OnePlus adopted a different approach in drumming up hype around the launch of the OnePlus Nord – which as it turns out is a line of smartphones, rather than a singular device.
On 25 June, OnePlus published a video titled “OnePlus – New Beginnings Documentary Trailer” onto its official YouTube channel (which you can watch above). As per the video’s description and its content, the series chronicles the company’s trials and tribulations in developing the OnePlus Nord – its new mid-range smartphone line.
The Nord – rumours of which have been circulating since late 2019 – distils down the OnePlus 8/8 Pro user experience into a more affordable package, with pricing coming in at under £500/US$500/€500.
Those familiar with OnePlus’ origins will know that the company built its early reputation on being the plucky underdog; working to subvert mainstream smartphone launches and marketing by building a passionate community of fans and releasing its debut product under the pretence of exclusivity.
While the approach isn’t identical with the Nord, it’s clear the company has tried to recapture some of the original magic that the brand possessed when it was fresh-faced back in 2014.
Where can I watch the OnePlus New Beginnings documentary?
Despite the above trailer appearing on YouTube, the documentary was originally split into four parts which aired on IGTV (Instagram TV) first, before being made available on YouTube a day or so later.
On 14 August, OnePlus announced that it would also be premiering New Beginnings as a continuous piece of content on Amazon Prime Video on 18 August.
We’ve embedded the YouTube versions of all four parts below for your convenience and viewing pleasure:
Here’s part two:
Here’s part three:
And here’s part four:
Another component to OnePlus’ marketing approach for the Nord has been to create a self-aware Instagram account, originally named after the very rumours and leaks related to the phone in question.
The account has also played host to teases, coded messages and even served as the source that confirmed the ‘Nord’ naming convention just days after it was created.
Head over to the OnePlus.Nord Instagram profile to watch all four parts and the original trailer, all found under the profile’s IGTV tab and formatted for portrait viewing – ideal for watching on a smartphone.
When can I watch the OnePlus New Beginnings documentary?
As already stated, part one aired on 30 June, part two arrived on 7 July, part three debuted on 14 July and part four first appeared on 4 August – several days after the phone’s 21 July launch but the same day as its European market release.
It’s also being made available in 121 countries and territories on Amazon Prime Video from 18 August.
Be Quiet’s Pure Base 500 mid-tower case launched last year with a focus on minimizing fan noise, but as usual with quiet cases, its temperatures ran warm. Happily, you can now bypass that catch with the company’s airflow variant, the Pure Base 500DX.
As you’ll see in our video above, the 500DX’s star feature is its mesh front, which allows for much greater air intake. (And falls right in line with the overall case trend for the year.) Instead of the foam-lined solid panel found on the standard Pure Base 500, the DX version has two large, long mesh sections spanning most of its front, partially outlined with ARGB light strips. The latter is a first for Be Quiet; until this case, it had only offered non-addressable RGB as accents.
Outside of this front-panel design change, the 500DX has two other main differences. The first is the exchange of one USB-A port for a USB-C Gen 2 on the front panel, while the other is the addition of an ARGB light strip along the upper edge of the chassis, right behind the tempered-glass side panel. All ARGB strips are controlled by a button also housed in the front panel, which allows you to cycle through six individual colors with four different light patterns, plus three rainbow patterns. It’s a thoughtful inclusion for those who have motherboards without an ARGB header, or who dislike the less-than-ideal software situation for RGB.
The Pure Base 500DX is available now at an MSRP of $100 with two color options, black or white. Retailers include Amazon, Newegg, and B&H, but most places are sold out or on back-order due to high demand. Be Quiet says that more stock should arrive soon—but be prepared to jump on it quickly, as it’ll sell fast.
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If you’re having a hard time finding Fortnite in the Google Play Store this morning, you’re not alone. Just hours after suing Apple for booting Fortnite from its iOS App Store, Google did the same thing. And right on cue, Epic Games rolled out a lawsuit against Google for the same thing—namely “unfair, monopolistic and anti-competitive actions.”
