🛫 Good morning! Formal MWC 2022 duties are coming to an end, and now it’s time for flights home or extended stays in Barcelona to wind down.

Apple Event: March 8

It was generous of Apple to let Android, PC, and enterprise players have the week or so of MWC 2022 to themselves.

Now, with an announcement yesterday, Apple has the stage to itself with its event titled “Peek Performance,” set for next Tuesday at 10AM PT/1PM ET.

• Apple continues to play its game of teasing and hints, and the rumor mill has been pretty strongly tracking a new 5G iPhone SE, a revamped iPad Air, and new Macs.
• Of interest is that Apple used a “.reality” file in the invitation.
• Also, I really like the design! Very fun looking logo.

Performance:

• The key to performance is likely adding the A15 chip in the iPhone 13 series to iPads, with the iPad Air last updated in March 2020.
• And the possible unveiling of the M2 chipset, the follow-up to the M1 chipset found in new Macs that blew the pants off performance per watt, and gave new Mac owners a much vaunted improvement in battery life.
• But it may be too soon for the M2 chipset: the M1 variants in the M1 Pro/M1 Max chips were only announced back in October last year.

Another iPhone SE? In 2022?

• A third-generation iPhone SE sounds like it’s coming but the platform is getting pretty long in the tooth.
• The second-generation came out in 2020 and added performance and a reasonable price point to either stay with iOS or get back into iOS cheaply.
• It was mostly well reviewed, with the Pixel 4a a strong competitor at the price point then ($350).
• In 2022 though, the iPhone SE design of the 4.7-inch LCD screen housed in monster bezels feels pretty ancient.
• No doubt Apple will add its polish to the 2022 iPhone SE, and the price point will then tell the story. The last one started at $399. There’s been speculation that Apple will drop the price to start this third-gen closer to $300 or so, but it could very well stick to the $399 RRP too.
• Competitors at that price are the Samsung Galaxy A32 and the Nord N10.
• And what will be interesting is whether or not Apple keeps selling the older 2020 iPhone SE. If Apple chooses to retain it and drop the price, say to $200 or so, that would give Apple a strong entrant into true value-phone land, where compromises are endless.
• Anyway, we may also see talk about iOS 15.4. It’s getting harder for companies to show off mindblowing new software features as platforms mature, but refinements and new things for Android to consider adding to its platform are always welcome.

Roundup

👉 After the hints and winks, you’d now have to bet that Nothing is working on a smartphone: an outlet saw images from a prototype Carl Pei was showing off at MWC 2022 to executives (Android Authority).

👉 Samsung Galaxy A13 4G, A33 leak: The Galaxy A33 could be hot stuff, and take on the iPhone SE 2022 as well? (Android Authority).

🥽 First a blockchain phone, now HTCis readying a ‘metaverse’ phone: HTCat least has the Vive platform so it should know what it is doing… (Android Authority).

🔨 Samsung may be throttling apps to save battery life on Galaxy phones, with up to 10,000 apps affected. Samsung says it’s investigating — we didn’t spot this on our Galaxy S22 phones, but one S21 Plus did have the function enabled (Android Authority).

😬 Fitbit recalls Ionic smartwatch after overheating causes major burns (Android Authority).

💻 Samsung Display working on a new type of OLED panel for Apple (The Elec).

📦 Amazon offline can’t compete with Amazon online, and will close 68 physical retail locations, including Amazon Books and 4-star stores as it shifts strategy (TechCrunch).

💰 Epic Games begins to show it’s “more than games,” acquires Bandcamp (Ars Technica).

🏎️ Grand Turismo 7 is out: “There’s still nothing quite like Gran Turismo” (The Verge).

👉 Intel, AMD, Samsung, TSMC, and other industry heavyweights create a new standard for chiplets: UCIe 1.0 could be better for manufacturing and collaboration with mix and match chip parts (Ars Technica).

🔋 Ford’s splitting itself between EVs and ICEs: splitting the company that won’t come easy (The Verge).

🛫 Polestar’s second concept car is an electric convertible with a movie-capturing drone (CNET).

🎮 Ukrainian official calls for Xbox, PlayStation, and others to bar Russian players amid invasion (Polygon).

🍦 Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald’s for $900 million (Wired).

🌓 “ELI5: How and when did the whole world end up using a seven day week when there are multiple calendars? It’s not an obvious number…?” (r/explainlikeimfive). (The clue is in the emoji…)

Throwback Thursday

Remember that wayward rocket that was attributed to SpaceX but ended up being a lost booster from a Chinese mission?

Well, it’s about to crash into the Moon tomorrow, and while it’s not really solid enough to cause a major event, it’s going to be closely studied.

Via Space:

• The rocket stage is on track to slam into Hertzsprung Crater on the far side of the moon on Friday at 7:25 a.m. EST (1225 GMT). The impact will mark the first time a piece of space junk accidentally smacks into the lunar surface, experts say. (This doesn’t count the spacecraft that have crashed while attempting to land on the moon, or rocket bodies intentionally steered into Earth’s nearest neighbor.)
• The March 4 crash will be broadly similar to impacts that occurred during NASA’s Apollo program, when the third stages of huge Saturn V rockets were intentionally steered into the moon. In both cases, the moon-smacking projectile is more or less a tin can, explained Jeffrey Plescia, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. 

Cheers,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.