OnePlus 11R 5G review: Not perfect, but mid-premium pricing makes up for it

by Hansraj Agrawal | Feb 27, 2023 | Technology

The India-exclusive OnePlus 11R 5G is a mid-premium smartphone designed in the shadow of its premium elder sibling, the OnePlus 11 5G (review). It has the same form factor, featuring a two-side curved screen, tapered frame, and fingerprint resistant glass back cover with ring-shaped camera island. The resemblance continues on the interface side too with both smartphones running the same version of Android 13 operating system-based Oxygen OS.

The OnePlus 11R and OnePlus 11 look identical and it is difficult to know which is which, if both are put side-by-side. Therefore, buyers do not have to settle down with something that looks inferior in comparison to the premium model. Important to note, however, there have been tradeoffs in the making of the OnePlus 11R to match the price. For example, it has a plastic frame.

The OnePlus 11R is geared to performance and it ticks the right boxes. Starting with the screen, it is a 6.7-inch 10-bit HDR10+ certified AMOLED panel of 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. The screen automatically adjusts the frame rate between 40Hz, 45Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz – based on on-screen content requirements. This enables smooth experience without compromising on the power efficiency. Complementing the smooth experience is the brightness, which goes all the way up to 1450 nits. It essentially means consistent screen experience irrespective of lighting conditions.

Adding to the experience is the dual stereo speakers powered by Dolby Atmos. The speakers are loud and clear, but not balanced because the earpiece unit that doubles up as a second speaker is not as loud and clear as the primary bottom-firing speaker. Nevertheless, the audio quality from the speakers is good for everyday use.

Coming to the performance, there is no significant difference in the OnePlus 11R and OnePlus 11. Like its elder sibling, the OnePlus 11R handles day-to-day operations with ease and shows no restraint in running power-and-graphic intensive tasks. Importantly, there is no thermal issue and the phone delivers consistent performance even after extended usage. The performance is alike while gaming with commonly available graphic-intensive gaming titles playable in peak graphic settings.

Speaking of games, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in the OnePlus 11 has native support for a ray-tracing engine for realistic lights, highlights, and shadow details in games.

This makes the premium model future ready, especially with regard to mobile gaming experience. Currently, however, the OnePlus 11R is as good a gaming smartphone as the OnePlus 11.

Rounding up the performance is the stellar on-battery time. The OnePlus 11R has a 5000 mAh battery, which is good for a day of mixed usage. Charging is quick with the supplied 100W wired charger, which takes less than 30 minutes to replenish the battery to 100 per cent from 10 per cent.

The OnePlus 11R is a performance-focused smartphone and it delivers on core capabilities. Unfortunately, imaging is not part of the experience. Not that the OnePlus 11R has a bad camera system but the experience is generic.

The OnePlus 11R sports are triple-camera array on the back, featuring a 50-megapixel primary camera sensor with optical image stabilisation, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle sensor of 120-degree field-of-view, and a 2MP macro lens. It is the only primary camera sensor that lives up to expectations with consistent performance in varied lighting conditions. The large sensor enables natural shallow depth-of-field, which adds zing to regular shots. Besides, it is quick in fixing focus and gets it right most of the time. The ultra-wide-angle camera is good in daylight conditions, but struggles in low-light. Besides, there is no colour consistency and the sensor tends to soften the frame in post processing that results in missing crucial details such as shadows, highlights, contrast, etc. The macro lens is there for novelty with limited usage applicable only in good light conditions. On the front, the OnePlus 11R has a 16MP camera sensor. It is good, but not the best.

Verdict

The OnePlus 11R is a capable smartphone with strong core capabilities geared toward performance. It has a bright and vivid screen, loud stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos, swift performance, and clutter free OxygenOS interface. Imaging from supplementary cameras put it a notch below others, but the phone’s mid-premium pricing (Rs 39,999 onwards) makes up for it.

