Samsung has announced that the Samsung Galaxy Fold officially goes back on sale in the U.S. on September 27th. It’s the U.S.’s turn to finally get in on the folding phone fun after Samsung delayed its initial launch to address concerns regarding its durability.
At launch, the $1,980 Galaxy Fold will be available as a carrier-branded phone from AT&T, or as an unlocked model available at select Best Buy and Samsung retail store that will work on any of the other major U.S. cell networks. However, unlike the UK and South Korea which got both 4G and 5G versions of the Galaxy Fold, at least initially, only the 4G Galaxy Fold will be available in the U.S.
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The two main updates Samsung made to the Fold for its re-launch were moving the protective polymer film that sits on top of the phone’s flexible OLED display beneath its bezels so that no one would mistake it for a screen protector and try to remove it, and the addition of a T-shaped insert designed to prevent debris from getting inside the Fold’s hinge.
Samsung’s new insert for the Galaxy Fold’s hinge is an improvement, but still not a perfect fix. Photo: Adam Clark Estes (Gizmodo)
Alongside the release of the Galaxy Fold, Samsung is also introducing its Galaxy Fold Premier Service, which is a new customer service experience designed to help and assist anyone who buys the phone. Fold owners will be able to use to service to get a walk through and explanation of the Galaxy Fold’s various features, or to contact Samsung about any potential issues via video chat, in-person support, or a dedicated phone number.
Unfortunately, as YouTube channel JerryRigEverything demonstrated recently after pouring some sand and rocks on the phone, the thing still won’t win many durability contests. Because the Galaxy Fold doesn’t have an official IP rating for dust or water resistance, it’s still quite possible for small particles to find their way inside Samsung’s foldable phone.
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On the bright side, the Fold’s hinge should be able to withstand a huge amount of pressure, because despite Zach from JerryRigEverything pushing directly on its hinge, he wasn’t able to bend of break the phone like he did on a couple previous iPhones and iPads.
As for the Galaxy Fold’s main rival—the Huawei Mate X—it’s expected by the end of the year. While Huawei still hasn’t announced an official sale date for its foldable phone, Huawei consumer group CEO Richard Yu said, during its recent launch event for the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro, that the Mate X could be available as early as next month.
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Either way, while the Galaxy Fold is certainly an ambitious and impressive device, for anyone interested in a foldable phone but concerned about its durability or longevity, my advice would be to wait for the second or third generation of folding devices.
The Galaxy Fold is an all-new type of smartphone experience, but as with all first-gen devices, there’s still some growing pains that Samsung and others should be able to address more thoroughly on subsequent versions.
The way we use email has changed a lot over the years, evolving from person-to-person communications to an all-in-one depository for newsletters, coupons, travel receipts and (a lot of) miscellaneous junk. This can lead to an overwhelmingly messy inbox, making it that much harder to find that e-ticket right before the concert. Yahoo Mail's revamped app, however, hopes to change that with an approach that prioritizes organization and avoid email overload (Disclaimer: Yahoo's parent company is Verizon, which is the same as Engadget's).
The primary way in which it does this is by grouping emails into "Views" with categories like Deals, Travel, Subscriptions and Attachments, which are all treated very differently. This is conceptually similar to Gmail's tabs. In Yahoo Mail's Travel view, for example, you'll see all of your upcoming flight and hotel itineraries, as well as previously completed trips and the associated emails (similar to how Google's Inbox used to do).
In the Subscriptions tab, you can see all of your currently subscribed-to mailing lists or newsletters, with the option to unsubscribe from any of them with a single tap, all within the app. One of my favorites is the Attachments view, which houses all of your various documents -- be they event tickets or photos -- in one easy-to-navigate folder.
If you're a frequent shopper, you might like the Deals view, which transforms all of your promotional emails into an online shopping portal. It lists top and recommended brands based on your habits and preferences, and even lists nearby deals in a Location tab (this is for iOS users only currently). You can even filter out coupons and get notified about offers before they expire. The Groceries view functions in much the same way, except you can even use it to make a shopping list. It'll also take into account any loyalty cards that you might have with a participating store.
On top of that, the new Yahoo Mail also has an "Active Update" feature. Based on the information it gleans from your emails, it'll automatically float timely updates at the top of your inbox, be it package tracking or flight delays.
Organization aside, the new Yahoo Mail interface has also been redesigned to better fit larger phone screens. Previously, the 'hamburger' menu icon was located on the upper left, which was a little difficult to reach one-handed. Now, a customizable navigation bar is located at the bottom of the screen, which is a lot easier to access. You can also personalize push notifications so that you know whenever an important email arrives in your inbox.
