When Samsung executive Justin Denison showed off the company’s concept foldable phone back in November, it was almost anticlimactic. The lights dimmed. Denison held the device with his right hand, and with his left, unfolded it for a short moment before folding it back up and putting it away. It was a brief and frustrating …
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February, 2019
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23 February
After Huawei and OnePlus’s success in the US, Oppo wants in
Another Chinese phone maker wants to take a crack at the US market. But this one already has a foot in the door in a roundabout way. Oppo, one of the biggest smartphone players in China, intends to enter the US market, Alen Wu, head of the company’s overseas business, said in an interview through an interpreter. Wu wasn’t specific …
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23 February
Samsung kills Blu
Samsung announced last week that it was no longer producing new 1080p or 4K Blu-ray players. If you’re looking for the canary in the video-disc coal mine, it doesn’t get any bigger than this. Whether it’s the latest artist or the hip new show on Netflix, streaming media is the norm today, and owning a streaming movie is more convenient …
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23 February
Forget Galaxy Fold: 5G and foldable phones go big at MWC 2019
Samsung and the MWC Barcelona conference have long had an up-and-down relationship. The energy at the trade show has ebbed and flowed depending on whether the world’s largest handset maker decides to hold its big first-half phone launch in Spain. If Samsung shows up, there’s a noticeable perk in interest. On Wednesday, just days before this year’s MWC kicks off, …
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23 February
What’s up with millennials’ vinyl attraction?
I love meeting young audiophiles who play LPs at home. They may stream music on their phone and in their cars, but at home they hunker down with their turntables and LP collections, and listen only to vinyl. For them music isn’t just something they play as background, music is in the foreground. They may have just bought an inexpensive …
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23 February
Facebook aims to quell controversy with connectivity vision at MWC 2019
At the biggest mobile show in the world, it’s easy to be blinded by the vast array of shiny new phones. They have a tendency to hog the spotlight. But look a little closer and you’ll see Facebook at MWC 2019. No, it’s not launching a phone — HTC tried that with the Facebook button-rocking ChaCha back at MWC 2011 …
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23 February
Huawei ‘Mate X’ foldable phone appears to be a thing at MWC 2019
When it comes to the next era of phones, it seems like it’ll be fold times. Samsung unveiled a foldable device this week (called, ahem, the Galaxy Fold). Now rival Huawei looks set to unveil its own bendable buddy. A photo posted to Twitter on Friday appears to show workers at Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona installing a billboard …
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23 February
Metro Exodus on PC gives new Nvidia RTX laptops a workout
The three games in the Metro series, inspired by Russian sci-fi novels of Dmitry Glukhovsky, have long been favorites of the PC gaming crowd because they took advantage of whatever the top-end PC graphics technology of the time was. Both Metro 2033 (2010) and Metro: Last Light (2013) were frequently used to benchmark gaming laptops and desktops (including in the …
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23 February
Galaxy S10 screen deep dive: Dynamic AMOLED, HDR10+, explained
The Samsung Galaxy S10 has an in-screen fingerprint reader, wireless charging of other devices, three cameras and an actual headphone jack. But its biggest feature is something its owners will be staring into every day: the screen. Samsung’s engineers didn’t neglect the new phone’s display. All four varieties — the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10 Plus, Galaxy S10E and Galaxy S10 5G …
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23 February
Galaxy Fold outdoes the iPhone XS. Here’s why you still won’t buy one
Update, Sept. 5: We’ve gone hands-on with Samsung’s revamped Galaxy Fold ahead of its revised release later this month. Original story, last updated in February, follows. Foldable smartphones like Samsung’s Galaxy Fold point to a bright future for the mobile world. But that doesn’t mean you should hop on the bandwagon now. Samsung on Wednesday finally offered a longer, closer look at …
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