Someone Switched An iPhone Lightning Connector To USB-C

Phones of today have mostly adopted the increasingly universal, no pun intended, USB-C port. The iPhone is still the exception, despite so many previous reports of this changing. Someone probably had seen enough of such reports without any of them actually happening, and decided to do it himself.

The person in question is a Swiss Robotics Masters student Ken Pillonel. There have been two major attempts. The first was a rough prototype all the way back in May which had most of the modification sitting outside the iPhone. More recently, he has managed to squeeze all the changes into the phone itself, and the port can be used for both charging and data transfer.

While he never identified the specific iPhone that he is modifying, the process involved reverse-engineering a C94 Lightning connector. That and making his own PCB for the USB-C port. Pillonel has put up a short video showing it in action. And it’s very well done, as it looks very natural, despite the fact that it has a port that an iPhone shouldn’t have.

Pillonel also says that a longer video breaking down the process is on the way. But in the meantime, you can watch the short preview which Pillonel has posted on his YouTube channel.

Someone In Japan Got Arrested For Selling Modded Breath Of The Wild Save Files

Back in February, we saw reports of a man getting arrested in Japan for selling hacked Pokemon for the franchise’s latest instalments. More recently, someone just got caught doing something similar, but for another Nintendo IP. Said person was caught selling modded save files for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The Broadcasting System of Niigata reports that a Tokyo resident was detained on 8 July for said offence. Originally, the modded save data was put up in an auction site in April for JPY3500 (~RM133). The listing was dubbed “the strongest software”, with boosted stats and rare items that would be tricky to obtain via normal gameplay.

Though the person was caught selling modded save files for Breath of the Wild, it wasn’t the only game he was modding saves for. The report states that he also admitted to doing the same for other games, earning JPY10 million (~RM380000) since December 2019.

The man is charged under Japan’s Unfair Competition Prevention law, under which modding of save files isn’t illegal. But it immediately steps outside legal realms once the modded save files start going on sale. And as we saw previously, Nintendo is very quick to take action when it comes to its own IPs.

Someone Managed To Get Windows 11 Running On A Lumia 950 XL

Microsoft released the Windows 11 preview build earlier this week and many fans and enthusiasts are jumping on it. And while the OS has been frustrating PC owners whose systems “don’t meet” the new TPM 2.0 requirement, one user has seemingly thought outside the box: installing the OS on a nearly six year old Lumia 950 XL.

The feat was performed by French engineering student Gustave Monce, who also posted a video of his effort on YouTube. According to Monce, he says that he managed to get an ARM64 build of Windows 11 running on the old Windows phone after “a day of work” and the results are, in a word, fascinating.

As a quick primer, the Lumia 950 XL was launched back in 2015, which was pretty much the twilight years of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS for smartphones. Specs-wise, the phone ran on a Snapdragon 810, 3GB RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, and had a 5.7-inch WQHD display.

Naturally, it goes without saying that Windows 11 was never made to be backwards compatible with the last of Microsoft’s Windows mobile devices. Having said that, the video shows the device being able to orient from portrait to landscape mode, albeit not seamlessly.

What is even more impressive is that Monce also managed to make the device capable of making and receiving phone calls. Why is this impressive? Because Windows 11 doesn’t ship with a phone stack, which means Monce actually had to create that part of the stack from scratch.

At the end of the day, it’s clear that Monce’s efforts are really just for fun, and there is no denying that it is quite refreshing to see what is an already ancient device – in technological terms, that is – capable of running Microsoft’s OS replacement for Windows 10.

Someone Gave The PS5 A Brass Makeover

We have seen two companies making gold PS5 consoles already. But gold is prohibitively expensive. If you wanted a similar-looking console, brass makes for a much more affordable alternative. And that’s exactly what the YouTube channel DIY Perks has done.

Brass is also chosen because in addition to affordability, it is also relatively easy to handle. That being said, it’s definitely no simple process. You’ll obviously need to know what you’re doing on the DIY front. And the PS5 comes with a lot of curves. And the plates are especially tricky, since they curve in different directions from one end to another. But at any rate, DIY Perks shows the entire process in recording.

The end result, plus some polish, is a very fancy looking PS5 console that isn’t too dissimilar to the gold ones. And it works just like the regular version, with one important exception. And that’s the WiFi, as brass, like most other metals, don’t work very well with wireless tech. The workaround here is to leave one of the WiFi antennas outside the console at the back.

Of course, DIY projects are hard work, and require a lot of skill. Making this custom PS5 out of brass, especially so. All that being said, the most difficult part is probably getting an actual PS5 in the first place, since you still need the electronics inside.