Nintendo has informed consumers in its home market of Japan that production and shipments of the Switch console and accessories will experience delays due to the effect of the new coronavirus. The Animal Crossing-themed variant of the Switch, which was only announced last week, has had its preorder availability pushed back from Saturday to an unspecified date. The company apologizes for the trouble and says it’ll keep on monitoring the situation.
It’s not clear whether the delays will affect shipments elsewhere. Nintendo specifically references hardware produced in China and sold in Japan, but last year the company started diversifying its supply chain and building some units in Southeast Asia specifically for the US market to avoid US tariffs. Most Switch consoles are said to be built by Foxconn, which is keeping its Chinese factories shuttered for at least another week.
Nintendo also warns that Ring Fit Adventure will experience further delays in Japan. The popular new fitness RPG, which makes use of a pilates ring-style controller, had already been selling well domestically to the point that Nintendo’s president Shuntaro Furukawa apologized to investors for the lack of supply to East Asia last week.
A woman looks at the NETFLIX app on her smartphone on January 03, 2020 in Berlin, Germany
Thomas Trutschel via Getty Images
Way back in 2015 Netflix announced it would team up with Amazon, Google, Intel and other companies to develop a royalty-free codecs that worked well on modern devices. Two years ago they revealed the fruits of their labor as the AV1 codec, that promised not only freedom from licensing payments they wanted to avoid, but also a saving of up to 30 percent on the amount of data used to stream 4K HDR video. Now, Netflix has started using AV1 on a "select" set of titles, and only for users on Android who've enabled the "Save Data" feature.
One reason for limiting the use of AV1 for playback is likely a lack of hardware support, which could mean people will use more battery life to watch the same videos. You can already enable AV1 instead of VP9 on YouTube videos, under the settings for Playback and Performance, but it warns users that using it for anything above 480p will require a powerful computer.
While Netflix says it still plans to roll out AV1 across all platforms eventually, starting with data savings on mobile follows its 2016 switch to VP9, and the shot-based encoding technique that improved things so much it re-encoded its entire library in 2018. According to Netflix, AV1 shows "20% improved compression efficiency over our VP9 encodes." There's no word on which shows you should watch to find the new codec in use, but one way or another it's a huge leap beyond the days of VC1, Silverlight and 720 x 480 res videos that maxed out at 3,400 kbps.
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YouTube channel PBKreviews has given Motorola's modern Razr the teardown treatment a day before it becomes available. And based on how many screws and cables the host had to go through to get to the flexible display, you'll probably want to go straight to a repair center instead of trying to fix the device yourself in case anything happens to it.
In fact, you'll have to heat the back of the phone to loosen up the glue and pry it open with plastic implements before you can get to any of the device's internal components. Then, once inside, you'll have to contend with dozens of screws and cables. The display, which needs more TLC than a non-foldable screen, is the very last thing you'll remove from the whole assembly. PBKreviews says the teardown was far from easy and "would probably even go as far as saying [that the phone isn't] repairable at all by most people."
Motorola released a "Caring for Razr" video in January, telling users that "bumps and lumps are normal" on the phone's display. It suggests keeping it dry, not using screen protectors and closing the phone before tossing it in your pocket or purse to prevent accidents from happening. The good news is that it'll only cost $299 to have the Razr's screen repaired "for circumstances that fall outside of the warranty." Sure, that's no pocket change, but as Phone Arena notes, that's only $20 more than a new Galaxy Note display. It's also just a tiny fraction of the $1,500 you'd have to pay for a new Razr.
Verizon owns Engadget's parent company, Verizon Media. Rest assured, Verizon has no control over our coverage. Engadget remains editorially independent.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
YouTube channel PBKreviews has given Motorola's modern Razr the teardown treatment a day before it becomes available. And based on how many screws and cables the host had to go through to get to the flexible display, you'll probably want to go straight to a repair center instead of trying to fix the device yourself in case anything happens to it.
In fact, you'll have to heat the back of the phone to loosen up the glue and pry it open with plastic implements before you can get to any of the device's internal components. Then, once inside, you'll have to contend with dozens of screws and cables. The display, which needs more TLC than a non-foldable screen, is the very last thing you'll remove from the whole assembly. PBKreviews says the teardown was far from easy and "would probably even go as far as saying [that the phone isn't] repairable at all by most people."
