Few investors have as deep a knowledge of the U.S. and Chinese markets as Hans Tung.
For over a decade the prodigious investor (now with GGV Capital) has been racking up the miles on flights between San Francisco, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Beijing and New York in search of startups that can span the Pacific divide as readily as he does.
Over time, that’s led to a portfolio that includes Sino-American sweetheart deals in companies like the multi-billion-dollar retailer, Wish; the recently acquired social media sensation musical.ly; and the Shanghai social and recommendation service Xiaohongshu; along with U.S.-centric investments like OfferUp and Poshmark.
Onstage at Disrupt, Tung will be joined by Yi Wang, the founder of the artificial intelligence-powered education Chinese education dynamo, LingoChamp (Liulishuo), to discuss the technologies and techniques that continue to power a cross-border technology revolution even in tumultuous times.
There could be no better pairing to lead us along the path that winds from the glass and steel campuses of Silicon Valley to the glass and steel office towers of Beijing’s technology parks.
Join us to hear how artificial intelligence is drawing investment dollars on both sides of the Pacific, and how companies are bridging the political divide with compelling new technologies.
It’s sure to be one helluva conversation.
The full agenda is here. You can purchase tickets here.
Note 9 rumors have been a bit of a free-for-all in the lead up to today’s big event. Samsung did manage, however, to do a slightly better job keep today’s big wearable news under wraps. We’d heard a few rumors up to this point, but the details have been pretty sketchy. As rumored, the new device is, indeed, the Galaxy Watch, bucking the Gear naming convention.
On the face of it, the new device features most of the same features as the Gear, including the circular bezel, which doubles as a control — one of the primary features the line has going for it versus Apple’s offering. The Galaxy Watch also comes in two different sizes, a decided improvement over early Samsung watches, which were entirely too large for many wrists.
No specifics yet on battery size, though the company says the new wearable should get “several days on a single charge,” an impressive claim, if true, and certainly of of the major pitfalls in the smartwatch world. For those times when you do need to refill, there’s that new Wireless Charging Duo, which can handle a Galaxy mobile device and watch at the same time.
Unlike previous rumors, the Galaxy Watch appears to still be running Tizen, rather than Android Wear.
Update: Samsung says the Watch will be available in the United States on August 24 before launching in additional markets over the following weeks. The 42 millimeter version of the Watch will be available for $329.99, while the 46 millimeter version will be available for $349.99.
Also, Samsung’s announcement confirms that the Watch will still be running Tizen.
Remember those rumors that Samsung would be working to keep costs of its new flagships at reasonable levels? Yeah, no such luck, bucko. The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 starts at $999.95. That will get you the base-level model, with an admittedly generous 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM.
The next SKU up will really make the eyeballs pop out of your head like a Tex Avery cartoon, however. At launch, the company’s offering up two models — the premium version gets you 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, which, as the company notes, is “1TB ready,” via expandable storage.
After all, 512GB microSD cards are out there. Granted, that’ll run you $350, but it seems safe to assume that you’re made of money if you’re speccing out a 1TB Galaxy Note. As for the phone itself, that costs a mere $1,249.99. The premium isn’t really a huge shocker, however — SSD is pricey.
That specific SKU will only be available from a select number of retailers — probably not a surprise given that it’s destined to be a niche item. It also will be available directly from Samsung, along with select carriers, including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and U.S. Cellular,
Remember AirPower? Apple had big plans for the charging mat when it was launched nearly a year ago. Since then, however, the iPhone/Apple Watch/AirPod accessory has been MIA for reasons no one outside of the Cupertino spaceship is entirely sure of.
Today’s at the big Note 9 event in Brooklyn, Samsung unveiled its own take on the tech. Granted, it’s perhaps less ambitious than Apple’s place it anywhere approach to charging, but at very least, there seems the very real possibility that it may still launch ahead of the competition.
The Wireless Charging Duo has two distinct surfaces: one for Galaxy handsets and the other for the company’s smartwatch. The upright design on the former means users can stand it up next to a bedside and use it as an alarm. It’s a slightly healthier habit than actually sleeping with the phone (writes the guy who woke up this morning on top of his own phone as the alarm was going off).
Of course, we know that the Note 9 is making its debut on-stage today (along with practically ever other piece of information about the thing), but the device may also pave the way for the anticipated release of the Galaxy Watch. The new mystery wearable could either launch today, or at IFA in a few weeks, which has traditionally been the stage for the company’s smartwatch announcements.
Samsung’s new S-Pen isn’t just a multi-colored stylus anymore.
With the upgrade to the new Samsung Galaxy Note 9, the S-Pen gets its own reboot, and now functions as a remote control for Samsung’s latest offering.
