Month: June 2016

Enlarge / Modern iPhones in three sizes. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Unlike Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, and other SoC manufacturers, Apple doesn't integrate an LTE modem into its iPhone SoCs along with the CPU and GPU, which means the company needs to order external modems. Those modems have historically been provided by Qualcomm, but according to a report from Bloomberg, Intel is officially being tapped as a second source of modems for the next iPhone.

The report indicates that iPhones sold on the Verizon network and in China will continue to use Qualcomm modems—it's unclear what this means for carrier-unlocked iPhones in the US, which can be used on any major mobile network without issues—but even so, this is still a big deal for Intel. The company dominates the shrinking PC market, but so far it hasn't been able to make much money from smartphones. In recent months, it has even dramatically scaled back its plans for smartphone SoC designs.

These rumors have been floating around since just after the iPhone 6S was released, and Qualcomm indicated in April that it could be losing modem orders from its "biggest customer" to a "second source."

Bluetooth 5.0, the latest version of the ubiquitous wireless standard, is set to be announced on June 16, according to an e-mail sent by Bluetooth SIG Executive Director Mark Powell.

The update will apparently be called "Bluetooth 5" without a point number in an effort to "[simplify] marketing." It's primarily of interest because the update promises to double the range and quadruple the speed of Bluetooth 4.2. It also adds "significantly more capacity to advertising transmissions," which is more exciting than it sounds because it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what you normally think of when you think of "advertising."

In the Bluetooth spec, an "advertising packet" allows Bluetooth devices to send small snippets of information to other Bluetooth devices even if the two aren't actually paired or connected to one another. For instance, when you go to pair a Bluetooth keyboard or speaker with one of your devices, advertising packets can let you see the name of the device before you've paired it so you can distinguish it from all the other Bluetooth devices that are within range. The same technology is used by wireless beacons to transmit information about the location you're in and by Apple's AirDrop and Handoff features to let your Macs and iDevices know what your other Macs and iDevices are up to.

(credit: Getty Images | eccolo74)

Two lobby groups representing small and medium-sized Internet service providers have taken the first step toward suing the Federal Communications Commission over a ruling designed to boost competition.

The groups are trying to overturn a condition imposed on Charter's purchase of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. In exchange for approval to buy the cable companies, Charter agreed to compete against other ISPs by building new networks in cities and towns already served by high-speed Internet providers.

The American Cable Association (ACA), which represents smaller cable companies in mostly rural and suburban areas, and NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association, which represents small telcos, each filed petitions to overturn the condition with the FCC last night. This is basically a formality to demonstrate to a court that the groups have exhausted all available options before suing. Assuming the FCC rejects the petitions, the groups will likely file a lawsuit.

Enlarge (credit: Mark Walton)

In January, Nvidia's GTX 970 became the most popular graphics card on Steam—a remarkable feat considering the next most popular chip at the time, HD Graphics 4000, isn't really designed for gaming at all, but is instead integrated into Intel CPUs. Today, the GTX 970 still commands a hefty five percent share of the Steam audience. Its successor, the GTX 1070—the second graphics card based on Nvidia's latest Pascal architecture following the powerful but pricey GTX 1080—has some big shoes to fill.

And it does fill them... for the most part. As Nvidia promised, the GTX 1070 is indeed faster than both the GTX 980 Ti and the Titan X, and by some margin: as much as 12 percent in some tests. Just a couple of months ago these cards cost upwards of £500/$650—the GTX 1070, at the high end, costs just £399/$449.

In its Founders Edition form (Nvidia's new nomenclature for reference cards), the GTX 1070 is cool and quiet too, the smaller, more efficient TSMC 16nm FinFET manufacturing process letting Nvidia ramp up performance to Titan-beating levels, while keeping the TDP down to a reasonable 150W.