It’s another cryptic graphic from Apple for fans to obsess over. Yep, it’s time for more new products from Apple, and rumors suggest an updated iPhone SE could be on the horizon. The text accompanying the invite, “Peek performance,” could mean more news from Apple’s silicon arm. Maybe we’ll get a glimpse at its M2 processor for future Macs.

The iPhone SE deserves a refresh to bring it in line with the rest of Apple’s phone lineup. It still has a home button! In 2022! This year's model may get Face ID and 5G support, with a design similar to 2018's iPhone XR. As Apple’s cheapest iPhone, the most interesting part will be where the price lands. How much cheaper than the iPhone mini?

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Rivian hikes the base price of its quad-motor R1T pickup by $12,000

• AMD, ARM and Intel back a universal standard for chiplets

• Bungie will ban 'Destiny 2' players who run the game from a Steam Deck

• Twitter may soon add a dedicated tab for podcasts

• US soccer matches are coming to HBO Max

What do economic sanctions mean for Russia's space program

What about the ISS?

Shamil Zhumatov / Reuters

Following economic sanctions and financial constraints from the US, EU and the UK, Russia issued retaliatory sanctions of its own against Western companies. On Wednesday, Roscosmos announced it will not launch the next round of 36 OneWeb internet satellites scheduled for liftoff on March 4th from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, NASA remains optimistic the sanctions will not adversely impact ongoing collaborative space programs, like the running of the ISS, which has been a joint US–Russian effort from the start. But that could change.

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Biden wants to ban advertising aimed at kids

'It’s time to demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children.'

In his first State of the Union address, President Biden asked Congress to implement new laws to increase child safety on Facebook, TikTok and other social media platforms. Much of the motivation for change appears to have come from the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who attended the address as a guest of Jill Biden. Haugen recently testified before Congress, accusing Facebook parent, Meta, of disregarding child safety on the platform. The White House will ask for funding to study the question of child safety on social media.

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UN starts working towards a global plan to curb plastic pollution

The treaty could end up being as important as the Paris Climate Accord.

After a week of negotiations in Nairobi, the United Nations has agreed to start working on the first-ever global plastic pollution treaty. It's not likely to be ready before 2024, but according to the UN, it could end up being as important as the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. In 2019, the organization found plastic pollution is 10 times worse than it was in 1980.

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Polestar's second concept car is a convertible

With a drone inside.

Polestar

Capturing the spirit of ‘80s and ‘90s kids' toys, Polestar’s new concept car is the O2. “Polestar O2 is our vision of a new era for sports cars," Polestar’s Head of Design, Maximilian Missoni, said in a press statement. "By mixing the joy of open-top driving with the purity of electric mobility, it unlocks a new mix of emotions in a car."

Drivers will also be able to film their top-down adventures with the O2's integrated cinematography drone. Developed in collaboration with Hoco Flow, this autonomous camera drone rides in an area of negative pressure generated from an airfoil. The drone can follow along at speeds up to 56MPH, and owners can edit and share the captured footage from the central infotainment system.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab S8+ review

Truly the best Android tablet?

The Galaxy Tab S8+ has a brilliant OLED display, class-leading performance, a speedy fingerprint sensor and a premium design. Throw in an S-Pen and Samsung’s recipe makes for a high-end Android tablet that's hard to beat. And there aren’t many rivals around to beat it. In his review, Sam Rutherford puts it best: “There are two kinds of Android tablets: Samsung's Galaxy Tab S line and everything else.”

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Ford splits business into separate EV and combustion units

The EV part is getting increasingly more important.

Ford is splitting its car manufacturing business into separate EV-only and internal combustion engine (ICE) divisions to help it fight both "new EV competitors" and conventional challengers. Its electric part, Model e, is meant to speed up large-scale development of EVs while producing connected vehicle technology for all of Ford’s vehicles.

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Aloy is a little less obsessed with her stash in 'Horizon Forbidden West'

The latest patch is here to save a bit of your sanity.

Guerrilla Games’ new patch for Horizon Forbidden West addresses a number of issues that have been part of the game since launch. This includes a major bug that prevented players from completing the “Reach for the Stars” main quest. For instance, Aloy’s ally Varl won’t get stuck swimming anymore. But perhaps the best improvement is Aloy won’t mention her stash as frequently. Until now, any time she picked up resources she couldn’t carry, they’d be spirited away to her stash box, and she would let you know. Almost. Every. Darn. Time.

