Week in Review: Samsung's eye-popping vision for the future of OLED TVs
Plus: Has Google got its Pixel pricing in a pickle? And just how cold is space? | The future of OLED TV is here | Has Google made another Pixel blunder?
Created for techradar.com@quicklydone.com | Web Version
Hello, and welcome to another Week in Review, bringing you the best articles (well, the ones I’ve found most interesting this week) in a handy email digest, so that you can look incredibly clever to your friends over the weekend as you regale them with all manner of tech-related anecdotes.
We’ve been deep into planning for Prime Day 2022 all week. Amazon’s mega deals-a-thon takes place this coming Tuesday and Wednesday, and we’ve been putting up a host of articles to help you decide which tech items you should be looking at, and how to find a great bargain – and we’ll also be working frantically next week to bring you all the best deals as they go live.
As such, this newsletter might be a little briefer than usual, but I’d like to think it’s very much a case of quality over quantity. Let’s get to it…
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The Samsung S95B is the first TV to use the company's QD-OLED display tech (Samsung)
Regular readers know that I love an OLED TV – I’ve got the LG CX, and I think it’s marvelous. The rich contrast, the deep, inky blacks… superb.
Quantum Dot, Samsung’s flagship competing tech, was the enemy to me. OLED was the king, where LCD was the past. But then Samsung went and combined the tech, using a Quantum Dot layer over the traditional OLED tech to create the best of both worlds: QD-OLED.
Matt Bolton’s write-up of the next-gen tech made me both excited and sad: excited because the picture quality sounds amazing, and sad because, well, I can’t justify buying one of these for at least five more years.
The Google Pixel 6a will go on sale at the end of this month (Google)
I love Tom Bedford’s insights into the phone world – he’s a very cost-conscious writer (which is what we need at the moment with prices spiraling upwards), and he’s spotted something interesting regarding the upcoming and ostensibly affordable Pixel 6a.
The phone, which goes on sale at the end of this month, costs $449 / £399. That’s not bad when you consider that the flagship Pixel 6 cost $599 / £599 when it launched, right?
However, that Pixel 6a pricing was announced months ago, and sales often bring the price of the Pixel 6 down close to that of the 6a, which will give buyers something to really think about.
Add to that the fact that Google has shown us that the Pixel 7 is looking like it'll be a pretty exciting phone, and you’ll likely to be able to get a Pixel 6 for little money in no time.
This doesn’t mean it’s game over for the Pixel 6a – far from it, this is likely to be a popular phone because it will still be the cheapest Pixel – but Google is cannibalizing itself, so it needs to think about what more it could offer buyers.
A case? Google Play credit? There’s an opportunity here, and Google needs to take it – otherwise the ‘a’ variant of the Pixel range is never going to sell as well as it could.
The Mercedes EQXX set a new range record for an electric car (TechRadar)
If you saw last week’s newsletter you'll know that I went to Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK and got the chance to ride in Mercedes' new Vision EQXX electric car, which had just set a new range record – and it was an incredible experience.
I won’t go into too much more detail here, but I spent far too long last weekend writing a fuller acccount of my jaunt (and editing loads of photos) to not urge you to read it – it’s been one of my favorite stories in my 15 years in this job, so I’d love you to give it a read.
Check that a product review isn't too good to be true before parting with your money (StockSnap / Pixabay)
With Prime Day around the corner we want to make sure that our readers are able to get the best deals for them. Obviously, you should be bookmarking our Prime Day page so that you know which deals are worth checking out, but I know that most of our readers will also have a good ol’ browse of the Amazon store.
And often there will be great-looking deals on products that you’ve not heard of and don’t know anything about… but don’t worry, they’ve got great reviews from satisfied customers, right?
Not always. We spoke with Saoud Khalifa, CEO and founder of FakeSpot, and Tommy Noonan, founder of ReviewMeta – the two websites do their best to help shoppers spot fake reviews so that they don’t part with money for products that are low-quality, if not completely useless, or which don’t turn up.
The Apple Watch 8 could have a larger display than the 45mm Watch 7, above (TechRadar)
I wrote this piece fairly quickly – not because I didn’t care about it, but because it just felt like it was in my brain ready to emerge.
When rumors of a larger, 2-inch Apple Watch 8 started to circulate, it was easy to say ‘well, that’s just too big, right?’. And maybe that will be true for some people – but I think there are too many benefits to dismiss this idea.
The first is battery life, the one area of the Watch that Apple needs to improve – more space should mean room for a bigger battery.
Another is that this would make the Watch 8 more useful for running and sports – the larger display makes it easier to glance at your key metrics as you’re huffing and puffing around.
And a third thing is that oversized accessories are pretty hot right now, so I can see a chunkier Watch pushing Apple further into the fashionista demographic.
I know – you probably don’t care whether or not the Apple Watch graces the cover of Vogue; but, like any popular device, the more recognition it gets from new sources, the more innovation and development is poured into it.
I really hope a rugged, large-screened Apple Watch appears with three-day battery life (minimum) in September – it’ll be interesting to put all three sizes (likely 41mm, 45mm and 50mm) on a wrist to see the difference.
Temperatures vary dramatically between different regions of space (Getty Images)
I love it when science articles just pose a really interesting question like 'How cold is space?' – instantly, I want to know.
This is another of those articles that it’s pointless for me to try and summarize, as it’s so rich in information that you’ll get far more from reading it than from me saying “well, Uranus’ tilt is the reason it’s colder than Neptune, don’t you know?”
And it turns out that, as with so many things, the reality of how it would feel to be up there is not how it’s shown in the movies – but that doesn’t mean the effects of falling into space without a space suit would be any less dramatic:
“As freezing requires heat transfer, an exposed astronaut – losing heat via radiative processes alone – would die of decompression due to the lack of atmosphere much more rapidly than they freeze to death.”
Well, that’s nice to know.
This is from the editor
Hopefully you've enjoyed my whistle-stop tour of what happened in the world of tech this week – remember, if you want to discuss anything that's going on, my inbox is always open (remember to include NEWSLETTER in the subject line), and I really do love to hear from all of you.
I won’t go on any longer, save for telling you to sign up for the Week in Review if you haven’t already, and spread the word. Thank you for reading this far – I appreciate every set of eyes, and every share really does help build this community!
Have a lovely weekend,and I’ll speak to you in seven days.
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