Google Pixel 4A renders include a headphone jack and hole-punch display

It’s the slowest week of the year for gadget news. Christmas is in the rearview, and it’s a few days until the new year. After that, it’s a straight shot to CES and then MWC. Meantime, best we’ve got going for us are a handful of rumors, including a peek at what Google’s next budget might could potentially possibly conceivably look like.

Per renders from OnLeaks and 91Mobiles, a vision of the Pixel  4A has appeared — or, a render, rather. The handset will no doubt be an important one for Google. After all, the 3A (pictured at top) helped the company recover from some lackluster sales last year. A couple of pieces jump out at first glance. The display appears to finally buck the company’s longtime notch dependency, in favor of a hole punch camera on the front.

Perhaps even more compelling, the device seems to hold the torch for the headphone jack. In 2020, that could well be a standout feature even among mid-range handsets. As the company eloquently put it around the time of the 3A’s release, “a lot of people have headphones.”

And here comes my last late #Christmas gift in form of your very first and early look at the #Google #Pixel4a!
360° video + gorgeous 5K renders + dimensions, on behalf of my Friends over @91mobiles -> https://t.co/rsvRkjVOln pic.twitter.com/sqG6J5knSR

— Steve H.McFly (@OnLeaks) December 28, 2019

Other notable features on the forthcoming devices include the addition of the squircle phone bump on the rear, a design element borrowed from the Pixel 4. Likely the handset will stick to a single camera, instead of adopting the flagship’s truly excellent dual-camera set up. Even so, Google’s been able to accomplish some solid imaging technology with just the one sensor, courtesy of clever ML software.

The display, too, will be slightly larger than its predecessor, bumping up one or two tenths of an inch. The handset is reportedly dropping around May, probably just in time for I/O 2020.

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Huawei shipped 12 million Mate 30 series phones worldwide

Around a month ago Huawei passed the 7 million sales mark with its Mate 30 lineup. Now the figure has grown to 12 million units, according to a new report from Chinese news agency Sina. The figure is quite impressive given the limited availability of the handsets outside of China and their lack of Google Mobile Services. Looking ahead, Huawei's goal with the Mate 30 lineup is to top the 20 million shipments mark which seems like an attainable goal judging by the current sales volumes. In our time with the Mate 30 Pro, we found its one of the best all-around Android flagships of...

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VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition

VMware is closing the year with a significant new component in its arsenal. Today it announced it has closed the $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition it originally announced in August.

The acquisition gives VMware another component in its march to transform from a pure virtual machine company into a cloud native vendor that can manage infrastructure wherever it lives. It fits alongside other recent deals like buying Heptio and Bitnami, two other deals that closed this year.

They hope this all fits neatly into VMware Tanzu, which is designed to bring Kubernetes containers and VMware virtual machines together in a single management platform.

“VMware Tanzu is built upon our recognized infrastructure products and further expanded with the technologies that Pivotal, Heptio, Bitnami and many other VMware teams bring to this new portfolio of products and services,” Ray O’Farrell, executive vice president and general manager of the Modern Application Platforms Business Unit at VMware, wrote in a blog post announcing the deal had closed.

Craig McLuckie, who came over in the Heptio deal, and is now VP of R&D at VMware, told TechCrunch in November at KubeCon, that while the deal hadn’t closed at that point, he saw a future where Pivotal could help at a professional services level, as well.

“In the future when Pivotal is a part of this story, they won’t be just delivering technology, but also deep expertise to support application transformation initiatives,” he said.

Up until the closing, the company had been publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, but as of today Pivotal becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of VMware. It’s important to note that this transaction didn’t happen in a vacuum where two random companies came together.

In fact, VMware and Pivotal were part of the consortium of companies that Dell purchased when it acquired EMC in 2015 for $67 billion. While both were part of EMC and then Dell, each one operated separately and independently. At the time of the sale to Dell, Pivotal was considered a key piece, one that could stand strongly on its own.

Pivotal CEO talks IPO and balancing life in Dell family of companies

Pivotal and VMware had another strong connection. Pivotal was originally created by a combination of EMC, VMware and GE (which owned a 10% stake for a time) to give these large organizations a separate company to undertake transformation initiatives.

It raised a hefty $1.7 billion before going public in 2018. A big chunk of that came in one heady day in 2016 when it announced $650 million in funding led by Ford’s $180 million investment.

The future looked bright at that point, but life as a public company was rough and after a catastrophic June earnings report, things began to fall apart. The stock dropped 42 percent in one day. As I wrote in an analysis of the deal:

The stock price plunged from a high of $21.44 on May 30th to a low of $8.30 on August 14th. The company’s market cap plunged in that same time period falling from $5.828 billion on May 30th to $2.257 billion on August 14th. That’s when VMware admitted it was thinking about buying the struggling company.

