User blogs

I suspect it will be a while before I get excited over wireless earbuds. It’s not for a lack of trying on the part of manufacturers. In fact, quite the contrary. The category actually matured quite quickly, compared to various other verticals in the consumer electronics space. The truth is, most major hardware makers have gotten pretty decent at making a pair of wireless buds — many for pretty cheap.

Samsung’s been in that category for a while now. I’ve liked the last several models I’ve tried from the company. The sound quality has been good, they’re generally pretty comfortable — a good experience, all around. In fact, one of the issues I’ve raised the last couple of times is the fact that Samsung didn’t offer its own equivalent to products like the AirPods Pro and Sony WF-1000XM3 (though that latter reference is starting to become a bit dated).

It’s a hole in the lineup now filled by the Galaxy Buds Pro, which slot in the high end, above the Galaxy Buds Live and Galaxy Buds+. The naming conventions could be streamlined a bit, but it’s a small complaint in the grand scheme. At $199, the Pros are $30 more than the Live and $50 more than the Pluses. More importantly, it puts them at $50 less than the AirPods Pro – their clearest analogue.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

And like Apple’s Pro buds, the Galaxy Buds are very specifically designed to operate with Samsung’s devices. You can still pair them with other Android handsets, but you’re going to lose key parts of the software integration. This honestly seems to be the way things are headed, with practically every smartphone company also manufacturing their own headphones. And certainly Samsung’s got enough market share that such a play makes sense.

If you do want to use them on another Android device, you can pair them by downloading the Galaxy Wearables app. You can pair them manually without the app, but you’ll lose a bunch more features in the process. Like past Galaxy Buds models, there’s no physical button on the case for pairing.

After several generations of devices, Samsung’s certainly got the foundation in place. And its purchase of Harman/AKG in 2017 has clearly played a key role in its ability to create some quality audio accessories. All of that comes into play here. Samsung’s made some solid choices on the design front. The charging case is remarkably compact. I was actually a bit surprised when I opened the package. It’s not nearly as long as the AirPods case, though it is a bit thicker. In any case, it’s certainly compact enough to carry around, unlike, say the Powerbeats Pro.

The battery claims are pretty impressive, given the size. The company rates the buds at five hours each and 28 hours with the case. Turn off active noise canceling and Bixby (I’ll let you guess which of those two I won’t miss) and the numbers bump up to eight and 20 hours, respectively. I will say that I was able to confidently bring the headphones with me on one of my lengthy morning sabbaticals without worrying about packing the case. That’s not something I can say about every wireless earbud.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The headphones sport an 11-millimeter woofer and 6.5-millimeter tweeter. I found the sound to be an overall good mix, whether listening to music or a podcast. If you’re so included, you can also fiddle with the equalizer in the wearable app. It features six presets, rather than sliders, so it’s an imperfect science. But I didn’t really feel the need to mess around in there much.

The active noise canceling is solid, as well (okay, I admit it, Bixby is the one I’d drop in a heartbeat). I wasn’t really aware at how good a job it was doing drowning out street noise until I switched it off — this can be accomplished with a long press on the side touch panel or through the app. By default the former switches between ANC and transparent mode, skipping the off mode in the middle. Like the equalizer, you an adjust the level of ANC here — either high or low.

If you’re a Samsung true believer, Seamless Switch can be enabled, allowing you to, say, switch between a tablet and a phone when a call comes in. Other neat Samsung-specific features include the ability to use the buds as a kind of makeshift lavalier mic while recording video on the Galaxy S21. The SmartThings app can also be used to find misplaced buds. All in all, Samsung is clearly building up its ecosystem here.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The design of the buds themselves has been streamlined since the extremely bean-like Buds Live. The company says they were designed to minimize contact with the ear, to help relieve pressure. It’s a shame that everyone isn’t able to try every earbud on before buying — how they fit in your own ears is obviously an extremely personal thing.

I found, however, that one of my ears tends to ache when wearing them for a prolonged period — not an issue I’ve had with either the AirPods Pro or Pixel Buds (the Powerbeats Pro are also great in this respect). I found myself fiddling with them semi-regularly and triggering the touch mechanism in the process (this can be turned off by default in the app).

Most of my issues with the Buds Pro are pretty minor. They’re a worthy update to the line and a great pair of headphones if you’re a Samsung user.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/15/samsungs-galaxy-buds-pro-are-a-solid-airpods-alternative/

If you’ve been following the gaming space – or just the state of the world, generally – over the past 12 months, this shouldn’t come as a major surprise. Spending saw big increases pretty much across the board in 2020, as a homebound populace sought comfort and distraction in gaming. This comes in stark contrast to much of the rest of the consumer electronics space, in which economic uncertainty  curtailed purchasing on non-essentials.

According to the latest figures from NPD, spending on gaming hardware, software and accessories was up 25% in December and 27% for the full year. Hardware specifically increased 38% year-over-year for December to $1.35 billion, with the arrival of next gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

That’s the highest figure since the $1.37 billion hit in December 2013, the year the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 arrived. In spite of this year’s new arrivals (which were hampered by limited availability), Nintendo’s Switch once again dominated sales for the month, with the PS5 grabbing the number two spot. The Switch’s 2020 was the second highest annual performance for a console, after the Wii in 2008.

The Switch – which turns three this March – got off to a slow start, courtesy of its own limited availability. But the arrival of a new Animal Crossing title helped rocket it to the top, as isolated consumers looked for new venues for social gaming. That title took the number three spot for the year, finishing behind Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (the former also topping the list for December).

