This year is the first in smartphone hardware in a long time in which I felt like no game-changing changes came from any company. The smartphones revealed by HTC, Samsung, Apple, and the rest - they were all solid. But we've reached a point in the history of the smartphone where only the very rich should consider buying a new device every single year. Let me tell you why.
It would appear that WhatsApp has caused China enough trouble that the government has blocked the app's usage entirely. This comes after weeks of smaller blocks within the app, including voice chats, the sending of photographs and other files, and video chats. Now Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Symbolic Software, suggests that China's blocked all communication with WhatsApp entirely, starting this week.
Going to the dentist is a scary experience for many, but obviously not for the brave person who volunteered to undergo oral surgery performed by a robot. The procedure took place in China, where the robotic dentist successfully implanted a pair of teeth into patient's mouth. No human took an active role in the surgery, according to a local report.
Bitcoin, the first successful cryptocurrency, promised to disrupt the way we view and use money, and disrupt it did. And like almost all disruptions, it has left some scrambling to make sense of matters, confusing not just plain folk but even and especially governments and lawmakers. Such confusion often leads to regulation that becomes unfavorable to such new systems. Like, for example, China’s new ruling that makes it illegal to use initial coin offerings or ICOs in raising funds for a startup or product.
Not all smartphones are created equal or even priced equal. Not all smartphones even launch in all major markets. While some OEMs withhold some models in some markets for good reasons, some decisions may make you scratch your head a bit. None of those, however, may have anything on this latest tidbit about the Nokia 8. What is, so far, HMD’s and Nokia’s first actual flagship-level smartphone might not actually launch in the US, one of the world’s most important smartphone markets. Making it even weirder, however, is the possibility it might not even launch in China either.
The images you're about to look at show an iPhone 8 casing with a leather exterior. The details on the back and within are exceedingly convincing - embossing and tiny bits of text that usually only show up in legit, Apple-made pieces of hardware. While we'd expect this sort of level of detail on a case for an iPhone made by an accessory maker, these details can't legally exist on a 3rd-party case at all.
China and its strict censorship laws have banned western internet media and social platforms like Twitter, Google, and especially Facebook, but the latter has recently managed to work its way through the country's "Great Firewall." How? It seems the social media giant created an app called Colorful Balloons, which functions just like its own photo-sharing app Moments, and released it to Chinese users through a local company.
Today the robot-creators at MegaBots revealed their fully-built and painted battle robot: EAGLE PRIME! This Giant Robot Duel (the first of its kind) was scheduled earlier this year between the United States and China (AND JAPAN!), and MegaBots will represent with the most patriotic mecha-robot ever built. Today you get to see it, the first MK3-class MegaBot ever created.
Huawei's first smartphone released with a US-based mobile carrier is tipped to be coming in the year 2018. This device has not been named, nor priced or specifically dated. What we do know is that the brand has been waiting to gain foothold in the country for quite some time. It's not been an easy road since being accused of being used by China to spy on the United States and its citizens.
Apple has made moves to comply with the Chinese government, as this weekend it's been revealed that the company has pulled nearly all available VPN (virtual private network) apps from the country's App Store. This marks another example of China's attempts to filter and crackdown on internet use within its borders, as VPN apps and services allowed users to get around the country's strict censorship restrictions, often referred to as the "Great Firewall."
They say good things never last and bad things last for ages. That seems to be the case with AdUps, a Chinese “technology firm” that was blatantly installing spyware on countless of Android smartphones worldwide. Despite being involved in a scandal that even got the US Homeland Security’s attention, AdUps’ operation continues and its spyware still infects entry-level and budget smartphones, even Blu Product’s own, which was at the heart of that scandal.
This morning a set of images leaked with iPhone 8's name on them - figuratively, of course, but still - this leads to the next big mystery. The next phone from Apple will very likely be part of a set of three, the other two set in the standard line of phones as iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus. But the leak today suggests that the iPhone 8 - or whatever Apple ends up calling it - will be coiled for the strike as the most unique iPhone yet.
