Author: azeeadmin

Full-size pickup trucks are the meat of the U.S. automotive business; it’s a red-hot category with the Ford F-150 leading the pack in sales and the Chevrolet Silverado and Ram pickups fast followers.

But the air is thin at the top. What’s often lost in truck coverage is how fiercely automakers compete to woo discerning customers with packaged bundles of optional and standard features. And now, more than ever, those packaged bundles rely heavily on in-car tech.

Ford, as the top seller, must add bells and whistles without alienating its most discerning clientele. The 2021 F-150 — as I was reminded during a recent test drive — epitomizes this effort and hints at what is to come with the upcoming all-electric Lightning pickup truck.

I tested the 2021 4×4 SuperCrew Lariat equipped with a 3.5-liter V6 PowerBoost Full Hybrid engine in its native suburban Detroit, 20 miles from where it was developed and manufactured.

Getting the details right on pickup trucks is an art of custom packaging for car companies. It’s one of the reasons that options packages are dizzying; the F-150 I tested was no exception. The F-150 offers six different powertrains, three bed lengths and three cab options, and then there’s eight trim levels, two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive options.

This options-heavy strategy has paid off for automakers like Ford. However, as these companies add more tech and software, there is a risk of causing confusion among its most loyal customers.

Screensavers

2021 Ford F-150 interior. Image Credits: Ford Motor Company

What sets the F-150 apart from other vehicles in its lineup is how much functional tech matters to its core customers. On the new model I tested, a 12-inch display that houses the standard Sync4 infotainment system is the center of the dashboard — and the customer experience.

Sync4 was introduced on the Mustang Mach-E and on the new Ford Bronco. Sync has been steadily improving for a simpler user experience since its 2007 introduction. Sync4 doubles computational power and introduced over-the-air software updates.

The system sources data from INRIX on traffic, construction (always in a Michigan summer), weather and parking space availability from data in 20,000 cities and 150 countries.

Natural language processing used in the system provided more accurate responses to my voice-based queries and incoming SMS messages. One caveat worth noting: It was difficult to judge the machine learning algorithm because my test vehicle had been used by multiple drivers in recent weeks.

For infotainment, I generally defer to Apple CarPlay, which along with Android Auto, is easy to call up, because it connects wirelessly in the F-150 and minimizes distracted driving. Ever since they debuted in production vehicles — 2014 for CarPlay and 2015 for Android Auto — it seemed inevitable that Apple and Google were going to dominate the middleware infotainment system game.

Sync also tees up supported apps Waze and Ford+Alexa.

Driving tech

Driving a full-size truck for the first time can be intimidating, and Ford uses camera tech to make the big rig easier to maneuver. The split screen helps a timid driver feel confident navigating through tight spaces.

Five onboard cameras act as guides that assist with steering and parking. The vivid graphics incorporated into the 360-degree view from above helps to establish bearings where mirrors won’t suffice.

Behind the steering wheel is a 12-inch digital cluster. There’s part of me that misses the old-fashioned gauges of a classic pickup, but that’s not the direction Ford is heading. Ford is striving for future-forward vibes, encapsulated by Mustang Mach-E’s Apple-design-inspired aesthetic.

Through its in-car design, Ford is trying to make the case it’s a tech company first, and a 120-year-old automaker second. These earnest aesthetic cues may be a bit too on the nose as products age over time.

Ford is due to introduce Blue Cruise, an advanced driver assistance system it once called Active Drive Assist, on vehicles later this year by an automatic software update, which was not yet active on the model I drove in June, though the hardware was included.

The company claims the system allows for hands-free driving in zones that span 100,000 miles of North American road and will be standard on the F-150 Limited vehicles in the Ford Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 Prep Package. It will be sold as an option on Lariat, King Ranch and Platinum models. The system uses a driver-facing camera to track eye gaze and head position to monitor concentration as an answer to GM’s Super Cruise.

The doodads that matter most

2021 Ford F-150’s interior work surface. Image Credits: Ford Motor Company

Under the foot-long screen are the old-school knobs and switches that show Ford knows its customers still favor a manual cue here and there. Below that is a shift lever that folds down and flat into a 15-inch workstation, which I used for some in-car laptop time.

