Mobile Devices - Page 47

Apple's lifesaving Emergency SOS via Sattelite feature is now live in two more countries, giving iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro owners access to emergency services even then they don't have a cellular signal or Wi-Fi connectivity.

The feature was first announced alongside the iPhone 14 series of devices in September 2022 but its availability was limited at launch. Now, the feature is available in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Now, Australia and New Zealand can be added to that list.

Apple announced the news via a press release, saying that the feature is available on the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max.

When Google announced the Pixel Fold during the Google I/O event earlier this week there weren't too many surprises. Unfortunately, that also extended to the price of Google's first foldable as well.

Leaks had already suggested that Google would sell the Pixel Fold for around $1799 and sure enough that's exactly what was announced. That isn't all that expensive considering the competition's own prices in this particular market, but it's still a lot of money to ask people to hand over. So Google has come up with a plan.

That plan, it seems, is to try and make it easier for people to buy a new Pixel Fold by giving them insane trade-in prices on their old phone. Specifically, it looks like Google wants people to trade in their old iPhone or Samsung phone with those being the ones that are worth the most according to the company's trade-in prices.

Motorola has always been a company with something of a cult following and it always helped when it was making decent phones. The next foldable flagship from the company is now just around the corner, and it's looking pretty great.

That phone is the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra flip phone and it's expected to be announced relatively soon. But the lack of an official announcement doesn't mean that we don't know much about it and now we've also been treated to a handful of images showing three gorgeous colorways - one o which is absolutely our favorite.

The images were shared by leaker Evan Blass who posted them to this protected Twitter account. We get to see the phone in black and blue, but it's the third color that we're most interested in. It's a kind of magenta or red affair and it's possibly our favorite phone color right now. It might even be nicer than the Pixel 7a's Coral, but it's definitely a close-run thing.

When Google announced the Pixel 7a earlier this week there were a handful of colors to choose from. But anyone who wanted the best one - the gorgeous Coral color - has to buy their new phone directly from the company itself. And that posed one problem.

Those buying a Coral Pixel 7a from Google's UK store quickly spotted that the company was selling that one color for £50 more than the others. Oddly, the price hike was only in place for that one color and also only in that one part of the world. Anyone buying the Coral color anywhere else on the planet paid the same price as they would if they bought a different color altogether.

It wasn't clear exactly why that was the case and, it turns out, it shouldn't have been the case at all. Google says that the £50 markup was a mistake, adding that people will receive refunds as a result. Orders won't be canceled, thankfully. Buyers will just get their £50 back instead.

Google finally got around to announcing the Pixel 7a during its Google I/O event earlier this week and while the Pixel Fold stole the show, the company's budget offering is still a big deal. But there's a problem.

When announcing the Pixel 7a Google confirmed that it would sell for $499, which is $50 more than the previous Pixel 6a. What's more, Google decided to keep the Pixel 6a around which meant that the two were far too close together in the company's lineup, at least in terms of price. Now, that's all changed.

To make it easier to differentiate the two phones, and make the Pixel 6a an even more attractive buy, it's had a big price drop. Now, buying a Pixel 6a will cost just $349 and you might even find it for a bit less if you shop around as well. That's $100 less than it was costing just a few days ago and that makes it quite the bargain.

When Google finally announced the Pixel 7a during its Google I/O media event yesterday everything was pretty much as the leaks had foretold, including the $499 price. Except, something strange happened.

As expected, Google announced that the Coral color would be exclusive to its own online store, meaning that would be the only way to get the Pixel 7a in its best color. The problem is, if you choose that one color and happen to be in the United Kingdom, you'll pay more than if you chose any of the other ones. And nobody seems to know why.

Checking the UK Google Store shows that the Pixel 7a retails for £449 in the standard Sky, Charcoal, and Chalk colorways - Blue, White, and Black to you and me. But if you choose the Coral that price gets jacked up an extra £50 to $499 for reasons unknown.

After months or rumors and leaks, Google has finally announced the Pixel Fold during the Google I/O event yesterday. It also showed off the Pixel 7a for the first time and finally told us all when the Pixel Tablet will go on sale. But the real star of the show was that foldable Pixel. But it has a rather interesting secret.

Well, it isn't a secret now. But it was. That secret is that it can't actually open all the way. That is, it won't lay flat on a table because the hinge doesn't actually go all the way to allow the phone to open through 180 degrees. And it all seems a bit strange.