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Google achieves quantum error correction milestone: Sundar Pichai

by Hansraj Agrawal | Feb 27, 2023 | Technology

Google has achieved an experimental milestone of scaling a logical qubit, demonstrating for the first time that it’s possible to reduce errors by increasing the number of qubits, its CEO Sundar Pichai has said.

In quantum computing, a qubit is a basic unit of quantum information that can take on richer states that extend beyond just 0 and 1.

“Our breakthrough represents a significant shift in how we operate quantum computers. Instead of working on the physical qubits on our quantum processor one by one, we are treating a group of them as one logical qubit,” said Pichai.

As a result, a logical qubit that Google made from 49 physical qubits was able to outperform one it made from 17 qubits, according to the research published in the journal Nature.

Google’s quantum computers work by manipulating qubits in an orchestrated fashion that it calls quantum algorithms.

The challenge is that qubits are so sensitive that even stray light can cause calculation errors — and the problem worsens as quantum computers grow.

“This has significant consequences, since the best quantum algorithms that we know for running useful applications require the error rates of our qubits to be far lower than we have today. To bridge this gap, we will need quantum error correction,” Pichai explained.

Quantum error correction protects information by encoding it across multiple physical qubits to form a “logical qubit,” and is believed to be the only way to produce a large-scale quantum computer with error rates low enough for useful calculations.

“Instead of computing on the individual qubits themselves, we will then compute on logical qubits. By encoding larger numbers of physical qubits on our quantum processor into one logical qubit, we hope to reduce the error rates to enable useful quantum algorithms,” said Pichai.

Three years ago, Google quantum computers were the first to demonstrate a computational task in which they outperformed the fastest supercomputers.

Someday, said Pichai, quantum computers will be used to identify molecules for new medicines, create fertilisers using less energy, design more efficient sustainable technologies from batteries to nuclear fusion reactors, and produce physics research that will lead to advances we can’t yet imagine.

“That’s why we’re working on eventually making quantum hardware, tools and applications available to customers and partners, including through Google Cloud, so that they can harness the power of quantum in new and exciting ways,” Pichai noted.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Nokia logo updated for first time in 60 Years with new goals at MWC 2023

by Hansraj Agrawal | Feb 27, 2023 | Technology

Focusing on aggressive growth, Finnish telecom equipment manufacturer Nokia announced on February 26, 2023, that it was changing its brand identity for the first time in nearly 60 years, complete with a new Nokia logo. The word “NOKIA” has five distinct shapes in the new logo. The old Nokia logo’s recognisable blue colour has been replaced by a variety of other colours, depending on the application.

In an interview, Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark stated: “There was an association with smartphones earlier; today we are a business technology company.” He made the remarks ahead of the company’s business update on the eve of the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC 2023), which will begin on 27 February in Barcelona and run until March 2.

In 2020, when he took over as CEO of the struggling Finnish company, Lundmark devised a three-stage plan: reset, speed up, and expand. Lundmark stated that the second stage was beginning now that the reset stage had been completed. Although Nokia intends to expand its service provider business, in which it sells telecom equipment, the company’s primary focus is now gear sales to other businesses.

In order to sell private 5G networks and gears for automated factories to customers primarily in the manufacturing sector, significant technology companies have formed partnerships with telecom gear manufacturers like Nokia. Nokia intends to evaluate various options, including divestment, as well as growth paths of its various businesses.

“The signal is exceptionally clear. Lundmark stated, “We only want to be in businesses where we can see global leadership.” As Nokia moves towards data centres and factory automation, it will also compete with big tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon.

The macro environment is reducing demand from high-margin markets like North America and replacing it with growth in low-margin India, which has forced rival Ericsson to lay off 8,500 employees. “This is a structural change,” Lundmark stated, adding that Nokia anticipates North America to be stronger in the second half of the year. “India is our fastest-growing market with lower margins.”

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Microsoft introduces next-gen hybrid cloud platform ‘Azure Operator Nexus’

by Hansraj Agrawal | Feb 27, 2023 | Technology

Microsoft announced that it is launching its next-generation hybrid cloud platform “Azure Operator Nexus” for communication service providers.

