The new in the world of technology

Apple has  drawn a blueprint of its own foldable smartphone  in a patent application published last week. The design plans were filed back in October and indicate Apple has also been considering a foldable phone for quite some time. Just yesterday, Samsung  officially launched the Galaxy Fold , a foldable phone that costs just under $2,000, ushering in the foldable trend as the latest shift in the smartphone sector. Huawei has also confirmed it plans to launch a 5G foldable phone, likely during  Mobile World Congress next week . Apple’s foldable patent application describes a display with hinges that can fold in half or in thirds. The display could be used in anything from phones and tablets to laptops, wearables, and even mobile accessories. “It would be desirable to be able to use flexible display technology to provide improved electronic devices,” the company writes in the application. The patent application only means the idea is out there and hasn’t bee...

Nike says that a fix is in the works for its  broken Adapt BB smart sneakers , days after an Android update rendered some of them unusable. The $350 Adapt BB went on sale this past weekend, and users started reporting issues soon after. Some report that either the left or right sneaker fails to pair after attempting to update them through the companion Android app. That means the sneaker can’t be tightened or properly worn. Some users say the update caused the motor to stop functioning, too, so even the physical buttons don’t work. A Nike spokesperson told  The Verge , “We are seeing isolated connectivity issues related to the setup of the Nike Adapt BB and are actively working to resolve it. If a consumer experiences this, we encourage them to contact Nike Consumer Services.” For the time being, the shoes can sometimes be fixed with a hard reset, which involves holding down sneakers’ two buttons. The shoes should be able to pair again after that. The issue doesn’t a...

The Bixby button saga has been an ongoing blemish on an otherwise sterling smartphone record for Samsung since the release of the Galaxy S8 nearly two years ago. We’ve written endlessly about how the button is  “structural bloatware”  and a wildly unnecessary feature bolted onto a flagship phone, one that’s required lengthy explanations for  how to disable it entirely  or  use third-party software to remap it  to something you might find useful. But with the new S10, announced yesterday, Samsung has finally  included a built-in method for remapping the button  to a command of your choosing. Even better: the company says it’s now  extending that remapping capability  to other flagship phones in the Galaxy line. That includes the S8 and S9 lines, as well as the Note 8 and Note 9. So long as your device is running Android Pie (as well as the  One Touch UI that sits atop it ), Samsung says you’ll get Bixby button customization th...

Nvidia is introducing a new affordable graphics card as part of the company’s GTX line today. While you might expect the new Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti to be based on the previous Pascal architecture, Nvidia is using its latest 12th-generation Turing GPU architecture instead. That means better performance and less power consumption, but since it’s not an RTX card, you won’t get  Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) or ray-tracing support . The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti includes 1,536 CUDA cores, 6GB of the latest GDDR6 memory, and a 1.8GHz boost clock. Nvidia says it has a power envelope of 120 watts, giving the GTX 1660 Ti “the best performance per watt of any GPU in its class,” according to the company. Nvidia is backing up that claim with promises of smooth 120 fps gameplay at 1080p in popular battle royale titles like  Fortnite ,  PUBG,  and  Apex Legends . The GTX 1660 Ti is also up to 1.5x faster than the GTX 1060 6GB version. It’s likely that the...

I started playing video games around the time when they were transitioning to 3D and making use of CDs, which meant that the capacity to store beautiful visuals far outstripped the hardware’s ability to render them in real time. The upshot of this was that big-budget games often didn’t look great while you were playing them, but every now and then, you’d be treated to a lavishly rendered cutscene that would not only blow you away with its detail and artistry, but provide crucial context for what the regular graphics were actually meant to look like. The canonical example of this is Square Enix’s  Final Fantasy  games for the original PlayStation. Last week,  Final Fantasy VIII  celebrated its 20th anniversary, while  IX  was re-released for the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One — I know,  VIII  got robbed — and the subject happened to be on my mind this week as I played through one of 2019’s newest, highest-budget, most visually stunning games. Wh...

Just over a year ago, I reviewed a  cool little computer called the Eve V . It was a Windows 10 2-in-1 that compared favorably in many ways to its obvious inspiration, Microsoft’s Surface Pro, while costing considerably less. The catch was that it came from an unknown company called Eve-Tech that had crowdfunded the device and sought input on its design from the campaign backers. I concluded the review by saying, “If Eve-Tech can follow through on supply and reliability — and that may be a big if — I absolutely recommend it.” It was a big if. Eve-Tech ran into financial issues and couldn’t produce enough of the V to meet demand, with many backers receiving their devices months or even years after they’d placed their orders. The company says it’s dealt with almost all of the outstanding orders, it can ship new ones out in two days, and it will soon offer substantial discounts on existing stock. At this point, though, it’s hard to recommend the Eve V and its 2017 Y-series proc...

S amsung’s Gear VR is one of the most popular virtual reality headsets, but recently, its future has seemed uncertain. Samsung didn’t mention the mobile headset during this week’s Unpacked event, and it hasn’t significantly updated the hardware since 2017. Despite this,  the company said  that all four of its new Galaxy S10 phone models will work with the Gear VR, using an adapter that ships with the headset. The Gear VR doesn’t seem to be facing imminent extinction. In fact, it seems to be in near-stasis, which is frustrating if you’d like to see Samsung fix its many problems, but it might make the most practical sense. When Samsung and its partner Oculus launched the Gear VR in 2015, the $99 plastic shell was many people’s cheapest and simplest option for decent-quality VR. Today, Google sells the very similar  Daydream View mobile headset , which can be powered by a range of Android phones. The $199 Oculus Go offers Gear VR apps in  a more convenient packag...

F acebook  will end its unpaid market research programs and proactively take its Onavo VPN app off the Google Play store in the wake of backlash following  TechCrunch’s investigation about Onavo code being used in a Facebook Research app the sucked up data about teens . The  Onavo   Protect  app  will eventually shut down, and will immediately cease pulling in data from users for market research though it will continue operating as a Virtual Private Network in the short-term to allow users to find a replacement. Facebook has also ceased to recruit new users for the  Facebook Research app  that still runs on Android but was  forced off of iOS by Apple  after we reported on how it violated Apple’s Enterprise Certificate program for employee-only apps. Existing Facebook Research app studies will continue to run, though. With the suspicions about tech giants and looming regulation leading to more intense scrutiny of privacy...

Despite making a smartphone  that could one day replace our laptops  with the  Galaxy Note 9 , there wasn’t a  huge  amount to get excited about for us computing folk at Samsung's Galaxy S10 launch event. However, the  Samsung Galaxy Fold , the company’s first foldable phone, could have huge ramifications for the future of laptops and tablets. We’ve been hearing so many rumors lately of all kinds of manufacturers – from  Dell  to  Lenovo  and even  Microsoft  – looking at creating foldable laptops with flexible screens, but the Samsung Galaxy Fold is the first time we’ve seen a foldable device that appears to work as well as it promises, while remaining a desirable bit of kit. Of course, every laptop by its very nature is foldable, but could we soon see laptops with a single, bendable, screen that acts as both a traditional display and a keyboard? With Samsung proving that it can be done, I think we’re now even c...