There are ample charging stations and wireless charging throughout the cabin. While the F-150 interior is spacious, every inch of real estate is carefully thought through. Seats fold to 180-degrees for proper roadside naps or to add extra cargo space.

The dark grey leather seats felt more utilitarian than luxurious, especially for a fully loaded vehicle. (Crosstown competitor Ram tends to outdo Ford on driving joy and interior design aesthetics.) The exterior and interior design emphasizes functionality, pure and simple. I hauled two kayaks in the back and found thoughtful hooks to connect to my bungee cords in the truck bed.

A bevy of 240-volt outlets are in the rear of the truck bed and two more are onboard in the cabin. The truck bed also has a convenient ruler built in on the tailgate with both metric and imperial calculations. A 2.4 kilowatt generator is standard on the hybrid model, while the optional 7.2 kW generator functions for 32 hours on a full tank of gas.

I didn’t test out the F-150’s towing capacity, but for truck folks these numbers are essential. It has a payload of 2,120 pounds and can tow up 12,700 pounds (those numbers vary a bit depending on bed length and drivetrain). It also offers a backup towing assist function, which helps align the connection to a trailer. The model I drove was priced at $68,095, a significant leap from the $50,980 base price. In contrast, Ford produces an even higher-end F-150 trim called the Limited, which starts at $73,000.

Function in form

Before it goes all electric, the hybrid powertrain gives Ford a much needed boost to compete with Ram and Chevrolet, which already sell hybrid variants. The hybrid option is a logical compromise for customers who aren’t ready for the full Lightning EV that will go on sale in 2022, a launch that’s already generated buzz and 120,000 pre-orders. I clocked about 24 miles per gallon, an improvement over all-gasoline and best in its class for non-diesel. It’s still not enough to get Ford anywhere close to a stellar emissions report card, which is why the Lightning matters so much.

In order to court new EV customers, Ford must appease its current buyers who buy all those trucks we see on the road today. There’s two kinds of pickup truck customers: Those who rely on the functionality for their daily vocation or the weekend warriors and those who seek out the capability in case they might need it in a disaster scenario. The truck that I drove does the job of appealing to both.

The F-150 has always been suited to buyers who use it for home improvement projects, outdoorsy hobbies and towing. Pickup trucks also support laborers that require a rugged, functional vehicle. When Ford introduces anything new to this model, it creates hype and high stakes on how these customers feel about tweaks.

2021 F-150 Lariat interior in black. Image Credits: Ford Motor Company

The buyer who seeks security came to mind while I had the F-150 on loan in late June, which is why I’ve saved the part about how it drives for last. My test drive period coincided with a summer storm that pummeled Michigan and shut down major highways and left vehicles stranded for days.

Before the storm, I zoomed around town, adjusting to the big loose steering and wide turns and the rhythm of stillness that occurs as the hybrid engine regenerates.

Once the storm came, I eased off the throttle and into a steady and sure pace, hands at 10 and two. Passenger cars and lesser capable crossover SUVs floated by me in two feet of water on the Lodge Freeway. The F-150 plowed through the muck, unbothered. I didn’t experience any skidding or stalling, in contrast to one friend who was forced to walk home because her Uber driver got stuck. The F-150 feels like a test case for a survivalist in an environmental catastrophe. The backup generator is the added security blanket.

Full-size trucks have an innate quality to make a driver feel invincible, which at the end of day is why people love their F-150s, and why the company has gotten so much mileage off that “Ford tough” tagline. It’s a delicate balance, keeping an unfussy truck at a price point that delivers power, substance and peace of mind.

Market timing  —  how relevant an idea is to the current state and direction of a market  —  is the most important factor in determining the durability of that idea.

Several inputs inform market timing: The skew of consumer preferences in response to a pandemic. The price of goods for a resource that is finite and becoming scarce. The creation of a novel algorithmic or genetic technique that enlarges the potential of what can be streamlined, repaired and built.

