microsoft have Proprietary Drives, but the PS5 allows Third-Party Support.

The Xbox Series X comes with a 1TB SSD, while the PS5 comes with a 825GB SSD. But, while the Xbox’s SSD has a read speed of 2.4GB/s, almost 50 times faster than what the Xbox One, the PS5’s SSD has a read speed of 5.5GB/s, 110 times faster than the PS4 and Xbox One’s Drive. I’ll go into more detail about why this is important when we get to the Graphics section of this video.

Now, with both of these Consoles, you will be able to expand the Storage if you really need to. On the Xbox, Microsoft will be selling Drives that they’ve developed in partnership with Seagate, which will allow you to add one extra Terabyte to the Console. 

Sony won’t be selling any first party SSD, instead, you will be able to buy any third party m.2 Drive and replace the Internal Storage with that. However, it will need to have at least the speeds of the Internal Drive. As of right now, there are no Drives that even match that speed. 

You can indeed connect External HDD’s to both of these Consoles, but you would not be able to play any next-gen Games from those as they’re simply way too slow. You can store your current-gen Games on those, which will be playable on both of these Consoles. 

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Games

But the specs really don’t mean anything if there are no great games to take full use of them. So, what games are we getting for each Console? Well, this is where the biggest differences between these two Consoles really show.

‘Horizon: Forbidden West’ is just one of the many AAA Exclusives that Sony will have before there are any on the Series X (Source: Sony).

On the PS5, you will have Exclusive Games. So, just like with the PS4 now, all new games made by Sony studios will only work on the PS5. That means that the next ‘Spider-Man’, the next ‘Horizon’, the next ‘God of War ‘and so on. The good news is that those games will look absolutely incredible and truly next-gen. The bad news is that you need to buy a PS5.

When it comes to the Xbox, things are entirely different. Microsoft says that for the first two years, there will be no Exclusives at all on the Xbox Series X. This means that any new Game that you will buy for the Xbox will work on the Series X, the Xbox One X, the Xbox One S, the Xbox One as well as on any Windows PC. So, the great news here is that you don’t really have to buy the Xbox Series X to take advantage of the new Games. The bad news however, is that the Games will not look as good as the Exclusives will on the PS5. There’ll be more about that when it comes to the Graphics. 

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Graphics

So now, which Console will have better Graphics? This is also really tricky.

If you’re into cross-platform Games, such as ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Fortnite’, ‘Minecraft’, ‘Overwatch’, ‘Assassin’s Creed’ or basically anything that works on both Playstation and Xbox, those Games will run better on the Xbox. Most of these Developers have already confirmed that the Xbox Series X will run their Games at a higher Resolution and higher Frame-Rates. In fact, Microsoft is aiming for a full Native 4K experience at least 60 FPS, with some Games even targeting 120 FPS. 

Footage from ‘Halo Infinite’ did not showcase the best of what the Series X can offer (Source: Xbox).

Sony, on the other hand, hasn’t really confirmed that they’re even targeting 60 FPS. Insomniac Games for example, the Developer of the next ‘Spider-Man’ Game, have confirmed that ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ will have a 60 FPS Mode. But, their Tweet is a bit strange and it sort of implies that you’ll have to choose between 4K and 60 FPS or if you want 60 FPS, you’ll need to have some graphical options disabled. 

Since the PS5 will indeed have Exclusives at launch, these games will indeed look true next-gen, while the launch Games on the Xbox Series X, since these are cross platform/non-exclusives Games, will just look like the current-gen in higher Resolution and at a higher Frame Rate.

Take a look at ‘Halo Infinite’, which we just got a gameplay reveal for last week. The game looks decent, it runs in Native 4K60 but the Graphics themselves just look like current-gen. Take a look at the Grass and the Lighting, now compare it to, let’s say, ‘The Last of Us: Part 2’ or ‘Ghost of Tsushima’. In these games, the Foliage Density is significantly higher. Not only that, but in ‘The Last of Us: Part 2’, you can even interact with the foliage to the point where you can bump into a Pine Tree and you’ll see the snow fall off of it. Also, pay attention to the Lighting and compare both of these to how it looks in Halo Infinite. Also, keep in mind that ’The Last of Us: Part 2’ and ‘Ghost of Tsushima’ are PS4 games, ‘Halo Infinite’ is a next-gen title.

Long story short, when you develop a Game, you have to develop it on the weakest common denominator and then let the more powerful hardware run that same Game at a higher Resolution and Frame-Rate.

Otherwise, if you develop the Lighting and the Physics on a higher-end Platform, porting that down is going to be incredibly difficult. For example, ‘Halo Infinite’ was developed on the Xbox One and then ported onto the Xbox One X, the Series X and then onto PC.

For a PS4 Game, ‘The Last of Us: Part 2’ looked truly next-gen (Source: Sony).

Luckily, Microsoft has also shown a few Games developed on the Series X, which would not work on the Xbox One at all, just the Series X and PC.  Those games were the new ‘Fable’, ‘State of Decay 3’, ‘Forza Motorsport 8’ and a few more. Finally, these definitely looked like next-gen Games.  Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t said when we’ll get these Games, but it seems like they will all come out after those first two years as again, these Games will now be “Exclusives” rather than Games that also work on the Xbox One series, in order to take full advantage of the hardware inside the Series X. 

So, at launch, cross platform Games will look better on the Xbox One X, while Exclusives will look better on the PS5 as the Xbox won’t actually have any until two years after launch. We don’t yet know to what extent cross platform Games run better on the Series X just yet, this is because the PS5 does indeed have that much faster SSD. If we take a look at ‘Star Citizen’, a Game that is actually a PC Exclusive, it has been fully optimised with SSD’s in mind and if you have an m.2 Flash Storage Module for example, that game can run at up to 20 FPS higher than if you were running the same Game, on the same platform, with the same specs, but on a HDD.

The speed difference between a HDD and a standard 2GB/s m.2 Flash Module is a factor of 40x. The speed difference between the PS5’s SSD and the Xbox SSD is only about 2x. This is not enough to give us 20 FPS or anything like that on the PS5, but likely something that can make this Performance gap between these two Consoles, look smaller.

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Special Features

So what about the Special Features? Is there anything unique in terms of each Console that might make you pick one, over the other? Well, the Controllers are a pretty big difference here. 

The Xbox Series X Controller looks almost identical to the Xbox One X Controller, which is not necessarily a bad thing as that Controller was regarded by many as the best Controller on the market. This has been improved this time by adding a Dynamic Latency Input which is supposed to significantly reduce the Input Lag, making this Controller likely the best  choice if you’re into competitive gaming. 

Microsoft have very much taken the approach of ‘If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’.

However, the PS5’s Controller is a complete redesign. Not only that, but it also implements a Touch-Bar and Haptics Support similar to what we have on modern Smartphones, just on steroids. This will give you the ability to feel different surfaces in a Game, I’m really curious to see how well it works.

The Xbox Series X though, has a massive advantage in terms of Backwards Compatibility. It allows you to play Xbox One, Xbox 360 and even original Xbox Games, while the PS5 will only allow you to play PS4 games with the DualShock 4. Also, the Xbox does feature the Xbox Game Pass, which lets you play a selection of Games via a monthly subscription, which is pretty amazing if you just want to try some Games out. Sony does have PlayStation Now, which is also a monthly subscription, but this one streams Games rather than downloading them, so the quality is affected here. Some Games can indeed be downloaded though, but only a few. 

However, one big advantage to the PlayStation could be the new 3D Audio Engine. This is a hardware-based engine, which will immerse you significantly more into a Game by giving you 7.1 Surround Sound in all PS5 Games. 

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Price 

And finally, let’s talk about the price. So the prices have not been revealed as of yet, which means that the prices that I’m going to give you are based on leaks from some reliable sources. 

The PS5 is said to start at $400 for the Digital Version and $500 for the Disk Version. The Xbox Series X is said to start at $500, but we’ve also seen reports that Microsoft will also launch another Xbox, the Xbox Series S, which would start at around $300. However, the Series S will be considerably less powerful than the Xbox Series X, whereas both versions of the PS5 are identical in Performance. 

Google Pixel 4a - My First Impressions!

Google sent over their brand new Pixel 4a in what is a pretty soft launch for a Smartphone. If you want to see the live Unboxing, you can check out the video above. For now, we’re going to focus on my First Impressions after spending a day with it. So, let’s get into it.

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Design

Design-wise, I absolutely love it. It’s very tiny at 5.8” and is almost identical to an iPhone X, XS or an iPhone 11 Pro and around the same size as the iPhone SE 2020. This is a very small Smartphone, which is easily usable with just one hand. The back is made out of Plastic, so there is no Glass here as this is only a £350 device. We also have a Fingerprint Reader on the back with no In-Display Fingerprint Reader at all. Additionally, I also really love how the Camera Module looks, it’s so tiny and cute. The Pixel 4a just looks like a baby Pixel 4.

A nice inclusion for their target market.

On the right-hand side we have a coloured Power Button, as well as the Volume Slider. On the top, we have a Microphone and a Headphone Jack, I haven’t seen this in ages! I guess that, because of the lower price, Google assumes that the market that they are targeting this at would not have Wireless Headphones. This is a good option for just giving people more options as you can, of course, still use Wireless Headphones on this if you want. We don’t have anything on the left-hand side and finally on the bottom we have the Speaker, a USB C Charging Port as well as the other Microphone. Speaking of Speakers, we do have Stereo Speakers on this, which is fairly rare to see on low-to-mid range Smartphones. 

Moving on to the Display and like I said before, this is a 5.8” Panel but what I haven’t said is that this is actually an outstanding Panel, especially at this price. It is an OLED Display with a Resolution of 2340x1080 and a PPI of 443. It supports HDR as well as Google’s ‘Now Playing’ feature, which shows you the exact song that’s playing in the background, even when you’re not connected to the internet, which I think is just insane. It is a 60Hz Panel but it does support Always-On functionality. The fact that we have no Notch or thick Bezels, but rather a single small cut-out for the Front Camera, makes this the best looking Pixel Phone that Google has ever released, in my opinion.

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Camera

The Pixel 4a can still do 4K60 Video Recording.

So what about the Camera? Most of the people that would buy a Pixel Smartphone, would buy it for that amazing Camera. Well, I’m pleased to say that the Camera on the Pixel 4a is identical to the main Camera on the Pixel 4. That means that this is a 12.2MP Sensor with 1.4μm Pixels and an f/1.7 Aperture. The Front Camera is also identical to the one on the Pixel 4, an 8MP Sensor with 1.22μm Pixels and an f/2.0 Aperture. We have 4K Video Recording with the Back-Facing Camera but only at 30 FPS. Again, this is the same as on the Pixel 4.

We even get Optical Image Stabilisation and Dual Pixel Phase Detection Autofocus, which is something that you usually only see on high-end Smartphones. You even get the insane Astrophotography Mode, which is still the best way to take photos of the night sky on any Smartphone. We got this with the Pixel 4 first and now we also have it on the 4a.The Pixel 4 had one of the best Cameras ever, on a Smartphone, and we’re getting that on a Phone that costs £350, which is pretty incredible.

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Specs

The Processor is not the fastest, but Google do a great job of optimising what they do have.

 Then, we come to the Specs? Well, CPU wise, we get the Snapdragon 730G Processor, which from these ‘Geekbench’ results, is significantly less powerful than a Pixel 4’s Snapdragon 855 or not even to mention the iPhone SE”s Apple A13 Chip. But, using the Pixel 4a seems to be just fine. It’s very fast, very responsive, so it looks like Google has done an outstanding job when it comes to optimising the software for this lower-end hardware. The only place where I’ve definitely noticed a Performance downgrade, over the Pixel 4, was when processing photos, but that’s was it. We also get 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM, the same as on the Pixel 4, as well as 128GB of storage, which is again the same as on the Pixel 4. 

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Special Features

So what about the Special Features? Is there anything we’re missing out on, from the Pixel 4? Well, we don’t get Wireless Charging or Water Resistance. That 3D Depth Sensing Array on the front is gone and so is the FaceUnlock.The Speakers are a bit worse but other than that, we get most of the features. Even Fast Charging is just as fast as on the Pixel 4, up to 18W, and we do get a Fast Charger bundled in the box, which is great. 

The Haptic Engine on this feels amazing and I’m not talking about a Vibration Motor, I’m literally talking about the Haptic Engine. This is actually a first for a Phone of this price to include. It feels pretty much as good as the one on the Pixel 4, meaning that the typing experience is absolutely incredible.

So, what’s the catch then? Well, it only comes in one size and only in this one single black colour but other than that, this is just an outstanding Smartphone. Now, is it better than the iPhone SE, or the OnePlus Nord or the Samsung A71?

PS5 – Major Controller Updates, Pre-Orders, Price & More!

