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Exynos-based Windows laptop could open the Arm floodgates

Samsung uniquely makes its flagship smartphones available with two different SoCs. American buyers get the flavor with the latest leading Qualcomm processor while those in Korea and elsewhere get the one with the leading-edge Exynos processor, Samsung’s homegrown processor family. Exynos processors also show up in the company’s lower-end Chromebooks, which compete with offerings using MediaTek SoCs.

If reports hold true, though, Samsung may be set to offer a Windows 10 PC using Exynos. That isn’t such big news per se as Samsung is a relatively small player in the notebook world (outside Korea, of course). But it would mean that Qualcomm’s period of exclusivity for Windows on Arm processors had come to a close, and thus open the door for competition from MediaTek, which has been king of the budget Chromebooks. Arm-based Windows PCs, in contrast, have remained expensive. Qualcomm has introduced less expensive SoCs to bring the prices down, but so far no OEMs have bitten. This has made it difficult for Windows on Arm to gain traction at a time when Apple has reset expectations of what an Arm-based computing experience (or at least transition) can be.

Ecosystems Mobile Devices Techspressive

OnePlus’s (good) Huawei moment

On the back of a partnership with fellow disruptor T-Mobile, OnePlus’s roaring entry into the U.S. market has been one of the most successful for a handset brand in the U.S. in some time. According to Counterpoint Research, the brand saw 163 percent growth in 2021, making it one of the few brands outside of Apple to see such a rise in volumes. Unlike Apple, Samsung or Huawei, though, OnePlus has emphasized the refresh rates of its displays for smooth scrolling and gameplay. Now, though, companies such as Samsung are also featuring faster refresh rates on its top-end devices in addition to market-leading cameras.

One way to improve a smartphone brand’s imaging cred is through association with a in contrast, Huawei has made the most of a partnership with a storied imaging brand, partnering with Leica on its phone’s optics. It’s not the only such partnership; HMD has partnered with legendary German glass company Zeiss. And now, rumors have it, OnePlus will be partnering with medium format king Hasselblad.

Here again, OnePlus wouldn’t be the first company to be associated with Hasselblad. As part of its far-flung Moto Mod adventure, Motorola fielded a Hasselblad-branded camera module, but it reflected the brand only in name and wasn’t really much more than a point-and-shoot camera with a decent telephoto zoom. If OnePlus can truly tap into Hasselblad’s imaging expertise, it could take the company to the next imaging tier the way Leica did for Huawei.

Mobile Devices Techspressive

LG as the last O.G.

Mobile phone history can be described in two eras — B.C. (Basic Cellphones) and A.D. (Apple Dominance). So profound was the iPhone’s imact was that it wiped the slate of competitors nearly clean; Samsung is the only company from the feature phone era that has since become a global leader. Motorola, Nokia, BlackBerry, and Palm now exist only as subsidiaries or licensed brands.

And then there’s LG, which has survuved, but has lost billions of dollars over more than 20 consecutive quarterly losses. The company maintains a respectable presence in the U.S. market compared to, say, HTC or Sony, which also seems to be continually hanging on to its mobile business by a thread. But LG’s position is now being threatend by Chinese brands such as OnePlus and TCL as well as Xiaomi and others outside the U.S.

LG’s exit would come at an odd time. After dipping into a niche form factor wth the swiveling Wing smartphone last year, it has repeatedly teased a rolling smartphone, a form factor that, as I’ve written, could have broader appeal than the folding smartphone that has become a differentiator for its chief rival.

Mobile Devices Techspressive

Google’s moves could help, then hurt, Apple’s app store battle

Epic’s efforts to coerce Apple to allow it to use alternative forms of payments and even establish its own store on iOS have gotten off to a poor start in the legal arena with a judge opining that Epic acted dishonestly in activating a hidden feature in the iOS version of Fortnite. To my lay eyes, Epic’s legal case against Apple seems weak. But Epic’s lawsuit was never the main way it sought to try to bring about app store change. It is a backdrop, a warm-up to spur regulatory intervention, a move it is supporting through an industry coalition, and PR offensive. Leave it to the developer of Fortnite to launch an assault on an enemy from all angles.

