Apple's latest iteration of the Powerbeats earbuds came back in 2016, so they're well overdue an upgrade. Now, it looks like that's on its way. Images of the unannounced Powerbeats 4 have appeared online for the first time, and with Apple's new H1 wireless chip it looks like they're now on par with the Powerbeats Pro.
According to WinFuture, the new earbuds will come with up to 15 hours of battery life and a "Fast Fuel" option, which will give an hour of playback for just five minutes of charging. There's support for Siri, water-repellent housing and a focus on "ergonomic comfort," whereby the cable connecting the two buds lies behind the ear, rather than the front -- a design that is consistent with an FCC listing that appeared last month.
As coronavirus continues to affect businesses around the world it seems unlikely Apple will hold a dedicated press event for the launch, and there's no word yet on price, or when they'll be available, although it looks like they'll come in black, white and red versions. At launch the Powerbeats 3 cost $200, but considering that was four years ago that's no real indicator of pricing for the newer model.
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Images of Apple’s unannounced Powerbeats 4 earbuds have appeared online for the first time, along with new details about their specs. WinFuture reports that the earbuds will have up to 15 hours of battery life this time around, up from the 12 hours you’d get from the Powerbeats 3, released in 2016. Five minutes of charging will get you 60 minutes of playback, according to WinFuture.
Internally, the earbuds will reportedly use Apple’s new H1 wireless chip, similar to the Powerbeats Pro, which should mean support for features like “Hey Siri” and “Announce Messages with Siri.” The earbuds will reportedly be available in black, white, and red. The Powerbeats 3 cost $199.95, but pricing for the Powerbeats 4 headphones remain unknown.
Our first hint of Apple’s new earbuds came back in January, when icons of what appeared to be the Powerbeats 4 appeared in iOS. Then, last month, the earbuds appeared in an FCC listing. This latest leak is consistent with these previous images, which showed that the earbuds’ cable is now attached to the arm that hooks around the top of your ear as you wear them, rather than descending from the front. Although the earbuds themselves are connected to each other with a cable, they connect to your phone wirelessly using Bluetooth.
There’s still no word on when the new headphones might be released. The Powerbeats 3 were first shown off at the iPhone 7’s launch event. There had been rumors that Apple was planning to host an event at some point this month. However, as more and more events get cancelled or postponed over coronavirus concerns, and as Apple itself starts recommending its employees work remotely, it’s increasingly unlikely that any traditional press event will actually take place this month.
More Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Warzone gameplay has been "leaked" in the form of an early access review from YouTuber Chaos, presumably in advance of the mode's shortly impending release date later this week.
The now deleted video showed off several matches of the battle royale game. It also reportedly confirmed that it will be available as a free-to-play standalone mode for those who don't own the base copy of Infinity Ward's first-person shooter. Check out this reddit thread that listed key details from the video.
The leak, alongside a number of new datamined tidbits from Modern Warfare's backend code, also seemed to corroborate previous reports that Warzone will accommodate cross-play, Solos, Duos, and Trios, two different modes, and up to 150 players per match.
Advertisements from Warzone have also started to appear on Twitch, suggesting that Infinity Ward's take on the last-man-standing tournament could be dropping anytime from today onwards.
Previous rumours had stated that the studio is planning to stealth release Warzone without much warning, through the sheer abundance of leaks over the last few months have somewhat undermined that attempt at subterfuge.
In any case, we'd advise freeing up some space on your console of choice, as you may well be downloading Warzone straight onto your hard drive within the next 24 hours.
Wondering if you should pick up the latest Call of Duty? Here's our Modern Warfare review
Either Unihertz is a really fun company to work at, or it decides each new phone concept by pulling random specs out of a hat. Maybe both. How else do you explain the existence of, say, the Titan, its rugged BlackBerry Passport-aping Android phone? Every Unihertz device must have a tiny audience, but I can only assume the people in that audience are overjoyed that the company exists.
That brings me to Unihertz’ latest effort, the Atom XL. As the name suggests, it’s a larger version of the Chinese company’s rugged second phone, 2018’s Atom. But since the Atom was tiny, with a 2.45-inch 432x240 screen, the new Atom XL still ends up being diminutive by modern smartphone standards.