We’ve had some major PS5 updates over the past week, ranging from the first hands-on video with the DualSense Controller, to Pre-Order Updates, Performance Updates, Games, Graphics and so much more. So, get those snacks ready and here’s everything new in terms of the PS5!

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Pre-Orders 

First things first, there were a ton of rumors that the PS5 Pre-Orders would start as soon as possible. These were mostly coming from Twitter leaker ‘IronManPS5’, previously known as ‘PSERebus’, who’s actually been very accurate in the past. He started tweeting that the PS5 Pre-Orders would start on Monday, 13th July. This, unfortunately, did not happen.

We then heard the news that the PS5 Controller would get a hands-on look on Friday, 17th July, and that that would also be when the Pre-Orders would start. That did not happen either. But luckily, in that hands-on video/interview that Geoff Keighley had with Eric Lempel, the Global Head Marketing of PlayStation, Eric debunked those Pre-Order rumors as false. He said that Sony will let their customers know, ahead of time, when the Pre-Orders would start. They wouldn’t just start out of the blue and catch everyone by surprise, which is the good news.

A more strict & direct approach from Sony, with the Pre-Orders.

The bad news, or maybe this is actually good news as well, is that we now have confirmation that you would only be allowed to buy one PS5 per household as the stock would be quite low at launch. This was found by a Reddit user who was browsing the web page source code on ‘direct.playstation.com'. It seems that when you’ll try to add another PS5, you’ll get an error message saying that you can only purchase one Console. Now, in that code, it is revealed that Sony will also be adding labels on certain PS4 products that would be PS5 compatible, this includes Games and likely some PS4 Accessories as well. 

Speaking of Labels, we actually got to see the PS5 label that would be on Game Cases, the top left label that we’ve had on PS4 & PS3 Game-Cases and so on. For the first time, with the PS5, the Label is black & white, so no more Blue PS5 Logo or anything like that. Sony seems to have fully embraced the white & black colour scheme that they’ve introduced on the PS5 Console and the PS5 Controller. I do love the minimalist look they’ve gone for.

Finally, seen as how we’re talking about Pre-Orders and Boxes, both Nikkei and Bloomberg report that Sony is increasing the PlayStation 5 manufacturing by around 50% with aims of reaching 10 million units by the end of 2020. Just to give you guys an idea, the PS4 sold 4.2 million units in 2013. The PS4 was released on November the 15th, which is around the same rumoured released date that the PS5 is said to come out. 

The Gaming Community has increased significantly since 2013 and considering the price of the PS5, I do expect loads of users wanting to upgrade to the new Console. I don’t see twice the number of units sold as launch, compared to the PS4, I think that’s a bit too optimistic. But, if Sony manages to manufacture 10 million units of the PS5, that would solve the entire stock issue at launch.

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Price 

Now, let’s talk about the price, ‘IronManPS5’ tweeted the full prices for not just the PS5 itself, but also the prices for the Accessories. Even though he was wrong in terms of the Pre-Orders, he was right in the past, numerous times. So, even if his price leaks are not 100% correct, they should at least be very close to the final retail prices. 

He says that the PS5 will cost $500, €500 or £450 in the UK. The PS4 Pro was priced at $400, the PS4 was also priced at $400, whereas the PS3 was priced at $500. This might seem like a lot, But do keep in mind that unlike a Smartphone, which can cost way over $1,000 and only used for two years or so, you would actually end up using a Console for a lot longer. This will probably be around five years or even more, which means that the $500 would be split into something like $100 a year, compared to $500 a year, which is what a high-end Smartphone would cost you.

The Digital Only PS5 may only come in at £350.

This $500 is just for the regular PS5, here will also be a ‘disk-less’ / Digital Only version of the PS5, which is said to cost $400, €400 or £350, the same price as the PS4. The only reason why you would get the more expensive PS5 is if you have any disk-based PS4 Games that you still want to play on the PS5. I do have a few disk Games, but I bought all of those when the PS4 came out, then I started moving towards Digital Games. Those old games that I got on disk can always just be bought again from the PlayStation Store as they’ve gotten so inexpensive now. I personally think that I would be going with the Digital Only version, especially since I really do prefer the way it looks.

The DualSense Controller is said to be $60, €60 or £55. The Charging Station for these Controller, which can charge two of them at the same time, that’s said to cost $30, €30 or £25. The PS5 Media Remote will also have the same price. The PS5 HD Camera is said to cost $60, €60 or £55 and finally, the Pulse 3D Wireless Headset will apparently cost $160, €180 or £130. I would say that these are some very good prices, for both the Consoles and the Accessories. 

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Controller Update 

Now it’s time for the big one, the Controller.

As I mentioned before, Geoff Keighley, who’s pretty well known in the Gaming Industry, was the very first person outside of Sony themselves and the Developers, who has laid his hands on the PS5 Controller. The first thing I took from the full video and interview with PlayStation’s Eric Lempel, was the actual size of the Controller.

We’ve seen some alleged leaked images of the DualSense, where it looked gigantic, but now Geoff has showed us a side-by-side image against the PS4’s DualShock Controller. While the DualSense is indeed larger than the DualShock 4, it is not significantly larger. Realistically, the size and the weight should in fact make it more comfortable than the DualShock 4 was, at least this is what Sony is saying.

The first ‘hands-on’ clip with the DualSense revealed it’s not quite as unwieldy as we may have first thought.

We also got to see the bottom of the Controller for the very first time, which was something that for some strange reason, Sony has avoided showing. This made me think that maybe it was because Sony added two customisable Buttons there, just like the Back-Button Attachment on the DualShock 4. But now that we finally got to see the bottom of it, there are no Buttons at all, just a sticker.

Geoff also mentioned that the Speaker on the DualSense had a wider range of sound, compared to the DualShock 4 Speaker and also the fact that the Controller had a nice hefty weight to it. The game that he got to test was Astro’s Playroom, which is a spin-off from the PSVR’s highly praised AstroBot VR game, just in non-VR this time. The game lets you fully explore the functionality of the Controller, test out the Haptic Feedback, the Touchpad, the Adaptive Triggers and so on. He mentioned how cool the Triggers felt now that the Game Developers could actually implement different levels of pressure in them so that when you draw a Bow, it would feel entirely different from when you would fire a Gun. I can’t wait to try this.

I was expecting Geoff to be blown away by the Haptics or at least talk more about them. He did mention how realistic the game feels but I was just expecting him to praise the Haptic Touch a bit more.

Speaking of Astro, I’m assuming that Geoff was indeed playing this on a PS5 unit, which means that he also got to experience the PS5 to some extent but he didn’t talk about that at all here. However, Eric, PlayStation’s Global Head of Marketing, did talk a bit about the PS5 itself. Aside from the Pre-Order news that I mentioned before, he did talk about how Sony believes in Console Generations and Console Exclusives.

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Games 

This was in contrast to Microsoft, who will be enforcing Cross-Generation Compatibility for Games. So, any Games developed for the Xbox Series X, at least for the next two years, will also need to run on the Xbox One X as well as the Xbox One. I’ll talk about this more, in a separate video, so do Subscribe and enable Notifications for that. 

But until then, Eric made a good point here, saying that Games such as ‘Ratchet & Clank – Rift Apart’, would not even be technically possible on previous Consoles at all. This is because in this game, which is a PS5 Exclusive, you can instantly travel through different dimensions and take the fights from one dimension to another, which is only achievable thanks to the PS5’s insanely fast SSD, which is more than 100 times faster than the PS4’s Hard-Drive. Making this game run on the PS4 would involve changing the Gameplay and the Story of the Game.

‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ was not fully developed on the PS5, which may explain some of the apparent compromises (Credit: PlayStation).

Not only that, but if you make the game for the PS4 first, which you would do in a down-up development cycle and is how most Games are made, you would not be able to implement such ground breaking features.  Again, more about this in a separate video, but Eric does have a very good point. This is why the next PlayStation exclusive games to launch, such as ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’, ‘Ratchet & Clank -  Rift Apart’, ‘Horizon: Forbidden West’ and many more will only run on the PS5.

Speaking of Games, Insomniac games have confirmed that ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ would run at 60FPS on the PS5, sort of. They said that you would get to choose between a 4K Mode and a Performance Mode with 60FPS.

So, here’s the thing, we were all hoping that this Console generation would finally be a 60FPS generation. Microsoft have already confirmed that their standard would be 60FPS for Games and even 120FPS in some cases. We’ve seen some rumors that Sony was planning to do the same in all of the Games to be released for the PS5. However, judging by what Insomniac has said, it seems like while you can indeed play Spider-Man Miles Morales in 60FPS, you would have to downgrade a few graphical settings and apparently, the Resolution too.

Now, we don’t really know what these downgrades would be as of yet, but I would say that in the best case scenario, we can turn off Ray-Tracing to enable 60FPS. In the worst case scenario, not only will Ray-Tracing be disabled for 60FPS, but the Resolution would also be dropped to 1440p, or even 1080p, and then dynamically upscaled to 4K. Judging from Insomniac’s message, it is looking quite likely that we will have some drop in Resolution as well. 

Now, the good news is that ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ wasn’t fully developed on the PS5. It’s still using the same engine as the 2018 ‘Spider-Man’, just modified to take better advantage of the PS5. It will be only when games such as ‘Horizon: Forbidden West’ or the next ‘God of War’ come out, games which have been fully developed on the PS5 from scratch, that we might see 60FPS as a default on the highest possible settings.

For a start, it seems that Sony would be focusing on the highest possible Graphics first, and then the Frame-Rate. To be honest, even-though I’m personally disappointed in this decision, games such as ‘Last of Us: Part 2’ look absolutely breath-taking on the PS4 Pro, it honestly looked as if I was playing a PS5 game, it looked that good. So, I cannot wait to see what Sony has in store next.

If you look closely, you can still see a little bit of blue on the left-hand image (Credit: PlayStation Lifestyle).

Speaking of that, we actually had a recent leak from what seems to be a retailer that was listing a few Sony products. One of those products is a Black PS5 and a Black Controller with both having a red LED light, as opposed to the standard blue LED light that the White PS5 has. Now, we have heard many rumors that Sony is indeed working on different colour schemes for the PS5, one of them being black, so this could indeed be the real thing. I would expect Sony to give us an update on the colours as the pre-orders open. 

Personally, I do think that this image is fake. It does look very photoshopped, not even to mention errors such as the back of the Controller still being white, or the red light still having a blue glow on the Console. This is definitely fake. Regardless of that being fake, we’ve actually modelled our very own concept of the PS5, in black, and I’m definitely team Matte Black. I would definitely go for this option, should Sony give us the option at launch.

You can of course change the colour of the LED bar on the PS4, kind of. This was done by the system itself, based on the games. I’m hoping that with the PS5, we would also have the option to have custom colours, that would be quite cool!

Pixel 5 - Google’s Making a MASSIVE Change!

What is happening with the Google Pixel 5? 

Google’s upcoming Smartphone for 2020 seems to have been completely forgotten, or so you would think, since we haven’t had any major leaks yet. By this time last year, Google themselves even tweeted the full Design of the Pixel 4 because of how many leaks we had at that point.

Not only that, but we even had full Review videos of the Pixel 4, months before the Phone was even announced. The Pixel 4 ended up being the most leaked Phone since the iPhone 4. Whether or not some of this was done on purpose, we cannot know for sure. But, what we do know is that the Pixel 5 is just three months away and we’ve barely heard anything about it. 

So, here’s everything that we do know about the Pixel 5, so far!

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Design

Let’s be honest, Google has never had a good looking Pixel Phone. The Pixel 1 from 2016 looked just like the iPhone, which at that time had some gigantic Bezels. Not only that, but the fact that the Pixel also had the Android Navigation Bar made that chin look even more gigantic and the back just looked…weird.

The Pixel 2 from 2017 thinned out the Bezels considerably, but 2017 was when we got the iPhone X and the Samsung Galaxy S8, so we started getting Bezel-less Smartphones and Google was, once again, at least a year behind.

Then, the Pixel 3 from 2018 had that gigantic Notch, even bigger than on the iPhone, but that Notch didn’t have any 3D Facial Recognition Sensors, like on the iPhone. Instead, it only had a secondary Front Camera, which was a Wide Angle, but that was it. The back of the Pixel 3 was improved with the inclusion of Frosted Glass, which I absolutely loved.

The Pixel 4 in Orange was easily the best looking Phone in that line-up.

Then in 2019, we had the Pixel 4 and instead of Google removing that gigantic Notch altogether, like what most of the competition was already doing, Google went back to the Pixel 2’s Design with thicker Bezels on the top and bottom. Now, we did get a 3D Depth Sensing Camera with the Pixel 4, just like the iPhone, but the Pixel 4 still looked very out-dated.