Motorola released a "Caring for Razr" video in January, telling users that "bumps and lumps are normal" on the phone's display. It suggests keeping it dry, not using screen protectors and closing the phone before tossing it in your pocket or purse to prevent accidents from happening. The good news is that it'll only cost $299 to have the Razr's screen repaired "for circumstances that fall outside of the warranty." Sure, that's no pocket change, but as Phone Arena notes, that's only $20 more than a new Galaxy Note display. It's also just a tiny fraction of the $1,500 you'd have to pay for a new Razr.
Verizon owns Engadget's parent company, Verizon Media. Rest assured, Verizon has no control over our coverage. Engadget remains editorially independent.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
YouTube channel PBKreviews has given Motorola's modern Razr the teardown treatment a day before it becomes available. And based on how many screws and cables the host had to go through to get to the flexible display, you'll probably want to go straight to a repair center instead of trying to fix the device yourself in case anything happens to it.
In fact, you'll have to heat the back of the phone to loosen up the glue and pry it open with plastic implements before you can get to any of the device's internal components. Then, once inside, you'll have to contend with dozens of screws and cables. The display, which needs more TLC than a non-foldable screen, is the very last thing you'll remove from the whole assembly. PBKreviews says the teardown was far from easy and "would probably even go as far as saying [that the phone isn't] repairable at all by most people."
Motorola released a "Caring for Razr" video in January, telling users that "bumps and lumps are normal" on the phone's display. It suggests keeping it dry, not using screen protectors and closing the phone before tossing it in your pocket or purse to prevent accidents from happening. The good news is that it'll only cost $299 to have the Razr's screen repaired "for circumstances that fall outside of the warranty." Sure, that's no pocket change, but as Phone Arena notes, that's only $20 more than a new Galaxy Note display. It's also just a tiny fraction of the $1,500 you'd have to pay for a new Razr.
Verizon owns Engadget's parent company, Verizon Media. Rest assured, Verizon has no control over our coverage. Engadget remains editorially independent.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Samsung has released an update to its Device Care app that removes the fishy Qihoo 360 storage cleaning integration. The application has been under fire for sending usage data to the Chinese company behind the service. Samsung said it only shared generic, non-personalized data with Qihoo, but it looks like the manufacturer has still decided to forgo the cooperation completely following the backlash.
To get rid of the Qihoo 360 integration in Device Care right now, head to the Play Store and see if the Device Care update is available to you. If not, you can also sideload the latest release from APK Mirror (Android 10 version, Android 9 version). You'll continue receiving automatic updates later even when you choose the latter route.
Once you have the latest version and head to Settings -> Storage on your phone, you'll see that the big blue button that used to let you automatically clean your storage is gone. It makes way for a longer explanation on how you can optimize your file system manually: "Free up storage space by deleting unused data such as rarely used apps and unnecessary documents." Other than that, the new Device Care release includes Android 10 support and UI improvements to the battery usage page.
Left: Older versions. Right: Version 11.0.02.42 without the Qihoo 360 integration.
Samsung has always relied on external partners for some system features, among them storage space cleaning apps. This led to some issues: The company initially partnered up with Cheetah Mobile's Clean Master, an app now infamous for ad fraud. Samsung then replaced that product with the one from Qihoo 360, and we know how that turned out.
The effectiveness of cleaning apps like those from Qihoo 360 and Cheetah Mobile is debatable at best, anyway. Many of them are just clever schemes to grab your data and display ads. Instead, try clearing individual apps' caches yourself. By choosing big offenders like Spotify or Chrome, you'll quickly end up freeing almost as much storage as a cleaning app would. If you absolutely rely on automatically saving space on your phone, check out Files by Google or SD Maid. Both give you more granular control, don't display ads, and show you what exactly they're doing.
Depending on which Android version your phone is on, you need to choose between these two Device Care versions on APK Mirror:
Price: Free
Android 9 APK
We've added the new Android 9 version of Device Care without Qihoo 360 to this post.