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As countries and territories put the financial squeeze on Russia, it’s turned into a major test of cryptocurrencies and their exchanges. Many of the biggest cryptocoins, like bitcoin and Ethereum, have rallied in the past few days. Is this due to an influx of Russian money as the ruble tumbled in value? Or is this due to crypto investors and owners pushing that narrative to bump up values and reignite interest? I don’t know. I’m not an economist.

At the same time, Ukraine had raised over $13 million in cryptocurrency contributions as of February 28th. Reuters reported last week Binance had restricted crypto accounts affected by sanctions against Russia, while Kraken is warning Russians their accounts might be frozen if there's a "legal requirement" to do so.

Despite requests from Ukraine to go further, major crypto exchanges, including Coinbase and Binance, are saying that doing so would harm civilians and be counter to their ideals. "To unilaterally decide to ban people’s access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists,” a Binance spokesperson told CNBC.

For now, cryptocurrency continues to exist on the fringes of governmental influence.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Ethernet co-inventor David Boggs dies at 71

• Engadget Deals: Apple's Mac Mini M1 drops back down to $570

• Engadget Deals: AMD Ryzen 5000 processors fall to all-time lows at Amazon

• Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service officially launches in the US

• 'Monument Valley 2' and 'Alto's Adventure' are coming to Apple Arcade

• Facebook will demote Russian state media across its entire platform

• Cyberattack forces Toyota to suspend vehicle production in Japan

• Apple halts sales of all products in Russia

• Paramount+ anniversary sale drops plans to $1 for new subscribers

Google wants devices to know when you're paying attention

All in the name of more intuitive experiences.

Google

Google has been working on a "new interaction language" for years, and today it's sharing a peek at what it's developed so far. This new "interaction language" could help machines around us become more intuitive and perceptive of our desire to interact with them. This means reading our body language and movement so devices better know when to remain in the background instead of bombarding us with information. The team used the company's Soli radar sensor — first seen in Google’s Pixel 4 — to detect the proximity, direction and pathways of people around it. Read on for a breakdown of Approach, Pass, Turn and Glance — four of the new interaction terms Google is tackling.

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Jeep's first all-electric SUV arrives in 2023

An electric Ram 1500 is due in 2024.

As part of its new Dare Forward 2030 strategic plan, the automaker has unveiled the first all-electric Jeep SUV. Stellantis, the owner of Jeep, didn't provide a name, but its Jeep EV will launch in early 2023 and appears to be relatively compact. Autoblog reports that Jeep might be using the STLA Small platform that supports up to an 82kWh battery and 300 miles of range — but nothing’s confirmed yet. For now, it’s a cautious rollout that leaves Stellantis behind Ford, GM and other car brands that already have multiple EVs either on the road or coming this year.

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What we bought: Echelon's Connect Sport bike

It pairs well with an Apple Fitness+ subscription.

Engadget

Late last year, Engadget’s Jon Fingas resolved to get back in shape and bought a $397 Echelon Connect Sport exercise bike, using it alongside an $80-per-year Apple Fitness+ membership. Yes, that makes it much cheaper than Peloton, whose Bike ($1,495) and full subscription ($39 per month) demand a fair chunk of cash. Using Apple’s fitness platform to program workouts means it doesn't matter if Echelon’s own connected bike isn’t as smart as Peloton’s. And the end result is the same: a sweaty workout in the privacy of your home.

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Sonos' Roam SL is a mic-free version of its portable speaker

It costs $20 less than the original Roam.

It’s been about a year since Sonos released the Roam, its smallest and least expensive speaker yet. As with most modern Sonos speakers, the Roam has a built-in mic, so you can interact with voice assistants. The new Roam SL ditches that mic, meaning no more Alexa or Google Assistant. You also lose the Auto Trueplay feature, which uses the microphone to tune the speaker to sound better wherever you place it.

The $159 SL is otherwise identical to the original Roam. It's a small speaker that can connect to your WiFi network and be part of a Sonos multi-room audio system.

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This smart mosquito repellent system obeys voice commands

And you can control it with an app.

Thermacell has released a smart mosquito repellent system called Liv, which connects multiple repeller units to a smart hub. You can switch the system on and off using the hub or bark voice commands through Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. You also have control of the repellers through the Liv+ mobile app. Just in time for sunnier months, it's available to order now. Liv starts at $699 for a pack of three repellers (which the company says will cover up to 945 square feet).

