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Phone Arena
6 days ago
- Business
- Phone Arena
Top 5 phones to cure us of the awful Samsung, Apple brand loyalty
Brand loyalty is something I see no use of, so today's proclamation goes like this: "Smartphone users of the world, free yourselves!" Since I'm not born in Prussia in 1818 (hint: google Karl Marx's year and place of birth), I guess I should cut it out before this thing turns into an anti-corporate is, however, a use of talking about brand loyalty. Everybody knows (in theory, at least) how brand loyalty pays accustomed to it, one gets to know their phone in-depth and knows what to expect of the next model from the same brand. The transfer between the new and old phones is seamless, the interface is familiar, as are the features that are there to be relied upon year after there are cons to brand loyalty and I want to drag them into the light… and then, I will present to you several phones to cure you of your Samsung or Apple attachment. That's the OnePlus 13. | Image by PhoneArena As of 2025, brand loyalty numbers tell a really fascinating story – Apple's once-dominant grip on customer loyalty has shown signs of weakening. In 2023, an impressive 94% of iPhone owners stuck with Apple. That's to say virtually all iPhone users replaced their devices with another iPhone. This coincided with the launch of the iPhone 15 this loyalty rate dropped to 89% and has remained there, likely due to growing dissatisfaction and a perceived lack of innovation. Apple's AI efforts, including its Apple Intelligence initiative and delayed improvements to Siri, have faced criticism and underwhelmed users, to put it mildly. Meanwhile, Samsung's loyalty rate has improved, climbing from 68% in 2021 to 76% in 2025, (minus a slight dip in 2024, but it's insignificant). Its Galaxy AI features have generally been better received than Apple's recent offerings. Samsung still competes with brands like Google, Motorola, and low-cost Android manufacturers. This shift paints a rather juicy picture: more folks are ditching their usual dance partners and flirting with something new – particularly hopping from iOS over to many are probably ditching Apple for Samsung, as their phones are extremely popular, well-marketed and often capable. But… there's a whole galaxy of multicolored, buzzing, sizzling phones from the Far East that one should check before going down the same old beaten path of sticking with either Sammy or Cupertino. Come on, people, what happened to your adventurous spirit?! That's the OnePlus 13T. | Image by OnePlus These are not in any particular order, but are all worth checking closely – and if you happen to choose one of them, you won't regret it. Sure, some may not be sold in your local brick and mortar, some might even require you dealing with customs and overseas shipment. Customer service may not be available 24/7, but so what – the Internet is full of horror stories about Samsung and Apple not providing adequate services as without further ado: OnePlus 13: it's got a 6.8-inch magnificent OLED screen with a 1-120Hz local high refresh rate. Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset under the hood (the best Qualcomm you could get on a phone right now) and the option for 24 GB of RAM. Simply amazing, given its $900 price tag. OnePlus 13T (a.k.a OnePlus 13s): it's the same phone as the aforementioned, just smaller. If you're a fan of compact phones and big batteries, you'll be happy to learn that this 6.3-inch beast packs a 6,260 mAh capacity battery. Realme GT7 – Launching globally on May 27, this is a true flagship killer. It features MediaTek's new Dimensity 9400e processor, delivering high performance with a 2.45 million+ AnTuTu score and support for 120 FPS gaming. It also packs a large 7,000 mAh battery (!) and 120W fast charging. Samsung's 45W charging speeds should go kick rocks. Xiaomi 15 Ultra or Oppo Find X8 Ultra: if mobile photography is your thing, you should definitely check those monsters that both pack an 1-inch sensor for their main cameras. They both pack two separate zoom cameras (with periscope-type lens in Oppo's case), have large cameras, large batteries and top-shelf chipsets. Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design – does anyone else in your friend circle rock a TRI-folding phone? No? I thought so. Well, tri-foldables are not merely an illusion, but a reality. The price is high, but you get what you pay for: a 10-inch screen that fits in your pocket and a 3.6mm thinness. True mobile innovation. Of course, this list is way longer than that, but I wanted to give you a little taste of what's out there and beyond the Apple, Samsung realm. That's the Huawei Mate XT. | Image by PhoneArena Consumers are beginning to realize that sticking with a familiar name often means paying more for marginal benefits. In many cases, these exotic brands from China deliver comparable (and better) camera systems, high-refresh-rate OLED displays, powerful chipsets, and jaw-dropping battery capacity up with your go-to phone brand isn't disloyal – it's smart. When consumers explore new options, it forces the big names to stop coasting and start innovating. Maybe that's why Samsung is offering 45W charging speeds for the Galaxy S25, instead of the 25W of the Galaxy S24. I know, it's still miles behind the Chinese 100W that are offered, but, hey, it's something. So skip the overpriced, uninspiring year-to-year updates and try something bold – you might be pleasantly surprised.