There has also been some confusion surrounding the version numbers, so here's the deal: Samsung publishes two altogether different APKs for Android 10 and 9. Version 11 releases are meant for Android 10, while version 10 is the one to get when you're on Android 9. Makes perfect sense, right?
The first couple of months of each year, Microsoft typically reorgs something. This time around, it's the Experiences and Devices unit under Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha where a lot of the changes are happening.
The biggest and boldest move in the February 5 reorg being announced internally today involves the Windows Experience (client) and the hardware teams. Microsoft is going to roll up these two businesses into a single team, known as Windows + Devices -- reporting to Chief Product Officer Panos Panay, I've confirmed with a person familiar with the changes who asked not to be named. The move takes effect on February 25.
Corporate Vice President Joe Belfiore, who currently heads the Windows Experience business under Jha, is going to move over to the Office side of the house. Belfiore and Ales Holecek will be leading the Office Experience Group (OXO) team as a product/engineering team. Belfiore will continue to lead EPIC (Essential Products Inclusive Community), which includes the mobile apps on Android and iOS and Microsoft News.
Today's changes do not affect Microsoft's COSINE (Core OS and Intelligent Edge) team, which will continue to be part of the Azure Engineering organization under Executive Vice President Jason Zander. Nor do they change the strategic priorities of Jha's Experiences and Devices unit.
For the past few years, Microsoft has been designing Windows, Office and Surface together, making sure that new Surface products would light up features in the operating system and Office apps and services. So, in some ways, Panay's new role is just a formalization of that operating procedure. It's also likely a way to give Windows a little more visibility internally and externally. (Just to be clear, Panay is not joining the Microsoft Senior Leadership team as part of this; his boss Jha is on the SLT.)
But I'm curious to what extent Microsoft's OEM partners will be uneasy about Windows client and Surface being a single unit -- given that many of these OEMs were none too happy when Microsoft originally got into the PC business itself back in 2012. Microsoft officials continue to say that the decision to be a PC maker was about helping carve out new markets for Windows. But Surface has become a robust business for Microsoft in its own right, currently bringing in roughly $4 billion a year.
Update: Here's an excerpt from Panay's internal email announcing his new role (which I've verified is genuine):
"Personally I'm very excited to lead the Windows Client for Microsoft, which will help us streamline our decision-making processes, be clear on our priorities, and deliver the best end user experiences from silicon through operating systems across all Microsoft apps and service connected devices (OEMs and Surface). We believe this will make the Windows Client experience better for the entire PC ecosystem. Designing hardware and software together will enable us to do a better job on our long term Windows bets (dual screen, silicon diversity, connectivity, app platform, etc.) and having a single point of Windows Client Experience leadership driving consistent priorities and resourcing across all of Windows client will help all of us accelerate innovation and improve execution. This is such an amazing time and opportunity to bring more energy to Windows and our customers using Windows. It won't be easy, but extending our growth will be key for our company strategy."
A couple of interesting backstory tidbits about these reorg moves. Late last year, there were rumors that Panay might be on the hunt for a new role, either inside or outside Microsoft. I'd heard from one source of mine that he was considering a leave of absence or might be considering joining Apple. But I couldn't confirm this to the extent that I felt comfortable reporting it.
Also: Belfiore is not going to assume his new OXO role until this fall. In mid-March, he and his family will be doing another "Semester at Sea" educational experience, so he will be on leave from Microsoft from then until the end of summer. Eran Megiddo, Corporate Vice President of Windows Product & Education -- who was charged with establishing product direction and strategy for Windows client since May 2019 -- is going to be focusing on Modern Life Experiences (MLX) and Education, going forward.
There are a number of additional changes happening in Jha's organization that are being announced today. Microsoft veteran and Corporate Vice President Brian Macdonald, who currently runs the Microsoft Teams business, is retiring from the industry, but will consult part-time with Jha and has team. Corporate Vice President Jeff Teper is going to lead Teams along with OneDrive and SharePoint in his stead. And Kirk Koenigsbauer, who currently is Corporate Vice President of Microsoft 365, is going to become Jha's Chief Operating Officer.