That’s the thing, when you build a Smartphone, you can indeed make it extremely exciting for us (the tech nerds) by adding Sensors that can sense your hand from 30cm away and cool stuff like that. But, the majority of people won’t care about that at all, they only care about how good the Phone looks and how much it costs. With the Pixel 5, it seems like Google will finally be focusing on these two things.

We’ve had a recent link from ‘xleaks7’ who, in partnership with ‘Pigtou’, shared some CAD Models and some renders of the Pixel 5. It seems that Google will finally bring a modern Display to the Pixel line by dropping the Notch and the Forehead altogether, going for an In-Display Camera Cutout. You know, just like what other manufacturers have been doing since early 2019. The Frame surrounding the Phone, the Bezel, is now thinner and seems to resemble the one that we have on the iPhone X. The sides are pretty much identical to the Pixel 4, with a coloured Power Button and a Volume Button on the right-hand side and nothing on the left, aside from the SIM Card Tray. The back is really where we might see some more changes. 

So, on the leaked CAD files, the Camera is just identical to the Pixel 4 one, at least when it comes to the number of Modules. This is very disappointing to see as most Smartphone manufacturers are moving towards four and even five Camera Modules, Google is still sticking with just two. Also, the Fingerprint Reader from the Pixel 3 is returning, at least according to the CAD Models.

I honestly don’t see this happening at all. Everyone has been using In-Display Fingerprint Readers for a few years now and I really don’t see Google going back in time and having a Fingerprint Reader on the back but it is Google, so anything’s possible. We’ve actually removed that from our Concept and we’ve obviously embedded that into the Display Assembly, we’ve also added one more Camera Module for a total of three.

Finally, when it comes to the colours, the Pixel 5 is rumoured to come in two colours, Black and White, but I would expect them to release at least one “special colour”, similar to the ones we’ve seen previously such as “Oh So Orange, “Purple-ish” and “Not Pink”. We haven’t had any leaks in terms of that, so we’ve created our own colour. We call this ‘Tasteful Turquoise’ and I think it just looks incredible, especially with that white Power Button. I would definitely buy this, should Google actually release this colour.

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Display

We’re likely getting a smaller Display, with no improvements in terms of the Refresh Rate.

That was the Design so, what about the Display? The Pixel 4 had a 90Hz Refresh Rate, so will we get anything crazy like 120Hz this year? According to all the leaks that we’ve seen, Google will be keeping the same 90Hz Refresh Rate as last year but the Display size is said to be getting smaller, from 6.3” to 5.78”, making it around the same size as the iPhone XS. This is still said to be an AMOLED Display, with a QHD Resolution.

However, this year it seems like we would also be getting the Pixel 4a and Pixel 4a XL. According to some code found by ‘9to5Google’ in the latest version of the Google Search app, Google would not have a Pixel 5 XL and instead, they would only have a Pixel 4a, 4a 5G and Pixel 5. 

Speaking of the Pixel 4a, the official render of the Pixel 4a has appeared on Google’s website and we even got to see a full billboard featuring the 4a, which matches with the Design of the Google website listing. It seems like the Pixel 4a’s launch is imminent and the Pixel 5 leaks seem to match up with the 4a’s front Design, so it is quite likely that Google would be announcing all of these, at the same time.

That’s also why there’s a lot of confusion when it comes to the Specs, as we’ve seen reports that Google would keep the Pixel 5 as a mid-range device this year, which I’ll cover more in just a second. 

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Camera

With the Pixel’s Camera, Google’s Software was always key.

In terms of the Camera, ‘OnLeaks’ has posted a schematic that shows not just all of the upcoming Pixel phones for 2020, but also their Camera Arrangement. He did mention that this is likely not 100% accurate, at least on the Pixel 5’s side, as we’re still awaiting on a lot of details to be confirmed. Nonetheless, that schematic does point to the Pixel 5 having a Triple Lens Camera Module, as opposed to the Dual on the 4a. But, one of these Modules would be the Flash, which would mean that the Pixel 5 only has two Cameras, the same as the Pixel 4. The Pixel 4a would only have one Camera.

The leaks are also saying that the Main Camera on the Pixel 4a would be identical to the Pixel 4’s, which was mostly identical to the Pixel 3’s Camera. We don’t know yet if that second Module on the Pixel 5 would be the same Telephoto that we had on the Pixel 4, or a new Ultra-Wide Angle Module. I’m really hoping that it’s an Ultra-Wide, or even better, a Triple Lens Camera with both a Telephoto and an Ultra-Wide Angle Module.

But the thing is, even-if the hardware remains the same, Google’s magic is all in Software. That is why the Pixel Phones have such a great Camera, because of that Google Image Processing. 

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Performance

When it comes to the Performance, this is a bit of an odd one. We’ve seen many reports that Google would not be including a new flagship level Processor in the Pixel 5 this year, so no Snapdragon 865, but instead they would be using Qualcomm’s mid-range 765G Processor. This is a fairly decent Processor and also Qualcomm’s lowest-entry Chip that would give you 5G.

In terms of RAM, the Pixel has always fallen short of its flagship competitors.

But, the problem here is that all the leaks are saying that both the Pixel 4a, the 4a XL and the Pixel 5 will all have this Chip. This begs the question…what will the Pixel 5 have over the 4a’s, aside from that extra Camera Lens? Also, why would Google make such a move?

Keep in mind that the Pixel Phones, as they were released in October, are quite late in terms of implementing a new Processor. Qualcomm announces their new Chips in December. So, just two months after the Pixel Phones launch, they would already be outclassed by a faster Processor. While Pixel Phones were very well optimised in the past, we haven’t really had any performance issues. RAM management issues were always a problem, as Pixel Phones only came with 4 or 6GB of RAM when other Smartphones already have 8GB, 12GB or even 16GB. The Pixel 5 is said to be sticking to 6GB of RAM. 

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Special Features

When it comes to Special Features, Water Resistance and Wireless Charging will still be there, at least on the Pixel 5, but it seems like the 3D Facial Recognition Camera Array on the front is going away. 

While that is a bit of shame to see, as Google has even done a better job when it comes to Face-Unlock than even Apple, the majority of users would still pick a better looking Phone than a not so great looking Phone that comes with more features.

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Battery 

In terms of Battery Life, the Pixel 4 had a fairly poor one. The 4 XL was better, but it still wasn’t great.

At the moment, we don’t have any leaks in terms of the Pixel 5’s Battery Life but from the looks of it, it would remain identical to the Pixel 4’s, or even getting a bit smaller due to the entire Device being smaller. Fast Charging is also expected to remain the same at 18W. 

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Release Date

The Pixel 5 is likely to break away from the usual October launch.

When are the Pixel 4a and Pixel 5 going to be released? Well, the Pixel 4a’s launch seems to be imminent. Not just judging but the sheer number of leaks that we’ve had on it, but also by the leaked press image on Google’s website. Plus, the Pixel 4a has been long overdue, this was supposed to launch back in May. 

The Pixel 5 on the other hand, is a bit of a different story. You see, Pixel Phones have always launched around October, but we’ve also had a ton of leaks in the past, around this time. This means that Google could either delay the Pixel 5 until November, or even December, or they could be releasing the Pixel 5 alongside the 4a’s as a slightly higher-end version of it, rather than a true flagship Smartphone. I do think that this is what will happen. 

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Price 

The problem with Pixel Phones has always been the fact that they were priced like flagship Smartphones, but they lacked a lot of features that the competition had. These were Features such as a modern Design, a high amount of RAM or a Dual/Triple Camera Module. Even the Processors were out of date two months after the Pixel Phones launched.

However, with Google marketing the Pixel 5 as a mid-range device rather than a flagship, they can still keep most of those features and they can cut back on the CPU Performance. This was already pretty good to be honest. All of this means that they can drop the price as a result. Therefore, the Pixel 4a is said to start at $350, while the Pixel 5 would be priced around $500-$700. However, the Pixel 5 would need to seriously outclass the 4a’s, if Google wants to charge this much for it. 

So, at the end of the day, there’s nothing really that points to the Pixel 5 being a revolutionary Smartphone at all, or even a Smartphone that competes with the flagships of today. Google has tried to compete with the flagships for so many years now and aside from the Camera, which was indeed flagship level, they have failed. They seemed to have just moved into another direction, focusing on the mid-range market instead.

Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra – Why Apple should be worried!

With a release date of mid-to-late August, the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 is just around the corner. Not only that, but the Note 20 is looking to be a true iPhone 12 killer. We know most of the details of both the iPhone 12 and the Note 20, so let’s take a closer look at the Note 20 and see how it stacks up against the iPhone 12!

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Design

The Note 10+ from last year was one of my favourite Smartphones ever, in terms of the Design. Having that squared-off form-factor with almost no Bezels and a curved Display made the Phone look and feel like it was something straight from the future. The Camera was great, the S-Pen was always a nice touch and overall, I was a massive fan of the Note 10+.

When it comes to the Note 20, ‘OnLeaks’, who’s been incredibly accurate in the past when it came to his leaks, revealed the full Design of the Note 20 back in May. It looks like it is pretty much a Note 10+, with a few minor changes. The first change is that the edges are not as curved as they were on the Note 10+. In fact, they look to be almost entirely flat now, similar to what we got with the S20 Ultra. Personally, I have always preferred curved edges as they just look so futuristic and while accidental touches have been an issue in the past, with the S7, S8 and even the S9, I’ve never had that issue with my S10 or my Note 10. So, it’s a bit of a shame that Samsung got rid of those.

Check out "@ZONEofCONCEPTS” on both Instagram & Twitter for more concepts like this one

The second change is that the Front Camera Cutout is now smaller, it’s pretty much the same size as it was on the S20’s. The third, and final Design change is when it comes to the Camera Module on the back, which I’ll get to when I’m talking about the Camera Section. But, Design-wise at least, we do have these rings that actually match the colour of the Phone, which I think looks so good. I’m absolutely in love with the Note 20’s Design, even more so than with the Note 10+.

Moving on and just as we had last year, Samsung will be releasing two models of the Note 20. These will be the regular Note 20 and the Note 20 Plus, which might be called the Note 20 Ultra, which is how I’m going to refer to it throughout this video. We don’t really know much about the regular Note 20 aside from the fact that it will be smaller, with a lower Refresh Rate and a downgraded Camera. So, I won’t really be talking about the regular Note 20 from this point on as I’ll be focusing on the higher-end Note 20 Ultra model.

Speaking of that, we are expecting three colours: White, Black and this new Copper colour. We’ve actually had a recent leak of the new Copper Note 20 Ultra, which was posted on Samsung’s Russia website by…Samsung themselves. I’m not really sure if this is even a leak at this point but you can’t get more official than that. I have to say, the Note 20 Ultra looks absolutely gorgeous, even better than in our own concept. I love how the squared-off Camera matches the squared-off Body. The S-Pen also seems to perfectly match the Body of the Phone now, possibly even down to the actual material. 

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Display

The Note 10+ came with a 6.8” Display with a 19:9 Aspect Ratio and a Resolution of 3040x1440. The Note 20 Ultra is said to be getting a larger 6.9” Display with a taller 20:9 Aspect Ratio and a Resolution of 3200x1440. Not only that, but Ross Young, a well known Display Analyst, says that the Note 20 Ultra will be Samsung’s first Smartphone to come with an LTPO Display.

The Note 20 Ultra is said to come with a Dynamic Refresh Rate, similar to the iPad Pro.

Essentially, with the Galaxy S20’s earlier this year, we got a 120Hz Refresh Rate Display. However, we did not have a Variable Refresh Rate, meaning that you could either get 60Hz all the time, or 120Hz all the time. We didn’t have a dynamically adjustable Refresh Rate like on the iPad Pro for example, which can automatically adjust from 24Hz, all the way up to 120Hz, whenever it needs to. However, this will indeed be possible on the Note 20 Ultra, which will be able to dynamically adjust the Refresh Rate from 1Hz, all the way up to 120Hz. What this means is that we’ll see a much improved Battery Life over the S20 line and hopefully even 120Hz at Native Resolution, which on the S20’s is currently limited to 1080p.

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Camera

Samsung made some gigantic Camera improvements with the S20 line. Not only did we have a larger Image Sensor for the first time since 2016, but we also got 8K Video Recording and 30x Digital Zoom on the S20 & S20+.

Of course, we also had the big S20 Ultra, which added a 108MP Sensor, up from the 12MP Main Module that the other two S20’s had. It also added 100x Space Zoom, which could theoretically zoom in so much that you could even see the surface of the Moon. All of that sounded great on paper, but unfortunately the S20 Ultra’s camera was plagued with issues.

The Low-Light performance was severely impacted by how small the Pixels on the Sensors really were. Even with Samsung’s Pixel Binning technology, photos and videos in Low-Light looked like they were taken on a Phone from a few years ago. The Zoom functionality was actually very good, but only up to 10x. Once you got to 30x, or not even to mention 100x, you know the story. That’s not even to mention all of the Auto-Focusing issues that were still not fully resolved, even after Samsung issued a ton of software updates. The Image Processing had its own fair of issues, with photos being either overly exposed, under exposed and the HDR Processing was hit and miss.

