Your weekly look at the world of smartphones and mobile technology, this is the Phone Buzz on Friday 5th February 2021.

This Week’s Top Story

• Apple vs Facebook is going to be one of the most significant stories of 2021. Reducing it down to a soundbite removes many of the shades of grey between the positions of Tim Cook’s Apple and Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, but the battle around who controls your personal data is going to be visible, ugly, and relevant to every one of us. I suspect that Apple is going to find its stance far easier to justify in public (Recode).

Apple Headlines

• As always, the improved camera technology is one way to help a new smartphone stand out form the pack. That means the new features and techniques are going to be hotly debated before the reveal, during the launch, through the reviews, and beyond. This year’s iPhone 13 will not be an exception, and the latest leak brings a new ultra-wide camera into play as one of the key specs (MacRumors).
• Following up on reports last week, JP Morgan’s supply chain analyst has bumped up the project sales of the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max in the back half of 2021. Not only does he pick out the drop in iPhone 12 numbers, he floats the idea that iPhone 12 Mini production may haunt in the third calendar quarter of the year (Apple Insider).
• The iPad family has benefited from the global rise in tablet sales. With the market up 19.3 percent year-on-year, Digitimes believes Apple is on its thirteenth consecutive record quarter (iMore).
• Has Apple missed a trick with the MacBook Pro design? Microsoft’s Surface Pro 7+ has a number of great features for enterprise customers, and that offers a distinct advantage over the Mac; although with a redesign expected during 2021 we may yet see Apple’s laptop fitted with a removable SSD (Forbes).
• The public beta of iOS 14.5 will allow iPhone users to use Face ID to unlock their device while wearing a face mask; the twist is that the user must have an Apple Watch, which acts as secondary check through proximity to go along with the reduced biometric data available (BBC News).
• That’s not the only significant feature in the  iOS 14.5 beta. It may have been there at launch, but this version is expected to switch on 5G support to both SIM cards in the iPhone 12 (Rene Ritchie).
• Apple TV+’s ’Ted Lasso’ has pick dup Emmy nominates for ‘Best Comedy’ and ‘Best Actor’. The awards ceremony is on Feb 28th (Apple Insider).

Android Headlines

• Last year’s Galaxy S20 Fan Edition, arguably the best value of the S20 family, only turned up in September. Just a few months later, is the jump to the Galaxy S21 worth it? (SamMobile).
• It might not be Windows 3.1 (kids, ask your grandparents), but Samsung has rolled out a promotional video with key features of its ‘One UI’ that sits on top of Android; highlighting the new elements, flowing animations, and the impact of the 120Hz screen found in the Galaxy S21 family of handsets (Samsung YouTube).
• Ron Amadeo and the Ars Technica team have taken a deep dive into Huawei’s HarmonyOS. The heart of the ‘brand-new’ mobile operating system looks remarkably like a fork of Android 10 (Ars Technica).
• The Nokia 8.3 5G will be the first of HMD Global’s smartphones to receive Android 11. It’s been a staggered roll-out over various territories, with competition expected by February 7th (Nokia). The Nokia 8.3 was the ‘James Bond’ phone with a tie-in to the delayed Bond Film ‘No Time To Die’, but with a rescheduled release of November 2021, any 8.3 from Q is going to look out of date; the industry expects parts of the film to be reshot to update the products placed in the film (Cinemablend).
• Meanwhile the Nokia 1.4 has been announced with prices starts at 99 euros. Packing a SnapDragon 215, up to 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, a 6.51 inch screen, and an 8 megapixel rear camera, it’s the latest version of HMD Global’s entry level Android One smartphone (Nokia).
• OnePlus’ affordable 5G smartphone, the Nord N10 5G, has picked up a price cut in its established territories. For UK consumers that drops the price to £249, and the even more affordable N100 drops to £129 (Amazon UK).
• One of the quiet but useful mobile apps I use is Microsoft’s Office Lens. Not only is the document scanning application picking up a number of new features; including image to text, additional image filters, and the ability to sca up to 100 pages into a single PDF file. Oh and it’s getting rebranded to Microsoft Lens. After all, who needs an office when we are all working from home! (Microsoft blog).
• MediaTek has announced a new 5G modem, the M80, that can sit alongside its range of processors, presumably including its  Dimensity 5G system on chip offerings. As well as being the first of MediaTek’s 5G modems to support mmWave, the specs suggest performance that is a slight improvement over Qualcomm’s X60. Given timescales involved, handsets with this modem may not show up till late 2021 or early 2022 (VentureBeat).
• Google and Ford have created a new collaborative group, Team Upshift, to “drive ongoing innovation” in the connected vehicle space. Ford has announced that Google Cloud as its preferred cloud-based provider, while Google will see Android-powered services fitted to countless Ford and Lincoln cars in a six-year partnership starting in 2023 (Ford).

Mobile Tech Headlines

• Max Weinbach has updated his review of Microsoft’s ARM-powered Surface Pro X. As with many who have reviewed the machine over a long period, there’s a lot of love as well as a call for Microsoft to offer more support for the Windows 10 on ARM project (Android Police).
• The Chromebook platform saw it take more than ten percent market share of personal computers last year, according to data from Canalyis. Presumably one of the key factors is rise of home schooling in the face of lockdowns around the world, at least for those who can afford to buy new hardware. It’s also important society considers internet access… the always-connected nature of modern desktop OS platforms means that those that cannot afford or have access to fast internet connections face another disadvantage (Thurrot).
• In case you missed it: Jeff Bezos is standing down as CEO of Amazon and taking up the role of Executive Chair (About Amazon); Alphabet’s Q4 results (Alphabet).

And Finally…

• The Apple Car remains a draw for both consumer tech and business writers. There seems to be something a bit more solid in the current lap around the track, with Hyundai in pole position through its Kia brand. How much of ‘Hyundai’ can survive the branding avalanche of ‘Apple Car’ remains to be seen. Personally I suspect not much beyond the access to the dealership forecourts (CNBC).

Ewan Spence

Ewan is the editor at Phone Buzz News. For over 30 years he has been covering the worlds of media and technology, from the early days of the first smartphone through to their essential role in today's society.