Year: 2019

Foldable phones are having their moments at this year’s Mobile World Congress. A few days after Samsung debuted the Galaxy Fold on stage at an event in San Francisco, Huawei has just shown off its solution, the Mate X.

On the face of it, the device looks like it may well be a step up from the Galaxy device, right down to its three large screens. Of course, all of that display real estate presents some key new challenges, beyond the underlying technology. Namely, how to avoid getting those surfaces scratched to hell.

Huawei’s got a solution for that, too — albeit not quite as elegant as the phone itself. In one of the earliest examples we’ve seen indicating what foldable cases may look like, going forward, the company quickly showed up a slip case.

The accessory opens to accept the folded up phone, snapping shut to protect both sides of the device. That means it doesn’t unfold to product the eight-inch display — which, to be fair, won’t be exposed when you’re carrying the device around in your pocket.

Of course, this is just an early solution developed in house. No doubt future cases will be every bit as varied — if not more so — than the devices themselves. This, at least, probably won’t run $2,600. 

Today at MWC Barcalona Huawei launched its first consumer 5G products. Aside from its 5G Mate 20 X, the company also updated and new products that will bring 5G to people’s homes and devices through routers and connectivity options. Most consumers will first taste 5G not on a dedicated device like a phone, but through broadband-like services and these devices are aimed at that market.

Last year, Huawei announced the 5G CPE Pro but never took it to market. Then, last month, ahead of MWC Barcelona, Huawei announced a new version alongside its new Balong 5000 5G chipset, which is at the heart of its consumer 5G products.

Huawei’s Balong 5000 brings added connectivity options over the company’s previous 5G chipsets. Huawei claims the Balong 5000 is the first chip that supports both standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) network architectures for 5G allowing it connect to existing supercharged 4G networks as well as future 5G networks. It also packs the goods to support vehicle to every communication signaling Huawei’s commitment to infrastructure support.

The company says the Balong 5000 chip can achieve download speeds of 4.6 Gbps and 6.5 Gbps depending on if connected to Sub-6 GHz or high-frequency bands for extended spectrum.

The new 5G CPE Pro packs the Balong 5000 chip along with WiFi 6, which is key to serving 5G’s added speed to devices. With WiFi 6 the CPE Pro can deliver local network speeds of up to 4.8 Gbps.

The 5G CPE Win uses the same Balong 5000 chip and is being positioned as home receiver. It’s weather-proof and can be mounted to a wall, pole, or windowsill and serves network through the house through WiFi or Power Over Ethernet.
The 5G Mobile WiFi is an updated version of a product Huawei announced last year. Like the 5G CPE Pro, the product now features Huawei’s Balong 5000 allowing it connect to existing 4G networks and future 5G networks.

At this time the company did not reveal availability or pricing for any of the above products. Chances are though, giving the company’s legal issues in the States, these products likely will not be available in that market.

Today at MWC Barcelona Huawei announced it will bring 5G to its flagship phone, the Mate 20 X. This marks the first 5G phone from the Chinese mobile giant. Huawei joins a growing list of companies introducing their first 5G phone in early 2019.

In the past week, Samsung, Oppo, and Xiaomi announced 5G versions of their flagship phones.

The company failed revealed any more details about the upcoming handset including price and availability. Chances are the Mate 20 X will feature a version of its do-it-all Balong 5000 chipset, the company’s latest 5G chip announced a few weeks ago.

Huawei’s Balong 5000 brings added connectivity options over the company’s previous 5G chipsets. Huawei claims the Balong 5000 is the first chip that supports both standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) network architectures for 5G allowing it connect to existing supercharged 4G networks as well as future 5G networks. This is key as carriers worldwide are looking to sell consumers on the benefits of 5G built on the networks of existing 4G networks.

The Mate 20 X is widely seen as one of the best phones available with an amazing camera, in-screen fingerprint reader, and a large, beautiful screen. Price and market availability

Foldables are expense. And so are 5G phones. But foldable 5G phones? Well, um, get ready for that second mortgage. At the end of Huawei’s MWC press conference, mobile chief Richard Yu dropped a pricing bombshell, noting that the recently announced Mate X will run €2,299 ($2,600).

There’s a pricing premium and then there’s that.

The audience at the event audibly gasped as the price was revealed for the handset, which is set to launch in mid-2019. Yu clearly anticipated the reaction, noting that the company was working with carriers to help bring the price down. The executive took an almost apologetic tone for the price of innovation.

Mass production should help lower the cost as well, but if there was any doubt that this thing is aimed exclusively at early adopters, that should well be put to rest.

