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Samsung goes big on battery with the Galaxy Watch 5 series

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After weeks of leaks and rumors, Samsung finally announced the $279.99 Galaxy Watch 5 and $449.99 Galaxy Watch 5 Pro today at its Unpacked event. And while there weren’t too many surprises, it seems the company took criticisms about the Galaxy Watch 4’s poor battery life to heart. Both the Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro boast bigger batteries, faster charging, and increased durability to boot.

With the Galaxy Watch 5 series, Samsung once again is shaking up its smartwatch lineup. While the Galaxy Watch 4 series rebranded the main Galaxy Watch and Watch Active lines from the Tizen era, this year’s event introduces a new model altogether: the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro. Whereas the vanilla Galaxy Watch 5 is the entry-level flagship, the Pro is meant to be a more premium version aimed at outdoor enthusiasts. Neither has Samsung’s iconic physical rotating bezel, though they both have the more subtle touch bezel. For physical bezel fans, the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic will remain as a midtier option between the Watch 5 and the Pro.

The Galaxy Watch 5 comes in 40mm and 44mm, while the Pro comes in a single 45mm size. All the watches are powered by the same 1.18GHz Exynos W920 processor, with 1.5GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. The Galaxy Watch 5 lineup also has an improved version of the 3-in-1 BioActive sensor first introduced on the Watch 4, which enables ECGs, heart rate, and body composition analysis. Samsung says that the improved sensor adds more advanced sleep tracking features to the Watch 5, including personalized sleep coaching. You also get built-in GPS, contactless payments, optional LTE, Bluetooth 5.2, and Wi-Fi. Both watches also feature 5ATM and IP68 dust and water resistance.

The Galaxy Watch 5 Pro is aimed at outdoor enthusiasts.

New this time around is a body temperature sensor. Doug Wegener, Samsung Electronics America’s head of wearables and accessories, told The Verge that the temperature sensor will add another data point for sleep tracking, but that’s about it for now. According to Wegener, adding the sensor was meant to give developers more options in designing new health and wellness features.

The big hardware gains this time around have to do with battery life. The Watch 5 has a 13 percent larger battery — 284mAh battery in the 40mm Watch 5 and a 410mAh battery in the 44mm. That should translate to about 40 hours on a single charge. The Pro has an even larger 590mAh battery that’s rated for 80 hours, or 20 hours of continuous GPS usage on a single charge.

Aside from adding bigger batteries, Samsung also improved charging speed. It claims that you can go from zero to 45 percent battery in just 30 minutes. For folks interested in sleep tracking, the company says you can get eight hours of battery in just eight minutes.

The color options for the 40mm Watch 5 side by side

The 40mm Galaxy Watch 5 is available in graphite, pink-gold, and silver with a purple strap. The 44mm version is available in graphite, sapphire, and silver.

We’ll have to see in testing how much mileage these bigger batteries actually get, especially with power-guzzling features like the always-on display and Google Assistant enabled. After all, Samsung promised 40 hours of battery life last year, but both the Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic fell well short of that estimate. Still, if all Samsung does is nail battery life, it’ll go a long way toward fixing the gripes we had with the Galaxy Watch 4.

Otherwise, the Galaxy Watch 5 is an incremental update. The main design changes are a more durable sapphire crystal display and a curvier back so the 3-in-1 sensor makes better skin contact with the wrist. The more meaningful updates will come from software. The Watch 5 series will ship with One UI Watch 4.5, which adds a host of new accessibility features, a better typing interface, and dual-SIM support. Apps like SoundCloud and Deezer are also coming to Wear OS 3, as is the ability to use voice navigation on Google Maps directly from the wrist. And after months of waiting, Samsung Galaxy Watch owners can finally use Google Assistant on their watches. (Don’t panic, Bixby lovers. Samsung promises all five of you that Bixby’s still available on the Watch 5 and Pro.)

The Galaxy Watch 5 Pro on a wrist displaying fitness metrics

The Watch 5 Pro is available in black or gray titanium.

The flashier updates are reserved for the Pro given that it’s the new model and aimed at a completely different audience (aka, the Garmin and Polar crowd). It’s more durable, with a titanium case and a harder 29GPa sapphire crystal display compared to the Watch 5’s 24GPa display. It also has a snazzy new magnetic clasp.

But outdoor enthusiasts will probably be most stoked by the Pro’s mapping features. You can now download GPX routes for hiking and cycling, complete with turn-by-turn navigation. It also has a track-back feature so you can return the way you came. While this is a staple on multisport GPS watches, it’s not something you generally find on an advanced flagship smartwatch. Even so, Samsung’s ability to lure away Garmin lovers will really come down to whether the Pro can actually deliver on a multiday battery.

The Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro are available for preorder starting today and will ship starting August 26th. The Watch 5 starts at $279.99 while the Pro starts at $449.99. LTE versions cost an extra $50. Both watches will also have a Bluetooth-only Golf Edition that starts at $329.99.


