Samsung’s next folding phone is likely to be announced this month, and what appears to be the first hands-on video with the device has just appeared online. Leaker Ben Geskin has posted a short clip purportedly showing the phone, said to be called the Galaxy Z Flip, in action on Twitter.
The video doesn’t show a great deal more than what we’ve already seen in leaked photos and renders — we still can’t tell whether the phone is using a new form of “ultra-thin glass” from Samsung, for example. But if you’ve been wondering how the Z Flip might work out in practice, it may well be of interest. The phone does look like it might be quite a bit easier to slip into a pocket or handbag than pretty much anything else out there — except maybe Motorola’s similar upcoming Razr.
European and American Animal Crossing fans can rest easy this time, though: Nintendo’s newest themed Switch console, the 32GB Nintendo Switch Animal Crossing Special Edition, is available both inside and outside of Japan.
▼ The Japanese and European editions feature a download code for Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The console’s style is beautifully in keeping with Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ island getaway aesthetic, pairing a cream-colored charging station emblazoned with pastel Nook characters with JoyCon controllers in a brand new palette: ocean blue and pale sea-glass green.
The Switch itself also has a decorative pattern on its back, paying tribute to the chunky silhouettes and cutesy accessories that make the game so charming.
▼ The back of each JoyCon and their wrist grips match the sandy cream color of the charging dock.
▼ The Switch’s back is a treat to behold!
American fans can purchase the set early on March 13 for US$299.99. This is because the American set comes only with the console and its accessories, not a copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons itself. The game will go on sale on March 20 after a delay from its original announced target release of 2019, which is when Japanese and European versions of the Switch set will hit stores.
The Japanese Switch set is priced at 35,960 yen (US$332) plus tax, and the European version at GB£319.99 (US$423).
Meanwhile, if you already have a perfectly well-functioning Switch, Nintendo will also be selling themed carry-cases and screen protectors for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite to the tune of US$24.99. These will be released alongside the Switch console in their respective countries.
▼ The front and back of the case, patterned with the franchise’s distinctive leaf emblem.
Japanese and international fans alike were impressed by the high level of quality and faithfulness to the series’ aesthetic. The Nintendo of Japan announcement was quickly greeted with delight, disbelief, and demands to have that adorable console in their hands right that second.
“Thanks for making it in the Miku Hatsune colors!” “Soooooo cute! But oh no, I already own a Switch!” “I heard a new Animal Crossing was coming so I bought a Switch… last week. The colors on this one are so cute. Aaaaaargh!!!” “It doesn’t say ‘limited stock’. Take your time and buy it whenever you want!” “The makers must be Tom Nook fans. When will Isabelle get her model?”
▼ Sadly, the Isabelle Switch is just a dream at this juncture.
One thing’s for sure: after the long, long wait, we’re ready to sail away to our vacation island filled with cute critters on March 20, whatever console we use to take the trip!
The tablet market was fairly bleak in 2019, it seems. IDC analysts have estimated that tablet shipments dropped 1.5 percent in 2019 compared to a year earlier, with some brands taking a significant hit. The lone bright spots were Apple and Amazon, whose market shares jumped to 34.6 percent and 9 percent respectively on the back of stronger shipments. Even heavyweights like Samsung, Huawei and Lenovo saw their share and shipments drop.
The researchers didn't explain why the tablet world contracted over the course of the whole year, but its fourth quarter stats offered some clues. Apple was particularly aggressive in updating tablets in 2019, and its lower-cost models were particularly successful -- the 10.2-inch iPad reportedly represented almost 65 percent of Apple's shipments. Amazon has been struggling with a decline in the US, but its budget Fire tablets got a boost through discounts like the Black Friday sale.
For rivals, the problems varied. Samsung fared well with keyboard-friendly tablets like the Galaxy Tab S6, but that wasn't enough to make up for sinking demand for its other slates. Huawei and Lenovo, meanwhile, performed best in their home territory of Asia-Pacific but didn't fare as well elsewhere. The US decision to blacklist Huawei didn't help, either.