The Laser Module enables precise Auto-Focus.

So what about the Note 20 Ultra’s Camera then? Is it the same problematic Camera that the S20 Ultra had? Well…yes and no.

The Main Camera is said to be the same as on the S20 Ultra. That means we get a 108MP Sensor, with an f/1.8 Aperture and 0.8 µm Pixels. However, Samsung is said to be adding a new Laser Module to the right, the purpose of this new Module is to help the Main Camera focus faster. In theory, that should solve all the Focusing issues that the S20 Ultra had.

That 48MP, 100x Zoom Periscope Module that the S20 Ultra got is indeed said to be replaced with a 13MP Module that provides 5x Optical Zoom and around 50x Digital Zoom. This is compared to the 4x Optical Zoom, 10x Hybrid Zoom and 100x Digital Zoom that the S20 Ultra had. The quality at 50X, as this is quite a low Resolution Sensor, should be similar to the quality that the S20 Ultra had at 100x. But at 10x, it should be quite similar to the Ultra or even better, as we do have 5x Magnification on the Lens, so I’m definitely looking forward to trying that out.

Also, since we also get an f/3.4 Aperture, rather than the f/3.5 that the S20 Ultra got, alongside the much lower Resolution of 13MP, the Zoom Module should be much better in Low-Light than the S20 Ultra’s Camera was. 

Finally the third Module is said to be the same 12MP, f/2.2 Ultra-Wide Angle Module that we got with the S20 Ultra. Aside from this, the Front Camera is said to be the same one as on the S20 Ultra, which means that it would be a 40MP Sensor with an f/2.2 Aperture capable of recording 4K Video at 60 FPS. 8K Video Recording will be there as well, but that’s on the Back Camera. So, overall if Samsung can indeed fix the Auto-Focusing issues, the Zoom issues and of course the Image Processing issues that the S20 Ultra had, I do think that this would be a great Camera.

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Performance

Performance wise, this is a bit of a tricky one. You see, the S20 Ultra actually had very good Performance. It came with 12GB or even 16GB of RAM, the Note 20 Ultra will pretty much be the same. The baseline Storage model is said to be bumped to 256GB, compared to 128GB on the S20 Ultra. That would be the one that would come with 12GB of RAM, as the 512GB model would come with 16GB of RAM. So, with regards to RAM and Storage, we’re all good.

The tricky part is when it comes to the Processor. The S20 Ultra came with two different Processors, based on where you bought it from. If you bought it from the US, Canada, China or even South Korea, it would come with the Snapdragon 865 Processor. However if you bought it from Europe and anywhere else, it would come with Samsung’s own Exynos 990 Processor. You would expect Samsung’s own CPU to be the better choice as this is a Samsung Smartphone, but it turns out that it was actually the other way around.

The S20’s RAM & Storage Specs.

The Snapdragon Processor models ended up having better performance, cooler Operating Temperatures and even better Battery Life by a significant margin, when compared to the Exynos models. Also, keep in mind that Samsung was charging the same amount of money for both Phones. It was just that based on where you lived, you could be getting a noticeably inferior product. Samsung has received a ton of backlash for this to the point where Users even started a petition, which ended up getting over 44,000 signatures. This was for Samsung to stop using Exynos Processors in their Phones.

So now, what about the Note 20 Ultra? Well, all the rumors point towards Samsung still using Exynos Processors in some of the Note 20’s. However, I do have some good news here. A report from ZDNet Korea states that Samsung would be using a new Exynos 922 Processor inside the Note 20. This would be the world’s first Chip to be manufactured on a 6nm process and apparently Samsung is also trying to get this down to 5nm. Apple will be switching to 5nm in September 2020 with the introduction of the Apple A14 Chip, inside the iPhone 12. 

The reports are saying that this new Exynos 922 even outperforms the Snapdragon 865 but, to be honest, I just don’t believe that’s the case, considering that Samsung has been lacking behind Qualcomm for a number of years now. Even if the Exynos 922 outperforms the Snapdragon 865 in terms of raw Performance, Power Consumption and Heat are still two ongoing issues that would also need to be solved. But at the end of the day, the Exynos variant is still a good Phone, just not quite as good as the Snapdragon variant. 

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Special Features

If you’re looking for the S-Pen, the Note 20 will be your only option.

So what about Special Features? Is there anything that would make the Note 20 Ultra stand out from the rest?

Well, the main reason why anyone would be a Galaxy Note, rather than a Galaxy S, is because of that S-Pen. The S-Pen is said to be getting some more improvements this year, with the biggest one being a significantly improved experience, all thanks to that 120Hz Refresh Rate Display. This will make writing and drawing on that Display feel so much more natural and fluid than ever before.

Also, Ice Universe says that the Note 20 will have some new S-Pen features. We don’t really know what these features are, but I would say it would be quite safe to assume that most of these would be software features similar to what we got with the Note 10+. The S-Pen has already reached a point where it is quite difficult to improve anything in terms of the hardware as it’s already so advanced.  Aside from this, the surface area of the Ultrasonic Fingerprint Reader is also rumoured to be increased but..that’s pretty much it.

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Battery

In terms of the Battery, the Note 10+ had a 4300mAh Battery. The Note 20+ is rumoured to have anywhere between a 4500mAh and a 5000mAh Battery. The S20 Ultra, for example, has a 5000mAh Battery, however, do keep in mind that the Note also needs some extra space inside for that S-Pen. My prediction would be around 4800mAh at the very best and likely somewhere around 4600mAh. 

Fast charging is said to stay the same as on the S20 Ultra and the Note 10+, so 25W with support of up to 45W (with a separate Charger). 

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Release Date

When it comes to the Release Date, the event is said to be on August 5th, with the Note 20’s to be released on August 21st and fun fact, that’s just two days after my birthday so, that’s pretty exciting!

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Price 

Price-wise, the Note 20 line is said to be the most expensive, non-folding, Smartphone from Samsung yet. Greek website ‘Techmaniacs’ claims that the Note 20 will start at 1,250 Euros, while the Note 20 Ultra will start at 1400 Euros.

It seems like the Note 20 Ultra would be about the same price that the S20 Ultra was, even though it does come with more features and that S-Pen. 

In conclusion, I’m pretty excited for the Note 20 Ultra but I’m personally more excited for that Galaxy Fold 2. Having used the Fold 1 as my daily driver for around two months, I just cannot be as excited for regular Smartphones. Folding Phones are the future and this is also the field where we’ll see the biggest improvements, year after year.

Unfortunately, even-though the Fold 2 would be a gigantic upgrade from the original Fold, it seems like it would actually not have an S-Pen in the end, despite many rumours saying that it will. This means that if you really want that S-Pen experience, the Galaxy Note 20 is pretty much your only option.

iPhone 12 (2020) - Hands-On with Mockups!

Here, we have something pretty special. These are the upcoming 2020 iPhones. The iPhone 12, the iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 12 Pro Max. So, wait a second Daniel, did Tim Cook send these to you? Do you actually have the new iPhones two months before release? Well…yes and no.

These are essentially non-functional models that are made for Case Manufacturers so that they can start working on their Cases. A massive thanks to Sonny Dickson for arranging these units too. Even though they are non-functional units, they do have the exact dimensions of the upcoming iPhones, which means that we can stack these up against other Smartphones and see how they compare.

So, without any further ado, here is an early look at the iPhone 12 line-up! 

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iPhone 12

The regular iPhone 12 from the front.

The first iPhone that we have right here would be the smallest of the bunch and also the most affordable one, the iPhone 12. This iPhone is actually smaller than the current iPhone 11 Pro or the iPhone XS or X,  which at the moment are the smallest notched iPhones that we have. Not only that, but the iPhone 12 is even smaller than the iPhone SE, 8, 7, 6s and even the 6, being just a tiny bit taller and wider than an iPhone 5. So if you’ve always wanted a flagship iPhone that was small and easy to use with one hand, that option is now finally back.

Now, something interesting about this iPhone is that it comes with a 5.4” Display, meaning that while the size of the Phone is smaller than an iPhone 6, the actual Display is noticeably bigger. Also, this is an OLED Display, just like on the iPhone X and newer. So, no more LCD Panels on any of the 2020 iPhones. Goodbye LCD, you won’t be missed.

Another big change to the iPhone 12 is that it now has a squared-off frame, very similar to the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4, which were my favourite iPhone designs ever. While having a squared-off frame isn’t as comfortable in the hand, as a wedge shape frame is, they do have way more grip and they won’t be as slippery because of that. As a bonus, you can even prop the Phones up which might not sound like a big deal for you guys, but for us, that’s pretty huge. It means that we don’t have to prop the Phones on something when we’re filming.

Taking a look at the Ports and the Buttons, on the bottom we have the Lightning Port as well as the Speaker and Microphone Grill. On the right, we have a massive Power Button. Nothing really on the top and finally on the left, we have the Mute Switch and the Volume Buttons. Finally, when it comes to the back and the Camera Module, we have a Dual Camera Module here, as opposed to the Triple Camera Module that we’ll see on the Pro models. This is pretty much the same arrangement as we got with the regular iPhone 11.

A top-down view of the back of the iPhone 12.

This means that we have the Main Module as well as an Ultra-Wide Angle Module. The Cameras on the iPhone 11’s were already pretty much the best in the industry, with 4K60 Video Support on all of the Lenses. These ones are said to be getting even better with support of possibly even 4K Video at 240 FPS.

We’re also getting an Apple A14 Processor, which would be manufactured on a new 5nm process so overall, the iPhone 12 is a pretty big upgrade in every single way and really the biggest upgrade that we got even since the iPhone X, in 2017.

There is one thing that isn’t fully known about these iPhones yet, that is the Notch. Since these models were made for Case Manufacturers, the Notch would not be 100% accurate. We’ve had many reports that the Notch would indeed be getting smaller, so I do expect this to look about the same as we’ve modelled it in our Concepts. This won’t really be that much of a change on the larger models of the iPhones, but it definitely will be on this 5.4” iPhone 12, where that Notch is already taking a considerable amount of space on this tiny Display.

Price wise, this iPhone is said to start at $650, $50 less than what the current iPhone 11 starts at. That is pretty awesome considering that you’re also getting an OLED Display, 5G and better Performance as well. 

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iPhone 12 Max

The iPhone 12 Max has the exact same Camera cut-out as the regular 12.

The second 2020 iPhone would be the iPhone 12 Max. This one is basically the successor to the iPhone 11 as it has the exact same 6.1” Display size, only this time, it is an OLED Display. I really do like this size a lot, especially now that we have these flat sides. I can grip it perfectly and it is noticeably larger than the 5.4” iPhone 12.

On the back, we have the exact same Dual Camera Module setup as on the iPhone 12. The front would have the same Notch size as on the iPhone 12 which again, I do believe will be around the same size as we’ve modelled it in our concept, based on all the leaks that we’ve seen.

The iPhone 12 Max is rumoured to start at $750, or $50 more than the iPhone 11. But, we are getting an OLED Display, thinner Bezels, a new Design with a flat frame as well as 5G support.

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iPhone 12 Pro

Then, we have the two Pro iPhones, starting with the iPhone 12 Pro. This one also has a 6.1” Display, the same as the iPhone 12 Max. This Display is very likely to be a 120Hz Panel, making everything far more fluid and responsive than on the non-pro iPhones. The frame, while still flat, will be made of out Stainless Steel, as opposed to the Aluminium on the non-pro models. Personally, I think I do prefer the Matte Black frame on the non-Pro iPhones. There’s something about that, that just takes me back to that iPhone 5 Design, which was by far my favourite.

The 12 Pro and the 12 Max will have the exact same dimensions.

Also, something to note here is that on the bottom left, we have this thing that looks like a Smart-Connector. Some of you might be thinking that this is the SIM Card Tray but, if you take a look at the previous unreleased iPhone models that we’ve shown you over the years, none of them had the SIM Card Tray on them. That was just on the final models, mostly because you don’t need access to the SIM Card like you do for the Buttons.

We do know that Apple plans on removing the Lightning Port entirely with the iPhone 13 next year and that the Charging will be done through a Magnetic Smart Connector or directly through Wireless Charging. But, Apple could already be including that Smart Connector on the iPhones this year just to get Users accustomed to charging with that Magnetic Connector already. Aside from this, this iPhone will also come with 6GB of RAM, compared to the 4GB that we have on the non-Pro iPhones.

The Cameras will be getting a pretty big improvement too. Not only will we be getting a Triple Lens Camera Module, we would also be getting that LiDAR Sensor that the 2020 iPad Pro got. This LiDAR module is not present on our models right here. This is, again, mostly because they’re for Case Manufacturers and as long as the size of the Camera Unit is correct, it doesn’t really matter what they have inside. Our concept is more accurate, so that would be closer to what the 2020 iPhones will look like, from the back.