The XL has a 4-inch screen with a resolution of 1136x640. That’s the exact same specs as the much-missed iPhone SE, which makes me wonder if a bunch of unsold iPhones were discovered in a warehouse somewhere. Like the iPhone SE, there are chunky bezels above and below the screen, making space for a fingerprint sensor, capacitive Android navigation buttons, a selfie camera, and an earpiece.
I never used the original Atom, but I can’t imagine its screen was very practical for day-to-day use. Former Verge editor Michael Zelenko concluded as much after testing the Unihertz Jelly, which has the same size screen, a couple of years ago. The XL, though, runs Android pretty much like you might remember it working circa 2011, before phones started to balloon in size. Screen space is still a little cramped, of course, and typing feels quite a bit more difficult if you’re used to larger modern screens, but overall this phone is fine at doing phone things — only at a much smaller scale.
The Atom XL still isn’t what I’d call a small device overall, though, as it continues Unihertz’ tradition of making the toughest phones possible. It’s 17.5mm thick — that’s 2.3 iPhone SEs — and weighs 225g, or slightly more than a Galaxy S20 Ultra. Much of that is accounted for by the 4,300mAh battery, which is the kind of capacity you’d normally only find in phones with far bigger screens; since the Atom XL only has to power a much smaller panel, its battery life should be pretty strong. It’s also IP68 water- and dust-resistant, and feels like it could survive a fall down a reasonably large hill.
A note on crowdfunding:
Crowdfunding is a chaotic field by nature: companies looking for funding tend to make big promises. According to a study run by Kickstarter in 2015, roughly 1 in 10 “successful” products that reach their funding goals fail to actually deliver rewards. Of the ones that do deliver, delays, missed deadlines, or overpromised ideas mean that there’s often disappointment in store for those products that do get done.
The best defense is to use your best judgment. Ask yourself: does the product look legitimate? Is the company making outlandish claims? Is there a working prototype? Does the company mention existing plans to manufacture and ship finished products? Has it completed a Kickstarter before?
And remember: you’re not necessarily buying a product when you back it on a crowdfunding site.
Still, doesn’t making a small phone unnecessarily huge go against the point of making a small phone in the first place? Well, if you’re someone who bemoans the general loss of 4-inch phones, then yeah, it kind of does. I do think if Unihertz made an XL version of its other 2.45-inch phone, the Jelly from 2017, it’d probably have broader appeal.
But the Atom XL is more of a specialist device. If you want a phone to take hiking, for example, I could see this being a useful option. The durability and endurance will be more important than anything else, plus it’ll be easier to use in one hand than other phones when you’re laden with gear. There’s even an optional walkie-talkie antenna.
Other than the Atom XL’s unique properties, its spec sheet is very pedestrian. There’s a MediaTek Helio P60 processor (read: not fast), a single 48-megapixel camera, an 8-megapixel selfie camera, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, USB-C, a headphone jack, and a microSD card slot (or dual SIM if you don’t want to expand your storage). It runs Android 10.
I don’t think this will or should be many people’s primary phone, but I can see it making sense as a backup or a situational device. That’s reflected in the pricing — the Atom XL costs $259 right now on its fully-funded Kickstarter campaign, while the regular retail price will be $329. If you don’t care about the walkie-talkie antenna, there’s an even cheaper version called the Atom L that sells for $209 on Kickstarter or $279 at retail.
Shipping is set for June 2020. All the usual crowdfunding caveats apply, of course, but I’ve seen a working model of the phone and Unihertz has had successful campaigns in the past.
That means we're unlikely to see the search giant's next mid-range handsets unveiled with anything resembling the kind of fanfare that surrounded the Pixel 3a and 3a XL last year. Ironically, Google had managed to keep a significantly tighter lid on information pertaining to the Pixel 4a, but of course, the show industry must go on, so one way or another, we're pretty certain this budget-friendly new bad boy will go official in the not-so-distant future.
A modern design with a hole punch display and square-shaped camera module
It's pretty much etched in stone now, ladies and gents - the mid-end Pixel 4a will arguably look cooler and trendier than the high-end Pixel 4 and 4 XL, thanks to a relatively small chin and a perforated screen in the top left corner. Rumor has it that hole punch will house an 8-megapixel selfie shooter, while the similarly modern square-shaped camera setup at the back seems to comprise a single imaging sensor (most likely, with a 12MP count), as well as an LED flash displayed diagonally from the main snapper.
