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TCL made a Galaxy Z Flip-style folding phone, but you may never get to buy it
It can't compete with the coronavirus
Some much-needed competition in the foldable phone space has been officially waylaid for now. TCL's Project Chicago, a clamshell-styled would-be competitor to Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip3, is on indefinite hold from release.
Some Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 and Galaxy Watch4 pre-orders face delays due to high demand
Certain models won't ship until mid-September
Some will be lucky enough to have already received their pre-orders of Samsung's shiny new toys, including the Galaxy Z Fold3 and Galaxy Watch4, but some will have to wait a little longer than expected. Reports suggest that Samsung isn't able to keep up with demand and is having to delay certain shipments of its latest products.
Google Play app approvals are suffering severe delays, jeopardizing security and customer retention
Some devs are waiting a month or more
Around this time last year, Google began imposing a more strenuous review process on new apps and updates submitted to the Play Store. For many developers, this was only a minor inconvenience that slowed down publishing by a few hours or days. However, in the months since the COVID-19 pandemic began, a growing number of people have detailed delays of several weeks for new apps and even simple bug fixes.
Amazon is delaying shipment of 'non-essential' items in the US up to a month
But what gets delayed isn't clear-cut
Last week, Amazon began to prioritize shipments for sanitary products and pantry staples during the coronavirus pandemic as it faced and continues to face extraordinary demand for essential products. Today, though, many customers browsing around for items on the site have noticed that nearly all items considered to be non-essential now have a ship-by date of April 21 for Prime subscribers.The company sent a statement to the media today which reads:
Folding phones are tricky to get right, their manufacturers are finding. In light of Samsung's well-documented troubles with its Galaxy Fold, Huawei previously delayed the release of its own folding device, the Mate X, from a June release date until September. Now, that release date has been pushed even further, according to TechRadar.
Public transit is easier on your wallet and the environment than driving or taking an Uber, but it's also frequently a frustrating, crowded experience. Google can't necessarily fix that, but the company is working to at least prepare you for it: starting today, Maps will show real-time traffic delays for buses and crowdedness predictions for trains.
The integrity of the Samsung Galaxy Fold's design was shown to be questionable (at best) shortly after pre-release models reached the hands of the first round of reviewers. Debris made its way into their screens, causing several early hardware failures, and release was delayed from April 26 to an unspecified later date. AT&T made it seem like the new date would be mid-June, but a new report out of Korea contradicts that.
The JBL Link bar looked like an interesting Google-infused product when it popped up in May 2018, but it has been chronically delayed ever since. JBL started taking pre-orders in August of last year, but it missed the fall ship date, Now, the spring 2019 ship date is being pushed back to summer.
There aren't many phones made from titanium because it's vastly harder to work with than aluminum, but RED went for it anyway. The Hydrogen One has been teased repeatedly over the past year, but it's still not out. If you pre-ordered the titanium version, the wait is going to be even longer. According to RED, the first run of titanium phones was a failure. It's going to try and make it right with a free phone, though.
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Samsung's Oreo updates have been slow to appear, but what else is new? The company promised it was almost done with Oreo updates a few weeks back, and T-Mobile said its Note 8 update was all set. However, you might have noticed your Tmo Note 8 is still running Nougat. That's because T-Mobile pulled the update three weeks ago shortly after announcing it. Oops.
All the Pixel 2 XL units in the wild so far have been black—Google had those ready to ship first, for whatever reason. Those who were smitten with the white/black Pixel had to wait for their panda phone to ship a few weeks later. It looks like the first round of pandas has gone out, but some other orders are getting mysteriously delayed.
Shipping delays on Pixel phones are nothing new. It took months for Google to get out from under the backlog for the original Pixel. This time, the white models seem to be in particularly short supply. Several people who ordered the smaller Pixel 2 in white are getting notices from Google that their orders have been pushed back by a month, but they are getting a small token of apology from Google.
Google and Motorola announced a big step for Project Fi a few weeks ago. The new Moto X4 will be the first "Android One" device in the US, as well as the first non-Google device on Project Fi. It's just not either of those things quite yet. The phone was supposed to be shipping around now, but customers are being notified of a delay of several weeks.
Smartphone startup Essential is headed by Android founder Andy Rubin, but that doesn't mean it's immune from delays. After promising to launch the Essential Phone in June, the company missed the deadline with nary a word. Rubin has now relayed a message to those who registered to buy the phone, informing them it'll just be a few more weeks.
Samsung launched the Galaxy S8 several months ago without the promised voice Bixby voice control. It said at the time the feature would be launched soon, but so far only the Korean-language version has rolled out. The company imposed a deadline of "spring" for the English launch, but the WSJ says we're still at least a few weeks away from release.
Google has started rolling Android 7.0 Nougat out to Nexus devices, but no watches have gotten the corresponding Wear 2.0 update. The beta test has been ongoing for months, and today Google has released the third dev preview. That's good, but there's also some bad news. The developer preview is now expected to continue into early 2017, which is a significant delay.
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Nextbit launched its Kickstarter last year with just a GSM version of the Robin, but the people demanded a CDMA one too. The company attempted to accommodate them, but now CEO Tom Moss has announced that the CDMA Robin will never exist.
A few years ago, a couple companies had the idea of creating credit cards with e-ink screens that could replace all the other credit cards in your pocket. You may remember them as Coin and Plastc. The former, after missing its target date by a year, hit the market in 2015. The latter is still in development. Since quite a bit of time has passed since the end of 2014, Plastc is now issuing a status update.
What would you say if I told you a smartphone Kickstarter is experiencing a delay? Would you be shocked? I bet not. It's really just par for the course. Nextbit has announced that the CDMA version of its Robin smartphone won't ship next month after all. Instead, they're expecting it to be ready in April.