Month: February 2023

The Mobile World Congress continues. One of the first manufacturers to present its new flagship has been Honor, with its Honor Magic 5 Pro. The terminal brings us the best of the brand and of course, the thing promises.

First impressions: the design

Starting with its design, we must say that we are facing a fairly large phone, but firm and well built. The back cover is built in glass and also has a fairly simple matte finish.

Particularly striking is its gigantic camera module, where Honor seems to have put a lot of effort. This arrangement of lenses can also be found in the latest releases of Honor, so it seems that they are building a recognizable brand image. The small curvature of the camera makes it look less clunky and somewhat softens the large portion it takes up of the back.

We also have back the curved edges, which in addition to being aesthetic, help to better grip the terminal. As for the screen, the Honor Magic 5 Pro mounts a fingerprint sensor integrated into it in the style of other smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy or Xiaomi. On the front, we find the 12-megapixel front camera and a 3D sensor that will serve for facial recognition.

The Honor Magic 5 Pro is iP68 certified, which is the highest degree of protection against liquids and particles that an electronic device can obtain today.

Its screen will give us less eye fatigue

One of the most important aspects of a terminal today is its screen. The panel is 6.81 inches with OLED technology and a refresh rate of 120 Hz, which is already the norm for high-end devices. The brightness reaches 1,800 nits of maximum brightness, which means it should look good outdoors. Its resolution is QHD+, so we will have 2,848 x 1,312 pixels.

The display is also LTPO and has a 2,160 Hz PWM, which would greatly help to reduce eyestrain. PWM stands for Pulse Width Modulation, a technology found in all displays that modulates the signal to avoid distortion.

A brown beast on the inside

When gutting the Honor Magic 5 Pro, we see that it carries a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, a processor that we will see a lot within the most premium range of Android. The new Samsung Galaxy S23 is one of the latest handsets to hit the market with this Snapdragon, so we have no doubt that this Magic 5 Pro will go like a real shot.

As for RAM, we will have two options to choose from, one of 12 GB and another of 8 GB. As if that were not enough, we will also be able to expand this amount with virtual 5 GB. For storage, we will have a 256 GB and a 512 GB model, but without the possibility of expansion (as has been usual in recent years).

Honor has managed to cram a sizable 5,100 mAH battery into this Magic 5 Pro and also includes a (necessary) 66 W fast charger. Of course, you can’t miss wireless charging, which in this case is 40 W. The terminal will allow you to charge other devices such as headphones or smarwatches in case you need it.

As expected, in terms of connectivity we’re pretty well covered: 5G, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2, Wi-Fi 7 and its USB-C port will give you everything you need and more. On the software side, we find that the Honor Magic 5 Pro comes with Android 13 as standard (with the possibility of upgrading to Android 14) and Magic UI 7.1, which brings very interesting functionalities (such as gesture control).

Camera with “just” 50 megapixels

The megapixel trend is back stronger than ever. Honor joins the trend and mounts in its terminal a 50-megapixel sensor, both for the main camera, the telephoto and the wide angle.

Its main camera has a size of 1/1.12 inches, optical stabilization, f/1.6 aperture and focal equivalent to 23 mm. In addition, we also have a dTOF sensor to measure depth. While the sensor is not as large as the one found in the new Xiaomi 13 Pro, it does surpass that of its most direct rivals, the iPhone 14 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.

Social networks are starting to jump on the artificial intelligence bandwagon. In addition to welcoming LLaMA, the new artificial language model created by Meta to help investigate problems related to AI language models (including their erratic or even toxic behavior), Snapchat also announced this week its own chatbot: “My AI”, based on the latest version of the popular ChatGPT.

Snapchat DOWNLOAD

According to Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, My AI is a bet that AI chatbots will be increasingly integrated into people’s lives. The new chatbot will be anchored in the chat tab in the Snapchat app, above contacts’ messages.

Initially, My AI will only be available to users of Snapchat Plus, Snapchat’s subscription service that costs $3.99 per month. However, as Spiegel told The Verge, the goal is to make the new ChatGPT-powered chatbot available to Snapchat’s 750 million monthly users.

Snap’s CEO also explained to the media outlet what he expects users to do with their new chatbot: “The big idea is that, in addition to talking to our friends and family every day, we’re going to talk to AI every day. And this is something we’re well positioned to do as a messaging service.”

My AI would be a “decaffeinated” ChatGPT, much more restricted in its responses than OpenAI’s popular AI. This is because the AI has been trained by Snap to at all times adhere to the company’s trust and safety guidelines and not give responses that are “off the mark,” such as swearing, insults or sexually explicit messages.

The world of AI continues to evolve, and the next big contender is none other than Meta. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram unveiled this week its new artificial language model: LLaMA, which differs greatly from other popular AIs such as the famous ChatGPT.

Facebook DOWNLOAD

According to The Verge, LLaMA is a research tool shared by Meta in order to “democratize access to this important and rapidly evolving field”. That is, instead of talking to it as you might do with ChatGPT or Bing‘s new AI, it would serve for researchers to solve problems related to AIs’ linguistic models, including their erratic or even toxic behavior.