But enemies can often force strange bedfellows Such is the case for Apple and Google. While the two have not launched a coordinated response to Epic’s claims, they share common interests in terms of first-party app store control. That’s been made clear by Google cracking down on in-app payments, a move that helps reinforce Apple’s position as an industry norm.

However, a major difference between Android and iOS is that Android, even when outfitted with Google Mobile Services such as the Play Store that define the Android experience for users outside of China, is open to other app stores. In the past, this has required the user to change a setting that invokes a warning about potential security implications, which of course acts as a disincentive.

However, Google is planning to ease the process in Android 12. If Android can support multiple app stores without succumbing to an inordinate number of security and privacy fiascos, that could lend stronger evidence to groups like Epic’s coalition that Apple could allow multiple app stores that forced compromises to Apple’s bottom line but not its platform’s safety.

Ecosystems Video Games

Roku could be a crucial cloud gaming partner

Today, Roku revealed its next-generation player and new entry-level soundbar as well as the expansion of its Roku Channel beyond its devices and onto Android and Apple mobile devices, but its biggest content move in some time may lie ahead.

Roku has always done a good job staying above the platform war fray. More impressively, with its homegrown operating system, it has avoided being beholden to Google or the Google Play Store while still supporting YouTube as well as video services from Amazon and, most recently, Apple (even if the Apple TV+ transports you into a weird quasi-Apple TV interface).

Now, with major cloud gaming services from Microsoft, Google and Amazon staking out platforms on which to land, Roku could find itself in the catbird’s seat. Such platforms have modest hardware requirements and are likely well within the capabilities of most if not all devices in Roku’s lineup. Roku would be a particularly attractive partner for Microsoft, which, unlike Amazon with FireTV and Google with Google TV platforms and devices, has no low-cost first-party external box on which to offer its Xbox Cloud Gaming as part of its Game Pass subscription.

Cloud gaming is immature enough that offering Microsoft’s could gaming wouldn’t do much to cannibalize the Xbox Series X or S. And even in Amazon’s or Google’s case, Roku’s standing as the smart TV software behind one in every three TVs sold in the U.S. is an irresistible draw.

For Roku’s part, having access to these cloud gaming services would be a shot in the arm to its content lineup. Despite the recent additions of big guns Disney+ and Peacock and more Roku Channel partners, the platform retains a long tail of niche content. Roku dabbled into casual games on the platform years ago, but attracted just a handful with no major titles. Now, though, it’s churning out boxes that can handle 4K televisions, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos, and is selling wireless home theater products, all of which make for great device support for high-end gaming experiences that wouldn’t tax its inexpensive devices.

Services Video Games

When second screens are the second priority

Phones with internal folding or dual displays dramatically increase the real estate available to work on an app or multiple apps. But in current implementations such as the Surface Duo and Galaxy Z Fold 2, these come at a cost. Both devices need to be opened in order to reveal their maximum device real estate. This minor burden was all but acknowledged by Samsung in the Galaxy Z Fold 2 as the company shared feedback from users that they wanted a larger front display since very often they needed to use the Fold folded.

This kind of realization likely influenced LG’s decision to offer a second display as an accessory for its last few premium offerings such as the 8GX, V60 and, most recently, Velvet. Doing so adds bulk and a larger hinge gap than we see in the Surface Duo. However, remove the second screen and you have a recognizable phone experience. Such is also true for the LG Wing. In recognizing that the company will be able to make only so much progress in encouraging app developers to support the device’s unusual “T” formation. it assumes a typical phone’s screen characteristics most of the time while keeping the time and effort to reveal the second screen to a minimum, one-handed effort.

At the end of the LG Wing debut video, LG hinted at the next device in its Explorer Project line, which may include a rolling screen. That’s a good bet given the work LG has done with rollable displays in its television line. Particularly after having tried a TCL prototype of such a device, I think this flexible display technology may offer the smoothest transition between a typical phone display that can be managed with one hand and one that expands out to the size of a small tablet. As a bonus, there would be no need for a front display.

Mobile Devices

The Prisoner as a metaphor for the information economy

1984 is often held up as the science fiction work that best exemplifies the dystopian surveillance state. (You could certainly do worse.) But as I’ve been taking in a few episodes of the 1967 British TV classic The Prisoner, I’ve been struck by how it serves as a better metaphor for our consumer relationship with ad-driven business models.

