Apple unveils its most powerful iPad Air ever

Apple today introduced an all-new iPad Air which they call the most powerful, versatile, and colorful iPad Air ever. Now available in five finishes, iPad Air features an all-screen design with a larger 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display, camera and audio upgrades, a new integrated Touch ID sensor in the top button, and the powerful A14 Bionic for a massive boost in performance, making this by far the most powerful and capable iPad Air ever made. The new iPad Air will be available starting next month.

“Today we’re excited to introduce a completely redesigned and far more powerful iPad Air, debuting Apple’s most powerful chip ever made, the A14 Bionic,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With its gorgeous new all-screen design, larger 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display, next-generation Touch ID, and a massive boost in performance with A14 Bionic, the new iPad Air brings customers powerful pro features at an even more affordable price. Along with major upgrades to the iPad Pro and eighth-generation iPad this year, and the powerful new features of iPadOS 14, this is our strongest iPad lineup ever, giving our customers even more ways to enrich their daily lives.”

All-new iPad Air design in five beautiful finishes

The new iPad Air features a completely new thin and light design in five gorgeous finishes: silver, space gray, rose gold, green, and sky blue. The new all-screen design features a larger 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display for a stunning visual experience, with 3.8 million pixels and advanced technologies, including full lamination, P3 wide color support, True Tone, and an anti-reflective coating for an amazing visual experience.

To allow the display to extend on all sides, a next-generation Touch ID sensor is integrated into the top button, providing the same fast, easy, and secure way to unlock iPad Air, log in to apps, or use Apple Pay that customers know and love. iPad Air is compatible with Magic Keyboard and its floating design, and built-in trackpad, Smart Keyboard Folio, and new Smart Folio covers, as well as Apple Pencil, which attaches magnetically to the side for easy pairing, charging, and storing.

Most powerful iPad Air with A14 Bionic

iPad Air delivers a massive boost in performance with Apple’s most advanced chip, A14 Bionic. Handling even the most demanding apps, A14 Bionic makes it even easier for users to edit 4K videos, create gorgeous works of art, play immersive games, and more. Using breakthrough 5-nanometer process technology, A14 Bionic is packed with 11.8 billion transistors for increased performance and power efficiency in nearly every part of the chip. This latest-generation A-series chip features a new 6-core design for a 40 percent boost in CPU performance, and a new 4-core graphics architecture for a 30 percent improvement in graphics.

To deliver breakthrough machine learning capabilities, A14 Bionic includes a new 16-core Neural Engine that is twice as fast, and capable of performing up to 11 trillion operations per second, taking machine learning apps to a whole new level. A14 Bionic also includes second-generation machine learning accelerators in the CPU for 10 times faster machine learning calculations. This combination of the new Neural Engine, CPU machine learning accelerators, and high-performance GPU enables powerful on-device experiences for image recognition, natural language learning, analyzing motion, and more.

Upgraded camera and immersive audio

iPad Air, which includes a 7MP front-facing FaceTime HD camera, now features the same 12MP rear camera used in iPad Pro for higher resolution photos and 4K video capture. The new design of iPad Air features stereo speakers in landscape mode, elevating the audio experience so users can enjoy wider stereo sound while watching video.
iPad Air now features a USB-C port for up to 5Gbps data transfer, which is 10 times faster, for connecting to cameras, hard drives, and external monitors up to 4K. With Wi-Fi 6 performance and 60 percent faster LTE connectivity, along with A14 Bionic, this is by far the most powerful iPad Air ever.

Distinct iPad experience with iPadOS 14

iPadOS 14, available beginning Wednesday, September 16, brings new features and designs that take advantage of the unique capabilities of iPad, such as its large Multi-Touch display, and versatile accessories. iPadOS 14 further integrates Apple Pencil into the iPad experience for better note-taking capabilities, and new ways to work with handwritten notes. When taking notes on iPad, Smart Selection uses on-device machine learning to distinguish handwriting from drawings, so handwritten text can easily be selected, cut, and pasted into another document as typed text using the same familiar gestures.

Shape recognition allows users to draw shapes that are made geometrically perfect and snap right into place when adding diagrams and illustrations in Notes. Data detectors work seamlessly with handwritten text, recognizing phone numbers, dates, addresses, and links, making it easy for users to perform actions like tapping a handwritten number to make a call.

iPadOS 14 also brings Scribble to iPad, allowing Apple Pencil users to handwrite directly in any text field, making actions like replying to a quick iMessage or searching in Safari fast and easy — all without ever needing to put Apple Pencil away. Scribble uses on-device machine learning to convert handwriting into typed text in real-time, so writing is always kept private and secure.

New sidebars for many apps including Photos and Files, and streamlined toolbars that consolidate controls into a single place, making them more useful than ever.
Beautifully redesigned widgets that present timely information at a glance right on the Home Screen.

Most environmentally friendly, most advanced iPad lineup ever

The new iPad Air is designed to be environmentally friendly and supports Apple’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2030. The iPad Air uses a 100 percent recycled aluminum enclosure and 100 percent recycled tin for the solder on its main logic board. The new speakers in iPad Air also use magnets with 100 percent recycled rare earth elements. iPad Air remains free of harmful substances, is highly energy-efficient, and uses wood fiber packaging that is recycled or comes from responsibly managed forests.

iPad Air joins the powerful iPad Pro, the eighth-generation iPad, and iPad mini to form the most advanced iPad lineup ever. With support for Apple Pencil, best-in-class performance, advanced displays, and all-day battery life, whether customers prioritize portability, power, or price, there’s an iPad for everyone. Learn more about the iPad family at apple.com/ipad/compare.

