IbizTech

Comments made by OnePlus CEO Pete Lau at Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona have cast doubt over the hopeful expectation that the next OnePlus flagship phone will have wireless charging. In speaking with CNET, Lau calls wireless charging “far inferior” to his company’s wired Warp Charge and the tone of the interview, via a translator, was apparently strong enough for CNET to conclude that the feature will definitely not be on the OnePlus 7. The sentiments expressed by Lau echo previous comments he’s made, saying that OnePlus won’t include wireless charging until it can be made as fast as the company’s wired charging, but fans of the brand will have been hoping to hear a different tune in the buildup to the company’s first release of 2019. I reached out to OnePlus, asking the company to confirm or deny the reported absence of wireless charging from its next flagship. What I received was something approaching an implicit confirmation: OnePlus reiterated its belief that the speed o...

Specifically for videos that appeared on Musical.ly TikTok will pay $5.7 million to settle accusations that it violated children’s privacy law, the Federal Trade Commission said today. The short-form video app and social network is also being required to gain parental approval for users under 13 years of age, to comply with federal law. All videos previously uploaded by people under the age of 13 will be removed as well. The FTC alleged that TikTok “illegally collected personal information from children” by not obtaining their parents’ permission before they signed up, putting it in violation of COPPA — the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. COPPA dictates that any app or website targeted at children, such as TikTok (and its former app, Musical.ly), must ask children under the age of 13 to get parental consent to share personal information with an app or website. Nearly every social network and online service operating in the US asks users to agree to terms that prohibit ch...

Not all screen protectors will work with the ultrasonic fingerprint reader, so Samsung is giving you one. Buyers of the new Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus will find a preinstalled plastic screen protector on their device when they unbox it beginning March 8th. Samsung has confirmed that it’s shipping the S10 with a protector on the display, meaning you won’t have to immediately hunt for something that’s compatible with the ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor on day one. Now, this is just your very basic screen protector — similar to what OnePlus does with their phones, if I had to guess — and it isn’t glass, so it’s bound to scratch over time. The included protector thus doesn’t have any sort of warranty on how long it’ll last. Samsung will sell extras of its first-party screen protector for $29.99, but the company doesn’t plan to bring it to Best Buy or carrier stores since they’ll likely be carrying other, similar options. The Galaxy S10E won’t have this screen protector...

Only a few select channels will have comment sections enabled. YouTube will no longer allow the majority of channels featuring kids to include comment sections following a controversy over predatory comments being posted on videos of children. YouTube will temporarily remove comments from videos that feature minors in the coming months. Only a select few channels with children will be allowed to include a comment sections, but even that comes with a caveat: they’ll be required to monitor their comments for safety. “These channels will be required to actively moderate their comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior,” YouTube wrote in a blog post. YouTube also says it’s launched a better algorithm to let it automatically “identify and remove predatory comments.” The classifier is “more sweeping in scope,” according to the blog post, and will catch up to twice as many predatory comments from individuals. YouTube’s decision ...

HMD Global’s new Nokia 9 PureView — and all five of its rear cameras — may have just gotten announced at MWC 2019, but it’s hitting stores in the US really soon, with sales set to start March 3rd. To go with the launch, HMD is also offering a special limited time offer on the Nokia 9 PureView that will lower the price by $100 off the usual $699 price, bringing it down to $599 for the first week of sales. After March 11th, the price will go back up, which doesn’t leave a ton of time for customers to decide on whether they want to buy it. But if you’re planning on being an early adopter, the extra $100 off certainly can’t hurt. The Nokia 9 PureView’s standout feature is, of course, the quintuple camera array on the back, offering five 12-megapixel lenses that shoot at different exposures (three black and white, two color), for what the company promises is enhanced levels of detail that a single smartphone camera can’t capture on its own. The phone also has an in-display fingerprint...

When listening in on podcasts, there are a host of options for how to tune in — Spotify, Apple Music, the website of a podcast. One of the most popular and best podcast apps, though, is Pocket Casts, which supports more platforms than many of its rival apps, and has more features to boot. Now Pocket Casts also has an Alexa skill, making it easier to listen in at home. To get started, add the Pocket Casts skill within your Alexa app and connect your Pocket Casts account to Amazon by logging in. Then say, “Alexa, open Pocket Casts.” From there, if you’re just getting started with Pocket Casts, Alexa will note that you’ve got nothing in the queue and no subscriptions so you’ll need to get your Pocket Casts account up to speed with subscriptions to your favorite podcasts. Unfortunately, there’s no way to browse podcasts through the Alexa skill. To ensure you’re not misheard, you can start commands by saying “Alexa, tell Pocket Casts.” But commands that don’t specify Pocket Casts can st...

I told you MWC 2019 would be a show where things got weird, but even I didn’t anticipate a company being wild enough to build a phone with an 18,000mAh battery. But here I am, in awe of the mighty girth of the Energizer Power Max P18K Pop. France’s Avenir Telecom licenses the Energizer brand, and it makes the most of it with devices that push the boundaries of specs and sanity. This dark blue unit measures in at 18mm of thickness, according to Avenir’s spec sheet, but stacking it side by side with a more conventional smartphone, I’d say a more accurate articulation of its thickness would be about 3.5 iPhones. This phone is immense. Or is it technically a battery with a phone in it? An epic battery of such proportions had better last a long time, and Avenir promises a week’s worth of use, or two full days, 48 hours, of continuous video playback. That sounds conservative since we got a week from a phone with a battery measuring about half as large. The 6.2-inch LCD display of the ...