Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 review: Solid value, but a lot of compromises

One of the great things about AMD Ryzen processors in laptops is that given the right use case, you can get some really premium performance for a relatively inexpensive price. Indeed, for just over $1,200, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 comes with a QHD+ 120Hz display, a Ryzen 7, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, 16GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD. That’s pretty sweet.

Of course, Ryzen processors come with significant compromises, mainly that performance suffers significantly when not connected to a power source. Also, it would be really great to see Lenovo push the limits of design a bit more than it has, as its laptops feel a bit bland.

Still, you really can’t beat the value here. For a creator laptop, it offers the things you want, like performance, a great display, and more.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16

Lenovo's IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro offers a Ryzen 7 processor, RTX graphics, a 120Hz screen, and more for a heck of a bargain.

Features:

Pros: Cons:

See at Lenovo

About this review: Lenovo loaned the IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 to XDA Developers for the purposes of this review. It had no input into the contents of this article.

Navigate this review:

• Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 price and availability
• Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 specs
• Design: The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 is silver, and frankly bland
• Display: The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 has a 120Hz QHD+ screen
• Keyboard: If a number pad is what you want, Lenovo has you covered
• Performance: AMD Ryzen 5000 is great when plugged in, but not on battery life
• Who should buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16?

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 price and availability

• The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 is only sold on Lenovo.com, and this model costs $1,232.

Announced in September of 2021, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 has been available since late last year. Of course, the word “available” is a tricky one here, because even while I’m reviewing it, you can’t seem to buy it.

This particular unit that Lenovo sent me comes in at $1,232, and it’s sold on Lenovo.com, when it’s in stock. Lenovo has confirmed to me that it’s not selling this laptop through any other vendors, so if you don’t see it on Lenovo.com, there’s nowhere to get it.

Interestingly, when Lenovo announced the product, it said it would start at $1,449, so it’s selling for less than that.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 specs

Processor	AMD Ryzen 7 5800H
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050
Display	16” (16:10) OLED WQXGA (2560×1600), 100% sRGB, 500 nits, Display HDR 400, 120Hz refresh rate, touchscreen
Body	17.4-19.99mm x 247.42 mm x 356.81mm (.69-.79” x 9.74” x 14.05”) Starting at 2.08 kg (4.59 lbs)
Storage	1TB M.2 PCIe SSD
Memory	16GB Dual Channel DDR4-3200
Battery	75Wh, supports Rapid Charge Boost
Ports	1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Always On) 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (support data transfer, Power Delivery 3.0 and DisplayPort 1.4) 1x HDMI 1.4b 1x Card reader 1x Headphone / microphone combo jack (3.5mm) 1x Power connector
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 6, 802.11ax 2×2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 5.1
Audio	2 x 2W user-facing Dolby Atmos Speaker System
Keyboard	6-row, multimedia Fn keys, LED backlight
Camera	IR Camera & 720p, with ToF sensor, fixed focus
Color	Cloud Grey or Storm Grey
Material	Top/Bottom: Aluminum
OS	Windows 11 Pro
Price	$1,232

Design: The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 is silver, and frankly bland

• The laptop comes in silver, and has little to differentiate in terms of style.
• There’s no Thunderbolt or USB4.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro comes in two colors: Cloud Grey and Storm Grey. While those sound similar, both being called Grey and named after weather, they’re not. Cloud Grey is just another name for silver, which is totally normal, while Storm Grey is more of a gunmetal grey.

Personally, I think the design is too bland. It’s silver, big, and boring. And to be fair, there are plenty of people that want exactly that from a laptop, and I get it. All I’m saying is that there are laptops on the market that will catch some eyeballs when you take them into a Starbucks, and the IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 is not one of them.

Made of all aluminum, it weighs in at just over four and a half pounds. This is pretty standard fir a machine like this. After all, it’s a 16-inch laptop with a 45W processor and dedicated graphics. You’ll definitely feel it in your bag. It’s big too, although that goes without saying for a 16-inch laptop.

Without Thunderbolt or USB4, you might want to wait for the next generation.

Also as you’d expect from a large product like this, there are lots of ports. On the left side, you’ll find a power port that looks like a USB Type-A port, but it’s not. There’s also HDMI 1.4b, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, and a headphone jack. That USB port does support DisplayPort 1.4, but it’s a shame that the HDMI port is 1.4b, because HDMI 1.4b doesn’t support a decent refresh rate on 4K monitors. And without Thunderbolt or USB4, your options are limited when it comes to output.

That’s worth keeping in mind too. New Ryzen 6000 laptops include USB4, which is similar to Thunderbolt 3; prior to that, you pretty much get standard USB ports. In other word, it’s a real shortcoming in Ryzen 5000 and earlier, but it’s fixed in future generations.

