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Estimote launches wearables for workplace-level contact tracing for COVID-19
Bluetooth location beacon startup Estimote has adapted its technological expertise to develop a new product designed specifically for curbing the spread of COVID-19. The company created a new range of wearable devices that co-founder Steve Cheney believes can enhance workplace safety for those who have to be co-located at a physical workplace even while social distancing and physical isolation measures are in place.
The devices, called simply the “Proof of Health” wearables, aim to provide contact tracing — in other words, monitoring the potential spread of the coronavirus from person-to-person — at the level of a local workplace facility. The intention is to give employers a way to hopefully maintain a pulse on any possible transmission among their workforces and provide them with the ability to hopefully curtail any local spread before it becomes an outsized risk.
The hardware includes passive GPS location tracking, as well as proximity sensors powered by Bluetooth and ultra-wide-band radio connectivity, a rechargeable battery and built-in LTE. It also includes a manual control to change a wearer’s health status, recording states like certified health, symptomatic and verified infected. When a user updates their state to indicate possible or verified infection, that updates others they’ve been in contact with based on proximity and location-data history. This information is also stored in a health dashboard that provides detailed logs of possible contacts for centralized management. That’s designed for internal use within an organization for now, but Cheney tells me he’s working now to see if there might be a way to collaborate with WHO or other external health organizations to potentially leverage the information for tracing across enterprises and populations, too.
These are intended to come in a number of different form factors: the pebble-like version that exists today, which can be clipped to a lanyard for wearing and displaying around a person’s neck; a wrist-worn version with an integrated adjustable strap; and a card format that’s more compact for carrying and could work alongside traditional security badges often used for facility access control. The pebble-like design is already in production and 2,000 will be deployed now, with a plan to ramp production for as many as 10,000 more in the near future using the company’s Poland-based manufacturing resources.
Estimote has been building programmable sensor tech for enterprises for nearly a decade and has worked with large global companies, including Apple and Amazon . Cheney tells me that he quickly recognized the need for the application of this technology to the unique problems presented by the pandemic, but Estimote was already 18 months into developing it for other uses, including in hospitality industries for employee safety/panic button deployment.
“This stack has been in full production for 18 months,” he said via message. “We can program all wearables remotely (they’re LTE connected). Say a factory deploys this — we write an app to the wearable remotely. This is programmable IoT.
“Who knew the virus would require proof of health vis-a-vis location diagnostics tech,” he added.
Many have proposed technology-based solutions for contact tracing, including leveraging existing data gathered by smartphones and consumer applications to chart transmission. But those efforts also have considerable privacy implications, and require use of a smartphone — something Cheney says isn’t really viable for accurate workplace tracking in high-traffic environments. By creating a dedicated wearable, Cheney says that Estimote can help employers avoid doing something “invasive” with their workforce, since it’s instead tied to a fit-for-purpose device with data shared only with their employers, and it’s in a form factor they can remove and have some control over. Mobile devices also can’t do nearly as fine-grained tracking with indoor environments as dedicated hardware can manage, he says.
And contact tracing at this hyperlocal level won’t necessarily just provide employers with early warning signs for curbing the spread earlier and more thoroughly than they would otherwise. In fact, larger-scale contact tracing fed by sensor data could inform new and improved strategies for COVID-19 response.
“Typically, contact tracing relies on the memory of individuals, or some high-level assumptions (for example, the shift someone worked),” said Brianna Vechhio-Pagán of John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab via a statement. “New technologies can now track interactions within a transmissible, or ~6-foot range, thus reducing the error introduced by other methods. By combining very dense contact tracing data from Bluetooth and UWB signals with information about infection status and symptoms, we may discover new and improved ways to keep patients and staff safe.”
With the ultimate duration of measures like physical distancing essentially up-in-the-air, and some predictions indicating they’ll continue for many months, even if they vary in terms of severity, solutions like Estimote’s could become essential to keeping essential services and businesses operating while also doing the utmost to protect the health and safety of the workers incurring those risks. More far-reaching measures might be needed, too, including general-public-connected, contact-tracing programs, and efforts like this one should help inform the design and development of those.
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An EU coalition of techies is backing a ‘privacy-preserving’ standard for COVID-19 contacts tracing
A European coalition of techies and scientists drawn from at least eight countries, and led by Germany’s Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute for telecoms (HHI), is working on contacts-tracing proximity technology for COVID-19 that’s designed to comply with the region’s strict privacy rules — officially unveiling the effort today.
China-style individual-level location-tracking of people by states via their smartphones even for a public health purpose is hard to imagine in Europe — which has a long history of legal protection for individual privacy. However the coronavirus pandemic is applying pressure to the region’s data protection model, as governments turn to data and mobile technologies to seek help with tracking the spread of the virus, supporting their public health response and mitigating wider social and economic impacts.
