Nintendo basically denies that it’s making a 4K Switch Pro

The launch of the Nintendo Switch OLED model shocked quite a few people, as rumors had been flying for months that it would be a whole lot more. It packs a 7-inch OLED display, whereas the previous model had a 6.2-inch LCD display. Not only is that quite an upgrade in terms of contrast, but it’s also a pretty big change in terms of the vividness of the colors and the brightness. Interestingly, earlier reports in the year got the display right, but also said that Nintendo was working on 4K output, and 4K support would have almost certainly meant more powerful hardware too. However, neither materialized.

Now, following a report from Bloomberg, Nintendo has basically denied that it’s making a 4K Switch Pro.

We also want to restate that, as we announced in July, we have no plans for any new model other than Nintendo Switch – OLED Model, which will launch on October 8, 2021. (2/2)

— 任天堂株式会社（企業広報・IR） (@NintendoCoLtd) September 30, 2021

The report in question from Bloomberg states that at least 11 companies have a development kit provided by Nintendo that could be used for making and testing 4K games. Reportedly, these companies range from large publishers to smaller studios and even one that has never made a console game before, Zynga Inc. Zynga spokeswoman Sarah Ross reached out to Bloomberg following the article’s publication to say that “Zynga does not have a 4K developer kit from Nintendo”. Nintendo told Bloomberg in a response to a list of questions before publication that their reporting was “inaccurate”, but declined to specify which parts.

Nintendo’s competitors in the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X have supported 4K output for several years now, putting Nintendo’s system at a technical disadvantage. According to Bloomberg, the kit given to developers supports 4K docked output, a much higher resolution than the currently available 1080p output. Previously, the publication had also reported that the company intended on using faster NVIDIA chips for the new 2021 Switch model, which may have been shuttered thanks to the global chip shortage.

Despite Nintendo’s complete denial, it wouldn’t be the first time that the company denied it was planning to do something that it later went on to do anyway. Famously, the company once denied that it was going to launch a larger 3DS, only to then release the 3DS XL later that month. In other words, is the company/was the company working on a 4K-compatible Nintendo Switch Pro? It’s possible we may never know.

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The Nreal Air are a pair of lightweight AR smart glasses that expand your phone’s viewing area

While consumer-oriented smart glasses haven’t seen much success in the past, companies are still betting big on the technology. Several OEMs have already showcased their unique implementations this year, including Xiaomi, Snapchat, Razer, and Facebook. Now, Nreal is joining the fray with its latest product — the Nreal Air.

The Nreal Air is a pair of lightweight AR smart glasses that aims to make using a smartphone a whole lot more immersive. While it looks a lot like Ray-Ban’s iconic Wayfarer, it offers a couple of cool features that make it rather unique. Once connected to your phone, the glasses project a massive virtual display right in front of your eyes that makes streaming TV shows or playing games on your phone a more immersive experience.

Nreal claims that the virtual display measures 130-inches when viewed at a simulated distance of 3 meters and a massive 201-inches at a virtual distance of 6 meters. The smart glasses feature OLED displays with high color density and as many as 49 pixels per degree (PPD). They also offer 90Hz refresh rate support.

Talking about the Nreal Air, Nreal’s founder Chi Xu said, “Consumers today are seeking lighter, but longer lasting AR glasses exclusively for streaming media and working from home. For instance, in Korea we’ve found that 78% of our users use Nreal Light to watch streaming content. Nreal Air builds on our Nreal Light offering and furthers our mission to spread AR globally. With Nreal Air, we’ve zeroed in on the perks of a portable movie theater and condensed this into lightweight AR sunglasses with a zero-footprint display, while making it affordable.”

The Nreal Air will be compatible with both Android and iOS devices, but buyers will have to purchase an adapter to use them with an iPhone or iPad. The smart glasses will go on sale in Japan, China, and South Korea later this year in December and make their way to other markets next year. At the moment, Nreal hasn’t shared exact pricing information, but the company says that the glasses will retail at a fraction of the price of the Nreal Light. The Nreal Light currently retails for €799 in Europe.

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BlueStacks X is the first streaming service for mobile games

BlueStacks today is launching BlueStacks X, a game-streaming service that’s focused exclusively on mobile games. If you’re unfamiliar with BlueStacks, the company has a service that lets you run Android apps on Windows. With 40 million monthly active users and 200k to 300k new downloads daily, the vast majority of BlueStacks users are going after one type of Android apps on their PC: games.

And that’s why the BlueStacks X streaming service is focusing on mobile gaming. Various other services are going after console games and bringing them to mobile, but BlueStacks is aiming to being you the games you’re already playing on your phone, but on different devices.

The new service is built in collaboration with now.gg, a hybrid cloud computing company. By using this hybrid technology, some of the game compute is going to be done in the cloud, while some can also be offloaded to your device, depending on your device’s capabilities. You’ll be accessing the service through the browser, but you need a browser that supports native graphics rendering.

