Sony plans to introduce new design for next generation of phones

You don’t have to be closely following the tech scene to know a Sony-made phone when you see one. The company has kept to its “OmniBalance” design for years and for some it has gotten old pretty quickly, especially when put up against the other major Android OEMs. But it looks like the company is ready to change its tune. According to Sony India’s Managing Director Kenichiro Hibi, the company is has different plans for its next generation of devices. He told The Indian Express, “We have deployed an OmniBalance design as long as the X series continues to be available in the market. Also, we are planning to launch [a] new generation of products and you can expect a complete new design from the devices.”

As for what that new look is, we can only speculate. Sony could jump on the bezel-less route like the other major manufacturers and it has in a sense that some of its newer devices hardly have bezels on the sides. What do you think Sony should integrate into its smartphones?

Mozilla finally kills of Adobe Flash on Firefox version 56 for Android

Adobe Flash has been on the chopping block for ages but it doesn’t seem to want to die. Mozilla is taking a step towards removing it from all its properties with its latest announcement. Firefox 56 for Android will no longer support Adobe’s multimedia plugin. This means, Firefox on Google’s mobile OS will require Android 4.1 or higher to work, which is the Android version. You might not notice much of a difference here since most sites have dropped support for Flash but if you still need to use it, Dolphin browser works.

Source: Android Authority

Twitter doubles character limit to 280

The tweets of your friends, frenemies, favorite celebrities, and hate follows can now be twice as long. Twitter has begun testing 280-character limit to tweets. The social network claims only nine percent of all tweets right now are exactly 140 characters and that users have to edit their initial thoughts to fit under the original limit. Twitter claims it hopes to lessen the burden on “languages impacted by cramming,” which is most languages except for the likes of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, and have people tweet more. Now, we can’t say whether this will improve the quality of tweets or not. The 140-character limit was initially set to reflect SMS message length.

This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu

— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017

Source: The Verge

Dyson gets into electric car business

Heathcliff O’Malley

Dyson’s latest project might seem a bit outside its wheelhouse but when you think about it, the technology company has always been in the business of cleaning our air of pollutants. And so the company is turning its sights to electric vehicles as announced by James Dyson, the company’s founder and chief engineer. Dyson is set to unveil a battery-powered electric vehicle by the year 2020. It’s supposedly going to be a “radical and different” type of car.

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