Apple Watch Series 7 Receives General Release Date: Malaysia’s Status Still Unknown

Of all devices that were launched during the California Streaming event last month which also include iPhone 13 Series, iPhone 13 Pro Series, 6th generation iPad mini, and 9th generation iPad, there are still some mysterious elements regarding Apple Watch Series 7. For example, its actual rollout date was not revealed by Apple during the event but that has just changed this evening.

The company has announced that Series 7 will be made available in selected markets starting from 15 October onwards. Interesting enough, more than 50 countries and regions are part of the first-wave markets for the new smartwatch including the usual suspects such as the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, and China.

Despite the large group of first-wave markets, it seems that Malaysia is not part of it though as Apple Malaysia’s website still listed the Series 7’s availability as “later this year” at the time this article is published. As a comparison, Apple websites for Singapore and Thailand have noted that customers will be able to order Series 7 through them starting from 8 October.

On another hand, Series 7 is not listed on Apple’s websites for Indonesia and Vietnam. We are now reaching out to Apple to find out more about the watch’s availability in Malaysia and will keep you posted once we receive further updates.

MSI Seemingly Confirms Launch Date of Intel Alder Lake CPU Lineup

During its Architecture Day in August, Intel has promised that its 12th generation Alder Lake CPU lineup will launch this year, but fell short of providing a solid date for the event. Well, thanks to MSI, it appears that the date seems to be set for 4 November.

The alleged confirmation date stems from the Taiwanese PC components and laptop maker’s press release, announcing that it would be providing a free upgrade kit for Intel LGA1700 CPUs, along with their Coreliquid CPU coolers. More specifically, consumers will need to fill up a form in order to receive the upgrades but as of this publication, the button that would usually take them to the necessary portal is greyed out and sporting the words “Coming Soon”.

More to the point, the availability date of 4 November initially drew suspicions from Videocardz, whom after reaching out to what it says were reliable sources, was confident that the date is when Intel plans to launch its Alder Lake-S desktop CPU lineup. Further, that date reportedly coincides with the product’s sales and review embargo.

Intel is expected to launch three SKUs under the Alder Lake-S series, including the Core i9-12900K, Core i7-12700K, and Core i5-12600K. As it stands and given how these things usually go, Intel has yet to officially confirm anything, so take this news with a pinch of salt.

EA: Battlefield 2042 Early Access Date Is Now 12 November

Electronic Arts has very recently confirmed that Battlefield 2042 has been pushed back to 19 November. At the time, video games leaker Tom Henderson claimed that this will also push back the open beta and early access dates to October. But now, it looks like it will be pushed even further back than that.

Adam Freeman, EA Europe’s community manager, has shared on Twitter that the new early access date for Battlefield 2042 has now been pushed back to 12 November. This puts it just a week before the launch of the game.

This small window makes the open beta date in a pretty precarious spot. If it retains the pattern of being two days after early access opens, this means that there will only be five days for the open beta phase of Battlefield 2042. Even if the so-called open beta is a glorified server stress test, it does feel like five days is too tight a window for anything to be done if anything does go south.

Freeman says that an exact date for the open beta will be shared later this month, which leaves things up in the air. But as it is, it does seem like the 19 November release of the game itself is quite set in stone.

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked Date Leaks; Event To Kick Off 11 August

Samsung’s next Galaxy Unpacked event is undoubtedly expected to be the brand’s most exciting product reveal this year, but has remained silent about when it is taking place. Fortunately, thanks to reliable and long-time leakster, Evan Blass (@evleaks), we now have an exact date for the event, along with some product leaks.

According to Blass, the next Galaxy Unpacked event is set to kick off next month and more specifically, 11 August. In addition to that, the man then proceeded to leak several renders of the products that apparently are going to be announced during the event. These items include the Galaxy Z Fold 3, Galaxy Z Flip 3, Galaxy Watch 4, Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, and Galaxy Buds 2. Not only that, Blass’ leaks also seem to suggest that the event could also be when Samsung announces one additional device: the Galaxy S21 FE.

As XDA says, if the latter does become reality, it would most definitely be surprising, considering that Samsung previously pushed the launch of the phone back to the fourth quarter of this year, due in no small part to the ongoing chip shortage.

Now, it goes without saying that Samsung has not released any official date yet and this is still just a rumour. However, given Blass’ track record and reputation, believing the 11 August event date wouldn’t be too far a stretch of the imagination. Guess we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed and wait.

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution Gets Launch Date; Arriving 22 June

Besides the Zen 3-powered APUs and new Radeon RX 6000M series GPUs for laptops, one of the more important announcements of AMD’s Computex 2021 keynote was the progress of its FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling technology. More to the point, the company also provided a key detail many gamers have been looking forward to: a release date for FSR.

As a quick primer, FSR is to AMD what NVIDIA’s DLSS upscaling feature is to its RTX technology. Unlike DLSS, though, FSR doesn’t require the use of proprietary and specifically designed core for the task.

Again, like DLSS, FSR will have four quality presets for gamers: Ultra Quality, Quality, Balance, and Performance. Naturally, Ultra Quality will retain as many pixels at the cost of frames, while running an FSR supported title at the Performance preset will guarantee higher frame rates, albeit at the cost of details.

