Samsung Unpack

This week Samsung held its Unpacked event and presented new phones:

Samsung Galaxy S20 & S20+

The successors to S10 model have following specification:

• 6.2-inch 120Hz QHD+ OLED display in S20,
• 6.7-inch 120Hz QHD+ OLED display in S20+,
• Snapdragon 865 CPU,
• 12GB of RAM,
• 128GB of storage + microSD in S20,
• 128 or 512 GB of storage + microSD in S20+,
• 10MP Selfie camera,
• Triple (12+64+12MP) rear camera system,
• 5G compatible,
• 4000mAh battery in S20 & 4500mAh in S20+.

Samsung Galaxy S20 starts at $999,  and S20+ starts at $1199. Both will be available on March 6th.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra

Samsung also revealed the premium model in S20 lineup.

• 6.9-inch 120Hz QHD+ OLED display,
• Snapdragon 865 CPU,
• 12GB or 16GB of RAM,
• 128GB or 512GB of storage + microSD in S20+,
• 40MP Selfie camera
• Triple (108+48+12MP) rear camera system with additional depth camera,
• 5G compatible,
• 5000mAh battery.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra starts at $1399, and will be available on March 6th.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip

Samsung presented another foldable phone -  Galaxy Z Flip,  but it's not a successor to Galaxy Fold. Here is the spec:

• 6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED main display,
• 1.1-inch Super AMOLED cover Display,
• Snapdragon 855+ CPU,
• 8GB of RAM,
• 256GB of storage,
• 10MP Selfie camera,
• Dual 12MP rear camera system,
• 3300mAh battery.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip costs $1,380 and launched on February 14th.

Xiaomi Mi 10

Despite of the Coronavirus outbreak in China, Xaomi managed to launch, at online-only event, the new flagship phones - Xiaomi Mi 10 & Mi 10Pro. Here is the spec of presented devices:

• 6.67-inch 90Hz AMOLED display,
• Snapdragon 865 CPU,
• 8 or 12GB of RAM,
• 128GB or 256GB of storage in Mi 10,
• 256GB or 512 of storage in Mi 10 Pro,
• 20MP Selfie camera
• Quad (108+12+8+20MP) rear camera system in Mi 10,
• Quad (108+12+2+2MP) rear camera system in Mi 10 Pro,
• 5G compatible,
• 4780mAh battery in Mi 10 & 4500mAh in Mi 10 Pro.

Xiaomi Mi 10 starts at ~$575 and will be available in China from February 14. Xiaomi Mi 10Pro  starts at ~$715 and will be available in China from February 18.

$450 production cost of PlayStation 5

According to Bloomberg manufacturing costs of the PlayStation 5 are around $450 per unit. The biggest reason for higher cost is limited supply and high prices of DRAM and NAND flash memories.

Dope links

• Swift Playgrounds for macOS
• Swift Package framework creation in Xcode
• How to Send Push Notifications to the iOS Simulator
• Full Stack Open 2019 - Deep Dive Into Modern Web Development
• GraphQL is Not "Better" Than REST
• What to Choose Between Gridsome and NuxtJS
• The guide to write universal, SSR-ready Vue components
• A Vue powered design tool that... exports Vue components
• Create a Reading Scroll Progress Bar for Your Blog in JavaScript and CSS
• How I recreated a Polaroid camera with CSS gradients only
• Spider-Man Developers Want More People to Know How Games Are Written
• Third Row Tesla Podcast – Elon Musk's Story - Director's Cut

Image credits: Samsung

Interesting links

• Upcoming Browser Behavior Changes: What Developers Need to Know
• CSS position explained
• Print to CSS
• Case Study: lynnandtonic.com 2019 refresh
• Large-scale Vuex application structures
• How to Boost Vue.js Performance
• Animating Vue with GreenSock
• Faster way to download and install Xcode
• Combine and SwiftUI views
• UIKit, SwiftUI, LiveView, How to use Live Preview in UIKit!
• Hacking SwiftUI for Unit Testing and Runtime Inspection
• Modern Networking in Swift 5 with URLSession, Combine and Codable
• Ink - A fast and flexible Markdown parser written in Swift
• Comparing Backend Frameworks written in Java, Swift and Go
• Deconstructing a git commit
• Remote work benefits I never considered
• The Making of STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order - Documentary
• I Created the Tesla Cyber Truck in 1 Minute
• Aston Martin Red Bull Racing's Zero Gravity Pit Stop - Movie & Making of

Image credits: Pro Church Media

Tesla Cybertruck

Tesla has revealed its new car. This time it is,  Blade Runner inspired, electric pickup truck called Cybertruck. There will be 3 versions available:

• Single motor rear-wheel drive with 250 miles of range, 7500-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 6.5 seconds. Starting at $39900.
• Dual motor all-wheel drive with 300 miles of range, 10,000-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 4.5 seconds. Starting at $49900.
• Triple motor all-wheel drive with 500 miles of range, 14,000-pound towing capacity, and 0-60 mph in under 2.9 seconds. Starting at $69900.

