Reviewing a new iPhone is always a long-term affair. After all, with a number of new features packed into each iteration–from its processing prowess to the new camera to an improved display–there is much to dissect and experience over the course of discovering and using each new capability.

This time around, we got to spend quality time with the flagship iPhone 7 Plus 256GB variant in the all-new black colour, and it so happens that the bulk of the phone’s capabilities ups the ante by way of dual cameras, the faster A10 Fusion processor, a brighter and more colourful screen, stereo sound and more. So we decided to first deep dive into two key areas of use these specifications are honed toward photography and gaming.
The all-new camera(s)
Clearly, the most standout feature of the iPhone 7 Plus is its dual lens camera system. With a 12MP resolution, the camera is actually composed of two separate f/1.8 lenses–one wide angle and the other telephoto. Switching between the two is a simple matter of tapping the ‘1x’/’2x’ icon on the camera interface, enabling re-composing your subject in two different frames. The camera also features a wider color gamut that lets it capture more hues than most smartphone cameras.
and our of a marketplace at noon, the camera impressed with its ability to reproduce natural tones while nailing the exposure even during challenging lighting situations such as backlit subjects or mottled light that shines through trees. Also, the optical image stabilization made for razor-sharp shots of fast moving subjects (a toddler, in my case) which would otherwise result in blurry pictures in cameras without this feature.

And when roaming around the outdoors hunting for the next photo op, the one new feature that unexpectedly came in handy is its IP67 dust and water resistance. A sudden downpour? Passing lorry kicked up a dust cloud? The ability to just carry on using this phone in such scenarios is a huge plus–more for peace of mind than anything else.
Even the front camera made for vivid selfies with its support for the wide color gamut capabilities in its sensor. Apple does state that about 100 billion computer operations go into the capture of each photo. And while it’s not really possible to verify this, the results certainly do reflect.

High-def gaming
The new A10 Fusion processor in this phone is supposedly twice as fast as the one in the iPhone 6, with higher battery efficiency to boot. To put it through its paces I played a fair bit of the new Oz: Broken Kingdom game–one that is known for its intense graphics and character detail. This became especially evident in the phone’s HD screen and wide color gamut capability–the fight sequences seemed to pop with the specular lighting effects and in the hundreds of flying monkeys Blogging Kits.

Teamed with the phone’s Haptic feedback, stereo sound (a first for the iPhone, with speakers at both ends of the device,) gameplay was both responsive and immersive. With its increased abilities as a gaming platform, it’s clear that the iPhone 7 will enable game developers to push the limits on what they can deliver.

There’s plenty more to talk about on this phone, but my initial experience has been very positive. There happens to by a forthcoming update–iOS 10.1–which will add the much-anticipated ‘Portrait’ feature to the camera, enabling the kind of depth of field otherwise only reserved for DLSR photos.

We’ll be covering this and more as we continue to experience the new iPhone–stay tuned for more.

 

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It has been over three months since Niantic released its popular location-based augmented reality game Pokemon Go, but it is yet to come to several Asian countries, including India, China, and South Korea which happen to be among the world’s biggest gaming markets. Now, there are high chances of gamers in these countries losing interest due to the delay.
Niantic has said that it would release Pokemon Go in about 200 countries, and it has released in over 100 nations so far. As many as 31 countries, including Egypt, Morocco, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Mauritius got the popular game earlier this month.
Pokemon Go has been released in several Asian countries, but not without running into issues. Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam have restricted gamers from playing it at select places. It has run into the problem in South Korea, as the country restricts the use of uncensored map data from overseas while the game requires real-time geospatial technologies and Google’s map data to play.
Pokemon Go is a free augmented reality (AR) mobile phone game that lets players catch virtual characters in real life environment.
The game has also run into problems in India even before its release with a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed in the Gujarat high Court seeking a ban claiming that its release in the country could create mayhem. It stated that Go eggs were spotted in places of worship, thus amounting to hurting religious sentiments of certain communities.
There is no hurdle in sight in China as far as the release of Pokemon Go is concerned with Hong Kong already receiving it a couple of months ago. But it is not known why Niantic is holding back the release of the game in China.
Well, the game could be released in more countries in the next few weeks, and it is inevitable with its popularly taking a nosedive in the West, but it appears like curiosity among gamers will vanish by the time it is launched.