But market timing is also defined by a less discussed area that is born not in capital markets but in the public sector  —  the regulatory landscape  —  namely, the decisions of government, the broader legal system and its combined level of scrutiny toward a particular subject.

We can understand the successes and challenges of several valuable companies today based on their combustion with the regulatory landscape, and perhaps also use it as an optic to see what areas represent unique opportunities for new companies to start and scale.

Looking back: The value in regulatory gray areas

“The tech comes in and moves faster than regulatory regimes do, or can control it,” Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick said at The Aspen Institute in 2013.

The brash statement downplayed that the regulatory landscape had, in fact, driven a number of pivotal outcomes for the company up to that event. It changed its name from UberCab to Uber after receiving a cease-and-desist order in its first market, California. Several early employees left because of the startup’s regulatory challenges and iconoclastic ethos. It shut down its taxi service in New York after just a month of operations, and then in early 2013 received its lifeline in the city after being approved through a pilot program.

Fast forward to the present, and Uber has a market cap of about $82 billion, with the ousted Kalanick having a personal net worth in the neighborhood of $2.8 billion.

Still, even at its scale, many of its most important questions on growth centered around how favorably the regulatory landscape would treat its category. Most recently, this came with the U.K. Supreme Court ruling that Uber drivers could not be classified as independent contractors.

The regulatory fabric has had similar leverage over other sharing-economy companies. In October 2014, for example, Airbnb’s business model became viable in San Francisco when Mayor Ed Lee legalized short-term rentals. In November 2015, Proposition F in the city aimed to restrict short-term rentals like Airbnb, and the startup spent millions in advertisements to mobilize voters in opposition.

Airbnb’s current market cap stands at $92 billion, and its CEO, Brian Chesky, has an estimated net worth over $11 billion. Like Uber, its regulatory tribulations continue, most recently being fined and judged to owe $9.6 million to the city of Paris.

The stories of these two companies and others in the sharing economy space demonstrate the value that the regulatory fabric can add or subtract from a company’s wealth, but also underscore the value  —  for founding teams, early employees, investors and customers  —  of navigating the gray areas.

Looking around: The data economy

The present regulatory fabric has precipitated market timing for ideas in a number of categories. Solutions that enable data privacy, like BigID, and ones that embed data privacy into larger customer value propositions, like Blotout, are on streamlined growth tailwinds from the GDPR in Europe and their inspired analogs in the U.S.

Market timing  —  how relevant an idea is to the current state and direction of a market  —  is the most important factor in determining the durability of that idea.

Several inputs inform market timing: The skew of consumer preferences in response to a pandemic. The price of goods for a resource that is finite and becoming scarce. The creation of a novel algorithmic or genetic technique that enlarges the potential of what can be streamlined, repaired and built.

But market timing is also defined by a less discussed area that is born not in capital markets but in the public sector  —  the regulatory landscape  —  namely, the decisions of government, the broader legal system and its combined level of scrutiny toward a particular subject.

We can understand the successes and challenges of several valuable companies today based on their combustion with the regulatory landscape, and perhaps also use it as an optic to see what areas represent unique opportunities for new companies to start and scale.

Looking back: The value in regulatory gray areas

“The tech comes in and moves faster than regulatory regimes do, or can control it,” Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick said at The Aspen Institute in 2013.

The brash statement downplayed that the regulatory landscape had, in fact, driven a number of pivotal outcomes for the company up to that event. It changed its name from UberCab to Uber after receiving a cease-and-desist order in its first market, California. Several early employees left because of the startup’s regulatory challenges and iconoclastic ethos. It shut down its taxi service in New York after just a month of operations, and then in early 2013 received its lifeline in the city after being approved through a pilot program.

Fast forward to the present, and Uber has a market cap of about $82 billion, with the ousted Kalanick having a personal net worth in the neighborhood of $2.8 billion.

Still, even at its scale, many of its most important questions on growth centered around how favorably the regulatory landscape would treat its category. Most recently, this came with the U.K. Supreme Court ruling that Uber drivers could not be classified as independent contractors.

