News written by Matti Robinson (March, 2020)

The one smartphone manufacturer that seems to be on the uptick in recent years is OnePlus. The Chinese manufacturer has managed to grab a sizable audience with reasonable priced high-end smartphones.

The company is well positioned in the West where Huawei has recently struggled due to issues with the U.S. government and not having Google apps, and many other Chinese companies don't have much of a presence.

Now, OnePlus is preparing for the launch of their most recent smartphone.

For a while now, Chinese factories have largely returned to normal production capacity, and ramping up production for OnePlus 8 launch should be no longer a problem.

In a series of tweets earlier this week the company CEO Pete Lau reveals that they've already had to postpone the launch three times due to current situation. However, "now, we must move forward," he said.

Yesterday, the company announced that the upcoming OnePlus 8 Series, which according to leaks – like the leaked picture above – includes OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro just like the predecessors, is going to be revealed on April 14.

Some of the specs have been spoiled by the company themselves. They have a tendency to reveal the specs slowly leading to the unveiling of the device, and this year seems no different.

The coronavirus outbreak has has tremendous effects to global economy, job security, and, most of all, health. Airlines and cruise lines are in deep trouble, closed stores means massive furloughs, and hotels are empty.

Not everything is down for the count, though. As many of you probably know, video conferencing company Zoom is booming, Amazon and Walmart is hiring more and more, and VPN usage has surged. Another company that is benefiting from the quarantine is Microsoft.

Microsoft has revealed that their Teams app has seen massive spike in users, now with over 44 million users who've generated over 900 million meeting and calling minutes each day over the week.

What's more, Virtual Desktop usage has increased more than threefold, and in Italy, which is hit the hardest by COVID-19, Teams' calling and meeting monthly users went up 775 percent.

According to the company, there hasn't been any significant disruptions even with the massive increase in traffic.

It it worth to note that originally Microsoft claimed in the blog post that the entire Azure cloud traffic had increased 775%. This was not the case, and the company corrected it to Teams traffic in Italy, which has some of the strictest quarantine policies.

Apple is known for their unrelenting product security and secrecy. Ever after one of the employees lost a prototype iPhone in a bar, Apple has been extra careful about their products leaking.

Of course leaks still happen but not allowing to take prototypes home means that there's been fewer lost prototypes, for sure.

However, the current COVID-19 outbreak has thrown a spanner in the works of Apple's prototype security. Since everyone is encouraged to work from home, it also means that they've had to allow taking prototypes with them.

As said, normally this wouldn't be allowed, unless you are an executive of the highest caliber. Now, even lesser development staff can take the devices home and potentially cause some issues to what Apple hopes is a impenetrable veil of secrecy around its upcoming products.

Apple hasn't quite given every average Joe the access to prototypes, though. Only a select personnel can still take home the precious development samples.

Accordingt to rumors, currently in development are at least a new HomePod, Apple TV, MacBook Pro, iPad, Apple Watch, iMac, and of course the 5G enabled iPhone. In addition, Apple is of course developing updates to each of its operating systems.

World's leading contract manufacturer Foxconn has been struggling to keep up with production during the past few months. Factories in China have mostly returned to business as usual, but demand is still a problem.

Foxconn's profits are undoubtedly going to sink, after all they did that already last year, after a global crisis due to COVID-19. Apple is among the largest customers, and iPhone demand determines much of the profits both Apple and Foxconn can make.

An economic downturn affects nearly every industry in the same fashion. When people don't have excess money, a thousand dollar smartphone is much harder sell.

Apple has made up to 18 percent less orders to Foxconn in early 2020 compared to last year, Reuters reports. The sources also claim that Apple might be slowing down the production of upcoming 5G capable iPhone, although release could still be on schedule.

The demand for new iPhones is currently not there, and apparently Apple estimates that it won't be still there in time for the new iPhone, due in September.

COVID-19 is still running rampant in most of the world, and in many places still going to ramp up. It is unclear how long the economic woes will shrink the demand.

IBM and The Weather Channel have released a new online tool for tracking COVID-19 cases around the world. The Weather Channel, which is owned by IBM, hosts the service.

The data used in the visualization is provided by World Health Organization WHO and Johns Hopkins University, and it includes confirmed cases and deaths for most of the world.

There are, however, differences in accuracy. The U.S. has the best data available, and you can browse it in a separate section by county. Worldwide data only has country-specific numbers.

Out of the seven counties with most reported cases, the state of New York has eight of them with Washington and Lousiana each one.

According to IBM, offering the most accurate data available on the outbreak ensures that people grasp the magnitude of the issue which in itself helps to fight the spread.