With the inclusion of Bluetooth low energy inside the S-Pen, users can now untether themselves from the phone. With a click of the pen, folks can take pictures, advance slideshows or pause and play music.
The stylus includes a super capacitor to charge when it’s not being used in the slot. The company thinks the stylus should get 30 minutes of standby time with 40 seconds of charging.
Aesthetically, things are changing with the S-Pen now, as well. There are some new colors, with neon-yellow and purple styluses on offer, which write on off-screen memos in the color that matches their design.
Developers also can incorporate the BLE functionality into their apps later this year, the company said.
Everything you thought you knew about the Galaxy Note 9… well, it’s pretty spot on, honestly.
Between the images, promo videos, teasers and that image of Samsung CEO DJ Koh using the damn phone out in public, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the company simply embraced the leaks in hopes of generating a little extra excitement ahead of launch during these (excruciatingly hot) dog days of summer.
As expected, little has changed aesthetically this time out — and that’s just fine. There are a couple of new colors, a shifted fingerprint sensor and a screen that’s larger by a fraction of an inch, which is perhaps why the aforementioned C-level executive thought he’d be able to go unnoticed. That’s all perfectly fine, of course — it’s probably too much to expect some radical design departure with each subsequent generation by the time you’re on number nine or so.
Really, like the S9 before it, the new Note isn’t a radical departure in any respect. The latest version of the industry-defining phablet is more focused on the fundamentals. It’s honestly a welcome change from a company like Samsung that often feels entirely focused on the bells and whistles. More storage, a better camera, an improved S-Pen and a considerably larger battery are all on-board this time out.
Which isn’t to say there aren’t any new whistles or bells, of course. This is Samsung, of course.
In a briefing, Samsung referred to the Note line as “our innovation brand,” a nod to the fact that it’s regularly been the first device to receive many now standard Galaxy features — see: the Edge display (curving screen), S-Pen, giant screen, dual-camera. If there’s one new feature that stands out, however, it’s actually that larger battery, which now measures 4,000mAh hours — that’s a 700mAh jump over its predecessor.
That’s great news, of course. Samsung doesn’t have any official hour estimates to share at the moment, and is instead still calling it an “all day” battery — though the vast majority of users should be able to squeeze out more than that with standard usage. The real significance of all of this likely won’t be lost on anyone who’s been paying even the slightest bit of attention to the mobile industry over the past couple of years.
The Note 9 marks the first significant battery capacity increase since the Note 7’s exploding lithium-ion led to two separate recalls for the company. Naturally, Samsung’s on the offensive about this one, noting the eight-point safety check the company instituted when the literal and figurative smoke cleared with the Note 7. The company subjected the phone to external scrutiny from UL.
“What we want to do is a tempered approach to innovation any time,” Samsung’s director of Product Strategy and Marketing told TechCrunch, “so this was the right time to increase the battery to meet consumer needs.”
Of course, the company had to consider both the pragmatic concerns over battery combustion, along with the optics of rushing too quickly to push the bounds of capacity. There was, after all, a general notion that the company had flown too close to the sun on this one. As such, battery life has stagnated on the last several Galaxy phones.
As the initial invites for today’s event suggested, the S-Pen also gets a lot of love this time out, featuring the most significant upgrades since the stylus was announced all the way back in 2011. The most obvious difference: the striking new colors. The image on the invite was, indeed, a closeup of a neon yellow stylus. There’s a purple one, too — each writing on the off-screen memos in a color that matches their design.
The real differentiator here, however, is the inclusion of Bluetooth low energy inside the S-Pen, which allows it to function as a remote. That, of course, requires a battery, so the stylus now includes a super capacitor so it charges when it’s in the slot. Samsung says it should get around 30 minutes of standby time with 40 seconds of charging. Mileage will vary, of course, but given the fact that it will effectively be charging whenever it’s not in use, that shouldn’t be an issue.
The new S-Pen can be used to control things like the camera, slideshows and music playback. In Spotify and Google Music, one click of the button does Play/Pause and two clicks advance the trick. There’s no back, but there’s really only so much one can do with a single button. In photo mode, it can be used as a shutter, with a double-click flipping the camera around for a selfie.
The functionality will only be available for a select number of apps at launch, but the company’s going to be opening up the SDK for developers. There also will be some level of customization available in the settings, so users can designate different functions.
Here’s what you’re working with as far as camera hardware:
Rear: Dual Camera with Dual OIS (Optical Image Stabilization)
Wide-angle: Super Speed Dual Pixel 12MP AF, F1.5/F2.4, OIS
Telephoto: 12MP AF, F2.4, OIS
2X optical zoom, up to 10X digital zoom
Front: 8MP AF, F1.7
The biggest change on the imaging side is software, however. Scene Optimizer is similar to technologies we’ve seen on recent flagships from companies like HTC. The system uses an on-board AI process (no cloud connection required) to determine what you’re taking a photo of. There are 20 categories, all told, including Night, Snow, Street Scene, Birds, Indoors, Text, Food, Pets, Flowers and Sunset. Once the system has decided what it’s shooting, it adjusts the white balance, color and saturation accordingly.