Speaking of the rear design, we can't say we're very impressed with how the Pixel 4a looks. Unsurprisingly, this thing is bound to follow the plastic build direction of its forerunners instead of going with a "premium" metal-and-glass construction, but what's notable about these leaked pics is that they appear to suggest Google could break with the two-tone tradition of the last few years.
The entire Pixel 4a back cover seems to be the exact same shade of black, and as much as we'd like to blame that on an optical illusion created by the smudges and fingerprints on this prototype device, we fear that's probably going to be the case for commercial units as well.
Other unsurprising features revealed today include a conventional rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, a headphone jack at the top, and a power button in a different color than the handset's back (white in this particular case). By the way, the curious rear logo and imprints shouldn't raise any red flags concerning the veracity of this leak, simply suggesting we're looking at a test unit of some sort that Google was trying to conceal from our sight, failing miserably.
What about the Pixel 4a XL?
That, our friends, is a million-dollar question, and alas, we're afraid we can't even give you a two-dollar answer right now. The best we can do is assume Google does have two Pixel 4a variants in the pipeline, even though the jumbo-sized model hasn't made much of an appearance in the rumor mill yet.
There's a chance the Pixel 4a XL (if real) will be released in both 5G-enabled and 4G LTE-only versions, unlike the regular-sized Pixel 4a, which is widely expected to pack a Snapdragon 730 processor that doesn't support the improved speeds and low latency of the new generation of mobile networks.
Said upper mid-range chipset could be paired with a more than respectable (especially by Pixel standards) 6 gigs of memory, as well as 128 gigs of internal storage space. The perforated screen of the Google Pixel 4a is tipped to measure 5.8 inches in diagonal, expanding on the Pixel 3a real estate while most likely shrinking the overall height and width numbers.
The pricing structure is currently unknown, but if the Pixel 4a is indeed set to come with 6GB RAM and 128GB local digital hoarding room on deck (and that's still a big if, mind you), there's a good chance the 5.8-incher will cost around $450 at launch, up from the $400 starting price of a Pixel 3a packing 4 gigs of memory and 64 gigs of storage space.
The buyer of the prototype “Nintendo PlayStation” is Greg McLemore, an entrepreneur best known for starting the turn-of-the-century tech-bubble bust Pets.com.
Forbes reported the buyer’s identity on Saturday. McLemore, 51, has spent 20 years assembling a collection of rare and vintage video games and arcade amusement machines. A 2015 profile in Robb Report noted that he made his first purchase shortly after selling 50 percent of Pets.com to Amazon and turning the company over to a new CEO.
Pets.com went bust in November 2000, following a marketing campaign that made its sock puppet mascot a minor pop-culture celebrity.
McLemore, to Forbes, called the $300,000 (plus a $60,000 buyer’s premium) that he paid for the Nintendo PlayStation “inexpensive” when compared to recent auctions, like a mint-condition copy of Super Mario Bros.that sold for $100,000; McLemore said he reached out to seller Terry Diebold and made an $100,000 offer for the machine a few years ago.
McLemore told Forbes he intends to loan the Nintendo PlayStation to the University of Southern California’s Pacific Asia Museum, for an exhibit next spring and summer showcasing Asian influence on the video games industry.
A prototype of the Nintendo Play Station, a console that never came to market, fetched $360,000 at an auction over the weekend, CNN reports. Greg McLemore, founder of Pets.com and Toys.com had the winning bid, beating out other collectors, including Palmer Luckey, CEO of Oculus VR.
The console is one of only 200 prototypes created from a failed 1991 partnership between Sony and Nintendo. Forbes describes the unit as basically a Super NES with a CD-ROM drive. Valerie McLeckie of Heritage Auctions, where the console was offered, tells CNN it’s believed the other 199 prototypes were destroyed when the Sony/Nintendo deal fell through. Sony released its first PlayStation in 1994.
According to Polygon, this prototype of the Nintendo Play Station was discovered by a man named Terry Diebold in a box of stuff once owned by former Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Olaf Olafsson. The two had both worked at Advanta Corporation and when that company went bankrupt, the console was one of many items that ended up at private auction, which is how Diebold acquired it.
McLemore says the console was “the single most expensive thing I’ve ever bought outside of a house,” adding “it was worth it especially when combined with the rest of my collection,” CNN reports. That collection includes more than 800 coin-operated machines as well as smaller games, magazines, and art, which McLemore wants to use to create a permanent museum, according to Forbes.
“I’m looking to not have this machine just buried in a closet somewhere,” McLemore says.
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