Galaxy Fold is now out for sale officially. The folding phone was intended for release months ago when it started breaking apart in reviewers hands.
Since then Samsung has recalled all devices, postponed the launch, and tried to fix the most glaring issues of the phone and especially its display. Now that you can finally purchase the $1980 marvel, you might want to know how to make sure you don't break it.
The fact is that Galaxy Fold is still a tremendously fragile device due to its folding mechanism and plastic covered screen. Samsung obviously knows this, and is suggesting people only use a light touch when operating the phone.
Light touch is mentioned in the phone packaging but the company has also released an advert explaning the features and how to take care of the device.
This "Caring for your Galaxy Fold" video is available on YouTube (and below). In addition to suggesting light touches, as even your fingernails could damage the screen over time, Samsung notes that dust and water should be kept away.
This is due to the fact that there is no official IP rating for the phone, and the delicate folding mechanism might break from dust and sand.
Furthermore Samsung also notes that there are magnets on the phone to keep it closed that you should be mindful about.
Apple's batterygate in late 2017 and early last year revealed the that Cupertino company had been throttling the performance of people's iPhones due to them getting older.
This meant that when your battery started deteriorating the iPhone would slow down to preserve better battery life. It was a conscious choice by Apple to make older iPhones slow down so they wouldn't seem to have as bad of a battery – and according to them they didn't try to just make you buy a new faster phone.
A lot of people were mad about this, especially since it wasn't documented officially and much less openly told about to the public.
Apple made their changes, and they even announced a battery change program in addition to allowing the user to prioritize performance over battery from the settings.
Now with the new iPhone 11 series, Apple has gone a little further to right some wrongs. According to a support document found by 9to5Mac new iPhone 11 has a dynamically monitored solution to battery and power management.
Amazon has announced that it is buying a fleet of electric delivery vehicles from a Michigan EV start up. According to CEO Jeff Bezos, the company has placed an order of 100,000 electric vans from Rivian.
Bezos revealed the purchase order at an event in Washington, DC, where the CEO spoke about how to curb climate change.
The first of the new vehicles are expected to arrive in 2021, and all the 100,000 Rivian EVs should roam the streets by 2024.
Amazon's operations exec Dave Clark tweeted the rendered picture of the vehicle that is going to deliver your Prime packages in couple years.
Rivian was founded ten years ago and is developing sustainable transportation. The company has built two EV vehicles, a truck and an SUV, which were shown in late 2018 in LA Auto Show.
The company is riding a high after major investments this year. Amazon was part of Rivian's funding round in February which raised $700 million. In April, Ford announced a $500 million investment in Rivian.
Facebook has been trying to find its way to video calls for quite a bit now. Most of you, probably all to be honest, have seen ads for the Portal webcam. Now it has couple sigblings: Portal Mini and Portal TV.
The new device is essentially a TV dongle, like Chromecast or even Apple TV, that just focuses on its on-board camera. You plug the camera stand to an HDMI input of your TV and you are ready to go.
Its meant to allow easy video calling from the big screen, but also features AR gaming and content co-watching. The last mentioned feature is reserved for two Portal devices working together. You can watch videos with your loved ones while sharing the moment over a video call.
Another newcomer is Portal Mini. The $129 Portal Mini has a smaller 8-inch HD screen and looks like a picture frame at that size and with the new design.
There's also a renewed Portal that has the same new minimalist design and retains the 10 inch screen. Facebook has also dropped the price to $179 from $199.
Amazon has just released a new music service for the most demanding music consumers out there. It's called Music HD and it expands upon their Amazon Music streaming service with new higher fidelity options.
Essentially Amazon Music HD is the better equipped version of Amazon Music Unlimited. Instead of listening to songs in average 320 kbit stream, you'll get to enjoy HD audio with up to 850 kbit/s and 16-bit/44.1 kHz quality.
If you insist on listening only to the best of quality, you can even choose song available in what the company calls Ultra HD. This maxes out at 3730 kilobits per second at 24-bit/192 kHz.
While most of the songs, over 50 million, on Amazon Music are available in HD audio, "only" some millions are found in the most premium UHD.
Amazon Music HD uses the same Amazon Music app as its cheaper sibling, and costs $14.99 a month (or $12.99 for Prime subscribers) or $19.99 for Family subscriptions. If you are unsure if it's worth the money, you are fortunately offered a generous 90-day free trial.
