The foldable Motorola Razr is without a doubt the brand's most highly anticipated device expected to see daylight sometime over the next few months, but obviously, the Lenovo-owned company has a bunch of other stuff in the pipeline as well, including an entry-level Moto E6 and high-end (ish) Moto Z4.
While we're still not 100 percent certain the idea of a Moto Z4 Play has been abandoned, yet another leaked render of a handset presumed to be the "standard" Z4 is today showcasing a familiar modular design with a couple of interesting revisions. Just like previous leaks, this suggests a modern in-display fingerprint reader will replace the more conventional side-mounted biometric recognition method found on both the Z3 and Z3 Play.
Of course, that's not necessarily a good thing in terms of fingerprint scanning speed and reliability, but it's only fair to wait and see what Motorola can do to improve that stuff in real-life scenarios. Another big change is the reduction of the Z3 and Z3 Play's horizontal screen bezels, which are almost completely eliminated and replaced with a sleek waterdrop-style notch.
Speaking of sleek, today's (ev-) leaked imagery reveals the incredibly thin profile of the Moto Z4, which might be even slimmer than the 6.8 mm Moto Z3 and Z3 Play. Despite that insanely delicate design choice, it looks like the beloved 3.5 mm headphone jack will be making a comeback, positioned next to a USB Type-C port, with a speaker curiously located at the top of the handset rather than the bottom side.
Another previously rumored tidbit that gains further "confirmation" today is the presence of a single rear-facing camera, along with a swanky "batwing" Motorola logo and 16-pin connector for Moto Mods at the back of the Moto Z4. While Evan Blass is keeping all specifications under wraps, we already "know" that imaging sensor is set to be equipped with a full 48 megapixels, while the single selfie shooter doesn't sound like a pushover either, with 25MP capabilities.
The Moto Z4 is also expected to feature a Snapdragon 675 processor and 3,600 mAh battery, which would make it a decent... upper mid-range device. As such, the world probably doesn't need a Z4 Play variant.
Borderlands 3 plays like Borderlands 2 after it took a few years off to eat clean, exercise daily, and read a book. It's bigger and smarter, but deep down inside it's still the same juvenile, violent game that I fell in love with. I'm so relieved.
With Borderlands 3, what you see is what you get. No season pass or exploitative microtransactions or oblique time-sucking systems masquerading as Content™. It’s just a goofy stat-based FPS you can play with friends. And after playing three hours with two new Vault Hunters and speaking with the creative and art directors, Borderlands 3 is clearly another great excuse to shoot monsters and men while completing quests in search of even stranger guns. Watch our three hours of uncut gameplay to see what I mean.
Unless you finished Borderlands 2 yesterday, the changes and upgrades won't pop at a glance. There's no major new features, but its weapons are more surprising and refined than ever, combat is more mobile and chaotic, and—the best part—it's not another living game in the vein of Destiny 2 or The Division 2. There’s a lot to dig into. Here's a bird's eye view of all the important changes from Borderlands 2 to Borderlands 3.
The guns look and feel so much better
In Borderlands 3, having three guns is really like having six guns.
Borderlands 2 had a lot of cool guns but their best attributes were typically relegated to stats. All weapon models, regardless of the manufacturer, shared parts from the same universal pool. They looked unique, but few actually were unique. Stiff enemies, stiff recoil and weapon animations, and hollow sound effects made the biggest guns feel like aggressive number dispensers at best. As an RPG-infused FPS, Borderlands was ahead of its time, but behind in the ballistics department.
I didn't think math and meat could actually work together in an FPS with a gachapon gun system, but Borderlands 3 feels like an actual shooter. Guns are loud and heavy this time around, with bespoke firing mechanisms for every weapon manufacturer and weapon type, and much more apparent feedback built into weapon recoil and enemy reactions.
Because there are so many possible variants of guns, they’re not going to have the fidelity and detail of every unique Destiny 2 exotic, but they look, feel, and sound great. Art director Scott Kester told me that’s because Gearbox have essentially made Borderlands 2-sized weapon generation systems for each fictional gun manufacturer in Borderlands 3. "In the past the guns all shared pieces between all the guns, and this time, we built entire suites of gun randomization inside of each manufacturer so that there's a little bit more cohesiveness to them,” said Kester.
And how is that expressed? Junky Tediores don’t just explode when thrown, they might turn into an explosive holographic bouncy ball or transform into a little brain with eyeballs and spidery legs that harasses enemies with corrosive damage. A basic Hyperion pistol swallows my arm like Tim Cook designed a Mega Man blaster and fires tracking grenades that let me tag targets and bend bullets around cover.