Like the Galaxy Fold, the Mate X will feature some beefy specs, including 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage and a pair of batteries that add up to 4,500mAh. And, well, for $2,600, this thing had better be top of the line.

There’s also the whole problem of Huawei not being able to sell its devices through major channels here in the States. Certainly carriers won’t help subsidize the product in this market, so if that price isn’t enough to make you reconsider, it still may be difficult to come by.

The world’s fastest growing mobile company has long had a chip on its shoulder when it comes to Apple and Samsung. For too long, the company has had to go out of its way to remind the world that it’s capable of being every bit as innovative as those better established brands, a concept very much at the heart of the Mate X.

The device lives right at the cross section of the year’s biggest forward looking trends — foldables and 5G, and unlike some of the concepts we’ve seen to date, the product does so with panache.

It is, of course, a bit of a wild west when it comes to form factors for the burgeoning foldable space. In a quick, behind the scenes briefing ahead of today’s press conference at MWC, we were given the opportunity to see the handset in action. It was, admittedly, a little more rushed than we’d like, involving no actual hands on time with the product — it was more of a stand behind this rope and snap off a couple of photos situation.

No touching, no followup questions. The company promised to shed more light on the product today, as Richard You takes the stage, but for now, it appears to be the kind of cautious presentation one gives involving a device that isn’t quite ready to be put through its paces. Even so, it’s a heck of a lot closer and with much better lighting than we got the first time Samsung showed off its own entry.

And from these early glimpses, I’m mostly impressed with what the Chinese manufacturer was able to do here. Huawei’s brought some clever touches to the product category, and designed what looks to be a pretty slick devices from most angles.

The device is thin, as far as tablets go, at 5.4 mm, unfolded. Closed, it’s nearly double that, at 11 mm. Not thin, exactly, but still a heck of a lot easier to slip into your pants pockets than the 17mm Galaxy Fold.

More impressive is what the company’s been able to do with its displays. The screen is very much the thing on these products, and yet the Fold’s outside screen only measures 4.6 inches. The Mate X, meanwhile, sports a pair of outward-facing displays, the larger of which measures 6.6 inches at 2480 x 1148 pixels, with a 19:5 aspect ration.

The flip side is 6.38 inches, allowing for space for the camera bar — a chin that folds over to meet the display. The system features a Leica lens and the design is such that photo subjects can see themselves on the outward-facing display as a shot is taken. On the device’s side is a combo fingerprint reader/power button.

Unfolded using the proprietary “Falcon Wing” hinge (three years in the making, according to mobile CEO Richard Yu), the inside screen is a full eight inches. That’s certainly enough room to have a pair of apps open, side by side. While we didn’t get closer than a few feet away, the vantage point was enough to spot a visible crease in the middle of the phone, detectable when it caught the overhead lights.

The other key part here is, naturally, the 5G. Huawei, of course, manufacturers its own 5G network gear, which means that, unlike most of the competition, it’s been able to speed test. The company calls the Mate X “the world’s fastest 5G phone” — words that admittedly don’t mean a heck of a lot, at the moment. That said, it’s promising download speeds of “up to 4.6 Gbps, which should translate to a 1GB movie download in three seconds.

Inside are a pair of batteries that add up to 4,500mAh – you’re going to need something beefy inside to deal with all of those screens and 5G, which is a notable battery drainer. The company’s Kirin 980 processor is also on board for the device.

Update: The handset will be available mid-year, priced at, get this, $2,600. 

Everyone’s favorite MacBook knockoffs are back, with two new models. Of course, for all the talk of stolen trade secrets. Huawei’s got a strong track record of making seriously compelling and premium Windows laptops, and this latest batch certainly doesn’t appear to an exception.

Design wise, the systems are pretty similar to their predecessors (which, in turn, makes them pretty similar to Apple’s), but for a “cleaner logo” that removes the flower icon from the top, instead just opting for the company’s name. Both system feature aluminum alloy unibody designs, with a sandblasted finish.

The Matebook X Pro is the more premium of the two systems, sporting a 13.9 inch display at 260 PPI. The system also features Huawei’s singular recessed camera, hidden in the keyboard’s top row, with is great for stashing away for security purposes and also shooting video of the underside of your nose. Above the keys is a combination power button/fingerprint reader. 

Inside is an 8th gen Intel Core i7 process, up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of solid state storage. The battery, meanwhile, should get up to 14 hours on a charge. On the sides, you’ll find two USB Type-C ports and, one full USB and a headphone jack.

