Vivo has expanded the Vivo V20 series in India with a new entry in the form of the Vivo V20 SE. The new Vivo V20 SE slots below the standard Vivo V20 and Vivo V20 Pro and offers watered-down specifications at a lower price point.
From the front, the Vivo V20 SE looks identical to its bigger brother V20, sporting the same 6.44-inch AMOLED display with a waterdrop notch. Fueling the device is Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 SoC, a rather odd choice for a mid-ranger at this price, especially in a market with several competitors offering much better chipsets at similar price points. For what it’s worth, the chipset is paired with a generous 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage along with microSD card support.
In the imaging department, the phone flaunts triple rear cameras on the back, consisting of a 48MP f/1.8 primary sensor, 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle, and a 2MP depth sensor. For selfies, there’s a 32MP f/2.0 camera on the front with support for Vivo’s Super Night mode for better low-light photos.
The Vivo V20 SE is powered by a 4,100 mAh battery and comes with a 33W FlashCharge fast charger, which the company claims can charge the battery from 0% to 62% within 30 minutes. Other highlights of the device include an in-display fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth 5.0, dual-band Wi-Fi, USB Type C, micro SD card support, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The Vivo V20 SE comes running Android 10 out-of-the-box with Vivo’s Funtouch OS 11 on top.
Save for the chipset, the overall hardware on offer is decent for the price, but whether it will be enough to take on the seasoned competitors such as the POCO X3 and Realme 7 Pro remains to be seen.
Pricing & Availability
The Vivo V20 SE is priced at ₹20,990 (~$282) for the 8GB/128GB variant and will go on sale in India starting November 3. The device comes in two colors: Aquamarine Green and Gravity Black and will be available from offline and online partners. For online buyers, Vivo is offering a 1-time screen replacement, extra ₹2000 off on exchange, and no-cost EMI up to 12 months.
WhatsApp has been working on a new Disappearing Messages feature for the last few months. Evidence pointing towards the feature first popped up back in March this year, and we learned that it would allow users to send messages with a predefined expiration time on the platform. Then, in July, WhatsApp started testing the feature in version 2.20.197.4 beta with a couple of UI improvements and a universal seven-day expiration timer. Last month, we learned that the Disappearing Messages feature would also work with media files, allowing users to share disappearing images, videos, and GIFs on the messenger. As per a recent WABetaInfo report, WhatsApp has now shared additional information about the feature ahead of its official rollout in the form of an FAQ section on its website.
The new FAQ section reveals that WhatsApp users will soon receive a new ‘disappearing messages’ setting on the platform which will allow them to send messages that disappear after a seven days. The section states: “Once enabled, messages sent in the individual or group chat will disappear after seven days. The most recent selection controls all messages in the chat. This setting won’t affect messages you previously sent or received in the chat. In an individual chat, either user can turn disappearing messages on or off. In a group chat, only group admins can turn disappearing messages on or off.”
The section further notes that if a user doesn’t open WhatsApp in the seven day period, the message will disappear. However, the preview of the message may still be displayed in notifications until the app is opened. Furthermore, when replying to a disappearing message, the quoted text might remain in the chat after seven days thereby allowing users to view the content of the message even after it disappears. WhatsApp also reveals that if a disappearing message is forwarded to a chat that has the disappearing message setting turned off, the message won’t disappear after seven days. And finally, if a user creates a backup before a message disappears, the disappearing message will be included in the backup and it will be deleted only after the user restores the backup.
While the disappearing messages feature is undoubtedly a handy addition to the messaging platform, WhatsApp isn’t adding essential security features to prevent users from saving disappearing messages before they’re removed from the chat. The company notes that recipients will be able to save, forward, and take a screenshot of disappearing messages and the sender won’t be alerted of the same. Similarly, media shared using the feature will disappear from the chat but it will remain in the recipient’s device if they have auto-download turned on. And the sender won’t be alerted if the recipient saves, forwards, or takes a screenshot of the media before it disappears.
Along with the new FAQ section, WhatsApp has published concise tutorials for enabling/disabling disappearing messages on Android, iOS, KaiOS, Web, and Desktop. You can check out these tutorials by clicking on the respective link above.