Scores of apps are popping up across Europe aimed at attacking coronavirus from different angles. European privacy not-for-profit, noyb, is keeping an updated list of approaches, both led by governments and private sector projects, to use personal data to combat SARS-CoV-2 — with examples so far including contacts tracing, lockdown or quarantine enforcement and COVID-19 self-assessment.
The efficacy of such apps is unclear — but the demand for tech and data to fuel such efforts is coming from all over the place.
In the UK the government has been quick to call in tech giants, including Google, Microsoft and Palantir, to help the National Health Service determine where resources need to be sent during the pandemic. While the European Commission has been leaning on regional telcos to hand over user location data to carry out coronavirus tracking — albeit in aggregated and anonymized form.
The newly unveiled Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) project is a response to the coronavirus pandemic generating a huge spike in demand for citizens’ data that’s intended to offer not just an another app — but what’s described as “a fully privacy-preserving approach” to COVID-19 contacts tracing.
The core idea is to leverage smartphone technology to help disrupt the next wave of infections by notifying individuals who have come into close contact with an infected person — via the proxy of their smartphones having been near enough to carry out a Bluetooth handshake. So far so standard. But the coalition behind the effort wants to steer developments in such a way that the EU response to COVID-19 doesn’t drift towards China-style state surveillance of citizens.
While, for the moment, strict quarantine measures remain in place across much of Europe there may be less imperative for governments to rip up the best practice rulebook to intrude on citizens’ privacy, given the majority of people are locked down at home. But the looming question is what happens when restrictions on daily life are lifted?
Contacts tracing — as a way to offer a chance for interventions that can break any new infection chains — is being touted as a key component of preventing a second wave of coronavirus infections by some, with examples such as Singapore’s TraceTogether app being eyed up by regional lawmakers.
Singapore does appear to have had some success in keeping a second wave of infections from turning into a major outbreak, via an aggressive testing and contacts-tracing regime. But what a small island city-state with a population of less than 6M can do vs a trading bloc of 27 different nations whose collective population exceeds 500M doesn’t necessarily seem immediately comparable.
Europe isn’t going to have a single coronavirus tracing app. It’s already got a patchwork. Hence the people behind PEPP-PT offering a set of “standards, technology, and services” to countries and developers to plug into to get a standardized COVID-19 contacts-tracing approach up and running across the bloc.
The other very European flavored piece here is privacy — and privacy law. “Enforcement of data protection, anonymization, GDPR [the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation] compliance, and security” are baked in, is the top-line claim.
“PEPP-PR was explicitly created to adhere to strong European privacy and data protection laws and principles,” the group writes in an online manifesto. “The idea is to make the technology available to as many countries, managers of infectious disease responses, and developers as quickly and as easily as possible.
“The technical mechanisms and standards provided by PEPP-PT fully protect privacy and leverage the possibilities and features of digital technology to maximize speed and real-time capability of any national pandemic response.”
Hans-Christian Boos, one of the project’s co-initiators — and the founder of an AI company called Arago –discussed the initiative with German newspaper Der Spiegel, telling it: “We collect no location data, no movement profiles, no contact information and no identifiable features of the end devices.”
The newspaper reports PEPP-PT’s approach means apps aligning to this standard would generate only temporary IDs — to avoid individuals being identified. Two or more smartphones running an app that uses the tech and has Bluetooth enabled when they come into proximity would exchange their respective IDs — saving them locally on the device in an encrypted form, according to the report.
Der Spiegel writes that should a user of the app subsequently be diagnosed with coronavirus their doctor would be able to ask them to transfer the contact list to a central server. The doctor would then be able to use the system to warn affected IDs they have had contact with a person who has since been diagnosed with the virus — meaning those at risk individuals could be proactively tested and/or self-isolate.
On its website PEPP-PT explains the approach thus:
Mode 1
If a user is not tested or has tested negative, the anonymous proximity history remains encrypted on the user’s phone and cannot be viewed or transmitted by anybody. At any point in time, only the proximity history that could be relevant for virus transmission is saved, and earlier history is continuously deleted.Mode 2
If the user of phone A has been confirmed to be SARS-CoV-2 positive, the health authorities will contact user A and provide a TAN code to the user that ensures potential malware cannot inject incorrect infection information into the PEPP-PT system. The user uses this TAN code to voluntarily provide information to the national trust service that permits the notification of PEPP-PT apps recorded in the proximity history and hence potentially infected. Since this history contains anonymous identifiers, neither person can be aware of the other’s identity.
Providing further detail of what it envisages as “Country-dependent trust service operation”, it writes: “The anonymous IDs contain encrypted mechanisms to identify the country of each app that uses PEPP-PT. Using that information, anonymous IDs are handled in a country-specific manner.”
