₦airaland Forum

Bestchild:
Clearest selfie phone? I low key can't wait to see it

Clearest selfie mobile yah? Interesting. 48MP? Same selfie camera as the Infinix Zero 8 and the Camon 16 Premier? What kind of image sensor are they using, anyways? Dem nor dey talk am. Can't be the IMX586; 1/2.0'' is too large to fit in a selfie hole punch without a camera bump. Maybe ISOCELL GM1? GM3? Well, let's see if it'll beat arguably the best budget phone for vlogging and selfies, the vivo V21/V21 5G, which, oh by the way, has a 44MP 1/2.67'' Tetracell selfie sensor with OIS, the first on ANY smartphone since the HTC 10 and the Xperia XA Ultra series. Oh, and it can record 4K 60FPS selfie video; lots of flagships can't even do this (looking at you, Xiaomi, vivo, Oppo, OnePlus flagships) and has a dual selfie flash. Let's wait then, shall we?

seunmsg:
To be honest, I really don’t see the difference between whatsapp, Telegram and Signal in terms of data privacy. All of them are foreign companies that will compromise our privacy if necessary in the interest of their home country. Facebook, google, Apple etc already have more than enough information on each and every users than necessary. So, what else will whatsapp be sharing with Facebook that they don’t know already?
Any high ranking government official discussing secret government business or policies on whatsapp or social media group should be jailed. Whatsapp have access to everything we discuss on the platform and won’t hesitate to share with their home government if necessary. I expect DSS and NIA to regularly educate elected and high ranking government officials on how to use the internet (social media especially) in a safe and secure manner that won’t compromise national security.

True man. Though I sincerely doubt the DSS/NIA would be that stupid. I mean, even Boko Haram wouldn't dare to use those platforms to expose their tradecraft. It would be like them cutting their own throats.
I remember reading an article about a Zimbabwean rebel intelligence operative (in other words, an anti-Mugabe spook) who always carried three 'kpalasa' phones. When asked why he never used a smartphone, he said and I quote:
'Android? [funny expression on face] Do you want to get me killed?'
Although my main man Snowden says he uses Signal, remarking that if it weren't secure, he would've already been dead.

zudozz:
I just dey skip the thing since becos I dont even know what its all about!

You see? How many Nigerians, or even most people around the globe give a damn about their sensitive information being used to monetize them using ads?
You think Facebook is bad? Trust me, Google is ten times worse.
There is almost no 'free' app or service that does not try to make money from it's users by selling everything you do. Though I admit that ads are actually useful for web journalism, else BBC will be charging you a sub plan to read their news stories.(Fun fact; SSL or not, I've never been comfortable entering my bank details into any website).
Isn't it curious when the torchlight app you just downloaded is asking you for permission to access your contacts, your location history, your mobile data, your bluetooth and wifi and your camera/microphone?

Gptech:
I believe the woeful performances of the snapdragon 810 and 808 processors did good to the Mid range market. I think Qualcomm had to win people's confidence back and so decided to release a really powerful mid range processor in the Snapdragon 650/652, it was a huge success.

@Gptech Look, you all shouldn't be taking sides here. We're the consumers here, competition is never a bad thing (look at Intel before the return of AMD).
Competition is good for everybody. It drives costs down and brings about innovation (compare the smartphone scene and the difference between phones of the year 2017-2018 and 2020-2021).
Exynos is Qualcomm's biggest rival after MediaTek. Qualcomm have basically been sitting on their asses. For example, they were smug about the Snapdragon 765G being the chip to take 5G mainstream. Then Mediatek began their attack with the Dimensity series and now they were the ones that brought 5G to even lower price points.

Topmaike007:
I get am before no be property jare...

smartty68:
Exynos is a low budget MTK!

Please don't quote me because I'm having headache on my left leg...

sagieramos:
Odẹ boy. Who talk say Exynos is near SD?

Y'all are really amusing me. So what y'all gonna be saying about the Exynos 1080 or even the just announced Exynos 2100?