For the unfamiliar, The Prisoner centers on a conscientious, wry British intelligence agent who falls victim to a gas booby trap after resigning from his job. He awakens on an idyllic yet pervasively monitored, self-sufficient village from which it is virtually impossible to escape. A revolving cadre of inquisitors appointed “Number 2″ and their surrogates constantly pressure him (now known as Number 6) to share information (principally why he resigned. Consider it the quest for “the why behind the bye”). Much of the focus is on the cat-and-mouse game between the Number 2s and the defiant Number 6.

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
—”Number 6″

Cast aside that the population of The Prisoner’s village is tiny compared to the populace in 1984; the antagonists’ motivations differ. In 1984, Big Brother cares about what you think and demands the rejection of objective truth. But in The Prisoner, Number 2 wants to know your motivation to serve a never-identified Number 1, Big Brother is blunt, extracting information and confessions through torture. Number 2 is manipulative and sneaky, often trying to lull Number 6 into letting his guard down and tempting him with all kinds of benefits.

Similarly, many people’s worlds would be unrecognizable without Facebook and certainly Google, which cajole us into revealing our personal information for a host of benefits. Like Number 2, their ultimate goal is understanding why we do what we do. The ever-changing Number 2 could be Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any number of compelling online services that are beholden to Number 1: the advertiser.

One difference: In The Prisoner, the hero resigns without divulging. In the modern digital battle for privacy, we are resigned to divulging.

Ecosystems

The Sidekick video chat device brings cubicle culture home

In a parallel to the Garden of Eden story (one of of The Matrix‘s many religious allusions), Agent Smith reveals that the film’s humanity-conquering machines first tried to create a virtual paradise for those whose bodies they harnessed, but the human mind was unable to accept such a world. Thus, humans were fated, i.e., “cast out,” to a more familiar existence simulation that included pain and suffering. Indeed, those who have had a forced adoption to remote work due to COVID-19 may grow to miss elements of office life that they once resented—be it serendipity that leads to better collaboration or the vacuous chumminess parodied by the “Richmeister” in the classic Saturday Night Live Makin’ Copies sketch series.

Some of each would doubtless be delivered by Sidekick, an always-on, purpose-built, stationary tablet-like device designed to keep coworkers in each others’ views and encourage spontaneous collaboration among tightly woven small teams. The product simulates the oft-resented and distracting casual peer surveillance of open office plans within one’s home or other remote location. It’s your own personal manifestation of Zoom without a Leave button.

Actually, the product’s website notes that the device can easily be turned off with a tap. Like any persistent entity, though, it’s apt to fade into the background, almost surely broadcasting some unintentionally shared moment. But that may become a given through other means if, as my Techspansive co-host Shawn DuBravac thinks, companies will become aggressive about employee surveillance as they continue to support remote work.

If you’re sold, you’ll be paying indefinitely. Sidekick is offered as a service on a subscription model so customers must ask why colleagues would need a dedicated device for something that could be easily achieved with a small Android tablet or iPad mini on a stand as well as why they would pay $25 (or more, starting next month) per user in perpetuity to gain its benefits.

There’s much to be said for reducing the friction in remote collaboration. However, Sidekick swings the pendulum too far, throwing out the baby of privacy with the bathwater of isolation. To borrow AT&T’s distracted driving admonition, Cubicle ambushing: It can wait.

Telepresence

Tearing up the Note

At Digital Trends, Samsung alum Phil Berne argues that it’s time to retire the Galaxy Note line. Phil characterizes the Note 7 exploding battery imbroglio as a turning point form which the line never recovered. He also argues that the folding Galaxy Z series has outclassed the Note as Samsung’s avant-garde smartphone offering and that the S Pen isn’t enough to differentiate the Note from the mainstream S series. As evidence, he notes that Samsung has made S Pen an option in laptops and tablets are not branded “Note”.

I don’t see the Note 7 debacle as having been quite the point of no return that Phil does. Rather, I think the die was cast much earlier as Samsung started making the Galaxy S displays larger; it became clear that the S-series and Note were on a collision course. But now that they’ve collided with all but the (paradoxically branded, as Phil points out) S Pen separating them, there are a few things to keep in mind.

