#224. Correct photography algorithms are more important than megapixels

Hi all.

I want to start with a series of announcements.

A cool smartphone was sent for the test. I think the review will come out

Tomorrow.

A smartphone can do this:

And the phone looks like this:

They also sent the most curious Oppo headphones for the test. Firstly, they are beautiful, and secondly, the power of active noise reduction is indicated as 49 dB. Usually, headphones have 35, 39, well, 42 dB "noise reduction". And here as much as 49 dB.

To be honest, I don't really understand what that means.- noise reduction 35 dB or 49 dB. For example, what is the noise reduction power of my Sony WH-1000XM4 overheads? At the same time, decibels are logarithmic units, that is, +10 dB is an increase in volume by 2 times.

While nothing is clear, but the headphones look good. Yes, and they sound, on first impressions, not bad.

Update after a couple of days: noise canceling is really more powerful, you just need to choose the right size of ear pads and place the headphones more tightly in your ear.

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Table of Contents

• 5G in Rus'
• Games on macOS
• About the importance of correct algorithms

5G in Rus'

I want to touch on my favorite topic - announcements of the construction of 5G in Rus'. Last summer I made material based on press releases.

#184. Where did domestic 4G and 5G stations go?

In Russia there are domestic 4G and 5G, but they are hidden! Cameras under the screen and the inconspicuous development of technology.

So, according to press releases and photographic materials, in January 2022, Mikhail Mishustin (this is our prime minister) was shown a domestic 5G base station.

The station was shown personally by the head of Rostec, Sergey Chemezov, who said that:

“The equipment presented today isa step towards testing domestic next-generation communication technologies. The first deliveries of 5G base stations for testing in pilot areas are planned for 2023. Serial production is scheduled to begin in 2024. The customers of the equipment will be mobile operators, as well as large manufacturing companies.”

We are already in 2023 and we know for sure that deliveries will notstarted. There is no news about serial production, but it's not over yet! The only news about 5G this year is that Director for Special Assignments Vasily Brovko was awarded the Order of Friendship for his great contribution to strengthening Russian statehood. The press release clarifies that Mr. Brovko, among other things, "supervised the development of roadmaps for the digital economy, including 5G communication networks."

In the photo Sergey Chemezov and Vasily Brovko (with the order).

At the end of May, the CIPR took place.Eldar Murtazin was talking about the event, and among other news, a story about a 5G base station from Skoltech flashed by. Do not confuse Rostec with Skoltech. It's different.

And first in specialized telegram channelsreported, and then TASS also published the news that “the 5G base station, developed at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), demonstrated a speed of 1.4 Gbps, on par with foreign counterparts.”

And a quote is given from the head of the NTI Competence Center for Wireless Communications and the Internet of Things based on Skoltech Dmitry Lakontsev:

In terms of speed, we caught up with foreign counterparts - more than 1.4 Gb / s. Pilot projects this year are designed for 100 base stations, and a larger implementation is planned for next year.

Once again, I will note this disastrous way of thinking with alignment with foreign counterparts. However, thanks for not submitting the news as “Skoltech has created a killer for Nokia and Ericsson”. But they could.

I initially missed the news, but I could notget rid of the feeling of deja vu. And yes! On April 14, there was news on the TASS website that the first 5G base station had been created in Russia. Apparently, the first after Rostec. Because if it’s really the first, then what was shown to Mishustin, what were they awarded orders for?

The news says that 342 million rubles were disbursed in 39 months, of which 300 million rubles were received in the form of a state grant, and the press service commented:

“The first batch of equipment intended for completing the pilot network is already ready. The volume of production of base stations by the end of 2023 will reach 100 pieces.

The base station of Skoltech is comparable to modern samples of foreign equipment, and the peak speed of the mobile Internet reached 1.4 Gbps"

We can only assume that for 1.5 months at Skoltech made sure that the base 5G station was ready, and for the second time they were able to take the height in the form of a speed of 1.4 Gbps. Probably now we are waiting for the third successful news. Because the first two times - it can still be an accident ...

Once again, I note that I am as simple, butthe layman watching what is happening is embarrassed that I do not understand anything about the “movement”. And there they constantly show something, master the budgets (here I have no doubt that everything worked out to the penny), equalize with foreign equipment, even award orders for merit. It seems that there is no 5G yet, but there are already awards.

In fairness, I note that I do not understandonly me. At the Vedomosti conference at the end of April, profile journalists surrounded the head of the Ministry of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev and tried to find out what was happening with 5G. The minister succinctly answered in the spirit of the work being done, and since there were many questions, he immediately switched to others.

And how wonderful it would be if the siteThe Ministry of Digital Development has a page called “Our way to 5G”, where explanations and comments would be published. Because I am sure that the work is really going on. And Rostec and Skoltech are actively doing something right.

And then, based on press releases, we will have 5G a littlewhether not tomorrow. At the same time, news about the “strategy for the development of the communications industry in the Russian Federation for 2024-2035” is published nearby, according to which no 5G until 2030.

Spillikins No. 748. Development strategies for the communications industry in the Russian Federation for 2024–2035

Officials and the Internet, a monkey and glasses -gigabit Internet in every home, Wi-Fi will replace mobile Internet, the ban on YouTube and the payment for it are the initiatives of officials; price war in the world, Samsung brought down prices, sales of smart watches and smartphones; beta from Aurora; Butterfly from Apple and a lawsuit.

Games on macOS

We studied the Apple presentation from all angles, but WWDC is a multi-day conference, so the news was on all week.

In my opinion, the most exciting news concernsgames. At the presentation, Apple said that it would release software for developers to facilitate porting. And everyone decided that this was just some kind of development toolkit.

