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The Weekly Authority: OnePlus 10 Pro date, Nothing Phone 1

Catch up on the top tech news, with everything you might have missed this week.
By

Published onMarch 26, 2022

OnePlus 10 Pro box on a table
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority

⚡ Welcome to The Weekly Authority, the Android Authority newsletter that breaks down the top Android and tech news from the week. The 187th edition here, with the launch date for the OnePlus 10 Pro, Nothing Phone 1 news, and The Witcher 4.

🎮 This weekend I’m mostly enjoying saving Danny Trejo’s tacos during the free Far Cry 6 weekend, as well as soaking up the (rare) Scottish sunshine!

First thing’s first: Before we hop into today’s tech news, you should know that OPPO is giving away two Find X5 Pro devices!

OPPO Find X5 Pro Promotional Image
OPPO

These flagship smartphones are powered by the MariSilicon X Imaging NPU, drastically increasing their photographic capabilities (especially in low-light situations).

Two lucky Android Authority readers will be receiving these premium smartphones, so make sure to enter the giveaway before March 30!

Popular news this week

OnePlus 10 Pro Global Video Thumbnail
Harley Maranan / Android Authority

OnePlus:

Nothing:

  • The Nothing event on Wednesday turned out to be just a teaser of the announcement of the Nothing Phone 1, arriving this summer, with an undisclosed Snapdragon processor, plus three years of Nothing OS updates and four years of security updates.
  • Carl Pei talked about Nothing OS, a stock-style version of Android with Nothing’s minimalism and design language, fulfilling his long-standing ambitions for a more open ecosystem, a simple fast Android build, and minimal bloat.
  • Catch up with what you missed here or take a deeper dive into things over on Thursday’s Daily Authority, with Tristan.

Samsung:

  • Samsung is reportedly readying a brand-new foldable line this year: The device could be the first of its kind with a limited production run. A new format? More square? Bigger? Your guess is as good as ours.
  • And some Galaxy S22 Ultra models have GPS issues, but a fix is coming: Seems the Exynos variant is affected, with users reporting no GPS signal when using the likes of Google Maps and Waze.

Google:

Apple:

Space:

Elsewhere:

Gaming:

Movies/TV:

Reviews

Xiaomi 12 Pro rear panel offset right
Eric Zeman / Android Authority

Features

Weekly Wonder

We’re dedicating this edition’s Weekly Wonder to Stephen Wilhite, creator of the GIF, who passed away aged 74 on March 14.

We’re huge fans of GIFs here at Android Authority. How else are we meant to express how excited we are for the weekend or exactly what we thought of the latest flagship phone release? But who was Stephen Wilhite, how did the humble GIF come to be, and why oh why does everybody pronounce it wrongly?

History in a GIF-fy

Stephen Wilhite was a computer programmer at CompuServe, the world’s first major online service provider, when he came up with the Graphics Interchange Format (that’s GIF to you and me). This was back in 1987, before the World Wide Web was even a thing.

According to The Washington Post, it all came about when Alexander “Sandy” Trevor, the company’s chief technical officer, asked Wilhite to create “an image file format that used lossless compression and could work across an array of computer systems.” The idea was that this format would allow anyone to share stock charts, photos, weather maps, and pretty much any other files between Apple, Commodore, Atari, IBM, or any other computers.

  • It took Wilwhite about a month to create the format.
  • The first GIF was a picture of an airplane with rolling clouds.
  • It wasn’t originally created for animation but had been designed so it could be extended and stretched.
  • It caught on pretty fast amongst developers, later becoming more generally used as internet browsers took off, not to mention Myspace.
  • Netscape added the ability for GIFs to loop in 1995.

How is GIF pronounced?

In 2o12, Oxford Dictionaries named GIF the US word of the year. But there was fierce debate over how to pronounce it. Was it with a hard g, like “gift” or a soft g, like “Jif”?

  • Wilwhite himself weighed in on the issue in 2013, confirming it was “Jif,” like the peanut butter brand.
  • The debate’s still ongoing to this day though. Weigh in below in the comments section with your thoughts/preferred pronunciation!
  • Time even created a timeline of the debate about how to pronounce GIF.

The legacy of the GIF

Wilwhite may be gone, but his legacy lives on in the GIF. According to The Hustle, shortly after his passing, Giphy posted its tribute: “Stephen Wilwhite Creator of the GIF 1948-2022,” displayed on top of a GIF of rolling clouds, in memory of the first-ever GIF.

Nowadays we all use GIFs, whether you prefer expressing embarrassment with a GIF of Homer Simpson backing into a hedge, or letting somebody know exactly what’s up with Robert Downey Jr. rolling his eyes.

Here are just a few of the AA team’s favorites:

 

Tech Calendar

  • March 31, 10 AM ET: OnePlus 10 Pro global launch
  • March 30: Death Stranding Director’s Cut comes to PC
  • April 1: Galaxy A53 on sale (T-Mobile and Verizon from March 31)
  • April 5: Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga lands on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S
  • May 9-11: Qualcomm 5G Summit (San Diego)
  • May 11-12: Google I/O 2022

Tech Tweet of the Week

Not going to lie: quite excited about this.

Lego debuts awesome new Star Wars diorama sets. https://t.co/lrgol6hFgJ pic.twitter.com/znVaDhZNfN
— Game Informer (@gameinformer) March 24, 2022

Enjoy the sunshine!

Paula Beaton, Copy Editor.

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