Google unveils new Pixel handsets with 5G wireless

Google on Wednesday unveiled two new smartphones with 5G wireless capability under its Pixel brand, which showcases the Android mobile system but has limited market share.

The new Pixel 5 will start at $699 (around P34,000) for United States customers and its reduced-price Pixel 4a with 5G at $499 (around P24,000), the California tech giant announced at a streamed event.

The phones will be available from Oct. 15 in the U.S. and other markets.

The new handsets are “packing more helpful Google features into phones backed by the power and speeds of 5G,” said Google vice president Brian Rakowski.

The announcement puts Google, for the moment, ahead of Apple in the 5G smartphone race, with a 5G iPhone widely expected to be unveiled in the coming weeks. It also positions Google with a competitively priced 5G device as consumers begin looking for upgrades.

Google’s Pixel handsets have won positive reviews for their powerful cameras and integrated artificial intelligence, but have failed to crack the top ranks of the smartphone market dominated by the likes of South Korea’s Samsung, Apple and China’s Huawei.

The Pixel devices nonetheless serve as a showcase for Google and Android, integrating hardware and software and the newest Google applications.

“Google has pivoted its Pixel line from competing at the highest price points to offering more value, but the competition has intensified in the mid-tier market as well,” said Avi Greengart of the consultancy Techsponential.

“That leaves the Pixel 5 again trying to differentiate itself on its camera and software.”

The launch comes with the global smartphone market struggling from the pandemic-induced economic crisis and with many consumers waiting for 5G devices.

Total smartphone sales were down 16% in the second quarter, according to research firm IDC, whose survey showed Huawei leading the market ahead of Samsung, Apple and Chinese firms Xiaomi and Oppo.

At Wednesday’s event, the company also announced a ramped-up version of its Google TV platform which competes against Roku and Amazon’s Fire TV.

“The new Google TV experience brings together movies, shows, live TV and more from across your apps and subscriptions and organizes them just for you,” said Google TV senior director Shalini Govilpai.

Also unveiled was a new Nest Audio smart speaker which is 75% louder and has 50% stronger bass than its original smart speaker with the Google Home brand, according to the company.

Agence France-Presse 

Nokia profit up despite pandemic as new CEO takes over

HELSINKI (AP) — Nokia has reported better than expected second-quarter earnings on the back of improved margins for telecoms equipment and software despite the coronavirus crisis causing a substantial drop in revenue.

The Espoo, Finland-based maker of new-generation 5G mobile and other networks said Friday that its net profit for the April-June period was up 22% at 316 million euros ($376 million). Sales were down 11% at 5.1 billion euros.

CEO Rajeev Suri said in a statement that the majority of the drop in revenue was “the result of COVID-19 as well as a sharp decline in China based on the prudent approach we have taken in that market.”

Nokia estimated that the COVID-19 crisis hurt its net sales by about 300 million euros in the second quarter and about 500 million euros in the first half of the year.

“We expect that the majority of sales missed in the (second) quarter due to COVID-19 will shift to future periods,” Suri said.

Though the company warned it was expecting to lose some market this year, it gave an upbeat outlook for its main network business and lifted its profit and cash flow guidance for full year 2020.

Suri said that Nokia has now concluded 83 commercial deals for 5G, the new network technology that allows ultra-fast downloading speeds among other things. Along with China’s Huawei and Sweden’s Ericsson, Nokia is one of the three main providers of 5G networks. Huawei is at the center of a U.S.-China dispute over technology, with the Trump administration saying it can help the Chinese government spy on people, a claim the company denies.

Friday marked the last day as a CEO for Suri, a Nokia veteran with 25 years in service and the head of the company since 2014, as his appointed successor Pekka Lundmark takes over on Aug. 1.

Lundmark, 56, is the former CEO of the Finnish energy group Fortum and worked at Nokia between 1990 and 2000.

In May, Sari Baldauf was named as the company’s new chair. Baldauf headed Nokia’s network business from 1998 until 2005 and Lundmark was her team colleague in the 1990s.

Nokia has played catch up with Huawei and Ericsson in the 5G business, which has become increasingly politicized amid the U.S.-China rift, and industry observers say one of Lundmark’s immediate priorities is to review the company’s strategies.

Suri’s tenure was dominated by Nokia’s 15.6 billion-euro acquisition of the French telecoms group Alcatel-Lucent in 2016. Analysts say that integrating the company has taken more time than expected, causing Nokia to get a late start in the 5G race, which took off in 2018.

In February, U.S. Attorney General William Barr suggested the U.S. government should, either directly or through a U.S. company, take a stake in Nokia or Ericsson to stay ahead in the 5G and technological battle with Huawei and China.

AP

YouTube to curb amount of 5G-linked coronavirus conspiracy theory videos recommended to users

As COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the world, so do conspiracy theories about its origin. A popular theory that has surfaced and flourished across the web is one which suggests there is a link between the virus and the launch of 5G connectivity. Yesterday, The Guardian reported that videos supporting this claim published to YouTube will be suppressed.

Fewer videos with such content will be recommended to users and surface in their search results, as these theories have led to a series of attacks on phone masts, particularly in the United Kingdom. Videos that go so far as to breach the company’s policies will be removed; however, “content that is simply conspiratorial about 5G mobile communications networks, without mentioning coronavirus, is still allowed on the site.”

