U.S. wireless carrier Sprint's parent company, SoftBank Group, is reportedly looking to back out of merger talks with T-Mobile after company executives raised concerns over losing control of the resulting entity.
(AppleInsider.com): Helping to support Apple's accuracy claims, a video published on Tuesday shows the iPhone X's Face ID system reacting as intended, even when confronted with identical twins.
In the beginning of the video, posted by Business Insider, one of the twins tries on sunglasses, a hat, a scarf, and then all three, challenging Apple's assertions that Face ID can ignore those changes. The phone passes all four tests.
When confronted with both twins sans any accessories, the phone unlocks for one of them but not the other, despite there being little difference between the two people.
"I was pretty shocked that the iPhone X could really pick apart the details between me and my brother considering some of our own family members can't tell us apart," one of the twins comments. "So, yeah, it was a pleasant surprise knowing that Brian can't break into my iPhone X and I can't break into my brother's."
Face ID depends on the X's TrueDepth camera, which incldes a dot projector, an infrared sensor, and an infrared flood illuminator. Apple has also claimed that it can't be fooled by photos or masks, and will adapt not just to accessories but aging and facial hair.
To see the video, click here.
“Apple has reportedly dismissed an engineer after his daughter’s iPhone X hands-on video went viral on YouTube,” Tom Warren reports for The Verge. “Brooke Amelia Peterson published a vlog earlier this week, which included a trip to the Apple campus to visit her father and see an unreleased iPhone X.”
“Peterson now claims her father has been fired as a result of her video,” Warren reports. “In a tearful video, Peterson explains her father violated an Apple company rule by allowing her to film the unreleased handset at Apple’s campus.”
“The video itself may have seemed like an innocent hands-on, but it did include footage of an iPhone X with special employee-only QR codes,” Warren reports. “A notes app was also shown on the iPhone X in the video, which appeared to include codenames of unreleased Apple products. Filming on Apple’s campus is strictly prohibited, so filming an unreleased iPhone X is a definite rule violation.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Demand for the iPhone X has been ‘off the charts,’ according to Apple, which led to the new device selling out in a matter of minutes,” Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch. “Because of the scarcity of the hotly anticipated device, sellers have been scalping their pre-order confirmations on eBay, hoping to cash in on consumer demand.”
“According to the latest figures from eBay, there were more than 1,200 listings posted on its site within 45 minutes of the pre-sales opening at 12 midnight PT today,” Perez reports. “We ran an ‘iPhone X’ search now, and found more than 4,480 live listings, the majority being ‘Buy It Now’ offers instead of auctions.”
“While it’s too soon to say what the average selling price is — that will require more sales data over a longer period of time to be accurate — eBay says most of the listings appear to be in the $1,500 price range… (The $1,500 price range appears to apply to the 64GB iPhone X, from what we’re seeing.),” Perez reports. “eBay will continue to track iPhone X sales over the weekend, and we’ll update if and when the company has more data to share.”
Read more in the full article here.