 

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After launching the GeForce GTX 1080, 1070, and 1060 (with a rumored 1050 in the works), Nvidia India has announced the country’s inaugural GeForce Cup, an e-sports tournament featuring Overwatch. Though Overwatch is probably our favorite game of the year so far, it is still a surprising pick, given its creator Blizzard has pretty much forgotten about India despite having a distributor in the country.

The reason for this choice emerged in a chat Gadgets 360 had with Vamsi Krishna, Head – Consumer Marketing, South Asia, Nvidia. He let slip some interesting snippets on gamers in the country and what the graphics card giant is up to, aside from pushing out new hardware.

“Internally a lot of folks have asked me this question as well. And the crowd in India is more for CS and Dota and even the kind of e-sports teams that are popular in India are for these games, so why to choose Overwatch?” says Krishna. “The title has a significant uptake in global markets. This is one title which we strongly believe has an amazing gameplay experience that most of the gamers in India are deprived of experiencing.”

“It also meets a great platform where gamers can get the best gameplay experience,” he adds. “That’s the reason we chose Overwatch. What we also chose was to enable the premium cafes for Nvidia with Overwatch so they also encourage people who are coming to the cafes with this new game.”
For the GeForce Cup, Nvidia resorted to third-party suppliers for Overwatch PC codes Krishna says. With Blizzard not bringing in the game officially or offering any support, it makes us wonder if the company is too early to the e-sports bubble – while lucrative internationally, it has yet to hit similar heights in the country.

“The way the Indian e-sports scenario is, most of the global publishers don’t think there’s a sufficient size for e-sports in India, but we have a sufficient size,” claims Krishna. “It’s a matter of fact and it’s time before they realize we have a sufficient crowd and they come one by one officially to India.”

“And that’s the step Nvidia is taking to build the crowd in India,” he adds. “Eventually you’ll have support from publishers formally in India.”

Unlike other recent e-sports events that have taken place online, cyber cafes will play a crucial role for the GeForce Cup. But are they still relevant? According to Nvidia, very much so, likening their effect on adoption of video gaming in the nation similar to China or South Korea.

“It’s actually not cybercafes, it’s gaming cafes,” he says. “They are very relevant in India. If gaming as a category has to grow in India, gaming cafes play a significant role in this particular growth. What we believe is India and China when we compare, these are the two countries that are very similar in terms of society.”

“China is way ahead of India in the perspective of the gaming category,” he adds. “China has around 145,000 gaming centers and close to 60 million gamers.” India is nowhere close, but Krishna’s hoping that Nvidia can change this by working with cybercafes and getting them to convert to gaming cafes, at a time when Internet connectivity is getting cheaper and more accessible anyway.

(Also see: Nvidia on Indian Gamers, the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080, Pricing, and Availability)

“We believe there are 12 to 15 million PC and console gamers in India and we only have 300 to 350 decent gaming centers in India for this crowd,” says Krishna. “There is a significant opportunity for gaming vendors in India and that’s the reason why Nvidia is putting a lot of effort in terms of helping these cafe owners to understand best business practices and to allow more gamers to get encouraged to get into gaming cafes.” Nvidia’s cafe program – which guides and rates cafes according to their gaming readiness – helps in this.

“We’re looking at close to 150 cafes in the last five months and out of 150 cafes, we’re close to 29 certified cafes,” he says. “All these 29 cafes have made significant changes or investments to their cafes to meet the certification standards. If you go to a platinum-rated cafe you will find a minimum of GTX 960 and above and that’s a platform where gamers can get a good gaming experience.”
“While we certify cafes, we also help them with initiatives like the GeForce Cup that takes place in platinum-rated cafes to start with, and with season one we’re doing with eight of these,” he explains. “There will be a significant footfall in these cafes. There will be a new set of gamers to play new genres creating incremental revenue sources for these cafes.”

For Nvidia, the upside to this is getting to sell more cards, without having to reach the consumer market. A cybercafe is likely to buy more GeForce GTXes in a single order than most consumers would in their entire life time, several times over. “This is a long-term strategy for Nvidia. It’s never a quick strategy for us,” Krishna says. “Nvidia is one of the key gaming brands in India whose actually seriously investing in gaming cafe category.”

(Also see: Nvidia’s New GeForce Experience Makes It Dead Simple to Share and Record PC Games)

“Our audience is an active mix of everything [lapsed, active, and soon to be gamers]. Of 25 million who have an active interest in video games, around 10 to 15 million of them have platforms physically present with them,” he adds. “When we look at the number of people showing active interest in video games and related interests we close to 25 to 30 million people who are active on Facebook. That’s a big number. We’re only talking about connecting two to three million people but the opportunity is a lot more than what we’re reaching right now.”