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ElonJet is (sort of) back on Twitter

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The college student who ran the now-banned @ElonJet Twitter account that used public information to track Elon Musk’s private jet has resumed his activities on Twitter under a new username. As noted by Insider, Jack Sweeney, 20, has created a new account called @ElonJetNextDay — which now tracks Musk’s private jet with a 24-hour delay to circumvent Twitter policy restrictions.

Sweeney’s original ElonJet account was suspended from the platform last week following accusations from Musk that it violated Twitter rules by revealing his live location. Twitter updated its policy to forbid publishing a person’s real-time location on the same day it suspended ElonJet. Sweeney said in an interview with Insider that he will be “posting manually” for now while he works on the framework to fully automate the account.

Musk tweeted on December 15th that “Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.” Twitter also explicitly states that “sharing publicly available location information after a reasonable time has elapsed, so that the individual is no longer at risk for physical harm” is not a violation of platform rules. Elsewhere in the policy, it notes that its definition of “live” location data means someone’s real-time or same-day whereabouts.

Most commercial and private aircraft are equipped with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast technology (ADS-B) that transmits a unique code (tied to the airplane’s tail number) containing information such as altitude and GPS location. This information is publicly available and aircraft flying in the USA and Europe are required to broadcast it in order to prevent midair collisions.

In a statement back in November, Musk said he would not ban the original ElonJet account as part of his “commitment to free speech” despite claiming it was a “direct personal safety risk.” The automated ElonJet account posted publicly available information regarding the location of Musk’s 2015 Gulfstream G650ER, and had amassed over 540,000 followers before it was permanently banned on December 14th. Musk previously offered Sweeney $5,000 to have the account taken down.



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She Worked for Twitter. Then She Tweeted at Elon Musk.

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Early in November, Twitter’s roughly 7,500 employees received a terse email from a generic address: “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force.” The note was signed “Twitter.” On Nov. 3, some people at the company received emails indicating they would be laid off the next day.

That night, Ms. Solomon, her husband and a few colleagues headed to Dots Cafe Portland, a lounge on Clinton Street. Phones were on the table, face up, she said. As the work friends talked, they tapped away at their phones, taking part in chats on the Signal app with colleagues in London, Seattle and San Francisco. Messages like “I got hit” were flying across screens, Ms. Solomon recalled. “You were seeing your co-workers drop like flies,” she said.

By the next afternoon her team of about 10 engineers was reduced to four. Ms. Solomon and her husband had survived the round of layoffs. The next week, she recalled, she awaited further direction from Mr. Musk or the new executive team. Nothing came, she said, except for an email alerting employees that remote work would no longer be permitted, with few exceptions.

Many employees learned of Mr. Musk’s priorities by watching his Twitter feed, where he posted frequently about company business to his more than 100 million followers. On Nov. 5, he complained about the platform’s search function: “Search within Twitter reminds me of Infoseek in ’98! That will also get a lot better pronto,” he wrote. That same day, he tweeted: “Twitter will soon add ability to attach long-form text to tweets, ending absurdity of notepad screenshots.”

That was more than Ms. Solomon and many of her colleagues had heard internally. “Radio silence,” she said. She began to vent her frustration on Twitter.

One of her first tweets in this vein came on Nov. 6, shortly after Mr. Musk announced a new rule for Twitter users in a tweet: “Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark,” he wrote. He had posted that message after many people on Twitter had changed their names to variations on Mr. Musk’s name, most of them mocking.



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The new iOS 16.2 Home app architecture upgrade has disappeared

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Apple has removed the option to upgrade to the new HomeKit architecture on devices running iOS 16.2. The change follows multiple reports of issues and problems with the Home app after the upgrade was installed.

Apple spokesperson Emily Ewing confirmed the change in a statement provided to The Verge:

“We are aware of an issue that may impact the ability for users to share the Home within the Home app. A fix will be available soon. In the meantime, we’ve temporarily removed the option to upgrade to the new Home architecture. Users who have already upgraded will not be impacted.“

The new Home app architecture was one of the key features of iOS 16.2, with Apple claiming that the upgrade would be “more reliable and efficient.” MacRumors first discovered this week that the Home app in iOS 16.2 no longer offers the option to upgrade to the new architecture within the Home app settings. Several reporters at The Verge have also confirmed that the upgrade option is unavailable on their devices.

The new architecture was first introduced in the iOS 16.2 beta back in October as an optional upgrade before the iOS 16.2 public release on December 13th. Both the beta and public release required Apple devices logged into iCloud to be running the latest versions of iOS, macOS, and tvOS. The upgrade does not happen automatically when iOS 16.2 is installed on a phone, instead requiring a manual process through the Home app.

The update has caused issues with missing devices and adding multiple users for some

Reddit users who downloaded the optional upgrade prior to its removal have reported issues such as the app booting other members from a Home account and being unable to re-add them. Users on the MacRumors forum have reported being unable to invite users to share the Home, HomeKit‌ devices being stuck displaying an “updating” status, and some accessories vanishing from the Home app entirely. Users who have already upgraded are unable to revert to the previous version of the app.

Update, December 23rd, 2022, 2:15PM ET: Added confirmation and statement from Apple spokesperson. Added links to Apple’s updated support pages.

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