Month: April 2022

Enlarge / Belkin’s SoundForm Elite Hi-Fi smart speaker and wireless charger. (credit: Belkin)

The timeline for over-the-air charging in the home just got murkier. On Wednesday, a press release from Israel-based wireless charging company Wi-Charge detailed plans for a partnership with Belkin to launch a consumer product with Wi-Charge’s technology this year. Belkin is now tempering those expectations.

On Wednesday, TechCrunch interviewed Wi-Charge co-founder and Chief Business Officer Ori Mor. The TechCrunch reporter wrote that Wi-Charge “told me it has just inked a mysterious deal with Belkin, and we can expect the first wireless power device to show up from the accessories manufacturer later this year.” Mor told the publication that Belkin is being “super aggressive on the timeline.”

Mor stoked hopes of domestic cable- and pad-free wireless charging by saying that the Belkin product in the works is “a center-stage consumer product” and that Belkin had chosen “a perfect application.” Neither Mor nor Wi-Charge’s announcement specified the Belkin product, but the Wi-Charge executive highlighted Belkin’s businesses in aftermarket charging accessories, smart home products, and powerline offerings.

Enlarge / Just a few of the Activision franchises that will become Microsoft properties if and when the acquisition is finalized. (credit: Microsoft / Activision)

On Thursday, Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard cleared the second-biggest hurdle remaining in their plan to complete a $68.7 billion acquisition deal: existing shareholder buy-in.

ATVI shareholders have voted overwhelmingly in favor of approving Microsoft’s bid to acquire Activision-Blizzard, and a company announcement counted over 98 percent of shareholder votes in the “yes” column.

On a dollars-and-cents level, anyone currently holding on to Activision stock is likely interested in the potential cash windfall coming their way should the deal be completed. Ahead of the shareholder vote on Thursday morning, Activision stock prices were trading around $76 per share, while Microsoft’s acquisition terms include a buyout amount of $95 per share.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Earth Day is April 22, and its usual message—take care of our planet—has been given added urgency by the challenges highlighted in the latest IPCC report. This year, Ars is taking a look at the technologies we normally cover, from cars to chipmaking, and finding out how we can boost their sustainability and minimize their climate impact.

The best gadgets are the ones that find a way to enhance your world of work, play, or even just the daily grind. But there’s also another feature that can make a nice piece of tech even better: sustainability.

Continually buying the latest and greatest tech or gadget obviously creates a lot of waste. But thinking critically about the gadgets you buy can play a small part in reversing this trend.

Enlarge / This is our first look at Formula E’s Gen3 race car, which debuts next season. (credit: Formula E)

On Thursday, ahead of this weekend’s Monaco E-Prix, Formula E finally unveiled its next electric race car. It’s called the Gen3 car because it’s the third generation to be used by the series, and will be introduced at the start of next season.

Much of the reaction online has been about the car’s unconventional looks, at least in terms of what people expect race cars to look like. But then people reacted that way about the Gen2 vehicle as well. The new bodywork is more sustainable than before, with linen and some recycled carbon fiber (from retired Gen2 cars), which Formula E says will reduce the carbon footprint of the Gen3 car by 10 percent.

The new Formula E car is smaller than the previous version, with a narrower track and shorter wheelbase. It’s also gone on a diet, cutting the car’s mass from Gen2’s 903 kg to 760 kg, which is just lighter than a current F1 car, for context. Gen3’s weight reduction is coupled with a significant power increase: from 250 kW (335 hp) to 350 kW (469 hp), deployed to the rear wheels. With a top speed of 200 mph (320 km/h), we expect lap times to be significantly faster than before.

Enlarge / A splash image for Nuvia from the company’s blog. (credit: Nuvia)

Qualcomm bought a chipmaking startup called Nuvia back in March of 2021, and later that year, the company said it would be using Nuvia’s talent and technology to create high-performance custom-designed ARM chips to compete with Apple’s processor designs. But if you’re waiting for a truly high-performance Windows PC with anything other than an Intel or AMD chip in it, you’ll still be waiting for a bit. Qualcomm CEO Christian Amon mentioned during the company’s most recent earnings call that its high-performance chips were on track to land in consumer devices “in late 2023.”

Qualcomm still plans to sample chips to its partners later in 2022, a timeframe it has mentioned previously and has managed to stick to. A gap between sampling and mass production is typical, giving Qualcomm time to work out bugs and improve chip yields and PC manufacturers more time to design and build finished products that incorporate the chips.

Qualcomm acquired Nuvia based in part on its personnel—the company was founded by former members of Apple’s chip design team—and in part on its work designing ARM-based server chips. Chip designs take years to bring to market, so even if Nuvia had already been working on chips destined for consumer laptops when it was acquired, it was always going to be at least a couple of years before we could actually buy them in anything.

Enlarge / The Unihertz Titan Slim. It has big bezels and a weird keyboard layout. (credit: Unihertz)

Unihertz’s latest boutique smartphone is the Unihertz Titan Slim. In contrast to the all-screen phones that dominate the market, this phone marks another attempt to bring Blackberry-style QWERTY bar phones into the smartphone era.

For whatever reason, Unihertz never officially unveiled the phone on its website (there is only this “coming soon” teaser image), but enough phone reviews have been published by now that the product is pretty much public. Be warned that almost every reviewer who tested the Titan Slim came away with negative impressions, but at least it’s a unique device.

This PCMag report details most of the specs. The front of the phone sports a 4.2-inch LCD that is “roughly” 1280×768—and then all those QWERTY buttons start. With so much space needed for the hardware keyboard, shrinking the bezels should be a priority. Even $150 smartphones have teardrop front cameras and minimal bezels these days. Wasting so much space means the display comes with a weird 5:3 aspect ratio, which several reports say causes problems with Android app layouts.