Xiaomi has announced the Mi Mix 3, the latest entry in its series of full-screen flagship phones. It’s yet another high-end Chinese device with a huge screen-to-body ratio achieved by hiding the front-facing cameras on a sliding mechanism — no notch required. Unlike the Vivo Nex or Oppo Find X, however, the slider isn’t powered by motors. CEO Lei Jun compares the design to older sliding phones and suggests that it’ll be relaxing just to play with.
The previous two Mi Mix phones were both pioneering attempts by Xiaomi to reduce the bezels around the screen as much as possible, but they predated the now-ubiquitous notch and compromised by awkwardly placing the selfie camera below the screen, forcing you to hold the phone upside-down or deal with an unflattering angle. Even Xiaomi itself adopted the notch earlier this year with the Mi 8. But the Mi Mix 3 preserves the spirit of the series while seemingly fixing one of its bigger flaws.
Xiaomi claims a screen-to-body ratio of 93.4 percent, and has cut down on the “chin” at the bottom of the display by nearly 4.5 millimeters compared to the Mi Mix 2S.

Specs-wise, the Mi Mix 3 moves the series to OLED with a 6.4-inch 1080p panel. There are four cameras in total: 12-megapixel wide-angle and telephoto modules on the back, and a 24-megapixel selfie camera backed by a 2-megapixel sensor on the front. The phone has a fingerprint sensor on the back, so unlike the Oppo Find X you don’t have to pop the cameras up every time you want to unlock it.
As with basically every other high-end Android phone this year, the Mi Mix 3 has a Snapdragon 845 processor, but breaks new memory grounds by including up to 10GB of RAM. Xiaomi is also bundling the phone with a 10W wireless charger. A 5G version is set for release in Europe early next year.
The Mi Mix 3 starts at 3,299 yuan ($475) for a model with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage; that’s the same base price that the 64GB Mi 2S launched at. 3,999 yuan ($575) gets you 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The 10GB model is a “Forbidden City Palace Museum” special edition variant that comes with 256GB of storage and costs 4,999 yuan ($720). Pricing for India and other markets should be announced soon.

Source: http://tz2d.me/?c=h9B

The Honor Magic 2 won’t be formally announced for a week, but that isn’t stopping the Huawei sub-brand from releasing a bunch of photos and video of the new flagship device. As we knew, the Magic 2 features a sliding mechanism that hides the front-facing cameras behind the screen, averting the need for a display notch in similar fashion to high-end phones from Chinese compatriots like Oppo and Vivo.
The official pictures also reveal the device’s rear design, which looks extremely similar to the Huawei P20 Pro — it has the same triple-camera setup and comes in a couple of equally iridescent colorways. From leaks, we’re expecting the Magic 2 to have a 6.39-inch 2340 x 1080 OLED display, an in-display fingerprint sensor, and Huawei’s new Kirin 980 processor.
Stay tuned for full details on the Honor Magic 2 when it’s officially announced on October 31st — one day after Apple’s event and two days after OnePlus’. It’s going to be a big week for shiny new objects.

Source: http://tz2d.me/?c=h7P

Amazon’s latest experimental Go convenience store is opening today in San Francisco, adding the Bay Area city as the third after Chicago and Seattle in the company’s ongoing offline retail expansion. The store, located at the corners of California and Battery in the city’s financial district, is modeled much like the five existing locations. It largely serves prepared food, snacks, and drinks, with a focus on Amazon’s own line of sandwiches, salads, and meal kits. But the big innovation is its complete removal of the checkout process.
Instead of standing in line and paying a cashier, cameras and sensors track your movements through the store after you’ve scanned your Amazon account at the front and monitors when you take items off shelves. When you leave, you’re charged for what you’ve taken and given a digital receipt through Amazon’s standalone Go app. I took a tour of the 2,300-square-foot location late last week, when its windows were covered and its existence largely a secret until the San Francisco Chronicle revealed the address on Thursday using property records.
The interior is that of a very nice convenience store, with some seating and microwaves up front for warming up frozen pre-made food and eating in if you so choose. As for checkout, everything worked as advertised. I used the Amazon Go app to walk through a set of automated doors near the front, and from there I picked up an Amazon-made chicken bánh mì sandwich and walked right back out without any hassle.

