Author: Brett Venter

Social media feels so much like a space that is owned by its users that it’s easy to forget that there are companies behind those spaces. TikTok, the popular social media app hailing from China, has just come along with a rather hectic reminder. TikTok, according to a report from The Intercept, gave its moderators instructions to limit the reach of media it deemed undesirable — such as if users were unattractive (specifically, had “unattractive facial looks”), or the background of video was unappealing. Examples of this? If the setting was “…shabby and dilapidated” or included “…slums, rural fields [or]…

We haven’t had enough time for a final verdict but here’s what we think of the largest (until the Note 20, as we reckon it’ll be called, rocks up) of Samsung’s 2020 lineup. In short, is it really what it’s cracked up to be?

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…

To paraphrase Dre, a giant doesn’t have to move unless its provoked. Rolling up sirens blaring is a sure way to get noticed but people will know you’re a kid. Roll up in Audi’s Q3 35 TFSI S Tronic and people are still going to notice — all the more because you don’t have to call attention to yourself. 

As part of a growing trend, another conference has been cancelled due to COVID-19, otherwise known as coronavirus. Facebook’s D8 developer conference is the latest event to be canned, postponed or heavily modified — the short version is that there won’t be any in-person gathering going on this May. 

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. 

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…

We got a chance to handle the final version of the Huawei Mate Xs, poking and prodding and flipping and folding the 6in to 8in smartphone to our heart’s content. Kinda. Despite us having a large enough bag, Huawei wouldn’t let us take one home. Yet. Here’s what we learned during our time with the smartphone. 

Mobile World Congress was the first tech conference to be cancelled by a virus in 2020 but, we suspect, it won’t be the company’s last. Huawei took another route — a live-streamed version of their MWC conference. And, of course, Stuff was there. 

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…