OnePlus teases Nord 2 5G's design in new teaser

OnePlus isn't one to keep its upcoming devices under lock and key. The company has shown off the Nord 2 5G in a teaser poster on social media, featuring a rear side similar to the OnePlus 9. Its camera module sits at the top-left corner of the casing with a primary 50-megapixel Sony IMX766 sensor with OIS. OnePlus hasn't shown the display, but previous leaks claim it comes with a punch-hole for the selfie camera. The company confirmed it's a 6.43-inch 90Hz AMOLED panel with HDR10+ certification.

The OnePlus Nord 2 5G will come with a custom-developed Dimensity 1200 chip called Dimensity 1200-AI and Android 11-based OxygenOS 11.3. According to the company, it will get two major Android updates and three years of security updates. OnePlus will launch the Nord 2 5G on July 22.

Source: GSMArena

WhatsApp experiments with encrypted cloud backups on Android

Photo by Torsten Dettlaff from Pexels

WhatsApp offers end-to-end encryptions for your messages. But if you back up these messages on the cloud, authorities can use a search warrant to have Google Drive or iCloud hand over access to your data. Now, the Facebook-owned messaging service has enabled tech that allows it to independently encrypt your backups in the cloud in the recent beta update on Android (2.21.15.5).

The caveat is you shouldn't forget your passcode or lose your 64-digit recovery key because you'll be locked away permanently. WhatsApp can't help you get in. If you're willing to make that tradeoff, you can try to get in the beta test group or wait for the feature to roll out to everyone. WhatsApp is also testing a version of its software that works across different devices, so you get end-to-end encryption whether you use the app on the phone or not.

Source: The Verge

Xiaomi overtakes Apple in smartphone shipments during Q2 2021

For the first time, Chinese tech company Xiaomi has overtaken Apple in the global smartphone shipments ranking for the second quarter of 2021 with 17% of the market share. According to Canalys research, smartphone shipments grew 12% last quarter as COVID-19 vaccination programs are happening worldwide. 

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Valve's Steam Deck is a handheld gaming PC

Source: Valve

Valve's long-rumoured Switch-like handheld device is now official. But the Steam Deck is more a handheld PC gaming device than a direct competitor to Nintendo's handheld console. 

It runs on an AMD APU with a quad-core Zen 2 CPU with eight threads and eight compute units' worth of AMD RDNA 2 graphics. It has 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and three storage tiers: 64GB eMMC storage (USD 399), 256GB NVMe SSD (USD 529), and 512GB high-speed NVMe SSD (USD 649). You can also expand storage with a microSD card.

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