As Samsung and Huawei double down on their foldable smartphone lineups, and other handset vendors try to hide the notch, Chinese giant Xiaomi today chalked out a different path altogether. The company unveiled the Mi Mix Alpha, a smartphone with a front display that fully wraps around the back, save for a strip.
The Mi Mix Alpha’s body is made of a single piece of sapphire glass with ceramics and aerospace-grade titanium alloy. So what does the extra display gets you? Nothing much. The back display lights up and takes over the front screen’s duties when you flip the phone. Otherwise, it just sits there doing nothing.
Xiaomi says the Mix Alpha is a concept phone, so it is going to have a limited production run for the device. The smartphone will go on sale in China in December for 19,999 yuan (~$2,800).
The innards of the phone are no slouches either.
While the size of the display remains unknown, it boasts a 180.6% screen-to-body ratio, Xiaomi said at an event in China. The Mi Mix Alpha is powered by Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon 855+, coupled with 12GB of RAM, and 512GB UFS 3.0 storage. And it supports 5G connectivity.
The handset is housing 4,050 mAh battery and supports 40W wired fast charging, the company said. The Mi Mix Alpha is running Android Pie-based MIUI 11 software.
Which brings us to the strip: The front side of the Mi Mix Alpha does not have any camera sensors. Instead the back side sports a three-camera system: 108MP primary sensor it developed in collaboration Samsung, 20MP wide-angle sensor, and 12MP telephoto sensor.
At the sidelines of today’s event, Xiaomi also launched the Mi 9 Pro, follow up to the Mi 9 handset that the company unveiled earlier this year. The Mi 9 Pro, priced at roughly $520, now features support for 5G connectivity, becoming one of the low-cost handsets to support the networking technology. It also supports 40W fast charging, the company said.
Source: TechCrunch
Accounting is one of the cornerstones to building a business, but for most companies, getting it right is more of a necessity than it is one of their core competencies. That has created a vacuum, and now, a company called Tipalti — which has developed a popular solution to automate accounting for businesses that are not accounting companies by nature — has raised a significant round of funding to underscore that demand.
Today, the Israeli-Californian startup is announcing that it has picked up $76 million, money it plans to use to continue expanding the functionality of its platform and growing its business.
The funding, a Series D that brings the total raised by Tipalti to $146 million, is interesting in part because of who is providing it. Led by Zeev Ventures, it also includes backing from previous investor Group 11, along with new backers 01 Advisors, Greenspring Associates, and TrueBridge Capital Partners.
In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, 01 Advisors is the new investment firm co-founded Twitter’s former CEO and COO, Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, which started raising money only last month and appears to have disclosed one other investment before this, in the e-sports startup PlayVS.
01 Advisors’ interest in backing Tipalti comes from the fact that Twitter is a longtime customer of Tipalti’s, dating back to when Costolo and Bain were running things. Chen Amit, CEO and Co-founder of Tipalti, told me in an interview that the social media company signed up around the time that it was going public, ramping up its revenue generating functions (mainly advertising), and needed a strong accounts payable solution to pay suppliers and others in its ecosystem that wouldn’t break the bank and would help it track all the taxes and other areas that would now be getting thoroughly audited.
That experience, along with Tipalti’s wider track record among other fast-growing tech businesses whose business models are built on working with large networks of partners — other customers include Uber, Roku, Zumba, GoDaddy, Zola, GoPro, Foursquare, and Vimeo — is what compelled Costolo and co. to invest.
“While at Twitter, we chose Tipalti and they played a pivotal role in enabling us to scale and grow,” he said in a statement. “Tipalti’s platform was crucial In helping us manage payments to thousands of our publishers and partners around the world with ease, while delivering a flawless experience. Investing in Tipalti allows us to help bring the same benefits we experienced as operators to the thousands of companies that need this support.
Tipalti’s emergence and growth comes out of an interesting climate shift in the world of startups. The accounting department is not the first thing people usually think about when they consider an exciting tech startup. Indeed, there’s a longstanding belief among some founders and their investors that certain ideas are too good to adulterate early on with thoughts of generating revenue, especially when the startup is in high-growth mode. However, when the scale does tip over into making money (way earlier for some than others), it becomes a crucial area to get right.