The regulatory fabric has had similar leverage over other sharing-economy companies. In October 2014, for example, Airbnb’s business model became viable in San Francisco when Mayor Ed Lee legalized short-term rentals. In November 2015, Proposition F in the city aimed to restrict short-term rentals like Airbnb, and the startup spent millions in advertisements to mobilize voters in opposition.

Airbnb’s current market cap stands at $92 billion, and its CEO, Brian Chesky, has an estimated net worth over $11 billion. Like Uber, its regulatory tribulations continue, most recently being fined and judged to owe $9.6 million to the city of Paris.

The stories of these two companies and others in the sharing economy space demonstrate the value that the regulatory fabric can add or subtract from a company’s wealth, but also underscore the value  —  for founding teams, early employees, investors and customers  —  of navigating the gray areas.

Looking around: The data economy

The present regulatory fabric has precipitated market timing for ideas in a number of categories. Solutions that enable data privacy, like BigID, and ones that embed data privacy into larger customer value propositions, like Blotout, are on streamlined growth tailwinds from the GDPR in Europe and their inspired analogs in the U.S.

Amid a year of editorial pivots and employee exits, Medium announced today that it will make significant changes to its Medium Partner Program, which allows writers on the platform to monetize their content.

Founded in 2011, Medium launched its Partner Program in 2017. Since then, the platform has paid out $28 million to over 200,000 contributors. Initially, it offered payouts based on how much time Medium members spent reading a writer’s content. For $5 per month or $50 per year, Medium members could read all posts on the platform without hitting a paywall. Plus, part of each member’s subscription was split among the writers they read; so, if a Medium member spent 10% of their time reading one writer’s work, for example, that writer would get 10% of the subscriber’s revenue share.

Medium said that earnings based on read time will remain the same. But now, Medium will offer a new way to make money with the launch of a referral program.

Previously, if a reader converted to a paying member within 30 days of reading a writer’s story, that writer would get credit for the amount of time the reader spent reading their work. Under the new model, Partner Program writers will now have a personalized referral landing page — for any reader who purchases a Medium subscription via their page, the writer will get half of that member’s subscription fee for as long as they remain a paying member, minus the standard 2.9% + $0.30 in payment processing fees. So, if a writer got 100 readers to sign up for a monthly Medium membership through their referral, that would net the writer $227 per month.

Image Credits: Medium (opens in a new window)

However, now it’s more difficult for a writer to join the Partner Program — writers must have 100 subscribers, at least one published Medium story, and they must live within specific geographic regions. Even if a Partner meets the new eligibility requirements, they might lose their status if they don’t publish anything new in a six month period. Still, under the previous structure, just becoming a Partner didn’t guarantee financial rewards — some Partners with smaller followings would make pennies each month. Existing Partners will retain their status through the end of 2021, and if they haven’t reached 100 subscribers by then, they will be removed.

Also, Medium will soon institute a minimum payout threshold of $10, meaning that if a writer makes less than $10 in a month, that pay will roll over to the next month until they amass at least $10.

Medium has been reticent about its subscriber numbers in the past, but CEO Ev Williams told TechCrunch in November that its subscriber numbers were in the “high hundreds of thousands.” In March 2021, Medium had 725,000 subscribers per Axios, but Digiday previously reported that Medium had hoped to reach 1 million subscribers by 2020. As of September, its competitor Substack, founded in 2017, had 250,000 paid subscribers and raised a $65 million series B round two months later. Medium last raised venture funding in 2016 with a $50M series C round.

Platforms like Substack and the newer Ghost pay writers based on how many paying subscribers they have. Medium’s new revenue sharing model similarly incentivizes writers to corral readers to the platform, but Medium takes about 50%. For direct subscriptions to a writer’s individual newsletter, Substack takes 10%, and Ghost takes $9 per month. While Substack or Ghost readers might subscribe to multiple individual newsletters, Medium subscribers pay just one $5 monthly or $50 yearly fee to access all of the website’s content.

