Category: Technologies

OnePlus has confirmed that its first foldable phone will launch in the second half of 2023. While the company hasn’t announced details, pricing or an exact release date, more information will be announced in the coming months.

“We want to launch a device that aims to be at the pinnacle experience of today’s foldable market,” said OnePlus President Kinder Liu in a statement ahead of the company’s event during the Mobile World Congress 2023 in Barcelona.

The OnePlus foldable was first teased in February following the launch of the company’s latest flagship phone, the OnePlus 11. OnePlus’ parent company Oppo has been a step ahead with folding phones, having just recently taken the wraps off its clamshell-style Find N2 Flip phone. It’s unclear if OnePlus will go with a similar clamshell design or a “book fold” form akin to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4.

During MWC, OnePlus also showed off its upcoming tablet — the OnePlus Pad — along with its Concept phone that uses liquid cooling and a liquid cooling dock that can be used with any phone.

It’s hard to beat the convenience and portability of a tablet, and these days you can find powerful models that can give you the functionality of a full workstation even when you’re on the go. If you can land on a good deal, you won’t have to pay an arm and a leg for one either. Right now, for example, you can get Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S7 Plus for just $500 — that’s a savings of $350. But this deal expires tonight, Feb. 28, so act soon if you want to snag one at this price.

Released in 2020, the Galaxy Tab S7 Plus is the predecessor of the the Galaxy Tab S8 Plus, which was chosen as one of the best tablets for 2023. While it may not be the newest release, it still has a lot to offer for work and play, making it a solid option for the average person. It comes equipped with a large 12.4-inch AMOLED display with a 2,736×1,824-pixel screen resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate, for bright, crisp visuals and smooth performance, along with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. And if you find you need a bit more, it’s a cinch to expand that — you can add up to 1TB of storage through a microSD card (sold separately).

This tablet also comes with a stylus so you can draw, take notes and do other detailed work right on the screen. And while that is the only accessory that comes with your purchase, you can also invest in a compatible keyboard for a more full workstation experience, if you choose. It also has an 8-megapixel front-facing camera and a 13-megapixel rear cam so you can snap pictures or make video calls. And the battery lasts up to 8 hours on a single charge, so you can use it all day.

Is this tablet not the right fit? You can shop other tablet deals we’ve found right now.

What is your mobile carrier doing to combat the climate crisis? It might not be something you’ve thought much about, but with increasing numbers of networks around the world aligning themselves with science-based targets, it’s easier than ever to see if the service you’re paying for is taking genuine action to reduce its environmental impact.

In a report released at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday, mobile industry body GSMA said that nearly a quarter of energy (24%) used by the mobile sector comes from renewable sources, up from 14% in 2020. In addition, 62 carriers globally have now committed to rapidly decreasing their direct and indirect emissions by 2030, representing 61% of the industry by revenue. This is an increase of 12 networks since the previous report published last April.

The GSMA is leading an industry-wide drive to ensure carriers reach net zero emissions by 2050. A key metric it’s using to measure the ambition of its members is their commitment to preventing global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, the science-based target laid out in the Paris Agreement.

With the impacts of the climate crisis — from floods to wildfires to deadly heatwaves — increasingly being felt in regions around the world, there is growing pressure on all industries to prioritize transitioning to clean energy and ensure they’re playing an active role in preserving rather than harming our ecosystems. The mobile industry is no exception, and some networks are doing more than others to alleviate their environmental impact, which could make a difference to where you choose to spend your money.

On the hardware side, phone makers are investing heavily in giving phones a longer life and using more recycled materials in their products. But on the network side, companies are increasingly investing in finding ways to build and operate infrastructure using highly efficient methods that are less energy-intensive than those used in the past.

The biggest challenge for carriers, said John Giusti, chief regulatory office for the GSMA, is access to renewable energy. “The good news is that the industry is moving forward, with operators now directly purchasing 24% of their electricity from renewable sources, up from 18% in 2021 and 14% in 2020,” he said in the report. But with carrier demand outstripping supply, governments need to help expand access to renewable energy, he added.

Europe and North America, two of the regions most responsible for historic emissions, are leading the charge when it comes to ambitious sustainability commitments and actions. “It’s perhaps only fair because it’s parts of the world where they’re the most advanced climate wise, and therefore they have the most capability to actually reduce their emissions,” Steven Moore, head of climate action for the GSMA, said in an interview with CNET the week preceding MWC.

The GSMA’s report looked at actions by mobile operators across the world but called out T-Mobile as an example of a company making great strides to reduce its carbon impact in the US. It’s the first company in the US wireless sector to set a net zero goal validated by the Science Based Target Initiative covering all of its emissions, including those from across the supply chain and indirect emissions from purchased electricity. It’s also one of only a small handful of networks so far to set a net zero by 2040 target, instead of 2050.

