Another huge NFT sale was made at Christie’s tonight: collection of almost ten cryptopunks was purchased for $16.9 million. It’s likely the second-largest NFT purchases ever made, falling after Beeple’s sale in March.
CryptoPunks were one of the first NFT projects, and their value skyrocketed as collector’s items. The project, created by Larva Labs in 2017, offered 10,000 small pixel-art portraits of people, zombies, aliens, and apes. Each one was generated by AI-powered tech and has distinguishable attributes, like their hairstyle, glasses, or hat. Some traits are rarer than others, and those tend to make for more valuable CryptoPunks.
CryptoPunks have soared in popularity since NFTs started blowing up in February. Two alien punks sold in March for more than $7.5 million each. Another seven have sold for more than $1 million, all just in the past few months. NFT’s are based on Ethereum cryptocurrency which price skyrocketed this year to 4,300$ at the time of writing this post. Experts are sure – it is mainly thanks to lucrative and popular NFT transactions this year.
But what if someone decides to go against the notch trend? That is exactly what happened with a Samsung flagship model Galaxy S9. On the first sight it looks clean, screen area seems big enough and lack of notch does not make it look “old”. But Martin Hajek, a graphic designer wanted to know how it would look like with a notch. The result was outstanding. Samsung S9 appeared to had even narrower bezels than iPhone X. 
So we know that Notch makes smartphones more sleek, futuristic and attractive to customer. But what is a next step? Of course notch has to go, there is no place for him in all-display future of smartphones. Can we put front components under display? Not yet. There were attempts to avoid a notch but I do not think they are to stay. One of such an attempt we can observe in OPPO Find X. Chinese giant created a camera and sensors that pop up from the top of the smartphone. It allows to achieve an amazing 93.8% screen-to-body ratio.
There is a controversy about time needed for mechanism to pop up, scan your face and descend in order to unlock your phone. People are also not convinced about durability of this mechanism with users that use their camera often. Nevertheless we have to congratulate OPPO for trying to avoid notch. With 2019 comes new alternative for a notch – a hole punch camera! It was implemented in Honor view 20 and it looks amazing.
It looks like a far more reasonable compromise than an intrusive notch and more trustworthy than OPPO pop-up camera solution. We still have one of the biggest screen-to-body ratio and a front facing camera. In Honor View 20, OS still recognise front camera as a notch so you can put virtual bezels when watching full screen video. To be honest this is going to be a trend that grows in popularity in 2019, at least until we figure out how to hide camera under display. What do you think about OPPO, Honor and notch? What do you think about the future of notch smartphones?
Google Pixel Buds are advertised as a real-time translation earphones – a Google’s answer to Apple’s EarPods. They connect to your device via Bluetooth, the wire between them is just for practical issues. Of course the translation is not their only function, you can access your Google Assistant with just one touch of right earbud. Also you can listen to the music – but should I mention that? Let’s focus on their deal-breaking function. The translation. They use Google Translate during the whole process. The person wearing Buds speaks while holding right earbud. The sentence immediately translates to previously chosen language on the Google Translate app and is being spoken aloud on smartphone. Next, the second person answers to the phone and the respond is translated and played on the earbuds.