A Maliwan shotgun throws up a shield when aiming down the sights that might absorb bullets and convert them into health or ammo or send them bouncing back at enemies. And it might require charging up shots before firing, or maybe it spits out everything in my magazine as quickly as possible. That doesn’t even account for each manufacturer’s particular aesthetics or unique crosshairs that express that weapon’s discharge mechanisms, or, more importantly, that many weapons also have alternate firing modes.
Switching between firing rates is a thing, as expected, but most of Borderlands 3’s alt-fire modes are truly alternative. A simple pistol might unleash a rocket barrage with the press of a button. An LMG becomes a grenade launcher. A shotgun swaps between elemental damage types. An SMG transforms into a sniper rifle. In Borderlands 3, having three guns is really like having six guns.
Combat is faster and more fluid
New to Borderlands 3 is the ability to vault, or grab ledges to reach higher ground if my jump height won't cut it. Coupled with another new ability and recently popularized FPS staple, the crouch slide, and Borderlands 3 becomes one hell of a mover and shaker. Enemies love to run around, too, and because they spawn in greater quantities, there’s no time to stand still in Borderlands 3.
Even if I try to hide, most cover is destructible anyway. But I like the added urgency. It meshes with the gratuitous violence—sometimes enemies will literally go wide-eyed if they see someone with a shotgun crouch-sliding towards their face—and encourages the use of everything in my arsenal. Most arenas make good use of my ability to climb, providing some convenient flanking routes. It means I'm viable at every distance. From a high vantage point, I can get a few sniper shots in before tossing a grenade or popping an ability and leaping down, closing the distance with an SMG or assault rifle, then cleaning up the mess with a shotty, leaping and sliding into and out of cover.
In Borderlands 2, my tactics were: step out of cover, shoot until my shield goes down, get in cover, repeat. In Borderlands 3, my tactics are reckless and maniacal. It’s designed to push me into the middle of the fray, dodging and weaving and juggling a stupidly diverse arsenal to minimize the time spent hiding. The basic act of shooting dudes is finally entertaining enough to stand on its own.
You can emote
Flossing has yet to be confirmed.
Home base is a spaceship and it'll take you away from Pandora
We didn't get to go here. I want to go here.
Your adventures in Borderlands 3 are anchored in a ship that orbits one of many explorable planets that aren't Pandora (but also Pandora). The Sanctuary 3 is your hub and it's also where most of your old friends hang out. Here’s who and what we know is on-board.
A new vending machine that spits out loot lost in the field
Personal quarters you can decorate with guns
Marcus’s Muntions is back as a weapons and upgrades vendor, shooting range included
Moxxi’s Bar returns, and yes, that means slot machines are back, too
There’s an infirmary overseen by Dr. Tannis, though I'm not certain of its purpose
The bridge is where you’ll choose a planetary destination (Promethea was the only new one available during the demo)
Hammerlock’s room is where you’ll mount the stuffed dead bodies of special monsters you kill
The launch bay is where you’ll, uh, launch? Ellie says hello
Even Crazy Earl, the mysterious, shifty-eyed vendor is back, but he still only takes Eridium
Exploration actually matters
Borderlands 3 is spilling over with stuff to find and do.
I spent the entirety of my second 90 minutes of playtime wandering Promethea, and stumbled into a handful of fun side missions and collectibles. Borderlands 2 hid the occasional joke or special baddie in its various nooks and crannies, but Borderlands 3 is spilling over with stuff to find and do. Here's a short list of what I found:
Collectible voice messages: left behind by the 'first vault hunter', these lost messages promise a reward of OG vault hunter gear if you find enough.
Hidden vehicles: After climbing a few ledges beneath an overpass, I found a hidden vehicle chassis that came with a sticky mine launcher. More on that in a minute.
Cult radio towers: Moxxi wants to dominate the airwaves and she'll pay you special Moxxi bucks to find and sabotage the cult's hidden broadcast machinery.
Zero's combat challenges: What I thought was a dead end in the sewers beneath Promethea was actually a test. Zero (an old Vault Hunter) appeared and asked me to clear the room for a reward. Special high-level enemies spawned and I swiftly despawned them with guns.
Claptrap's girlfriend components: Claptrap is lonely, so he's building lover. Find parts throughout the galaxy and return them to the sad, sappy sucker and he'll reward you by spending more time locked away in his room. Maybe loot or something, too.
Vehicle customization is a thing, and you can find or steal new parts
Oh yeah, Borderlands 3 is also GTA now. Besides finding hidden vehicles and driving them back to Catch-a-rides to salvage their parts, you can also just hijack enemy vehicles if they're rolling with a weird lightning turret or chassis you don't have.
