It’s Sunday, and you know what that means, right? If you’re new here, that’s the day NextPit takes a look at all the major tech happenings of the week and picks a winner and a loser. This week, our choices were rather easy. The winner this week is Asus for coming up with the excellent Zenfone 8, while our easy pick for the loser is WhatsApp - yet again!
But before we talk about these two picks in detail, shall we take a look at what transpired in the world of consumer tech in the past seven days?
New Google Pixel 6 renders evoke polarizing responses
Google may have disappointed all its fanboys with the Pixel 5 - thanks to it shedding the flagship tag once held by its predecessor. However, a fresh leak from this week seems to indicate that Google could revert to its tried and tested formula of launching two Pixel devices with the Pixel 6 series. The leaked images came courtesy of serial leakster Jon Prosser, and tech blogger Max Weinbach confirmed that the design is indeed accurate. He did, however, reveal that the colors shown on the renders were a bit off.
Take a look at the image above and let us know what you think, maybe?
Yet another MediaTek chipset!
Qualcomm’s arch-nemesis MediaTek is on a roll. The company recently established itself as the largest smartphone SoC vendor in 2020 and has been continuously launching interesting new SoCs. Fresh off the oven is MediaTek’s latest 5G capable SoC known as the MediaTek Dimensity 900.
Positioned above the existing Dimesity 800 series, the new SoC seems to be bridging the gap between the 800 and 1xxx series. The new boasts of an octa-core CPU with twin Cortex-A78 cores at 2.4GHz for power and six Cortex-A55 units clocked at 2 GHz for efficiency.
Expect a barrage of mid-range devices with this SoC before the end of 2021.
Huawei P50 appears in renders
Huawei might be down and out even in its home market of China, where it has been overtaken by Oppo in terms of market share. The company, however, is in no mood to give up, it seems - especially after looking at recently leaked images of its flagship camera smartphone – the Huawei P50.
Fresh renders of the phone appeared on Twitter via a handle known as @RODENT950. The leakster claims that these aren’t mockups and are actual renders of the phone. Look at the image below and let us know what you think!
Xiaomi is off the hook in the US
Remember we reported about Xiaomi getting into trouble with the US government a few months ago? Back then, the company was placed on a blacklist that would have prevented American individuals and companies from investing in the Chinese brand.
This week, in relief for Xiaomi, the US Defense Department decided to pull Xiaomi out of the blacklist. This will come as a sigh of relief for many concerned Xiaomi investors from the States.
iPhone 12 production hit by Covid-19
In case you did not know it yet, Apple started making iPhones in India a long time ago. However, the production of the Apple iPhone 12 series in India was severely affected after it was revealed that half of the staff working in the Foxconn facility making these devices tested positive for Covid-19.
India is currently battling a deadly second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and has been consistently reporting well over 200,000 cases a day for nearly a month.
Coming soon: A Windows laptop powered by an Exynos chipset
Samsung is reportedly working with AMD to deliver a new Exynos branded chipset that could be used on Windows laptops in the near future. The new chipset - likely christened Exynos 2200 will also (unsurprisingly) feature an AMD Radeon GPU thanks to the collaboration announced between the two semiconductor giants last year. Nothing much is known about the Exynos 2200 so far except that it will be base on Samsung’s 5nm manufacturing process.
Winner of the week: Asus for giving us the Zenfone 8
This week’s winner was a unanimous one by the editors at NextPit. Everyone in the office seemed to absolutely love the new Zenfone 8, which was officially revealed this week.
As Antoine mentions in his hands-on article, with the Zenfone 8, Asus has managed to deliver an excellent phone that offers a compact form factor while not skimping on crucial features.
While Asus retained the crazy flip camera on the more expensive model (the Asus Zenfone 8 Flip), almost everyone in the tech blogging space was seen ogling over the sheer simplicity of the lower-priced Zenfone 8. Honesty, it does look quite sleek, doesn’t it?
Loser of the week: WhatsApp’s never-ending trouble with the law
Starting this Saturday, May 15, 2021, WhatsApp’s new (and controversial) privacy policy was slated to go into effect. However, it has hit a major roadblock in Germany. This is all thanks to a ban enforced by the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information.
According to the Commissioner, WhatsApp’s updated privacy policy isn’t very clear while also alleging that the provisions on data transfers are scattered at different levels of the privacy policy. If that wasn’t all, the terms are “unclear and hard to distinguish in their European and international versions,” he quoted.
While WhatsApp may go ahead with the new privacy policy in other countries, this new ruling might have a spillover effect in the rest of the EU. It would be interesting to see how this entire scenario plays out.
Since we are on the topic of WhatsApp, do let us know what you think of it by taking part in our weekly poll!
Well, that is pretty much all that we have for you this week. I hope you’ve had a great weekend!
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