AT&T’s smart streetlights can smooth traffic, detect gunshots

AT&T first unveiled its ambitious “Smart Cities” program at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, but now we have an idea as to how it’s going to work. The telecom has signed a deal with GE to install its Current CityIQ sensors into streetlights in various cities and municipalities around the US, starting with San Diego. The aim is to not just provide more intelligent lighting, but also monitor things like traffic circulation, parking spots, air quality, weather emergencies and even gunshots

GE is installing the Current platform as part of a $30 million upgrade to San Diego’s lighting system. The 14,000 LED fixtures will reduce energy costs in the city by up to $2.4 million, and the 3,200 “CityIQ” sensor nodes with cameras, microphones and other sensors will add “internet of things” connectivity. AT&T will act as the data carrier “and provide highly secure connectivity” for the San Diego deployment, it wrote in a press release.

As for concerns about security, the video footage from the cameras apparently isn’t as detailed as security camera footage. “It’s anonymous data with no personal identifiers,” a spokesperson for San Diego’s Mayor told Reuters.

Cities will be able to use AT&T’s M2X and Flow Designer open platforms to do traffic monitoring, parking optimization, gunshot detection, air quality monitoring, weather alerts and more. They’ll also be able to open up the platform to citizens, developers, entrepreneurs and universities to “create new revenue streams, drive economic development and make [cities] better places to live, work and play,” GE said in an earlier news release.

AT&T and GE aren’t the only companies tackling the (lucrative) city street lighting markets, of course. Another firm called EnGoPlanet has installed solar panels and sensors in Las Vegas streetlights, for example. However, AT&T and GE have enormous reach and resources that will probably help them get into many more cities.

Source: AT&T

Sony’s Xperia projector finally gets a name and release date

When we first caught a glimpse of Sony’s Xperia-branded projector concept at last year’s Mobile World Congress, the company didn’t have many details to share. A whole year later, Sony finally has an actual name and launch date for its Frankenjector (no, that’s not its name, although I wish it were). It’s called the Xperia Touch, and it’s part smart speaker, part projector and part virtual Android tablet. After a brief encounter with the Touch, I’m mostly appalled by how expensive it is for what it offers. To be fair, though, pricing for the US hasn’t been announced yet, but the lucky folks in Europe will get to buy it for €1,599 starting in Spring.

Don’t get me wrong. In theory, I kind of dig the idea. As a tenant of a cramped New York apartment, I adore projectors for their space-saving benefits. Plus, the Touch’s interactive surface means you can interact with whatever it projects, thanks to its onboard cameras. When casting, say, a movie or TV show to a wall, this function doesn’t seem all that helpful. But since the Touch runs Android, you can use it to basically turn your walls into giant digital whiteboards, which is neat. Its 1366 x 768 resolution is not very sharp, though, especially if you are watching your content at the 80-inch maximum width that this laser projector supports.

Not only can the Touch cast media to walls, but it can display on tables, too. In this orientation, the 10-point touch sensitivity makes more sense. In addition to letting you enjoy games or simulate a real piano-playing experience, the Touch’s ability to throw content to a horizontal surface also means your friends or teammates can work with you on the same screen while sitting across from you. The problem, though, is that you’ll have to make sure your table doesn’t have a complicated pattern, or it gets hard to see what you’re projecting.

During a recent briefing, I tried playing Für Elise and Ballade Pour Adeline on a projected piano. It was surprisingly enjoyable, although it’ll need actual keys and a set of pedals to rival a real instrument. I also challenged a Sony rep to a rock-tossing game where we had to fight to be the first to smash the other, and despite the Touch being slow to register our fingers sometimes, I managed to kill my opponent. Twice.

One of the strangest things about the touch input here is you get no sensory feedback at all, especially within a game. Nothing vibrates or lights up under your fingers to tell you that your touch has been registered, which makes any lag in performance at all seem all the more pronounced. I frequently found myself wondering if I had actually pressed anything at all.

Other than touch, though, the Xperia Touch also recognizes a few other inputs. It’ll hear your voice for Google Assistant commands and recognize your hand gestures to wake up its screen if it goes to sleep. The device also carries onboard a 13-megapixel camera so you can make Skype calls or take selfies if you so desire. Its stereo speaker also produced a respectable amount of sound at our cozy meeting space.

