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Apple releases new Watch and iPad, but no sign of the iPhone 12
Apple has launched a range of new products in its September event, but – for the first time in years – it has not released a new iPhone.
Three new Apple Watches were shown off, as was the updated version of watchOS.
The marquee new feature is a pulse oximeter which allows the wearable to detect blood oxygen levels by using red and infrared light to measure the colour of wearers’ blood.
This will be used with researchers in three studies focusing on respiratory diseases, including asthma and COVID-19.
Image: Apple Watch and iPad took the centre stage, with no iPhone announcement
The Apple Watch 6 will be available for £379 from 18 September, while the high-end version with GPS and cellular capabilities costs £479.
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Apple also announced the launch of a cheaper device, the Apple Watch SE, which will be available from £269 with just GPS, or £319 with GPS and cellular capabilities.
As part of the company’s move to generate revenue from services as well as its hardware devices, it announced a new Fitness+ service allowing Apple Watch users to take part in programmed workouts with world-leading fitness experts, with performance measured by the Apple Watch.
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Access to Fitness+ and other services is now available in a bundle called Apple One. This will be priced at £29.95 per month in a premier version which can be shared among family members, or for £14.95 per month on a limited subscription with fewer services.
The company also introduced its most powerful ever chip, the A14 Bionic, which will be available in the new iPad Air 4, available from £579.
The chip was described as “by far the most advanced we’ve ever made” with transistors so small they “challenge the laws of physics” with about 11.8 billion packed into a single chip.
“We’re talking about a scale so small, they’re measured in atoms,” the company said.
It is the first time such a chip has been announced in any product line other than the iPhone, potentially due to the delayed release date which the company warned investors about earlier this year.
According to Apple the iPad Air 4 is three times faster than the top-selling Android tablet, and six times faster than the top-selling Chromebook.
The iPhone 12 is expected to be the company’s first 5G device and will be launched at an event in October, according to reports.
The future of mobile phones is foldable, Samsung says
Samsung’s latest smartphone, the Galaxy Z Fold2, is about to go on sale, and it indicates the company’s commitment to a new kind of device: The folding phone.When I talked to Samsung’s Conor Pierce, it was a topic he returned to repeatedly. Samsung’s corporate vice president for UK and Ireland knows his phones, having spent 10 years at Nokia and Microsoft working on some of their key Windows Phones handsets.We talk – on video call, of course – and he is animated about the work Samsung is doing. He refers modestly to the team’s successes, rather than his own, and he is friendly and at ease – but don’t let that fool you. I have never spoken to a senior exec more au fait with the facts and figures, as he quotes another percentage or number relevant to the story.And the story is one of a company which still sells more phones than anyone else, but is reluctant to sit on its achievements. In the last few weeks, the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra phones have been unveiled alongside a new tablet, new smartwatch and true-wireless earbuds that are shaped like kidney beans (but are better at transmitting music to your ears than actual legumes).
The new Galaxy Z Fold2 has a complicated name: Z refers to Samsung’s folding phones, and Fold2 indicates it’s the sequel to last year’s Fold which had an uneven start. It was delayed after announcement when reviewers removed a screen protector that should have stayed in place and dirt got underneath, causing problems. The Fold and Fold 2 are both small tablets which fold in half to become phones.
In between was the company’s second folding phone, the Z Flip, which was a regular-sized phone that folded down into something more pocketable. It’s a great phone, but it felt a little fragile, that you needed to handle it with care. The Z Fold2, however, feels solid and robust.
Read more“The engineering hours that go into building a folding device is phenomenal,” Pierce says. “Some of the changes that we’ve made from the original Fold last year are very appealing for customers. There’s now a full screen display on the front cover and the hinge mechanism is changed as well. The engineers added a hideaway hinge so that you can actually change the angle and leave it in place so you can watch a movie as it sits down. They’ve also introduced a new sweeper technology which ensures that we don’t get particles embedded within the hinge – it’s a huge amount of engineering genius that goes into these devices.”
There’s no doubting the designers’ intention to create something high-end. In Samsung’s elegant Mystic Bronze finish, the Galaxy Z Fold2 looks more like a piece of jewellery than a phone, made to the same critical tolerances as a deluxe watch. But the fact that it’s designed to fold in half makes it thicker, when folded, than other phones. So, will customers really embrace folding handsets?
PS5 could be in short supply after release date, as Sony reduces number of consoles being made
Sony has reportedly reduced production of the upcoming PlayStation 5 console due to production issues of the chips on the console.Sony has lowered production from 15 million units of the next generation console to 11 million units, according to Bloomberg.It increased orders in July, anticipating many sales ahead of the console’s “holiday 2020″ release date, but manufacturing costs for its SOC (system on a chip) have cut its ability to build them.The SOC is the main circuit which integrates all aspects of the console, including the central processing unit (CPU), memory, input and output ports, and secondary storage.The Independent has reached out to Sony for comment.Read moreThe launch of the PlayStation 5 was reportedly unhindered by the coronavirus although the company said that it made significant changes to the way production has had to be handled.”Regarding the launch of PlayStation 5, although factors such as employees working from home and restrictions on international travel have presented some challenges in regards to part of the testing process and the qualification of production lines, development is progressing with the launch of the console scheduled for the 2020 holiday season,” Sony said at the time.”Major problems have not arisen in the game software development pipeline for Sony’s own first-party studios or its partners’ studios,” it continued.
Coronavirus: Facebook and NHS team up for blood donations
The NHS is partnering with Facebook to enlist new blood donors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland ahead of a potential second wave of COVID-19.
The feature on Facebook will allow users to sign up to receive notifications to donate at local centres, as well as encourage their friends to donate too.
