21st Century Fox reportedly in talks with Disney to sell most of its company

If we were honest, this is what we thought of when we heard the news. (Image courtesy of: Marvel.com)

There are reports going around claiming Disney and 21^st Century Fox are currently in talks about the latter selling off most of its company to the multimedia production giant. According to CNBC, it has been happening in the past few weeks but there aren’t any guarantees that it’ll lead to a deal. They describe the talks as being “on again, off again.” If the deal pushes through, it’s said Fox will give up most of its properties except those that revolve around news and sports. It seems senior management at Fox see that they can’t compete in the changing media landscape and sees Disney and its big machine capable of competing against the big internet companies that are leading the charge now (e.g. Facebook, Netflix, Google, and Amazon, to name a few).

For Disney, this deal would be advantageous as it preps its own streaming service. They’d gain access to more movie and TV productions to add to their own streaming offering. And if you’re thinking what we’re thinking, we might finally get that X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four crossover that we’ve been waiting for. (Even Ryan Reynolds is wondering what this deal could mean for his character Deadpool.) At the moment, nothing is for sure yet but we’re keeping our eyes out for this.

OnePlus 5T render leaks online, shows a full-screen display

We reported earlier this month that OnePlus might not be releasing the OnePlus 5T. But the rumour mill is not letting this die. OnePlus seems to have pulled OnePlus 5 off the shelves and just might be looking to release the updated version next month (which is roughly the same time when the OnePlus 3T came out). New leaked renders coming out of China show what the OnePlus 5T could look like. What the renders show, as you see above, OnePlus seems to be joining the full-screen, nearly bezel-less bandwagon. The Home button doesn’t seem to exist beneath the 6-inch screen but we see a fingerprint sensor above the OnePlus logo at the back.

Some of the rumoured specs for this device include an 18:9 aspect ratio, a dual-rear camera setup with optical image stabilization and a 20-megapixel and 16-megapixel rear setup as well as a 16-megapixel front camera. Joining another trend, the OnePlus 5T might do away with the headphone jack. It’ll reportedly run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset. Again all of these are speculation at this point, OnePlus is still keeping mum about the possibility that this device is coming out.

Source: GizmoChina

Rumour has it there won’t be a OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 6 expected early 2018

If you’ve been holding for OnePlus to release a OnePlus 5T, you might not get your wish. Rumour has it that OnePlus isn’t planning on releasing a T version for the OnePlus 5. Instead, they are setting their sights on releasing OnePlus 6 in early 2018. Last year, OnePlus released the OnePlus 3T to upgrade the OnePlus 3’s processor from a Snapdragon 820 to 821. The OnePlus 5 is a pretty powerful device on its own so we’re not surprised that an upgrade isn’t in the cards—or at least this is what the rumours suggest.

Source: GSMArena

Google might be closing purchase of HTC assets to boost hardware efforts

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Looks like Google might be thinking about getting back in the hardware business. This time, it’s being reported that Google is closing a deal with HTC to acquire the Taiwanese company’s hardware engineering assets, focusing on mobile. HTC is reportedly holding a town hall meeting on Thursday and if there’s truth to that, they might be discussing this deal. Not much is known at this point about which parts of HTC’s business Google plans to acquire. The Verge speculates they might leave the HTC brand for the company’s Vive and virtual reality business to use. As Evan Blass tweets, HTC is retaining its brand.

HTC has announced it was temporarily halting trading of its shares on the Taiwan stock exchange tomorrow because of the release of “material information,” which signals the announcement of something big.

Source: Bloomberg