While on healthcare processing is suggests: “A process for how to inform and manage exposed contacts can be defined on a country by country basis.”
Among the other features of PEPP-PT’s mechanisms the group lists in its manifesto are:
- Backend architecture and technology that can be deployed into local IT infrastructure and can handle hundreds of millions of devices and users per country instantly.
- Managing the partner network of national initiatives and providing APIs for integration of PEPP-PT features and functionalities into national health processes (test, communication, …) and national system processes (health logistics, economy logistics, …) giving many local initiatives a local backbone architecture that enforces GDPR and ensures scalability.
- Certification Service to test and approve local implementations to be using the PEPP-PT mechanisms as advertised and thus inheriting the privacy and security testing and approval PEPP-PT mechanisms offer.
Having a standardized approach that could be plugged into a variety of apps would allow for contacts tracing to work across borders — i.e. even if different apps are popular in different EU countries — an important consideration for the bloc, which has 27 Member States.
However there may be questions about the robustness of the privacy protection designed into the approach — if, for example, pseudonymized data is centralized on a server that doctors can access there could be a risk of it leaking and being re-identified. And identification of individual device holders would be legally risky.
Europe’s lead data regulator, the EDPS, recently made a point of tweeting to warn an MEP (and former EC digital commissioner) against the legality of applying Singapore-style Bluetooth-powered contacts tracing in the EU — writing: “Please be cautious comparing Singapore examples with European situation. Remember Singapore has a very specific legal regime on identification of device holder.”
Dear Mr. Commissioner, please be cautious comparing Singapoore examples with European situation. Remember Singapore has a very specific legal regime on identification of device holder.
— Wojtek Wiewiorowski (@W_Wiewiorowski) March 27, 2020
A spokesman for the EDPS told us it’s in contact with data protection agencies of the Member States involved in the PEPP-PT project to collect “relevant information”.
“The general principles presented by EDPB on 20 March, and by EDPS on 24 March are still relevant in that context,” the spokesman added — referring to guidance issued by the privacy regulators last month in which they encouraged anonymization and aggregation should Member States want to use mobile location data for monitoring, containing or mitigating the spread of COVID-19. At least in the first instance.
“When it is not possible to only process anonymous data, the ePrivacy Directive enables Member States to introduce legislative measures to safeguard public security (Art. 15),” the EDPB further noted.
“If measures allowing for the processing of non-anonymised location data are introduced, a Member State is obliged to put in place adequate safeguards, such as providing individuals of electronic communication services the right to a judicial remedy.”
We reached out to the HHI with questions about the PEPP-PT project and were referred to Boos — but at the time of writing had been unable to speak to him.
“The PEPP-PT system is being created by a multi-national European team,” the HHI writes in a press release about the effort. “It is an anonymous and privacy-preserving digital contact tracing approach, which is in full compliance with GDPR and can also be used when traveling between countries through an anonymous multi-country exchange mechanism. No personal data, no location, no Mac-Id of any user is stored or transmitted. PEPP-PT is designed to be incorporated in national corona mobile phone apps as a contact tracing functionality and allows for the integration into the processes of national health services. The solution is offered to be shared openly with any country, given the commitment to achieve interoperability so that the anonymous multi-country exchange mechanism remains functional.”
“PEPP-PT’s international team consists of more than 130 members working across more than seven European countries and includes scientists, technologists, and experts from well-known research institutions and companies,” it adds.
“The result of the team’s work will be owned by a non-profit organization so that the technology and standards are available to all. Our priorities are the well being of world citizens today and the development of tools to limit the impact of future pandemics — all while conforming to European norms and standards.”
The PEPP-PT says its technology-focused efforts are being financed through donations. Per its website, it says it’s adopted the WHO standards for such financing — to “avoid any external influence”.
Of course for the effort to be useful it relies on EU citizens voluntarily downloading one of the aligned contacts tracing apps — and carrying their smartphone everywhere they go, with Bluetooth enabled.
Without substantial penetration of regional smartphones it’s questionable how much of an impact this initiative, or any contacts tracing technology, could have. Although if such tech were able to break even some infection chains people might argue it’s not wasted effort.
Notably, there are signs Europeans are willing to contribute to a public healthcare cause by doing their bit digitally — such as a self-reporting COVID-19 tracking app which last week racked up 750,000 downloads in the UK in 24 hours.
But, at the same time, contacts tracing apps are facing scepticism over their ability to contribute to the fight against COVID-19. Not everyone carries a smartphone, nor knows how to download an app, for instance. There’s plenty of people who would fall outside such a digital net.
Meanwhile, while there’s clearly been a big scramble across the region, at both government and grassroots level, to mobilize digital technology for a public health emergency cause there’s arguably greater imperative to direct effort and resources at scaling up coronavirus testing programs — an area where most European countries continue to lag.
