From the Editor’s Desk: Galaxy S9 at CES, and other surprising things

It makes sense for Samsung to tease its next major phone announcement in January, but don’t expect any big reveals until a few months into 2018.

Every year, like clockwork, there are rumors that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S flagship might be making an early appearance, at the CES show in Las Vegas in January. Up to now, that has never happened, for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, January just isn’t a great time to announce a smartphone. (With the exception of the original iPhone back in 2007, I guess.) And it also comes at an awkward time in terms of the technology — for the past several years, Qualcomm’s new silicon has landed in early spring. (We’ve seen nothing so far to suggest the upcoming Snapdragon 845 will be any different.) So there’s little to be gained by going early with your announcement, only to have a multi-month run up to real, actual availability.

Normally I’d just laugh at reports that yet again, we might hear about the Samsung Galaxy S9 in Vegas in January, but this year’s rumors have more credibility. VentureBeat’s Evan Blass reports that the Galaxy S9 and S9+ will make a “first public appearance” at the show, while noting that a separate launch event is planned for sometime in March.

Blass has a solid, reliable track record that elevates his report above the usual supply chain soothsaying, and the nuance of what he’s claiming may happen actually does make a lot of sense.

The final release timing of the Galaxy S9 might not be all that different to previous release cycles — early spring for most of us — but there are benefits to Samsung kicking off the hype cycle a little earlier in the year. The immediate post-holiday period surely isn’t a huge sales month for Galaxy phones, with the initial glut of Note 8 sales having already taken place, and informed buyers already anticipating next-gen Galaxy S models. What’s more, the momentum is with Apple right now, on the back of a successful iPhone X launch.

By giving a surprising, early (though likely very fleeting) glimpse of the Galaxy S9 in January, Samsung will be hoping to reclaim some of that momentum from its main rival. That kind of mini-reveal at that point in the year gets people talking about Samsung again, with minimal impact on sales of existing models.

Samsung has a long track record of teasing upcoming launch events at other, smaller events. (The Galaxy S8 and Gear S2 are a couple of recent announcements.) Other phone makers like Huawei have also gotten in on the pre-announcement trend of late, taking to the stage at IFA 2017 in September to pre-announce the Mate 10 series, a month and a half ahead of the phones’ proper launch event.

At a minimum, Samsung will set the ball rolling and make sure we all know the S9 is coming in a couple of months. At most, it might take the unprecedented step of showing an outline or silhouette of the S9 series, perhaps giving away one or two features.

But don’t expect much substance. Samsung will be saving the good stuff for the real launch event a couple months later. (After all, Samsung can’t start actually shipping phones until major components, like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 platform, are ready to go.)

A brief, tantalizing glimpse of the S9 could be accompanied by a more thorough reveal of the foldable Galaxy X.

This kind of pre-announcement announcement works best as part of a one-two punch, which leads me to the other thing I expect to see out of Samsung at CES — the long-awaited, heavily rumoured Galaxy X “foldable” phone. The most recent info we have on this unicorn of a phone points to something along the lines of the Axon M. (Only hopefully less terrible.) So this won’t be a true foldable OLED panel, but instead a combination of two bezelless screens in a clamshell device.

Even if, as reports suggest, the Galaxy X is a one-off concept device a la Galaxy Round, it’d work as part of a strategy that focuses the conversation on smartphone innovation on Samsung in the two months preceding its biggest product launch of the year. That’s particularly important given that we’re expecting this to be a “tock” year for the Galaxy S line, with largely iterative improvements on the S8.

An earlier-than-expected teaser for the next big phone you’ll actually be able to buy, combined with an on-stage reveal for a long-awaited concept device, absolutely makes sense for Samsung at CES. Given that the show has been hit and miss for big phone news in recent years, Samsung also won’t have to work too hard for media and public attention.

Who knows whether any of that will actually happen — but I think there’s at least a plausible chance. We’ll find out for sure in just over a month.

Other odds and ends as we move into the home stretch of the year:

• I’ve been using the HTC U11 Plus in Taiwan for the past couple of weeks. (The phone remains elusive in Europe, but should be going on sale there sometime in December.) Our full review should be going live any day now, but you can get a feel for what I think in our review. The short version is that this is the phone HTC should’ve released six months ago.
• I’ve said before that I expect 2018 to be a make-or-break year for HTC — a year in which we’ll learn whether the company still wants to try and carve out a niche for its own-branded smartphones, or whether the future of the firm is as a glorified ODM. The quality of the U11+ gives me hope, but HTC still faces challenges in terms of scale, visibility and marketing.
• We’ll be in London for the global launch of the Honor 7X — and, if the rumors are to be believed, possibly the Honor V10 as well. The 7X looks like a solid phone, and the trade-offs in this year’s model — no NFC, microSD — aren’t major deal-breakers at this price.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back in a few weeks for a pre-holiday Editor’s Desk.

-Alex

The best Chromecast speaker

By Brent Butterworth

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter, reviews for the real world. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

After a blind listening test and more than 40 hours of casual use with a variety of speakers, we think the JBL Playlist is the best Chromecast speaker for most people. It sounds good and looks great, and is priced low enough that you can buy several for the price of one high-end Chromecast or competing Wi-Fi speaker.

Why you might want a Chromecast speaker

A Chromecast Audio speaker connects to your home Wi-Fi network, and receives Internet-based audio content from a Chromecast-compatible app on your smartphone, tablet, or computer. Chromecast’s main advantage over the more common Bluetooth standard is that it lets you play the same audio on multiple speakers throughout your home. You can also play music from a phone or tablet on a speaker in another part of your home, and can control it using voice-commands through Google Home. You can also add Chromecast to practically any speaker with a 3.5 mm analog input, using Google’s inexpensive Chromecast Audio dongle.

