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Industrial design in mobile phones is at its striking best. The current crop of announcements at this year’s Mobile World Congress are testament to this: the solid, clean look of the Nokia 6, the simple but elongated shape of the LG G6 and the eye-popping colours of Huawei’s P10. But perhaps the most attractive design of the lot is Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium. It modifies the already-elegant look of last autumn’s Xperia XZ, building on the distinctive curved edges and flat base and top (hey, it even stands up on its own!) but only gently. This new phone is bigger thanks to the 5.5-inch display on board. And, the most noticeable change, it now comes in a finish called Luminous Chrome. This is essentially a mirror. As shiny and reflective as the clearest, cleanest mirror you’ve seen. It looks fantastic and is perfect for adjusting your make-up, combing your hair or checking your contact lenses. And of course, it’s a real fingerprint magnet. It won’t suit everyone but it’s a real standout in a show that’s already spoilt for design-led choices. A mirror finish does not a smartphone make, mind, and the Xperia XZ Premium has a lot to offer inside as well as out. Turn it on and the display is preposterously good. It is a 4K screen, like Sony’s previous Xperia Z5, but this time – and for the moment uniquely – it is High Dynamic Range-capable as well. High Dynamic Range, or HDR, as you may know is a technology which allows a display to show great detail in shadowy areas and in bright skies, for instance, at the same time. Without HDR you could have one but not both. Is this overkill? It certainly sounds it, when you think the 5.5-inch display has four times as many pixels as a full-size High Definition TV. But what sets the Xperia XZ Premium apart is that Sony has a partnership with Amazon for 4K HDR content so that there’s something to watch on your mobile phone that does the screen justice. This, Sony says, means a screen that’s totally immersive and great to watch. The company also says that such a screen needs a lot of power to work well and so has installed the latest Qualcomm processor to do the heavy lifting. That’s the Snapdragon 835, stat fans. And there’s plenty of power in the camera on the XZ Premium, too. The pixel size is bigger, we’re told, meaning fewer can fit on the sensor. Even so, the rear camera has 19-megapixel resolution, so way more than most on the market. Treats include laser autofocus (no, no, it just means it’s fast, not that it’s going to blast you with a ray gun), and an improved white balance system. But the real new feature is the camera’s slow-slow-slow-mo mode. Most video on smartphones is shot at 30 frames per second (fps). Here, the camera can briefly shoot at 960fps. That’s not a typo. Is it a gimmick? Of course it is, but, oh my, it’s a good one. Splashing water, popping balloons or a bloke jumping in the air on the beach all turn into mini dramas when shot at this speed. The phone goes on sale in late spring and I look forward to reviewing it then, but in a world of me-too smartphones, the Xperia XZ Premium looks tremendous and offers unique, fun, brilliantly executed features.

Pep Guardiola left sad but inspired, Gerardo Martino simply got fired and for Luis Enrique, well, he was just tired. There is much more information to come on Luis Enrique's departure from Barcelona, and that will now proceed to leak fairly heavily from the city's two sports-only daily newspapers until the day he leaves and beyond. But in the moment, with the coach having "stunned" his players after their win over Sporting Gijon, the main feeling is one of, well, not being stunned at all. Rather, this felt inevitable. Luis Enrique is a man who rarely felt particularly joyful despite having much reason to be so. In his first year as Barcelona coach he won La Liga, the Copa del Rey, the Champions League, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup. The only way from there is down and so it would turn out, but that barely tells the whole tale. Barca were, for around two-thirds of his second season, the best team in Europe. But they fell apart at the wrong time, blowing a defence of their Champions League title and nearly managing to squander their huge buffer in La Liga. A league and cup double felt like a disappointment. This season, the difficult third, has fallen further. There are still those games when they are irresistible and slice teams to shreds but the inconsistency has risen and those poor performances have appeared with greater and more concerning frequency"It's a decision that's very difficult for me, and very thought out, but I believe that I have to be honest and true to what I think," he said in a statement. "In the pre-season I had a meeting with Albert Soler and Robert Fernandez in which I let them know in advance that there was the possibility I wouldn't renew my contract. They told me there would be no rush to take my decision. "This moment has arrived. I announce it now." Not lacking in theatre, Luis Enrique touched on the main point here that this was not a surprise to those at the club. Robert Fernandez, the sporting director, has already scoped out replacements and many people at the club who used to confidently proclaim Luis Enrique would sign a new contract have, in recent weeks, stopped answering questions - swerving round them like Lionel Messi. Luis Enrique's contract has been a minor issue - more so when the performances started to dip - but his stand-off was not even the most important one at the club. Messi, for whom talks continue but at a surprisingly snail-like pace, remains the man that Barcelona must tie down to secure their future. He is still the finest footballer on the planet and, as reports would have it, would like Jorge Sampaoli to become Barca's next coach. Figures in the administration prefer Ernesto Valverde, while there are some who like Ronald Koeman but his candidacy is at times overblown by enthusiastic agents trying to facilitate the Dutchman in landing his dream job. The club have months to decide on that, but until then it's Luis Enrique who will be in charge and his first task is to reverse a first-leg humiliation in Paris. An early goal and who would bet against Barcelona? The answer: anyone who has watched a lot of their games this season. The next coach needs to fix some of the problems Luis Enrique is having with key players underperforming - most notably, Sergio Busquets - and being more tactically flexible. But he won't be able to fix the recruitment issues of the current regime, who spent north of £100m last summer and still entered the season with a central midfielder as their only right-back. It is not just Luis Enrique who should be considering his future, with politics threatening to ruin the world-famous La Masia academy as different names jostle for power. The scouting network suffers from similar issues. As a coach at Barcelona there's only so much you can do. For a long time, managing their post-Xavi transition, Luis Enrique did that well. He transferred the focus of the team from their midfield to probably the greatest front three modern football has seen and they won a lot of games. But as performances began to trend downwards and his already tense relationship with the media went in the same direction, the transfer of power from midfield to attack was seen as Barcelona's play losing its identity. "The reasoning is that I live my job searching for solutions and this gives me little rest," Luis Enrique said of his decision to leave. "I will need to relax and this is the main reason." Three years under the intense microscope of FC Barcelona, with its political in-fighting and intense media scrutiny, would make anyone crave relaxation. Luis Enrique has the medals, he's had the trophies and he served the club well. Now he is just tired.