Germany — where some of the key backers of the PEPP-PT are from — being the most notable exception.
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Scanwell aims to launch at-home 15-minute coronavirus test, but it still needs FDA approval
At-home diagnostics startup Scanwell, which produces smartphone-based testing for UTIs, is working on getting at-home testing for the novel coronavirus into the hands of U.S. residents. The technology, which was developed by Chinese diagnostic technology company INNOVITA and has already been approved by China’s equivalent of the FDA and used by “millions” in China, can be taken at home in 15 minutes with the guidance of a medical professional via telehealth, and produces results in just hours.
Scanwell’s test will require FDA clearance, but the company tells me that it’s in the process of securing approval through the FDA’s accelerated emergency certification program. The FDA guidance says that this approval process should take 6-8 weeks (though that “could be faster,” Scanwell says), and Scanwell is aiming to be ready to go with shipping these as soon as it receives that approval. While the U.S. drug regulatory agency previously had only included PCR tests in its protocols, it updated that guidance to include serological tests earlier this week. Scanwell further says they “don’t anticipate any issues with FDA approval.”
The test that Scanwell is aiming to launch uses what’s called a ‘serological’ technique, which looks for antibodies in a patient’s blood. These are only present if someone has been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, since as of right now researchers haven’t found any evidence that natural antibodies to this particular virus exist without exposure. By contrast, the types of tests that are currently in use in the U.S. are “PCR” tests, which use a molecular-based approach to determine if the virus is present genetically in a mucus sample.
The PCR type of test is technically more accurate than the serological variety, but the serological version is much easier to administer, and produces results more quickly. It’s also still very accurate on the whole, and is much cheaper to produce than the PCR version. Plus, it could help expand efforts beyond testing only the most severe cases with symptoms present, and do a much better job of illuminating the full extent of the presence of the virus, including among people with mild cases who have already recovered at home, and those who are asymptomatic but carrying the virus with the possibility of infecting others.
Also, while other, PCR-based at-home testing options already exist, like one from Everlywell that will start going out on Monday, require round-tripping test samples, adding time, complexity and cost and relying on testing materials like swabs that are in short supply globally.
Once the test is available, people deemed eligible via Scanwell’s screening process in their Scanwell Health app will be sent the test via next-day delivery. They’ll be guided by telehealth partner Lemonaid‘s licensed doctors and nurse practitioners, and they’ll then receive results and further guidance about those results via the app within a few hours. The whole testing process will cost $70, which Scanwell says just covers its costs (it’s also looking at ways to provide free service to those who need it), and will be deployed first in Washington, California and New York, as well as other areas depending on the severity of their coronavirus situation.
That the tests will take potentially 6-8 weeks to come to market seems like a long time, given the current state of the rapidly evolving COVID-19 situation and testing. But we’ll likely still be very much in need of testing options at that time, especially ones that can serve people who aren’t necessarily meeting the criteria for other available testing resources.
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Female-led Robin Games raises $7M to combine lifestyle content with fantasy gaming
As a former Jam City executive, Jill Wilson led teams behind some of the top-grossing gaming franchises, like Cookie Jam and Panda Pop. Now she’s running her own startup, Robin Games, where a team of mostly women is working to create a new niche in mobile entertainment they’re calling “lifestyle gaming.” As the name implies, the idea is to create a mobile gaming experience — in this case, fantasy gaming — that’s more like the sophisticated and stylish lifestyle content that’s popular today.
Robin Games is backed by $7 million in seed funding, the company announced on Thursday, as it made its public debut. The round was led by early-stage fund LVP, which has invested in other to game companies including Supercell, Playfish, and NaturalMotion . Additional investors in the oversubscribed round include 1Up Ventures, Alpha Edison, Everblue Management, firstminute Capital, Greycroft Tracker Fund, Hearst Ventures, and Third Kind Venture Capital.
“Traditionally in gaming, when you say ‘fantasy,’ you mean dragons and other mythical creatures, disproportionately built women, armies and battles and explosions and glory,” explained Wilson, Robin Games’ sole founder and CEO. “As a lifelong gamer, I love (most) of these themes, but traditional gamers are no longer in the majority. Thanks to the smartphone, everyone now has access to a gaming console in their pockets. We are expanding the definition of “fantasy” for this modern wave of gamers, whose fantasies are just as diverse as they are,” she added.
Wilson clarified that she’s not meaning to stereotype women as not enjoying fantasy games about things like warriors and dragons. Instead, Robin Games aims to expand the types of fantasies being explored through gaming — including those mobile gaming has yet to include.