The newsletter business is competitive — in June, Facebook launched a newsletter platform called Bulletin with hand-picked contributors, and Twitter acquired Revue earlier this year. Then, last week, Quora unveiled a monetization platform called Quora+, which costs the same as a Medium membership. Similar to Medium, Quora+ subscribers get access to all content any writer chooses to put behind a paywall, and writers are paid based on engagement with their content. But writers can also write paywalled posts on Spaces, which are like user-created publications on Quora — Quora takes a 5% cut of those payments.

Orbital manufacturing startup Varda Space Industries is moving fast. Only a few weeks after announcing a $42 million Series A, Varda has signed a deal with launch company Rocket Lab for three Photon spacecraft to support the startup’s initial missions.

The first spacecraft will be delivered in the first quarter of 2023, with the second to follow later that year and the third in 2024. It’s an aggressive schedule for the eight-month-old Varda and would mark the company’s first three manufacturing missions to space. The contract includes an option for Varda to purchase a fourth Photon.

Partnering with a more established company makes sense – especially considering the Photon’s bona fides, which includes a NASA-funded mission to the moon at the end of the year. Rocket Lab was also awarded a subcontract a subcontract by the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory to design two Photon spacecraft for a 1-year mission to Mars.

Image Credits: Rocket Lab (opens in a new window)

Varda, which was founded by SpaceX veteran Will Bruey and Founders Fund principal Delian Asparouhov, is banking big on a manufacturing condition that you can only find in space: microgravity. They think that the potential market for bioprinted organs, specialized semiconductors, fiber-optic cables or pharmaceuticals – products that you can’t make in Earthbound-conditions – is high enough to make the costs of building a spacecraft and launching to space more than worth it.

Under this most recent deal, each Photon will be outfitted with two Varda-made modules: the first will be a microgravity manufacturing module, where the space production will actually take place, and the second will be a reentry capsule designed to bring those finished products back to Earth. Asparouhov told TechCrunch that their designing the reentry modules to bring back “on the order of 40-60 kilograms of materials” for the first couple of missions, with the aim of quickly scaling up for subsequent launches.

Varda says this approach is low-risk and incremental. “That’s why we’re seeing so much interest from the investment community, [the Department of Defense], NASA, et cetera, it’s this very pragmatic, one-step-at-a-time approach,” Asparouhov said. “We’ll prove this first space factory. And yes, as we start to scale it allows us to send a larger space factory and then eventually, yes, we might have something the size of the [International Space Station], 10 times the size of the ISS. But that’s not what we’re starting with. We’re starting with a very small, near-term pragmatic approach.”

Each mission will last roughly three months from launch to landing, Rocket Lab said in a statement.

Twitter today is introducing a revamped version of its website, which the company says will make the site more accessible, less cluttered and easier to use. Among the changes, the site is implementing Twitter’s new font, “Chirp,” and it’s changing various elements to become more high contrast, among other things. Soon, it will roll out new color palettes as well, to allow users to personalize their Twitter experience further.

Chirp was first introduced in January as Twitter’s first proprietary typeface. In the past, the company had relied on fonts like SF Pro, Roboto, and Helevetica Neue for its brand. The goal with Chirp — beyond giving Twitter’s its own form of visual expression — was to offer a typeface that’s sharp and legible for everyday use, but also one that would allow for more personality, including when put into motion or used for brand advertising.

At the time of its debut, however, Twitter had not yet committed to making Chirp the typeface for its wider product, though Creative Director for Twitter’s global brand, Derrit DeRouen, said it was his “personal desire” to do so.

Today, Twitter is making Chirp a core part of the new Twitter website.

It’s also making all Western-language text align left, which the company says will make it easier to read as you scroll. (Non-Western text is unchanged.)

The colors on Twitter. com have been updated to be more high-contrast, too, as have the buttons. One notable change is that there’s a lot less of Twitter’s blue on the site. For example, the tweets and the navigation have now shifted to black when using the default Twitter theme with the white background. And the changes to buttons — like Twitter’s “Follow” buttons, for instance — are aimed at making the most important actions stand out, notes Twitter.

