Phone Scoop

A new startup has announced Freckle, a unique take on a phone designed exclusively for kids aged seven and up. Uniquely, it encourages exploration via the Curiosity Camera and Quests. Curiosity Camera works sort of like Google Lens; it lets kids point the camera at anything and ask questions about it. These inquiries are saved as "Artifacts", which parents can review in their app. Parents can also set up "Quests", where kids are given specific exploration tasks, like taking pictures of three different bugs, for example. The phone also supports tap-to-pay, with a Freckle Pay wallet that parents can top up from their app. Story Time, games, camera, music, walkie-talkie, and maps are also included, and access to each feature can be controlled from the parents' app. Freckle also offers the usual features of a kids' phone, such as location tracking, communication limited to specific contacts, lack of social media, and no access to the open web nor an app store. The hardware includes a 3.1-inch touch-screen with 720 x 720 pixel resolution, 2,600 mAh battery, and cameras on both the front and back. Freckle plans to ship the $199 phone starting this December. Service will run $25/month, which includes 2 GB of data.

Qualcomm has revealed the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip to power flagship phones, alongside an even-more-powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. Both chips offer 37–40% improved power efficiency (compared to the previous-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5), thanks in part to a new 2nm manufacturing process. (Apple and MediaTek also adopted the 2nm process for their new flagship chips this year.) The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip offers 10% improved CPU performance, 35% improved GPU (graphics) performance, 14% improved NPU (AI) performance, and 20% improved AI performance-per-watt. Taking things further, the "Extreme" version offers 13% improved CPU performance, 44% improved GPU (graphics) performance, 35% improved NPU (AI) performance, and 33% improved AI performance-per-watt. New in both chips is the X105 modem, which improves data speeds, coverage, and power efficiency. Support for up to six cellular antennas improves download speeds by 10%, improves cell-edge reception, and reduces dropped connections. The X105 supports 3GPP Release 19 5G Advanced. The new FastConnect 8800 radio system supports 4x4 Wi-Fi 8 for double the peak speeds and up to 3x longer gigabit range. Unique to the Extreme version is support for 8k60 FPS video and 4k240 super slow motion, as well as support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec. The Extreme version also introduces Adreno Neural Fusion, which uses AI to directly enhance graphics for gaming, with better power efficiency than using the GPU alone. A number of brands have announced that they will use the chips in flagship phones later this year, including Motorola.