Editors’ note: This story was originally published on Jan. 7, 2017.

In 2007, Nokia was the world’s largest phone maker. Microsoft was gearing up to launch Windows Vista. And the best new products at CES included a wireless TV and an MP3 player that streamed internet radio.

Then, on Jan. 9, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled a device that went on to change the world: a $499 iPhone that came with 4GB of storage. It was a mobile phone, a music player and an Internet device. It went on sale about six months later, on June 29, 2007.

“iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” Jobs said at the time.

Since then, Apple has sold more than 1.2 billion iPhones and has become the most profitable public company in the world. Copycat phones from companies like Samsung, HTC, Motorola and Xiaomi proliferated across the globe, and now even people in places without steady electricity have smartphones.

“It’s difficult to understate [the iPhone’s] impact,” Reticle Research analyst Ross Rubin said. “The ripples it has created affect wide swaths of our lives.”

Here are some ways the iPhone has changed the way we live:

1. We’re always on

It used to be you’d fire up your computer, wait for your Wi-Fi to connect (or your dialup connection, if we’re going wayyy back) and open Internet Explorer, Safari or some other web browser. Now you’re connected to the internet all the time. If you’re not on Wi-Fi, you’re linked through your cellular network.

It’s not just inescapable connectivity that the iPhone helped bring about. It’s also how we actually access the internet. The iPhone made mobile web browsing useful for the first time. Every other mobile web browser before that was painful, in the words of CNET’s Kent German. Soon came a flood of apps, which removed the need to open a web browser at all.

2. Tablets, watches and headphones, oh my

Multiple devices are either tied to the iPhone or exist because the phone was created. There’s the iPad, essentially a larger iPhone you use at home. And there’s the Apple Watch, which is tethered to the iPhone.

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Then there are all the accessories spurred by the popularity of the iPhone, like phone cases; Bluetooth speakers and headphones; and charging docks. ABI Research estimates that revenue in the global mobile accessories market will top $110 billion in 2021.

“Given users’ attachment to their smartphones and their wants and needs to personalize and protect them, the aftermarket mobile accessories market is showing no signs of slowing down,” ABI analyst Marina Lu said.

3. The key to appiness

You may not remember this now, but Apple’s first iPhone didn’t have such a thing as third-party apps or the App Store. That changed in July 2008, when Apple introduced the iPhone 3G and its iPhone 2.0 software.

The App Store is what made the iPhone a must-have device. There are now more than 2 million apps in the App Store, with essentially every company making one or more apps. And the iPhone and App Store have spawned industries that couldn’t exist without smartphones. There’d be no Uber or Lyft to shuttle us from place to place, for instance, or Instagram or Snapchat for sharing our photos.

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4. Everyone’s a shutterbug

Sure, we had cameras on our phones before the iPhone. But the Apple gadget’s combination of easy internet access and apps like Instagram inspired people’s inner photographer.

As a result, lugging around an actual camera became redundant.

“We as a species take more pictures than we ever had in the past by an order of magnitude,” Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart said.

5. Livin’ live

The phone’s camera also means you have a portable camcorder (remember those?) at your fingertips. And on top of that, the phone’s connection lets you broadcast video immediately. That could mean talking to your family members on the other side of the country or shooting a cat video for YouTube. Or, thanks to services like Facebook Live and similar features on other social networks, the technology can be used for filming police brutality or instantly reporting something you’ve seen.

On the flip side, having these smart devices on us at all times lets law enforcement and corporations (like the makers of those apps on your phone) track us. Apple has taken a strong stance on privacy, but security remains a big concern for users.

6. Putting the digits in digital

Touchscreens once were rare. Now babies are swiping at TVs and wondering why the screen doesn’t change. Interactive screens are in virtually everything, even refrigerators. When Jobs introduced the iPhone, he said, “We are all born with the ultimate pointing device — our fingers — and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse.”

He was more right than he could imagine. The appeal of a touchscreen phone forced Microsoft to embrace touch in its software and get its hardware partners to make touchscreen phones, tablets and computers.

It’s almost surprising to see a device today without a touchscreen (though Apple maintains it won’t be putting touchscreens in its Mac computers).

7. You are here

The introduction of mapping on the iPhone meant you no longer had to feel like an embarrassed tourist in a new city, clutching a giant paper map on the street corner. Google Maps and Apple Maps are two of the most-used apps on the iPhone, and they’ve steadily added features over the years, like public transit and biking directions.

8. Gaming goes to the next level

The iPhone reinvented the idea of mobile gaming. Apps like Angry Birds, that anyone could play using their fingers on the touchscreen, became hugely popular, and payment models changed. Many games are now free to play — instead of charging a sales price, developers came up with the idea of in-app purchases, which let you pay for new levels and features as you go.

Mobile-oriented gaming subscriptions have also gained steam, with Apple’s Arcade service and Google’s Play Pass both highlighting access to ad-free games on iOS and Android, respectively. Even more companies plan to use cloud services to stream games to mobile, with growing efforts from Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, Nvidia’s GeForce Now and Google’s Stadia.

9. Cash ain’t king

Apple wasn’t the first company to talk about mobile payments, but it did make even your grandma aware of the technology, which lets you use your phone to purchase things. Goodbye, cash. Hello, iPhone. The iPhone’s Wallet app also can store retail coupons, reward cards, and passes for flights and movies, all in one place. Even your driver’s license is getting ready to be in Apple’s Wallet if you want it to be.

Cash isn’t dead yet — there still are many places that don’t take mobile payments — but using your phone at the checkout stand is more common than ever.

10. But wait — there’s more

There’s no way to sum up in just 10 points all that the iPhone did. So here’s a grab bag of additional stuff.

Apple basically killed Adobe Flash on mobile devices and made endless scrolling a very good thing. You never have to carry a calculator or flashlight anymore, and visual voicemail lets you easily skip forward in a meandering message. Podcasts mean you don’t have to listen to the radio in real time — and have become a competitive space where Spotify, Stitcher and more wrangle exclusive deals for popular shows.

Social media has also shifted heavily to mobile devices from desktop computers, letting people feel connected to friends at all times. 

At the same time, the iPhone has been linked to the rise in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and short attention spans in kids. Governments use mobile devices to spy on their citizens, and consumers give up a lot of personal information in exchange for services like Uber rides.

But even with the negatives, don’t try to take someone’s iPhone away.

Please leave some of your thoughts in the comments section on how the iPhone has changed the way you live.

The post How the iPhone changed our lives … for better or worse first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

Tractors that steer themselves are nothing new to Minnesota farmer Doug Nimz. But then four years ago, John Deere brought a whole new kind of machine to his 2,000-acre corn and soybean farm. That tractor could not only steer itself but also didn’t even need a farmer in the cab to operate it. 

It turns out the 44,000-pound machine was John Deere’s first fully autonomous tractor, and Nimz was one of the first people in the world to try it out. His farm served as a testing ground that allowed John Deere’s engineers to make continuous changes and improvements over the last few years. On Tuesday, the rest of the world got to see the finished tractor as the centerpiece of the company’s CES 2022 press conference.

“It takes a while to get comfortable because … first of all, you’re just kind of amazed just watching it,” said Nimz, who on a windy October afternoon described himself as “very, very interested” but also a “little suspicious” of autonomous technology before using John Deere’s machine on his farm. “When I actually saw it drive … I said, ‘Well, goll, this is really going to happen. This really will work.'”

The emergence of fully autonomous farming equipment offers a twist to the century-old contest between man and machine. The rise of automation in everything from car factories to Amazon Go convenience stores has sparked fears that robots will eventually wipe out millions of jobs. But in farm country, where workers are in short supply and younger people are moving to cities, autonomy may be the only way to ensure enough food is grown to feed the world. 

Rather than suspicious, Nimz is now eager for autonomy to come to essentially all parts of farm operations. “It’s just going to make my life a lot easier,” he said. 

I got an early look at the tractor in action in October in Blue Earth, Minnesota — and even rode along as the machine tilled Nimz’s field.

The tractor is a “way to get the job done on time, every time and do it at a high level of quality,” Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer for Deere & Co., said during my visit to Minnesota. “It’s 20 years in the making.”

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Riding solo

John Deere isn’t the first agriculture equipment maker to develop an autonomous tractor. But as the world’s No. 2 maker of agricultural equipment, it’s one of the most notable. Its signature green tractors are ubiquitous across farm country, and the company has won over young fans with its apparel and toy tractor lines. 

CES 2022 marks John Deere’s fourth year at the Las Vegas tech show, an effort by the company to show off the advanced technology in its machines to a new audience. Rather than creating a brand-new machine, the company unveiled equipment that can be added to its popular 8R 410 tractors for full autonomy. Two boxes — one on the front and the other in the back — contain a total of 12 stereo cameras and an Nvidia GPU that let a farmer control the machine from a smartphone, starting it with a swipe of a button and watching live video as the machine moves across a field.

John Deere’s tractors have been capable of steering themselves for two decades — as along as the farmer still sits behind the wheel. That fact makes the move to a fully autonomous tractor less of a stretch for a farmer than for someone who’s spent the last 20 years driving a Honda Civic.

See also

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• John Deere makes me feel like I’m home on the farm during virtual CES 2021
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While John Deere may be popular, it also has faced its share of troubles. In November, about 10,000 unionized workers ended a five-week strike that won them better pay and benefits. 

One ongoing criticism of John Deere’s tractors is the price, and the new autonomous system won’t come cheap. A regular 8R tractor and the 2430 chisel plow will set a farmer back over $500,000. 