Who ever said that manufacturing chipsets is an easy thing?
I sincerely appreciate the @OP's concern with this but one has to pull his/her head from the clouds.
First of all, chip manufacturing is nothing to see as a joke. Remember China's pride (Huawei) were banned from using US chip resources. China is investing heavily into companies like SMIC to produce chips on 14nm, which is regarded as semi-obsolescent. If China has difficulty in producing world-class SoCs, how will ordinary Nigeria be able to start?
Secondly, even Intel, (a.k.a. Chipzilla) is finding it difficult to produce 10nm in adequate quantities, and this is a company commonly regarded to have the most advanced foundaries on the planet, and with the support of the USA, to boot!
Third, so many of the things that make semiconductors so incredibly advanced are buried under the weight of patents. I mean, look at Qualcomm's activities. So, even if you wanted to copy, how the hell would you make it work?
Finally, let's assume that you managed to scale through these enormous obstacles, and then managed to get support from investors. How about support from Nigeria and Nigerians? Okay, I'll give you the people. Government, nko? Dem go give you regular electricity supply? Dem go give you favourable government policies and subsidies? Shey dem go helep you with fresh cooling water supplies? (If there is one thing that semiconductor foundaries need, it is fresh cooling water). Importing raw materials, too? Dem go make am easier?
And one more thing. So far, India has started development on their own chipset, based on RISC-V. Great milestone, but it won't garner much attention outside blog and media articles. And if you want to use contracts (you wanna go fabless?) please remember that TSMC has it's orders for 5nm crammed to the gills by Apple, and only them have developed cutting edge 3nm fabricators, and Apple sef don swallow all dose ones join. You won't even be able to afford their 14nm contracts even if Dangote and all of Nigeria's richest were supporting your ambitious venture. So you'd have to settle for, at best 24nm, which no one in 2021 gives two hoots about.
Think am.

Nice DIY post @OP. Though I must say that if you are using a smartphone with curved edges, specifically Samsung flagships which are notorious for inaccurate palm rejection algorithms, then I sincerely doubt these tips might help.
Curved-edge (and waterfall) display phones, man I love 'em . They're damn stunning in pictures and even more stunning in person. But without great palm rejection (like Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo flagships), oops. And if you hate glare and are nitpicky about absolute color accuracy, then maybe you should stay away...

trippleKAY:
Good evening, my infinix phone restarts apps while on minimize, please can anyone help me on how to stop that? Thanks

Dear friend, I don't know if I can help you, but I can try.
If,
1). On your Infinix, go to PowerMaster (I guess it's Power Marathon now )
2). Go to smart power saving.
3). Turn it off.
4). Anywhere you see 'standby intelligent power saving', turn it off.
Then,
1). Go to Settings.
2). Go to Battery and power.
3). Go to battery optimization
4). Turn off all the toggles for the apps you use a lot.
Lemme know if this works for you.

sunshineV:
bad ram optimization. sell the scrap

Hey, sunshine, how's it going? Haven't heard from two NL members in a while; used to follow them a lot while I was a guest. Specifically, @skywalker240 and (ahem) the original @Slawormir. Would you kindly inform me of their whereabouts? Thanks.

edoairways:
With the proliferation of power bank countrywide and persistent epileptic power supply, it would make sense if solar power bank was marketed. I may have a power bank with USB cord attached to it but it might be difficult to recharge it when it is exhausted.

Dear sir, you have a point, but I personally wish there were a powerbank above 20000mAh that charges from dead to full in less than 1 hour, and could charge a laptop like a Dell XPS 15 2020 as well as a smartphone. Wishful thinking, eh?