LLaMA, consisting of four artificial language models of different sizes, is released under “a non-commercial license focused on research use cases,” and would grant access to universities, non-profit organizations and laboratories, which could make use of it free of charge to conduct their AI research.

In its release, Meta states the following, “We believe that the entire AI community (academic researchers, civil society, policy makers and industry) should work together to develop clear guidelines on responsible AI in general and large responsible language models in particular. We look forward to seeing what the community can learn (and eventually build) using LLaMA.”

According to the paper published by Meta, LLaMA-13B, the second smallest version of this artificial language model, performs better than OpenAI‘s popular GPT-3 model “on most benchmarks.” In addition, LLaMA-65B, the larger version, would be more “competitive with the best models,” such as DeepMind‘s Chinchilla70B and Google‘s PaLM 540B.

Meta has previously launched its own AIs, although they did not perform very well. While the quality of BlenderBot left something to be desired, Galactica, an AI created to write scientific papers, had to be withdrawn from the market after inventing the data for many of its papers.

More trouble for one of the tech giants. The U.S. Department of Justice this week sued Google for “routinely shredding” its employees’ chat messages over several years. The company Epic Games, creator of the popular video game Fortnite, once raised a similar issue in its case against Google, accusing the company of anti-competitive conduct.

As picked up by TechCrunch, this latest lawsuit continues the antitrust lawsuit that the U.S. Department of Justice initially filed in 2020 against Google for monopolizing the search and advertising market.

The U.S. Department of Justice claims in the lawsuit that Google was required under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to end its practice of auto-deleting chat histories as soon as it anticipated the upcoming litigation, back in mid-2019. However, the company failed to do so, the U.S. government claims, and Google employees merely had the option to disable or enable Google Hangouts chat history when they saw fit.

Google Hangouts DOWNLOAD

This Google program, the lawsuit explains, offers a feature for “off-the-record” chats that are automatically deleted after 24 hours. The complaint alleges that the company even taught its employees to use this feature to discuss sensitive topics instead of using email.

In addition, the new lawsuit points to an internal Google policy created just weeks after the litigation was filed that authorized company employees to manage whether or not they wanted to retain their Hangouts conversations by selecting chats with the “history on” option, which would retain chat messages for between 30 days and 18 months (as selected by the user), or “history off,” thus deleting messages after 24 hours (the default option for individual chats is “history off”).

The U.S. Government also alleges that Google falsely claimed that it put a “legal hold” on the automatic deletion, and that it lied when it said it was keeping all chats in safekeeping, since it left the feature to automatically delete chats active until this month, without any official agency having any record of it.

The new lawsuit states the following: “As we now know, over the past four years, Google systematically destroyed these written communications. In fact, Google continued to automatically delete these ‘off-the-record’ chats after reasonably anticipating litigation, throughout the U.S. investigation and even when the company became a defendant in this litigation, every 24 hours until February 8, 2023.”

A vitally important issue in Epic Games’ lawsuit against Google, in which the judge has already stated that he will not let Google “get away with” deleting chats. The court in the Epic Games case continues to collect internal company chats that have a bearing on the litigation, with particular interest in terms such as “sensitive,” “history disabled,” “history enabled,” or “off the record.”

Today’s movies and series offer incredibly high sound quality. However, this is of no use if we do not have a sound system that is up to the task.

Nowadays, televisions have increasingly thinner panels, which leaves no room for the placement of proper speakers. The truth is that several brands continue to explore new ways to solve this problem (such as the use of the screen itself to emit sound), but for the moment, they only serve to make up for it. Equipment such as sound bars can be a good option to improve your listening experience without having to sell a kidney along the way (although, like everything else, it depends on the model you choose).

In this article, we will focus on one model in particular: the Bose TV Speaker. Can this soundbar offer you the best value for money listening experience?

Bose TV Speaker AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

Is the Bose TV Speaker a Game Changer for Your Home Entertainment System?

The truth is that if you are an audio sybarite, you will know that sound bars are not the best solution on the market. However, getting one will greatly improve your experience when watching any series, movie or even playing video games. Specifically, the Bose TV Speaker has managed to stand out on Amazon and become the best seller. What is its secret?

The Bose TV Speaker soundbar has an optical connector (cable included), an HDMI output (this cable will have to be purchased separately), Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity and supports Dolby Digital. However, it doesn’t have Wi-Fi, so you won’t be able to connect it to the Bose app (but you can use it with your mobile). On the other hand, the speaker is very easy to set up: you just need to connect the cable from the TV to the soundbar and you’re all set.

The speaker also has other connectors to expand your system and make it more complete. Do you like to enjoy the bass? Add a subwoofer. In this case, the Bose TV Speaker is compatible with the Bose Bass Module 500 and Bass Module 700.

Improve Dialogue Clarity on Your TV and Home Theater System

You’ve probably had this happen to you: you’re watching a series or movie and after a while, you realize that you’re unable to understand what the actors are talking about (even though it’s in your own language). The Bose speaker provides the option of dialogue mode, which will boost the voices so you hear the dialogue clearly.

