Month: December 2019

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  Lifting the lid off the Librem 5's box, you see the phone and a "getting started" manual. [credit: Azdle ]

When Ars spoke to Purism founder and CEO Todd Weaver two weeks ago, the Librem 5 had been "shipping" for a month, but not to backers—only to Purism employees and inside developers. Weaver talked a little about the unexpected hardware issues the company had been experiencing late in the game including a batch of phone boards missing a 10kOhm resistor, and he gave us an updated schedule about when the phones would resume shipping. More importantly, Weaver said backers would begin receiving their phones by the first week of December.

Thankfully, the company met this latest deadline on time. On November 27, Ars reader Azdle posted a comment to the thread—"Just because I can, hello from my freshly-received Librem 5 phone! (And, no, I don't work for Purism, I'm just an early backer." Azdle was also kind enough to share some unboxing pictures and some commentary about what, exactly, a Librem 5 phone from the Birch shipment is—and what it's not.

What the Librem 5 isn't (yet)

First of all, it's not really a "phone" yet. There's no audio when attempting to place a phone call. The cameras also don't appear to work yet. Azdle reports "installing and opening up Cheese"—Cheese is a very basic Linux video application, installed by default in many distros—"I just get a message saying 'no device found.'" There's also effectively no power management yet, so the Librem doesn't last long on battery. It takes a long time to charge as well.

Enlarge / The Sega Genesis Mini.

Greetings, Arsians! Today is Cyber Monday, and while the Dealmaster has a giant roundup of every worthwhile tech deal he can find, we understand that not everyone is looking for a big-ticket item. For those who only need to buy a smaller-scale gift or two, we've rounded up a few good Cyber Monday tech deals priced below $50.

Some of the highlights here include discounted media streamers: Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K is down to $25, its joint-lowest price to date, while Roku's Streaming Stick+ is $20 off at $30. Our favorite wired gaming mouse (which still works well for non-gaming), the Razer DeathAdder Elite, is priced at an all-time low of $25, while one of our favorite portable USB-C power banks, the Aukey PB-Y13, is available for $21. Naturally, there are a metric ton of video game deals, but board games we like such as Catan and Pandemic are also at lower-than-usual prices for Cyber Monday.

If none of that appeals to you, there are also deals on Instant Pots, smart speakers, wireless chargers, microSD cards, and plenty more beyond that. Have a look at the full list below and see if anything works as a potential stocking stuffer (or just a cheap treat for yourself).

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches a Starlink mission on Nov. 11, 2019. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX will have its lowest annual total of rocket launches since 2016 this year. With 11 orbital launches through November, including two Falcon Heavy missions, the company has no chance to match its total of 18 flights in 2017 or its record 21 missions last year. However, SpaceX is gearing up for what could be a frenetic December to close the books on 2019 and set up a very busy 2020.

As early as Wednesday, the company will launch its third mission to supply the International Space Station in 2019. The CRS-19 mission, launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, will ferry about 2.5 tons of cargo to the ISS. This particular Dragon capsule will be making its third flight to the station. It is believed that the Falcon 9 first stage for this mission will not have previously flown.

Liftoff of the CRS-19 flight is scheduled for 12:51pm ET (17:51 UTC) on December 4, and weather conditions are likely to be favorable. The first stage booster has already completed its static fire test.

Enlarge / T-Mobile's 5G coverage map. (credit: T-Mobile)

T-Mobile today announced that it has launched "America's first nationwide 5G network," but T-Mobile's definition of "nationwide" doesn't include about 40% of the US population.

"America gets its first nationwide 5G network today, covering more than 200 million people and more than 1 million square miles," T-Mobile's announcement said.

The US Census Bureau estimates the population to be more than 330 million people. T-Mobile hasn't actually forgotten about the other 130 million people in the US, as a sentence halfway through the carrier's press release notes that "T-Mobile's network covers more than 60 percent of the population." At 1 million square miles, the carrier's 5G network also covers about 28% of the country's 3.53 million square miles, and it's far short of the geographical reach already provided by T-Mobile's 4G network.

Enlarge / A wall of user photos form a Facebook logo at the company's data center in Lulea, Sweden. (credit: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND | AFP | Getty Images)

If you feel like you don't want to spend much time on Facebook anymore but don't want to lose up to 15 years' worth of shared photos, good news: the company is rolling out a tool that will let you export your image library directly to Google Photos.

Facebook announced the new tool in a corporate blog post today. The initiative springs from the Data Transfer Project, a collaboration among Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter to make some data transferable among those platforms.

The pilot begins this week in Ireland (where Facebook has been under investigation for alleged violations of EU data privacy law). The tool is then expected to roll out to users in the rest of the world sometime in the first half of 2020. Users who have the option available to them will see the tool in Facebook's settings under Your Facebook Information.

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Electronics sales are plentiful during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so this is one of the best times of the year to buy a new laptop. To help you make an informed decision while removing the need to wade through the sea of deals, the Dealmaster is back with all of the worthwhile laptop deals you can buy right now for Cyber Monday.

Of note from our list are a few deals on some of our favorite laptops, like the 7th-gen Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Now you can get Lenovo's premium workstation with an 8th-gen Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and a 14-inch 1080p display for $999. This slashes $400 off the laptop's regular price, and in general, it's always worth waiting for the rare sales that bring the price of the X1 Carbon down to $1,000 or less. This is the newest version of the X1 Carbon, but you'll have to settle for an 8th-gen Intel processor rather than the newest 10th-gen processors (you can get the X1 Carbon with those, but you'll have to pay more).

HP has a good deal on the Envy x360 15t—a model with a 10th-gen Intel Core i7 processor, a 15.6-inch FHD touchscreen, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and 16GB of Optane memory is now just $649. The Envy 13 laptop impressed us by being an affordable alternative to the Spectre series of laptops, and this deal is for the 15-inch convertible version. It's a laptop that's arguably as sleek as its Spectre counterpart and nearly as powerful, and this Cyber Monday price makes it even more of a no-brainer purchase.