LG masked the aperture of the pre-release V30s to try and control its narrative

Wanting to announce a product on their terms, LG did a bit of “creative subterfuge” as The Verge describes it by tinkering around with the phone’s aperture. The company deliberately misrepresented the aperture value of f/1.6 as f/1.7 to throw off any industrial espionage and particularly nosy fans who want to know the latest specs ahead of the release. This understandably had the people who got pre-release review units question whether the phone had an f/1.6 aperture value. LG after all did announce the feature a few weeks before the device was launched at IFA 2017. But the move was seen as LG taking control of sharing its own news instead of leaks beating them to the punch.

The company does want to reassure users that the V30 retail units will ship with an f/1.6 aperture. In a statement they say, “Before unveiling a new product, LG Electronics safeguards confidential and proprietary device information by masking the true values of important product specifications. Some preproduction preview sample devices recently distributed featured non-final software, which maintained masked information with regard to aperture. The LG V30 features an F1.6 aperture camera and glass lens, an industry leading innovation.” 

Huawei set to unveil Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro on October 16th in Munich

Huawei just unveiled its new Kirin 970 processor at IFA 2017 in Berlin, boasting of the processors artificial intelligence capabilities. And soon we’ll be seeing that in two new Huawei flagships coming out next month: the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro. According to Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, the two devices will be the Chinese company’s first full display mobile phones. This means we might see a similar screen-to-body ratio as what we’ve been seeing lately in a lot of flagship devices. As expected, we’re being told it’s getting a dual camera setup (evidenced by an official tweet from Huawei Australia’s Twitter account).

Not much else is known at this point but as Android Authority says, we should expect the Mate 10 Pro to have things like better resolution display, more RAM, and a boost in internal storage, among others. We just have to wait until next month to find out.

Sony has its own take on AirPods, features noise-cancellation tech

One of the new audio accessories Sony unveiled at the ongoing IFA tech show in Berlin takes the fight to Apple’s own wireless earphones, the AirPods. Called the WF-1000X, this wireless earbuds has a special trick up its sleeve: noise-cancellation technology. Each earbud comes with a button, one is used to enable ambient sound while the other is for taking calls.

According to Sony, you can get three hours of use out of them. Not a lot but if you charge them in the case, which holds two additional charges, you get a total of nine hours out of the pair. A full charge will take an hour and a half while using microUSB. Unlike Apple’s AirPods, you can’t track the WF-1000X, so if you lose them, you might lose them forever. The WF-1000X retails for US$199.99 (around CA$250).

Source: The Verge

Samsung Gear Sport gets leaked ahead of rumoured IFA debut

With IFA just a few days away, we get a look at what looks like another wearable coming from Samsung. The Gear Sport (SM-R600) will supposedly have 5ATM waterproofing, which makes it suitable for taking on a swim. In the FCC schematics, you can see that it’s still similar looks-wise to other Gear smartwatches with its round screen. Not much is known from the leaked image. But it’s expected to be the first smartwatch to run on Tizen 3.0 and have both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. It’ll supposedly also have a heart rate sensor, as one would expect from a fitness tracker. We should be hearing more about this next week.

Source: GSMArena