Honor’s second foldable, and the first destined for the west, has been unveiled today in China as the Honor Magic VS 5G. The VS is a follow-up to the Magic V, but you’ll spend a while playing spot the difference between the two handset’s spec sheets. This new model keeps the same measurements, display resolutions and connectivity options, but gets Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 paired with a bigger 5,000mAh battery.
Instead, the biggest difference is the focus on reliability, with Honor talking up its new gear-free hinge, reducing the complexity of the mechanism inside. The company says that the handset will withstand up to 400,000 folds despite the parts count falling from 92 (in the Magic V) to 4 in the VS. Sadly, there’s no word on water and ingress protection, meaning it may still lag behind the competition in terms of getting dirt trapped where it shouldn’t be.
The Magic V was no slouch, imaging-wise, but the VS is packing a 54-megapixel primary camera tied to Sony’s IMX800 sensor, same as found on the Honor 70. That’s paired with a 50-megapixel wide and macro lens, as well as an 8-megapixel 3x optical zoom lens. The company says that its computational photography know-how will ensure the handset offers “best in class” capabilities.
Imaging-wise, the handset has a 54-megapixel primary camera tied to Sony’s IMX800 sensor, the same one found on Honor’s 70 series. That’s paired with a 50-megapixel Wide and Macro lens, as well as an 8-megapixel 3x optical zoom lens. The company says that its computational photography know-how will ensure that the handset offers “best in class” capabilities.
At the same time, the company is launching the Honor 80 and 80 Pro, a pair of cameras designed for mobile vlogging. These handsets boast of an AI setup to judge scenes intelligently and tweak the lighting and color to suit the environment at the time. And you’ll be shooting with a 160-megapixel primary camera — although that headline figure will probably be binned down quite hard when processed. And we’ve already put Honor’s claims about using its products for videography to the test when we reviewed the Magic 4 Pro.
Pre-orders for the Magic VS will first open in China on November 23rd, in a choice of Orange, Cyan or Black colorways. It’ll be priced at 7,499 RMB (roughly $1,048), with its arrival in worldwide markets expected to happen through the first quarter of 2023, although pricing information isn’t yet available.
For most people, there’s no such thing as an essential Roomba if you can work your own vacuum cleaner. They’re nice to have, and do a job, but you’ll get better results if you can put the work in yourself. They also require more management than Rosie the Robot from The Jetsons or Red Dwarf’s Kryten. You’ll come to earth with a bump when you see this oversized hockey puck crashing itself into your baseboards, wondering where the future we were promised disappeared to. But, if you judge the new Combo J7+ on its own merits, it makes a far better case for itself than many of its rivals.
The Roomba Combo J7+ is iRobot’s first “true” two-in-one vacuum and mopping robot, doing both without intervention. There’s no need to add or remove a mop pad between missions, and none of the dreaded risk of cross-contamination. After all, if your two-in-one is infused with dirty water, it runs the risk of depositing its juices all over your freshly vacuumed carpets and rugs. That’s a first world problem, but one iRobot believes is a big impediment to people buying a premium floor-cleaning robot.
iRobot’s solution is to have the Combo J7+ hold its mop and pad on top of its chassis, only pulling it down when required. The machine’s sensors identify when it’s rolling over hardwood versus a carpet, and flips down the pad accordingly. It’s a fairly smart piece of engineering, and iRobot’s engineers deserve kudos for finding such an elegant solution. All you’ll need to do is fill the reservoir with water and some cleaning solution, and activate a mission from inside the iRobot app, choosing your dosage level (Eco, Standard or Ultra) before pressing start.
I’ve had the J7+ in my home for three weeks now, set up in my entrance hall, since the ground floor of my home is a mix of hardwood, laminate and rugs. My kids, who have to walk down a dirt track to get to school, love tracking mud and debris into my hallway upon their return. Plus, it means I can send it out after dinner to clean the kitchen floor to deal with the usual raft of child-created crumbs. Although more commonly, I choose to clean the floors during the mid-morning, when my kids can’t complain about the noise the Clean Base makes.
