Pocketnow Daily: Samsung Galaxy S22 Spec Updates, Apple’s AR Timeline & more! (video)

The official news today begin with Blackberry, and that even sounds weird to say as it’s been a very long time. The company was supposed to announce some new enterprise-oriented 5G smartphones this year but, it looks like the company is dead for real this time.. The founder of CrackBerry.com just posted on their forum that the company has been dead as of yesterday. He goes on to say that he never signed an NDA and we’ll have to see if they post a formal update but, apparently Blackberry simply prefers to just go away quietly into the night as they’re “clearly done with phones”. And I mean, this doesn’t come off as a surprise after they sold their patents for 600 Million earlier this year. And sure, Onward Mobility kept announcing that we could expect new smartphones, especially last year, but so far, all we’ve gotten are delays That new smartphone was allegedly similar to the Priv when it comes to design but it would bring some new features like 5G. So yes, it looks like Blackberry is gone for real this time.. So just do me a favor and send some love to Michael Fisher, as I’m pretty worried about his mental health after today.

Let’s move the spotlight on to Cupertino for the first time today and their AR Headset that has been in the headlines for the past couple of weeks. Some of the latest rumors say that it’s getting delayed until next year but that Apple still plans to lay the groundwork for the new AR/VR App Store at WWDC. Well, now we have a new report from Mark Gurman’s newsletter that tells us some of the features we can expect. According to him, we’re getting a virtual reality version of FaceTime where you’ll be in a conference room with dozens of people but, instead of seeing their actual faces you’ll see 3D versions of them… Aka their memojis. Kind of like what you get with VR chat nowadays. He also assumes that the headset will be able to determine your facial expression in real time, making the experience fairly lifelike. Finally, he says that he would also look out for heavy use of SharePlay, allowing for multiple headset wearers to experience the same music, movies and games together. And this goes perfectly along with Bloomberg’s previous report claiming this would be aimed at gaming, media consumption and communication. This all sounds pretty cool but, the catch is that Gurman says that Apple is delaying the product’s announcement until WWDC next year. Let’s wait and see.

Now as for events that are happening soon, let’s talk about Apple and their Spring Event… Again! But hey, today we got some different information. For the past two or three weeks we’ve been kinda certain that we’re supposed to be getting a new iPad Air, the iPhone SE and possibly a Mac at the company’s March Even, but now, Cupertino just registered three new Macs in the Eurasian Database just a few weeks ahead of March. And apparently, only one of these is described as a laptop. For those of you wondering about the other products we’re expecting, those were registered a couple of weeks ago. Of course, this is not a guarantee that we’re getting these products but, some leaks from Dylan last year claimed that we could expect a new iMac Pro with a 27-inch display and an M1 Pro or Max chipset at the Spring Event. Other rumors suggest that the laptop is a refreshed 13 inch MacBook Pro that’ll bring the M2 chipset and the new design. But we have no idea on what the third computer might be, perhaps a Mac mini Pro or a Mac mini refresh. This event is tipped to happen on March 8th so let’s see what we really end up getting.

And finally for the most weird news today, let’s talk about the Galaxy S22 and the few tidbits we’ve gotten to know after it’s release. First off, it looks like they made a mistake in their advertising for the base models where they were claiming the displays went from 10 to 120Hz in refresh rate. Kinda leading people to believe that they were getting LTPO panels. Now, they’ve changed it in the spec sheet and clarified that it goes from 48 to 120Hz, which is the accurate number for LTPS panels. And listen, it’s still good, but not as good as some of us were expecting. Moving on to some benchmarks that have been making a ton of headlines, PC Mag just ran a few tests where they put the S22 Series against the iPhone 13 Pro Max and the Pixel 6. Of course, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 performs similarly in all Galaxy models and even beats the Pixel 6 but, things change when it goes against the iPhone. See, the Ultra got a single core score of 1232, while the iPhone went for 1735. And if we’re talking multi-core, the Ultra got 3433 but was just obliterated by the 13 Pro Max’s 4647. Of course, benchmarks don’t mean much for day-to-day use. I’ve been using a combo of these and can’t really tell you those numbers can be felt in real world use either. If anything I’d say the battery hasn’t been amazing, but it’s the usual thing with new Android phones during the first week.