YouTube has been working since early February to remove potentially harmful content that suggests a relationship between COVID-19 and 5G as well as various other inaccurate conceptions about the virus. Complementing these actions, the company has also been making information from recognized health organizations like the CDC and WHO about the disease easier to find and access directly on the platform.

AFP Relaxnews 

In a first, three surgeries conducted using robots and 5G

BEIJING — Robots guided by doctors in a remote location through 5G wireless technology successfully completed major portions of three simultaneous orthopedic surgeries on Tuesday.

The whole process, monitored by specialists at a hospital in Beijing, was the first time three remote procedures were conducted at the same time.


The surgeries took place in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province; Karamay, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region; and Tianjin. Live images were transmitted to a team at Beijing Jishuitan Hospital as the robots executed their preset programming commands.

At 9:30 am, Tian Wei, head of the hospital in Beijing and team leader, issued the command for the surgical robots to begin their work.

The robots have been designed to carry out many of the tasks, but others must still be done by humans, such as implanting devices within bones.

The operations on Tuesday were all completed at around 1 pm.


“The combination of 5G technology with surgical robots is a huge technological advance that will help us share our skills with more patients in distant regions,” Tian said. “People across society can now have access to top medical resources. In the future, using robots and 5G will be common. The medical community will be smarter.”

Jiang Wenxue, head of orthopedics at Tianjin First Central Hospital, where one of the surgeries took place, said 5G technology provided clarity and continuity of images－videos and still photos－as well as stability, reliability and safety, which helped the doctors in Beijing monitor progress and communicate with their counterparts in remote operating rooms.

“With the network, we can perform surgery regardless of the distance,” Jiang said.

The Tianjin subsidiary of the State Grid Group has been promoting the integration of the electrical grid and 5G technology and has developed plans to ensure that power is not interrupted during surgeries.

Xiang Huangmei, vice-president of China Telecom’s Beijing branch, said the bandwidth of 5G is 10 times greater than 4G, which provides tremendous speed advantages.


“The high speed of 5G has resolved the time-lag problem and brought about dramatic progress in remote surgeries,” she said.

In June, Jishuitan Hospital performed 5G-assisted remote robotic surgery on a patient in Yantai, Shandong province, monitored by doctors in Beijing. China Telecom provided network support.

Luo Jun, secretary-general of the International Health Industry Forum, a Beijing-based think tank, said the use of advanced technologies such as 5G, 3D printing and artificial intelligence is an unstoppable trend in China’s medical sector.

“The risks of surgery are highly controllable, and the medical teams always have emergency plans for power or network failures,” he said.

source: technology.inquirer.net

British PM approves Huawei role in 5G network–report

LONDON — British Prime Minister Theresa May has given the go-ahead for China’s Huawei to help build a 5G network, shrugging off security warnings from senior ministers and Washington, the Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday.

The country’s National Security Council, which is chaired by May, agreed Tuesday to allow the Chinese technology giant limited access to build “noncore” infrastructure such as antennas, the report said.

The decision was made despite concerns raised over May’s approach by Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt.

Downing Street declined to comment on the newspaper report.

The United States has banned Huawei’s 5G technology from its territory and has urged allies in the so-called Five Eyes intelligence sharing collective — which also includes Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand — to follow suit.

Huawei is the leading manufacturer of equipment for next-generation 5G mobile networks with almost instantaneous data transfer that will become the nervous system of Europe’s economy, in strategic sectors like energy, transport, banking and health care.

However, the technology titan faces pushback in some Western markets over fears Beijing could spy on communications and gain access to critical infrastructure.

Last month, Britain identified “significant technological issues” in Huawei’s engineering processes that pose “new risks” for the nation’s telecommunications, according to a government report.


source: technology.inquirer.net

A show of force for 5G at CES 2019

The coming year will be a pivotal one for 5G, the fifth generation mobile communications standard which will set new bandwidth records. Mobile network operators and mobile phone manufacturers at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, running Jan. 8 to 11, will be unveiling a host of new smart solutions for homes, companies, cars and entertainment, which make use of this new technology.

Smart cities already figured large in discussions at the 2018 CES. This year’s show is expected to be marked by the emergence of practical applications in a range of areas: the internet of things, home automation, corporate environment automation, self-driving cars, entertainment, as well as virtual and augmented reality.


A number of 5G infrastructure projects will be unveiled at Las Vegas, with others expected for the end of February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. At a time when AT&T has only recently launched its network, which for the moment is limited to a dozen cities, Verizon and other competing operators may take advantage of the show to publicize their new offers.

With regard to the first 5G-compatible smartphones, these are also expected to be released in the first quarter of 2019. Hot on the heels of Qualcomm’s presentation of its latest 5G-compatible Snapdragon 855 processor, Chinese manufacturers OnePlus and Xiaomi are already embroiled in a telecom war over who will be the first to bring out a phone featuring this new 5G chip.

The arrival of 5G is set to pave the way for download speeds that are up to 100 times faster than those that are possible under 4G as well as game-changing developments in electronics markets such as very high definition streaming, the widespread adoption of the Internet of things, and the launch of self-driving smart vehicles. JB

source: technology.inquirer.net