The shrinking market leaves at least some these companies in a tough spot, in part because there aren't many clear answers. Samsung may need to either shore up its budget tablet sales or shift even more of its focus to the high end, while the opposite appears to be true for Huawei and Lenovo. And while Apple and Amazon appear to be sitting pretty, they might not have room to be complacent lest their rivals (including Windows tablet and convertible makers) figure out winning strategies.
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Super Bowl 2020 will broadcast tomorrow on Fox Sports, and kickoff will happen at 6:30PM ET. Whether you like American football or not, the occasion presents a chance to save on Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K and Fire TV Cube. And if you want to watch the game in 4K HDR, these are the only devices that will get the high-fidelity stream through the Fox Sports app.
For a quick breakdown of the prices, the Fire TV Stick 4K is $34.99, which is $15 less than its usual cost. Amazon’s Fire TV Cube is considerably more expensive at $99.99, though the hike up in price comes from its extra features, including its ability to work like a smart speaker and to control other devices in your entertainment system with its built-in IR blasters. Links for both are just below.
The unlocked versions of Google’s Pixel 4 and 4 XL are $100 off at Best Buy. This brings the price down to $699.99 and $799.99, respectively. You’ll only be able to save on the 64GB model in the glossy “just black” color option. Best Buy will give you a generous $200 gift card if you decide to buy, however. That’s at least a nice perk for picking the worst Pixel 4 color.
This weekend, readers of The Verge can save on select Ring home security cameras and bundles from Daily Steals. Because Daily Steals sells some refurbished products, it’s worth noting that these are new and come with their original one-year manufacturer warranty.
The market for slightly older phones doesn’t immediately dry up the moment a new one comes out. If anything, it gives people holding out an opportunity to scoop up some deals. Case in point: the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 with a whopping 512GB of onboard storage (and 8GB of RAM) has dropped in price considerably. Its original price was set at $1,249.99, but it’s now at $636.01 on Amazon for the “ocean blue” color. That’s almost 50 percent off.
This phone doesn’t have the fit and finish of the Note 10, and notably, it has bezels. But if you can overlook them, you’ll get a powerful smartphone with a big 4,000mAh battery and a handy S Pen. The Note 9’s high cost was a strike against it when The Verge’s Dan Seifert reviewed it, but now that this isn’t as much of a factor, maybe you should check it out.
As I finished cutting and gluing Envelope together to eventually encase my Pixel 3A inside, I was hopeful. On top of being an average phone user, I've been reviewing and reporting on phones for years. To spend time with phones and be paid for it, then turn around and do the exact opposite, would be new for me, and I was amused to embark on it.
From electronic lock boxes to minimalist phones, the lengths people go -- or rather, the lengths companies hope people go -- to detox from their phones have always intrigued me. On one hand, these intentions come from a good place; we could all stand to spend less time on our phones. But the marketing behind these solutions often carries a whiff of privilege. After all, the customers they want to attract who are "overwhelmed" by their phones are also more likely to afford space away from it; and they'd have the means to buy that fancy lock box or a secondary phone whose main selling point is that it does nothing.
So when Experiments with Google, Google's collection of outside developer projects that it finds interesting, showcased a low-tech project called Envelope that aims to help users decrease phone usage by way of a physical barrier, I was even more curious. It required an app (of course), but also just a pair of scissors, some glue and a paper print-out. It was created by London-based design studio Special Projects, and it challenged users to temporarily seal away their phones in a paper envelope and, you know, live life or whatever.
The concept essentially dumbs down a phone (in this case, it only works with the Pixel 3A), so that it only makes and receives calls and tells time. Outside of that, a 0.1mm sheet of paper would lie between me and messaging, Chrome, YouTube, Maps, a camera, Instagram and everything else we love our phones for.
I planned to last at least 24 hours, with the aim to limit my phone use entirely. But as I later realized, I was regrettably underprepared and had to lower my ambitions quickly.