On the other side, there are two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, so you only get 5Gbps speeds, and there’s a full-size SD card reader. Personally, I’m a big fan of the full-size SD card reader, and I’m pleased to see it with so many companies omitting it.

Ultimately, the design is…fine. Nothing about it stands out, as it’s just a bland, silver laptop that’s made out of aluminum. It’s got the ports you need, but there are some limitations as outlined above. Of course, as I mentioned right out of the gate, there’s a lot of value for the price here.

Display: The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 has a 120Hz QHD+ screen

• The 120Hz refresh rate makes for smooth animations.
• The webcam is still 720p.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 has a 16-inch 16:10 QHD+ 120Hz display, so it’s pretty good. It’s bigger at 16 inches, and while it only sounds a little larger than 15.6 inches, it’s measured diagonally, and it’s 16:10 now. That means that it’s taller and has a larger surface area.

The 120Hz refresh rate is pretty, but it affects battery life.

Personally, I think QHD is the sweet spot for resolution, at least in most cases. It doesn’t suck down power in the same way that a 4K display would, and at the same time, you don’t get the pixellation that you would on an FHD screen. I think most would agree that FHD simply isn’t enough pixels for a screen this big.

The refresh rate is 120Hz, which is nice, making for smooth animations. The problem is that if you turn this on, it does affect battery life. This is something that’s been solved in other products with dynamic refresh rates, which I’d love to see in the PC space so you don’t have to choose between nice, smooth animations and a boring old 60Hz screen.

Testing results are good, but not great. As you can see, it supports 100% sRGB, which is great, but it supports 72% NTSC, 77% Adobe RGB, and 78% P3, which as I said, is good but not quite as good as say, a Dell XPS 15.

In my testing, brightness maxed out at 465.4 nits, which falls a bit short of Lenovo’s promised 500 nits. Still, I really have to say, I was impressed with the brightness on this screen. In some lighting conditions, I found it uncomfortable to use at full brightness, and that’s a good thing. This also makes it great for outdoor use.

As you’d expect, there are narrow bezels on all sizes. The reverse notch at the top houses and IR camera for Windows Hello, along with a 720p webcam. Indeed, in the era of working from home, you’ll probably wish you had 1080p. This is something I’d expect to see changed in the next generation of the product.

Keyboard: If a number pad is what you want, Lenovo has you covered

Once again, Lenovo has produced a premium backlit keyboard, which is both accurate and comfortable to type on. Thanks to the size, it also has a number pad to the right of the main QWERTY keyboard. Obviously, this is something that’s a bit polarizing. you either want the number pad or you don’t, but it is there.

The keys are shallower than what you’d get on a ThinkPad, but they’re pretty standard for a consumer laptop, which is good.

It comes with a Microsoft Precision touchpad, just as you’d expect from any modern laptop. That means that it’s fast, responsive, and supports the gestures that you’re used to.

Above the keyboard, you’ll find the Dolby Atmos system, which consists of dual 2W speakers. They sound fantastic, for anything from calls to listening to music at your desk.

Performance: AMD Ryzen 5000 is great when plugged in, but not on battery life

• Once again, Ryzen performance suffers when the machine isn’t connected to power.
• Battery life on the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 is bad enough that you’ll always need to bring a charger.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 packs a Ryzen 7 H-series processor and dedicated graphics in the form of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050, and considering the other perks it has (it even comes with Windows 11 Pro), it’s a bargain at just over $1,200. As I mentioned right out of the gate, using an AMD Ruyzen processor is a great way to deliver premium performance at a more reasonable price point.

It just needs to be plugged in. I’ll tell you right now that the PCMark 10 score dropped from 5,956 when it was plugged in, to 4,193 when it wasn’t. That’s a 29.6% drop in performance. Note that both tests were taken with the power slider set to best performance. I edited a lot of photos in Photoshop and Lightroom, both when connected to power and when not, and you can feel the difference.

Performance dropped by 29% when the laptop wasn't plugged in.

Battery life leaves much to be desired as well. I only got two to three hours out of it when the screen was set to 120Hz, and when it was set to 60Hz, maybe I could stretch it to four hours, but that’s still unlikely. Battery life is simply not good. You cannot plan on bringing this laptop anywhere without having a charger with you.

But like I said, when it’s plugged in, performance is fantastic. For benchmarks, I used PCMark 10, 3DMark, Geekbench 5, and Cinebench R23. The laptop was plugged in for all of these.

	IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 Ryzen 7 5800H, RTX 3050	Dell XPS 15 9510 Core i7-11800H, RTX 3050 Ti	Surface Laptop Studio Core i7-11370H, RTX A2000
PCMark 10	5,956	5,988	5,573
3DMark: Time Spy	4,299	4,801	5,075
Geekbench	1,423 / 7,368	1,538 / 7,514	1,546 / 5,826
Cinebench	1,371 / 10,587	1,491 / 9,399	1,504 / 6,283

As you can see, the benchmark scores, when the laptop is plugged in, are pretty much comparable to Intel’s 11th-gen processors.

Who should buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16?

Obviously, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16 is not for everyone. In fact, this is aimed at creators, or at least people that need the power of dedicated graphics.

Who should buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16:

• Creators that need to get a lot for their money
• People that will be connected to power most of the time, or at least when doing power-intensive tasks

Who should not buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro 16:

• Users that are on battery power most of the time
• Creators that can afford to not make so many compromises
• People who are on a lot of video calls and care about webcam quality

Here’s the deal. If you’re looking for a laptop that’s aimed at creators, you have to think about what you want to spend. If you’re a professional that can afford to spend a bit more, you should buy something with an Intel processor. If you’re a hobbyist or just starting out, AMD Ryzen could be better for you. The big thing to consider is that performance takes nearly a 30% hit when you’re not connected to power.

 

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Insta360 One RS Review: A modular action camera that can capture literally everything

When you think of action cameras — those small, cube-shaped wide-angle cameras that extreme sports enthusiasts attach on top of their helmets, shoulder, backpacks, and more — the first brand that comes to mind is probably GoPro. But in recent years, GoPro has seen major competition from Insta360, the Chinese upstart brand best known for its highly popular 360-degree cameras. Insta360’s latest product, the One RS is a camera that can transform from a standard action camera to a 360-degree camera via modularity. The concept is original, the hardware well-built, but perhaps more than anything, it’s the brilliant software features that make Insta360 cameras (not just the One RS) so much fun to use.

About this review: Instas360 sent me a One RS Twin Edition to review in early March. Insta360 did not have input in this review.

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Insta360 One RS: Pricing and Availability

Insta360 One RS is a modular camera whose pieces can be sold separately or in various combinations. The most common package will be the $549 “Twin Edition,” which includes the core, battery base, and both 4K action lens and 360 camera lenses, along with a mounting bracket. There’s also a $299 “4K Edition” that includes all of the above but omits the 360 lens (which means you’re essentially buying only an action camera); and a $549 “1-inch Edition” that includes the core, battery base and a Leica-branded action lens with a 1-inch sensor.

All of these packages are available for order now on Insta360’s website or Amazon.

Insta360 One RS

The Insta360 One RS is a modular camera that can turn from an action cam to a 360 camera in under 30 seconds

Pros:

Cons:

View at Amazon

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Design and Hardware

The Insta360 One RS consists of three parts:

• A core that houses an undisclosed processor, a 1.5-inch screen, microphone, MicroSD card slot, and USB-C port
• A 1,445 mAh battery base
• The camera lens (there are three options)

The trio of lens options includes a 4K wide-angle action lens (officially named 4K Boost lens) that can shoot an equivalent of 16mm focal length; a 360 lens (consisting of two 5.7K fisheye lens each with 180-degree FoV); and a Leica-branded wide-angle 1-inch sensor (this is essentially a superior version of the 4K Boost Lens with a larger sensor that takes in more light).

The 4K Boost lens (left) and 360 lens (right).

Insta360 will sell all of the above parts separately as well as in packages that include either just one or a combination of lenses. I tested the “Twin Edition,” which includes the 4K Boost lens and 360 lens, along with a mounting bracket.

All of these parts connect via pin slots (similar to those in 80s/90s Nintendo cartridges) and snap into place with ease. Once connected, the whole kit feels sturdy, as if it’s one piece. When properly connected, the One RS is actually rated IPX8 for water resistance up to 16 feet underwater.

When connected, the Insta360 One RS weighs 121g (4.3oz) and measures 70.1 x 49.1 x 32.6mm. This is a bit bigger and heavier than a standalone action camera like the GoPro Hero 10 Black and DJI Action.

The core features two physical buttons for power and shutter; slots for USB-C and Micro-SD card (both covered by a water-proof flap; a microphone; and a 1.5-inch LCD screen that supports touch and swipes, to navigate through the camera’s UI. Users can directly control the camera by interacting with the touchscreen, or via the Insta360 companion app on their phone. I will talk more about the app in the software section. The screen also serves as a viewfinder, and due to its modular nature, it can be positioned on the same side as the lens (for selfies and vlogs) or on the opposite side (for capturing footage in front of the user).