I was only able to try it on a limited number of objects during a brief hands-on, but it worked well with things like flowers and a plate of food, really highlighting colors in the process. You can’t actually manually override the system to choose one of the aforementioned 20 scenes, but if you’re getting a false positive, you can just shut the thing off.
Even more compelling is Flaw Detection, which points out when you’ve messed up. The system will notify you if a shot is blurry, if there’s a smudge on the screen, if the subject blinked or if backlighting is making everything look crappy.
Spec-wise, we’re talking a 2960×1440 (516ppi) display, Octa-core Snapdragon 845 and 6 or 8GB of RAM, running Android Oreo.
Oh, and then there’s storage. The Note 9 comes with beefy 128GB, standard. If you really want to go all-in, there’s also a 512GB version, which, as Samsung notes, makes the device “1TB ready,” when you factor in the expandable 512GB microSD that exists for the the price of a mid-tier smartphone (PNY’s is $350 right now). Oh, and speaking of money.
Take a deep breath.
Samsung had suggested early on that it was going to attempt to rein in the cost on this one. Maybe next generation. The 128GB model runs $999.99. The 512GB version will set you back $1,249.99. Both are available starting August 24, with pre-order starting August 10. The latter will be limited to “select retail locations and carrier sites, including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and U.S. Cellular.
The Note 9 comes in Ocean Blue and Lavender Purple, which ship with a purple and yellow stylus, respectively. And yes, there’s a headphone jack.
It understandable took a few years for Samsung to get back on the horse, but the company is finally read to push the limits of battery life yet again. Announced today at an event in Brooklyn, the Note 9 presents a considerable jump in battery capacity over its predecessor, jumping 700mAh to a beefy 4,000mAh. That’s the biggest ever for the line.
The on-going Note 7 saga did have some upsides for the company, forcing its hand into launching one of the industry’s most comprehensive battery testing procedures. Naturally, that eight-point battery test was a centerpiece of today’s big event, noting that while the company was pushing the boundaries yet again, it’s still doing its due diligence.
The last several Galaxy device launches opted not to make battery a priority, focusing instead on things like camera AI, while keep capacity more or less the same.
“What we want to do is a tempered approach to innovation any time,” Samsung’s director of Product Strategy and Marketing told TechCrunch ahead of the event, “so this was the right time to increase the battery to meet consumer needs.”
Samsung’s internal testing are still in place here, along with with some third-party testing from organizations like UL. By waiting long enough to push the limits, the company has pulled off an impressive feat — turning its misstep into good. While the on-going issue would have been enough to take down a lesser company, the phenomenon didn’t make a dent in the hardware company’s bottom line.
Waiting a couple of years has allowed the company to put the whole thing in the rearview mirror, while positioning itself as one the industry’s most thoughtful and cautious manufacturers. All that and the device gets an admittedly impressive 4,000mAh battery, which should more than get you through the day.
It’s true, Fortnite is coming to Android this summer. We’ve known that for sure since May. There is, however, one key caveat (aside from that whole no Google Play bit): The obscenely popular sandbox survival game will launch on Google’s mobile OS as a Samsung exclusive.
The Epic title will be available for Galaxy users with an S7 or higher (Note 9, S9, Note 8, S8, S7,S7 Edge). Those with a Galaxy Tab S4 and S3 will get a crack it it, as well). That, naturally, includes the new Note 9, which the company is positioning as something of a mobile gaming powerhouse.
The specs are certainly impressive, and the 6.4-inch screen should lend itself well to portable gaming. There’s also a new Water Carbon Cooling system on board, to help keep the handset from overheating from more resource-intensive tasks. The new tech improves the liquid cooling system the company has had on-board its Galaxy devices since the S7.
Starting today, the title will appear on Galaxy devices’ game launcher, remaining an Android exclusive until the 12th — at which point, one imagines, it will become more widely available for the rest of Android users. As with the rest of the versions of the title (the PS4’s issues aside), the game will support multi-platform crossplay.
To celebrate the deal, those who pre-order the Note 9 will be able to choose between free AKG noise cancelling headphones or a device with a 15,000 V-bucks — the in-game equivalent to to $150 of our regular people dollars. All Note 9 and Tab S4 users will also get access to a Fortnite Galaxy skin (see: above), which is unique to those devices.