Google has once again shifted its target API level requirement for all apps submitted to Google Play. Since August 3, 2020, all new apps submitted to Google Play were required to target at least Android 10. Starting today, all updates to existing apps must target Android 10 (API level 29) or higher. The search giant made similar changes at the end of last year and has been requiring Android app developers to target newer API levels since 2017.
Since its stable release in September of 2019, Android 10’s distribution has grown steadily, with the operating system running on 100 million devices just 5 months post-launch. As of April of 2020, Android 10 was running on 8.2% of all Google-certified devices, though that percentage has likely gone up significantly in the last few months because Google has requirements on the OS version that new devices can launch with.
When you take a look at the many new APIs available in Android 10, you start to realize how important the release is. Some of the notable APIs include support for foldable devices, support for 5G, support for Dark Theme, and improved privacy features.
Most developers by now have likely adapted their apps to target Android 10 or higher, but any developer that hasn’t must now comply with Google’s rules or risk abandoning their software, which ultimately leaves consumers in a lurch.
By requiring app developers to target last year’s release of Android, Google is hoping to encourage the adoption of new APIs, thus providing users with an improved experience. Earlier versions of Android are still more prevalent than more recent releases, but with initiatives like Project Treble, Google is slowly closing the fragmentation gap and making it easier for OEMs to update their devices.
It will eventually be the same story next year when Google will require that developers target Android 11 (API level 30), which is the most recent release.
CD Projekt RED’s upcoming action RPG Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most highly anticipated games of 2020. And even though the game has been delayed a couple of times now, the hype surrounding the release hasn’t died down yet. Cashing in on the hype, OnePlus has now released a Cyberpunk 2077 Edition of the OnePlus 8T in China.
The OnePlus 8T x Cyberpunk 2077 Edition features a redesigned back panel with a massive glass camera island at the top, a speckled gray color finish, yellow accents, and prominent Cyberpunk branding.
Although the camera island on the Cyberpunk 2077 Edition OnePlus 8T is significantly larger than the regular variant, OnePlus hasn’t changed the camera placement. Instead, the extra real estate offered by the larger camera island is just occupied by Cyberpunk branding.
Along with these external design changes, the OnePlus 8T x Cyberpunk 2077 Edition runs a Cyberpunk themed version of OxygenOS that tries to mirror the futuristic aesthetic from the game.
While OnePlus hasn’t made any changes to the hardware on the Cyberpunk Edition device, the company is offering a bunch of Cyberpunk-themed goodies with the device. These include an exclusive Cyberpunk case and several OnePlus/Cyberpunk themed stickers.
Pricing & Availability
The OnePlus 8T x Cyberpunk 2077 Edition will be available in a single 12GB+256GB configuration priced at CNY 3999 (~$599). The device is already up for preorders on most popular eCommerce portals in China, and it will go on sale starting November 11th. As of now, OnePlus has not released any information regarding an international release.
It’s worth noting that OnePlus isn’t the only company capitalizing on the Cyberpunk 2077 hype. Earlier this year, Microsoft released a Cyberpunk Edition of the Xbox One X that’s already up for sale in several markets around the world. In case you’re interested in getting your hands on the limited edition console, you can purchase it by following this link.
London-based startup F(x)tec launched the Pro1 back in September last year. At launch, the device ran a near-stock version of Android 9.0 Pie with just a couple of additional apps that had been optimized to work with its physical keyboard. But the company had also sent devices to developers from LineageOS and SailfishOS to speed up third-party development for the device. As a result, the device received official LineageOS 16 support earlier this year in July. And now, the LineageOS team has officially extended LineageOS 17.1 support for the F(x)tec Pro1.
As per the updated LineageOS build targets on the project’s GitHub page, the team has officially added LineageOS 17.1 (based on Android 10) support for the F(x)tec Pro1. Although the LineageOS 17.1 build for the device wasn’t live at the time of writing, it should be available for download on the device’s Wiki in the next couple of days.
If you’re interested in trying LineageOS 17.1 on your F(x)tec Pro1, you can download the recovery flashable package by clicking on “Get the builds here” on the device’s Wiki page (linked below). But before you go ahead and flash the ROM on your device, make sure you read the installation instructions and other linked documentation, including the guides and special boot modes. Also, make sure to take a backup of your data before you start the process or you may lose it during the installation.