As of yet, IBM and The Weather Channel have not released tools that try to model the spread, which might be a more complicated issued than predicting the weather.

Both The Weather Channel website (accelerator.weather.com) as well the mobile app provide the statistics.

Coronavirus has put a wrench in a lot of companies futures, and even though electronics giants aren't the ones most susceptible to market volatility, there are certainly implications to the Apples and Googles of the world.

Especially since China was hit the hardest last couple of months, due to the novel coronavirus originating in the country, and that's where much of the world's electronics manufacturing is located in. Now, China has mostly returned to business as usual, but aforementioned implications are still to be fully felt.

Apple is among the companies that might see changes due to manufacturing issues. According to Nikkei Asia Review, Apple is considering delaying their upcoming iPhone. Postponing the launch by months could be in the cards, although it might not necessarily be due to production issues, as was previously suggested.

Cupertino giant fears that markets haven't recovered enough by September, and people would not the phone as much as the company expects.

According to the source, the decision hasn't been made yet, and there's no launch date as of yet for iPhone 12. However, don't be surprised if you can't upgrade your iPhone as early as last year.

Coronavirus pandemic is undoubtedly going to be a problem still for weeks if not months, even with very strict social distancing and curfew policies. However, Apple seems to be fairly confident that it can soon open some if its stores.

Apple senior VP of Retail + People Deirdre O'Brien has sent a memo to employees saying that some of the stores are looking to open as soon as early April, VentureBeat reports. Reopening the stores that were closed indefinitely just a week ago so soon seems premature, but perhaps Apple has some information we don't.

While President Trump was suggesting that he'd like to see more of the country open by Easter, he's also listening to his important aids, including Dr. Fauci, whether this is wise. Whether Apple's idea came from the president or not, is unclear.

There's obviously pressure for both Apple and the economy in general to open up as early as possible, but Apple also said it is prioritizing the health of employees and customers. This seems like a contradiction if indeed stores are opened after April 5.

First technology conference that was cancelled in 2020 due to the novel coronavirus was Mobile World Congress more than a month ago. Ever since, one gathering and conference after another have postponed or postponed.

In addition to MWC in the tally we've got Google and Microsoft developer conferences, gaming conference E3, and of course Apple's own WWDC among others.

Now one of the largest computer conferences, Computex, has decided it would be in their, and their quests', best interest to not have their annual gathering in June. Computex 2020 isn't cancelled, however. Instead, the organizers have postponed it until coming fall.

According to them, Computex 2020 will be held in Taipei, Taiwan on Semptember 28, nearly three months after it's original June 2 date.

People having to work from home and spend most of their leisure at home unsurprisingly has meant that internet usage has gone up tremendously. While using a VPN connection or browsing the coronavirus news isn't going to impact hugely the data caps, streaming video certainly is.

If the network capacity is reached with streaming, it might also mean that people are going to have trouble working from home. Authorities in Europe have been ringing alarm bells and requesting data capping.

Many of the streaming video platforms are slowing down connections to avoid any issues. Disney and Facebook have both joined Netflix, YouTube, and others in efforts to reduce the traffic by degrading the quality in Europe.

Disney has also decided to postpone the launch of Disney+ in France, as requested by the French government. According to Reuters, Facebook is dropping Instagram quality a notch, among other things, to help with data infrastructure.

Many of our dear western democracies have had to issue some form of curfew to slow the spread of COVID-19. Fortunately at this point many are taking the threat seriously but there's a fair few that don't seem to care about suggestions, or even orders, to not leave home unless necessary.

The threat is so serious, that many of the countries are considering, or have already implemented, policies that might violate some of our rights. One can ask, where do we draw the line?

European governments are working with mobile carriers to gather data about crowd movements, Reuters reports. Operators in Europe are sharing anonymous location data to guide in efforts to stop the spread.

The aggregate data can help local governments to see where people are gathering and determine hot spots without sharing individual data. In Germany Deutsche Telekom has donated data and in Italy three different carriers (Telecom Italia, Vodafone and WindTre) are working with the authorities.

A1 Telekom Austria has developed a tracking app with Invenium to guide the efforts in Austria, and others are likely to join in other countries.

Smartphones have made many of the world's leading technology companies what they are. Without a doubt Apple wouldn't be today's Apple without the iPhone.

Many of the leading manufacturers and their partners have been on the smartphone hype train for a decade or more. For most of it, in fact until very recently, it has provided them with immense growth and great profits.

However, it seems that the smartphone industry is now in a crucial spot of reckoning. The past year or two have been much tougher on them than what they are used to, and last month with Chinese factories closing meant a decline that no one expected.

