Spotify might be adding real-time lyrics to its app, again. Dozens of Twitter users around the world have reported that lyrics are now popping up as they listen to Spotify. A user with beta 8.5.46.848 confirmed the feature to Android Police. But, this seems to be server-side enabled, as not all users with that beta can see the lyrics.
But this isn't Spotify's first karaoke. The lyrics showing up today are provided through Musixmatch, the same company Spotify partnered with to deliver lyrics in the past. In 2016, the companies ended their partnership.
"It was a great partnership and there is mutual respect between both companies as our business strategies move us each in different directions," a Spotify spokesperson told Engadget at the time. It's unclear what changed, but hopefully this time around the partnership will last.
Today, a Spotify spokesperson offered the company's standard canned response:
"At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We don't have any further news to share at this time."
You can now search for videos with your voice on YouTube mobile even while you're casting to a bigger screen. The Google-owned platform has announced the feature, which works on both iOS and Android devices, along with the revelation that it's now possible to watch YouTube in HDR on the PS4 and the PS4 Pro. YouTube's post also talked about the other capabilities it rolled out over the past year. Those include "Who's Watching," a feature that lets you switch between the profiles linked to the device you're watching on, as well as YouTube's debut on Amazon Fire TV devices.
The platform has more cast-related features in the works, as well. German site SmartDroid (via Android Community) has spotted what seems to an experimental feature rolling out to select Android users, which turns the mobile YouTube app into more of a bona fide remote control while you're casting.
At the moment, you can only pretty much use the app to pause, play and adjust the volume while you're casting to a TV. The updated controls, however, show a directional pad that makes it easier to browse videos, and include quicker access to captions and playback quality settings. You'll be able to access those new elements through the volume panel that pops up when you tap on the cast button -- that is, so long as you're one of the users lucky enough to get the feature.
Want to know how Google’s Pixel 5 supports wireless charging despite a predominantly metal body? Google explained the essence of how it works, but a video teardown at PBKReviews (via 9to5Google) has eliminated the mystery altogether. There’s a large cutout in the middle of the otherwise aluminum shell that lets the wireless charging coil work its wonders — the bio-resin plastic you see on the outside merely gives the illusion of an uninterrupted surface.
The design is more familiar beyond that, with a few twists. Google has tucked millimeter wave 5G antennas near the volume rocker and top edge, and clips keep the screen firmly attached to prevent a repeat of issues with some Pixel 4 units. There may be further room for improvement, though. iFixit noted that Google is using a mainboard much like that on the Pixel 4, limiting the amount of room for a larger battery and other components.
The teardown reflects Google’s play-it-safe approach to the Pixel 5. While it’s willing to use a clever trick to add a staple feature like wireless charging, this isn’t a radical reinvention. The company is focused on delivering the fundamentals at a competitive price, and that apparently involves a conservative design.
The OnePlus Nord debuted to fairly solid acclaim over the summer, but it came with one notable caveat: It’s only available in India and parts of Europe. Mid-range phone fans in North America had to make do without, but won’t be true of the company’s new budget phones. OnePlus officially revealed the new Nord N10 5G and N100 this morning and confirmed that both devices would be launched in the UK, with a North American launch to follow.
“The OnePlus Nord N Series represents the next step in our strategy to expand our smartphone offerings to more price points,” said OnePlus CEO Pete Lau in a press release. “Now even more users can get a burdenless experience without sacrificing quality.”
The Nord N10 5G (£329/~$430) is the more capable of the company’s new budget phones, and packs Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 690 chipset with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. While it’s outgunned by the more common Snapdragon 765, the 690 is Qualcomm’s most affordable sub-6 5G-capable chipset and should certainly give the competition’s mid-range smartphone chips a run for their money.
That chipset also gives the Nord N10 5G the ability to run a high-refresh rate display -- in this case, a 6.49-inch Full HD screen that refreshes at 90Hz like the original Nord. And the similarities don’t end there: The Nord N10 5G also packs a quartet of rear cameras, though OnePlus didn’t just transplant the original Nord’s cameras into a new body. The N10’s 64-megapixel main camera will likely see the most use, followed by an ultra-wide camera with a 119-degree field of view. The last two cameras are considerably less conventional — one is a dedicated macro camera, and the other shoots solely in black and white.
