The Morning After: Mobile World Congress has more laptops than phones
Lenovo, Samsung and the rest.
Mobile World Congress, best known for phones, next-gen mobile networks and everything related is having a laptop moment. Sure, Honor revealed its latest high-end phone, with the full-fat Android experience, but a lot of the headline devices have been laptops or hybrids or two-in-ones. That’s true of Samsung (Galaxy Book 2 Pro), Huawei (laptops, tablets and a hybrid) and now, Lenovo. It’s revealed its first ThinkPad running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip — the processor family usually used in smartphones. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip is made for these kinds of devices.
It’s got some exciting specs: 5G support built-in, a heady 28 hours of battery life and… a red ThinkPad tracker nub. We’ll wait on a full review to decide whether it lives up to the full ThinkPadTrackPad experience, but the wait won’t be long: The ThinkPad X13s is slated to go on sale sometime in May, starting at $1,100.
— Mat Smith
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Honor says its Magic 4 Pro is a Galaxy S22 rival
But when can I buy one?
The once-Huawei subsidiary is, unlike its former owner, able to combine high-specced devices with, thankfully, all the Android and Google features we demand. Its latest flagship family, the Magic 4 and Magic 4 Pro are, once again, stylish, competitively priced phones with some notable tricks. Honor’s Eye of Muse-branded camera setup (don’t ask) features two 50-megapixel cameras on both phones, with the Pro packing a 64-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3.5x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom. (The vanilla Magic 4 gets a more humble 8MP periscope camera.)
The Magic 4 Pro also gets a direct time-of-flight (DTOF) sensor to help with focusing and improving image quality. The Magic 4 Pro will cost €1,099 ($1,230) in Europe when it launches. The Magic 4 will cost €899 ($1,006).
LG's latest CineBeam 4K projectors promise improved daytime viewing
Both are available now.
LG is once again updating its CineBeam 4K projectors, and the upgrades are good news if you tend to watch during the day. Both the HU715Q Ultra Short Throw laser projector and the HU710P laser-LED hybrid promise better daytime viewing, with a new auto-brightness feature on the HU715Q. The HU710P’s move to a wheel-free hybrid offers brighter overall pictures than its predecessor. LG is already shipping both CineBeam projectors, starting at $2,499 for the HU710P and $2,999 for the HU715Q.
Russia withdraws from European spaceport in response to sanctions
The country has also dropped US involvement in a Venus probe.
Russia is cutting some of its cooperation with international space programs in response to sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. Roscosmos is "suspending" cooperation with European partners on launches from the Guiana Space Centre in retaliation for EU sanctions. The Russian space agency also announced it's pulling staff from the French Guiana-based Spaceport.
OnePlus 10 Pro is headed to the US, Europe and India in March
The device will also stick with OxygenOS instead of shifting to a unified OS.
While most OnePlus phones had been available globally before "reaching" China, that wasn't the case with the OnePlus 10 Pro, which has so far been China-exclusive since its January launch. That's about to change. The company announced at MWC that its latest flagship phone will finally head to the US, Europe and India "by the end of March."
Instagram head says iPad 'not big enough' to make app a priority
Adam Mosseri says there aren't enough people using iPads to justify fast-tracking an app.
It's been more than 11 years since Instagram launched, and there's still no native iPad app. According to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, that's not going to change any time soon. In a series of tweets between Mosseri and prolific tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, Mosseri said there weren't enough iPad users to justify making a dedicated app.
