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Daily Authority: š¦ More Nothing
š Good morning! Australia qualified for the World Cup last night, beating poor old Peru in a penalty shootout. Iād be more excited, but the World Cup in Qatar isnāt a great lookā¦.
Nothing Phone 1?
Nothing has mastered the art of teasing and so itās no surprise that the Nothing Phone 1 is being very gradually unveiled, ahead of a July 12 launch date.
Something is coming though: Nothing keeps showing off tiny segments of the phone ā¦along with some cool birds.
- There have been several pics, including this one today and yesterday.
- I wouldnāt say I get the bird stuff: there are blue budgerigars which I recognize, and er, some kind of parrot.
Anyway, what we see:
- Some clever people like Ben Geskin have puzzled the images together, along with the elements unveiled at the Nothing hype launch a few months ago, to give you the above compilation.
- You can start to see elements like camera, side fingerprint sensor, and in another pic, elements that look like the wireless charging coil.
- What it looks like, to me, is a metal frame, then a white color scheme, and glass, and then finally, you can see a bunch of internals that are also white, including the charging coil, and what looks like some mesh and careful lines.
- If this is right, other approaches like this, such as the HTC U11 Plus and U12 Plus, sort of just hinted at the internals that werenāt as carefully configured.
- Also, the Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition had a ātransparentā design, though it was fake: Xiaomi just pasted cosmetic parts on the back and hid the real guts.
- So, expect a nice design, and I guess the best guide would be the Nothing Ear 1 design.
- And, a few months later, youād naturally expect Nothing to put up a matte black design as well.
Tomorrow:
- As for whatās being unveiled tomorrow, itās hard to guess. Will a full photo reveal come?
- I keep asking myself how much we should care.
- On the one hand, thereās the obvious welcome that should be paid to a new phone company trying to add something to the ecosystem.
- On the other, there are the wild overpromises from founder Carl Pei, the fairly bleak Nothing launcher that emerged for no obvious reason, and the reality that smartphone design is stuck in a glass sandwich approach.
- Itās not impossible that Pei and the Nothing team have figured out a killer feature that will be interesting and useful but itās not hugely likely, and thereās no track record.
- So, letās see what emerges tomorrowā¦ but if itās just more drip-drip leaks, they wonāt be in this newsletter.
Roundup
š¤ Er, well, hereās an unboxing video of the unreleased Pixel 6a. Thatās unexpected. (Pre-orders start July 21 for $449, soā¦) (Android Authority).
šØ Samsung will fix your cracked screen for just $50 for a limited time, most US owners (Android Authority).
š Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 reaches over 418,000 folds in marathon test. And I canāt believe it, but a bunch of people just folded it by hand, over and over! (Android Authority).
š¬ Qualcommās $1,500 Snapdragon Insiders phone is barely getting any updates, and wow. So bad. (Android Authority).
š§ Intel tries to get its chip manufacturing back on track with āIntel 4,ā due in 2023, thanks to EUV manufacturing. Intel promises a 21.5% speed increase at same power usage as current CPUs (Ars Technica). More on EUV which comes from ASML, but itās basically borderline pure magic (Wiki).
š Big Tech has a new antitrust nemesis: John Oliver, with a 25-min long segment talking Appleās āblood money,ā Googleās search dominance, and most of all, Amazon (Gizmodo).
š¦ Speaking of: Amazonās troubled drone delivery project is finally taking off, with a drone delivery service in the town of Lockeford, California later this year (The Verge).
š¤ Michigan approves digital license plates made by a startup (Engadget).
š Olā Musky will speak to Twitter staff for the first time this week (CNET).
š«This is fun: The 10 closest airports (just move the map around) (Github).
š Why itās impossible to rent a car right now (Wired).
š„ āWhat is a record, sports or otherwise, that will likely never be broken?ā (r/askreddit). (Yes!)
Chart Tuesday
Hereās a chart race of the most popular websites since 1993:
- If you remember those early 90s times itāll help, but itās fun to see the eras changing.
- The issue now is: both TikTok and Snapchat would be up there with the most popular websites, but theyāre apps, so, I donāt know.
- But Instagram does manage to make the top 10 towards the 2020s, at least.
Cheers,
Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.