Daily Authority: 📁 New outwards foldable

🌳 Good morning! Happy Earth Day! Kiss a tree, turn off a light bulb, dim your TV a little, and, hardest of all: try and keep your plants alive!

HUAWEI foldable

Huawei’s been as close to Samsung as any major manufacturer in releasing foldable smartphones, just a step or two behind.

Now, HUAWEI is back at it again, announcing a launch date for April 28 for the Mate XS 2, and what looks like the return of the outside-folding foldable. It’s been awhile!

• HUAWEI first put out its out-folding HUAWEI Mate X as just the second foldable from a major manufacturer, going with the alternative out-folding design versus the inner-folding approach.
• That was followed up by the Mate XS in the same style back in 2020, again aiming to avoid needing an outer screen and sticking with using one screen in both folded and unfolded options.
• And then HUAWEI went for something more conventional by copying Samsung’s in-folding, book-style design for the Mate X2, which was a 2021 release.
• Another conventional style came with the P50 Pocket, the clamshell much like the Galaxy Z Flip and Moto Razr.
• Now HUAWEI is seemingly going back to the out-folding foldable.
• There’s no guarantee of that yet, but that’s what the teaser invite image and the naming convention suggests.

What’s coming:

• HUAWEI announced on Weibo that it will be holding a launch event on April 28 for the Mate XS 2.
• What will be interesting, if we stick with the out-folding thought line, is how HUAWEI might be beefing up the protection for the device.
• The concern was around durability: our reviewer Kris Carlon dropped the Mate XS but it held up, but the concern is more like how the always-exposed screen would hold up through the everyday lifestyle and rough and tumble.
• We didn’t get many long-term reviews because HUAWEI didn’t sell the original XS outside of China.
• And there’s no saying this will launch outside of China either.
• But ultra-thin glass protection on the outside? A new and better Falcon Hinge? What else could HUAWEI bring?
• (Sadly, as always, it’s worth reminding HUAWEI won’t be bringing Google Mobile Services to it, with the ongoing US ban still …ongoing. So, you get HUAWEI Mobile Services and App Gallery.)

What it means:

• Ok, a new HUAWEI phone in China only isn’t exactly a shot of caffeine directly into your veins. It’s nothing like the surprise CNN Plus service’s failure inside just one single month. (More on that below).
• But, the news of the HP foldable laptop yesterday shows that foldable tech is still being refined and proven.
• The waiting game now is really if Apple will release a foldable device at all. It doesn’t need to, exactly, given the iPhone is doing very well thank you very much.
• But people love the Z Fold 3. I keep seeing it in the wild, and a new poll on the site shows just over half of you have seen someone with some kind of foldable.
• It all means the Fold 4 (and Flip 4) are pretty hotly anticipated.

Roundup

👨🏻‍🤝‍👨🏻 OnePlus Ace launched: You’ve seen this before, and will see it again, even if the Ace is limited to China (Android Authority).

👉 The EU is close to forcing every manufacturer to use USB-C chargers for everything, extending the deal to laptops now. Next step is another vote, then EU country negotiations (Android Authority).

🍪 Google made a tasty cookie change in Europe that we need across the web: a reject all button (Android Authority).

💻 ASUS drops two OLED Zenbooks and a new logo: no more ASUS, new clean arrow-shaped logo (The Verge).

🔊 Sonos is reportedly releasing a $250 soundbar in June (The Verge).

📺 Wow: CNN Plus realized no one wants it, will shut down almost immediately. It lasted a month! It cost hundreds of millions! (Android Authority).

📈 HBO and HBO Max added 13 million subscribers last year, as Netflix’s growth slowed, though 76.8 million subscribers is about a third of Netflix’s 221.7 million subs (The Verge).

💸 Also wow: Netflix spent $30M per episode on the upcoming fourth season of Stranger Things. That’s double what the final (terrible) season of Game Of Thrones cost! The other detail is that Netflix put out 500+ originals last year, and is going to rein that in a bit (AVClub).

🎮 Also also, if there’s ad-supported Netflix, maybe there’ll be ad-supported PlayStation games too: Sony is looking into ad-supported games now, like Microsoft and Xbox are looking into as well. (Engadget).

👻 Finally in the stuff that made me go wow: Snapchat has more daily users than Twitter and is growing faster than Facebook. 332 million users, daily (TechCrunch).

🌳 Speaking of Earth Day, here’s how to cut through the corporate climate hype: scope, how, how fast, and what’s their progress thus far (The Verge).

💊 “Modern medicine fails people with chronic pain,” from a book partly titled The Untold Story of Pain (Wired).

🛫 First airline will use SpaceX’s Starlink for in-flight internet (CNET).

🤔 “Is there any truth to the idea that we’re now ‘too clean’ and we are somehow weaker for it?” (r/askscience).

Friday Fun

Ok, just a quick bit of fun:

• Please enjoy someone describing a very hard strange Easter egg hunt from 27 years ago.
• There’s more: this reply, in eight tweets, by a teacher, describes their own slightly devious Easter egg hunt involving fake eggs and broccoli, and the eventual revenge of one kid.

Bonus: The Roomba’s been acting strange.

Cheers,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.