After getting India hooked to its Mi Band lineup of fitness trackers, Xiaomi recently launched the Mi Watch Revolve in the country. Priced at ₹10,999, the Mi Watch Revolve is meant to be a premium upgrade for existing Mi Band users or the first smartwatch for those who weren’t impressed by the sporty fitness tracker aesthetic. With its shiny metal case, AMOLED display, and compelling feature set, the smartwatch looks to be a great buy on paper. But does the Mi Watch Revolve have what it takes to replicate the Mi band lineup’s success? Read on to find out.
Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve: Specifications
Specification
Xiaomi Mi Watch Revolve
Dimensions & Weight
46.2 x 53.3 x 11.4 mm (excluding straps and protrusions)
40g (excluding strap)
Materials
Stainless steel case, silicone strap
Strap
Standard 22mm quick release
Display
1.39-inch AMOLED touch display
454 x 454 pixels
Compatibility
Android 4.4 or iOS 10 and above
Sensors
PPG heart rate sensor
Three-axis acceleration sensor
Gyroscope
Geomagnetic sensor
Ambient light sensor
Baroreceptor
Connectivity
Bluetooth 5.0 BLE
GPS + GLONASS
NFC payments
No
Battery
420mAh, proprietary charging dock
IP rating
5ATM water resistance, no IP rating
Colors
Chrome Silver, Midnight Black
Note: Xiaomi India loaned us the Mi Watch Revolve in Chrome Silver for this review. This review was written after a month of use. Xiaomi did not have any input regarding the content of this review.
Mi Watch Revolve: Design & Display
The Mi Watch Revolve’s premium design is what sets it apart from Xiaomi’s Mi Band lineup of fitness trackers, even though it’s no more than a fitness tracker in function. It features a 46mm circular stainless steel case with an AMOLED touch display, a silicone strap with a traditional clasp, and two buttons on the right edge that control all of its functions.
While the stainless steel dial is machined quite well and doesn’t have any sharp edges, I’m not a fan of its size. The smartwatch looks massive on my wrist, and I can safely say that it’s not designed for those of you who prefer a more discreet look. On top of that, the Chrome Silver variant that I received is a tad too shiny for my taste, but thankfully, Xiaomi does offer a matte black variant.
The Mi Watch Revolve is massive and it's not a great pick for anyone with slender wrists.
Despite the massive case, the Mi Watch Revolve features a 1.39-inch AMOLED display. This is because the display is surrounded by a thick bezel with dial marks. Xiaomi could have easily trimmed this bezel and offered a smaller 42mm or 44mm case with the same display, especially since these dial marks don’t really make sense on a digital watch.
The Chrome Silver Mi Watch Revolve comes with the Neptune Blue silicone strap, but Xiaomi does advertise three more color options — Cosmic Dust Maroon, Space Black, and Astral Olive. Xiaomi’s website also lists a fifth Midnight Black leather strap, but none of these alternative options were available for purchase at the time of writing this review. Thankfully, the Mi Watch Revolve makes use of standard 22mm quick-release straps, and there are plenty of third-party options that you can purchase if you don’t like the one included with the watch.
Coming to the display, the AMOLED panel on the Mi Watch Revolve has a resolution of 454 x 454 pixels and a peak brightness of 450nits. The display is vibrant and gets sufficiently bright for optimal visibility in direct sunlight. The watch offers 5 levels of brightness settings, and I used it on level 3 for the majority of my testing with absolutely no issues. Thanks to the AMOLED panel, the watch also includes an always-on display option. You can turn it on to have the watch display the time and date even when you switch off the display. But I wouldn’t recommend using it as it reduces the watch’s battery life significantly.
Mi Watch Revolve: Features
As mentioned earlier, the Mi Watch Revolve is nothing but a souped-up fitness tracker. And as such, it offers pretty much all the features you’d find on a Mi Band. The watch includes 10 sports modes, continuous heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, notification alerts, and music playback controls. But unlike the Mi Band, the Mi Watch Revolve makes use of Firstbeat’s Motion algorithm to track a few other metrics as well. These include VO2 Max, body energy monitoring, and stress levels. You can keep track of all these metrics both on the watch and within the Xiaomi Wear app.