These tweaks may seem minor for now, but they could become more important as Twitter rolls out its expanded feature set — like the Super Follow and other features — as they give the company a way to emphasize particular actions it wanted the user to take.

The redesign has removed some of the visual clutter on the screen, too, like what Twitter refers to as “unnecessary divider lines.” There are fewer gray backgrounds as well as increased space to make text easier to read.

The changes prepare Twitter to make room for a different type of online experience that goes beyond just sharing text-based posts with the occasional photo or other media attached.

With Super Follow, Twitter is aiming to bring more creators onto the platform, and the company is also rolling out e-commerce shopping features, a subscription service for power users, live audio with Spaces, redesigned bookmark collections, and more.

But adding features could lead to a more confusing experience, particularly for newcomers, as the new options could begin to crowd the screen. That’s why it makes sense that Twitter is redesigning its website now. However, whether Twitter users will appreciate the update remains to be seen.

The company says today’s changes are just the start of more visual updates to come, though it didn’t hint at what those future tweaks may include. It only noted that it would roll out more color palettes “soon.”

The technology industry is often thought of as being the domain of the young and the new. We see an emphasis on young founders (“40 Under 40”), innovative ideas and disruptive challenges to legacy brands, incumbent companies and “old” ways of thinking.

But one of the things I’ve learned on my journey in co-founding my latest startup is that technology should be enabling and accessible to all, and nowhere is this more critical than for empowering our older adults.

Older adults are one of the most underrepresented audiences for new technology products and platforms. There is a massive opportunity to provide products and services that will make life better for today’s seniors and future generations of older adults to come. Founders in every space, from edtech to healthcare, from financial services to robotics, can make a bigger impact if we recognize the opportunity of being of service to older adults.

Don’t make a product “for old people”

Older adults often get overlooked by tech companies. In fairness, it can be hard (and insensitive and uninspiring) to market products and services as being “for old people,” because people in this group don’t tend to think of themselves as “old.”

One of the best strategies for tech companies that want to serve the older adult market is to focus your value proposition on empowering older adults. Don’t make a product “for old people” — make a product that helps older adults lead a healthier, more active, more connected life.

Whether it’s the education tech space, financial services, health tech, consumer products or other innovative digital services for seniors, tech companies have big opportunities to empower older adults.

We are seeing some great examples, including:

• AgeBold is doing interesting work with at-home exercise programs for older adults to improve their balance, strength and mobility. The value proposition: Exercise for better aging. It’s a product “for” older adults, but the message is focused on empowerment and building strength, helping people live healthier, more active lives as they age.
• Eldera.ai connects children with vetted older adult mentors, for one-on-one or group conversations and remote learning activities. This concept is powerful because it helps older adults share their life experience and build relationships with other families.

Older adults have so much to offer. Instead of approaching this market as a “problem” to be solved, startups should engage with older adults as an active, curious, ready-to-learn group of people who are eager to be empowered.

Recognize the size of the opportunity of the older adult market

It often seems like so many consumer-facing apps today are created for younger people. But there’s a big disconnect between where so much of the tech industry’s attention and investment is going and the spending power and lifestyle preferences of today’s older adults.

Older adults are the most underserved demographic for the tech world. They’re also one of the fastest-growing age cohorts. The number of people worldwide who are 65 and older is expected to grow from 524 million in 2010 to 1.5 billion in 2050.

The “silver economy,” driven by the spending power of older adults, is expected to grow into the 2030s because the senior population is the wealthiest age group and their numbers are growing 3.2% per year (compared with 0.8% for the overall population).

Google has now taken another step towards the public release of the latest version of the Android operating system, Android 12. The company today released the fourth beta of Android 12, whose most notable new feature is that it has achieved the Platform Stability milestone — meaning the changes impacting Android app developers are now finalized, allowing them to test their apps without worrying about breaking changes in subsequent releases.

While the updated version of Android brings a number of new capabilities for developers to tap into, Google urges its developers to first focus on releasing an Android 12-compatible update. If users find their app doesn’t work properly when they upgrade to the new version of Android, they may stop using the app entirely or even uninstall it, the company warns.