Rounding out the N10 package are a 4,300mAh battery, dual speakers for stereo audio, support for OnePlus’s Warp Charge 30T fast charging, a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and Android 11 (albeit painted over with the company’s OxygenOS 10.5 skin).
The Nord N100 is surprisingly good-looking, considering the price.
OnePlus
While the N10 seeks to fill the space just below the already-released Nord, OnePlus’s N100 (179/~$234) is aimed at the sort of budget shoppers brands like Motorola typically cater to. The standout features here include a 6.52-inch HD+ display and a 5,000mAh battery, along with a peculiar rear camera setup.
The primary 13-megapixel camera is the main draw, but it’s joined by secondary cameras that pitch in for bokeh-filled portraits and super-tight macro shots. Meanwhile, the rest of the N100’s internals are a bit more pedestrian: It uses one of Qualcomm’s relatively new Snapdragon 460 chipsets, paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. (Contrary to reports that circulated before today’s announcement, the N100 also accepts microSD cards.)
More competition in the mid-range is always welcome, but it remains to be seen if OnePlus’s decision to go down-market will pay off. Early on, OnePlus built its brand around the idea that it made “flagship killers” — devices that ran as fast as premium offerings, but without the sky-high price tags. Now that OnePlus is embracing the idea of playing at every level of the market, it runs the risk of muddying that appealing message.
Then again, the potential upsides here are significant. Well before returning to the flagship smartphone space with its Edge+, Motorola clawed its way into profitability purely on the strength of its low-cost offerings. Without knowing anything about the carrier arrangements OnePlus may or may not have lined up, it’s tough to imagine OnePlus reaching similar levels of success. With the right deals in place, though, the company may just find itself carving out the kind of successful niche that other affordable phone makers simply haven’t been able to.
Motorola has been on a tear this year: It has announced or released more than ten new smartphones in 2020, and rumor has it there's at least one more big reveal coming soon. For what it's worth though, the brand's latest mid-range offering the -- Motorola One 5G -- might be its most appealing new release yet. It's not a flagship in the vein of the Edge Plus, or the continuation of an experiment like the Razr. Instead, it's a sub-$500 smartphone running a mostly clean flavor of Android 10 with a handful of unexpected features and an enormous battery. In other words, it's exactly the kind of introduction to 5G that Motorola's cost-conscious fans probably need.
There's just one catch, though. Motorola promised earlier this year it would release a 5G smartphone for under $500, and, well, you're looking at it. For now, though, the company declined to say how much less than $500 the One 5G will cost -- the most Motorola would say is that the phone will wind up on AT&T soon, and that a Verizon-friendly model with support for mmWave 5G is set to land in October. In other words, stay tuned for official pricing.
Now, onto the phone itself. Many mid-range 5G smartphones use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 765 and the Motorola One 5G is no exception -- it's paired here with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage, though you can add microSD cards as large as 1TB. (A quick aside: We usually see this chipset in slightly more expensive phones, but Qualcomm apparently slashed its prices earlier this year.) While Motorola's choice of chipset isn't much of a surprise, the rest of the stuff around it is: The phone features, among other things, a whopper of a 6.7-inch Full HD+ screen complete with HDR10+ certification and a 90Hz refresh rate. That means this display is just as big and runs just as smoothly as Motorola's flagship Endless Edge display; here's hoping its tall, 21:9 aspect ratio means regular people have a chance of wrapping their hands around this thing.
Motorola
Powering the whole shebang is a 5,000mAh battery, which we're hoping to see multi-day use from since it's paired with a chipset that sips power rather than gulps it. Meanwhile, around back sits a quartet of cameras: You'll spend most of your time shooting with the main, 48-megapixel wide sensor, but it's flanked by a 2-megapixel depth sensor, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera with a 118-degree field of view and a curious 5-megapixel macro camera for extreme close-ups. Now, the jury is still out on whether people are really clamoring for this kind of highly specialized sensor, but Motorola gets credit for sweetening the deal in an unusual way -- it gave that macro camera a tiny, proper ring light. (And in case you were wondering, no, you cannot use it as a more appealing kind of flash for the other cameras.)
The front-facing camera situation is similarly surprising, since Motorola saw fit to add two of them here. The first is a relatively straightforward 16-megapixel camera with an f/2.0 aperture, and you can count on this one to deliver the stronger selfies. The other camera, meanwhile, is an 8-megapixel ultra-wide that Motorola says can squeeze an extra three or four people into the frame at once. Throw in a side-mounted fingerprint reader, a headphone jack and NFC for all those COVID-era contactless payments, and it feels like we're looking at a phone that could give Google's new, cheap Pixels a real fight in the looming 5G mid-range smartphone war.