Oops, my apologies. I forgot that powerbank actually does exist. It's the Chargeasap Flash 2.0.

theFilmtric:

MediaTek Helio P95

MediaTek has announced a new mobile processor in february, the Helio P95.This is the chipset on the Oppo A93 that retails for 125000This SoC is a successor to the company's popular Helio P90 chip. That SoC has been included in a ton of budget smartphones to date.
The MediaTek Helio P95 is now here to continue the tradition. This is yet another mid-range processor that will probably be included in a ton of budget Chinese smartphones.
This is a single-cluster, 8-core processor. It comes with two Cortex-A75 cores clocked at 2.2GHz, and six Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 2.0GHz.
The MediaTek Helio P90 offers a 10-percent performance improvement over its predecessor

This SoC also comes with a rather large L3 cache, and it includes the PowerVR GM 94446 GPU. This graphics chip will offer a 10-percent improvement in performance, compared to the Helio P90, claims MediaTek.
This SoC supports up to 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM (1,866MHz), and UFS 2.1 flash storage. In terms of cameras, it supports 64-megapixel sensors, or 25-megapixel + 16-megapixel dual camera setups.
As far as display support is concerned, it supports resolutions of up to 2520 x 1080, with a 21:9 aspect ratio. This SoC also comes with APU 2.0 (AI Processing Unit). That unit offers a 10-percent increase in benchmark performance compared to the Helio P90.
The Helio P95 includes triple ISP with 14-bit RAW and 10-bit YUV processing. AI camera enhancements are also a part of the package, including AI-NR low-light photography, scene identification, 5-person human pose tracking, and so on.
MediaTek's HyperEngine is a part of this offering as well. It comes with improvements in gaming, while it also boosts other aspects of this processor.
It supports Cat. 12 download speeds, and Cat. 13 upload speeds[/b]

This chipset supports 4G LTE connectivity, up to Cat. 12 download speeds, and Cat. 13 upload speeds. 4 x 4 MIMO support is included, and the same goes for 256 QAM, ViLTE, VoLTE, WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, and so on.
MediaTek did not say when will we start seeing smartphones fueled by this processor. The company also did not list a single phone that will be fueled by this chip.
Chinese smartphone manufacturers are expected to start making such announcements soon, though. Companies like Ulefone, Elephone, OUKITEL, and a number of others tend to use MediaTek's processors intensively.
Such companies have been using the Helio P70 and P90 quite a bit in the last year or so, so they'll probably do the same with the Helio P95 as soon as it becomes available. We're guessing that the first phones will arrive in Q2 this year, but we'll see.
The post MediaTek Intros Helio P95 SoC, A Successor To Helio P90 appeared first on Android Headlines.

theFilmtricsay

The Helio P95 is basically a Helio P90 with faster AI silicon and a few tweaks to the power management and scheduling (Corepilot 4.0), so therefore in raw CPU and GPU performance it is on par with the P90 which is on par with the Snapdragon 710AIE.

theFilmtric:
Exactly.

theFilmtricsay

Heavens, no! Y'all are getting it wrong (kinda).
The Dimensity 1000C/L are basically watered-down D1000s with the same 5G+5G support and (maybe) the AV1 decoding, while the MT6889Z/CZA Dimensity 1000+ is a bonafide flagship SoC which is duly advertised as such.
Try to understand me. The 'flagship killer' segment requires a phone with flagship-grade performance for less than half the cost of typical flagships, and a Dimensity 820 or even a Kirin 985 won't cut it. Remember that the reason why a lot of global SD865 phones barely launched above 500 USD is primarily because of the cost of the SoC itself. And for damn sure Mediatek is proud of the only dual-SIM 5G flagship chipset on the market (at least until the SD875/Exynos 2100 comes) with this modem still being integrated.

atheistandproud:
What kind of shameless plagiarism is this?

Lalasticlala, dragnet, honsule, Seun.

This op copied my post to the last punctuation without giving credit.

Really, @OP? Why this copy-and-paste?
@atheistandproud maybe you should call EFCC.

atheistandproud:
I highly doubt that. A14 is designed on ARMv8.6 which is light years from the X1 and A78 which are on ARMv8.4.

They could come close as usual but beat? That remains to be seen.

I agree, though I doubt they'd match the A14. Maybe the A13 (God, please). Apple is literally two years ahead of them all. We need a new little core. Cortex-A55 is five years overdue. Wish ARM could make a Cortex-A65 design for mobile. But who knows? This might change next year with ARMv9 Matterhorn.

jaxxy:
Nice bt damn long.

Intel chips have dominated the market Apple now complaining they are too expensive bt intel disagrees. This is besides any long rivalry btwn these 2 I guess.

