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iOS 15 adds all the little features that were missing
The release of iOS 15 should be a major event for mobile operating systems. And yet, this year, there’s no breakthrough feature or overarching theme that makes this release stand out. Apple has focused on quality-of-life updates as well as new features for its own apps.
The result is a solid update that is not going to be controversial. Some people are going to take advantage of the new Focus feature. They’ll spend a lot of time customizing their phone to make it as personal as possible. Other people are just going to miss or dismiss the new features.
This year’s update is also a bit different because you don’t have to update to iOS 15. If you’re fine with iOS 14, Apple won’t force you to make the jump to iOS 15. You’ll still receive security patches. Some people will simply dismiss iOS 15 altogether.
It seems like a small change, but it actually says a lot about the current state of iOS. Apple considers iOS as a mature platform. Just like you don’t have to update your Mac to the latest version of macOS if you don’t want to, you can now update at your own pace.
Also, iOS should be considered as a mature platform for app developers, so iOS 15 adoption will be slower than usual as people won’t necessarily update to iOS 15 right away. Apps should potentially work on older iOS versions for longer.
Of course, users will “update” to a new version of iOS when they buy a new iPhone and replace their old iPhone. But Apple has people who pre-ordered the iPhone 13 and will get iOS 15.
Image Credits: Apple
Focusing on you instead of your phone
One of the biggest changes in iOS 15 is the ability to change your Focus from Control Center. It’s a surprisingly powerful feature with a lot of options and tweaks. I would say it doesn’t feel like an Apple feature.
But it’s definitely one of the most interesting features of iOS 15. Chances are you spend a lot of time with your phone, and your device requires a lot of attention from you. With this new feature, it reverses the balance and puts you back in charge.
“Do Not Disturb” users are already quite familiar with the idea that you can silence notifications when you don’t want them. If you want to keep using “moon mode” with iOS 15, you don’t have to change anything.
But you can now create additional Focuses. By default, Apple suggests a few Focuses — Work, Sleep, Driving, Fitness, Gaming, Mindfulness, Personal and Reading. Each Focus is customizable to your needs and you can create new Focuses from scratch.
When you turn on a specific Focus, it basically blocks notifications by default. You can then add people and apps so that notifications from those people and apps still go through. App developers can also mark a notification as time sensitive so that it always goes through. I hope they won’t abuse that feature.
There are three more settings that you can activate. First, you can optionally share that your notifications are currently silenced in Messages and compatible third-party apps. Second, you can hide home screen pages altogether. Third, you can hide notifications from the lock screen and hide badges from the home screen.
Focus gets particularly interesting when you realize that you can couple specific Focuses with automation features. For instance, you can automatically turn on “Sleep” at night or you can automatically turn on “Work” when you arrive at work.
Power users will also have a lot of fun setting up a Focus and pairing it with a Shortcut. For instance, you could use Shortcuts to open the Clock app when you turn on Sleep mode. You get it, this new feature has a lot of depth and beta users have just started scratching the surface.
Image Credits: Apple
Update all apps
With iOS 15, Apple has improved nearly all the default apps. Some additions are definitely nice improvements. Others have been a bit more controversial.
Let’s start with the controversial one: Safari’s design has been updated. But what you saw at WWDC in June doesn’t look at all like what’s shipping today. Essentially, Apple has listened to feedback and changed the user interface of its web browser during the summer.
By default, the address bar is now at the bottom of the screen, right above the row of buttons that let you open bookmarks, share the current page or go to the previous page. I think it works better. But if you really don’t want the address bar at the bottom, you can move it back to the top of the screen.
Other than that, Safari changes are all good improvements. For instance, the browser now supports traditional web extensions. It’s going to be interesting to see if popular Google Chrome extensions eventually come to Safari. Another nice new feature is the ability to create tab groups and find your tab groups from your other devices.
FaceTime has become a versatile video-conferencing service. You can now create links, share them with friends and add them to calendar invites. For the first time, people who don’t own an Apple device will be able to join FaceTime calls from a web browser. There’s also a new Zoom view… I mean, grid view.
Unfortunately, the big new FaceTime feature is not ready for prime time just yet. SharePlay, the feature that lets you sync audio and video playback with your friends, is going to be released later this Fall.
The Weather app has also been redesigned. It is now packed with a lot more information, such as precipitation maps, next-hour precipitation notifications and a new UV index. It has become a solid alternative to third-party weather apps. I still use Snowflake, but differences are smaller and smaller.
Messages is now better integrated with other Apple apps. Whenever someone sends you an article, a photo album, a podcast or a song, you’ll see those recommendations in Apple’s other apps — Apple News, Photos, Apple Podcasts, Apple Music, etc. Once again, this is a nice addition in my testings but it’s not going to change the way you use your phone.
Apple Maps is getting better and better, especially if you live in San Francisco. If you haven’t used it in a few years, I encourage you to try it again. It’s now a solid alternative to Google Maps.
Some cities, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and London, are receiving new detailed maps with 3D buildings, bus lanes, sidewalks and more. It feels like navigating a video game given how detailed it is. The app has also been redesigned with new place cards, a new driving user interface and settings in the app.