The 4K Boost lens can snap 48MP still photos or record video up to 4K/60fps under normal mode or 6K/24fps in an anamorphic-like ultra wide-screen mode. The 360 lens, meanwhile, can record 360-degree video up to 5.7K at 30fps, or a lower resolution at up to 100fps.

The 1,445 mAh battery base allows the Insta360 One RS to shoot for around 70 minutes on a single charge.

The One RS, being cube-shaped, can obviously stand up right on surfaces on its own, but most users will want to pair it with a mounting bracket, which is included with the Twin Edition. It’s a quick-release bracket, meaning a press of a button will open a flap through which the Insta360 One RS will slide in and out. The bottom of the mount has a quarter-inch thread, which is the widely used standard for selfie sticks, tripod mounts, etc.

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Using the Insta360 One RS

With a built-in mic and a touchscreen that allows easy navigation to all shooting modes, the Insta360 One RS is almost ready to begin filming out of the box — it just needs a MicroSD card, which is a separate purchase. Once that is taken care of, the Insta360 One RS can operate independently as a standalone camera without ever needing a smartphone. You can preview the scene with the built-in screen, record with the press of a button, review the footage captured on the screen and transfer files over to a computer via the MicroSD card.

However, pairing the Insta360 One RS with a smartphone via the Insta360 companion app (available on iOS and Android) make the experience far easier. You get a much larger screen to preview and review footage, for example. The app also offers advanced camera settings like tweaking exposure and white balance, and perhaps most useful of all, you can control the Insta360 One RS remotely with the phone. You don’t have to touch the camera itself to change shooting modes or begin recording. I will talk about the Insta360 app more in the software section right after this one.

Insta360 One RS connected to an iPhone 13 Mini

With the 4K Boost lens, the One RS is a fairly typical action camera, meaning it captures a sweeping field-of-view with everything in focus. There’s optical stabilization inside the lens, but Insta360’s software stabilization is excellent too, as footage comes out mostly stable and smooth even when I’m walking, riding a bicycle, or running full speed. Because of the ultra-wide 16mm focal length, I can hold the One RS with my hands, arm extended, and still get my entire head and shoulder in the frame for vlogs. Adding a selfie stick obviously helps matters and make for a wider framing that shows not just me, but my background. The internal mic does a decent job capturing my voice, and Insta360’s software will automatically apply a de-noising algorithm to remove background sounds — although this leaves my voice sounding digitalized.

Below is a collection of 4K Boost lens footage, captured in daytime and nighttime. Notice how the stabilization is really good even as I’m running full speed. Dynamic range is excellent during the daytime footage too. At night, obviously, video quality takes a hit, with noticeable noise.

Switch to the 360 lens and the Insta360 One RS can capture 360-degree footage up to 5.7K. Like almost all 360 cameras, the footage here is just two 180-degree super fisheye videos stitched together, and Insta360’s software does a good job of hiding the stitch line. This shouldn’t be a surprise, because 360 cameras are ultimately Insta360’s main claim to fame. Its standalone 360 camera, the One X2, is widely considered the best consumer-grade 360 camera on the market. The 360 lens in the One RS is actually identical to the One X2’s lens, so you’re getting the exact same 360-degree footage.

While 360-degree videos can be viewed with a VR headset or on YouTube, I prefer to reframe 360-degree videos into a conventional video for uploading to Instagram. To that end, Insta360 built this creative software trick that lets me pan around an existing 360-degree footage, set framing as I see fit, and then render a regular video with those camera movements. Below is a sample: this was a 360 video I reframed to make it look like there was a cameraman panning around the band (I’m on drums, by the way). In reality, the camera was just stationary in the middle of the band room. Notice the audio, while not amazing, can be considered good, considering audio is being captured by the One RS’ built-in microphone.

Below are more reframed 360 samples, mostly shot at night. While Hong Kong at night is still pretty well lit, it is still considered a low light situation, and the footage remains mostly noise-free.

You’ll notice in some angles of the above video it looks like the camera is floating above me as if it’s mounted on a drone. It wasn’t. The One RS was, in fact, just connected to an extended selfie stick. Insta360’s software automatically erases the selfie stick from the scene. In the stills below, you can see my arms extended, holding something that has been digitally erased.

With both lenses, the Insta360 One RS can shoot videos in time-lapse at varying speeds, as well as slow-motion (up to 8x slowed down speed). For 360 videos, the Insta360 One R’s footage is as crisp as any competing consumer-grade 360 cameras, while 4K action cam footage is good, but bested by the GoPro Hero 10 which can shoot 4K/120fps.

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Insta360 One RS: Software

But it’s the software that really makes the difference. Insta360 has both the aforementioned mobile app for iOS and Android and desktop software for Windows and Mac. To be honest, the mobile app is often easier and more intuitive to use, but the desktop software is needed to render 6K wide-screen footage. I have been using Insta360 products for years and have used the mobile app 99.9% of the time.