Moreover, BlueStacks X is completely free, just like BlueStacks itself. It’s ad-supported, so you might see an ad before your game starts playing, but if that bothers you, keep in mind that if it hasn’t been for the streaming service, you’d have probably spent that time installing the game or an update.

“BlueStacks App Player recently crossed 1 Billion lifetime downloads. X is a natural next step for us. Hybrid cloud is a big technological breakthrough which makes it economically viable to launch the service,” said Rosen Sharma, CEO, BlueStacks Inc. “We are a trusted partner to top mobile game developers. There is a lot of excitement among them about X and some of the other innovations we have like deep Discord integration.”

Included in the service are over 200 games, all of which can be played for free. The company says that it’s adding more on a weekly basis. You can access BlueStacks X today on web browsers on iOS, Android, Windows 11, macOS, Chrome OS, and some smart TVs. There’s also a native client for X that’s available for Windows.

If you want to check it out, you can play around with the service here.

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Google Discover tests showing Islamic Prayer times to some users

For all the information that Google presents through Discover on the -1 homescreen, there’s always scope to provide more useful information beyond the usual news articles, weather updates, and ads. Google is now testing a new information card in Google Discover, one that shows the next Islamic prayer timings.

A user on Reddit spotted Google displaying the prayer timing for Asr namaz in their Google Discover screen. For those unaware, these timings indicate the start of each of the five mandatory prayer slots in the day for people who follow Islam.

According to the user, tapping on the prayer timing card launches a Google Search for “prayer times”. There’s nothing more to customize or configure on this end. Curiously, the reader actually wanted to remove the timing card as it was not relevant to them, and they had done nothing to enable it in the first place. So we’d definitely appreciate an option to opt-in and to opt-out too.

A prayer time card within Google Discover on the -1 homescreen, and a customizable notification to complement it, would be something that a lot of Muslims around the world would find useful. Although, this can be tricky to implement properly because of the deviations in regional timings and cultural practices for these prayers. However, this can be rolled out for some of the major sects first, and then be expanded to include timing offsets to account for the regional differences.

In my Google Nest Audio review, I commented how useful a Smart Speaker really was, outside of the US and other English-speaking regions. A function related to prayer timings and Adhan (the Islamic call-to-prayer) would have greatly elevated the experience in my household and brought along practical utility to the smart speaker beyond reading out the weather and news. Amazon has some Alexa Skills for prayer timings and Adhan, and it would be great to see Google also catching up in this space.

If you’d like to get rid of Google Discover entirely, do check out the Discover Killer Xposed module.

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IMDb TV, Amazon’s free streaming service, launches in the U.K.

Amazon has brought its ad-supported free streaming service, IMDb TV, to the U.K, packing both original and licensed content that wasn’t available on Prime Video before. IMDb TV launched in the U.S. a few years ago, and the service only recently announced an iOS and Android app. It’s initially going to be available via a carousel in Prime Video, though in the coming weeks, a standalone app will also be available on Fire TV. No subscription to Amazon Prime is required.

IMDb TV’s launch in the U.K. comes with a smaller selection of TV shows and movies for now, but it will be expanded in the future. Original U.S. content is available such as “Luke Bryan: My Dirt Road Diary” and “Moment of Truth”, but both of those are produced by Amazon Studios as IMDb TV exclusives. In the U.K., “Pulp Fiction” and “2 Broke Girls” are also available on the service. Ryan Pirozzi, co-head of content and programming at IMDb TV alongside Lauren Anderson, told Variety that the selection will be tailored specifically to customers in the U.K.

“Free streaming services are not unique, especially in the U.K., where there’s several broadcaster options [such as BBC iPlayer and Channel 4’s All4],” Pirozzi told Variety. “I think what is unique about us is ambitious, premium original series from Amazon Studios inside a free service: that is much more unique.”

As Pirozzi notes, Amazon likes to refer to IMDb TV as “the modern version of a network.” It’s seen as complementary to Prime Video, and they want to produce content that people might expect will be behind a paywall. The company hasn’t written off U.K. exclusive original content yet either, though it’s not happening any time soon.  Pirozzi says that the launch of IMDb TV is still “day one” for them and that they’re still learning from customers. The service is funded by advertisements that are shown in the middle of programming, and is entirely free to use.

If you live in the U.K., you can check out IMDb TV now.

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Fairphone’s latest smartphone offers a 5-year warranty and Snapdragon 750G

After being featured in multiple leaks over the past few weeks, the Fairphone 4 is now officially out. Built by Amsterdam-based company Fairphone, the Fairphone 4 is a sustainable smartphone that is easy to repair and has a lower environmental impact. The new model succeeds the Fairphone 3+ and offers a modern design, more powerful internals, and 5G support. The phone also comes with a 5-year warranty.

