The Redmi Note 11S will launch in some markets as the POCO M4 Pro (4G)

On Wednesday, Xiaomi officially introduced the Redmi Note 11 series to international markets. The lineup consists of four devices: the Redmi Note 11, Redmi Note 11s, Redmi Note 11 Pro, and Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G. If you remember, Xiaomi also has a sub-brand called POCO whose portfolio largely consists of rebranded Redmi and Xiaomi smartphones. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of the newly-launched Redmi Note 11 phones is now set to take on new clothes and launch under a different identity in other markets.

Based on the information we have received from our tipster, we believe that the global Redmi Note 11S will launch in some markets as the POCO M4 Pro (4G). Both devices share the same device codename: fleur. Note that there’s already a POCO M4 Pro 5G, which was launched in November last year. It was a rebadged version of the Chinese Redmi Note 11.

As we have seen with previous Redmi-POCO rebrands, the POCO M4 Pro (4G) will most certainly keep the same internal as the Redmi Note 11S but there will be some cosmetic changes to set it apart from the Redmi Note 11S. We don’t know when the POCO M4 Pro (4G) is set to hit the shelves and in which markets it will land. At the very least, we hope that both phones do not co-exist in the same market — we have seen this happen with the Redmi Note 10T and POCO M3 Pro 5G.

Separately, we have also learned (via XiaomiUI) that POCO is working on a device called the POCO F4 GT, which will serve as a direct successor to the last year’s POCO F3 GT.

The POCO M4 Pro (4G) will likely pack the same hardware as the Redmi Note 11S. That means we already know what to expect from the phone in terms of specifications. It will pack a 6.43-inch FHD+ LCD with a 90Hz refresh rate, a MediaTek Helio G96 SoC, 6GB/8GB RAM, up to 128GB storage, a quad camera setup led by a 108MP primary shooter, a 5,000mAh battery with 33W fast charging support, and a side-mounted fingerprint scanner.

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Thanks to XDA Recognized Developer yshalsager for the tip!

Featured image: the Redmi Note 11S

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OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G is reportedly launching next month

Last year, OnePlus added a new entrant to the Nord family with the launch of the OnePlus Nord CE. While not as competitive as Xiaomi or Realme’s mid-range offerings, the OnePlus Nord CE offered a great all-around smartphone experience, as we noted in our review. The device was certainly well received as the company is now looking to follow up with a successor. We got our first look at the OnePlus Nord CE 2 last month via leaked renders. Now a leak suggests the official launch may just be around the corner.

According to tipster Max Jambor, who has a good track record when it comes to OnePlus product leaks, OnePlus plans to launch the Nord CE successor as soon as next month. The render shared by Max points to a February 11 launch — just a couple of days apart from the Galaxy S22 series launch which is reportedly launching on February 9.

The OnePlus Nord CE 2 is coming a bit early than we anticipated considering the OnePlus Nord CE came out in June last year. Note that OnePlus hasn’t officially confirmed anything about the Nord CE 2 yet. But if the leak is indeed true, we can expect the company to start teasing the phone in the coming days.

As per previous leaks, the OnePlus Nord CE 2 (codename Ivan) will feature an updated design with a flat, hole-punch display on the front and rectangular camera island on the back. The phone is rumored to pack a 6.4-inch AMOLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate. Under the hood, it will reportedly be powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 900 chipset (the Nord CE featured Snapdragon 750G SoC). The chipset will be paired with up to 12GB of RAM and up to 256GB of storage. As far as camera hardware is concerned, we’re not expecting a huge leap as the phone is expected to feature an identical triple camera setup as the Nord CE, consisting of a 64MP primary shooter, an 8MP ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP macro lens.

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Featured image: OnePlus Nord CE 2 leaked render by 91Mobiles

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Realme Pad will be updated to Android 12 after all

Realme officially joined the Android tablet league with the release of the Realme Pad in September last year. The Realme Pad offers decent hardware at an affordable price stage, featuring a solid build quality, a large design, and capable multimedia capabilities. However many users were disappointed when they learned earlier this month that Realme had no plans for the Android 12 update. But after some backlash, Realme now has a change of heart.

Realme on Wednesday officially confirmed that the Realme Pad would receive the Android 12 update after all. However, users will have to wait a quite bit to get their hands on the new software as the update won’t come out until Q3 2022. But at least your Realme Pad won’t be stuck on Android 11 forever. Realme also says the tablet will get three years of security updates which is great to see considering the fact it’s a budget tablet.