Photos is also receiving a bunch of improvements. Every year, the company is refining Memories. I’m not sure a ton of people are using this feature, but it’s better than before. There is now more information if you swipe on a photo as well, such as the shutter speed and lens that were used.
But the biggest change to your photo library is that you can now search for text in your photo; iOS is scanning your photos to find text and save it for Spotlight searches.
Similarly, you can now point your camera at text and select text from there. It is incredibly convenient if you’re looking for the restaurant address on the menu and want to share it with a friend or if you’re traveling and you want to translate some text.
Image Credits: Apple
Tips and tricks
There are a ton of small changes that make iOS 15 better than iOS 14. Let me list some of them:
- If you have a compatible home key, hotel key, office key or ID card, you can now add all of those to the Wallet app.
- You can share some health data with someone else. It can be useful if you’re living far away from your loved ones or if you want to update your healthcare team.
- If you pay for iCloud, you’re now an iCloud+ user. In addition to storage, you get additional features: iCloud Private Relay, which is available as a beta feature, lets you browse the web with increased privacy; Hide My Email lets you create randomly generated email addresses to create new accounts around the web.
- Similarly, if your family is using iCloud for their email addresses, you can now set up a personal domain name and set it up in iCloud.
- iOS uses on-device speech recognition, which means you can dictate text much faster.
- But that’s not all, iOS processes some Siri requests on your device directly, which means that you can start a timer, set an alarm or change the music instantly. It has changed the way I use Siri.
- You can add an account recovery contact in case you get locked out of your iCloud account. This is important to convince more people to use two-factor authentication.
- Talking about two-factor authentication, Apple’s built-in password manager called “Passwords” can now save 2FA details and auto-fill 2FA fields. It works pretty much like 2FA in 1Password.
- You can set up a legacy person for your Apple ID. I encourage you to look at that feature carefully. I’ve talked with several persons who couldn’t get their loved one’s photos after they passed away because Apple couldn’t just hand out the photos.
- Apple has added tags to Reminders and Notes. You can also @-mention people in Notes.
As you can see, the list of changes in iOS 15 is quite long. But it’s up to you to decide whether you want to update to iOS 15. When Apple added cut, copy and paste with iPhone OS 3, it was an obvious decision. I personally like the new features and it was worth updating. And I hope this review can help you decide whether to update or not.
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iOS 15 is now available to download
Apple has just released the final version of iOS 15, the next major version of the operating system for the iPhone. It is a free download and it works with the iPhone 6s or later, both generations of iPhone SE and the most recent iPod touch model (iPad users will also be able to update to iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8 today).
The biggest change of iOS 15 is a new Focus mode. In addition to “Do not disturb,” you can configure various modes — you can choose apps and people you want notifications from and change your focus depending on what you’re doing. For instance, you can create a Work mode, a Sleep mode, a Workout mode, etc.
There are many new features across the board, such as a new Weather app, updated maps in Apple Maps, an improved version of FaceTime, and more. Safari also has a brand-new look.
The new version of iOS also scans your photos for text. Called Live Text, this feature lets you highlight, copy and paste text in photos. It could be a nice accessibility feature as well; iOS is going to leverage that info for Spotlight. You can search for text in your photos directly in Spotlight and it’ll pull out relevant photos. These features are handled on-device directly.
Paid iCloud users have been upgraded to iCloud+. In addition to more storage, iCloud+ subscribers get a handful of new features. iCloud Private Relay, which is available as a beta feature, lets you browse the web with increased privacy. Hide My Email lets you create randomly generated email addresses to create new accounts around the web. ICloud email users can also switch to a personal domain name.
The update is currently rolling out and is available both over-the-air in the Settings app, and by plugging your device to your computer for a wired update. But first, back up your device. Make sure your iCloud backup is up to date by opening the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and tapping on your account information at the top and then on your device name. Additionally, you can also plug your iOS device to your computer to do a manual backup in Finder or iTunes for Windows (or do both, really).
Don’t forget to encrypt your backup in iTunes. It is much safer if somebody hacks your computer. And encrypted backups include saved passwords and health data. This way, you don’t have to reconnect to all your online accounts.
Once this is done, you should go to the Settings app, then “General” and then “Software Update.” You should see “Update Requested…” It will then automatically start downloading once the download is available.
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Roku debuts new Streaming Stick 4K bundles, software update with voice and mobile features
Weeks after Amazon introduced an updated Fire TV lineup that included, for the first time, its own TVs, Roku today is announcing its own competitive products in a race to capture consumers’ attention before the holiday shopping season. Its updates include a new Roku Streaming Stick 4K and Roku Streaming Stick 4K+ — the latter which ships with Roku’s newer hands-free voice remote. The company is also refreshing the Roku Ultra LT, a Walmart-exclusive version of its high-end player. And it announced the latest software update, Roku OS 10.5, which adds updated voice features, a new Live TV channel for home screens and other minor changes.