Here’s the backstory. On Thursday morning, Epic announced new lower pricing for its in-game V-Bucks currency. Instead, a paying $10 for a thousand V-Bucks, Epic is now charging $8, a savings of 20 percent. However, Epic presented two pricing options, one for “Epic direct payment” that reflects the $8 price, and another for $10 if you wanted to go through Apple’s or Google’s App Stores for the previous $10 price. The reason, as Epic explained, was due to the 30 percent fee that Apple and Google collect on all in-app purchases.
That violates Google’s terms of service, which state that apps or games downloaded through the Play Store “must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment.” By offering its own method of payment, Epic ran afoul of those rules.
But make no mistake, this is a fight Epic wanted. Not only did they have lawsuits ready, they also kicked off a social media campaign with the hashtag #FreeFortnite as well as a cheeky in-game video parodying Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial:
Epic Games has defied the App Store Monopoly. In retaliation, Apple is blocking Fortnite from a billion devices. Join the fight to stop 2020 from becoming “1984”.
But while Epic didn’t have any slick videos at the ready, it did have plenty of ammunition in its arsenal. In addition to essentially calling Google evil and greedy, the lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California court claims that Google killed deals with OnePlus and LG “to allow users … to seamlessly install Fortnite and other Epic games by touching an Epic Games app on their devices.” Epic says Google stepped in and “demanded that OnePlus not implement its agreement with Epic” over concerns that “the Epic Games app would have ability to potentially install and update multiple games with a silent install bypassing the Google Play Store.”
Similarly, LG told Epic “that its contract with Google did not allow it to enable the direct distribution of apps.”
Notably, the Epic Games App is available exclusively in India as described in the suit. Furthermore, OnePlus 8 users can play Fortnite at 90Hz for a smoother gameplay not available on other devices.
These accusations are serious but also confusing. Google already pre-installed apps onto their phones, so it’s unclear why it would block Fortnite from appearing on LG phones. But what’s clear is that this fight is just beginning and will likely last a long time. And with the anticipated Fortnite Chapter 2, Season 4 update looming later this month, both sides have a lot to lose.
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Now that Intel’s finally announced its new Tiger Lake CPU for laptops Thursday morning, we can finally start making the odds on which chip will win: 11th-gen Tiger Lake or AMD Ryzen 4000.
Sure, we know laptops based on the Tiger Lake CPU aren’t even out yet (wait for a rollout on September 2), and there are far more Ryzen 4000 laptops coming too, but that’s never stopped the media from speculating. In our case, we’ll make the best educated guesses we can based on what we know. Here’s how the competition seems to be shaking out:
Intel
The challenger: Tiger Lake
Intel is playing its Tiger Lake cards pretty close to its chest, so there still isn’t a lot on the table. What we know officially is that the 11th-gen Tiger Lake CPU is built on a 10nm process, using SuperFin technology that primarily addresses one of the shortcomings of the original 10th-gen Ice Lake chip: relatively limited clock speeds.
While the 10th-gen Ice Lake chips were more power-efficient than the older (and confusingly named) 10th-gen Comet Lake CPUs, the top speed of the best 15-watt part, the Core i7-1065G7, was 3.9GHz with a 1.3GHz base clock.
Intel also has a higher wattage Core i7-1068NG7 (exclusive to Apple products, including the 2020 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro) that runs at 28 watts with a turbo clock of 4.1GHz and a base clock of 2.3GHz. Both are quad-core chips with Hyper-Threading and Iris Plus / Gen 11 graphics running at the same clock speed.
Tiger Lake should easily make the 10th-gen chips irrelevant from a performance point of view thanks to the improved transistors. While no clock speeds were stated, you can see from the information Intel released Thursday that the Willow Cove cores in the new Tiger Lake chips will reach close to 5GHz, while the fastest Sunny Cove cores in Ice Lake ran out of gas at 4.1GHz.
Intel
Intel’s new 11th-gen CPUs with the Willow Cove cores should hit far higher clock speeds than its 10th-gen CPU with the Sunny Cove cores.
