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🔋 Hello everyone! I’m driving into Formula E here in Berlin tomorrow. Strangely enough, 18 drivers could win the championship before the last two races, which is pretty crazy. It’s a crazy old series, even after 7 years of racing.
Honor, the non-Huawei company that we swear by, yesterday launched its Honor Magic 3 series, its first flagship after Huawei.
- There are Honor Magic 3, Honor Magic 3 Pro and Honor Magic 3 Pro Plus.
- They all share a 6.67-inch OLED screen with a refresh rate of 120 Hz, a 4,600 mAh battery, 66 W wired charging, the Magic UI 5 skin, and full support from Google Mobile Services, thank you very much.
- The Pro Plus goes all out and offers the latest Snapdragon 888 Plus chipset, a quad rear view camera in a chic (albeit borderline unattractive) design, IP68 rating and “Nano Crystal Shield” protection on the front against falls.
- They’re definitely coming outside of China, at least to Europe, but at a high price: the Pro Plus starts at a pretty wild $ 1,499 (~ $ 1,759) for the only configuration that’s 12GB of RAM / 512GB of storage.
- And in some confusion, Honor had to update outlets, including Android authority that it will bring two rounds of Android updates to Magic 3, so Android 12 due in a few weeks or so, and Android 13 after that.
Huawei roots:
- Here’s what my colleague Hadlee Simons wrote about this device being an obvious but not quite a Huawei P50 Pro with a new badge. It’s remarkable how close the camera systems are: “The P50 Pro and Honor Magic 3 Pro Plus both have a 50-megapixel main camera (and it looks like the Huawei phone also has an IMX700), a 64-megapixel -Periscope lens and a high-resolution monochrome camera (but 64MP compared to the 40MP of the P50 Pro). We even see the same wired and wireless charging speeds on the Pro devices, while the standard Magic 3 and P50 share the same 66W charging with just cable. “
- “This similarity suggests that the Honor phones were in the works before the split from Huawei, which makes sense given the long development time for smartphones in general.”
- “This could be the closest thing to new Huawei phones with Google support.”
- So, as Hadlee points out, this seems to be all of Huawei’s hardware excellence, build quality, and camera imaging … but with the Honor brand, 5G models, Google Mobile Services, and greater availability than in China.
- However, Honor previously said it needed to develop its own imaging algorithms that Huawei could not seem to adopt. And the Huawei bindings may not last more than a generation or two.
- Even so, it’s almost like the U.S. trade ban was on Huawei mitigated (Twitter). Who would have thought?
🔜 Samsung Galaxy S21 FE emerges from certification: hints of original August 11th launch date, but we’re still waiting for it to appear (Android authority).
📈 Galaxy A52S: A New Samsung Mid-Range Smartphone Could Be The $ 500 5G Phone To Beat (Android authority).
🔜 A Fairphone 4 is confirmed on the go with Android 11 and 5G connectivity (Android authority).
🎮 This new gaming handheld combines Android and a switch-style design (Android authority).
😬 AMD RX 6600XT in the test: A sad trumpet sound of a 2021 GPU for 379 US dollars (Ars-Technica).
🧮 Windows 11 gets updated snipping tools, calculators, and email apps(The edge).
💍 Amazon moves Lord of the Rings production from New Zealand to Great Britain (The edge).
🤖 Huh: Nvidia revealed that its CEO was computer generated in a keynote speech and no one noticed! Which sounds wild and crazy, but in fact the CGI part was only 14 seconds long – and it’s at least fake enough that I really don’t know if it’s a surprise – it purposely looks more like CGI or green screen tricks than for a frightening view of the future? Anyway, what was really impressive was the part where the real CEO was sitting in a CGI kitchen that looked very real (VICE).
🕸 This engineer has come closer than anyone to creating true Spider-Man web shooters (Gizmodo).
😎 A series of tests have shown that all makes of car with driver-assistive, semi-automatic systems, including Tesla, are fairly easy to fool. Strangely enough, my favorite is classic novelty glasses with eyeballs that fooled the GM system (Car and driver, Youtube)
👩🚀 Russia’s space program just threw a NASA astronaut under the bus in an attempt to … try to divert attention from a near-disaster two weeks ago? (Ars-Technica).
🤔 “People fly flies because they annoy us, not for eating. Do other animals kill other species for reasons other than food or defense? ”(R / nodumme questions).
The first full motion capture soccer game between La Liga third division rivals Atlético Sanluqueño and CD Gerena could end up being “the most influential 90 minutes of soccer ever played”. Why? How could it be? Well, it will redefine EA’s FIFA series, writes Wired.
Quotes:
- “Just by recording 22 players over 90 minutes, EA was able to generate enough animations, 8.75 million frames, to operate its new ‘HyperMotion’ technology. Then machine learning sets in. “
- “So far we’ve chosen an animation from our database when a player approaches the ball to take the next action – a shot, pass or dribble,” explains Eaves. “But it doesn’t know the context. All of this data trains the network and helps mix animations. “
- “Her movements were immortalized that night. They will soon be experienced by more than 30 million players worldwide. That’s why it was so important for both sides. ”
- “One of the goalkeepers had a hard shot straight at him and the ball slipped through his fingers,” Eaves recalls. “He was absolutely devastated – the emotions were real. I couldn’t help but think that he probably didn’t want us to bring this animation into play. “
In other words, the FIFA series could stop being the same game over and over again. (And your microtransactions paid for that level of technology …)
Have a nice weekend,
Tristan Rayner, Managing Editor.