It was another busy week in telecom, this time with Mobile World Congress making its American debut. Here are a few snapshots from the MWCA show, ranging from 5G simulation to actual, if pre-standard, “5G” equipment:
Did you spot it? #5G live on our booth at #MWCA#Ericsson pic.twitter.com/QVv94FRI1I
— Paul Cowling (@PaulCowlng) September 14, 2017
Good #5G demo on the @Qualcomm #MWCA17 stand. Simulation shows 80% coverage at 28GHz using existing LTE cell sites pic.twitter.com/DFlRdid17X
— Geoff Blaber (@geoffblaber) September 14, 2017
To virtual reality in more than one sense:
Some good #5G news at #MWCA17 but industry still struggling with use cases. VR replaces remote heart surgery as demo of choice pic.twitter.com/pqnLUX6my7
— Geoff Blaber (@geoffblaber) September 14, 2017
#CTIAmember @Samsung with a #MWCA17 #VR demo that lets you get outside (and competitive) with friends. pic.twitter.com/oNKnMVtz68
— CTIA (@CTIA) September 14, 2017
Need a break at the end of a busy #MWCA17 week? Stop by @messagebird's booth and (literally) put your head up in the cloud. pic.twitter.com/t1ZaGQjp0j
— CTIA (@CTIA) September 14, 2017
Cute puppy! And a dog robot trying to be a cute puppy.
Guide dog Kendel at #mwca17 and excited about smart collar that can tell you how he's feeling pic.twitter.com/ZLu2od35aO
— Megan Lawrence (@accessgeo) September 14, 2017
Last day already? Make sure to walk around and check out the cool technology! #MWCA17 pic.twitter.com/JZcYYLJfEb
— OnGo Alliance (@OnGoWireless) September 14, 2017
The other big news of the week, of course, was Apple’s official unveiling of the new iPhone 8, iPhone X (pronounced “ten”, mind you, not “ex”) and a new Apple Watch. The iPhone X garnered a bunch of buzz in part because of its hefty price tag, which starts at a thousand bucks. Although personally, if I were ever to pay a grand for a phone (highly unlikely; I am an Android person and still using a Galaxy S5, which tells you something about how often I upgrade), I’d expect more than 64 GB of memory, but you have to shell out more than $1,100 for the 256 GB model.
Time called the new iPhone “luxuriously out of touch”:
"Apple's new $1,000 iPhone X is luxuriously out of touch" https://t.co/ihGVkAMtS8
— TIME (@TIME) September 14, 2017
While the Verge resigns itself to the inevitable:
The $999 iPhone X was an inevitability https://t.co/2eAAS60ELU pic.twitter.com/gpb5TBYG6R
— The Verge (@verge) September 14, 2017
Or you could go for the solid gold designer version from Brikk, at a cool $70K, because why not?:
The £53,000 solid GOLD version of #iPhoneX https://t.co/qxxi1xIfGb pic.twitter.com/2Ny1G09rXQ
— Evan Kirstel the $B2B Techfluencer (@EvanKirstel) September 14, 2017
Meanwhile, tweets making note of all the other things you could buy with a thousand bucks that are NOT the iPhone X (the entire Cracker Barrel and/or McDonald’s menu; a flight to Europe; various artists’ albums) began circulating. And it appears that carriers won’t be looking to make it *that* much easier for consumers to get their hands on the latest from Apple.
T-Mobile on iPhone promotions.
From @braxtoncarter and @SievertMike $TMUS $AAPL pic.twitter.com/FYxtyJrnAM
— Walter Piecyk (@WaltLightShed) September 14, 2017
Sprint CEO @marceloclaure on iPhone X. $S $AAPL pic.twitter.com/mU9J4qJ3zR
— Walter Piecyk (@WaltLightShed) September 14, 2017
The rising cost of iPhones is prompting wireless companies to look for other ways to lure customers https://t.co/3hB8VjJN6l
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 14, 2017
Twitter also made note of the fact that some enterprising Chinese company is already offering “sleeping masks” to obscure one’s face, so that one’s significant other could not, for instance, use Face ID while one is sleeping to check one’s phone for, say, evidence of indiscretions. Well now!
Chinese vendors are already marketing face masks as iPhone X security tools https://t.co/rohOyegMFr pic.twitter.com/RRHpAXeJQ6
— The Verge (@verge) September 14, 2017
I, personally, am more intrigued by the cellular-enabled Apple Watch, which I am referring to as Apple “going full Dick Tracy” and really, really dating myself and the fact that I actually read the newspaper funnies at one point in my life. To me, this is the first mainstream, consumer “internet of things”-slash-wearable that has presented a meaningful revenue opportunity for carriers. The going rate for adding an Apple Watch to a cellular data plan among the national domestic carriers seems to be $10 a month — if this is something that actually gets decent up-take, that’s nothing to sneeze at in these days of plateauing service revenues.
Why the new Apple Watch is a much bigger deal than the iPhone X https://t.co/lj9VnbzV4j pic.twitter.com/ERC9nndorA
— Forbes (@Forbes) September 14, 2017
And oh hey, the new iPhone X and iPhone 8 aren’t going to have 600 MHz support. That’s a bit of a bummer for T-Mo, for as much as it’s been talking up (and starting to turn up) 600 MHz ASAP and anticipating wider device support by the end of this year. T-Mobile US has other bands that will support the newest Apple devices, of course, but getting the latest-and-greatest from Apple onto 600 MHz will have to wait for a later model.
The new iPhone's will work awesome on our LTE network. They do not however have hardware needed for the 600 MHz frequency. *DanKing
— T-Mobile Help (@TMobileHelp) September 14, 2017
