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Hyundai reportedly stops developing new combustion engines
Samsung's latest C-Lab projects include a smart guitar with LED guides
Xiaomi’s 12 Series phones are among the first with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips
In 2021, Apple addressed past mistakes
The best accessories for your new Xbox Series X or S

Hyundai reportedly stops developing new combustion engines

Posted: 28 Dec 2021 09:45 AM PST

Hyundai only just released its first ground-up electric car, but it's apparently ready to leave combustion engines behind. As Electrekreports, Korea Economic Dailysources claim Hyundai shut down its research center's engine design unit sometime this month. There will still be some workers left to refine existing engines, but the rest will move to EV-related work.

The company is understood to be converting buildings for EV development at the same time. The powertrain development center is becoming an electrification test facility, and the performance development center is now dedicated to electrified machines. There's also a new battery development center, while researchers are now sourcing raw battery and chip components.

The aim is simple, according to the leak. Hyundai wants to accelerate the transition to EVs, and that means devoting much more of its energy to the newer technology. Electrification is "inevitable," new research chief Park Chung-kook reportedly said in email, and the transition will help produce cars that "dominate the future market."

We've asked Hyundai for comment. The change in priorities would make sense, at least. Many countries and individual states intend to ban combustion car sales in the 2030s. Hyundai's home of South Korea, for instance, has a climate plan that would ban combustion-only sales by 2030 and all combustion vehicle sales by 2035. Hyundai is already phasing out diesels. There wouldn't be much point to designing new engines that would only have a brief time on the market, and the company is likely to significantly expand its EV lineup long before any government cutoffs.

Samsung's latest C-Lab projects include a smart guitar with LED guides

Posted: 28 Dec 2021 09:00 AM PST

As it does every year around this time, Samsung has unveiled its C-Lab incubator projects for CES 2022, with the aim to gauge customer response and further advance the most promising ideas. The star of the show this year is ZamStar, a guitar and app combo designed to make collaboration and learning easier. Other notable projects include an AI solution to help kids develop good smartphone habits and a nursery mobile that can allow for early detection of infant strabismus (eye crossing).

ZamStar consists of an app and a custom guitar called ZamString. The idea is that you can play a part on the guitar, add effects and then sync it up with other musicians around the world. It's clearly a riff on the COVID-19 TikTok trend of musical collaborations (remember all those sea shanties early this year), with the idea of making it easy to sync up your music. Meanwhile, the ZamString guitar has a fretboard that lights via input from a song, making it easy to figure out where to put your fingers. It's not a new concept, but perhaps the first to marry both the learning and collaboration aspects.

Piloto, meanwhile, is what Samsung calls an "AI solution that helps children develop proper smartphone usage habits." The aim is to teach kids "self-regulation skills" on smart devices to help them make good choices. Finally, Innovision is "a daily life eye-care system with a nursery mobile to catch suspicious symptoms of the strabismus and monitor visual ability development status for babies." That seems like a smart idea, since babies gaze natural towards mobiles.

Along with its inside incubators, Samsung's C-Lab Outside is backing nine startups, including an AI-based biometric recognition solution for pets called Petnow. All of these projects will be on display with their own booths at CES 2022. So far, Samsung still appears to be planning to attend the event and has not followed the lead of other exhibitors (Google, Lenovo, Intel, Amazon, Meta, T-Mobile) by cancelling.

Xiaomi’s 12 Series phones are among the first with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips

Posted: 28 Dec 2021 08:30 AM PST

Xiaomi has unveiled its latest lineup of flagship smartphones and wearables. The Xiaomi 12 Series, which is only available in China for now, includes two sizes of phones: Xiaomi 12 and Xiaomi 12 Pro.

Both are among the first devices to run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset and they boast LPDDR5 RAM. The Xiaomi 12 has a 4,500mAh battery, while the 12 Pro has what the company claims is the first single-cell 120W, 4,600mAh battery. Xiaomi says it offers an increased capacity of 400mAh over dual-cell batteries without having to increase the size.

The base model's camera array includes Sony's 50MP IMX766 as the main camera, a 13MP ultra-wide angle lens and a 5MP telemacro sensor. The 12 Pro, meanwhile, has the new Sony IMX707 sensor, an ultra-wide camera with a 115-degree field of view and a 2x telephoto camera for portraits. All three sensors are 50MP, while the main camera improves light capture by up to 49 percent over the previous model, according to Xiaomi.