True, I'm tired of Intel's dominance. Jeez! Were it not for AMD we'd still be having maybe a quad-core eight thread i9-9840H We need competition in tech: it forces manufacturers to be innovative, it drives costs down and it gives us choice. Nvidia too is coming in. They just bought ARM. Wouldn't be long before we see an ARM-based server from them. I wonder if they may kill Mali GPUs though, maybe for their own designs?...

Djtm:
You should format your post properly and use paragraphs

Thanks for the advice sir, but I did use paragraphs.

JJmubby:
U spitting some facts bro, iPhone are not that expensive over there, its here in Nigeria that we take it as its some big deal, if not for Nigeria Naira’s terrible exchange rate.

Honestly speaking, boss. I mean, the truth is that iPhone prices vary wildly from country to country. In the US, an iPhone 12 and a OnePlus 8 Pro are the same price. In the UK, the OnePlus is 100 quid cheaper. In India, to pick the iPhone over the OnePlus that is almost 600 dollars cheaper and is of far better value is just ridiculous. Unbox Therapy says the iPhone 12 is so expensive in India 'you could book a flight to Dubai, buy the same damn phone and fly back with change to spare'.
P.S.: Watch TechNick's battery drain test and watch the iPhone 12 come second to the Note 20 Ultra which has almost twice the battery mAh. iOS's power management is legendary.

I'd say you shouldn't underrate Mediatek and Exynos, sir. Why? I'll explain. Mediatek is not the same company it once was. Ever since the Helio P60, they've been through a renaissance. The Dimensity series is the culmination of this achievement. They've been beating Qualcomm in the price-to-performance ratio. Okay, look at it this way: the Realme X7 Pro is way cheaper than a OnePlus Nord and it's still a flagship.
Personally, I don't always trust benchmarks, because they are based on quite unrealistic workloads, can fool you (in Geekbench 5 the Exynos 990 beats the SD865 in single-core while in real life even the Dimensity 820 beats it in sustained performance) and they cannot reliably compare phones with the same chipset. (I use Geekbench to just get an idea of the initial perf. of a new chip, but AnTuTu? Even a UX tweak can double the score, and it's too biased against Chinese phone brands). I'd pick PCMark, 3DMark, specint.2006 (the best) or SpeedTest G over the popular ones.
The Dimensity 1000+ falls somewhere between the SD855+ and the SD865 in raw performance, and it's much better than Kirin 990 5G, which is slightly above the same SD855+. The upcoming MT6893 (Dimensity 2000?) has the 1+ fast+3 medium+4 light core configuration as the 865/+ and will likely beat it in CPU and efficiency. The GPU, however, not really (why the same Mali-G77 MC9, MTK why?). The Kirin 990 5G has in my opinion the most efficient 5G modem (and for now only the Kirin 9000 beats it). The D1000 family are the only mobile SoCs on Earth yet to support Dual-SIM Dual-Standby 5G+5G and 4K 60FPS 10-bit AV1 decoding.
I'm really excited by the newly announced Exynos 1080 and the upcoming MT6893. These are the chips that will power the next generation true premium midrangers. Also curious about how the upcoming Exynos 2100 and the Snapdragon 875 will compare in specs. And who knows, maybe they might match Apple's A13 Bionic (hopefully).

JJmubby:
I get 12+ hours constant sot on my xr with medium usage. He’s right, new generation iphones have very good batteries and don’t be fooled by the mah number you see online, they last longer or are even on par with androids with 4000mah batteries in usage.

The thing about android phones is that they just put big batteries in the phones like that with little to no battery optimization where as ios optimize their batteries which allows the phones to use most out of the battery without actually draining them quickly. You can confirm this by doing a battery test between a 3000mah samsung s10e and a 2815mah iphone 12 or 2658mah iphone xs, you’ll notice that the s10e will die before the rest of the iphones despite having the bigger battery.