The mobile app connects to the One RS wirelessly via a few taps — however, this process is much faster on the iOS app than on the Android app (we’re talking 10 seconds vs up to a minute). Once connected, both versions of the app have the same interface.

Within the app, we can directly see the camera’s viewfinder on the mobile screen, control the camera directly in the app, as well as make edits to footage already shot. The editing suite is quite impressive for a free mobile app — you don’t just get to trim length, switch aspect ratio (16:9, 9:16, 1:1) and render the video to your phone’s storage, you can also apply beauty filters that enlarge eyes or brighten skin (ugh). Color temperature, contrast, overall brightness can be tweaked too, but there’s also a one-stop “Color Plus” button that uses AI to apply tweaks automatically. I find that it works well for the most part.

For 4K Boost lens footage, the editing is straightforward, almost as if you’re fixing up any normal smartphone footage. With 360 footage, however, there are a lot of things we can do, including the aforementioned reframing of a 360 video into a normal video. We can frame the video using our fingers to pinch and swipe through the footage, or by tagging pivot points at which the camera moves.

The above gif is heavily compressed, but in the below screenshots, you can see that the 5.7K 360 footage looks reasonably sharp even when zoomed in. This means 360 footage captured by the Insta360 offers a very diverse playing field. I can zoom all the way out to a tiny planet-like shot, or pull all the way to examine details of the scenery around me.

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Who should buy the Insta360 One RS?

The Twin Edition’s $549 price tag seems like a high price at first glance, but when you consider that you’re getting a high-quality 4K action camera and a 360 camera, the price is justifiable. A GoPro Hero 10 alone costs $500; a standalone 360 camera from GoPro costs $400.

If you are an outdoor adventurer and want a versatile camera that can capture literally everything in the scene, the Insta360 One RS is one of the best options out there

As mentioned, I think the Insta360’s software is superior to competing DJI and GoPro products I’ve tested, especially the reframing feature. To be honest, I often feel like I don’t take full advantage of the Insta360 360 cameras because I’m just using them to walk around streets, or the occasional bike ride. Insta360’s 360 lenses are highly popular for those who participate in extreme outdoor activities like skydiving, dirt bike riding, among others. When I see that footage (often shared by Insta30’s Instagram account), I am left in awe.

If you are an outdoor adventurer and want a versatile camera that can capture literally everything in the scene, the Insta360 One RS is one of the best options out there. If you don’t need either the 360 lens or the action lens, there are cheaper packages that shave about $100 off the price tag.

Insta360 One RS (Twin Edition)

The best option for those trying an Insta360 product for the first time -- this kit includes the 4K action lens and 360 lens so you can capture wide-angle stabilized 4K footage or 360-degree videos with just a quick swap of lenses.

View at Amazon

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Google Photos tests a new Snippets feature that creates short, shareable clips from your videos

Google Photos is reportedly testing a new feature called Snippets. The feature is currently available for only a handful of users, and Google is yet to share any information about the feature or a wider rollout. Fortunately, users who have received the Snippets feature on their devices reveal that it automatically creates short, shareable clips from longer videos.

First spotted by Reddit user u/CraftSquid426 (via Android Police), the Snippets feature in Google Photos appears to be a new creation category that will join the existing Animations, Collages, Movies, and Cinematic photos categories. Its icon is a short strip of film, suggesting that it will take a small section of a video on your phone to create a short, shareable clip. Like the other Google Photos creations features, Snippets will likely use machine learning to create the short clips.

Credit: u/CraftSquid426

Android Police further reveals that the Photos app will also show Snippets in the main carousel on the home page. These automatically created Snippets look to be trimmed versions of longer videos attempting to highlight the best part of the video. However, the Snippets currently seem to capture a random part of the video, suggesting that the machine learning algorithm needs more training. It’s also worth mentioning that the Snippets feature has only been spotted on videos of pets so far.

Credit: Android Police

At the moment, we don’t have any further information about Google Photos’ new Snippets feature as it’s not available on any of our devices. We’ll make sure to let you know as soon as we have more details.

It’s worth noting that the new Snippets feature comes just a week after Google announced three big changes coming to the Photos app — a Library tab UI overhaul, a Sharing tab design refresh, and new screenshot features.

What do you think of Google Photos’ new Snippets feature? Do you think it’s a useful addition or just a gimmick that you probably won’t use? Let us know in the comments section below.