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/15/video-game-spending-increased-27-in-2020/

The pandemic might have wiped out whole swaths of the economy, but one area that is pulsating with activity is home sales. Driven by remote work and changing commute patterns, home sales skyrocketed last year, with the National Association of Realtors predicting that the total volume when fully calculated will be the highest in 14 years.

That’s been great news for Better Mortgage (which generally brands itself as Better.com for presumably that SEO love). According to the company, it is now underwriting $3 billion per month in mortgage loans, and that’s led to huge VC interest, including most recently a $200 million round a few weeks ago led by L Catterton at a $4 billion valuation. The company has also hired more than 4,000 employees since the start of the pandemic last March.

One of those new hires is Diane Yu, who is joining the company as CTO to lead engineering and technical strategy. She has had extensive experience in advertising networks, having led engineering as CTO at Comcast for its Advanced Advertising Group. She came to Comcast via the cable and media conglomerate’s acquisition of her startup FreeWheel, which designed tools for ad management and optimization. Prior to that, she worked for nearly a decade in engineering leadership at DoubleClick.

Her addition to the C-suite follows the hiring of Kevin Ryan as CFO, who joined in October of last year. Ryan is a former long-time Morgan Stanley investment banker who led the IPO for Rocket Mortgage, one of the many neo-mortgage lenders that have risen up in recent years.

All of these hires are presumably preparation for an IPO, which has been rumored for the past few months and intensified after Ryan’s hiring. With home sales at a peak, underwriting growing rapidly, and a fleshed-out management team, Better hopes its turn to shine in the public markets has finally arrived.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/15/diane-yu-joins-better-mortgage/

Last year, a number of startups building OKR-focused software raised lots of venture capital, drawing TechCrunch’s attention.

Why is everyone making software that measures objectives and key results? we wondered with tongue in cheek. After all, how big could the OKR software market really be?

It’s a sub-niche of corporate planning tools! In a world where every company already pays for Google or Microsoft’s productivity suite, and some big software companies offer similar planning support, how substantial could demand prove for pure-play OKR startups?

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Pretty substantial, we’re finding out. After OKR-focused Gtmhub announced its $30 million Series B the other day, The Exchange reached out to a number of OKR-focused startups we’ve previously covered and asked about their 2020 growth.

Gtmhub had released new growth metrics along with its funding news, plus we had historical growth data from some other players in the space. So let’s peek at new and historical numbers from Gthmhub, Perdoo, WorkBoard, Ally.io, Koan and WeekDone.

Growth (and some caveats)

A startup growing 400% in a year from a $50,000 ARR base is not impressive. It would be much more impressive to grow 200% from $1 million ARR, or 150% from $5 million.

So, percentage growth is only so good, as metrics go. But it’s also one that private companies are more likely to share than hard numbers, as the market has taught startups that sharing real data is akin to drowning themselves. Alas.

As we view the following, bear in mind that a simply higher percentage growth number does not indicate that a company added more net ARR than another; it could be growing faster from a smaller base. And some companies in the mix did not share ARR growth, but instead disclosed other bits of data. We got what we could.

Gtmhub:

• 400% ARR growth, 2019
• 300% ARR growth, 2020
• More: The company has seen strong ACV growth and its reportedly strong gross margins from 2019 held up in 2020, it said.
• TechCrunch coverage

Perdoo:

• 240% paid customer growth, 2020
• 340% user base growth, 2020
• Given strong market demand, a company representative told The Exchange that Perdoo had to restrict its free tier to 10 users.
• TechCrunch coverage

WorkBoard:

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/15/rapid-growth-in-2020-reveals-okr-software-markets-untapped-potential/

Apple has planned new upgraded MacBook Pros for launch “later this year” according to a new report from Bloomberg. These new models would come in both 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, with new and improved Apple Silicon processors like those that Apple debuted on the new MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro model late last year. They would also see the return of Apple’s MagSafe charger, a magnetic dedicated charging port that would replace USB-C for power, and they could potentially do away with the Touch Bar, the small strip of OLED display built in to the keyboard on modern MacBook Pros.

Bloomberg’s report suggests that these MacBook Pro models will have processors with more cores and better graphics capabilities than the existing M1 chips that power Apple’s current notebooks with in-house silicon, and that they’ll also have displays with brighter panels that offer higher contrast. Physically, they’ll resemble existing notebooks, according to the report’s sources, but they’ll see the return of MagSafe, the dedicated magnetic charging interface that Apple used prior to switching power delivery over to USB-C on its laptops.

MagSafe had the advantage of easily disconnecting in case of anyone accidentally tripping across the power cord while plugged in, without yanking the computer with it. It also meant that it kept all data ports free for accessories. Bloomberg says that the revitalized MagSafe for new notebooks will also offer faster charging vs. USB-C, in addition to those other benefits.

As for the Touch Bar, it has been a topic of debate since its introduction. Pro users in particular seem to dislike the interface option, especially because it replaces a row of dedicated physical keys that could be useful in professional workflows. The report claims that Apple has “tested versions that remove the Touch Bar,” so it seems less clear that Apple will finally unring that particular bell, but I personally know a lot of people who would be excited if that does come to pass.

Finally, Bloomberg says Apple is also planning a new redesigned MacBook Air. That was updated most recently just a couple of months ago, and the report says it’ll only follow “long after” these new MacBook Pros, so it seems unlikely to arrive in 2021.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/15/apple-said-to-be-planning-new-14-and-16-inch-macbook-pros-with-magsafe-and-apple-processors/