How to Set Your Google Data to Self-Destruct - The New York Times

Last year you may have been addicted to Beyoncé. But nowadays you’re more into Lizzo. You also once went through a phase of being obsessed with houseplants, but have lately gotten into collecting ballpoint pens.

People’s tastes and interests change. So why should our Google data histories be eternal?

For years, Google has kept a record of our internet searches by default. The company hoards that data so it can build detailed profiles on us, which helps it make personalized recommendations for content but also lets marketers better target us with ads. While there have been tools we can use to manually purge our Google search histories, few of us remember to do so.

So I’m recommending that we all try Google’s new privacy tools. In May, the company introduced an option that lets us automatically delete data related to our Google searches, requests made with its virtual assistant and our location history.

On Wednesday, Google followed up by expanding the auto-delete ability to YouTube. In the coming weeks, it will begin rolling out a new private mode for when you’re navigating to a destination with its Google Maps app, which could come in handy if you’re going somewhere you want to keep secret, like a therapist’s office.

“All of this work is in service of having a great user experience,” Eric Miraglia, Google’s data protection officer, said about the new privacy features. “Part of that experience is, how does the user feel about the control they have?”

How do we best use Google’s new privacy tools? The company gave me a demonstration of the newest controls this week, and I tested the tools that it released earlier this year. Here’s what to know about them.

How to auto-delete your search history

Most of Google’s new privacy controls are in a web tool called My Activity. (Here’s the URL: myactivity.google.com.)

Once you get into the tool and click on Activity Controls, you will see an option called Web & App Activity. Click Manage Activity and then the button under the calendar icon. Here, you can set your activity history on several Google products to automatically erase itself after three months or after 18 months. This data includes searches made on Google.com, voice requests made with Google Assistant, destinations that you looked up on Maps and searches in Google’s Play app store.

Which duration should you go for? It depends on how much you care about getting personalized recommendations.

Let’s say you have been doing lots of Google searches on celebrities and movies. Google News will recommend news articles for you to read on those topics based on those searches. So if you’re steadfast about following celebrity and movie news, setting searches to delete after 18 months is probably a good option. If you’re more fickle about your interests, three months may be better.

If you’re the type who doesn’t care to get any personalized recommendations on Google products, you can simply disable search history from being retained in your account. Next to the Web & App Activity option, toggle the switch to the off position.

How to auto-delete your YouTube history

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CreditGoogle

New to Google’s privacy controls this week is the ability to auto-delete your YouTube history, which includes searches and the videos you’ve watched.

In the My Activity tool, click on Activity controls and look for the button for YouTube history. Click on Manage history and you will see a similar calendar icon, which lets you set YouTube history to delete after three months or 18 months.

How and when to use private mode and auto-delete in Google Maps

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CreditGoogle

Also arriving in the coming weeks is a so-called Incognito mode in Google Maps. Toggling this on lets you look up and navigate to destinations without creating a location history. It also prevents others from seeing your past searches.

To turn it on, open the Google Maps app and tap on the account icon in the upper-right corner. Then click Turn on Incognito mode.

This could come in handy in a few situations:

• If you are meeting someone to discuss a sensitive business matter, Incognito mode will prevent the meeting location from being recorded.

• Google Maps lets you constantly share your location with someone like your romantic partner. If you want your location to be kept secret, like when shopping for an engagement ring, you can turn on Incognito mode.

• Let’s say you are driving and a member of your family is using the Maps app on your phone to navigate to a new address. Turning on Incognito mode will hide your past maps searches from that person.

Google now also includes an auto-delete option for location history. In the My Activity tool, click Activity controls, scroll to Location history and click Manage Activity. On the next page, find the icon shaped like a nut and then click Automatically delete location history. You can set data to self-purge after three months or 18 months.

For those who don’t want Google to create a record of their location history at all, there’s a switch for that. On the My Activity page, click Activity controls and scroll to Location history and turn the switch to the off position.

Just do it

In offering these privacy tools, Google is a step ahead of other internet giants like Facebook and Twitter, which don’t provide ways to easily delete large batches of dated posts.