The NHS is particularly focusing on enlisting male plasma donors who have previously had the coronavirus, as their blood could help save lives for people with COVID-19.
The UK faces another national lockdown
More than 5,000 blood donations are needed by the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland every day to meet demand.
Each donation can save up to three lives – but there isn’t a good representation across all sections of British society in who is donating, with the majority of donors aged over 45
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Black people and men are particularly underrepresented, with rare subtypes, such as RO, far more common in people of black heritage – but currently only 1.5% of blood donors in England are black, compared to 3.5% of the population.
Men in general are particularly being encouraged to donate blood as well as plasma because their blood generally contains fewer antibodies, making it easier to match patients and use their donations in blood products such as plasma and platelets.
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“The timing of the tool is vital because ahead of any second wave of COVID-19, the NHS urgently needs people who’ve had coronavirus to donate convalescent plasma,” Facebook said in a statement.
This is antibody-rich plasma which can be transfused into people whose immune systems are struggling to respond to the infection.
“Men are especially needed because they are roughly 50% more likely to have high enough antibody levels for the trials,” the company added.
Image: Health Secretary Matt Hancock welcomed the announcement
The Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock welcomed the announcement.
He said: “Giving blood saves lives. The need for donors never ceases, and we have seen in the past few months how blood products can be used to treat those seriously ill with coronavirus.
“This new tool makes donations even easier, with donor centres sending notifications through Facebook to let people know when they can give blood in their area.
“I’m hugely grateful to new donors and everyone who has continued to donate throughout the pandemic, and I encourage anyone who can to give blood or plasma to help save more lives.”
Japanese military given instructions on UFOs
The Japanese military have been given instructions to record and report sightings of unidentified aerial objects which could pose a potential threat to the country’s security.
Taro Kono, the country’s minister for defence, issues the instruction following the US department of defence founding its Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.
While the popular imagination has been excited by UFOs, the military takes UAPs – as they are formally known – very seriously.
Declassified: UFOs filmed by US navy pilots
The risk for security officials is that the spotted aircraft are something which an untrained observer is unable to identify, but which could be a foreign incursion into domestic airspace.
But sometimes the UAPs appear to be even more mysterious.
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Earlier this year the Pentagon declassified three videos of strange elliptical objects racing across the sky.
The black and white videos were recorded by Navy pilots – one in November 2004 and two in January 2015, according to the US Department of Defence.
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One of the clips shows a dark circular object flying in front of a jet, another shows a small object speeding over land and the third shows a circular object racing and then appearing to slow down as it approaches the camera.
Mr Kono cited these videos and explained that while the Japanese defence force pilots are not believed to have ever encountered a UAP, his intention wast to develop a procedure in case such an encounter ever took place.
It is not the first time that members of the Japanese government have broached the topic.
Image: Footage of UFOs has been released by the US DOD
The defence ministry previously stated in 2015 that it had never encountered alien spacecraft although the country’s then chief cabinet secretary, Nobutaka Machimura, said: “Personally, I absolutely believe they exist.”
Then-defence minister Shigeru Ishiba added that in his personal opinion there were “no grounds” to deny that there are UFOs controlled by alien life-forms, although this was not the official government position.
Celebrities fascinated by UFOs include rock star Tom DeLonge, who spoke to Sky News about his work on the subject earlier this month, saying he would not have put music on the backburner just “to chase monsters and ghosts”.
Former Blink-182 star on leaving rock for UFOs
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the lunar module pilot for Apollo 14, publicly stated he was personally 90% sure that many reports of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, “belong to visitors from other planets”.
He suggested that he had met officials from foreign countries who had personal encounters with alien beings, and suggested that governments were covering up such contacts.
That said, he always maintained that he had never seen a UFO, and that he had never been threatened regarding those claims. He also said that UFOs being covered up was his own personal speculation.
Facebook launches climate information centre
Facebook has launched a climate science information centre to promote authoritative voices on climate change following wildfires in the US and criticism of the platform for allowing misinformation to spread.
However, the company will continue to permit false information about climate change to be posted and promoted by politicians, as well as excluding opinion articles from its normal fact-checking processes.
Sir Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister and Facebook’s global policy chief, told reporters that the company would continue exempting false claims about climate change posted by politicians.
“No social media company has ever tried to do so for the simple reason that political speeches always are characterised by exaggerations, selected uses of statistics, and exaggerated claims of virtues from one candidate and vices of others,” he said.
Trump denies climate change in wildfires row
It follows dramatic wildfires across the west coast of the US, where the company is based, which have killed more than 30 people as they spread across the states of Oregon, California and Washington.
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The information centre project is similar to the information centres Facebook has launched for COVID-19 and the US elections, topics which the company has also acknowledged there was a substantial amount of disinformation around.
It comes as the company pledges that its global operations will meet a net zero carbon emission target and be completely powered by renewable energy by the end of this year – and aims for its supply chain to reach net zero carbon emissions in 2030.
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The information centre will provide “factual resources from the world’s leading climate organisations, including the Met Office in the UK, and steps people can take in their everyday lives to combat climate change”.
Facebook explained that it prioritises tackling misinformation that poses an immediate threat of harm, such as fake cures for coronavirus or hate speech which could incite violence.
Last month the company deleted a post by Donald Trump which included the false claim that children are “almost immune” from COVID-19.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention published a study in April, involving 2,500 children, which found about one in five needed hospital treatment compared with one in three adults.
A global review of dozens of studies also said children’s role in transmission was unclear but that “it seems likely they do not play a significant role”.
“COVID-19 appears to affect children less often, and with less severity, including frequent asymptomatic or subclinical infection,” concluded the study – done in partnership with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
According to Chris Cox, the head of the coronavirus information centre, more than 600 million people have clicked on the tool, which the company’s executives consider a success.
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