Daniel Cooper
The J7+ is the first Roomba to ship with iRobot OS 5.0, which improves upon the company’s work to avoid dangerous hazards. (I don’t know if I can say “rolling into a pile of dog poop and smearing it all over your carpets” in a way that’s brand safe, so just use your own euphemism.) After each mission, you’ll be asked to review obstacles that the robot detected during the trip, letting it know if the pair of sneakers you left by the back door is a temporary or permanent fixture for the future. The big point, however, is for the camera’s computer vision to identify these hazards and avoid them without having to bump into them.
I will say, I did find the early mapping runs to be a little more frustrating than I may have expected. Part of this was because I had to tidy up everything after my kids before I could send the machine out for a run. And that it was outfoxed fairly regularly by both my welcome mat and the threshold between the hallway and the kitchen. I wish, really, there was a way I could use my phone – with its boat-load of location-aware tech – to help build the map. For instance, I’d be happy to trace a rough outline of the ground floor of my home with my phone using dead reckoning, which you’d think would help speed up the process.
To be fair, this power has grown exponentially over the period of time I’ve had the Roomba in my home. A few days ago, the system asked if I wanted to craft a dedicated cleaning zone around the kitchen table, without any prompting from me whatsoever. That’s obviously a great way to spot-target areas of dirt buildup without having to do the whole kitchen floor every night, too. Credit where due, the Roomba has picked up a good sense of where everything is in my house, and where it needs to direct its energies.
The machine does a great job removing small, loose particles from the floor, but it’s still leaving the odd outlier. Not to mention that, despite a lot of promises to not need much micromanagement, you’ll be filling the Roomba’s water reservoir very frequently. The container can take a fairly piddly 210 ml (around 7 ounces) of water, good enough for 40 square meters (430 square feet) of floor on high dose, enough just about for my modest, British ground floor. But if you’re in a McMansion with floors the length and breadth of a football field, you might need to refill the Roomba in the middle of a job.
In the US, the J7+ ships with the clean base, which will set you back $1,099.99 – a fairly massive chunk of change. Elsewhere, you can pick it up base-free, but if you’re buying a Roomba for the convenience, the base makes plenty of sense. The base is not only where your machine will charge itself, but it has its own vacuum that sucks out any debris that the Roomba picks up and deposits it inside its own bag. If I have a complaint, it’s that I wish the Roomba itself had some of the power of the Clean Base’s own suction, which is about as powerful (and noisy) as a jet engine. I also wish there was a way to disable this feature.
There are parts of iRobot’s sales pitch that leave me almost petulantly shrugging in hostile indifference. Like being able to order your Roomba to clean a specific high-traffic zone by barking a command to your home’s voice assistant of choice. I think using a voice assistant became passé after the third time you tried to impress your neighbors by changing the color of your living room lights in 2013. Yes, for older people, and those with accessibility needs, a good voice assistant connection is vital, but it’s also something that leaves me cold. Especially when it’s a lot easier to just activate a mission from the app, which is beautifully simple to do.
But, despite my objections, I have found this gizmo worming its way into my regular routine more than I ever expected. It’s actually a pleasure to walk back from the school run, see a pile of dirt on the floor and be able to magic it away with the press of a button. And setting it up to mop the floor as well, means that the number times I have to clean it myself has dropped massively. It may not replace your vacuum cleaner, or your mop, but it will mean you don’t have to use them anywhere near as frequently as you normally do.
Elon Musk has banned Twitter employees from working remotely, saying they need to spend 40 hours a week in the office unless he gives his express permission otherwise. Bloomberg reported from the company’s first official all-hands communications from Musk since bought the platform. He said workers need to prepare for “difficult times ahead” for advertising-led business like Twitter, and that he wants to see subscription fees, account for half the company’s revenue.