While the company isn’t yet announcing its first titles or specific details, like launch dates, the games are said to cover content you’d typically find in a lifestyle magazine, on an Instagram influencer’s profile or on a lifestyle blog for example.
“We are focused on developing games that are deeply sophisticated under the hood, with an elevated, real-world, approachable style that reflects more of the lifestyle content you’d previously see outside of gaming,” Wilson told TechCrunch .
All this will be wrapped up in the free-to-play business model that powers most top-grossing games. In addition, Robin Games’ strategy will allow it to expand to include a partnership strategy, which will diversify its revenue streams further down the road.
Wilson said the idea for Robin Games was something she had in mind for some time, as she was personally looking for games to like this to play herself — only to find they didn’t exist.
“I’ve always designed products for myself first and foremost, which allows me to deeply connect with what the end-user really wants — since the end-user is me,” said Wilson. “Recently, I realized that not only did we have a unique answer to a pretty major gap in the market, but also that the timing was right and, most importantly, that we could pull together the exact right team to execute this vision.”
The startup is currently a team of nine based in Venice Beach. Management is 80% women and everyone had worked together to make hit games in years prior. In terms of hiring, the company is focused on building out a diverse team in order to better realize its vision, Wilson said, and, more broadly, change the face of the gaming industry as it stands today.
“Our mission goes beyond filling a gap in the market. We’re really looking to shake up the games industry, not only redefining what a modern game team looks like, but also changing the definition itself of what it means to be a gamer,” noted Wilson.
In previous studies, female players have been shown to prefer match-3 and social farming games, among others, with fantasy and MMOs further down the list, and sports and shooting games last. But the types of games Robin Games is proposing don’t really fit into any one category that exists today, so it’s still unknown how female gamers will respond.
However, it makes sense to target this underserved market, given that women account for 46% of all U.S. game enthusiasts.
“Jill Wilson and her incredible team are already further along than most developers starting out,” added Are Mack Growen, partner at LVP and member of Robin Games’ Board of Directors, about the firm’s investment. “This team has developed and operated some of the world’s most successful games for a decade, and now they have assembled to bring premium experiences to the massively underserved audience of women. In addition to their industry expertise, they fundamentally understand their audience and the ingredients for powerful entertainment. We are proud to have led their seed round and look forward to helping them redefine what it means to be a gamer.”
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Pixel phones updated with new gesture controls, emoji, AR effects & more
One of the benefits of owning a Pixel smartphone is that it improves over time, as Pixels are first to receive updates that deliver the latest fixes and improvements. The first round of new features arrived in December, including a filter for robocalls, more photo controls, improved Duo calls and more. Today Google says Pixel owners are getting a second set of additions, this time including new music controls, new emoji, still more photo and video features, expanded emergency help features, Google Pay improvements and several others.
Last year, Google introduced a new sort of gesture control, called Motion Sense, with the introduction of the Pixel 4. The idea is that you can now control your phone without having to touch it. Instead, the smartphone detects the wave of your hands and translates that into software controls.
Already, Motion Sense allowed Pixel 4 owners to skip forward or go back to a previous song. With today’s update, they’ll also be able to pause and resume music by making a tapping gesture above the phone.
Google suggests this will be an easy way to pause your music when you need to have a conversation. But in reality, it will only be useful if it works consistently — and so far, reviews have said the Motion Sense system was finicky and underdeveloped. That could change in time, of course.
Another improvement today is an update to Pixel 4’s Personal Safety app, which first arrived in October. The app uses the phone’s sensors to detect if you’ve been in a severe car crash and checks with you to see if you need help. It also lets U.S. users call 911 with a tap or voice command. If you’re unresponsive, the phone shares your location and details with emergency responders. Now the feature is coming to users in Australia (000) and the U.K. (999).
The new set of updates also includes added AR effects for Google’s video calling app Duo, which can change with your expression and move around the screen. These aren’t Duo’s first set of effects, but keeping the roster of effects updated is critical for social communication apps.
Meanwhile, the Pixel 4’s selfie camera can now create images with depth, which improves Portrait Blur and color pop, and lets you create 3D photos for Facebook.
Pixel phones will also now receive the emoji version 12.1 update, which hit iPhone with the iOS 3.2 update in October 2019, and which arrived on Twitter in January 2020. The set includes 169 new and more inclusive emoji, offering a wider array of gender and skin tones as well as more couple combinations.
A change to Google Pay will now let you press and hold the power button to swipe through your debit and credit cards, event tickets, boarding passes and other stored items. This is coming first to the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Taiwan and Singapore.
You can also now take a screenshot of a boarding pass’s barcode, then tap a notification to add it to Google Pay to then receive real-time flight updates as notifications. This is rolling out to all countries with Google Play on Pixel 3, 3a and 4 during March.
