iPhone SE 2 Leak Ahead of Early 2020 Launch

Rumors of Apple iPhone SE 2 have been doing the rounds for some time now. Since Apple unveiled its iPhone SE, rumors started of a new successor to that phone. But Apple has remained mum on the issue. Yet again, rumor mills have started churning; this time around it has to do with an updated antenna. The so-called updated antenna will supposedly improve connectivity. The details are not so clear cut at the moment, but the supposed antenna is made from LCP.

Antenna for the Rumored iPhone SE 2: 

It all started when renowned analyst Ming-Chi Kuo started releasing information on the device. The latest to come from her direction was news of an antenna. The antenna is said to improve connectivity for the phone.

The report does not give details of what the antenna will be made out of but has hinted at an LCP based antenna. Another thing mentioned is that one of Apple’s suppliers is rumored to be providing the antennas components in early 2020 for iPhone SE 2.

The antenna will be able to deliver gains of up to 5.1 decibels and will also fit within an adjustable package. This should help with packaging.

LCP is a substance that is a low-cost organic substrate. This substrate works consistently and is said to have a low loss outcome.

Back to our analysis- Launch of the iPhone SE 2 maybe sometime in 2020. This time around there has been no fresh news of what to expect from the handset. But if previous reports are to be believed, then the new iPhone SE 2 will run on an Apple A13 SoC, with 3GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of internal storage. The phone is also rumored to be 5G compatible.

Rumored Price of the new iPhone SE 2: 

The phone is rumored to be available at $399.

In Other Apple News: 

In some previous report it was also hinted that Apple was planning on launching 4 new iPhone 12s. All of these rumored iPhone 12s seem to be 5G compatible as well. Apple had finally incorporated a third sensor to its iPhone 11 Pro Max. Reports also suggest that Appel is also going to add a ToF sensor on next year’s model as well.

What the iPhone SE 2 will Look Like: 

iPhone SE 2 which may be Apple second budget phone may look more like the iPhone 8 rather than the earlier iPhone SE. Meaning, that the new iPhone SE 2 may have a 4.7-inch display and a home button. The feature that it will not have is Face ID. It may also have a single rear facing camera not the dual set up that iPhone 11 seems to have.

As for colors the phone may come in space grey, red or silver. None of any of this seems new, but this will help in keeping the price low. At present the cheapest iPhone is iPhone 8 coming in at $449a.

iPhone 6s Plus Service Program for No Power Issues

While Apple is busy with the new iPhone 11, it still keeps tabs on its older phones. If you happen to have brought an iPhone 6s or 6sPlus recently, you might just be able to get it repaired for free. The no power issue with the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus seems to affect iPhones manufactured between October 2018 to August 2019. These phones all have a similar serial number, which may have the problem. The problem is when the phone does not power on due to a component part that might fail. Apple has even provided a serial number check to see if you’re affected, and offer a free iPhone 6 Plus Service program.

The iPhone 6 Plus Service Program?

With iPhones 6s and 6s Plus not powering on due to a failure on behalf of a component part, Apple has now initiated the iPhone 6 Plus service program. Under this program, you can get your iPhone 6s repaired for free if any breakdown is caused by the said issue. If you already have paid to get your iPhone repaired, then Appel is willing to give you a refund.

Any prior issues will have to be repaired first, like a cracked screen, for example, before the issue can be resolved.

iPhone 6 Plus Service Program, not the only Program in Town?

This isn’t the first time iPhone 6 has come under the radar with its issues. In 2016, Apple started the iPhone 6s Program for Unexpected Shutdowns and a worldwide Battery Replacement program too. All these programs are geared towards the iPhone 6.

Under the iPhone 6s program for unexpected shutdowns, the iPhone 6s will be covered for a period of 2 years since its initial sale.

Is your iPhone 6s in Trouble?