The model we received had a White back, which is really clean (Centre-Top).

Now, aside from that new LiDAR Module, which will allow you to scan objects and even the environment in 3D for a significantly improved AR experience, the three Main Cameras will also be getting some major upgrades. The rumors are saying that they’ll be getting higher quality optics, with a Seven-Element Lens system. We’ve also heard rumors of a 64MP Sensor, but those aren’t confirmed as of yet. All we know for now is that the Pro models will definitely be an upgrade over the current iPhone 11 Pro’s in terms of the Camera quality, we just don’t know how much as of yet.

The iPhone 12 Pro is said to start from the same $999 price-point that the iPhone 11 Pro started at. We do get a larger Display, better Performance, a LiDAR Scanner, improved Cameras, 5G support and possibly even a 120Hz Refresh Rate.

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iPhone 12 Pro Max

Finally, the last iPhone would be the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which is the second iPhone out of the iPhone 12 line-up to get a change in terms of its size. But, unlike the regular iPhone 12, which is now smaller, the 12 Pro Max is bigger than ever before, coming in with a massive 6.7” Display. I have to say, while I absolutely love how this iPhone feels in the hand, it is just gigantic. The 11 Pro Max was always on the big side but this is just humongous. However, when we compare it to the Note 10+, which comes with a 6.8” Display, the iPhone is almost the same size, the Note is still bigger of course, but not by a lot. 

The iPhone 12 Pro Max, compared to the S20 Ultra.

The same thing applies when we compare it to the S20 Ultra. But you see, while the Ultra is much taller, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is noticeably wider, making it feel far chunkier and more Tablet-like in the hand, than the S20 Ultra. The fact that we also don’t have a Notch at all gives us much more screen-real-estate, when compared to the iPhone.

Now, even-though I do like the look of this iPhone a lot, and the fact that it has such a massive Display, I still cannot use an iPhone for business, when I’m traveling. We still do not have side by side multitasking support on the iPhone at all. So, if I want to use two Apps at the same time, which I pretty much do all the time when I’m traveling as I need to look at my Calendar and schedule some events based on some emails or some notes, I cannot do that at all on the iPhone. I can only run one App at the same time. But, on a Samsung Galaxy Note for example, or any Android Phone really, you can in fact run two or more Apps at the same time, significantly improving the multi-tasking experience.

I think I might just go for the iPhone 12 Pro this year and of course, the Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 as my Main or Secondary Phone, once that releases. 

Other than that, the 12 Pro Max would have the same Specs and Features that the 12 Pro has. This means 6GB of RAM, alongside that Triple Lens Camera Module on the back with the LiDAR Scanner included. Interestingly enough, if you take a look at the side of the 12 Pro Max, while on the left we do have that Smart Connector shape, on the right we have another Cutout which does resemble the Apple Pencil Connector on the iPad Pro. Also, this Connector is much larger than the single Connector on the 12 Pro. 

The range in sizes for this line-up is pretty significant.

So..what could this be? My theory is that the Connector that’s on the right of the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the one that’s on the left side of the iPhone 12 Pro, will both be used for that new Magnetic Charger. It is a bit weird that they’re not on the same side and they also have different sizes, so I’m not fully sure what’s up with that, but I do believe that they’re both Magnetic Connectors.

When it comes to the second tiny Connector on the 12 Pro Max, I do think that this is actually the SIM Tray and for some reason it was modelled onto this iPhone, even-though it didn’t need to be. That’s my theory but do let me know what you guys think.

Something else that I want to mention here is that all of these iPhones feel considerably thinner than the 11 Pro’s. The 11 Pro’s measured in a 8.1mm thick and the 12 Pro’s are said to be getting thinner, at 7.4mm. As long as that doesn’t affect the Battery Life, that’s really nice. Finally, the 12 Pro Max is said to start at $1,100. For this, we’re getting a larger Display with possibly a 120Hz Refresh Rate, faster Performance, improved Cameras with that LiDAR Scanner, 5G and of course, that brand new Design.

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Overall, the iPhone 12 line-up is looking to be very promising. Especially considering what Apple will be pricing these iPhones at. It will be like $750 for the 12 Max, which would have the most powerful Processor in any Smartphone and likely one of the best Cameras in a Phone, that’s an amazing deal.

However, in order to achieve these prices, Apple had to remove the Charger and the Headphones from the box, so you will have to buy those separately now. Some people might be ok with that, some might not. I personally am, as long as the price gets decreased which unfortunately, for the iPhone 12 Pro’s, it has not.

iOS 14 Review - Biggest Change Since 2007!

Every year in June, Apple announces a new version of iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and macOS. We also have tvOS but come on, no one really cares about that.

This year, we had a few leaks that iOS 14 would bring a new Fitness App to the table, alongside possibly a new list view for the Home-Screen, but that was pretty much it. However, it turns out that iOS 14 is actually pretty much the biggest change that the iPhone has had since the introduction of the very first iPhone, back in 2007. This version of iOS (4) brought the ability to change the Wallpaper, as well as multitasking support. Then, iOS 7 redesigned the whole look and now iOS 14 allows you to have more than just Icons on the Home-Screen. 

It introduces Widgets and an App Library UI, amongst many massive features, making it a gigantic update. I’ve already covered over 40 big changes in our previous video, but now that I actually got a chance to use iOS 14 on my actual iPhone for a few days, I wanted to talk about my personal experience and how it actually is to use iOS 14, iPadOS and watchOS 7. So, without further ado, here is my iOS 14 experience!

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iOS 14

Starting off with iOS 14 and the biggest feature that we got were the Home-Screen Widgets.

Now, we did kind of have Widget support with iOS 8, which came out in 2014. But these Widgets were only viewable in the Notification Centre. In more recent versions of iOS, you had to swipe right from the Home-Screen in order to see them, which was not that convenient. But now with iOS 14, you can place Widgets pretty much anywhere you want on the Home-Screen, which reminds me of Android.

This is so much cleaner, on the face of it.

In fact, Widgets support has been my number one most requested feature in iOS and it’s been one of the major reasons why I keep gravitating towards Android, whenever a major new device comes out. However, unlike on Android where you can basically place a Widget anywhere you want, on iOS they work in the same way as Apps do. They still magnetically attach to other Apps, which means that you just cannot have Widgets on the top, empty space in the middle and Apps on the bottom. You can only place Widgets where you already have Apps, which is a bit of a bummer.  

Also, you always need to have two rows of Apps between Widgets. For whatever reason, you just cannot have one single row, probably because Apple is using a 4x4 App Square for each small Widget. Something cool that I’ve noticed is that now you can just hold your finger anywhere on the Home-Screen to activate the Jiggle Mode, this is what it’s called internally. You also get this nice Haptic Response when you’ve done that. 

In order to add Widgets, you just press on the ‘Plus’ Button in the top right corner, you then get a bunch of automatic Widget suggestions, based on the Apps that you use the most. Once you scroll down, you get to this list of all the Apps that support Widgets. Since the Widget system has been completely redesigned in iOS 14, Apps will need to implement these Home-Screen Widgets, which is the reason why right now, only a few First-Party Apps support them. But then, it’s pretty straight forward. You select a Widget and then you get to choose between three or even four different sizes, in the case of Notes. Unfortunately, you cannot resize a Widget once you’ve placed it. In order to change the size of it, you’ll have to remove it and add it again. 

Now, if you choose to go for a small Widget, then that Widget would not be intractable. The moment you tap it, you would be taken to that App. Whereas if you have a larger Widget, with more UI elements, then you can click one of those elements to get taken to that specific function in the App. You can also hold on a Widget and then edit it with things such as changing the location that the Weather App shows you, the Note that’s currently displayed in the Notes Widgets and so on. 

You can also drag one Widget on top of another, to have a stack of multiple Widgets that you scroll through. It might be useful for some users, but for me personally, I like having all my information visible at a glance. I do prefer having all of my Widgets un-stacked and visible all the time.

Yes, ‘Jiggle Mode’ is the actual term for it.

Overall, I really do like the Home-Screen Widgets a lot and I just cannot wait for more Developers to start creating their very own Widgets. I predict that I would be changing my Home-Screen almost daily when that happens, by playing around with different Widget layouts. But unfortunately, Widgets are far from perfect. 

You cannot position them anywhere on the Home-Screen, for some reason Apple still kept the previous Widget View from iOS 13. Meaning that you can still swipe right from the Home-Screen and get this very long scrollable list with all of your Widgets. I just think that they should remove this because it just complicates things way too much for the average user. Having two places where you can have the same Widgets is just not ok. But wait, it gets even weirder.

In the Widget Panel, you can still hold to make them jiggle and then you have the same ‘Plus’ symbol, from where you can add more of them. It turns out that if you scroll down you still have the ‘Edit’ Button, from where you can add all the iOS 13 style Widgets here. Now, I really do hope that Apple fixes this in a future Beta Version. I do think that it will be fixed by the time iOS 14 launches, especially since all Widgets will be converted to the new style.

The second big new feature in iOS 14, is the App Library. Just like on Android again, where this is called the App Drawer, if you swipe left from your last Home-Screen, you can access the App Library, which is really just like the Launcher on Mac. A collection of all of your Apps installed on your iPhone. While I do like this idea a lot, unfortunately there are many issues and inconsistencies that I’ve found with the App Library. For example, on stock Android you get this App Drawer which lists and sorts all of your Apps alphabetically. Personally, I’m not really a fan of this as I do prefer having my Apps in Folders, which Samsung actually allows you to do in their own Android skin. which I love. Apple is somewhere in the middle.

The App Library does create App Folders, but those Folders are created automatically for you. There’s no way you can change that which means that finding a specific App can be quite tricky. Apple, please give us the option to rename and organise the Folders, as that would help a ton! 

Another mainstay on Android has come to iOS in the form of the ‘App Library’.

The way it works now is kind of pointless as I can still better organise all of my Apps, by having custom Folders on the Home-Screen. Also, opening those Folders in the App Library is very confusing as well. Unlike the Folders on the Home-Screen, if you tap on an App, it just launches it. So, you need to press on the bottom right Icon that shows multiple Apps, in order to open up the Folder. Ok, so you’re probably wondering, what happens if you delete an App from the Home-Screen? Does it go to the App Library or does it get removed? So, once you get into Jiggle Mode, the ‘Delete’ option has been renamed into ‘Remove App’ and once you press that, you’ll be asked if you want to delete the App or add it to the App Library. Which again, is extremely confusing because all your Apps are already in the App Library anyway. I think this should be renamed into “Hide App” and “Remove App”. 

Back to the App Library. If you swipe up, you get this list view in alphabetical order, with all of your Apps. This is sort of like on Android and then you can scroll through them or even search through them, which I can already do that in Spotlight Search, but at least we get this list view, which I am a fan of. Those are the two big changes in iOS 14, Widgets and the App Library. While I do love both, I do feel like iOS is becoming a bit of a mess now. You can swipe right to access the Widget Panel which you can also add to your Home-Screen anyway. You can then swipe down to access the search functionality which you can also access by swiping left from your last Home Screen, but that search is only for Apps, whereas the swipe down search is for everything. I just feel like it needs a lot of polish as right now, it’s like a notebook full of ideas, instead of an organised Operating System.

There have also been a few extra things that I have noticed, which I do really want to point out. First off, the stability has actually been very good. I haven’t had any system crashes or anything really. It was a bit slow at first but after it indexed all the Apps, things got back to normal. It was so good that I even installed it on my personal iPhone and from all the Betas that I’ve used over the past ten years or so, iOS 14 is definitely the most stable. Battery life has been affected, but it’s nothing too severe.

The double-tap on the back functionality allows you to select a specific function that your iPhone will execute, once you double or triple-tap on the back. The way it works is that it uses your iPhone’s motion sensors to detect the tap on the back. However, because of this, my double tap functionality also got activated a few times when I laid my iPhone flat on my desk. The good news is that you can also have custom Siri short-cuts on this, meaning that you can pretty much assign anything you want to this double or triple tap Gestures. I’ve set mine to launch the Camera App as iOS still doesn’t have a quick Camera Launch functionality on the Volume or the Power Button. These gestures are a bit finicky to activate, but when they do work, it’s a pretty nice feature to have. 

A long-awaiting and welcome new feature, is 4K YouTube Content.

Also, you can finally watch 4K YouTube content now, after so many years.

The reason why we couldn’t do it before was because Apple wasn’t using Google’s VP9 Codec and Google wasn’t using the h.265 that Apple was using. But now that the new AV1 Codec has been agreed to by both Apple and Google, and iOS 14 supports AV1, 4K playback is finally possible on Apple devices. But there is a catch. Google only seems to be using AV1 for 4K HDR videos, meaning that you can only watch 4K videos that are HDR. Otherwise, they’ll still be 1080p. I really hope that this gets fixed.