VMware came to the rescue and offered $15.00 a share, a substantial premium above that August low point. As of today, it’s part of VMware.

How Pivotal got bailed out by fellow Dell family member, VMware

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Maxar is selling space robotics company MDA for around $765 million

Satellite industry giant Maxar is selling MDA, its subsidiary focused on space robotics, for $1 billion CAD (around $765.23 million USD), Reuter reports. The purchasing entity is a consortium of companies led by private investment firm Northern Private Capital, which will acquire the entirety of MDA’s Canadian operations, which is responsible for the development of the Canadarm and Canadarm2 robotic manipulators used on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station respectively.

Maxar’s goal in selling the business is to help alleviate some of its considerable debt, which stood at $3.1 billion as of this past September. The company was already known to be seeking potential buyers for MDA, so it’s not much of a surprise. MDA will continue to operate as its own company under the terms of the new ownership, which should mean that its current plans and contracts will continue.

MDA is working on a number of projects for various clients, including developing wildfire monitoring satellites, navigation antennas for use on other company’s satellites and to develop Canadarm3, the next version of its robotic appendage, for use on the NASA Lunar Gateway that will be a research and staging station orbiting the Moon as part of the U.S. space agency’s Artemis mission series.

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Elon Musk details SpaceX progress on latest Starship spacecraft build and flight timelines

The holidays might be a time of slowed activity for most companies in the tech sector, but for SpaceX, it was a time to ramp production efforts on the latest Starship prototype – “Starship SN1” as it’s called, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. This flight design prototype of Starship is under construction at SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas development facility, and Musk was in attendance over the weekend overseeing its build and assembly.

Musk shared video of the SpaceX team working on producing the curved dome that will sit atop the completed Starship SN1 (likely stands for ‘serial number 1,’ a move to a more iterative naming system and away from the “Mark” nomenclature used for the original prototype), a part he called “the most difficult” in terms of the main components of the new spacecraft. He added that each new SN version of the rocket SpaceX builds will have minor improvements “at least” through the first twenty or so versions, so it’s clear they expect to iterate and test these quickly.

As for when it might actually fly, Musk said that he hopes this Starship will take off sometime around “2 to 3 months” from now, which is still within range of the projections for a first Starship high-altitude test flight given by the CEO earlier this year at the unveiling of the Starship Mk1 prototype. That prototype was originally positioned as the one that would fly for the high-altitude test, but it blew its top during testing in November and Musk said they’d be moving on to a new design rather than try to repair or rebuild the Mk1.

Musk also shared new details about the construction process for Starship, including that SpaceX will move its build process for future spacecraft to an enclosed building starting with Starship “SN2” in January – though mostly to block out the winds experienced in Boca Chica, since Musk says that welding for stainless steel (the primary material for the Starship fuselage) is much less sensitive to dust and debris than aluminum.

In another tweet, Musk detailed another change from SpaceX’s previous operating model in developing Starship: The future spacecraft’s development is being focused at Boca Chica currently, he said, while SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral teams are “focused on Falcon/Dragon.” Up until now, SpaceX has been operating two separate teams working in parallel on Starship prototypes at both sites. Musk didn’t detail what will become of Starship Mk2, the other earlier prototype that was currently in development at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Musk also shared updates about his tunneling company The Boring Co. (they hope to open their Vegas tunnel to drivers in 2020), Starlink (could be available to customers in the Caribbean either in 2020 or 2021) and chocolate chip muffins.

Simulation of first crewed flight of Falcon 9 / Dragon 2020 @NASA pic.twitter.com/BSDPYTcVIG

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 30, 2019

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Oppo F15 incoming, looks like a rebranded Oppo A91

The Oppo F lineup has been getting two refreshes per year and we are about to see the Oppo F15 come and replace the Oppo F11. The Indian division of the company has just released an official teaser on its YouTube page, showcasing the device and promoting it with the slogan "Flaunt it Your Way". The device also appears briefly in the 30-second clip with a thin pill-shaped oval flash and four snappers, strongly resembling the Oppo A91, launched in China several days ago. If the Oppo F15 is indeed the Oppo A91, then we're looking at a phone with a Helio P70 chipset, 6.4" AMOLED screen...

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Google Pixel 4a renders show punch-hole display and square camera cutout

Google's midrange Pixel 3a duo proved to be a real hit with users who don't care about the latest flagship specs but want a solid camera experience and stock Android. A new set of renders courtesy of @OnLeaks is giving us our first look at the upcoming Pixel 4a which brings the familiar pixel 4 design with a few twists. For starters the display will feature a punch hole in the top left corner for the front-facing camera marking a first in the Pixel line. The screen is believed to come in between 5.7 and 5.8-inches and the bezels appear noticeably slimmer than the current Pixel...

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