The Indian government applied blanket bans on internet access in Kashmir after it revoked partial autonomy in the region. The measure was meant to enforce security in the disputed territory, but it also cut off businesses and other facilities that needed at least some high-speed internet to thrive.

The restoration also comes at an important moment. With the world in the midst of a pandemic, fast mobile data could be vital for education, online shopping and India’s planned health ID cards. In that light, 4G service could represent a safety measure while it’s still risky to visit others.

The expansion is a big step towards broader 5G adoption throughout the country — you’ll probably want to be able to connect to a 5G network when you pick up a 5G-ready phone, after all. T-Mobile says it’s working with OnePlus, Qualcomm and Samsung to make sure compatible devices can access the standalone 5G network after a software update.

“Since Sprint became part of T-Mobile, we’ve been rapidly combining networks for a supercharged Un-carrier while expanding our nationwide 5G footprint, and today we take a massive step into the future with standalone 5G architecture,” Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s president of technology, said in a press release. “This is where it gets interesting, opening the door for massive innovation in this country — and while the other guys continue to play catch up, we’ll keep growing the world’s most advanced 5G network.”

Stadia now allows you to stream games over 4G and 5G connections, provided you’re willing to try the functionality out as part of Google’s latest experiment. You can enable the feature by launching the Stadia app on your phone, tapping on your avatar, and navigating to the Experiments section of the settings menu. Keep in mind Google is currently rolling out the feature to users, so you may not see the option right away. 

When Stadia launched in 2019, the only way to use the service over a cellular connection was to use tethering to trick the app into thinking it was connected to the internet over WiFi. By contrast, Microsoft’s competing Project xCloud service has offered cellular streaming since day one.   

There’s also WiFi 6 connectivity, but the newly-added optional 4G LTE means you’ll get a faster and more reliable connection when you’re out and about. Basically, you won’t have to rely on feeble connections from coffee shops and bars. And there’s an optional fingerprint reader, to help keep your device extra secure.

And it looks good. As well as being slimmer, it’ll come in a trio of colours, including a seamless 3D metal styling. Natural silver and warm gold will drop first, starting at $499 and $749 respectively. They’re both available now from Best Buy, and from May, HP will be offering it in a calming forest teal shade with a starting price of $550.

The company announced the new Snapdragon 720G, 662 and 460 at a press event in New Delhi this morning, and all three share certain characteristics — think support for WiFi 6 and India’s NavIC satellite positioning system. While it’s easy enough to read these announcements as overture to an incredibly valuable country, Qualcomm insists these new processors will make their way to the US and other mature markets, too.

But anyway, let’s talk about the chips themselves. The octa-core Snapdragon 720G is (obviously) the most powerful of the bunch and will be aimed at higher-end phones, though not full-blown flagships like Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S20 series. The “G” in the chipset’s name refers to its focus on gaming, so expect 10-bit HDR and the same anti-cheating measures Qualcomm built into the premium Snapdragon 855.

The chipset also packs Qualcomm’s Hexagon 692 DSP for on-device AI operations, plus full support for 4K video recording and high-speed displays running at resolutions as high as 2520 x 1080. Maybe most important, the chipsets X15 LTE modem provides for download speeds as fast as 800Mbps — you’ll likely never see speeds that good, but that’s far faster than what you’d see on many 5G networks right now.

The Snapdragon 662 feels like a dialed down version of the 720G. Sure, it too is an octa-core chip, but it top speeds cap at around 2.0GHz (compared to the 720G’s 2.3GHz), and X11 modem can only hit a theoretical limit of about 390Mbps down. You might notice the improvements it brings if you’re an avid smartphone photographer; Qualcomm says the 662 supports “new triple camera configurations and smooth switching between them,” as well as storing images in the super-efficient HEIF file format. Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 460 uses the same modem and lower-tier AI engine as the 662, but its new performance cores and an improved GPU architecture means the chipset performs more than 50 percent faster than the Snapdragon 450.

Qualcomm stands to gain dramatically as 5G becomes more pervasive this year, but keeping its 4G customers happy is good business. In growing markets, the company faces serious competition from rival chipmakers like Mediatek, not to mention smartphone makers that use their own homemade processors — think Samsung and Huawei. We can’t say for sure whether these new chipsets will help Qualcomm beat back its rivals, but it can’t afford not to try.