Thanks to a built-in battery that will last about an hour, the Xperia Touch can also remain active when you unplug it so you can move it to different rooms or locations without having to power off altogether. Whether you’ll want to get it into your house at all is a different matter altogether. Sure, the Xperia Touch bundles almost three separate devices worth of features into a compact, solid package. But is it €1,599 worth? I’m not so sure. For one thing, there are several other options, such as Lenovo’s Yoga Tablet 2 Pro or the Moto Z with projector Mod, that do similar things. For another, despite my love for projectors, the Touch doesn’t leave me wanting more time with it. Ultimately it’s a unique concept that’s fun to play with, but not quite practical enough to justify its high price.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.

The Xperia XZ Premium may be the 4K flagship we’ve been waiting for

After a mostly disappointing year of Sony smartphones (ahem, Xperia X and X Performance), the company might have just built its finest yet. Say hello to the Xperia XZ Premium, a high-performance sequel to last year’s XZ that ticks just about every box on our list when it comes to flagship devices. The few things the XZ didn’t exceed out early expectations on might be the device’s undoing, but for now, Sony seems to have gotten enough right that we’re willing to see where the XZ Premium takes us.

The Xperia XZ Premium is a beautiful device in that rounded, slab-like way Sony loves, but the look ultimately hasn’t changed much since last year. I personally don’t mind — I think there’s still plenty of mileage to be squeezed out of this classic Sony look. Still, there’s no denying that high-end smartphones are losing their bezels left and right, like LG’s G6 and the as-yet-unrevealed Galaxy S8. Beyond just being visually striking, a smaller bezels means more screen in physical packages that aren’t necessarily bigger than before. Sony has made its fair share of phones with skinny bezels, but eliminating all that space above and below the XZ Premium’s screen is probably next to impossible for now.

After all, there is a lot going on here. The screen I just mentioned is a 5.5-inch panel running at full 4K (like the Z5 Premium of yesteryear) that also supports HDR content. Sadly, I haven’t seen much HDR content on this screen since the device we played with was far from finished, but the panel is awfully pretty even when I just swiped through the interface. Lag was basically non-existent, too, though that shouldn’t really be a shock.

Aside from the ZTE Gigabit phone floating around here somewhere, the XZ Premium is one of the few devices powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chipset (complete with 4GB of RAM) here at the show. Word of Samsung gobbling up all available 835s for Galaxy S8s might have been blown out of proportion. Still, Sony has only said the XZ Premium will launch in the US some time in the Spring, so Samsung has a strong chance of beating it to store shelves.

Then there’s the camera, which only shoots 19-megapixel stills instead of the 23-megapixel shots you could coax out of the regular XZ. As usual, there’s more to the story than just megapixels. Sony’s new Motion Eye system has dramatically improved image stabilization and added a memory layer to the photo capturing workflow. (Essentially, images are written to memory more quickly and then processed, reducing lag.)

Sony claims this results in image scanning five times faster than before, helping the XZ Premium become the first smartphone to capture slow-motion video at 960FPS. Seriously. Again, our tester unit wasn’t quite set up for this, but I’ll update this story when we get to try it out. The test shots we took came out with a lot of detail and vivid colors, though. Throw in some predictive capture to make sure you never miss a once-in-a-lifetime moment because of your poor, human reflexes and we’ve got a hell of a package.

There’s at least one strange omission, at least as far as the US model is concerned. There’s no fingerprint sensor that one, which I’m still trying to wrap my head around. For now, our biggest concern is the battery. Check this out: the XZ Premium has to power a brand new, high-power Snapdragon and a full, 4K display with a 3,230mAh battery. Sony swears up and down that its Smart Stamina mode will keep the phone running for a while, but man — I have some serious qualms about the company’s choice. The XZ Premium is by no means a small phone, so not using an even more capacious battery is pretty puzzling.

For those really concerned by this, the smaller Xperia XZs might be the more logical choice. It runs with a more common Snapdragon 820 and a 5.2-inch, 1080p screen that should ease the load on its 2,900mAh battery considerably. Sure, you’ll lose out on the sheer wow factor that comes with the Premium, but in our time together, the phone ran like a charm and retains that excellent camera setup.

Sony hasn’t yet said how much the XZ Premium will cost at launch, but I’m almost irrationally excited anyway. I can’t remember the last time Sony gave me this kind of rush. If the battery manages to exceed expectations, we might be looking at a real rock star, the kind I didn’t think Sony would make again. There’s still plenty to see at Mobile World Congress, so stay tuned for more — hopefully the XZ Premium stacks up well against the competition.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.

