2025-11-25 20:27:39
Spotify will raise subscription prices for users in the United States in the first quarter of next year, according to the Financial Times, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The report links pressure from major record labels on both Spotify and Apple Music to raise subscription prices. They argue prices have lagged inflation, while subscriptions remain cheap compared to video services such as Netflix.
Wall Street analysts say the price increase is critical to Spotify's stock, as the company pushes to show profitability. JPMorgan analysts have projected a $1-a-month price rise would boost Spotify's annual revenue by $500 million.
Spotify recently raised prices in multiple countries across South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region. The company has not raised prices in the U.S. since July 2024.
A Spotify subscription costs $11.99 a month in the U.S., compared with $9.99 when it launched in the country 14 years ago. Spotify currently costs $1-a-month more than Apple Music for individual plans.
2025-11-25 19:44:55
Huawei's just-announced Mate 80 lineup is attracting attention in China today thanks to a display spec that easily sees off the competition in the premium smartphone segment.
The company claims the OLED panels in its latest phones can reach up to 8,000 nits of peak brightness – a figure that, if independently verified, would make the Mate 80 series the brightest smartphones on the market.
Huawei says all four models – the Mate 80, Mate 80 Pro, Mate 80 Pro Max, and Mate 80 RS – achieve unmatched peak output, but the Pro Max uses a dual-layer OLED design to push 8,000 nits brightness, with superior efficiency and better thermal handling.
The claim positions Huawei well ahead of Apple's latest iPhone 17 models, which top out at 3,000 nits peak outdoor brightness and 1,600 nits HDR peak.
On paper, there's a yawning gap between the figures, but how they're measured is the key. Huawei hasn't said what testing conditions underlie its 8,000-nit claim, and peak brightness metrics often apply only to small portions of the display for very brief moments.
By contrast, Apple says its iPhone 17 models achieve a "typical" max brightness of 1,000 nits, while the other specifications describe sustained outdoor or HDR behaviour. That makes direct comparisons difficult until reviewers can test the Mate 80 displays in controlled conditions.
There are also practical questions surrounding Huawei's figures. Real-world visibility isn't just about peak output – it depends on factors such as viewing angle, reflectivity, contrast, and colour accuracy.
If Huawei's numbers hold up under testing, the Mate 80 series could signal another leap in smartphone display performance. For now, the claims highlight how aggressively some manufacturers are pushing OLED panel brightness as a key differentiator.
Other notable specs in the Mate 80 series include high-end camera systems with variable-aperture main sensors and multiple telephoto lenses, RAM options reaching 20GB on the top models, and large batteries up to 6,000 mAh paired with fast wired and wireless charging.
The Mate 80 Pro Max starts at CNY 7,999 (about $1,127) in China, while the top-tier Mate 80 RS Master Edition comes in at CNY 11,999 (about $1,683). The prices place the highest-end models firmly in flagship territory, even before considering storage upgrades.
2025-11-25 18:23:46
Poland's antitrust regulator is investigating whether Apple is restricting competition in the mobile ads market through its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, reports Reuters.
Introduced in April 2021 with the release of iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5, Apple's ATT framework requires that all apps on iPhone and iPad ask for the user's consent before tracking their activity across other apps. Apps that wish to track a user based on their device's unique advertising identifier can only do so if the user allows it when prompted.
Apple said the feature was designed to protect users and not to advantage the company. It has been unsurprisingly unpopular with advertisers and data brokers.
Poland's anti-monopoly office, UOKiK, suspects that Apple's ATT framework could be favoring the company's own ads service by limiting the ability of third-party apps to collect user data for personalized ads.
"We suspect that the ATT policy may have misled users about the level of privacy protection while simultaneously increasing Apple’s competitive advantage over independent publishers," UOKiK President Tomasz Chrostny was quoted as saying in a statement. "Such practices may constitute an abuse of dominant position."If the regulator finds its suspicions to be warranted, Apple could face a fine of up to 10% of its annual turnover in Poland.
"It is no surprise that the data tracking industry continues to oppose our efforts to give users back control over their data, and now intense pressure could force us to withdraw this feature, to the detriment of European consumers."Regulators in Germany, Italy, and Romania have opened similar probes to examine whether the privacy feature violates competition rules by impeding access to essential data for advertising while reinforcing Apple's own position in the digital ad market.
"We will work with the Polish competition authority to ensure Apple can continue to offer users this valuable privacy tool."
2025-11-25 18:04:57
Encrypted messaging platform Signal now offers secure backups on iPhone, letting users save and restore messages if they lose access to their device.
There are free and paid versions of Signal's secure backups. The free version lets users store up to 100MB of text messages, including photos, videos, and files from the last 45 days.
The paid version costs $1.99 per month and can back up all text messages, along with up to 100GB of media which can be older than 45 days.
The end-to-end encrypted backups can be accessed using a 64-character recovery key generated by the user's device, but keeping the key safe is crucial – if it's lost, Signal can't help users recover their backups.
Enabling secure backups in the Signal app is straightforward: Open the Settings menu and select Backups, then tap Setup ➝ Enable Backups. After a recovery key is generated, users can choose a free or paid plan.
Secure backups first came to Android in September. Signal says it plans to bring secure backups to its desktop app, and its longer term goal is to allow users to transfer message history between Android, iPhone, and desktop apps.
2025-11-25 10:16:49
Amazon has dropped the price of the AirPods 4 to $69.00 for Black Friday, from $129.00. This is now a new all-time low price on the earbuds, beating the previous low price on Amazon by about $10.
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This is the AirPods 4 model without Active Noise Cancellation, but if you're looking for the device with ANC you can find it on Amazon for $99.99, down from $179.00, another record low price.
2025-11-25 08:06:00
Apple's foldable iPhone could be priced at $2,399, according to an estimate shared by analyst Arthur Liao at Fubon Research. There have been a range of price estimates, from as low as $1,800 to as high as $2,500, and the latest estimate falls on the higher side.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo previously said he expects the iPhone Fold to cost between $2,000 and $2,500, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman expects it to be somewhere around $2,000.
The foldable iPhone will be expensive because of the premium components that Apple plans to use. The display panel and hinge will push pricing toward the upper end of market expectations, Fubon Research suggests.
Demand for the device will depend on the price that Apple sets, but Fubon believes that Apple could sell around 5.4 million units in 2026. Global smartphone demand could fall during the year, and foldables will be the "only spotlight" in the 2026 smartphone market.
The report says that Apple is also working on camera upgrades for 2026, with the first variable aperture lens planned for the iPhone 18 Pro models. It doesn't sound like the iPhone Fold will get the variable aperture lens that Apple is developing, but rumors indicate it will have a dual-lens rear camera setup with Wide and Ultra Wide lenses along with two front cameras.
