Over the last decade, Meta has done all it can to establish each part of its business as a separate but equal contributor to its bottom line. After all, that’s why part of Facebook’s brand identity is little icons denoting Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus. Plus, you know, it helps to deflect from any suggestion it’s operating a sprawling digital monopoly owning a big chunk of the internet.
I’ve always thought the folks at reMarkable were missing a trick by not offering a keyboard for their e-paper tablet. I’m a fan of portable, distraction-reducing writing machines, and when my brain gets too cluttered, I go stand by my window with a keyboard-equipped iPad in front of me.
Back in December, I got to play with Honor’s second foldable, the Magic VS, but the first one it will sell in the West. It was a Chinese-market prototype with several rough edges, but even so, it made a fairly compelling case for its own existence. Now, three months later, the company has rocked up to MWC with the finished version that’s intended to be sold on this side of the equator.
After breaking from Huawei, Honor has made the case that, in Europe at least, it is Samsung’s true rival in the Android space. In the last three years, it has offered flagship phones that are spec-for-spec the equal of whatever that year’s S-series is packing. Sadly, it’s also doing this at a time when the spec arms race is all but done, and it’s harder than ever to actually stand out amongst the crowd.
The advent of MWC is always an opportunity for Google to shine a light on some smaller, but still useful, tweaks to its ecosystems. This year, the Android giant is unveiling a raft of minor additions to Android and Wear OS designed to further smooth the bumps in your digital life. That includes a new widget for Google Keep that’ll let you check-off to-do lists from the comfort of your home screen.
AR is an exciting idea, but it’s not clear if there’s enough computational power in the world to make such a fantastic concept real.
The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard, Season Three, Episode Two: “Disengage.”
I wonder how often technology journalism is aspirational rather than useful, like when you watch car reviewers testing million dollar rides. I comfort myself knowing that while flagship laptops are pricey, there are few gadgets so eye-wateringly expensive that they’re just for one percenters.
The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard, Season Three, Episode One: “The Next Generation.”
In the 25th Century…
The following article contains spoilers for earlier Star Trek properties but doesn’t reveal specific spoilers about Star Trek: Picard season three, not that you should be watching it anyway.