Tipalti sits among a number of other startups that have emerged in recent years to help handle less-sexy, but very essential back office functions, the kind that can cripple or even kill off a business of not handled well. Others in the group include the likes of AppZen, which has built AI-based expense auditing tools that it now wants to expand into other finance team functions; and Gusto, which helps manage payroll and benefits.
There are also a number of companies also looking to build better tools for accounts payable automation, including the likes of AccessPay (which also covers accounts receivable functions), OneSource Virtual, abd MineralTree. All of the big accounting software providers will provide a degree of automation in their products, too, although Tipalti’s Amit believes that these target much larger enterprises. RPA companies that are aiming to automate all back-office functions are also potential (if not existing) competitors, too.
Tipalti’s pitch is primarily to the midmarket, which is partly why it has been a big hit with startups that are growing fast but might not yet be at the point of considering solutions built for much larger companies. The tools are able to read, process, pay, and account for invoices using its automation technology, and the startup measures its effectiveness in terms of how much human work it can take on.
In fact, it describes a slightly frighteningly precise efficiency equivalent: citing research from the Levvel Research Accounts Payable Survey, the average midmarket organization has “an average of 9.8 full-time accounts payable employees.” Tipalti says that its platform can provide 80% of that workload function. (The idea being that the remaining 1.96 of humans (!) left over after Tiptali has done its magic can work on other tasks and longer need to dedicate all of their time to accounts payable procedures.)
It’s not just about reducing human overhead, though.
Amit said that some 30%-40% of its customers are gig economy businesses, with a fair number working across different international markets. That makes for a very messy accounting operation. “When you have payees all over the world, that affects you every month,” he said, adding that regulations are becoming ever more stringent on how businesses account for revenues and pay out to people, with the rise in money laundering and using assets in nefarious ways. “Regulators want more information communicated around payments, or the can be a new embargo on an entity, and so you need to change that, your banking process and who you can work with.”
The big pitch with automating companies may be that they are not aiming to take humans out of work, but to free them up to work on other things that AI cannot replace — not yet, anyway — and as an added benefit, they are helping companies reduce their operational expenses and helping them to run things better. How that will play out in the longer term could indeed be great, or it could see even more people with too much time on their hands. But in the meanwhile, Tiptali has grown by leaps and bounds. The company says it’s now processing more than $8 billion in annual transactions, with its customer and business bookings doubling in the first half of 2019.
Tipalti is not disclosing its valuation with this round, but Amit said on the back of that growth it has tripled since it last raised money.
Source: TechCrunch
Here’s what’s new, what’s changed, when it goes on sale and what you get in the box.
Source: CNET
Samsung’s design improvements to its foldable phone make an immediate difference — just not to the Fold’s fundamental design.
Source: CNET
Cluno, the Munich startup providing what it calls a “car subscription� service, is disclosing that it has raised €140 million in debt financing.
Two asset-backed financing deals totalling €80 million were signed recently, adding to €60 million of debt previously secured — ie it’s not all entirely new money.
Separately, the company raised €25 million in equity-financing in a Series B round in February led by Valar Ventures, the U.S.-based venture capital firm founded by Peter Thiel. Others who participated are Acton Capital Partners and Atlantic Labs, which both backed the Cluno’s Series A round. It brought total equity raised by Cluno to €32 million.
Founded in 2017 by the same team behind easyautosale (which exited to Autoscout24 in 2015), Cluno offers an alternative to car ownership or a more restrictive lease by enabling you to subscribe to a car for an all-inclusive monthly fee.
Available in Germany only, you book your car online or via the Cluno app, with the monthly fee covering all costs except fuel. After a minimum term of six months, subscribers can return or switch their car with three months notice.
Convenience and choice is also part of the pitch. This sees bookings, as well as credit checks and signatures, all carried out paperlessly via the Cluno app. The startup offers multiple models from nine different car companies, including BMW, VW, Audi and Ford. Models span small cars to SUVs, including hybrid and electric vehicles.
Cluno tells me the new debt financing is dedicated to growing the company’s car subscription fleet “and serves as the basis for structures that are fit for capital markets”.