The term “platform” we’re told, refers to both PCs and consoles. Of which, PCs are “significantly dominant,” according to Krishna. Drilling down further, he tells us that only one to one and a half million people have “decent” platforms to play at resolutions of 1080p and above. But this isn’t a reflection of interest in the category, he insists.

“While the balance nine plus million people do have a PC but no good platforms. They consume a lot of data. If we announce any game titles or talk about any games that release in the market they go active on social and consume the content,” Krishna explains. “They check out what’s happening around the world, they follow and post. The balance shows an active interest and that’s untapped potential that will eventually get into the fold.” One method used to tap into this segment Krishna tells us, is its live stream of marquee events such as the GeForce 1070 and 1080 launch in Bengaluru.

“On that day we reached close to two million gamers. Close to 200,000 video views on that day alone,” he says. “If you look at the demographics of gamers, 50 percent are in the demographic of 18 to 24 and are predominantly male and these guys are one of the most socially active audiences in the world today.”

“One thing that we struggle with in India is the broadband. Today if you have – this is a hypothetical assumption from my personal perspective – high-speed broadband connections to 20 cities,” Krishna adds. “Say 100 million high-speed broadband connections. I don’t see a reason why India will not have 20 to 30 million gamers who are playing on the best platforms. That is the reason why there is a significant deficit in the growth of PC gaming.”

And it isn’t just the top 20 cities either. In addition to the GeForce Cup, the company is bringing its GamerConnect event – where consumers can check out the latest games on Nvidia hardware to tier-II cities such as Mangalore and Jaipur.

“It’s a growing gamer community and most gamers in tier-II haven’t got exposed to the brand directly. Tier-II cities are also very well connected today. The kind of response we get in tier-II cities is a lot more encouraging these days,” he says, adding that the spending power is on par with bigger cities. GamerConnect appears to be a way for the company to let customers – existing or otherwise – of its presence.

While Krishna’s focus is squarely on evangelising gaming, we had to ask of the company’s plans for the GeForce GTX 1050 – the alleged budget GPU successor to last year’s GTX 950.

“I can’t comment on that. There is no announcement of any other products from the Pascal architecture perspective,” he says. “The only products we are formally announced in India are the 1080, 1070, and 1060 in two formats – 6GB and 3GB. Having said that, Nvidia constantly apprises the market scenarios and product gaps – as and when there is a right time or opportunity we will talk about those accordingly.”

 

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GURGAON: After nine weeks of frenzied competition, the finale is at hand. On Sunday, Gurgaon and gaming come together in what promises to be a battle between smart wits and smarter minds.
The ‘Dew Arena’ gaming championship claims to be the biggest such in India, and numbers bear that out. The organizers, NODWIN Gaming – the main players in the gaming segment in India – had set out to reach 30,000 participants. In the end, a whopping 70,000 took part. That’s proof enough that India has a robust community of gamers.
Gathering in the city for the final leg will be 100 of India’s best gamers, with teams flying in from Chennai, Bangalore, and Mumbai. And on Sunday, 40 elite gamers will be slugging it out for a funky accolade (having their name on a bottle of a popular fizzy drink), and a prize pool totaling Rs 10 lakhs.
In the ‘Dew Arena’, contenders squared off on personal computers, consoles, and mobile phones. Of these, the ‘mobile’ game allowed gaming enthusiasts the opportunity to play in the ‘arena’ from any place (and at any time).
Akshat Rathee, MD of NODWIN Gaming (gaming partner of ‘Dew Arena’) says it’s no longer considered “weird” to be a gamer. This is, he says, gaming’s time. “We’ve been adamant in saying that gaming is here. It’s just something that’s been under the radar – we didn’t realize it has grown into a subculture of entertainment and youth,” Rather told TOI.
“You’ll not find anyone in India under the age of 25 who’s not played a game, whether it be ‘Candy Crush’ or ‘Temple Run’, or ‘FIFA’ on the console – these are words that have become part of the lexicon now,” claims Rather.
Gaming, he adds, is far from being a nerdy pursuit, and plenty of multi-tasking and stamina is required. “These are people whose fingers move faster than you can see – they’re not the fat boy in the basement with big glasses!
“These are guys whose left fingers are on the keyboard doing one thing, whose right hand is on a mouse doing something else, and whose eyes are not blinking for at least three-and-a-half minutes in a row to make sure he doesn’t miss a second of anything.”
Also on the finale day, there’s a chance for visitors to take part in a ‘cosplay’ (that’s costume play for the uninitiated), where people dress up as characters from comics, video games, or those Japanese staples, manga and anime. It’s time for this subculture to take the limelight.

