Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony’s Xperia 1 came to the US just last month, but next week, the company may already be planning to announce a successor to the flagship smartphone, specifically on September 5th at 12PM BST / 7AM ET during IFA 2019. The model is rumored to be called the Xperia 2, and according to Xperia Blog (via 9to5Google), we might be seeing it for the first time in a batch of leaked images. It’s easy to tell the Xperia 1 from Sony’s earlier phones. It along with the cheaper Sony Xperia 10 were the company’s first devices to feature a 21:9 aspect ratio display. It resulted in a tall, skinny display that’s a perfect place to watch movies.
Xperia Blog
The device shown off in the leaked renders above appears to be cut from the same cloth, though its rear camera system has shifted over to the left side of the back of the phone. Everything else shown off in the leaked images, including the location of the ear speaker and the assortment and order of buttons and fingerprint sensor on the right edge of the phone, are exactly the same. Sony is infamously slow to make sweeping changes to its phone lineup, and if these leaks are accurate, it looks to be keeping the tradition going. It’s tough to speculate what might be appreciably different about the inside of this new device. The Xperia 1 already features the Snapdragon 855, and I don’t see Sony following the lead of a few gaming-focused phones, like the Black Shark 2 Pro and Asus ROG Phone II, in implementing the newer Snapdragon 855 Plus processor. However, if Sony puts in a display with a fast refresh rate, like the OnePlus 7 Pro and Razer Phone 2, consider my interest piqued. We’ll be at IFA 2019, so stay tuned to see if Sony brings some new phones to the show.
Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Just a few hours after Tesla launched its in-house car insurance product in California on August 28th, the company stopped offering rate quotes and suspended access to the insurance website. It now appears to be live again as of 8PM ET on August 29th. But even during the time Tesla’s insurance site was working and offering owners quotes, some people weren’t happy with the results. The problem with starting up a whole new part of your business is… you have to start up a whole new part of your business Tesla tells The Verge those two things are actually related; the company says it found “bugs” that were affecting some customers’ rate quotes, but it declined to offer any specifics beyond that. The company said it will get the website back up as soon as that’s resolved, without saying when that resolution might be. We found it had gone live again as of this evening. Tesla’s insurance mini-site launched around 3PM ET on Wednesday, but users reported trouble accessing the site within just a few hours. At 6:49PM ET, the company tweeted it was “making some updates to Tesla Insurance” and that the service would “be back online shortly.” Seventeen minutes later, the company tweeted again that there was an “Algorithm update in progress.” That same language also shows up if you try to click on the link that originally took people to the Tesla Insurance mini-site. Both the Tesla Motors subreddit and the company’s owner forums are littered with posts from people who claim they received quotes that were higher than expected. That appears to have disappointed some owners since the company promised rates that were up to 20 percent lower than the competition. (However, most of those irked owners didn’t provide evidence of the comparisons they were complaining about.) The insurance offering may give Tesla a way to create bigger margins with a product that doesn’t require as much money to set up as the process of designing and manufacturing cars. But the problem with starting up a whole new part of your business is… you have to start up a whole new part of your business. And sometimes, new things break. Update, 8:20PM ET: Added that Tesla Insurance’s site appears to be live again.
Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images for Discovery Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is wildly outspoken, and he’s never been shy to criticize the company he helped build. This week, he told Bloomberg that Apple should have been broken up a long time ago. He’s not necessarily talking about government regulators stepping in the way Elizabeth Warren wants, though. Rather, he seems to be talking about building an environment where engineers like himself are free to work on their own. Here’s the full quote: “I wish Apple on its own has split off a long time ago and spun off independent divisions to far away places and let them work independently, like Hewlett Packard did when I was there.” Apple seems to be doing pretty well as a monolithic entity, though You might note that HP was the company that turned down Wozniak when he wanted to make a personal computer — five times, according to Woz — and that HP as a company isn’t anywhere near the wildly successful juggernaut that Apple is today. But Woz has also praised HP in the past for letting him work freely. “Engineers could go in at night and have access to all the parts they needed and tools to work on their own designs,” he recalled in 2011. “I think big tech has gotten too big, it’s too powerful a force in our life, and it’s taken our choices away. It’s hard to escape,” Woz told Bloomberg, but added that he thinks Apple is “the best of the companies” because it’s mostly making money selling products rather than tracking people. He thinks that when it comes to Facebook and Google, competition should be enforced — but in the meanwhile, he has an ask: “Give me a choice to pay for almost no tracking.”
