FIFA 21 has already been globally released on 9th October. It somewhat matched the hype as EA Sports brought some changes demanded by the fans over the years.
The most notable feature of FIFA 21 is the Co-Op mode. You can play Division Rivals, Squad Battles and Friendlies with your friends.
The next-gen console, Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series S and X have also been released in November. FIFA 21 gave an option of Dual Entitlement which will allow you to upgrade the FIFA 21 from your old console to the next-gen consoles for free.
So, FIFA 21 will be coming to the PS5 and Xbos Series S and X on 4th December.
What to expect from FIFA 21 in the next-gen consoles?
Feel Next Level
PS5™ DualSense™ Haptics
Push-Pull Physics
Sights & Sounds
Move Next Level
Next Level Realism
Responsive Multi-Touch Animations
Off-Ball Humanization
See Next Level
GameCam
LiveLight Rendering
PreMatch Live
Big Goal Moments
Play Next Level
Lightning Fast Load Times
PlayStation Activities
Shared Progression
Most players who've purchased #FIFA21 on current gen consoles can now download & play the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S version. Worldwide availability will follow as we ramp up towards official launch on December 4.
Many people have already got access to FIFA 21 on their next-gen consoles. EA Sports are gradually releasing the update and everyone will definitely get on 4th December on its worldwide release.
Qualcomm launched Snapdragon 865 in March of this year. Now, they have announced a better version of it which will be called Snapdragon 888. Earlier, Qualcomm was supposed to name this as Snapdragon 875. But, some people believe that the digit 8 is lucky as per the traditions, thus the name was later changed to Snapdragon 888. So, how is Snapdragon 888 better than Snapdragon 865? What is the difference between the two chips?
Manufacturing process
Snapdragon 865 was built on a 7nm manufacturing process but the Snapdragon 888 is built on a smaller size of the transistor of 5nm. This smaller size will benefit the latter by increasing the number of transistors and offering higher power efficiency.
CPU
The Snapdragon 865 has one Cortex-A77, three Cortex-A77, and four Cortex-A55. Whereas, Snapdragon 888 has one Cortex-X1, three Cortex A78, and four Cortex-A55. The Cortex A78 is considered to have 20% more power than the Cortex-A77. Thus, what we can infer from this is that Snapdragon 888 will be more powerful than Snapdragon 865. Also, Cortex-X1 might offer approximately 23% improvements over the Cortex-A78’s performance.
AI Engine
Snapdragon 865 offered only 15 TOPS or Tera operations per second. Snapdragon 888 goes a notch above and will offer 26 TOPS. This is the highest AI engine TOPS in any mobile device.
GPU
Older Snapdragon 865 will have the GPU Adreno 650 whereas the newer Snapdragon 888 possesses the GPU Adreno 660. This Adreno 660 is 35% better in terms of performance over the Adreno 650.
Of course, we really souped this thing up for gaming. The #Snapdragon 888 #5G provides unrivaled speed and stamina for elite gamers everywhere with the 3rd gen of #Snapdragon Elite Gaming, which delivers a 35% increase in GPU performance on top of the usual features it offers. pic.twitter.com/37np5nR7S4
The Snapdragon 888 beats Snapdragon 865 in the camera & image processing domain as well. The older version of SoC had Spectra 480 ISP. It can support a single camera of up to 200MP and a dual camera of up to 24MP. Snapdragon 888 will be having Spectra 580 ISP. It will support a single camera to the same level as Snapdragon 865 but it will offer up to double (48MP) support to the dual camera.
Finally, we built the #Snapdragon 888 #5G Mobile Platform to enable you to take pro-level photos and videos. With our new gigapixel ISP, you can capture photos and videos at 2.7 gigapixels per second, or 120 photos at 12 MP resolution in 1 second. 📷 💪 #SnapdragonSummitpic.twitter.com/QxnHk9npHl
Snapdragon 865 had only a single 5G SIM support, whereas, Snapdragon 888 will come up with dual 5G SIM support. The former used to offer 5G connectivity in the first slot and 2G/3G/4G connectivity in the second slot. The latter will offer the same but will also give an option of 5G connectivity in the second slot.
