🌄Good morning, and welcome to Thursday’s Daily Authority! Paula here today, covering for Hadlee as he heads off on grand adventures. Meanwhile, it’s raining here in Scotland, and I had a particularly late night playing Overcooked on Switch (yawn!).
Today’s a big day, with the Made by Google 2022 event happening just a few hours after you read this newsletter. But first, some other top tech news…
Pause your Pixel purchase
Chances are some of you are planning on pre-ordering a Pixel 7 or Pixel 7 Pro following today’s event. Hold up! Here’s why that may not be a great idea.
- Our Hadlee Simons weighs in on why you should wait: “Google’s phones have had a history of issues at launch, with the Pixel 6 series being the most recent example of this. The Pixel phones launched with extremely slow and inaccurate in-display fingerprint sensors, for starters. But this wasn’t the only Pixel 6 problem on day one.”
- He continues, “The Pixel 6 range also had bugs which saw calls automatically being declined, Wi-Fi randomly shutting off, and the refresh rate being stuck at 60Hz. Most of these have been fixed via subsequent firmware updates, but we still have persistent problems like the overheating Tensor chipset and wireless connectivity being horrible after all this time.”
- And earlier Pixel phones weren’t without their issues either. The Pixel 5 had issues including the on-device sensors on some devices not working, while the Pixel 4 saw issues such as the screen switching to 60Hz when below 75% brightness. Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 models also saw battery swelling.
Not just a Google problem
We’re not picking on Google here — plenty of other manufacturers have seen launch window issues recently too:
Google’s likely to offer some enticing preorder bonuses, if previous years are anything to go by, but if you can resist, we’d definitely recommend waiting. As Hadlee says, “The Pixel 6 series nevertheless represents perhaps the nadir of launch window issues on Android. So we’d caution against buying or preordering the Pixel 7 series at launch until the extent of these bugs is clear. After all, the last thing you want is a smartphone that struggles with cellular and Wi-Fi connections.”
👋 Amazon Glow is no more: Amazon kills off the interactive video-calling device, launched just last year, and it’s only really been available to buy for about six months (TechCrunch).
Thursday Thing
This week isn’t just Google event week, it’s also Fat Bear Week! Say what?
From October 5 through 11, Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska holds its annual playoff-like competition for the fattest bear around.
- The brown bears in the park have spent all summer gorging themselves on 4,500-calorie salmon. Yum.
- Live-streamed webcams show the bears in all their glory as they pile on the pounds.
- Some of these huge bears can weigh over 1,000 pounds.
- During Fat Bear Week, you, the public, get to vote which bear wins!
- The competition is looking pretty tough this year, including Bear 747, a former Fat Bear Week champion and the largest bear many rangers have ever seen.
- But our money’s on Bear 480, Otis, the 2021 champion and a famous face on the park’s streaming webcams.
- Mashable‘s following all the latest ursine activity.
Have a bear-y great week!
Paula Beaton, Copy Editor.