Yet there’s no one-size-fits-all for how people should use Google’s privacy controls, since everyone has different lifestyles and levels of paranoia. To give an idea of how you can tailor these settings, here’s my personal setup:

• I set my search history to auto-delete. I rarely use Google Assistant and don’t visit Google News, meaning I don’t benefit from personalized recommendations. But I’m often checking Google Maps, and it’s useful to have a recent history of those searches to revisit destinations. So I set Web & App Activity to automatically delete after three months.

• I set my YouTube history to self-destruct. I go in and out of phases that involve cooking different types of foods, and I like it when YouTube surfaces new recipes based on recent searches. So I set my YouTube history to auto-delete after three months.

• I set my location history to auto-delete, too. I use Google Maps regularly, and I go on big trips twice a year. It’s useful for me to let Google know where I have been recently so that its Maps app can load relevant addresses and remember places I have been. But it’s not useful for Google to continue to know that I went to Hawaii last month for vacation. So I set my location history to auto-purge after three months.

It’s difficult to imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to take advantage of Google’s auto-delete tools. There’s no practical benefit to letting Google keep a history of our online activities from years back. So don’t delay in wiping a tiny bit of your digital traces away.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/technology/personaltech/google-data-self-destruct-privacy.html

2019-10-02 09:00:00Z
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Huawei phones lose access to install Google's apps - Bloomberg - Reuters

(Reuters) - Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s newly launched Mate 30 devices have lost their access to manually install Google’s Android apps, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

FILE PHOTO: A new Huawei Mate 30 smartphone is pictured at the Convention Center in Munich, Germany September 19, 2019. REUTERS/Michael Dalder/File Photo

According to the report, security researcher John Wu published a blog post bit.ly/2p5d2Cu Tuesday that explained how users of Huawei's Mate 30 Pro were able to manually download and install Google apps, despite a U.S. blacklisting that prohibits the Chinese company from using American components and software.

But in the wake of the revelations, the Mate 30 devices, made to work on new 5G mobile networks, lost their clearance to manually install Android apps, as reported by a number of smartphone experts, Bloomberg said.

The Mate 30 is Huawei’s first major flagship smartphone launched last month, since U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration effectively blacklisted the company in mid-May, alleging it is involved in activities that compromise U.S. national security, a charge the company denies.

Wu wrote in the post a widespread method to install Google Services on newly released Huawei devices relies on undocumented Huawei specific mobile device management application programming interface, or MDM APIs.

“Although this “backdoor” requires user interaction to be enabled, the installer app, which is signed with a special certificate from Huawei, was granted privileges nowhere to be found on standard Android systems,” he wrote.

“The system framework in Huawei’s operating system has a “backdoor” that allows permitted apps to flag some user apps as system apps despite the fact that it does not actually exist on any read-only partitions,” Wu said.

This process let the Mate 30 phones to run popular apps like Google Maps and Gmail that otherwise would not be permitted, Bloomberg reported bloom.bg/2mSwsKg.

An easy-to-use app enabling the installation of Google apps and services on the Mate 30 Pro, called LZPlay, had emerged alongside the device’s release, however it has disappeared after Wu’s posting. Only Google is able to make that change through its SafetyNet anti-abuse check, the report said.

Google and Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2019-10-02 07:06:00Z
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Huawei Phones Had Bootleg Access to Google Apps. Not Anymore - Yahoo Finance

(Bloomberg) -- One of Huawei Technologies Co.’s biggest trade war headaches has just gotten worse, as an unofficial workaround to the Trump administration ban on using Google apps and services has been quashed.

Security researcher John Wu published an illuminating post Tuesday that explained how users of Huawei’s Mate 30 Pro were able to manually download and install Google apps, despite a U.S. blacklisting that prohibits the Chinese company from using American components and software. The process allowed the Mate 30 Pro (along with the basic Mate 30) to run popular apps like Google Maps and Gmail that otherwise would not be permitted.

In the wake of Wu’s revelations, the Mate 30 devices lost their clearance to manually install Android apps, as reported by a number of smartphone experts. Only Google is able to make that kind of change through what’s known as its SafetyNet anti-abuse check.