Speaking of things that need to get fixed. There’s now a way to adjust the exposure in the Camera App separately from the Focus, which is pretty great! We’ve had this in some third-party Apps as well. However, the way it currently works in iOS 14 has to be the most unintuitive way that I’ve seen. You can still adjust it via the up/down Slider when you’re focusing, but now you also have this Exposure Meter. The thing is, once you adjust it, there’s no reset button and you can increase/decrease the Brightness the same old way while the exposure meter is set to a custom value and that value won’t change. However, I’m pretty sure that this is a glitch though. 

In the Weather App, you can now see the AirQuality Index, which is pretty nice. Probably my favourite feature that I’ve found is that now you can hold the Navigation Buttons to go back to a specific previous category.  This really helps for when you’re buried deep into the Settings and you don’t want to keep going back and back until you get to where you want to be.

Siri now has a brand new UI, which I do like. You can now summon her without blocking the entire Display. However, what I don’t like is that you cannot interact with your Phone, whilst using Siri. Other than that, it’s more or less the same Siri as before. This UI now applies to whenever you’re getting a call. Rather than this blocking your entire Display, you get this notification-style window which you can even dismiss and continue doing your own thing.

‘App Clips’ is another thing that we’re looking forward to testing in the future.

Control Centre now allows you to show individual Accessories and Scenes from the Home App. Unfortunately, you cannot customise which Scenes or Accessories it shows you as this has all been automated, based on the ones that you use the most.

If you’re wondering how the AirPods pro sound, with that new 7.1 Surround Sound support, I won’t be able to tell you that because it seems that this is not available in Beta 1 just yet. Picture-in-Picture is though and it works just as you would expect it to, kind of. It doesn't work in the YouTube App so you have to be playing a video in Safari in order for that to work. But, it does work for Face-Time now, meaning that the person that you’re speaking to won’t get a black screen every time you go to check a Notification, but instead they’ll get to see you all the time, ands likewise.

Of course, there are many more features, such as App Clips, which I cannot test just yet. In terms of the big changes that I have noticed, these would be the main ones. 

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watchOS 7

Moving on to watchOS 7, by far the biggest change here is Sleep Tracking and…I’m quite disappointed. The way it works is that you have this Sleep App and you select how many hours of sleep you want to get and when you need to wake up, it will then tell you when you have to go to bed. Right before that, you’ll have a ‘Wind Down’ period, which is usually around 45 minutes. This is when DND will automatically be enabled and that’s pretty much it. 

Your Apple Watch will estimate the Battery Life it would have, when you go to bed, and if that amount would be less than 30%, you’ll get a Notification to charge it. The only problem is that I never got that Notification, which I’m assuming will get fixed in the final version. Not only that, but Automatic Sleep Detection never worked for me. I had to manually put my Watch into Sleep Mode, rather than this being enabled automatically based on the sleep times that I’ve set it to. Again, I’m guessing that this will be fixed when iOS 14 comes out.

But probably my main issue with Sleep Mode is that you cannot really see your sleep stats, unless you go into the Health App and into the ‘Sleep’ section of that. Moreover, it doesn’t even tell you much, just the time you were in bed, which is literally based on when you tapped the ‘bed-time’ Icon and the time you were asleep. There are no mentions of sleep quality, REM data or anything like that. An App such as Sleep Cycle is so much better than the native Sleep Tracking is, as of right now.

Native Sleep Tracking will now be a thing, but there are already alternatives that do it better.

Also, you’re probably wondering how much Battery Life it drains in Sleep Mode. Well, in my case, I had 51% Battery when I went to bed and 37% when I woke up about six-seven hours later. A 14% drop is actually very good, I just really hope that the Sleep Tracking gets smarter by the time this gets released. 

There is a new hand-wash feature which would show you a timer when it detects that you’re washing your hands. That’s not working just yet, or at least I could never get it to work, on my Apple Watch. 

Aside from that, the only new Watch-Face that we get, is the Chronograph Pro, which includes a Tachymeter that you can use to measure the speed that you are traveling at. I just wish this also had a digital version. You can also have complications on the X-Large Face, which is pretty nice to have and you can also add a Colour Filter to the ‘Photos’ Watch-Face. I also really do like how Apple has redesigned the Watch-Face customisation page and they now show you the colour selector on the right of the Face, rather than inside the Watch-Face.

There’s a new Workout for Dancing, but this was actually in watchOS 6. It was hidden in ‘Others’ and I’ve used it all the time for when I was playing ‘BeatSaber’. I’m not fully sure what’s new with this, possibly improved tracking?  But that’s pretty much it in terms of big, noticeable changes.

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iPadOS 14

Finally, there’s also iPadOS 14, which is a very small update. Aside from ‘Scribble’, there’s nothing really that stood out to me. In fact, we don’t even get the Widgets from iOS, there’s still stuck in the Side Panel and we don’t have the App Library at all, which is extremely inconsistent.

While I do believe that these will be added by the time iPadOS releases, Craig Federighi indicated to Marques that this is how they’ve intended to release iPadOS 14, for now. So, we’ll see.

But that’s about it, macOS does have a lot of changes as well, just like iOS 14 did, but that’s an entire video in itself.

macOS Big Sur Review - A New Era for the Mac!

Just like with iOS, watchOS and iPadOS, Apple also releases a new version of macOS every year at WWDC, in June. Last year we had macOS Catalina, which was filled with bugs and stability issues, some of which still haven’t been fixed. I was honestly expecting the next macOS version to just be a stability improvement, over Catalina.

Since we didn’t had any leaks on the next version of macOS at all, pretty much the entire tech community was assuming that this would be a very small update. But instead, macOS Big Sur is actually the biggest macOS update that we’ve had in years snd probably the biggest update that macOS has had since the introduction of macOS X, in 2001.

So, without any further ado, here is my experience with macOS Big Sur!

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Ok, so by far the biggest change that we got with macOS Big Sur is the new design. Unlike iOS, which usually gets a decent set of improvements every single year, macOS is a bit more conservative. For example, all versions of macOS, from macOS 10.0, to macOS 10.9, have looked almost identical. 

Spot the difference

But in 2014, Apple released macOS 10.10 (Yosemite). This was the biggest design change that the Mac ever got, at least up until that point. Gone was the skeuomorphism that Steve Jobs was a big fan of, as now we got the same design language as on the iPhones and the iPads with iOS 7, back in 2013. A design that featured a heavy emphasis on transparency, 2D effects and simplicity. I was actually a big fan of this design, I literally had zero issues with it, but I always felt like it could be improved. And it was!  

With macOS Mojave, in 2018, we got Dark Mode. This was one of my favourite macOS features ever and now with macOS Big Sur in 2020, Apple has redesigned macOS pretty much entirely again. 

Essentially, we get an even more iOS like look with things such as Control Centre, the Notifications and Widgets panel from iOS 14 as well as System Toggles that look exactly like they do on iOS. I’m actually a massive fan of this Design. I think it looks absolutely gorgeous, however I do have some concerns that I want to raise, which hopefully Apple will address by the time macOS Big Sur releases to the public.

My first concern is the Contrast. On the current macOS Catalina, all the top bar Elements are perfectly visible. Everything looks pretty great, I’ve never had any issues identifying UI Elements. However, on macOS Big Sur, UI Elements are all over the place. The Contrast is almost entirely gone on the top bar, making everything barely even readable. Not only that, but Apple has also added more space between the Icons in the top bar. This means that for people like me, who have a ton of Icons there, many of those Icons would not be visible anymore due to the extra spacing required.

My second concern is the Control Centre. So, I do like how it looks and how it works a lot, you can even control the Screen Brightness from there and even things such as the Keyboard Backlight, which I think is absolutely brilliant as it just looks and behaves so much like iOS. I wouldn’t normally have a problem with this, if the device had a Touchscreen but…it doesn’t.

Whether this means that Apple will release TouchScreen Macs in the not too distant future, we do not know. But what we do know is that Big Sur behaves a lot like iOS and while using Big Sur with a mouse, it just doesn’t feel right.

Having a UI designed for Touch Input can have its’ upsides and downsides.

Now, speaking of the Control Centre, there are a lot of things that I like about it. For example, having the Control Centre means that you no longer need individual Icons in the top bar for things such as WiFi or Bluetooth. You can now keep all of those in the Control Centre, which does mean that you can indeed clear up a lot of space out there. But, probably my favourite thing about the Control Centre is that you can even drag elements outside of it and onto the top bar. So, if you ever wanted to have, let’s say, ‘Do Not Disturb’ Mode or even AirDrop in the top bar, that is now possible. On iOS, you can have third party apps in the Control Centre, I am predicting that this will also be possible later on, in macOS.

Next-up, Widgets are absolutely brilliant. They look and work exactly like they do on iOS 14, meaning that you can just add different sizes. These can be Small, Medium or Large and they’re fully interactive. My only complaint here is that I wish you could place them on the Desktop as well, rather than having them constrained in this separate Widget Panel. Essentially, just like you can on iOS 14, I think that being able to just drag them out of the Widgets Panel and onto the Home-Screen would be ideal, especially on a Mac, since you have a much larger Display, compared to an iPhone. 

Notifications have also been tweaked. Rather than getting a massive list of all of your Notifications, they are now grouped into a stack which you can then expand to access all of them. Again, I just wish that they worked like they do on iOS or iPadOS. On iPadOS for example, you just bring the Mouse to the top portion of the screen and the Notifications Panel drops down. Apple is aiming for consistency between macOS, iOS and iPadOS, so I think it would be great to have Notifications work in the same way as they do on Apple’s other platforms.

My third concern is when it comes to UI Design. If you take a look at Finder, you can probably tell that it’s been completely redesigned. The Buttons are all in the window to the right, while the Side Panel alone is on the left and we have no control in that one at all. I really do like the way this looks, but the spacing is completely off.

So what about Calendar? The Spacing is completely different from Finder and System Preferences. Speaking of which, why is it still called ‘System Preferences’ and not ‘Settings’, like it is on iOS? I could keep adding to that list. For example with Siri, while it has indeed been redesigned on iOS and iPadOS, on macOS it still uses the same exact look as it did in macOS Catalina. There are many things left that Apple needs to polish, by the time macOS Big Sur releases.

Concern number four, are the Icons. In Big Sur, Apple decided to completely redesign the System Icons to essentially bring them more in line to iOS and I couldn’t agree more. I don’t know why we didn’t have identical Icons until now. But the problem is that they look atrocious. For example, while some Icons look identical as to how they look on iOS, like Calendar, Notes & Reminders, some Icons have this 3D look to them. Some examples include Messages, Mail, Face-Time and App Store, they also have an inner shadow.

The Icons are inconsistent in design, something I hope is addressed before release.

I’m honestly not a fan of this Design, I think it looks pretty bad, especially if you take a look at the System Preferences Icon or that horrid Battery Icon. These icons look like when you add Drop Shadow and Bevel & Emboss in Photoshop, if you know what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t necessarily be that critical of them, if they were all consistent, but they’re not. It looks as if each of these Icons was designed by a completely different person and none of these people were ever in touch.

Finally, my last concern is the Launchpad. First of all, why is it still called the Launchpad instead of the App Library like we now have on iOS? It’s essentially the exact same thing. Anyway, my problem here is that it’s still as painful and as slow, when it comes to organising your Apps. On iOS, you can indeed drag multiple Apps at the same time and place them in Folders. On macOS, you have to do it one by one, which is just a pain to do with a Mouse and even more so when you have loads of Apps installed, like I do.

Now, there are a few smaller features which I did find to be really cool so, here are a bunch of those features. I really do like how every UI Element has curved corners now, this also means that everything just looks off, when you look at the straight corners of the actual Display on your Mac. Because of this and the fact that the iPhone and the iPad both have curved corners, I do believe that the next Macs, starting with the new 14” ARM MacBook Pro, will indeed come with curved corners as well.

Also, remember that Battery Life indicator which also told you exactly how many hours of Battery Life you had left? Well, Apple removed that a while ago but now this seems to be back in Big Sur, which is great. The scheduling feature, which has been buried deep down into the Settings, is much more visible in the Battery section. You can even see your Battery Usage for the past day or week, just like you could for a number of years on iOS.

Everything about Big Sur just looks cleaner, but it’s not perfect.

Safari now lets you see how much websites track you. I’m pleased to say that we only use Google Analytics for tracking, so ‘ZONEofTECH.com’ is pretty tracker free, unlike many other websites out there. Speaking of websites, Safari now lets you watch Netflix in Full 4K Dolby Vision. Up until now, it was limited to 1080p. 