Apple has said that the not – powering on issue affects only certain iPhone 6s’ and 6s’s plus. Only a certain series of these phones are affected. To know if your iPhone 6s is affected, you can always check with Apple’s Support page. In this support page, Apple has given users the ability to check if the user’s phones are eligible for the iPhone 6s Plus service program. All you have to do to check if your phone is eligible is to enter your iPhone serial number into the serial box.

Apple has also said that by providing the iPhone 6s Plus service program, does not mean that Apple is extending the standard warranty on all these phones. This program will supposedly cover the phone for only two years after your initial purchase.

The free repair will only be applicable in cases where the iPhone isn’t powering up due to the Component failure. Any other issue will have to be looked in to at the user's expense.

Where to get your Phone Looked into if you’re Eligible for the iPhone 6s Plus service program?

You can have your phone looked at in an Apple store or in an Apple-authorized service provider, or alternatively, you could get in touch with Apple Support online, if you happen to be affected by the issue.

Privacy Tools in iOS 13: Get the Most out of Apples new Privacy Tools

To avoid viruses, bugs and what have you, out there, the best and most effective way is to get the latest software update. You may have heard this more than once from family, friends, and your neighbor’s grandma, but do not underestimate the power of the latest software update. Especially if it’s an iOS 13 update. The latest version of OS for Apple iPhone users came somewhere last week. This week, iPad users too can get more security with the latest version of IPads being released. Apart from the many new features, the new OS brings, updates to privacy tools is one of the key highlights of the new iOS 13.

Some of the New privacy Tools in iOS 13:

There are many cool and necessary privacy tools in iOS 13, one of them being a shortcut to automatically creating burner email addresses when signing in to apps. There is also a feature that silences Robo callers, where was this before now? Besides all this, there are even fewer buttons which aid in minimizing sharing of location data with third parties.

A Word of Warning:

As with most updates, with getting the latest in OS features, there are also several bugs to contend with. This one too is no exception. A word of caution, you may want to wait for a few more weeks till all the glitches are sorted out before you go on and download the latest version of iOS.

Logging in to Apps with a Burner Address:

The most useful privacy tool in iOS 13 is the ability to sign in to third party apps with Apple’s ID. This is not new to the tech world, however. The same is seen in both Google and Facebook. But to lend a little twist to the feature, Apple has now added a burner email to the cocktail.

When you register for a new app, they invariably ask you for your email ID. This is the point where you have the option to log in using your Apple credentials. Once you do this, Apple will ask you if you’d like to hide your email ID. When you accept this option, Apple essentially creates a burner email ID for you.

No more Robo Callers with the New Privacy Tools in iOS 13:

Robo calls are the most annoying thing yet. They call you throughout the day, and you go and pick them up only to place your phone down a second later, talk about a waste of time.

But with Apple’s new Privacy tools in iOS 13, you’ll be able to end this menace once and for all. You can activate this feature by going into settings and selecting “silencing unknown callers” option. So any time you get a call from an unknown person, the phone won’t ring or vibrate but will just show the notification on the screen. The robocall is automatically forwarded to voicemail.

While this may be good at getting rid of robocalls, it at the same time gets rid of calls from relevant unknown persons too.

Apple Metal: The App Developer and Everything You Should Know About It

The Apple Metal is a low-level hardware-accelerated 3D graphic, and compute shader application programming interface. It provides direct access to the GPU (graphics processing units) that helps you to enable and maximize the graphics of the applications on your iOS, macOS and tvOS. Developed by Apple, Metal first came into existence on June 2014.

The app has developed on an easily approachable and low-overhead architecture that has the pre-compiled GPU shaders, multithreading support, finely grained resource control. Thus, the Apple Metal evolves in the support for different GPU driven command creation that simplifies the functioning with an array of this Metal-capable GPUs. It gives them access to the user to tap on the pro Power of Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR.
What are the new features in Apple Metal?

• GPU-driven compute encoding:

  Apple Metal is moving beyond the rendering passes, Metal in iOS 13 and tvOS 13 empowers the GPU to such extent that it now can construct its commands. Plus, it also enables indirect compute encoding too. The complete scenes can be built using the advanced tessellation and culling processes, and techniques. This can also be scheduled with little or zero CPU interaction.

