This week’s Apple event was all about the little things: a new, small iPhone and a new, smaller iPad Pro. But while these devices may be small but their impact is likely to be huge – especially in the corporate world, where both the iPhone SE and new iPad Pro are likely to be big hits. We’ve also got our hands on Samsung’s latest Windows tablet, we’ve got the low-down on Android Pay in the UK, and we’ve discovered the future of both gaming and pornography. It’s Week in Tech!
Small iPhone announced, not many dead
The latest iPhone is the iPhone SE, a 4-inch model that looks like the iPhone 5S but which has most of the iPhone 6S inside. So is it any good? John McCann has the facts and figures, and you can also check out our hands-on iPhone SE review. It’s cheap by Apple standards – $399 / £359 / AU$679 – and while it looks pretty retro on the outside it’s bang up to date inside. We’ve rounded up the best deals on the new handset here, and here for UK buyers, but as with any iPhone don’t expect big discounts so soon after the launch date.
Hey ho, it’s a small iPad Pro
We say ‘small’ relatively speaking. At 9.7 inches, the new iPad Pro is the same size as an iPad Air, but it’s a lot less bulky than the 12-inch Pro that Apple currently sells. Inside it’s almost identical, albeit clocked slightly slower, and the screen gets Apple’s new True Tone display, which adjusts the colour balance based on ambient lighting conditions. It starts at £499 and we think it’s the future direction of the iPad, aimed as much at corporate Windows users as it is at sofa surfers and app addicts.
Pick of the Pros
In the blue corner we have the new iPad Pro, and in the red corner we have Microsoft’s Surface. They’re both aimed at business users, but which one is best? There’s only one way to find out: get Joe Osborne to pit them against one another. The result? We won’t spoil it here, because the fight is too much fun.
Hey ho, it’s the Galaxy TabPro
Samsung makes tablets too, of course, and the Galaxy TabPro S is its latest 10-inch Windows tablet. Kevin Lee likes it a lot, with a few reservations: “As it stands – or attempts to – the TabPro S only works perfectly if you use it in the exact way Samsung has envisioned. But, damn, is this one slick Windows 10 tablet.”
Android Pay in the UK
Wave goodbye to your wallets and pack up your purses: Android Pay is coming to the UK. Not all UK banks are on board – Barclays won’t be supporting the service at launch, and neither will Santander, NatWest and a few others – but most of the big names will be joining the Android Pay party. When is it actually happening? Google says “in the next few months”.
Ten years of tweets
Twitter turned 10 this week – but will it still be here in another ten years? Hugh Langley is on the case. It’s hardly in trouble, he says, but there are clouds on the horizon. Twitter is “spending a lot of money, stock has tanked, and user growth has slowed dramatically. There is also a large number of lapsed users that Twitter is trying to win back”. Langley also looks at how Twitter can rise to its many challenges.
Probably not the NX generation of gaming
Is this our first look at the Nintendo NX’s rather smudge-prone controller? Afraid not. Some “leaked” images had the internet in a frenzy this week, however it turned out that they were 3D-printed fakes all along, based another fake previously “leaked” (which the hoaxer also owned up to on Reddit).
The pranksters of the latest fakes even uploaded a video explaining how they did it. The takeaway? Trust nobody.
Get a PlayStation on your phone
Fancy playing PlayStation games on your phone? Some PS4 users with Sony handsets already can, but Sony’s ambitions are much bigger: it’s formed a new company to bring PlayStation characters and titles to the major mobile platforms. The new company, ForwardWorks, will power up on April the 1st – but we’re pretty sure it isn’t an April Fool.
Grumble flicks in your face
If there’s one thing we know about tech, it’s that sooner or later it’s exploited by the adult entertainment industry – so it’s not a great surprise that smut site Pornhub has created a new section dedicated to virtual reality pornography. The videos are being made by the excellently named BaDoinkVR, and they’re the first VR porn flicks to be made available without subscription fees attached. The site is so confident that VR is the future that it’s giving away 10,000 VR headsets to early adopters.
Source: techradar.com