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Sony has quietly updated the official Xperia page’s YouTube banner to reveal that it’s announcing a new product in a couple of weeks. As noticed by Droid Life, the banner says the company is launching a new Xperia product on April 14th at 4:30PM Japan time or 3:30AM Eastern time in the US. Seeing as Sony used Xperia’s YouTube banner for the announce reveal, it’ll likely stream the event on the video platform.

The company didn’t say what kind of product it’s unveiling, but rumored specs for a phone that’s reportedly named Xperia 1 III have been going around. According to those rumors, the phone will have specifications to rival other companies’ flagship devices. It will reportedly have a 6.5-inch 4K OLED display with a 21:9 aspect ratio and a 120Hz refresh rate, as well as a periscope lens that will be made in-house by Sony’s CyberShot division. 

The phone is said to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, the brand’s latest premium processor for smartphones, and can have up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Other possible features include a 5,000mAh battery, an SD slot and a headphone jack. The model will reportedly cost around US$1,370 when converted from Chinese Yuan, which doesn’t come as a surprise, seeing as Xperia 1 II was priced at $1,200 at launch.

We’ll know for sure on April 14th — we’ll let you know by then if Sony indeed unveils a new phone.

Fantasian, a new role-playing game from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, is available now for Apple Arcade. The game is playable on iOS, Mac, and Apple TV.

Fantasian is the latest from Sakaguchi’s studio Mistwalker, which he founded in 2004; the developer has since released games such as The Last Story and Blue Dragon. Although Fantasian uses traditional RPG elements like turn-based battles, it’s been designed with handcrafted physical models — more than 150 dioramas in all.

Fantasian features touch controls but, according to Sakaguchi, is intended to deliver a console-like experience on mobile devices. The game follows an amnesiac hero searching for a way to regain his lost memories. In a previous interview with The Verge, Sakaguchi said that replaying Final Fantasy IV made him want to return to his RPG roots.

The game was released yesterday in Japan. On Twitter, Sakaguchi noted Fantasian has the “same birthday” as one of his other games, Final Fantasy VI — a title that shares similar themes.

Sony has, in a very low-key way, just announced that its upcoming Xperia event will be on April 14th (via Droid Life). The news comes from the Xperia YouTube channel’s banner, where it lays out that there will be a new product announcement happening at 4:30PM Japan Standard Time — that’s 3:30AM EST, or 12:30AM PT (if you feel like burning the midnight oil to watch live).

The banner gives no real hints as to what will be announced, but there have been a few rumors floating around — one about a new flagship, the Xperia 1 III, and one about the return of the Xperia Compact, which could end up being an Android answer to the iPhone Mini.

Image: Sony

It’s worth noting that there are other rumors that mention new versions of the Xperia 5 and 10, leaving out the Compact entirely. But pretty much every rumor indicates that we’ll see a new entry in the flagship Xperia 1 line. Leaks indicate that the 1 III will have a periscope zoom lens, and Techradar recently published what could be the full specs. It’s mostly what’s expected from a flagship Android phone: Snapdragon 888, 12GB of memory, 5G, and a 4K 120Hz screen.

It’s probably a safe bet that if there’s only one phone being announced (which is hinted at by the singular “product” in the image from Sony), the Xperia 1 III would be it — the 1 line seems to be on a yearly cycle. The Compact is much more of a wildcard — the last time Sony released a “Compact” branded phone was in 2018, though it does use the word to market the Xperia 5 II, with its 6.1-inch screen, which is around the same size as an iPhone 12 Pro or Galaxy S21. The rumors for a 2021 version of the Compact say that it’ll have a 5.5-inch display, which is only a tiny bit bigger than the screen on an iPhone Mini.

Both potential phones are rumored to come with headphone jacks. As for what we’ll actually see on the day, only time will tell — but thankfully there’s not much of it left.

Over the next few years, the batteries that go into electric vehicles are going to get cheap enough that an EV should cost no more than an equivalent-sized vehicle with an internal combustion engine. But those EVs are still going to weigh more than their gas-powered counterparts—particularly if the market insists on longer and longer range estimates—with the battery pack contributing 20-25 percent of the total mass of the vehicle.

But there is a solution: turn some of the car’s structural components into batteries themselves. Do that, and your battery weight effectively vanishes because regardless of powertrain, every vehicle still needs structural components to hold it together. It’s an approach that groups around the world have been pursuing for some time now, and the idea was neatly explained by Volvo’s chief technology officer, Henrik Green, when Ars spoke with him in early March:

What we have learned… just to take an example: “How do you integrate the most efficiently a battery cell into a car?” Well, if you do it in a traditional way, you put the cell into the box, call it the module; you put a number of modules into a box, you call that the pack. You put the pack into a vehicle and then you have a standardized solution and you can scale it for 10 years and 10 manufacturing slots.

But in essence, that’s a quite inefficient solution in terms of weight and space, etc. So here you could really go deeper, and how would you directly integrate the cells into a body and get rid of these modules and packs and stuff in between? That is the challenge that we are working with in future generations, and that will change how you fundamentally build cars. You might have thought that time of changing that would have ended, but it has just been reborn.

Tesla is known to be working on designing new battery modules that also work as structural elements, but the California automaker is fashioning those structural modules out of traditional cylindrical cells. There’s a more elegant approach to the idea, though, and a group at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden led by professor Leif Asp has just made a bit of a breakthrough in that regard, making each component of the battery out of materials that work structurally as well as electrically.

