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- HTC U12 Plus says bye to real buttons, embraces the squeeze
- Please Sony, Don't Make The PS5 For 2019. Or 2020.
- Yup, Apple is going to crush every Android phone once again with the iPhone X Plus
| HTC U12 Plus says bye to real buttons, embraces the squeeze Posted: 23 May 2018 07:52 AM PDT  The HTC U12 Plus gets skinny bezels and does away with actual buttons. Josh Miller/CNETIt looks like a button, feels like a button, but it's not a button. That's right, there are no clicks on the new HTC U12 Plus. The sleep/wake button and the volume keys are nothing more than haptic feedback illusions. Apple did something similar when it replaced the home button on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus with a touch-sensitive area that simulates the action and feel of a real button. But HTC took it a step further and replaced all of its buttons with digital ones. Getting rid of mechanical buttons reduces the risk of a part breaking and allows the phone to have a dust- and water-resistance rating of IP68. When the phone is powered off, the sleep/wake button still works. Apparently, the pressure-sensitive button requires so little power that it will work on a dead battery. Like the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, it will be interesting to see how people adapt to the new feel of these nonbuttons. These haptic buttons are one of the biggest differences you'll notice between the U12 Plus and last year's U11. But there are many more refinements aimed at making HTC's new flagship an antidote to our current crop of Android phones -- especially those with a notch.  The sides have pressure sensitive "buttons" and the edges can accept taps and squeezes to trigger actions. Josh Miller/CNETTouch-sensitive and squeezable sidesMuch like last year's U11 and Google Pixel 2 -- which HTC manufactures -- the left and right sides of the U12 Plus are squeezable. But now, with the upgrade, you can squeeze short, squeeze long or squeeze and hold. Each squeeze is customizable and triggers a different action. You can have it open an app, turn the flashlight on or open the camera and take a picture, among other things. The sides of the U12 Plus are touch-sensitive and can receive tap input. For example, you can tap with your thumb and index finger on each side of the phone to minimize the screen for one-handed use. The U12 Plus can even identify which hand you're holding it with and offset the shrunken display accordingly.  Watch this: HTC U12 Plus goes buttonless 2:49 Bokeh mode and 4 camerasThe new phone also comes with four cameras. Two on the front and two on the back. Both pairs enable bokeh mode, which adds an artistic blurry background to portraits you take. You can adjust the focus point before or after you take a picture and change the amount of blur. The HTC One M8 was the first phone with dual-rear cameras years before it became trendy. Like the iPhone X ($999.99 at T-Mobile USA) and Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus ($799.99 at Amazon.com), the U12 Plus has 2x optical zoom, which should make photos look sharper than a digital zoom would.  Sonic Zoom uses the phone's four microphones to focus in on your subject for better audio when you zoom in while recording video. Josh Miller/CNETThere's a nifty feature called Sonic Zoom, which, if you zoom in during a video recording, uses the phone's four microphones to hone in on your subject for better audio. The U12 Plus shoots HD and 4K video at both 30 and 60 frames per second. It also shoots slow motion video at 240 fps at 1080p.  The translucent blue version of the phone allows you to see the actual components of the U12 Plus. Josh Miller/CNETSnapdragon 845 processor and other nicetiesThe U12 Plus follows the skinny bezel, tall display trend with an 18:9 6-inch Quad-HD (2,560x1,440-pixel) display. HTC managed the smaller bezels without having to incorporate a notch. Though its fingerprint reader has migrated to the back. The phone runs on a Snapdragon 845 processor with 6GB of RAM and comes with either 64GB or 128GB of storage. The U12's battery is larger than the one in the U11, but with the larger display, it will be interesting to see how long it lasts. Despite the Gorilla Glass 3 back, the phone doesn't have wireless charging. But it does have Quick Charge 3.0. The phone comes with Usonic earbuds, a clear case that allows for access to the sides and a Quick Charge 2.0 charger -- a Quick Charge 3.0 power adapter can be purchased separately.  From left-to-right: translucent blue, ceramic black and flame red. Josh Miller/CNETThe phone comes in three colors:
Preorder the HTC U12 PlusThe HTC U12 Plus is now available for preorder through HTC's website and supports AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. It will ship in mid-June. In the US, the 64GB model costs $799 and the 128GB model $849. UK and Australian prices will be announced soon, but $799 converts to about £600 or AU$1,060. HTC U12 Plus specs compared with Galaxy S9 Plus, Pixel 2 XL, iPhone X and OnePlus 6
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| Please Sony, Don't Make The PS5 For 2019. Or 2020. Posted: 23 May 2018 07:31 AM PDT  'God of War.' It's beginning to happen. Sony's Playstation 5 has been whispered about for years, essentially ever since the Playstation 4 came out back in 2013. That's what a straightforward sequential numbering system gets you: we already know what this console will be called and so we can hold it in our heads better than the Xbox Ω or whatever Microsoft goes with this time. The whispers, however, are intensifying: there are rumors of development kits already out it in the wild, of big games being made with the new hardware in mind, of business strategies that would seem to require new hardware. Recently, we got a rare on the record acknowledgment of the future, at least in vague terms: that Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO John Kodera said the PS4 was entering the final phase of its lifecycle. That doesn't mean that the PS5 is around the corner, but it does mean that it's coming at some point. This is inevitable: hardware manufacturers gotta manufacture hardware, and nothing drums up business like a new machine. And yet it's hard to look at these rumors knowing that we just only got God of War last month, or that we'll be getting Red Dead Redemption 2 in the fall, or that Sony's exclusive Spiderman game still looks amazing. And not only that, but the market for smaller games on the platform is flourishing as well. The PS4 has an established install base, a big library and a great future. It reminds me a little bit of the waning days of the Xbox 360/PS3 generation when developers were really hitting their strides with games like GTA 5 and The Last of Us. Call them the golden years if you must. A console transition is a big, unwieldy event for the video game industry, and when we do make the transition to PS5 we probably can't expect to see something on the level of God of War for a few years. That's the nature of the beast, or has been for a few generations now: it takes developers a few years to learn the ins and outs of a new system, and it takes the install base a little while to justify big-budget production. The early days of every console are awkward, with the notable recent exception of the Switch--and that's been entirely on the back of first-party development. I wouldn't expect something similar with a PS5. Consider the fact that Guerilla Games made the nice-looking but ultimately unremarkable Killzone: Shadow Fall for the PS4 launch. Last year, it followed things up with the epic Horizon: Zero Dawn. If we make another console transition, we'll probably find ourselves closer to Shadow Fall days than Zero Dawn days. And so while I know that we'll be getting the PS5 sometime soon and that I will inevitably become excited about the prospect, I don't really want it. I like this time late in a console generation, when we spend less and less time talking about hardware and more time talking about games. I like it when games have the potential to sell to a much larger install base, and when I'm not the only one of my friends with a shiny new system. It's just so hard for a new console to not be a disappointment on some level, which is why we spend so much time at launch talking about potential rather than actual games in those early days, and why we obsess over numbers-- it's because we don't have anything else to talk about. Right now we're out of the "potential" phase of the PS4 and squarely in the games phase. I'd like to stay here for a little while longer, please. There will hopefully be some technical advances that will ease the transition. Last generation's transition to X86 architecture should make things a bit easier for backwards compatibility when the time comes, and the mid-generation upgrades raise the possibility of a forward compatibility that reduces the risk of developing for new hardware. A smooth line rather than a broken generational leap is better for the entire gaming industry, and both Sony and Microsoft are clearly working to make that happen. But this new conception of console generations is itself new, and comes with risks and unknowns. We talk about the PS5 for two reasons. The first is that video games are a business and that the release of a new console is one of the biggest things that happens in that business, both for the manufacturer that releases it and for the wider ecosystem of console developers and publishers. The second is that we thought that the PS4 would make us happy, that we believed the sizzle reels when they told us that this was the machine that could finally realize the dreams we had about the power of graphics technology since we were little children, that the games it would be able to play would stretch the bounds of our imaginations. When the PS4 did not bring quiet to the unquiet mind, we began talking about the PS5. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Yup, Apple is going to crush every Android phone once again with the iPhone X Plus Posted: 23 May 2018 07:50 AM PDT Something strange is happening right now in the smartphone market: Apple no longer makes the most powerful smartphone in the world. Well actually, we should amend that statement a bit. The A11 Bionic processor that powers Apple’s iPhone X, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone 8 indeed outperforms every other smartphone that’s currently available. Each of Apple’s three flagship iPhones score over 4200 on GeekBench’s single-core test, while the top-performing Android phone only managed a score of 3400. Apple’s 2017 iPhones also crush the competition in the multi-core test, with scores reaching as high as nearly 10200. Meanwhile, only one Android phone has managed to break 9000 so far. The iPhone X and Apple’s other current-generation flagship phones pack plenty of power. Power has never been Apple’s problem. The problem recently has been iOS, or more specifically, iOS 11. It has been plagued by bugs, security holes, RAM management problems, and other issues since the day it was released in September 2017. Things have certainly gotten better over time as Apple continued to release software updates, and the current version — iOS 11.3.1 — offers big improvements compared to last year’s initial release. But there are still lingering issues that hinder performance, and there is still plenty of work to be done before iOS is back up to snuff. Of course, all this isn’t to say that the burden lies squarely on Apple and Qualcomm’s current generation of Snapdragon chips are unimpressive. The Snapdragon 845 that powers the current flock of Android flagships brings impressive performance and efficiency gains. Coupled with gobs of RAM, as is the case on new Android phones like the OnePlus 6, the Snapdragon 845 processor soars. OnePlus’ new flagship phone blew past the Galaxy S9, and therefor iPhone X, in the kind of real-world speed test that Apple used to dominate. But Apple’s A11 Bionic is still the more powerful chipset — and in 2018, it sounds like Apple is set to retake the throne. A new report from Bloomberg on Wednesday morning states that Apple’s chip fabrication partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has begun mass production of the next-generation processors that will power Apple’s 2018 iPhone lineup. Apple is expected to release three new iPhone models this coming September, including an iPhone X successor, an “iPhone X Plus” with a larger OLED display, and a mid-range iPhone with an LCD screen sized between the two. All three new iPhone models should be powered by the same A12 processor that TSMC just began producing.
As we’ve heard a number of times in the past, Bloomberg reiterates that the A12 will be based on a 7-nanometer process. The Snapdragon 845 chipset that powers all of this year’s Android flagships is based on a 10-nanometer process, which is what Apple’s A11 Bionic chip used for last year’s iPhones. Apple’s 7-nanometer chips will be smaller, faster, and more efficient than the current crop of 10-nanometer chips, offering big performance gains in Apple’s upcoming 2018 iPhone lineup. But that’s only half of the equation. Apple’s WWDC 2018 conference kicks off in less than two weeks on June 4th, which is when the company will host its big keynote presentation. The star of the show at this year’s WWDC keynote will be iOS 12, of course. Apple reportedly had big plans for iOS 12, but then it decided to strip out some of the new features the company had been prepping. Why? To focus on improving performance and ironing out the bugs that have marred the iOS 11 user experience. So what can we expect from Apple’s 2018 iPhone lineup? We already know all about Apple’s new designs and basic specs thanks to former KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, which are shown in the graphic above. As we can see, Apple’s iPhone X update and the larger “iPhone X Plus” will pack the most RAM Apple has ever included in an iPhone. We also know that Apple is laser focused on bringing big performance improvements to iOS 12, and now we can state with near certainty that the upcoming new A12 chipset is based on a 7-nanometer process. All this adds up to Apple’s 2018 iPhone models turning out to be the most powerful and efficient smartphones the world has ever seen, and we’ll almost certainly see them crush every Android phone out there once again in performance and speed tests. |
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