Meanwhile, its main competitors, Verizon and AT&T have both aligned themselves with the 1.5 degrees pathway, and Verizon has committed to net zero emissions across the board by 2050. Moore said that he wouldn’t be surprised if networks in many places end up achieving net zero much earlier than 2050. “Once we start to invest, it’s incredible how quickly things can change,” he said.

YouTube wants videos to reach more people, regardless of what language they speak. In a blog post Thursday, the video site said it’s expanding the ability for creators to add multilanguage audio to videos, meaning people will have the option to watch many videos dubbed in their primary language.

“Whether it’s chess tutorials, a historical documentary on Rome, or a series of ghost hunting investigations in Italy, we can’t wait to see our creators continue to adopt this feature into their own content, and for our viewers to discover videos from international channels,” YouTube said in the post.

If you’re curious how you can use the feature to watch videos in your primary language, we’ll get into how you can do that below.

YouTube’s been testing the feature with a small group of creators, including Mr. Beast, over the past year. In testing, multilanguage dubbed videos saw a 15% watch time increase that derived from views in a video’s non-primary language, YouTube said. On average, people watched over 2 million hours of dubbed video daily in January alone.

To try out the feature, creators can add different audio tracks through YouTube’s Subtitles Editor tool when uploading a video. Creators can update existing content in their catalog through this tool as well.

Viewers can click the video’s settings in the bottom right and then click Audio Track, which opens up other audio tracks in different languages. “We want this to be a seamless experience,” YouTube said in the post, “so content will also default to match viewers’ preferred language and users will be able to search for multilingual content courtesy of translated video titles and descriptions.”

Performing a highly technical demonstration in front of a live audience of journalists is always a risky move on the part of a technology company. You can almost guarantee that tech will fail you at the very moment you need it to perform at its best.

But not this time. Nokia Product Marketing Chief Adam Ferguson made the brave and somewhat bold move of replacing the battery on one of the company’s three new budget phones live on camera, all while providing onlooking press with a running commentary of exactly what he was doing and why it’s so important.

Ferguson promised it would take him less than 5 minutes to complete the battery transplant, and though we can quibble over a few seconds either way, he fundamentally proved to be a man of his word.

“If someone like me — who isn’t particularly good with his hands, as you’ve probably seen from some of my shaky handling there — can do it while speaking to all of you, hopefully it demonstrates that absolutely anybody can,” he told us during the demo, which took place virtually, in the week preceding Mobile World Congress.

The Nokia G22, now awake following major surgery performed by an amateur in front of our eyes, is designed with repairability at its very core. Thanks to a partnership with tech repair company iFixit, owners of this phone, announced at MWC in Barcelona on Saturday, will be equipped with guides and support to fix their phones themselves when the time comes. All they’ll need is a guitar pick and a #00 screwdriver.

It puts Nokia, which isn’t even in the top five global smartphone brands, ahead of the game this week at the world’s biggest mobile show, where sustainability is a major theme. In the context of the global climate crisis, the problem of electronic waste has become an increasingly pressing concern for tech companies and for consumers. Ensuring the products we use have a long life and aren’t easily disposed of as soon as our battery starts to flop is a key step in reducing the environmental impact of our tech use.

“We’re seeing already that people are holding on to their phones for longer,” Steven Moore said in an interview during the lead-up to Mobile World Congress. Moore is head of climate action at mobile industry body GSMA, which hosts MWC. He said the average lifespan of a smartphone has already stretched from two to three years. Plus, he added, people are showing more interest in repairing their phones, and are open to purchasing refurbished models in the first place.

Nokia isn’t the first to do this. Since 2013, Fairphone, a Dutch social enterprise, has been focused on trying to make modular phones that have a smaller environmental footprint. Since last April, Apple has also been supporting people who want to take care of DIY fixes on their iPhones, through its Self Service Repair program.

But the difference right now is that DIY repairs are beginning to shift from being a niche perk to being an important headline feature of new phones. “As consumers increasingly demand more sustainable and longer-lasting devices, the ability to repair smartphones easily and affordably will become a key differentiator in the market,” Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, said in a statement.

Nokia might not be the pioneer of the repairability trend, but it’s adopting the practice at a key time. This year at MWC sustainability is front and center, as companies across the mobile landscape strive to reduce their environmental impact in line with the GSMA’s goal of the mobile industry reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Any phone manufacturers who don’t come to the show this year with a well-rehearsed set of arguments for why they aren’t taking control of repairability options for their devices should be prepared to face criticism, Emma Mohr-McClune, chief analyst and practice lead at analysis firm Global Data, said in a statement.