On the downside, the Bose TV Speaker loses quality when set at high volumes, as well as suppressing bass. However, it outperforms other brands (e.g. Samsung) in its price segment.

All in all, we can’t say it’s the best sound bar. Still, this speaker is ideal for those who want to enjoy the Bose sound experience without leaving a kidney along the way. For now, one thing is for sure and that is that it will greatly improve the sound offered by your TV. Interested? Bose TV Speaker is available on Amazon.

What would a week be without news about Elon Musk, wouldn’t it? This Monday, the billionaire reportedly sent an email to Twitter employees who “survived” his layoffs just a few days ago in which he announces to workers that this March 24 they will receive shares of the company as a reward, the amount of which will be “very significant”.

Twitter DOWNLOAD

“Last week, we completed a difficult organizational review focused on improving future execution, using all the feedback we could gather from across the company,” Twitter’s still-CEO wrote in a document accessed by The Verge. “Those who stay are greatly appreciated by those around them.”

Titled “Performance Rewards”, the internal memo is the first communication from Elon Musk to his employees after the latest series of layoffs and across-the-board cuts at Twitter, a dynamic he carried out since he bought the company, and which has taken down almost the entire product team and even senior managers who were loyal to him.

At the moment, it is unknown how Musk will compensate employees with stock, since Twitter went off the stock market after he bought it late last year. In other memos, Musk alluded to the system he set up at SpaceX to allow employees to regularly sell company stock to interested investors.

So far, Musk has done everything in his power to prevent Twitter employees from knowing the true extent of the cuts that have been made so far. For starters, the company’s internal directory ceased to be operational from the moment he took office. In addition, a few days ago, Musk disabled the company’s Slack and disabled Google chat for employee emails, thus further hindering communication between workers.

Slack DOWNLOAD

After all the layoffs carried out, The Verge’s sources estimate that Twitter would have less than 2,000 workers so far. Before Elon Musk took full control of the company, the workforce consisted of approximately 7,500 employees.

The Mobile World Congress held these days in Barcelona never ceases to amaze with its many new products. Samsung has presented its new S23 Ultra and Galaxy Book 3, Xiaomi has launched the Xiaomi 13 Pro and the Buds 4 Pro headphones, and there has even been room for Elon Musk’s prestigious Hyperloop.

However, there is another company that is making a surprise with its great new products: Honor. The technology company has presented its spectacular Honor Magic 5 Pro, a cell phone with a very interesting design and, in addition, with a camera that has nothing to envy to those of the latest iPhone.

But the most interesting novelty of Honor is in the new battery that has just been presented. It is a battery that can last up to two full days of continuous use, and whose material is unique in the sector. This was presented by the CEO of Honor, George Zhao, during his presentation at the MWC.

A battery made of silicon-carbon

The new battery they have created is made of silicon-carbon, making it the first battery of this material in the industry. This material causes the battery to contain 12.8% more energy density, compared to classic lithium batteries, which use graphite for one of the electrodes.

To give an example, they have shown that the battery of the Honor Magic 5 Pro, which is made of lithium, has 5100 mAh. But, if this new silicon-carbon battery were to be used, the battery capacity would go up to 5450 mAh. In China, the new model of the smartphone with this battery is already being tested, so it is already a reality and not something that is simply in laboratories.

However, the standard that has been launched internationally for the Honor Magic 5 Pro is with the classic lithium battery. So it is still a novelty that is in testing and will be integrated worldwide from the new generation of cell phones.

Elon Musk does not stop fulfilling his dreams. The billionaire creator of Tesla has already managed to standardize electric vehicles in the automotive market, create his own space agency (SpaceX) with which he will try to take people to Mars and buy Twitter, his favorite social network. But he still has another major goal to achieve: to implement the Hyperloop worldwide.

What is Hyperloop?

The Hyperloop is a joint project of Tesla and SpaceX that consists of a mode of passenger transport through low-pressure tubes. It would be a kind of ultra-high-speed train that would transport the inner capsules at a speed of about 1,200 km/h. That is, faster than an airplane.

To show that this is a viable mode of transport in the future, Musk has brought to the Mobile World Congress a demonstration of the Hyperloop. It is a capsule that travels at 1,200 km/h and promises to be able to travel from Madrid to Barcelona and vice versa in just 30 minutes.

Andrés de León, CEO of HyperloopTT in Spain, told La Vanguardia about the importance of this unique mode of transport, as well as its presence at the congress: “Nowadays, things are interrelated. The automotive industry is present at Mobile because in the end we are talking about something that has to do with connectivity. The capsule, for example, has 85 integrated sensors and has the internet of things”.

So important is this mode of transport that even the king of Spain has visited the MWC to get to know it, as well as the rest of the novelties of the fair. In addition to this great novelty that we have been able to record with our own cameras, there are other great innovations such as an air cab or dozens of innovations in telephony by Samsung or Xiaomi.