Nother CarGuy

Late last year Xiaomi president Lin Bin teased an upcoming phone with a 48-megapixel camera, and today the company has revealed it in full. Despite the eye-catching headline spec, it’s turned out to be a product under the entry-level Redmi brand called the Redmi Note 7. Design-wise, it looks very similar to Xiaomi’s smaller, low-cost Mi Play announced a few weeks back, with a circular display notch, a back panel with colorful gradients, a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, and rear-facing dual cameras — one of which uses that much-vaunted 48-megapixel image sensor and an f/1.8 lens, the other of which is 5 megapixels and used for depth information. The camera can take photos with its 48 million tiny 0.8-micron pixels in good lighting, or combine neighboring pixels for what’s claimed to be the equivalent of a 12-megapixel photo taken with larger 1.6-micron pixels. At half an inch across, the sensor is physically quite a bit larger than what’s typically found in smartphones, whic...

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has suspended production of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, a source said on Monday, after reports of fires in replacement devices added to the tech giant’s worst ever recall crisis. Top U.S. and Australian carriers also suspended sales or exchanges of Note 7s, while major airlines reiterated bans on passengers using the phones, after smoke from a replacement device forced the evacuation of a passenger plane in the United States last week. Fires in phones that were meant to replace devices that had been recalled because of their propensity to explode would be a disaster for the world’s largest smartphone maker, suggesting it had failed to fix a problem that has already hurt its brand and threatens to derail a recovery in its mobile business. “If the Note 7 is allowed to continue it could lead to the single greatest act of brand self-destruction in the history of modern technology,” said Eric Schiffer, brand strategy expert and chairman of R...

A Southwest Airlines flight in Louisville, Ky., bound for Baltimore was grounded on the tarmac Wednesday morning after a passenger's Samsung smartphone caught fire and filled the cabin with smoke. Capt. Kevin Fletcher, of Louisville fire department's arson unit, said a Samsung smartphone overheated Wednesday morning and began to smoke, which led Southwest Airlines to evacuate the plane before it departed for Baltimore. A spokeswoman from the Louisville airport confirmed to CBC News that the Southwest flight 944, a Boeing 737, was grounded then emptied 10 minutes before takeoff with 75 passengers and crew aboard. "A customer reported smoke emitting from an electronic device," the airline told CBC News in a statement. "All Customers and Crew deplaned safely via the main cabin door." Fletcher said there was minor damage to the plane's carpet where the device was dropped. U.S. website The Verge reported Wednesday that the device in question wa...