“Although this ‘backdoor’ requires user interaction to be enabled, the installer app, which is signed with a special certificate from Huawei, was granted privileges nowhere to be found on standard Android systems,” Wu wrote on Medium.

Google declined to comment for this story.

An easy-to-use app enabling the installation of Google apps and services on the Mate 30 Pro, called LZPlay, had emerged alongside the device’s release, however it has disappeared after Wu’s posting. The researcher said in his findings that “it is pretty obvious that Huawei is well aware of this ‘LZPlay’ app, and explicitly allows its existence.”

Huawei said in an emailed statement it has had no involvement with LZPlay.

Huawei’s New Android Phone Lacks Luster Without Google Apps

Effectively, the change makes sure that the U.S. ban on Google services for the Mate 30 Pro is ironclad -- and many of the users outside of China who might have obtained or imported the device will now have only the bare Android-based Huawei user experience.

At the heart of Huawei’s problems is the Google Play Store, a system-level app that’s part of Google’s licensed bundle, which opens access to the full panoply of Android applications. With it on board, an Android device can more effectively compete with Apple Inc.’s iPhone and App Store, equipped with globally popular apps like YouTube, Instagram, Netflix and Spotify. Without it, no matter how great its specs and performance, an Android device is a tough sell for U.S. or European customers. The U.S. trade ban has been damaging to Huawei because it undercuts the company’s ability to compete in the premium smartphone market in Europe, which had been one of its growth drivers.

Huawei doesn’t have the same challenge in its native China because the government already bans most Google apps and services on all smartphones. Instead, Chinese users rely on Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat as the do-it-all super-app, plus a diversity of other sources for apps, games and entertainment, an ecosystem that’s developed in Google’s absence.

With the latest blow to the Mate 30 Pro, Huawei’s prospects for global smartphone sales dim even further.

(Updates with Huawei’s response in the 7th paragraph)

To contact the reporter on this story: Vlad Savov in Tokyo at vsavov5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Peter Elstrom, Colum Murphy

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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2019-10-02 04:07:59Z
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Sony halves price of PlayStation Now streaming games service to go up against Microsoft, Google - CNET

Sony's slashing prices for its game streaming service.

Josh Miller/CNET

Sony isn't playing games with its PlayStation Now streaming games service. Starting Tuesday, the monthly price for the service will be cut in half, to $9.99 per month. Sony says it's taking the dramatic step in order to keep in line with competition.

The new price, which drops from the $19.99 per month it costs now, will be "comparable to other entertainment streaming services on the market," Sony said in a statement. 

While the move will likely be celebrated by subscribers, it offers yet another sign of how strongly companies are willing to compete to get our dollars. Streaming services have become all the rage, with all manner of companies offering TV, movies, music and, yes, even video games sent over the internet to your phone, laptop, tablet or console.

The popularity and ease of streaming technology has pushed a new generation of consumers drops cable bills, leading to a land grab effort by the likes of Netflix, Disney, Apple, Amazon, Google and even CNET parent CBS. 

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To attract ever more people, prices have dropped steadily. Disney Plus, for example, will cost $7.99 per month when it launches later this year, offering access to more than a dozen new original shows in addition to back catalog of Disney, Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel films. Apple TV Plus, meanwhile, will charge $4.99 per month when it launches later this year, promising new shows from entertainment royalty like Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell and Oprah Winfrey (not to mention, people who buy a new iPhone, iPad or Mac from the tech behemoth will get a year of Apple TV Plus for free).

While there are many streaming video and music services to choose from, Sony's PlayStation Now, which launched in 2014, has been one of the few gaming services available for years.

Part of that, industry executives say, is the higher cost of building and maintaining the ultra fast internet connections and powerful data centers capable of creating a game's intricate visuals, streaming them to a player, and then responding to button presses on a controller. Those costs helped to sink the early game streaming company OnLive, which shut down in 2015.