Among the flagship consumer-facing features in Android 12 is the new and more adaptive design system called “Material You,” which lets users apply themes that span across the OS to personalize their Android experience. It also brings new privacy tools, like microphone and camera indicators that show if an app is using those features, as well as a clipboard read notification, similar to iOS, which alerts to apps that read the user’s clipboard history. In addition, Android 12 lets users play games as soon as they download them, through a Google Play Instant feature. Other key Android features and tools, like Quick Settings, Google Pay, Home Controls, and Android widgets, among others, have been improved, too.

Google has continued to roll out smaller consumer-facing updates in previous Android 12 beta releases, but beta 4 is focused on developers getting their apps ready for the public release of Android, which is expected in the fall.

Image Credits: Google

The company suggested developers look out for changes that include the new Privacy Dashboard in Settings, which lets users see which app are accessing what type of data and when, and other privacy features like the indicator lights for the mic and camera, clipboard read tools, and new toggles that lets users turn off mic and camera access across all apps.

There’s also a new “stretch” overscroll effect that replace the older “glow” overscroll effect systemwide, new splash screen animations for apps and keygen changes to be aware of. And there are a number of SDKs and libraries that developers use that will need to be tested for compatibility, including those from Google and third-parties.

The new Android 12 beta 4 release is available on supported Pixel devices, and on devices from select partners including ASUS, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, and ZTE. Android TV developers can access beta 4 as well, via the ADT-3 developer kit.

If there’s one thing that the ongoing COVID-19 crisis has proven, it’s that the healthcare system in the U.S. is in drastic need of major transformation. One of the biggest issues to be highlighted by the pandemic in particular is the iniquity in access to care, but there are signs that one of the effects of COVID-19 will be a stepping up of accessibility reform driven in particular by technology.

At Disrupt 2021, we’re thrilled to have three guests onstage for a panel discussion all about how tech companies are working to address access gaps in healthcare. From Cityblock Health, we’ll host co-founder and Chief Health Officer Toyin Ajayi; from Carbon Health, co-founder and CEO Eren Bali; and from Forward, CEO and co-founder Adrian Aoun.

Cityblock Health is the first tech-driven provider for communities with complex health and social needs — bringing better care to neighborhoods where it’s needed most. Cityblock’s goal is to foster a model of care that meets individuals where they are, delivering highly personalized primary care, behavioral healthcare and social services to its members, with a focus on those who access Medicaid, are dually eligible for Medicaid and Medicare, and others living in lower-income neighborhoods.

Carbon Health has a goal of making good healthcare accessible to all, with same-day appointment booking, telehealth services and prescription delivery, facilitated through partnerships with some of the leading insurers and payers in the U.S. The company has taken a central role in vaccine administration in California, and continues to evolve its model of modular healthcare delivery to reach communities where primary care hasn’t traditionally been readily available.

Forward is an AI-based healthcare system combining world-class private doctors with new technology to enable proactive, data-driven primary care. Starting with cutting edge in-clinic and at-home biometric data measurement, Forward aims to tailor its primary care to individuals in a combination that delivers both scalability and personalization. The company also espouses a direct-to-consumer, subscription-based model of care that it argues avoids some of the traditional pitfalls of insurance-backed care.

We’re excited to be able to dig in to these very different approaches to healthcare, that still all share the fundamental goal of making a higher-quality standard of care available to more people.

During the three-day event, writer, director, actor and Houseplant co-founder Seth Rogen will be joined by Houseplant Chief Commercial Officer Haneen Davies and co-founder and CEO Michael Mohr to talk about the business of weed, BioNTech co-founder and CEO Uğur Şahin will dive into what’s next for mRNA technologies after COVID, and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong will dig into the volatile world of cryptocurrency and his company’s massive direct listing earlier this year.

Disrupt 2021 wouldn’t be complete without Startup Battlefield, the competition that has launched some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Cloudflare and Dropbox. Join Ajayi, Bali, Aoun and more than 10,000 of the startup world’s most influential people at Disrupt 2021 online this September 21-23. Check out the Disrupt 2021 agenda here. We’ll add even more speakers soon.