On the front, each device has a 32MP sensor. The front-facing holepunch camera was positioned on the left on the Mi 11 series, but, as with the 11T devices, it's in the center this time.

Xiaomi noted that Night Mode is available on both devices, each of which is said to have a camera that works well in low-light scenarios. The company says it's introducing a new imaging computing algorithm, which it claims improves capture speed and shutter lag.

The Xiaomi 12 has a 6.28-inch flexible OLED display with a 2,400 × 1,080 resolution, 1,100 nits of brightness and a refresh rate of 120Hz. The 12 Pro offers a 6.73-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 3,200 x 1,440 and 1,500 nits of brightness. Xiaomi says the display uses micro-lens tech, which it claims improves the "viewing experience while increasing smart energy-saving capability." Both devices have HDR10+ and Dolby Vision support.

On the audio side, both handsets have symmetrical dual speakers and Dolby Atmos support. The 12 Pro features a customized mid-woofer and tweeter.

The devices will go on sale on December 31st, starting at RMB 3,699 (around $580) for the Xiaomi 12 and RMB 4,699 (approximately $738) for Xiaomi 12 Pro. The company also said it will release a lower-cost version of the Xiaomi 12 on the same day. The Xiaomi 12X has a Snapdragon 870 chipset and starts at RMB 3,199 ($500).

The phones will use MIUI 13, an OS based on Android 12 that's also coming to Mi 11 series handsets, Xiaomi 11T and other phones and tablets. Xiaomi's smart watches, speakers and TVs will also harness the OS to help unify the ecosystem. A feature called Mi Smart Hub will allow users to share things like their screen, music and apps with multiple nearby devices using a simple gesture.

In addition, Xiaomi revealed its latest smartwatch. The Xiaomi Watch S1 has a 1.43-inch AMOLED screen with a sapphire glass display and stainless steel frame. It will offer detailed health stats and has support for 117 fitness modes. The device has a 5ATM water resistance rating too. Xiaomi says the device has a 12-day battery life and up to 24 days of standby time.

Like the new phones, the Xiaomi Watch S1 will only be available in China for the time being. It starts at RMB 1,099 ($172).

Also new are the Xiaomi Buds 3, which have dual-magnetic dynamic drivers. The earbuds offer up to 40dB noise cancellation and three active noise cancellation modes. Xiaomi says owners will get up to seven hours of playback on a single charge and up to 32 hours of total use with the charging case. The Xiaomi Buds 3 will cost RMB 449 ($70).

While these devices are geared toward the Chinese market, they could make their way elsewhere at a later date. Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun hinted as much on Twitter.

In 2021, Apple addressed past mistakes

Posted: 28 Dec 2021 06:30 AM PST

When Apple announced the upgraded MacBook Pro earlier this fall, the common refrain was that the company was finally giving its customers what they asked for. But while the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro updates represent the most obvious case of Apple owning up to (and rectifying) past mistakes, the company has actually been on this course for the last few years. And at the end of 2021, Apple has just about finished replacing some of its most problematic designs.

Reviews of the new MacBook Pro are almost universally positive (aside from the high price points), but it's still worth recapping just what a big change these laptops represent from their predecessors. Both of the new sizes are thicker and noticeably heavier than the models they replace; for a company that showed an almost fanatical obsession with thin-and-light design over the last decade, it's a major about-face. But the older, 4-pound, 15-inch MacBook Pro often had trouble staying cool under heavy processor loads, a problem that couldn't be solved without increasing the laptop's size and weight. It's as if Apple remembered it already has the MacBook Air, and that the people buying a Pro are willing to lug around a bit of extra weight for a more capable machine.

Apple arguably started moving in this direction with a mid-cycle refresh a few years ago. In 2019, the company started banishing the unreliable and uncomfortable butterfly keyboard for a significantly improved scissor-switch model. That revised keyboard arrived on the first 16-inch MacBook Pro. Along with the new keyboard, that laptop was a third of a pound heavier, and larger in every dimension than its predecessor.

That was the first indication that Apple was willing to fix some of the ill-fated decisions it made with the MacBook Pro lineup, which brings us to this fall's refresh. Users still had a laundry list of things they wanted changing, and Apple largely delivered. The new models brought back the SD card slot and HDMI port that the company removed in 2016. The MagSafe charging port, one of Apple's smartest innovations, also made a comeback. Finally, Apple replaced the Touch Bar with a standard row of function keys.