The new Streaming Stick 4K builds on Roku’s four-year-old product, the Streaming Stick+, as it offers the same type of stick form factor designed to be hidden behind the TV set. This version, however, has a faster processor, which allows the device to boot up to 30% faster and load channels more quickly, Roku claims. The Wi-Fi is also improved, offering faster speeds and smart algorithms that help make sure users get on the right band for the best performance in their homes where network congestion is an increasingly common problem — especially with the pandemic-induced remote-work lifestyle. The new Stick adds support for Dolby Vision and HDR 10+, giving it the “4K” moniker.
Image Credits: Roku
This version ships with Roku’s standard voice remote for the same price of $49.99. For comparison, Amazon’s new Fire TV Stick Max with a faster processor and speedier Wi-Fi is $54.99. However, Amazon is touting the addition of Wi-Fi 6 and support for its game streaming service, Luna, as reasons to upgrade.
Roku’s new Streaming Stick 4K+ adds the Roku Voice Remote Pro to the bundle instead. This is Roku’s new remote, launched in the spring, that offers rechargeability, a lost remote finder and hands-free voice support via its mid-field microphone, so you can just say things like “hey Roku, turn on the TV,” or “launch Netflix,” instead of pressing buttons. Bought separately, this remote is $29.99. The bundle sells for $69.99, which translates to a $10 discount over buying the stick and remote by themselves.
Image Credits: Roku
Both versions of the Streaming Stick will be sold online and in stores starting in October.
The Roku Ultra LT ($79.99), built for Walmart exclusively, has also been refreshed with a faster processor, more storage, a new Wi-Fi radio with up to 50% longer range, support for Dolby Vision, Bluetooth audio streaming and a built-in ethernet port.
Plus, Roku notes that TCL will become the first device partner to use the reference designs it introduced at CES for wireless soundbars, with its upcoming Roku TV wireless soundbar. This device connects over Wi-Fi to the TV and works with the Roku remote, and will arrive at major retailers in October where it will sell for $179.99.
The other big news is Roku’s OS 10.5 software release. The update isn’t making any dramatic changes this time around, but is instead focused largely on voice and mobile improvements.
The most noticeable consumer-facing change is the ability to add a new Live TV channel to your home screen, which lets you more easily launch The Roku Channel’s 200+ free live TV channels, instead of having to first visit Roku’s free streaming hub directly, then navigate to the Live TV section. This could make the Roku feel more like traditional TV for cord-cutters abandoning their TV guide for the first time.
Image Credits: Roku
Other tweaks include expanded support for launching channels using voice commands, with most now supported; new voice search and podcast playback with a more visual “music and podcast” row and Spotify as a launch partner; the ability to control sound settings in the mobile app; an added Voice Help guide in settings; and additional sound configuration options for Roku speakers and soundbars (e.g. using the speaker pairs and soundbar in a left/center/right) or in full 5.1 surround sound system).
A handy feature for entering in email and passwords in set-up screens using voice commands is new, too. Roku says it sends the voice data off-device to its speech-to-text partner, and the audio is anonymized. Roku doesn’t get the password or store it, as it goes directly to the channel partner. While there are always privacy concerns with voice data, the addition is a big perk from an accessibility standpoint.
Image Credits: Roku
One of the more under-the-radar, but potentially useful changes coming in OS 10.5 is an advanced A/V sync feature that lets you use the smartphone camera to help Roku make further refinements to the audio delay when using wireless headphones to listen to the TV. This feature is offered through the mobile app.
The Roku mobile app in the U.S. is also gaining another feature with the OS 10.5 update with the addition of a new Home tab for browsing collections of movies and shows across genres, and a “Save List, which functions as a way to bookmark shows or movies you might hear about — like when chatting with friends — and want to remember to watch later when you’re back home in front of the TV.
The software update will roll out to Roku devices over the weeks ahead. It typically comes to Roku players first, then rolls out to TVs.
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Tile secures $40 million to take on Apple AirTag with new products
Tile, the maker of Bluetooth-powered lost item finder beacons and, more recently, a staunch Apple critic, announced today it has raised $40 million in non-dilutive debt financing from Capital IP. The funding will be put toward investment in Tile’s finding technologies, ahead of the company’s plan to unveil a new slate of products and features that the company believes will help it to better compete with Apple’s AirTags and further expand its market.
The company has been a longtime leader in the lost item finder space, offering consumers small devices they can attach to items — like handbags, luggage, bikes, wallets, keys and more — which can then be tracked using the Tile smartphone app for iOS or Android. When items go missing, the Tile app leverages Bluetooth to find the items and can make them play a sound. If the items are further afield, Tile taps into its broader finding network consisting of everyone who has the app installed on their phone and other access points. Through this network, Tile is able to automatically and anonymously communicate the lost item’s location back to its owner through their own Tile app.
Image Credits: Tile
Tile has also formed partnerships focused on integrating its finding network into over 40 different third-party devices, including those across audio, travel, wearables and PC categories. Notable brand partners include HP, Dell, Fitbit, Skullcandy, Away, Xfinity, Plantronics, Sennheiser, Bose, Intel and others. Tile says it’s seen 200% year-over-year growth on activations of these devices with its service embedded.
