Unlock your iPhone without removing your face mask!

This week was so tiresome. Non-stop classes, piles of assignments, presentations and way too many tests. But brown parents love consistency :) So here I am- ditching my math homework to write this week’s issue. This week’s newsletter is centred around Apple because they made some major announcements! And each one is better than the last. Let’s just dive straight into them.

Apple’s new iOS 15.4 beta added a really cool feature (and a much-requested one at that)— you can unlock your phone with FaceID with your mask on! This feature is futuristic in two ways. Firstly, unlocking your iPhone with a mask is just straight-up cool and convenient. Secondly, we gotta look at this from the technical side of things. A device with a phone size of as little as 5'8" inches will be able to detect you and your identity from just a half-facial scan. Okay, how do I describe this? The phone camera can essentially recognise who you are and give you access by just getting a brief look at your eyes and forehead. If you think about it, it is actually revolutionary. Apple claims that the newer iPhone models will be able to scan the area around your eyes and authenticate. Well, Apple also says it is less secure compared to the traditional method but eh, who cares? There is some sad news, though. This feature is only available on the iPhone 12 and 13 lineups. I don't know man, the feature is cool but it would have been cooler if it rolled out to previous iPhones too.

iOS 15.4 also has another addition– news emojis! 37 new emojis, that's a lot. The emojis are unique and some of them are kinda awkward too.

Okay, well I can see practical use cases for most of them. To be honest, I really like the first and last emoji in the first row. These might just become my new favourites! Something unique: this lot will be the first set of emojis to have a distorted face shape!  Those don't exist just yet. (The first image and the half-face salute) The lip-biting emoji will make conversations weird for sure, hehe. For some reason, I can imagine 8th graders using that emoji on their friend's posts and it's just funny.

Another interesting development is about the iPhone and contactless payments. I don't think I will be able to cover other things if I mention it, so here is the link if you want to read more about iPhones and contactless payments.

Moving on...

Samsung sent out invites for its yearly Samsung Unpacked Event, earlier this week. The invite featured a huge "S", implying that they are launching the S22 in less than 10 days now! Which is quite cool. There were rumours that Samsung will launch another device to their lineup this year so we can expect a completely new phone too. Rumours also suggest the new phone is likely to have an S-Pen and a more boxy design with a screen size of 6.1 inches. I am guessing this phone will mark the end of the Note series era. The new phone is likely to be the S22 Note Ultra and it will absorb the whole note series.

Well, in another update, YouTube's CEO hinted at potential NFT. Susan Wojcicki said; "the company is looking to ‘help creators capitalize on emerging technologies". Well, this isn't an official statement from YouTube but what we can decipher from this is that YouTube creators might just have a special marketplace to sell NFTs. Idk? Is that possible? Would creators be able to showcase their NFTs on their channel headers or channel pages? We can't be too sure just yet, but let's wait and watch.

Before I end this issue and go for a luxurious 6-day break from writing, I would like to highlight this really cool app, iBeer. Hehe, funny? Yeah, you can simulate the experience of having a beer on your iPhone and iPad and trust me when I say that it is a good time killer. Especially for all my teenage friends who have been dying to try alcohol ;) This app was on the App Store leaderboard for over a year and the creator earned more than $20,000 in a day just by launching this app. It's that cool. Make sure to check it out.

While you are checking it out, make sure to subscribe to the Tech Garamond and stay tuned for weekly tech updates :) I guess this is the end then. Till then, make sure to update your devices, especially Apple users. Apple just rolled out iOS 15.3 and macOS 12.2. Make sure you clean your laptop screen too! I can feel that it is dirty. Why are you still reading? Clean your screen!

Cleaning my own laptop's screen,
Tejas Tagra
5991 days old