It’s been another bumper week in the tech world and, as is so often the case, Apple is at the centre of it. Here are our winners and losers for this week.
The slow crawl towards Spotify offering Hi-Fi music appeared to gather pace this week, with potential pricing for Music Pro tier along with other perks being reported. It’s still not expected until later this year though.
Speaking of things we’re still waiting for, a report suggested the revamped Alexa Plus AI is still not ready for prime time and won’t be available in the immediate aftermath of Amazon’s planned launch event on February 2026.
The mobile company Nothing made a bold statement by comparing the cameras on its forthcoming Nothing Phone (3a) to the iPhone 16 Pro Max. We’ll believe that when we see it.
As you’ll read later in this week’s round-up, there was some disappointing news for Brits with the UK excluded from the global launch of the Huawei Mate XT tri-fold.
And finally, there was also big news in the streaming realm with Amazon gaining full creative control over the future of the James Bond franchise. It remains to be seen whether that’ll be a win or a loss for 007 diehards.
Now, let’s move on to this week’s Winners and Losers.
Winner: Apple iPhone 16e
The iPhone 16e arrived on the scene this week and it’s a far cry from the compromise-laden iPhone SE phones of yesteryear.
It runs the same A18 series chip, has the same 6.1-inch OLED display (both are very slightly downgraded) as the iPhone 16. It has the same 48-megapixel Fusion Camera that can take both 24-megapixel and 48-megapixel shots and capture 4K HDR video at 60fps. Plus, it has Face ID with Touch ID now consigned to history.
It offers access to all of the new Apple Intelligence features and there’s the Action Button offering access to the Visual Intelligence. The design too, is more befitting of a modern iPhone.
Plus, it debuts the long-awaited homegrown C1 5G modem that Apple says is part of the reason there’s an extra four hours of battery life available on this device compared to the iPhone 16.
Of course, it’s not perfect. Omitting MagSafe charging doesn’t make much sense and it’s a tough pill to swallow to only have one main camera on a £600 phone. However, the positives far outweigh the negatives and I think the iPhone 16e is going to be a smash hit.
Loser: The UK government
iPhone users in the UK were dealt a huge privacy blow on Friday with the news Apple was pulling its Advanced Data Protection tool, that offered end-to-end encryption for users photos, files and app data stored in iCloud.
Apple reluctantly made the decision to drop the feature, rather than cave to UK government demands to provide a backdoor to access iPhone users’ private data worldwide.
The troubling overreach from the Labour government threatens Brits’ security, has removed their peace of mind, and enraged counterparts around the world.
Apple said it was “gravely disappointed” to be removing the feature at a time when the threat to users’ most sensitive data was at its highest level.
You can read about what it means for Brits here.
