Boeing Starliner will return to Earther without astronauts on board
The issues for the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) have come about primarily because Boeing and NASA engineers can’t be sure that it’s safe to let humans travel in Starliner. Following weeks of delay, NASA has decided that Starliner will return to Earth sans any human passengers.
The reason for this is that it “allows NASA and Boeing to continue gathering testing data on Starliner during its upcoming flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for its crew”. This… seems like the best course of action, since if Starliner implodes it won’t take any astronauts along with it.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain on board the ISS until February 2025 before returning to Earth on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon shuttle. Since they were only supposed to be up there a couple of weeks, that’s a ton of overtime. Starliner, on the other hand, will depart the space station in the opening weeks of September this year. The delay is so that NASA and Boeing can reconfigure the capsule for autonomous operation ahead of its next phase of testing.
Meta’s Vision Pro is a no-go, yo
The overpriced mixed reality headset market may already be deader than disco if the rumours of Meta canning their attempt at an Apple Vision Pro competitor are true. A report from The Information (paywall) reckons Meta has instructed its Reality Labs division to immediately halt work on its premium device, codenamed La Jolla.
The device was supposedly scheduled to hit shelves in 2027, brimming with higher-res micro OLED displays – putting it on par with the far-too-expensive Vision Pro, debuting earlier this year for $3,500 and as high as R110,000 in South Africa. That’s no longer the case. You won’t see us complaining.
The Information’s sources, two unnamed Meta employees, don’t offer any details as to why Meta so abruptly nixed production, though we’re guessing it has something to do with that price tag mentioned earlier. It goes on to say that Meta has also reportedly axed production of the Quest Pro, its most premium offering released in 2023, citing its poor reception and $1,000 price (R18,000) for the cancellation.
It seems as though Meta’s sticking with its bread and butter for now – cheaper headsets that can appeal to the small niche of VR/AR gamers with the release of the ‘Venture’ headset – scheduled for release at the end of 2024. As for Meta’s future of mixed reality… that remains to be seen.
Honor’s Magic V3 is around the corner
Following the global release of the Honor 200 series, Honor has announced three new devices heading to the global market. Along with the Honor Magic V3 foldable smartphone that was announced and subsequently launched in China earlier this year, the company will launch the MagicPad 2 and the Magicbook Art 14 as part of IFA in Berlin in September. More specifically, Honor plans to hold a press conference on 5 September at 14h00 SAST before the global consumer electronics event kicks off.
With the local launch of the Magic V2 in March this year, chances are high that we’ll see the Magic V3 turn up here at some point. Whether the MagicPad 2 and Magicbook Art 14 join it in South Africa is still unclear. However, considering the growth Honor’s smartphones have experienced locally in the last few years, it seems likely that’s exactly what Honor is gearing up for. The fact that Honor had a Magicbook model and Magic Pad 9 Pro on display at the Honor 200 launch adds credence to that.
Three-way folding phones are the new in-thing
If you’re one of the people actively hoping for foldable smartphones to become even more expensive, your wish might just come true. Xiaomi is reportedly developing a three-way foldable, beating out the current two-screen model that Samsung and so many others have popularised in recent years.
Why, you ask? Money, of course. The news comes from a user on Weibo (via GSMArena) who has proven himself accurate thanks to leaks in the past. According to him, the device will appear as part of the Xiomi Mix line-up, though we’ll get our first look at the device’s three-way curves in February 2025 during Mobile World Congress (MWC).
The point of a triple-folding device would be to squeeze as much screen in there as possible, though, at a much higher price than a ‘traditional’ foldable, we’d imagine. At that point, we don’t see why a tablet wouldn’t be just as capable of performing the same jobs – without the glorious crease – but to each their own, we guess.