Technology industry A submarine made of Swiss cheese is oozing. The latest surprise announcement comes courtesy of CNBC, where Google internal documents reveal that the company is about to introduce a foldable phone.
Word is, Google plans to debut a foldable Pixel handset at its upcoming iOS developer event on May 10, with the device slated for a full release sometime in June. The phone is said to be a book-shaped foldable rather than the vertical flip of Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip or Motorola’s refreshed Razr. According to CNBC, the device measures 5.8 inches diagonally when closed and unfolds into a 7.6-inch tablet. That puts it in competition with the similarly sized Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. The new handset will cost more than $1,700, which is about twice as much as the Z Fold.
Details about Google’s foldable phone’s internals are scant, but it’s said to come with the same Tensor 2 chip that Google put in its recent Pixel phones. Google may be wrapping it up with the six-month-old Google Pixel Watch.
Being late to the gadget party has become a recurring theme for Google. The company was slow to release the Pixel Watch for the first time years after Apple, Samsung and Garmin flooded the market. Earlier this year, Google threatened to oust Bard as it sought to acquire Chat GPT and Microsoft’s Bing Chat; Both in another competitor Open AI.
Samsung has been steadily releasing foldable and multi-screen devices for the past few years, but foldable phones are still relatively new and represent a tiny fraction of the global smartphone market. Google may have a shot with the new device, but the fate of future foldables is still up in the air. Full details will probably be, Stretching In a few weeks.
Here’s what else happened this week in the world of consumer technology.
New Samsung news
Backing that competitive spirit, Samsung is making moves to compete with the likes of Google and Apple in the news distribution business. This week, Samsung launched the Samsung News mobile app, a rebranded and updated version of the Samsung Free service focused on news stories.
The service works much like Apple News, offering a variety of curated stories that readers can find from news outlets like Apple. News weekDeputy, Attractive, The New York Postand Bloomberg Media. The service is available as a beta app from the Samsung App Store. Also, if you have the Samsung Free app on your phone, you’ll notice it’s renamed to Samsung News. Samsung says it will be rolling out to all Samsung phones in the near future, and is currently only available on “select devices.”
You know, if you want to read the stories, you can go to the publication’s website itself.
Human secret gadget
Human, founded by a pair of former Apple employees, is coming out with a new wearable AI thingamajig.
The company’s founder, Imran Chaudhry, showed off the device in a Teddy Talk on Thursday, which was leaked to Inverse a day before it was supposed to be released. In the released video, Chaudhry wears the device in his chest pocket and taps various parts to answer questions, translate speech and project video calls. The device appears to be platform-agnostic and does not require pairing with a smartphone to function. There are no details on how it will connect to the internet, what the battery life and performance will be like, or how Human will connect to the internet or whether it will be outsourcing its work to other service providers.