As before, you don't need to use Yahoo Mail in order to use the app; it's compatible with all kinds of email accounts like Gmail or Microsoft's Outlook.
The new Yahoo Mail app will arrive on both iOS and Android starting September 23rd.
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Anyone who has taken delivery of an iPhone 11 is going to have one thing high on their to-do list: carry out a Night Mode test to see whether the feature lives up to the hype…
NordVPN
Zac Hall gave his view on Saturday, saying that it “will make us rethink what we can capture with our phones.” I’ll also be sharing my own thoughts and sample shots in my next iPhone 11 Pro Diary piece.
What PCWorld has done, though, is to compare the iPhone 11’s Night Mode with the corresponding features of the three Android smartphones with the best reputations for low-light photography.
PCWorld’s Michael Simon compared the iPhone 11 to Google’s Pixel 3 XL, Samsung’s Galaxy S10+, and the OnePlus 6T. It has so far been the Pixel 3 that has been the gold standard for night shots — but no more, says Simon.
It was just about a year ago when Google launched its innovative Night Sight mode to critical acclaim. With the ability to turn unusable low-light scenes into spectacular, backlit, frame-worthy photos, Night Sight was the prime example of just how far ahead Google was when it came to photography.
Since Night Sight’s launch, Samsung, OnePlus, Huawei, and LG have all developed low-light modes for their cameras. Keep reading as we take a close look at how Apple’s new low-light camera stacks up against the best Android has to offer […]
I’m simply blown away by what Apple has accomplished with Night Mode on the iPhone 11. When I first tried Night Sight on the Pixel 3 last October, I couldn’t believe what Google was able to do with its AI and processing. In no uncertain terms, Apple’s Night Mode makes Night Sight look amateurish.
I tested the four cameras in various settings. The iPhone 11 consistently delivered sharp, detailed shots that didn’t look washed-out or unnatural. In a couple of my nighttime sky shots, it even captured a couple of stars that I could barely see with my eyes, which straight up blew my mind. It didn’t always win, but it was the most consistent.
Simon also gave the iPhone top marks for the user interface, saying that it had pulled off a difficult trick — being both easier to use and more powerful.
The iPhone puts the countdown timer at the bottom of the screen so it doesn’t interfere with what you’re shooting. It also differs in the control you have over how slowly it shoots. The camera app tells you exactly how long the processing will be — generally one or two seconds, depending on the available light — so you know ahead of time how long you need to keep your hand still. It’s a mystery with the other phones. The iPhone process was also quicker than the rest of the pack on average because it optimizes as it processes, eliminating the extra step.
You can manually adjust the processing time up to 10 seconds to enhance the image further. Plus you can actually see what’s happening in your shot as it processes, a rarity for processing-heavy modes. None of the other night modes offers nearly as much transparency or control, and it shows how much thought and detail Apple has put into its system. Apple may be playing catchup, but Night mode doesn’t feel rushed or duplicative. It’s unique, intuitive, and even a little innovative, and people will enjoy using it more than they would the others here.
The above shot shows the biggest benefit of the iPhone, says Simon.
While the Pixel 3 XL (center) and Galaxy S10+ (right) all performed well, the iPhone 11 (left) enhanced the ride and the sky behind it without losing a sense of reality.
You can check out his full Night Mode test with lots more comparative shots over at PCWorld.
Facebook Inc.
FB -0.11%
for most of the past decade was Silicon Valley’s 800-pound gorilla, squashing rivals, ripping off their best ideas or buying them outright as it cemented its dominance of social media.
Now the knives are coming out.
A number of Facebook’s current and former competitors are talking about the company’s hardball tactics to investigators from the Federal Trade Commission, as part of its broader antitrust investigation into the social-media giant’s business practices, according to people familiar with the matter.
One of them is
Snap Inc.,
SNAP 0.95%
where the legal team for years kept a dossier of the ways Facebook was trying to thwart competition from the buzzy upstart, according to people familiar with the matter. The title of the documents: Project Voldemort.
The files in Voldemort, a reference to the fictional antagonist in the popular Harry Potter children’s books, chronicled Facebook’s moves that threatened to undermine Snap’s business, including discouraging popular account holders, or influencers, from referencing Snap on their Instagram accounts, according to people familiar with the project. Executives also suspected Instagram was preventing Snap content from trending on its app, the people said.