But Apple knows how to surprise.The published Game Porting Toolkit is easiest to compare with Proton. For the public that does not follow the gaming sphere, I will explain. So, last year, Valve, which owns the Steam store, introduced the Steamdeck portable gaming computer, which runs on the Linux operating system. Well, since the games are developed for Windows, the Proton environment was attached to Steamdeck - a set of tools (Wine, DXVK) that allows you to run Windows games on Linux.

Apple's utility works similarly to Proton, meaning it instantly makes almost any game available on macOS. The utility even supports DirectX 12.

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Gaming forums and Reddit are already buzzing with user reviews.

For example, we successfully launched Cyberpunk 2077 onMacBook Pro 16 GB RAM, M1 chipset, Ultra settings, 1440 x 900 resolution. The frame rate, of course, is none - only 15 fps. Obviously, optimization is needed. But the fact itself is impressive.

Hogwarts launched on MacBook Pro with M2 chipsetLegacy on medium settings with a floating frame rate of 35 - 70 fps. Here, as in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, the fact that the computer runs the game completely on its own, without using MetalFX, is noteworthy. MetalFX is an analogue of Nvidia DLSS that allows you to increase the quality of textures and increase the number of frames per second using artificial intelligence. Accordingly, if MetalFX works in the same way as DLSS, then in the same Cyberpunk at high settings, 40 fps can be expected.

Well, old games, for example, GTA V, run in 4K on ultra settings with a frame rate of 30 fps. Final Fantasy XV works great too:

For those who want to appreciate the smoothness and picture, here is a recording of the Hogwarts Legacy gameplay. Obviously the game needs more optimization. See how the Pegasus' tail "breaks" in flight.

However, Apple itself says that Game PortingThe Toolkit is a test tool for developers to preview how a game behaves on macOS. And also how much and where it will be necessary to make efforts to make the port work perfectly.

Here, of course, we can say that the idea is notwill shoot. But in contrast, I would like to bring Steamdeck, which is a rather mediocre computer that runs games in a modest resolution. Graphics flaws are hidden by a small screen size. However, despite its limitations, Steamdeck is selling quite successfully. Macbook Air is, of course, $400 more expensive, but it can easily compete with Steamdeck in portability.

I don't expect macOS games to flood the market in the coming year. Rather, there will be a scenario like with AppleTV +. Slowly, serials began to rivet and after 3 years they reached a fairly high level.

I guess it's the same with games.Perhaps even faster. If porting games turns out to be really as easy as Apple promises, then we may well see a scenario for the mobile market, when an application or game is first released for iOS, because there is a solvent public, and only then appears on Android.

Release the game on macOS to collect the cream of the cropmarket is a great idea. Steam, for example, has a 30% developer commission. If Apple offers a commission of 20% for the sake of attracting, it will already attract attention.

About the importance of correct algorithms

One evening I went for a walk around VDNKh to take some examples of evening photography on test smartphones. And he was extremely surprised by the result.

In this story, I will use pseudonyms,because the brands are gone, but the PR people are. And in Rus', all relationships are not business, but personal. And any business is not a business, but a personal connection. And when they try to play business, tantrums happen, like the former Beeline PR manager Georgy Lobushkin, who in the spring was indignant at the entire banned Facebook * about why the Kommersant newspaper writes unpleasant things about his company, and he has to because of this suffer. Well, because that's how business works. PR people have a task to make the company loved, and journalists have to create traffic to the article, and there is nothing personal about it. But neither of them understand this, so PR people cry and do not invite to events, samples are not sent, and so on, and offended journalists scribble slander.

So, walking around VDNKh, I went up towonderful puck-shaped building. Its remarkable thing is that there is a bright running line (running, that is, the letters move). The line is already blinding, but it's dark around. This is a serious test for any camera. Smartphones cheaper than 30 thousand, I usually do not test here. Here is an example from a very good smartphone up to 20 thousand rubles (below you will see how this inscription actually looks). It is trite by status that he is not supposed to have a camera that can handle this.

But this evening on the test, I had a certainSmartphone Realmius GTZ. This smartphone has a 50 MP camera with optical stabilization and a sensor size of 1/1.56 inches. In terms of positioning in the rest of the world, this is a light flagship running on the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. I say “in the rest of the world”, because in Russia last year for the previous generation the company broke such a price that I sobbed into my pillow for half the night, comparing the cost phone and your salary. Let's see what happens this year!

Realmius GTZ is a good device, but still a light flagship, so I didn’t expect miracles from it. The more I was surprised and delighted with the result.

There is a small oversharp associated with the fact thatit was necessary to extinguish the haze from the bright running line. Also note that in the photo with the orange inscription, even the lantern far in the background with illumination in the form of the Russian flag is clearly worked out. You can see what is happening in the room, and the glass panels reflect me and the guard.

After the result of Realmius, I hada crazy idea to test your main 100% flagship smartphone. Well, to get a pleasant feeling that it was not in vain that he spent the money he earned with blood and sweat.

And so I boldly take out my wide trousersbig and weighty, I'm not afraid of the word unit. I call it Coreus 23 Ultimate. The security guard, who was watching over order, immediately tensed up suspiciously, and the girls on the neighboring bench rapturously quieted down. And I understand them: after all, a 200 megapixel camera, laser autofocus, optical stabilization. I turn on night mode and take a photo.

The result, to put it mildly, is not 100 thousand.Then I remember that this powerful device is not for shooting in automatic mode, and if I want a satisfying result, then I need to drive the settings. And so, not embarrassed by either the guard or the girls, I sit down on the bench and start playing with the settings. And I twist them this way and that. Well, I screwed up:

So I realized that size doesn't always matter.Correct algorithms are more important. Then he got on the electric scooter, pushed off and sadly went home. This is such a difficult story. There is no morality in it. Have a good week everyone!