News
Samsung caught tweeting with an iPhone
Whoops!
There’s a rule of thumb when you work for a globally recognized brand: don’t use the rival’s products. Yet, brand ambassadors have always been caught using products against their contract. Take, for example, Gal Gadot’s iPhone-created tweet to promote the Huawei Mate 10 Pro. Or, Russian celebrity and Samsung brand ambassador Ksenia Sobchak using an iPhone on live television.
Celebrity blunders are risks that PR departments have to take. But what happens when the brand itself gets caught using a rival’s phone?
Recently, Samsung landed in this exact situation. The brand’s Nigerian branch tweeted about the Galaxy Note 9. As you might have guessed by now, the tweet wasn’t made on a Galaxy. Instead, the tweet brandished the damning “via Twitter for iPhone” tag. Samsung Nigeria uses an iPhone.
Rather than deleting the tweet, Samsung Nigeria took a drastic solution — deleting the entire account. At the time of this writing, Samsung Nigeria’s Twitter account is back online, tweet deleted. Still, the overreaction further confirms the brand’s culpability in the kerfuffle.
Before the tweet disappeared, popular tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee captured the entire tweet for the world to see. The eagle-eyed content creator also caught Gadot’s whoops moment on his own feed.
Of course, Samsung itself might not be at fault here. Big-name brands often hire external PR firms to handle communications to the public. At most, Samsung is now on the hunt for a new firm in Nigeria. Notoriously, the company does not take well to brand blunders. A few weeks ago, Samsung sued Sobchak for her mistakes in public.
In today’s rabid tech industry, who can blame them? For sure, competing brands are already formulating ways to mock Samsung for the incident.
Hey, remember when Apple launched the MacBook Neo, and it had the most attractive price for an Apple-branded laptop? Those were good times. Unfortunately, it was too good to be true. Responding to the ongoing RAM crisis, Apple has now increased the prices of its hardware, starting with the MacBook and the iPad lineups (via Reuters).
The “highlight” here is the price of the MacBook Neo. To be fair, the affordable MacBook is still the cheapest one of the lot, but that’s not saying much. From a starting price of US$ 599, the Neo now costs US$ 699.
Now, we’d love to say that a US$ 100 price hike is the most you can expect across the board. But that’s not true at all. Most will bring up the price by a few hundreds and up to a whopping US$ 1,300. Here’s a list of devices you’re going to see changes for:
| Model | Original price | New price |
| MacBook Neo | $599 | $699 |
| MacBook Air (13-inch) | $1,099 | $1,299 |
| MacBook Air (15-inch) | $1,299 | $1,499 |
| MacBook Pro (M5) | $1,699 | $1,999 |
| MacBook Pro (M5 Pro) | $2,199 | $2,499 |
| MacBook Pro (M5 Max) | $3,599 | $4,099 |
| iMac | $1,299 | $1,499 |
| Mac Studio (M4 Max) | $1,999 | $2,499 |
| Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) | $3,999 | $5,299 |
| iPad | $349 | $449 |
| iPad mini | $499 | $599 |
| iPad Air (11-inch) | $599 | $749 |
| iPad Air (13-inch) | $749 | $949 |
| iPad Pro (11-inch) | $999 | $1,199 |
| iPad Pro (13-inch) | $1,299 | $1,499 |
| Vision Pro | $3,499 | $3,699 |
The current price hikes do not include the iPhone lineup. It might only be a matter of time, though. Recently, Tim Cook confirmed that Apple can no longer shoulder the expenses of the RAM crisis by themselves, essentially signaling a huge wave of price hikes. The brand will likely continue the increases heading into the iPhone launches in September.
Nothing goes together more than a Chinese smartphone brand and the relentless pursuit for a bigger battery. For years, Chinese brands have engaged in a war for this particular component. Now, the latest salvo has been fired. Honor is reportedly working on a phone with a gigantic 14000mAh battery.
Today, the biggest battery capacity you can find on an Honor phone is 11000mAh. The Honor X80 Pro Max already offers a battery that can last you more than a single day. At this point, it’s certainly more than enough for our daily needs.
According to Digital Chat Station on Weibo, a smartphone brand is currently working on a 14000mAh battery. Though the leak does not explicitly pinpoint Honor, the emoji used (a wolf) is historically used to imply the Chinese brand in Weibo parlance.
A 14000mAh is just absurdly huge. With a battery larger than some powerbanks, battery anxiety becomes moot. It’s bordering on “can we bring this on a plane” territory.
As with all rumored features, the next question is when this battery will arrive on a consumer-ready device. Given how serious the battery wars are for the Chinese market, it’s only a matter of time.
SEE ALSO: HONOR continues APAC expansion, to launch 600 series in Taiwan
Yesterday, Nothing officially teased the Phone (4b), an all-new line positioned below the Phone (4a) series. At the time, the teaser revealed nothing but the design of the upcoming phone. However, ahead of its July 7 launch, the Phone (4b) suddenly appeared on Geekbench, spoiling a few of its mysterious specs.
According to the listing, the Phone (4b) will run the SM6650, more popularly known as the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4. It’s a modestly powered processor built for the budget to midrange segments of the performance spectrum. Having this processor does confirm that the phone belongs to the step below the Phone (4a), bringing affordability to a name other than CMF.
Besides the processor, the new phone will come with an Adreno 810 GPU and 8GB of RAM. Inside, it will ship with Android 16 out of the box, but this will likely be upgradeable to Android 17 later this year.
It’s already confirmed that the Phone (4b) will be quite the looker. The phone will slightly depart from the design philosophy of the Phone (4a) series. Though it will still have a sizable rear island, the camera setup will just be a small vertical strip on the top-left corner. Additionally, the lighting element typical of all Nothing phones will be a small horizontal strip on the bottom-right corner.
Thankfully, the wait for more specs won’t be long. Nothing has confirmed that the phone’s launch is set for July 7.
-
Buyer's Guide1 week agoBuyer’s Guide: TECNO SPARK 50 Pro vs SPARK 50 5G
-
News1 week agoTECNO’s SPARK 50 Pro is the latest budget smartphone battery beast
-
News1 week agoBudget smartphone realme C100 Series launches
-
Reviews4 days agovivo X300 Ultra review: A Whole Different Animal
-
Reviews1 week agoHONOR Watch 6 Review: Less guessing, more knowing
-
Laptops1 week agoROG launches 2026 Strix gaming laptop series
-
Entertainment1 week agoSamsung brings the Galaxy Z series into Spider-Man: Brand New Day
-
Reviews7 days agoThe realme P4 Power: realme’s midrange power play?