Photo by Nick Statt / The Verge

The store’s motto is “Good Food Fast,” and the app even tracks how long you spent during each visit as a kind of brag about the efficiency of the cashier-less model. Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of technology for Amazon Go, told me that the core focus of the Go model is to save people time. “How crowded [the store] is no longer is a function of how long it’s going to take,” Kumar told me. With Go stores, the company wants to eliminate the concept of a morning or lunch rush, as well as the notion that you have to restrict what you buy and where you eat based on how much time you have to wait in line, place an order, and wait for it to be prepared.
It’s clear from the layout of the store and its upscale presentation that, at least in San Francisco, Amazon is aggressively targeting delis, cafes, casual lunch spots, and drug stores with its Go model. Stocked at the California Street location is pretty much everything you’d find at a 7-Eleven, with a small and seemingly hand-picked selection of goods you might more readily find at, say, a Walgreens. For instance, you can head to the Go store to purchase a can of Pringles, or maybe some chapstick, and choose from a pretty basic selection of cold medicine. You can also buy bread, milk, and cheese.
Amazon is aggressively targeting delis, cafes, lunch spots, and drug stores
But the focus is more on the fresh food. The quality and selection of the ready-to-eat food is designed to be wide-ranging and competitive with the lunch selection in a downtown urban center. Amazon has a staff of workers and a full kitchen in the back of the store, and each day it makes fresh items that you might be willing to pay made-to-order prices for. That includes sushi, breakfast burritos, salads, and an assortment of sandwiches, among other snacks, candy, and desserts.
The company has stocked the store with more expensive ready-to-cook kits from its Blue Apron-style meal service, which were restricted to online ordering until the launch of the first Go store in late 2016. Amazon has also partnered with local third-party restaurants, including bakery La Boulangerie and South Indian restaurant chain Dosa, to flesh out its inventory with pastries, yogurts, hummus, and other options. It even partnered with a local chocolate maker to make a San Francisco-centric brand of Amazon Go chocolate.
Ultimately, Amazon hopes its cashier-less model proves convenient enough, and its food and product selection appealing enough, to draw people away from the tried-and-true chains we’ve become accustomed to. The company is not necessarily trying to replace the 7-Elevens and Walgreens of the world, at least not yet. And a Go store is a far cry from a fast casual restaurant or a traditional restaurant with counter service. Rather, right now it seems like Go stores are an avenue for Amazon to establish a stronger foothold in offline retail, just like its physical bookstores in Seattle and New York City and its acquired Whole Foods locations give it a strategic footprint in groceries and paper books.

Photo by Nick Statt / The Verge

Of course, down the line, Amazon could use its Go model as a way to aggressively expand its brick-and-mortar operation if the stores prove especially successful and capable of handling high volumes of shoppers. Bloomberg reported in September that the company plans to open thousands of locations over the next three years in what would be a remarkable escalation of Amazon’s offline retail rivalry with Walmart, grocery chains, and even the traditional restaurant and fast food industries.
We’re not quite there yet. But Amazon is starting to move faster, and in the process its transforming from an e-commerce giant to a true, do-everything retail operation. The company has already planned its second San Francisco location at a site basically around the corner from its current one, at 98 Post Street. It will be slightly smaller than the first one, and it’s opening this winter, the company says. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Amazon is opening its third Go store at the Illinois Center in 2019. That will bring is total number of stores up to eight, with at least one location planned for New York City some time in the next year.

Source: http://tz2d.me/?c=h53

http://twitter.com/#!/BecketAdams/status/474532322252185602

Scrub-a-dub-dub.

When Brandon Friedman took to Twitter to plant the seeds for another attack on Bowe Bergdahl’s whistle-blowing platoon mates, his bio proudly announced his role as deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

What if [Bergdahl’s] platoon was long on psychopaths and short on leadership?” he tweeted, before calling for everyone to “withhold judgment” about allegations that Bergdahl deserted. “I’m not a fan of such speculation,” he added. Uh huh.

And then Friedman scrubbed his Twitter bio. Here’s the Google cache from Jun 3, 2014:

brandon-friedman-twitter-bio

Here’s how it appears now, after his “blame the platoon” tweets:

brandon-friedman-twitter-bio-new

The Twitter bio still links to Friedman’s Tumblr “About” page, which includes his work for HUD, the Department of Veterans Affairs and VoteVets.org, as well as his U.S. Army service.

http://twitter.com/#!/BecketAdams/status/474541978718572544

Gosh, we wouldn’t want to speculate.

http://twitter.com/#!/seanagnew/status/474544265373429760

Chicago-on-the-Potomac’s attacks on those who served with Bergdahl just get more and more unreal. And yet, is anyone truly shocked?

http://twitter.com/#!/iowahawkblog/status/474527855133880320

"What kind of scum would slander this fine brave patriotic US soldier!"
"His platoon mates."
"And you actually believe those baby killers?"— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 03, 2014

"I need volunteers to call Bergdahl's entire platoon psychopaths."
"Reporting for duty, SIR!"
#WHsuicidemission— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 05, 2014

Related:

Obama administration official Brandon Friedman floats ‘psychopaths’ smear of Bergdahl’s platoon mates

‘Wow!’ And so it begins: White House smears vets, claims ‘swift boating’ of Bergdahl

Read more: http://twitchy.com/2014/06/05/obama-admin-official-scrubs-twitter-bio-after-suggesting-bergdahls-platoon-was-full-of-psychopaths/