Okay, I am pretty late in making this article as in India, the laptop was available pretty late, and due to stock issues, I could not get it. Indeed it’s been almost 7 months since this gaming laptop has been launched; however, fortunately, I got hands-on with the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 powered by Ryzen 9 4900HS and RTX 2060 Max-Q.
The gaming laptop is indeed the best in 2020, and various reasons are supporting that, but it’s mainly because of the insane Ryzen 9 4900HS. Paired with an RTX 2060, the laptop gives great gaming performance and proves its worth for productivity and content creation.
Honestly, at first, seeing the laptop, I never felt this is a gaming one, as it’s so sleek, considering this to be a gaming laptop and Ryzen 9 in it. Overall design impressions and other views will be reserved for a full review, and this will be a performance benchmark article followed by a dedicated article on gaming benchmarks.
Performance
I knew the processor would be a beast and in India, the Ryzen 9 variant was not available at launch and did take some time to arrive. However, the prices and stocks issues have always remained a concern for the ROG Zephyrus G14 because of the heavy demand, thanks to the pandemic.
Having used a Ryzen 4000U series powered VivoBook Flip 14 laptop as a daily driver, I always wanted to test a Ryzen 4000H APU, and I did get to test the best one. The Ryzen 9 4900HS is an 8 core, 16 threaded processor with 3.0GHz base clock speed and up to 4.3GHz boost clock speed, drawing a lower 35W TDP.
It comes paired with 16 GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q 6GB GDDR6 GPU. This, on paper, is a sick combo that can not only excel in gaming as well as productivity, considering you get a 14-inch 120Hz FHD IPS-level panel with Adaptive-Sync technology and excellent colour accuracy.
One of the biggest things I hate about gaming laptops is they had been bulky for years now, and battery life is pretty bad. Thanks to AMD’s efficient chips, the ROG Zephyrus remains silent and cool during normal work or until you summon the performance mode for heavy tasks or plug-in the charger.
To get the best performance out of the laptop, use it while charging, or if you want to play or work without the charger, you use the silent mode to save battery life. Be it working or gaming, this laptop is excellent either way and although it’s costly but worth spending.
Benchmarks
The first thing you have to do is UPDATE THE BIOS, yes, its very important because the version with which comes you this performance:
Before BIOS update
Whereas updating to the latest BIOS takes the performance to:
After BIOS update
There is a huge difference in clock speeds as the processor stretches its arm to the maximum with sustained TDP, and you hear the fans are actually ramping up. So, I updated Windows 10 to the latest version, used the latest AMD and NVIDIA drivers for the tests.
Starting with Cinebench R20, we see the Ryzen 9 4900HS scoring around 4065 points in multi-core whereas scoring 468 points in single-core, having an excellent 8.69 MP ratio. This score beats even a desktop Ryzen 7 2700X or even a Core i9-10980HK as per this database.
Coming to Cinebench R15, we get a score of 1749 points which is indeed powerful as well beating the Core i9-10980HK comfortably.
On the Geekbench 5 side, we have a lucrative 7647 points in multi-core, which is absolutely incredible on a laptop! This score puts the ROG Zephyrus G14 with Ryzen 9 4900HS above the Core i7-9700K and just inches apart from the desktop Core i9-9900.
Drawing just 35W of TDP, this kind of performance is great, however, the single-core score is pretty similar to what I got with my Ryzen 7 4700U, this area needs improvement by AMD with Ryzen 5000.
The PCMark 10 scores also show the laptop as an excellent contender for productivity and content creation. Overall, it got a score of 5503 points which is brilliant for gaming as well as productivity, and in Productivity, it got a score of 7037 points, 8439 points in Essentials, and 7618 in content creation.