Twitter fostered a remote work culture during the pandemic, allowing many employees to work from home. It also instituted regular additional rest days for employees, another initiative Musk has axed, saying that Twitter’s turnaround will require “intense work.” Musk ’s other companies, SpaceX and Tesla, also require mandatory in-office work unless management specifically approves it. When he wrote to both sets of workers, he said that visibility was key for senior leadership, who should be seen to be working alongside their subordinates.
Musk added in his remarks that the company’s first priority — after completing the rollout of Twitter Blue — is to address his concern around automated accounts. A key pillar of Musk and the company’s fight, prior to acquisition, was the billionaire’s belief that the company was under reporting the amount of fake accounts running on its platform.
Less than two months after it admitted a million vehicles had faulty window sensors, Tesla is issuing another large-scale recall. This time, the company is flagging more than 40,000 cars after a software defect cut power steering when driving over potholes. A software fix is rolling out, and Tesla said over 97 percent of affected vehicles already have the new code.
This is, however, the 17th recall Tesla has issued in 2022, with issues affecting more than 3.4 million vehicles. It adds weight to Tesla’s critics, too, who say the company’s poor build quality hurts its ability to recruit would-be EV buyers. But despite the number of post-purchase issues, the company hasn’t seen any harm to its bottom line, which saw profits double in the last year.
One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges has been bailed out by one of its major rivals. FTX, fearing a liquidity crunch and struggling to satisfy customer withdrawals, has thrown itself upon the mercy of major rival Binance. FTX’s rapid collapse raises questions about how well these exchanges are managing clients’ money and cannot quell belief the crypto bubble is about to burst, once and for all.
Netflix’s Triviaverse is the streaming giant’s latest foray into the interactive gaming space, and it’s pretty good. It’s a rapid-fire trivia quiz, throwing increasingly difficult questions at you while the clock runs down, adding an extra frisson of tension. There’s a two-player mode, too, and it’s the sort of title you could imagine throwing on when the energy in a party sags. It made me wonder how much fun we’d all have if Netflix bought a company like Jackbox, offering those titles through its platform.
The European Union has followed the UK’s lead to open its own investigation into Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The bloc is concerned the Xbox owner’s control of such a major games publisher poses a risk to competition the world over. It now has 90 days to complete a thorough investigation of the deal, postponing any completion to mid-March next year.
Nice as the Apple Watch Ultra is, Garmin thinks its new Instinct Crossover can do a better job while standing on its metaphorical head. The new watch is a hybrid with a digital display embedded in the whole face and is sturdy enough to cope with the big outdoors. As for battery life, the standard edition will last a month on a single charge, and 110 hours with GPS activated. Opt for the Solar Edition, with PV panels around the bezel, and it’ll run for up to 70 days if there’s enough light.
Microsoft’s knocked out five generations of Surface Laptop, and it looks like familiarity has bred a small degree of contempt. Sam Rutherford has taken the new machine for a spin, finding there’s not enough change from the previous model. Sure, there are new Intel CPUs and a new Thunderbolt 4 port in the chassis, but that’s about it for major changes.
Instead, you get the same chassis, display and webcam as previous years, none of which are table stakes for a premium laptop in this class. Nor are the lack of graphics options beyond Intel’s Iris XE, which means games will either look rough or run like sludge. And that’s really not good for a laptop that costs the same as the vastly superior XPS 13.
Rivian appears, from a fairly modest start, to have produced two of the best EVs in their classes. Roberto Baldwin has spent some time rolling around in the new R1S, an electric off-roader with some serious power and even better quality of life improvements: You can camp (or live) in your R1S by adjusting its suspension to ensure its cabin is entirely flat, relative to the floor it’s parked on. Pretty cool.
From ‘No censorship’ to ‘No, censorship’ in record time.
Twitter owner Elon Musk previously said lifetime bans were bad, and that “comedy” was once again legal on the platform. Unfortunately, a number of users enjoyed their new freedom to mock the site’s new overlord, prompting something of a rethink. After several high-profile users started impersonating Musk, the super-chill billionaire with a great sense of humor, announced Twitter will permanently ban account impersonators unless clearly listed as a parody.