Of course, there is too often a gap between a phone's potential on paper and its performance in the real world. Motorola is eyeing an imminent launch so, stay tuned to see how its unusually appealing new phone stacks up against the competition.
Rumors have circulated of a larger entry-level iPad with thinner bezels, but it’s now clearer what that tablet might look like. The 91mobiles team has posted what it says are design schematics for the update to Apple’s more affordable iPad. If accurate, the new slate would effectively be a cut-down iPad Pro with similarly slim bezels and a boxier design. It would use Face ID instead of Touch ID, and a Smart Connector hints at possible Magic Keyboard support.
Like with earlier reports, the new iPad would reportedly revolve around a 10.8-inch screen. Apple would keep costs down by offering a single rear camera instead of the two (plus LiDAR) on the Pro. It would reportedly pack USB-C as well, although it’s not certain claims of dual speakers hold up. Apple has sometimes included two grilles at the bottom even if there’s only one speaker — this may be more for symmetry than functionality.
It’s not certain what kind of performance the new iPad could offer, although t’s likely to include a newer processor than the A10 from the current starter model.
As for when the new iPad might arrive? Apple is rumored to be holding its customary hardware event (albeit in virtual form) in mid September and might introduce the new iPad alongside the iPhone 12 series. With the COVID-19 pandemic creating chaos, however, that’s not guaranteed. There’s a chance you’ll have to wait a while to see an iPad revamp.
Fall is nearly upon us, which means Apple is gearing up to unveil its newest iPhones. 2020 being what it is, however, it's far from business as usual over in Cupertino. Apple has already confirmed it will ship its new smartphones later than usual this year and has remained quiet about its next splashy launch event, but that's not all -- we're also expecting the company to unveil as many as four new iPhones in one shot.
While we wait for the full, official details to emerge, let's take a look at what we already know about the most unusual iPhone launch in Apple's history.
This story was first published on August 28, 2020, and last updated on the same day.
What's new this year?
Oh boy -- a lot, by the looks of things. Some new features, changes, and additions will be specific to the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro lines and we'll dig into those shortly -- let's begin with the updates we expect to appear across the board this year.
For one, Apple is said to be using OLED screens across all versions of the iPhone 12. This shift will be especially noticeable to people coming from devices like the iPhone XR and iPhone 11, which used Apple's "Liquid Retina" screens. Those were always pretty good by LCD standards, but going forward, people who don't want to pay for Apple's most expensive phones should still get some improved image quality.
More importantly, these new iPhones will also use the company's latest mobile chipset, which we expect to be called (what else?) the A14 Bionic. While it'll still be weeks before Apple explains its benefits in full, chipmaker TSMC offered something of a preview in the form of comments made during a recent earnings call. The A14 is all but certainly based on TSMC's 5nm fabrication process, which the company said should result in roughly 15 percent faster performance while saving 30 percent in power consumption. That's nothing to sneeze at, especially when you consider last year's A13 Bionic was already the fastest smartphone chipset out there. And that reduced power consumption should prove especially helpful now that Apple is finally embracing 5G.
2020 is the year 5G is finally starting to matter in the real world, so it's little surprise that all of Apple's new iPhones will support those next-gen networks. Well, some of them, at least. There are two kinds of 5G networks taking root around the world: sub-6 and mmWave. (Their names broadly refer to the swathes of electromagnetic spectrum each type of network operates in, but you don't need to worry about that.) All of Apple's new iPhones will play nice with the former since sub-6 networks are more common and cover more ground.
The bigger question is which models will support the world's faster -- but more geographically limited -- mmWave 5G networks. Rumors originally suggested that this feature would be exclusive to the iPhone 12 Pro line, but later reports insisted that all versions of the iPhone 12 could tap into all 5G networks. For now, that appears to be the case, but the matter is still being hotly debated.
What is the iPhone 12 series?
The iPhone XR and iPhone 11 have been exceptionally lucrative for Apple, and this year we're expecting two versions of the iPhone 12 to continue the affordable flagship tradition.
