Daily Authority: 📱 OnePlus and OPPO's German ousting

🌞Good morning! Welcome to Tuesday’s Daily Authority. We’re still in the middle of a Scottish heatwave, so I’ve been getting into food prep to save cooking (at night, when it’s cool) and eating a bit too much ice cream. Ok, it’s a pretty good summer!

Germany bans OPPO and OnePlus phone sales

Although you can’t buy OPPO phones in the US, in Europe, both OPPO and OnePlus phones are readily available — unless you live in Germany, that is:

• Both OPPO and OnePlus have ceased sales in Germany following a patent lawsuit.
• The ongoing patent lawsuit from Nokia (not HMD Global, who owns the Nokia smartphone brand) claims OPPO and OnePlus both allegedly used patented 5G technology in their smartphones.
• The companies didn’t pay for these patents, so Nokia argued that sales should be barred until the issue is rectified.
• Now a German court has taken Nokia’s side.
• It now looks like OnePlus and OPPO will have to pay Nokia for the use of its patents in order to sell phones legally in Germany.
• However, this could also mean the technology is removed from future phones to avoid paying.

What does this mean for OPPO and OnePlus?

If you’re in Germany and already own a OnePlus 10 Pro or an OPPO phone like the Find X5 Pro, nothing will change — your device will work as normal. It’s only the sale of new devices from these brands that has been banned:

• Both OPPO and OnePlus halted sales in Germany yesterday.
• You’re unable to purchase a phone on either phone’s German website, with the OPPO website currently looking a bit empty.
• There’s a worry that, theoretically, other companies could back Nokia, following Germany’s lead.
• In a worst-case scenario, OPPO and OnePlus could be forced to stop sales throughout Europe, which would spell big trouble for both brands.

It’s not the first time German courts have come down heavily on phone brands. In early 2019, Apple pulled the iPhone 7, 7 Plus, 8, and 8 Plus from German shelves after Qualcomm claimed it infringed on its intellectual property for power saving in smartphones.

Roundup

⛔ India seeks to ban Chinese-made budget phones in a delicate balancing act (Android Authority).

📱 Tis the season for foldables: Xiaomi announces Mix Fold 2 arrival (Android Authority).

🗨 Snapchat’s launching a supervision tool that will let parents see who their kids are chatting to, but not what’s being said (The Verge).

📺 Meanwhile, Google TV is apparently getting a ton of new powerful capabilities, including wireless audio features (Android Authority).

📧 Our own Dhruv wrote about how having a personal G Suite account became his worst tech decision, and we asked you if you regret using a G Suite account for personal use — here’s how you voted (Android Authority).

⌚ We’ve got some bad news for those of you who own older Fitbits (Android Authority).

🚀 SpaceX Polaris Dawn is planning its first crewed launch in December — there’ll be four passengers on board, and they’ll attempt a historic spacewalk (Interesting Engineering).

🤖 Wired interviewed Meta’s new chatbot, Blender Bot 3 (Wired), about itself, but it’s very much a work in progress — and you can talk to it too, if you like (The Verge).

🎮 Activision confirmed PlayStation users will get access to this year’s CoD beta first (Twitter).

👀 Steam’s adding support for Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons as part of the newest beta update (TechRadar).

😥 And it looks as though less than 1% of Netflix subscribers are playing its games: The service currently offers 24 games, but an average of 1.7 million people are playing them (9to5Mac).

🕷 Arachnophobes look away now: Spiders — specifically jumping ones — may have more going on mentally than we thought and may experience REM sleep (Ars Technica).

Tuesday thing

Courtesy of The Hustle: Etienne Klein, a French scientist and director of France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, tweeted an image he said the James Webb Telescope had supposedly taken of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun.

It’s a great image, but… It’s actually just a photo of a slice of chorizo. Klein said it was a joke, and that he’d posted it to educate people about fake news.

Have a fake-news-free week!

Paula Beaton, Copy Editor.