“At present, operators are staying out of this argument, but at one point even operators will start demanding more choice in this regard,” she added.

With pressure mounting from consumers and from other areas of the mobile industry, it’ll be up to phone manufacturers to respond by making it easier to replace device parts such as batteries and screens, which often bear the brunt of long-term use. But it’s important that they don’t neglect software as part of this conversation either.

When OnePlus released the OnePlus 11 earlier this month, it extended its support period for up to four years of Android updates and an additional fifth year of security updates. Without the promise of long-term security updates such as this, an otherwise decent phone can become unusable.

Good future-proofing also doesn’t lessen the responsibility on phone makers to ensure devices are already as sustainable as possible before they even reach your hands.

According to Moore, 80% of the environmental footprint of a mobile phone has already happened before you take it out the box. “That really means that we need to consider the actual embodied emissions and environmental impact within the device,” he said.

The long-term vision for future phones, as laid out in a GSMA strategy paper released in November, is that one day our devices will be 100% recycled and recyclable, as well as made with 100% renewable energy.

“There’s no device at the moment that fits that description, but we’re already seeing really promising signs from some of the manufacturers on this,” Moore said. “There’s a lot that the industry can do [and] I think we’re just at the beginning.”

The battery life of your Mac, and how long it lasts, depends on several factors, including which applications you have running. If you keep your computer plugged in all the time, battery life shouldn’t be an issue, but if you’re unplugged and don’t have access to power, you need to figure out how to conserve energy. And that includes tracking which apps are big energy consumers — and closing them, if needed.

Don’t miss: 17 Essential MacBook Settings You Need to Try Today

Not all apps are built the same, which means they’ll drain battery differently. A notes app may not use up too much power, but video editing software or a music player might. But instead of guessing, there’s a quick way to see which apps on your Mac are draining the most battery. Here’s how to check.

And if you have an iPhone, here are 9 tips to charge your phone faster.

Quickly view which apps are draining your Mac’s battery the most

You can easily view which apps are draining your battery — with a single click, actually.

In the menu bar at the top of Mac’s screen, you should see a battery icon over the top-right. Click the battery icon to bring up a small menu and check the apps listed under Using Significant Energy.

If there’s an application listed there that you’re not currently using, close it to help conserve battery. All you have to do is go over to your Dock, right-click any open app and then hit Quit.

Obviously you won’t be able to close your web browser or any other app you’re actively using, but if the app is just sitting there, running in the background, it’s better to just close it until you need it again or are connected to power. Not only will it save battery, it may also make your computer run smoother, especially if you have too many apps open at once.

We’re past the days when pizza was the primary food delivery option. You can now get almost any food imaginable delivered to your door without getting out of your pajamas.

Food delivery services, such as Postmates, GrubHub and DoorDash, can bring you meals from your favorite chain restaurant or the local diner. With so many food delivery service apps, figuring out the best one can be hard. We’ve evaluated how easy it is to use these apps, how many restaurants each app works with, how steep the delivery and service fees are and how long the estimated delivery time is for each.

We selected restaurants near each other and about 5 miles from a suburban location. We also examined how delivery to an urban area influenced time and costs. We ordered similarly priced items from all locations in each app to help determine additional fees, and we looked at these services around midday during the week in February.

Here’s a roundup of our favorite food delivery service apps that you can download from the Apple App Store or the Google Play store.

Note: Your experience will likely vary depending on your location, dietary restrictions, the time of day you order and any available promotions.

Food delivery tips

Mix and match delivery apps

These might be our favorite food delivery services, but that doesn’t mean you have to pick just one. Unless you sign up for a rewards program, these services are free, so you can download and use each of these apps. You can check which service is cheapest and fastest for you in your area by downloading each. You can also download apps that compare these food delivery services for you so you aren’t switching back and forth between apps.

Order straight from the restaurant to save on fees

Many restaurants also have their own apps or websites you can order from directly, which could save you money on service fees. If you choose to pick up your food from these restaurants, that could save you money on delivery fees, too, but that also applies to each of the above food delivery apps. You could also get your food quicker if you choose pickup rather than delivery, as pickup times are usually about 15 minutes.

For more, check out the best meal kit delivery services, the best cheap meal delivery services and the best healthy meal delivery services.

OnePlus wasn’t content with just putting liquid cooling inside its latest OnePlus 11 Concept. The company has also created a liquid cooling dock to cool down any device, including iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones. And unlike the OnePlus 11 Concept, you should be able to buy this cooling dock later this year.