John Deere will initially rent out tractors with the autonomous equipment already added, but it hadn’t yet determined the price for adding the autonomous equipment when CNET met with the company. Hindman said it would be “significant” — as much as 10% of the total equipment cost, or as high as $50,000. That may bother some farmers, many of whom are already irritated by John Deere’s refusal to let them repair their own expensive tractors. 

At first, the new tractor system will only be able to till fields, which is the process of turning over the earth to return nutrients from recently harvested crops to the soil. Some farmers — pressed for time and lacking workers — skip that process, but that makes them more reliant on chemicals to help their crops grow. By automating the task of tillage, John Deere hopes to take away one responsibility from farmers’ long lists of duties. And with tillage, if something happens to go wrong with the self-driving tractor, a producer has time to fix the problem before spring planting. John Deere views it as the simplest task to automate.

Farmers “are clamoring” for “more and more and more,” said Deanna Kovar, vice president of production and precision ag production systems at John Deere. “They’re just looking to figure out how can they get more jobs done without a human in the seat.”

Not reinventing the wheel

John Deere’s road to autonomy began decades ago. In the mid-1990s, it introduced satellite GPS in tractors to help farmers with precision agriculture, which is the ability to glean insight about what’s going on in the soil in order to become more efficient with gas, fertilizer and seeds. A decade later, Deere’s StarFire GPS receivers became accurate enough to enable tractors to steer themselves.

John Deere started with the 8R because it’s the company’s most popular row crop tractor, and it already “was nearly autonomy ready,” said Joe Liefer, senior product manager of autonomy at John Deere.

“We had the ability already to electronically control the hydraulics and mechanical functions of the tractor, which is required for remote operation,” he said.

The plan this year is to let a limited number of farmers use the autonomous system. During the initial rollout, Deere will rent a full tractor and chisel plow to about 10 to 50 producers who have steady internet connectivity on their farms and have an interest in using the technology. 

Later on, Deere will let farmers bring their own tractors to be retrofitted with the autonomous technology. It plans to support at least the past three years of tractors and may eventually support older machines, Hindman said. Because John Deere tractors have had self-driving technology for decades, configuring them to be fully autonomous is relatively easy. It will take only about a day to install the equipment and test a machine before a farmer can take it home to use in the field, Kovar said.

“Retrofitting it on part of the existing fleet of equipment that’s out there … means that more farmers can take advantage of it … sooner,” she said.

The tech inside

Most autonomous cars being tested use a depth sensor called lidar, while Tesla employs an array of cameras, sensors and radar. John Deere, however, believes that stereo cameras are the way to get self-driving technology into as many fields as possible. Its autonomous machine has 12 such cameras.

To make the 8R autonomous, John Deere mounts a stereo camera pod on the front of the tractor and another pod on the back. Each pod has three pairs of ruggedized stereo cameras that essentially work like human eyes. Images are collected by both and are then combined to help the machine locate potential obstacles that are between 45 feet and 90 feet away. 

“Just like, say, your iPhone is just taking multiple images and merging them together for … that high dynamic range, we’re using that same type of technology here to really understand contrast and the world around us,” Liefer said.

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While stereo cameras work for John Deere’s current autonomous tractor, it may use lidar, radar, ultrasonic and other technologies for more difficult tasks in the future like operating in standing crops, Hindman said. To gain some of those smarts, John Deere acquired a Silicon Valley-based ag tech startup called Bear Flag Robotics for $250 million in August.

“The problem of perception in agriculture is really hard,” Hindman said. “[And] the hardest technical problem for us from a perception perspective is probably standing crop.”

Steady cellular connectivity is a prerequisite for using the autonomous system in a field. If the tractor loses its cell signal, it will stop and won’t start back up until it reestablishes a connection and gets the OK from the farmer through an app.

Inside the machine, John Deere installed multiple ways to stop and manually control the tractor, including through the throttle and normal brakes. The farmer also can grab the steering wheel to take over operation of the machine. 

The tractor can still be used manually for other tasks, not just autonomous operations, and the cab looks no different. Because of those changes made to the machine itself, a farmer can’t easily move the autonomous pod from one tractor to another. 

Along with the redundant brakes, John Deere has built other security into the system. Data that’s shared between the tractor and the smartphone is encrypted on both ends, and the company embedded security in the software on the machines. The tractor also has redundant systems on board to be sure the cameras and GPS signal are present. If those go offline, the tractor will stop.

Avoiding obstacles

Early on, John Deere’s autonomous technology had troubles with shadows. And leaves. And patches of dirt that were different colors than the others. All of them triggered the tractor to stop and send an alert about obstacles. But the technology is now at the point where the false error rate is low, Hindman said.

To help avoid false alerts of obstructions, John Deere’s autonomous 8R runs with the lights on all the time — an unusual sight in farm country.

Leaving the lights on all the time “makes the environment that we’re taking images of more consistent throughout the day and over time,” Hindman said. And the tractor actually performs better at night than during the day because there’s more contrast in the image data, he said.

John Deere has a US-based tele-support staff to examine obstacle alerts from the tractor. If the workers determine it’s something minor like leaves that blew across the path, they’ll let the machine resume operations without bothering the farmer.

If the tractor comes across something like a large rock, it will stop because the rock could get stuck in the tillage tool. The tractor sends a push notification to the farmer with an image of the obstacle. John Deere built in the ability for the tractor to route around those obstacles so the farmer doesn’t have to come to the field for every issue.

“To make sure that we’re not a nuisance to the customer, we will have support 24/7 that’s saying, ‘OK, the machine stopped and it saw something,'” Kovar said. “Is it safe for us to get started again?”

Real-world testing

Nimz has been testing John Deere’s autonomous equipment on his farm for four years, but he still drives by the field where the tractor is running by itself, just to marvel at the fact it’s actually working without anyone in the cab.

He had jumped out of his combine to talk with me before quickly resuming work. A storm was expected the next day, which would prevent him from continuing the harvest. Farmers aim to get as much work done as possible before rain since they don’t know when they can get back into the field.

Although Nimz has to quit working when it gets too dark, his autonomous 8R doesn’t have the same problem. Instead, it can run all night, getting the tilling done before the dirt turns to mud.

“You want to get as much work done as you can, [but] asking an employee to [work late at night after a long day] is hard,” Nimz said. “An autonomous tractor can do this. … It’s no problem. It doesn’t care. So you can turn it loose and just let it work 24 hours a day to get ahead of weather.”

Because of the ability to farm more hours in a day, Nimz expects to be able to buy smaller equipment. The trend in farming has been to use ever-bigger equipment and tractors to cover as much ground as possible in the shortest amount of time. A 36-row planter can put more seeds in the ground at one time than a 12-row planter. But buying smaller equipment lets farmers like Nimz save money and is also better for the ground. Because the machines are lighter, they compact the soil less.

More than anything, he expects his autonomous tractor and plow — as well as future John Deere products — to make his life “a lot easier.” If the machine is running and he doesn’t have other work to do, he’ll be able to take a lunch break instead of eating a sandwich in his tractor.

“Little things like that mean something,” Nimz said. “It’s things that … I thought I was gonna have to … retire to enjoy.”

A labor shortage

The biggest benefit of autonomous tractors is letting farmers perform two jobs at once. The industry has a labor shortage that makes it difficult for growers to get everything done on their farms in a short window. If a farmer doesn’t get planting done in time, he won’t have a crop to harvest in the fall. If he doesn’t get the crops picked before a freeze and snow, the harvest will be lost.

Farm work is seasonal, with extra workers needed to put in long hours during planting and harvest. In 2019, more than half of all hired farmworkers — roughly 450,000 people — were immigrants, according to New American Economy. But US immigration policy makes it difficult to find enough workers, and the H-2A agricultural visa is expensive for many US growers, the think tank said.

“Farmers frequently worry about finding enough workers as few Americans seem willing to take on the most difficult and physical farm jobs,” New American Economy said.

Most of the population lives in cities, and farmers in the US are getting older, with the average age nearing 60. Farmers will have to feed 10 billion people in 2050 with fewer laborers and without more arable land, Hindman said.

Autonomy could help fill that gap. Automating more tasks on a farm could eliminate jobs that were once filled by people. Nimz, for one, said that when one of his workers retires, he likely won’t hire someone new.

“The guy that’s been with me for 36 years, I don’t have to replace,” he said. “The tractor will take his place.”

But John Deere expects most farmers to deploy those workers to other tasks on the farm, rather than cutting employees.

Autonomy “is not a threat,” Hindman said. “It’s really [the way] we’re going to solve the labor shortage to continue to grow the food that the world needs.”

Swipe to drive

A key part of the autonomy process is the smartphone. John Deere designed the system to be controlled by iPhones and Android phones through its existing Operation Center app. For farmers with the new self-driving systems, an additional tab will show up that contains the autonomy features. 

Inside the app, farmers swipe to start the vehicle and press a button to pause the operations. The app tells them how much fuel is left, how long the machine has been running and how long it’s been idle. They can see the obstacles under an “Events” section and bring up — and zoom in on — video from those 12 stereo cameras.

One task the tractor can’t handle on its own is refueling, which needs to happen about every eight hours. A “Go To” button in the Operation Center app can prompt the tractor to head to a preset destination in the field so it can be refueled, much like a robot vacuum will return to its charging station.

While growers can control a tractor from their phones and restart it after an obstacle is identified, they must be physically with the machine the first time they start it for the day.