A lot of comments I'm seeing here are just amusing. Well, people must base their opinions on experience or worse, 'what I heard'.
Thing is, I personally don't really like iOS. But as a power user and someone who hates bias I wouldn't mind using one. At all. You see, those of you saying iPhones have bad battery life are either using older-gen iPhones (iPhone 6-iPhone 8 Plus or even the new iPhone SE, which I only recommend to light user who likes the Apple way of doing things) or newer iPhones that have bad battery health.
There is a lot to like about iPhones. The build quality/fit and finish are amazing, only matched by Samsung, Huawei, Sony, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Asus, LG and many other flagships (and they don't all feel the same). Apple's color management on their displays is amazing, too. I once held my boss's iPhone 11 and the fit and finish was incredible. It seems one has to pay a lot for that experience. Reviewers have often said that holding a well crafted flagship phone makes you feel you are holding something special, like a Rolex. It may not seem like much, but for someone like me who has seen a lot of ugly-looking and cheap-feeling budget phones, it's like a revelation. iOS may seem boring (and it is) but it is a lot more refined than Android. Granted, it might not matter to you if you haven't used or seen it (afterall, ignorance is bliss, no?) but spend just a day and you will understand that soup wey sweet, well you know the rest. Truth is, to really appreciate the iPhone ecosystem you have to be somewhere like in the States, where everyone isn't running around looking for free basics, or data bonus, or 'abeg helep me on hotspot na' or even stable network, and Apple's and other services just work seamlessly. Otherwise,top-drawer iPhones will just be too expensive for someone like me to use and get the best out of. But if I could afford it without killing myself, hell, I'd grab the iPhone 13 Pro Max when it comes.

Randerl:
This, is a great and well researched write up.

Thanks @thepoweruser.

Einstein! Thanks for the support, sir. Waiting to see how the chip wars pan out. Come 2030 and things in the tech space will be so different from today.

cool318:
@thepoweruser
Great Tech write-up you just vomited here.
Imagine the pumping power of CPU, GPU and APU's in one system. Apple is always setting the pace.
I believe the Bionic processor, could it be the brain child of that Nigerian earlier mentioned on this forum, who was said to be on the verge of producing chips embedded in Artificial intelligence.

Keep us posted @OP

You betcha.

Exumal:
Great write up OP. But we shouldn't forget the fact that the processor, GPU and the RAM are all on board, no room for future upgrade. I believe this new trend may bring about the death of Windows. They will have to look into a better optimized. On a gloomy side, I can't see a better future for Android and Windows; Apple is going the way of Huawei's Harmony. One OS for all your home appliances and smartphone as well as these OS are cost efficient in utilizing hardwares. Why pay much for hardware with low efficiency or pay less for hardware and well optimised OS.

Thanks for the comment, friend. But let me shock you. Who started the trend of soldering those components to the motherboard? You guessed right: Apple. Android is so good now in my opinion that it is only manufacturers that are responsible for ruining it via bad skins/ads, not Google. Fuchsia is still years away from coming to something you'll find in someone's pocket. Windows' future? Who knows? Andromeda failed just like Windows 10 Mobile and the UWP platform. HarmonyOS, now that is interesting, especially the intriguing microkernel base. Well by Q2 2021 we'll have a sizable number of devices running it.
Fingers crossed.

atheistandproud:
Interesting.

Thanks for the mention.

The M1 is a beast but I didn't think that RISC architecture would do well against CISC.

The future is pregnant.

Nice comment, my atheist friend. Though I do think that RISC can beat CISC. Why do I say this, though? Because both now have a lot in common. Attributes that make both different has been used with both of them (well, maybe not all). Let's just wait for Apple's ARM iMac, shall we?
P.S: So, what do you think about the upcoming Android 5nm chips (SD875 and Exynos 2100)? Can they beat Apple's A14?

Hakeem12:
I Stan and re-stan apple for this. Exciting times in the tech world right now, exciting times. I have also been wondering what would happen to x86. Apple left others in the dust with this move.

The A14 bionic is no joke. It's a beast. Love the way you write. You should launch more topics. Only one other guy; atheistandproud dishes out info like this. The only bugging me is the lack of dedicated graphics hardware. Would an integrated GPU fare better?