what a reason omg xd good luck in your future

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That, as Zlatan Ibrahimovic powered the ball past Fraser Forster, was the sound of inevitability. The Swede reasserted his world-class match-winning ability, Jose Mourinho again won the League Cup as his first piece of silverware at an English job - as he always does - and Manchester United claimed their 44th major trophy as they beat Southampton 3-2 in a remarkable final at Wembley. Of course, it was from a late goal. Of course, it was from Ibrahimovic, as he took all the glory from the other player's two strikes in this game, Manolo Gabbiadini. Those stats say an awful lot, especially when you consider that this was the Portuguese’s 13th major final, and the 11th he’d won. For all the debate about his career, and the debate will continue after this supremely entertaining match, there can be no disputing the winning culture he creditably creates though just winning trophies. The story of this game, however, was different to pretty much any other final he’s played - and, for a time, looked like it was going to end so differently. How Southampton didn’t win remains hard to explain, especially after having an onside Gabbiadini goal ruled out. How they came back from 2-0 down after that against such a big side remains even more difficult to explain, but so easy to admire. How they ended up losing, however, is very easy to say. Winning games like this is just what Ibrahimovic, Mourinho and Manchester United do. Just like another major story this week, a game that seemed to defy the usual logic and norms of these types of things only ended confirming and conforming to inevitability all the more exquisitely. That will pain an exhausted Southampton, as they were so excellent. Just not excellent enough. Southampton had started so much the better but, for exactly that reason, the first 44 minutes couldn’t really have gone much better for United in the circumstances. They were awful, but somehow found themselves 2-0 ahead. It shouldn’t have even got to that point, given that Southampton had seemed to maximise their fine start with a goal. With Cedric and Gabbiadini so clearly targeting Marcos Rojo, and Nathan Redmond evidently instructed to create havoc in a central midfield that did not contain Michael Carrick, a pattern was set as United struggled to contain Puel’s attack. Cedric burst down the right on 12 minutes, to smash a cross in that Gabbiadini deflected in, only for the linesman to put his flag up because Ryan Bertrand - who was out of David De Gea’s eyeline - was ahead of the play. It was unlucky, but an abrasive Southampton were undeterred, until they faced another set-back just six minutes later. Oriol Romeu took down Ander Herrera just in front of the area, and Ibrahimovic took the opportunity for one of his free-kick thunderbolts. Except, this wasn’t quite of his usual standard. It was hard, but fairly central… but still enough to catch out Fraser Forster who dove too slow and too late. United were 1-0 up but Southampton were not down. They kept coming, kept ripping through centre - to the point it was inevitable that Mourinho brought on Carrick at half-time, for Mata - kept stinging De Gea’s hands with shots, and kept looking to expose Rojo. If there were plenty of errors from United’s defence, from the officials, and from the Southampton goalkeeper, however, there were none from Mourinho’s attackers on the rare occasions they got forward. This initially seemed so clinically Mourinho. After 39 minutes when he had looked so poor defensively, Rojo suddenly looked excellent going forward as he burst down the left. The Argentine played a quick exchange with Anthony Martial and Mata, before cutting inside to feed Jesse Lingard. And, as he always seems to do at Wembley, Lingard scored. He sliced the ball into the bottom corner and surely cut Southampton’s legs away to win the League Cup by half-time. But no. If anything, Southampton only stood taller. This was what was so impressive about their display. For many other sides of their size or even fewer resources, to have the start they had, and the goal they had disallowed, and then go 2-0 down to a big side, that would been it. It have felt all too crushingly familiar, all too crushingly inevitable. Not Southampton. At least not yet. They kept persisting with the same game-plan, and just kept persisting. By the end of that opening 45 minutes, they were back in it, and it was so telling that Gabbiadini scored with a move so similar to the strike he had ruled out. It was this time James Ward-Prowse who pumped the ball towards goal, but again the Italian there. Southampton so evidently felt this was on, and kept impressively going for. Within minutes of the second half starting, they were level. Gabbiadini seemed to be on a level above everyone on the pitch, as he expertly spun around in the box to beat everyone to a dropping ball and instinctively finished past a stranded De Gea. At that point, there seemed only one winner. The excellent Romeu should have claimed with a header that cannoned back off the bar. That, however, was to prove their big chance. The big side was soon to remind them of why you need to take such opportunities, to remind them of how it is that Mourinho and United have won so many trophies. You could sense the tone of the game changing at that point. Ibrahimovic, meanwhile, remains unchanging. On 87 minutes, as the pushed-to-the-limit Southampton players went a little too slack at the back, United took a lot. Ibrahimovic had himself started the move, with a clever touch just inside the opposition half, with Anthony Martial then doing so well to feed the ball out to Herrera. He perfectly picked the cross, and the rising Ibrahimovic picked his spot with a header he had so much time for. The Swede apparently remains timeless, as does Mourinho’s capacity to win trophies. In the end, it was inevitable.

