The iPhone 7’s new A10 Fusion: quad-core, high-efficiency, and a more powerful GPU

Apple announced the iPhone yesterday, along with its A10 microprocessor. We’ll have to wait a bit to see how the new CPU compares with the A9 in terms of overall performance, but Apple shared some significant details of what to expect with the new chip.

Past rumors have suggested a second-generation 14nm SoC built at TSMC, but Apple said nothing about either its process node or foundry manufacturer of choice. What we do know is that the new A10 is a quad-core, 3.3-billion transistor CPU (the A9 CPU contained more than two billion transistors) with an estimated 40% performance advantage over A9 (according to Apple).

Big.Little-ish

Ever since it debuted the iPhone 4s, Apple has stuck to a dual-core policy for its iPhone, even as its Android competitors steadily boosted their core counts. It’s become common for flagship Android devices to field 4-8 cores — either a single cluster of high-end CPUs like the Snapdragon 820, or a combination of high-end and low-power CPUs in a unified cluster via ARM’s big.Little.

When ARM debuted big.Little it was by no means certain that the idea would take off. As we covered at the time, making the large and small CPU clusters talk to each other effectively required some heavy lifting from both SoC manufacturers and Android itself. Intel, meanwhile, believed that it could use Dynamic Frequency and Voltage Scaling to effectively address the market with a single CPU or CPU cluster, rather than relying on clusters of high-performance and high-efficiency CPU cores that share data and workloads amongst themselves.

Apple isn’t calling its own cluster implementation big.Little, but its implementation of the same concept appears similar. The A10 will combine two high performance cores with 40% better performance than the A9 with two high-efficiency cores that draw 1/5 the power of the A10’s high-end chips. The controller that manages these workloads is custom Apple silicon, so we don’t know how well Apple’s solution will compare with ARM’s. Apple could be facing a learning curve here — the first chips to implement big.Little didn’t actually do so properly and it took several technology and Android iterations before the standard was fully supported in both hardware and software. Alternately, Apple may have been developing the technology through several revisions, and only rolled it out when it knew it had everything nailed down.

Apple is also claiming that the new GPU inside the iPhone 7 will deliver 50% more graphics performance than A9 and 240x more performance than the original iPhone. These gains appear to have been plotted against the iPhone 6s rather than the 6s Plus. The iPhone 7’s battery life is said to have improved as a result of these changes, with more than two hours of run-time compared with the iPhone 6s and one hour more than the iPhone 6s Plus.

Apple’s decision to use a similar technology to big.Little should pay dividends in terms of battery performance, but we’ll have to wait for more details before we can compare the two technologies. The latest revisions of big.Little allow for workloads to be shared across all the CPU cores in a device, provided its thermal budget allows for this. Apple may have duplicated this functionality with the A10 Fusion. Apple is also claiming that its screens are now 25% brighter than before, and these types of changes can have a significant impact on battery life.

Heading into the event there were rumors that the iPhone would use an Intel-branded modem rather than a Qualcomm chip, but if this is true Tim Cook didn’t mention it. The new Fusion technology Apple is debuting here is a significant shift for its device strategy and it’ll be interesting to see how the new hardware impacts overall SoC performance. The GPU is presumably by Imagination Technologies — they’ve built the hardware for every iPhone and there’s no sign Tim Cook changed suppliers for the iPhone 7.

for more development and traing cum Webiste Development call +919568180808 or go to SPOKES TECHNOLOGIES

Is the HP Chromebook 13 G1 the future of the laptop?

Hewlett-Packard’s Chromebook 13 is the best evidence yet that the Chromebook is here to stay.

Built around Google’s Chrome operating system (OS), Chromebooks are inexpensive laptops that are beginning to challenge the hegemony of Windows and the Mac.

In brief: the Chromebook, for many, can be your only laptop. I can say that with authority because I’m very attached to Windows and Mac machines. Despite that, I have been happily using HP’s Chromebook 13 exclusively for a couple of weeks.

Chromebooks are powerful if you give them time

Jumping to another operating environment is always jarring. There’s no way to avoid the initial gotchas, pitfalls, and frustration. Chrome OS is no different. The flip side is, it can also open your eyes to a better way of doing things.

And Chrome OS could be a better way for lots of consumers looking for an inexpensive platform that is essentially self-repairing, secure, extremely fast, and where all future operating systems are ultimately headed.

Chrome OS is based on Google’s popular Chrome browser. So, if you’ve spent time in the Chrome browser, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Chrome OS is presented as a “desktop” -- just like Windows or Mac -- with icons and a settings bar (the latter analogous to the Control Panel in Windows or System Preferences in OS X). But everything takes place in the browser. That gives you access to Google’s excellent office suite, its Pixlr image editor, Google Photos, the Chrome Web Store, Play Music, Play Movies, Google Hangouts, and lots more.