The structural battery combines a carbon fiber anode and a lithium iron phosphate-coated aluminum foil cathode, which are separated by a glass fiber separator in a structural battery electrolyte matrix material. The anode does triple duty, hosting the lithium ions, conducting electrons, and reinforcing everything at the same time. The electrolyte and cathode similarly support structural loads and do their jobs in moving ions.

The researchers tested a couple different types of glass fiber—both resulting in cells with a nominal voltage of 2.8 V—and achieved better results in terms of battery performance with thinner, plain weave. The cells using this construction had a specific capacity of 8.55 Ah/kg, an energy density of 23.6 Wh/kg (at 0.05 C), a specific power of 9.56 W/kg (at 3 C), and a thickness of 0.27 mm. To put at least one of those numbers in context, the 4680 cells that Tesla is moving to have an energy density of 380 Wh/kg. However, that energy density figure for the cylindrical cells does not include the mass of the structural matrix that surrounds them (when used as structural panels).

Speaking of structural loads, the greatest stiffness was also achieved with plain glass fiber weave, at 25.5 GPa. Again, to put that number into context, it’s roughly similar to glass fiber-reinforced plastic, whereas carbon fiber-reinforced plastic will be around 10 times greater, depending on whether it’s resin transfer molding or woven sheets pre-impregnated with resin (known as pre-preg).

Professor Asp’s group is now working to see if swapping the cathode’s aluminum foil for carbon fiber will increase both stiffness (which it should) and electrical performance. The group is also testing even thinner separators. He hopes to reach 75 Wh/kg and 75 GPa, which would result in a cell that is slightly stiffer than aluminum (GPa: 68) but obviously much lighter.

Building electric cars or even airplanes out of structural composite batteries is still a longer-term project, and even at their best, structural battery cells may never approach the performance of dedicated cells. But since they would also replace heavier metal structures, the resulting vehicle should be much lighter overall.

Meanwhile, Asp thinks other products could see the benefits sooner. “The next generation structural battery has fantastic potential. If you look at consumer technology, it could be quite possible within a few years to manufacture smartphones, laptops, or electric bicycles that weigh half as much as today and are much more compact,” Asp said.

Listing image by Marcus Folino

Microsoft has shut down its Cortana app for iOS and Android. It’s the latest in a series of moves to end support for Cortana across multiple devices, including Microsoft’s own Surface Headphones. The Cortana app for iOS and Android is no longer supported, and Microsoft has removed it from both the App Store and Google’s Play Store.

“As we announced in July, we will soon be ending support for the Cortana app on Android and iOS, as Cortana continues its evolution as a productivity assistant,” reads a Microsoft support note spotted by MacRumors. “As of March 31, 2021, the Cortana content you created–such as reminders and lists–will no longer function in the Cortana mobile app, but can still be accessed through Cortana in Windows.” Cortana reminders, lists, and tasks are now available in the Microsoft To Do app instead.

Microsoft first launched Cortana for iOS and Android in December 2015. The app was originally designed to connect Windows 10 PCs and mobile phones, but failed to gain traction despite a big redesign. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recognized the company’s difficulties in competing with other digital assistants a couple of years ago, revealing that Microsoft no longer saw Cortana as a competitor to Alexa and Google Assistant.

Microsoft had once envisioned a future full of Cortana-powered fridges, toasters, and thermostats. That dream came to an end earlier this month when the first and only Cortana speaker removed Microsoft’s digital assistant. Other devices like the Cortana-powered GLAS thermostat are also no longer powered by Microsoft’s digital assistant.

Cortana isn’t completely finished, though. Microsoft still sees value in conversational AI and the company is trying to reposition Cortana as an assistant that can improve Microsoft’s enterprise-focused offerings.

It’s the 1st of April and you know that means – a handful of Mario games have been removed. Why has this happened and what is Nintendo’s reasoning? Fans are still searching for answers to these questions.

While nobody seems to really be able to provide an answer, VICE reporter Patrick Klepek investigated the whole limited release thing last year and received an insightful response from a developer who has worked with Nintendo on multiple occasions in the past.

Apparently, it’s rather “straightforward” – the video game giant is resorting to artificial scarcity because it believes it drives sales by playing on people’s “FOMO”, otherwise known as a fear of missing out:

“They have data that shows that rereleases of games tend to wither on wishlists,” said a developer who’s been involved with publishing several games on Switch, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not permitted to publicly discuss their meetings with Nintendo. “The manufactured FOMO [fear of missing out] helps them get those sales, or so they think.”

Last year, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser had a crack at explaining why Mario’s games would be removed – stating how it was a “celebration” of Mario. At the time, he also noted how it would not be a strategy widely used going forward.

“Yeah, I think I use a simple word: celebration. It just — this is a celebration of Mario’s 35th anniversary. And we wanted to celebrate in unique and different ways, and we’ve done that through games like Super Mario 3D All-Stars, or we will be doing that through future releases, such as Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury.”

“And then we’ve also done it through releases such as Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros., or through Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. There are various ways that we’re celebrating Mario’s 35th. And with some of these titles, we felt it was an opportunity to release them for a limited period of time. They’ve done very, very well. Super Mario 3D All-Stars has sold over 2.6 million units in the U.S. alone. And so clearly, consumers have been able to jump in and enjoy that. And it’s not strategy that we’re going to be using widely, but it’s one we thought was very unique for the actual anniversary.”

So, what do you think about the idea of Nintendo using limited-time releases to drive sales? How would you feel about similar offerings in the future? Share your thoughts down below.