Latest news

Samsung announced their new Galaxy S lineup yesterday introducing the Galaxy S20, S20+, and the new top tier S20 Ultra. Those phones are impressive in their own right, and you can read more about them in our overview.

However, there was another smartphone, a one more thing of sorts, that Samsung announced in San Francisco. The second generation of foldable phones, which follows Motorola's new Razr in design.

The new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip was already teased in an ad that ran during the Oscars a few days ago. Even before that leaks had pretty much confirmed the existence of said phone.

Now, though, we have all the facts and juicy details.

Samsung has unveiled three new handsets in its Galaxy S- line up which support 5G wireless connectivity, and pack powerful camera features.

It unveiled the three new 5G-capable Galaxy S devices in San Francisco today, while rival Apple is still to release a 5G-capable iPhone and Chinese rival Huawei suffers from geopolitical woes. All three new handsets - Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+, and Galaxy S20 Ultra - feature considerable camera upgrades for superior image and video capturing. It should be noted that only the Galaxy S20+ and Galaxy S20 Ultra support sub-6 and mmWave 5G technology.

Each has three camera lens on the rear (telephoto, ultra-wide angle, and wide-angle), though vary based on which S20 device it is. The standard Galaxy S20 has a 64MP telephoto lens, 12MP wide and 12MP ultrawide, which is the same arrangement as the Galaxy S20+. However, the S20+ model supplements the three lens with a depth sensor (DepthVision).

The high-end Galaxy S20 Ultra also features the depth sensor but its telephoto lens drops to 48MP, while it packs a significant 108MP (f / 1.8) wide-angle lens. New in the S20 line-up is Space Zoom, which combines the optical zoom features with artificial intelligence to provide up to 30x zoom on the S20 and S20+, and a staggering 100x zoom with the Galaxy S20 Ultra.

The leading mobile technology conference, Mobile World Congress, will be held again in Barcelona later this month. While many of the most prominent smartphone manufacturers have their own separate events these days to unveil the flagships, MWC has remained the most important event for the industry.

This year, however, it seems that there will be some downscaling, as some of the exhibitors and companies have decided to stay home. This is mainly due to the coronavirus epidemic prevalent especially in China.

Some of the cancellations include Chinese smartphone maker ZTE as well as Sony, LG, Nvidia, and Ericsson.

Many of the companies are going to release their new products via a streamed event instead.

MWC organizer GSMA has had to resort to more thorough procedures due to increased security concerns posed by the spread of the very contagious illness. GSMA has disallowed anyone from Hubei province to attend the conference.

This includes one of the most populous cities of China, Wuhan, which is home to a large tech sector. Companies like Xiaomi, Huawei, Foxconn, and others, have either headquarters, R&D, or manufacturing in the city.

GSMA also wants to confirm that the attendees have been outside of China for at least two weeks, and that they haven't been in contact with anyone infected with the virus.

This year's Samsung Unpacked, held tomorrow in San Francisco, is expected to be the event where the Korean smartphone maker unveils both the new Galaxy S20 as well as their second-generation foldable phone.

Surprisingly Samsung decided to take a bit of a head start yesterday by releasing an ad for the latter. The phone's first commercial aired during the Oscars yesterday.

The ad itself, which can be seen down below, didn't reveal much of anything new in terms of design, since the leaked photos have been circulating the web for quite some time, but there were some interesting features Samsung decided to show off.

Perhaps the most intriguing of them all is the tiny secondary display that is hidden under the back of the clamshell, next to the cameras. This display is seen alerting the user of a call that can be answered by swiping.

The ad also confirmed what was already rumored, the phone seems to be designed to work differently in different poses, and dual cameras are present, as are USB-C sans an accompanying headphone jack.

Now, I guess tomorrow we'll find out the specs and price. You can watch the unveiling live at samsung.com starting at 2pm ET / 11am PT.

Netflix is the king of streaming for a good reason. Not only has it had very good content over the years but it has been on the cutting edge of technology and A/B-testing.

The company is known for trying out all kinds of things to improve the experience and, most of all, improve the viewer and viewing numbers. Most of this has resulted in an experience that competitors simply can't provide, but there are definitely occasional hiccups.

One of these is perhaps the automatic previews introduced not too long ago. When you are looking for one it is convenient that you get an automatically playing preview or trailer of the the show in question, and it definitely provides more in-depth look than reading a short synopsis.

However, when you are flicking through the titles, and perhaps just want to pause for a second, automatically playing random previews can be irritating as hell. Apparently after enough rants online, and in Netflix support inbox, the company has finally also acknowledged this.