Also iOS 14 does indeed support 4K Video playing on YouTube, albeit you have to be watching a 4K HDR Video, as you don’t really get the 4K option on non-HDR content. But, I am assuming that this will be fixed and it seems likely that we would also be getting 4K support in YouTube on the Mac as well with Big Sur, when it releases. 

Speaking of Safari, you can now customise the Safari Home-Screen quite significantly. So now, not only can you customise the content that it displays by selecting and deselecting categories of items, but you can also have a custom Wallpaper in Safari, just like you can in Chrome. Apple will now be including the Safari Extensions in the AppStore and we also have a brand new API, which should make it much easier for Developers to develop and port their extensions from Chrome, into Safari. Safari is finally becoming more useful and I’m extremely happy with that.

I should also point out that I’m absolutely in love with the new Mail App. The UI has been cleaned up substantially and all the controls are now on the top right, with the left being reserved for the Side Panel, just like in Finder. This design actually reminds me a lot of Outlook, which actually had one of the very best designs for a Mail App.

The Calendar App has been redesigned as well, but I am still not a big fan of the Pastel Colours. I’ve always preferred the look of Google Calendar, maybe that’s just me. The Messages app also got a new Design, which brings in more in line with the iOS version, not just in terms of looks, but also in terms of its functionality.

Hopefully further support for more Apps comes in time.

So overall, I am a massive fan of how macOS Big Sur looks but like I’ve mentioned before, there are quite a few things that just need to be more polished and I’m really hoping that they will be by the time macOS Big Sur releases.

But in the end, macOS Big Sur isn’t just a massive visual upgrade, it is also a gigantic upgrade under the hood. It is the first version of macOS to fully support ARM Processors, which is the reason why Apple has also called it macOS 11. This lays the foundation of all future Macs that will feature Apple Processors. Speaking of that, Windows will not be supported.

Just as a final note, some of you are probably wondering what is the performance is like? Well, unlike iOS 14, which I actually ended up installing on my own personal iPhone just because of how stable it was, I just could not do the same with macOS Big Sur. This was not necessarily because of stability issues, but mostly because of a number of my Apps that just don’t work on Big Sur, without receiving an update.

Google Drive File Stream, which we use a lot for our work here, does not work at all. Mailbutler, a great tool that I use with the native Apple email App does not work either as well as a few more.

These apps will only get updated closer to macOS Big Sur’s release, so I still have to wait a few months until I actually get to use it. Apple hasn’t really told us an exact date for when macOS Big Sur will be released. I would predict the end of October, as COVID has delayed pretty much everything. But I don’t think it would be any later than that though.

The Last of Us: Part II - Full Review (Spoilers)

This is going to be my Full Review of ‘The Last of Us: Part II’ and this will include FULL SPOILERS for the game, so if you haven’t played it yet, I would highly suggest you do so and check out the Story Trailer above if you haven’t already.

The first thing you might notice is that… I’m not Daniel. I normally deal with Marketing and other assorted behind the scenes stuff at ZONEofTECH but as the resident Video Game nerd, I felt that I couldn’t let this opportunity go to waste. Whether you like this game or not, it’s impact and scale has been massive and if nothing else, has sparked a lot of discussion.

I had planned to put this out a little earlier but as it became clear how divisive and polarised the online Gaming Community had become after the game launched, I felt like I needed to finish the Story first and experience everything for myself before giving a more well-rounded and considered opinion. So, here it is (thanks to Sony for sending us over a code).

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A (not so) Lost Legacy

Naughty Dog had a big reputation to live up with the ‘The Last of Us: Part II’ (Image: Pinterest)

Naughty Dog have a rich history of producing some of the most memorable and technically impressive games out there. From ‘Crash Bandicoot’, ‘Jak & Daxter’ to ‘Uncharted’, there is no doubt that these guys are capable of producing Video Games that are of the absolute top-tier. With this in mind, and that the first game of the ‘Last of Us’ series was arguably the game of its Console Generation, there was an expectation to deliver something of equal, if not higher, magnitude.

Playstation have also built themselves an extensive library of exceptional exclusives, such as the most recent ‘God of War’, ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ and ‘Spider-Man’ to name a few. Sony also produce the new ‘Spider-Man’ movies with Tom Holland who, coincidentally, will be portraying Nathan Drake in the upcoming ‘Uncharted’ movie. All of this adds to expectation for Naughty Dog. This game has been built up to the point where anything less than absolute perfection is deemed a failure by the more hardcore segments of the fan-base, this is where the problem starts.

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The Giraffe in the Room

Let’s just get right into it and address the story, which has set the internet on fire over the past week or so. I will warn you one more time for SPOILERS, avert your eyes if you plan to play it yourself. 

The catalyst that sets this game in motion is Joel’s death at the hands of a new character, Abby. He is quite viciously beaten to death with a golf club, staying alive just long enough for Ellie to burst in and watch him die. This is after having his leg damn near blown off by the character who we are made to play with for around half of the entire game afterwards. I have seen a lot of anger towards this, with people saying that Joel deserved better. But Joel did some dark things and made a lot of enemies in the first game so, while I do agree that the manner in which he was killed off was a little gratuitous, I can understand why this had to happen the way that it did. The game is very deliberately pushing a certain narrative at this point, the overkill and ambiguity surrounding this event is meant to invoke anger from the player. Joel saved Abby from an Infected Horde and she does this, why?

Some of the trailers led us to believe some things about the game, which turned out to not be the case (Image: Den of Geek).

This is seemingly unjustified and puts you in Ellies head, goading you to carry on and get the guys who killed Joel for reasons we don’t yet know. But we do know they deserve what they get, right? What follows is a slow descent into Ellie’s personal own rainy, Pacific North-Western Hell, with her state of mind deteriorating, methods becoming more brutal and the people she cares about paying the price for her personal vendetta. She eventually gets what she wants, coming face-face with Abby around half-way through the game. 

The Story then does a complete u-turn and makes you play through the timeline again as Abby, with the people who killed Joel. This time however, you’re dealing with on ongoing Faction War between the Washington Liberation Front (who have de facto control of the City after overthrowing the Military) and the Seraphites (referred to as ‘Scars’ by the WLF). These ‘Scars’ are painted as savage, religious fanatics who want to pull down the existing power structures and establish their own new world with the teachings of their revered founder, a God-like figure in their eyes. We encounter them as Ellie but don’t really explore their role until we play as Abby.

We also explore the motives for Abby wanting Joel dead and as it turns out, her Father was the Doctor that Joel killed while rescuing Ellie from the Firefly Hospital in the first game. Her group are also ex-Fireflies, fuelling the flames. As we explore Abby’s past and the journey she takes to Jackson, I began to empathise with, and see the depth of a character I vilified for so long. It completely changed the way I viewed the game. I hate what Abby did, but I get it. Her character arc was superbly laid out.

Was all of that worth it in the end? (Image: GamesRadar).

The game mirrors the Ellie & Abby characters and by the time it all comes to a head again, both characters have very similar motives for doing what they are doing and it’s impossible to say who’s ultimately in the right. There are secondary female characters on each side who have differing fates from the same scenario, at this point the Writers are almost literally hitting you over the head with that metaphorical mirror. This is all about perspective. In this world, there is no such thing as heroes or villains in the traditional sense, which is fresh from a story-telling point of view because, whilst I love Marvel movies and the like, there’s enough of that around right now. Everyone is a villain or a hero to someone else, depending on what side you’re on. Even the Seraphites, they serve as a metaphor for overcoming certain Social issues, but that’s a discussion within itself.

In the end, Ellie still can’t let go and the game ends with her worse off than before, insinuating that this cycle of revenge that she found herself in did more damage than her actual loss did in the first place. This was an exceptional Story told expertly well, but with a game like this, you’ll never please every single player. I am glad Naughty Dog took this direction though, seemingly embracing the fact that the game was going to get criticised one way or another and just made a game that they felt was real and authentic. I feel like the game justifies its existence and pushes the narrative forward in a way which is true to the identity of the first iteration. That being said, I do feel some of the ‘Jump-Scare’ moments were predictable & repetitive and that the whole back-story behind Joel’s big secret reveal should not have been cut into a flashback. Additionally, I would be very interested to see how this game would have played if it was laid out chronologically. This is not a comprehensive run-down of the entire Story as that would literally take me pages on pages to say in full, I will say again, try to experience the full thing first-hand.

Onto topics that are little less contentious, I’m going to avoid splitting this off into sections as each technical aspect of this game feeds so well into the other that it’s sometimes difficult to draw the line. I’ll start with the first thing you notice, the Graphics. I would say this is second only to the PS4 remaster of ‘Shadow of the Colossus’, in my opinion. From the snowy Mountains of Jackson to the ruined City of Seattle, every scene in this game looks like it was pulled straight out of a big-budget Hollywood film and shot on a Camera, rather than digitally manufactured.

The game couples huge set-pieces with the most acute details (Image: USgamer).

It’s massive too. Each tiny part of this world has been meticulously crafted and it does not suffer from that sheer scale. There are scenes that make the world feel huge, the buildings in Seattle for instance, but then you look around and notice all of the other tiny little things that are there. Some of my favourite moments, from a Graphics standpoint, were ones that made use of Naughty Dog’s talents with Water & Snow Effects. It’s the small details in their behaviour and how they interact so fluidly with what the player is doing and what is happening in the game that give that added layer of immersion. When I first loaded up the game and saw that Main Menu, it had me sold there and then.

The Weather Effects are put to equally good use too. You might notice that Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fog and Lighting is used at very specific points, this is the game very subtly trying to make you feel or act in a certain way. It is devices like this that help guide you through certain points in the game and are a good way of showing you what to do without being explicit. The Lighting is particularly well-done, it’s not over-produced and comes across as natural to the point where you forget to take special notice of it, just because of how well it fits in to every part of the game.

I will give a special shout-out to the Gun Customisation too, the detail in those close-up scenes on the Workbench is straight-up ridiculous. The transitions between these areas are seem-less and at no point did I feel that a menu or a cutscene really took me out of the game. The Infected themselves are just horrifying, but in the best possible way. It speaks a lot about character design when an enemy can make you feel physically ill. There’s one in particular that’ll stick with me, but I’ll leave that one for you to discover.

The boat chapters helped showcase some very technically impressive environments (Image: Evening Standard).

If you’ve played the first game, then it won’t take you long to get into the flow of this one, many of the systems are similar (Weapons, Crafting, Exploration etc). However, especially when you’re playing as Ellie, the game is just so much faster than the first one. Combat is fluid and refined from what we saw in the last game, it’s fast-paced and the environment is put to good use in terms of the animations, some areas might allow you to be bit more creative with how you take down some enemy types. My only complaint is that the Companion AI can sometimes be a little dumb in their movement and is invisible to enemies, even when clearly in their line of sight. Generally speaking though, the Enemy AI Pathing is well thought out, it’s sometimes unpredictable in a good way so you really have to keep your bearings.

Resource management is key, especially on the higher difficulties where they become increasingly sparse. Enemy types can be varied in certain encounters, including: Runners, Clickers, Bloaters, Stalkers, Armed Human NPC’s and Dogs amongst others. The game really makes you think about how to engage and pushes you to utilise everything around you in order to survive. Plus, using all of your Ammo on lighter enemies can have an effect down the line when you find yourself up against something heavier, with only your knife or a wooden board (this happened to me more than it really should have).

There’s a lot to see, too much for just one play-through (Image: GosuNoob).

The levels have a lot more verticality to them to really help flush out the amount that you can see, do and find, making these threats ever-present. This is a ‘Last of Us’ game, so be sure to open up every drawer and look in every corner, there’s always something else that you haven’t seen. My play-through was roughly 32 hours, 10 hours of which was just me looking around a cleared area for Resources & Collectibles. I did start to go slightly insane at points as there are a grand total of 266 Collectibles to find across the 11 Acts/45 Chapters. There are also several PlayStation Easter Eggs scattered around, including Nathan Drake’s Ring, a Precursor Orb from ‘Jak & Daxter’ and a few of the fat PS3’s (as the world effectively ended in 2013) here and there. Also, pro-tip, always expect the worst when resources seem to getting more common and pay attention to what the game gives you, because it might be an indicator that you will need them very soon. Also, they are scattered throughout the world as you would expect them to be in real-life. For example, you will find Cloth in Bedrooms, Alcohol in Bars, Supplements in Bathrooms, Parts in Garages and so on. These are the little details which you might think are pretty common sense, but make the experience so much more real.

Realism is a huge aspect of this game and a lot of that comes through Audio. The Sound Design is immense and use of Music is well-placed and used to flush out the world that extra step further. The Guitar is one of the key symbols of the game and is Ellie’s strongest link to Joel, its integration in terms of the Controls is also very intuitive and unique. It almost makes me feel like I can play the Guitar (which I can’t), this leads into another massive part of this Games’ production, which Accessibility. If you’re hard of Hearing, Blind or have Physical Disabilities, there are features in this game that can allow you to still enjoy & experience it. I saw a video on Twitter of a young man who was Blind, playing the game. It was one of the more wholesome things that I saw on this subject and goes to show how awesome Video Games are, with the impact that they can have.