The tech giant believes that modern network infrastructure will assist its telecommunications partners to improve and monetise their existing infrastructure while also lowering their overall cost of ownership, reports TechCrunch.

Azure Operator Nexus will allow these companies to run their carrier-grade workloads both on-premises and on Azure.

“AT&T made the decision to adopt Azure Operator Nexus platform over time with expectation to lower total cost of ownership, leverage the power of AI to simplify operations, improve time to market and focus on our core competency of building the world’s best 5G service,” said Igal Elbaz, Senior Vice President, Network CTO, AT&T.

Microsoft’s EVP for Strategic Missions and Tech, Jason Zander, explained that the new hybrid cloud platform is a “combination of hardware, hardware acceleration, and the software that goes with it”.

“This is important, because Microsoft has a set of edge cloud hardware — but it’s not built for it. When you see vendors talking about using the same thing to run an IT workload as they are planning on running a telco network, it doesn’t work and it’s exactly why we’ve made this multi-year investment,” he added.

The tech giant is also launching Azure Operator Voicemail, a solution that enables operators to transfer their voicemail services to Azure as a fully managed service, as well as Azure Communications Gateway, a service that connects fixed and mobile networks to Teams.

The company will further launch two new “AIOps” services “Azure Operator Insights” and “Azure Operator Service Manager”.

“Operator Insights uses machine learning to help operators analyze the massive amounts of data they gather from their network operations and troubleshoot potential issues, while Service Manager helps operators generate insights about their network configurations,” the report said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Twitter sacks product manager Esther Crawford in another round of layoffs

by Hansraj Agrawal | Feb 27, 2023 | Technology

Following another round of layoffs, Twitter product manager Esther Crawford is no longer employed by the company.

Crawford led various projects at Twitter, including the company’s Blue with verification subscription and its forthcoming payments platform.

More than 50 employees were impacted by the layoffs, which were spread across several departments. Martijn de Kuijper, the creator of the now-shuttered Revue newsletter platform that Twitter acquired in 2021, was also among them, reports The Verge, citing sources.

With this recent cut, the Twitter CEO Elon Musk has done at least four rounds of layoffs.

This is happening despite his promise not to sack more employees after his brutal layoff exercise in November last year that affected two-thirds of the micro-blogging platform’s 7,500 employees.

On Sunday, it was reported that the Twitter CEO was laying off more Twitter employees and affected employees received notices via email on Saturday.

The recent cut targeted a number of departments, including ads and infrastructure engineering.

Now, the company likely has less than 2,000 employees, which was about 7,500 when Musk took over.

Earlier this month, Musk had laid off dozens of workers across sales and engineering departments, including one of Musk’s direct reporting executive, who was managing engineering for Twitter’s ads business.

The company also shut down two of its three India offices and directed its employees to work from home, as part of the Twitter CEO’s mission to cut costs and turn the struggling social media service profitable.

Twitter closed its offices in New Delhi and financial hub Mumbai.

In November last year, Musk fired more than 90 per cent of its staff in India, around 200-plus.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Twitter lays off 200 employees, nearly 10% of current workforce: Report

by Hansraj Agrawal | Feb 27, 2023 | Technology

Twitter Inc has laid off at least 200 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, the New York Times reported late on Sunday, in its latest round of job cuts since Elon Musk took over the micro-blogging site last October.

The layoffs on Saturday night impacted product managers, data scientists and engineers who worked on machine learning and site reliability, which helps keep Twitter’s various features online, the NYT report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The company has a headcount of about 2,300 active employees, according to Musk last month.

The latest job cuts follow a mass layoff in early November, when Twitter laid off about 3,700 employees in a cost-cutting measure by Musk, who had acquired the company for $44 billion.

Musk said in November that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation.

Twitter recently started sharing revenue from advertisements with some of its content creators.

Earlier in the day, The Information reported that the social media platform laid off dozens of employees on Saturday, aiming to offset a plunge in revenue.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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