Of course, Apple only deserves so much credit for fixing self-inflicted wounds. But it feels like the company has a much clearer vision of what the people shelling out (at least) $2,000 for a MacBook Pro actually want. And beyond simply fixing earlier mistakes, the Apple-built M1 Pro and M1 Max processors offer massive performance gains and better battery life. Add in an outstanding new display and excellent keyboard and MacBook Pro buyers have a lot to look forward to. The fact that these computers are thicker and heavier than the ones they replace will barely be a consideration for most, especially since bigger laptops have space for things like extra ports, larger batteries and better cooling systems.

While the MacBook Pro is the obvious example of Apple giving the people what they want this year, it's not the only one. Take the iPhone 13 launch. The company once again released two standard models and two "Pro" models, just as it did in 2020. In most ways, these phones were iterative updates over the 12 series — but all four phones have significantly better battery life than their predecessors. Improving longevity is an obvious way to make customers happy, but it's still good news that Apple quickly identified the weak spot with the iPhone 12 lineup and fixed it. Perhaps not coincidentally, all iPhone 13 models are also all a little heavier than last year's. (They're also imperceptibly thicker, at .30 inches vs. .29 for the iPhone 12.)

Again, though, there's some recent precedence for Apple putting battery life over a thin-at-all-costs design. 2018's iPhone XR was a cheaper and slightly less elegant version of the flagship iPhone XS — but its larger screen and thicker body left room for a battery that smoked the "superior" XS. So, in 2019, Apple made the iPhone 11 Pro bigger than the XS it replaced, but it also vastly improved battery life. It was particularly surprising to see Apple make a bigger iPhone after chasing thinness at all costs for so long, but it was definitely welcome. The company finally seems to realize that an impossibly thin device that constantly needs to be charged doesn't make for a good user experience.

Another good example is Apple's significant change of heart around product repairs. Specifically, Apple announced plans to sell repair parts and instructions to customers who want to fix their iPhones themselves, a victory for anyone who felt they should be able to pop open their iPhone and put in a new battery or fix a broken display. While right-to-repair groups said there's still more Apple can do in this area, they nonetheless hailed it as a major step forward from the completely closed nature of its products, the vast majority of which haven't been user-serviceable before. Apple is starting with the iPhone, but said it will roll out some self-repair tools and parts for M1-based Macs in 2022, as well. The threat of government regulation may have played a big role in this new initiative, but the end result is still good for consumers.

Apple is even having a little more fun with its products than it has in a while. Take the M1-powered iMac, for example. I wish that it had more ports and, considering the price, it should have more RAM and storage — but the wide variety of colors Apple chose is just great. I'm dying for these colorways to come to a redesigned MacBook Air (fingers crossed for the spring). The three new hues in the HomePod mini lineup are another good example of Apple realizing that hardware you place in your home doesn't just have to be gray or silver.

While the new MacBook Pro is a huge step forward for those who want serious power on the go, Apple still hasn't given professionals the full desktop-class computers they need. Because Apple is in the middle of its transition to Apple Silicon, the larger iMac and Mac Pro machines are hard to recommend right now. Hopefully, Apple will bring the power of the M1 Pro and M1 Max to a larger iMac and a new Mac Pro tower in 2022. If they can wrap up this last bit of the transition next year, Mac buyers will be covered at all points of the company's product lineup. It's been way too long since we could say that.

The best accessories for your new Xbox Series X or S

Posted: 28 Dec 2021 06:00 AM PST

If you bought an Xbox Series X or S a year ago, your selection of accessories mostly came down to aging gear designed for last-gen systems. Now, you've got plenty more ways to upgrade your Xbox experience. Maybe you need a better controller to optimize your Psychonauts 2 runs, a clearer headset to chat with teammates in Apex Legends, or perhaps your storage is just running low. Here are a few of the best Xbox accessories you can nab today.

Controllers: Go stylish, go Pro

It's always smart to have a second controller on hand. Even if you don't play multiplayer games much, you'll regret not being prepared for the occasional friend or family member who's down for a Mortal Kombat match. And at the very least, it's wise to have a replacement in case something goes wrong with your main controller. (We've all smashed our gamepads against the wall for one reason, or another – no judgement.)