During the initial setup, the farmer has to map a boundary around the field and around barriers, similar to setting up a VR headset. That can be done by manually driving the tractor or using a John Deere Gator (a small, all-terrain utility vehicle) that’s connected to the company’s mapping technology.

Always-on support

Today, John Deere doesn’t charge service fees for its GPS capabilities or other features inside its machines. But it’s not sure whether it will do so for autonomy. And the company hasn’t yet determined how it will handle upgrades and other logistics. Farmers hold onto their tractors for decades. But the technology used to make machines autonomous will be outdated far sooner.

“We have to come up with the right business model that allows growers to take advantage of increasing levels of technology, increasing improvements in the ability of the cameras and the compute and the perception system without having to change the tractor out every time they want to do that,” Hindman said.

In the early years of autonomy, John Deere expects the updates and changes to come very quickly. While it’s starting with tillage, it plans “to offer new models with new crop types, with new pieces of equipment, with new implements for the tractor … on a fairly fast cadence,” Hindman said.

John Deere says that technicians at its dealerships will be able to fix complicated problems with the autonomous systems. And farmers will be able to make some repairs on their own, like wiring the harnesses holding the pods to the tractor or fixing the brackets that hold the sensors.

Beyond tillage, John Deere will look at other tasks carried out by tractors, like spring tillage and cultivating. And in the future, John Deere plans to extend autonomy to essentially every task a machine performs on a farm, from planting to harvesting.

“Those won’t all come all at the same time,” Hindman said. “So there will be part of the operation on the farm that a farmer still does … in the cab of the tractor, operating the tractor as they do today.”

Farmers will continue to use the 8R as a regular tractor, and future autonomous updates can be rolled out to the same machine through hardware and software additions. That will let farmers use the tractor for more than one autonomous task.

Getting to the point where all parts of agriculture are automated likely will happen “sooner than anybody thinks,” Hindman said. “If my back were against the wall, I’d tell you in 10 years or less we’ll see autonomy all the way through the production system.”

For now, John Deere’s machines will help farmers ready their fields for the next planting season — and I get to see what it’s like from inside the cab of the self-driving tractor.

Growing up on a farm in rural Iowa, I’ve ridden in combines with my dad dozens of times and have checked out John Deere machines that steer themselves. But the experience of sitting behind the wheel of a massive machine as it completely drives itself can only be described in one word: wild.

I’m just along for the ride. Every move of the machine is automated and monitored from a smartphone, letting Nimz harvest corn while the tractor tills his fields. As the machine nears the end of a “pass,” one stretch down the field, I almost forget that I’m sitting behind the wheel.

When I finally exit the machine on the edge of the field, the empty tractor continues on its way, pulling the plow behind it. Rain is about to start falling, and it’s got a lot of work to do.

The post John Deere breaks new ground with self first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO and CDC websites.

As the coronavirus swept across the globe, so did rumors about what caused it and how it’s spread. One that’s persisted online is that 5G networks caused the disease. A new one involves vaccines somehow being linked to 5G tracking. Both are completely wrong. Radio waves can’t create a virus, which is what causes COVID-19. And if someone wanted to track you, your phone is a more likely culprit than radio transmitters that are entirely too large to fit into a syringe. 

But that hasn’t stopped threats against broadband engineers and possible arson attacks against UK phone towers, prompting UK carriers to ask people to stop burning the towers and the UK’s national medical director to call out the 5G conspiracy theory as “complete and utter rubbish.”  The US Department of Homeland Security issued a warning last year about the potential threat to wireless equipment. Communications networks are crucial in the fight against the pandemic. 

The COVID-19 conspiracy theory has spread on social media. Keri Hilson, an American singer with 4.2 million followers on Twitter, sent several tweets in April 2020 that attempted to link the coronavirus to 5G. She wrote: “People have been trying to warn us about 5G for YEARS. Petitions, organizations, studies…what we’re going thru is the affects [sic] of radiation. 5G launched in CHINA. Nov 1, 2019. People dropped dead.”

That same month, actor Woody Harrelson became the latest celebrity to falsely connect 5G to the coronavirus. He shared an article in an Instagram post, saying that while he hasn’t “fully vetted” rumors linking 5G to the pandemic sweeping the globe, “I find it very interesting.”

Others on YouTube and Facebook, including an anti-5G Facebook group, have also shared false claims. But YouTube that month said it would remove 5G-coronavirus hoax videos, implementing a ban one day after stopping just short of that. Twitter has started labeling tweets containing the hoax and adding links to legitimate sources of information (but it’s had some trouble). 

“We’re committed to providing timely and helpful information at this critical time, including raising authoritative content, reducing the spread of harmful misinformation and showing information panels, using NHS and WHO data, to help combat misinformation,” YouTube said in a statement. “Now any content that disputes the existence or transmission of COVID-19, as described by the WHO and local health authorities, is in violation of YouTube policies. This includes conspiracy theories which claim that the symptoms are caused by 5G.”

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Facebook also said it’s removing posts inaccurately connecting 5G to the coronavirus. 

“We are taking aggressive steps to stop misinformation and harmful content from spreading on our platforms and connect people to accurate information about coronavirus,” the company said in a statement. “Under our existing policies against harmful misinformation, we are starting to remove false claims which link COVID-19 to 5G technology and could lead to physical harm.”

In March 2020, a Facebook user named Ben Mackie falsely linked 5G to the coronavirus, saying in part that it’s not actually a virus. “They are trying to get u scared of a fake ass virus when it the 5G towers being built around the world,” he said. He also claimed that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates invented the technology and that it’s an effort to depopulate the world. And Mackie said that vaccines being developed for the coronavirus are actually chips that will be implanted in people. 

(Editors’ note: We are not linking to these posts because they contain falsehoods.)

Those claims were debunked by UK fact-checker FullFact, and other experts have chimed in. 

“This story about 5G has no credence scientifically and is certainly a potential distraction, as is other such misinformation, from controlling the COVID-19 epidemic,” said Dr. Jonathan M. Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health. 

Brendan Carr, who serves on the Federal Communications Commission, tweeted that Hilson’s effort to link 5G to the coronavirus “is straight from the most dangerous depths of tin foil hat land.” He noted that COVID-19 is caused by a virus that’s spread by person-to-person contact, not by radio waves, and he reiterated that the FCC, Food and Drug Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency all say 5G is safe.

5G is the new, super-fast wireless technology that’s been rolling out across the globe. In the US, 5G networks are available nationwide. 5G is also live in a number of other countries, such as China, South Korea, Germany and the UK. The technology is poised to change the way we live and is expected to power everything from self-driving cars to advanced augmented reality experiences. The belief is that whatever country leads in 5G will lead the world over the coming decades and possibly longer. 

5G health concerns?

But ever since companies first started talking about 5G, there have been concerns expressed by some people about the technology’s impact on health. One version of 5G, called millimeter wave, runs on very high-frequency radio waves. Those signals can’t travel long distances, which requires towers to be placed close together and installed in more locations. That has reignited worries that the radio waves could produce harmful radiation that could cause brain cancer, reduced fertility, headaches and other illnesses.

The FDA and FCC say there’s nothing to worry about because studies haven’t found a link between radio frequency signals from cellphones or cell towers and disease. But because 5G is so new, there’s no definitive way to know if it will cause long-term health problems.

What can be definitively stated is that 5G doesn’t cause or spread a virus. 

“It’s a ridiculous concept,” said John Bucher, a senior scientist with the National Toxicology Program, a US Health and Human Services interagency program dedicated to testing and evaluating substances in our environment. “Each year, you get a new strain of flu that goes around. That’s what viruses do — mutate and move around that way, probably as long as there’s been life.”

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A coronavirus is a type of virus that’s spread from person-to-person contact. It doesn’t travel through something like radio waves. You can’t get it from using your phone or watching TV — unless the phone itself or the remote control is contaminated with coronavirus. This novel coronavirus belongs to the Coronaviridae family. They look like spiked rings when viewed under an electron microscope and are named for these spikes, which form a halo or “crown” (corona is Latin for “crown”) around their viral envelope. 

The coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. The virus, initially known as 2019-nCoV, was reported to the World Health Organization on Dec. 31 and has been under investigation since. Other coronaviruses include SARS and MERS. In mid-March, the World Health Organization labeled the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, and the virus’ spread has caused countries around the world, including the US, to take drastic measures like lockdowns.

One point addressed by the 5G-coronavirus theories is that COVID-19 came from China because that’s where most 5G network towers are. While China does have service in many areas, 5G came to South Korea and parts of the US first. The US hasn’t seen major numbers of coronavirus until the past couple of weeks. COVID-19 also has spread to areas without 5G, like Iran and Japan. 

“There appears to be no dispute that animals are the source of the coronavirus, according to experts like the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control,” said CTIA, the wireless industry trade association, said. 

This isn’t the first time that 5G has been a target of conspiracy theories. Russia, which has sown misinformation and influenced the 2016 US presidential election, has included 5G as one of its target areas. Broadcaster RT America, which is funded by the Russian government, a year ago published a report called “5G Wireless: A Dangerous ‘Experiment on Humanity'” that sought to create fear about the technology. The New York Times at the time said it was an effort by Russia to slow the US push for 5G. 

CNET’s Maggie Reardon, Richard Nieva and Queenie Wong contributed to this report. 

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Qualcomm on Tuesday introduced a trio of 5G chips — and a 4G variant — for inexpensive smartphones, as the chip giant aims to get super-fast connectivity into as many user hands as possible.