To our surprise, AMD says that FSR will not only work on its hardware, but also on NVIDIA’s GeForce products. In the case of the keynote, the company showcased the GeForce GTX 1060 running with FSR, with the video demo showing the card supposedly gaining 41% more framerates with the feature enabled.

AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution will be available on 22 June and the feature will be applicable across the board for all Radeon GPUs. To reiterate, the feature will be available on not just AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs, but also its last-generation Radeon RX 5000 Series, Radeon RX 500 series, as well as all Ryzen CPUs fitted with Radeon graphics cores.

Alienware X-Series Is The Brand’s Thinnest Gaming Laptop To Date; Coming Soon To Malaysia

Over the years, the gaming laptop industry has been trying to shed the typical bulky and thick image that is being associated with a gaming laptop. For Alienware, the brand managed to deliver that with its current generation of the M-Series releases to a certain extent but not at the level of the upcoming Alienware X-Series.

While Alienware has yet to reveal how thin its new X-Series laptop is going to be, the teaser images and videos that Alienware has published so far clearly backing up its claim that the new model is going to be the thinnest Alienware gaming laptop to date.

One of the initial details that the brand has released regarding its new X-Series laptop is that it will feature a new thermal interface material (TIM) called Element 31. Said to be made from a gallium-silicon matrix, the material apparently has a much higher thermal performance compared to other TIM that Alienware has used before.

Other than that, the X-Series laptop will also mark the debut of the patent-pending Alienware Quad Fan solution. Aside from featuring a noticeable amount of heat pipes, the solution also utilises two sets of evacuative and outlet fans to move heat out of the ultra-thin gaming laptop.

While this was not explicitly mentioned by Alienware in its teaser video, you should be able to notice the number “17” on its lid which signifies its screen size just like the existing M-Series laptops. In case it is not obvious enough, what you’re looking here is essentially the brand-new Alienware x17.

Other than that, we have also been informed by Dell that the company is planning to release the x17 into Malaysia by mid-June. The base model will carry an 11th-Gen Intel Core i7 H-Series chip, Full HD display, 16GB of RAM, 512GB solid state drive, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 as well as a rather hefty RM 10,999 price tag.

Meanwhile, expect to hear further updates regarding the new ultra-thin gaming laptop in a few weeks time as Alienware is planning to reveal more information regarding its new x17 ultra-thin gaming laptop on 1 June via its Twitch channel.

Apple Accidentally Leaks Unannounced Event Date… Via Siri

Assistants aren’t perfect. Sometimes they get your coffee wrong, or schedule an appointment on the wrong date. But what about digital voice-activated ones? Well… Siri kind of slipped up for Apple, according to MacRumors. And rather than the usual misheard instructions kind of mistakes, Apple’s famed voice assistant supposedly spilled the beans on an unannounced event which is slated to happen later this month.

The publication said that it simply asked Siri “When is the next Apple Event?”, to which it responded with “The special event is on Tuesday, April 20th, at Apple Park in Cupertino, CA.” Not realising its mistake, Siri continued with “You can get all the details on Apple.com“. Clicking the link will take you to Apple’s event landing page but the event itself has not been listed yet, MacRumors added.

For those in Malaysia who are thinking of asking the poor unsuspecting voice assistant with the same question, then you’re out of luck. Our chief editor Chapree did just that, but was met with a different response. Siri instead asked him to refer to Apple’s website for any information, which we did check. No dice, unfortunately.

According to The Verge, only those with a US Apple ID are able to receive the same response as MacRumors. But chances are, Apple may have already tweaked Siri’s “error” by this time.

Being a slip of a digital tongue, not much is known about this supposed Apple “special event”. Some believe that we may finally see the launch of new iPad Pro models which, according to a  Bloomberg report, will feature Mini LED screens – a first for any Apple product. Other potential debuts alongside the Pro is the 2021 version of the iPad mini, and the ever elusive AirTags product.

We’ll eventually find out if such an event will be held on the aforementioned date next week. But should this information be accurate, there’s a big possibility that we’ll be hearing an official announcement from Apple soon enough.

OnePlus Watch Teaser Hints Launch Date; May Debut Alongside OnePlus 9 Series

As promised by CEO Pete Lau back in December, OnePlus has confirmed that it will launch its first ever smartwatch very soon. As teased via the brand’s official Twitter account, the wearable is hinted to debut alongside its latest flagship smartphones, the OnePlus 9 series, later this month.

The tweet also provided brief glimpses of the upcoming watch – revealing what appears to be a circular watch face, among other things. Its specifications are not known at this time, but OnePlus hinted via its official forums that the wearable will come with the typical health, fitness and sleep tracking capabilities. Should the OnePlus Watch come with features unique to its own, we can safely expect the brand to only reveal them during the launch.

On a related note, there’s also a possibility that the upcoming device will launch in Malaysia around the same time as its global debut. According to PriceBaba, a listing of the OnePlus Watch (under its model name W310GB) has been spotted on the SIRIM eComM database and was recently approved by the organisation on 8 March 2021. However, after searching through the database ourselves in order to confirm this, it appears that the listing is nonexistent. That, or it may have been removed entirely.

OnePlus may debut its first ever smartwatch together with its upcoming OnePlus 9 flagship smartphones on 23 March. The launch event will be live streamed via the brand’s official website and social media channels at 10pm Malaysian time.