Both the gap and the overall speeds were lower in other countries, with Switzerland and South Korea coming closest at roughly 1.1Gbps on 5G. Most of these markets don’t have millimeter wave access and are relying instead on “mid band” (typically 3.4GHz to 3.8GHz) frequencies to deliver next-gen wireless. In some cases, 5G was so new or channel-limited that the difference was hardly noticeable, such as in Spain and the UK. Australia’s 5G was actually slower than LTE, topping out at 792Mbps versus the older format’s 950Mbps.

US networks might not want to crow too loudly about their advantage. As we’ve discovered first-hand, millimeter wave 5G typically offers very limited coverage that falls apart quickly as you venture indoors. That mid band 5G may be slower in theory, but you may hold a 5G connection in more places. And of course, 5G networks are largely empty at this early stage. It could be a different story once 5G adoption picks up and providers become crowded.

Opensignal was optimistic, though. It noted that more 5G services would launch on new spectrum and wider channels, helping deliver on the technology’s potential. For now, though, only a handful of people will see 5G at its fastest.

In their paper, the researchers developed and tested a spoofing attack on presidential alerts. They used commercially available hardware and modified open-source software to send messages to nearly every phone in a 50,000-seat stadium with a 90 percent success rate. The vulnerability is due to the fact that WEA alerts use LTE. Alerts are sent on a specific channel to every compatible device in range, and there’s no way for the device to verify the authenticity of the alert. Presidential alerts are especially risky because users can’t opt out of them, as they can with AMBER alerts or weather warnings.

“Fake alerts in crowded cities or stadiums could potentially result in cascades of panic,” the researchers wrote. We got a glimpse of just how disruptive fake alerts can be last year, when a false alert mistakenly warned every cellphone in Hawaii that a nuclear missile was on its way. The panic would be more widespread if an alert were sent out nationwide. The paper warns that fixing the problem will require “a large collaborative effort between carriers, government stakeholders, and cell phone manufacturers.” Given the US government’s relationship with some cell phone manufacturers in particular, that seems like a big ask.

This isn’t the first time Loon has provided connectivity following a disaster. It delivered internet to 100,000 people in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria struck in 2017. But in that case, it took Loon four weeks to get the balloons online. The difference in Peru is that Loon was already negotiating a commercial contract with international carrier Telefónica. In the past month, it began installing infrastructure and testing the balloons in the country, so it had some of the pieces in place.

That’s proof, the company says, that it’s better suited for “preparedness” than response. It takes a lot of planning to make balloon-powered internet work, so countries with established Loon service will, theoretically, benefit from faster assistance in the event of disasters. “With Loon already active in a country, as is the case in Peru, our ability to respond to a natural disaster can be measured in hours or days rather than weeks,” the company wrote in a blog post. It’s likely Loon hopes that will be an added incentive for countries to sign up for its balloon-supported service.

AT&T introduced the 5GE (5G Evolution) in January on Samsung’s Galaxy S8 Active and LG’s V30. But as true 5G networks are still being tested, 5GE really indicates 4G LTE-Advanced — a mix of 4G LTE plus technologies like 4×4 MIMO antennas, 256 QAM and carrier aggregation. AT&T’s competitors were quick to mock and dispute the icon. And a study by OpenSignal claimed the so-called 5GE network tested slower than enhanced 4G on Verizon and T-Mobile, though AT&T said the methodology was flawed.

The problem, critics charge, is that the label is misleading and will only confuse people, especially when actual 5G coverage is available. As Verizon previously wrote, “The potential to over-hype and under-deliver on the 5G promise is a temptation that the wireless industry must resist.” But this isn’t all that different from when AT&T started using the 4G label while everyone else was still on 3G. Now that the 5GE icon is available in AOSP, there’s a good chance that, as AT&T promised, we’ll begin seeing a lot more of it.

On top of this, the problem is rarely consistent. One carrier can have different vulnerabilities on two pieces of networking equipment, while one piece of network gear can have create headaches on two separate carriers.

The research team plans to officially present its findings at a conference in May, and they’re sharing their tool with carriers and device makers (but not the public, for obvious reasons) to help them spot vulnerabilities and develop fixes. These flaws won’t necessarily be exploitable as a result. Even so, they serve as a reminder that even the wireless standards you take for granted aren’t airtight.