This Google Pixel concept has two front-facing cameras, but with zero notches and a sleek bezel.

Remember the Pixel 3 and its MASSIVE unibrow?? I do. Google makes some amazing phones, but boy, the Pixel 3 felt like their design team’s aesthetics department was on vacation. The 3 had LARGE bezels, and the 3XL was one of the most awkwardly notchy phones on the planet. I won’t even get into analyzing the Pixel 4 only because Google hardly sold any units of it… but aesthetically, it definitely solved the notch problem.

Meet the Pixel Vector, a smartphone concept that challenges the notion that phones need to have thick bezels, hole-punches, or notches to have front-facing cameras. The Pixel Vector cleverly uses the negative space between the phone and the screen’s corner to throw in not one, but two front-facing cameras. The phone’s sharp edges and display’s rounded corners provide the perfect triangular negative spacing for cameras, spacing them out too, so they can perform 3D scanning required for facial recognition. On the back, the Vector goes back to the basics of having a single-lens camera rather than the massive ‘box of donuts’ you’d see on the Pixel 4. Sticking to the tenents of aesthetics over engineering, but without compromising on the latter, the Pixel Vector manages to be a good phone that’s also good looking. What do you think?

Designer: Ferdinand Aichriedler

Anki is closing the doors on its toy robot business

Anki, the startup responsible for adorable robotics, is closing its doors and will terminate nearly 200 employees Wednesday. CEO Boris Sofman broke the news to staff today, Recode reports. In a statement provided to Engadget, the company said, "A sig...

Three teams will compete for millions in DARPA’s rocket launch challenge

Despite all of the advancements in space travel, rocket launches are still hindered by the fact that they take months, if not years, to plan and execute. Because that could slow vital military operations, DARPA created the Launch Challenge: a call fo...

Moleskine’s paper notebook lets you draw in vectors right inside Adobe Illustrator!

Teaming up together to achieve the near impossible, Adobe and Moleskine have debuted the Paper Tablet, a book and pen combo that translates sketches on paper to digital sketches on Adobe’s software… but that’s not all. The sketches you make on Moleskine’s Paper Tablet don’t just appear as scanned images on your computer. They get vectorized within Adobe Illustrator, giving you an infinite set of possibilities to take your doodles and actually begin working on them in vector software.

The magic happens courtesy Moleskine’s Adobe Creative Cloud Connected Paper Tablet (the notebook), and the Moleskine Pen+ Ellipse pen. The notebook comes with Adobe’s Illustrator icon at the top right of each page, and simply tapping on it with the Pen+ Ellipse lets you save all your progress to Adobe’s Creative Cloud. Once you begin sketching on Moleskine’s special notebook, the Pen+ records each movement, copying each stroke to Adobe Illustrator in real time, although you can sketch independently without having Adobe Illustrator open too. With a simple Adobe extension, you can beam all your progress to Illustrator and sketch in real-time should you choose. You can even undo actions and brush strokes on the digital file (although that won’t happen on paper).

Essentially replacing the need for a Wacom, while providing integration with Adobe’s Illustrator to remove all sorts of friction, Moleskine’s Paper Tablet is a neat way to take your doodles and sketches to the next level while retaining the comfort of drawing on paper.

Designers: Moleskine & Adobe