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Samsung Galaxy A23 renders leak, showing a familiar design

Samsung is preparing to launch more Galaxy A series phones this year, and we’ve already seen leaked renders and regulatory images showing the Galaxy A53. Now, a reliable leaker has revealed apparent Galaxy A23 5G images and a video (seen above).

Frequent tipster Steve ‘OnLeaks‘ Hemmerstoffer and College Dunia have posted images of what’s believed to be the Galaxy A23 5G. The pictures show that the phone’s rear cover bears more than a passing resemblance to the upcoming Galaxy A53. More specifically, we see a quad-camera bump that blends in with the rest of the rear cover.

From Android Authority

Sony’s LinkBuds TWS may launch soon with a quirky design

Image: Sony

Sony makes some of the best true wireless earbuds on the market. The WF-1000XM4, the company’s latest earbuds, has received critical acclaim for its outstanding ANC performance and amazing audio quality. Now the Japanese electronics giant is gearing up to launch a new pair of truly wireless earphones, dubbed the LinkBuds WF-L900.

According to WinFuture, the Sony LinkBuds WF-L900 will feature a rather strange open design that’s a departure from the previous Sony earbuds. The leaked renders below show that the earphones have a ring-like structure, with a hole in the center allowing ambient sound to easily pass through. While most ANC earbuds try to form a tight seal around your ears to reduce ambient noise as much as possible, the Sony LinkBuds has an open design that makes it easier for the wearer to listen to the outside world.

From XDA

Exclusive: OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G design confirmed, and this is its new flagship color

Image: Oneplus

The OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G is officially landing later this week, but the company has now provided TechRadar with exclusive images of the upcoming phone so you can see the design for the very first time.

The Nord CE 2 5G is expected to be an affordable alternative to the company’s flagship phone range. The previous OnePlus Nord CE phone from 2021 cost £299 (around $420, AU$550), so we’d expect around a similar price for this model.

OnePlus has kept a similar look to the first-gen handset, but there are some differences, such as a new camera design on the rear of the phone. The new camera module looks to have rounded corners in a similar style to the Oppo Find X3 Pro from the company’s sister brand.

From Techradar

LG’s new projector turns your lounge into a cinema, and you’ll hardly know it’s there

Image: LG

With the 2022 Oscars season upon us, and more and more of the best streaming services putting the latest silver screen releases into our homes at the same time as they hit the multiplexes, there’s never been a better time to buy a projector. LG’s latest CineBeam short throw projector fits the bill nicely.

The LG CineBeam HU715Q 4K Ultra Short Throw projector makes use of a laser projection system to throw images as large as 120-inches onto your walls or projection screen. Thanks it’s short throw design, it can do this relatively discreetly too – it needs just about a 22cm distance from your wall to create an image 100-inches in size. 

In other words, you can use it on a TV stand just like you would a regular television set up, compared to the projectors of old that had to be set up meters away from where the eventual images were going to be beamed in order to hit those cinema-baiting screen sizes.

With a 4K resolution and 2,500 ANSI Lumens brightness, you should be able to comfortably watch the CineBeam HU715Q in daylight hours. HDR with a Dynamic Tone Mapper works in tandem with an adaptive brightness and contrast sensor to ensure you’re not left fiddling with the image settings too much during different times of the day.

From Techradar

Apple Filings Show Three New Macs Are on the Horizon

Image: Gizmodo

Apple will likely release refreshed iPhone and iPad models at its rumored event next month, and now newly unearthed paperwork suggests they could be joined by Macs.

As spotted by Consomac (via 9to5Mac), the Cupertino tech company registered a trio of Macs in the Eurasian regulatory database as model numbers A2615, A2686, and A2681. The products are described in those filings as laptops and desktops, and if rumors are accurate, we could be looking at a refreshed Mac mini, 27-inch iMac, and MacBook Pro. The database has two separate entries for three total products.

  • Personal Apple computers of A2615, A2686 (macOS 12 software version) and their spare parts.
  • Apple portable A2681 (macOS 12 software version) and its parts.

Apple’s first major event of the year will take place on March 8, according to a Bloomberg report that also predicts a new Mac with Apple-designed chips arriving as soon as March.

From Gizmodo

New Nokia G21 and G11 might have the best battery life of any smartphones

Image: Nokia

HMD Global has just unveiled two new budget Nokia-branded phones, dubbed the Nokia G21 and the Nokia G11, and while some budget phones struggle to stand out, these two have at least one obvious selling point – they both promise up to three days of battery life.

