News written by Petteri Pyyny (August, 2021)

Microsoft announced its upcoming operating system, Windows 11 back in June, 2021. The beta version of the OS has been publicly available since July and has been downloaded and tested by millions of users.

Now, Microsoft has finally announced when the new Windows version will be available for regular users, too. The date is October 5th, 2021.

On that date, the first Windows 10 users will be prompted to install a new version of the Windows to their PCs. Also, on that date, those who don't have a valid Windows 10 license, can directly go and purchase a Windows 11 license for their PC. And, obviously, plethora of desktop PCs and laptops with pre-installed Windows 11 will hit the store shelves on that day, across the globe.

Windows 11 will be completely free update for all Windows 10 users.

The update will be delivered through regular Windows Update and it will be phased, so only handful of users will actually get it on 5th of October. Microsoft expects the entire rollout to be complete by mid-2022, so some of the current Windows 10 users will have to wait quite some time until their OS will be updated automatically to the new version.

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China is curbing its gaming addiction with iron first. Country just rolled out a new legislation that forces game developers to curb teenagers gaming hours down to just three per week.

According to the new legislation, gaming companies are required to control how many hours teenagers between 15yo and 17yo play video games (no matter what the platform, including mobile pgone games, console games and PC games). Country now allows teens to play only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays between 8pm and 9pm local time. And on public holidays, too, but again, between the one hour time slot between 8pm and 9pm.

If game developers don't play by the rules, China can simply ban their games, for good.

And as we're talking about China, this is really enforced. Gaming and media giant Tencent took pro-active steps already in July, 2021 and introduced facial recognition to all of its games in China. Every player is required to verify their gaming ID with a valid personal identification document when creating an account. And Tencent's games will occasionally use facial recognition during the gaming session to check that the person whose account is used, is really playing the game.

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Chinese consumer electronics giant Xiaomi has always had a rather confusing naming policy for its products, whether the products are mobile phones, robot vacuums or electric scooters. But now, company has announced that it will finally clarify the branding, to some degree.

This announcement follow the recent launch of Xiaomi Mi Mix 4 of which, apparently, is now internationally sold as Xiaomi Mix 4 - note, the removal of the "Mi" there.

According to a statement made for XDA-Developers, this will be the way forward for the company from now on. So, no more "Xiaomi Mi", but just "Xiaomi".

The change will affect all Xiaomi's product brands, not just phones, but also e-scooters, robot vacuums, laptops, etc.

Sure enough, this will be a welcomed change for most consumers. But Xiaomi still has a plethora of stuff to confuse its potential customers: like its affiliations with non-Xiaomi brands, such as Redmi, POCO, Roborock and Ninebot that tend to blend into Xiaomi's "digital world" to one degree or another. But this one is a change to the better, definitely.

Just bought a brand new TV set? You own it now, right? Well, kinda... Electronics giant Samsung has revealed that all Samsung's TV sets have a built-in kill switch that Samsung can operate at will.

This was revealed in South Africa in July. In South Africa, during riots, rioters broke into Samsung's local warehouse and stole tons of goods from the warehouse, including new Samsung TV sets.

According to Samsung's local representatives, company swiftly took action and activated the remote kill switch on all the stolen TV sets, rendering them basically useless. The feature, called TV Block is apparently a standard feature in all Samsung's new TVs.

Whenever a Samsung TV set connects to the net, it communicates back and forth with Samsung's servers. If Samsung's servers indicate that the TV set in question is put to its blacklist, the TV set automatically renders all of its features useless. So, after that information has been received, even the standard TV broadcasts can't be viewed with the TV.

The feature was introduced in order to block sale of illegally obtained Samsung TVs, just like in this particular case. Samsung also ensures that if legally obtained TV somehow freezes due this feature, customers can contact their local Samsung support in order to get the matters resolved.

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As Android 12 first public beta is already available, it is time to take a look at current phone models expected to get Android 12 once it gets released officially.

None of the Nokia models are among the list of Android 12 beta phones, but HMD Global who manufactures the Nokia phones, has been clear about the company's Android support policy.

So, based on that update policy, Android Update Tracker has built a list of Nokia phones eligible to get the Android 12 update.

Obviously, list could change - HMD Global could very well release Android 12 also to selected older models, but this list is based on what we know right now.

Here's the list:

• Nokia 1.3
• Nokia 2.4
• Nokia 3.4
• Nokia 5.3
• Nokia 5.4
• Nokia 8.3 5G
• Nokia G10
• Nokia G20
• Nokia X10
• Nokia X20
• Nokia XR20

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One of the most frustrating aspects of WhatsApp is its phone operating system lock-in. Currently, it is almost impossible to transfer chat history from Android's WhatsApp to iPhone and vice versa. This is finally changing, as WhatsApp introduced a streamlined data transfer.

The new feature resembles the one available in competitors, such as Signal, where two phones can be paired and messages are then transferred from one device to another. As WhatsApp doesn't use centralized messaging servers like Telegram, the messages can't be just "pulled from the cloud".

The new transfer feature is available now only for recently released new Samsung's foldable phones, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3. Later, the new transfer method will be brought to all other Android devices, too.

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Twenty-five years ago, the first "official", illegal MP3 rip was released to public. The honor goes to Metallica's Until It Sleeps which was released back in 10th of August, 1996.

First publicly availably MP3 tools were just released back in 1996, with WinPlay3 being the only Windows-based player at the time and l3enc being the best tool to actually convert music from CDs to MP3 format.