The news was confirmed by a few people who visited Google to see what the Pixel Fold had to offer before it was announced but Mr Mobile was one who explained it particularly well on Twitter. According to him, the hinge can be forced to get to 180 degrees but ti requires too much effort and, presumably, makes the user feel like something will break. That isn't something you want to happen to your new $1800 foldable.

OK, so we all know that having a longer PIN is a good way to make sure that our phones are safe and secure. But really, who wants to go about entering a PIN that's multiple digits long? That's why we have biometric security with face and fingerprint unlocks, right?

Well, sure. But sometimes entering a PIN is the only way to get in, and now Google is working on a way to make entering longer PINs less annoying.

With Android today you have to enter a long PIN and then confirm that you're done so that the phone will unlock. But the latest Android 14 beta does away with that final step, automatically signing you in when you successfully enter a PIN that's at least six digits in length. You can see it in action in the tweet embedded above.

Google is set to announce its new budget smartphone the Pixel 7a in just a day - and the leaks are still coming.

The latest rumor comes via Twitter leaker SnoopyTech who shared a couple of photos of what appears to be marketing for the Australian launch of the Pixel 7a. And while that's interesting enough on its own, what really caught our eye was what's at the bottom. It appears that Google is giving away a free pair of Pixel Buds A-Series if you buy its Pixel 7a.

Or at least, someone is. It isn't immediately clear from looking at what we see here whether this is a deal that is being run by Google or if it's something that has been put together by a third-party retailer. But if it's the former, we can likely expect that Google will run a similar promotion internationally.

If you are looking to upgrade your iPhone later this year and want to be able to enjoy improved zoom capabilities, you're going to want to iPhone 15 Pro Max.

That's following yet another report that the biggest and best iPhone will be the only one to benefit from a new zoom lens that will be made possible thanks to the magic of the periscope.

A periscope lens is one that bends light to allow for a longer distance between the lens itself and the camera sensor. That allows for the distance to be increased without making the phone thicker, and it will mean that the iPhone 15 Pro Max will have up top a 6x zoom - a big improvement over the current 3x optical capabilities.

While it is absolutely fair to say that iOS 16.5 probably isn't the most hotly anticipated software of the next few weeks, we do now at least know when it'll be released. Or at least, we have a much better idea than we did before today.

Apple has confirmed at least which week will see iOS 16.5 ship to the public, although it still left us guessing as to which date we should be keeping our eyes peeled for. But regardless, iOS 16.5 will be available to everyone next week.

How do we know that? Because Apple mentioned it in a Newsroom post announcing its latest Pride Apple Watch and Pride iPhone wallpapers. Both of those things were shown off in that Newsroom post, but the bit we're most interested in for the sake of this post is the bit right at the very bottom which confirmed that the new Pride Celebration watch face and iPhone wallpaper will be available next week. And guess what? They both require watchOS 9.5 and iOS 16.5 respectively.

Apple's iPhone 16 Pro smartphones - yes, the models set to arrive in 2024 - are set to increase the size of the display, a new rumor reckons.

This comes from a trusted source for Apple leaks, Ross Young, who is CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) and has informed us with accurate info in the past.

Young asserts that the iPhone 16 Pro will have a 6.2x-inch screen and the iPhone 16 Pro Max could offer a 6.8x-inch display, with that final digit of the size to be revealed in a couple of weeks (at a talk he's giving).

Apple CarPlay is a great feature for connecting your iPhone to a vehicle and then having its display projected onto a big in-car screen, but not everyone sees it that way. GM has famously declared that it won't be putting CarPlay support in its future electric vehicles - but Ford says that it has no intention of doing the same thing.

Ford CEO Jim Farley was speaking with The Wall Street Journal when he noted that around 70% of the company's customers in the United States also use iPhones. With that in mind, it's his belief that taking CarPlay away from them would be a bad idea. And he's probably right.

It seems that GM believes that it can reinsert itself between content and the customer, however. It'll be making apps for services like Spotify available via its new Google-based in-car entertainment system and that's how it expects people to listen to music and whatnot. But Ford's CEO has a different approach, saying that carmakers can't make a ton of money from controlling that experience and that it's all about safety and productivity instead.

With Samsung and Google being silicon bedfellows it sounds like the latter could be about to benefit from a bit of a breakthrough that the former has had. That breakthrough is an improvement in its 4nm chip manufacturing process with the company thought to have seen the yield increase to the point where it's almost as reliable as its existing 5nm process.

If Samsung really can make its 4nm chips work then we can probably safely expect that the next Google chip will be based on that manufacturing process. That chip will likely be the Tensor G3, a chip that will surely power the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.