First, while other Samsung devices may use the S Pen without the Note branding, that’s more justifiable in large part because Samsung’s volumes in categories such as laptops and tablets are a fraction of its smartphone volumes and can’t support a distinct subbranded “Note” line. (The tablets once did.) In the case of tablets, there is less room for stylus differentiation because the market-leading competitors (iPad and Surface) feature stylus compatibility.

Second, while Phil is right that Samsung’s Galaxy Z devices now reflect the highest level of Samsung’s advanced phone wizardry, those folding phones are priced too high and are too technologically immature to be an effective enthusiast product to replace the Note, which is pushed heavily to business users that need something practical and durable. While that could change, I don’t see it happening by this time next year, which means the Note likely has at least one more iteration ahead.

It’s hard to kill product lines that aren’t outright drowning; look at how long it took LG to dispense with the separate the struggling G and V lines despite years of shake-up warnings or, per Sony or HTC, exit smartphones altogether. Samsung also needs something above the S series to more directly answer the iPhone Pro.; that’s clearly not the Z series at this point. Still, it’s getting crowded at the top of the Galaxy product line.

A final question is how Samsung might handle branding the Note’s successor within the Galaxy S line were it to discontinuesthe Note brand (assuming Samsung doesn’t make the Pen standard, which it shouldn’t). It also seems wasteful to ship an empty silo in the Galaxy S and make the S Pen a separate purchase. Does the future hold a Galaxy S40, Pen edition?

Mobile Devices

Quibi needs a free tier

Vulture has an extensive, let’s call it, “pre-mortem” article on Quibi, the short-form, episodic video content service that’s gotten off to a slow start. The piece focuses a lot on Jeffrey Katzenberg’s involvement. However, this simple economic Catch-22 highlights many of the service’s travails:

Because [Quibi’s] point was to charge for content, it had to start out by raising an enormous amount of money to afford content worth charging for.

Quibi’s challenge is that it’s stuck between the rock of YouTube, which thrives on free short-form (if generally not episodic), highly viral content, and the hard place of subscription-based long-form services (Disney+, HBO Max) that offer increasingly more mainstream, well-known content and big-budget exclusives, often based on franchises. One other high-profile subscription-based newcomer, Apple TV+, also started with a clean slate. But Apple has the advantage of close proximity to a billion screens in people’s pockets. While Apple’s service also rolled out with no shortage of star power, it is now reported to be acquiring back-catalog titles amid reboots such as Fraggle Rock.

Quibi’s content may have been optimized for a smartphone’s reorienting display, but it has failed to tap into a key element of mobile media: virality. The service attracted criticism for being unavailable on TV at launch, but the far bigger sin of omission was not having any web accessibility. Indeed, the closest thng akin to Quibi shows from other content sources are skit shows or late-night monologues that attract millions or viewers on YouTube. A show like Will Arnett’s Memory Hole would do very well in such a format (even if its alleged namesake has attracted only a few hundred thousand views).

Quibi has also fought the perceived value of serialization. Relaying the reaction to the service, Vulture’s Benjamin Wallace posits:

Who needed Quibi to break things up into “snackable” chunks for them to begin with? As one longtime Hollywood executive told me, “I have a pause button.”

Indeed, the very brevity of Quibi’s shows make them better suited to binging. And in that scenario, there’s little practical difference between having three or four short episodes or one of more traditional length.

Most singificantly, though, Quibi missed an opportunity by not offering a free tier of service available without login, at least on a limited trial basis, and at least for a limited time. Such an approach proved powerful for Hulu which, in its early days, was also viewed skeptically as being redundant to what was already available “free” on TV. Indeed, like Quibi, Hulu had ads from its inception. But those were far more acceptable when Hulu offered a free tier, and at least today’s Hulu has an ad-free option. Quibi’s ads pass quickly enough, but they’re still an annoyance in what is marketed as a premium service.

As the Vulture article notes, Quibi will soon have its 90-day post-launch reckoning in which many of its free trials expire. If the uptake disappoints, its not too late for the video startup to offer a limited free tier, preferably without login. It’s the best way to let its content market itself.

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