Buckle up for gadget news
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Buckle up for gadget news
On Friday we wrote about Samsung’s mysterious ‘artificial human’ project Neon, speculating that the company was building realistic human avatars that could be used for entertainment and business purposes, acting as guides, receptionists, and more.
Now, a tweet from the project’s lead and some leaked videos pretty much confirm this — although they don’t give us nearly enough information to judge how impressive Neon is.
The lead of Neon, computer-human interaction researcher Paranav Mistry, tweeted the image below, apparently showing one of the project’s avatars. Mistry says the company’s “Core R3” technology can now “autonomously create new expressions, new movements, new dialog (even in Hindi), completely different from the original...
The next Galaxy flagship smartphone from Samsung is indeed being announced on February 11th. After the date was discovered earlier today thanks to an unlisted video, Samsung has now confirmed that its Unpacked event will be held that day in San Francisco.
There’s little doubt we’ll see the Galaxy S11 (rumors indicate it might actually be branded as the S20 for some reason), and Samsung is also at work on its second foldable phone after last year’s Galaxy Fold. If you like reading into such things, the invite could be seen as a tease of both devices. And Samsung indeed confirms that more than one is coming on the 11th.
Say hello to a whole new Galaxy. Unpacked on February 11, 2020 #SamsungEvent pic.twitter.com/ln1pqt2vu7
— Samsung...
If you’re eagerly awaiting Samsung’s next flagship phone, the Galaxy S11, then go ahead and mark February 11 in your diary. According to a newly-leaked promo, this looks to be the date for Samsung’s next “Unpacked” press event, which last year was the occasion for the company to unveil the Galaxy S10.
The promo was downloaded as an unlisted video on Samsung’s official Vimeo account by Max Weinbach of XDA Developers and first spotted by Twitter user @water8192.
The 15-second clip doesn’t give much away. There are just two mysterious oblong shapes pressing through a sheet of material in place of the letter A’s in the word “Galaxy.” One shape is more rectangular and the other more square, perhaps suggesting that Samsung will unveil both a...
A Protein Powder and Supplements Gold Box, a Winter Home Blowout at Overstock, and an Ultimate Keto Bundle from ButcherBox lead off Saturday’s best deals from around the web.
I’ve been excited to write about Little Women since I saw a screening of it a few months ago. It’s one of my favorite movies of 2019 and an all-around impressive piece of filmmaking, thoughtfully jumping back and forth between the book’s two volumes to tell its own complex story.
Flipping between two timelines can be confusing or gimmicky, but here it allows the world of the March sisters to feel so much bigger. We get to see multiple sides of these characters as they struggle with growing up and figuring out what they want. It’s never so simple as them learning to do the right thing — we often see them making tough and surprising choices as their goals shift over time.
Coming from Greta Gerwig, the film obviously does incredible things...
JLab’s latest pair of true wireless earbuds, the JLab Go Air, are some of the cheapest we’ve ever come across from a named brand. They cost just $29, which is cheaper than replacing the battery in a single AirPod, or the same price as replacing a damaged AirPod under AppleCare+. The JLab Go Air’s specs aren’t terrible either; you get 5-hours of battery life out of a single charge, and their case gives you an extra 15-hours. They support Bluetooth 5, and Engadget reports that they’re sweat resistant — though there’s no mention of an official IP-rating.
Of course, the big question is how good these things sound, and at this price it’s probably best to go in with lowered expectations. Although we’ve liked the sound quality of JLab’s wired...
The biggest tech news yesterday is that the former Google human rights chief says he was “sidelined” over the proposed, censored Chinese search engine known as “Dragonfly.” Ross LaJeunesse, the executive, knew how to ensure his story would make an impact. He spoke with The Verge’s Colin Lecher and many other media outlets, published a Medium post with frankly shocking details, and dominated tech news all day. Good. His story deserves attention.
An idea that I’ve been kicking around as we prepare for season two of the Land of the Giants podcast (about Google, naturally) is that until very recently, Google was a special kind of naive. It is a powerful, massive company that used to see itself as a utopian collective which just so happened...
The Zens Liberty, a Qi wireless charging pad which bears more than a passing resemblance to Apple’s cancelled AirPower charger, is now available to order for January delivery. The Liberty includes 16 overlapping charging coils which allow you to place your devices anywhere on its surface to charge. $139.99 (€139.99) gets you a model with a fabric surface, while the $179.99 (€179.99) edition comes with a glass surface to let you see all the charging coils contained within.