At launch Amazon Music HD is available in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan.
Dating service Tinder has become hugely popular over the few years that it has existed. The app has grown into a community which has been expanded by the company's recent endeavours.
Last year Tinder Inc. launched their new editorial lifestyle website called Swipe Life, which focuses on dating and culture. Now the company is working on a TV show, Reuters reports.
According to the report, Tinder's show was already filmed in Mexico City and the post-production is under way. Tinder told Reuters that the TV series is built to support their new marketing strategy.
While you'd be expecting to watch Tinder matching in real-time, it's not going to be directly connected to the app. Instead it is a what the source calls "apocalyptic storyline" with "a relationship sub plot."
There's no word on when the show might be coming or when the new video platform for this show would launch.
OnePlus has confirmed that it will launch its new phone line on 10th of October, 2019 in London, United Kingdom.
As the "T" model is typically a relatively minor update to the previous model, we can expect to see everything to get little bit better, faster and bigger. As with OnePlus 7, the upcoming OnePlus 7T will also have its more expensive version with OnePlus 7T Pro. And if the old tradition continues, bit later, a "McLaren" special edition will be launched that will push everything a bit further that is packed with Pro model.
Generally reliable leaker, OnLeaks, has published the rumored specs already.
YouTube has become immensely popular in the past few years. It might not be the TV killer everyone thought of, that's probably Netflix, Disney, and others, but it has stolen much of the time spent in entertainment from traditional tubes.
One of the ways to watch YouTube is the web interface designed specifically for TVs. The interface, called Leanback, is meant for big screens connected to PCs. For some reason or another, YouTube is not removing this feature.
YouTube has not given a specific reason for the removal of the interface, but like Android Police thinks it might be due to some manufacturers bypassing YouTube apps and instead using the web interface. Seems like a strong measure to right that wrong, though.
Another reason would be that no one is actually using Leanback as most people who watch YouTube have a smart TV or a smart device with a YouTube app connected to a TV.
Apple's new iPhones will be available in stores next Friday, but if you have a qualifying iPhone you can get the new and improved iOS 13 even faster.
It was revealed that Apple would be releasing the updated version of their mobile operating system to the public on September 19, the same day it will launch the new game subscription service Apple Arcade.
Unlike with previous iterations of the OS, this year you won't get an update for your iPad at the same time. This is due to the fact that Apple recently separated the operating system for their tablets from iOS. The iPadOS will update September 30th.
If you are wondering whether you have a new enough iPhone to get the update, you'll be probably happy to hear that support include every iPhone after iPhone 6S, including iPhone SE. Support is extended to 7th gen iPod Touch too.
Apple's iPhone event on Tuesday was mostly consumed by the new iPhone models, name cheaper iPhone 11 and the new flasghip iPhone 11 Pro (and 11 Pro Max).
Even the new services got plenty of limelight, but there were other product releases too. One of them was the all-new seventh generation iPad.
I say all new, but in fact the iPad unveiled this week included some fairly dated hardware. While Apple calls it the first seventh generation iPad, it has a system-on-chip from 2016.
The new iPad comes requipped with a A10 Fusion chip, which means that it has the same processors as a iPhone 7. Not that A10 is a lousy chip, and you probably don't need anything better for your daily browsing and Instagramming &ndahs; or whatever the kids do these days.
Also, fortunately the slightly obsolete equipment means that you won't have to break into your nephew's piggy bank to afford it. A $329 starting price tag seems like a good deal for an iPad.
It comes with a new, larger 10.2 inch Retina display, and supports first-generation Apple Pencil as well as the full-sized Smart Keyboard. The charging port is still the Lightning type, though.
It will be available on September 30th in Silver, Space Gray, and Gold. Prices start at $329 for the WiFi model and $459 for the WiFi+Cellular model. You can choose between 32GB and 128GB storage options.
Pandora has brought its Dekstop app to Windows systems, following its release earlier this year for Macs.
Whether the tier you are using is Free, Pandora Plus or Pandora Premium, you can download the Pandora desktop app for Windows from the Microsoft Store starting from today. Previously, you have to use a web browser to access the service on Windows so this will be an improvement for many.
Using the Pandora Desktop App has many benefits over the browser:
Keyboard controls that let you play, pause, replay, skip, shuffle, or thumb up/down songs right from your computer keyboard.
