Indian ride-hailing giant Ola adds tipping option to its app globally

You can now tip your Ola driver. The Indian ride-hailing giant said on Tuesday that it has rolled out this feature to its users in India, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom — all the nations where it currently operates.

Ola said riders in each market will see a range of denominations they can pick as the amount they wish to tip digitally. It plans to allow riders to pay a custom amount of their choice in a few weeks, a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

All of Ola’s 2.5 million driver partners globally — from those who operate two-wheelers to four — can receive tips, the nine-year-old ride-hailing giant said.

The addition of this feature comes as Ola looks to broaden its efforts to help its driver partners who have been financially hit in recent weeks after New Delhi and several other governments across the globe enforced a lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Uber first introduced the tipping feature in some states in the U.S. in 2017 and has since expanded to it many more states and nations. It rolled out the tipping feature to its users in India early this year.

Driver partners on both the platforms have long expressed the need for a tipping feature to supplement their incomes after both the companies gradually reduced the incentives they had bandied out in the early years.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, our driver-partners have worked tirelessly to enable essential travel for all those in need, despite facing their own challenges. As services resume, they continue to personally invest in ensuring the safety of their customers and deliver a comfortable ride experience,” said Anand Subramanian, a spokesperson at Ola.

“Linking rewards to higher-quality services, we invite our customers to join us in sharing our appreciation and supporting them during these trying times. Not only will the new functionality provide an opportunity for drivers to increase their earnings but will also showcase how a small gesture of solidarity and support from customers will drive our driver-partner community to go a long way,” he said.

In recent months, Ola has announced a range of relief packages including exempting lease rental to assist its driver partners. It has also committed to provide driver partners with a few hundred dollars if they or their family members test positive for Covid-19. Uber has yet to offer any significant aid to its driver partners in India.

Like their driver partners, both Ola and Uber have been hit with the global pandemic as well. Ola said last month it was cutting 1,400 jobs, or 35% of its workforce in India. Days later, Uber said it was eliminating 600 jobs, or 25% of its local workforce, in the nation. India is a key overseas market for Uber.

Indian food delivery startups Swiggy and Zomato have also introduced tipping option in their apps in recent months.

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Google Photos is temporarily turning off backups from messaging apps to save bandwidth

A Google employee has just confirmed that the Google Photos app will disable automatic backup & syncing of media from messaging apps.

As many people are sharing much more over messaging apps during much of the world’s time-off of work and school amidst COVID-19, Google wishes to save its bandwidth resources that are strained, likely backing up memes, videos, and photos that are shared over messaging apps. It will begin notifying users of the change on the Google Photos app the next time they open the app.

Due to COVID-19, people are sharing more photos and videos. To save internet resources, backup & sync has been turned off for device folders created by messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messages, and Kik.

Starting today, you’ll notice a message in the Photos App about this change. You can change this setting at any time.

You still have the option of re-enabling backup & sync for messaging apps. Further investigation by XDA-Developers revealed that the specific apps affected by this change are: Facebook, Helo, Instagram, LINE, Messages, Messenger, Snapchat, Twitter, Viber, and WhatsApp. Previous backups from these apps won’t be affected.

We’ve seen bandwidth-reducing changes from Netflix, Disney+, YouTube, and TikTok, which lowered streaming quality in order to compensate for added strain on these platforms during the start of the pandemic. We wonder why Google decided to make this change so late.

Google recently rolled out a major change to its UI, but regardless of whether the update arrived or not, to check your backup & sync settings, head to the Photos app > Settings > Backup & Sync

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Oppo Enco W11 TWS launched in India at ₹2,499

Oppo Enco W11 is the new budget true wireless earphone in the market. It has launched in India today. It is a toned-down version of Oppo W31 and while the W31 costs ₹4,499, this one comes at ₹2,499.

Let’s see what you get at this price.

Oppo Enco W11 Features

Internally, the Enco W11 packs an 8mm driver. You get Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity. Oppo assures low latency and better stability as compared to its TWS competition in this price bracket.