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Mobile World Congress, best known for phones, next-gen mobile networks and everything related is having a laptop moment. Sure, Honor revealed its latest high-end phone, with the full-fat Android experience, but a lot of the headline devices have been laptops or hybrids or two-in-ones. That’s true of Samsung (Galaxy Book 2 Pro), Huawei (laptops, tablets and a hybrid) and now, Lenovo. It’s revealed its first ThinkPad running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip — the processor family usually used in smartphones. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip is made for these kinds of devices.

It’s got some exciting specs: 5G support built-in, a heady 28 hours of battery life and… a red ThinkPad tracker nub. We’ll wait on a full review to decide whether it lives up to the full ThinkPadTrackPad experience, but the wait won’t be long: The ThinkPad X13s is slated to go on sale sometime in May, starting at $1,100.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

The next OnePlus phone can fully charge in 15 minutes

Qualcomm's X70 5G modem has an AI processor to improve signal strength

Panasonic will start making Tesla's higher-capacity EV batteries by March 2024

ASUS Zephyrus G14 review: Still a solid 14-inch gaming laptop

Lenovo's latest tablets include a Windows 11 detachable

Lenovo's new ThinkPad X1 Extreme runs on 12th-gen Intel chips

Crypto exchanges refuse to freeze all Russian accounts as Ukraine requested

Honor says its Magic 4 Pro is a Galaxy S22 rival

But when can I buy one?

Honor

The once-Huawei subsidiary is, unlike its former owner, able to combine high-specced devices with, thankfully, all the Android and Google features we demand. Its latest flagship family, the Magic 4 and Magic 4 Pro are, once again, stylish, competitively priced phones with some notable tricks. Honor’s Eye of Muse-branded camera setup (don’t ask) features two 50-megapixel cameras on both phones, with the Pro packing a 64-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3.5x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom. (The vanilla Magic 4 gets a more humble 8MP periscope camera.)

The Magic 4 Pro also gets a direct time-of-flight (DTOF) sensor to help with focusing and improving image quality. The Magic 4 Pro will cost €1,099 ($1,230) in Europe when it launches. The Magic 4 will cost €899 ($1,006).

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LG's latest CineBeam 4K projectors promise improved daytime viewing

Both are available now.

LG is once again updating its CineBeam 4K projectors, and the upgrades are good news if you tend to watch during the day. Both the HU715Q Ultra Short Throw laser projector and the HU710P laser-LED hybrid promise better daytime viewing, with a new auto-brightness feature on the HU715Q. The HU710P’s move to a wheel-free hybrid offers brighter overall pictures than its predecessor. LG is already shipping both CineBeam projectors, starting at $2,499 for the HU710P and $2,999 for the HU715Q.

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Russia withdraws from European spaceport in response to sanctions

The country has also dropped US involvement in a Venus probe.

Russia is cutting some of its cooperation with international space programs in response to sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. Roscosmos is "suspending" cooperation with European partners on launches from the Guiana Space Centre in retaliation for EU sanctions. The Russian space agency also announced it's pulling staff from the French Guiana-based Spaceport.

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OnePlus 10 Pro is headed to the US, Europe and India in March

The device will also stick with OxygenOS instead of shifting to a unified OS.

While most OnePlus phones had been available globally before "reaching" China, that wasn't the case with the OnePlus 10 Pro, which has so far been China-exclusive since its January launch. That's about to change. The company announced at MWC that its latest flagship phone will finally head to the US, Europe and India "by the end of March."

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Instagram head says iPad 'not big enough' to make app a priority

Adam Mosseri says there aren't enough people using iPads to justify fast-tracking an app.

Godong via Getty Images

It's been more than 11 years since Instagram launched, and there's still no native iPad app. According to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, that's not going to change any time soon. In a series of tweets between Mosseri and prolific tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, Mosseri said there weren't enough iPad users to justify making a dedicated app.

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It feels like only last week that Samsung was taking the covers off its Galaxy S22 series of devices, but that's because it was literally only a few weeks ago. Of course, the company isn't stopping there and is using MWC 2022 to reveal the latest iterations of its Galaxy Book laptops. 

The Galaxy Book 2 Pro series was the major announcement this year, encompassing three new laptops. There's the convertible Galaxy Book 2 360, the clamshell Galaxy Book 2 Pro and the Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360, a high-end 2-in-1. They all sport 13-inch screens, with the Pro and Pro 360 also getting 15-inch versions.