In GeekBench 5, the RTX 2060 Max-Q graphics got a score of 66991 points which is also pretty impressive and even better than a desktop AMD Radeon RX 5700 GPU.
In 3DMark FireStrike, we see an incredible score of 13,537 points that shows how powerful both the RTX 2060 and Ryzen 9 4900HS combo is. The graphics score I got was 14,508 points and a physics score of 20,053 points, making it one of the most powerful gaming laptops out there.
The scenario almost remains the same in 3DMark FireStrike Extreme, the laptop managing a whopping 6726 points. If you closely notice, the CPU performance is what really impressed me; with heavier loads, the Ryzen 9 4900HS doesn’t throttle, at all.
In 3DMark Time Spy, the laptop performs quite well putting up a score of 5801 points where the GPU was scoring 5503 points whereas the CPU was scoring around 8394 points.
Whereas in Time Spy Extreme, the ROG Zephyrus G14 puts up a respectable score of 2694, proving its worth in extreme test cases as well.
Last but not the least, I even tested the RTX 2060 Max-Q’s ray tracing capabilities in 3DMark’s Port Royal test, where the GPU shined with a score of 3136 points, proving you can use ray tracing on this mobile GPU.
To put this CPU to test I even tried HandBrake where I did these two rendering tests:
1080p low to high 2:30 min video in 45 seconds
720p low to 1080p high 3:30 min video in 1.58 seconds
Literally, the rendering speeds can leave you spellbound, so whether it’s gaming or productivity, indeed the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 with Ryzen 9 4900HS and RTX 2060 Max-Q is amazing! Soon, I will be posting the gaming benchmarks of the laptop for over 15 modern titles, so keep an eye here.
American social media conglomerate corporation Facebook Inc. has been accused by Virtual-reality startups of using a familiar playbook to muscle out rivals. Virtual reality could be the digital platform of the future, and these accusations on Facebook have prompted a new line of scrutiny from U.S. competition enforcers.
Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion, which has helped them on the way to becoming the world’s biggest virtual-reality hardware maker. But the Justice Department’s antitrust division has now been drawn towards its practices, according to two people familiar with the matter.
This new investigation of Facebook’s virtual-reality business reflects broader concerns that the company has grown too powerful. During a hearing with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one U.S. lawmaker assigned the company’s supremacy to a simple tactic: Copy, acquire, and kill any company that seems like a competitive threat.
Facebook is pushing hard to establish its presence in virtual reality. Simultaneously, software developers and startup founders say that the company is now using that same playbook to undermine competition there. The Virtual reality market represents a unique opportunity for the social media pioneer to lead the world into the next state-of-the-art platform.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly preparing to bring an antitrust case against the social media powerhouse as soon as next week. However, Bloomberg has reported that investigation has been focused mostly on whether the company’s acquisitions of Whatsapp and Instagram harmed competition.
Facebook is the virtual-reality hardware market’s largest player by owning 39% share, according to data from market intelligence firm International Data Corporation. Other players market with smaller shares includes Lenovo Group Ltd., Sony Corp., and HTC Corp. Facebook launched its latest headset, the Quest 2, in October, cutting the price to $299 from $399.
Stan Larroque, the founder, and CEO of Lynx has accused Facebook of selling the latest version of the headset, the Quest 2, at a $50 loss per device, which makes it impossible for smaller device makers to compete.
“The message is we’re Facebook and we don’t care if we make money or not, but we’ll flood the market and virtual reality will be Facebook Reality pretty soon,” Larroque said according to Bloomberg.
Cix Liv, the co-founder of startup Yur Inc., has accused Facebook of eating the market alive; none of the competitors have a chance to breathe freely, with Facebook always going for the kill. Yur Inc. makes technology that can help Oculus games track fitness metrics. Liv had presented the idea to Facebook and claimed that it met all the prerequisites Facebook asked for; however, he was rejected. Furthermore, his company’s apps were completely blocked out, and Facebook later released a new version of Liv’s app in their own way.
