Technology - Google News

One of Apple's innovations for iPhone 14? Always-on displays... - Android Authority

Posted: 30 May 2022 03:36 AM PDT

Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority

TL;DR

Apple will purportedly debut always-on display tech on the iPhone 14 series.
This comes more than a decade after the tech first arrived on smartphones.

Always-on displays have been around for years now, but you won't find this feature on iPhones. However, it sounds like Apple will finally implement it later this year.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported in his Power-On newsletter that iOS 16 indeed includes support for an always-on display:

This would allow the iPhone to turn down the frame rate significantly on the lock screen and display quickly glanceable information — similar to newer Apple Watches.

Gurman asserts that the always-on display functionality will be exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, adding that the feature was originally planned for the iPhone 13 series.

A long overdue feature

Always-on displays are commonly used to show the time, weather, battery percentage, and/or notifications, and they've been around for more than a decade. The tech debuted on Nokia's Symbian smartphones back in 2009 and 2010 before arriving on Android via the likes of Motorola, LG, and Samsung a couple of years later.

Still, it's better late than never for Apple, and the combo of an OLED screen and low refresh rate (e.g. 1Hz) could make for a negligible hit to battery life on the iPhone 14 series.

This isn't the only upgrade coming with iOS 16 though, as it's believed that Apple will also bring wallpapers with "widget-like" features and improved windowing/multitasking.

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Google Pixel 7 prototype reputedly shows up on eBay - Engadget

Posted: 30 May 2022 11:50 AM PDT

It seems Google just can't stop its upcoming hardware from showing up in the wild. Weeks after a Pixel Watch prototype was left at a restaurant (and before Google confirmed the device's existence), it appears someone tried to sell a Pixel 7 on eBay.

The eBay listing for what certainly looks like a prototype Pixel 7 popped up on the Pixel subreddit, but it has since been taken down. The images that the seller posted didn't shed a ton more light on the device. The front looks similar to the Pixel 6, hole-punch camera and all. The camera bar on the rear has two lenses as well.

Take a closer look at one of the images, though, and you'll see something that might raise your eyebrows. In the reflection of the purported Pixel 7's rear is what looks like a Pixel 7 Pro — the device that the seller was using to take the pictures. This suggests that, whoever the seller is, they had access to both models of the upcoming Pixel lineup.

The rear of a purported Pixel 7 with what seems to be a Pixel 7 Pro in the reflection

In the description, the seller claimed that Pixel 7 was running Android 13, with apps that are at the developmental stage. They said the phone has 128GB of storage and 8GB RAM and that they were selling it as is with "no guarantees of any sort." The phone would have shipped from McKinney, Texas.

Although Google announced the Pixel 7 and its Pro sibling at I/O, it'll be months before the devices, which will run on a second-gen Tensor chip, go on sale. Google will surely provide a more in-depth look at them at a hardware event. But, given the leaks to date, we might already know every detail by the time Google formally shows them off.

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