Thank you for the kind words sir. I'll try to add more topics. You would not believe that I wrote this entire article on a small phone (specifically an MTN Smart M561M3 KaiOS phone). Saving for a smartphone now. To answer your question, Apple is working on the GPU problem by offloading the tasks to the M1's 8-core GPU. Shouldn't be too much of a worry; after all, who uses a Mac for gaming?

x123xlolls:
Which be dat? Brahms

It's a Cockney expression. Like, rhyming slang: 'Brahms and Liszt' means 'pissed'. In other words, drunk.
Oh, and one thing, man I hate Destiny.

Damn, bruh...
Lemme try. Remember these from the Nokia 2690 and the Nokia C1-01:
Aires.aac
Bird box.aac (from Nokia 105)
Collective.aac
Duel.aac
Lights on.aac
Journeys.aac
Liszt.aac (also from 105)
Maximise.aac
Nokia tune.aac (oh, do I love this)
Octopus.aac
Nostalgia.aac
Ring ring.aac
Sensation.aac
Starsign.aac
Trill.aac
Walk away.aac
Out.mid (had to download that)

Oops, gotta add these (not Nokia, tho)
Marimba (ahem, iPhone. Hear it. That's an iPhone)
Telekom (from a Bold 9900 carrier unlocked from T-mobile Germany)
Over the Horizon (Samsung)
Orange (Xiaomi)
Huawei tune
OnePlus rhythm

Jeffy1206:
roll on, Liszt

Brahms and Liszt, baby.

Ernerstdavid55:
I was lost in it like I was watching a movie
Nice one

Thanks for the support, sir. I appreciate it. I really do.

Pimples:
Intresting write up

Thank you so much sir.