The new Snapdragon 778G Plus, Snapdragon 695 and Snapdragon 480 Plus all feature both ultra-fast 5G millimeter wave connectivity, as well as the slower but more reliable sub-6GHz version of 5G. They aim to bring 5G to less expensive devices around the globe, while the new Snapdragon 680 features 4G and older connectivity to give handset makers an option for LTE devices. 

Many of the chips will likely appear in phones outside the US, though the 778G Plus in particular could make its way to mid-range smartphones here. 

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“All these platforms are designed to enable increased performance and capabilities with new options across our 7-, 6- and 4-Series,” Kedar Kondap, Qualcomm vice president of product management, said in a video statement provided to reporters ahead of the news. “As 5G continues to grow rapidly across the world, we’re seeing increasingly strong demand for 5G devices.”

The continued advancement of 5G is more critical than ever now that the coronavirus has radically changed our world. The next-generation cellular technology, which boasts anywhere from 10 to 100 times the speed of 4G and rapid-fire responsiveness, could improve everything from simple video conferencing to telemedicine and advanced augmented and virtual reality. In the US, few phones have hit the market this year without 5G, and the ultra-fast, millimeter-wave version has come standard in devices like Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup. While many consumers now have 5G phones, there still isn’t yet the “killer app” that shows consumers what the connectivity can really do. 

Qualcomm has been the leader when it comes to 5G modems and systems-on-a-chip, essentially monster processors that combines the CPU — the brains powering the device — with other capabilities. But it’s facing new competition, both from chip rivals like MediaTek and from handset customers developing their own processors. Google last week launched its Pixel 6 and 6 Pro phones with its self-designed Tensor SoC in order to provide more advanced capabilities to its users, something it said other chips couldn’t accomplish.

“The key element in making this decision was around AI and how we could bring AI at a much different, more personal level to the end user,” Phil Carmack, the vice president and general manager in charge of Google’s chip business, said in an interview with CNET ahead of the Pixel launch. “We simply weren’t able to get there with the existing solutions that were out there.”

Qualcomm’s new family of processors joins its high-end Snapdragon 888 Plus, which it unveiled in June. That chipset supercharges the Snapdragon 888, which arrived earlier this year in premium phones like the Samsung Galaxy S21. 

Expanding 5G to cheaper devices

Qualcomm is gearing up to introduce its next high-end processor. It will host its annual Snapdragon Tech Summit in late November and early December in Hawaii after taking a year off. Qualcomm typically unveils its next 800-series Snapdragon chip at the conference. While Qualcomm’s high-end chips are important for setting the bar on performance and capabilities, it’s the company’s lower end processors that likely will appear in more devices. 

“Mid-range smartphones are expected to be the main driver for accelerating 5G device adoption – especially in emerging regions,” Deepu John, Qualcomm senior director of product management, said in a press release. 

See also

• Pixel 6’s Tensor chip: Inside the brains of Google’s newest flagship
• 5G phones are more affordable than ever. But the killer app is still missing
• Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 Plus will speed up gaming, AI in high-end 5G phones

The Snapdragon 778G Plus is a follow up to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 778G. It features boosted GPU and CPU performance and “is designed to deliver cutting-edge mobile gaming and accelerated artificial intelligence to enable stunning photo and video experiences,” Qualcomm said. The Snapdragon 7-series adoption has grown by 44% in the past year “due to tremendous high-tier demand,” the company added.

Compared with the Snapdragon 690, the new Snapdragon 695 features up to 30% faster graphics rendering and 15% improvement in CPU performance. The boosts will enable “immersive gaming, high-end capture and increased productivity,” Qualcomm said. 

Oppo is one handset maker that plans to introduce a device based on the Snapdragon 695 “in the coming months,” it said. And Xiaomi plans to use the Snapdragon 778G Plus and Snapdragon 695 in phones. 

The Snapdragon 480 Plus is a follow-up to last year’s Snapdragon 480. That processor marked Qualcomm’s effort to bring 5G to cheap handsets, and the company said more than 85 devices have been announced or are currently in development based on the 480. The 480 Plus gives “users access to truly global 5G connectivity and boosted performance to power in-demand productivity and entertainment experiences,” Qualcomm said. 

HMD Global, which sells phones under the Nokia brand, said in a press release that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 480 “has been an instrumental part of HMD Global’s drive to bring high quality, affordable 5G smartphones … to as many people as possible.” It plans to introduce new devices with the Snapdragon 480 Plus. 

The Snapdragon 680, meanwhile taps into 4G and older networks. It offers handset makers — largely outside the US — another option for customers who aren’t ready for 5G or in areas that don’t yet have a solid network. 

It’s built on 6-nanometer process technology and “is designed to deliver compelling all-day experiences, including optimized gaming and triple [image signal processor] featuring AI-enhanced low light capture technology.”

The post Qualcomm intros new super first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

For the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, search giant Google is taking a page from Apple — by styling itself as a chip designer with more control over its flagship smartphones. For owners of Google’s new Pixel 6, that could mean a phone with artificial intelligence that you’ll actually want to talk to and battery life long enough to still power through a busy day. 

Google, which unveiled its $599 Pixel 6 and $899 Pixel 6 Pro phones during a virtual event last week, introduced changes like new colors, display improvements, Android 12 and a horizontal camera bump strip on the back instead of a square-shaped corner array. But the biggest difference is what’s inside: Tensor, the first chip designed by Google.  

Read more: CNET’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro review

Phil Carmack, the vice president and general manager in charge of Google’s chip business, and Monika Gupta, senior director of Google Silicon, chatted with CNET in a videoconference the week before the Pixel event to get an in-depth look at what makes Tensor special — and why Google even bothered to make the processor. 

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“The key element in making this decision was around AI and how we could bring AI at a much different, more personal level to the end user,” Carmack said. “We simply weren’t able to get there with the existing solutions that were out there.”

The goal is to create a Pixel phone loaded with more AI smarts and the power to make those calculations without sacrificing battery life. In the new Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, that manifests through real-time language translations, highly accurate voice transcription and high-end camera features like the ability to unblur the face of a person in motion. On top of that, Google promises 24 to 48 hours of battery life. 

“It was kind of like we were being held back a little bit,” Gupta said. “We have access to state-of-the-art [machine learning] right within Google, yet we couldn’t bring it to our Pixel users. We have this vision for Pixel, and we couldn’t realize that vision.”

That changes with Tensor, which marks Google’s first foray into the expensive and difficult world of SoC design. It started working on the processor about four years ago with a team of 76 people. (The team “is a lot bigger now,” Carmack said, though he declined to specify its size.) Most semiconductor companies have thousands of engineers developing their new chips. But Google has something else behind it — its team of researchers who specialize in artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

“On Tensor, we are running the state-of-the-art [machine learning] models from Google Research, like the latest and greatest,” Gupta said. “And we’re doing it much more efficiently than ever possible before due to the Tensor architecture.”

See also

• The Pixel 6 has a $599 price, new cameras and Google’s ambitious Tensor processor
• Google’s Pixel 6 phones are coming with a chip designed in-house
• Google’s Pixel 6 reveal event is Tuesday: Watch the Android 12 phone’s reveal

While most handset makers use chips supplied by Qualcomm, Apple has stood out as an exception by creating processors for everything from its iPhones to its Macs. Designing its own processors lets Apple optimize for the features it cares about the most, like high performance and long battery life. Now, Google is looking to follow that strategy as it taps into its strength in search and AI. The move deals a blow to Qualcomm.

“Qualcomm Technologies and Google have been partners for more than 15 years, starting with bringing the first Android devices to market,” Qualcomm said in a statement. “We will continue to work closely with Google on existing and future products based on Snapdragon platforms to deliver the next-generation of user experiences for the 5G era.”

Google could use a fresh direction. While its Android software powers almost nine out of every 10 smartphones shipped globally, Pixels make up less than 1% of phones shipped around the world, according to Strategy Analytics. 

But Anisha Bhatia, a senior analyst at researcher GlobalData, called Google’s efforts to make Tensor “significant.”

“Making a chip is a complex and expensive process, and Google, a company that isn’t strong in smartphones, is investing money and resources into this process,” Bhatia noted. “It would allow Google to better compete in the smartphone marketplace.”

Tensor’s specs

Tensor is what’s called a system-on-a-chip, essentially a monster processor that combines the CPU — the brains powering the device — with other capabilities. 

In the case of Google’s design, the eight-core CPU is integrated with a 20-core Arm Mali-G78 MP20 GPU, a Tensor Processing Unit machine learning engine, an advanced image signal processor for photography, a Tensor security core, a “context hub” for ultra-low power capabilities, and 8MB system cache. Tensor also includes a 4MB CPU L3 cache and is built on the 5-nanometer manufacturing node. 

The key is all of the parts of Tensor working together to carry out an action on the Pixel 6. 

“It’s kind of rare that one of these blocks is the star of any important experience,” Carmack said. “They have to be carefully choreographed.”

The Tensor security core is a CPU-based subsystem that’s separate from the main apps processor. It allows sensitive tasks and controls to run in an isolated and secure environment. Alongside Tensor will sit a co-processor, Google’s next-generation, dedicated security chip called Titan M2. And because Google created Tensor, it’s extending security support to Pixel owners to five years, letting people hold onto their devices much longer. 

The CPU itself is eight cores based on architecture from chip designer Arm — two high-performance Cortex-X1 cores with clock speeds of 2.8GHz, two midrange A76 cores at 2.25GHz and four small, high-efficiency A55 cores at 1.8GHz. Chip experts like XDA Developers called the configuration — which combines Arm’s most powerful new cores with older cores — unusual when the specs leaked before the event.

