News & Reviews:   Apple

Pulling down your mask just to unlock your iPhone or do an online transaction can be pretty annoying. But today, Apple has finally released the much-awaited iOS 15.4 with a new Face ID Mask Unlock, as well as other updates. 

Apple’s controversial move of not including chargers and EarPods when you purchase an iPhone drew the flake of many when it was first announced back in 2020. In fact, a lot of rival companies even poked fun and mocked the decision through various ads, most notably Samsung.

However, 2 years on, it seems that not including chargers with smartphone purchases has become the new industry standard practice. In fact, most of the major smartphone manufacturers have been doing the same or planning to do so in the future. 

Counterpoint Research, a global industry analysis firm based in Asia yesterday revealed last year's top 10 best-selling smartphone models in the world and the results may surprise you. First of all, the list is dominated with Apple devices with the iPhone 12 being last year’s best-selling smartphone.

In fact, 7 out of the 10 entries are Apple smartphones, including all top 5 best-selling smartphones. However, the biggest surprises from the results have got to be the fact that no flagship Android devices made it to the list and that the best-selling Android phone last year was the Samsung Galaxy A12.

If you’ve been following rumours about the iPhone 14 lineup, you’d recall that many sources are claiming that the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro Max will have a dual-hole display design. That is one pill-shaped cutout for Face ID and a punch-hole for the selfie camera.

Well, it seems the alleged design, though will be limited to the iPhone 14 Pro series this year, would be implemented to the entire iPhone 15 lineup in 2023.

OLED iPad has been a long-overdue product from Apple. However, this new information is here to shed some light on the timeline when the company is launching one. According to it, Samsung has just started developing a new kind of OLED, and it's said to appear on the 2024 iPads.

Due to the current world events, it almost seemed like Apple pulled out its first quarterly event without announcing anything but here it is. The company's first event has been officially announced and will begin on 8 March at 10 AM Pacific Time at the Steve Jobs Theater in California.

Three suspicious model numbers registered in the Eurasian Economic Database are expected to be new Apple M2 products. According to the source, the Cupertino-based company might announce them at a rumoured Spring event that is to be held in March.

While the idea of tracking your missing items sounds like a great idea, some people have apparently abused the AirTag to stalk others. Launched last April, Apple just released a statement on an update on the AirTag and unwanted tracking. 

Apple might be preparing a new operating system for its rumoured virtual or augmented reality(VR/ AR) headset. Developers have spotted the name 'realityOS' roaming around some pre-release iOS 13 builds, GitHub repositories and App Store upload logs. No matter if it's for the company's upcoming VR/ AR headset, there must be something going on.

When it comes to modern devices, the functionalities are not fixed since they can be improved. Having said that, you have to wait for major updates to get new features most of the time. But Apple has a couple with the upcoming iOS 15.4.