In a world where even many flagship phones struggle to get beyond one day, that’s an impressive stat – though we haven’t yet put these phones to the test, so we can’t verify it.

Still, they have decently large batteries, with both phones including a 5,050mAh battery. They also support charging at up to 18W, though only a 10W charger comes in the box.

The company is also keen to point out that these phones will get twice as many security updates as the competition does on average, with 36 updates promised – presumably meaning three years of updates. Actual Android updates will be limited to two years though.

From Techradar

Samsung Says the Galaxy S22 Has a Worse Battery Life Than the S21

Image: Samsung

While the Galaxy S22 lineup is full of neat little upgrades and improvements, fans are worried about an odd detail—the Galaxy S22 and S22+ have much smaller batteries than their predecessors. And with updated spec information, Samsung appears to quietly validate these concerns.

Yeah, battery capacity isn’t always an indicator of a device’s battery life. If a phone has a power-efficient display and processor, for example, it may last more than a day on a single charge.

And although the S22 lineup’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset is a bit more power-hungry than what we got last year, the S22 and S22+ were expected to ship with power-saving, 1~120Hz adaptive refresh rate LTPO displays. At least, that’s what Samsung told customers before it revised the S22 spec page on February 11th.

The S22 spec page now clarifies that the S22 and S22+ displays are OLED, not LTPO. Additionally, they have a 48~120Hz variable refresh rate, meaning that they always run at a minimum of 48Hz. A minimum of 1Hz is ideal, as it ensures low power consumption when nothing is happening on-screen. (The S22 Ultra has a proper 1~120Hz adaptive refresh rate LTPO screen, )

From Review Geek

India bans Free Fire and 53 other apps linked to China

Garena Free Fire
Image: Garena International

India on February 14 banned Garena’s Free Fire: Illuminate and 53 more apps of Chinese origin that apparently pose a threat to the country’s national security.

Free Fire is among the most popular Android games in the world currently. The game is owned by Singapore-based Sea Ltd., which is backed by China’s Tencent. Last month, the WeChat creator cut its stake in Sea from 21.3% to 18.7%. However, it still remains the largest shareholder of Sea Ltd.

As per data from App Annie, Free Fire was the highest-grossing mobile game in India during the third quarter of 2021. It was also the most-downloaded game globally in December 2021.

From Android Central

More ads are coming to Snapchat Stories, but creators will benefit this time

Image: Snapchat

Creators who are verified on Snapchat are now able to make money on the platform through ads within stories. This change will mean that Snapchat for iOS users will now see mid-roll ads when tapping through Stories for the first time.

As reported by The Verge, the company has been looking for ways to increase the relevance of Stories, as users have started to spend more time consuming content on its TikTok equivalent, Spotlight. Snapchat has already featured ads on the Discover page, but this will be the first time creators will share a cut of the ad revenue with the mobile messaging platform. 

The feature is currently in beta testing and only available to those who have reached Snap Star status, indicated by the gold star verification on their account. The revenue will be based on account metrics like engagement and will see increased rollout sometime this year.

From 9to5Mac

NASA Taps Lockheed to Bring Back a Piece of Mars

Image: Hackaday

Since NASA’s Mariner spacecraft made the first up-close observations of Mars in 1964, humanity has lobbed a long line of orbiters, landers, and rovers towards the Red Planet. Of course, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. History, to say nothing of the planet’s surface, is littered with Martian missions that didn’t quite make the grade. But we’ve steadily been getting better, and have even started to push the envelope of what’s possible with interplanetary robotics through ambitious craft like the Ingenuity helicopter.

Yet, after nearly 60 years of studying our frigid neighbor, all we have to show for our work boils down to so many 1s and 0s. That’s not to say the data we’ve collected, both from orbit and on the surface, hasn’t been extremely valuable. But scientists on Earth could do more with a single Martian rock than any robotic rover could ever hope to accomplish. Even still, not so much as a grain of sand has ever been returned from the planet’s dusty surface.

But if everything goes according to plan, that’s about to change. Within the next decade, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) hope to bring the first samples of Martian rocks, soil, and atmospheric gases back to Earth using a series of robotic vehicles. While it’s still unclear when terrestrial scientists should expect delivery of this interplanetary bounty, the first stage of the program is already well underway. The Perseverance rover has started collecting samples and storing them in special tubes for their eventual trip back to Earth. By 2028, another rover will be deployed to collect these samples and load them into a miniature rocket for their trip to space.

From Hackaday

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