Friends in India, stay strong.
Friends outside India, if you'd like to help the COVID-19 effort from afar, here are some suggestions (I went with UNICEF):
As I always say when Marques reaches another level of success: couldn't have happened to a nicer or more deserving guy. Congratulations
@MKBHD
! Well-earned!
Ok so 1: I love you people, and I owe everything to you
2: I’m always honored to represent in any way what I believe to be one of the most vibrant, increasingly diverse communities on the internet
3: I’m not 27 yet, gimme my last 2 days as a 26-year-old, Forbes! 😅
I took the
#Pixel7Pro
to Iceland hoping to capture the Northern Lights – and the sky gods did not disappoint! 🙌
Google Pixel 7 Pro, assorted Night Mode & Astrophotography, handheld & tripod, no edits. (Check out the Big Dipper in number 4!)
Anyway. Happy to cover the Apple stuff as usual ... but I genuinely can't remember the last time an iPhone - not its camera - truly wowed me.
These days it's companies like Samsung (and to a lesser extent, Motorola) that really make me feel like I'm living in the future.
Samsung Display showing off WILD foldable concepts at
#CES2022
Many "concepts" rarely see the light of day. But Samsung is one of the few companies making folding phones you can actually buy.
Hoping that Westworld-esque tri-fold makes it to market in '22. What's your favorite?
MANUFACTURER: Want to review our thing?
ME: yes
MANUFACTURER: Okay: you need to include these key points in your video, which should be between x and y mins long, and you need to send it to us for pre-approval, and you need to link to our company page.
ME: ... oh then no.
My Pixel 6 Review will arrive a bit later than others.
For the past decade, "hitting the embargo" has driven my content timing. But sometimes - especially on a month like this, with the standards I try to meet- I simply can't deliver a review to be proud of in that timeframe.
LG Mobile leaves behind a legacy of innovation and a stubborn contrarian streak – often at the expense of the mainstream appeal that might have made it a larger success.
I can relate to that, so I'm preparing a retrospective video. Meantime, share your LG memories with me!
Finally: the one I think we all hope actually makes it to market someday. TCL's "Scrollable" is about the size of a Galaxy Note 10+ when closed ... but a little pull on the edge causes motors to deploy the screen into tablet mode, unfurling like a pirate's treasure map.
Peeled off my S23 Ultra's
@dbrand
skin for the first time in a year and 😬
Hey, at least all that leather kept me blissfully ignorant! Would never have known if I didn't remove the skin.
I'm not switching to the iPhone, but the 15 Pro Max is the softest landing for an Android user that Apple has ever offered.
🔌 Your accessories still work
🕹️ AAA games
📷 A (somewhat) competitive zoom
📺 StandBy
👧 The "Girlfriend Button"
Watch the vid before you weigh in
1/2
Current status:
bummed out about falling behind on content;
stressed out about apartment maintenance issues;
strung out with holiday planning.
... but this still from my Surface Pro X Review is making it a little better.
Video drops tomorrow morning.
They're finally letting this Android foldable nerd come to Cupertino! Excited to report from Apple's HQ for the first time, next month.
Thanks to all of you who've been with me on this journey since 2012! A special moment for me, and happy to share it with you.
Samsung chose iPhone Review Day to deliver my special-edition satin gray Z Flip 3. My Apple stuff doesn't arrive til Friday, so no complaints here. 😄
Welcome to the fold, MrTricorder!
The new iPhone SE is official!
📲Looks like an iPhone 8
🤞TouchID v2 (no FaceID)
📸Single camera: 12MP
🧠A13 Bionic processor
⚡️Wireless charging
🌧Water/dust resistance
🗓April 17 preorder
🚛April 24 shipping
💰$399
In a sea of $700+ phones, this couldn't be better timed.
People aren't thinking long-term about this.
USB means no more hoping the bartender or Uber driver has the same phone as you when you need to bum a charge. It means no more "we're out of that" at the airport tech store if you forget your cable. Now, any charger is the right one.
I want you all to remember back to a few months ago when I said consumers won't be happy with the port swap
Look this is a needed swap but people aren't going to be happy. It'll hold people back a bit, not forever but a bit
But buying a bunch of new cables is a pain in the ass
20 years ago, most US phones were flip phones.
10 years ago those flips were replaced by smartphones.
