OnePlus is gearing up to release the OnePlus 9, and the company is also prepping to buck a somewhat detrimental smartphone trend — the absence of a charging brick with new phones — in the process. Writing in response to a query by a potential customer, CEO Pete Lau confirmed the upcoming phone would ship with both a charging cable and charging brick in the box.
It may seem like an unremarkable thing to note, but much like the headphone jack, it is no longer a guarantee your new smartphone will come with an accessory that was once taken for granted. In a trend popularized by Apple and the iPhone 12, some other phone manufacturers have opted to start shipping their phones in smaller boxes without charging bricks because most users already have chargers lying around and can easily do without them. It’s also being eschewed for environmental reasons aimed at reducing the e-waste from excess chargers.
The difference such actions make to e-waste is still up for debate. Ruediger Kuehr, head of the Sustainable Cycles (SCYCLE) Programme hosted by the United Nations University said when speaking to Wired last year: “The percentage of chargers coming from tablets, smartphones, et cetera is 0.1 percent of the total e-waste increase.”
OnePlus phones use the company’s proprietary Warp Charge technology. The Warp Charge 30T charger included with the OnePlus 8 Pro charges the battery to full in less than an hour, and even its wireless charging is fast, with a 50% charge taking just 30 minutes. To achieve these speeds, you must use a Warp Charge charging brick and OnePlus’s USB Type-C cable, otherwise it will just charge at a normal, slow speed. If OnePlus takes the time to develop fast charging, and then uses Warp Charge as a selling point, it’s unlikely to force you to pay extra for a charging brick to make it work.
The OnePlus 9 series will launch on March 23, and in addition to talk about the battery and charging, we’re excited to see how a rumored partnership with camera experts Hasselblad works out. We’ll have comprehensive OnePlus 9 coverage on the release day.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.