To date, Tile has sold more than 40 million devices and has over 425,000 paying customers — a metric it’s revealing for the first time. It doesn’t disclose its total number of users, both free and paid combined, however. During the first half of 2021, Tile says revenues increased by over 50%, but didn’t provide hard numbers.
While Tile admits that the COVID-19 pandemic had some impacts on international expansions, as some markets have been slower to rebound, it has still seen strong performance outside the U.S., and considers that a continued focus.
The pandemic, however, hasn’t been Tile’s only speed bump.
When Apple announced its plans to compete with the launch of AirTags, Tile went on record to call it unfair competition. Unlike Tile devices, Apple’s products could tap into the iPhone’s U1 chip to allow for more accurate finding through the use of ultra-wideband technologies available on newer iPhone models. Tile, meanwhile, has plans for its own ultra-wideband-powered device, but hadn’t been provided the same access. In other words, Apple gave its own lost item finder early, exclusive access to a feature that would allow it to differentiate itself from the competition. (Apple has since announced it’s making ultra-wideband APIs available to third-party developers, but this access wasn’t available from day one of AirTag’s arrival.)
Image Credits: Tile internal concept art
Tile has been vocal on the matter of Apple’s anti-competitive behavior, having testified in multiple congressional hearings alongside other Apple critics, like Spotify and Match. As a result of increased regulatory pressure, Apple later opened up its Find My network to third-party devices, in an effort to placate Tile and the other rivals its AirTags would disadvantage.
But Tile doesn’t want to route its customers to Apple’s first-party app — it intends to use its own app in order to compete based on its proprietary features and services. Among other things, this includes Tile’s subscriptions. A base plan is $29.99 per year, offering features like free battery replacement, smart alerts and location history. A $99.99 per year plan also adds insurance of sorts — it pays up to $1,000 per year for items it can’t find. (AirTag doesn’t do that.)
Despite its many differentiators, Tile faces steep competition from the ultra-wideband-capable AirTags, which have the advantage of tapping into Apple’s own finding network of potentially hundreds of millions of iPhone owners.
However, Tile CEO CJ Prober — who joined the company in 2018 — claims AirTag hasn’t impacted the company’s revenue or device sales.
“But that doesn’t take away from the fact that they’re making things harder for us,” he says of Apple. “We’re a growing business. We’re winning the hearts and minds of consumers… and they’re competing unfairly.”
“When you own the platform, you shouldn’t be able to identify a category that you want to enter, disadvantage the incumbents in that category, and then advantage yourself — like they did in our case,” he adds.
Tile is preparing to announce an upcoming product refresh that may allow it to better take on the AirTag. Presumably, this will include the pre-announced ultra-wideband version of Tile, but the company says full details will be shared next week. Tile may also expand its lineup in other ways that will allow it to better compete based on look and feel, size and shape, and functionality.
Tile’s last round of funding was $45 million in growth equity in 2019. Now it’s shifted to debt. In addition to new debt financing, Tile is also refinancing some of its existing debt with this fundraise, it says.
“My philosophy is it’s always good to have a mix of debt and equity. So some amount of debt on the balance sheet is good. And it doesn’t incur dilution to our shareholders,” Prober says. “We felt this was the right mix of capital choice for us.”
The company chose to work with Capital IP, a group it’s had a relationship with over the last three years, and who Tile had considered bringing on as an investor. The group has remained interested in Tile and excited about its trajectory, Prober notes.
“We are excited to partner with the Tile team as they continue to define and lead the finding category through hardware and software-based innovations,” said Capital IP’s Managing Partner Riyad Shahjahan, in a statement. “The impressive revenue growth and fast-climbing subscriber trends underline the value proposition that Tile delivers in a platform-agnostic manner, and were a critical driver in our decision to invest. The Tile team has an ambitious roadmap ahead and we look forward to supporting their entry into new markets and applications to further cement their market leadership,” he added.
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Apple sheds value during iPhone event
The TechCrunch crew is hard at work writing up the latest from Apple’s iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch event. They have good notes on the megacorp’s hardware updates. But what are the markets saying about the same array of products?
For those of us more concerned with effective S&P dividend yields than screen nit levels, events like Apple’s confab are more interesting for what they might mean for the value of the hosting company than how many GPUs a particular smartphone model has. And, for once, Apple’s stock may have done something a little interesting during the event!
Observe the following chart:
Image Credits: TechCrunch/Y Charts
This is a one-day chart, mind, so we’re looking at intraday changes. We’re zoomed in. And Apple kinda took a bit of a dive during its event that kicked off at 1 p.m. in the above chart.
Normally nothing of import happens to Apple’s shares during its presentations. Which feels weird, frankly, as Apple events detail the product mix that will generate hundreds of billions in revenue. You’d think that they would have more impact than their usual zero.
But today, we had real share price movement when the event wrapped around 2 p.m. ET. Perhaps investors were hoping for more pricey devices? Or were hoping Apple had more up its sleeve? How you rate that holiday Apple product lineup is a matter of personal preference, but investors appear to have weighed in slightly to the negative.
Worth around $2.5 trillion, each 1% that Apple’s stock moves is worth $10 billion. Apple’s loss of 1.5% today — more or less; trading continues as I write this — is worth more than Mailchimp. It’s a lot of money.