“The structured, asset-based financing via ‘Cluno FinTech 1 GmbH’ and ‘Cluno FinTech 2 GmbH’ is a highly profitable and at the same time insolvency-proof investment for banks. Cluno’s fully digital reporting and the resilient backup service structure contribute to reliability,” says Dr. Veronika von Heise-Rotenburg, CFO of Cluno in a statement.
Meanwhile, the previously raised equity is being used to grow the two-year-old Cluno, which currently counts 80 employees.
Adds Nico Polleti, co-founder and CEO of Cluno: “Car subscription has proved to be very successful as a mobility concept and is on the verge of entering the mass market. As innovation driver in a fast-paced industry, we want to take our business model to the next level as quickly as possible. Our goals are scaling and, in the long run, internationalization. Both the financial resources as well as the trust of the financial institutions are a crucial lever.”
Source: TechCrunch
The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that Google doesn’t have to de-reference results related to the so-called right to be forgotten at a global scale.
Europe’s top court also reminds Google and other search engines that it doesn’t change anything when it comes to the right to be forgotten in Europe. Google still has to de-reference results for all of the 28 Member States of the European Union.
“Thus, the Court concludes that, currently, there is no obligation under EU law, for a search engine operator who grants a request for de-referencing made by a data subject, as the case may be, following an injunction from a supervisory or judicial authority of a Member State, to carry out such a de-referencing on all the versions of its search engine,� the court said in its decision.
Google and other search engines started implementing the right to be forgotten in 2014. As a European citizen, if you can find sensitive information about you when you query your name, you can ask search engines to delist those results.
If a link gets delisted, you won’t be able to find it when you search for a name when you’re in Europe. Google de-references pages at a regional level and applies the right to be forgotten on local versions of its search engine — Google uses IP addresses and geo-blocking.
But the CNIL, France’s data protection agency, fined Google in 2016 saying that regional delisting wasn’t enough. According to the CNIL, Google should have removed those results at a global level to comply with the law.
Google first filed an appeal in France and the case ended up at the Court of Justice of the European Union. According to Google, global delistings had the potential to damage free speech and help authoritarian regimes de-reference sensitive stuff from the search results.
And Europe’s top court agrees to some degree. “In addition, the balance between the right to privacy and the protection of personal data, on the one hand, and the freedom of information of internet users, on the other, is likely to vary significantly around the world,� the court said.
Earlier this year, an advisor to Europe’s top court also said that the right to be forgotten should be limited to Europe.
European citizens living outside of the European Union or people living in the European Union who use a VPN server could potentially access delisted results.
That’s why Europe’s top court says that search engines should take measures to “prevent or, at the very least, seriously discourage an internet user conducting a search from one of the Member States on the basis of a data subject’s name from gaining access, via the list of results displayed following that search, through a version of that search engine outside the EU, to the links which are the subject of the request for de-referencing.�
Source: TechCrunch
The Galaxy Fold comes in a nice box. It’s a thing I rarely, if ever, mention in product write-ups, because, if done right, shipping containers are generally the least interesting thing about a product. But Samsung, to its credit, has taken great care. That’s been one of the constants across this admittedly bungled product launch: presentation.
The first time I saw the device, it was well lit, in an elaborate display behind several layers of glass on the floor of Mobile World Congress. Samsung wasn’t letting anyone go past a literal velvet rope a few feet from the device.
When we finally got our hands on the Fold, Samsung had laid out several large boxes, which, when opened, had the effect of raising the device up, toward the viewer. It was a fun thing for a room full of journalists who had largely been engaging with the product through guarded curiosity, wondering aloud whether it would ever actually see the light of day.
That skepticism was warranted, as it turned out. The Fold came back broken from several reviewers. After placing the blame at the feet of users, Samsung eventually changed tack, pushed back the April release date indefinitely and tried to get to the bottom of what was going on with the product.
This week, the Fold returns to North American store shelves — or, rather, it finally debuts, about five months after initially planned. And once again, Samsung’s delivering the device in a nice box. The purpose of this one, however, is as much about setting expectations as it is providing a splashy debut.