Carmack said Google designed the CPU in a way that would deliver the best responsiveness and power efficiency for intensive use cases like computational photography.

“We did something different than the rest of the Android ecosystem is doing because we didn’t build it in order to win a benchmark of single threaded performance for the minimum amount of dollars invested,” Carmack said. “We built it to deliver the experiences. … Having two really high-performance cores helps us get better overall responsiveness and better overall sustained performance.”

Ultimately, the Pixel 6’s Tensor CPU performance is 80% faster and its GPU is 370% faster than the chip in the Pixel 5, Qualcomm’s midrange Snapdragon 765G. Notably, that chip was slower than the top-of-the-line processor found in other premium Android phones. 

Still photography

One of the areas that will see improvements on the Pixel 6 is photography. Already a strong area for Pixels, Tensor enables even smarter camera abilities. 

A new feature called Face Unblur puts the face of a subject-in-motion in focus while maintaining the blur of the rest of the body. For instance, you can capture a photo of a child jumping on a trampoline, with the face sharp and in focus and the limbs blurred in motion. 

The technology works by tapping into a Google Research face-detection ML model called FaceSSD. Before even taking the photo, the Pixel will detect there’s a face in the scene. If it’s blurry, the Pixel will automatically spin up the second camera so it’s ready to go when you press the shutter button. 

The camera takes two images simultaneously, one from the main camera and one from the ultrawide camera. The main camera uses normal exposure to give you a low-noise photograph, and then the ultrawide uses a faster exposure to provide a super sharp image. 

“Machine learning will align these two images, it will merge them, and it will take the sharper face from the ultrawide and the low-noise shot from the main to get you sort of the best of both worlds,” Gupta said. Lastly, the Pixel will take one final look to see if there’s any blur remaining in the merged images. If so, the phone will estimate the levels and direction of the blur and remove it. 

“All in all, it takes about four machine learning models to combine this data from two different cameras and then deliver you the photograph with a nice clear face,” Gupta said. “Not only is almost the entire chip lit up with different subsystems doing different things, even at the phone level, we have multiple camera sensors lit up. But this sort of gets to kind of the heart of why we approach Tensor differently and why our focus is really rooted in starting from the end users.”

FaceSSD can also work with video, Gupta said. The company has never been able to apply face detection to video before because the older chips weren’t fast enough and consumed too much power, she said. The new FaceSSD runs twice as fast, at 30 frames per second, which makes it suitable for video. It’s also lower power. 

“A lot of our computational photography techniques that we applied to photos historically, we are now able to apply the videos for the first time,” Gupta said. “All of these techniques are just going to make videos better.”

Another photography feature called Motion Mode adds blur into a still image. It “brings sort of a professional look and feel to urban photos, a night out or even nature scenes,” Gupta said. “Typically, you’d create these effects with like maybe a tripod or long exposures or fancy equipment and a lot of practice. But within the Google Camera app, we make this super easy with the Motion Mode.”

The Pixel 6’s camera takes several photos and combines them. Using the on-device machine learning and computational photography, it will identify the subject of the photo, figure out what’s moving and what’s not, and then add a sort of aesthetic blur to the background. For instance, if taking a photo of a cyclist, Motion Mode would make the cyclist in focus and blur the wheels and background slightly to indicate the action. 

Video 

Google Pixels have long won accolades for their photo quality, but video typically hasn’t measured up to the quality found in rival phones. The company aims to make its video just as good as still images in the new Pixel 6 using its computational photography experience, Gupta said.  

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Google developed an algorithm called HDRnet. It embedded parts of the algorithm directly into the Tensor image signal processor to “vastly” speed up the processing while “drastically” reducing the power consumption, she said. HDRnet allows the Pixel 6 to capture video at the quality of still images, and it can run on all video formats, even 4K video at 60 frames per second. 

“Once you put ML in the interactive loop, it’s a real-time guidance system now,” Carmack said. “An intelligent photographer is there in real time, making sure you get the right thing.”

Speech and transcription

Another area where Tensor benefits Pixel users is in how you talk to the device. The Pixel 6 comes with on-device speech recognition that “can transcribe speech with incredible accuracy,” Gupta said. Because of Tensor, that transcription consumes half the power as before. 

That improved speech recognition will help with features like Voice Access, which lets users talk to the phone without having to type in commands, and Google Call Screen, which uses Google Assistant to answer incoming calls, talk to the caller and provide a transcript of what the caller’s saying. 

Google Assistant also should have improvements, thanks to Tensor and the advanced ML enabled by the chip. The processor allows for more effective “hot word” detection — the “OK Google” that triggers the voice assistant to respond. In the Pixel 6, it can detect the hot word even when the background is noisy. 

And the new Tensor security core works with the rest of the processor to secure sensitive information. For instance, you may need to call on the Google Assistant to unlock your phone or grant access to your contacts. The Pixel 6 will do all of that processing on the device instead of sending it over the cloud. 

“On-device AI might help them placate some of the concerns people have around Google and better compete against iOS on the privacy and security side,” Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi said.

And because of Tensor, Google can apply more ML to problems to further refine and understand the nuances of the individual speaker, Gupta said. 

“This could be the difference between knowing is it Monica with the ‘C’ or Monica with the ‘K,’ or where do you put the comma, where do you put the punctuation, all the nuances you get depending on who’s speaking, based on their accent or based on the nouns they often use,” Gupta said. 

Live translation

When it comes to translation, the Pixel is running a new, “state-of-the-art” model called Neural Machine Translation, Gupta said. It consumes half the power than previously possible, Gupta said. 

Live Chat Translation quickly translates from one language to another. It works on any Android chat app, and translations happen directly in that app, rather than forcing a user to copy and paste text into Google Translate. The new Pixels also can translate media in real time, like providing live English interpretations on a French-speaking video. 

And thanks to Tensor and NMT, the new Pixel 6 can provide on-device translation for speech.

“Tensor was essentially designed to be the best on-device [machine learning] SoC in the market,” Gupta said. “If I’m watching something, and it’s being live captioned for me or live translated for me, that’s private.”

These sorts of tasks would typically drain a phone’s battery, if not for Tensor. 

“One of our product goals was to kind of eliminate this compromise with Tensor and really push [performance and energy efficiency] simultaneously,” Gupta said. 

For Google, Tensor and the Pixel’s new AI features aren’t the end. They’re just the beginning — and they’re only limited by how powerful and energy efficient Google can make its chips.

“This tight collaboration between Research, Android platform, Pixel and the silicon team creates a nice virtuous cycle,” Carmack said. “We have a whole roadmap of products.”

The post Pixel 6’s Tensor chip: Inside the brains of Google’s newest flagship first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

Samsung’s new Z Flip 3 and Z Fold 3 are more popular than their predecessors — but the South Korean electronics giant isn’t giving specific sales data.

The company on Monday said demand for its newest devices “continues to exceed expectations.” In the first month, Samsung sold more foldables in the US than in the prior two years, it said in a newsroom post shared ahead of the announcement. US consumers bought five times more Galaxy Z Fold 3 units than last year’s Z Fold 2, while they scooped up 40 times more Z Flip 3 units than the earlier Z Flip 5G. 

Samsung declined to provide actual figures, which means it’s difficult to gauge just how high the actual sales are. In August, it said that “preorder volume” for the new devices was already “outpacing total sales for Galaxy Z devices to date in 2021″ — without giving any specific figures.

Samsung likely sold about 1.02 million foldables in 2019 and 2020 combined in the US, Strategy Analytics said. 

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The global numbers aren’t much higher. The research firm estimates that consumers bought only 730,000 foldables across the world in 2019, with about 82% of them coming from Samsung. The following year, vendors sold 2.2 million foldables, with 2 million of them made by Samsung, Strategy Analytics said. In the first half of 2021, Samsung likely sold about 2.3 million foldables around the globe, Strategy Analytics estimated. That brings Samsung’s total global sales before its latest models to roughly 4.9 million. In August, it estimated that Samsung would sell 5.2 million foldables this year.

Samsung introduced its $1,000 Galaxy Z Flip 3 and $1,800 Galaxy Z Fold 3 in August during a virtual Unpacked event. In virtually every way, Samsung sought to address the problems found in its earlier foldables, ranging from worries about the screens being too delicate to criticism that only tech ultra-fans could afford their steep prices. 

The company on Monday published a new video showing how it tests its foldables, including putting them in an environmental chamber, looking at water resistant and S Pen usability, and folding them enough times to be sure they’ll outlast 200,000 fold — or around five years of use if folded and unfolded 100 times a day. Tests for the Z Flip 3 and Z Fold 3 “reflect actual user patterns in real-world scenarios such as folding and unfolding using both hands,” Samsung said. 

See also

• With Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3, Samsung’s doing all the right things. But it may still struggle
• Galaxy Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3 edge foldables closer to mainstream
• Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 review: The first foldable you may actually want to buy

While the improved durability has likely made consumers more willing to try foldables, the lower prices have probably been another major factor in making them more attractive to would-be buyers. By starting this year’s foldables lineup at $1,000 — nearly $400 less than last year’s original Z Flip and the same price as Apple’s iPhone 13 Pro — Samsung’s aiming to make its foldables mainstream. 

That’s particularly true of the Z Flip 3, which CNET’s Patrick Holland called a “scene-stealer” and said “might be the first foldable phone aimed at a mass audience that has a chance of living up to such hype.” The device features a compact clamshell design that shields the inner display, while the Z Fold 3 expands outward from a phone into a tablet and comes with S Pen support for the first time.