The buds bring touch gestures for controlling calls, music, and overall volume. There is passive noise cancellation for calls. Oppo offers two extra pairs of silicon tips to choose from. Amongst other features, you also get IP55 water resistance against sweat and minor splashes.

ALSO READ: Redmi Earbuds S Review

Enco W11 bears a 40mAh battery that clocks 5 hours of music playback. Further, there is the 400mAh battery of the case which warrants another 20h of juice. Oppo claims these can offer 1hr of playback from just 15 minutes of fast charging. In case, you’re wondering, the port is USB-C.

Each bud weighs 4.4g individually and the case measures 35.5g.

ALSO READ: Realme Buds Air Neo Review

Oppo Enco W11 Price and Availability

Oppo Enco W11 is available through Flipkart at ₹2,499.

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Sony Bravia AG9 review (KD-55AG9 KD-65AG9 KD-77AG9): This near-perfect OLED TV is now over £1,000 less

Our original review continues below:

The fight for the ultimate OLED TV in 2019 is already raging between LG and Panasonic, but now a new challenger approaches: the Sony AG9 replaces last year’s award-winning AF9 as the Japanese brand’s flagship OLED TV. 

The AG9 has a fine reputation to uphold, and not least because the AF9 confidently secured Expert Reviews’ TV of the Year award in 2018, but on this showing, Sony may need to buy a bigger awards cabinet. The AG9 is what is known in the business as ‘a bit of alright’.

READ NEXT: Sony AF9 review

Sony AG9 review: What you need to know

Just like last year’s models, the BRAVIA AG9 is part of Sony’s Master Series. This means that it’s designed to mimic the quality and colour accuracy of Sony’s own BVM-X300 reference mastering monitor – a monitor which has graced many a Hollywood movie production suite.

In addition to the 55in KD-55AG9 and the 65in KD-65AG9 which we’re reviewing here, the AG9 will also be available in a massive 77in screen size. Just don’t ask how much it’s going to cost. (It’s £6,999.)

Features on the Sony AG9 include a 4K OLED panel, the company’s top-end X1 Ultimate video processor and the ingenious Acoustic Surface Audio Plus technology which turns the entire screen into a giant speaker. 

The Smart TV platform runs on Android Oreo 8.0 and offers HDR-enabled versions of all the essential video-on-demand apps such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Youtube. Freeview Play makes the grade, too, and provides access to all the major UK catch-up TV services including BBC iPlayer. 

The AG9 supports HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision. HDR10+ is absent however. 

Buy now from John Lewis

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Sony AG9 review: Price and competition

The OLED marketplace is getting pretty crowded, but with a street price of £3,799 at the time of publication in August 2019, the Sony KD-65AG9 comes in straight at the top-end. Only Panasonic’s flagship £4,299 TX-65GZ2000 costs more. 

The Sony AG9 is flanked by a troop of cheaper competitors. The 65in LG C9 (£2,999) and E9 (£3,499) both offer full HDMI 2.1 support for less cash, and Panasonic’s superb step-down GZ950 (£2,499) and GZ1500 (£2,999) models are equally tempting. 

Sony AG9 review: Design and connections

This is a fine-looking TV. The Sony KD-65AG9 sits almost vertically – there’s a slight relaxed backwards lean – and the extremely low-profile stand doesn’t take up much space at all. A discreet Sony logo adorns the bottom left corner of the bezel. As OLED TVs don’t need a separate backlight, Sony has taken full advantage, paring the AG9’s body and bezel down to a mere sliver. 

All the various connections are found on the left rear of the TV. There are four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.0b ports, all of which are HDCP 2.3 compliant. The pair of spring clip terminals the rear reveal one of the AG9’s neatest party tricks: you can connect the AG9’s Acoustic Surface Audio Plus speakers directly to a home cinema amp and use it as a centre channel. 