Higher clock speeds at higher power draws is easy, but Intel said it’s also getting more efficiency across the board. That means Tiger Lake should actually run at higher clock speeds while using less power. All told, it looks like a pretty decent part.
Intel also greatly beefed up the graphics with Xe LP, a redesigned core that should offer nearly double the performance of 10th-gen Ice lake’s graphics. In fact, Intel claims the 11th-gen Tiger Lake chip running at 15 watts will outperform a 10th-gen Ice Lake chip running at 28 watts.
Gordon Mah Ung/IDG
The defending champ: Ryzen 4000
AMD’s Ryzen 4000 “Matisse” has reset the laptop landscape unlike any other CPU in years. With 8 cores on a 7nm chip, it holds the high ground for multi-core performance and simply runs far cooler than Intel’s 14nm 10th-gen Comet Lake H chips. It also dances all over Intel’s 10nm, 10th-gen Ice Lake chips. The reasons are the core count, plus the Radeon graphics cores, and the efficiency of TSMC’s 7nm process. But the proof’s in the products, and we’ve been impressed with the premium-class performance delivered by budget-class laptops like the Acer Swift 3 and HP Envy x360 13. Sorry Intel fans, there’s a new champion.
11th-gen Tiger Lake U vs. Ryzen 4000 U
We’ll give our forecast based on three metrics that matter in small laptops: Multi-core performance, single-core performance, and graphics or gaming performance.
Multi-core performance
We think if the rumors are true that Tiger Lake U will indeed “only” be a quad-core chip, AMD’s Ryzen 4000 U will easily have the edge. The simple math is 8 cores are more than 4, and we’ve yet to see that fundamental rule challenged.
Intel’s Tiger Lake U might surprise us with its high clocks, though. If it can sustain the clocks, it may close up the distance enough to worry Ryzen 4000 U. Still, we’ll be putting our marker on AMD’s Ryzen 4000 U for this category. Sure, not everyone needs 8 cores for what you do on a tiny laptop, but for those who do, you can’t beat it.
Single-core performance
For the single-core performance that applies to most mainstream applications, Tiger Lake has a chance to punch back. Ryzen 7 4000U is about equal to and sometimes faster than Intel’s 10th-gen Ice Lake U chips, but Intel could regain advantage thanks to the SuperFin and higher clocks in Tiger Lake U.
Intel’s argument is that you don’t need all of those cores in a tiny 13-inch laptop. Instead, you want higher boost clocks to give you the most responsive feel in most of the mainstream apps people use on tiny laptops, like Chrome, Office and even Photoshop.
Intel
Intel’s Xe LP will offer higher performance than its previous Gen 11 graphics in Ice Lake CPUs, while consuming less power.
Graphics performance
We suspect that Intel, for once, will be sitting pretty with graphics. Besides upping the execution engines to 96 from 64, Intel has redesigned and optimized the entire Xe LP graphics cores for Tiger Lake laptops. Intel has already seen Ryzen 4000 U and is willing to say that Xe LP graphics in Tiger Lake will offer AAA gaming experience previously unseen laptops in this form factor.
We know Intel lawyers, and they wouldn’t let the company say that unless it was true. While there are a lot of caveats to the statement, we think Tiger Lake U gaming performance will be all about Intel—for once.
The ringer
The ringer in all this is Tiger Lake’s support for LPDDR5/5400 and LPDDR4X/4267 memory. Both of those memory clock speeds exceed Ryzen and Ice Lake’s LPDDR4X/3733 memory support. Because integrated graphics performance relies very heavily on memory bandwidth, Intel should have the advantage there too. It does depend on how easy it is to find laptops that support the higher-clocked RAM, but we’d guess the first laptops to come will feature it.
Conclusion
With Tiger Lake winning two of the three categories, we’re going to say the odds-on favorite for the matchup this year will be Tiger Lake U. There are some exceptions. If you indeed need an 8-core powerhouse in a sub-three-pound laptop, your only choice will have the AMD logo on it. But for those who want a laptop for general use, Tiger Lake U’s advantage in single-threaded performance will prevail, and it should have an edge in graphics performance, too.
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