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Enlarge / The Comirnaty (Pfizer/BioNTech) and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. (credit: Getty | Marcos del Mazo)

People ages 60 and older who were initially vaccinated with two Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine doses were better protected from the omicron coronavirus variant after being boosted with a Moderna vaccine rather than another dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Those results are according to interim data from a small but randomized, controlled clinical trial in Singapore and published this week in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The study—involving 98 healthy adults—can't determine if the Moderna booster is simply superior to a Pfizer-BioNTech booster for older adults or if a mix-and-match booster strategy is inherently better. It also focused solely on antibody levels, which may or may not translate to significant differences in infection rates and other clinical differences. It also only followed people for 28 days after a booster, so it's unclear if the Moderna booster's edge will hold up over time.

Enlarge / Windows 11 22H2 is entering its next stage of development, according to rumors—and the OS itself. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Windows 11 has already changed quite a bit since the version we reviewed in October was released, and Microsoft has put out a steady stream of redesigned app updates, bug fixes, and user interface improvements.

But the company's big yearly Windows updates are still important. They're still where Microsoft makes the most significant changes to Windows 11's look and feel and under-the-hood features. This week, rumors suggested that Microsoft is wrapping up work on what will eventually be released as Windows 11 version 22H2, the OS's first yearly update. That build, currently available to the Windows Insider Beta channel as build number 22621.1, will serve as the foundation for the next year of Windows updates.

We cover new Windows Insider builds fairly frequently, depending on how noteworthy the changes are. But to save you the trouble of scrolling through months of articles, we've gathered together all the most significant differences between the current public build of Windows 11 21H2 (for the record, 22000.675) and the latest beta of version 22H2.

Enlarge / The Pixel 6a. (credit: Google)

The Pixel 6a is shaping up to be one most promising smartphone releases of the year. With a flagship-class system on a chip and a $450 price tag, it looks like Google is taking a credible swing at the iPhone SE. Since Thursday's announcement, a few more details have come out that didn't make the keynote.

First off, the Pixel 6a will be Google's widest smartphone release ever, by a small margin. Remember, the Pixel 5a release was Google's smallest ever, launching in just two countries, the US and Japan. Google's device available support page was updated Thursday, and the Pixel 6a is back up to the usual 13 Pixel launch countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and United States.

But wait! There's more: Google also says the Pixel 6a will be coming to India later this year, bringing it to 14 countries. That's a new record for Google's comparability small (Apple and Samsung ship in 100-plus countries) phone hardware operation. India is a strange choice since it's one of the most competitive global smartphone markets. Google will need to significantly drop the price of the Pixel 6a to be competitive there. We don't know the Indian price yet, but check out the replies to that tweet announcement, which is full of Indian consumers already dragging the phone for its assumed $450 price tag and being "only" 60Hz. It's going to be a tough battle.

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

If you've ever looked at a 360 Hz monitor and thought, "This isn't fast enough," here's something to look forward to. While we've seen monitor prototypes surpass 360 Hz, the highest native refresh rate you'll find on a PC display these days, it seems that AU Optronics (AUO) is working on panels that'll be available with an even snappier 480 Hz refresh rate.

Of course, not many would look at a screen updating with new information 360 times every second as lagging. But for very fast-paced action—like in a competitive game where words and items whizz by in an instant or where a few milliseconds of a delay could be the difference between a win or a loss—more speed may be imperative.

AUO highlighted a 480 Hz panel when promoting its presence at SID Display Week. (credit: AUO/YouTube)

As spotted by TFT Central this week, AUO announced via a YouTube video that it's working on a 24-inch PC monitor panel with a 480 Hz refresh rate and response time that's under 1 ms (the brand didn't get any more specific there). And it's aimed at gamers.

Enlarge / 2021's iPhone 13 still uses Apple's proprietary Lightning port. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple is testing iPhones that use the industry-standard USB-C port, according to a report in Bloomberg citing people with knowledge of the situation.

Since 2012, Apple's smartphones have used the company's proprietary Lightning connector. But more recently, the slightly larger USB-C port has come to dominate consumer electronics, including most of Apple's other products. Consumers, reviewers, and even government regulators have called for Apple to drop Lightning in favor of USB-C in recent years.

This has led Apple to a tough spot, with three possible paths forward, each with some significant downsides.

Enlarge / AMD's artistic interpretation of how FSR works. It's a bit more complicated than this four-box rendering implies—especially when we consider how much better FSR 2.0 is.

Out of all the battles between graphics card manufacturers, the fight over image upsampling and reconstruction is the most interesting to follow, mostly because more gamers can actually take advantage of the results. This week, that battle has become even hotter, thanks to AMD finally landing a considerable blow.

Despite only working on one game as of press time, AMD's new FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) feature finally passes the sniff test that its "1.0" version flunked last year. This week's updated "2.0" version works on a larger number of GPUs in the wild than Nvidia's comparable option, and it lets players get closer to good-enough pixel counts when running on 1440p or 4K panels. But the caveats in play leave us viewing the results as good news for older or mid-range GPUs rather than the solution to the supply issues everyone is facing.

A brief explainer on Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR

Image upsampling, as delivered by the likes of Nvidia and AMD, can take a game with a smaller pixel resolution and intelligently blow it up to fill popular screen resolutions like 1080p, 1440p, and 4K. If these systems work as advertised, they'll produce something comparable to raw pixels—or sometimes look sharper since they also include an anti-aliasing pass to remove "jaggies" and other visual defects.