ZTE’s low-cost Blade V8 Mini comes with dual cameras

In addition to unveiling its Gigabit phone here at MWC, ZTE is adding two new phones to its Blade V8 line of affordable handsets. The Blade V8 Mini and Lite will be available in Asia and Europe in March, and although we don’t know what they’ll officially cost yet, it’s safe to say they’ll be cheaper than the $229 Blade V8 Pro that we saw at CES.

Between the two low-cost handsets, the Mini is the slightly more premium. While they both run Android Nougat, sport 5-inch HD displays and pack octa-core processors, the Mini uses a Qualcomm-branded chip while the Lite has a Mediatek version. The Mini comes with a dual camera setup on its rear, while the Lite only has a solo 8-megapixel camera on its back.

Both phones felt surprisingly comfortable to hold, thanks to their smooth bodies and light footprint. I couldn’t tell, just by touching, which one was the more premium handset. On the sunny rooftop where we saw the new devices, it was clear that the screens weren’t very bright. Once we got inside, though, images and text were colorful and sharp.

I have a hard time believing a dual camera setup on a handset this cheap can be effective, and it was difficult to judge from my very brief experience with the Mini’s camera. The software looks similar to that on ZTE’s higher-end Blade phones, though.

They may not be the most remarkable phones of the show, but the new Blades join a growing group of very affordable, stock-Android smartphones we are seeing out of Barcelona this year. Nokia’s new Android offerings may have generated plenty of excitement, but they will surely face fierce competition from the increasing number of options from Chinese companies who have more experience in the space.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.

Sony’s new Xperia Ear lets in sounds from the outside world

Sony already debuted wireless earbuds with the Xperia Ear device last year. Here at MWC 2017, the company is showing off the next iteration of its virtual assistant-equipped audio gear. For now, Sony is calling the new gadget the Xperia Ear Open-style Concept as the product is style in the prototype phase. Unfortunately, that means we aren’t able to listen to it here at the show, but the company is still offering some details on the setup.

This new version of Xperia Ear uses “open-ear” audio tech Sony developed inside it’s Future Lab incubator program. Essentially, the wireless earbuds let noise from the outside world in while you’re wearing them. This probably sounds like a bad idea to most, but the feature will help keep you safe on a run or allow you to hear colleagues while listening to music and receiving app notifications in the office.

Details are scarce on the internals for now, but we do know that the combination of two spacial acoustic conductors and driver units beam sound directly in your ear canal. The earbud’s speaker is circular with an open center to allow those environmental sounds to come through. It will be interesting to see how well this new design stays in place as the controls components are housed in a casing that wraps under your ear and sits behind it. Like the previous version, this Open-style Concept will feature Sony’s Agent virtual assistant that’s capable of recognizing both voice cues and head gestures to lend a hand with activities.

The company also has a new “Anytime Talk” feature that will reach existing Xperia Ear devices in the coming months. The tool will allow you to start a group conversation with a single button push or by moving your head a certain way without having to scroll through your contact list. Again, a beta version is coming to that first-gen Xperia Ear soon. Sony says its also working with the creators of the Line messaging app on “a new integrated voice experience.” If Sony does decide to bring this new device to market, we’ll likely get more info on pricing, availability and features soon enough.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.

AT&T Announces New Unlimited Data Plan With 10GB of Tethering and $25 Off DirecTV

AT&T launched a new unlimited data plan less than two weeks ago, but with more competitive options available from Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, it went back to the drawing board and came up with something better.

Starting Thursday, new and existing AT&T customers can choose from two new plans: Unlimited Plus and Unlimited Choice.

Unlimited Plus starts at $90 per month for a single line and includes unlimited talk, text, and data at up to 4G LTE speeds. Video can be streamed in HD quality, but Stream Saver mode, which reduces streaming video to around 480p quality, is enabled by default and must be turned off through myAT&T.

AT&T Unlimited Plus includes up to 10GB of 4G LTE tethering per line per month, with speeds reduced to a max 128 Kbps for the rest of the bill cycle for eligible devices once the high-speed allotment is exceeded.

Two smartphone lines starts at $145 per month, while up to eight additional devices, such as tablets and hotspots, can be added for $20 per month each. The pricing includes monthly access charges, but it is not inclusive of taxes or additional fees. AutoPay and paperless billing are required.

For a limited time, AT&T Unlimited Plus customers can receive a $25 bill credit towards DirecTV, DirecTV NOW, or AT&T U-verse each month. The bill credits begin in 2-3 billing periods. The total monthly cost for AT&T Unlimited Plus with DirecTV NOW, for example, would start at $100 per month after discounts.