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The Scottish government is seriously considering a second independence referendum next year, it has been claimed. Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP is increasingly confident it would win a second vote, as the First Minister believes the circumstances around it would be different to the first poll because of Brexit. Scots voted to remain a part of the UK by a wide margin in 2014. Charles Grant, an adviser to the Scottish government’s Standing Council on Europe, told Reuters: “I believe the Scottish government is thinking very, very seriously about going for an independence referendum next year. “They feel they have enough emotion and momentum to overcome the economic downsides ... the harder the Brexit, the more likely they are to break away.” And one Scottish politician, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the agency: “If you don’t call [an independence vote] now, it’s off the cards for a generation.” The economic fallout of Brexit would make future voters wary of more change, they said. The Scottish government published a draft bill for a second referendum last autumn, but Ms Sturgeon has said a “soft” Brexit would take Scottish independence off the table for the foreseeable future. She has previously said that being forced out of the single market would be one red line that might cause her to trigger a second independence referendum. However, Scottish Secretary David Mundell has said there is “no set of circumstances” in which Scotland could stay in the European Union as the rest of the UK completes Brexit. Last week, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator, said Europe “cannot afford to lose” Scotland

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The agent of Celtic striker Moussa Dembele has revealed that his client is determined to see out his four year contract in Glasgow, despite interest from some of the world’s biggest clubs. 20-year-old Dembele moved to Scotland from Fulham last summer and has proved an instant success at Celtic Park, scoring 27 goals in his first season at the club. His performances have attracted interest from clubs including Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham – all of whom have sent scouts to watch the young Frenchman in action – as well as Real Madrid, but his agent Mamadi Fofana has insisted Dembele has no intention of leaving. “Moussa doesn’t stress. He signed a four-year deal at Celtic and, in his head, he’ll be at Celtic for those four years,” Fofana told the Daily Record. “If he has to leave, that will happen at the right time, but it’s not in Moussa’s head or my head. "In January, there was speculation, but there will always be speculation if he does well. “It’s good. It means we are all doing well. The boy is doing well, Celtic is doing well and we as agents are doing the right things for everyone. Despite Fofana’s completely unequivocal stance, Arsenal legend Ray Parlour has urged his former club to make a move for the forward, praising him as a “terrific signing” for the Scottish champions. “Dembele’s been a terrific signing for Celtic and to get him for next to nothing was a wonderful bit of business,” Parlour said. “Keeping him in January was important and I’m pleased he stayed because he can enjoy the rest of the season and probably end up with some winners’ medals. “But you have to be realistic, it will be extremely difficult if a huge bid comes in this summer. When you’re looking at figures of £35million up, then it’s serious money.” Parlour also drew parallels between Dembele and a young Thierry Henry and stressed that, when it comes to developing young French forwards, no club has a better track record than Arsenal. “Arsenal have a great track record with young French strikers, and French players in general,” Parlour added. “Henry is the obvious one but Anelka was probably more similar to the Dembele situation. He was signed for just £500,000 as well, and went on to be a record transfer within a year. “Dembele’s got a long way to go in that respect but there will be a lot of big clubs in the market for him in the summer – and I’m not surprised Arsenal are one of them. “He’s done a great job for Celtic and he could turn out to be a brilliant investment.” After Celtic’s recent 5-2 win against St Johnstone at the beginning of the month – during which Dembele scored a hat-trick – the France U21 international admitted all of the talk surrounding his future was flattering but reassured Celtic supporters that he sees his long-term future at the club. “Yes, all the talk is flattering and it motivates me to keep doing well. I’m happy to be here and I hope to be here as long as I can,” he said. “There has been speculation around me for the last six months and I don’t really listen to what has been said. I just tried to get fit as quickly as possible and back on the pitch. “I try to do my best when I’m out on the pitch and show everyone the level of where I’m at. It’s easy not to get distracted. I’m a very calm kind of guy and I don’t really let this type of thing get in my head. I focus only on enjoying my football at Celtic and I’m very happy to be here.”