Google Photos (Free, Google Play) →

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Source: Reddit
Via: Android Police

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Google starts testing Privacy Sandbox in Chrome and announces new user controls

Google’s attempts to replace browser cookies with a new solution have been met with a lot of criticism from privacy advocates and competitors. Google’s first attempt at phasing out cookies came in FLoC, short for Federated Learning of Cohorts, which Google deemed more private and better than cross-site tracking cookies. However, the company abandoned the feature following the backlash, proposing a replacement in the form of Topics API, which categorizes your interests into different topics that advertisers can target. Now Google has started testing the Topics API along with other features such as FLEDGE and Attribution Reporting.

In a blog post on Thursday, Google announced the next stage of testing for Privacy Sandbox features. As part of the trial, developers can now test out Topics, FLEDGE, and Attribution Reporting APIs in Chrome Canary. Google says it will soon expand these features to a limited number of Chrome Beta users, and assuming things go smoothly, the API testing will eventually be made available on the Chrome stable channel.

“Starting today, developers can begin testing globally the Topics, FLEDGE, and Attribution Reporting APIs in the Canary version of Chrome. We’ll progress to a limited number of Chrome Beta users as soon as possible. Once things are working smoothly in Beta, we’ll make API testing available in the stable version of Chrome to expand testing to more Chrome users,” said Vinay Goel, Product Director, Privacy Sandbox, Chrome.

Google says it’ll take into account feedback from developers and companies to further improve the APIs and make them broadly available in Chrome once it’s confident that they’re working as intended.

“Once we’re confident that the APIs are working as designed, we’ll make them broadly available in Chrome, allowing more developers to integrate, evaluate and provide feedback as we continue to optimize them for their use cases.”

Google will also soon start testing updated Privacy Sandbox settings and controls in Chrome, allowing users to see and manage interests collected by the browser based on their history. In addition, users can also opt out of the trials altogether.

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Source: Google Chromium

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Apple is working on its own payment processing technology and a “Pay Later” feature

Apple has slowly been trying to dominate more and more fields, as its range of products and services further expands. For example, the company has been replacing Intel processors with its own M1 chips on the Mac lineup — a step closer towards independence. A new report now states that Apple is working on its own payment processing infrastructure. That’s to potentially rely less on relevant partners down the road. The report also mentions that the Cupertino tech giant could be developing a “Buy Now, Pay Later” feature for Apple Pay users. It will reportedly allow eligible users to borrow money from the company and pay them back through installments.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has shared some of Apple’s internal plans in the financial department. The company is seemingly aiming to bring several payment-related tasks in-house — allowing it to rely less on current partners. These tasks could include payment processing, risk assessment for lending, fraud analysis, credit checks and additional customer-service functions such as the handling of disputes.

If these plans come to fruition, eligible users might be able to borrow money from Apple and pay them back through one of the two installment plans. The first — Apple Pay in 4 — will reportedly aim at short-term, interest-free, four-installment plans. The second — Apple Pay Monthly Installments — could be for long-term installment plans with added interest.

Apple’s payment-related plans will likely focus on additional financial services — such as the rumored hardware subscription model — rather than existing ones. For the time being, it’s unlikely for the company to completely drop its partnerships. Instead, it could be aiming at bringing more of its payment services to a wider range of regions. We only hope that this project helps bring Apple Card and Apple Pay to even more countries.

Would you use a Buy Now, Pay Later feature offered by Apple? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Source: Bloomberg

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Listen, Unwind, or Explore with OPPO’s O Relax

Finding the right ambient sound app is a tedious process, as most of these types of apps are littered with low-quality sounds, ads, and bad UIs. Those of us that rely on nature sound loops, white noise, or ASMR tend to find ourselves with a collection of different apps to serve these purposes. OPPO users get access to an exclusive app called O Relax, which is the last ambient sound app that you’ll ever need. Packed with high-quality audio and customizable experiences, you’ll be able to immerse yourself in a calming experience that can help you relax.

It’s important to take a few minutes each day to destress and block out the chaos of life. Your phone can now be your private meditation space with O Relax, which is included for free in ColorOS 12.1. The OPPO Find X5 Pro, along with most other OPPO devices gives you access to this amazing sanctuary app.

OPPO Find X5 Pro

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Listen

The listen mode gives you access to a massive selection of different audio files, which you can add to your scene and fine-tune the volume levels. Start from presets that include ambient sounds, music, colored noise, or special collaboration projects with different themes.

O Relax Summer Seashore

The ambient sounds are a great way to create your own audio environment to help you fall asleep, relax, or meditate. If you want to drown out noise pollution from LEDs, appliances, or any sort of electronic device, try the different colored noises. The pink noise is perfect for canceling out the hum of LED noise, which is often annoying to people with sensitive ears.

When you create your own ambient paradise, you can use sounds from nature, life, cities, ASMR, and more. As you discover new sounds, they are downloaded and stored locally for playback without an internet connection. You can use this feature to queue up some custom sounds before getting on a plane, and then drown out the noise of the flight with some nice headphones.