If price is the first hurdle, then you don't even get a chance to show your technology is superior

Carolina Milanesi, analyst at Creative Strategies

A new band of streaming services is starting up though, driven by falling costs of computer components and faster internet connections across around the world. They include Microsoft's Xbox team, which will begin testing its Project xCloud streaming service in October, and game maker Electronic Arts, which announced its game streaming service last year and began publicly testing it last month. Neither has said how much their respective services will cost.

"The power of instant access is magical, and it's already transformed the music and movie industries," Google's Phil Harrison said when he announced the tech giant's Stadia game streaming service in March. It's planned to launch in November, and will be free to use if you buy the game through Google. 

Not everyone's convinced though. Some people believe that eventually people will sour on having so many subscriptions.

"Most Americans want two, three or four subscriptions -- they certainly don't want 40 of them, and they aren't going to pay for them," Strauss Zelnick, interim chairman of CBS and CEO of game maker Take-Two Interactive, which makes hit titles like Grand Theft Auto V and the western epic Red Dead Redemption 2, said in an interview this summer. 

To help PlayStation Now stand out, Sony's relying on a back-catalog of more than 800 games available on the service, including its hit 2013 post-apocalyptic survival game The Last of Us, Bethesda Softworks' popular adventure game Fallout 4, and the fighting game Mortal Kombat X which was published by Warner Bros.

Sony said it'll be making some of its more popular games available on the service during the holidays, including the Indiana Jones-esque action game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, last year's epic God of War and Take-Two Interactive's hit Grand Theft Auto V.

That pressure to stand out and become one of the few eventual survivors is likely what's driving Sony's decision to drop its price so dramatically.

"Word of mouth is still important when convincing your peers and people you game with that this is a good solution," said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies. "if price is the first hurdle, then you don't even get a chance to show your technology is superior." 

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2019-10-01 12:00:00Z
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GoPro Hero 8 Black announced: integrated mounting, better stabilization with HyperSmooth 2, $399 price tag - The Verge

GoPro has announced its newest camera, unsurprisingly called the Hero 8 Black. The California camera company has packed a lot into the same flagship price point of $399, with a new integrated mounting system, a refreshed software experience that requires fewer taps, and the ability to shoot up to 4K footage at 60 frames per second or capture startlingly steady footage, thanks to an improved version of the company’s HyperSmooth digital image stabilization.

The Hero 8 Black is available to order today, October 1st, and it starts shipping on October 15th. It will sit alongside GoPro’s new $499 360-degree camera, the Max, and the Hero 7 Black, which now costs $299. The Hero 7 Silver will round out GoPro’s lineup at $199, while the Hero 7 White is being discontinued.

The Hero 8 Black looks very similar to its most recent predecessors, but those looks deceive. In fact, there are a lot of little changes that should add up to create a much different experience when compared to past Hero cameras.

One of the biggest is that the Hero 8 Black has optional “Mods,” which will let users tack on accessories like a GoPro-designed microphone, an LED light, or a flip-up screen. (More on those here.) But for people who just care about the camera itself, this is what’s in store.

The biggest change to the physical design of the camera this year is that it can now be mounted to any GoPro mount on its own, without a housing of any kind. GoPro took the two mounting “fingers” that slot into the company’s mounts and integrated them into the body. They snap down when you’re ready to mount the camera, but they flip up flush to the body (and are held in place by magnets) when you want to use the Hero 8 Black on its own.

The lens of the Hero 8 Black doesn’t protrude quite as much as the one on the Hero 7 Black, and it’s also not removable. GoPro says it made the glass twice as hard as the glass on the Hero 7 Black, so it shouldn’t need to be replaced.

The Hero 8 Black also uses a new battery, GoPro’s first in years. It’s the same shape and capacity, but it’s more powerful. The new camera can draw power out of the new battery at a faster rate in order to help with some of the most intense shooting modes.

On the software side, GoPro’s executed a number of impressive changes. Front and center is the new version of HyperSmooth. The digital image stabilization feature that made its debut on last year’s Hero 7 Black garnered pretty rave reviews by making footage look super smooth without lots of noticeable warping or loss of resolution. GoPro has pushed the envelope even more with HyperSmooth 2.0, though. Footage shot on the Hero 8 Black with the new HyperSmooth enabled makes Hero 7 Black footage look almost jittery. GoPro teased the ability to ditch a handheld stabilizer last year, but this year, the company really means it.

