Kozminski Techblog

Courtesy: https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/14/18088620/samsung-foldable-phone-science-fiction-movies-television-westworld-star-trek

You’ve probably heard about flip phones. You’ve probably owned one. You felt cool, flipping that phone way too loud to answer or end a call, didn’t you? There is no denying that. Yet, somehow we’ve all switched to touchscreen smartphones. why is that? Well for one, Motorola and other manufacturers leading in the flip phone business didn’t make any groundbreaking changes throughout the time they existed. That period was a weird time for phones. You could use your phone for a solid few years and then change for a phone that looked and worked the same way. Now it’s different, every time you check the tech news some new manufacturer has developed a new phone with the same adaptation of the “smartphone” idea. They all circle around the same idea – one screen, getting a bit bigger or smaller, more cameras and a different implementation of a front-facing camera. You may ask, Kamil, what is there to be changed?

Courtesy: https://www.t3.com/news/best-folding-phones

Well, you’ll be surprised. Have you heard about the foldable screen? If you haven’t then don’t worry, a lot of people still don’t know that they exist. At the time of writing this article, there are six announced foldable screen phones. Five out of six are technically small foldable tablets. While open, they have a screen ranging from 7 to 8-inch. When you are finished using it, you can fold it up into a more compact form, creating a normal-looking smartphone. This kind of technology is certainly not for everyone as the pricing starts at 1500$. Because of that, you have to ask yourself, do I need that kind of phone? For most of you, the answer is probably going to be no. In the tablet mode, you have a screen smaller than most tablets on the market. In the folded state, you have a smartphone that isn’t as good as any smartphone at this price point. So, let’s forget about that implementation of foldable screens for now, and move on to Motorola.

Courtesy: https://www.t3.com/news/best-folding-phones

Yes, that same company that made your flip phones back in the day is back with a new concept. It’s called Razr, as was the classic released in 2004. While it’s in a folded state, it has a very compact form that will fit anywhere. At that time, it shrinks its size in half. After opening your flip phone, you have a full-length touch screen. An additional screen will be implemented on the outside, serving a notification only function. Here are some specifications for all of you that may care about this kind of info: 6.2-inch internal OLED display, 2142 x 876 resolution, Secondary external display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 710, 4GB or 6GB RAM, 64GB or 128GB storage, 2730mAh battery. Price is still unknown, but we’ll probably know it as it is expected to be unveiled on November 13th.

So let’s answer the question in the title, should you care about it? Motorola’s variant of the foldable screen is highly interesting and has an enormous potential to be the actual future. That implementation also serves a real purpose, unlike those folding tablets that are just a gimmick. You don’t have to buy them right away, but just bear in mind that foldable screens exist, and watch as they develop.

Edit: Motorola did show us their product on November 13th, here is first hands-on impression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCv7qwuLpHs

Courtesy: https://www.mymemory.co.uk/blog/huawei-enters-the-foldable-phone-market-with-futuristic-mate-x/

Sources:

https://www.cnet.com/news/that-motorola-razr-foldable-will-squeak-out-debut-before-years-end/

https://www.t3.com/news/best-folding-phones

The subscription-based economy is nothing new for a typical consumer. We’ve all heard and some of us probably own an account on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime or Netflix. These are only a few of the biggest players that everyone knows about. The list of services that you can assign a part of wallet every month to goes on and on. However, this time we’ll focus just on the biggest video streaming platforms. That way from tens of thousands of companies we just narrow it down to 5, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV and Hulu.

Let’s start with the biggest and the first major player in that territory, Netflix. It started as a DVD rental store in 1997. Their innovative DVD mailing technology became a hit. Nowadays their idea seems simple. You go to their website, search a title that you desire, order it, and after a day or two, you find it in your mailbox. However, that wasn’t the case in the late ’90s. Then, after 10 years of a rental massacre on its competitor, Blockbuster, Netflix introduced streaming services. The first of its kind on such a large scale. From a comfortable point of your couch, you could surf through numerous titles of movies and tv shows. Later on, Netflix wanted its share of video producing and started an “Originals” category. Their creations are a huge hit across the globe.

Netflix dominated video streaming for almost a decade with their list of customers booming to a whopping number of 117 million. Although that seems like an insane amount of accounts, the company itself is becoming scared. The first time in ten years they didn’t meet their forecast. In 3 months until September 2019, they projected to add 7 million new subscribers, but only 6.8 million started and paid for their account. The question is, should Netflix be worried? Well that depends, although they are still growing, the competition of Apple TV and Disney+ will probably want their share of customers. These two companies are starting their video streaming platform in November and some of Netflix’s subscribers will probably want to migrate.

The fact is, Netflix had a monopoly on streaming for a long time. The competition had to begin sometime. What will Netflix do? Well, for all ofyou parasites that are using someone else’s account I have some bad news. Their plan is to reduce or even eliminate account sharing tradition. How will they accomplish that? That is still unknown but fear the inevitable.

References:

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix

https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/10/21/netflixs-q3-earnings-a-new-record-and-alarm-bells.aspx

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/255/041/0f4.jpg

https://www.geo.tv/assets/uploads/updates/2019-10-18/251710_7819512_updates.jpg