Samsung Bixby

Samsung's Bixby digital assistant is getting a boost in

capabilities -- but the question is whether it's too late.

The South Korean company on Wednesday will kick off

its two-day developer conference in San Francisco, an

annual event that reflects the company's big push to get

developers to make software specifically for its devices.

In the past, that's meant making apps that work on the

edge of Samsung's curved smartphone displays or take

advantage of its S Pen stylus. This year, that focus turns

to Bixby and artificial intelligence.

While the prospect of a foldable smartphone -- the long

rumored Galaxy F -- may draw eyeballs to Samsung's 10

a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) keynote, that's more a tease of what's

to come. The meat of the presentation will be all about the

now: getting Bixby smarter. The consumer electronics giant

could share more information about the Bixby-powered

Galaxy Home smart speaker that it unveiled in August,

including its sales date.

Absolut Vodka Contest

Over the last four decades Absolut has worked with

more than 550 of the world’s top artists, including Keith

Haring, Arman Armand, Romero Britto and Maurizio

Cattelan, resulting in over 800 art pieces. Now, the

vodka brand is looking for its newest creative voice with a

global competition.

Absolut is launching its biggest collaboration effort in its

history, encouraging creatives from all over the world to

create expressions that bring to life what one of the drink's

brand beliefs mean to them. The beliefs are centered on

creating a more open, equal and inclusive world and make

up the creative platform, ‘Create a Better Tomorrow, Tonight’.

The international Absolut Creative Competition will reach

20 countries across the world with the mission to find the

next bold creative voice of the brand. The competition

entries will be judged by a global jury of leading creative

Voices.

The competition aims to celebrate creativity and harness

the power artists have to envision and create a better

tomorrow. Artworks can be submitted through the brand’s

dedicated webpage through 31 January 2019. The site

also features the posters of the past, with descriptions of

each artist and poster.

To promote the competition, Absolut worked with director

Oscar Hudson and creative agency BBH on two films that

capture the spirit of the competition. In them, artists walk

through a cityscape that represents the generations of

artistic posters created by noted artists. It ends with the

question: “Are you next?”

New Royole Phone

Samsung may be just days away from taking the wraps

off its very own foldable smartphone-tablet hybrid, but

consumer electronics company Royole has stolen a bit

of its thunder with its very own flexible display device.

Called the FlexPai, the 7.8-inch hybrid device can fold

180 degrees and transform from a tablet into a phone,

albeit a bulky one.

At an event in San Francisco this evening, Royole brought

out a working version of the FlexPai that we actually got to

hold, and the folding feature works as advertised. Granted,

it feels miles away in quality from a high-end modern flagship,

but it is still the first real foldable device I’ve seen in person,

and not just in a concept video or prototype stage.

The FlexPai will be available as a consumer device in China

with a base model price of 8,999 yuan, or around $1,300. You

can also pay that amount of money in USD for a developer

version if you live in North America. That gets you 128GB of

storage, but you can double it for an additional $150 and add

an additional 2GB of RAM for a total of 8GB.

Apple 5G iPhone

Apple’s 5G iPhone will come to market in 2020, a source

with knowledge of Apple’s plans says.

Apple plans to use Intel’s 8161 5G modem chip in its

2020 phones. Intel hopes to fabricate the 8161 using its

10-nanometer process, which increases transistor

density for more speed and efficiency. If everything goes

as planned, Intel will be the sole provider of iPhone

Modems.

Intel has been working on a precursor to the 8161

called the 8060, which will be used for prototyping and

testing the 5G iPhone.

Apple, our source says, has been unhappy with Intel

lately. The most likely reason relates to the challenge

of solving heat dissipation issues caused by the 8060

modem chip.

