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Apple announces the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro phones

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Apple, in their packed event in Cupertino, announced a triad of new iPhones. Starting with the iPhone 11, it’s the cheapest of the lot and will come in a myriad of colours, new processor and dual cameras. 

The phone will come in colour choices of purple, green, yellow, black, white and Product (Red) and is IP68 rated that protects the phone from dust and accidental liquid spills. 

The front has a 6.1-inch Liquid Retina display and is powered by Apple’s all-new A13 Bionic chip that is touted to be the world’s fastest smartphone SoC with a Neural Engine capable of delivering more than 1 trillion operations per second. In comparison with last year’s A12 Bionic, the CPU and GPU performance is 20 per cent faster.

The iPhone 11 comes with a dual-camera system with an ultra-wide and wide lens with a focus on video that supports features like cinematic video stabilisation, Audio Zoom that matches the audio to the video framing. There’s improved night mode, HDR support, computational photography with Deep Fusion and a new video editor. 

The Face ID is now faster and now comes with Spatial Audio and Wi-Fi 6. 

iPhone 11 will be available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB storage variants at a starting price of Rs. 64,900.

Next up are the iPhone 11 Pro duo – the iPhone 11 Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Both phones replace the iPhone XS series with a triple camera setup, better performance and even better battery life. 

iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max skips the glossy glass look from the previous-generation iPhones with a matte glass back and polished stainless steel band. It also boasts IP68 certification that offers water resistance up to 4 meters for up to 30 minutes. 

The new iPhone 11 Pro devices get an upgrade in terms of display, which are known as Super Retina XDR OLED displays that support HDR and True Tone. Just like the iPhone 11, the Pro variants are also powered by A13 Bionic chip that drastically improves the performance and battery life, with iPhone 11 Pro delivering up to four more hours of battery life in a day than iPhone XS, and iPhone 11 Pro Max up to five hours more than iPhone XS Max.

The triple camera system consists of a new ultra-wide, wide and telephoto lens that brings new way to shoot videos with extended dynamic range and cinematic video stabilisation.

The phones also come with U1 chip for spatial awareness, faster Face ID, Wi-Fi 6, Gigabit LTE and more. 

The iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max will go on sale from September 27 in India in storage options of 64GB, 256GB and 512GB in midnight green, space grey, silver and gold at a price starting from Rs. 99,900 and Rs. 1,09,900, respectively.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint Hands-on

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Last week we were in Ubisoft’s office to experience its upcoming game – Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Although we got a look at the game in their Mumbai office, our 30-odd minute experience wasn’t enough for us, which is why we spent a good amount of time playing the closed beta over the weekend. 

We got to try out different missions at Ubisoft’s office and closed beta but the main objective of the game is the same – defeat the Ghosts aka The Wolves who have gone rogue. 

Ghosts are customised into classes and depending on your preference, you can select from four different classes – Assault, Panther for stealth, Sharpshooter for sniper and Medic for healers. Each class comes with its own set of progression system that aids players in the battlefield. For instance, for the Panther class we were playing with, can be equipped with a spray that makes their detection difficult for drones.

Speaking of drones, you get a drone yourself to control that can give you an aerial view of the enemies or carry out specific tasks like healing the player with a healer drone. 

This time, however, customisation plays a huge role. The game allows endless customisations right from the looks of the player to the weapons. We hope these weapon customisations don’t spoil the realism that seasoned Ghost Recon fans look for. Nevertheless, the brief gameplay time was fun.

Ghost Recon Break releases next month on October 4 and can be pre-ordered right now on Games The Shop. 

OnePlus inaugurates its first global R&D facility in India

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India is one of the most important markets for OnePlus that boasts a growth rate of more than 100%. And to cater to the growing local and global market, OnePlus has opened its first R&D facility in Hyderabad, India. 

OnePlus says there were a lot of factors to choose Hyderabad as its R&D facility location, including the availability of “sizeable pool of talent” that will help them to expand to over 1500 employees in the next three years. 