According to Strategy Analytics, smartphone shipments declined a massive 38 percent in February. A total of 61.8 million units were shipped last month compared to 99.2 million previous February.

This is by far the largest decline ever in smartphone history.

March is likely not going to be much better, even though factories in China are pumping out again much more product, as people in the west are stuck at home, and uncertain about their financial situation.

Strategy Analystics expect a lot of the products to be sold on a discount soon as manufacturers and retailers are stuck with products that aren't selling fast enough, and are getting obsolete every second they spend on the shelves.

Apple has decided to extend the closing of their brick-and-mortar stores. Previously Apple intended to open the stores outside China to the public again after March 27.

Coronavirus has gotten more intense in the past around the world, and most governments have decided to close schools, ban gatherings, and discourage needless contact. This is as good a reason as any to extend close closing further.

At this point Apple doesn't know how long Apple Stores are going to stay closed. It wholly depends on the spread of the virus, and likely stores will open at different points in different regions.

Apple's online store will function as expected, and you can get all the products shipped to you if needed. In repair or warranty issues, Apple asks customers to contact them by email or phone.

Some of the third-party retailers are still open so you can get products from the likes of Best Buy, at least for now.

In China, Apple Stores are already open. Number of new cases has rapidly dropped in the recent weeks, and in many ways China is back to regular business.

If you were around six years ago and actively seeking for BitTorrent enabled movie services, you are probably familiar with Popcorn Time. The controversial service with a fairly unstable history has now come back to life, Motherboard reports.

The original service was buried in early 2014 but it came back just hours later by another group. Even the one died mere year and a half later.

There's no story behind the resurfacing of an old familiar face, not that we know anyways, but one could construct a plausible reasoning on top of coronavirus and people searching for content online. Especially since the latest version of Popcorn Time has been named Corona.

However, what we do know is that people are using VPN way more than they were before the outbreak. In fact, Popcorn Time suggests that you use VPN when using the service for reasons that will become obvious if they aren't already.

World has in many ways stopped and people have definitely isolated due to coronavirus spreading around the world. Conferences have been cancelled, school's out, movie theaters are suffering, and people are spending time at home.

For some very specific businesses this means a boost. Amazon is hiring 100,000 new employees and Netflix is likely more crowded than ever. The latter also means that VPN connections are on the rise.

As people are using their internet and region-restricted streaming services, they are seeking new content from abroad, according to Atlas VPN blog post. Another reason, probably as important, is to access work networks from home as more and more people are working from home.

The company reveals that VPN usage has indeed increased tremendously in coronavirus affected countries. In the US, usage is up 53% but in Italy, the western country that has been affected the worst, is up 112%.

Even Russia, that has officially had only a few cases of coronavirus, has gone up 36%.

There are also services that are provided to Italians for free due to the harsh impact coronavirus has had in the country. VPN might make it possible for people from other countries to share those benefits.

As soon as Microsoft decided to reveal most of the mighty specs of their upcoming Xbox Series X console, Sony is ready to unveil something of their own.

PlayStation 5 has so far been under covers, and there's not a lot we know about the next-gen gaming console. This is going to change tomorrow, as the Japanese company is set to reveal the console.

PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny will "provide a deep dive into PS5's system architecture." What exactly this means is unclear, and whether we see the actual console, and perhaps the controllers is unclear.

It is likely that at this point Sony is still just going to talk about the technical specifications, and leave the console unveiling itself for a later event.

Xbox Series X specs (see them here) are likely going to be challenged today, and Sony wants to express exactly how they are going to be outcompeting their rival.

Sony might have intended to share this information at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, which would've been organized right now if coronavirus didn't happen. Both GDC as well as E3 in June were cancelled due to the outbreak.

As many of us expected after numerous conferences and gatherings cancelled due to coronavirus, Apple did not find it responsible to fly hundreds of people to attend its annual developer conference.

Apple doesn't exactly call WWDC cancelled, since it is planning to organize a purely virtual conference, but the physical part, the one that people were excited to once again attend, is not going to happen.

Apple joins the list of cancellations with Microsoft and Google, who've just recently announced the cancellation of their physical developer events, as well as other conferences, such as world's largest mobile conference MWC, Game Developer Conference, and E3.

As mentioned, WWDC 2020 will still happen virtually and Apple promises both keynote speeches as well as panels for software developers. They promise that the announcements will be major even though they couldn't invite people at their campus this time around.

This weekend we were supposed to have Game Developers Conference with possibly some juicy details about next-gen consoles and games, although Microsoft at least has their own virtual conference. Now even the most anticipated game conference of the year, E3, has been cancelled.