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Infinix HOT 20S review: Built for continuous gaming

04/26/2023

During the past couple of years, mobile gaming has taken for itself a large chunk in the gaming space as it became the preferred platform for a lot of users. There are different brands catering to this need and one of them is Infinix with its HOT 20S midrange phone that promises capable performance and a lengthy battery life.

Does it live up to these promises? We find out.

Design

While most gaming phones are on the bulky and hefty side, Infinix was able to make the HOT 20S lean a bit more towards the sleek side which is not really surprising as we’ve seen on the Infinix Zero X Pro and Infinix HOT 10S that we previously reviewed.

Related: Infinix Zero X Pro review: Premium specs for less!

The back panel has a glossy finish (hello smudges) but has this textured patterns underneath the outer layer. It does provide a nice look when light reflects off it and gives it that semi-premium look.

Its edges are cornered which could be easily felt when holding the device. The right side of the solidly built chassis houses the power/lock button in addition to the volume rocker and are both easy to reach in portrait usage.

This power/lock button also doubles as a fingerprint scanner which has been reliable to use and easily gives us access to the device with no fuss.

On the left side, it only features the SIM slot sitting alone at the upper edge of the device. Down below we have a USB-C port for charging and transferring files as well as a 3.5mm audio jack for wired connectivity of accessories and a speaker grille on the right-most part.

The phone is available in four color options: black, purple, white, and blue. Overall, the device isn’t too heavy but not too light either. It has a decent heft to it that makes it sit on the hands comfortably without the fear of accidentally slipping off from your grasp.

Having cornered edges also helped in securing the phone in your palms but if you’re a fan of smooth, curved edges, this might take some getting used to.

Display and multimedia

The Infinix Hot 20S comes with a large 6.78-inch IPS-TFT LCD display with a Full HD+ resolution of 1080 x 2460 pixels. It features a 120Hz refresh rate which means scrolling and animations appear smoother.

It’s proven to be great for gaming as having a comfortable screen real estate does affect how one enjoys gameplay.

When talking about being immersive, the screen-to-body ratio of the phone is 90.5% — giving it a modern look and while bezels are somewhat noticeable, the entire display can still pull you into the game effectively. Colors are vibrant enough without going overboard and the allowable brightness is just right even while viewing content outdoors.

It only comes with a single down-firing speaker, though, which could leave you wanting more in the sound department when streaming videos or playing games. Thankfully, you can easily connect a pair of headphones via its audio jack.

Cameras

The Infinix Hot 20S has a triple-camera setup on the rear, consisting of a 50-megapixel main camera, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel depth camera.

Its main camera can take high-quality photos with good detail and accurate colors. There’s no ultra-wide camera here, only a macro sensor that could be useful for taking close-up shots of small objects, but has limited use, of course.

The depth camera helps to capture bokeh or portrait shots with a blurred background effect. But as with most depth sensors in this range, successfully cutting out subjects from the background could be hit-and-miss.

On the flip side, it comes with an 8-megapixel front camera that can take satisfactory selfies with beautification filters and can also be used decently for video calls.

Performance

The HOT 20S is powered by a 12nm MediaTek Helio G96 4G chipset and Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. If you’re not familiar, Helio G96 is a powerful and efficient processor that can handle most tasks with ease.

It’s also accompanied by 8GB RAM that can get up to 5GB additional memory and 128GB of storage — a generous amount of memory and storage for a midrange phone.

Running today’s popular games like Mobile Legends, Call of Duty, and Genshin Impact, the phone handled them all without disturbing lags as long as you settle for decent gaming settings, especially for Genshin Impact.

For Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, the phone’s high refresh rate comes into play and easily makes the gaming experience more enjoyable than running on standard 30fps.

Running Call of Duty: Mobile was also immersive on the HOT 20S, with decently precise input for effectively getting those headshots!

Being a gaming-focused smartphone, it has access to settings to improve gameplay and avoid distractions at the height of each match. From its Dar-link Ultimate Game Booster platform, you can tweak your settings depending on the demands of the game titles you’re playing.

The phone runs on XOS 12, which is based on Android 12. XOS 12 comes with a range of features and customization options, but it can be a bit heavy and may affect the phone’s performance in the long run. Of course, you can opt to keep customizations and widgets to a minimum so they don’t affect the device’s performance that much.

Battery

The Infinix Hot 20S has a large 5,000mAh battery that can easily last for a full day of usage. Even with long periods of gaming, its battery was still able to last, and rarely did we need to charge before the day ended.

The phone supports 18-watt USB-C charging, which is convenient considering the capacity of this smartphone. Although at 18W, topping up the device still lasted more than two hours of being plugged in.

If you’re looking for additional features like wireless charging, that’s not present here. But with its price, it’s not really something I would personally expect.

Price in the Philippines and final thoughts

Overall, the Infinix Hot 20S is a decent midrange smartphone with some impressive features. It has a large and immersive display, a powerful processor, and a generous amount of memory at up to 13GB and storage at 128GB.

The camera setup is good, but the macro camera is not very useful. Although in the battery department, we are simply satisfied when it comes to performance and its fast charging feature is a welcome addition considering its 5000mAh capacity.

If you are looking for a midrange phone with a large display, internals that do capable work, and a lasting battery setup, the Infinix Hot 20S is definitely worth considering its PhP 8,499 price tag.

 

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