Realme 240W Charging and Netflix Password Plan
OPINION: The week is coming to an end, and it’s time for us to choose the winner and the loser of the last seven days in the world of technology.
Short of the exciting launch of the OnePlus 11, the first week of February wasn’t full of exciting headlines. This isn’t entirely surprising, as with Mobile World Congress on the horizon, we expect many tech brands to refrain from their February event announcements.
OpenAI has launched a new subscription-based tier for ChatGPT, while Microsoft said it has teamed up with the creator of ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 to reinvent its Bing search engine with new AI smarts.
Read on to find out which companies we named winners and losers this week.
Winner: Realme
Our winner this week is Realme after the phone maker confirmed it will be bringing 240W charging to the global market with the Realme GT 3.
The news came in a roundabout way as Realme was actually unveiling its latest flagship phone, the GT Neo 5. One of the key features here was 240W charging, however this particular model won’t be making its way outside of China.
Realme was quick to reassure international fans that they would will be able to get their hands on those ultra-fast charging speeds in the form of the Realme GT 3 following on from the 4-star Realme GT 2 of 2022.
The GT 3 is expected to launch this month, a year after parent company Oppo first showcased a 240W version of its SuperVOOC fast charging technology at MWC 2022.
The 240W SuperVOOC not only charges a 4500mAh battery to 50% in 3.5 minutes of charging, but also reaches full capacity in just 9 minutes. It’s incredibly fast and the fastest charging we’ve ever seen on a smartphone, pushing the limits of the current USB-C standard to the max.
It’s also significantly faster than the 80W SuperVOOC found on Oppo’s own flagship Find X5 Pro. We’re happy to see 240W charging making its way outside of China, especially considering it comes from such an affordable brand.
Loser: Netflix
Netflix has been the loser this week as the streaming service doubled down on its much-maligned plan to stop password sharing.
The company that once tweeted the words “Love is a password exchange” posted a blog this week explaining exactly how it plans to prevent users from sharing their account information with friends and family.
Starting in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain, Netflix will start asking its subscribers to provide a primary location for their Netflix account.
Once they choose their family, users will have the option to add up to two additional profiles for people they don’t live with – for a fee, of course.
“Today, over 100 million households use shared accounts, impacting our ability to invest in great new TV shows and movies,” Netflix explained in a blog post.
We expect to see some incredible new content from Netflix over the next few years to make up for these drastic changes. If not, it’s likely that users will start to abandon an increasingly expensive streaming platform in favor of something more affordable, or one that’s willing to turn a blind eye to password sharing.
Source link
