Feature phones have long gone out of fashion in the global market, but in the US the situation is changing. Some Americans are switching to such devices to limit their time spent on smartphone screens.

“It’s happening to some Gen Zers — they’re tired of screens,” said José Briones, moderator of the r/dumbphones subreddit. “They don’t know what’s going on with mental health and they’re trying to cut down on their smartphone use.”

In 2022, sales of HMD Global flip phones in the US have grown. Tens of thousands of such phones are sold monthly. At the same time, global sales of HMD feature phones have declined, according to the company.

Nearly 80% of feature phone sales in 2022 were in the Middle East, Africa and India, according to Counterpoint Research. The North American feature phone market is forecast to grow by 5% over the next five years, and possibly even more.

Various companies are following this trend by selling devices aimed at those who want to spend less time with their phones and social networks.

Apple has again delayed mass production of its mixed reality headset, and the device may not show up at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2023) this year.

This was stated by prominent Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who explained that Apple is “not very optimistic” about whether the headset can create an “iPhone moment”. Recall that back in 2021, Tim Cook said that the headset should replace the iPhone in the next ten years. The same statement was made by Ming-Chi Kuo.

As a result, the company has decided to postpone the device’s mass production schedule to mid-to-late Q3 2023. Kuo believes the delay adds to the uncertainty over “whether a new device will show up at WWDC 2023.”

The delay also means headset shipment forecasts for 2023 will be even lower than previously thought, falling to between 200,000 and 300,000 units. It was previously expected to ship about half a million units this year.

The reasons for Apple’s concern are the economic downturn in the market, compromises in hardware specifications, the mass of the device, the readiness of the headset ecosystem and applications, and the very high price of the device. Kuo thinks the headset will cost between $3,000 and $4,000 or more.

Earlier it was reported that Apple employees are skeptical about the company’s next revolutionary device.

Apple announced yesterday that WWDC 2023 will run from June 5th to 9th.

Together with the Meizu 20 Pro, a simpler model, the Meizu 20, debuted today. It is also built on the SoC Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but cheaper: the basic version with 12 GB of RAM and 128 GB of flash memory is priced at only $ 435. The cost of the top version (12/512 GB) is $555.

Outwardly, Meizu 20 is a collection of quotes. The main camera is designed in the spirit of the Samsung Galaxy S23, and the flat metal frame is like the iPhone 14. The screen with the front camera embedded in the center is like most models on the market. By the way, the yellow color is also related to the iPhone 14: literally immediately after the announcement of the yellow iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus, Meizu announced that its new flagship would also have this color.

The OLED screen is flat, it is characterized by a diagonal of 6.5 inches and Full HD + resolution, the maximum frame rate is 144 Hz. The fingerprint scanner is sub-screen, and the resolution of the front camera is 32 megapixels.

The main camera is represented by sensors 50 (Samsung GN5), 16 and 5 MP. The set can hardly be called flagship. But these are the components of the hardware platform: a bunch of Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 flash memory – like in all the flagships of this year.

Meizu 20 received a 4700 mAh battery with support for 67 W fast charging. This model does not support wireless charging. The list of characteristics includes stereo speakers, WiFi-7, NFC and the Flyme 10 interface based on Android 13.