Samsung has been trying to make foldables popular for years. The company has incorporated the screens in its highest-end products since 2019, but early models didn’t attract many buyers. Early flaws in the initial Galaxy Fold’s display raised doubts that foldables were strong enough to withstand daily use, let alone a rainstorm or a fall from a nightstand. And prices, which reached as high as $2,000 for last year’s Z Fold 2, were aimed more at one-percenters than at typical smartphone buyers. The durability and pricing questions prevented most consumers from buying foldables, particularly in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The post Samsung’s Z Flip 3 and Z Fold 3 sales dwarf previous foldable demand first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

For over two years, TCL has been showing prototypes of possible foldable phones to reporters. One had a 10-inch screen that bent into thirds. Another featured a screen that wrapped around the wrist. Yet another had a large screen that closed like a book, one featured a screen you pulled out to expand it into a tablet and a more futuristic model included foldable and rollable displays in the same device.  

And then there was a clamshell model that looked a lot like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip and Motorola’s Razr. That device, codenamed the Chicago Project, is the one TCL planned to launch early in the fourth quarter. It aimed to sell the phone for less than Samsung’s $1,000-and-higher foldables and Motorola’s $1,400 Razr. The Chinese giant had the foldable nearly done — and this week even shipped CNET one of the nearly finished prototypes to prove it was real — but ultimately decided to scrap it and start over. 

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Now TCL won’t launch its first foldable for at least 12 to 18 months, Stefan Streit, TCL’s chief marketing officer, said in an interview ahead of Friday’s announcement. And when it introduces the device, it won’t be Chicago but a revamped product. For now, hopes for a lower-cost foldable device will have to wait. 

“We could finish this product and bring it to the market, but this felt somehow … not right,” Streit said. “For us, this category is really, really important. We will bring products. We will bring a number of products.” Just not the first device TCL thought it’d launch. 

While TCL has sold phones under the low-cost Alcatel brand for years — and for a brief period under the BlackBerry name — it has only been selling devices under its own TCL branding since early 2020. It’s among the top players in televisions, but TCL doesn’t have the recognition needed in mobile to pull in people willing to try a new product category like foldables. Even Samsung, the world’s biggest phone maker, is still in the early days of getting consumers to trust that foldables are durable enough to withstand normal daily use. 

See also

• With Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3, Samsung’s doing all the right things. But it may still struggle
• TCL experiments with foldable, rollable displays in the same mobile device
• This new foldable phone design makes the Galaxy Fold look downright boring

TCL decided to cancel the introduction of its first foldable because of several “commercial” factors — weakness of its brand, expensive components because of the pandemic and lack of carrier support, Streit said. 

Perhaps most of all, the move by TCL is an acknowledgement that foldables may not be ready for mainstream users — at least not in huge volumes and at low prices. 

Foldables remain a tiny part of the overall smartphone market. This year, vendors should sell about 7 million such devices, according to Strategy Analytics, while companies will sell 1.35 billion regular smartphones. That estimate from last month included potential TCL sales.

It’s not until Apple introduces its first foldables, possibly in the second half of 2023, that the devices start selling in higher numbers, Strategy Analytics analyst Ken Hyers said in August. His firm expects about 15 million foldables to be sold around the world in 2023 and more than double that amount the following year. In 2026, the number of foldables sold across the globe should hit nearly 170 million, Strategy Analytics said. 

TCL had aimed to launch a fully featured foldable by the end of 2021 that cost less than the devices from Samsung, but the lowest price it could reach with its first device was $800, Streit said. Samsung’s new Z Flip 3 starts at $1,000, while its Z Fold 3 retails for $1,800. 

“If somebody can spend $800, he can also spend $1,000,” Streit said. “Probably, he will go for the brand he knows for many years and trusts more.”

Competing with the Z Flip 3

At the same time, some of Chicago’s specs aren’t as high-end as those in the Z Flip 3. The two devices look similar, but TCL’s foldable is a little thicker, a little wider and a little heavier. And the front screen is smaller at 1.1 inches diagonally versus 1.9 inches for the Z Flip 3. The interior screens are about the same size: 6.67 inches diagonally for TCL and 6.7 inches for Samsung.

Chicago isn’t water resistant like the Z Flip 3, and it’s likely not as sturdy, Streit said. It uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 765G processor, which isn’t as fast or as powerful as the Z Flip 3’s Snapdragon 888. Chicago also has a slower version of 5G and couldn’t be used on Verizon’s ultra-wide-band network. Its fastest download speed is 2.7 Gbps versus the Snapdragon 888’s peak of 7.5 Gbps. 

Chicago would have been available in one color, “Pastel Gold,” which looks like a peach-color matte plastic body with gold metal detailing on the sides and edges of the hinge. When displayed next to Samsung’s cream-color Z Flip 3, it’s sometimes difficult to tell the devices apart. 

One area where Chicago could have had an advantage over the Z Flip 3 is the part of the interior display where it folds in half. The crease in the prototype sent to CNET is less pronounced — both visually and when touching the display — than on the Z Flip 3. CNET’s Patrick Holland, who reviewed Samsung’s foldables, said the Z Flip 3’s crease doesn’t bother him, though it is noticeable when interacting with the middle of the screen. 

Enlarge Image

TCL decided to cancel Chicago before Samsung’s August Unpacked event, Streit said. But seeing the Z Flip 3 cemented its decision, even though Chicago was finished except for tweaks to features like the software and the hinge. 

“I’m using it every day,” Streit said of Chicago. “Nothing has changed” about how much TCL believes in foldables, he said, but market conditions need to improve before it launches a consumer device. For now, TCL has already started working on the foldable it hopes to actually sell. 

That device, while similar to Chicago, will be thinner and sturdier, Streit said, but it will likely still be a clamshell, high-tech flip phone design. 

“It’s … the most natural step from where we are coming from,”  he said. 

The hope is that in late 2022 or early 2023, the market will be ready for a lower-cost foldable, Streit said. Component prices will likely be back to normal, TCL’s brand will be stronger, 5G will be broadly deployed so carriers can support other phones, consumers will be looking for new types of devices and prices will finally be low enough for wide adoption, he said. 

“We feel like this … is the better time for TCL to then launch something which … hopefully brings it into more mass market segments,” Streit said.

For all of you curious about what might have been, here are the key specs: 

Dimensions and weight

• Unfolded: 164.8 mm x 78.1 mm x 7.35 mm 
• Folded: 86.5 mm x 78.1 mm x 17.9mm 
• Weight: 204.5 grams

Interior display

• 6.67-inch AMOLED, DOTCH display 
• Resolution: FHD+ (1080 x 2400)
• Screen-to-body ratio: 84.6%
• Aspect ratio: 20:9
• Pixel density: 395 PPI, 16.7M colors 
• Brightness: 700 nits (peak), 420 nits (normal) 

Front display

• 1.1-inch AMOLED screen

Memory

• 6 GB RAM and 128 GB flash memory

Battery and charging

• Battery capacity: 3,545mAh 
• Wired charging speed: Up to 18W Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0
• Wireless charging speed: Up to 10W wireless charging Connections: Type-C 
• USB-C 3.1 

Rear camera

• 48-megapixel primary camera with optical image stabilization, Sony IMX582 sensor, 0.8μm pixel size
• 16MP ultra wide-angle camera
• Video capture: 4K at 30 frames per second, 720p and 1080p at 30/60 frames per second
• Video playback: 4K at 30 frames per second, 720p and 1080p at 30/60 frames per second

Front camera

• 44-megapixel front camera
• Video capture: 4K at 60 frames per second, 720p and 1080p at 30/60 frames per second

The post Here’s the affordable TCL foldable phone that could’ve been first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO and CDC websites.

Samsung is making it easier to show proof you’ve been vaccinated, all through your Galaxy smartphone. The tech giant has partnered with health care nonprofit The Commons Project to securely store immunization status digitally within Samsung Pay, letting you get access to a bar or restaurant that requires you to show proof you’ve received the shots for COVID-19.

After downloading the free CommonHealth app from the Google Play Store, go through the software’s authentication process. Once the app securely verifies your vaccination status, you can then download your COVID-19 immunization record in the CommonHealth app and add it to Samsung Pay. Once the Smart Health Card is downloaded, it can be shown at restaurants, bars, airports or other places that require proof of vaccination, as well as be securely shared through a QR code. 

The feature will be available to all Galaxy smartphones that support Samsung Pay by the end of this week. That includes virtually all Galaxy S devices since 2015’s Galaxy S6, the Note lineup since 2015’s Note 5, all of Samsung foldables and its Galaxy A series, including the A32 5G and A50. Samsung Pay is also available on certain Samsung smartwatches. 

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“As more and more consumers use their Samsung devices as a digital wallet, it is a natural extension to make COVID-19 vaccination records more easily accessible,” Rob White, senior director of product for Samsung Pay at Samsung Electronics America, said in a statement.

Much of the US — and other countries around the globe — reopened in the late spring and early summer, but the surge of the highly contagious delta strain is now causing some organizations and governments to shift plans to prevent infections. Tech giants like Apple and Google have pushed back their returns to office, and many companies are now requiring their employees to be vaccinated. Masks are again required indoors in many places, and some cities, including New York and San Francisco, require residents and visitors to show proof of vaccination to enter restaurants, bars, gyms and other businesses. 

