Popular news this week
- MWK: The Mobile World Congress 2021 in Barcelona this week was different from the usual gala, but still came with announcements and new product launches.
- Samsung took the stage to showcase its One UI Watch experience for wearables, the skin on Wear OS 3.0. It also confirmed a “summer” launch event from Samsung Unpacked for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 series.
- Lenovo has released a number of new Android tablets in its Yoga lineup that look powerful and promising. It also announced a new Smart Clock 2.0 with Google Assistant Smarts.
- The big announcement from Qualcomm was the new Snapdragon 888 Plus chipset, which adds a modest increase in performance and gives us all something we can all sell. It also eventually named Cristiano Amon as CEO (Reuters)after holding the strange title of Qualcomm CEO-Elect since January of this year.
- Samsung folding devices: The leaks continue around Samsung’s next-generation foldable, highlighted this week through a series of 360-degree videos of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3. The leaks revealed a lot and confirmed some earlier details from renders of the Galaxy Z Flip 3, including an under-display camera. A new Galaxy Z Fold 3 leak also had a lot more renders seen, and some camera spec leaks told us the cameras will be similar to the Fold 2, although there is more to be learned.
- Windows 11 first build: The first official build of Windows 11 was released this week by Microsoft as Windows Insider Preview (read: early beta) and kicks off with a full suite of big visual UI changes, widgets, multitasking features, and more. It also launched with some known issues, which is fair for a beta, and was missing some features, including the new ability to run Android apps. We can’t wait to see this in action.
- Windows 11 controversy: One hot topic that showed no sign of cooling off was Microsoft’s unusual decision to exclude so many systems and CPUs from official Windows 11 support. This led to mass confusion about upgrade compatibility. While Microsoft showed some signs of giving in by opening the inside preview on each system to examine the data returned, our colleague Gary Sims is among the defendants against Microsoft’s decision. Gary posted three Gary explains Videos this week explaining the drama of Windows 11, calling Microsoft unrepentant, and offering helpful alternatives to Windows 11 as well. Will Microsoft reverse these decisions?
- Mini LED TV from LG: LG announced that it will finally launch its mini LED display televisions in July. LG’s QNED TVs are available in 8K and 4K variants in a range of typical large-screen sizes, although the price has not been disclosed. B&H Photo later made pre-order prices: $ 1,997 for the 65-inch 4K model QNED90, 75-inch for $ 2,997, 86-inch for $ 3,997. The high-end QNED99 8K TVs start at $ 3,497 for the 65-inch model.
- Take flight: Big news this week was a flying car that flies in the air between airports at around 170 km / h, or 105 mph, that uses a BMW engine. Surprisingly great! (BBC). And in billionaire battles in space, Sir Richard Branson will attempt to fly into space on July 11th in an attempt to outperform rival Jeff Bezos and his space launch scheduled for July 20th (Ars-Technica). It’s all very silly, but it’s a big month for space tourism.
- And Just when you thought you were safe: TV-style commercials are coming to console games, with “a first in-game advertising platform of its kind” signing contracts with companies like EA “to try to bring TV-style commercials to their console games”. for reasons that hopefully nobody will tolerate? (Kotaku).
reviews
- Sony WF-1000XM4 in the test: The only true AirPods killers
- Fitbit Luxe Review: Fine, Fine, Pretty, but not as many features as you’d expect for $ 150.
- Realme Buds Q2 review: Active noise cancellation made affordable, it’s a shame about the build quality …
properties
- Why you shouldn’t wait for a Snapdragon 888 Plus smartphone.
- Android apps on Windows give us what Google has been promising all along.
- Tested: 160W fast charge that won’t melt your phone.
- How on-device machine learning has changed the way we use our phones.
- The internet is rotting away (The Atlantic).
- Rob the Xbox vault: In a $ 10 million gift card cheat after a young Microsoft engineer discovered a near-perfect scheme for generating Bitcoin. (Blümberg).
Tech calendar
- 19.-23. July: Conference for Game Developers (GDC).
- July 31st – August 5th: Black hat USA
- Beginning of August: Samsung Unpacked Event?
Tech tweet of the week
Here’s an interesting discussion on why physical QWERTY phones are gone, from one of the gems on Twitter. Tren Griffin. I’m adding his answer to the OP, not the OP itself.
You are always free to start a company that makes TotL keypad phones. This is how a market works. To produce an affordable phone that consumers will purchase, it takes quantities you do not understand. It is doubtful that you are right with this business plan. pic.twitter.com/j8xQ0SfqkJ
– Tren Griffin (@trengriffin) July 1, 2021
Another week in your pocket!
Tristan Rayner, Managing Editor.