Mobile Devices
The latest and most important Mobile Devices news.
Samsung's newly-rumored Galaxy S25 Slim will compete against Apple's new iPhone 17 Air in 2025
Apple is poised to unveil an ultra-slim iPhone 17 Air in 2025, and now it looks like smartphone competitor Samsung will join with its rumored Galaxy S25 Slim smartphone.
We're hearing about the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim smartphone from Korean leaker "yeux1122" said in a recent blog post that the South Korean giant might launch the new ultra-slim Galaxy S25 Slim in April 2025. We're also being teased about the Galaxy Z Flip SE and Galaxy Z Fold 7 smartphones being unveiled at about the same time.
TheElec also reported a couple of weeks ago now that Samsung was considering making a slim Galxay S25 smartphone, so the Galaxy S25 Slim feels like the best name for it. Samsung beating Apple to the punch with an ultra-slim smartphone ahead of the iPhone 17 Air will be another move like the company did with its foldable smartphone range starting with the Galaxy Fold, and then into the Galaxy Z Flip family of foldables.
Elon Musk confirms if Tesla is making a smartphone to rival Apple and Google
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has sat down for a lengthy discussion on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, where he touched on the rumors that Tesla is developing a smartphone behind closed doors.
It has been long rumored that Tesla is developing a smartphone that will separate itself from the duopoly of operating systems, Android and iOS. However, these rumors have been just that, rumors, and have mostly been unfounded or simply murmurings. In fact, Musk has brought up the topic before as the Tesla CEO said in November 2022 that if Apple and Google decided to "boot" then-Twitter, and now X, from its respective app stores, Musk said there would be no other choice but to "make an alternative phone.
Now, on a recent episode of the JRE podcast, Musk was asked if there is any credibility to these rumors, or if he has ever considered making a smartphone. Musk responded quickly by saying, "No, we aren't doing a phone". When asked if he had ever thought about making one, Musk said, "We could do a phone. The operating system of a Tesla is Linux-based, but we have written a massive of software on top of that."
Apple is officially banned from selling iPhones in Indonesia
Apple has been blocked from selling its bread and butter product, the iPhone, and its multiple variations, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Industry.
According to reports, Apple has been officially blocked from selling iPhones domestically following its failure to abide by the 40% local content requirement for smartphones, which requires at least 40% of all parts within a product to be manufactured locally. The iPhone 16 has unfortunately fallen short of this requirement, meaning Apple Indonesia hasn't fulfilled the requirement of obtaining a local content certification and now, therefore, cannot sell the latest generation of iPhone.
At the moment, Apple has no manufacturing facilities in Indonesia, but since 2018, the company has been establishing developer academies throughout the country, in which they have invested approximately $101.8 million. Indonesia isn't a small region for Apple either, as the country has more than 350 million active mobile phones among its 270 million residents, meaning there could be quite a lot of potential iPhone customers waiting for the latest generation iPhone.
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First Apple Intelligence features hit iPhone's in latest iOS 18.1 update
Apple has finally rolled out an iOS update that contains the first set of Apple Intelligence features, and here's how you can access them.
Apple has been criticized over its marketing of its latest iPhone generation, as the company touted the latest generation of devices as the vehicles for Apple Intelligence. However, when the iPhone 16 was released, there weren't any Apple Intelligence features available. Apple stated it was planning on rolling out Apple Intelligence features in stages, and we have just received the first stage with iOS 18.1.
If you are interested in trying out some of the new Apple Intelligence features, you will need to make sure you have a compatible device that is updated to the latest version of iOS. Firstly, you will need to have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, which means an iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max. Any devices below those models won't be eligible as they don't have the required hardware to run Apple Intelligence.
Apple's next-gen iPhone 17 Air rumors: A17 chip, 8GB RAM, single 48MP rear camera, and more
Apple's all-new, ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air is rumored with a single 48MP rear camera, 8GB of RAM for Apple Intelligence, its in-house A17 chip made on TSMC's new 2nm process node, and more.
In a new report from MacRumors, several credible sources over the last few months have claimed Apple is working on a redesigned, significantly thinner iPhone 17 smartphone for 2025. It's not yet known as the iPhone 17 Air, but I'm really digging the iPhone 17 Air name, so it'll be called that from now on out until Apple confirms the official name of its new ultra-thin iPhone 17.
