Month: November 2021

Enlarge / Kia will reveal the EV9 concept in Los Angeles. (credit: Kia)

Last week, Hyundai teased a concept of a new electric SUV called "Seven." On Thursday, it was Kia's turn to tease its version, a concept it is calling "EV9."

Details are scant for EV9 as they are for the Hyundai Seven, although we know it will employ Hyundai Motor Group's new E-GMP electric vehicle platform, which uses an 800 V electrical architecture. The platform enables rapid fast charging to 80 percent in less than 20 minutes and either rear- or all-wheel drive layouts for larger-battery electric vehicles.

Like the Seven, the EV9 has a flexible and adaptive interior, although I'm slightly worried about Kia's "radical new take on the traditional steering wheel." There are, after all, perfectly good reasons that most cars use round steering wheels.

Enlarge / Kia will reveal the EV9 concept in Los Angeles. (credit: Kia)

Last week, Hyundai teased a concept of a new electric SUV called "Seven." On Thursday, it was Kia's turn to tease its version, a concept it is calling "EV9."

Details are scant for EV9 as they are for the Hyundai Seven, although we know it will employ Hyundai Motor Group's new E-GMP electric vehicle platform, which uses an 800 V electrical architecture. The platform enables rapid fast charging to 80 percent in less than 20 minutes and either rear- or all-wheel drive layouts for larger-battery electric vehicles.

Like the Seven, the EV9 has a flexible and adaptive interior, although I'm slightly worried about Kia's "radical new take on the traditional steering wheel." There are, after all, perfectly good reasons that most cars use round steering wheels.

Enlarge / Windows 11 SE's default wallpaper. (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is taking the fight to Chromebooks in schools with the $250 Surface Laptop SE, but inexpensive hardware is only part of the equation. One reason Chromebooks have succeeded in education is because of Chrome OS, which is well-suited for lower-end hardware, easy for IT administrators to manage, and hard to break with errant apps or malware.

Microsoft's answer to Chrome OS is Windows 11 SE. Unlike past efforts like Windows in S mode (which is still its own separate thing), Windows 11 SE isn't just a regular version of Windows with a cheaper license or a cut-down version that runs fewer apps. Windows 11 SE defaults to saving all files (including user profile information) to students' OneDrive accounts, and it has had some standard Windows 11 features removed to ensure a "distraction-free" learning environment that performs better on low-end devices. The operating system also gives IT administrators exclusive control over the apps and browser extensions that can be installed and run via Microsoft Intune.

If you're a school IT administrator with a fleet of PC laptops or desktops, you might wonder if you can buy and install Windows 11 SE on hardware you already have so you can benefit from its changes without buying new hardware. The answer, Microsoft tells us, is no. The only way to get Windows 11 SE is on laptops that ship with Windows 11 SE. And if you re-image a Windows 11 SE device with a different version of Windows 10 or Windows 11, it won't even be possible to reinstall Windows 11 SE after that.

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Sure, you probably have Android 12 on your Pixel phone by now, but what if you put it on there a second time?

That's basically what happened to a bunch of Pixel users yesterday. They had the latest Android 12 build on their device, and the phone's automatic update system prompted them to download nearly the same build through a whopping 1.8GB download. After questions on Reddit popped up, the official Google account responded to users, saying, "We're sorry for the alert you received. Not to worry, we've resolved this issue and you can disregard it."

We have no way of knowing which builds users were updated to, but the examples we've seen online all involve a Verizon build of the Pixel software going out to non-Verizon users. Devices running Android 12 with the November security update were updated to the Verizon version of that update. As far as we can tell, the differences between the normal build and the Verizon build are about what you would expect: The Verizon version contains extra code that helps the phone work on Verizon's network. The affected devices seem to include many older Pixel devices but not the brand-new Pixel 6.