While you could just get another stock Microsoft controller, there are plenty of options worth considering. The Anniversary Edition gamepad is just a bit more at $70, and it has a spiffy translucent design that'll look great on your coffee table. If you're looking for something with a bit more color, the gorgeous Limited Edition Forza Horizon 5 model is still around. If you find yourself burning through plenty of AA batteries, consider a rechargeable solution like PowerA's dual controller bay. It comes with two batteries, and it lets you juice up your gamepads in style.

Buy Xbox Wireless Controller at Microsoft - $60 Buy Anniversary Edition controller at Amazon - $100 Buy Forza Horizon 5 controller at Microsoft - $75 Buy PowerA charging station at Amazon - $25

For dedicated Xbox gamers, Microsoft's second-generation Elite gamepad may be worth the investment. It has replaceable thumbsticks, rear buttons and a comfortable grip. Not to mention, it's one of the few Xbox gamepads that you can recharge over USB-C.

If you're more interested in playing older games, or are just looking for a different style of controller, we're also huge fans of 8BitDo's Pro 2. It's incredibly comfortable, and its directional pad is one of the best on the market. It also makes a great controller for PC gaming (though any recent Xbox controller will also work on computers over Bluetooth).

Buy Elite gamepad at Amazon - $180 Buy 8Bitdo Pro 2 at Amazon - $50

Specialized controllers are cool again!

If you play Microsoft Flight Simulator long enough, you'll realize you can only go so far with a standard gamepad. Time for a flight stick! After conferring with flying simulator fanatics, and perusing plenty of reviews, we'd recommend jumping on Thrustmaster's T-Flight Hotas One joystick. It offers realistic five-axis control, fourteen buttons and a detachable throttle. And unlike some clunky PC solutions, it's compact enough to fit on a coffee table or lap desk. (You can also use it with a computer, if you'd like.)

If you're more into cars, we were impressed by Logitech's G923 racing wheel. It feels like a genuine steering wheel, with a comfortable grip, steel paddle shifters, and a trio of solid pedals. Once it's clamped to a table, it delivers a surprisingly realistic driving experience – all the better to tear through Mexico in Forza Horizon 5. It's definitely pricey at $400, but it's an investment that'll last for many racing games to come.

Buy T-Flight Hotas One joystick at Amazon - $90 Buy Logitech G923 racing wheel at Amazon - $400

Bump up your storage

If you were lucky enough to nab a new Xbox Series X or S at launch, chances are you're already familiar with their storage limitations. Luckily, you can easily give yourself a bit more breathing room with one of Seagate's storage expansion cards, which are just as fast as the speedy SSDs inside the consoles. In addition to the 1TB card that arrived at launch, Seagate also recently unveiled 512GB and 2TB options. We'd recommend going for the 1TB option at this point, though – spending $400 for the 2TB just seems excessive.

You can also connect traditional hard drives, like Seagate's 2TB Game Drive, to the Xbox Series X and S over USB. They're far too slow to run current-gen games at their full speed, but they give you a boatload of storage for a much cheaper price. They're useful to have around for playing games from the original Xbox, as well as the 360. And they can also be used as "cold storage" to free up space on your precious SSD. Newer games can easily move back and forth between those drives, which prevents you from having to download them again.

Buy Seagate expansion card (1TB) at Amazon - $220 Buy Seagate Game Drive (2TB) at Amazon - $130

Tune up your sound

You deserve better than your crummy TV speakers. While you could just plug in whatever headphones you have laying around into your Xbox controller, we'd recommend investing in a solid pair of wireless headphones. They'll likely sound better, and they remove the whole cord problem entirely. SteelSeries Arctis 9X are one of the best options around, with beefy drivers, a comfortable fit and sturdy build quality. We were impressed during our hands-on testing, as they sounded just as good as the company's excellent Arctis Pro PC headphones.

Buy SteelSeries Arctis 9X at Amazon - $200

Upgrade to a real media remote

Tired of controlling Netflix playback with your controller? Then snag 8BitDo's Media Remote. Available in long and short designs (the latter removes numbers and other extraneous buttons), they're well-made remotes that fit the Xbox's clean aesthetic. I've been using the short model to control 4K Blu-rays and tons of streaming apps, and it's far easier to use than a controller when it comes to quickly fast-forwarding. Now, I don't have to put my drink down to skip to another chapter.

Buy 8Bitdo Media Remote at Amazon - $20

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