Winners and Losers: Switch OLED stuns while Facebook implodes

It’s been another whirlwind week in the world of tech, but to help you sort through the biggest headlines of the last seven days, it’s time for another iteration of Trusted Reviews’ Winners and Losers.

Twitter was certainly popular this week, wasn’t it? As the internet went into a full-on meltdown recently as Facebook – and all of its owned apps – went offline for a substantial amount of time. Not only did countless netizens flock elsewhere for their social fix, but the event also provided this very column with an easy pick for the week’s loser (sorry Zuckerberg).

Things were a lot more agreeable in the TR offices, however, as we all had a chance to try out the brand new Nintendo Switch OLED and the five-star title that’s launching alongside the console: Metroid Dread. Simply put, this is one of those moments where being a Nintendo fan has really paid off.

Winner: Switch OLED

I’ll be the first to admit that when the Switch OLED was originally announced, I was disappointed. In comparison to the full 4K upgrade that a lot of folks were expecting, the Switch OLED’s moderate portable-focused updates felt like a missed opportunity. Having now held the Switch OLED in my hands however, I see now that it’s exactly the type of mid-life cycle boost the Switch needed.

With significantly reduced bezels and a much more vibrant display that’s owed to the OLED tech it so proudly touts, the Switch OLED feels like a modern device in a way that the original Nintendo Switch never did – even at the time of its release.

Thanks to these improvements – as well as additional storage and a better designed kick-stand – the Switch OLED is much closer to achieving the Switch’s initial goal of providing console quality gaming on the go. It’s hard to convey just how impressive this device is without seeing it for yourself, but believe me when I say that the change is like night and day.

Of course, helping to cement Nintendo’s dominance this week has been the release of Metroid Dread which not only stands as a great 2D side-scroller in its own right, but its blend of colourful character models and atmospheric backdrops really shines on the OLED’s screen. Even if you don’t plan on buying a Nintendo Switch OLED, you should still check out Metroid Dread as it’s one of the rare few games to earn a full 5-star rating here at Trusted Reviews.

Loser: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp

Around late afternoon on Monday, October 5, Facebook and its various owned apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram all went offline.

As a point of context, each of these apps have individually suffered from performance issues at some time or another, but never have we seen such a monumental collapse of Facebook’s entire infrastructure. The whole affair brought to mind the Google services outage of 2020, where people were unable to access key apps such as Gmail and YouTube.

The widespread nature of Facebook’s downfall was one thing, but it was almost unbelievable that it took roughly seven hours before the social media giant could be brought back online. As it turns out, the culprit was none other than the backbone of Facebook itself. If you feel so inclined (or enjoy reading about DNS failures) then you might care to take a look at the full explanation over what happened in a Facebook blog post.

As you might expect, the internet and the meme community at large had a field day with the event, and even Tom Anderson (the chap best remembered for creating the ill-fated social media platform Myspace) also weighed in.

The outage did raise the debate however of Facebook’s dominance in a lot of people’s lives, and whether or not it’s time to bid the monolithic platform adieu. In fact, according to a study from VPNOverview, ‘how to delete Instagram account’ is searched for 3.6 million times a year.

Maybe it isn’t too difficult then to imagine a time when Facebook isn’t the social media giant that we know it as today – one can dream at least.