• Improved Acceleration of Raytracing:

  The Apple Metal performance Shaders or the MPS are capable of speed up the Raytracing operations more. Why? Well, MPS can move the bounded volume hierarchy construction to GPU. Metal Performance Shaders are also capable of providing new and optimized de-noising filters to an essential collection of those highly-optimized compute and graphics shaders. Thus, the MPS improved the acceleration of Raytracing.

• Metal for Pro Apps:

  With the macOS Catalina, the content-creation applications are now capable of taking the advantages of Apple Metal too. The peer groups of Metal have made it easy to share the data rapidly between several GPUs in Mac Pro. The best part of this feature is you don’t have to transfer these data to the main memory. In addition to that, the enhancement of CAMetalLayer helps users to get access to the High Dynamic Range of capabilities of the Pro Display XDR.

• Simpler GPU Families:

  Apple Metal has made developing an easy task to do. With simplified GPU families, it is even easier now. There are three well-considered groupings there that allow you to target the functionalities easily which are common in all of the Metal enabled GPUs. It has improved the harness support to the third party GPUs on your macOS.

• Apple Metal memory debugger:

  The Apple metal memory debugger will help the user to get an insight into how much memory is the Metal objects consuming at runtime. It suggests youimprovements on how the resources are configured. This way one can take the full advantage of Metal.

• Apple Metal-enabled iOS Simulator:

  The simulator helps to speed up the development of iOS applications using Metal. It either uses Metal directly or depends on the Metal-based system frameworks. It perfectly helps the transitioning from OpenGL ES to Metal to happen smoothly.

Metal is the best platform developed by Apple to help the developers. Try it now.

iPhone 11 Pro: All you Should Know About It

Tuesday was the day Apple released its newest addition iPhone 11 Pro to its iPhone range. While there was a lot of talk of the phones, the thing that really stood out with people was the stove like camera set up going on at the back of the phone. The camera has a mid night green color, if you’ve ever heard of such a thing, and is called “slowfie”. But besides this there were still some features that went unnoticed or they were just overshadowed by the weird looking camera.

Talk about Wi Fi 6 and that’s exactly what we’re going to do:

Lo and behold the new iPhone 11 Pro as well as its siblings come with Wi Fi 6, the latest and greatest in wireless networking. This is just like what Samsung did with its S10 phone too. So it’s no surprise too that the Cupertino based company did it too. By having Wi Fi 6 does not mean that the new iPhone 11 pro will not be compatible with earlier version of Wi Fi. It’s just that now with the new Wi Fi in town, communication is a lot faster and larger amounts of data can be transferred at a time than before. Not only that the new Wi Fi 6 allows devices to conserve battery by scheduling transmissions. Besides that you’ll still get better reception even in crowded places such as airports and stadiums. But getting back to iPhone 11 Pro, you won’t see any of Wi Fi 6 just yet, since the New mode of communication isn’t certified at present.

iPhone 11 Pro with ultra- Wideband Chip:

This was not given enough attention in Apple’s keynote but is still worthy enough for a mention in their official product site. This new chip dubbed “U1” increases the phone’s spatial awareness. This basically means that they are better placed now to find other iPhones that are in close proximity to it, say like in the same room. This chip will seemingly work better with AirDrop a feature that allows you to share files wirelessly with another iPhone. So just by pointing you’re device to the other iPhone in the room you’ll be able to send files to it.

iPhone 11 Pro with 18W Charger in the Box:

This is something that Samsung users have enjoyed for a little while now, I’m talking fast charging. Now Apple’s in on the game too with the new 18W USB C charger that it will ship with iPhone 11 Pro and its max counterpart. Seemingly you’ll be able to get 50% charge in just 30 minutes with this new charger in tow.

Gained a Little more weight this time around:

The iPhone 11 Pro and its max sibling weigh just a little bit more this year as compared to its last year’s counterpart. 18 grams more to be exact. But it may just fly under the radar since the weight increase isn’t that much.