Desiring to detox
Envelope works by replacing the Pixel 3A's default phone call app with its own, one that is plain and stark, in black and white. After swiping through a start-up guide, the app gave me 10 seconds to slide my Pixel 3A in my fully assembled envelope.
On Monday at 2:30 p.m., I sealed the Pixel 3A. Once inside, I only had access to the standard four-row dialer, a call button, and a button for the clock. When I needed to dial a number, the call button turned green and then switched to red when a call was active. To tell the time, the numbers on the dialer lit up each digit of the time sequentially, while a calm four-note melody played. Watching the time flash through the paper like this unexpectedly became my favorite part of the app.
Because my friends and I mostly chat through Facebook Messenger and hardly anyone calls one another these days, I easily lasted through the workday, checking messages and listening to music on my computer. Back at home, I assumed things would be as effortless. Barring any fantastical event that would warrant me ripping Envelope open to take a photo, I can easily leave my phone in my bedroom for hours while off cooking, eating and watching Netflix in another room. The only temptation I could imagine was checking Twitter before bed, but that would be easy enough to resist for one night.
Later in the evening though, I was invited to dinner last-minute and needed driving directions to a friend's house. In the end, it wasn't any addiction to Twitter or Instagram that did me in, but Google Maps. And because I didn't want to look up and down at hand-written directions at night while driving, I felt comfortable to terminate my experiment then and there at 7:30 p.m.
Because the point of Envelope was to decrease time spent mindlessly scrolling through my phone and not to eliminate phone use altogether, however, I was curious to keep going. At that point, I decided to use a second phone to navigate for directions and keep the Pixel 3A sealed. Don't get me wrong -- I readily admit that had it not been for the second phone, I would have tapped out completely after 5 hours. I do concede that I couldn't last 24 hours with my main driver inside Envelope. But I still wanted to see how long I could continue.
During the next 24 hours, I talked over the phone with my sibling through Envelope (call quality was a bit muffled, but surprisingly my facial oil didn't leave any visible residue on the paper), tried to avoid the rain (turns out, paper doesn't go so well with water) and checked the time about a dozen times (again, it was a delightful thing).
But after three more instances of using my second handset, I ultimately called it quits. Without a bedside clock, I used it to set a wakeup alarm. I used it again at the movies to call up an emailed confirmation code. Finally, when it was late at night, I had to check a transit app and time for the next bus because I wanted to stay inside a nearby store instead of idly waiting outside at a bus stop alone.
It was three strikes and I was out (four if you count navigating to my friend's house). Before starting the experiment, I imagined myself breaking the seal when I was in a peaceful state of mind, fully rested and relaxed, and ready to reenter digital life. But things didn't pan out so idyllically. On Wednesday evening, after 48 hours of sealing away my Pixel 3A and a bit of stress, I cut Envelope open with a paring knife.
In response, phone makers started to include software that gives you information on how much time you spend on your device and limit usage time on certain apps. Apple has Screen Time, Google has Digital Wellbeing and OnePlus has Zen Mode. Third-party apps and launchers like Siempo, Space and Flipd also help with digital detoxing.
The idea of sealing away your phone isn't unique to Envelope either. Yondr, for example, was founded in 2014 and works with schools and concert venues to secure phones away in pouches. "Anti" smartphones with stripped-down features like Punkt, Light and Palm existed for years and cost about $350.
The Punkt MP02, which launched in 2019.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
But what drew me into Envelope is that it's both physical and free. That's because it's not quite a real product -- just a well thought-out notion that was created for the Pixel 3A, submitted to, and then picked up by Google.
"I wish we were able to do it for every single phone!" said Special Projects co-founder Adrian Westaway in an email to CNET. "We chose to make the code open source and free to modify so that the community could hopefully edit and evolve it, and make it more available to other phone users."
When Punkt launched its minimalistic MP01 phone three years ago, its tagline was "Offline as the new luxury," and CEO and founder Petter Neby listed typical Punkt customers as "architects, lawyers, bankers and Silicon Valley people," in a 2017 interview with CNET.
