The Vivo brand may not immediately ring a bell in the West, but its recent mobile photography ambitions are worth paying attention to. The company's latest flagship, the X70 Pro+, is the world's first smartphone to feature optical image stabilization (OIS) across all four of its rear cameras. Like the previous model, these all have Zeiss optics and Zeiss T* lens coating, but the main camera is further enhanced by an SLR-grade high-transmittance glass lens to reduce chromatic aberration.

Vivo

Vivo continues to offer one of the more versatile sets of cameras I've seen lately. The X70 Pro+ comes with a 48-megapixel f/2.2 ultra-wide camera, which is further stabilized by Vivo's now-signature micro gimbal; a 50-megapixel f/1.57 main camera powered by a large Samsung GN1 sensor (as featured on the X50 Pro+); a 12-megapixel f/1.6 portrait camera with the much newer Sony IMX663; and an 8-megapixel f/3.4 5x zoom periscopic camera. 

All four rear cameras support electronic stabilization for video shooting, and if you really want to, the main camera can film at up to 8K resolution. The X70 Pro+ also packs Vivo's very own "V1" AI imaging chip for better noise reduction in low-light video recording, as well as more efficient motion smoothing in video playback and gaming.

I don't usually spend much time in the camera filter section, but Vivo's selection of bokeh effects look fun, as they were apparently meant to mimic classic Zeiss lenses. The X60 series already introduced the "swirly" Biotar filter, and with the new X70 series, you also get the "anamorphic" Distagon, the "genuine" Planar and the "creamy" Sonnar. Apparently Zeiss took part in developing these bokeh effects, so that should speak for their faithfulness.

On the other side of the X70 Pro+, you get a 32-megapixel f/2.45 punch-hole selfie camera at the top of a 6.78-inch screen. This 3,200 x 1,400 AMOLED panel offers better colors (10-bit or 1 billion colors) and brightness than before, thanks to Samsung's latest E5 LTPO tech. It also delivers a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of up to 300Hz, which should deliver some silky smooth scrolling and gaming.

Vivo

The Android 11-based X70 Pro+ comes with many other flagship elements, namely a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888+ processor, fast LPDDR5 RAM, IP68 dustproofing and waterproofing, stereo speakers and a dedicated Hi-Fi chip. There's even an infrared remote feature to let you control home appliances the old-fashioned way.

As for charging, the 4,500mAh battery here supports Vivo's 55W FlashCharge and 50W Wireless FlashCharge. The latter requires a special charging stand, which packs two coils to handle both portrait and landscape orientations. You can also use any Qi pad, with the trade-off being a slower charging rate, obviously. The phone itself does 10W reverse wireless charging, should you need to revive other phones, smartwatches or wireless earbuds.

Vivo

The X70 series includes two other models: the quad-cam X70 Pro and the tri-cam X70. Both models are powered by MediaTek's Dimensity 1200-vivo chipset, and their smaller 6.56-inch AMOLED screens (2,376 x 1,080, 120Hz) translate to smaller batteries as well. But hey, you still get an infrared remote on either model.

While the X70 Pro and X70 also receive the Zeiss treatment, they baked the micro gimbal into their main cameras (50 and 40 megapixels, respectively) instead of their 12-megapixel ultra-wide cameras. It's also worth mentioning that their 12-megapixel portrait cameras lack OIS. Given their missing V1 imaging chip, it'll be interesting to compare their low-light shots with the X70 Pro+.

Vivo

For what it's worth, the version of the X70 Pro sold in China will be powered by a Samsung Exynos 1080, and it also includes a V1 chip.

Outside of China, Vivo's X70 series will initially roll out in markets like India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates, among others. There's no word on a European launch just yet, but Vivo might want to plan one soon to keep up with the likes of Oppo and Xiaomi. Meanwhile, stay tuned for our upcoming X70 Pro+ hands-on.

The smartwatch market doesn't appear to be cooling down any time soon — if anything, it's heating up. Strategy Analytics estimates smartwatch shipments grew by a whopping 47 percent year-over-year in the second quarter of 2021, with 18.1 million of the wearables shipping this spring. Demand (at least from retailers) has returned to "pre-pandemic levels," according to the analyst firm's Steven Waltzer — it hasn't been this hot since 2018.

Strategy Analytics attributed the spike to continued demand for personal health devices. It's not clear how much the pandemic recovery fuelled demand, although it wouldn't be surprising if the renewed interest in going outside prompted extra sales.

It wasn't just the usual companies that benefited from the surge, either. Apple held on to a comfortable lead with 52 percent of the market and the most popular individual smartwatch (the Apple Watch Series 6), and Samsung saw its shipments jump 54 percent. Garmin's fitness-focused watches still jumped 25 percent, though, and "others" (including Fossil and other Wear OS backers) saw their shipments climb 55 percent. This was a strong overall market, even for smaller brands.