Many wireless carriers, including Verizon and AT&T

in the U.S., will initially rely on millimeter-wave spectrum

(between 28 gigahertz and 39 Ghz) to connect the first

5G phones. But millimeter-wave signal requires some

heavy lifting from the modem chips and RF chains, our

source explains. This causes the release of higher-than-

normal levels of thermal energy inside the phone–so

much so that the heat can be felt on the outside of the

phone.

Amazon Presentation Language

Amazon introduced the Alexa Presentation Language

(APL) — a suite of tools designed to make it easier for

developers to create “visually rich” skills for Alexa devices

with screens such as Amazon’s Echo Show, Fire TV, Fire

Tablet, and Echo Spot — in September alongside a bevy

of new devices. Today, following on the heels of a public

preview, it launched APL in beta.

Starting this week, developers can design skills with APL

in all locales supported by Alexa and test them in the Alexa

Developer Console. (Amazon warns they might display

differently if deployed before a forthcoming software update.)

After the initial rollout, Amazon says it’ll begin certifying and

publishing APL skills in the Alexa Skills Store.

“With APL, you have the flexibility to enhance your skill

experience for different device types, control your user

experience by defining where visual elements are placed

on screens, and choose a variety of components available

with APL that are best suited for your content,” June Lee,

a data engineer at Amazon, explained in a blog post.

Royole FlexPal

California-based start-up Royole has beaten major players

Huawei and Samsung in launching what it claims is the

world's first foldable smartphone.

Unveiled Wednesday at a conference in Beijing, the

FlexPai mobile phone was made available to consumers

in a flash sale on Thursday. Priced from 8,999 to 12,999

yuan ($1,295.49 to $1,871.33), the company said it would

start delivering the phones in December.

Royole, a six-year-old components manufacturer, said

FlexPai would "subvert people's perception of traditional

smart phones," functioning as a portable device and a

high-definition large screen tablet, with the capability to

support dual-screen use.

During the press conference, Bill Liu, founder and CEO

of Royole, also announced that the firm would invest 200

million yuan into global firms that would develop apps and

software for the device.

"The Royole FlexPai foldable smartphone provides mobile

phone users with a revolutionary experience compared to

traditional phones," Liu said.

"It perfectly solves the contradiction between the high-

definition large-screen experience and portability, which

introduces a whole new dimension to the human-machine

interface. The phone's inherent design will forever change

the consumer electronics industry, as well as the way

people interact with and perceive their world."

Facebook VR delayed Update

Facebook’s  virtual reality arm may soon find itself in the

unfamiliar position of playing catch-up with hardware

Competitors.

Last week, TechCrunch reported that Oculus co-founder

Brendan Iribe had decided to leave Facebook partially

due to his “fundamentally different views on the future of

Oculus”  and decisions surrounding the cancellation of a

next-generation “Rift 2” project.

The company’s prototype “Rift 2” device, codenamed

Caspar, was a “complete redesign” of the original Rift

eadset, a source familiar with the matter tells us. Its

cancellation signified an interest by Facebook leadership

to focus on more accessible improvements to the core

Rift experience that wouldn’t require the latest PC hardware

to function. Iribe did not agree with the direction, with a

source telling us that he was specifically not interested in

“offering compromised experiences that provided short-

term user growth but sacrificed on comfort and performance.”

In the wake of the overhaul’s cancellation, the company will

be pursuing a more modest product update — possibly

called the “Rift S” — to be released as early as next year,

which makes minor upgrades to the device’s display

resolution while more notably getting rid of the external

sensor-tracking system, sources tell us. Instead, the headset

will utilize the integrated “inside-out” Insight tracking system,

which is core to Facebook’s recently announced Oculus Quest

standalone headset.

The “Constellation” tracking system on the current-generation

Rift offers precise accuracy thanks to the static external

sensors that track the headset and Touch controllers. While

the Insight system would likely offer users a much more

simplified setup process, a clear pain point of the first-generation

product, “inside-out” tracking systems have greater limitations

when it comes to the lighting conditions they work in and are

generally less accurate than systems with external trackers.