Surely, ripped songs were produced even begore August, 1996, but the first release by a scene group is being dated to that specific date, as shown by the associated .nfo from those days. The release group was called Compress Da Audio, a relatively short-lived MP3 ripping group, who just managed to get the fame of being the first group to enter into the wonderful world of MP3 music.

The MP3 phenomenom grew rapidly from those days, with the advent of better ripping and encoding tools appearing during the winter of 1996-1997 and with the first version of WinAMP player. Coming years, MP3 became the synonum to illegal music, as P2P networks became a commonplace and people didn't have to rip their own music to MP3 format anymore - but could simply download songs from P2P networks.

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Consolidation among antivirus vendors continues, as American NortonLifeLock acquired Czech-based Avast for appx. $8bn. As part of the deal, Avast-owned CCleaner is now also part of NortonLifeLock's portfolio.

NortonLifeLock offers two options for Avast shareholders to pay for the purchase: first option includes 31 percent cash and 69 percent stock, while the other option pays 90 percent of the acquisition in cash and 10 percent in stock. In both options, the valuation of Avast is appx. $8bn, appx. 7.2 billion euros. Avast, while based in Czech, has been listed in London stock exchange.

Both companies have focus on cosumers and small businesses. NortonLifeLock was previously a subsdiary of Symantec, but was spun off as its own company after Broadcom acquired Symantec's enterprise business. Avast, meanwhile, has always focused on consumers and small businesses.

Avast expanded its own portfolio back in 2017 when it acquired Piriform, the maker of popular PC cleanup tool CCleaner.

NortonLifeLock has expanded recently through acquisitions: back in December, 2020 the company bought Avira for $360 million.

For those old enough to remember the times when PC wasn't the best gaming computer, the name Amiga brings back many good memories. The iconic home computer which had its peak at the beginning of the 1990s was superior to most of the other computers of its time - and this was true also with its gaming selection.

Now, Amiga is coming back. Well, not exactly, but a retro, miniature version of the computer is arriving to stores in 2022. Dubbed as TheA500 mini, the officially licensed miniature clone of the iconic device is meant for gaming - and only for gaming. As its predecessor, TheC64, the machine is a smaller version of its original ancestor, but looks the same.

TheA500 mini can run original Amiga games as well as games built for later Amiga versions, namely, the ECS and AGA chipsets. So, despite being named after the most successful Amiga, the Amiga 500, the retro computer can actually run games made for Amiga 1200, too.

TheA500 ships with 25 pre-installed games, including classics like Kick Off 2, Pinball Dreams and Speedball 2. It can also run any Amiga game available if you copy Amiga game image to an USB stick and run it from there. TheA500 ships with mouse that resembles the original Amiga mouse and a gamepad to play the games with.

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Dark mode has arrived to phones and computers during the recent years - as a huge wave. The prpoponents of the dark mode have always emphasized the fact that using dark mode saves battery compared to traditional light mode. But is it really true?

Rsearchers at Purdue University put the claim into a real test, using six of the most popular Android apps, in various usage situations, In order to test the dark mode's superiority, researchers installed six most popular dark mode-enabled apps from Google Play store: YouTube, Google News, Google's own Phone app, Google Calendar, Google Calc and Google Maps.

All of the tested apps are pre-isnatlled in millions of Android devices and each of them have more than 500 million installs each on Google Play store.

Dark mode does not save battery if your phone display uses old technology

First and foremost, the dark mode wont save any battery if the phone's display is old. Specifically, phone's display must use OLED (or AMOLED) technology in order to benefit from dark mode, at all.

In OLED screens, when a specific area in display is black, the display in that particular area is actually switched off, completely. So, if majority of the screen is showing completely black color, the vast majority of the screen is actually switched off - thus, saving battery.

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Once the champion of speedy Android updates, the rollout of Android 11 has been a struggle for HDM Global who manufactures Nokia branded Android phones. After missing deadlines one after another, Nokia 5.3 finally gets its official Android 11 update.

Many people have reported that Nokia 5.3 is finally getting its Android 11 update through an OTA update. Originally the update was supposed to be delivered in H1 of 2021, so the timeline has slipped dramatically.

And according to a site that tracks Android's promised updates, there are still several Nokia models that are waiting to get the Android 11 update that HMD has promised for them.

As Android 12 release date approaches, the users of slow updating manufacturers have been frustrated. It is not just Nokia, but also Xiaomi's Android 11 rollout and Motorola's Android 11 updates have been slow.

As the list of phones that should get Android 12 grows, many people stuck with 2019 Android 10 might move away from manufacturers that seem to be delivering the updates late.

According to reports, Spotify is testing a new subscription model in the United States with limited user base. The new subscription model costs only a dollar/month, making it by far the cheapest music subscription service in the U.S.

But as the normal Spotify Premium costs $9.99 in the U.S., the super-cheap subscription model comes with handful of restrictions. First of all, the cheap subscription comes with ads, just like the free version of Spotify.

Secondly, unlike in free version, user can skip unlimited number of songs when playing the music. In free version, user can only skip six songs per hour. Furthermore, the new Spotify Plus model allows user to freely select what music is being player - in free version, user's specific song selection is limited to Spotify-curated playlists.

According to The Verge, the limited scale test is exactly that: a limited test. You can't opt in to the Spotify Plus subscription, as the users for the service have been pre-selected from Spotify's free users.

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