In Q3 of 2020, Apple Watch has hit a record of shipments of about 11.8 million units. When this record is compared to the Q3 of 2019, it has a massive improvement of 75% year-on-year this year. In spite of the increase of shipments, looking at the overall shipments and market share, Apple is still in second place and Xiaomi in the top.
IDC, a research firm, has reported that in quarter three of 2020, Xiaomi led the shipments and market share to 13.5 units and 24.5%, respectively. Xiaomi always thinks about the customer of every price range. The company can sell its wrist wearables, which gives tough competition to Apple, which does not manufacture its watch for the low price range. Xiaomi showed growth of 27.8% YoY. In global shipments, Huawei ranked third, Fitbit fourth, and Samsung fifth.
Image Source: wccftech
When in the list, true wireless earbuds are added, the report looks different. The combined shipments and market share of Apple Watch and AirPod is about 41.4 million units and 33.1%, respectively. IDC stated about Apple’s shipment growth, “Apple led the market with 33.1% share during the quarter. AirPods, along with Apple Watches, was hugely popular due to pandemic driven demand. Apple’s expanding Watch lineup also ensured that devices were available at multiple price points, including new mid-level products such as the Watch SE.”
In this category, Xiaomi is in the second position with 17.0 million units, which is less than half of Apple’s. Even in the ranking of market share, Xiaomi is less than half of Apple’s market share. Huawei and Samsung are in third and fourth place, with year-over-year growth of 87.2% and 32.2%, respectively.
Image Source: wccftech
Samsung is concentrating on truly wireless earbuds and continuously releasing its new products. Due to the current pandemic and lockdown, the wearables market faced a negative growth in the first two quarters of this year. But now, in quarter three, the market of wearable finally took a turn for the better.
In the past few weeks, managers of teams competing in Europe have become very vocal about the schedules being too hectic for the players. Gary Neville recently compared Jurgen Klopp’s antics to those of Sir Alex Ferguson, who used to employ the same strategies to buy more recovery time for his players.
“On some things. The 12:30 pm kick-off, I don’t know why and the fans at home listening to this will not be able to understand why there’s a difference really between 12:30 pm and 3 pm in terms of players’ recovery, it’s two-and-a-half hours, what does that do?”
"The 12.30 is not as good for players – it's not. That's a fact."@GNev2 insists he has sympathy for Jurgen Klopp 'on some things' after his complaints about fixture congestion. #MNFpic.twitter.com/Ft5beLure9
“But I personally hated the 12 o’clock kick-off on a Saturday, particularly having played Champions League midweek.”
“It always felt like your legs were never the same, you were eating pasta at 9 o’clock in the morning.”
“I remember Patrice Evra saying his first game in English football was a 12 o’clock Manchester Derby at the Etihad – they used to play at 8 o’clock at night in Monaco.”
“There’s just something that is more difficult, particularly away from home, so that I agree with.”
“I don’t know what it is, I don’t know if it’s some psychological thing, whether it’s a body clock thing because you’re warming up at half-past ten in the morning or travelling to a game at a time that you don’t normally do, it doesn’t feel the same and it isn’t as good for a player.”
“But I also used to play for a manager, and there are hundreds of these quotes from Sir Alex Ferguson, who every single season would want that advantage to recover more, the ability to play at different times so it suited Manchester United and that’s what Jurgen Klopp wants now.”
However, here is why the Premier League will most likely not budge on the ‘rescheduling’ of games.
The Delayed Start to the Season
The most basic of explanations can be given for the fact that there are no other available dates for matches to be rescheduled. The season started about a month and a half late and will have to wrap up by May or June so that the 2021/22 season takes place normally.