GoPro also built in more control over HyperSmooth, with the ability to set it to “high” or even turn on a “boost” mode that crops in even tighter for extra-stable footage. Best of all, HyperSmooth is now available in all shooting modes.

The company was able to improve HyperSmooth in part by changing the way the image sensor interacts with GP1, the company’s custom-made processing chip. The Hero 8 Black is the third camera to use GP1, and the improvements to HyperSmooth show there’s a lot more the company can do to exploit owning more of the image processing stack, according to Pablo Lema, GoPro’s vice president in charge of product management and user experience.

The HyperSmooth-aided “Time Warp” feature that GoPro debuted on the Hero 7 Black gets its own refresh on the Hero 8 Black, too. It will now automatically adjust the speed of the footage based on data from the camera, and there’s a new option to tap the touchscreen mid-Time Warp recording to snap into “real time” footage for when you want to focus on something instead of blowing right past it.

GoPro also added a new Live Burst feature, which largely mimics Apple’s Live Photos. In this mode, the camera saves 1.5 seconds’ worth of still images before and after you hit the shutter button, making it harder to miss the exact shot you want.

The Hero 8 Black ticks pretty much every box when it comes to resolution and specs. It shoots 4K footage at up to 60 frames per second, including at 100 Mbps bitrate for the first time ever. It will shoot 240 frames per second at 1080p for super slow motion footage. The Hero 8 Black can live stream at 1080p, up from 720p on the Hero 7 Black.

One drawback to all these resolution and frame rate options is that it can be overwhelming. So GoPro added a “presets” drawer that users can access with a quick swipe of the finger. The camera ships with four already dialed in, but they can be easily tweaked, and the camera can store up to 10 at a time. GoPro’s ProTune settings are also now found here.

“The number one question we get in our customer support calls by a long shot is: ‘What settings should I use for what?’” Lema told The Verge. “Our cameras are very powerful devices. The permutations of frame rates, resolutions, and lenses, [turning] ProTune on or off. It’s nauseating.” Lema said his team “took whole brain trust of GoPro” and boiled everyone’s favorite settings down to the four presets that ship with the camera. “They’re not meant to be exhaustive, but they’re meant to be the first guiding suggestions from GoPro that says, ‘These are how you should probably use the camera first.’”

In that same vein of emphasizing simplicity, GoPro has rebranded the different field of view options on the Hero 8 Black. It now refers to them as “digital lenses,” and users can toggle between them with just a few taps, from super wide all the way to a more narrow view.

On the photo side, the Hero 8 Black captures 12-megapixel snaps, and users can now shoot RAW photos in time-lapse and burst modes instead of just in regular photo mode. The company says the Hero 8 Black’s HDR photos will look much better now, too, because it’s no longer using third-party processing algorithms to merge multiple photos, which was leading to “ghosting” artifacts in pictures with movement

“With Hero 7 Black, we were doing HDR in what I would say was an educated, but not super scientific, way,” Lema said. “But with Hero 8 Black we’ve truly changed the way we actually read the sensor to make it so that the HDR ghosting is almost completely eliminated.”

Last but not least, GoPro has once again overhauled its mobile app. It recently combined its Quik editing app with the main camera connection app to create one app that does pretty much everything. Lema calls it the “biggest software initiative we’ve had at GoPro since we’ve had a mobile app.”

A lot of these changes feel like they’ve come from a place of confidence, which has not always been the case for GoPro over the last few years. The overwhelming success of the Hero 7 Black — it was GoPro’s fastest-selling camera ever — has helped put distance between the company and more unstable times, like the recall and ultimate demise of its first and only drone, Karma; multiple rounds of layoffs; and the growth and subsequent culling of a crowded product lineup. The company also has its finances trending in the right direction, having recently upgraded its outlook for the second half of 2019.