“The Realme Pad will get the Android 12 Update in Q3, 2022 and would also have 3 years of security update. The announcement has been made keeping in mind the requirements of the users,” Realme said in a press release.

Realme says Android 12 will pack features like a revamped lock screen and notification UI, scrolling screenshots, one-handed mode, and updated widgets among other things.

The Realme Pad is one of the best budget Android tablets available on the market. It features a large 10.4-inch LCD display with 2000 x 1200 resolution and an 82.5% screen-to-body ratio. Under the hood, it’s powered by MediaTek’s Helio G80 octa-core SoC, paired with 3GB/4GB RAM and 32GB/64GB flash storage. It has an 8MP rear and an 8MP ultra-wide front camera. The tablet packs a 7,100mAh battery and charges via an 18W fast charger. Other notable highlights include quad speakers with Dolby Atmos support, dual microphones with noise cancellation, Bluetooth 5.0, Face Unlock, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the software front, it runs Android 11 out of the box with Realme UI for Pad on top.

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Oculus VR is now Meta Quest VR

Late last year, Facebook announced that it’s renaming itself to Meta, inspired by the company’s focus on alternate realities. Now, the Virtual Reality division of Meta has been renamed from Oculus to Meta Quest. It’s not surprising though, since we were expecting the rebrand to happen sooner than later. Apart from being an attempt to establish a brand that’s free from the flak affiliated to ‘Facebook’, the new Meta Quest branding will also help the company emphasize its move towards the metaverse and a future that’s focused on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.

The Oculus Twitter handle, which doesn’t exist anymore, recently announced this change via a tweet. It consists of a meme that suggests that the brand will now be called Meta Quest instead of Oculus. After the tweet was put out, the account handle was renamed to @MetaQuestVR. At the end of the day, it’s just a rebrand and there’s going to be no change in the products or services offered to existing Oculus device owners.

New Name. Same Mission. pic.twitter.com/USJafAPEdW

— Meta Quest (@MetaQuestVR) January 26, 2022

What this means is that all future VR/AR products from the company will launch with the new branding. The Oculus Quest 2, for example, could be sold as the Meta Quest 2 once existing units with the older branding are sold out. Surprisingly, though, the Oculus app on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store still hasn’t received an update with the new branding.

Just a few days back, we heard reports of Meta giving up on its own replacement OS for its VR/AR devices. However, it does seem like Meta is quite serious about building an ecosystem of products and services geared towards the metaverse. Another interesting aspect of this is that previously, the Quest was just a series of headsets from Oculus that were standalone VR devices. There were other headsets outside of the Quest series too like the Oculus Rift and Oculus Go. With the rebranding, all new products from Meta in the future will have the Quest tag attached to them.

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OnePlus 9 Pro’s latest update restores GCam auxiliary camera access

OnePlus recently rolled out a new stable channel OxygenOS 12 update to the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro. The update included several bug fixes, improvements, and optimizations, along with the Android security patches for January 2022. And, although the official changelog doesn’t make any mentions of it, the update also restores GCam auxiliary camera access on the OnePlus 9 Pro.

For the unaware, OnePlus started rolling out OxygenOS 12 based on Android 12 to the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro late last year. While the update introduced a bunch of new features to the devices, it also blocked one crucial feature — auxiliary camera access for Google Camera ports. This prevented users from utilizing their phone’s wide-angle and telephoto cameras with the modded camera app.

Shortly after users spotted this issue, OnePlus promised that it will restore auxiliary camera access in OxygenOS 12 for the OnePlus 9 series with a future update. However, the company didn’t provide an exact release timeline. While we expected OnePlus to take its own sweet time to revert this change, the company has already delivered it with the recently released OxygenOS 12 stable channel update (C.44).

Aamir from our team has confirmed that Google Camera ports can now access both the ultra-wide and telephoto cameras on his OnePlus 9 Pro running OxygenOS 12 (C.44). As you can see in the attached screenshots, the modded camera app lets you easily switch between the primary, ultra-wide, and telephoto cameras on the device with a tap. We believe that this should now also be possible on the vanilla OnePlus 9 with the latest OxygenOS 12 update, but we aren’t absolutely sure. In case you own a OnePlus 9, you can check if you have auxiliary camera access on the latest OxygenOS 12 build by installing a GCam mod from our Google Camera port hub.