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 07: Marcus Rashford of Manchester United celebrates scoring their second goal during the Premier League match between Everton and Manchester United at Goodison Park on November 07, 2020 in Liverpool, England. Sporting stadiums around the UK remain under strict restrictions due to the Coronavirus Pandemic as Government social distancing laws prohibit fans inside venues resulting in games being played behind closed doors. (Photo by Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
With EFL Cup and FA Cup ties taking up the midweek in the absence of other fixtures, when they are not held on the weekend, it is very difficult for the Premier League to arrange for the season any better than it already is.
The European Advantage
All things considered, the amount of money in football is absolutely undeniable. It is not a coincidence that only four of the Big Six in the Premier League take Champions League berths in most seasons.
Considering the financial backing behind these clubs, it is also a fair assumption that they have a good, quality squad depth to dive into if players need to be rotated. That advantage does not lie with a lot of the smaller clubs in the league, who often struggle to just make up the numbers alone.
The Turning of the Tables
If you’ve been following the Premier League at all this season, you will know that the league leaders have been changing almost every other week. And the Big Six are finally at a slight disadvantage over the rest of the league.
With the likes of Southampton, Aston Villa, and Everton all managing to take the competition to the entitled teams in the league, the entire thing has made for much more exciting viewing. And the Premier League, considering the way that they do business, will be damned if they let this slip away.
Five Subs Solution
Along with calls for a more flexible schedule, managers of the Premier League have been calling for the English league to follow the rest of Europe and reintroduce the five substitutions rule that was in effect when play resumed after lockdown.
Considering that the fixture schedule is packed, the five subs rule would be the way to go to protect the players, as well as to finish the season in time for the next one. However’ there must be a majority on the issue for it to go through as a rule in the league. That, as of yet, has not been achieved.
Borussia Dortmund starlet Erling Haaland is out until January. Borussia Dortmund manager Lucien Favre confirmed the injury before Dortmund’s game against Lazio in UEFA Champions League yesterday.
Erling Haaland has picked up a hamstring injury. He had torn his hamstring in the training session. Lucien Favre said to Sky Sports: “Erling Haaland will not be able to play again until January. Maybe he played too much. But he can’t play now.”
“He was injured in training. We initially thought it was not that bad. We cannot change it.”, he added.
Erling Haaland is a regular starter for the Bundesliga giant. He has already scored 17 goals this season in just 14 appearances. He also provided 3 assists this season. It is a huge blow for Borussia Dortmund before the busy December schedule. They still have 7 matches left including a UCL tie and DFB Pokal action.
Dortmund drew against Lazio yesterday. Raphael Guerreiro scored in the 44th minute. Ciro Immobile equals the score with a 67th-minute penalty. Dortmund is now leading the group with 10 points from the first 5 games.
In the Bundesliga, they are now standing 4th in the table. They are now 4 points away from the top.
With the absence of Erling Braut Halland, Borussia Dortmund now can rely on 16 years old Youssoufa Moukoko. “I think he’s the biggest talent in the world right now. 16 years and one day, that’s quite amazing. He has a big career ahead of him.”, Halland himself told about the young striker a few days back.
According to a complaint to be filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), American multinational technology company Google has reportedly violated US labor laws. The company has allegedly spied on workers who were organizing employee protests, then fired two of them, namely, Laurence Berland and Kathryn Spiers.
The complaint is related to the firing of the two employees, which was connected with employee activism in late 2019. Berland’s contract was terminated for reviewing other employees’ calendars. What made this firing scandalous was that Berland was organizing against Google’s decision to work with a firm widely known for its anti-union efforts, IRI Consultants. The NLRB has a new founding and believes that Google’s policy against employees looking at certain coworkers’ calendars is unlawful.
“Google’s hiring of IRI is an unambiguous declaration that management will no longer tolerate worker organizing,” Berland said in a statement according to The Verge. “Management and their union-busting cronies wanted to send that message, and the NLRB is now sending their own message: worker organizing is protected by law.”