The HP Chromebook 13 G1

The Chromebook 13 G1 is HP’s 2016 high-end Chromebook, starting at $499. Believe or not, that’s pricey for a Chromebook, which often sell in the $199 to $399 range. For $499 you get a lot, though.

For starters, HP includes a 13.3-inch 3,200-by-1800 “QHD+” display. When HP announced the Chromebook 13 G1, I had to do a double-take on the display specs. In short, you won't find a 2016 Windows PC or Mac with that kind of display for anything close to $499. Other specs for the $499 model include an Intel Pentium 4405Y (1.5GHz) processor, 4GB RAM, and 32GB of storage.

While the processor, RAM, and storage specs may seem meager, they’re not. That’s the beauty of a Chromebook— you don’t need a fast processor or a large hard drive. The new 2016 Chromebooks with Intel’s lower-end 6th Generation Pentium or Core M processors are fast. And because the storage takes place in the cloud, 32GB is adequate.

Other notable HP Chromebook 13 specs include a 2.84 pound weight (but it feels lighter because of the good weight distribution), a 0.5-inch thickness (laptops don’t get much thinner than that), and a sturdy aluminum chassis.

The HP Chromebook 13 I’m using goes for just over $800. That extra cost is mostly pegged to the faster Intel 6th Generation M5 processor and 8GB of RAM in my model (instead of 4GB).

Battery life is good. I found the 3-cell, 45Wh battery delivered a long time between charges. What most reviews (which found battery life lacking) miss is that a laptop with a very-high-resolution display, like HP’s Chromebook 13, is never going to last long between charges without a really big battery. But I got more than seven hours doing lots of productivity work, watching a short movie, and the usual social media and Web browsing.

All in all, the HP Chromebook 13 is a high-quality laptop that delivers a lot of bang for the buck and presages a bright future the Chrome OS.

Caveats

The following caveats don’t apply to HP’s Chromebook specifically, but to any Chromebook.

If you’re wedded to Windows and Microsoft Office, the Chromebook probably won’t be a satisfying experience. I’m a heavy Office 365 and OneDrive (Microsoft’s online file hosting service) user. While the Chrome OS gives you access to the online version of Microsoft Office, many of the full Office features are missing. That said, I found that the Google office suite is a powerful replacement and I would be perfectly happy using it full time (as I’ve been doing).

Another thing to keep in mind is, you don’t have access to the range of apps available to Windows and Mac users. In my experience with the Chromebook, however, I always found ways to get things done and almost always found a comparable app online.

Chrome OS Offline: Whether I’m using Windows, Mac, or Chrome OS, I’m always online (as are most people these days). That said, Chromebooks are designed as cloud devices that rely on being connected to the Web. But Chromebooks are much better at working offline now. For example, when I was writing this review in Google Docs, I turned off the Wi-Fi, and Chrome immediately notified me that all changes were being saved offline. 

Finally, the question that always gets asked is, why do I need a Chromebook if I can just run the Chrome browser on my Windows PC or Mac? My response: true, but why not consider a cheap Chromebook that’s fast, secure, manages and updates itself automatically, and has almost none of the clutter and overhead that Windows and macOS have. Besides, the kind of OS that Google is offering is the future of the PC and Mac. Look no further than Apple’s iOS.

Call +91-9568180808 or visit www.spokes.co.in for Website Development and Software Development.

Apple’s Tim Cook declares augmented reality a ‘core technology’ for the company

Over the last few years, Microsoft has staked out an interest and position in augmented reality (AR) as opposed to virtual reality (VR). As the name implies, “augmented” reality is about showing the user additional information or cues over and above what they can see in the real world, while virtual reality is used to project an entirely different environment from wherever the user is actually standing. Microsoft’s HoloLens is one of the first high-profile AR headsets, while games like Pokemon Go have become smash hits in the real world thanks to the way they leverage augmented reality to project virtual Pokemon into every day life.

Apple has stayed out of either market to-date, but that may be about to change. In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Cook was asked what he thought of augmented or virtual reality. He responded:

I think AR [augmented reality] is extremely interesting and sort of a core technology. So, yes, it’s something we’re doing a lot of things on behind that curtain that we talked about.

What’s interesting about this isn’t the fact that Cook is aware of or interested in AR — plenty of companies undoubtedly are, especially after the success of Pokemon Go — but that he’d describe it as a core technology when Apple, to date, has done absolutely nothing with the feature.

