Chinese manufacturer Beelink has earned a reputation for producing quality mini PCs across a range of price points. The Beelink U59 is a definite standout for those looking for a budget option – in our four and a half star review we said it offered a “good feature set that might appeal to many different customers.”

Beelink also offers higher-end products like the GTi Ultra, which features Intel‘s 12th to 14th Gen Core CPUs, with support for Beelink’s exclusive eGPU solution for users requiring extra graphics power. Beelink has been developing its SER series for some time. Its most recent release was the SER8 model powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS Hawk Point processor, 32GB of DDR5 memory, and 1TB of storage. Priced around $650, the SER8 delivered strong performance in a compact design.

This time of the year always excites us: it brings a look at what’s new in iPhone photography. First up is our brief look at the technical specifications of the new iPhone 14 Pro cameras. Our next post field tests the new cameras and their output. Whether you are a first-time reader or a long time listener, we promise an exciting few weeks.

iPhone 13 Pro vs. iPhone 14 Pro

We expect the iPhone 14 to have the same camera system as the iPhone 13 Pro, minus its telephoto camera, so we’ll keep this post limited to the iPhone 14’s Pro version, which has the most major camera changes. Fortunately, the the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max have the same camera array, which keeps things simple. With the help of a Halide Technical Readout sent to us, it’s straightforward to analyze the year over year hardware changes. But first, a disclaimer…

Huge breakthroughs today are just as much about software as hardware. Sure, software can’t replace a giant large telephoto zoom lens (yet), but it allows for breakthroughs in dynamic range, exposure, night photography, adding nice blurred backgrounds, and much more. When it comes to computational photography, the quality of your software and processing power plays as important a role as the physical camera itself. It’s silly to judge the new iPhone entirely on sensor specs, and we can’t wait to run full package through its paces as soon as it arrives at Halide HQ.

iPhone 14 Pro Technical Readout Comparison

Without further ado, here’s a side by side comparison with the iPhone 13 Pro to iPhone 14 Pro. Specs changes are marked in bold:

Wide

The Wide camera sees the greatest changes. The lens gets a bit wider, a 2mm focal length difference. The aperture is smaller (‘slower’), means the lens collects less light. This was probably necessary to work with a larger sensor. We calculate that the Wide camera is able to collect 20% more light compared to last year’s camera, even with this slightly worse aperture, thanks to its larger size.

We’re astonished by the improvement in the camera sensor’s ISO range. It goes far beyond previous iPhone cameras. Given high ISO values are accompanied by more noise, it’s highly likely this ISO range is made possible by how its higher resolution sensor combines 4 pixels into one, vastly reducing noise.

Apple refers to this as ‘quad-pixel’, and for almost all apps, it is how the camera will operate. By default, camera apps will ‘see’ the new Wide camera as if it were a 12 megapixel camera. Behind the scenes, iOS will downsize those 48 megapixels, combining four pixels into one, reducing noise. This will avoid breaking third-party apps, which probably aren’t ready for those larger images that require 4x the memory.

It does mean that if you were hoping to shoot 48 megapixel JPGs, you are likely out of luck without a third party camera app. With the first-party camera app, you can only capture 48 megapixel images by shooting in ProRAW. We hope this was a product choice as opposed to a technical limitation, and they leave more options available to third-party developers.

We look forward to testing the sensor in low-light: its high ISO range, quad-pixel shooting and claimed ‘second generation’ sensor-shift stabilization, we are expecting a big leap in image quality in at night.

Finally, we noticed that minimum focus distance — which is the closest the camera will focus on objects — has taken a step back, going from 150mm (5.9 inches) to 200mm (7.8 inches). While two inches doesn’t seem like much, if you were frustrated by your iPhone 13 switching between the ultra-wide (‘macro’) lens and regular camera, it’s possible this could happen a little more often new iPhone. The new lens design just can’t focus as close as the 13 Pro’s. We’ll be interested in seeing how much they’ve mitigated this in software.

Telephoto

The telephoto camera might be our team’s favorite, and it sees a fairly small spec bump. Apple has been fairly mum about this camera, only calling it ‘improved’. They might just mean that it benefits from the new Photonic Engine software pipeline, but the improved ISO range gives us hope they upgraded the sensor.

Ultra-Wide

With iPhone 13 Pro, Apple got serious about the image quality on its Ultra-Wide camera. This year, we’re seeing another sensor size bump; its larger pixels and area offset a slightly slower aperture. However, it lost a slight touch of its ultra-wideness, moving to a 14mm focal length (full frame equivalent).

Across the board, we are seeing what should be solid low-light improvements. A larger sensor and higher ISO sensitivity should allow this camera to further mature to be a good option for high-quality images. Apple actually claimed the greatest improvements to this camera in its keynote, claiming ‘up to 3×’ better images. We will have to see what that entails in testing.

Front-facing

Apple made a big change to the front of the iPhone this year. The Dynamic Island features the TrueDepth hardware we’ve come to love; a host of IR projector/sensor hardware to enable Face ID and a regular old front-facing (or ‘selfie’) camera. Despite being shrunk into a little isle, the front-facing camera got an upgrade.