Sadly, the only HDMI 2.1 feature implemented on the Sony AG9 is enhanced Audio Return Channel (eARC) on the HDMI 3 input, and you will have to go into the user menu to enable it specifically. We tested eARC using a Denon X3500 receiver, and it works well, passing Dolby TrueHD Atmos soundtrack from 4K Blu-rays through the TV’s HDMI 3 port.

Compared with last year’s AF9, the onboard Acoustic Surface Audio Plus system has been changed from 3.2 to 2.2 channels, consisting of two actuators and two subwoofers at the back. This is partly to achieve a slimmer design for flush wall-mounting, but we don’t think there’s any significant drop in sound quality. The Sony AG9 remains one of the best-sounding TVs – if not the best – on the market, with outstanding clarity and sufficiently weighty bass. A feat made all the more impressive by the fact that there’s no visible exterior speakers to be seen.

You might be slightly disappointed to hear it, but the AG9’s premium remote control is probably the biggest upgrade on the outgoing AF9. With an ergonomic shape and excellent tactile feedback working in tandem with the super-responsive Android TV system, it makes the AG9 an absolute joy to use.

Buy now from John Lewis

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Sony AG9 review: Picture quality & gaming responsiveness

All OLED TVs can produce perfect blacks – the technology makes it possible to turn every pixel on and off independently – but it’s the shades of colour just above black that have proven challenging for various TV manufacturers to render in an artefact-free manner. Sony OLEDs generally suppress the telltale noise and artefacts better than most other TV brands, and it’s pleasing to find that the same applies to the AG9. It’s still not perfect, though: when watched in a pitch-black room, our review sample exhibited very rare instances of flashing artefacts in heavily compressed dark scenes.

After calibration, colour accuracy was excellent on our Bravia AG9 review unit, translating to natural and realistic colours and lifelike skin tones. Brightness uniformity was incredibly clean when checked with full-field grey slides, with no sign of banding, dirty screen effect (DSE) or colour tinting, meaning that you can watch sports and play games without being distracted by such issues. 

Our review sample exhibited some vignetting when displaying full-field slides just above black, particularly so on the left side of the screen, and this caused some minor shadow detail loss from the extreme left edge of the picture in very dark scenes. As with any TV from any brand, there is an element of a lottery to the buying process: some TVs, even of the same model from the same manufacturer, will always be better than others due to variances in the panels. 

While uniformity can vary from one unit to another, what you can take to the bank is Sony’s class-leading motion and video processing. Even with Motionflow disabled, slow panning shots in 24fps movies – in both SDR and HDR – are handled smoothly without any sign of judder. And should you choose to engage motion interpolation, Sony’s technology is less likely to incur interpolation artefacts than other brands. Meanwhile, the upscaling capability of the X1 Ultimate processor is fantastic, retrieving sharp detail from sub-4K content without excessive ringing or fizziness. It’s equally pleasing to see that gradients were rendered smoother than many other OLEDs even without the help of Sony’s Smooth Gradation feature.

For HDR content, the AG9’s DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage came in at 98%, while peak brightness measured 530 nits on a 10% window after calibration, and 135 nits full-field. Those figures are relatively low, but the Sony AG9 is equipped with dynamic tone-mapping which analyses the picture on the fly to make each scene look as bright as it needs to be, all the while keeping an eye on accuracy. During playback of real-world HDR10 content, the Sony AG9 doesn’t look dim at all in a side-by-side comparison with a 2019 OLED with a measured peak brightness of 700 nits. 

Turning our attention to other HDR formats, we watched Wimbledon in HLG HDR through the TV’s internal BBC iPlayer app, and it certainly looked good. Sony currently don’t have any plan to support HDR10+ on their televisions, but we don’t think this is a deal-breaker since HDR10+ dynamic metadata is designed to mainly help low-end to midrange TVs. 

Dolby Vision content on the Sony AG9 still looked a bit darker than on an LG OLED, and this is due to the low-latency Dolby Vision profile that the Japanese manufacturer uses. Speaking from experience, the best Dolby Vision picture quality is still provided by LG (and now Panasonic) OLEDs. On Sony OLEDs, we actually prefer to watch in vanilla HDR10, especially with the dynamic tone-mapping on X1 Ultimate sets.