While there's no phone news, these laptops will have cross-device support for your other Galaxy devices, as well as further Bixby voice assistant features. Dive into all the full details in our highlight reel below.

Catch up on all of the news from MWC 2022 right here!

Facebook has pulled a network of fake accounts attempting to spread Russian disinformation in Ukraine. The company said it had removed about 40 accounts, pages and groups from Facebook and Instagram that were detected over the last 48 hours. 

Meanwhile, Russia has been restricting Twitter access for its citizens since early Saturday morning. According to internet monitor NetBlocks, there was a nearly complete blackout of the platform across all major domestic telecom providers. On Friday, the country’s telecom regulator, Roskomnadzor, began partially restricting access to Facebook after the social network refused to stop fact checking and labeling content from Russia’s state-owned news organizations.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Ukraine asks international volunteers to join 'IT army' against Russia

• YouTube blocks RT and other Russian channels from generating ad revenue

• Some Russian bank cards no longer work with Apple Pay and Google Pay

• 'The Dropout' offers a timely reminder of the Theranos madness

• Sony's answer to Game Pass on PlayStation could cost up to $16 a month

• Samsung's new Galaxy Book laptops get better webcams and brighter screens

• Hitting the Books: The case against tomorrow's robots looking like people

• Huawei's new MateBook X Pro has six speakers packed inside it

Valve Steam Deck Review

Its first portable combines the familiar with something new.

Engadget

Valve's first portable isn’t a mobile device to take on your everyday commute. It's more like a Steam Controller and a Steam Machine in one hefty package, and it isn’t all that comfortable to play for hours on end. But while it's hard for Senior Editor Jessica Conditt to recommend the Steam Deck as an introduction to PC gaming, it's a great second device for the millions of existing Steam users around the world, one that opens up new places to play around the house.

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'Pokémon Scarlet' and 'Violet' head to Switch in late 2022

It’s set to be an ‘open-world adventure.’

The Pokémon Company just surprised most of us. It revealed Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, two new Pokémon games, are set to launch sometime in late 2022. Building on the recently released Pokémon Legends: Arceus, developer Game Freak said the games would offer an "open-world adventure" for players to discover. Perhaps it’ll strike a balance between the newest Pokémon game and the mainline series.

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Huawei’s MatePad Paper is half e-reader, half tablet

And it works with the company’s stylus.

Huawei

A lot of us are obsessed with e-ink devices. The latest addition is a substantially sized e-ink tablet from Huawei. The MatePad Paper has a 10.3-inch grayscale screen with an anti-glare, reflective display to aid low-light use. The Paper can reproduce 256 shades of greyscale to display text and images — and even video. Not only does it have surprisingly tiny bezels, with an 86.3% screen-to-body ratio, but it’s also is compatible with Huawei’s M-Pencil, its second-generation stylus.

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TCL’s latest concept phone folds inwards and outwards

But getting the screen to work is staggeringly difficult.

TCL seems to love showing off its prototypes, and it’s doing the same for MWC 2022. Alongside an array of new phones and tablets, the company just debuted a concept device tentatively called the Ultra Flex — a phone with a 360-degree rotating hinge and a flexible display that bends with it. This thing can fold in on itself as well as outwards. However, it’s a little… no, very, delicate.

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A lot of Engadget readers – and to be honest, Engadget editors – are obsessed with e-ink devices. Whether they’re productivity workhorses or digital canvases, the tech has slowly continued to inch beyond the one-handed e-readers of the last decade.

The latest addition is a substantially-sized e-ink tablet from Huawei. The MatePad Paper has a 10.3-inch grayscale screen with an anti-glare, reflective display to aid low-light use. The Paper can reproduce 256 shades of greyscale to display text and images – and even video — although I'm not sure why you'd want B&W video.

You probably already noticed it’s got surprisingly small bezels for an e-ink device. Huawei says it’s honed the tablet down to an 86.3 percent screen-to-body ratio, with a book spine-inspired design ensuring there's something for you to hold. All that e-paper, coupled with the size of the thing, sets it apart from pretty much every other e-ink device we’ve seen so far. (The Kindle DX was a long time ago.)

