Industry News

Vivo has announced its latest flagship phone, the X80 Pro, and its most prominent new hardware feature is a larger in-display fingerprint sensor. The active area is far bigger than the small sensors found on most Android phones these days, meaning it’s easier to unlock the phone without looking at the screen to align your thumb. The scanner has several advantages beyond just being physically larger. You can register each fingertip with a single press on the screen, instead of having to lift and press it several times as with conventional phones. It works very quickly, even if your hands or the screen is wet. The larger surface area also means you can set the phone up to require two simultaneous fingerprints for an extra layer of... Continue reading…

Free for people, not businesses. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeAlmost five months after Google announced that it was going to make G Suite legacy free edition users start paying for their accounts, it seems to finally have a path in place that most people will be happy with. According to 9to5Google, there’s now a no-cost option that’ll let people keep using their G Suite accounts for personal use, and signing up for it won’t involve a song and dance of joining a waitlist or transferring data between accounts. In January, Google announced that free G Suite users would have to start paying for Google Workspace if they wanted to keep their accounts, after around a decade of keeping the legacy free tier around. The company said that if users didn’t decide which paid Workspace tier they wanted by May... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeNetflix has been showing movies and TV shows ahead of their public release to small groups of subscribers in the US, according to a report from Variety. Subscribers who participate in the feedback panels will watch “several upcoming movies and series over the course of about six months,” Variety says, and after they finish watching a piece of content, they’re asked to fill out a survey. The company then takes that feedback into account for potential changes ahead of a film or show’s debut. Netflix is well-known for testing many of its software features ahead of wider releases, like the Top 10 row and the “Play Something” shuffle feature, so it’s perhaps not too surprising that the company is also testing its content with small groups of... Continue reading…

Image: DisneyWhen Disney Plus’ ad-supported plan goes live later this year, it will reportedly run ads for four minutes on movies or shows that last an hour or less, according to reports from Variety and The Wall Street Journal. As Variety points out, this would make Disney offer fewer ads per hour than some of its competitors. NBC’s Peacock runs no more than five minutes of ads for every hour of content, while HBO Max shows four minutes of ads per hour. Disney Plus’ planned number of ads even beats the Disney-owned Hulu, which runs anywhere from nine to 12 ads in one hour. As for the content of the ads themselves, the company is reportedly taking a cautious approach to maintain its family-friendly image. Disney isn’t just cutting out ads that may... Continue reading…

The government will fund a project to help humanitarians on the ground and gather evidence of war crimes.