But a lot of us, me included, aren't architects, lawyers or bankers. And the fact that my last instance of using a smartphone was due to a concern of personal safety is worth noting. As mentioned before, peddling the need to go "off the grid" bears a thin veil of indulgence. Many can't afford to simply disconnect because their job, education or welfare depends on consistent access to a phone. As a five-foot woman who gets winded after a flight of stairs, I wasn't going to make myself any more vulnerable than I already was at a lone bus stop for the sake of detoxing.
Though it's limited to the Pixel 3A, I hope others take Westaway's suggestion and expand it to other devices (it's available on GitHub) and have a go at experiencing it for themselves, if only for a few hours.
In the meantime, the desire to be more mindful and less tied to your phone is still an admirable, albeit first-world, ambition. While I consider myself decent at avoiding needless screen time, I was still thrown off by all the small but vital tasks I use my phone for. I was especially surprised how these features had implications to my personal safety too, even with my own privilege as an able-bodied person. Taking time off to live life in reality shouldn't have to be an extravagance afforded only to the few. And while Envelope certainly doesn't solve these issues of parity, it at least requires very little -- just a sheet of paper, a glue stick and a pair of scissors.
Article Updated - Sat 1st Feb, 2020 12:00 GMT: Nintendo's been drip-feeding us information about Animal Crossing: New Horizons for some time now, and the latest information about this upcoming release comes from its Aussie web page, on the official Nintendo Australia website.
While we already know the game will support up to eight players and four residents simultaneously, a rather sizable chunk of writing at the bottom of this page touches on the finer details about the user limits online and per console. Within this big chunk of text is a special note (as highlighted below). As you can see, you'll be limited to one island per console, irrespective of the number of user accounts or copies of the game you have.
*Up to 8 players with registered accounts on a Nintendo Switch console can live on one shared island, and up to four residents of one island can play simultaneously on one console. Please note: only one island can exist per Nintendo Switch console, irrespective of the number of user accounts registered to or copies of the game used on one console. One Nintendo Switch and one copy of the game is required for each unique island. Alternatively, up to eight people can play together on one island via local wireless or online play. Local wireless play requires one console and one copy of the software per player. Internet connection required during online play. To use online services, you must create a Nintendo Account and accept the related agreement. The Nintendo Account Privacy Policy applies. Some online services may not be available in all countries. Online play requires paid online membership.
Of course, as disappointing as this might be to hear, this isn't exactly new. Past entries have also had limitations like this. For example, the GameCube release restricted four local players to a single town. In the Switch release, you won't even be able to bypass this restriction with an SD card swap, either, as save data is stored internally (thanks, Games Radar).
How do you feel about this restriction? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
If you've been anywhere near the internet over the past few hours, we imagine you've already seen the recently-announced Animal Crossing-themed Switch console. Isn't it just the loveliest thing you've ever seen?
Anyway, if you can't quite afford this latest model, or if you want to pretend you have one without having to pay for it, Nintendo seemingly has you covered. On its official Japanese site, Nintendo is offering a replica box without anything inside for 550 yen (approx. £4 / $5). As if we've suddenly been placed inside a weird, alternate, Ikea-based universe, you even have to assemble the thing yourself when it arrives; thankfully Nintendo provides instructions:
At first, you might find yourself wondering what on Earth has possessed Nintendo to do such a thing, but it does actually make quite a lot of sense. For collectors, owning pristine boxes to limited-edition consoles is a must - just check eBay to see how many empty boxes get sold every day - so why not cash in on that? Nintendo actually did the very same thing with Splatoon 2 in 2017.
Let's face it, we'll all buy pretty much anything with a Nintendo logo on it - and Nintendo knows it.
We should note that this box-only option has only been announced for Japan so far. Nintendo says that the replica box will not have any warranty info or barcodes on it, nor will it contain any of the leaflets found inside the real thing. Japanese fans will also be able to buy the console's Joy-Con and Dock separately, which makes considerably more sense.
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