Alongside 32 levels of backlighting, the device is also compatible with Huawei’s M Pencil, which usually launches alongside its more typical tablets. This means you can scribble, annotate and edit your documents and books, which is a very useful tool when it comes to e-ink devices. Notably, Huawei has been able to refine the sensitivity of the textured screen to 26ms. It might not be quite as super smooth as an S22 Ultra – or even Huawei’s other tablets, but it's notable on a matte e-ink surface. Is this the perfect digital note-taking device?

Continuing Huawei’s push to connect all of its devices as seamlessly as possible, you can connect the MatePad Paper to the company’s laptops, PCs, tablets and phones. Huawei says the tablet will appear like a USB drive, and you can drag and drop your notes and annotated PDFs across to your laptop. This is possible thanks to the company's propriety operating system, HarmonyOS.

Huawei product announcements come with the usual proviso, however. The hardware is exciting – and tempting for anyone who works with lots of books, documents and digital paperwork — but you’ll be constrained by HarmonyOS. 

The company says it's still growing out the ecosystem, but the onus remains on app creators and companies as to whether they’ll offer support. For example, There are a few ways I could check out my Kindle books on the MatePad Paper – maybe I could use the web-based reader? – but it won’t be as seamless as Amazon hardware. Then again, the MatePad Paper is also capable of more than a simple Kindle.

Huawei didn’t announce the availability and pricing of the MatePad Paper ahead of its MWC presentation. We’ll update this report when we hear more.

Catch up on all of the news from MWC 2022 right here!

Huawei’s top laptop series has gone through a few iterations, but the company has made some notable upgrades to its 2022 MateBook X Pro, without losing what we’ve liked from these laptops over the last few years. Yes, it’s still slim, yes it’s still understated. Yes, we don’t know if it’ll ever appear in the US.

The 2022 model will land with 11th gen Intel U series processors (a spokesperson added that 12th-gen MateBooks would arrive later this year), and a bigger screen. Huawei has expanded the screen up to 14.2 inches from the 13.9 inches of its predecessor, while simultaneously making the body even slimmer. Above the 3,120 x 2,080 display, there’s a HD micro camera – fortunately Huawei hasn’t moved it back to the peek-a-boo webcam keyboard button.

This is also Huawei’s first laptop to support the P3 color gamut and over 1 billion colors and reaches refresh rates of 90Hz too. And for those into touch displays, there's 10-point multitouch compatibility too. 

Inside the new wedge design, there are now triple air intakes, up from a single intake last year, including one built into the keyboard. Huawei says this results in 60 percent more airflow through the device. And it might be put to use. The new MateBook X Pro has a new 'performance mode' — accessed through a keyboard shortcut. Huawei says this boosts the CPU's thermal design power (TDP) to 30W for a "performance uplift". 

The MateBook X Pro comes with a 90W SuperCharge function that can give 3 hours of use on just a 15-minute charge. (And this all comes from a tiny 180-gram charger that looks more like a phone charger.) 

Plug a phone into one of the four USB-C ports and you’ll get up to 50 watts of charge, too. Huawei has also upgraded the sound in its latest laptop, with six speakers dotted around the MateBook X Pro. That's a lot. There are also four mics dotted around the perimeter to improve audio recording and conference calls. 

These are the big changes, but a lot is staying the same. There’s still a large trackpad (with some new “free touch” gestures, including one for swiftly scrobbling through video), a chiclet keyboard and Huawei’s Mobile App engine (for running Huawei’s mobile… apps on your laptop). 

Huawei

Alongside a new e-ink device, Huawei is also launching a new OLED hybrid PC. The 2-in-1 MateBook E comes with two keyboard options — alas likely to be sold separately or bundled with the PC, depending on region.

Alone, the 12.6-inch MateBook E weighs just over 700 grams (1.5 pounds) and is a slender 7.99mm thick. It will run on 11th-gen Intel Core processors with Intel's embedded Iris X graphics. Huawei's second-generation stylus will also work with the hybrid — the first time it's been compatible with the MateBook series — supporting 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and 2ms responsiveness. A magnetic keyboard folio, seen above, will allow you to adjust the view of the 2-in-1 while working, while a new Glide keyboard peripheral, adds an extra USB port to the device and will, according to Huawei, allow you to hold it in one hand. For spreadsheets on the go? 

The company is holding onto other details – including, crucially, price – for its big MWC reveal. We’ll update this story when it’s streamed this weekend. 

Catch up on all of the news from MWC 2022 right here!