Fairphone 4: Specifications

Specification	Fairphone 4
Dimensions and Weight	162mm x 75.5mm x 10.5mm 225g
Display	6.3-inch LCD IPS Full HD+ (1080 x 2340) 410ppi Corning Gorilla Glass 5 19:5:9 aspect ratio
SoC	Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G 2x ARM Cortex-A77 @ 2.2GHz 6x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz Adreno 619 GPU 8nm process
RAM and Storage	6GB / 8GB RAM 128GB / 256GB flash storage MicroSD card support
Battery & Charging	3,905mAh battery 30W fast charging support (charger sold separately)
Rear Camera	Primary: 48MP f/1.6, OIS (Sony IMX582) Secondary: 48MP f/2.2 ultra-wide
Front Camera	25MP f/2.2 (Sony IMX576)
Ports	USB Type-C port
Connectivity	5G NFC Bluetooth 5.1 Type-C port WiFi 802.11.b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz + 5GHz)
Other features	Side-mounted fingerprint reader IP54 rating MIL-STD-810G compliance 9.2 out of 10 repairability score (128GB variant) DisplayPort support
Software	Android 11 Two major Android updates

Like its predecessors, the Fairphone 4 has a modular design, allowing users to easily swap out the battery, display, camera module, and other parts with a standard screwdriver. Despite the modular design, the phone has an IP54 rating and also boasts MIL-STD-810G compliance.

On the front, the Fairphone 4 flaunts a 6.3-inch Full HD+ LCD with a tall 19:5:9 aspect ratio and Corning Glass 5 protection. On the back, the phone features a dual-camera setup featuring a 48MP primary shooter with optical image stabilization and a 48MP ultra-wide camera with a 120-degree field of view. On the front, you get a 25MP selfie shooter.

The Fairphone 4 is powered by Qualcomm’s mid-range Snapdragon 750G chipset, paired with either 6GB or 8GB RAM and 128GB or 256GB flash storage that is expandable via a microSD card.

The phone packs a 3,905 mAh battery with 30W fast charging support via a USB Type-C port. In terms of connectivity, you get dual-band Wi-Fi support, Bluetooth 5.1, NFC, and dual SIM with 5G support on both SIMs. On the software front, the device runs a near-stock version of Android 11 out of the box. The company promises two major Android updates and software support until the end of 2025.

The Fairphone 4 comes in an eco-friendly package that only includes the phone and a quick start guide. The USB cable, dual-port 30W fast charger, and USB-C to 3.5mm audio jack adapter are sold separately. As always, all key spare parts of the Fairphone 4, including the rear camera module, LCD, battery, loudspeaker, and USB port, are available on the company’s site.

Pricing & Availabiltiy

Pricing for the Fairphone 4 starts at €579/£499  for the base model, while the 8GB/256GB model will set you back €649/£569. The phone is available for pre-order today and will start shipping on October 25. The phone comes in Grey, Green, and Speckled Green colors.

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[Update: More wallpapers] Download OPPO’s ColorOS 12 wallpapers ahead of the official rollout

Update (09/30/2021 @ 07:47 ET): OPPO has shared more ColorOS 12 wallpapers. Scroll to the bottom for more information. The article as published on September 7, 2021, is preserved below.

OPPO has been working on ColorOS 12 based on Android 12 for quite a while now. The company first released an Android 12 beta build for the Find X3 Pro shortly after Google dropped the first Android 12 beta at I/O 2021. But the build did not come with ColorOS 12. Although the company didn’t share a release timeline for its latest Android skin at the time, a recent leak revealed that OPPO would unveil ColorOS 12 on September 13. While OPPO still hasn’t confirmed the release date, it has now shared several new wallpapers that will be available on ColorOS 12.

In a recent post on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, OPPO shared nine new abstract wallpapers via the ColorOS handle. Here’s what they look like:

If you like what you see, you can download the full-resolution wallpaper files for your phone by following the link below.

Download ColorOS 12 wallpapers

Along with sharing the new wallpapers, the Weibo post confirms that OPPO will release ColorOS 12 in “mid-to-late September.” This is in line with previous leaks, so we expect the company to unveil its latest Android skin in the coming weeks. It’s worth mentioning that OPPO was among the first Android OEMs to release an Android 11 beta last year, and we expect the company to stick to that tradition this year as well.

While we don’t have all the details about ColorOS 12 right now, OPPO has previously announced that the updated skin will extend the personalization options available on Android 12. The company has also confirmed that ColorOS 12 will give users more privacy controls and offer better transparency when it comes to data security.

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Update: OPPO has shared more ColorOS 12 wallpapers

OPPO has shared even more ColorOS 12 wallpapers ahead of the stable release. The new collection includes 47 wallpapers that should be enough to help you keep your device looking fresh for the next few months.  You can download the new wallpapers by following the link below.

Download ColorOS 12 wallpapers

The company recently gave us our first look at the upcoming software upgrade, and it packs a bunch of new features and aesthetic changes. ColorOS 12 public beta releases are scheduled to roll out to the Find X3 series, the OnePlus 9 series, and more devices later this year. Until then, you can try out the new wallpapers.

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