Apple and interfaces

Apple’s greatest strength, historically, has been its ability to capture new interfaces and adapt them for easy use. Apple didn’t invent the mouse or the modern GUI, but it popularized both with its initial Mac 128K in 1984. The iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone or the first device with a touchscreen, but it was the first smartphone to treat touch as the primary means of interacting with a device without a need for a stylus or keypad.

Augmented reality has the potential to rewrite the rules of interface design like few products before it. AR has been a mainstay of science fiction for decades — a tricorder is an AR device with a sophisticated sensor package that can scan a local area for a wide range of measurements, then report those measurements back to the user. While Star Trek rarely showed precisely what the user saw as output, multiple Star Trek episodes feature the device being used to scan for a general anomaly before honing in and following it in a specific direction. Deep Space Nine established that the bridges of Jem’Hadar warships don’t have forward-facing viewscreens — they have wearable devices that project a heads-up display to each individual. While this isn’t exactly the same as AR technology, there’s nothing about the system that implies it can’t be used to communicate other information as well.

But — and this is key — in order for AR to become more than a minor feature, it’s going to have to evolve and grow up. This has significant ramifications for every aspect of system design (and a few for the real world as well). Pokemon Go already has a reputation as a battery killer, precisely because it leverages multiple sensors and devices within your smartphone at the same time.

We don’t know how Apple envisions its AR system working or whether its part of the company’s car project or if it would roll out on an iPhone. But integrating AR into software is difficult, and demonstrating its use case is even trickier. Niantic had a hit with Pokemon Go because it was able to trade on an established game franchise and use expertise gleaned from its previous AR title, Ingress. Any push to bring AR into the real world as a general use case will have to learn from previous high-profile attempts that have gone awry.

It’ll probably still be a few years before we start to see AR showing up in devices and software as a rule, but it’s not too early to plan for it — and Apple has good reason to try and position itself to catch that wave. That’s probably what Apple had in mind when it bought AR software developer Metaio last year as well as Media in January 2016.

For More Website Development and Software Development please contact to Spokes Technologies or call +91-9568180808

17 iPhone Tricks To Make Your Life Easier

Did you know you could actually correct Siri's pronunciation?​

Sure, there's plenty your trusty iPhone can already do. It can help you find your way home, settle bar debates and, heck, even make the odd phone call or two. In a pinch you could probably serve small canapés off it. But this pocketable box of wonder isn't just a pretty vessel into the world of internet joy and messaging madness. Oh no.

There are dozens of cool iPhone features hidden beneath the surface that you probably weren't even aware of. These are some of the best iPhone hacks you didn't know about, and exactly how you can find them.

1. Charge your phone faster with a single button press.

Tired of waiting for your phone to recharge? Well, there is a way to speed up the re-juicing process, and it's surprisingly simple — just engage Airplane mode. By knocking out all your phone's Wi-Fi-searching, data-draining communication skills, it takes the strain off your battery while it's being powered up. Not hugely, true — but if you're pressed for time and looking to eke out every bit of juice, that extra 4% you'll add in 30 minutes connected to the mains could make all the difference.

2. Shave seconds off of your searches.

When it comes to finding out the latest league standings or proving a point, getting where you need to go on the internet is all about speed and precision — something missing when you're forced to knock out type-heavy web addresses. So save time by holding down the period icon while typing out an address to bring up a short-cut series of URL suffixes. From the classic (.com) to the less used (.edu, .ie), there are quick hit shortcuts for all.

3. Discover exactly what your phone knows about you.

Slightly sinisterly, your iPhone is always gathering data on you in the background — be it the apps you're using the most, how much data you're churning through... or even, most creepily, where you are. To see what we mean, head to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Frequent Locations. Here you can see not just where you've been, but how long you've spent in each place. Big Brother really is watching...

4. Replace a toolbox essential.

You've probably filed away the Compass app alongside the Stocks and Find Friends apps in a folder entitled 'Crap I can't delete'. You should pull it back out, though — it's got a secret second function that will help with your DIY duties. No: not using your iPhone to hammer in nails (although it can — briefly — do that too). Instead, swiping left in the Compass app brings up a very useful level — a digital bubble gauge than can check if that shelf really is level. (Spoiler: it isn't.)

5. Lock your camera's focal point.

We all know that tapping the screen while taking a photo will set the camera's point of focus, right? Good. Annoyingly though, every time you move the camera after picking a focal point, it disappears. Well, no more. Instead of just tapping the screen, press for a second or two until an 'AF Locked' box pops up. Now you can twist, turn and swing the thing around without losing focus.