We should expect the iPhone 17 Air to sport a 6.6-inch display, an Apple A19 processor made on TSMC's current 3nm process (the same used for the A18 Pro chip) according to a new research note from investment bank Haitong International, and analyst Jeff Pu. He also expects the iPhone 17 Air to feature an aluminum frame, FaceID, a single 48-megapixel rear camera, 24-megapixel front camera, and 8GB of RAM for Apple Intelligence.
New Kindle Colorsoft is Amazon's first-ever color Kindle and it's available for preorder
Color e-ink displays have existed for a while. Still, this week, Amazon announced its very first e-reader with a color display - the new Kindle Colorsoft (priced at $279.99 USD), available for preorder today.
As part of the announcement, Amazon noted that creating a colorized Kindle required more than simply swapping out the traditional black-and-white display for a color one. "It uses an oxide backplane with custom waveforms for fast performance and a higher contrast on both color and black-and-white content," Amazon writes in the announcement.
The display includes custom nitride LEDs that enhance color and brightness without affecting image quality. Amazon adds that you can zoom in on images without "worrying about pixelation." The new technology also means that Amazon's new Kindle Paperwhite is the fastest yet, with 25% faster page turns.
Apple sneaks out mostly unchanged iPad mini with same screen, but it offers a few key upgrades
Apple just revealed a new iPad mini in one of its lowkey launches (by which we mean - let's just bung a press release out there and have done with it).
This isn't the first time we've seen such an affair, and it won't be the last, no doubt. Of course, as you might guess, this one's being slipped out for a reason, namely because the new iPad mini - powered by an A17 Pro SoC - is more of a spec bump than anything else (which was what the rumor mill was saying all along, to be fair).
You get that new A17 Pro chip, and storage starts at 128GB (twice as much as its predecessor), plus the refreshed compact 8.3-inch tablet also comes with Apple Intelligence support on board, which means that the RAM for the entry-level model is now 8GB.
Dockcase MagSafe SSD makes shooting LOG on iPhone easy and stylish
Apple first introduced the ability to shoot with the ProRes codec on the iPhone 12 Pro, but with the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, along with the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, owners can now shoot in Log.
Unfortunately, with these new and impressive codecs, iPhone owners are at risk of reaching capacity when shooting in higher resolutions, particularly at 4K. Dockcase has set out to remedy this problem by providing a simple NVMe SSD enclosure that can attach to the back of an iPhone via MagSafe.
The Dockcase Smart MagSafe M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure features 100W PD passthrough charging so you can keep your smartphone charged while on a shoot, support for up to 2TB of storage, a read-only mode, SSD health monitoring software, and power loss protection, which provides 3 seconds of power loss protection to ensure all data is correctly saving to the storage solution.
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Apple Intelligence slated to release with iOS 18.1 on coming release date
Apple is expected to release its highly anticipated foray into artificial intelligence, but just in Apple fashion they have rebranded the emerging software as "Apple Intelligence".
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who wrote in his recent Power On newsletter, Apple is slated to roll out iOS 18.1 on October 28, and within that OS update will be Apple Intelligence. For those that don't know, Apple Intelligence will be coming to the iPhone 15 Pro/Max and the entire iPhone 16 line-up. Unfortunately, devices older than that don't have the necessary hardware to process AI tasks at a speed that Apple is comfortable with releasing.
Apple Intelligence, or the complete lack of it, has been a point of criticism in the recent launch of the iPhone 16 lineup, as much of Apple's marketing for the new generation of iPhone showed Apple Intelligence features that weren't available at launch. Apple clarified when the features will be released, saying Apple Intelligence will be rolled out in stages. As for iOS 18.1, according to reports, developers with early access to the operating system version have found it to be quite unstable, leading to app crashes and excessive battery drain.
Apple quietly made charging better in iOS 18
Apple has finally released its iOS 18 update to the public where it has included a slew of new, big features for users, along with some other smaller features the company didn't highlight, or just glazed over during its presentation.
One of those features is the new charging capabilities, and before you get ahead of yourself, Apple hasn't suddenly increased the speed of which your phone can charge. However, Apple has made charging your phone at maximum speed much easier, as a new feature within iOS 18 will inform the user if the charging cable they are using is providing the maximum charge.
After updating to iOS 18, a user can open their Settings application and navigate to Battery; an alert will pop up informing the user they are using a slower charging cable. Additionally, a slower charging cable will be displayed in the battery graph as an orange line. Unfortunately, the feature isn't as informative as I would like because it's not immediately clear how slow a charging cable has to be to qualify for an alter or orange line in the graph.
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