Buy your Disrupt pass before September 20, and get ready to join the big, bold and influential — for less than $100. Get your pass to attend now for under $99 for a limited time!

While it was one of the less hyped gadget debuts in recent memory, Samsung blasted out a series of announcements at an Unpacked event bright and early this morning.

Too busy to tune in? Still asleep when it all went down? Here’s the slimmed down version of everything you need to know.

Galaxy Watch 4

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Samsung is back with another set of smartwatches, this time with a twist: after years of focusing on their own operating system with Tizen, these latest watches are back on Google’s Wear OS. Or, at least, Samsung’s take on it — this software build will be called “Wear OS Powered by Samsung”, and will borrow some of the best bits of Tizen while being Wear OS at its core.

Samsung went deep on health metrics this time around, focusing much of the announcement on the Watch’s ability to constantly monitor things like blood pressure, blood oxygen, and body composition.

This year’s watch comes in two forms: Galaxy Watch 4, and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. The standard Watch 4 is a bit thinner and lighter, with a touch-sensitive bezel for controlling the interface; Watch 4 Classic bulks things up a bit, with a bezel that physically spins. Watch 4 starts at $250 and comes in 40mm or 44mm, while Watch 4 Classic bumps the base price to $350 and comes in 42mm or 46mm.

Read the full announcement post here

Galaxy Z Fold 3

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Pricey and with plenty of problems to work out of the earliest versions, folding smartphones haven’t exactly taken over the world. Hell, most people probably still haven’t seen a folding phone in person. But Samsung isn’t done in this space just yet!

This morning the company announced the Galaxy Z Fold 3, its third iteration on the hotdog-style folding phone approach. They’ve managed to drop the price tag a bit (from $2000 to $1800), while bumping up the overall build quality — its got a stronger aluminum frame, a more durable folding display, and it’s waterproofed (a first for the Samsung foldables!) up to an IPX8 rating. (One catch: that “x” means it’ll survive an accidental dunk in the tub, but you still want to keep it away from dust/debris.)

The Fold 3 will be the first Samsung device with an under-display camera — an awesome trick, albeit one that generally comes at the expense of picture quality. The back of the device brings in three more (more standard, less hidden) lenses — ultra wide, wide-angle, and telephoto, all coming in at 12 megapixels each. Oh, and it supports the S Pen stylus now!

Expect this one to start shipping on the 26th of this month.

Find more specs and details in our full post here.

Galaxy Z Flip 3

Image Credits: Brian Heater

While the flagship Fold 3 took up most of the folding spotlight today, Samsung’s relatively entry-level (clamshell!) foldable gets an update too with the announcement of the Galaxy Z Flip 3.

The Flip 3 will get many of the same durability improvements coming to the aforementioned Fold 3, including the improved aluminum body, more durable display, and IPX8 water resistance. It’s got a 10MP selfie cam on the inside, with two 12MP cameras (ultra wide and wide Angle) on the outside. At $999 — nearly $400 less than the last one — it’s the first time Samsung has managed to drag its foldable line into the sub-$1k price range. It’s got a bigger cover screen (the screen that shows whenever the device is folded shut) this time around, at 1.9″ versus last-gen’s 1.1″.

As with everything else announced today, it starts shipping on August 26th. Find our full post on the Flip 3 here.

Galaxy Buds 2

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Samsung also debuted a new generation of its entry-level wireless earbuds today, and everything you need to know could fit in a tweet: they’re smaller and lighter and have active noise cancellation, and will ship on August 26th for $149.

Want more details? Here’s the full post.

Less plastic!

They kinda snuck this one in at the end, but it’s worth a highlight: Samsung is committing to eliminating all single-use plastic from its phone packaging by 2025, with plans to dramatically increase its use of recycled material across its mobile products by the same year. Given that Samsung ships more phones per quarter than any other company on the planet, thats huge — and, hopefully, an example others will follow.