A big change here is the front-facing camera gaining variable focus (and autofocus) for the first time since the very first iPhone. In addition, a nice improvement in aperture should allow a bit more depth of field and light to reach this little camera. We’ll have to see how much of a difference or need there is for autofocus; if the sensor is indeed larger this year, it might allow for sharper shots.

What remained the same

We haven’t been able to confirm many changes in the telephoto and LIDAR systems on the iPhone 14 Pro. Despite this, we are seeing signs that point to an all-new telephoto camera sensor. The LIDAR system has changed slightly, throwing a wider grid of dots that corresponds with the new, wider 24mm focal length of the Wide camera. Otherwise, it appears unchanged, and so does the TrueDepth depth-sensing infrared hardware despite its miniaturization.

Stay tuned

As is tradition, we are going to test the iPhone 14 Pro’s camera system deeply — planning several outings in Mexico and the desert Southwest. We’ll be testing 48 megapixel shooting, RAW performance, quad-pixel ins and outs and extensively inspecting the new Photonic Engine. We will also be checking out the new iPhone 14’s camera. In the mean time, check out Austin Mann’s excellent iPhone 14 Pro camera review.

You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram to read about our findings in the meantime.

What sets humans apart from the rest of life, or indeed inert matter? Many people would respond that it is our intelligence. Yet the rise of seemingly intelligent machines challenges this way of thinking. The companies behind these new artificial intelligence technologies, in the form of ChatGPT and its rivals, speak of achieving artificial general intelligence – machines that have the same level of intelligence as humans across a range of tasks.

Does this meteoric rise in AI make human intelligence, and therefore us, less special? Neil Lawrence, professor of machine learning at the University of Cambridge, doesn’t think so. In fact, he thinks we should throw out the concept of artificial general intelligence altogether.

In his new book The Atomic Human: Understanding ourselves in the age of AI, Lawrence makes the case that it is only by better understanding our own intelligence, and how wildly different it is to its artificial counterpart, that we can make the most of both. Here he tells New Scientist why he thinks both human and artificial intelligence are misunderstood, why it is pointless to compare the two and why, ultimately, we need a more nuanced understanding of intelligence.

Alex Wilkins: What do you make of the trend to compare artificial to human intelligence?

Neil Lawrence: Most of these arguments are pointless, they are irrelevant. Of course, the nature of the intelligence that we’re seeing in AI is extremely different from our own. It’s absurd that people are talking about this intelligence as if it’s anything to do with us.…

Brands need to adapt as Generation Z shifts search behaviour to social media

Search engines fight back with AI enhancements

Google is implementing new AI technologies in its suite of services, including new AR functions in its signature search engine. Source: Google

AI poses challenges, but brands and consumers will benefit in the long run

OpenAI announced that ChatGPT and Whisper models are now available on their API, giving developers access to cutting-edge language and speech-to-text capabilities; Shopify is one of the brands that uses this AI-technology extensively to help consumers find the right products. Source: OpenAI

What we think

The Rebel Moon series is continuing at Netflix, although the most recent announcement isn’t for another movie. The streaming service announced Blood Line: A Rebel Moon Game, a standalone action video game set in director Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon space opera-verse, during its Geeked Week event on Thursday.

Blood Line is a top-down action game akin to Diablo 4 from Super Evil Megacorp, most recently known for the roguelike Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate. It lets players team up online to take down hordes of enemies. You can check out a little of the gameplay in the trailer above. Like other Netflix titles, this will only be available on mobile and only to Netflix subscribers through its app. You can sign up for the beta now.

The core gameplay involves choosing between four classes based on characters similar to the ones you meet in the movies: Bannerguard, Evoker, Kindred, and Forsaken. The Bannerguard is your high-damage tank, while Kindred is long-range. The Forsaken are for players who are fans of dealing damage with dual-wielding weapons. Finally, the Evoker is the healer and support character.

Netflix writes that each will have “unique backstories” and “specific Motherworld-vanquishing motivations” that will mirror what you’ll get with the characters watching the movies. The game will be live service, although because it’s available for free through a Netflix subscription, the updates will be in the form of narrative chapters that expand the story and help you build up a rebellion.

“And then when updates come in, it’s not just, ‘Oh, this one is always better,’ but it’s a new kind of piece to your puzzle and how you want to mix them up so they won’t just be the next thing that’s bigger and stronger, but it’ll actually be a different spice, as it were, to put into your recipes of your loadout,” Super Evil Megacorp design director Robert Gallerani said in a press briefing attended by Variety.

Super Evil Megacorp announced its partnership with Netflix in 2023, noting that it had been working with the media company on “an amazing new IP” that would allow it to be a “transmedia pioneer.” “We love building worlds, and with Netflix, we get the opportunity to be part of building a universe far larger than a single game – and we will build it simultaneously with the rest of the IP universe,” a spokesperson from the developer wrote.

While the first Rebel Moon did poorly with critics, including Digital Trends, Netflix reported it was the most-viewed title on the service within its first week of release with 29.3 million views. Later, Snyder claimed that it “probably” surpassed the number of people who saw Barbie in theaters. Netflix has since released the sequel, along with a director’s cut with extra scenes.