All models are made of ultra-strong glass and polymer-layered composite that can withstand even bullets.  Also, all versions come with Autopilot, but "self-driving" costs additional $7000.

Cybertruck is available to preorder, but first models won't be delivered until late 2021.

Interesting links

• Understanding CORS
• You can create these elements without JavaScript
• Easily switch to Composition API in Vue.js 3
• Audio Processing for Dummies
• How to write a commit message
• Apple has locked me out of my developer account
• The future of my games on Apple (post-Catalina) and what this means for art games in general
• Microsoft Flight Simulator - Official Gameplay Trailer

Image credits: Tesla

Pixel 4

Google just tweeted an image of the Pixel 4, a phone that has not been officially announced and will not ship until October. This is probably Google's answer to a lot of leaks surrounding this phone. It might be unusual, but in my opinion, it is very smart move. As people already saw the phone, they might as well see it in high definition photo.

Also there another aspect of this "leak". As you can see, the new Pixel 4 has square camera bump, almost the same as new iPhone suppose to have. I'm wondering whether Google is trying to say, hey we were first.

iPhone 2020

We didn't even get this year's iPhone, but we already have rumors about its successor. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is planning to release 3 models:

• High-end 5.4' with OLED display and 5G,
• High-end 6.7' with OLED display and 5G,
• Low-end 6.1' with OLED display.

It looks like the equivalent of the current iPhone XS will be downsized, where equivalent of the iPhone XS Max will be even bigger. The XR model will be untouched in terms of size, but it will gain the OLED display.

To be honest, I don't like those changes. The current size of the iPhone XS is perfect for me, and I don't want to get neither bigger or smaller phone.  

New MacBooks

The Eurasian Economic Commission database is amazing source if you want to know what companies are planing to release. This time the information about several models of portable computers from Apple have pop up.  

As 15' MacBook Pros have already been refreshed, it means that probably the 12' MacBook, MacBook Air or even 13' MacBook Pro are going to get the update.  Also, there are rumors about brand new 16' MacBook Pro, but I personally doubt we are going to see it this year.

Interesting links

• Vue 3.0: What Evan You & Chris Fritz Say You Should Expect
• Vue 3 will change Vue in a big way - Current Syntax to be deprecated - Composition functions will eventually be the only way to build Vue components
• Vue's Darkest Day
• How to Design for the Web in 2019
• Rendering SwiftUI views to HTML
• An Introduction to Flutter
• Always be closing!
• An oral history of the hamburger icon (from the people who were there)
• I turned my Tesla into a pickup truck

Image credits: Google

This week World Wide Web turned 30 years old :). I think when Tim Berners-Lee created first WWW site, he didn't know how much he would change the world. Today it is in the center of our life. It's not only a source of information or entertainment. We shop there, we trust our savings in electronic bank. We not only earn money over Internet, but sometimes we even trust it with our lives.
Without a doubt world would not be the same without the WWW. Let's only hope that personal agendas of the politicians won't destroy it.

This week Tesla completed their S3XY car lineup with the brand new model Y. This model is a compact SUV, but it doesn't look like one. It's basically a bigger version of Model 3. The new car will be available in 2020 with price starting at $39,000 for model with 230 miles range. The 300 miles range model will cost $49,000 and the Performance version will cost $60,000.
SUVs are one of the most popular cars out there. We will see whether the people are interested enough in the electric one to boost Tesla's position on the market.

Apple finally announced the WDDC 2019. This year, conference will take place in the first week of June (3rd - 7th) in San Jose. This year's conference should be the interesting one. Of course we will get our first glimpse at iOS 13 and macOS 15. But I think we, as developers, are all waiting for more details about project Marzipan, as well as long awaited Mac Pro and maybe even rumored new MacBook Pro.

Microsoft announced that Windows will be able uninstall broken updates. This is the good step forward, especially after issues with last October update, but I'm wondering how fast we will see reports about this tool making even more harm than good.

Thats all for this week. If you want more, here is the list of interesting things.

The iOS Dev Directory

Ralph Küpper - Running Small Microservices in Swift on Production Environment

A little thread on generating and rendering a procedural trajectory mesh

Creating the Blockade Runner Engine Look for Rogue One

Designing Star Wars: Star Wars Resistance

Someone is recreating Star Wars: Dark Forces... in Unreal Engine 4

Real-Time AR Self-Expression with Machine Learning

A JavaScript-Free Frontend

Learning React Hooks by building a game - react.games Preview

Direct uploads to AWS S3 from the browser (crazy performance boost)

10 Programming Terms in Normal Human Language

Image credits: Pixabay.