You can read the rest of our coverage from the Apple event here. Enjoy!
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iPhone users will receive iOS 15 update on September 20
Shortly after today’s virtual conference, Apple announced that the next major version of iOS will be ready for prime time very soon: iPhone users will be able to update to iOS 15 on September 20. The company first unveiled iOS 15 earlier this year at its Worldwide Developers Conference.
The biggest change of iOS 15 is a new Focus mode. In addition to “Do not disturb,” you can configure various modes — you can choose apps and people you want notifications from and change your focus depending on what you’re doing. For instance, you can create a Work mode, a Sleep mode, a Workout mode, etc.
There are many new features across the board, such as a new Weather app, updated maps in Apple Maps, an improved version of FaceTime, and more. Safari also has a brand-new look. At first, it was a bit controversial. Since then, Apple has listened to feedback and improved its new take on Safari.
The new version of iOS also scans your photos for text. Called Live Text, this feature lets you highlight, copy and paste text in photos. It could be a nice accessibility feature as well; iOS is going to leverage that info for Spotlight. You can search for text in your photos directly in Spotlight and it’ll pull out relevant photos. These features are handled on-device directly.
You’ll be able to update to iOS 15 if you have an iPhone 6s and later, any model of iPhone SE or the most recent iPod touch model. It’ll be available as a free download.
For users running the iOS 15 beta, the release candidate is rolling out now, ahead of Monday’s public launch.
If you like your iPhone the way it is, Apple has also said that you don’t have to update to iOS 15. For the foreseeable future, the company will still update iOS 14 with security patches.
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Wright tests its 2-megawatt electric engines for passenger planes
Just like the automotive industry, aerospace has its sights set on going electric — but flying with battery-powered engines is a tougher proposition than rolling. Wright is among the startups looking to change the math and make electrified flight possible at scales beyond small aircraft — and its 2-megawatt engine could power the first generation of large-scale electric passenger planes.
Electric cars have proven to be a huge success, but they have an advantage over planes in that they don’t need to produce enough lift to keep their own mass in the air. Electric planes have been held back by this fundamental conundrum, that the weight of the batteries needed to fly any distance with passengers aboard means the plane is too heavy to fly in the first place.
In order to escape this conundrum, the main thing to improve is efficiency: how much thrust can be produced per watt of power. Since reducing the mass of batteries is a long, slow process, it’s better to innovate in other ways: materials, airframe and of course the engine, which in traditional jets is a huge, immensely heavy and complex internal combustion one.
Electric engines are generally lighter, simpler and more reliable than fuel-powered ones, but in order to achieve flight you need to reach a certain level of efficiency. After all, if a jet burned a thousand gallons of fuel per second, the plane couldn’t hold the amount needed to take off. So it falls to companies like Wright and H3x to build electric engines that can produce more thrust from the same amount of stored energy.
While H3x is focused on small aircraft that will probably be taking flight sooner, Wright founder Jeff Engler explained that if you want to take on aerospace’s carbon footprint, you really have to start looking at commercial passenger jets — and Wright is planning to make one. Fortunately, despite the company’s name, they don’t need to build it entirely from scratch.
“We’re not reinventing the concept of the wing, or the fuselage, or anything like that. What changes is what propels the aircraft forward,” said Engler. He likened it to electric vehicles in that much of the car doesn’t change when you go electric, mainly the parts that have operated the same way in principle for a century. All the same, integrating a new propulsion system into a plane isn’t trivial.
Wright’s engine is a 2-megawatt motor that produces the equivalent of 2,700 horsepower, at an efficiency of around 10 kilowatts per kilogram. “It’s the most powerful motor designed for the electric aerospace industry by a factor of 2, and it’s substantially lighter than anything out there,” said Engler.
The lightness comes from a ground-up redesign using a permanent magnet approach with “an aggressive thermal strategy,” he explained. A higher voltage than is normally employed for aerospace purposes and an insulation system to match enable an engine that hits the power and efficiency levels required to put a large plane in flight.
Image Credits: Wright
Wright is making sure its engines can be used by retrofitted aircraft, but it’s also working on a plane of its own with established airframe makers. This first craft would be a hybrid electric, combining the lightweight, efficient propulsion stack with the range of a liquid fuel engine. Relying on hydrogen complicates things but it makes for a much faster transition to electric flight and a huge reduction in emissions and fuel use.
Several of Wright’s motors would be attached to each wing of the proposed aircraft, providing at least two benefits. First, redundancy. Planes with two huge engines are designed to be capable of flying even if one fails. If you have six or eight engines, one failing isn’t nearly so catastrophic, and as a consequence the plane doesn’t need to carry twice as much engine as you need. Second is the stability and noise reduction that comes from having multiple engines that can be adjusted individually or in concert to reduce vibration and counteract turbulence.
Right now the motor is in lab testing at sea level, and once it passes those tests (some time next year is the plan) it will be run in an altitude simulation chamber and then up at 40,000 feet for real. This is a long-term project, but an entire industry doesn’t change overnight.