The one time I went into an AV store to look at projectors, the salesperson tried to upsell me to a $3,000 unit in the first five minutes. That means I’ve never found a unit that could start me on a home cinema journey until I looked at our new buyer’s guide.
Steve Dent has laid out what you need to know before buying a projector and thrown in some recommendations for good yet affordable units. And that should go hand-in-glove with the new audio buyer’s guide, since no movie is complete without an excellent sound system, right?
Airbnb has pledged to improve transparency around the cost of vacation rentals, putting the full price of a stay in search results. It’s to address complaints that you don’t see the hidden charges until you’ve clicked into a listing. That can include a hefty security deposit or cleaning fee, pushing the price well over, say, just visiting a hotel. Unfortunately, the figures aren’t displayed pre-tax, as custom in the US, so there’ll still be some sticker shock when it comes time to hit the button.
French high-end audio company Devialet has a reputation for making powerful, interesting and eye-wateringly expensive speakers. Today, the company has announced its first portable smart speaker with an eye-watering price tag. Looking like a cannonball with its own carrying strap, the Devialet Mania is designed to calibrate its sound to the area it’s in. So, if near to a wall, it’ll tweak where its speakers are pumping to give you “expansive” and “powerful” audio while on the go.
Devialet
Nestled inside the Mania’s 170mm (6.7-inch) tall body is a quartet of full-range drivers teamed up with a pair of Speaker Active Matching sub-woofers. Four microphones are used for that stereo calibration, but can also be used to communicate with Amazon’s smart assistant, Alexa. The speaker can also connect to your favorite music service over WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect. The company promises that Mania will travel well, too, with IPX4 water resistance and 10 hours of battery life, when used at moderate volumes, at least.
On October 15th, billionaire Elon Musk said he would indefinitely fund Ukraine’s Starlink use to support the country. But, on October 24th, the Ukrainian military lost internet access, causing problems for commanders and soldiers fighting the Russian invasion. The outage was reportedly caused by a funding brouhaha between Musk, SpaceX and the Department of Defense.
The issue centers on the (roughly) $3.15 million running cost, which SpaceX had asked the US to pay for, but withdrew after public criticism. The report added that DoD officials are likely to take on the running costs but want to set firm contract terms, lest the impulsive billionaire “change his mind.” That’s a reference to, uh, lots of things, but also that Musk has publicly called on Ukraine to hand over chunks of its territory to Russia to guarantee peace.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp owner Meta will apparently start the week by announcing a round of large-scale lay-offs. This is a reaction to both Meta’s recent financial woes (burning all of its profit on a metaverse boondoggle) and the sheer number of people it employs. In its most recent earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said the company would focus its investments on “high priority” areas, which would see non-priority teams stay flat or shrink.
Virgin Hyperloop is no more after the Virgin Group withdrew its branding from the well-funded Hyperloop startup. The company has now reverted to its previous name, Hyperloop One, and is promising a fresh start in its operations. The split was prompted by the startup’s decision to end research into building a passenger service to concentrate on freight shipping.
Westworld’s first season was a thoughtful and entertaining exploration of AI, humanity, free will and commerce. Unfortunately, the blockbuster conclusion of that run also kicked the narrative legs out from under the series as it attempted to continue. After limping on for three more awful years of go-nowhere, no-stakes storytelling, ratings fell from 3.3 million in the pilot to a low of 312,000 during its fourth season. It’s no surprise HBO pulled the plug, citing the high budget and miniscule audience as justification. And to think: The second season of Carnivále pulled in 1.7 million viewers a week, but that wasn’t enough to spare it from the axe.