The COVID-19 vaccination cards given to Americans are flimsy and are oddly sized for wallets. For some people, it makes the most sense to carry a photo of the card or access some other verification through a phone. That’s where Samsung’s new push comes in. 

Storing the record in Samsung Pay should give users quick access to their vaccination records. Samsung launched Samsung Pay, its mobile payments service for its smartphones and wearables, in 2015. The idea was for users to pay for items by waving their Galaxy device near a store’s checkout register instead of swiping a credit card. Since that time, Samsung Pay has given users the ability to add loyalty cards, receive cash back for making certain purchases and take advantage of promotions. Last year, Samsung even introduced its own debit card with SoFi and Mastercard.

The Commons Project — with its CommonHealth and CommonPass apps — is one verified, secure way for people to store proof of vaccination on their mobile devices. Other apps that provide the same service include Clear (which is best known for its offering that fast-tracks people through airport security) and New York’s Excelsior Pass. 

iPhone users will have to wait until iOS 15 becomes available this fall to easily store their immunization and lab information in Apple’s Health app. In the meantime, there are workarounds for getting easy access to vaccination records on an iPhone, such as installing apps like GoGetDoc’s YaxYes that let you then save the record in the Apple Wallet. 

How to add COVID-19 vaccination records to Samsung Pay:

1. Download the CommonHealth app from the Google Play store and follow the directions to verify your vaccine record.
2. Once you have access to the COVID-19 vaccine record in the CommonHealth app, click the “Add to Samsung Pay” link.
3. Open Samsung Pay and click “COVID-19 Vaccine Pass” from the homepage.

The post Samsung Galaxy phones can store COVID vaccination proof in Samsung Pay first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

Samsung has its newest foldables ready for buyers. Now, it has to see if buyers are actually ready for them. 

The South Korean company unveiled its $1,000 Galaxy Z Flip 3 and $1,800 Galaxy Z Fold 3 on Wednesday during a virtual Unpacked event.
Both feature tweaks in materials and design that make them more robust than their predecessors. Both also have prices lower than Samsung’s earlier foldables. 

By starting its foldables lineup at $1,000 — nearly $400 less than last year’s original Z Flip and the same price as Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro — Samsung’s aiming to make its foldables mainstream. That’s particularly true of the Z Flip 3, which CNET’s Patrick Holland called a “scene-stealer” and said “might be the first foldable phone aimed at a mass audience that has a chance of living up to such hype.” But it may take more than lower prices and sturdier materials to attract customers. 

Read more: CNET’s ongoing review of the Galaxy Z Flip 3

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The past year has been tough for the phone market. When the coronavirus pandemic started spreading across the globe, consumers stopped buying smartphones and instead spent their money on laptops, webcams and other work-from-home equipment. Phone sales are now recovering — partly thanks to new, inexpensive 5G phones — but consumers may find they’re not yet willing to take a risk on a new category of devices, especially when they’re not out-and-about to show them off.

This no-win situation underscores a key dilemma for companies looking to create new device categories. Samsung is refining its products and making foldables more accessible, but others (read: Apple) may swoop in once consumers finally settle on getting one. But the market never develops in the first place if companies like Samsung don’t take that initial gamble.

“A lot of big products really take several iterations to get right,” Technalysis Research analyst Bob O’Donnell said. The new Z Flip 3 “is the right price point to get people going and possibly start to make an impact,” he said. But even with the improvements, it’s still early days for foldables, O’Donnell added. 

Three-year lock-in

The Z Flip 3 is “still very much a premium product,” as is the Z Fold 3, Drew Blackard, vice president of mobile product management for Samsung Electronics America, said in an interview ahead of Unpacked. But “Samsung aside, at the market level, [$1,000 is] a volume-driving price point that we’re really excited to bring foldable technology to,” he said.

One way Samsung is making the devices more approachable is by encouraging customers to sign up for installment plans with carriers that last 36 months, which is longer than previous phone payment programs. The belief is the extended payment plans — and higher trade-in value for older phones — will make the devices “much more accessible” to consumers, Blackard said. 

Ultimately, the longer plans mean each monthly payment is lower, for both the Flip and the Fold. In “a lot of cases, [consumers are] going to be able to look at these at a similar monthly price as they were looking at a Note 20 last year,” Blackard said. That device started at $1,000. 

See also

• Galaxy Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3 edge foldables closer to mainstream
• Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 3 fixes should win over foldable skeptics
• Samsung needs to make its Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3 cheaper and sturdier to attract buyers
• Samsung Galaxy Unpacked recap: Galaxy Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3, Watch 4, Buds 2 and everything announced

The longer device payment plans aren’t completely out of nowhere. On average, users in the US now hold onto their smartphones for three years. 

But none of Samsung’s foldables — not even the first, problematic Galaxy Fold, which hit the market in late 2020 — have actually been on sale for three years, so it’s difficult to know how those devices will hold up over a long time period. Will the batteries still work by then? If not, how difficult and expensive will they be to replace? Will the crease in the display become so noticeable, the foldable becomes a pain to use? What other problems could pop up by then? Those answers aren’t yet clear, and they’re not all addressed by the Samsung Care Plus warranty plan.

Still, reviewers and analysts largely applauded Samsung’s revisions in its new devices, especially the addition of water resistance and the Z Flip 3’s price cut. 

“The Flip is a much easier sell,” Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi said. Making the entry price close to the Galaxy S21 lineup could make it appeal to consumers who are “wanting to be different,” she said.

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Falling flagship prices

The $1,000 price tag puts the Z Flip 3 in line with flagship phones, although prices for top-tier devices have been coming down. The base phone in Samsung’s Galaxy S21 lineup now starts at $800, a $200 cut from last year’s S20 series. And Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup from a year ago came with two less expensive models, the $700 iPhone 12 Mini and $829 iPhone 12. CNET’s Holland said the iPhone 12 and the pricier, $1,000 iPhone 12 Pro are “basically-the-same-phone similar,” and for many consumers, the lower priced device is the way to go. 

The Z Flip 3 has an eye-catching design and comes in 7 colors

+27 more

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Still, analysts expect growth in the new foldables category. Samsung’s 2021 foldable sales will more than double last year’s tally. In 2020, the first year with both a Fold and Flip in its lineup, Samsung sold about 2 million foldables around the world, according to Strategy Analytics. This year, Samsung should sell about 5.2 million foldables, the research firm said. Even though sales should see a big jump, foldables will still be a tiny fraction of the overall smartphone market. Globally, vendors should sell 1.35 billion smartphones this year, Strategy Analytics said. 

It’s not until Apple introduces its first foldables, possibly in the second half of 2023, that the devices start selling in higher numbers, Strategy Analytics analyst Ken Hyers said. Almost immediately, Apple will capture a big chunk of the market, despite the Samsung’s head start, Hyers said. His firm expects about 15 million foldables to be sold around the world in 2023 and more than double that amount the following year. In 2026, the number of foldables sold across the globe should hit nearly 170 million, Strategy Analytics said. 

“That is the power of Apple,” Hyers said. It “can immediately, with a new tech, a new device, take over that market in a really significant way.” 

For now, Samsung will hope its Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 improvements are enough to get that mainstream push started — and that it can maintain a lead in a market that it essentially built. 

The post With Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3, Samsung’s doing all the right things. But it may still struggle first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

Samsung’s newest foldables are here, complete with lower prices, water resistance, and sturdier materials for the hinges, body and display. The updates found in Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 are meant to reassure consumers that foldables aren’t as fragile as they may seem. 

The new Z Fold 3, which expands outward from a phone into a tablet and comes with S Pen support for the first time, starts at $1,800. The Galaxy Z Flip 3, which features a compact clamshell design that shields the inner display, starts at $1,000. Samsung showed both phones off Wednesday during an online Unpacked event
. 

In virtually every way, Samsung sought to address the problems found in its earlier foldables, ranging from worries about the screens being too delicate to criticism that only tech ultra-fans could afford their steep prices. The South Korean electronics giant hopes the changes make its devices — now in their third generation — appeal to more consumers and eventually become a bigger chunk of the overall smartphone market. 

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“We really do think we’re finally at that price point … with the foldable Z series that we can take these mainstream,” Drew Blackard, vice president of  mobile product management for Samsung Electronics America, said in an interview ahead of Unpacked. And “we wanted to make sure that there’s no compromising … including durability.”

Samsung and other vendors are counting on foldable devices to be the future of the mobile market. The company has incorporated the screens in its highest end products since 2019, but they haven’t yet taken off with consumers. Early flaws in the initial Galaxy Fold’s display raised doubts that foldables were strong enough to withstand daily use, let alone a rainstorm or a fall from a nightstand. And prices, which reached as high as $2,000 for last year’s Z Fold 2, were aimed more at one-percenters than at typical smartphone buyers. The durability and pricing questions prevented most consumers from buying foldables, particularly in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Samsung hopes the Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 will change that. 

In 2020, the first year with both a Fold and Flip in its lineup, Samsung sold about 2 million foldables around the world, nowhere near the 1.29 billion total smartphones sold globally, according to Strategy Analytics. This year, Samsung should sell about 5.2 million foldables, the research firm said, versus a smartphone market of 1.35 billion units. 

See also

• Galaxy Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3 reignite Samsung’s foldables push
• Everything announced at Samsung Unpacked: Galaxy Watch 4, Buds 2 and more
• Galaxy Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3 preorder: How, where and when to buy Samsung’s new foldable phones

With the Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3, Samsung incorporated more durable materials in the phone hinges and bodies, included a sturdier protective film on the foldable displays, redesigned the hinge to make it make it stick out less from the screen and added water — but not dust — resistance. The higher end Z Fold 3 works with two different S Pen styluses, both of which are designed to be more gentle on the foldable display and one of which also works with older S Pen-compatible devices. 