2 years ago, Motorola's RAZR reboot blended the worlds.
And today, Samsung brings the combo below $1000 for the first time.
Galaxy Z Flip 3 Review:
When the Zipcar you booked for Christmas won't start (and there are no other cars available), but
@DurvidImel
logs you in from 3,000 miles away so you can borrow his Tesla.
Every toast I've made this weekend: "DAVID SAVED CHRISTMAS!"🎄
Thanks again David, & Merry Xmas all!
You know that feeling when, once a year, you log on to Facebook to find a hundred "happy birthday" wishes?
K, draw that out to 4 years, and exchange "a hundred" with (what feels like) a thousand.
Thank you so much for making this milestone possible, and celebrating it with me!
You can always rely on TCL to bring out some crazy concept phones. I went hands-on with three of them this week.
First up: a phone/tablet I like to call "the Westworld." Three panels, two hinges ... and one giant screen.
There's a lot about Apple, as a brand, that's hard to take. The self-importance, the affected effortlessness, the $$$. I get it.
But don't become one of those who builds an identity around hating Apple and hijacks conversations to say so. It's stupid tribalism. And it's sad.
Huh. Girlfriend and I just had exactly the same Samsung push notification: her Note 10+ and my Galaxy Z Flip each alerted with a Find My Mobile notification. When tapped, it disappeared. Different Samsung accounts on each phone.
Theories?
One of the truly bizarre side effects of my job is that I occasionally get to re-create a little corner of 2006 in my living room, in the form of vintage tech. Welcome back, mid-oughts!
My Vision Pro thread:
The work that went into this is obvious. It will surely be the best in its class. And 🍎 is good at spearheading new categories.
But the use cases are giving BIG "been there/done that." The lifestyle demos have been either underwhelming or dystopian.
What's important about the Pixel Fold?
🙅♂️
❌Bezels
❌Screen crease
❌(nope, not even) The price
👍
✅Android, built for foldables – by Google itself!
The Pixel Fold will make every foldable better, even if Google doesn't sell a single one. Here's how:
Time was, an "N95" was a fun phone you bought, not a mask you competed with medical workers to stockpile.
Nokia N95 owners of yesteryear: share your tales with me. They may appear on the next When Phones Were Fun!
I love a phone that's ambitious enough to make me want to rise to its level.
The Sony Xperia 1iii is one such phone – but where its cameras are concerned, don't conflate complexity with competence.
Review tomorrow.
I always knew that, if I ever made a product of my own, I'd want it to be a little ... funky.
The day has come!
Introducing Clicks for iPhone, brought to you by
@crackberrykevin
, me, and a deep bench of smart folks!
Video premiering now on YouTube:
#SurfaceDuo
first thoughts:
💻Doesn't feel like a phone. Feels like a pocket computer.
📂The hinge is *perfect.* Open to any angle you want; it stops at that point.
🤔Glass? I'd have preferred magnesium.
📚This is gonna be the perfect Kindle.
🎁Unboxing is live on Insta!
Qs?
Remember, kids: if a reviewer has an opinion that differs from yours, they're definitely getting paid/not getting paid/somehow corrupt/part of a vast global conspiracy to discredit your personal taste in phones (if not your entire country and way of life). Resist!
Me in a nutshell:
:emails photo to self:
(2 seconds later)
:phone buzzes with email notification:
Me: "oh, wonder who that could be!"
(2 seconds later)
"oh that's right"
Found out today that my Google PR contact has fallen to the
#googlelayoffs
.
She was excellent at her job, one of the most efficient & responsive PRs I've met. Her dismissal reinforces my belief that these layoffs are arbitrary and stupid.
My sympathies to all those affected.
I freakin' love that all 4 of these are photos of the same device. 🤯
I've been waiting since May '19 to use the world's first folding-screen PC out in the real world. Well 18 months (and $3000) later, Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Fold is finally here!
Video soon! Meantime: Questions?
The stated goal of
@nothing
is to make tech fun again - and its new "CMF" brand is the most (non-folding) fun I've seen in phones in a while.
The
@cmfbynothing
Phone 1 is the latest attempt to bring modularity to mobile, with removable backplates and an attachment point that can
Hard as it may be to believe, my
@Apple
MacBook Pro 2018 has sprouted a new problem: yellow LCD discoloration creeping up the side from the lower left corner. Anyone else have this?