Now on solid ground, GoPro is obviously willing to try some new things, like releasing a new 360-degree camera into a market that isn’t fully receptive to the idea, or investing money into developing a new system of Mods that could change how a GoPro gets used (and who buys them) or making tweaks to how a GoPro camera works. That approach will help GoPro fend off any new competitors (like DJI, which entered the action camera market this year) while staying strong as smartphone cameras get even better and more versatile.

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2019-10-01 13:00:00Z
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Here's when 5G could make an actual difference in your life - CNET

Smartphone companies like Samsung use Qualcomm's modems in their 5G devices.

Chris Monroe/CNET

There are so many promises about how faster 5G data will transform our lives, it sometimes feels mythical. Though lightning-fast download speeds are slowly coming to more carriers and phones, self-driving cars talking to each other, remote surgery and 5G replacing your home Wi-Fi feel more like advancements in some distant future. But at last, we're finally starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Qualcomm, which makes the 5G chips and modems that every 5G phone in the US will rely on, shared a road map (scroll to end) that spells out when we might start seeing 5G improvements beyond just fast download speeds. Qualcomm isn't the only major 5G player, of course -- Huawei, Nokia and Ericsson are all leaders, too -- but Qualcomm's investments in 5G research and development mean that it has a strong hand in getting the next wave of 5G benefits off the ground. So, its timeline is a good place to start.

Here are five next-gen milestones that could actually affect you.

Now playing: Watch this: 5G means more than just fast downloads to your phone

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Every high-end phone could be 5G in 2020

Qualcomm has said it before: all premium phones will support 5G next year. It's a confident statement that both predicts and reflects the trend we're seeing with phones like the Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G, LG V50, OnePlus 7 Pro 5G and others. But there's a little nuance here, too.

The pattern so far points to a pricier 5G version of every mainstream phone, for example, as we see with the Galaxy S10 Plus and Galaxy S10 5G. 4G-only options are still valuable during the 5G transition because they come with a lower price tag. And phone-makers like Samsung want to flood the market with options at every price point, to capture a wide swath of buyers. 

"Every high-end phone that gets launched next year will be 5G. Every single one." Qualcomm CTO Jim Thompson @CNET #5G

— Jessica Dolcourt (@jdolcourt) September 24, 2019

While we'll see more 5G phones next year, it's a likely bet that we'll continue to see what we're seeing now -- a 5G option for every major lineup. By 2021, when the networks are fully developed and prices start to come down, it's more likely that every premium phone model will support 5G from the get-go, without a 4G variant to provide a cheaper option. 

That said, keep an eye out for one-off handsets for 5G service only, like foldable phones and "affordable 5G" devices aimed at specific markets, like the Galaxy A90 5G. Regions with more developed 5G networks, like Korea, may also see more 5G phones (without 4G variants) if the rate of adoption continues to climb. 

5G laptops will appear in 2020, too

Lenovo has already announced its intentions to make a 5G connected PC in early 2020, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see several other 5G-capable laptops surface at January's giant CES tech show, along with a carefully managed in-booth demo. We may not actually see those laptops hit the market for awhile, but you'd better believe that some laptop-makers will lunge at the chance to be one of the first to bring 5G to computing -- just as you see happening right now with phones.

Our first experiences with 5G carriers have been choppy. That's not unexpected when you consider that 5G coverage and reliability are just starting to get off the ground. But once carriers like Verizon, Sprint/T-Mobile and AT&T begin to build out not just pockets of 5G but whole neighborhoods where you can get ultrafast connections in major cities, Qualcomm bets that the hunger for 5G laptops will follow.

Sarah Tew/CNET

The mobile-chip leader already powers always-connected 4G PCs like the Asus NovaGo. Always-connected 5G PCs are simply the next step. 

The main difference between 5G laptops and 5G phones is that there will be far fewer of them, even when 5G starts becoming much more stable and widespread. Phones are connected to the network by definition. You can live your whole life without needing a cellular data connection on your laptop, so long as you've got Wi-Fi or a hotspot.

