🐤 Good morning! Hurricane-level winds here were warned, and a pigeon couple nesting outside my apartment window is bunkering down in the gusts. Hang in there!

Galaxy Book launch?

A week since the Galaxy S22 series launched, and now Samsung is announcing a new Galaxy Unpacked event.

• The latest Galaxy Unpacked is set for February 27.
• Yep, that’s a Sunday.
• It’s set to coincide with Mobile World Congress 2022 (MWC) next week, just a day before the big tech conference takes place in Barcelona.
• Given MWC starts on Monday, Samsung wants to beat the rush, so Sunday it is.
• (Guess who’s going to be working on a Sunday!)

What’s coming?

• Between 2014 and 2018, Samsung would announce its latest Galaxy S phones, but a bit like other brands, Samsung decided it was big enough to host its own events, rather than share the stage at the likes of MWC or IFA.
• Anyway, Samsung’s accompanying blog post is titled “Three PC Promises” and goes on to say “We are excited to share the full details of the next generation of Galaxy Book with you right ahead of Mobile World Congress (MWC)” and mentions the next gen laptop will be built by Samsung and Intel.
• So, I would pretty strongly bet that it’s going to be …Intel-powered Galaxy Book laptops.
• Intel’s 12th-gen CPUs seem to have plugged Intel back into top spot, with its mobile H-series and P-series particularly interesting, so Samsung’s new devices will be worth keeping an eye on. Please pray for whopping battery life to give Apple some kind of competition with its M1 laptops.
• It might not necessarily just be Wintel devices either: the other type of PC could be a Chromebook, but we’ll wait and see here.
• Anyway, if your Sunday is clear, you’ll be able to watch a livestream of the launch on Samsung’s YouTube page as well as Samsung.com.
• By the way, Android Authority will be in attendance at MWC this year. This event is virtual, mind you, but it’s likely Samsung will have the devices on the show floor the next day, so we’ll check them out.

Roundup

📱 OPPO Find X5 Pro official launch date set for just before MWC: February 24 (Android Authority).

📺 Microsoft is testing one of Android’s best accessibility features in Windows 11: Live Caption (Android Authority).

📸 “Pixel cameras are foolproof, but I’m the fool who wants a manual mode” (Android Authority).

📁 Foldable phone market “will hit $29 billion in 2025,” IDC says, which sounds like a lot but is only 1.7% of the entire market (CNET).

📊 App Annie rebrands to Data.ai as it attempts to be more than a mobile data and analytics platform? (VentureBeat).

🖥 Mini LED, the next best thing to OLED, is getting cheaper in PC monitors (Ars Technica).

🏡 Disney is developing planned communities for fans who never want to leave its clutches: “Storyliving” (The Verge).

📉 Is Firefox OK? The browser is flatlining (Wired).

💻 Chrome OS Flex is an ideal off-ramp for millions of PCs that can’t run Windows 11 — a verdict after testing out the new tech (Ars Technica).

☢️ Latest success from Google’s AI group: Controlling a nuclear fusion reactor(Ars Technica).

🔋 Welp, the Hummer EV’s battery weighs more than a Honda Civic at 2,923 lbs (1,325kg). Giant SUVs aren’t great in any form, really (The Verge).

🤔 “ELI5: How did Duck Hunt for Nintendo work?” Love hearing about the light sensors involved in 40-year old tech and how the gun fire noise covered up the screen blanking! (r/explainlikeimfive).

Throwback Thursday

Remember as far back as a few years ago stretching to right now, when we had to use our spoken voice to activate Alexa/Assistant/Siri?

Well, no longer are you a slave to decibels, with a new invention: A wearable smart camera that can detect voice commands without a sound(Gizmodo).

• Wait, what?
• Well, you mouth the sounds but you don’t have to speak, because an infrared camera is staring up at your neck to see what you’re saying.
• Designed by boffins at Cornell, the chin-tracking camera was, after training, able to recognize commands in English “with 90.5% accuracy”.
• Look, obviously no one wants to wear a camera, that’s not the point here. At some level, creating actions without sound has some merit, so it’s an interesting idea!

Cheers,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.