This morning is brought to you by a lot of phone news. To start, we’ve got our detailed review of Samsung’s Galaxy S22 (and S22 Plus) by the latest addition to Engadget’s editorial team, Sam Rutherford. We also have a first look at Oppo’s latest attempt at a flagship, the Find X5 Pro, written by yours truly, who’s been here a little too long. Hah.

Oppo’s new phone, a few days early, is kicking off our coverage of MWC – the world’s biggest mobile show hosted in Barcelona. Due to the pandemic’s ebbs and flows, we’re covering all the announcements remotely, but expect more news from Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo and many others over the next few days.

The Find X5 Pro has impressive specs, a partnership with camera experts Hasselblad and a pretty-looking phone. The challenge for Oppo is getting people to consider its device as a compelling, reliable alternative to the big players like Samsung, Apple and, well, all the other companies jostling for second place. And even if you like what you see, there’s no word of US availability for now.

Beyond the world of tech, we’re all sadly watching the developments in Ukraine this morning. If you’re looking for ways to help those affected, NPR’s put together a list of organizations asking for assistance.

-Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Nintendo is buying close development partner SRD

• Spotify reportedly took down freshly added episodes of Alex Jones' podcast

• A Pokémon Presents livestream will take place on February 27th

• Google relaxes COVID-19 rules for its US employees | Engadget

• Amazon union organizer arrested for allegedly trespassing at warehouse

• Facebook turns on 'lock profile' tool for people in Ukraine

Twitter restores suspended accounts that tracked Russian military activity

Twitter Safety has also posted tips in Ukrainian on how to keep accounts secure.

Twitter has admitted that it mistakenly removed accounts sharing Russian military activity during its invasion of Ukraine. The deleted accounts, which have since been reinstated, included an aggregator of user-generated posts from Ukraine and accounts owned by people doing open-source intelligence (OSINT) to debunk fake news and claims.

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Oppo Find X5 Pro packs a new AI chip and Hasselblad branding

And I think it’s a pretty device.

Engadget

Oppo’s latest phone looks and sounds like an expensive, powerful flagship. With a 6.7-inch WQHD+ screen that can hit 1,300 nits of brightness, adaptive refresh rates and a new AI chip, made in-house to amp up low light camera performance – even at 4K. There are also two 50-megapixel primary camera sensors, a new (but familiar-sounding) Hasselblad collaboration and a gorgeously curvy design to help it stand out from the competition. US-based readers, however, might never see one.

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Samsung Galaxy S22 review

Building on solid foundations.

Engadget

After Samsung ticked the new design box with last year's S21, now the company has refined it further with the Galaxy S22 and S22+. While they might look a lot like last year's phones, there have been some notable upgrades, especially on the S22's display, performance and camera. The Galaxy S22, starting at $800, offers a boatload of premium features in an attractive chassis with excellent build quality.

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What connects OnlyFans and a terrorism database?

A lawsuit alleges the company is trying to squash rivals.

OnlyFans is facing a pair of lawsuits over claims it conspired with Facebook to disable adult entertainer accounts by placing their content on a terrorism database. One suit was launched earlier this week by a rival platform called FanCentro, and the other is a class action lawsuit made on behalf of three adult entertainers. Both Facebook and OnlyFans were named as defendants in the latter complaint.

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The new Moto Edge+ wants to be a more affordable Galaxy Note

The phone starts at $900 and features active pen support.

Back in 2020, the Moto G Stylus quickly became one of the company’s most popular phones, featuring stylus input on a phone outside of Samsung’s Note series. But now, Motorola is stepping up its ambitions with the new Edge+, which is essentially a more affordable take on a Galaxy Note. Unlike with Samsung’s devices, Motorola’s Smart Stylus is an optional extra that comes bundled with a folio cover, which addresses the phone’s lack of built-in stylus storage. Prices start at $1,000 (or $900 at launch), but again, you’ll pay extra for that stylus.

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'OlliOlli World' is a great Switch experience

Despite a few flaws.

OlliOlli World, the delightfully offbeat skateboarding platformer, launched a few weeks ago on basically every gaming console you could ask for. It’s a clean break for the series, taking familiar gameplay but putting it in a totally redesigned world that allows for more exploration, competition and tricks. The original OlliOlli was released on the PS Vita handheld, meaning its appearance on the also-can-be-a-handheld Switch seems like the most appropriate home for the reboot.

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Marvel’s first run of TV shows set in its cinematic universe, including Daredevil and Jessica Jones, have found a new home beyond Netflix – if you live north of the border. The shows, set to disappear from Netflix on March 1st, will appear on Disney Plus in Canada, starting March 16th. 