As you might imagine, the cancellation of E3 2020 is coronavirus, which has shut down most of early 2020's events, including the likes of MWC, Google I/O, and others. According to Entertainment Software Association, or ESA, that is responsible for the annual game conference, this is the first year since 1995 that the E3 conference has not been held.

The organizer has announced that it is "exploring options with our members to coordinate an online experience to showcase industry announcements and news in June."

Google in planning to update their media streaming device Chromecast soon, 9to5Google reports. The search giant has made some interesting improvements to both software and hardware, report claims.

The new Chromecast Ultra is said to come with an improved software package that turns the dongle into a full-fledged media device. No longer is Chromecast Ultra going to run the simplified Android (or perhaps Chrome OS) but instead will be running Android TV.

This means that unlike the current generation Chromecast Ultra (pictured), the upcoming streaming stick is able to no only stream but act as a standalone media device. Essentially this turns your dumb TV into a Android TV, like the ones from Sony, Sharp, Philips and others.

As you'll be interacting with the Chromecast Ultra itself, not just which ever device is streaming content to it, Google is going to include a remote. This is perhaps one of the biggest gripes about Chromecast for some, although personally it never has been an issue.

According to the rumors, the remote has taken some influence from both the Daydream View remote and an Apple TV remote. It includes a microphone, which allows voice commands via Google Assistant.

The electric car company founded in 2003 by a PayPal co-founder Elon Musk has passed an impressive milestone. Musk announced on Twitter earlier this week that the company has made their millionth car.

Musk's original Master Plan included creating an electric car, which was the 2008 Roadster, use the money to develop more affordable and popular electric car, ie. Model S, finally make a widely accessible mass-produced vehicle, which was released in 2017.

It also included developer solar power, which has been taken care of by Musk's other venture, SolarCity, which merged into Tesla in 2016.

Obviously Tesla isn't done now that the initial Master Plan has been concluded for years. In fact, Musk blogged about "Master Plan, Part Deux" in 2016.

For the car business part of Tesla, the plan is to provide electric vehicles to all automotive segments, and offer both autonomous driving as well as car-sharing capabilities.

Neither of these aspect have advanced as fast as we, or Elon Musk for that matter, would hope for, but that's what we're looking at.

However, many analysts would probably agree that making self-driving quickly isn't actually the most pressing issue, instead the company needs to get the volume up. Luckily for Tesla, they've managed to up the production quite a bit, hoping to make around 500,000 cars this year.

As coronavirus is wrecking havoc and spreading panic around the world, most of the conferences that we're to be held in the first half of 2020 have been cancelled.

This includes not only the leading smartphone and mobile conference, Mobile World Congress, and upcoming Microsoft and Google developer conferences but also Game Developers Conference which was supposed to be held starting next Sunday.

This means that there's no vessel to many of Microsoft's plans, and the company has to talk about the product releases and news in another way.

Microsoft has announced that it will have a two-day streamed event, called Game Stack Live, which is aimed at developers interested in upcoming products, most importantly Xbox Series X as well as their cloud gaming platform Project xCloud.

The virtual conference is likely to include a lot of details that are essential to the game developer community but the company might share some interesting tidbits even for us non-developers.

If nothing else, we'll learn what type of tools Microsoft has created for the content creation, and how exactly is it going to combat Sony's supremacy this time around.

Exclusive titles are a must in fighting the console behemoth Sony, and this is one of the more important ways Microsoft might win developers over.

Car salesmen haven't had much action in China lately due to coronavirus. In fact, sales of automobiles has gone down 80 or even 90 percent, manufacturers and industry sources report.

However, cars isn't the only business, by a long shot, that has been affected by the widespread virus. Sales of smartphones has been hugely impacted by coronavirus, Reuters reports.

China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) has released sales figures for smartphone sales in February, and the numbers are dramatically down.

In February, only 6.34 million smartphones were sold compared to 14 million previous year. This means a decline of 54.7 percent.

Apple sold less that half a million iPhones in China in February, and was down more than 60 percent. Android phone sales went down just over 50 percent with 5.85 million sold.

This isn't exactly news to Apple who released a warning to investors in mid-February that the company won't be able to meet previous revenue estimates due to production and sales slowdown amid coronavirus.

Google Photos is one of the company's more important consumer products. You've probably witnessed the importance in their Pixel ads – I'm sure you remember the one with iPhone running out of storage for photos.

It's obviously one of the most popular photo apps as it comes with many Android phones, and even when it doesn't people flock to download it. Popularity dictates that Google doesn't really want to try and fix something that isn't broken.

