Kalakshar US

It seems increasingly likely that Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone SE will feature the first 5G modem the company has built in-house. A new report from Bloomberg both confirms earlier reporting from 9to5Mac and clarifies that Apple’s first modem won’t be quite as capable as the chips the company is trying to leave behind.

The new modem, reportedly called “Sinope” won’t support mmWave, the short-range 5G technology Verizon offers that can theoretically reach speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. It also will only offer four-carrier aggregation as opposed to Qualcomm’s six, “a technology that combines bands from several wireless providers simultaneously to increase network capacity and speeds,” Bloomberg says.

Apple’s modem will instead be focused on providing Sub-6 5G, the more common standard that’s already supported on the current iPhone SE, which was released in 2022. In testing, Apple’s new modem reportedly “caps out at download speeds of about 4 gigabits per second,” slower than Qualcomm’s current mmWave models, but the difference is easier to justify on a cheaper device and might not be that noticeable anyway. The goal is ultimately to achieve even tighter integration between the modem and other components of the phone to offer more important benefits than just download speed, like improved battery life.

Bloomberg writes that launching on the iPhone SE first is how Apple plans on managing the risks of its new hardware gamble. Debuting on the iPhone 17 Pro would be a mark of confidence, but most people expect a phone that costs upwards of $1000 to work without issues. Until Apple can guarantee that, the SE makes sense as a modem guinea pig. That won’t be the case for long, however. “Ganymede,” Apple’s second-generation modem, should be ready for the iPhone 18 in 2026 and match Qualcomm’s current offerings with mmWave support and faster download speeds. In 2027, the company’s “Prometheus” modem is aiming to surpass Qualcomm entirely in “performance and artificial intelligence features.”

A report published later today suggests these new modem designs could also have a pretty big influence on more than just the iPhone. Bloomberg attributes the thinness of the rumored iPhone 17 Slim to the space-saving efficiency of Apple’s new modem, and also suggests that future Macs and Vision headsets could get cellular connectivity in the future, too. This would mark the first time a Mac had onboard cellular, though the iPad has had the option since day one.

There’s still years before any of that happens, and the road to even get here has been long and winding. For one, Apple’s relationship with Qualcomm has been up and down. The companies were in a legal spat over patent violations that ultimately led to a settlement and a licensing deal in 2019. That same year is when Apple’s intention to move on from Qualcomm became more public with the purchase of Intel’s modem business. Apple has attempted to build a team that could create its first modem since then, and even re-upped its agreement to use Qualcomm modems through 2026 in 2023. It now seems like the company could be a position for that to be the last deal with Qualcomm it makes.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/the-next-iphone-ses-new-modem-reportedly-wont-be-as-capable-as-qualcomms-205330204.html?src=rss 

SpaceX completed its first Starlink direct-to-cell satellite constellation this week. On Wednesday, the company launched 20 satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, 13 of which can communicate directly with cell phones without extra equipment.

The completed constellation follows the FCC’s approval of a deal between SpaceX and T-Mobile last week. The companies announced the partnership in 2022, touting plans for a future where phones can be connected to the world even in the middle of the ocean. SpaceX says the satellite constellation acts “like a cellphone tower in space, allowing network integration similar to a standard roaming partner.”

On Thursday, SpaceX posted on X that the direct-to-cell satellites will “immediately connect over laser backhaul to the Starlink constellation, eliminate dead zones and provide peace of mind when customers need it most.” The company sent and received its first text messages through T-Mobile’s network early this year.

The low-earth-orbit constellation has 6,799 operational satellites, and Space.com reports that about 330 can communicate directly with cell phones. On Thursday, Elon Musk said unmodified cell phones would enjoy a bandwidth of around 10Mbps per beam. He said future constellations will be capable of much greater throughput.

The companies will presumably go into more detail for consumers once Starlink Direct to Cell is available. It’s currently targeted for next year. However, the constellation isn’t locked into T-Mobile alone. Android Central reports that SpaceX senior director Ben Longmier said shortly after the deployment that the satellites are “open for business for any teleco in the world.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacex-completes-starlinks-first-direct-to-cell-constellation-212549713.html?src=rss 

Meta’s aggressive push to make its AI assistant a ubiquitous presence in its apps continues to pay off. Meta AI is on the verge of passing its next major milestone, with “nearly” 600 million monthly users, Mark Zuckerberg shared in an update. Meta AI, which debuted last fall, passed 500 million users back in October.

The update came alongside the release of Meta’s latest Llama 3.3 70B model. According to Meta, the latest text model has “similar performance to the Llama 3.1 405B model,” but comes “at a fraction of the cost.” Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta posted a chart on X that showed Llama 3.3 scored higher on several benchmarks compared with Google’s Gemini Pro 1.5 and OpenAI’s GPT-4o.

Zuckerberg also briefly teased the next major release. “The next stop is Llama 4,” Zuckerberg said in a video shared on Instagram, after noting that the 3.3 release was the “last big AI update of the year.” Zuckerberg has so far has been fairly tight-lipped about what’s in store for Llama 4, though he’s offered some hints. The CEO said earlier this year that the model was being trained on a cluster of more than 100,000 H100s with an expected release of one of the “smaller” Llama 4 models “sometime early next year.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-ai-has-nearly-600-million-monthly-users-184512693.html?src=rss