Really, it’s like the analog version of the “Caring for Your Fold� video the company debuted on YouTube last week. It was as flashy and well-produced as we’d expect from Samsung, right down to the dramatic piano music while instructing the viewer to “Just use a light touch.� That note arrived with its own (somewhat redundant) footnote: “Do not apply excessive pressure to it.�
Similarly, the Fold box comes with its fair share of paperwork. The first bit is an overview of Galaxy Fold “Premier Service,” the white-glove offering the company announced a while back. That was, it explained, the reason it canceled initial AT&T pre-orders. The 24/7 service comes free with the purchase of the $2,000 phone, offering users phone support, starting with setup. The company’s got a call center in North Carolina fielding the calls during U.S. business hours, and routes them abroad after that.
There are other elements to it, as well, including a $149 screen warranty. All of these pieces add up to a company confident enough to bring the product back to market, but not quite ready to ensure that the Fold’s screens might not crack under pressure for some. In fact, there’s a five-point warranty adhered to the screen that warns against:
The product does, thankfully, ship with a case, which is a thin, two-piece snap-on covering. It won’t protect the front display from scratches, but it may help the product avoid dings if dropped. When closed, at least. I’m very much looking forward to someone purchasing the device for extensive drop testing while open.
Samsung does get some bonus points for also throwing in a pair of its very good Galaxy Buds Bluetooth earbuds for free. A nice gesture, to be sure.
As those who read the site with some regularity likely already know, we’ve actually spent a significant amount of time with the device. I was carrying the original version of the Fold around during our Robotics event back in April. Fitting, I suppose, that I’ll be sporting it next week at Disrupt. I do once again plan to hold onto the phone for a bit to get a better idea of day to day life with the foldable (though I likely won’t be doing daily dispatches this time).
Full disclosure: Samsung just gave us the revised version of the product yesterday afternoon. Hardly enough time to give you anything conclusive, so I’m not going to pretend to do so here. I will say that aesthetically, very little has changed. For better and worse. The one immediate thing that leaps out is the lack of a visible screen protector.
If you’ll recall, that was a major source of the problems last time out. The edges of the built-in screen protector were visible and, yes, it looked an awful lot like the removable screen protectors other Galaxy products ship with. Did I peel it off? No. Was I tempted? You better believe it.
This time out, the laminate has been extended to under the outer edges to avoid that temptation altogether. The other big fixes include plugging the gaps in the hinges that previously allowed debris to fall behind the screen, damaging it when pressure is applied. There’s also a new, unseen layer of metal under the display designed to reinforce the screen. This gives the device a slightly more rigid feel.
Otherwise, the hardware is largely unchanged, including the small 4.6-inch window display up front and the large 7.3-inch foldable screen inside, which still has a visible seam when the light reflects it at an angle.
There’s a tacit understanding that the Fold is an imperfect device. The product builds upon a decade of experience creating Galaxy flagship smartphones, along with all of Samsung’s prior electronics knowledge, but the foldable category is still very much a kind of uncharted territory. Companies are going to fail plenty before they succeed here, and at very least, Samsung deserves some kudos for being among the first to try the thing, tumbling a bit and getting back up and trying again.
There remains the important question, however, of whether consumers are okay with what feels a little like an extended beta test — albeit one that costs $2,000 to join. Thankfully, Samsung got some of those unfortunate bungles out of the way before bringing the product to market. Along with a reinforced display, however, Samsung does appear to be girding itself for the possibility that consumers will find creative and new ways to mangle the display — accidentally and otherwise.
Suffice it to say, I’ve got a lot more thoughts on the matter, many of which I’ll be formulating over the coming days and weeks. So, stay tuned for those. Meantime, if you’d like to leap before you look, the Fold can be yours this Friday, starting at $1,980 U.S.
Source: TechCrunch
Fans will get to see previews of new Mandalorian and Rise of Skywalker collectibles ahead of Force Friday on Oct. 4.
Source: CNET
The most important things you need to know how to do on your new iPhone.
Source: CNET
The film’s f/x artists tried to create, with pure data, a shockingly realistic 23-year-old Will Smith. Their true aim: to finally cross the uncanny valley.
Source: Wired