Day: April 7, 2014

APCN2 fixed, Philippines to expect faster Internet

Kevin Bruce Francisco Leave a comment

We’ve previously reported that the country’s Internet connection has been affected due to faulty submarine cables. Today, PLDT has announced that the APCN2 has already been fixed and that normal speeds are now restored.

fast internet

“The consortium operating the Asia-Pacific Cable Network (APCN) which includes the Philippines has fully repaired the two breaks in its fiber optic undersea cable network in China-Korea and Taiwan-Japan. Thus, PLDT services affected by this fiber cable cuts are now fully restored,” PLDT Home posted on their Facebook page.

Since the submerged cables are now fixed, not only PLDT subscribers should be experiencing faster connection speeds, but the whole Philippines as well as eight other APAC countries as mentioned in our previous article.

The cables were reported to be damaged due to movements of tectonic plates, but are now in good working order.

Although PLDT claims that everything is now functioning properly, there are still quite a lot of people reporting on their page regarding sluggish connection. How does your connection fare? Personally, I haven’t gotten the chance to test my speed before and after, but I’ve experienced a boost in connection the past days.

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Qualcomm unveils 64-bit Snapdragon 810 and 808

Ronnie Bulaong Leave a comment

Qualcomm is going in for the kill as the company announced two new powerful additions to their 64-bit mobile chip lineup, namely the octa-core Snapdragon 810 and hexa-core Snapdragon 808.

Of the two, the Snapdragon 810 sports the better feature set consisting of four Cortex-A53 processors which handles the mundane tasks and another set of Cortex-A57 chips which takes care of the resource-heavy apps.

Speaking of performance, the Snapdragon 810 will also benefit from the new Adreno 430 GPU which, according to Qualcomm, is 30% faster than Adreno 420 or around 80% faster than Adreno 330, the GPU we often see on flagship devices. Furthermore, the octa-core SoC supports displays with 4K resolution, LPDDR4 RAM, as well as Cat 6 LTE-Advance connectivity.

Despite of being the modest between the two new chipsets, the Snapdragon 808 is by no means a push-over. It has a quartet of A53 chips which is complemented by a pair of Cortex-A57 processors and Adreno 418 which should come in handy when the going gets tough.

The Snapdragon 808 inherits some of the qualities of its more powerful counterpart such as LTE Category 6/7 modem and support for MIMO which brings improved wireless transfer rate over Wi-Fi. On the downside, the hexa-core only supports 2K displays and LPDDR3 RAM which is still pretty respectable in today’s standards.

According to Qualcomm, consumers can expect these new Snapdragon SoCs to start making their way in to various flagship devices starting the first half of 2015. Of course, there’s no point of making a 64-bit SoC if the ecosystem can’t support it which leads us to think that Google may announce a 64-bit Android OS in the near future, perhaps in Google I/O 2014?

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The post Qualcomm unveils 64-bit Snapdragon 810 and 808 appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Qualcomm unveils 64-bit Snapdragon 810 and 808

Ronnie Bulaong Leave a comment

Qualcomm is going in for the kill as the company announced two new powerful additions to their 64-bit mobile chip lineup, namely the octa-core Snapdragon 810 and hexa-core Snapdragon 808.

Of the two, the Snapdragon 810 sports the better feature set consisting of four Cortex-A53 processors which handles the mundane tasks and another set of Cortex-A57 chips which takes care of the resource-heavy apps.

Speaking of performance, the Snapdragon 810 will also benefit from the new Adreno 430 GPU which, according to Qualcomm, is 30% faster than Adreno 420 or around 80% faster than Adreno 330, the GPU we often see on flagship devices. Furthermore, the octa-core SoC supports displays with 4K resolution, LPDDR4 RAM, as well as Cat 6 LTE-Advance connectivity.

Despite of being the modest between the two new chipsets, the Snapdragon 808 is by no means a push-over. It has a quartet of A53 chips which is complemented by a pair of Cortex-A57 processors and Adreno 418 which should come in handy when the going gets tough.

The Snapdragon 808 inherits some of the qualities of its more powerful counterpart such as LTE Category 6/7 modem and support for MIMO which brings improved wireless transfer rate over Wi-Fi. On the downside, the hexa-core only supports 2K displays and LPDDR3 RAM which is still pretty respectable in today’s standards.

According to Qualcomm, consumers can expect these new Snapdragon SoCs to start making their way in to various flagship devices starting the first half of 2015. Of course, there’s no point of making a 64-bit SoC if the ecosystem can’t support it which leads us to think that Google may announce a 64-bit Android OS in the near future, perhaps in Google I/O 2014?

{Source}

The post Qualcomm unveils 64-bit Snapdragon 810 and 808 appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Sony A7S now official, “S” for Sensitivity

Ronnie Bulaong Leave a comment

In the days leading up to the official announcement, rumor-mongers have speculated that the upcoming Sony A7S will be able to shoot 4K clips. While their claims were partly true, there’s more to this new full-frame, mirrorless camera than meets the eye.

Just to set things clear, by default the new Sony Alpha 7S can only record 1080p clips at 60fps and 720p videos at 120fps (APS-C mode). However, its sensor is capable of outputting uncompressed 4:2:2 video feeds with 4K resolution (3840×2160) via HDMI.

That said, the Panasonic Lumix GH4 has a slight edge over the A7S in this category. But the Sony Alpha 7S levels the playing field by having a full-frame sensor which is twice as big as the ones found at the heart of the GH4.

Now that we have that straightened out, let’s talk about the other aspects of the A7s. Externally, the camera inherits the same compact and minimalist design of its Alpha 7 siblings. It also shares most of the feature set of the A7/A7r like Multi-Interface Shoe, NFC and Wi-Fi.

But what really sets this bad boy apart from the two other cameras that came before it (apart from the ability to capture 4K videos) is the sensor inside it. The Sony A7s’ sensor has an insane ISO range of 50-409,600 which puts it at par with the Nikon D4S.

Sony A7s specs:
12.2MP CMOS sensor
Sensor Type: Full-frame (36 x 24mm)
Contrast Detect AF w/ 25 AF points
ISO 50 – 409,600
30 sec. – 1/8000 sec. shutter speed
12fps continuous drive
Optional External Flash via Hot shoe
2.4M-dot Electronic Viewfinder
0.71x Magnification, 100% coverage
3” Articulating 921k-dot LCD
1080p video recording @60fps
720p video recording @120fps
Optional 4K Video Recording via HDMI
MPEG-4, AVCHD, XAVC-S video formats
NFC
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
SD / SDHC / SDXC
RAW + JPEG file format
DMW-BLF19Lithium-Ion battery
Dimension: 127 x 94 x 48mm
Weight: 489g

Interestingly, the Sony A7s has the least number of pixels (12.2MP) compared to the A7 (24.3MP) and A7r (36.4MP). This results to bigger pixel size which, theoretically, should equate to cleaner images even at high ISO.

Sony has not yet announced the pricing and availability of the new A7s, but we’ll keep you guys posted once they do.

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