ASUS ROG Phone II vies for gaming phone crown

ASUS Republic of Gamers

The gaming phone segment isn’t exactly a big market. But there are several contenders there. And after a year since it launched its first model, ASUS is back with a bigger and better model. ASUS didn’t change much with the phone’s design but improved it in other respects. The ROG Phone II is the first smartphone to sport the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus chipset, a tweaked version of the 855 built for better gaming and virtual reality use. The phone now has a 6.59-inch display with a 120Hz 10-bit HDR screen with 1ms latency. It now shows images twice as fast as the 60Hz of a normal phone, but this also has 60Hz and 90Hz modes available.

The ROG Phone II also now gets a bigger 6,000mAh battery, which is one of the biggest out there for a smartphone. But if you expect to game a lot on this device, then you’ll burn through this quicker. ASUS promises up to seven hours of non-stop PUBG action on this device. And with 30W ROG HyperCharge using a standard 3A cable, it can charge up pretty quickly, too.

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Slack gives its desktop app a performance boost

Slack is making life easier for its Windows and macOS users. The collaboration software has been rebuilt for both Windows and macOS to make it load 33 percent faster and use 50 percent less RAM than before. Many Slack customers will notice the change, but it’ll be particularly evident for those who use multiple workspaces. The company has been working on this overhaul for two years, and they have been modernizing parts of the code along the way. The new underlying code is now multi-workspace aware, meaning it won’t create a standalone copy for each workspace and take up RAM for each instance. What the program does is reuse components and rely on a modern codebase. The app itself still runs on Electron, but all the UI parts have been rebuilt using React.

For those who use Slack calls, that feature should be faster as well. And when you’re offline or suffer from a bad internet connection, the app now caches your session better. The app doesn’t get an offline mode per se, but you can now look back at messages in a channel or view conversations you were having before your connection dropped. All these changes have started rolling out to Slack users now.

Source: The Verge

Canadian Apple Watch Series 4 owners can now use the ECG app, get irregular heart rhythm notification

Here’s some great news for Apple Watch Series 4 owners. You can now use the ECG app and get irregular heart rhythm notifications as part of the free watchOS 5.3 update. Apple has received a Medical Device License from Health Canada for these two features. You can now take an electrocardiogram right from your wrist. This Apple Watch model can capture your heart’s rhythm in a moment when you experience symptoms like a rapid or skipped heartbeat. This in turn helps provide critical data for physicians. At the same time, the Apple Watch can now occasionally check heart rhythm in the background and send a notification if an irregular heart rhythm that appears to be atrial fibrillation is identified. watchOS 5.3 update is now available for download.

Google Photos on Android gets live video preview

Google Photos is making it easier to look for a video clip you need with its latest update. Version 4.20 of the Android app will automatically play back a video as you scroll through the main Photos tab. These clips have a white play icon and clip length at the top-right corner of the thumbnails. Google Photos will run through the entire recording without audio, and it’ll loop the video if you keep it in view. If there are multiple videos side-by-side, Google Photos will preview these in reverse chronological order. The feature is available in both the Month and Comfortable view options.

This feature isn’t limited to local content either. Those that are backed up to the cloud from other devices will get this option, too. However, it isn’t available in the search screens or in the album portion. This feature isn’t available on iOS yet and the web version only gives you a preview if you hover your mouse over a clip.

Source: 9to5Google