There are signs this spike will continue. Apple Watch Series 7 could be weeks away as we write this, and Samsung's Wear OS-packing Galaxy Watch 4 might revitalize Android smartwatch sales. Low-cost LTE smartwatches from Chinese brands like Oppo and Xiaomi might also help, according to the analysts. This momentum will eventually die down, but it's unlikely to fade in the near future.

Last year, Boss Team and Saber Interactive announced that Evil Dead: The Game with Bruce Campbell reprising his original movie role would arrive sometime in 2021. Now, the developers have tweeted out an update with a specific and slightly later release date: February 2022. 

The reason for the delay is to "give the team some extra time for polish and to ensure this is the ultimate Evil Dead experience you're all waiting for," the team tweeted. "This additional time is also allowing us to implement a single-player option that will let you enjoy the game when you are without your co-op compadres." 

As we saw in the launch trailer in December, Campbell's Ash along with Kelly and crew have to work together to fight Deadites led by a powerful demon. You can think of it as a Dead by Daylight-style asymmetric title with a chainsaw hand and Bruce Campbell's clever catchphrases. It also comes with a big dollop of nostalgia with familiar characters, locales and plenty of gore in the form of blood-soaked zombies.

Evil Dead: The Game will offer "multiplayer co-op and PvP for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch," according to the developer's website. They advised that you stay tuned to their Twitter page "for more information about new character updates, pre-order availability, and the next gameplay video featuring Bruce Campbell."

We hope you weren't planning to festoon your wrist with a titanium Apple Watch Series 6. As Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Mac Rumors note, the titanium Apple Watch is largely unavailable through the company's online stores in the US and other countries, whether you try for delivery or pick-up. This applies regardless of your case or strap choices.

Gurman speculated in his "Power On" newsletter that Apple underestimated demand. It likely made a small number of titanium Apple Watches and stopped production "months ago" in anticipation of switching focus to Series 7, according to Gurman, but ran out prematurely as sales remained relatively strong. While we wouldn't classify the titanium Series 6 as a runaway hit if that's true, Apple's luxury wristwear might have fared better than expected.

Whether or not Apple offers a titanium Series 7 is uncertain. The tech giant has frequently shaken up its Watch Edition strategy, ditching its solid gold originals in favor of more affordable ceramic and, eventually, titanium. It might decide that the costs of manufacturing upscale watches doesn't justify the comparatively meager sales. There's always the Hermès models if you want to splurge. At the same time, though, titanium versions don't cost that much more in practice — and they might serve as halo watches that attract conventional watch enthusiasts as well as the wealthy.

The best part of waking up is, of course, hot bean juice in your cup. But, as Dr. Kate "The Chemist" Biberdorf explains in her new book It's Elemental, if you want to consistently enjoy the best cuppa joe you can craft — perfectly caffeinated and not too bitter — a bit math is necessary. And it's not just coffee. Biberdorf takes readers on a journey through mundane moments of everyday life, illustrating how incredible they actually are — if you stop to examine about the chemistry behind them.  

Harper Collins

Excerpted from It’s Elemental by Kate Biberdorf, Copyright © 2021 by Kate Biberdorf. Published by Park Row Books.

Coffee and tea are much more potent sources of caffeine than soda. In one cup of coffee, you are likely to ingest around 100 mg of caffeine, but it can be up to 175 mg with the right coffee beans and technique. The whole process of making coffee beans (and coffee itself) is pretty fascinating if you’ve never given it much thought. For example, espresso makers and percolators get the most caffeine out of lighter roasted beans, but the drip method is the best way to get the most trimethylxanthine from darker beans. However, in general, light and dark roast coffees typically have the same relative number of caffeine molecules in each cup of coffee (excluding espressos).

Let’s look at the roasting processes to determine why that is. When the beans are initially heated, they absorb energy in what we call an endothermic process. However, at around 175°C (347°F), the process suddenly becomes exothermic. This means that the beans have absorbed so much heat that they now radiate the heat back into the atmosphere of the roasting machine. When this happens, the settings have to be adjusted on the equipment, in order to avoid over-roasting the beans (which sometimes results in burnt-tasting coffee). Some roasters will even toggle the beans between the endothermic and exothermic reaction a couple of times, to achieve different flavors.

Over time, roasting coffee beans slowly change from green to yellow, and then to a number of different shades of brown. We refer to the darkness of the bean as its “roast,” where the darker roasted coffee beans are much darker in color than the lighter roasted beans (surprise, surprise). Their color comes from the temperature at which they are roasted. Lighter beans are heated to about 200°C (392°F) and darker roasted beans to about 225–245°C (437–473°F).

But just before the beans start to, for lack of better words, lightly roast, the coffee beans go through their first “crack.” This is an audible process that occurs at 196°C (385°F). During this process, the beans absorb heat and double in size. But since the water molecules evaporate out of the bean when under high temperatures, they actually decrease in mass by about 15%.

