Hello, loyal readers and technology fans! I’m not sure we’ve ever been properly introduced. I joined TechRadar late last year as the US Editor-in-Chief, and I'm as obsessed with technology as all of you are. So, I hope you don’t mind me filling in for Global EIC Gareth – anything I break or get wrong, let’s keep it between us.
Like most of you, I watch way too much Netflix, and I couldn’t help but notice the public drubbing handed to the platform’s newest thriller, Keep Breathing, this week, and how in spite of this it’s still a Top 10 show. That sparked a rather dark realization in me: we’re watching almost anything Netflix serves up. And I’m not pointing the finger at you – it’s all of us.
Let’s get to it – and remember, anything goes haywire here, you say nothing of it to Gareth. If, on the other hand, you’re gathering up some praise to send my way, feel free to email us, and include ‘NEWSLETTER’ in the subject line.
Lance Ulanoff, US Editor-in-Chief
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We’re entering the start of what I lovingly call ‘phone season’, and OnePlus kicked it off this week with the unveiling of its long-anticipated OnePlus 10T Android smartphone. This is the sort-of lesser OnePlus 10, while for a tip-top model, you might look at the OnePlus 10 Pro.
I’ve tried almost every OnePlus model over the last eight years; I find them generally pleasing, and they usually sport one or two marquee features, such as an early macro-photography lens. This week I attended OnePlus’s rather packed mid-town Manhattan launch event for the 10T. It was a long presentation full of too many tech details, but the phone itself is attractive, and has some decent cameras and mind-blowing gaming chops.
The biggest deal might be the 150W charging capability – it’s too bad that it’s not ready to launch with the phone. I also loved the Moonstone Black color variant and its etched glass rear cover. Gosh that felt exquisite.
Before any of us can really catch our breath, Samsung is prepping a major foldable device event. There have been leaks a plenty, but we’ll have all the real details on August 10. I think I need to take a long nap before next week.
I almost forgot to mention that soon after Samsung does its thing, Apple will probably hit us with a handful of hot iPhone 14 devices. Like I said, phone season.
Prey's director insists the movie isn't a prequel to Predator (20th Century Studios)
My head is spinning after reading Tom Power’s exclusive interview with Prey director Dan Trachtenberg, who explained that the movie, which is set 300 years before the Arnold Schwarzenneger sci-fi action romp Predator, is not an origin story.
I’m fascinated by all the ways studios will use and abuse their intellectual property. The Predator franchise has spawned a lot of movies, including crossovers with Alien. The films are usually over-the-top and hugely entertaining, but it was also clear to me that the series was running out of steam. That’s why this “go your own way” approach makes sense.
Making Prey something of a standalone actioner/frightfest means the director and his team can do pretty much anything they want. And, apparently, they did. Tom loved the film, calling it “thrilling, gruesome, and deeply resonant” in his review. I’ve always been a Predator fan, so I’m ready to watch Prey, whatever it is.
Oh, and I should also mention one franchise film that’s not going anywhere. Warner Bros. just shelved Batgirl, either because it was awful or due to budget cuts. Either way, I’m disappointed that I won’t get to see Michael Keaton don the batsuit again.
I’ll be honest, I had no idea that Winamp is still a thing. I first discovered Winamp in the late 1990s when I was working at Windows Magazine, a publication most you will have never heard of, but which was all the rage in our pre-social media age.
In any case, Winamp was how everyone traded MP3 music files. In fact, it was right around this time that Napster took off – before we all realized that pirating music was bad. Most of us now use one of a small set of music streaming services – Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora – but Winamp still has its fans… and now, after almost four years, an update.
Basically Winamp is like a music service startup in the body of a vital 85-year-old man (there are, apparently, a lot of bugs that still need fixing). It looks and sounds old, but it has the heart of a lion.
Fitbit's latest upgrade has drawn criticism from users (Future)
As I see it, technology is all about change. As most consumers see it, it’s about things working and rarely, if ever, changing. Take Fitbit. As Matt Evans reports, the beleaguered fitness tracking company has stepped in it by overhauling the way charts containing your fitness metrics are displayed in its app.
I’m sure Fitbit (which is owned by Google, which also likes to change things) believed this revamp would make it easier for customers to track their progress and activity. However, users seem to disagree, and Matt calls the update “a hot mess.” I’m not a Fitbit user, so I can’t comment, but I understand the difficulties that brands face in trying to upgrade and improve their products while managing consumer expectations.
How do you implement change without frustrating loyal customers? I wish I had the answer – I know Fitbit certainly doesn’t.
Sony may have come up with a solution to controller drift (Sony)
I’m no gamer, but I’ve played enough FPS games to know that one of the hardest tasks is aiming your weapon accurately, especially in fast-paced multiplayer games. I’m terrible – and I’d be even worse if I was using a controller that suffered from drift.
Over at our gaming site TRG, Shabana Arif reports on a fascinating new patent from Sony that might make PS5 DualSense control drift a thing of the past. What’s really cool about this is that it would use a non-Newtonian fluid – i.e. a fluid that changes viscosity under force – instead of a physical mechanism under the control stick to enable two states of use.
The fluid allows the stick to move freely and be more accurate. But – and here’s the clever bit – if you press slowly down on it, the fluid under the stick moves out of the way and the stick slides down into the body of the controller.
The crew members for the latest Blue Origin space flight included the first Portuguese and Egyptian citizens to go into space (Blue Origin)
Up until recently, I watched every single Blue Origin space tourism mission. The roughly 10-minute blink-and-you-missed it space events see ‘regular folk’ – i.e. non-astronauts – carried briefly to space inside Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule. I particularly remember the flight that carried William Shatner (the original Captain James T. Kirk) into space. It was quite a moment.
This week, however, I realized that I had totally missed a launch. In fact, I didn’t see a lot of news coverage of it. Our sister site Space.com was all over it, but a lot of people will have missed the excitement of another flawless just-over-the-edge-of-space flight.
In other words, we may already be over this. And if enthusiasm for space missions wanes because they become routine, we might lose the necessary energy and support for what’s really on the table here – going back to the moon, and onwards to Mars.
In any case, if you’re a space nerd like me, you should be spending more time on Space.com.
The Sign Off
I could go on, but there’s a beach and some barbecuing waiting for me. Thanks for reading, and for holding your applause until the end. I look forward to your feedback, comments and questions (oh, yes, I’m sure you have questions).
Have a great weekend!
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