For power users, another useful addition lets you now configure rules based on Wi-Fi or physical location. For example, you can set your phone to automatically silence your ringtone when you arrive at work, or go to Do Not Disturb mode when you get home, among other things.
Other new features include the rollout of Live Caption (automatic captions) to Pixel 2 phones, the ability to schedule when Pixel’s Dark Theme turns off and on, an easier means of accessing emergency contacts and medical info, improved long-press options for getting faster help from your apps and an update to Adaptive brightness to make reading in direct sunlight easier.
Google says the new feature set is rolling out starting today. You may not see it immediately, but should fairly soon.
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Sony announces its first 5G flagship, the triple lens Xperia 1 II
Sony has announced its first 5G smartphone: The Xperia 1 II. (For the curious or confused, it is pronounced ‘Xperia One, Mark Two.’)
“No one understands the entertainment experience better than Sony,” said president of mobile communications, Mitsuya Kishida, claiming the company is “uniquely positioned” in the era of 5G cellular technology to offer its target users an “enriched” experience thanks to Sony’s extensive content portfolio.
“Whether you are a broadcast professional who requires dynamic speed or an everyday user who desires enhanced entertainment, Xperia with 5G takes your mobile experience to the next level,” he said.
As ever with Sony — a major b2b supplier of image sensors to other smartphone makers (rather than a major seller of its own phones) — it’s made the camera a huge focus for the new Android 10 flagship, which has a 6.5in 21:9 “CinemaWide” 4K HDR OLED (3840×1644) display and is powered by a Qualcomm 865 Snapdragon chip (with 8GB of RAM on board).
Round the back the Xperia 1 II packs three lenses which offer a selection of focal lengths (16mm, 24mm and 70mm) for capturing different types of photos — from super wide angle to portraits.
All three rear lenses have a 12MP sensor, while round the front there’s an 8MP lens. Sony is also using Zeiss optics for the first time in a smartphone, expanding a long-running collaboration to a new device type.
Talking up the camera, Kishida touted ultra-fast, low light autofocus, noting that it supports 20fps autofocus and auto-tracking burst (which he called a world first in a smartphone) for capturing crisp action shots.
“Our new continuous auto focus keeps tracking of moving subjects. What’s special about this is with 20fps it calculates the object 3x per frame — that’s 60x per second — capturing the very moment,” he said.
“With the power and speed of 5G you will be able to share those moments more quickly and more easily across the network,” he added.
Another photo-friendly feature is real-time eye auto focus. Sony demoed this by showing it working on a video of a cat playing with a toy. So, tl;dr: Sony has trained its model on data-sets of pets too, not just humans.
A ‘Photo Pro’ interface on the handset, meanwhile, has been designed to be familiar to users of Sony’s mirrorless Alpha cameras — letting photographers tune shots via access to tweakable parameters they’re used to using on Sony’s high end digital cameras.
Sony is paying the same mind to video makers, with a video editing interface on the device that offers features such as touch autofocus and custom white balance — which Kishida said will help “visual storytellers” control the camera more easily.
There’s also a noise reduction feature to improve audio capture.
Best of all, the Xperia 1II has a 3.5mm headphone jack — enabling audiophiles to enjoy the simple pleasure of plugging in their favorite pair of high-end wired headphones and tuning out everything else.
Kishida flagged the use of an AI technology, called DSEE Ultimate, which he said upscales the sound signal to “near high resolution audio” — including when streaming. “This the best on the go acoustic experience available,” he claimed.
On the games front he touted a collaboration that will let users of the device play a mobile optimized version of Call of Duty using PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4 wireless controller.
The handset, meanwhile, packs a 4,000mAh battery as well as fast wireless charging.
Per Kishida the Xperia 1 II will start shipping from Spring onwards, though it’s not yet clear which markets Sony will be bringing the device to. (Last year the company’s mobile division was reported to have defocused most of the global market in a bid to focus on profitability.)
The Xperia 1 II may have a fairly niche target buyer, as Sony is a relative bit player in consumer smartphone sales vs giants like Samsung and Huawei, but is intended to act as a showcase for what the company’s camera technologies can offer other mobile makers.
Sony’s mobile chief was making the announcements at a virtual press conference screened via YouTube after the company became one of the first big companies to pull out of attending the Mobile World Congress tradeshow.
MWC’s organizer, the GSMA, subsequently cancelled the annual mobile industry event, which had been due to take place in Barcelona this week, after scores of exhibitors said they would not attend due to public health concerns attached to the novel coronavirus.
MWC typically attracts more than 100,000 visitors across four days. So the sight of Sony’s press conference being streamed to an empty room — entirely devoid of cameras, claps or woos but still with built in pauses for the media to take photos of the new hardware — was more than a little surreal.