Shown off at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the main part of the dock, which is full of liquid coolant, sits on your desk. A hose (that looks like a thick red charging cable) comes out of the dock and connects to a bracket holding your phone. The bracket resembles one you might use to view your phone on your car dashboard.

The bracket, equipped with a metal plate that gets extremely cold from the coolant, is in direct contact with the back of your phone. It should keep your phone from overheating during processor-intensive tasks, including gaming, which can raise the temperature of your handset, particularly when playing demanding games like Genshin Impact at max settings.

Gamers and others who require a lot of power on their devices might be used to getting frequent warnings about overheating during use. In that case, the OnePlus cooling dock could help you game for longer. Still, it’s pretty niche and requires quite an elaborate setup. It also needs its own power supply, so don’t expect to use it on the bus during your daily commute.

OnePlus hasn’t yet announced when it’ll be on sale or how much it will cost, but it is projected to be available later in the year.

Will you wear AR glasses everywhere you go in the future? That’s debatable. But manufacturers are continuing to make them. Xiaomi’s AR Glass Discovery Edition, announced at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, is another attempt to figure out the territory. The camera-equipped AR glasses look like mysterious AR sunglasses, and they can dim their lenses on the fly.

Qualcomm announced a new AR glasses-focused chipset design last year that was aimed at having smaller smart glasses work wirelessly with nearby phones. Qualcomm’s tech is rolling out for manufacturers that have a glasses-and-phone product relationship already set up, since the glasses and phone both need to be certified for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces software in order to work.

Xiaomi’s new glasses don’t use that new chipset. Instead, they’re using a higher-performance XR2 chip, much the upcoming RayNeo X2 glasses TCL showed off at CES in Las Vegas earlier this year. (The chip’s also in the Meta Quest 2 and several other standalone VR headsets.) They work with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces software, because Google hasn’t yet created a native environment for AR glasses in Android.

Xiaomi’s glasses look more like futuristic visors, and use Micro OLED displays, promising a “retina-level” resolution level at 58 pixels per degree (this measures the density of pixels rather than the total pixel resolution). One unique thing they add is a set of lenses that change opacity to go dark for better AR viewing, which sounds similar in concept to the Magic Leap 2. The glasses use hand tracking and gesture tracking for controls, using the glasses’ external cameras, but they can also pair with a phone and use a phone’s touchscreen like a trackpad too.

Google, Samsung and Qualcomm have already announced a future XR partnership, which could lead to glasses and phones that are better integrated with Google’s Android platform. Apple’s expected mixed-reality headset could do the same for the iPhone over time. Xiaomi’s glasses are early to the party, in that sense.

Qualcomm is driving the progress between glasses and phones in the meantime, and that’s mostly happening on a carrier-by-carrier and device-by-device basis. In some ways it feels similar to the early days of smartwatches, before Google and Apple entered the game. The immediate future will likely still see a process of gradual evolution, and it’s unclear what software will work for these glasses, or how well they’ll fit on your face or eyes. We do know they have prescription lens inserts, but I’ve found them a mixed bag for my vision when I’ve tested them in the past.

Pokemon Sleep, revealed during Monday’s Pokemon Presents livestream, is a sleep-analyzing game coming to Android and iOS this summer. We’ve waited a while for this one — The Pokemon Company first hinted at it back in 2019.

You play by placing your phone by your pillow when you go to bed, so it can record and measure your sleep. The longer you slumber, the higher your score will be in the morning and more Pokemon will have gathered around sleeping legend (and Pokemon Sleep mascot) Snorlax.

Your sleep will be classified as one of three styles — dozing, snoozing or slumbering — and Pokemon that sleep in similar ways will show up in the morning. Each Pokemon has a number of different sleep styles to discover and log in your sleep style dex.

Those who prefer not to put their phone by their pillows will also be able to use the Pokemon Go Plus+ accessory, which connects to Pokemon Sleep via Bluetooth. Once it’s connected, you hold the device’s central button, place it by your pillow and sleep. In addition to measuring your sleep, a Pikachu voice can prompt you when it’s time to wake up or go to sleep.

Like the Pokemon Go Plus device that came out in 2016, it’s compatible with Pokemon Go — you can use it to spin Pokestops and catch Pokemon in the hugely popular mobile game. Linking the new device to Pokemon Go will let you catch an adorable Snorlax wearing a nightcap.

A future update will also let you use Pokemon Sleep data in Pokemon Go, but it’s unclear what that data will do.

Pokemon Sleep didn’t get a firm release date, but the Pokemon Go Plus+ comes out July 14 — it’s likely the app will arrive around the same time this summer.