Sony PS5 Pro’s appeal dilemma, safeguarding stolen phones and Truecaller update

There is a new Sony PlayStation 5 Pro that launches in early November. A desperate mid-cycle refresh? For an astonishing $700 (that’d be around ₹60,000 direct conversion; expect India pricing to be a bit more). Quite how will Sony convince even the most enthusiastic PlayStation gamer that the PS5 Pro is indeed worth all that much money—even more so if they already own a PS5? You’ve to consider the PS5 Pro doesn’t have a built-in optical drive, and you’ll have to buy one separately for around $70 while at it. That’s before you even factor in an inevitable mess with availability (be prepared to be greeted by “out of stock” notices, for your imprudent behaviour). Three important performance tweaks, Sony hopes, would be enough to convince you. Would they?

Let’s analyse. There is an upgraded graphics processing unit, or GPU, which they say has 67% more Compute Units and 28% faster memory, than the current PS5 console. Advanced ray tracing, for more dynamic reflection and refraction of light, which simply means better graphics rendering is possible. Of course, in this day and age, little goes by without a mention of AI. “We’re also introducing PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, an AI-driven upscaling that uses a machine learning-based technology to provide super sharp image clarity by adding an extraordinary amount of detail,” the wording’s from Sony’s official release.

The only question to be asked here is—who is the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro for? I’d say for the impetuous. The perspective here is, a very capable PS5 that’s already on sale will set you back by about ₹54,990. As of now, that console isn’t receiving any pricing corrections (mind you, there’s also the drive-less Digital Edition for around ₹44,990; eventually market forces will invite some offers). Sony seems to have forgotten a lot of time has passed since 2016, when they launched the PlayStation 4 Pro, which effectively replaced the PS4 at around the $400 mark and sold alongside the more affordable PS4 Slim. As I said, the demographic this Pro will appeal, have specific personality traits.

METHODOLOGY

It is not every day that one gets the chance to have a casual conversation with Deirdre O'Brien, who is Senior Vice President of Retail at Apple Inc. whilst walking into Apple Park for a briefing (not with O’Brien, mind you). Or have the privilege of being briefed at a post keynote demo zone by Piyush Pratik, product manager for iPhone (minutes after his own appearance at the keynote). Just those moments that stay with you, for a lifetime. Last week was hectic with everything Apple, OpenAI and Adobe announced, but it is easy to navigate around that when work is in primary focus. My weekly column talked about all that, in which I noted that consolidation is often the more successful route for tech innovation, but it doesn’t have the most appealing of optics.

Social media experts (getting my goat rather regularly on various issues, the past few weeks) have been incessantly cribbing that this year’s iPhone 16 series isn’t a revolutionary step forward. They didn’t need to be. Improvements where necessary, and that’s it (I’ll get to the pricing too, in a bit). What they’ve missed is the real innovation elsewhere, which is Apple doubling down on the AirPods as health tracking wearables and clinical grade hearing aids. The first of its kind. By the way, FDA approvals have been signed, sealed and delivered to Apple, as I was on the flight back (must have been flying over Greenland, by my estimates). As the FDA calls it, “the first over the counter hearing aid software device.”

The US FDA, in their authorisation for Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 wireless earbuds’ hearing aid feature, acknowledged them as “the first over the counter hearing aid software device.”

Then there’s sleep apnea on the latest and previous generations of the Apple Watch. It’ll be interesting to see how that works in the real world. Samsung has done a good job of including sleep apnea on its latest line of Galaxy Watch Ultra, which we have reviewed in detail, as well as blood pressure monitoring (the only caveat is that it’ll work when paired with a Samsung smartphone). Apple’s yet to add blood pressure functionality on the Watch. Expected next year?

On its part, OpenAI isn’t shy of saying that the o1 models are essentially still a preview, which is another world for being very, very early in the development stage. This essentially is expected to imbibe new understanding skills, though the data sets from which it gains its knowledge, are the same as OpenAI’s other GPT models. The training method has changed, which can be called reinforced learning (where there are rewards and penalties within the system) which gives it the ability (or at least that’s the hope) to chain together a conversation (and thought) as we do. Mind you, this model isn’t next in line for a release. That’d be GPT-4.5 or GPT-5, later this year or early next year.

A look at the future: Which reminds me, Sam Altman posted a cryptic message again. And I tried to make sense of it. He wrote, “love being home in the midwest. the night sky is so beautiful. excited for the winter constellations to rise soon; they are so great.” Winter constellation = project Orion? Winter = begins in December, through to the end of February. New models incoming?

The future of generative video is still unfolding, OpenAI’s Sora demos already impressing humans, and Adobe’s Firefly Video Model likely to release later in 2024

Adobe’s readying its AI video generator platform, an extension of the Firefly AI suite. The company says Firefly Video Model arrives only later this year for more users, and not until it is safe to release for wider usage. For now, a very select user base has access for testing. But we have confirmation that their Premiere Pro app will have the first integration. The future of generative video is still unclear, in terms of how these tools will find wider acceptance and how they will handle often complex prompts. Realism in demos is great. OpenAI’s Sora impressed us, and the potential looks no less with Firefly’s video generation (OpenAI too is taking careful steps with safety measures and hasn’t detailed any timeline on a wider release). Yet, those are extremely specific prompts to highlight capabilities—and these prompts are not often so clear and crisp when users begin to use them.

IDENTIFY

I have often been found saying this—Truecaller is one of the most useful apps on any phone I use. Its usability unfortunately has varied. Android phones get the best of Truecaller’s Caller ID feature, while you need some tweaking and a whole lot of luck to get it working somewhat as you’d expect, on an iPhone. That’s changing with iOS 18 that has now rolled out for all compatible iPhones (the support is wide, goes as far back as iPhones released 4 years ago). As Alan Mamedi, who is co-founder and CEO of Truecaller confirmed in a post (see that here), the Truecaller app for iPhone is set to undergo a significant overhaul in the coming weeks. All because iOS 18 includes a new underlying structure that allows Truecaller to fetch information from their servers for caller identification from their database. Mamedi does hint that Apple’s yet to fully unlock this aspect of iOS 18, and once they do, Truecaller will be able to give their updated app a final thorough check, ready for release.

SAFETY

Stolen iPhones will be even less useful, with iOS 18. That is because the new operating system extends an Activation Lock feature to individual components in your iPhone. Parts such as the battery, display etc will be linked to your Apple ID, and if these parts were to be picked from a stolen iPhone and installed on another device as part of a repair, that phone will request for the original part holder’s Apple ID and password to proceed. Else that freshly repaired device becomes unusable. Stolen iPhones till now could effectively be blocked by the owner preventing anyone resetting or using them but could still be scavenged for parts that’d fetch top dollar in the after-market repairs ecosystem. No longer, perhaps?

Stolen iPhones will be even less useful, with iOS 18 extending activation lock to individual components as well

At the same time, Google’s believed to be integrating a layer of authentication that’ll require the original user’s biometric authentication if someone attempts to reset the device in an unfamiliar location. Similar to Apple’s Stolen Device Protection feature that rolled out with iOS 17. That said, Google is yet to confirm if it’ll arrive with Android 15 (that’s expected sometime in the next few months) or later.