There are new some software features on board, as well. Most notable is Huawei Share, which utilizes NFC to bring easy file sharing between the company’s laptops and phones, so you can, say, copy text on the handset and send it to the notebook to edit.

The Matebook X 14, meanwhile, is more of a midrange system. The laptop features a lower res 14 inch display and a few other lower-end features throughout. There are however, more full USB ports and a battery that should last up to 15 hours on a charge.

More information, including pricing and availability, is coming soon. Both systems should be available in the U.S.

Accurx, the U.K. startup and Entrepreneur First alumni that has developed a messaging service for doctor surgeries, has raised £8.8 million in Series A funding, TechCrunch has learned.

According to multiple sources, London venture capital firm Atomico has led the round, with participation from LocalGlobe and EF. We first heard a term sheet had been put on the table as far back as mid-January, while it is thought the investment only closed last week.

I also understand the round was highly contested, potentially pushing up Accurx’s valuation. One source tells me that Accel was in the running but didn’t end up investing.

Both Atomico and Accurx declined to comment.

Co-founded by Jacob Haddad and Laurence Bargery, who met and subsequently founded the company at Entrepreneur First in 2016, Accurx initially set out to develop a data-set and tools to help tackle the problem of inappropriate use of antibiotics, which is a major contributor to the diminishing effectiveness of antibiotics. Since then the startup has pivoted to focus on creating a broader communication platform to bring medical teams and patients closer together.

(Given Haddad and Bargery’s backgrounds, I dare say that the use of data and machine learning to help improve healthcare delivery is still very much front of mind for the company).

As it exists today, Accurx’s main product is Chain SMS, a messaging app for use by doctor surgeries to communicate with patients. It has been designed to support nurses, administration staff and practice managers etc., as well as GPs. Typical use-cases for Chain SMS includes sending advice to patients, notifying a patient of normal results, and reminding them to book appointments. All communication is saved back to a patient’s medical record to ensure a more joined up approach than might otherwise happen using arcane communication methods such as telephone calls and sending letters in the post.

(Somewhat related: this weekend, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock has called for the use of pagers for communications within the NHS to be phased out by 2021. The outdated technology costs the U.K. taxpayer-funded health service £6.6m per year, apparently).

To that end — and no doubt not gone unnoticed by investors — I gather that Chain SMS is already in use by 20 percent of GP practices in England, from close to zero when it launched in February 2018. The conventional wisdom is that startups find it difficult to penetrate the NHS, when in practice this is starting to change, whilst GP surgeries, although funded through the NHS, are actually run as independent businesses so arguably easier to sell into.

A fun fact: A quick spelunking of Companies House records reveals that prominent Conservative Party politician and former Army officer Tom Tugendhat — who is also the current chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and tipped by some to be a possible future PM — is an early investor in Accurx.

Separately, I’m told that Wendy Tan White, the former EF General Partner who recently joined Alphabet’s X (formerly Google X) as Vice President, has also invested as part of this latest round. Meanwhile, I understand that recently recruited Principal Irina Haivas led on behalf of Atomico. Haivas is a former surgeon and former surgical fellow at Harvard Medical School (yes, you read that correctly!) and has previously worked at healthcare investor GHO Capital Partners.

Xiaomi doesn’t want to miss the 5G bandwagon — the company just unveiled its first smartphone that comes with a 5G modem at a press conference in Barcelona. The Mi Mix 3 5G is a new variant of the Mi Mix 3, a phone that Xiaomi originally released in October 2018.

The company is trying to create a bezel-less phone with the Mi Mix line. Instead of a notch or a punch-hole display, Xiaomi has opted for a sliding front-facing camera. The result is a 93.4 percent screen-to-body ratio. You can find two cameras on the back of the device, which give you the ability to shoot slow-motion videos at 960 frames per second. The handset body is made of ceramic.

There are a few changes in the new device. First, Xiaomi has swapped the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 system-on-a-chip with a Snapdragon 855 system-on-a-chip — the same chipset you can find on the Samsung Galaxy S10. When it comes to the modem, the company is using Qualcomm’s X50 5G modem.

It’s always hard to grasp the advantages of 5G. That’s why Xiaomi’s Director of Product Management Donovan Sung started a video call with one of its telecom partner, Orange Spain. There was some latency and it wasn’t that convincing.

At launch, Xiaomi is partnering with Orange, 3, Sunrise, Telefonica, Tim and Vodafone. The device will be available in May for €599 ($680) in two colors — Onyx Black and Sapphire Blue. Let’s see if any 5G network will be ready by then.