Kishida had another 5G handsets to tease: the Xperia Pro, a flagship handset aimed at video professionals. It features 5G mm wavelength technology for improved capability to stream high-resolution video, as well as a handy micro HDMI port for easy plugging in of other high end camera kit.
Sony touted tests it’s done with U.S. carrier Verizon (TechCrunch’s parent company) to use the forthcoming 5G handset for live streaming of live sports events.
“Sony’s expertise and long history in providing profession digital imaging solutions is very unique,” added Kishida. “Only Sony has such deep and well established relationships, and we are bringing decades of experience to an end-to-end solution — from professional content creation to mobile communications technology in 5G.”
There was a mid-range smartphone announcement, too, also shipping from Spring onwards: The Xperia 10 II packs a 6″ display and also features a triple lens camera as well as water resistance.
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Tencent to grow gaming empire with $148M acquisition of Conan publisher Funcom in Norway
Tencent, one of the world’s biggest video and online gaming companies by revenue, today made another move to help cement that position. The Chinese firm has made an offer to fully acquire Funcom, the games developer behind Conan Exiles (and others in the Conan franchise), Dune and some 28 other titles. The deal, when approved, would value the Oslo-based company at $148 million (NOK 1.33 billion) and give the company a much-needed cash injection to follow through on its longer-term strategy around its next generation of games.
Funcom is traded publicly on the Oslo Stock Exchange, and the board has already recommended the offer, which is being made at NOK 17 per share, or around 27% higher than its closing share price the day before (Tuesday).
The news is being made with some interesting timing. Today, Tencent competes against the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo in terms of mass-market, gaming revenues. But just earlier this week, it was reported that ByteDance — the publisher behind breakout social media app TikTok — was readying its own foray into the world of gaming.
If it goes ahead, that would set up another level of rivalry between the two companies. Tencent also has a massive interest in the social media space, specifically by way of its messaging app WeChat . While many consumers will have multiple apps, when it comes down to it, spending money in one represents a constraint on spending money in another. ByteDance currently profits from having content on its social apps related to Tencent gameplay, so building its own content could be one way of moving away from that. The two have (naturally) also been battling it out in court in China over unfair competition claims, in part related to that gaming content.
Today, Tencent is one of the world’s biggest video game companies: in its last reported quarter (Q3 in November), Tencent said that it make RMB28.6 billion ($4.1 billion) in online gaming revenue, with smartphone games accounting for RMB24.3 billion of that.
Acquisitions and controlling stakes form a key part of the company’s growth strategy in gaming. Among its very biggest deals, Tencent paid $8.6 billion for a majority stake in Finland’s Supercell back in 2016. It also has a range of controlling stakes in Riot Games, Epic, Ubisoft, Paradox, Frontier and Miniclip. These companies, in turn, also are making deals: just earlier this month it was reported (and sources have also told us) that Miniclip acquired Israel’s Ilyon Games (of Bubble Shooter fame) for $100 million.
Turning back to Funcom, Tencent was already an investor in the company: it took a 29% stake in it in September 2019 in a secondary deal, buying out KGJ Capital (which had previously been the biggest shareholder).
“Tencent has a reputation for being a responsible long-term investor, and for its renowned operational capabilities in online games,” said Funcom CEO Rui Casais at the time. “The insight, experience, and knowledge that Tencent will bring is of great value to us and we look forward to working closely with them as we continue to develop great games and build a successful future for Funcom.”
In retrospect, this was laying the groundwork and relationships for a bigger deal just months down the line.
“We have a great relationship with Tencent as our largest shareholder and we are very excited to be part of the Tencent team,” Casais said in a statement today. “We will continue to develop great games that people all over the world will play, and believe that the support of Tencent will take Funcom to the next level. Tencent will provide Funcom with operational leverage and insights from its vast knowledge as the leading company in the game space.”
The rationale for Funcom is that the company had already determined that it needed further investment in order to follow through on its longer-term strategy.
According to a statement issued before it recommended the offer, the company is continuing to build out the “Open World Survival segment” using the Games-as-a-Service business model (where you pay to fuel up with more credits); and is building an ambitious Dune project set to launch in two years.
“Such increased focus would require a redirection of resources from other initiatives, the most significant being the co-op shooter game, initially scheduled for release during 2020 that has been impacted by scope changes due to external/market pressures with increasingly strong competition and internal delays,” the board writes, and if it goes ahead with its strategy, “It is likely that the Company will need additional financing to supplement the revenue generated from current operations.”
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Weber’s new Smart Grilling Hub uses June tech to make everyone a grillmaster
Weber is deepening its partnership with smart cooking startup June, with a new product debuting at CES 2020 today that can turn any grill into a smart grill — and providing expert guidance and grilling advice to even novice home cooks.