Netflix has added an option to remove the automatic previews entirely. Their Twitter post makes it clear that it wasn't just one or two complaints they've received about this specific feature.

Apple is taking streaming media seriously. Not only did it finally challenge Spotify a few years ago with Apple Music, now the company has announced their own streaming video service too.

Apple TV+ might not yet be competing against Netflix or even Disney+ and its close to 29 million users in terms of viewership, but they've got something neither of these companies have.

That is Apple TV, the media player. The fifth iteration of Apple TV was released in 2017, and much has happened since. Not of course least, the introduction of Apple TV+.

Apple TV+ is available of course on many platforms in addition to iTunes and Apple TV, including smart TVs by Samsung and others, but that's suboptimal for the Cupertino company. They surely want to keep the Apple ecosystem as all-encompassing as possible.

9to5Mac has spotted a reference to a new Apple TV device in recently released tvOS 13 beta. Not only did they spot a reference to a new device, but they even managed to retrieve information that it is using a new architecture that's found in Apple's A12 and A13 chips. Those are found in iPhone XS and iPhone 11 respectively.

A Russian security researcher Vladislav Yarmak released earlier this week a blog post in which he detailed how the controversial Chinese technology company Huawei has hidden a backdoor into some of their products.

This, among other security concerns, is something the U.S. government has been worried about for years. While Yarmak's claim seemed believable at first, it was in fact the security camera manufacturer using Huawei's product that had, likely mistakenly, included this breachable security hole.

In this case the security camera that was accessible via a remote access software allowed the creation of a session key that would let in telnet connections to the camera with default administrator logins.

Yarmak blamed HiSilicon, Huawei's chip manufacturing arm, of the faulty system-on-chip. However, HiSilicon did their own research and determined that it was the software, not the hardware, component that allowed this backdoor access.

Yarmak has since acknowledged his mistake.

Fortunately the software error isn't widely spread since it was only found in security camera by two manufacturers, both fairly insignificant. However, if you happen to own cameras by Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology or XMtech, you might want to look into possible patches.

Netflix has revealed that it has started utilizing a new video codec in its streaming service. The video compression technology is called AV1 and succeeds Google's popular VP9.

Netflix is saying that the AV1 compression provides up to 20 percent improvement in efficiency, which ultimately could mean better quality with less bandwidth and less data traffic.

At this point Netflix is only enabling it for certain use cases. First ones to get it are Android app users, who can get better compression by enabling "Save Data" option from the app settings.

However, not every video will still be AV1 encoded, Netflix is only transitioning towards a catalog of AV1 content.

Netflix intends to bring the new codec to all platforms, but we'll have to see how long that'll take.

AV1 is developed by a consortium of media and tech companies called Alliance for Open Media. This includes Google, who developed the predecessor VP9, as well as Netflix, Intel, Amazon, and Microsoft, among others.

Disney's new subscription streaming service Disney+ has been around for around three months but it certainly has managed to gain significant headway with its Baby Yodas and all.

Challenging Netflix is hard but when you have the power of Marvel superheroes, Disney classics, and of course Star Wars and aforementioned Baby Yoda, anything is possible. It seems that Disney's initial push has been a strong one.

The company has revealed that it is closing in on 30 million subscribers already. Disney says that it has so far accumulated 28.6 million users, which is quite the figure considering it's only available in handful of markets and has been around for less than 90 days.

The earnings report says Disney+ had 26.5 million subscribers as of December 28. That means only 2.1 million subscribers have been added in the past 42 days.

CEO Bob Iger says that the success has surprised even Disney themselves. Disney+ is already larger than HBO Now in subscriber numbers and nearing 50% of what Netflix has in the US.

Obviously there's still a long way to go to challenge Netflix for the number one spot, and it remains to be seen whether the company is able to produce content that will keep people paying.

The most anticipated show on the new streaming service Disney+ was by far The Mandalorian. Set in the Star Wars universe, The Mandalorian focuses on the breed of bounty hunters in a galaxy far, far away.

Now Disney has unveiled that they have season two coming for the show that popularized Baby Yoda, one of the more influential memes of the past couple of months.

You'll have to still wait a little bit as the continuation is expected to land in October. However, Disney+ will have two seasons of its most popular show in the first year of existing.

Disney has probably recognized that much of its early success has come from this show alone.

Not only is Disney releasing another season of The Mandalorian but they are also considering spin-offs based on some of the characters in the show.

The United States government and Chinese tech manufacturer Huawei have been arm wrestling for years now. Between both the previous as well as the current government, the U.S. has been worried about Huawei's national security impact.