Fixed 5G that replaces your Wi-Fi router: It's slowly begun

5G hubs that work like Wi-Fi for your for home are already here. One example of fixed 5G is the HTC 5G Hub with Sprint, a device that plugs into your router to deliver home broadband in the form of the mmWave flavor of 5G (the wireless spectrum carriers are using to deliver 5G). The goal here is to compete with the dominant cable provider, a potential boon if you live in an area with few home broadband options.

Fixed 5G uses a different part of the network than your mobile phones (it isn't the same as hotspotting your phone to power a device), but it's designed to deliver the same dramatically high speeds, say between 500Mbps to over 1Gbps (gigabit-per-second) in practice, with perhaps faster speeds down the road.

While you might be able to subscribe to home 5G if you live in the right place, it's still extremely early days. The devices and coverage areas are few and far between. Data plans are expensive, and if you blow past the data cap (which is easy to do when you're streaming movies, games and music), you'll drop down to much slower data speeds -- about 3Mbps if you use Verizon's 5G hotspot and 2G speeds with Sprint's HTC 5G Hub. 

Sprint's HTC 5G Hub brings 5G to your home network.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Self-driving cars that talk to each other

The 5G-connected car is one of the most compelling future scenarios. In one demo Qualcomm likes to show, an autonomous car outfitted with 5G sensors runs the same route as a car without 5G. The 5G-powered sensors take in data from other connected vehicles, understanding when a car door is opening, if there's an obstruction in the road and when pedestrians are finished crossing the street. At the end of the demo, the 5G-connected car is better informed of obstructions and arrives at the destination much faster.

But reality could be decades away. This capability (which Qualcomm calls 5G NR Cellular V2X) has a target of 2021 for its first commercial use. But before 5G in autonomous cars can become common, the self-driving vehicles have to, as well.

The first cars that can drive themselves without any driver input or oversight could emerge in the early 2020s, but they'll be rare and highly regulated. That is, there will likely be only a few of these vehicles approved to work in tightly constrained areas for really specific purposes, say within a 10-square mile geofence. The safety of self-driving cars is a touchy subject, and the industry will likely proceed with caution.

Self-driving vehicles need the green light before being steered by 5G.

Pony.ai

Cheaper, lower-powered 5G to your smartwatch

5G connectivity is expensive, from the chips that help a device ping the network to the carrier that provides the service. For wearables like your smartwatch, fitness tracker and smart glasses (maybe like Amazon's new Echo Frames), the full 5G treatment might be overkill, and expensive enough to keep it off wearables even when 5G phones become more ubiquitous.

But lower-powered 5G could reduce prices while keeping wearables connected. Right now, this variation on 5G, referred to in the image below as NR-Light, is on the tablet for future discussion -- but it isn't in development yet. Look for the first of their kind no earlier than 2023. 

For more on the speedy data technology, read up on all the myths surrounding 5G and how 5G can help shape the world beyond fast phones alone. 

A peek at Qualcomm's 5G development plans for future releases.

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https://www.cnet.com/news/heres-when-5g-could-make-an-actual-difference-in-your-life/

2019-10-01 11:00:01Z
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ARM-based Surface: why Microsoft has to bet big on this processor - The Verge

Of everything Microsoft is rumored to be announcing this week, the ARM-based Surface is far and away the most important thing to my mind. This is not what I would have told you a month or two ago, honestly. It’s surprising because there are really important storylines for everything Microsoft is set to announce. Let’s just strafe a few of them before digging into ARM.

Take the Surface Pro, for example. Microsoft hasn’t changed the overall design in years, so it feels overdue for a bezel-killing update. At the very least, Microsoft will hopefully bow to the inevitable and include a proper USB-C port on it.

The potential dual-screen device hits on so many long-running Microsoft stories I can’t even begin to list them all. There’s the ancient history of the Courier concept, the old history of Microsoft trying and failing to make Windows Phone successful, and the recent history of hardware boss Panos Panay hinting that Microsoft needs to do something in mobile, even if it’s not specifically a phone.