Facebook — under fire for the role it has played in helping spread misinformation through its social media platform — has been turning its attention to more positive applications of its tools, such as strengthening communities, fundraising for good causes, and maybe even finding The One. Today comes the latest in that list: the company today announced the official launch of Mentorships, a free service that will pair people who need help or guidance with those who can provide it.
Mentorships will start first with a focus on mentoring opportunities within specific Groups. This is a sizeable opportunity in itself, with collectively about 200 million Group members across the social network. Facebook’s product manager for Groups, be extending the feature to a smaller selection of Groups before inviting participants more widely.
When we first spotted Facebook testing Mentorships nearly a year ago, we’d guessed it would be a service focused on career advancement, coming as it did so soon after Facebook made a move into job listings and LinkedIn launching its own mentoring features. As it turned out, an early pilot of the service was announced during Facebook’s Social Good Forum, where the initial users were iMentor, a mentoring group focused on first-generation college students, and the International Rescue Committee.
It’s the latter social good angle — helping provide guidance to people in need or for educational purposes rather than straight career coaching — that Facebook is going to focus on initially as the Mentorship service proceeds into a more widely available format.
Early users of the mentorship feature include Mama Dragons, a group focused on providing support to Mormon parents of LGBTQIA children; and a group focused on learning how to make soap. (Yes, soap.) Mentorship product manager Gabriel Cohen said that the kind of help that mentors will be providing will vary widely, from helping new Group members “learn the ropes” in the Group, through to providing more direct support and guidance in whatever the specific area might be.
For now, there is no element of payment involved in the service. “People are doing this out of a spirit of volunteering,” Mentorship product manager Gabriel Cohen said in an interview.
Interestingly, in this first iteration, Facebook is banking the administration and running of mentorships not only around specific Groups, but Group administrators. That is to say, it’s up to Group admins to decide whether they would like to enable mentorships within their communities, and then it’s also up to them to pair people together, and make the introductions. Thereafter, they can communicate through a guided program set up by Facebook — which provides some guidance on how to proceed and check in with each other — or directly through Messenger.
Cohen said that in its early conversations with those trying out the Mentorship feature that so far, admins seem to be okay with doing the heavy lifting, although there has been some feed back that points to Facebook over time providing more tools to help things along, whether it be in providing some recommendations on pairings or simply helping connect users in a more automated way.
“We are relying on them to make these matches, but I think there are opportunities to simplify the effort they need to make,” he said. “It takes a lot of work to maintain a community well and we don’t want to burden them more.”
But you can see why Facebook is taking this more manual route, at least at first: the company has been treading a fine line when it comes to how it uses algorithms to curate and facilitate communication on its platform. Some of that has not worked in its favor when it comes to other areas like news, and the company has made a deep swing to bringing in more people into the mix to set things aright. Introducing algorithms now could be a misstep that’s not worth it to make, especially since the ethos is supposed to be about connecting people directly.
Over time, Cohen said that the idea will be to expand Mentorships to more areas — essentially as many as there are Groups on the platform. These could cover not just parenting and soap-making, but fitness, support groups of survivors of violence or other disasters, and more.
And yes, he didn’t rule out having mentors appear alongside Facebook’s efforts in job listings, too.
“If we are looking for job searches outside of our the immediate networks, mentors can really help,” he said. “We do want to take advantage of this in the future. Jobs seems like a logical place to have this.”
Amazon this morning announced the launch of a toolkit for developers that will allow them to integrate Alexa into cars’ infotainment systems. The “Alexa Auto SDK” is available now on GitHub, and includes all the core Alexa functions like streaming media, smart home controls, weather reports, and support for Alexa’s tens of thousands of third-party skills. It will also add new features just for auto users, like navigation and search, Amazon says.
The source code and function libraries will be in C++ and Java, allowing the vehicles to process audio inputs and triggers, then connect with the Alexa service, and handle the Alexa interactions.
In addition, Amazon is offering a variety of sample apps, build scripts, and documentation supporting Android and QNX operating systems on ARM and x86 processor architectures.
The SDK will allow for streaming media from Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and Audible, for the time being, and will allow customers to place calls by saying the contact’s name or phone number. These will be launched over the native calling service in the vehicle.
Plus, it can tap into a native turn-by-turn navigation system, when customers specify an address or point of interest, or if they cancel the navigation.
A local search feature lets customers search for restaurants, movie theaters, grocery stores, hotels, and other business, and navigate to the location.
This is not the first time Alexa has come to cars, by any means. Amazon has been working with car makers like Ford, BMW, SEAT, Lexus andToyota, who have been integrating the voice assistant into select vehicles. Alexa is also available in older cars through a variety of add-on devices, like those from Anker, Muse (Speak Music), Garmin, and Logitech, for example.
With this SDK, Amazon is opening the voice assistant to other developers building for auto, who don’t yet have a relationship with Amazon.