Meanwhile, AT&T Unlimited Choice is a new cheaper option starting at $60 per month for a single line, and includes unlimited talk, text, and data at up to 3 Mbps speeds. Video streams at a max of 1.5 Mbps, aka about 480p. No discount is offered for bundling DirecTV, DirecTV NOW, or U-verse.

Two smartphone lines starts at $115 per month, while up to eight additional devices, such as tablets and hotspots, can be added for $20 per month each. The pricing includes monthly access charges, but it is not inclusive of taxes or additional fees. AutoPay and paperless billing are required.

For both plans, customers that exceed 22GB of data usage may experience reduced speeds for the remainder of the billing cycle, but only at times and in areas where there is network congestion, which is similar to 22GB, 23GB, and 28GB soft cap policies from Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile respectively.

Additionally, AT&T said both plans allow individuals and businesses to make unlimited calls from the U.S. to Canada and Mexico, and send unlimited texts to over 120 countries. AT&T customers on these plans can also use their plan to talk, text, and use data in Canada and Mexico with no roaming charges.

Video references AT&T’s earlier unlimited data plan
AT&T’s earlier unlimited data plan started at $100 per month and did not include any tethering, so its new plans offer better value. Meanwhile, Verizon Unlimited starts at $80 per month, Sprint Unlimited starts at $50 per month for a limited time, and T-Mobile ONE starts at $70 per month, inclusive of taxes and fees.

Tags: AT&T, unlimited data
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Vkansee demos its under-glass fingerprint sensor on a Lenovo laptop

Why it matters to you

Keep an eye on the companies behind under-glass fingerprint sensors, as their technology may be utilized in your next smartphone.

The next step for fingerprint sensors on smartphones is for them to sit under the glass, and that’s rumored to be a feature on Apple’s next iPhone. Vkansee, a startup in New York, has already patented an under-glass optical fingerprint sensor — but the company is utilizing it first with Windows laptops.

At Mobile World Congress, the startup is demoing its prototype optical fingerprint reader on a Lenovo laptop utilizing Windows Hello, Microsoft’s face, fingerprint, or iris recognizing software that enables secure sign-in into your computer.

More: Samsung Flow app to let you use phone’s fingerprint sensor to log into Windows

There are varying types of fingerprint sensors, but the most common ones found on smartphones today are capacitive scanners, which use electrical currents to collect data about a fingerprint. Vkansee president Jason Chaikin told Digital Trends that capacitive scanners are “great,” as they are cheap, fit into phones well, and consume very little power.

So why do manufacturers want to ditch them? Smartphone design. Manufacturers always need to cut a hole because it’s incredibly difficult to have a capacitive sensor under glass — they would need to etch the glass to attempt to put the sensor underneath.

Optical scanners have been around for a long time, but until now they have been big and bulky — they’re the sort of scanners used at border crossings and for background checks.

“A small light flashes through glass and it goes through a lens,” Chaikin said. “An optical sensor is a fixed, focal-length camera that captures a picture of your fingerprint.”

More: Apple was just granted a patent for a touchscreen that reads fingerprints

Vkansee’s optical sensor can read through 2mm of glass, making it optimal to be embedded under a smartphone’s glass display. Synaptics also announced an optical fingerprint-sensor for smartphones last year.

Vkansee’s testing its prototype on a Lenovo laptop, and the company claims its “high-resolution sensors are ultra-thin, anti-spoof, water- and sweat-resistant, and read fingerprints at a resolution up to 2,000 pixels per inch.”

The company said its evaluation kits are in testing with various manufacturers, and last year it announced a software licensing partnership with Precise Biometrics, a fingerprint software company that offers fingerprint matching algorithms to the likes of Huawei, Google, Xiaomi, Lenovo, LG, and more.

Chaikin said Vkansee’s technology will debut in laptops this year, and likely on mobile devices at a later time.

Vkansee demos its under-glass fingerprint sensor on a Lenovo laptop

Why it matters to you

Keep an eye on the companies behind under-glass fingerprint sensors, as their technology may be utilized in your next smartphone.

The next step for fingerprint sensors on smartphones is for them to sit under the glass, and that’s rumored to be a feature on Apple’s next iPhone. Vkansee, a startup in New York, has already patented an under-glass optical fingerprint sensor — but the company is utilizing it first with Windows laptops.

At Mobile World Congress, the startup is demoing its prototype optical fingerprint reader on a Lenovo laptop utilizing Windows Hello, Microsoft’s face, fingerprint, or iris recognizing software that enables secure sign-in into your computer.