No joke, this is the worst computer I've used since my entry-tier Toshiba Satellite in 2001.
Have dusted off SO many old blog posts, videos and podcasts preparing for the new episode of
#whenphoneswerefun
. Anyone have any buried 2013-era memories surrounding either of these
#PureView
monsters?
I'll always love the purple shirt, but after 5 years it was time to ditch the old headshot. Thanks to
@deviedoodle
of for my new one, which captures just the kind of "about the author" energy I wanted.
(Now buy my book/get to class/get off my lawn, etc.)
Shifting gears a bit, for those who could use a distraction. 🎉
Any fellow old folks longing for a simpler time (at least in mobile tech)? Send me your favorite recollections of this absolute beast from 2007, as I prep the next episode of
#whenphoneswerefun
!
#nokia
#n95
10x zoom on a smartphone (as I've said since Huawei pioneered the modern implementation a couple years ago) is incredibly handy. So easy to crop out an undesirable foreground without sacrificing resolution.
(Zoom: 1 and 3. Wide: 2 and 4. Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, no edits.)
Last sick update: finally made it back to the wonderful world on the other side of the discharge desk. Recovery (from pneumonia AND sepsis, I’ve learned) will still take me a while but at least now I’ll get to do it at home. Thanks for all your kind words over the past week!
Samsung's Unpacked virtual event for the Galaxy Z Fold 2 is refreshingly restrained and to-the-point. Pretty clear the company thinks the device can mostly speak for itself.
There it is: the last major webOS UI feature to make its way to a modern smartphone. Apple moves notifications (on the lock screen at least) to the bottom of the screen. You know ... where you can reach 'em.
Android, pls do this
Those camera and processor improvements are clutch, for real. But as we're coming down from the
#AppleEvent
high, here's what we're not getting in the new iPhones:
📵No USB-C
📵No reverse wireless charging for Airpods
📵No design modernization (same huge notch)
Do you care?
Yesterday: officially two weeks since my second vaccine shot 💉
Today: first time working inside at a coffee shop since March 2020 ☕
It's great to be back. 🎉
Gentle reminder that the Scan feature on some smartphone cameras (Samsung, in this example) is ridiculously useful and criminally underrated.
Photo 1 is the actual angle I shot from; Photo 2 is the resulting scan. 🤯
Protip: block anyone in the replies who's already bleating about the "bezzzzzzzzzzellllllssssssssss" 😄
Important thing is, they're symmetrical top/bottom and L/R. And the aspect ratio is the more important thing, in any case.
Can't wait to see this thing in person.
Took a while, but the cover screen feature update finally hit Oppo Find N2 Flip review samples. 🥳
Welcome to the party, Spotify, WhatsApp and dictated text replies!
Beautiful day to test some phone cameras.
#Pixel4
squad, let me hear from you: based on what you've seen thus far, will you be picking one up come launch day, or giving it a pass?
(Obligatory "full review coming soon.")
Had to call Apple because my MagSafe order never showed up (despite being marked delivered).
What a breath of fresh air. Lord knows I have my beefs with Apple, but their customer service is outstanding. Five minutes after getting on the phone I had a free replacement inbound. 👏
Wish I had more to say about Samsung's Galaxy S21 FE. I mean, the specs are solid:
💽 Same SoC as S21
💾 6GB/8GB
📺 6.4" FHD+ 120Hz
📸 12/12/8MP
🔋 4500mAh, 25W (15W wireless)
🤖 Android 12
🌊 IP68
... but for $699, I think I'd rather save a c-note & get the Pixel 6. Thoughts?
I'm about to post a video about a laptop.
Please watch it if you need a distraction or, improbably, you actually need my guidance on whether to buy a Surface Book 3. But there's no escaping that in this moment, in the USA, it doesn't really matter.
This does. Watch it instead:
1) This is a big deal. If Samsung wants to preserve consumer faith in the Z Flip, it needs to explain the nature of the UTG screen.
2) But I'd still buy one. A flip phone protects the screen while closed. My Fold is still doing great after 45 days.
3)
@ZacksJerryRig
owns.
Getting LOTS of questions about eSIM, so here's what it looks like to move a phone number from the iPhone 14 Pro Max (R) to the 14 Pro (L). I compressed the time for this video: the process took a little less than three minutes.