Engler was emphatic about the enthusiasm and support the company has received from the likes of NASA and the military, both of which have provided considerable cash, material and expertise. When I brought up the idea that the company’s engine might end up in a new bombing drone, he said he was sensitive to that possibility, but that what he’s seen (and is aiming for) is much more in line with the defense department’s endless cargo and personnel flights. The military is a huge polluter, it turns out, and they want to change that — and cut down on how much money they spend on fuel every year as well.
“Think of how things changed when we went from propellers to jets,” said Engler. “It redefined how an airplane operates. This new propulsion tech allows for reshaping the entire industry.”
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Samsung’s latest Galaxy Fold adds stylus support, waterproofing and an under-display camera
Behold, Samsung’s latest flagship. With the Galaxy Note out of the way — for this year, at least — the company used today’s Unpacked event to breathe added legitimacy into its foldable line. The original Galaxy Fold, introduced in 2019, represent a sort of experiment for the company (along with all the hiccups that entailed), as the first foldable from a major hardware manufacture, whereas last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 2 found the company correcting some of the glaring issues with its predecessor.
Today’s event finds the company making the case for Galaxy Z Fold 3 as something beyond an experiment or a curiosity. The task will almost certainly be an uphill battle for the next few generations. Unlike the latest version of the Flip, which starts at a price reduced considerably from its predecessor, the new Fold drops the entry price $200, down to $1,800. Any price reduction is a step in the right direction — and something that should be increasingly feasible as the technology continues to scale. But even in the world of premium flagships, that will continue to be a tough pill to swallow.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
What the upgraded Fold truly brings to the table, however, is a continued refinement to build materials that make the foldable screen a feasible option for day to day usage. This, of course, is precisely what hamstrung the original. Sure, the company did a lot of testing in controlled rooms, but once the product got out into the world (and into the hands of non-Samsung employees), problems of durability began cropping up, resulting in displays that were unintentionally damaged in a variety of imaginative ways.
The Galaxy Z Fold features a stronger frame made of “Armor Aluminum,” new protective film for the foldable display, Gorilla Glass Victus on the front-facing screen and an IPX8 rating — representing the first waterproof rating for the company’s foldable. Waterproofing has, of course, become something of an industry standard, but obviously things complicate quickly when you add folding mechanisms into the equation.
In fact, that’s why the rating has an “X” stuck in the middle of it. It’s effectively protected from accidental dunks in water, but not dust and debris. This is due to the hinge mechanism created for earlier models that allows some particulate matter through, but sweeps it away with a built in brush that moves as the device opens. That effectively protects it from getting behind the screen, where it could damage the phone with a finger press on the other side.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
Of course, the stronger protective film is the thing. It’s what’s (hopefully) standing between you and damaging your phone’s biggest selling point with an overzealous finger press — or, for that matter, a stylus. The Fold, after all, is following in the footsteps of Samsung’s S series by blurring the line with the Note (which handily opted to sit this round out).
In fact, Samsung actually went out of its way to create a special Fold Edition of the S-Pen specially designed to not damage the Fold display. It’s optional, of course, and as with the S21, there’s slot for the stylus in the handset — that’s to be expected, given the relatively fragility of the product. There will, of course, be a case with a built-in S-Pen holster.
The Fold Edition S-Pen is smaller and features a spring-loaded tip designed to retract so you don’t damage the screen by writing/drawing too hard. Certainly the Fold is a clear candidate for stylus functionality, given its 7.6-inch canvas that puts even the Note Ultra’s 6.9-inch screen to shame. Of course, the feasibility of this combination has been severely hampered by structural integrity issues with the screen. It will be interesting to see how the company has managed to navigate that.
At 7.6 inches (2208 x 1768, 374 ppi), the primary screen is largely unchanged. The cover screen, too, is about the same, at 6.2 inches — though it now joins the main screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
Notably, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is the first Samsung device to add an under-display camera. That, along with foldable displays, has been one of the biggest holy grails in the smartphone category for the past several years. Samsung’s not the first to introduce the technology. A handful of Chinese manufacturers, including Xiaomi and Oppo, have either released or plan to release devices sporting the technology.
It’s telling that the company opted to test the water with the Fold. Aside from the obvious aspect of creating a contiguous display, it gives the company the opportunity to test out another mainstream technology. The dirty little secret about the first generation of under-screen cameras is that the picture quality tends to suck. Samsung surely knows this and has opted to stick it on a device that already has a selfie camera above its front display.
