Hottest new tech brand in India: Realme announces its first smartwatch and TVs! Realme’s explosive performance in India has made it one of the fastest growing smartphone brands in the world, and today the company is expanding into the nebulous “lifestyle tech” market with products in new categories. First up is Realme’s first smartwatch, imaginatively called the Realme Watch. It has a square design with a 1.4-inch 320x320 LCD display and runs what appears to be a custom version of Android. It can display notifications, control music, hang up phone calls, and do other typical smartwatch things. Realme is claiming 7 to 9 days of battery life from the watch, or 20 days in its power-saving mode. After my experience with the new watch from technological stablemate Oppo, though, I’d want to check that claim for myself. Realme’s watch has much of the same functionality as the fitness band that the brand launched in March, including a heart rate sensor, sleep monitoring, and the India-targeted cricket-tracking mode. The larger screen makes this look more like a Fitbit-style watch, though, and the bands are easily removable if you want to switch up the style. The Realme Watch will cost Rs. 3,999 (~$50) and will be available from Flipkart and Realme.com on June 5th. Next is the Realme Smart TV, a pair of Android TV sets that sees Realme follow smartphone makers like OnePlus and Xiaomi by moving into the TV market in India. There’s a 32-inch 720p option and a 43-inch 1080p model — no 4K option here, though Realme claims the sets support HDR10 and HLG, reaching up to 400 nits of brightness. They use a quad-core MediaTek processor and have Dolby Audio-certified 24W quad speakers. The TVs will go on sale on Realme’s website and on Flipkart on June 2nd. The 43-inch set will sell for Rs. 21,999 ($290) while the 32-inch model is Rs. 12,999 ($170). Other products announced today include the Rs. 2,999 ($40) Realme Buds Air Neo, a better-sounding pair of truly wireless earbuds, along with a new 10,000mAh power bank for Rs. 999 ($13). They’ll both be available today.

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Android 11 is looking to be a huge design overhaul power button menu leaks, showing new smart home Quick Controls Images from leaked developer documentation have just given us our best look yet at Android 11’s new power button menu. The menu can include a series of new smart home shortcuts called “Quick Controls,” which can control everything from smart lights to locks and thermostats, alongside payment options and the standard “Power off” and “Restart” buttons. The images were tweeted out by Mishaal Rahman from XDA-Developers, who credits Twitter user @deletescape as the source of the leaked documents containing the images. We’ve known about these shortcuts since at least March when XDA-Developers reported on their existence, but these latest screenshots give us a better idea of how the overall menu will look. The existing “Power off,” “Restart,” “Screenshot,” and “Emergency” buttons have been relocated to the top of the screen above a shortcut to Google Pay, similar to the one that was added to the Google Pixel back in March. The bulk of the screen, however, is taken up with these smart home controls. Android Police reports that tapping each of them will reportedly toggle the corresponding smart home gadget on or off, and long presses will either give you more options or take you directly to the relevant smart home app. As Rahman notes, one of the images shows that a smart home camera feed could even be embedded directly into this menu. Google was due to officially unveil Android 11 on June 3rd, but it decided to delay the announcement over the weekend. It’s currently unclear when the event will be rescheduled.

