OPINION: It’s Sunday, which suggests its time for us to recount our picks for the winner and loser of this week’s headlines.
It’s been a comparatively quiet week, with many firms having exhausted any main January bulletins at CES 2023. Highlights from this week embrace Intel exhibiting off its quickest CPU but, a brand new hi-res Sony Walkman and a date for what we hope would be the Spotify HiFi launch we’ve been ready for.
Hold studying to seek out out who our winner and loser are this week.
Winner: Sony
Our winner this week is Sony after the corporate introduced a brand new controller designed to make gaming on the PS5 extra accessible.
The controller – codenamed Challenge Leonardo – was unveiled at CES this month, and is designed to make the PlayStation console extra accessible for gamers with restricted motor management, resembling issue holding a controller for lengthy intervals of time, urgent small teams of buttons or positioning fingers on an ordinary controller.
The controller equipment contains a round design that may be modified with swappable elements, together with analogue stick caps and buttons in several styles and sizes. Avid gamers can change up the buttons, structure and the space of the analogue follow the gamepad.
So far as software program customisation goes, gamers may also make modifications to button mapping, together with utilizing a number of buttons for a similar operate or assigning two features to the identical button.
There’s additionally the choice to retailer programmed button settings as management profiles and change between them by urgent the profile button, with as much as three management profiles supported on anyone console.
Challenge Leonardo lays flat, that means it may be positioned on a tabletop or wheelchair tray and might be secured to AMPS mounts and tripods. The controller may even be paired with a DualSense wi-fi controller or a second Challenge Leonardo so gamers can transfer between the controllers and play collaboratively.
Sadly, Challenge Leonardo continues to be in improvement, that means we’ll want to attend a bit longer to see the controller hit retailer cabinets. Nevertheless, this does imply that Sony has extra time to fine-tune it with suggestions from players so we’re excited to see the ultimate product.
Loser: Apple
This week’s loser is Apple as rumours unfold that the corporate has determined to cancel the iPhone SE 4.
The most recent leak comes from revered Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (through MacRumors).
In keeping with Kuo, Apple had initially deliberate to make use of the iPhone SE 4 announcement as a possibility to showcase its new, in-house 5G modem. Nevertheless, that plan seems to have been scrapped because the modem reportedly received’t be prepared till 2025. This leaves Apple prone to proceed utilizing Qualcomm modems into 2024.
So, the place precisely does that go away the iPhone SE 4? Kuo doesn’t go into element as to why precisely Apple would ditch the SE, however he does say that the provision chain has been given directions to cancel the manufacturing and cargo plans for the cellphone, which appears fairly damning if true.
It’s a disgrace that Apple appears to be abandoning its most cost-effective iPhone. We have been followers of the iPhone SE 3 and the quick efficiency and nice digicam it delivered (to not point out iOS at an reasonably priced value).
After all, it hasn’t formally been confirmed that Apple will cancel the cellphone. If it does nonetheless, we hope the corporate will come out with one other reasonably priced mannequin – and even higher, cut back the worth of the flagship iPhone to make up for this loss.