Spain was forced to close its airspace, leading to hundreds of flight delays, to prevent mid-air collisions caused by a falling Long March 5B. The Chinese-made rocket carried the final piece of the country’s Tiangong space station into orbit, before making an uncontrolled descent. Unlike other heavy rockets, which can fire engines to guide their fall back to Earth, the Long March is just left to land wherever. The approach has already drawn the ire of NASA administrator Bill Nelson, who said China risks causing major damage or loss of life.
Here’s a rundown of everything that happened with Twitter over the weekend.
Carlos Barria / Reuters
A number of major companies opted to pull their adverts (and money) from Twitter after Elon Musk’s content-moderation promises failed to reassure them. One of the world’s largest advertising companies has advised clients to pause spending on Twitter until the dust around the acquisition settles.
The reaction is only natural. Blue-chip brands don’t really want to have ads sitting side by side with hate speech. This is especially the case given the company lost around 15 percent of its trust and safety team in the mass-layoffs. Not long after, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, said fighting misinformation remains a top priority as the US goes to the polls. Roth’s pleas may fall upon disbelieving eyes, however, as Musk himself promoted a conspiracy theory concerning Paul Pelosi’s attacker last week.
Twitter then began testing support for its new Blue subscription, with its paid-for verification system. The setup isn’t live yet, but app updates already reveal groundwork laid for the features. Activations for the paid-for verification wouldn’t start until November 9th at the earliest, however, holding off until after the midterm elections, to prevent abuse of the system.
Another feature, announced this weekend, is the ability to append long-form essays to tweets. This, said Elon Musk, would end the absurdity of “notepad screenshots,” common when users want to post lots of text (usually an apology) in a single tweet.
Speaking of apologies, Twitter co-founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey, posted one of his own on Saturday. He said the need for large-scale layoffs was his fault because he grew the company “too quickly.”
But clearly, despite those claims, Twitter has apparently had some remorse of its own around the scale of its layoffs. Management has reportedly realized many of the employees unceremoniously dumped last week were actually doing important work. It’s rumored some of those people were asked to return, but you can understand if they’re not feeling much generosity of spirit toward their former employer after the nature of their split.
Something’s going on at Virgin Hyperloop, the startup attempting to bring Elon Musk’s vision of high-speed trains to life. At some point in the last few weeks, the company has quietly changed its name back to Hyperloop One, the brand it used between 2016 and 2017. Its website has been scrubbed clean, too, using an old stock image of the XP-1 test pod and the claim that “It’s a new day at Hyperloop One,” too.
This isn’t just a website issue, as the Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts have all reverted to the old logo and name as well. And the change has to be fairly recent — a tweet posted October 22nd still carried the Virgin logo and name. While we can't speculate on precisely what prompted the change, it appears to be a deliberate effort towards de-branding. Seemingly, Richard Branson and Virgin are now no longer willing to share a brand with the logistics company.
The company has certainly seen a number of changes through this year, laying off 111 staffers and abandoning its much-hyped attempt to build a passenger system. After that, majority owner DP World said that it would pivot toward using the technology for logistics, enabling the construction of "inland ports" to ferry cargo containers to their eventual destination faster than the present system.
We have reached out to Virgin, Hyperloop One and (partner) DP World in the hope of getting some sort of clarification on the change, and will update this if we hear back.
I’ve always wanted an Apple TV, but the high price and locked-down features made me opt for Roku’s ecosystem instead. And while I appreciate the freedom Roku offers, Devindra Hardawar’s review of the new TV 4K almost turned my head.
The 2022 model is cheaper, smaller and runs more efficiently than its predecessor, and it still packs that fancy Siri remote as standard. The box’s speed is its greatest strength, letting you leap between video streaming apps in the time it takes for your cable box to wake up.
Of course, there’s always a fly or two in the ointment, like the $129, 64GB model has a compromise or two. If you, for instance, want a built-in Ethernet port, or Thread IoT integration, you’ll need the $149, 128GB model. Never change, Apple.