On-screen song notifications that graphically display the artists, albums, and song titles for the music that's currently playing.
App-based controls for our new Pandora Modes feature, which lets you customize the music you hear on your Pandora stations using selectable "modes" including Crowd Faves, Deep Cuts, Newly Released, Artist Only, and more.
You can download the new Pandora Desktop App for Windows 10 from the Microsoft Store.
Apple TV+ is the company's new subscription service with which it will compete against the likes of Netflix and soon Disney+.
According to Apple, Apple TV+ will launch on November 1st in a hundred countries around the world. One of the launch titles is a futuristic fantasy See starred by Jason Momoa. We also got the first look at the series in first ever trailer, shown below.
Apple TV+ pricing is fairly aggressive. A family subscription of the service is said to cost $4.99 a month. They'll even throw a full year of subscription with select Apple device purchases.
Google has agreed to pay almost a billion euros to settle a tax fraud case in France, which was initiated with a raid on its French offices four years ago.
Tax authorities in France had been seeking evidence that Google had underpaid its tax liabilities in the country by not fully declaring its activities in the country. Google, as part of Alphabet Inc., reports almost all of its sales in Europe in Ireland where its headquarters are located in Dublin. It is noted to pay very little tax in European countries and has provoked the ire of tax collectors all across the continent.
Google's French offices were raided in 2016 in a tax fraud investigation. Today, it is confirmed by Google that the company has reached a settlement with the French authorities to bring the dispute to an end.
The settlement - which will set a precedent in the country and may result in more actions taken against other multinational firms - will see Google pay a fine of 500 million euros and an additional 465 million payment in taxes. This falls short of the 1.6 billion the French finance ministry was hoping to win, but the precedent may be more valuable.
Google commented that this settlement addresses the past disputes in France once and for all.
Apple unveiled their new smartphone models earlier this week with iPhone 11 replacing last years cheaper iPhone XR and the new iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max replacing iPhone XS and XS Max.
However, there was a lot of other, smaller, announcement littered across the event as well. One of them was the gaming service Apple Arcade. The Cupertino giant had already briefly unveiled the service early in the year, but now we've got all the key details about it too.
The most important of them are of course availability and price. Both of them were announced, and we're happy to let you know that Apple Arcade is launching in less than a week.
It becomes available September 19 in 150 countries around the world. According to the company it offers over 100 titles in the following weeks of the launch, and costs only $4.99 for the whole family.
Furthermore, Apple revealed that it will include a one month free trial.
Some of the Apple Arcade developers joined Tim Cook et al on the stage. This included Konami with their classic remake Frogger in Toy Town as well as Capcom and Annapurna Interactive with their own titles.
Apple announced today the iPhone 11. However, that is not the new flagship of the iPhone lineup, instead the cream of the crop is iPhone 11 Pro, and it's bigger sibling iPhone 11 Pro Max.
The successor to last year's iPhone XS features the same 5.8 and 6.5 displays with Face ID cutouts. The display's have been improved, though.
According to Apple they provide better brightness and color accuracy, and that is why they've adopted a new moniker Super Retina XDR.
The iPhone 11 Pro, just like the cheaper iPhone 11, is powered by the new A13 Bionic chip, which Apple says improves upon CPU, GPU as well as NPU performance up to 20 percent.
Not only is it more powerful but it's more energy efficient, which improves battery life. Apple says iPhone 11 Pro lasts up to 4 hours more than its predecessor iPhone XS.
Even better, it now comes with a faster charger out of the box, and you won't have to use your iPad charger no longer.
Clearly the biggest improvement over the previous generation, however, is the camera. In the back you now have three cameras instead of two. The new one being the wide angle camera, just like in iPhone 11.
The trio thus consists of a 12 megapixel optically stabilized main shooter, a 2x telephoto camera, and a wide angle camera with a 120 degree view, or as Apple calls it 0.5x camera.
Galaxy Fold is now out for sale officially. The folding phone was intended for release months ago when it started breaking apart in reviewers hands.
Apple's batterygate in late 2017 and early last year revealed the that Cupertino company had been throttling the performance of people's iPhones due to them getting older.
Amazon has announced that it is buying a fleet of electric delivery vehicles from a Michigan EV start up. According to CEO Jeff Bezos, the company has placed an order of 100,000 electric vans from Rivian.