The company describes new tech as follows, “the minimum pixels applied on top of the camera hole, Z Fold 3 features an increased viewable area so users get an unbroken canvas for their favorite apps.” The thinking here is that the internal camera simply doesn’t get as much use, save for things like teleconferencing (which is, granted, something we’ve been doing a lot more of in the past year). As currently configured, it’s a bit of a compromise on both ends. Picture quality takes a hit and the camera hole is still semi-visible. So, either the best or worst of both worlds, depending on what you’re looking for.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
The under-display camera is four megapixels (when was the last time you saw one of those?), verses the 10-megapixel front/cover camera. The rear camera setup is virtually identical to its predecessor:
- 12MP Ultra Wide. F2.2, Pixel size: 1.12μm, FOV: 123-degree
- 12MP Wide-angle. Dual Pixel AF, OIS, F1.8, Pixel size: 1.8μm, FOV: 83-degree
- 12MP Telephoto. PDAF, F2.4, OIS, Pixel size: 1.0μm, FOV: 45-degree
The battery has taken a bit of a hit, down from 4,500 to 4,400mAh (spread out over two modules, as is the foldable way). The Fold also supports fast charge/fast wireless and Wireless Powershare to use that 4,400mAh battery to power other gadgets. Samsung generally doesn’t offer battery estimates for phones prior to release, so wait on the review for that. The whole thing is powered by a Snapdragon 888 chip (market depending), coupled with 12GB of RAM and either 256 or 512GB of storage.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
Like the rest of the devices announced today, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is up for preorder now and starts shipping on the 26th. The $1,800 price tag continues to be a roadblock toward more mainstream adoption, though the company has moved a number of these devices to early adopters already. Preorders get a $200 Samsung Credit.
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$100M donation powers decade-long moonshot to create solar satellites that beam power to Earth
It sounds like a plan concocted by a supervillain, if that villain’s dastardly end was to provide cheap, clean power all over the world: launch a set of three-kilometer-wide solar arrays that beam the sun’s energy to the surface of the Earth. Even the price tag seems gleaned from pop fiction: one hundred million dollars. But this is a real project at Caltech, funded for a nearly a decade largely by a single donor.
The Space-based Solar Power Project has been underway since at least 2013, when the first donation from Donald and Brigitte Bren came through. Donald Bren is the chairman of Irvine Company and on the Caltech board of trustees, and after hearing about the idea of space-based solar in Popular Science, he proposed to fund a research project at the university — and since then has given more than $100 million for the purpose. The source of the funds has been kept anonymous until this week, when Caltech made it public.
The idea emerges naturally from the current limitations of renewable energy. Solar power is ubiquitous on the surface, but of course highly dependent on the weather, season and time of day. No solar panel, even in ideal circumstances, can work at full capacity all the time, and so the problem becomes one of transferring and storing energy in a smart grid. No solar panel on Earth, that is.
A solar panel in orbit, however, may be exposed to the full light of the sun nearly all the time, and with none of the reduction in its power that comes from that light passing through the planet’s protective atmosphere and magnetosphere.
The latest prototype created by the SSPP, which collects sunlight and transmits it over microwave frequency. Image Credits: Caltech
“This ambitious project is a transformative approach to large-scale solar energy harvesting for the Earth that overcomes this intermittency and the need for energy storage,” said SSPP researcher Harry Atwater in the Caltech release.
Of course, you would need to collect enough energy that it’s worth doing in the first place, and you need a way to beam that energy down to the surface in a way that doesn’t lose most of it to the aforementioned protective layers but also doesn’t fry anything passing through its path.
These fundamental questions have been looked at systematically for the last decade, and the team is clear that without Bren’s support, this project wouldn’t have been possible. Attempting to do the work while scrounging for grants and rotating through grad students might have prevented its being done at all, but the steady funding meant they could hire long-term researchers and overcome early obstacles that might have stymied them otherwise.
The group has produced dozens of published studies and prototypes (which you can peruse here), including the lightest solar collector-transmitter made by an order of magnitude, and is now on the verge of launching its first space-based test satellite.
“[Launch] is currently expected to be Q1 2023,” co-director of the project Ali Hajimiri told TechCrunch. “It involves several demonstrators for space verification of key technologies involved in the effort, namely, wireless power transfer at distance, lightweight flexible photovoltaics and flexible deployable space structures.”
Diagram showing how tiles like the one above could be joined together to form strips, then spacecraft, then arrays of spacecraft. Image Credits: Caltech
These will be small-scale tests (about six feet across), but the vision is for something rather larger. Bigger than anything currently in space, in fact.
“The final system is envisioned to consist of multiple deployable modules in close formation flight and operating in synchronization with one another,” Hajimiri said. “Each module is several tens of meters on the side and the system can be built up by adding more modules over time.”
Image Credits: Caltech
Eventually the concept calls for a structure perhaps as large as 5-6 kilometers across. Don’t worry — it would be far enough out from Earth that you wouldn’t see a giant hexagon blocking out the stars. Power would be sent to receivers on the surface using directed, steerable microwave transmission. A few of these in orbit could beam power to any location on the planet full time.
Of course that is the vision, which is many, many years out if it is to take place at all. But don’t make the mistake of thinking of this as having that single ambitious, one might even say grandiose, goal. The pursuit of this idea has produced advances in solar cells, flexible space-based structures and wireless power transfer, each of which can be applied in other areas. The vision may be the stuff of science fiction, but the science is progressing in a very grounded way.
For his part, Bren seems to be happy just to advance the ball on what he considers an important task that might not otherwise have been attempted at all.
“I have been a student researching the possible applications of space-based solar energy for many years,” he told Caltech. “My interest in supporting the world-class scientists at Caltech is driven by my belief in harnessing the natural power of the sun for the benefit of everyone.”
We’ll check back with the SSPP ahead of launch.
