It’s Halloween weekend which means it’s time for us to pick our (not so spooky) winner and loser from the last week in tech.
This week has been a relatively quiet one, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to talk about. Sony announced its high-resolution A7R V mirrorless camera, Nothing camera out with some lipstick-inspired earbuds and Apple, Xbox and Snap bashed Meta’s vision of the Metaverse.
We also saw the launch of Bayonetta 3 on the Nintendo Switch and Instax unveiled its Square Link instant printer.
Read on to discover this week’s winner and loser…
Winner: Motorola
This week’s winner is Motorola after the company unveiled the Motorola Razr (2022), a follow-up to its 2019 foldable reimaging of the classic Razr V3.
The 2022 version of the Razr comes with an updated, more modern design (no more is the chin at the bottom of the phone), the flagship Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset and a 3500 mAh battery with 30W TurboPower fast charging.
There’s also a 50-megapixel and 13-megapixel dual camera and support for 8K video, a 32-megapixel front camera, and the highlight of the phone, its 6.7-inch 144Hz foldable touchscreen.
On the front of the phone, there’s a smaller Quick View screen designed to let you glance at your notifications, access controls like music playback and take snaps using the sharp rear camera.
We found the Razr (2022) to be a substantial upgrade over the 2019 model, delivering major upgrades in areas like the design, camera, performance and battery – as long as you’re not bothered about wireless charging or the camera’s limited zoom capabilities, that is.
This is actually Motorola’s second win in a row here in Winners and Losers, with the company earning the title last week for the innovative rollable concept it showcased at parent company Lenovo’s annual Tech World event.
Motorola’s use of cutting-edge display tech in its recent phones and concepts is exciting to see. However, we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see if these moves can return Motorola to its former position as a leading name in mobile.
Loser: Apple
Our loser this week is Apple after the brand seemed to receive a month’s worth of bad news in the space of a week.
First – and perhaps most dire for us consumers – came the Apple One price hike. From this past Monday for new subscribers and 30 days later for current ones, the cost of an Apple One subscription has increased from £14.95/month to £16.95/month.
Likewise, the price of an Apple Music plan has risen from £9.99/month to £10.99/month, while Apple TV+ users will now need to contend with paying £6.99/month instead of £4.99/month.
Of course, Apple isn’t alone here. A number of major streaming services, including Netflix and YouTube, have increased their subscription prices this year, making it seem inevitable that Apple would eventually follow their leads.
According to Apple (via 9to5Mac), this particular price hike is due to an increase in licensing costs and artists will see more money from this move, which is arguably a good thing. However, it’s not ideal that this charge has been passed on to consumers considering how the price of well, everything, is also going up in the same year.
As if ruffling its subscriber’s feathers with a price hike wasn’t enough of a hit for Apple this week, the company was also forced to pull gambling ads from the App Store after it heard complaints for placing the ads in badly thought-out places, including alongside gambling addiction recovery apps and apps aimed at kids.
This all happened in the same week Apple execs seemed to begrudgingly admit that the company would have to comply with the EU’s decision to enforce USB-C as a universal charging standard, meaning the Lightning cable could be no more by 2025.
All-in-all, it’s been a rough week for Apple. Thankfully, its users seem to have come out relatively unscathed as the ads were quickly taken down and the switch to USB-C could easily be seen as a positive for those of us who already have the more widely used cables lying around our homes.
The worst news here is the Apple One price hike which, while very annoying, isn’t entirely surprising.