Netflix

There’s no official news of a similar revival in the US, at least not yet. However – without spoiling any surprises – some characters have managed to make notable reappearances in recent Marvel movies and shows. Hopefully, Disney can figure out exactly where to take these shows, and hey, give The Defenders the do-over it deserves. I won’t be taking any questions on this matter.

-Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• How to incinerate the International Space Station

• 'Apex Legends Mobile' launches in 10 countries next week

• Trump’s free speech app Truth Social is censoring content and kicking off users

• Facebook failed to spot climate misinformation from some of its worst denialist offenders

• Spotify debuts its first 'bookcast' from Dolly Parton and James Patterson

• Apple's 2021 iPad mini drops to $459 at Amazon

Meta wants to build a universal language translator

Zuckerberg recently recapped the company's natural language processing efforts.

During a Metaverse and AI livestream event on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Meta's research division is working on a universal speech translation system that could streamline users' interactions with AI. Zuckerberg said: "Now, we have the chance to improve the internet and set a new standard where we can all communicate with one another, no matter what language we speak or where we come from. And if we get this right, this is just one example of how AI can help bring people together on a global scale."

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Apple AirTags gain additional anti-stalking messaging in new iOS 15.4 beta

Those include warnings to would-be stalkers.

Engadget

Apple's latest anti-stalking features for AirTags, announced earlier this month, have started to appear in iOS 15.4 beta 4. The beta update includes a warning when users first set up an AirTag. "Using this item to track people without their consent is a crime in many regions around the world," it reads. "This item is designed to be detected by victims and to enable law enforcement to request identifying information about the owner."

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Intel claims its 12th-gen ultraportable chips are a huge step forward

They're up to 70 percent faster for multithreaded performance.

Intel is finally ready to reveal more details of its new U and P-series CPUs for ultraportables. And, much like AMD's upcoming Ryzen 6000 chips, it looks like Intel is aiming to deliver a huge performance boost while consuming less power than last year's hardware. With the Core i7-1280P, Intel's fastest 28-watt P-series CPU, the company claims you'll see up to 70 percent faster multithreaded performance than last year's i7-1195G7. Like the rest of its 12th-gen lineup, Intel's U and P-series chips are a new hybrid design that combines Performance cores (P-cores) and Efficient cores (E-cores) on a single die.

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USPS won't be buying more electric mail trucks, despite EPA pleas

Only 10 percent of its next-gen fleet will be electric.

The USPS is moving forward with plans to spend $11.3 billion on a fleet of next-generation mail trucks that mostly run on gas, despite requests from the EPA and Biden administration to electrify its new vehicles instead. "Our commitment to an electric fleet remains ambitious given the pressing vehicle and safety needs of our aging fleet as well as our fragile financial condition," Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in a statement. He went on to say that the agency would try to buy more EVs as additional funding became available.

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Oppo’s latest phone looks and sounds like an expensive, powerful flagship. With a 6.7-inch WQHD+ screen that can hit 1,300 nits of brightness, adaptive refresh rates, and a new AI chip, made in-house to amp up low light camera performance – even at 4K. There are also two 50-megapixel primary camera sensors, a new (but familiar-sounding) Hasselblad collaboration and, well, just look at this beautiful thing.

So far this year, Oppo already announced its MariSilicon X neural processing unit (NPU), its intriguing attempt at foldables, but not a new flagship phone. But that’s where MWC comes in, which so far is shaping up to be a relatively quiet mobile show. It’s good news for Oppo. Barring any leftfield surprises (Samsung and Huawei both have press events this week) it can take center stage. Fortunately, Oppo has provided a device ahead of the public reveal, so I’ve got some early impressions and thoughts to add to proceedings.

The Find X5 Pro borrows heavily from the Find X3 Pro’s shape and style from last year, but I think it looks even better. The camera unit now has a diagonal slope at the bottom, so it should fit in your hand better. There’s no space-age, hyper-reflective silver color option this time, just glossy black or ceramic white. It was a bit much.

Mat Smith/Engadget

This black one picks up fingerprints and smudges with a little too much ease, but I didn’t fear scratching it before I had to film this preview or grab photos for my story. Oppo says the ceramic body is actually nanometer microcrystalline ceramics. The material takes 168 hours to produce but Oppo says results in a phone that can resist scratches over 1200 HV – Vickers Pyramid number that registers hardness. For comparison, stainless steel scores 200 HV, while diamond reaches around 10,000 HV. In summary, you might not need the protective case that also comes in the box. There’s also Gorilla Glass Victus on the screen.

