2 hours ago
🛶 Hello everyone! Has it been a week since the Olympics? I had some real tears in my eyes as I watched the competitors at the more casual events like canoeing and that was repeated, not even live! I’m way too invested …
Hello Edge 20
The Motorola Edge 20 series is here. Somehow, depending on where you live.
Catching up:
- The Edge 20 series comes with an Edge 20 Pro, an Edge 20 Lite, and a medium edition called the Edge 20.
- The three models are a worldwide release, but everywhere except in China and North America.
- There is a later launch in China on August 5th.
- And in the USA / Canada a fourth model seems to be coming to the region some time later: “Motorola is excited to share its commitment to deliver a new 5G Edge family device in North America this fall.” was the company’s statement.
Edge 20 line-up:
- All three stick to a single design approach: a 6.7-inch display, triple cameras, large batteries, and a seemingly reasonable price point for each tier, though each tier has its own competitors, of course. There is no curved screen with flat screens this time either.
- And while the Edge 20 Pro is Motorola’s flagship within the company, it’s not an entirely top-of-the-line model; it skips the Snapdragon 888 for the Snapdragon 870.
- The Pro packs a 6.7 inch 144Hz OLED, the 870 SoC, a triple camera including 5x periscope lens and a 4,500mAh battery. That looks decent for the £ 650 / € 700 price tag.
- The Edge 20 standard version drops some high-end features, including switching to a Snapdragon 778G chipset, and it loses the 5x lens but keeps the 144 Hz OLED. It’s thinner than ever for a 5G Motorola phone at 6.99mm, which shrinks the battery down to a 4,000mAh package, but now it’s £ 430. I wonder how the battery life will keep up with the 144 Hz display …
- The Lite Edition saves harder with a Dimensity 720 chipset and 6.7-inch 90 Hz OLED screen – and the triple camera has fewer top-line features. It does, however, go up to a larger 5,000mAh battery and starts at £ 300 / € 350.
- Another compromise for the family: Motorola said its phones will only receive two Android operating system updates and two years of security updates.
- That’s below average as Samsung, OnePlus, Nokia, and Google all offer much longer software service.
- Edge 20 sales in Asia, the UK, and other European markets are slated to begin August 19th.
Round up
📈 Xiaomi is just about to become the world’s largest smartphone maker as it is only one percentage point away from Samsung in the second quarter of 2021, according to Canalys (Android authority).
📸 Here is everything you need to know about the Huawei P50 and P50 Pro that launched in China yesterday (Android authority).
🔋 Dark Mode Study: Most conditions only show 3-9% battery saving, but the savings get bigger and better at 100% brightness (Android authority).
🎧 Nothing Ear 1 reviews are out: Wired in the UK gave them 8/10, Gizmodo says “Nothings overhyped earbuds are actually extremely good” and The edge chose 7/10 and mentioned some bugs that seem to be ironed out. While you’re all ears: “The chief designer at Nothing explains how yours [Ear 1] Product could rival Apple’s all-conquering wireless earbuds at a fraction of the cost, ”writes Wired.
👓 Facebook’s next hardware product will be “smart” Ray-Ban glasses – Zuck: “[The Ray-Bans will] have their iconic form factor and [let] you do some pretty nice things “, but no details about those” neat things ” (Ars-Technica).
💵 Scarlett Johansson sued Disney over streaming ‘Black Widow’: the short version, in my opinion, is that stars can get paid more when movies get big at the box office. But when the box office is compromised because someone like Disney puts it on Disney Plus, people don’t go to the movies and the box office numbers go down, even if Disney Plus subscriptions are doing well. Now Johansson is suing because the report says she could be owed $ 50 million! (WSJ, $).
🎮 The developers at Stanley Parable and Gone Home team up to create Ivy Road Studio (Engage).
📦 Amazon reported slightly lower than expected sales in the second quarter: Amazon’s earnings show why Andy Jassy is now in charge, because Amazon Web Services remains a ray of hope (The edge).
🚀 After docking with the space station, the Russian module suddenly fires engines: “That. Was. A day.” (Ars-Technica). And that means that NASA and Boeing postponed the Starliner ISS launch to August 3rd after the ISS disaster (Engage).
On Elon Musk’s brain computer startup Neuralink raises $ 205 million (Blumenberg, $).
🤔 “Why do ID cards expire? I’m still the same person ”(r / nostupidquestions).
Fun on friday
I enjoyed this reading, entitled “What I Learned When I Left My Life to Algorithms for a Week” CNETwhere StitchFix decided on clothes, Yelp on food and activities, Taste.io offered algorithmic movie recommendations, and Apple Music algorithmically generated playlists. It went well, it seems.
But whatever, that’s the whole point:
- “… the biggest lesson I learned from this weeklong experiment was that the degree to which these algorithms can recognize my wishes and respond to them largely depends on three things: who is developing them, why they are being developed, and who data contained therein. “
- “The more specialized the service and the more data it gathered about me, the better it seemed to work.”
That means, if you want good suggestions, you have to either actively enter data (and bind yourself to an app like Yelp) or your more natural, non-enforced usage provides information.
- Advantage: Apple Music or Spotify, the Netflix algorithm, Google and so on.
Have fun feeding, no matter which algorithm you choose,
Tristan Rayner, Managing Editor.
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