The basic iPhone 12 is said to pack a 5.4-inch OLED screen which, if true, would make it the smallest smartphone in Apple's line-up. (The relatively pint-sized iPhone SE uses a smaller 4.7-inch display, but is thought to be physically larger than the 12.) In addition to the A14 chipset we mentioned earlier, we're expecting the 12 to come with 4GB of RAM, though the amount of storage available remains a mystery. Right now, it seems very likely that we'll see iPhone 12s with 128GB and 256GB of storage, but some leakers have insisted there will be a 64GB model as well.
Meanwhile, the larger iPhone 12 Max and its 6.1-inch screen should feel very similar to the existing iPhone 11. Apart from obvious differences, like having a bigger display and battery, the 12 Max is said to be internally identical to its little sibling. That said, the same uncertainty about its storage tiers applies here as well. And no matter which version of the iPhone 12 strikes your fancy, both models will continue to use a rear dual-camera system, though details on those sensors are limited for the moment.
While the iPhone 12s' internals are largely agreed upon, there are still several lingering questions about its design. In a report published on April 13th, Bloomberg confirmed that the higher-end iPhone 12 Pro series would debut with a new, more angular design inspired by recent iPad Pros, but couldn't say the same of the less-expensive iPhone 12s. Since then, we've seen several dummy models allegedly built to Apple's specifications that suggest the iPhone 12 will feature that new design, though we'd suggest you take those with a grain of salt for now. Other possible design tweaks include a new notch that’s up to 30 percent smaller than the ones found in Apple’s current phones, but there currently isn’t a consensus on that potential change either.
What is the iPhone 12 Pro series?
The iPhone 12 and 12 Max might be the affordable flagships most people will buy, but the iPhone 12 Pro series is where Apple gets to push the limits of what we should expect from our smartphones.
As usual, the two Pro models share a common foundation that includes the A14 Bionic and 6GB of RAM, along with either 128GB, 256GB or 512GB of storage. Curiously, we're expecting the smaller iPhone 12 Pro to use a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display, which would make it roughly the same size (and potentially the same shape) as the more reasonably priced iPhone 12 Max. The iPhone 12 Pro Max, on the other hand, just might be the biggest iPhone Apple has ever made. While earlier iPhone screens have topped out at 6.5 inches, the 12 Pro Max's Super Retina XDR display is said to measure 6.7 inches diagonal. That's enough to make my wrist hurt in anticipation, but dummy models suggest the 12 Pro Max might not feel substantially larger.
These displays are said to have at least one key advantage over the panels used in the standard iPhone 12s: Improved refresh rates. Noted leaker Jon Prosser shared images on August 25th that seem to confirm the Pros' screens will have the ability to refresh at 120Hz for exceptionally smooth scrolling and animations. Those images also suggest the inclusion of a feature that allows the iPhone 12 Pros to "alter the refresh rate from 120Hz to 60Hz" depending on the kind of content being displayed.
As mentioned earlier, the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max will debut with a new -- and somewhat retro -- design. The devices' stainless steel edges are expected to be flat, making these phones look more like the classic iPhone 5 than more recent rounded models. (As someone who believes iPhone designs peaked around 2013, this is very good news indeed.) And just like last year, expect both versions of the iPhone 12 Pro to come with at least three rear cameras -- I say "at least" because there's a strong possibility that these devices might also include a LiDAR depth sensor like the one that debuted in this year's iPad Pro. Apple has slowly been building up its augmented reality teams, to the point where we’ve heard AR content may soon debut as a part of Apple TV+. Adding sophisticated depth-sensing technology like these LiDAR arrays to iPhones may seem impractical now, but it may have a profound impact on how the iPhone experience evolves down the road.
When will Apple announce these phones?We're not sure yet. Apple has been holding its annual iPhone press conferences in September since 2012 and tends to stage those events on the second Tuesday or Wednesday of the month. If Apple holds to that tradition this year, that would mean the event would be scheduled for September 8th or September 9th. Of course, 2020 has been anything but a normal year.
The leading candidate for a launch event right now is September 10th -- the day Apple itself accidentally scheduled a live YouTube stream for. However, Apple CFO Luca Maestri confirmed during the company's Q3 2020 earnings call that the new iPhones would be available "a few weeks" after the usual late-September launch window, likely due to production and supply issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Apple could hold a September event and release its new phones the following month, but it's just as possible that the show will be pushed to October so it more closely coincides with the launch window. With that in mind, prolific leaker Jon Prosser has already suggested that Apple will schedule its iPhone event for the second week of October.