Samsung has taken important steps to make its Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 more durable, Strategy Analytics analyst Ken Hyers said, but “you only get 30 seconds or less in a commercial to make that argument.”

“I think that a lot of people are going to be concerned,” he said. Making consumers more comfortable with foldables is “going to take time,” Hyers added. 

At the same time it boosted the sturdiness, Samsung lowered the starting prices for its new devices from their older siblings. The Z Flip 3 starts at $1,000 for 128GB of internal storage, which makes it $380 less than the first Flip version and $450 below the 5G model’s initial cost. That price tag puts it in line with regular flagship smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro and Samsung’s Galaxy 21 Plus. (Samsung skipped over a Galaxy Z Flip 2 to keep its foldable names consistent, executives said). Samsung also will sell a 256GB model for $1,050, and both versions come with 8GB of RAM. 

The Z Fold 3, meanwhile, retails for $1,800, which is $200 less than the Z Fold 2’s initial price and is the same amount as the older model’s reduced price from earlier this year. The starting price gets users 256GB of storage, and a more premium, $1,900 model packs in 512GB. Both variants come with 12GB of RAM.

Both foldables run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 processor, inside the US and out. Typically, international models use Samsung’s in-house-designed Exynos, but that’s not the case this year. And in the US, the phones work on the 5G airwaves of all carriers — including super-fast millimeter wave — rather than requiring dedicated variants for each network. 

Preorders for both the Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 start Wednesday, and they hit stores Aug. 27, the same date as Samsung’s new Galaxy Buds 2, Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. 

Boosting durability

For the first time in foldables, both the Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 feature IPX8 water resistance — which means they can be submerged in up to 1.5 meters of freshwater for as long as 30 minutes — but they lack dust resistance and aren’t meant to be used at the beach or the pool. By comparison, the Galaxy S21 lineup features IP68 water and dust resistance, which means the phones can withstand dust, dirt and sand, and can be submerged up to 1.5 meters underwater for as long as 30 minutes.

Samsung wasn’t able to pursue a dust resistance rating because of the foldables’ design. “Dust will get in” through the gaps in the hinge, Blackard said, but it continues to integrate Sweeper brush inside the hinge to reject those particles. 

To make the foldable phones water resistant required a new sealing design that blocked off areas near the moving components. The internal components all have a water-resistant coating, Blackard said, and Samsung configured the phones so both the top and bottom halves can withstand dunkings in water, said Jongmin Kang, who works in Samsung’s product mechanical R&D group. 

“To do this, we punched a hole in the interior so that water would flow into the device,” Kang said in a company-provided, Korean-language video that was translated into English. “We blocked the hole with rubber on the side of the device and filled up the open spaces with a liquid solution we newly developed.”

Samsung didn’t immediately provide more details about that particular process when asked by CNET. 

The company also applied an anti-corrosive solution on the hinge, as well as a lubricant so it won’t rust, Kang said. 

Along with adding water resistance, Samsung redesigned the Hideaway Hinge, which first appeared on the original Z Flip, to make it thinner, lighter and less obtrusive. It’s built from what Samsung calls Armor Aluminum, a material that’s reinforced with other metals — like how building concrete includes metal rebar — to make it 10% more durable than the hinges found in Samsung’s earlier foldables. There are also fewer gaps that can let in dust or water. The updated Sweeper technology inside the hinge has bristles that are shorter than earlier versions but are still able to repel dust and other detritus that make it past the hinge. 

“We developed Armor Aluminum to be harder and more durable so it is less likely to be deformed or scratched due to external shock,” Changyoung Hwang, who works in Samsung’s advanced color, material and finish lab, said in a company-provided, Korean-language video that was translated into English.

The Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 cover screens and rear glass are Gorilla Glass Victus, which is 50% stronger than Gorilla Glass 6. And the camera modules are coated with Corning’s new Gorilla Glass DX glass composite cover, which prevents scratches and the lens flares that have become common in most high-end smartphone models. 

Samsung also incorporated a new protective film made of stretchable polyester resin and optimized the main screen panel layers to make the Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 displays 80% more durable than earlier models.

The Flip’s redesign

When it comes to Samsung’s two new foldables, it’s the Z Flip 3 that received the biggest design changes. The company increased the size of the cover screen fourfold, stretching it along the edge of the phone instead of cramming it into a small box in the corner. The screen now can do more than display alerts or control the selfie camera. Without ever opening the Z Flip 3, users can launch Samsung Pay, access quick settings, read notifications and use widgets for music, weather, schedules, alarms, Samsung Health, Galaxy Buds controller, voice recorder and timer. 

The interior display remains at 6.7 inches diagonally but fits into a slimmer body than the original Z Flip. The new model is 72.2 millimeters wide versus 73.6 mm for the older device, and the Z Flip 3 is also slightly shorter and thinner when closed. The display now has a 120Hz refresh rate, double the first Z Flip’s rate. 

On the back of the phone by the cover display, Samsung included two cameras — 12-megapixel wide and ultra-wide lenses. The interior selfie camera is 10 megapixels. 

The cover screen displays more camera-related features than its predecessor, such as a quick shot mode that switches between photos and video when swiping left and right or between the wide and ultra-wide lenses when swiping up and down. Dual preview lets two people view images while looking at opposite sides of the device. For instance, if a user is helping a friend with a headshot, one can view the photos through the cover screen while the other sees them on the main display. 

The dual battery is the same size as the older Flip’s 3,300mAh, and the Z Flip 3 supports wired and wireless fast charging and reverse wireless charging to power up gadgets like the new Galaxy Buds 2. 

The Z Flip 3 is available in cream, black, green and lavender, and Samsung also has two exclusive colors for people who buy the device directly from its store — white, pink and gray. 

Z Fold 3 tweaks

See also

• Samsung needs to make its Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3 cheaper and sturdier to attract buyers
• Samsung’s next phones will have scratch- and reflection-resistant cameras
• Samsung confirms no new Note at Unpacked, but will bring S Pen to its foldables

For the Z Fold 3, Samsung largely stuck to the same design as the Z Fold 2, with one notable exception — the camera lens on the big interior screen was embedded underneath the display. Most newer Samsung phones contain a pinhole lens, which has a small black circle around the camera. With the Z Fold 3, the lens is hidden by whatever’s on the display, which Samsung said provides an “uninterrupted viewing experience” (but could also lead to confusion about where to look if taking a selfie with that camera). 

The lens underneath the main, foldable display is 4 megapixels, while the cover selfie camera is 10 megapixels. The back of the device features three cameras — 12-megapixel ultra-wide, wide and telephoto lenses. 

The Z Fold 3 still sports a 7.6-inch interior display, but it weighs slightly less than the Z Fold 2 — 271 grams versus 282 grams. It’s also a fraction of a millimeter narrower when opened and is only 6.4 mm thick versus 6.9 mm in the older model. 

The Z Fold 3 sports a slightly smaller dual battery than last year’s Z Fold 2 — 4,400mAh versus 4,500mAh in the older model. The new device works with wired and wireless fast charging and contains reverse charging.

When it comes to software, Samsung still faces some problems with app compatibility. For the Z Flip, apps made for regular smartphones work fine. But the Z Fold’s inner display is more like a tablet — of which there are few Android apps. To get around that, Samsung has worked with developers to encourage them to design for foldables, and Google at its I/O conference in May vowed to do more to support the devices. 

Blackard said during a recorded press briefing ahead of Unpacked that Samsung has worked with developers like Google, Microsoft, Disney and Spotify to tailor more than 50 popular apps for the Fold’s screens. For apps that aren’t optimized for foldables, Samsung has a new feature called Labs. It lets users tweak the size of the app window and use it at the same time as other apps. 

Along with Labs, Samsung on Wednesday showed off an improved user interface for the large inner screen. It aims to support more intuitive interactions with a new drag-and-drop feature, and the edge panel can be pinned to the right side of the inner display, giving users faster access to their top apps. Samsung introduced new productivity features, including split view, customizable aspect rations and a multi-view feature that lets apps open in pop-up windows.

The Z Fold 3 comes in phantom green, phantom black or phantom silver. 

S Pen support

The Z Fold 3 gets two new S Pens, a first for the foldable lineup. Samsung’s stylus, which debuted in its Note phablet, is popular with users but also previously was too risky to use on the more delicate foldable displays. The new S Pens — the S Pen Pro and S Pen Fold Edition — both feature retractable tips with “force limit technology” to protect the main display. 

“In terms of everyday usage, like your average consumer pressure when they’re writing or drawing, it’ll be … perfectly fine” and won’t damage the display, Peter Park, a Samsung product manager, said in an interview ahead of Unpacked. 

The S Pen Fold Edition only works with the Z Fold 3 and doesn’t have Bluetooth. At 132 mm long, it’s shorter than the S Pen Pro’s 173.7 mm length.

The S Pen Pro can be used by older Galaxy devices, and it contains Bluetooth to let users perform tasks like copy something from one Galaxy phone and pasting it on the Z Fold 3. Older S Pens from other devices won’t work with the Z Fold 3 and “may damage the screen,” Samsung said. The new S Pens “operate on a different frequency compared to our legacy devices,” Park said. 

The S Pen Fold Edition costs $50 alone or $80 with a specially designed S Pen case, while the S Pen Pro retails for $100. 

The post Galaxy Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3 edge foldables closer to mainstream first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.