Quite like in it's core search engine, not much has changed, but now Google is ready to give Photos some new flare, Android Police reports.

One of the more meaningful changes is the removal of the hamburger menu on the top left. Some of the hamburger menu items find a new home in the bottom bar.

The bottom of the UI transitions from having Photos, Albums, For You, and Sharing into having Photos, Search, For you, Sharing, and Library. This also means that the second big change is the replacement of the search function. Currently the app has a search box at the top of the interface.

A similar change was implemented in Google Maps earlier, so this definitely seems like a portfolio-wide design change. Google is clearly trying to made the interfaces more friendly with one-handed use, even with today's massive screens.

Microsoft has already unveiled their upcoming Xbox Series X console that will be battling against PlayStation 5 starting later this year. However, rumors suggest there might be another Xbox console in the works.

In fact, it is an age old rumor that Xbox is working on a cheaper gaming console to accompany Xbox Series X (pictured). This codename Lockhart, perhaps called Xbox Series S, was said to be cancelled but new information has surfaced and says unveiling might be imminent.

Dealer Gaming on Twitter is suggesting that Microsoft is preparing to reveal the cheaper system. It uses that same architecture as Xbox Series X in terms of GPU and CPU, but has significantly less performance.

According to the leak, the AMD-built Zen CPU and Navi GPU of the Series X only manage 4 teraflops compared to Xbox Series X that can crank out up to 8 teraflops. Nevertheless, the Series X console is still more powerful than any of the current generation Xbox consoles.

Another source claims that not only is Series S less powerful than its bigger sibling but it can't achieve the same resolution. Xbox Series X is confirmed to run games at 4K resolution but Series S is said to max out at 1440p.

Samsung's this years TV portfolio includes many new high-end 8K TVs and 4K is now distinctly mid-range. The lineup includes the top model, Q950TS series, which tops at way over $10,000, although prices are yet unconfirmed.

Samsung's best QLED TV, Q950TS, comes in 65-, 75- and 85-inch sizes and features full array local dimming (FALD) with 20% better peak brightness. It supports HDR10, HLG and HDR10+, but there's still no Dolby Vision support.

Both AMD's Free Sync and Nvidia's G-Sync are supported and latency in gaming mode should be around 10 milliseconds. You can also watch TV or YouTube in picture-in-picture with Multi-View while gaming.

The TV is only 15 mm thick and has a bezel-less Infinity Display framing. To get everything out of the painting-like build, the TV comes with OneConnect box which allows you to place wires out of the way.

Twitter revealed yesterday that it has started a new beta test in Brazil. The company is testing a new features called fleets, which are disappearing tweets.

Fleets, named after fleeting tweet, are similar to features on other platforms, including Snapchat's and Facebook's stories. They automatically disappear after 24 hours of posting the content.

Unlike tweets, fleets do not appear on the timeline. Instead, you can access person's latest fleet by clicking on the profile picture.

Twitter spokesperson told Reuters that one can use the new fleet feature when a thought doesn't quite manifest as a tweet but just a, well, fleeting thought.

There's no word on when fleets could become a worldwide feature, and it is certainly still a possibility that it might not land on your app at all.

Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has been spreading for months now, and it has dominated the news for at least a month, as reports from countries around the world update on the most recent statistics on infected and dead.

While the epidemic hasn't advanced to a pandemic stage, and hopefully never will, the threat is real and serious. This has been noted by technology companies too, as most of early 2020's conferences have been called off, including Mobile World Congress, Google I/O and Microsoft Build.

However, technology might also bring the solution to the problem, perhaps even in a very entertaining way. Instead of just washing your hands and hoping for the best, you can actually help stop coronavirus – while playing a game.

Researchers from University of Washington in Seattle have updated a game called Foldit from 2008 to help the cause. The puzzle game was created to help solve scientific problems with the help of the larger public, perhaps inspired by Folding@Home application on the PS3.

Google has decided to cancel their developer conference that was meant to be held in Mountain View, CA in May. As expected, Google has cited coronavirus threat as the single reason for canceling Google I/O.

Many of the conferences that are held in early 2020 have been cancelled due to coronavirus. This includes the world's largest mobile conference, Mobile World Congress, as well a Facebook's F8.

Google I/O was set to be held at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, just like on previous years, on May 12 to 14. Instead of the developer gathering, there will likely be just streams, videos and articles shared about the advancements in Google's software.

It remains to be seen whether Google will still present keynote speeches via stream as they normally do live to an audience.

Microsoft's developer conference, Build, is also slated for May, and they've cancelled their event as well. Now all eyes are on Apple, whose developer conference WWDC is organized in early June.