UK

There was a time when it seemed that carrier-subsidized phones as going out of fashion. That hasn't changed at all in the US where carriers still hold sway over people's mobile purchases but the landscape has shifted slightly in Europe. People there still get their phones from their carrier of choice but regional regulations have taken steps against lock-ins that US consumers have pretty much accepted as a fact of life. The UK is following suit and will soon force its remaining carriers to sell only unlocked phones by December 2021.

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Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has been looking for someone to acquire its semiconductor designer Arm and although it finally settled on NVIDIA, that deal may still fall through at least in one country. The UK government is reportedly preparing to intervene and block the acquisition if necessary on the grounds that NVIDIA buying up Arm could not only endanger its citizens' jobs but also threaten the country's sovereignty over one of its very few technology champions.

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A video was leaked this week featuring BT and EE CEO Marc Allera and Apple's own Eddy Cue. Per the video, "we are just days away from Apple's next major launch, a 5G iPhone, which will be a huge boost for 5G." This is the sort of video that'd be shared among carrier officials and affiliates, not meant for public consumption. In other words, there's little reason to believe we're more than a month away from a "launch" of the first 5G iPhone.

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The HTC Desire 20 Pro looks a whole lot like a couple of other devices we've discussed this week. One's the Samsung Galaxy A51, the other is an LG smartphone that's coming closer to the end of the month. The HTC Desire 20 Pro doesn't look particularly different in any major way from most other multi-camera, punch-hole display, back-facing fingerprint sensor-having smartphone on the market today. But the price... is surprising, to be sure.

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If you've been following the OnePlus Nord release story for the last few months, you might be interested in owning the device. It's a low-cost smartphone with features that seem to be far more elite than the phone's price would imply. It's a simple proposition, and the OnePlus method for enticing your cash in advance of the device's full "reveal" event is... shockingly efficient.

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Disney has decided to skip a previously revealed plan to debut a 4K version of the Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back in theaters, according to a new report. This would have been a milestone moment for the iconic trilogy, marking the first time a 4K version of the original Star Wars movies were presented in theaters. The big change here is the resolution, however, not the re-release plans.

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Samsung's Galaxy S and Galaxy Note premium phones often take the spotlight but they are hardly Samsung's only smartphones. Most of the time, you only hear about devices from its Galaxy M family only in association with markets like India, EMEA, and Southeast Asia. From time to time, however, a few of those do make their way to what some call as "major" markets, like this Galaxy M31 that has just landed on the shores of the United Kingdom.

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Detecting COVID-19 was the aim in a new dog-focused study done in the UK in April 2020. Scientists from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LHTSM) believe they've got a real shot at training dogs to detect the illness in humans. This project's outline suggests they're aiming to have these dogs deployed in as little as two months, here in the year 2020.

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Video streaming services are on the rise, especially with everyone forced to keep themselves distracted from the urge to go out. Services have expanded their content selection and even their free trial periods but Roku is making an even bigger leap almost literally. It has just crossed the gigantic pond known as the Atlantic and is bringing its catalog of free content to those stuck inside their houses in the UK.

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Manufacturers in the UK expect the government to give them the green light to move their facilities from normal operations to making medical supplies. Dyson is in one group, another group is led by Airbus. Both groups have announced that they have only to be given the go-ahead by the UK government by next week. In separate news, the UK's ALSO joined the EU effort to ramp up ventilator production worldwide.

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This January of 2020 an auction is set to take place with a set of artworks from several artists, one of whom is Damien Hirst. Of interest in this auction is a relatively old Damien Hirst artwork by the name of "Bodies", originally sold in the year 1989. The artwork is one of the first 4 medicine cabinets that'd eventually make a suite of 12, and it was purchased for a sum of £600
- converting that amount in 1989 to dollars hits around USD$1k.

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The OPPO Reno 2 (or OPPO Reno2 if you like) is an interesting piece of hardware. It's a smartphone thats part of a very, very similar set of associated handsets, all under the same "Reno" branding name. OPPO's not failed to deliver impressive smartphone hardware to our review bench since we first started reviewing their devices. But here's the thing - if a phone has good hardware but less-than-great software, is the overall experience still good enough for the price?

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