How we picked and tested

Panelist Phil Metzler contemplates the merits of the design of the various Chromecast speakers after the black cloth was removed to reveal their identities. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

When looking for the best Chromecast speaker, the only feature we insisted on was Google Chromecast (or in the case of our runner-up, the ability to incorporate a Chromecast Audio dongle).

There were a few other features that aren’t really necessary, but we appreciated seeing them anyways:

• Supports for Bluetooth or AirPlay, in addition to Chromecast
• Physical controls for functions like volume or play/pause, for times when you can’t find your phone or the phone’s in a different room
• Ability to be used portably via a rechargeable battery

We ended up with 10 speakers that fit our criteria, at prices ranging from a little over $100 to almost $500. We started by using them in a casual manner, setting each up on our network, and downloading the manufacturer-provided app if there was one. We listened to various models for a few days, then sat down for a few hours to compare their sound.

Next, we called in a listening panel—headphone editor Lauren Dragan and musician Phil Metzler—for a blind test. We concealed all of the speakers with thin black fabric, and then played whatever music Lauren and Phil requested using a Samsung Galaxy S8. We started with each speaker at maximum volume, so they could see what it was capable of, then we adjusted the volume to their liking. After they shared their ratings, we removed the black fabric and considered the products’ design and prices, and Lauren and Phil gave their final picks. The three of us agreed unanimously—in my experience, a rare result for a blind test.

Our pick: JBL Playlist

Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

For our listening panel, the JBL Playlist’s clearer and fuller sound made it the clear standout in its price range. Our testers thought it had a nice presence, with an even balance of bass, midrange, and treble. Besides Chromecast, the Playlist can connect with your devices via Bluetooth or a 3.5 mm audio input. And its simple and elegant design, with easy-to-access control buttons, will fit into any room.

The Playlist was the loudest of the budget-priced models, delivering 2.4 decibels more sound than the Grace Digital CastDock X2 and 3.4 dB more than the cheapest Sonos speaker, the Play:1. Basically, the Playlist gives you about as much extra volume as you’d get by turning up your smartphone’s volume a notch or two.

Runner-up: Grace Digital CastDock X2

Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

If the JBL Playlist isn’t available, or if you want a design that’s a little more compact, we recommend the Grace Digital CastDock X2. It’s a no-frills design with no playback or volume controls, so you have to do everything with your phone. In fact, it doesn’t even come with Chromecast—you have to add your own Chromecast Audio dongle, which as of this writing raises the combined price to only about $20 less than the Playlist. Fortunately, the CastDock X2 is specifically designed to accommodate said dongle. Just pop off the magnetically attached lid, connect the audio and power cables, drop in the dongle and replace the top.

The CastDock X2 sounds amazingly good for such a small, inexpensive product, though the bass was not as nuanced as the JBL Playlist’s. It has a rear 3.5 mm analog input for connecting an MP3 player or other source, and a switch that lets it work as the left or right speaker when two CastDock X2s are paired for stereo.

Upgrade pick: Riva Festival

Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

The Riva Festival sounds better than any Chromecast speaker we tested, but it’s in an entirely different class of product than our other two picks. As of this writing, it was priced more than three times as high as the JBL Playlist, our top pick. But it’s not fair to compare the two, any more than it’s fair to compare a luxury sedan with an econobox. That said, if you want the best sound from a Chromecast speaker under $500, this is the one to get.

The Riva Festival was by far the loudest speaker we tested. In fact, the bass was so powerful and clear that it sounded as if the Festival had a subwoofer built in. The downside is that the bass can get a little too aggressive with some music, and our listening panel noted that it seemed tuned for dance music.

This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

The first text message was sent 25 years ago

Be prepared to feel ancient — the first text message is 25 years old. Engineer Neil Papworth sent the first SMS on December 3rd, 1992, when he wrote “merry Christmas” on a computer and sent it to the cellphone of Vodafone director Richard Jarvis. It was a modest start, but it ultimately changed technology and even social norms.

It took a long time for SMS to find widespread adoption, both because of the cellular networks themselves (coverage was far from ubiquitous in 1992) and phones whose buttons revolved around dialing rather than typing. But then the smartphone arrived. In the US alone, the volume of messages surged from 12.5 billion per month in 2006 to 45 billion a year later. By June 2017, there were 781 billion messages passing around in the country. Messaging was suddenly easy, and SMS was ready and waiting to take advantage of that newfound freedom.

There’s little doubt that texting has influenced communication in the years since. Where texting was once seen as a rarity or even rude, it’s frequently the first choice for communication — how often are you annoyed when someone calls you instead of sending a brief message? Accordingly, it’s entirely common to see services that are available through SMS, whether it’s ordering pizza or getting music recommendations. Twitter’s original 140-character limit (which was just lifted in November) was built around SMS’ 160-character ceiling to enable tweets in an era before the mobile internet was widely available. The effects of SMS haven’t always been positive (they’ve facilitated spam, for instance), but it’s clear there’s no going back.

The question now is whether or not SMS has a healthy long-term future. The combination of smartphones and near-ubiquitous mobile internet access has led to an explosion of messaging services and social networks that do much more. WhatsApp by itself was delivering 55 billion messages per day as of July, and that’s not including other heavyweights like Facebook Messenger, Apple’s iMessage or Google’s Hangouts. SMS will likely stick around for a long time, as it’s the most practical option for anyone who either can’t get a smartphone or doesn’t live in an area with reliable, affordable mobile data. However, it’s entirely possible that SMS will go the way of GSM, fading away (it’s certainly declining in the UK) as people move to far more sophisticated technology.

Via: CBC

Source: Neil Papworth