In recent months, the FTC has made contact with dozens of tech executives and app developers, people familiar with the outreach said. The agency’s investigators are also talking to executives from startups that became defunct after losing access to Facebook’s platform in addition to founders who sold their companies to Facebook, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in Washington on Sept. 19.
Photo:
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
The discussions have focused on the growth-at-all-costs tactics that propelled Facebook from a social network for college students 15 years ago to a collection of services now used by more than one in four people in the world every day.
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The talks show that the FTC is “putting together a picture of what might be a pattern of behavior to prevent competition to the core Facebook business,” said Gene Kimmelman, a senior adviser at Public Knowledge, a consumer group that focuses on tech issues who was a Justice Department antitrust official in the Obama administration. Discussions with rivals are typical in antitrust probes, he said.
Inside Facebook, senior leaders are concerned about the possibility of rivals divulging damaging information to federal officials and have discussed ways to improve the company’s relationships around Silicon Valley, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
The FTC investigation is one of several antitrust probes into Facebook and major tech giants in the U.S. and around the world. Earlier this month, the House Judiciary Committee requested Facebook executive communications about the company’s decisions to buy the photo- and video-sharing network Instagram in 2012 and the messaging app WhatsApp in 2014. Lawmakers have contacted several of those companies’ rivals as part of that probe, the Journal reported previously.
The House panel can’t take enforcement actions against the companies. The FTC, however, can.
Related: How the Microsoft Antitrust Case Paved the Way for Big Tech
The Department of Justice is investigating the largest American tech firms for alleged monopolistic behavior. Roughly 20 years ago, a similar case threatened to destabilize Microsoft. WSJ explains.
One area of focus for the FTC is Onavo, an Israeli mobile-analytics startup that Facebook purchased in 2013. Onavo offered a free mobile app that described itself as a way to “keep you and your data safe” by creating a virtual private network. To do this, the company redirected internet traffic on Onavo to Facebook’s servers, which allowed it to log every action in a central database.
That enabled Facebook to quietly track what users did on their phones, including which apps they used and for how long, the Journal reported in 2017. Onavo data was frequently cited in internal research and strategy decks, according to former employees and internal documents, and helped inform Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp for $22 billion in 2014. Facebook shut down the Onavo app earlier this year amid growing scrutiny of its data-collection practices.
Snap was founded in 2011, when Facebook was already the dominant player in social media. It quickly became a social-media hit after its Snapchat messaging app took off among young people. At one point, Facebook—through Onavo—was able to see Snap data as specific as the number of messages a user sent or how much time those users spent in specific Snapchat features, the former employees said. Facebook couldn’t see the content of the messages or images. The visibility into Snap usage lessened considerably after Snap encrypted its app traffic.
A Facebook spokeswoman said the app was similar to other industry market research tools.
Another focus of the investigation is whether Facebook Chairman and CEO
Mark Zuckerberg
acquired or tried to buy startups that he feared would later become competitors, according to people familiar with the investigation. In some cases, after Facebook’s overtures were spurned, the social-media giant copied features of the former targets.
For example, when Mr. Zuckerberg met with the founders of startups, including Evan Spiegel, chief executive of Snap, and
Dennis Crowley,
co-founder of Foursquare Inc., he presented them with two scenarios: either they accept the price he was offering for their companies, or face Facebook’s efforts to copy their products and make operating more difficult, according to people familiar with the matter. In both cases, after the companies rejected the overtures, Facebook soon after released features that mimicked the products from Snap and Foursquare.
Foursquare in 2014 started shifting from a consumer-focused app to providing location-based tech and data to businesses.
Facebook rolled out a string of products similar to Snap’s most popular features, including stories, filters and stickers. Snap’s growth waned at times, in part due to competition from Instagram, and it now has around 200 million daily users, less than 15% of Facebook’s total. After a rocky patch in 2018 due in part to a botched redesign, Snap is once again adding users and its stock has rebounded. Snap has also managed to attract more young users between the ages of 13 and 34 in the U.S. than Facebook and Instagram.
The Facebook spokeswoman said consumers gain more choices when two companies offer similar services and features.
“This is competition at work and one of the longtime hallmarks of the tech sector,” she said. “Businesses continually build and iterate on concepts and ideas in the marketplace—making them better or taking them in different directions. This is good for consumers.”
Externally, Snap has often addressed the tension with humor. After Snap launched filters tied to specific regions, in 2014, it created one that only appeared for Snap users at Facebook’s headquarters. The filter showed an image of Snap’s ghost logo laughing, pointing at the user, presumably an employee of Facebook.
