Hasta La Gadget!

HTC has officially launched the U24 Pro, a smartphone featuring a 6.8-inch 1080×2436 OLED touchscreen with a 120 Hz refresh rate and Gorilla Glass protection. Powered by the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 SoC, the device includes 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of expandable storage. It runs on Android 14 and holds an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance.

The U24 Pro boasts a versatile camera setup: a 50 MP main camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) and an f/1.88 aperture, an 8 MP f/2.2 ultrawide lens, a 50 MP f/2 2x optical zoom telephoto lens, and a 50 MP f/2.45 front-facing camera with autofocus.

The phone’s dimensions are 167.1 × 74.9 × 8.98 mm, and it weighs 198.7g. It is equipped with a 4,600 mAh battery that supports 60W wired charging, 15W wireless charging, and 5W reverse wireless charging. Additional features include a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a two-color notification LED on the front.

Specs

Price

Priced at €564 (~$609) in the EU, the U24 Pro, that arrives in Taiwan by June 30th, faces stiff competition from various Chinese brands. Despite this, the device represents HTC’s continued presence in the smartphone market, offering robust features and a notable camera array.

Let’s remember that the last HTC flagship phone was the HTC U12+, released in 2018 (check our review of the device here). The company also released interesting phones like the HTC One M8 (2014) and HTC One M7 (2013).

HTC Launches U24 Pro With Advanced Camera And Fast Charging

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Yes, io9 used a very similar headline back in 2017 regarding a remake of The Crow—and Hollywood clearly did not listen; that long-in-the-works project is arriving in theaters this August. How The Crow do-over fares is yet to be seen (maybe Bill Skarsgård’s Joker look will work magic?), but we must insist, yet again,…

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Spotify has once again drawn the ire of the music industry. The National Music Publishers’ Association has called on the Federal Trade Commission to examine the streaming service’s addition of audiobook content into all of its paid subscription plans. According to the group’s FTC complaint, Spotify’s recent actions are part of “a scheme to increase profits by deceiving consumers and cheating the music royalty system.”

This requires some backstory. In November 2023, Spotify announced that it would include 15 hours of audiobook content as part of all its Premium subscription plans. A few months later, the company unveiled a new audiobook-only subscription, offering the same number of listening hours for $10 a month. The publishers’ organization claims that Spotify’s recent price increases are based on offering that extra audiobook content, and that paying customers are automatically being charged for a service they didn’t choose and can’t opt out of without switching to the free, ad-supported listening experience.

And the additional revenue from the higher Premium subscription costs may not go to the music composers. According to the FTC complaint, Spotify will pay about $150 million less in music royalties over the first year of these new bundled Premium plans.

The NMPA letter goes so far as to call the new audiobook-only plan “a sham” that “exists solely to allow Spotify to claim that audiobook content is a significantly and independently valuable aspect of its ‘bundled’ Premium Plan, as the Audiobook Access Plan costs only $1 less than the Premium Plan with the exact same audiobook content and music.”

At this early stage, it’s hard to say whether this issue will impact Spotify’s planned overhaul of its royalty model. Both artists and publishers have routinely criticized the streaming ecosystem at large and Spotify in particular for underpaying the creatives behind the music.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/music-publishers-accuse-spotify-of-bait-and-switch-subscription-scheme-235255614.html?src=rss

There is a lot to love about Deep Space Nine before it quote unquote “Gets Good.” The show’s first two seasons are, in a lot of ways, about the things many praise DS9’s back half for dealing with: the cost of compromising Star Trek’s utopian future on the furthest fringes of its final frontier. But even then, few…

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If you’re looking for a birthday gift for the Pokémon fan who has everything (and we mean, every toy, card, item of apparel, game, Happy Meal collectable, etc.), the jewelry brand King Ice may have the solution.

King Ice posted a photo on X and its website Wednesday teasing a new line of Pokémon jewelry pieces. The photo features the familiar face of Pikachu with a Poké Ball on his head decked out entirely in jewels. The X caption reads: “Collection dropping 6/14/24.”

This is not the first time the jewelry and clothing brand have collaborated with a big video game franchise. King Ice also sells a line of bejeweled Xbox themed necklaces, rings and earrings. It’s also made necklaces and other keepsakes featuring characters from games like PAC-MAN, Sonic the Hedgehog and Halo with a completely blinged out Master Chief full figure and helmet. King Ice has also made necklaces and rings for other pop culture icons such as Batman, Chucky and Tiffany from the Child’s Play horror movie and TV show franchise, Looney Tunes characters based on the Space Jam movies and Ren and Stimpy.

This also won’t be the first time that Pokémon has been honored with its own jewelry line. Tiffany & Co. released a line of Pokémon jewelry pieces in November designed by Daniel Arsham featuring characters like Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle, Jigglypuff, Cubone and Mew. The Tiffany necklaces came in 18K yellow gold with diamonds or sterling silver and even have their own Tiffany Blue Poké Balls, according to Women’s Wear Daily.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/king-ice-teases-bejeweled-pokemon-bling-222344432.html?src=rss