Updated: Sorry for the delay; dear readers, had to do a little more research.
Okay, y'all get the point. Pardon the joke.
But seriously, Apple and Intel were never really friends. It was embarrassing (and somewhat humiliating) that PowerPC, which had been so ahead of x86 in performance-per-watt, suddenly found itself obsolete. Intel's Core had made a massive step forward such that PPC was still stuck at 500~800MHz while x86 was blowing past 3GHz with dual and even quad cores. And longtime Mac lovers hated this. An x86 Mac? What an irony at the time.
PowerPC couldn't give Apple the performance and efficiency it wanted. Intel could. So when Mac OS X launched and Apple's roadmap to the future was set up, they knew PPC wasn't going to get them there.
But now that is changing.
I've always said that, 'Competition is good for us consumers, monopolies are bad'. Intel was virtually unchallenged in the PC chip biz for so long. AMD, their (pretty much) only rival couldn't match them in performance, and AMD's offerings just looked like feeble counterblows. But Intel's progressed rocketed upward, then began slowing to a crawl, since there wasn't anyone to push them. They had the best foundries on the planet. They had the lion's share of the PC market. Buy any desktop (or laptop) and chances were it had an Intel chip. What could possibly happen? Nothing.
Or so they thought.
Then Came Ryzen
In 2017, AMD debuted Ryzen. You have to understand that before Ryzen came we were stuck on dual and quad cores on mainstream PCs like forever. Ryzen changed that. Desktops and laptops were still stuck on 14nm. Ryzen gave us 7nm in 2019. They beat Intel in price-to-performance ratio, even in laptops. To really understand how just how much Ryzen shook things up I recommend reading PCWorld's articles on how AMD caught Intel napping at the wheel.
I mean, how worse could it get? People were now a lot more likely to go with AMD. Intel was only winning in biased workloads. Even in gaming, Intel's previous lead over AMD will likely be ending with Ryzen's forthcoming 5000 series. Chipzilla, still struggling to fix it's 10nm woes, couldn't do little more than reuse it's 14nm nodes. It wasn't looking good at all for Intel. AMD was whupping them everywhere.
And now comes Apple.
Switching to Custom ARM Chips
Anyone who knows Apple knows just how they've been dominating the mobile scene. It is often said that there are two sides in the mobile chipset game: Apple and everyone else. The A14 Bionic in the latest iPhones and iPad Air is so powerful that I honestly doubt either the Snapdragon 875(G) or the Exynos 2100 will match it in CPU performance. (Let's not even talk about GPU). Watch TechNick's videos on YouTube and see just how much mAh/min an iPhone has. (Spoiler alert: iPhone 12 goes as low as 5mAh/min even under heavy use!). Performance and efficiency, Apple was just miles ahead. It's impressive. And now Apple says it's leaving x86 behind and it's throwing it's weight behind ARM.
This marks a turning point in Apple's history. Imagine being able to use the same apps on your MacBook as your iPhone. Macs would instantly become Always-On, Always Connected PCs. (Who knows, Apple might add a cellular modem). Desktop-grade apps would come to the iPad, fully fulfilling Apple's dream of it being a practical laptop replacement. Apple's ecosystem would become even more seamless. So many potential benefits. For the first time ever, Apple controls the design and operation of the processors from the ground up
Naturally, critics were worried, and they had a very good reason to be. ARM had proven it's salt in the smartphone and embedded computing game but was largely disappointing on desktop performance-wise. Battery-wise, it was amazing. ARM-based Windows laptops running mainly Snapdragon chipsets could only run either native ARM32/64 Windows programs (perfectly) or legacy Win32 apps via emulation (not so perfectly). x86-64 emulation was still a long way off. So for Apple to want to do this said two things: i). That they were confident of their custom chip division (and they had good reason to be), and 2). That they were also confident of solving any inherent backwards-compatibility issues. Critics also questioned compatibility with things like dedicated GPUs and support with programs that used them.
One More Thing
On November 10, 2020, Apple announced the very first ARM Macs, all powered by the same Apple M1 chipset. The 2020 MacBook Pro 13, MacBook Air and Mac mini. No difference, other than the Air not having active cooling (a fan). Not even a heatpipe. The aluminium chassis was the heat sink.
The media was curious. Okay, this is a new era for Apple, we get it. Two years down the line, every new Mac is an ARM machine. Apps? Okay, native apps are coming. Side benefit: macOS Big Sur lets you run the same apps as the iPhones. But what about Photoshop and other x86 apps? Apple says, don't worry, Rosetta 2 to the rescue. Emulation. And then dismay, because we all know how slow emulating even x86-32 is on 64-bit ARM hardware.
Apple is a company that prides itself on the quality of it's software experience. The hardware and software are the key ingredients in any ecosystem, but to bring the best out of them requires polish. Refinement, even. Well, the hardware and software has been unveiled, nyet? Well, let's wait for reviews.
Trouble
The Apple M1 isn't so different from the A14 Bionic. Two extra cores, a beefier GPU, even an ISP and Neural Engine, similar to it's mobile counterpart. Infact, what's so different? Same Firestorm+Icestorm architecture (higher clocks-3.2GHz for Firestorm with four heavy cores instead of just two, up to 2.6GHz for Icestorm, up from 3.1 and 1.8 on the A14), same GPU architecture (double the cores), same ISP and AI silicon, same storage and RAM controller bus. However, the cores have larger caches to saturate the core clocks, better memory bandwith, hell, you could call this an A14X Bionic, and was initially rumored as an A14T. So, just how good is it? Hold on to your horses, guys... This might seriously blow your socks off.
The tech site The Verge said and I quote; ''The questions changed from, 'Why would you want to invest in Apple's unproven chip' to, 'How do other laptops and PCs go from here?'
Disrupting The Industry
As one of the reviewers of the new ARM MacBook put it, 'The test was deeply unfavorable'. In a corner was the very latest, all-bells-and-whistles maxed-out 16'' MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM, what is certainly an 8-core i9-9980H with an AMD Radeon 5500 M and 4TB of storage, a 6000USD machine, against a much less impressive MacBook Pro 13'' with Apple M1, 8GB RAM and 1TB storage, just for 2000USD. In every single test, the ARM laptop held it's own and even beat it's far expensive cousin (both in benchmarks and code compiling) and the most insane thing is that the Intel machine's fans were roaring and the ARM laptop didn't turn on it's fan ONCE.
What Happens Now?
In all my life, I have never expected this to happen. Obviously, the newer laptop doesn't have dedicated graphics hardware but Apple's software wizards are working on using their own integrated GPU in the M1. And this is with a laptop, imagine what Apple could do with the upcoming ARM iMac! This is the new computing revolution. A new day has surely dawned for ARM.
Here's me wondering what the hell Intel and AMD are going to do. Could this be the end of x86? What about Windows-on-ARM? How are they going to answer to this? Will Intel overlook the fact that the ARM MacBook does all these miracles while having twice the battery life? Bring back Itanium? I don't know. Only time will tell. But I can assure you that there is no way any of them (be it Intel, or Qualcomm, or the PC manufacturers, or even ARM will ignore this. Because Apple usually starts trends that push the industry forward. And this is the most amazing trend they kickstarted since the original iPhone launched, all the way back in 2007.