I think it looks great. And while it might not be quite as unique as the Pixel 6’s cyclops look, it at least looks different to the army of phones with their squarish camera arrays. There’s a little originality to the design here. There are also some (reliably?) familiar specs. It’s another phone arriving with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip – arguably the most powerful Android phone chip available in phones at this moment. There’s also a 5,000mAh battery – bigger than the one found in its predecessor. Bigger batteries are always better in my opinion.

Cameras seem to be Oppo’s focus with the Find X5 Pro. The company has made changes across camera hardware, processing, user interfaces and everything in between. Like its last Find X device, the X5 Pro has dual 50-megapixel primary sensors, but each has a few different specs, lens layouts and even materials.

The ultrawide camera, at the top of the Find 5X, includes a freeform lens. Oppo says this should reduce image distortion – that weird stretched effect at the edges of an image – when putting those wide angles to use. It has a f/2.2 aperture and can cover a 110-degree field of view. It’s a 50-megapixel sensor, which uses pixel binning techniques to offer what Oppo says is “2um binned pixel size”.

Just below it, the second 50MP camera taps into the same pixel binning techniques but has an f/1.7 aperture with a glass and resin combination lens. Using glass in just a part of the lens array should improve color accuracy up to 77 percent, according to Oppo. This camera also features five-axis optical image stabilization to boost your chances of a clear shot, and improve imaging performance across low-light settings. All of those axes of stabilization mean this sensor takes up a lot more space inside the Find X5 Pro, but there was still room for a 13-megapixel telephoto camera with f/2.4 aperture and a new 13-channel spectral sensor. Last year’s Oppo flagship had a mere 5-channel sensor, but this upgrade will improve color accuracy and the precision of white balance settings.

Mat Smith/Engadget

On the front, there’s a 32-megapixel selfie cam, with a new RGBW sensor that should offer, again, more accurate color capture and improved dynamic range. The selfie camera will also monitor whether you’re looking at your phone, keeping the screen lit if you’re still watching or reading.

That’s half the hardware story. Oppo is debuting its Marisilicon X NPU chip in its new phone. During my briefing, the company walked through how the chip enables a new “night-mode” video recording, even at 4K resolution with HDR enabled. There’s a barrage of specs and numbers to explain what Oppo’s homemade NPU is adding, but a lot of it distills down to better and faster signal processing and even improved power efficiency, which could be important if you’re capturing a lot of 4K content.

I briefly tested out 4K Ultra Night Video, Oppo’s take on low-light video recording. While it does certainly help to amplify detail in the dimmest situations, at least when I’ve used it so far, the NPU hasn’t translated to 4K video notably better than its competition.

I tried filming last night with the Find X5 Pro and Pixel 6 Pro, and Google’s footage seemed more natural and less harsh than what Oppo’s processing produced. Foliage detail was a little too excessively blown-out to the point of turning gray – it appeared to tune out the green.

There’s also the new collaboration with Hasselblad. Which isn’t quite so new. We’ve already written about it when OnePlus revealed its Hasselblad-infused camera software in the 10 Pro.

But for the sake of consistency, let’s go over what Hasselblad is adding, aside from cachet.

The phone’s Pro mode offers users some Hasselblad-seasoned fine-grain controls. That means a big orange shutter button and three Hasselblad approved filters for stills and videos. I can’t explain why, but I really liked what each of these ‘special’ filters did to my video and photos. You even get Xpan Mode, where you can shoot video in 65:24 ratio. If you don’t care to do the math, it’s just a very wide, cinematic aspect ratio. For reasons I can’t fully explain, I loved this too.

Mat Smith/Engadget

Now OnePlus and Oppo are more tightly aligned, it’s not surprising to see software overlap like this. Yes, you also get Hasselblad’s natural color solution, where the company has tried to replicate the color accuracy of its very expensive cameras into these smartphone camera sensors.

Oppo is saving a little bit of spectacle for its MWC show, and said spectacle, unfortunately, includes pricing and availability. I’ll update this story once Oppo spills those all-important details. However, you’re unlikely to see the Find X5 Pro in the US – something you may hear several times during Europe’s big mobile show.