After the first crack, the coffee beans are so dry that they stop readily absorbing heat. Instead, all of the thermal energy is now used to caramelize the sugars on the outside of the coffee bean. This means that the heat is used to break the bonds in the sucrose (sugar) into much smaller (and more fragrant) molecules. The lightest roasts—like cinnamon roast and New England roast—are heated just past the first crack before being removed from the coffee roaster.

There is a second crack that occurs during the roast, but at a much higher temperature. At 224°C (435°F), the coffee beans lose their structural integrity, and the bean itself starts to collapse. When this happens, you can usually hear it by a second “pop.” Dark roasts are typically categorized by any beans that have been heated past the second crack—like French and Italian roasts. In general, due to the hotter temperatures, darker beans tend to have more of their sugars caramelized, while lighter beans have less. The variation in flavor due to these methods is wild, but it doesn’t really affect how they react in the body— only the taste.

Once you purchase your perfectly roasted coffee beans, you can do the rest of the chemistry at home. With an inexpensive coffee grinder, you can grind up your coffee beans to a number of different sizes, which will definitely affect the taste of your morning coffee. Small, fine grinds have a lot of surface area, which means the caffeine (and other flavors) can be extracted from the miniaturized coffee beans with ease. However, this can often result in too much caffeine being extracted, which gives the coffee a bitter taste.

On the other hand, coffee beans can be coarsely ground. In this instance, the insides of the coffee beans are not exposed to nearly the same degree as finely ground coffee beans. The resulting coffee can often taste sour—and sometimes even a little salty. But if you partner up the correct size of coffee grounds with the appropriate brewing method, you can make yourself the world’s best cup of coffee.

The simplest (and easiest way) to brew coffee is to add extremely hot water to coarse coffee grounds. After they have soaked in the water for a few minutes, the liquid can be decanted from the container. This process, called decoction, uses hot water to dissolve the molecules within the coffee beans. Most current methods of coffee brewing utilize some version of decoction, which is what allows us to drink a cup of warm coffee instead of chomping on some roasted beans. However, since this method does not contain a filtration process, this version of coffee—affectionately referred to as cowboy coffee—is prone to having coffee bean floaters. For that reason, it’s usually not the preferred brewing method.

By the way, did you notice that I was avoiding the term boiling? If you’re trying to make halfway decent cup of coffee, the hot water should never actually be boiled. Instead, the ideal temperature of the water is around 96°C (205°F), which is just below boiling (100°C, 212°F). At 96°C, the molecules that provide the aroma of coffee begin to dissolve. Unfortunately, when the water is just four degrees hotter, the molecules that give coffee a bitter taste dissolve as well. That’s why coffee nerds and baristas are so obsessed with their water temperature. In my house, we even use an electric kettle that allows us to select whatever temperature we want our water to be.

Depending on how strong you like your coffee to taste, you may be partial to the French press or another steeping method. Like cowboy coffee, this technique also soaks the coffee grounds in hot water, but these grounds are a little smaller (coarse versus extra coarse). After a few minutes, a plunger is used to push all of the grounds to the bottom of the device. The remaining liquid above the grounds is now perfectly clear and deliciously tasty. Since the coarse coffee grounds are used in this method, more molecules can dissolve in the coffee solution, providing us with a more intense flavor (compared to cowboy coffee).

Another technique: when hot water is dripped over coffee grounds, the water absorbs the aromatic molecules before dripping into the coffee mug. This process, appropriately called the drip method, can be done manually or with a high-tech machine, like a coffee percolator. But sometimes this technique is used with cold water, which means that the fragrant, aromatic molecules (the ones that give your coffee its distinctive smell) cannot dissolve in the water. The result is called Dutch iced coffee, a drink that is ironically favored in Japan, and takes about two hours to prepare.

How do authorities dispose of confiscated cryptocurrency mining rigs? In a city in Sarawak, Malaysia, authorities got rid of 1,069 rigs at once by crushing them with a steamroller, Vice reports. According to Malaysian publication Dayak Daily, the PCs were confiscated over six raids conducted between February and April this year. Sarawak Energy Berhad, the electric utility company of the Malaysian province, is accusing the mining operators of stealing electricity for their activities. The operators allegedly stole RM8.4 million worth of energy, or around US$2 million, from the company. 

People who want to seriously mine cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Ethereum use PCs built for that purpose, and the process usually consumes a huge amount of electricity. That's why it's no surprise that energy theft is commonly reported in places where miners operate. In Ukraine, for instance, the country's Security Service raided a mining operation that used PS4 Pros as their machines, and the operators were also accused of stealing electricity from the country's power grid. The Malaysian city's police chief Hakemal Hawari told Dayak Daily that energy theft for mining operations has been so rampant this year, three houses burned down as a result of illegal electric connections.

You can watch the steamroller crush the mining rigs in the video below. If you're wondering, that's RM5.3 million (US$1.26 million) worth of hardware being haphazardly smashed by a gigantic machine.