Camera maker Olympus really knows how to tease its fans. It has scheduled three separate and extremely short teasers a week apart to prepare the road for its still to be announced OM-D DSLR. And while Olympus is naturally careful not to reveal any specs, it does at least confirm one property the camera will have: its ability to withstand the elements.
2019 is the year of the foldable phone. While only a few smartphone makers that can throw money around will be able to mass produce such devices, some manufacturers will, instead try to find ways to get around the costs that such a device would entail. LG’s rumored foldable phone might be one such example, utilizing two screens instead of a single foldable one. That is, if it could actually successfully pull it off.
They say that the best tool is the one that you have with you. In terms of photography, that might mean your smartphone’s camera. With mobile image sensors becoming more and more capable, some might even wonder if there’s a future for entry-level compact cameras at all. Unsurprisingly, camera maker Nikon says there is and its new COOLPIX A1000 and COOLPIX B600 compacts try to prove why.
Chinese manufacturers may have gone overboard in trying to remove both bezels and notch. Vivo and OPPO put motors to lift and pull cameras from the top while Honor and Xiaomi have brought back the age of sliders. But with these new or old solutions also come the potential for less durable construction. Fortunately, we have JerryRigEverything to put the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 slider through the wringer so we won’t have to, accidentally or otherwise.
If you thought that the iPhone XS represented the pinnacle and limit of Apple’s design, you definitely have another thing coming. Of course, one can only push that now iconic notch design so far but it seems that Apple has more changes in mind, just that they’re mostly invisible. The tripe cameras on the back might be its most visible change but the lone camera on the front won’t be a slacker either.
Android has long prided itself for how it allows users to dig into most of the file system, provided they have a file manager app on hand. Of the latter, ES File Explorer was once the cream of the crop for the features it offers. Those features, however, may have come at the price of your privacy and security. A vulnerability has been discovered that apparently gives any hacker worth his or her salt access to a phone with that app installed and all they have to do is sit on the same Wi-Fi network as the phone.
In-screen fingerprint scanners or fingerprint-on-display (FoD) sensors might be the future for many Android phones but their accuracy and speed compared to traditional optical sensors still leave some things to be desired. That said, we’re just at the start of innovation in this area and we might see more in the months ahead. And kicking off that next generation of FoDs is none other than Xiaomi whose upcoming phones might be equipped with this state of the art in-screen sensor.
It may not be spying for the Chinese government but it could be spying on other companies for its own gain. No sooner had Huawei’s CEO gone public with his praise of US President Trump and the company’s commitment to customers’ data privacy than a new report pops up claiming that the US is training more guns on the Chinese OEM. This time, however, the US Department of Justice’ investigation isn’t focusing on some grand national security threat but on the Huawei’s repeated theft of trade secrets from US companies.
Humans are worrying that robots are out to get their jobs but they may have failed to imagine that said robots could also be fired. OK, it’s not exactly that dramatic but when a hotel that made a name for itself for employing more than 200 robots “retires” half of them, you can be something’s amiss. As it turns out, Japan’s and the world’s first robot hotel may have bitten a bit more than they could chew and may now have to rely on hopefully non-robotic humans to keep things running smoothly.
As the mobile platform on which almost all of this year’s high-end smartphones will stand, it’s only natural to hope that the Snapdragon 855 will be everything that Qualcomm is hyping it up to be. The chipmaker’s near silence since unveiling the system-on-chip in early December is almost worrying, as if it wasn’t yet ready to release the chips to manufacturers, much less users’ eyes. Now that CES 2019 is done, however, Qualcomm has finally lifted its own embargo on benchmarks and the numbers look promising.
You can say what you want about Mozilla’s attempts at earning money but you can’t criticize it for lack of trying. In fact, the non-profit open source organization has a knack for throwing out ideas and experiments and getting users to be their guinea pigs. Or brave testers, if you will. Those experiments all came from the Firefox Test Pilot garage, which is sadly now closing up shop. Mozilla assures fans of the browser, however, that experiments will stop. In fact, it promises there will be even more.
Despite rumors to the contrary, Sony remained relatively silent at CES 2019 as far as mobile devices go. Instead, it preferred to focus on its key strengths, namely TVs, AV receivers, and Blu-rays. It can’t remain silent for long, though, and at MWC next month, it will have to face the music and the crowd. And what it will show on stage and on the floor could pretty much decide whether it will remain a serious contender in the smartphone race or just a name from a bygone era.