While the move to a smaller manufacturing process doesn't necessarily automatically mean that the chips will be faster, that is often what happens thanks to a couple of things. Chips built on a smaller manufacturing process often use less power, which in turn means that less heat is generated when they are working. Both of those things often mean that the chips themselves can be clocked higher, improving performance as a result.

The Nothing Phone (2) is coming and while we still don't exactly know when it'll arrive, we do now have more information than we did before. Like the fact that we can expect an announcement this summer.

That's what Nothing is saying on a teaser webpage that also shows us a little bit of a look at what the phone will look like. Not that we can see all that much, it's a severe close-up of what is likely the phone's back panel. We do see what appears to be a red notification light as well, but knowing Nothing it's possible that the light could do more than just tell you when you've got a new unread email.

As for the phone itself, we're expecting a premium device based on what we've been told so far. That's going to start with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip, which is as much as we have learned about the specs of this thing so far. There are some out there who remain disappointed that Nothing isn't using the latest flagship chip in the form of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but the chip being used here should still be more than enough to make apps and games fly.

Whether or not foldable phones are the future of the smartphone is a matter for debate another time. But if there's one thing that we can all surely agree on it's the fact that there are more and more of them launching seemingly every month. Now, we've been treated to a leak of the specs for another, this time the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra is in the crosshairs.

The Razr 40 Ultra is expected to be joined by a budget-oriented Razr 40 Lite version, but it's the flagship that we're the most interested in for obvious reasons. Now, a leak by XDA Developers appears to have given us our first real look at what the device will have to offer in terms of specifications.

Kicking things off we're told that the Razr 40 Ultra will ship with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chip inside with up to 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage wrapping up the main internals. There will also be dual-SIM and eSIM versions of the phone, while NFC and a fingerprint sensor are both table stakes at this point.

Have you ever looked at the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and thought that it looked just a little bit too small? Not many people have, but for those that do want something bigger there could be something on the horizon. That thing could be a 14.1-inch iPad.

We say iPad and not iPad Pro because that's the way leakers have been describing it so far, but in reality it seems highly likely to sit at the top of Apple's lineup. Whether it'll be called something like iPad Ultra or not remains to be seen, but it does seem to be coming whatever it winds up being called. Now, a new leak has suggested that it'll also come with a special chip to go along with that special screen size.

According to Twitter leaker Revegnus, the 14.1-inch iPad will come with an Apple-designed M3 Pro. That perhaps tells us when we should expect this thing to ship - some point in 2024, most likely - but it also suggests that this will be quite the beast of a machine.

Do you remember when a company like Google would announce something and it would take us completely by surprise because we hadn't seen anything about it leak on the internet. Those days are long gone it seems, and the Pixel 7a is the latest Google product to be leaked into oblivion before its big day on stage.

The Pixel 7a was already expected to debut during the Google I/O developer conference on May 10 and then go on sale on May 11. We've seen leaks upon leaks pointing to that. Now, we've also seen all of the marketing materials relating to the phone also leak, posted to Twitter by Roland Quandt.

There really isn't all that much left to the imagination after taking a look at a series of Quandt's tweets. We get to see a list of specifications as well as what's in the box and more.

The Google Pixel 7a is the hot topic right now and with the budget phone set to be announced during the Google I/O event on May 10, we now know exactly when the phone will go on sale as well.

That's because Google itself has confirmed as much. To be exact, it was the Google India account which teased the upcoming Pixel 7a without actually saying that's what it was talking about. However, based on the image shown in the tweet there's little left to the imagination.

This news does a couple of things of course. First, it confirms what we'd already expected - Google will announce the Pixel 7a during the Google I/O event on May 10 and then it'll go on sale the day after on May 11. Pre-orders are expected to begin right after that announcement, however, at least that's the plan on Google's store. Third-party retailers and carrier partners might have to wait until May 11.

With Google very much expected to announce the Pixel 7a during its Google I/O developer event on May 10 it now sounds like this might be the last of the "a" lineup. That's according to a new report, at least.

The Pixel 7a is just the latest in a line of budget-oriented devices that are meant to give customers the chance to get much of the Pixel experience without having to pay for the mid-range or premium options. In the case of the Pixel 7a that means people don't need to pay for the Pixel 7 or Pixel 7 Pro just to get in on the Pixel fun.

But that might not be the case anymore, according to leaker Yogesh Brar. Writing on Twitter Brar said that the Pixel "a" series is coming to an end, with Google choosing to ditch the budget phone to make room for the Pixel Fold. The Pixel Fold is a very different device of course - for starters, it folds, and it'll cost around $1800 if the rumors are true.