More: Samsung Flow app to let you use phone’s fingerprint sensor to log into Windows

There are varying types of fingerprint sensors, but the most common ones found on smartphones today are capacitive scanners, which use electrical currents to collect data about a fingerprint. Vkansee president Jason Chaikin told Digital Trends that capacitive scanners are “great,” as they are cheap, fit into phones well, and consume very little power.

So why do manufacturers want to ditch them? Smartphone design. Manufacturers always need to cut a hole because it’s incredibly difficult to have a capacitive sensor under glass — they would need to etch the glass to attempt to put the sensor underneath.

Optical scanners have been around for a long time, but until now they have been big and bulky — they’re the sort of scanners used at border crossings and for background checks.

“A small light flashes through glass and it goes through a lens,” Chaikin said. “An optical sensor is a fixed, focal-length camera that captures a picture of your fingerprint.”

More: Apple was just granted a patent for a touchscreen that reads fingerprints

Vkansee’s optical sensor can read through 2mm of glass, making it optimal to be embedded under a smartphone’s glass display. Synaptics also announced an optical fingerprint-sensor for smartphones last year.

Vkansee’s testing its prototype on a Lenovo laptop, and the company claims its “high-resolution sensors are ultra-thin, anti-spoof, water- and sweat-resistant, and read fingerprints at a resolution up to 2,000 pixels per inch.”

The company said its evaluation kits are in testing with various manufacturers, and last year it announced a software licensing partnership with Precise Biometrics, a fingerprint software company that offers fingerprint matching algorithms to the likes of Huawei, Google, Xiaomi, Lenovo, LG, and more.

Chaikin said Vkansee’s technology will debut in laptops this year, and likely on mobile devices at a later time.

MediaTek’s 10-core Helio X30 now official, debuting next quarter

MediaTek’s Helio X30 has 10 cores and a GPU that’s 2.4 times faster than last year’s X20.

At Mobile World Congress, MediaTek has officially kicked off availability of its high-end SoC for 2017, the Helio X30. The chipset is built on a 10nm node, and will be making its debut in phones next quarter.

Like its predecessor, the Helio X30 offers a tri-cluster CPU design that sees two Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.5GHz to form the high-performance cluster, complemented by four Cortex A53 cores at 2.2GHz and four Cortex A53 at 1.9GHz. MediaTek is touting its intelligent task switcher, CorePilot 4.0, to deliver up to 25% power savings. CorePilot 4.0 pulls data from the device’s thermals and relies on “user experience monitoring technology” to predict which CPU cores should be used for a particular task. The idea is to maximize battery life while ensuring that users don’t notice a drop in performance.

On the GPU front, the Helio X30 fields Imagination’s PowerVR Series7XT Plus clocked at 800MHz, which according to MediaTek is 2.4 times faster than last year’s Helio X20 while consuming up to 60% less power. The SoC accommodates displays up to 2560×1600 in resolution, up to 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, and eMMC 5.1 or UFS 2.1 flash memory.

Other improvements include a vision processing unit for processing images that uses 10% of the power a regular CPU would for undertaking the same task. The 14-bit Imagiq 2.0 ISP supports 28MP sensors, dual 16MP+16MP sensors, improved EIS for smooth videos and ultra-fast autofocus.

The SoC is also the first to include a hardware-based 4K 10-bit HDR10 decode for 4K video playback at 30fps. Also included is a Category 10 LTE modem with 3x carrier aggregation that has a theoretical peak of 450Mbps.

MediaTek mentions that the first phones powered by the Helio X30 will be available in the second quarter of 2017. Chinese manufacturer Vernee has already announced that its upcoming Apollo 2 will feature the Helio X30, and we’ll likely hear more about other handsets that will be powered by the SoC in the coming weeks.

Netflix wins an Oscar for documentary short ‘The White Helmets’

While we were expecting Amazon to score an Oscar first for Manchester by the Sea, Netflix ended up beating out that film with a Best Documentary (Short Subject) Oscar for The White Helmets. Directed by Orlando von Einsiedel, the film centers on a group of volunteer rescue workers for the Syrian Civil Defense Force, also known as “The White Helmets,” who risk their lives to help civilians in that war-torn country.

The group has saved more than 60,000 lives so far, and they’ve also been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Ava DuVernay’s The 13th, another Netflix film, was also nominated for best documentary, but it lost out to the epic-length O.J.: Made in America. As you might have guessed, The White Helmets is available to watch on Netflix now.