 

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Taiwan-based computer hardware company ASUS and Republic of Gamers (ROG) on Thursday launched two new gaming laptops equipped with the latest Nvidia Pascal GeForce GTX10 series graphic card in India. The laptops ASUS ROG GL502VS and G752VS are priced at Rs 1,81,990 and Rs 2,47,990, respectively.
“The Nvidia GeForce GTX 10 series graphics cards provide exceptional performance and energy efficiency to give gamers incredible VR-gaming experiences,” the company said in a statement. The GTX 10 series graphics cards come with Nvidia’s G-SYNC technology – designed to reduce stutter and lag. The also eliminate visual tearing for fast game visuals.

ROG GL502 comes with a sixth generation Intel i7 processor clocked at 2.70 GHz. It comes with a VR Ready NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 GPU. GL502 comes with 32GB of DDR4 RAM. The laptop features a 15-inch display that allows for 178 degree viewing angles. The laptop uses Hyper Cool Duo-Copper cooling system to keep the CPU and GPU cool independently. It also comes with USB Type-C ports for up to 10Gbps data transfer speeds. The laptop weighs 2.3Kgs.
ROG G752VS comes with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 GPU, Windows 10 Pro, 6th generation Intel Skylake unlocked Core i7 processor and up to 64GB overclocked DDR4 RAM. The laptop features a 17-inch Full-HD display. The laptop also comes with a 512GB SSD along with a 1TB HDD.
The laptops are available at leading stores along with Asus exclusive outlets.

 

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The Indian Games Expo (IGX 2016) made its way to India last Saturday, but more importantly, so did PlayStation VR.

With all this hype surrounding VR and hearing tales of it being the best thing to happen since sliced bread, we just had to check out. Luckily for us, Sony brought the PSVR to India and demoed it at IGX.

Let’s start with the headset itself. Looking at the spec sheet, it’s easy to dismiss the PSVR as the budget alternative to the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, and it is exactly that, but it has surprising potential.

Unlike the Rift and the Vive, which are festooned with sensors and require fancy tracking cameras to function, the PSVR uses simple LEDs and the PS Camera to track orientation. If you’re familiar with TrackIR, the PSVR uses a similar system.

The tracking wasn’t as fluid as I’ve experienced on the Vive or the Rift, but it was more than enough for the kind of games on offer.

Tracking aside, my second concern with the PSVR was the screen resolution. The Rift and the Vive both use 2K screens and even then images aren’t very sharp. If you’ve ever tried Google Cardboard with a Full HD screen, you’ll have noticed severe pixellation. The PSVR uses a Full HD screen.

Interestingly, I saw no pixellation whatsoever, which was a pleasant surprise. Sony did say that the PSVR uses three subpixel per rendered pixel vs the two subpixels per pixel on the Rift and the Vive. In effect, this means that Sony’s PSVR is actually rendering a denser image than the Rift and the Vive, making for a perceivably better VR experience.
Sadly, the PS4 itself doesn’t seem to be able to do that amazing headset justice.

Oculus and HTC recommend a pretty beefy system for handling VR. In comparison, the PS4’s graphics capabilities are very tame. In VR, that performance difference is very apparent.

We tried a bunch of games on the PSVR: Drive Club, Batman VR and Resident Evil 7. In all those games, the one factor that stood out was the low resolution of the game. Jaggies and low-res textures were everywhere. It was so bad in fact that it felt like we were watching something like a 360p video on a 1080p screen.

Barring resolution, the experience was pleasant enough. We did have controller and tracking issue in Batman and Resident Evil, but those issues were more down to set up issues than PSVR issues. We also couldn’t try the Move controllers in-game because they weren’t properly set up at the time of the demo.

I only spent a grand total of 20 minutes at most with the PSVR, but those 20 minutes convinced me of two things. The first is that Sony’s done a better job with games and with the headset than either Oculus or HTC. The second is that the PS4 is the wrong console for VR.

I hope the PS4 Pro manages to render higher resolution VR gaming because it would be a shame to waste PSVR on just the PS4.

 

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