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Unwind

The unwind section is a few games that are designed to relieve stress. A simple bubble popper uses audio and visuals to create a satisfying experience. As you pop the bubbles, the powerful haptic feedback from the OPPO Find X5 Pro delivers instant gratification.

O Relax Unwind Game

The deep breathing exercise is a great way to achieve full relaxation. This game uses haptic feedback and audio cues, so you can follow along without even looking at your phone. Try laying on your back and setting the phone on your chest, as you feel the vibrations match up with your breathing. Explore the other fun little games to find calming and satisfying ways to fully unwind.

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Explore

Immerse yourself in an audible world inspired by specific locations in different cities. Travel through places like Beijing, Shenzhen, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Reykjavik. Each city has a distinctly different sound, which can be adjusted between quiet and lively. A map will show you exactly where you are experiencing these sounds from, with a description of the area.

O Relax Explore

When you’re tired of cities on Earth, explore an alien planet in a 360 video. Tap on parts of the environment to see custom visuals and information about the alien world. The haptic feedback is synced with the video, which results in a very interesting connection to the environment.

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The OPPO Find X5 Pro has an amazing built-in speaker that can fill your room with your calming sounds all night long. Because of the high-quality audio files used to make the O Relax sounds, everything sounds even better when paired with some nice speakers. Feel the bass of a thunderstorm, or immerse yourself in the city street ambiance as audio plays through whatever speaker setup you prefer. The addition of Dolby Atmos panoramic audio makes this experience better than ever,

Get access to O Relax on OPPO phones like the new Find X5 Pro. Learn more about this phone on our XDA forums below.

OPPO Find X5 Pro Forums

We thank OPPO for sponsoring this post. Our sponsors help us pay for the many costs associated with running XDA, including server costs, full time developers, news writers, and much more. While you might see sponsored content (which will always be labeled as such) alongside Portal content, the Portal team is in no way responsible for these posts. Sponsored content, advertising and XDA Depot are managed by a separate team entirely. XDA will never compromise its journalistic integrity by accepting money to write favorably about a company, or alter our opinions or views in any way. Our opinion cannot be bought.

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Apple won’t release an under-display Touch ID iPhone anytime soon, even though your sibling can unlock your Face ID iPhone

Apple’s iPhones are great smartphones, and they have been so for a fair few years now. No matter which side of the Android vs iOS debate you stand on, it’s hard not to recognize the iPhone as a piece of tech that everyone in the industry tries to compete against. Anything that Apple does with the iPhone, the smartphone industry mocks for the first year and then shamelessly copies the next year. On the flip side, Apple is very slow to jump on new tech, and Android OEMs usually have features years before the Cupertino-based giant decides to adopt them. One such situation is under-display fingerprint sensors, a tech that Android OEMs have adopted since 2018. If you were waiting for Apple to adopt an in-display fingerprint sensor, you’ll have to wait a few more years, even though Touch ID has plenty of its own issues.

Under-Display Touch ID delayed on iPhone

According to noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, iPhones releasing in 2023 and 2024 will not be adopting under-display Touch ID. Kuo had previously predicted that 2023 could be the year when Apple makes the jump to under-display tech on the iPhone. But this prediction is now being revised, indicating we will have to pass over 3 more generations of iPhones before we have a chance of seeing Touch ID back on them in the form of an under-display solution.

I previously predicted iPhones would support under-display fingerprint sensing/Touch ID in 2023 at the earliest. But the latest survey indicates new iPhones in 2023 & 2024 may not adopt under-display Touch ID. Face ID with a mask on iPhone is already a great biometrics solution.

— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) March 30, 2022

Note that the prediction doesn’t explicitly mention that the iPhone in 2026 will adopt an under-display Touch ID. For one, that is too far out in the future to accurately predict at this stage. And Apple has presented nothing either to indicate that they are interested in bringing back Touch ID at all. This is where the problem arises.

PSA: Face ID on iPhones can evolve to be unlocked by your sibling

When Apple made the jump from Touch ID to Face ID with the iPhone X, a lot was claimed about its superiority. Compared to face unlock as it was present on Android smartphones, Face ID was and remains so much more secure — Android phones simply matched an optical likeness, while Apple does a far more precise 3D scan. The 3D facial scan is very accurate, and Apple claims there is only a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of another random person being able to unlock your iPhone with their face. Compared to the 1 in 50,000 error rate for Touch ID, Face ID does appear to be a far more secure solution.