It would be great if we could simply 3D-print parts of our bodies that we’ve damaged or worn out through overuse. It’s something NASA will try out with a bioprinter designed to do just that, in the hope of using it for soldiers. During its stay in the heavens, the printer will craft a human meniscus for study, to treat – without the use of inorganic implants – one of the most common knee injuries.
When Square Enix registered Symbiogenesis as a trademark, a small legion of fans got very excited. They, not unreasonably, believed the company was working on a follow-up to Parasite Eve, a beloved horror RPG from 1998. Imagine their dismay when the project turned out to be little more than an NFT grift from a games giant who should know better.
When NVIDIA launched the teeth-meltingly powerful RTX 4090, everyone waited to see what AMD would offer in return. The company has now shown off a pair of Radeon RX cards, the 7900 and 7900 XTX, powered by its new RDNA 3 architecture. AMD says these cards won’t melt your power supply (unlike its rival) and, at $999, won’t hollow-out your wallet (unlike… you get the idea).
Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a system to track WiFi-enabled devices through walls. The technique relies on the protocol’s automatic contact response and can pinpoint equipment to within three feet of its location. To demonstrate the need for better WiFi security, the team equipped an off-the-shelf drone with a WiFi scanner that cost just $15 to make. They flew it around the outside of a house, pinpointing the home’s occupants and WiFi-enabled hardware, such as security cameras. There are several worrying uses for such technology, including looking for unguarded areas of a home for burglary or unauthorized surveillance, none of which are particularly good.
Canon’s EOS R6 was a great camera with one fatal flaw: It couldn’t hold its temperature, so it overheated fairly regularly. Two years later, Canon has released a successor that should help restore its reputation after such a high-profile error. The EOS R6 Mark II gets a higher resolution 24.2-megapixel sensor, faster shooting speeds and better low-light performance.
Steve Dent spent some time shooting with some R6-II prototypes and has plenty to say in his detailed write up. Canon has eliminated many of the thermal issues, improved the efficiency and lengthened the time you can shoot 4K video in a single burst. There’s loads more to read and get excited by in his write-up, which has clearly got plenty of camera fans excited for its launch later this year.
Sony has announced its next-generation VR headset, PS VR2, will debut on February 22nd, 2023. The company also announced the price, and it’s an audible-woof worthy $550, which is more than the PlayStation 5 costs at retail. That’s not even the luxury version, either. If you want a version with flagship VR title Horizon Call of the Mountain, it’ll be $600. To add further cost-based insult to injury, you won’t get a charging station for your controllers unless you kick in another $50. Wooooooof.
For years, T-Mobile marketed itself as an “un-carrier,” a business that didn’t soak you with additional, arbitrary charges just because it could. Apropos of nothing, there are now hints the network will introduce a $35 charge for all new postpaid activations and upgrades. Previously, it would only charge you if you needed help from a T-Mobile staffer in store, but this apparently applies even if you do everything yourself. If true, it certainly makes you wonder how quickly the carrier is going to trash its reputation as the customer-focused network.
Plenty of companies have tried to weld a higher-end camera directly to a smartphone (Panasonic, Samsung and Nokia all come to mind). Now, Xiaomi is trying to do the same, by adding a unique twist to its flagship 12S Ultra smartphone. This concept phone has a mount for Leica’s interchangeable M lenses, which will sit over a 1-inch, 50.3-megapixel sensor. It’s only a concept device for now, but it’s certainly something to grab the attention of any pro photographer looking to reduce their bag weight.
DJI’s Mavic 3 is a great drone, but it’s also quite pricey, which may explain the enduring appeal of the older, cheaper Mavic 2 Pro. It’s hoping to address this by removing the telephoto lens from the Mavic 3 to help knock a couple of hundred dollars from the price. The Mavic 3 Classic starts at $1,469, and for your money, you’ll get the drone on its own, or you can pay some more to get it with a remote and charger thrown in. It’ll be interesting to see if the relatively slender discount will coax users to upgrade, or if it’ll just make the flagship look cheaper by comparison.