Comments welcome. Took me nearly 6 hours to type this. Appreciate the early comments. One love.

As a stalwart tech enthusiast, I must say that there is always a point in life when one senses that we are on the cusp of a revolution.
Apple is the sort of company that generates a lot of emotions: awe, love, despair, surprise, amusement and maybe even disgust. You can say a lot about this company founded in the 1970s by a few hippie-looking idealistic men, whose business atmosphere back then was starkly casual and laid-back compared to the overwhelming formality and corporate gloom of IBM (a company that actually had it's own country club); a company who prided its ability to think out of the box; a company whose leader, Jobs, is in my opinion the greatest tech visionary ever (and also one of my least favorite. Oops. )
Apple changed almost every aspect of computing. They changed the way we interacted with our PCs. They changed the way we listen to music. (I'm damn certain the .mp3 file format would never have taken off without the iPod). They changed the way we thought a laptop should be designed. The MacBook Air nailed the thin-yet-powerful laptop design and gave rise tn a new laptop category, the ultrabook. The iMac spawned the all-in-one PC. Their iPad is just in a league of it's own in the tablet market. The Apple Watch is (really) the only smartwatch worth buying. And; of course, the iPhone changed the definition of a smartphone. Apple isn't a trend-follower, it is a trend-setter. I know I sound like an Apple fanboy but I love innovation. I love breaking new ground. I love something new, unprecedented. Apple has recently been more conservative, focusing mainly on refinement (and the money) but I just feel like it's 2007 again. Granted, not everything Apple has made have all been runaway successes (cough, AirPower, iBook, AirPoint Extreme, the elusive Glass, cough) but Apple just makes innovations so good you wonder how we could have lived without this before. If I could use a sentence, it would be it just works. Convenience, even. (I mean, just look at how seamless FaceID is).
Alright, let's get down to it. So, for those of you in the know, Apple was rumored to ditch x86-based (Intel) processors for ARM. Initially, I dismissed the rumors as pure fantasy. I mean, really, right; what a nice April Fools joke: Apple leaves powerful x86 for weaker ARM in the name of power efficiency. (Except it wasn't April then). But then as the rumors thickened, I began to reconsider my opinions. I didn't want to believe it, but I thought there must be some meat to the rumors. And then imagine my surprise when on June 22 at the WWDC event, Apple announced what they called 'a historical moment'.
I was kind of sceptical, sure. But now I think they're right.
Apple's bone of contention has always been with Intel. I mean, back when Motorola was selling Apple chips before they jumped to IBM's PowerPC architecture, they were trying to build their own experience. Intel was a competitor (well, Wintel, but not IBM, thanks to their generosity). They wanted to show customers that they were better than any x86/Wintel/IBM compatible, both in performance and efficiency. Then Intel, who had lagged behind PPC, suddenly started catching up. And then in 2005, Jobs shocked us (Apple nerds) all.
*** 2005. Somewhere in a bar in Cupertino...***
First guy: Yo, Joe, word's on the street.
Joe: What word, Fred?
Fred:Looks like Apple's ditching PowerPC for x86 (Intel).
Joe:*Spits out his mouthful of ginger beer* WHAT?!
Modified: Man, this post is too long. Never fear, more updates incoming. Watch this space!