South China Morning Post
13-05-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Family of Germany's last emperor ends 99-year legal dispute over who owns art treasures
Thousands of cultural treasures from Germany's former Hohenzollern imperial family will remain on permanent display in museums in Berlin and Brandenburg, the country's new minister of state for culture, Wolfram Weimer, has announced.. After a dispute lasting almost 100 years, the descendants of the last German emperor have reached a landmark agreement with the federal government and with the states of Berlin and Brandenburg, he said. 'This agreement is a tremendous success for Germany as a cultural location and for the art-loving public,' Weimer said in Berlin. 'For a hundred years, there has been ongoing uncertainty about objects that are central to the art and collection history of Prussia and thus to German history as a whole.' German Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer. Photo: dpa The treasures include a portrait of Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg by painter Lucas Cranach the Elder and a table service for the Breslau City Palace acquired by Emperor Frederick II..
Associated Press
08-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Vertex to Present at 20th Annual Needham Technology, Media, & Consumer Conference
KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa., May 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vertex, Inc. (NASDAQ:VERX), a global provider of tax technology solutions, today announced that David DeStefano, Chief Executive Officer, and John Schwab, Chief Financial Officer, will participate in a fireside chat at the 20th Annual Needham Technology, Media, & Consumer Conference. The fireside chat is scheduled for Monday, May 12, 2025 at 9:30 AM Eastern Time. Live webcasts and replays of both presentations will be available on Vertex's investor relations website at About Vertex Vertex, Inc. is a leading global provider of indirect tax solutions. The Company's mission is to deliver the most trusted tax technology enabling global businesses to transact, comply and grow with confidence. Vertex provides solutions that can be tailored to specific industries for major lines of indirect tax, including sales and consumer use, value added and payroll. Headquartered in North America, and with offices in South America and Europe, Vertex empowers the world's leading brands to simplify the complexity of continuous compliance. For more information, visit or follow us on X and LinkedIn. Investor Relations contact: Joe Crivelli Vertex, Inc. [email protected]
ABC News
06-05-2025
- General
- ABC News
How the potato became popular thanks to Marie-Antoinette, an ex-prisoner of war and French fries
It's hard to imagine a time when the humble potato wasn't one of the most famous vegetables on the planet. From gnocchi to cepelinai, tudou si to French fries, the potato is the original global citizen, the " They can be roasted, baked, braised, boiled, smashed, scalloped, stewed, sauteed or simply fried. Spuds can be added to salads, soups or stews, served as a side dish or planted back in the ground to repopulate. It's this versatility that makes them a household staple. But hundreds of years ago, most Europeans had never heard of the vegetable. "[Back then] if you were encountering a potato, you might think that it was a very, very strange food indeed. It was unlike anything that you'd probably ever seen before," Lauren Samuelsson, food historian and associate lecturer at the University of Wollongong, tells Photo shows Global Roaming podcast Join Walkley award-winner Marc Fennell as he uncovers the incredible moments that changed the course of history. And those who were familiar with the plant were wary of eating it. "Some clergymen were preaching that because the potato hadn't appeared in the Bible, it was not designed for human consumption by God," says Dr Samuelsson. Then came Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, a prisoner-of-war turned unofficial PR agent for the potato. The young man was introduced to spuds while imprisoned behind enemy lines in Prussia, and he lived on little else for several years. Having developed a taste for this prison food, he made it his mission, once released, to revamp the image of the South American vegetable in broader Europe. With the help of Parmentier's "lavish 'potato parties", the vegetable underwent a makeover to become the staple food we know today. Europe's distaste for potatoes The Spanish first observed potatoes when they arrived in South America in 1532 to conquer the Incan Empire. Spuds were domesticated around 8,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Andes region of Peru and north-west Bolivia. The ancestors of today's cultivated potato can still be found growing wild there. There are now thousands of varieties of native potatoes in South America. ( ABC: Caddie Brain ) The Spanish invaders eventually introduced the tubers to Europe, along with other crops including tomatoes and corn. The pursuit of empire brought potatoes into contact with other parts of the world, and they ended up being the fuel that kept those empires going. "[It] was the food of the [Spanish Empire's] enslaved workforce. And that, of course, then allowed the Spanish to build up untold riches and really fuel their imperial ambitions around the world," says Dr Samuelsson. But the arrival of potatoes from the New World to the Old World was initially greeted with scepticism. The foreign vegetable, with its knobbly, misshapen design and textured skin, reminded folks of leprosy-infected limbs and stoked fears that the potato was a physical manifestation of the contagious disease. Dr Samuelsson explains this was because the prevailing medical opinion at the time posited that whatever caused or cured a disease "often looked like the disease that it was causing [or curing]". Photo shows Image of Dr Karl on a pink background and Listen app logo Dr Karl knows the best app for free podcasts, radio, music, news and audiobooks … and you don't need to be a scientist to find it! People also thought potatoes might be poisonous due to its links to the nightshade family, to the extent that the French parliament even banned the tuber in 1748. Another problem was that the wildly different climate conditions between Europe and South America did not suit It took decades for the potato to adapt to the shorter European growing season, though it had better luck growing in Ireland. "At the very beginning, it would have only been the very poorest of people who were eating potatoes," says Dr Samuelsson. Bread remained the staple food across Europe in the 18th century, but that soon changed thanks to rising prices, a revolution and a potato 'influencer'. French royalty at a potato party Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was a pharmacist in the French army when he was captured by Prussians and held as a prisoner of war in the mid-1700s. Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was a French pharmacist and agronomist. ( Supplied: Wikicommons/François Dumont ) His diet consisted largely of potato mash for the three years he was detained. At the time, Prussians were encouraged to plant and eat potatoes in the belief that if they were ever invaded, they could live off a vegetable buried underground. After his release, Parmentier became the potato's biggest advocate. A large part of his obsession with the vegetable seemed to be rooted in his own good health after years of eating only one food. Parmentier's hypothesis was that the potato must hold nutritional value. In 1770, he wrote a prize-winning essay, titled Inquiry into Nourishing Vegetables That in Times of Necessity Could Be Substituted for Ordinary Food, which argued in favour of using potatoes as an alternative to bread. Its release coincided with rising prices and food shortages in France, which had in turn fuelled unrest and anger in towns and villages up and down the country. "France and lots of European countries [were] one bad year away from famine because they [were] so reliant on wheat as their staple crop," says Dr Samuelsson. But in order for the potato to be fully embraced by society, Parmentier needed to get the elite on board. And the best way to do that was by throwing extravagant dinners. "On the advice of Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman who was over in France as an ambassador, [Parmentier] started to throw these potato parties where he would invite all of his mates," says Dr Samuelsson. Parmentier was well-connected to the French elite and used the gatherings to introduce the arbiters of cultural taste to various potato delicacies, from soup to dessert and "even potato vodka". Yet the ultimate tick of approval lay with the French king and queen, Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. Queen Marie Antoinette reportedly attended a potato party in the 18th century. ( Supplied: National Gallery of Australia ) "The story goes that Parmentier, in one of his amazing potato parties, somehow swings it that the king and queen [came] to one of these events," says Dr Samuelsson. " When they got there, he presented them with a bouquet of potato flowers, and apparently they were so enchanted, they loved it so much that [King] Louis put potato flowers in his lapel. And Marie Antoinette decorated her hair with potato flowers. " From banned vegetable to a viable substitute for bread, the potato's evolution continued until it made its way into some the world's most famous dishes. Fried potatoes arrive in America When one of America's founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, arrived in Paris to serve as ambassador to the French court, the potato frenzy was in full swing. "While he was over there, he was obviously hobnobbing with the great and the good. And he almost certainly could have been at one of Parmentier's parties," says Dr Samuelsson. Thomas Jefferson was a Francophile. ( Supplied: Wikicommons/Rembrandt Peale ) Jefferson developed a taste for the local cuisine, encouraging his enslaved chef James Hemings to learn to cook French food. Hemings reportedly One of those recipes was on how to make "pommes de terre frites a cru en petites tranches" or deep-fried potatoes in small cuttings. "Deep frying was becoming a real art in France … and so you can connect the dots here that someone's decided to find out what happens if you put potatoes in boiling hot oil," says Dr Samuelsson. While it's debated whether Jefferson was the first to introduce French fries to the US, his notes contain perhaps the It took more than a century for French fries to be fully embraced in America, and debate still rages over the origins of the fried potato: In Ireland, however, the tuber has a very different reputation. Too much of a good thing Potatoes are perhaps best remembered now for bringing about one of the worst famines in history. The Irish were dependent on potatoes as their primary food source until they were destroyed by a blight. ( Getty: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group ) Centuries ago, Irish peasants became reliant on the tuber after a wave of British imperial expansion deprived them of valuable land needed to farm grains and livestock and forced them into areas where fewer foods could be cultivated. Potatoes, peasants discovered, were one of the few plants that flourished in those less arable areas. "The Irish started to really rely on potatoes and it became the main part of their diet. Irish workers … would eat anywhere between 10 to 12 pounds of potatoes a day, which is four to six kilos," says Dr Samuelsson. But that all changed in 1845, when a fungus-like pathogen, Phytophtora infestans, also known as a blight, infected potato crops and made them inedible. Without their primary source of food, the Irish starved. In decades, the population halved. "When you become too reliant on one thing, it's a recipe for disaster," says Dr Samuelsson. Potato blight and famine are still a risk in many corners of the globe to this day. But it hasn't stopped the potato's dizzying rise in the culinary space. Today, it is the world's "There's not really a cuisine around the world that doesn't use potatoes and hasn't incorporated it into their food cultures, which I think just shows how wonderfully versatile it is," says Dr Samuelsson. "But it definitely still has a colonial legacy to it." 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