Just kill the driver or hijack their ride and salvage those shiny bits at a Catch-a-ride. From there it’s possible to trick out each chassis with whatever armor, weapons, wheels, skins, and color arrangements you like. In the demo, I found a two-person buggy, a three-person buggy with a mounted turret, and large wheel that works as a solo vehicle.
Loot is instanced (unless you like to share)
Strangers took too many of my guns in Borderlands 2. But in Borderlands 3, loot is instanced, meaning everyone in your party gets their own loot for their level. No more hogging, unless you like it. A Classic Mode will allow you to share (and steal) loot. That means power-leveling is still possible too. Hop into a late game area with a level 50 friend and let them kill everything while you hide behind some rocks, leveling up with every breath.
It's more meme-y and full of references than I expected
The main villains are, as Randy Pitchford puts it, "... like the douchiest kind of live streamers of the future you can possibly imagine." They're inherently punchable faces that make quips about likes and subscribes and call the player their favorite follower.
To be fair, I love coffee and can relate to most Coffee Content.
Borderlands 3 is more self-aware and Online than I thought it would be.
There's a fairly long sidequest about fetching coffee for a friend, a joke stretched over several objectives and big fights where the joke is: Coffee is good! I’d say it’s a task for the more aged Facebook meme crowd, but it requires stealing a power cell from a guy named Cell Daddy.
Claptrap still shrieks and shrieks and oscillates between gratuitous pride, stupidity, and shame. He’s building a girlfriend now. A Windows 95-lookin' EULA appears on-screen when installing the ECHO 3. I killed a king who'd laid claim to my buddy's burger restaurant. A burger king, you might say. Holds for laughter.
Borderlands 3 is more self-aware and Online than I thought it would be, and while the barrage of in-jokes and references fall flat for me, the physical comedy is better than ever. My favorite bit: I'm asked to install a blood bag on an NPC (who does bad raps that aren't funny, even ironically) using a button prompt that happens to also be the melee prompt.
Trained by every videogame in history to mindlessly comply, I press the button… and melee the guy. As Zane, my wrist blades cut the dude's entire arm off. I sat there dumbfounded for a few seconds. More of that stuff, Gearbox.
The smartphone industry is in rough shape. Sundar Pichai used the word “headwinds” to discuss the company’s difficulties moving Pixel 3 units, but Canalys’ latest report is far more blunt, describing the situation as a “freefall.”
Things are pretty ugly in the Q1 report, as smartphone shipments declined for the sixth quarter in a row. The combined global units hit 313.9 million, marking their lowest point in almost half a decade, according to the firm.
Of the big players, Apple seems to be particularly hard hit, falling 23.2% year on year. Once again, China played a big role here, but as usual, the full story is much more complex.
“This is the largest single-quarter decline in the history of the iPhone,” said analyst Ben Stanton in a release tied to the news. “Apple’s second largest market, China, again proved tough. But this was far from its only problem. Shipments fell in the US as trade-in initiatives failed to offset longer consumer refresh cycles. In markets such as Europe, Apple is increasingly using discounts to prop up demand, but this is causing additional complexity for distributors, and blurring the value proposition of these ‘premium’ devices in the eyes of consumers.”
A lot to unpack there, but what we’re looking at are some larger issues within the industry, including global economic issues and slowed upgrade cycles for users. The XS was also notably much less dramatic of an upgrade than its predecessor. Stanton did add that the iPhone, “show[ed] signs of recovery towards the back-end of the quarter,” which is promising for Q2.
It also remains to be seen what this year will hold in terms of iPhone upgrades, though most signs point to 2020 as the year the company makes the jump to 5G. Tim Cook was noncommittal on the topic during the company’s earnings call last night, instead pointing to positive numbers on the iPad side and, of course, Apple’s continued push into services.
Analysts are somewhat bullish about the potential of innovations like 5G and even foldables in shaking up the stagnant market, but big players like Apple are clearly hedging their bets, should the free-falling headwinds continue.
Huawei, meanwhile, continues to be a bright spot, with a 50.2% year over year growth and an 18.8% global market share, according to the firm. That growth could be hampered, however, by increased competition from Samsung and fellow Chinese handset companies like Xiaomi and Oppo.
Huawei was the only major smartphone manufacturer to increase its market share during the first quarter of 2019, defying industry-wide challenges to overtake Apple and close the gap on leader Samsung.
New figures form IDC suggest Huawei saw shipments rise by 50.3 per cent year-on-year to 59.1 million units. This gives the Chinese manufacturer a market share of 19 per cent.
Meanwhile Samsung saw shipments fall by 8.1 per cent to 71.9 million. The firm says sales of the flagship of the higher margin Galaxy S10 have been encouraging, but there has been less success in the mid-range segments This has affected market share which has slipped to 23.1 per cent.