Chipmaker Qualcomm’s president, Cristiano Amon, stole a little of Xiaomi’s thunder by naming the Mi Mix 3 5G first during a turn on stage at the press conference as a Xiaomi partner.

Amon took the opportunity to give a muscular sales pitch for 5G, claiming the next-gen cellular tech would come faster than the transition from 3G to 4G/LTE and bring transformative benefits for consumers — touting the likes of premium gaming on mobile to replace game consoles. That’s because 5G should greatly lower latency and improve online gaming.

“5G is here. Not in 2020, not in late 2020 – it’s here right now in 2019. 2019 is the year of 5G,” he claimed, suggesting 5G device launches would be fast-followed by commercial 5G services as early as the second half of this year.

On device AI will also get a boost from 5G, Amon suggested, arguing that “every” app will be able to leverage machine learning thanks to reduced latency.

“You can unleash the power of the cloud for every app and service,” he said.

“5G will improve substantially how we think about our phones,” he added. “Everything will get better.”

Xiaomi also used its first MWC new product launch event opportunity to announce the Mi 9 once again. The company has already unveiled its new flagship device earlier this week. It’s a more traditional phone with a waterdrop-shaped notch, a Snapdragon 855 chipset and a triple camera system. You can find a 48-megapixel camera, a 16-megapixel wide-angle camera and a 12-megapixel telephoto camera on the back of the device.

The Mi 9 will be priced at €449 ($510) for 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, €499 ($565) for 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Pre-orders start from today in select European markets — devices should ship by February 28.

There are now 224 million monthly active Xiaomi smartphone users globally. While Xiaomi phones aren’t available in the U.S., you can now buy Xiaomi phones in Spain, the U.K., France and Italy in addition to many Asian markets.

Xiaomi also talked up its wider product portfolio, saying it has more than 2,000 Xiaomi-branded products in all, working with more than 200 partners. The company reiterated that it’s committed to having a dual strategy of smartphones plus A-IoT

It singled out electric scooters to say it’s shipped more than 560,000 Mi scooters to date. The Mi scooter was “probably the best selling personal transportation device in the world in 2018”, it added.

At the event it also announced the launch of another new product: The Mi LED Smart Bulb — a connected light bulb that lets users control light color and brightness via their phone. It’s priced at €19.90. The company tried to demo its smart home ecosystem but failed to turn off the air purifier using Google Assistant.

Xiaomi didn’t say a word on its foldable smartphone. It looks like there’s still some more work to do on the device.

Microsoft is set to announce a brand new hardware device at MWC in Barcelona — the new HoloLens headset. The conference starts at 6:00 PM CET (5:00 AM GMT, 12:00 PM ET, 9:00 AM PT).

If you’ve ever tried the HoloLens, you know that this it is a magical device. But Microsoft quickly realized that it had more potential for industrial use cases. It is now positioned as a B2B device.

Let’s see what Microsoft has in mind with the second-generation HoloLens. The company is also going to talk about its mobile strategy when it comes to apps and services on iOS and Android.

You can check it out live via Microsoft’s official stream above, and stay tuned on TechCrunch.com for ongoing coverage of all the news coming out of MWC.

Microsoft is scheduled to hold a major press conference at MWC Barcelona later today. With Satya Nadella and Alex Kipman in attendance, the expectation has long been that the company would use the event to show off the next version of its HoloLens mixed reality headset. Just hours before the event, though, Twitter user WalkingCat spoiled at least some of the surprise by leaking four images of the new device.

These are the first images of the new HoloLens we’ve seen. The new version seems to have enhanced padding and generally looks more comfortable to wear, but that’s about all we can say about the device so far. The images show roughly the same camera and sensor layout of the old device, too. Chances are, though, there’s plenty of surprises left for today’s events.

One of the images shows a user tapping a menu item, for example. That’s a gesture that’s not currently supported on HoloLens 1 but that would make a huge difference in the user experience. The current tap and bloom gestures work, but aren’t exactly elegant or fast.

What everybody really wants to know, though, is if the new device features an improved field of view. The earliest prototypes Microsoft showed off had a large field of view that made you feel highly immersed into the AR experience. The production version, though, didn’t quite live up to that, though in my own experience, it only takes your brain a few minutes to compensate for the limited field of view.

Microsoft’s press event in Barcelona is scheduled to start at 18:00 CET, 9am PT and we’ll be out in full force, so check back later for our reporting from the event and more details about the new HoloLens.