32 hours well spent (Image: Dexerto)

I could honestly write a full on Book about this game, if given the time, but now I have to find a way to sum this up and not waffle on and on for hours. In Summary, this is not a game that I can that you will ‘enjoy’ the whole time, so to speak. This game is designed to make you think, question and feel, which is the hallmark trait of any worthwhile experience in my view. The ending was ambiguous, but this is the end of Part 2, not the end of the Story. There is still surely more to come with series and judging by Naughty Dog’s history, I have a theory that there will be four ‘Parts’ to this in total. We will see.

The Game is certainly re-playable, with fluid & brutal Gameplay, that level of production and a compelling Story, you will have no problem going through this game a second time while still getting that same sense of fulfilment. Naughty Dog are a victim of their own absurdly high bar, with how this game is being generally received outside of Critics. But I would definitely recommend playing this game, even if you know what happens and have seen a lot of Reviews saying otherwise. I won’t put a number on this, but I can categorically say that the 30 plus hours I spent in that world were worth my time, albeit exhausting, and deserves to be experienced by as many people as possible.

The Future of the Mac - Explained!

Every once in a while, usually once per decade or so, there is one big change that happens in tech that affects everything. Not just that, but it also affects our everyday lives.

A good example would be the introduction of the first iPhone back in 2007, which literally changed how future Phones looked and functioned to this very day. Samsung’s Flexible Display Technology from 2011 allowed us to have the Foldable Smartphones that we have today, with many more to come in the future. Tesla’s Autopilot has redefined, and will continue to redefine, the car industry. Now…there is another big change just around the corner and this time, it’s all about the Processor.

So, get ready for a bit more of a technical video and have those snacks ready and enjoy!

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Up until 2006, Apple Macs were using PowerPC Processors. PowerPC were a type of Reduced Instruction Set Architecture Processors, which were created in 1991 by, ironically, Apple, IBM and Motorola. This was also known as the AIM Alliance. 

The whole idea behind PowerPC Processors was for them to be affordable to the average consumer, rather than for high-end business computers. Additionally, they were intended to not just be very powerful for the average user, but also allow Programmers to very quickly and easily write Code for them. This was all good. From 1994 up until 2006, Apple had only been using PowerPC Processors. But at WWDC 2005, Steve Jobs went on stage to make a big announcement. He announced that Apple will be moving from PowerPC Processors, to Intel Processors.

The main reason for this was ‘Performance per Watt. He said that PowerPC Processors gave Macs around 15 Units of Performance per Watt, whereas Intel was giving them 70 Units, almost five times as much. This is why Apple switched from PowerPC, to Intel Processors. Intel’s Chips were more powerful and also consumed less energy, meaning that their machines could be thinner and more portable, which was very important back then. Devices back then were not as thin and portable as they are now.

Apple’s Processors haven’t always come from Intel

Now, switching to a new Processor, especially when it has a different Architecture, is extremely difficult and PowerPC and Intel were both based on a completely different Architectures. PowerPC CPU’s were based on the POWER Instruction Set Architecture, whereas Intel CPU’s were based on the x86-64 Architecture. What this means was that they were speaking completely different languages. 

This also meant that every single new program had to be re-written from scratch, but macOS in itself was not capable of running on Intel Processors unless of course, they had a Translator. That Translator was called Rosetta, named after the stone that helped us translate Ancient Egyptian, as the top half of it was written in ancient Egyptian, whilst the bottom half was written in ancient Greek. Anyway, Rosetta translated PowerPC instructions into x86-64 instructions, which meant that most, but not all programs that were developed for the PowerPC era, could actually run on Intel based Macs without the need for a full re-write.

It wasn’t perfect, just like when you’re translating between two different languages, some expressions just won’t translate that well. So, while PowerPC Apps could run on Intel Macs, Native Apps that were designed for Intel Macs first would always run better. That transition actually went very smoothly and fast forward 14 years and up until this point, Apple has kept on using Intel Processors in all of their Macs.

However, Apple is now switching from Intel, to their own Apple Series of Processors and this change will be even bigger than the last one. 

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Why?

Why switch? Isn’t Intel the market leader when it comes to CPU’s? They are in terms of sales, but they’ve been having some serious issues in the last few years.

You see, the way a CPU works is that they have these tiny Transistors that can pass electrical current through them, which the CPU then reads as one’s and zero’s. Modern CPU’s have billions of Transistors and the smaller and thinner these are, the faster they can pass the current through and therefore, the faster the CPU. It’s like driving a car from NY to LA to deliver a package, compared to driving from your house to your neighbour’s house, to deliver the same package. Obviously, the package will get to your neighbour’s house much faster as the distance is smaller, CPU’s work in the same way.

Apple will soon be making Processors with Transistors that are only twice as thick as Human DNA.

The size at which the Transistors inside a Processor are measured at is just in a few Nano-Metres. Intel has been using a 14nm manufacturing process and just to give you an idea of how thin those Transistors are, a human hair is around 90,000nm in thickness. A single strand of human DNA is 2.5nm. Intel’s has been manufacturing transistors at 14nm, which is pretty incredible. But, Intel has been releasing 14nm CPU’s since 2014 and they’ve been trying to switch to 10nm, the next step in the manufacturing process, since. They’ve only been able to do it in 2019. 

Apple, on the other hand, switched to 10nm in 2017, two years ahead of Intel. Not only that, but Apple has since switched to 7nm in 2018 and will switch to 5nm in 2020, with the upcoming Apple A14 Processors. Apple is already three generations ahead of Intel when it comes to the manufacturing process. To be more accurate, TSMC is, they are the actual manufacturers for Apple’s CPU’s. Additionally, AMD is also manufacturing on a 7nm process now, being two generations ahead of Intel. 

Intel launched 10nm in 2019, but even now in 2020, only ‘Y’ & ‘U’ Series Mobile CPU’s come with it. Desktop and high-end Laptop Processors, such as the H-Series that you would find on a 16” MacBook Pro for example, those are still based on a 14nm process.

Even if you take a look at the 10nm ‘Y’ & ‘U’ Series Processors, not even all of the models are based on the 10nm process, some are still 14nm CPU’s. It’s so horribly confusing. The whole point of Intel’s 10th Generation Processors was to finally switch to 10nm, but they’ve only done that on around 20% of their 10th Generation CPU’s, the rest are still 14nm. AMD Processors now out-perform Intel quite substantially and they even do it at a lower price. 

Not only that, but Apple has improved their own Processors so much, that even the 2018 iPad Pro now out-performs most Laptop Processors from Intel. The iPad Pro has significantly better performance than a 2020 baseline 13” MacBook Pro, it’s even better than the higher-end model. The iPad Pro is also significantly thinner than a Laptop and it does not even have a Fan in it, it is all passively cooled, whereas Laptops need to have gigantic Cooling Systems.

The new iPad Pro is a great example of what Apple can achieve with their own technology.

These are the two main reasons why Apple wants to move away from Intel. They want better Performance and they want that Performance at a lower power consumption than at what Intel offers, which means that they can make way more portable devices with a significantly better Battery Life. Imagine having an iMac that’s as thin as an iPad Pro, or a MacBook Pro that lasts for 20 hours, or more, on a single charge.

But, there is one more reason why Apple wants to switch now. Unlike 2005, when they were just looking for better performance at a lower power consumption, Apple now has the iPhone and the iPad, none of which they had back in 2005. Those devices also run on Apple’s own Processors, which means that Apple can now unify their entire line of devices and have any APPS run on the iPhone, the iPad and on the Mac natively, with no changes in the code required. This means that you’ll be able to run any iPhone App directly on your Mac including Instagram, Facebook Messenger or basically anything. 

Moreover, Mac Apps such as Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X will also able to run on iPhone and iPad. In fact, Apple even showed FCP X running on a Mac Mini with an Apple A12Z Processor, the same Processor as in the iPad Pro 2020. While it did have 16GB of RAM, compared to the 6GB on the iPad, and the CPU was likely cooled too, it could actually play three streams of 4K ProRes with effects at the same time, without dropping any frames at all. A 16” MacBook Pro can run around 11 streams of 4K ProRes, which is quite a bit more, this would also be ProRes RAW. But, keep in mind that the A12Z is just a Tablet Processor. Apple already mentioned that they’re working on multiple variants of their own CPU’s to be used in Macs, which Apple hasn’t really showed yet.

Credit: Apple

However, they did show us this graph that compared their Processors to the current devices that Apple is offering. Whilst Apple’s range is quite big, we can indeed tell that they are developing Laptop Processors that are just on par with Intel’s lowest-end Desktop Processors, while also having less power consumption than Intel’s current Laptop Processors .That equates to a 12” MacBook or a MacBook Air with a 20 hour Battery Life, having more performance than the regular iMac. Now, if we take a look at the upper part of this graph, we can see that Apple’s even aiming to make Processors better than any Desktop Processors that Intel has now, with just a bit more power consumption than a current Laptop.

These are very bold claims but I do believe that they can pull this off, especially if we take a look at what they’ve already achieved with the iPad alone.

Ok, so now that we’ve covered the ‘Why’, what about the ‘How’?

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How?

To help this transition, Apple is bringing back Rosetta. Credit: Apple

MacOS Big Sur, which is coming out later this year, will be the first macOS that has been developed for both x86-64 Intel Processors and ARM Processors (ARM being the Architecture that Apple’s using for their own Chips). Apple will be using the same Rosetta tool that they used back in 2006 to switch from PowerPC to Intel, which is now called Rosetta 2 and will translate x86-x64 Code, into ARM code. This means that you’ll still be able to run all of your Intel software on future ARM Macs.

Native apps will still run much better, FCP X was a good example and Apple has also shown Photoshop as well as Lightroom, which were both running extremely smooth. Lightroom was able to open up a massive library of RAW photos without any lag or slowdown whatsoever. On the Mac, I always get the beachball and some lag here and there whenever I do that, so that’s crazy.

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When?

You’re probably wondering, when is this transition going to happen and how would you be impacted?

We could soon be looking at one unified system for the Mac line-up.

Well, Apple has said that this transition would take two years. Meaning that by the end of 2022, we should have an Apple Processor in every single Mac that Apple sells, from the MacBook Air, all the way up to the Mac Pro, which is nuts. ARM CPU’s have never been designed for sustained workloads but it seems that this concept has been proven wrong, ‘The Verge’ reports that Japan has developed a supercomputer using ARM Processors and it turns out that this is now the fastest computer in the entire world, with it also being 2.8 times faster than the previous most powerful supercomputer in the world. So, ARM is definitely looking very promising. 

Now, Intel based Macs will still be supported for a number of years, but if you do plan on getting a Mac now, I would highly highly advise you to wait until the end of the year when Apple would be releasing their first Mac with an Apple Processor. Ming-Chi Kuo says that it will be a new 13” MacBook Pro. I’m fine with that, so I can’t wait! 

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MacOS big Sur

I just want to touch a bit on macOS Big Sur. This is really the biggest software update since macOS Yosemite, which changed up the design significantly from the previous design language that macOS Mavricks used. ‘Big Sur’ is an even bigger change as it adds a ton of elements from the iPhone and the iPad, to macOS. We even get things such as Control Centre and the same iOS-style Toggles.

While I do really like this design a lot, it kind of looks like it was made for Touch Input first because, well, it was. The iOS UI was made for Touch Input rather than Mouse Input. So, the fact that Apple’s adding the exact same design language and the same UI style makes me think that maybe we will see a TouchScreen Mac in the not too distant future. That would be pretty amazing.

I wouldn’t exactly call this a ‘Unified Design’. Credit: Apple

The start-up sound is back, which is quite interesting to see, alongside a ton of design elements from iOS. These include the Notification Panel and the indicator that shows amount of battery you have left in hours, is now back. They’ve also just cleaned up the entire UI a lot.

I do have two main concerns regarding Big Sur’s design. Firstly, the UI elements and how they just don’t feel right, they were designed for Touch Input. My second concern is the Icons. Apple is calling this a unified design, but they don’t look the same. They all have this weird shadow that is on the inside, very strange. We don’t have this on iOS and it just looks as if different Icons were designed by different people. The ‘Reminders’ Icon has no shadow at all, whereas the ‘Messages’ Icon does. Hopefully Apple fixes this by October, when macOS Big Sur is said to be released to the public. 

Anyway, I’m definitely looking forward to the future of the Mac and this transition will shape the entire tech industry. It will end up forcing more companies to innovate into the Mobile CPU space and of course, forcing Intel to do something about their CPU offering because at this point, AMD is ahead and it seems like Apple is now ahead as well.