The Morning After: What is Sony’s smartphone plan?

I’m not sure what’s in Sony’s playbook when it comes to selling its phones in the US. Take the Xperia 5 III. After launching in other regions last year, the phone is only now available stateside for $1,000. This is its middle-ish high-end phone, with the flagship Xperia 1 series of smartphones (seen above) both bigger and pricier.

Sony

For that price, this Xperia does have things to offer. The autofocus tricks, courtesy of Sony’s camera arm, are often impressive. The Xperia 5 III can also record 4K video at up to 120 fps; it’s a camera-first smartphone designed for folks who are really into photography or video. But, well, that’s true of all of Sony’s recent phones. And if you’re dying for truly cutting-edge smartphone photography, perhaps the Xperia Pro-I, with a 1-inch camera sensor, would fulfill the brief more clearly. It’s… only $800 more — further evidence of Sony’s smartphone prices feeling entirely separate from its competitors.

— Mat Smith

Sony A7 IV camera review

A powerhouse of a hybrid camera

Engadget

Sony’s A7 IV is a successful followup to its popular mainstream A7 III. Resolution is up considerably to 33 megapixels, and image quality is much improved overall. Video is now on par with rivals with 4K at up to 60p with 10 bit 4:2:2 quality. Autofocus is incredible for both video and stills, and the in-body stabilization does a good job. The biggest drawbacks are the relatively high price and the rolling shutter that limits use of the electronic shutter. Steve Dent puts the newest, best Sony camera to the test. (And I guest star as a voice-over talent.)

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Comcast tests the first multigigabit cable modem

But will you get full use of that bandwidth?

Comcast has successfully tested the first 10G modem capable of multigigabit speeds. The Broadcom-built prototype can provide download and upload bandwidth topping 4Gbps. At those speeds, downloading all 61 gigs of Call of Duty: Vanguard for PC would take just over two minutes.

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‘Baby Shark’ is the first YouTube video to reach 10 billion views

Sorry, everyone.

YouTube

Doop doop doop doop doop doop. Times 10 billion.

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This is the beginning of the end for the Xbox One

Microsoft is no longer making the consoles.

We learned in July 2020 that Microsoft had discontinued the Xbox One X and Xbox One S Digital Edition. Now, it has emerged the company also quietly stopped making the Xbox One S by the end of that year, “to focus on the production of Xbox Series X/S,” according to Xbox’s senior director of console product marketing.

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Woman sentenced to prison for stealing 3,000 iPods intended for students

The employee also filed fraudulent tax returns to try to cover up her actions.

Kristy Stock was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for her role in a scheme to steal and resell more than 3,000 iPods intended for Native American students. The charges against Stock included both tax fraud and transportation of stolen goods. Stock was supposed to use federal grant money to buy iPods to distribute to students. However, thanks to help from other conspirators James Bender and Saurabh Chawla, the group ended up shipping the stolen iPods to Maryland where they were listed on eBay before being sold at a “substantial” markup.

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Facebook, Google, Twitter and Reddit subpoenaed over January 6th insurrection

Company responses so far have been ‘inadequate,’ according to the committee.

Facebook owner Meta, Google, Twitter and Reddit have been subpoenaed by the Congressional select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol. Two key questions for the select committee are how the spread of misinformation and violent extremism contributed to the violent attack on our democracy, and what steps — if any — social media companies took to prevent their platforms from being breeding grounds for radicalizing people to violence,” committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said.

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