For gaming, input lag measured 26ms in both 1080p SDR and 4K HDR Game modes, and while this figure is probably responsive enough for all but the most hardcore twitch gamers, it’s the absence of HDMI 2.1 gaming features such as ALLM (Auto Low-Latency Mode) and VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) that will steer gamers towards rival TVs from LG and Samsung. Top tip: To get your Xbox One X and PS4 Pro to send 4K 60Hz HDR video signals to the Sony AG9, you’ll need to venture into the TV’s user menu, and change HDMI Signal Format from Standard to Enhanced.

Buy now from John Lewis

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Sony KD-65AG9 review: Verdict

The Sony AG9 produces by and large the same excellent picture quality as the AF9 – in fact, it’s so similar that we’d say the premium remote control is the biggest upgrade here. That’s no insult however: there was precious little room for improvement. Thanks to its stunning colour accuracy and class-leading motion and video processing, the Sony KD-65AG9 stakes its claim as one of the best OLED TVs you can buy today.

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Concept shows how Apple could create a ‘glassOS’ based on the iOS 14 interface

We’ve heard many rumors about Apple’s new augmented reality headset, referred to as Apple Glasses, which are expected to be announced at some point in 2022. While the company won’t give us details about their upcoming projects, developer and designer Jordan Singer has created this new concept that imagines the Apple Glasses user interface inspired by iOS 14.

As Jordan noted, Apple’s website highlights that changes in the iOS 14 interface makes the elements “compact” and focuses on letting users “quickly get information,” which is expected for an operating system that will run in a pair of glasses.

These changes include home screen widgets, the new Siri interface, and the non-intrusive incoming calls screen. With that in mind, Jordan created this concept to show how these elements could be shown to someone wearing Apple Glasses.

Let’s assume Apple’s glasses have a way of presenting UI, be it projection or on a display. And let’s assume that iOS 14 is introducing new UI paradigms that will help make the transition to glasses seamless. Now, let’s take a look at how almost every corner of the iOS 14 update meant for iPhone can be translated directly to UI on a pair of glasses.

For notifications, the concept uses watchOS-inspired banners in the top right corner of the field of view. You can see that the images use the new macOS Big Sur icons, and Jordan justifies that icons with 3D elements and shadows should be more natural to be recognized when overlaid on the “real world.”

The new incoming calls screen and Apple Maps navigation banners also match the Apple Glasses perfectly.

“glassOS” would automatically show widgets based on what’s most important to the user, just like Smart Widget Stacks on iOS 14.

There are many other examples that you can check out on the concept page, including Siri, AirPods alerts, privacy indicators, Translate app, and more.

What do you think of this concept? What approach do you think Apple should take to create a new operating system for Apple Glasses? Let us know in the comments section below.

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2020 HP Envy x360 13 Convertible 2-in-1 Review: Ryzen 5 Beats a Core i7

In review: HP Envy x360 13-ay0010nr. Test unit provided by HP

The AMD-powered 2020 Envy x360 13 looks and performs better than what its relatively low price would otherwise suggest. It’s essentially a less expensive version of the 2019 Spectre x360 13 that doesn’t sacrifice chassis quality or system performance to reach the lower price point. If you were considering an older Envy x360 13 or Spectre convertible, then it would be worth checking out this faster, cheaper, and leaner 2020 Envy model instead.

Some hardware limitations prevent the Envy x360 13 from being the “ultimate” 13.3-inch convertible. There is no Thunderbolt 3 or HDMI and RAM is not user-upgradeable meaning HP can charge extra for 16 GB DDR4 SKUs. Meanwhile, the oddly positioned fingerprint reader takes some getting used to and we feel that the hinges could be stiffer. Alternatives like the Lenovo Yoga C940 integrate stylus holders which can come in handy when in tablet mode.

We had named the 14-inch Yoga C940 as the consumer convertible to beat when we reviewed it late last year, but that particular system retailed for nearly $1500 USD. For under $1000, you’re not going to find a 13.3-inch convertible that balances performance, weight, build quality, and price better than the 2020 HP Envy x360 13 right now.