On the watch, you’ll find seven widgets to the right of the home screen, including Heart rate, Energy, Sleep, Weather, Stress, Music, and Activity History. As you can see in the attached images, these widgets display the most crucial information about each feature. The heart rate widget displays the current heart rate, along with the daily maximum and minimum figures.
The Energy widget shows your current energy level out of 100, the Sleep widget shows you information about last night’s sleep, the Weather widget shows the current temperature, daily min/max, and weather info, the Stress widget shows your daily average stress based on your heart rate variability, and the Activity History widget shows calories burnt, steps, and the number of times you stood up in a day.
If you want to see more details for each of these features on the watch itself, you’ll need to open up the app drawer by clicking the top button, select the app, and then swipe through all of the available screens for additional details. In the app drawer, you’ll also find a couple of additional features like a breathing exercise timer, alarm clock, stopwatch, timer, air pressure gauge, compass, and a Find My Phone option.
Along with these widgets, the watch also shows you incoming notifications for whitelisted apps. The notifications are displayed on the watch face as soon as they arrive, and you can view them later by pulling down the notification shade as you would on your Android smartphone. The watch also has a quick settings menu that you can access by swiping up on the home screen. It includes six quick settings tiles to turn on/off the flashlight, raise to wake, toggle DND mode, lock the display, disable automatic display shutoff, and open the full settings menu.
In the Settings menu, you can choose a different watch face, adjust the display brightness, turn on DND mode, configure the raise to wake feature, customize heart rate monitoring, enable/disable activity reminder, turn on Bluetooth disconnect reminder, configure additional display settings, adjust the vibration effect, and turn on a setting to light up the display whenever you receive a notification. You can also switch between installed watch faces by tapping and holding on the home screen, and then swiping through the available options.
Furthermore, the Mi Watch Revolve has GPS onboard. This is a great addition for those who don’t like to carry their smartphone when going out for a jog. On paper, these features seem adequate for a smartwatch in this price range. However, the Mi Watch Revolve is lacking a few features like camera shutter control, and we hope that Xiaomi may add this in a future update.
But before adding any new features, Xiaomi has to fix the multitude of bugs I encountered over the last month. Here’s a quick rundown of all the issues I experienced on the Mi Watch Revolve:
Step tracking is not accurate. The watch sometimes counts steps when I’m sitting down, and at times it doesn’t register anything even when I’m moving around.
The watch sometimes doesn’t record standing data at all, and even when it does, it’s mostly inaccurate. According to the data collected by the companion app, I didn’t stand up at all on two days in the last month. That’s unlikely.
The raise to wake function only works 50% of the time.
After declining an incoming call from the watch, it keeps vibrating for about 30 seconds.
Weather/temperature info doesn’t sync quite often, and even when it does, it’s sometimes inaccurate.
GPS takes about 10 minutes to lock on, which results in inaccurate location tracking.
Sleep tracking isn’t accurate, and the watch often shows lower/higher figures than the actual amount of sleep I got. On top of that, it doesn’t track daytime naps.
Syncing watch faces from the Xiaomi Wear app is a tedious process. The app often doesn’t load all the watch faces available and displays blank circles.
Downloading the watch faces that it does load takes a frustratingly long amount of time. And when the watch face does download, there’s no guarantee that it will successfully sync with the watch.
The VO2 Max reading also doesn’t seem to be accurate. After a 15 minute brisk walk, I received a VO2 Max score of 0. I’m not exactly sure what to make of that.
And these issues aren’t limited to my unit. A quick look at the Play Store reviews for the Xiaomi Wear app shows that several early buyers are experiencing similar issues.
The Xiaomi Wear app currently has a 2.7-star rating on the Play Store due to a string of 1-star reviews posted by disgruntled Mi Watch Revolve buyers in the last few weeks.
Some users have also highlighted additional problems like the lack of a 12hr time format, no option to sync data from the Mi Fit app for existing Mi Band users, and more that I didn’t spot in my testing. This paints a terrible image for the Mi Watch Revolve, and Xiaomi needs to fix these issues ASAP if it wants to replicate the success it achieved with its Mi Band lineup.