The new Weber Connect Smart Grilling Hub includes a small device with ports for connecting wired thermometers that you can use to monitor the temperature of your meats or other foods as they cook. The Hub supports use of up to four temperature sensors at once, so you can monitor the temperature of different dishes all at the same time; you connect to the hub with your smartphone via Weber’s dedicated app to receive up-to-date info about the current internal temperature of whatever you’re cooking. The app will alert you when your meats reach the proper temperature for whatever level of doneness you’re shooting for.
The app also provides step-by-step cooking instructions, notifications for things like when it’s time to flip food if that’s part of the cooking process and tips and tricks culled from actual expert grillers about how best to cook your stuff. Weber also says it plans to add Alexa support to the Hub later in the year, as well as provide other new features via software updates.
Weber previously partnered with June on their forthcoming Weber SmokeFire pellet grill, the first pellet grill made by Weber, which also has smart cooking technology similar to what the Smart Grilling Hub provides, but built-in.
The Smart Grilling Hub will launch in more than 30 countries initially starting in “early 2020,” and will sell for $129.99 in the U.S.
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The Samsung Galaxy Fold is headed to Canada, with in-store pre-orders starting today
The Samsung Galaxy Fold is a very unique smartphone, in more ways than one. The most obvious differentiator is that it folds out to expose a large, continuous 7.3″ display, hiding the seam thanks to a flexible OLED screen. It’s also at the very top end of the smartphone market price-wise, which could explain why it only debuted in a few limited markets at launch. Samsung says that customer interest has helped expand that initial pool of availability, however, which is why it’s launching pre-orders in Canada today.
There’s going to be some sticker shock for Canadians, however: The Fold starts at $2,599.99 CAD in its newest market. That’s the price you’d pay for a well-specced computer, but it’s actually right in line with the price of the phone in the U.S. when you account for currency conversion. Pre-orders are also going to be exclusively in-store, at Samsung’s Eaton Center, Sherway Gardens and Yorkdale locations, all of which are in Toronto. Retail sales, also exclusive to Samsung’s own retail operations, are starting December 6 but pre-order customers will be able to ensure a day one pickup.
Samsung’s Galaxy Fold has had a bit of an uneven launch, with a first attempt cancelled in light of multiple reviewers experiencing issues with their devices. Samsung re-designed elements of the phone as a result, including adding caps to prevent dust entering the crucial hinge component that powers the folding actions, and embedding a necessary pre-installed protective screen covering under the phone’s bezels. Still, our own Brian Heater experienced a display hardware issue within a day with his redesigned review device.
Samsung is offering free “Fold Premiere Service” which includes discounted screen replacements and standard free repairs when an issue is not due to any misuse on a user’s part. Overall, the takeaway should be that this is a first-generation device, but also a totally unique piece of technology in today’s marketplace for those willing to risk it.
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Weber’s new SmokeFire pellet grill uses June technology for smart cooking
BBQ legend Weber is getting into the connected cooking game with their new SmokeFire grill, which uses wood pellets for fuel and incorporates technology developed by Weber in partnership with appliance startup June for Wi-Fi-enabled smart cooking.
The SmokeFire grill, which will be available for pre-order in the U.S. starting on Cyber Monday and which will start shipping early next year, is a first in more ways than one for Weber. Yes, it packs in connected smart cooking — but it’s also the first time Weber has made a pellet grill, a style of outdoor cooker popularized by Traeger, and useful for both low and slow smoking, as well as high-heat grilling like a more traditional coal, natural gas or propane BBQ.
Weber may not have a history of building pellet grills, but it does have a very strong reputation when it comes to outdoor cooking appliances. The business introduced its iconic Kettle Grill back in 1952, and consistency racks up top marks for its range of BBQs, known for their even, consistent temperatures and long-term durability.
This legacy cooking industry heavyweight apparently decided to partner with June once word of the startup’s own Smart Oven started circulating around the office. June and Weber teamed up to test thousands of recipes in the development of the Weber Connect smart grilling software, which provides step-by-step directions ranging from prep through the entire cook, as well as an ETA on whatever you’ve got on the grill, delivered to and controlled from your smartphone.
The SmartFire comes in two sizes, with 24″ and 36″ grilling surfaces respectively, for $999 and $1,199 respectively. The design looks like what you’d expect from a pellet grill — with the interesting choice of locating the hopper wherein you feed said pellets to the back of a small prep shelf on the right side of the grill. If you’re new to pellet grills, they feed these processed wood pellets, which produce great smoke but very little ash because of their high-efficiency burn, in a controlled manner that keeps temperature inside the grill consistent where you set it.
Low and slow is a great way to grill, and having intelligent cooking features to guide you along the way should help alleviate rookie mistakes like over and undercooking. Plus, it’s just exciting to imagine what Weber can do with its first pellet grill.
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