The Zens Liberty doesn’t quite deliver on everything Apple’s AirPower had promised. For one thing, it only lets you wirelessly charge two, rather than three, devices simultaneously on the pad. It also can’t charge an Apple Watch natively — for that you’ll have to plug a...
OnePlus has announced new details of its Concept One smartphone, a prototype device that the company will be unveiling in full at CES 2020 next week.
The Chinese phonemaker has been teasing the Concept One since December, with some speculating that it could be the firm’s first foldable. But the actual unveil is a bit less exciting, with OnePlus tweeting that the main features of the Concept One will include an “invisible camera” array on the rear of the device and “color-shifting glass technology.”
There may be more to the Concept One than this, but we’ll have to wait until CES to find out.
The “invisible camera” effect is created by an electrochromic sheet...
LG has announced eight 8K TVs, ahead of CES. There are two OLED models which are 77 and 88-inches big, and six LCDs measuring between 65 and 75-inches. LG is yet to announce pricing or availability information for any of the sets, but it’s keen to emphasize that they’ll all offer “Real 8K,” in what appears to be a shot across the bow at Samsung and its recently announced certification from the 8K Association.
The announcement marks a continuation of LG’s proxy war with Samsung over what exactly constitutes an 8K TV. While both companies agree that 8K is a resolution of 7680 horizontal pixels by 4320 vertical pixels, the two companies have different ideas about how these should be measured. LG uses the Consumer Technology Association’s...
Samsung sold 6.7 million 5G phones in 2019 between the Galaxy S10 5G and the Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G, the company announced today, marking better than expected sales for devices supporting the next-generation mobile standard.
While 6.7 million devices may not sound like a lot in the grand scheme of the phone market, it’s better than expected — at IFA 2019, Samsung had only sold 2 million 5G devices, and only expected to sell 4 million total by the end of 2019. That number also makes up a considerable amount of the fledging 5G market, with Samsung claiming its devices count for 53.9 percent of the global 5G marketplace.
2020 is expected to be an interesting year for 5G growth across the...
Disney+ just launched in November, but some movies are already disappearing from the service, as reported by Polygon. For example, the three Home Alone movies were available when Disney+ launched, but the first Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York were removed from Disney+ yesterday, the first day of the new year.
Movies going away from Disney+ kind of goes against the idea you might’ve had that it would be the place you could find everything Disney-related forevermore. (And you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that — in November, Disney did tell Comicbook that it, unlike some other services, wouldn’t have a “rotating slate” of licensed movies each month.) But that doesn’t exactly appear to be true, given that some movies have...
I am a proven fan of butter, but I have not been using it to it fullest potential. It’s an obvious toast topper and cooking fat, but it’s also a pretty fantastic (and criminally underrated) sandwich spread.
LG Display has a new version of its rollable TV to show off at CES 2020, the company has announced. This year’s model works a little differently to the prototypes the company has shown off for the past two years, however. Rather than unrolling upwards out of its box, the TV will instead roll downwards from the ceiling; sort of like a projector screen without the projector. The company also has a new, smaller, 48-inch OLED TV display which will be unveiled at the show.
It’s an intriguing idea. LG Display’s existing rollable TV concepts already minimize the amount of space they take up when rolled down, and the new version takes that even further by not even taking up place on a TV stand. According to LG Display’s press release, the TV “is...
“Most people are posting pics of them from the begining [sic] of the decade in order to show how far they’ve progressed in life. If you find that boring, how about using Google’s servers to find out what you were EXACTLY THINKING 10 years ago?”
That’s what a Reddit user suggested in r/LifeProTips earlier today — so I figured I’d give it a go. Who wouldn’t enjoy taking a creepy trip down memory lane with Google along for the ride?
I popped over to Google’s My Activity page, and hit the + button to filter down so I was only looking at activity before February 2010. Looks like I didn’t actually use Google on New Year’s Day, or every day at all for that matter — clearly, I wasn’t as addicted to my phone back then. Which phone was I using?...
If your New Year’s Eve adventures left you with a few open bottles of wine, you might want to throw those bottles in the fridge—even the red bottles.
It’s New Year’s Day, which means a lot of the stores, restaurants, and businesses you typically frequent will be closed.
President Trump has signed a law increasing fines on spammy robocalls and requiring phone service providers to begin authenticating calls across networks.
The Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act) was signed on Monday, after Congress approved the landmark bill earlier this month to give the federal government new abilities to go after illegal robocallers. Fines can now reach $10,000 per call. The law also requires major carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to use a new technology called STIR/SHAKEN to help customers know if they’re being targeted by a robocaller with a spoofed number.
“I applaud Congress for working in a bipartisan manner to combat illegal robocalls and malicious caller ID...