6. Create custom vibrations.

Ever wished you could tell who's calling just by how your phone feels buzzing against your leg? Now you can: In Contacts, select your person of choice and hit Edit. Here you'll see a Vibration option. Selecting this will give you plenty of options, including the Create New Vibration tool. Making your bespoke buzz is as simple as tapping the screen to the beat of your choice.

7. Correct Siri's pronunciation.

Siri's a bit of a smug know-it-all — so  there's nothing better than calling it on its mistakes. Like when it mispronounces peoples' names like an ignorant American abroad. So if Siri says something wrong, just tell it. Following up a mistake by saying "That's not how you pronounce…" will see Siri ask for the correct pronunciation then let you check it's got things right. Because we all know it's Levi-O-sa, not Levi-o-SAR.

8. Close three apps at once.

It's not just pictures and web pages that support multi-finger gestures. You can throw additional digits into clearing up your iPhone clutter too. If you need to shut multiple applications in a hurry — for totally innocent, not hiding anything, honest reasons — you can drag three fingers up on the multitasking menu to cull the clutter quicker. Which means your phone should be faster in even less time.

9. Set your music on a timer.

Enjoy listening to a little soothing background music as you drift off to the Land of Nod? Then you're probably all too familiar with waking up at 3am to some unwanted tunes. Unless, of course, you set your music to turn off on a timer. In the Clock app, slide along to the Timer options. Here under the 'When Time Ends' tag, you can switch out the alarm option for a 'Stop Playing' tag. This will turn off the tunes, be it through Apple Music or Spotify, when the timer hits zero.

10. Take a photo without touching your phone.

An oldie but a goodie iPhone hack is using your volume control buttons to capture a picture — thus saving  your meaty paw blocking the screen as you attempt to hit the touchscreen controls. But if you prefer to be even further removed from your photo-capturing shutter controls? Hitting the volume button on a pair of compatible, connected headphones will have the same effect.

11. Save your data allowance by limiting app access.

You're just a third of the way through the month, and your 2GB data allowance is already starting to look a little stretched. You don't have to cut back on your on-the-go Netflix viewing though. Instead, select which apps get demoted to the Wi-Fi-only B-list. Go to Settings > Mobile Data where you can make the big decisions one app at a time.

12. Improve your battery life.

Spotlight, Apple's connected quick-access for key data and services, is great for offering instant access to the latest breaking news, sports scores and social updates. But that much stuff going on in the background can eat your battery life whole. Unless you turn off Spotlight features for certain apps to eke out more life per charge, that is. "How?" we hear you cry? Just go Settings > General > Spotlight Search and limit what's pulling in data behind your back.

13. Improve your signal by knowing where to look for it.

No need to hang out of a first floor window trying to discover where your iPhone's connection is best. Type *3001#12345#* into your iPhone's dialler and hit call to launch the hidden Field Mode tool. This sub-surface menu turns your bar chart-based signal indicator into a far more straightforward numerical-based signal signifier. Got a score of -50? Then you'll be enjoying HD video streams on the move. Down around -120, though, and you'll struggle to send a text. Just follow the numbers to better signals.

14. Use your phone like an Etch-a-Sketch to erase.

You might have already stumbled across this one in a fit of rage, but like your childhood etch-a-sketch, your recent iPhone activities can be erased simply by giving the thing a good ol' shake. Perfect for the plump of finger and poor of spelling, who want to skip the endless backspace bashing with a firm handset rattle. And if you're shivering rather than shaking? Don't worry: a pop-up will ensure you want to delete before erasing your typing.

15. Find out exactly how long you've been waiting for a reply.

We've all been there: endlessly rechecking our phones for a text reply, wondering how long it's been since we sent our message of love/ ransom demand. There's an easy way to find out, though - simply swipe in from the right-hand side of the screen when in a messaging thread, to show precise delivery times for every message sent and received. True: it's not as morale-beating as WhatsApp's blue ticks, but it will still give you a complex over why it's taking over 42 minutes for your other half to reply. Do affairs really take that long?

16. Share your family tree with Siri.

Does referring to your parents by their given name make you feel awkward? Then teach Siri to know who you're chatting about. Ask Siri to call your dad and the digital PA should ask who your father is. Once a contact has been assigned to the parental moniker, every time you ask for pops moving forward, you'll be backed up by simple, fuss-free calling.

17. Swipe right to retreat.

For iPhone-owning Android converts, living without a dedicated back button can be a difficult adjustment to make. While the iPhone might not have an ever-present command to put things in reverse, there is a simple way to head in the wrong direction. Within a number of apps — from Safari to Mail, via Messages — swiping from left to right on the screen will send you back to the previous page or menu. Who needs a dedicated button when you've got a more elegant solution?

For More development and CS/IT/ME Computer IT Courses please contact : 9568180808