Battery life & charging
At the moment, the only saving grace for the Mi Watch Revolve is its exceptional battery life. In my testing, the watch lasted 13 days on a single charge with continuous heart rate monitoring turned on, always-on display turned off, screen brightness set at level 3, moderate GPS use, and notifications turned on for 4 frequently used apps. This falls in line with Xiaomi’s 14-day battery life claim. However, the battery life took a massive hit while using the always-on display feature, and the watch dropped from 100% to 8% in just 8 days. Add to that frequent GPS use, and the watch’s battery life drops down to around 18 hours.
In my opinion, the always-on display feature isn’t worth the trade-off. It’s kind of redundant as you’re going to raise your wrist to check the time anyway, and the raise to wake feature should do the trick (if Xiaomi fixes it via an OTA update). The charging performance was also satisfactory, and the proprietary charging cradle managed to get the 420mAh battery back to 100% in about two hours.
Should you buy the Mi Watch Revolve?
As you might have already guessed by now, I’m not going to recommend the Mi Watch Revolve in its current state. Xiaomi really needs to step up its game and push an update (or several) to fix all the software issues with the smartwatch. And I might not recommend it even when these issues are fixed, since there are a couple of cheaper alternatives, like the Amazfit GTS (review) and Amazfit GTR (review), that offer more features and aren’t plagued by so many software issues.
In case you don’t wish to buy Amazfit’s older models, you can also wait for the upcoming GTR 2 and GTS 2 that were recently launched in the US and the UK. Amazfit’s second-gen smartwatches may be slightly more expensive than the Mi Watch Revolve, but they offer additional features like Amazon Alexa support, onboard music storage and playback, and more to justify their higher sticker price.
In an attempt to enter the discrete graphics market, Intel today announced the new Iris Xe MAX graphics. Made for thin and light notebooks, the new Iris Xe MAX is based on the Xe-LP microarchitecture. If you remember, the chip-maker had announced the Iris Xe graphics alongside the latest 11th-Gen Core mobile processors during the Intel Architecture Day event. With the aim of addressing “an emerging need for content creation performance in thin-and-light laptops,” the company is banking upon two major capabilities. First is Intel’s Deep Link technology as part of Intel Adaptix and second is the support for PCIe Gen 4.
Intel says that the CPU is rarely optimized in thin-and-light laptops paired with third-party discrete graphics. Deep Link’s Dynamic Power Share will enable all the power and thermal resources to be dedicated to the CPU when the discrete GPU is idle, thereby resulting in up to 20% better CPU performance during a sustained task like executing a final render. The new Iris Xe MAX graphics will also deliver improved 1080p gaming on popular games. For gamers, Intel is also adding two new features- Game Sharpening and Instant Game Tuning. These features will be available through the Intel Graphics Command Center. You can check out the performance numbers below:
Paired with the new 11th-Gen Intel Core mobile processors, the new Intel Iris Xe MAX graphics is claimed to deliver Additive AI to provide up to 7-times faster AI-based creation compared to similar laptops configured with third-party graphics. For this Intel used its 11th-Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 with Intel Iris XeMAX against a 10th-Gen Intel Core i7-1065G7 with Nvidia GeForce MX350. It will also offer Hyper Encode for up to1.78-times faster encoding than a high-end desktop graphics card. For this, the company used the same combo against the 10th-Gen Intel Core i9-10980HK with Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q.
The all-new Iris Xe MAX graphics along with the newest 11th-Gen Intel Core Mobile processors will be available starting today. The Acer Swift 3x, Asus VivoBook Flip TP470, and Dell Inspiron 15 7000 2-in-1 will be the first three devices featuring the new hardware. Furthermore, Intel plans to launch entry-level discrete to high-end gaming and data center graphics for HPC and AI workloads. It is also working with partners to bring Xe-LP-based discrete graphics for affordable desktops in the first half of 2021. Additionally, the Xe-LP based Intel Server GPU will be shipping this year while the Xe-HP and Xe-HPG products are scheduled to arrive next year.