A major point of frustration for Snap executives was the belief that Facebook was preventing Snap’s most popular content from trending on Instagram, which they considered to be an abuse of monopoly power. When users uploaded to Instagram videos and images of Snap’s most popular lenses—such as people vomiting rainbows and wearing bunny ears—the users also often included the hashtag #snapchat and the name of the lens.
In the Project Voldemort documents, according to people familiar with them, Snap executives noted their belief that Instagram was blocking searches of these Snap-related terms and not including this content on Instagram’s “explore” page where users discover new content.
Instagram representatives also started pressuring influencers to stop adding Snapchat links to their Instagram profile pages, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Instagram representatives suggested to some influencers that they could potentially void the users’ “verified” status, which signifies that an account is legitimate and popular, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Losing the blue check mark that comes with being verified can undermine an influencer’s ability to secure paid deals, which can range from hundreds to millions of dollars depending on the influencer’s popularity.
In 2016, Instagram added a rule that prevented users from adding links to their Snapchat profiles.
Facebook’s tactics have long engendered concern across Silicon Valley, said Paul Keable, chief strategy officer at Ashley Madison. The dating site, which caters to married people seeking affairs, is blocked from advertising on Facebook, which now operates its own dating feature.
“Facebook has created a scenario where they get to pick and choose who wins based on their personal whims,” Mr. Keable said. “All while running their own competitive products.”
Mr. Keable said he hopes he can work with Facebook to improve its relationship with the dating industry. He said he hasn’t been in touch with regulators but will provide information if asked.
—Emily Glazer and John D. McKinnon contributed to this article.
Millions of people have bought one of the three iPhone 11 phones that Apple launched less than two weeks ago, and the handsets are available in stores already — Apple doesn’t announce sales numbers for the iPhone, but several models sold out online soon after preorders started. But what’s more important is that, now that the phone has shipped to buyers, we have the first “official” teardown of the handset, which answers several questions. In the days leading up to the phone’s launch, we saw battery capacities get leaked, which is a detail Apple never shares. The iPhone maker also has the habit of not telling the public how much RAM its phones have, with a wild claim a few days ago saying the handset has 2GB of extra memory, dedicated to the camera system. Finally, we’ve heard conflicting reports of the bilateral wireless charging feature the phone was supposed to have. iFixit’s teardown helps answer all of those questions and reveals other iPhone 11 secrets.
iFixit is not affiliated with Apple; therefore, this isn’t the kind of teardown that Apple condones. However, the company became an authority when it comes to teardowns of new products, that’s why this iPhone 11 Pro Max teardown is as official as they get.
Bigger batteries?
The iPhone 11 Pro Max has a 3,969 mAh battery, the teardown confirms, which is precisely what documentation filed with a Chinese regulator revealed last week. The teardown reveals the Pro Max has an L-shaped battery, just like the iPhone XS before, but a first for the Max model.
When it comes to size, the battery is 0.7mm thicker, 4.2 cubic centimeters larger and 13g heavier than the iPhone XS’s battery. The teardown also explains that the iPhone 11’s slightly increased thickness (0.4mm) and the extra space 3D Touch screen layer freed (0.25mm), is what allowed Apple to improve battery life drastically.
The teardown revealed a few peculiarities about the battery and wireless charging coil, that might support to the notion that Apple dropped reversed wireless charging, the kind of feature that lets you recharge your Apple Watch or AirPods with the iPhone, at the last minute.
For starters, the battery has two distinct connectors compared to previous models (image above). Here’s what iFixit observed:
The phone will function without the charging-port-end connected (reconnecting it threw a temporary temperature warning for us).
While that lower cable is disconnected, the phone will charge via the Lightning port, but not the wireless charging coil.
When we disconnected the “main” cable that goes directly to the logic board, the phone shut down as normal and would not boot, even with the other cable connected.
Also, there seems to be a mysterious board below the battery, “as an interconnect for the battery, wireless charging coil, and Taptic Engine.” The board (image below) could be related to bilateral wireless charging, but it could also be associated with Apple’s new hardware that monitors battery performance.
In other words, it’s not definitively clear whether the iPhone 11 phones have components for bilateral wireless charging.
As amazing it would have been for Apple to have added 2GB of RAM to the Pro phones for the camera, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Or, if that extra RAM exists anywhere inside the phone, iFixit didn’t find it yet. What we can tell you is that the handset does have 4GB of RAM for the system and apps, just as benchmark said last week.
