IFA 2018: all the biggest news from Europe’s grand tech showcase – The Verge

Nubia’s wearable smartphone is a preview of our flexible OLED future

2018-09-04T08:55:33-04:00

Nubia Alpha.

The most interesting prototype at IFA this year was the Nubia Alpha, an Android-based device the company bills as a "wearable smartphone." The Alpha tries to realize one of the enduring gadget dreams: having a smart device with a display that wraps around the user's wrist. I checked it out at IFA in Berlin this past week, and, well, it's still at the rough draft stage of development, but Nubia is confident it'll have it ready to go on sale in China before the end of this year. If things work out, global distribution might also happen around the same time.

The demo units at IFA were behind glass, and it took a lot of cajoling to convince Nub …

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Sony adds 4K to a pair of compact cameras with super-long zoom

2018-09-03T17:41:49-04:00

Sony announced a new pair of compact cameras last week with some incredible zoom capabilities, going from as wide as 24mm to as zoomed in as 720mm. This isn't the first of Sony's compact cameras to have that exact zoom range, but this year's models add 4K shooting and, in one instance, a touchscreen. That should turn them into far more capable cameras that get closer to rivaling Sony's much loved RX100 series.

The new models, HX99 and HX95, are about the size of an iPod (if you can remember the last time you held one of those), just thicker, and weigh around half a pound. That's about the same as Sony's RX100 cameras, but there's one critic …

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Polaroid is now a brand of sadness

2018-09-03T11:09:29-04:00

Three years ago, almost to the day, I was anguished to find Kodak, the once-great photography brand, slapped atop some random selfie sticks. Now, walking through the same IFA halls in Berlin, I find Polaroid's name emblazoned on some dreadful laptops. These two companies - or, rather, whatever vulture capitalists have taken ownership of their names after their businesses went bust - are engaged in a miserable race to see who can put their name to the worst possible product.

Today's example from Polaroid is truly an eye-searing disaster. Just one of a group of plasticky, creaky, and underpowered "Polaroid" laptops with washed-out screens, th …

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Huawei adds new colors to the P20 Pro plus leather back options for China

2018-09-01T12:12:53-04:00

Remember how I told you Huawei's excellent P20 Pro was a phone that would frustrate Americans with its absence from their market? Well, this week at IFA, that device became even more aggravating, as Huawei introduced four new variants: two new color options and two real-leather backs that look and feel lovely.

Firstly, the colors: one of them flips the gradient of the original Twilight P20 Pro, with the darker side now being at the bottom and the radiant blue topping the phone like the glow of a distant flame. Huawei calls this Morpho Aurora, because the gradient does indeed morph and change depending on the angle you look at the phone from …

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Beyerdynamic’s new earphones are designed to lie comfortably flat in your ears

2018-08-31T15:16:20-04:00

The entry-level Beat Byrd earphones. | Image: Beyerdynamic

Beyerdynamic announced a new line of earphones at IFA yesterday that are all coming soon. The Byrd line of earphones are notable for having a flat design so if you lay on your side, they supposedly won't protrude into your ear.

First in the collection is the entry-level, in-ear, wired Beat Byrd earphones (pictured above). They have an orange cable, and they look pretty standard besides the flat casing. Beyerdynamic claims they'll have solid bass. The Beat Byrd earphone will be sold exclusively online on the company's website for €24.90 ($28.89) starting at the end of September.

The midrange Soul Byrd earphones. | Image: Beyerdynamic" data-portal-copyright="Image: Beyerdynamic"> The premium Blue Byrd earphones. | Image: Beyerdynamic" data-portal-copyright="Image: Beyerdynamic">

Beyerdynamic also made the midrange wired Soul Byrd earphone …

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Huawei promises its 7nm Kirin 980 processor will destroy the Snapdragon 845

2018-08-31T08:30:02-04:00

The Kirin 980 system-on-a-chip. | Image: Huawei

At IFA today, Huawei announced its newest system-on-a-chip, the Kirin 980, which boasts a number of world firsts. It's the first 7nm mobile processor, the first one built around ARM's Cortex-A76 CPU and Mali-G76 GPU, the first with a Cat.21 smartphone modem supporting speeds up to 1.4Gbps, and the first chip to support 2,133MHz LPDDR4X RAM. The Kirin 980 has 6.9 billion transistors, but I've seen it for myself and it's no larger than a thumbnail.

The road to today's announcement started three years ago for Huawei, with the company engaging more than 1,000 senior semiconductor design experts and churning through more than 5,000 engineering p …

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Huawei’s AI Cube is a 4G router and Alexa speaker, not a cube

2018-08-31T08:30:02-04:00

The Huawei AI Cube is not a cube. I just really want us to get that fact agreed upon before we proceed any further. It is, however, a rather unique device, combining a 4G modem, a home Wi-Fi router, a high-end 360-degree wireless speaker, and a Huawei-Amazon collaboration that promises Alexa integration and some not-yet-articulated AI capabilities.

Shaped like an elongated Google Home with a flat top, the Huawei AI Cube is an effort to get Huawei in on the flourishing smart speaker business. As of today, there are probably more consumer electronics brands with a smart speaker in their portfolio - Apple's HomePod, the Google Home family of d …

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Wireless headphones are improving faster than anything else in tech

2018-08-31T08:19:44-04:00

Beyerdynamic Lagoon ANC. | Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

If you're in the market for new wireless headphones, IFA 2018 has been an absolute treat for you. If, on the other hand, you just bought a pair, well… this is going to be an upsetting read. At this year's IFA in Berlin, headphones manufacturers brought out a litany of meaningful, tangible, delightful improvements that have made the wireless audio market much more exciting than it was just a few days ago. Let's take each new change in turn.

USB-C is the new charging standard

Anyone who's been following my writing will know that I think this change is overdue. For months, I've been imploring headphone makers to get with the times - a majority …

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Beyerdynamic’s new wireless headphones put the LED lights where they belong: on the inside

2018-08-31T06:30:01-04:00

Beyerdynamic Lagoon ANC. | Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

The Beyerdynamic Lagoon ANC headphones come with a neat lighting trick: instead of having exterior LEDs spoiling their aesthetic, they have internal lights to inform the user of their status. It's such a simple switch in thinking, executed with a smidgen of flair, yet its effect is profound. When you think about it, the only time you want to see a status light on your headphones is when they're off your head, and you probably want to see that light without ambiguity. So Beyerdynamic has done what's obvious in hindsight by illuminating the inner periphery of the cups with informative colors.

When you first pick up a Lagoon pair that's alread …

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AptX Adaptive is Qualcomm’s latest solution to bad Bluetooth audio

2018-08-31T03:00:01-04:00

Headphones | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

If you stream music from an Android phone to a pair of wireless headphones, there's a very good chance your devices are relying on a compression algorithm known as AptX, which is supposed to squeeze high-quality sound into the limited bandwidth provided by a Bluetooth connection. But existing AptX options have their limits, so Qualcomm - the company behind AptX since 2015 - is introducing a new version that's supposed to grow and contract the size of audio data to meet the demands of whatever and wherever you're actually streaming.

The new version of AptX is called AptX Adaptive, and its key feature is the ability to compress audio at a var …

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