On the other hand, in another scandalous firing, Spiers was let go after creating a pop-up for Google employees visiting the IRI Consultants website. According to the Guardian, the pop-up read as, “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.” In a statement that ruined Spiers’s reputation in the tech world, Google claimed Spiers had violated security policies. The firing was found to be unlawful by the NLRB.
“This week the NLRB issued a complaint on my behalf. They found that I was illegally terminated for trying to help my colleagues. Colleagues and strangers believe I abused my role because of lies told by Google management while they were retaliating against me. The NLRB can order Google to reinstate me, but it cannot reverse the harm done to my credibility,” Spiers was reported saying by The Verge.
Manchester United hosted Paris Saint-Germain in the matchday 5 of UEFA Champions League. United won the first meeting between the two in the group stage and it was expected that they would complete a double against PSG.
Neymar proved to be decisive again as PSG won the match by 3-1. Neymar scored in the 6th minute before Rashford equalised in the 32nd minute. At the start of the second half United looked most likely to score. They were playing with intensity but failed to put the ball into the net.
PSG captain Marquinhos put the visitors ahead with a tap in from Neymar’s corner. Fred, who was on a yellow card made a reckless tackle as soon as United went behind. This broke the United team and eventually the 10 men failed to stop PSG.
Neymar made a daunting run to start a counter-attack before finishing it off himself in the injury time. He was clearly the man of the match for his stellar performance.
In his post-match interview, Neymar made a strong statement. He opened up on his wish to play with Messi again.
He told ESPN: “What I want the most is to play with him (Messi). He can come here, to my team. No problem! Next year we have to do it. I want to enjoy with him on the pitch again. I want to enjoy the moments with him again. “
Lionel Messi’s Barcelona contract expires next summer. PSG, with their strong financial backing, can definitely make a move for Messi. On the other hand, it can also be a sign from Neymar to all the Barcelona presidential candidates that he wants to come back to Camp Nou.
Finally the Chinese brand ZTE has launched its latest smartphone ZTE Blade V2021 5G in China. This newly launched phone features a lot of great specifications, include- triple rear camera, a good battery life, great storage configuration, and many more. Let’s check out all these specifications of this phone.
The ZTE Blade V2021 5G sports a 6.52-inches HD+ display. The screen also has a 60Hz refresh rate. The phone has a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. The company offers three colour options for the buyers- Space Gray, Fantasy Blue, and Space Silver. In terms of dimension, the phone measures (165.9×75.8×8.9)mm and weighs 188 grams.
Under the hood, the phone is powered by MediaTek Dimensity 720 SoC and runs on Android 10 based MiFavor 10. This phone has two different combinations of its RAM and internal storage. They are as follows: 4GB+64GB and 6GB+128GB. Users can extend their storage by external MicroSD card and the storage is expandable up to 512GB.
Now enlighten the camera part. The phone has a triple rear camera setup on the backside, includes- 48 Megapixels of the primary camera sensor with f/1.79 aperture alongside an 8 Megapixels Ultra-wide sensor with 120-degree field of view and f/2.4 lens, and a 2 Megapixel Macro camera with f/2.4 aperture. On the front side, the phone has a teardrop-shaped cutout to hold an 8 Megapixel selfie camera sensor.
ZTE Blade V2021 5G has Dual-SIM(Nano) slot. The phone has a decent battery backup of 4,000mAh. The connectivity options include- 5G SA/NSA, Dual 4G VoLTE Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 5.1, a 3.5mm earphone jack, and a USB Type-C port.
Regarding the pricing and availability, the ZTE Blade V2021 5G has a price tag of CNY 999 (Roughly Rs. 11,200) for a 4GB+64GB storage configuration, whereas the 6GB+128GB variant is priced at CNY 1,399(Roughly at Rs. 15,700). The phone is already started to go on sale.