Thanks to XDA Senior Member Some_Random_Username for the tip!

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Microsoft announces a bunch of new features coming to Windows 11 next month

Microsoft is preparing to roll out some new features to Windows 11 users in February, Windows chief Panos Panay announced today. In a blog post looking at the current state of Windows 11, the head of Microsoft’s Windows and hardware divisions also looked to the future, starting with Android apps.

However, the wording around Android apps is somewhat confusing. Here’s what Panay says in the blog post:

“Next month we’re bringing new experiences to Windows that include a public preview of how you can use Android apps on Windows 11 through the Microsoft Store and our partnerships with Amazon and Intel(…)”

This is strange because Android apps on Windows 11 are already available in preview right now. If you’re enrolled in the Windows Insider Beta or Dev channels, you can install the Windows Subsystem for Android and the Amazon Appstore and start installing apps. With some fiddling, you can even do that on non-Insider PCs. Most likely, this means that Microsoft is going to make Android apps available to all Windows 11 users, but you’ll have to install the Windows Subsystem for Android manually and it will still be labeled as a preview. If that’s the case, we still don’t know when Microsoft plans to consider this a “stable” feature.

In a recent article, our own Rich Woods noted that we’re three months into the experience of Android apps on Windows 11, and not a whole lot has changed. Maybe Microsoft is hoping to make some performance improvements in the future. We did reach out to Microsoft about this and will update this article if we hear back.

Beyond this, Microsoft also announced a couple of new features that Windows Insiders have been able to try for a while. There’s the new microphone mute icon on the taskbar, first seen in Windows 11 build 22494, which is currently only available for the work version of Microsoft Teams. Another Teams-exclusive feature is the ability to easily share a window during a meeting right from the taskbar, which debuted in build 22499.

Additionally, the new Notepad and Media Player apps will also be rolling out next month. The new Notepad app uses a new modern design and supports dark mode for the first time, in addition to including a new interface for the Find and Replace features. The new Media Player app replaces both Groove Music and Movies & TV apps, and it’s set to be the central destination for audio and video playback on Windows 11.

As to when exactly these features will roll out, there’s a good chance they’ll arrive alongside the Windows 11 Patch Tuesday updates in February. We shouldn’t have long to wait to know for sure.

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Microsoft is ahead of schedule on its Windows 11 rollout because people just love it

Today in a blog post, Microsoft talked a lot about the past year in Windows, and what we’re going to see moving forward. The firm said that Windows is now on 1.4 billion monthly active devices, although presumably, that number is limited to Windows 10 and Windows 11. It also said that it’s moving quicker than expected with the staged Windows 11 rollout. The reason is, well, people just love it, no matter what you might have heard.

The company said that people are accepting the free upgrade offer at twice the rate as they did for Windows 10. Of course, that doesn’t translate into more PCs upgrading, as Windows 11 is actually available to a much smaller subset of devices. It’s still impressive though, since with Windows 10, Microsoft spent months installing adware on users’ PCs with the intent of tricking them into saying they want Windows 10, well ahead of the rollout. The Windows 11 rollout has been much more subtle.

But that’s not all. Microsoft says that Windows 11 has the highest customer satisfaction and the highest quality score of any version of Windows, ever. People are spending 40% more time on their PC with Windows 11, although that might also have something to do with the work from home boom that we’ve seen over the last couple of years.

The Redmond firm also said that Windows 11 brings three times more traffic to the Microsoft Store. This bit makes sense, since the store has now been opened up in meaningful ways, and anyone can put an app in the Microsoft Store now.

So, because people just love Windows 11 so much, Microsoft is now entering the final phase of the rollout, so it’s well ahead of schedule. Originally, the company said that the staged rollout wouldn’t be finished until mid-2022.

Windows 11 hasn’t been without issues. There are still known issues, such as with compatibility with VirtualBox. The new OS was fairly rushed when it first shipped, being built in only about nine months. The plan for Windows 10 was originally that it was going to be the last version of Windows, so a major UI overhaul like this would have been a feature update for it. Instead, it became Windows 11, as that capitalizes on the work from home boom and the temporary resurgence of the PC market. Of course, most of the issues present at launch have been fixed.

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