These claims do come with fine print though, and ones that I feel are not publicized enough. While yes, you can’t trick Face ID by holding up a simple photo, you can beat it with a face that looks very similar to yours. As Apple itself notes in its documentation (emphasis added):

The probability that a random person in the population could look at your iPhone or iPad Pro and unlock it using Face ID is less than 1 in 1,000,000 with a single enrolled appearance whether or not you’re wearing a mask. As an additional protection, Face ID allows only five unsuccessful match attempts before a passcode is required. The statistical probability is higher — and further increased if using Face ID with a mask — for twins and siblings that look like you, and among children under the age of 13, because their distinct facial features may not have fully developed. If you’re concerned about this, we recommend using a passcode to authenticate. You can also use Face ID without enabling Face ID with a mask.

Apple does not quantify this statistical probability. And there’s no way to know if they also account for the fact that these strangers (twins and siblings) are far more likely to be in physical proximity to your iPhone than a random person with a similar fingerprint.

So when I found out that my brother can open my iPhone 13 Pro with just a casual look, I was really (and rightfully) shocked.

My brother can unlock my iPhone 13 Pro with FaceID. He is 6 years younger.

I want fingerprint unlock back (not as a home button though).

— Aamir Siddiqui (@aamirsidd94) March 22, 2022

My brother is 6 years younger than me, but we do look fairly similar — as siblings often do. We aren’t twins though, and the age difference between us, as well as our personal preferences on hair and facial hair ensures that we definitely don’t look like photocopies of each other at any point. I was under the impression that this would be enough to keep my iPhone locked to me. However, all that my brother needs to do to unlock my iPhone is just look at it. Since we live in the same house (meaning he has plenty of opportunities to physically access my iPhone), the net effect is that my iPhone can be very easily and frequently unlocked by someone who is not me — and that is just insane.

Before you jump angrily to the comments, let me clarify some things. One, my iPhone has only one appearance enrolled in it, and that is mine. There are no alternative appearances enrolled, neither of myself, nor of my brother. I did set up Face ID unlock with Mask, but my brother can unlock my phone with this option disabled too. I do have Apple Watch unlock set up as well, but my brother can again unlock my phone with this option disabled too. No, he does not have my passcode, and he doesn’t even really need it. [I would have presented video proof of this whole charade, but my sibling is not comfortable being recorded for use on the Internet, and so you have to take my word on this sibling-unlocking happening.]

The only explanation I have been able to find is that this is rather intentional in a way. As mentioned in Apple’s documentation, it is possible to train Face ID to work on faces that bear a close resemblance.

Face ID automatically adapts to changes in your appearance, such as wearing cosmetic makeup or growing facial hair. If there is a more significant change in your appearance, like shaving a full beard, Face ID confirms your identity by using your passcode before it updates your face data.

And further:

This data will be refined and updated as you use Face ID to improve your experience, including when you successfully authenticate. Face ID will also update this data when it detects a close match but a passcode is subsequently entered to unlock the device.

Essentially, if my sibling or any other close resemblance attempts a Face ID unlock unsuccessfully and then I enter the password to open the phone, Face ID will take this as a learning opportunity to update my appearance in its database, merging my stored appearance with this newer appearance. Every unsuccessful Face ID + successful password unlock will train the AI behind Face Unlock to perform better in the future. The caveat then is that this makes it entirely possible that eventually, your iPhone can be opened by your sibling, especially if they have frequent access to your phone, even if such unlock or training is not intentional. So don’t be surprised if one day your sibling can suddenly open your iPhone with their face.

Touch ID > Face ID

Within the context of what I have laid down, I’ve been forced to disable Face ID on my iPhone. I trust my brother to not indulge in my personal data, but I am still extremely uncomfortable with the very idea that he has unlimited access to every single piece of information on my iPhone, including my banking and investment apps.

In a world with Touch ID iPhones, I would have had to worry about a small probability of bumping into a person who has a fingerprint similar enough to mine, who has access to my iPhone and wants to get inside of it. In a world with AI-based Face ID iPhones, there’s an even smaller probability that I come across a stranger who bears my facial resemblance. But what do I do about the sibling who can already unlock my Face ID iPhone?

In my current reality, I wish I could go back to a Touch ID iPhone. There’s no way to disable Face ID from learning and evolving appearances. So even if I do reset my stored appearance, it is only a matter of days and weeks before it matches the two faces again. Apple’s eloquent solution here is to ask users to just disable Face ID completely, and that is what I have done for now. Since I was already used to not being able to easily unlock my iPhone over the past two years because I had a mask on (Apple took its sweet time to roll out Face mask-based unlocking), the inconvenience is rather familiar. A part of me still hoped that a future iPhone flagship could bring back Touch ID. But looks like I will have to wait for a while now.

Until then, I’ll be using my banking apps on my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and my other Android devices.

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