It’s pretty amazing what a swap to an AMD processor can do in terms of price and performance-per-dollar. The redesigned 2020 Envy x360 13 is noticeably smaller and more compact than last year’s model while being much faster in the process.

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The New York Times Pulls Out of Apple News – The New York Times

The New York Times said on Monday that it was exiting its partnership with Apple News, as news organizations struggle to compete with large tech companies for readers’ attention and dollars.

Starting on Monday, Times articles were no longer appearing alongside those from other publications in the curated Apple News feed available on Apple devices.

The Times is one of the first media organizations to pull out of Apple News. The Times, which has made adding new subscribers a key business goal, said Apple had given it little in the way of direct relationships with readers and little control over the business. It said it hoped to instead drive readers directly to its own website and mobile app so that it could “fund quality journalism.”

“Core to a healthy model between The Times and the platforms is a direct path for sending those readers back into our environments, where we control the presentation of our report, the relationships with our readers and the nature of our business rules,” Meredith Kopit Levien, chief operating officer, wrote in a memo to employees. “Our relationship with Apple News does not fit within these parameters.”

An Apple spokesman said that The Times “only offered Apple News a few stories a day,” and that the company would continue to provide readers with trusted information from thousands of publishers.

“We are also committed to supporting quality journalism through the proven business models of advertising, subscriptions and commerce,” he said.

The news business has had a complicated relationship with Silicon Valley for decades. Companies like Google and Facebook have decimated newspaper advertising sales and disintermediated news sites by positioning their own platforms as one of the main ways that people can consume news.

Yet when Apple created a news app in late 2015, promising to work with publishers to help them build a business, many news executives were cautiously optimistic.

Unlike other tech companies, Apple didn’t compete with news sites for ad dollars. And Apple adopted an approach that was antithetical to how its Silicon Valley peers handled the headlines: It allowed only mainstream news organizations in the app, and humans, not algorithms, ranked the top stories.

Apple’s aggressive promotion of Apple News on iPhones has given it an audience of roughly 125 million monthly readers, making the app one of the world’s most widely read news sources. But advertising in the app has generated little revenue for news organizations. For any subscriptions sold in the app, Apple also takes a 30 percent cut.

Last year, Apple introduced a new way for publishers to make money: Apple News Plus, a subscription service inside its news app that offers access to hundreds of publications, which typically have digital paywalls, for $9.99 a month.

Apple told publishers that the service would deliver customers they wouldn’t otherwise get. But many publications would be undercutting their own prices, and they would have to share half of the Apple News Plus revenues with dozens of other news organizations. Apple took the other half for itself.

Still, many publishers took the gamble, including The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and Condé Nast, which publishes The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Wired. Months after its debut, many publishers were underwhelmed by the sales, according to Digiday, a digital media news site.

Executives at The Times passed on Apple News Plus and later reduced the number of articles it supplied to Apple News. In an interview with Reuters last year, Mark Thompson, The Times’s chief executive, warned other news organizations about the risks of teaming up with Apple.

“We tend to be quite leery about the idea of almost habituating people to find our journalism somewhere else,” he said.

The Times said last month that its total subscribers had topped six million. Revenue has been rising from digital subscriptions, even as the company grapples with an advertising downturn brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Times has long had a complex relationship with the large tech companies. It has experimented with working with Facebook, including on an effort called Instant Articles several years ago.

But The Times stopped producing Instant Articles for the social network in 2017, saying it wasn’t getting enough revenue. Now Facebook pays The Times to feature its articles in the news tab on Facebook’s app, the company’s latest effort to work with the news industry. Times articles also appear in Google News, which sends readers to publishers’ websites, unlike Apple News, which generally keeps readers on Apple’s app.

In her note to employees, Ms. Levien said that exiting the partnership with Apple News was not expected to have “a material impact” to The Times’s business and that the company would work with Apple in other ways, including on apps, podcasts and hardware.

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