What's your windows version ?

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Good bye and hard luck in your future

Apple is preparing to completely redevelop its fingerprint sensor to feature in a new iPhone, according to patent filings. The rumoured development is probably a way of having the technology fit into its next handset, mostly referred to as the iPhone 8. Because that phone is likely to bring with it an entirely new design – and a range of never-before-seen features – some of the most central parts of the phone will have to be re-designed. Apple is planning on making the display of the new phone reach all the way across the front of the handset, according to rumours, doing away with the black or white plastic that has surrounded the screen in some form since the very first iPhone. If Apple does do that, it will have no space for the home button that has also been a central part of every iPhone. Until the new handset was released, every phone featured a button on the front – with the iPhone 7, that stopped being an actual button but simulated one through vibrations, but kept its iconic place at the bottom of the phone. For years, that button has also contained the fingerprint sensor that has let people get access to the phone quickly and securely. That sensor has become central to the entire operating system – allowing people to authenticate payments and other things, as well as becoming the primary way of getting into the handset. The home screen on the latest version of iOS was even entirely re-designed around the new button, with the expectation that people would use their fingerprint to get into it. Instead of keeping that button, Apple is developing special technology that would allow it to be placed underneath the screen – allowing the display to take up the whole front, but keeping the button that is so central to using iOS. Some examples of how to do that "use a micro light emitting diode (LED) in an active matrix display to emit light and a sensing IR diode to sense light", according to the patent. That wold mean that the screen could actually see the finger that was being pressed onto it, reading the fingerprint as it did so and checking whether it was the right one. That would work better than some other, similar features, the patent notes. Most require two separate pieces of technology – the bit that displays light and the bit that looks out for it – stuck together, adding extra space and constraining the design. The patent actually renews a similar filing first submitted by micro-LED display company LuxVue in 2014. But the new filing re-assigns that to Apple – apparently as part of work it is doing on that technology. The new iPhone – which is expected to be numbered 8 but might also be called X, and will probably launch alongside another, less premium handset – has been rumoured to bring with it a range of features alongside its new display size. Those include special screen technologies, wireless charging and sensors that might be able to see the face of the person using it and help with augmented reality.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 will launch in late March before becoming available for purchase in April, according to a new report. The company recently confirmed that its next flagship handset would not make an appearance at Mobile World Congress next month, and the Guardian, citing “well placed sources”, now claims that it will go on sale “on or around” 21 April. The report also claims that users will be able to turn the S8 into an Android-running desktop computer by hooking it up to a dock, monitor and keyboard, with a new feature called desktop extension (DeX). Expected to work in a similar manner to Microsoft’s Continuum, Samsung will likely use DeX to push the S8 as a bona fide business device, potentially adding a few extra pounds to its price tag in the process. The Galaxy S8 will reportedly come in two different size options from 5-6-inches, and feature a larger screen than its predecessors, dubbed an “infinity” display. It is said to cover the vast majority of the smartphone’s front face, leaving no room for a home button or even Samsung’s logo. As such, the fingerprint scanner has been moved to the handset’s rear side. Both models will have a dual-edge curved display, like the Galaxy S7 Edge, and Samsung has decided to keep the 3.5mm headphone jack around, unlike Apple. The iris-scanning biometric technology used by the Note 7 will be included too, allowing users to unlock the S8 and authenticate purchases with their eyes. The phone will also feature an AI assistant, identified as Bixby in previous reports, which will be capable of recognising real-world objects through the S8’s camera.