The problem has become more timely with the introduction of 5G. The newest generation of mobile communication is being built around the world, and the U.S. doesn't want Huawei to be in the position of providing the equipment.

Whether the current administration thinks that the Chinese company and its connections with their respective government would be detrimental to the national security and the privacy of the people, or perhaps they would like to make it a little bit easier for the western competitors, only the people in the administration would know.

Nevertheless, the U.S. has banned Huawei from providing 5G equipment to the network building effort in the country, and even pressured the Europe to follow suit.

However, this hasn't worked out quite in the way that the U.S. officials hoped for. Recently UK determined that it won't be banning Huawei from entering the 5G market, if that is indeed the provider that will be chosen for whatever project.

Samsung has held the spot for the most smartphone shipments by a company for quite a stretch. Occasionally Apple could inch a win in one quarter before losing the lead again.

Now Apple has again managed to beat Samsung in the market share game. According to Counterpoint Research, Apple's 72.9 million iPhones ensured it the first place.

As per usual, Apple's lead was due to strong holiday sales, which has also previously sprung the Cupertino company to the lead.

Samsung, lead by its Galaxy lineup, only managed around 70 million units, which is more than 10% down from previous quarter and around the same amount they sold year earlier.

While Apple managed to get the lead once again at the end of the year, Samsung held the throne rather easily in yearly figures. Samsung shipped 296.5 million smartphones in 2019, Huawei came in second with 238.5 million, and Apple was third with just under 200 million units.

These figures are only estimates by Counterpoint Research, and other analytics firms have slight differences in numbers. IHS Markit for example estimates Apple's sales to be only 67.7 million units and behind Samsung's 70.7 million. Strategy Analytics estimates Apple took the lead in Q4.

The world's leading contract manufacturer, Foxconn, estimates that the spread of new coronavirus is not going to affect production in a significant way. Foxconn, known also as Hon Hai Precision Industry, builds many of the most popular eletronics, such as the iPhone.

The Taiwan-based Foxconn is not worried about production slowdowns due to the outbreak of coronavirus that was first detected at the turn of the year. As of today there has been reported 5,974 cases in China of which 132 have resulted in death.

While the company headquarters are located in Taiwan, most of its factories are in China. Some of them are in cities where coronavirus has taken hold aggressively, including Wuhan and Chengdu.

While coronavirus has been highly publicized lately, the scope of things is still small. There is no pandemic, barely an epidemic yet. A normal year of influenza in the United States can include tens of millions of cases with tens of thousands of deaths.

However, Foxconn is nonetheless taking the threat seriously, as it should. It could be very dangerous and detrimental to the production if coronavirus was allowed to spread to the factory workers. The company is following health official's guidelines in order to keep things in check.

Samsung is preparing a launch of its second-generation foldable smartphone. This time around Samsung is turning the folding display vertically in an attempt to copy the new Razr introduced last year.

Galaxy Z Flip is by far one of the more anticipated phone of 2020 we know of. It's not really a successor to the Fold, although it clearly shares some DNA. The company is still trying to figure out form factors for the folding display technology it has been developing for years and years.

Soon, in fact in less than two weeks, Samsung will unveil their new Galaxy S20 flagship phones in San Francisco. It could be, and perhaps it's even likely, that Samsung will also announce this new foldable there.

Last year at the same event Samsung announced their first folding phone, Galaxy Fold. Although it didn't come out for quite some time, and with recalls and all, Unpacked seems to be the event to unveil "one more thing."

They've already teased us with this concept in a video released couple months ago.

The past couple of years hasn't been easy for Apple, considering the relations with China and U.S. have been under turmoil and iPhone sales has been lacking. However, somehow the Cupertino conglomerate seems to have fight the winds.

Year ago Apple had to resort to a rare sales warning due to the problems mentioned. Now everything seems to be much more to where Tim Cook and the shareholders want it.

Previous quarter ended in a new record-breaking $91.8 billion revenue. Even Apple themselves were expecting a figure between 85.5 and 89.5. Markets were expecting revenue to be closer to the higher end of that spread.

Good news didn't end there as net income rose to new heights as well. Net income for the October-December quarter was $22.2 billion. Only the second time it hit over $20 billion after two years ago setting the record at $20.07 billion.

As one would expect, Apple stock got an immediate boost, although it barely registers in the already very upwards trend of the past six months.

Most of the revenue is from devices with $79.1 billion and most of that is still coming from the iPhone, which posted a $56 billion quarter. The iPhone is still down from the top sales figures of two years ago but Apple managed to make an important comeback to last years $52 billion revenue.