Several layers of graphene conduct heat from the board directly to the rear glass case.
Three additional thermal pads line the back case, atop a “clean cut through the steel case lining,” and this might be the ultra-wideband antenna hardware.
The phone’s repairability score is 6 out of 10, according to iFixit’s grading system.
The PlayStation 5 will have an optional setting to slash the amount of power the next-generation console consumes in standby mode.In a blog post, Sony announced it's working with the United Nations as part of its "Playing For The Planet" initiative, which aims to mobilise gamers to take an active role in combating climate change. Part of this effort involves partnered companies like PlayStation examining ways they can reduce their carbon footprint, and Sony is committing to working sustainable features into its new console's design.
"The next generation PlayStation console will include the possibility to suspend gameplay with much lower power consumption than PS4 (which we estimate can be achieved at around 0.5 W),” writes Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. “If just one million users enable this feature, it would save equivalent to the average electricity use of 1,000 US homes.”
Environmental safeguarding is ace, and in the video above we list more PS5 features we really want.
Compared to other forms of technology, gaming is notorious for its carbon footprint. A recent report found that American gamers emit around 12 million tons of carbon dioxide annually - the equivalent of 2.3 million cars. PlayStation has been working to reduce the environmental impact of the PS4 for the past few years by introducing energy saving modes and tweaking its hardware.
"For context, we estimate the carbon emissions we have avoided to date already amount to almost 16 million metric tons, increasing to 29 million metric tons over the course of the next 10 years (which equals the CO2 emissions for the nation of Denmark in 2017)," Ryan claimed.
The PS4 has sold over 100 million units worldwide, so if the next member of Sony's console family sells anywhere near as much, power saving features could have a huge impact - but only if players care about it. Since the setting is optional, those who purchase a PS5 will have to activate it themselves.
IGN's Top 25 PlayStation 4 Games
"The gaming community is diverse and growing at a fast pace," Ryan wrote. "There is an undeniable opportunity for leaders in the games industry to take a stand and support the UN Environment team by communicating the importance of preserving natural resources for generations to come."
iFixit’s annual iPhone teardown is always a great opportunity to take a peek inside Apple’s latest hardware, but this year’s edition has raised some intriguing questions. The big discovery is a second battery connector within the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which could be an indicator that the hardware was supposed to support bidirectional wireless charging at one point. iFixit also confirmed the size of the phone’s large L-shaped battery, the manufacturer of the phone’s modem, and found a hint of the amount of RAM inside Apple’s most powerful iPhone.
The second battery connector is the most interesting discovery of the teardown. Multiplerumors prior to this year’s iPhone 11 announcement suggested that Apple was preparing to equip the phones with bilateral charging to “reverse charge” AirPods, for example, when placed on the back of the new iPhones. These reports turned out to be false. However, after the phones came out, there was an unconfirmed rumor that they had the hardware to support bidirectional charging, but that the feature had been disabled in software. iFixit’s discovery isn’t conclusive: it notes that the second connector could have something to do with the iPhone 11 Pro’s battery monitoring and managing hardware.
Otherwise, iFixit’s report re-confirms much of what we saw in a previous iPhone 11 Pro Max teardown, which revealed that the phone has a 25 percent bigger battery than last year’s iPhone XS Max. It’s a 3969mAh model that runs at 3.79V for a total of 15.04Wh of power, a 2.96Wh improvement over last year. This extra capacity has meant that the battery, and hence phone, are a little thicker, by 0.7mm and 0.4mm respectively. In theory, the phone’s lack of 3D Touch mitigates the phone’s thickness increase a little, but in reality iFixit discovered that this only seems to have trimmed 0.25mm off the thickness of the display.
Elsewhere there are a couple of more minor discoveries:
The phones use Intel modems, even after Apple settled its longstanding dispute with Qualcomm earlier this year. However, that’s not exactly surprising given the two companies only dropped their lawsuits back in April.
iFixit’s teardown suggests that the iPhone 11 Pro Max has 4GB of RAM. However, it says this finding is “very non-definitive.” There was no sign of the extra 2GB of RAM that is rumored to be dedicated to the phone’s cameras.
As part of the teardown, iFixit discovered some hardware that could relate to Apple’s new ultra wideband antenna, which will offer better AirDrop performance on the phones and could be used to locate items tagged with Apple’s rumored tracking service.
Despite iFixit’s note that the phone has “some relatively repair-friendly features” surrounding its battery, it still awarded the phone a 6 out of 10 score for repairability overall, exactly the same as last year’s devices.
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