Smartphone sales
Samsung is confident the a refreshed ‘Galaxy A’ portfolio will guard against any further encroachment from Huawei in the mid-range, but analysts say it should not lose focus.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that Huawei is laser focused on growing its stature in the world of mobile devices, with smartphones being its lead horse," said IDC’s Ryan Reith.
“The overall smartphone market continues to be challenged in almost all areas, yet Huawei was able to grow shipments by 50%, not only signifying a clear number two in terms of market share but also closing the gap on the market leader Samsung. This new ranking of Samsung, Huawei, and Apple is very likely what we'll see when 2019 is all said and done."
Apple itself saw units fall by 30.4 per cent to 36.4 million, reducing its share to 11.7 per cent. Apple’s service revenue is helping to offset falls in hardware, but a lack of foldable and 5G handsets could count against it later in 2019. Apple’s first 5G iPhone isn’t expected until 2020.
Elsewhere, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo make up the top six.
Overall, the market contracted for the sixth consecutive quarter, with consumers taking longer to refresh their handsets.
"Consumers continue to hold on to their phones longer than before as newer higher priced models offer little incentive to shell out top dollar to upgrade,” added IDC’s Anthony Scarsella. “Moreover, the pending arrival of 5G handsets could have consumers waiting until both the networks and devices are ready for prime time in 2020."
Google has spent the last year refining its Wear OS smartwatch software to make everything feel simpler, more intuitive, and easier to use. The improvements have gone a long way in making Wear OS feel smoother and more useful. Today, Google is announcing another new addition: Tiles. Tiles are glanceable widgets that you can swipe between to get information quickly, including the weather, your next calendar appointment, your heart rate, news headlines, etc.
You access Tiles with a left swipe on your Wear OS watchface, which previously took you to Google Fit. Your Fit data is still in that spot, but now you’ll have these other widgets available to you as well.
“With a swipe left, you’ll be greeted by these Tiles and can check your progress towards your fitness goals or start a workout, know where you need to be next, plan ahead with the latest forecast, check your heart rate, follow the latest breaking headlines and set a timer,” Wear OS product manager Frank Deschenes wrote in a blog post.
Tiles can be rearranged to your liking with a tap and hold, and layout can also be adjusted with the Wear OS mobile app. Not all smartwatches running Wear OS will have all of these tiles; if your device lacks a heart rate sensor, you’re obviously not going to see that one. Google says it plans to add more tiles as time goes on.
Tiles will roll out to Wear OS over the next month, according to Deschenes. Now, if we only had a flagship Google smartwatch to use them on.
Moment has announced its biggest ever update for Pro Camera, which adds a bunch of cool new features to the app, and brings the Android version up to parity. And to celebrate, if you download the app for the first time you'll get 15 percent off in the Moment Shop, which carries more than 20 photography and travel brands.
First up, on the Android side of things, there's the addition of split focus and exposure, RGB histogram and the ability to capture both a RAW and JPG image in RAW mode, which means you'll be able to preview a RAW image a whole lot faster. The Android version has also got a few general performance improvements, camera roll redesign and improved OnePlus and Samsung S10 device support. The company even made an impressively aesthetic video showing off what can be done through the app with the S10.
New features for both iOS and Android include zebra stripes and focus peaking. With zebra stripes you'll be able to see at a glance, through the viewfinder, over and underexposed areas of a shot. With focus peaking, you can dial in focus in both photo and video mode, and when you're manually focusing you'll see the sharpest edges highlighted in the viewfinder, so you can be sure your image is crisp in all the right places. Get it on iOS for $5.99 and Android for $3.99.
Moment has announced its biggest ever update for Pro Camera, which adds a bunch of cool new features to the app, and brings the Android version up to parity. And to celebrate, if you download the app for the first time you'll get 15 percent off in the Moment Shop, which carries more than 20 photography and travel brands.
First up, on the Android side of things, there's the addition of split focus and exposure, RGB histogram and the ability to capture both a RAW and JPG image in RAW mode, which means you'll be able to preview a RAW image a whole lot faster. The Android version has also got a few general performance improvements, camera roll redesign and improved OnePlus and Samsung S10 device support. The company even made an impressively aesthetic video showing off what can be done through the app with the S10.
New features for both iOS and Android include zebra stripes and focus peaking. With zebra stripes you'll be able to see at a glance, through the viewfinder, over and underexposed areas of a shot. With focus peaking, you can dial in focus in both photo and video mode, and when you're manually focusing you'll see the sharpest edges highlighted in the viewfinder, so you can be sure your image is crisp in all the right places. Get it on iOS for $5.99 and Android for $3.99.