The facility here will house three labs – camera lab, communications and networking labs and automation labs that will focus heavily on camera development, 5G testing, software with focus on AI and performance testing.

OnePlus will also open its Experience Store in Hyderabad next month.

Review: BenQ W1700M

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Unboxing the W1700M for the first time was a feeling of déjà vu because of its uncanny resemblance with BenQ’s last year’s model – W1700. There’s little to differentiate between both the models on the outside but few tweaks internally and we have the W1700M, which is what we’re taking a look at, this month. 

The W1700M has the same design as the W1700, which is compact and weighs 4.2kg. The W1700M comes in BenQ’s signature matte-white finish with vents on the front and right-hand side for heat dissipation, focus and zoom ring along with physical keys at the top and connectivity options like two HDMI ports, D-sub, RS-232, USB Type-A and mini USB, and audio in/out ports at the back. However, the regular Type-A USB port does not support any playback of multimedia content. BenQ also bundles a backlit remote control that comes in handy if you mount the projector. The projector also comes with adjustable legs for tabletop setups.

W1700M features a 0.47-inch single-DMD DLP chip that allows the projector to output content to up to 4K UHD resolution (3840×2160) and a contrast ratio of 10000:1. The projector also features CinemaMaster Video+ that helps with the overall picture quality and other features like pixel enhancer. W1700M sports a single 5W speaker that delivers crisp and non-distorted audio, making it good enough for a small room. 

Lamp is one component where W1700M differs from the W1700. BenQ has lowered the brightness to 2000 ANSI lumens from 2200 ANSI lumens but massively gains in terms of lamp life that goes up to 15000 hours with LampSave mode.  

The W1700M now has full 100% Rec. 709 colour coverage and supports two HDR standards – HDR10 and HLG. Our experience with the W1700M has been positive. The projector handles 4K HDR content well with a good balance of colours and contrast. It also supports 3D content but requires an additional purchase of 3D glasses from BenQ. Auto keystone automatically adjusts the content according to the projection angle surface but W1700M also gives an option to tweak it manually. 


The W1700M is targeted at home cinema users and if you’re an existing W1700 user, there’s not much going for you to upgrade. However, if you’re in the market looking for a good performing projector with a space-saving design, the ₹2,10,000 W1700M needs a serious consideration.

RATING 4/5
WE’RE IMPRESSED Design, performance, lamp life
WE’D IMPROVE N/A
THE LAST WORD W1700M is a compact projector with 4K and dual HDR standard support with longer lamp life

Xiaomi announces Android One-powered Mi A3

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Xiaomi today announced the Mi A3, making it the third smartphone under Google’s Android One project. Offering Android stock experience, the Mi A3 improves on the shortcomings of last year’s Mi A2 and brings in some new features.

Mi A3

Mi A3 adopts a new design language that is refreshing to see on a sub-20k phone. The phone has a “glass sandwich” design with curves at the edges for better one-handed use and has a clean look that certainly makes it one of the best looking phone in the price range. The front has a 6.08-inch Super AMOLED display and integrates the fingerprint sensor and is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 665 processor with 4GB or 6GB of RAM.

Mi A3

The phone has a triple camera setup with 48MP IMX586 as the main sensor along with 8MP wide-angle and 2MP depth sensor and has a high-resolution 32MP on the front.

There’s expandable storage to up to 256GB but the built-in UFS storage will come with 64GB or 128GB. Furthermore, USB Type-C still stays with the Mi A series but the battery has been bumped up by the 4030mAh and supports up to 18W of charging speed. Xiaomi, however, bundles a 10W charger.

The Mi A3 will start selling on Amazon, Mi Home and mi.com in three colours – Kind of Grey, Not just Blue and More than White from August 23 for Rs. 12,999 (4GB+64GB) and Rs. 15,999 (6GB+128GB).