Canon has announced two new enthusiast-grade cameras that are similar in capability but very different in form. Whether you’d get along better with the EOS 90D or the EOS M6 Mark II will entirely depend on your feelings about the never-ending DSLR-versus-mirrorless debate. Both cameras have a new 32.5-megapixel APS-C image sensor, a DIGIC 8 image processor, an electronic shutter capable of speeds up to 1/16000, uncropped 4K/30 video recording, dual-pixel autofocus in live view with 5,481 selectable points, built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and USB-C. But the 90D looks like every other mid-range Canon DSLR, while the M6 Mark II’s compact form is essentially unchanged from the original M6 from 2017. There are a few differences in performance. The M6 Mark II is capable of shooting 14 frames per second with AF and AE tracking, for example, while the 90D goes up to 10 fps. That’s an increase from 7 fps on 2016’s 80D, however, and a lot of sports photographers would prefer the traditional DSLR-style optical viewfinder and 45-cross-type-point AF system over the extra frames.
Otherwise, the biggest difference is price. Both cameras will be available next month, but the 90D will cost $1,199 body-only versus $849.99 for the M6 Mark II. There are lens kits available for each, and while most 90D buyers will probably have a bunch of Canon lenses already, the M6 Mark II bundles are particularly worth looking at: $1,099 gets you the 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens along with the useful EVF-DC2 electronic viewfinder accessory, while the $1,349 kit swaps out that lens for an 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3. Canon is also announcing two L-class lenses today for its new EOS R full-frame mirrorless system. The RF 15-35mm f/2.8 L IS USM is a fast ultrawide-to-wide zoom, while the RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS USM is a standard zoom with a classic speed and focal length. Both lenses will ship next month for $2,299, and Canon pledges to complete its pro zoom “trinity” with a 70-200mm f/2.8 by the end of the year.
Standing desks were a popular idea, motors made them more convenient, and programmable presets to raise and lower them to your preferred height — with a button — are the most convenient yet. The $552-and-up VertDesk V3 with Voice Control is taking what must feel like the next logical step: it’s a voice-activated standing desk that allows iPhone users to move their desk up and down using only their voice, starting this September. “Hey Siri, stand up!” I don’t really need that level of comfort personally. I mean, if I have to stand up anyhow, why not push a button at the same time? But it sounds like I wouldn’t have to sacrifice anything for voice, either: I could customize two presets for sitting and standing, and leave two more presets for a colleague. And the VertDesk still has a physical button I could press if I don’t feel like saying “Hey Siri, stand up!” or “Hey Siri, sit down.” One thing does seem really helpful: an activity assistant that reminds me to stand. Because let’s be honest: if you do have a standing desk, how often do you actually stand? Kind of like an Apple Watch, the VertDesk can send notifications to my iPhone to remind me to stand for a little while. The VertDesk V3 claims to be the first voice-activated standing desk that customers can order online, and as far as I can tell, that’s true. (There have been promises before.) But voice control function isn’t actually built into the desk; the company offers a Bluetooth control box as add-on which is only compatible with the VertDesk V3 and RightAngle’s NewHeights Series 4 desks, according to VertDesk maker BOTD.com. If you’ve seen another manufacturer — say RightAngle Products — advertise a similar feature, BOTD says it’s because both companies have been developing it together. BTOD is planning on integrating this function in all new VertDesk V3’s by the end of the year, with an app for Android users coming in a month or so. If you’d rather add voice control to another company’s desk, you may have to do it yourself — and some users have done exactly that. Here’s one example that uses Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, and here’s another with the Google Assistant.
Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Chinese search giant Baidu is now the world’s second biggest vendor of smart speakers, according to a new report from Canalys. The research firm says Baidu overtook Google to capture 17.3 percent of the global market with 4.5 million shipments in the second quarter of 2019, representing staggering year-on-year growth of 3,700 percent. Amazon remains the overall leader with more than 25 percent share of the market and 6.6 million shipments. Baidu’s AI speakers run on an AI platform called DuerOS. The company initially targeted the high end of the market with the Teenage Engineering-designed Raven H speaker (above), but that product apparently sold poorly. More recently, Baidu has pushed sales of much less expensive models, with the basic Xiaodu speaker selling for as low as 89 yuan (~$12). Baidu overtook previous domestic leader Alibaba in the first quarter of this year in China, according to Canalys. Google’s Nest Hub comes to India today It’s worth noting, of course, that Baidu and Google aren’t direct competitors — Baidu sells its products exclusively in its home market, while Google sells its products almost everywhere but China. But Baidu’s explosive growth over the past year demonstrates the size and the dynamics of the Chinese AI ecosystem. Last year CEO Robin Li said in no uncertain terms that Baidu wouldn’t be worried by the prospect of Google re-entering China. Google has the advantage of being able to address other countries, however, and an example of that is today’s launch of the Nest Hub (previously Google Home Hub) in India, another potentially huge market. The smart display is available now for 9,999 rupees, or about $139. Gadgets360 reports that Google is bundling Xiaomi’s Mi Security Camera with the Nest Hub as a launch promotion.
