Author: Brett Venter

The COVID-19 novel coronavirus is responsible for a whole lot of things in recent months, from event closures to factory closures, and that’s before we look at its (far more serious) impact on the world in general. Now there’s another company feeling a little ill — Apple, which has warned its retail stores that replacement iPhones might be hard to come by for the next few weeks. Made in China In case you’re unaware, the bulk of Apple’s supply chain is in China. And China’s locked down travel in many parts of the country, putting a strain on the world’s…

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MWC, coronavirus, blah, blah… yeah, the largest mobile phone convention in the world was taken out by an invisible organism, leaving everyone involved to fend for themselves. So we’re looking at a trickle instead of a torrent of info. Part of that trickle is LG’s new flagship smartphone, the LG V60 ThinQ, which… let’s be fair, they were gonna out on their news portal ahead of time anyway. 

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Mobile World Congress has been canned, which means that the usual collection of announcements just… aren’t here. They’re popping up here and there, but without much coherence. Still, some of the larger names are getting into the limelight — witness Sony’s new Xperia 1 II, the company’s newest flagship smartphone. Out of reach The name? Yeah, that’s a weird one. It’s not the Xperia One Two — apparently it’s the Xperia 1 Mk II, similar to how Sony’s cameras are named. But the name’s not that important. What’s inside the phone is. And what’s inside the phone is the latest…

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Huawei was always going to reveal a new folding smartphone, even though we haven’t actually seen its first draft in stores here in South Africa. And with the announcement of the new Mate Xs, it seems like the first falcon-wing folding phone is completely out of the question. Unless you’re an eBay collector-type. Beyond the Fold Huawei’s Mate Xs took more than a few shots at Samsung’s Galaxy Fold — with a few direct comparisons in spec in its presentation. Prime among those was the 8in foldable display, which now uses a multi-layer polymer screen — a material the company…

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It may surprise you to hear this but not everyone — yes, including the people you like — tells the truth on Twitter. That’s fine if you’re the kinda guy with 26 followers and not a whole lot to say. But that guy with millions of followers? Many of ’em will believe that chap if he says the Earth is flat — based on little more than the fact that he has millions of Twitter followers. Twitter’s taken note of this phenomenon and is experimenting with marking false and misleading tweets by politicians and public figures with red and orange…

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