Yup, Facebook and Mark are evil. Facebook reportedly ignored its own research showing algorithms divided users An internal Facebook report presented to executives in 2018 found that the company was well aware that its product, specifically its recommendation engine, stoked divisiveness and polarization, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Yet, despite warnings about the effect this could have on society, Facebook leadership ignored the findings and has largely tried to absolve itself of responsibility with regard to partisan divides and other forms of polarization it directly contributed to, the report states. The reason? Changes might disproportionately affect conservatives and might hurt engagement, the report says. “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” one slide from the presentation read. The group found that if this core element of its recommendation engine were left unchecked, it would continue to serve Facebook users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.” A separate internal report, crafted in 2016, said 64 percent of people who joined an extremist group on Facebook only did so because the company’s algorithm recommended it to them, the WSJ reports. FACEBOOK FOUND THAT ITS ALGORITHMS WERE PUSHING PEOPLE TO JOIN EXTREMEST ORGANIZATIONS Leading the effort to downplay these concerns and shift Facebook’s focus away from polarization has been Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of global public policy and former chief of staff under President George W. Bush. Kaplan is a controversial figure in part due to his staunch right-wing politics — he supported Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh throughout his nomination — and his apparent ability to sway CEO Mark Zuckerberg on important policy matters. Kaplan has taken on a larger role within Facebook since the 2016 election, and critics say his approach to policy and moderation is designed to appease conservatives and stave off accusations of bias. Kaplan, for instance, is believed to be partly responsible for Facebook’s controversial political ad policy, in which the company said it would not regulate misinformation put forth in campaign ads by fact-checking them. He’s also influenced Facebook’s more hands-off approach to speech and moderation over the last few years by arguing the company doesn’t want to seem biased against conservatives. The Wall Street Journal says Kaplan was instrumental in weakening or entirely killing proposals to change the platform to promote social good and reduce the influence of so-called “super-sharers,” who tended to be aggressively partisan and, in some cases, so hyper-engaged that they might be paid to use Facebook or might be a bot. Yet, Kaplan pushed back against some of the proposed changes — many of which were crafted by News Feed integrity lead Carlos Gomez Uribe — for fear they would disproportionately affect right-wing pages, politicians, and other parts of the user base that drove up engagement. One notable project Kaplan undermined was called Common Ground, which sought to promote politically neutral content on the platform that might bring people together around shared interests like hobbies. But the team building it said it might require Facebook take a “moral stance” in some cases by choosing not to promote certain types of polarizing content and that the effort could harm overall engagement over time, the WSJ reports. The team has since been disbanded. In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson tells The Verge, “We’ve learned a lot since 2016 and are not the same company today. We’ve built a robust integrity team, strengthened our policies and practices to limit harmful content, and used research to understand our platform’s impact on society so we continue to improve. Just this past February we announced $2M in funding to support independent research proposals on polarization.”

Galaxy Note 20 Plus leaks! renders suggest a slightly bigger screen and much bigger camera bump Last year’s Galaxy Note 10 Plus was truly a thing of beauty, with an amazing screen and superlative industrial design. And, judging by some high-quality (and completely unofficial) renders of the Galaxy Note 20 Plus, it looks like Samsung won’t be changing too much in 2020. The only major difference is a new, bulkier camera module on the rear of the device. These renders come from noted leaker @OnLeaks in collaboration with phone-case maker Pigtou. As with all renders based on leaked CAD drawings, they should be taken with a pinch of salt, but the design they suggest for the Note 20 Plus seems reasonable enough. GRID VIEW 3 of 3 These renders are based on leaked CAD drawings. The most obvious feature is the big, nearly edge-to-edge display, with curved bezels, sloping sides, and a small, central hole-punch cutout for the selfie camera that’s near identical to the 2019 design. The top and bottom edge also look the same as that of the Note 10 Plus, with speaker grille, charging port, and space for the signature S Pen stylus. In terms of size, the Note 20 Plus will reportedly be slightly bigger than the 10 Plus, with a 6.9-inch display instead of last year’s 6.8-inch AMOLED screen, and slightly longer but thinner dimensions, with the same overall width (165mm long, 77.2mm wide, and 7.6mm thick, according to leaks). The most noticeable change, though, is the camera module on the rear of the device, which is much bigger than that of the 2019 Note Plus, according to the renders. In the Note 10 and Note 10 Plus this module was a pretty slim oval containing three lenses, while the flash module was positioned to one side, flush with the case (in the 10 Plus there are two additional divots that supply the phone’s depth-sensing capabilities). But the Note 20 renders show a larger, more rectangular module that apparently integrates all these components — lenses and assorted gubbins — into a single raised unit. This looks extremely similar to the camera system on this year’s Galaxy S20 Ultra, which was very much designed to show off Samsung’s photography abilities. The S20 Ultra’s module contained five lenses sporting up to 108 megapixels, and a 4x optical zoom that offered solid results up to a 10x zoom with the help of software. There’s a lot to say about that camera system, but check out our full review from February for more information. If the Note 20 and 20 Plus are anything like previous iterations in the series, they’ll contain the best, biggest, and brightest of Samsung’s smartphone specs. So it’s not unreasonable to expect some high-end camera hardware. We’ve not seen any leaked specs for the 2020 Notes, though, so will have to see what surfaces in the months to come. Reports suggest that Samsung will be launching the Note 20 in August, though this will likely be an online-only event as a reaction to the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic. youtu.be/pS8bErtjIDQ

Complete look of Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Plus (based on leaked CAD drawings)

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