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You’ve also got Lenovo out there showing how to make a foldable PC feel like a prototype, but can Microsoft make something that feels mainstream? A lot will ride on the rumored “Lite” version of Windows — which has its own dubious Windows S mode predecessor to leave behind, and potential competition with Chrome OS to look ahead to.

Then there’s the Surface Laptop. Any heads-up competitor to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro is worth paying attention to right now. Sure, Microsoft has the Surface Book line, but the Surface Laptop line is much more mainstream. It also, as I’m sure we’ll be reminded of this week, has an excellent keyboard. Plus, the idea of Microsoft potentially leaving Intel processors out of one of its flagship devices is definitely going to cause a stir.

So why, with all those rich veins of tech analysis to mine, am I most interested in the ARM-based Surface? Because it’s the future of mainstream Windows computers, and Microsoft had better not screw it up.

The benefits of switching to ARM are manifold. The main one is battery life, which is often rated above 20 hours for a laptop. That’s substantially better than anything Intel currently has to offer. It also makes it significantly easier to add LTE options (and, presumably, 5G) to hardware. ARM processors also tend to run cooler than x86 processors, which frees up manufacturers to experiment with different (read: thinner and lighter) form factors.

So: longer battery life, easier cellular integration, and thinner devices. As nice as the Surface Pro can be, there is a limit to how much it can improve in those areas, and that limit’s name is x86.

The switch to ARM is also exciting precisely because we know of a tablet that runs on an ARM processor that’s so fast and powerful that it flat out smokes comparably priced laptops in benchmarks. That tablet, of course, is Apple’s iPad Pro. It’s so fast that everybody has been assuming that Apple will switch the Mac over to an ARM processor sometime soon.

In principle, there’s no reason an ARM-based Windows tablet couldn’t reach similar heights of performance. And Microsoft will surely feel pretty good about getting the Surface on ARM before the Mac makes the change over.

Microsoft is making the right bet by going with ARM because it needs to find something that can be more innovative than Intel. Getting ARM right simply opens up so many more opportunities for Microsoft than sticking with Intel does. It’s not just making thinner tablets that could go up against the iPad. It’s completely different form factors — that dual-screen device, for example, would be a good candidate.

Chrome OS continues to be a thorn in Microsoft’s side — especially in the education market. ARM could help drive the cost of Windows machines down while keeping overall quality up (that last part is vital so as to avoid flashbacks to the netbook era).

That all sounds great, but you know that there’s a “but” coming. Here it is: to date, ARM-based Windows laptops have been bad. They’re slower and still have some compatibility issues to work though.

So while ARM is the right bet, it’s also a very risky bet. As Microsoft’s first ARM-based Surface, it needs to be fast enough for most people’s everyday use — and I mean without any slowdowns for most tasks. That wasn’t quite the case with the Surface Go, which could handle simple tasks, but was far too easy to bog down. Reportedly, Intel talked Microsoft out of using ARM last year with the Surface Go. Maybe that was right for the Go, but I can tell you from personal experience that it meant battery life has been really disappointing.

With a big processor change and eye-popping battery numbers, I bet more people will be tempted to buy this ARM Surface than the Go. That means more pressure on Microsoft to deliver something that’s fast enough. And that pressure will be compounded because whatever Microsoft releases is bound to end up being compared directly to Apple’s iPad Pro.

So far, we haven’t seen evidence that any ARM-based Windows machine is really up to that challenge.

Supposedly, salvation for Windows on ARM is coming in the form of the Qualcomm 8cx chip. I have no idea if that’s what Microsoft will go with and on top of that, nobody has any idea if the 8cx will really be as good as promised. The only laptop using it we’ve laid our hands on is the Galaxy Book S. Early looks were promising, but nobody has actually reviewed it because it hasn’t been released yet.

Whatever chip Microsoft chooses, it needs to deliver something that can convince lots of users that it’s powerful enough to be their main computer. The original idea for the Surface was to show the rest of the industry how to make better Windows computers. Now Microsoft needs to do it again with ARM.

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https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/1/20887386/microsoft-surface-event-pro-7-arm-windows-laptops

2019-10-01 11:00:00Z
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