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What to expect from Samsung’s next Unpacked
Foldables! Two, probably! Those are your headliners. Samsung tipped its hand with the event invite, which features a pair of geometrical objects that pretty clearly represent the new Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip.
The other headliner is what we won’t be seeing at the event (Deadliner? Endliner?). The company already confirmed via corporate blog that we won’t be seeing the next version of the Galaxy Note next week. That’s a big break from the device’s long-standing annual refresh cycle.
We still don’t know if this is the end-end of the line for the phablet. Samsung told TechCrunch, “We will not be launching new Galaxy Note devices in 2021. Instead, Samsung plans to continue to expand the Note experience and bring many of its popular productivity and creativity features, including the S Pen, across our Galaxy ecosystem. We will share more details on our future portfolio once we are ready to announce.”
Image Credits: Samsung
Rumors surfaced prior to this revelation that the company may have been forced to put the device on hold, as global supply chain issues continue to hamstring manufacturers. There’s also an argument to be made, however, that Samsung has gradually made the Note redundant over the past several Galaxy S updates.
It seems telling that the company referred to a forthcoming “flagship” in its official Unpacked copy. With the Note out of the picture and the Galaxy S about six months out from a refresh, this appears to refer to the Galaxy Fold gaining the (admittedly ceremonial) title. Whether that means two or three flagships in the company’s Armada remains to be seen.
What we do know, however, is that — like the Galaxy S before it — at least one of the forthcoming foldables will be blurring that Note line.
“I hope you’ll join us as we debut our next Galaxy Z family and share some foldable surprises — including the first-ever S Pen designed specifically for foldable phones,” the company’s president and head of Mobile Communications Business, TM Roh wrote. The executive also promised “even more refined style, armed with more durable, stronger material” on the new Galaxy Z Flip.
Previous — and subsequent — leaks have given us good looks at both the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Galaxy Z Fold 3. Hell, it wouldn’t be a Samsung event if pretty much everything didn’t leak out prior to the event.
A series of tweets from EVLeaks has given us nearly every angle of the upcoming foldable smartphones, along with (European) prices that put the Fold and Flip starting at €1,899 and €1,099, respectively. Both mark a sizable decrease from the previous generation. That’s nice — if not entirely surprising. Samsung’s plan all along has clearly been a prolonged drop in pricing as foldable technology scaled. We’re still a long ways away from cheap here, but perhaps nudging our way toward the realm of possibility for more users.
Other leaked details for the Fold/Flip include a 7.6/6.7-inch internal display, a Snapdragon 888 processor (both) and 12MP triple/dual cameras, respectively. Interestingly, water resistance is also reportedly on board here.
With a year of virtual events under its belt, the company seems to have a better idea of pacing. Samsung — along with many other companies in the space — took liberties when events went more from in-person to online, meting out announcements event by event. Thankfully, next week’s Unpacked is a much bigger, self-contained event.
The other expected highlights are both wearables. First is the long-awaited fruits of the partnership between Samsung and Google that was announced at I/O. We didn’t get a lot of info at the time, beyond the fact that it will potentially be a boon for users and developers, with the ability to jointly create apps for both the beleaguered Wear OS and Samsung’s custom brand of Tizen.
Image Credits: Samsung
“Samsung and Google have a long history of collaboration, and whenever we’ve worked together, the experience for our consumers has been dramatically better for everyone,” Google SVP Sameer Samat said at a June follow-up to the I/O news. “That certainly holds true for this new, unified platform, which will be rolling out for the first time on Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch. In collaboration with Samsung, we’re thrilled to bring longer battery life, faster performance and a wide range of apps, including many from Google to a whole new wearable experience.”
The company held an (admittedly disappointing) event at MWC focused on the forthcoming watch. There was, however, one key thing missing: the watch. Based on pure speculation, I’d suggest that the wearable just didn’t come together on the timeline Samsung was expecting, but the company went ahead and did a virtual presser at the (mostly virtual) trade show.
The company did, however, announced One UI Watch — a wearable version of its streamlined OS interface. Samsung notes in a press release:
One UI Watch together with the new unified platform will create an entirely new Galaxy Watch experience. As part of the new experience, once you install watch-compatible apps on your smartphone, they will be swiftly downloaded onto your smartwatch. If you’ve customized your clock app on your phone to show the time in different cities around the globe, this will be automatically reflected on your watch as well. And if you block calls and messages from your watch, they will now be blocked on your smartphone, too.
Leaks have also revealed the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic models along with (again) European pricing. They’re reportedly set to start at €279 and €379, respectively, with each featuring multiple sizing options. That last bit was always a sticking point for me with Samsung watches, which have traditionally been fairly massive, knocking out a good number of potential buyers in the process.
The last big piece of the puzzle are the Galaxy Buds 2. The latest upgrade to the company’s entry-level buds are said to be gaining active noise canceling.
Will there be surprises once things kick off at 7AM PT/10AM ET on August 11? Little, ones, probably. These leaks have a tendency to capture things in broad strokes but miss some of the key nuances in the process. And while the company is more than a little familiar with pre-show leaks, it’s still managed to surprise us in the past.
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