Nokia Announces the 2nd Generation Nokia 6

Nokia has announced that the second generation of the Nokia 6 is now available for pre-orders in China.  The mid-range phone has been rumored for several weeks with various leaks suggesting that an update to the phone would be coming in short order.  Those rumors were confirmed today with the announcement and the device’s product & ordering page going live.

Being dubbed the Nokia 6 (2018), this updated device has a 5.5″ Full HD display with 2.5D curved glass with Gorilla Glass 3.  It is powered by the Snapdragon 630 SoC, clocked at 2.2GHz, and coupled with the Adreno 508 GPU.  It has 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and will come with either 32GB or 64GB of storage.  You can expand that with the MicroSD card slot (also the SIM 2 slot) on the phone.

Chrome 63 Build for Chrome OS Finally Rolling Out

After being announced a few weeks back and virtually no device getting the update immediately, Chrome 63 is finally rolling out for Chrome OS.  It is an important release because it addresses the vulnerabilities outlined by Intel and Google earlier this week.  With Chrome 63, devices running Chrome OS will be protected.

Clearly users of Chromebooks and Chromeboxes need to update to this new build immediately.  You can do so by typing chrome://help in the omnibar of the browser and then clicking the Check for Update button.  The update will take about 5 minutes to download depending on your device & connection speed.  As is normal with Chrome OS, you will need to reboot your device to apply the new build.

Updated HP Chromebook 11 and 14 Models Announced Ahead of CES

With CES 2018 next week, we are already starting to see some pre-show announcements.  HP jumped on that bandwagon today by announcing updated version of their HP Chromebook 11 and Chromebook 14.

The HP Chromebook 11 G6 is black with orange trim, sports a 180° hinge and is powered by the 7th generation Celeron N processors.  It will come standard with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.   The updated HP Chromebook 14 G5 will have a slightly better processor option, can be configured up to 8GB of RAM and has 64GB of storage.

Minor Stable Channel Update for Chrome OS Released

An incremental update to Chrome OS has been released by the Chromium team and is starting to roll out to devices.  The updated version is build 63.0.3239.116 (Platform version: 10032.75.0) and Google indicates that the majority of Chrome OS devices will get the update over the course of the next few days.

As is often the case with these midstream updates, there are not a lot of details available on what was addressed or fixed.  Rather, we simply get the generic “This build contains a number of bug fixes and security updates”.

AT&T Expects to Launch a True 5G Network This Year

AT&T has somewhat thrown down the gauntlet to its competitors when it comes to Fifth Generation (5G) mobile networks.  The carrier announced that they plan to have true 5G coverage in a dozen cities by late 2018 and aim to be the first to offer the next generation, high speed mobile data solution.

This will be different than the pseudo 5G that both AT&T and Verizon are offering which, more-or-less, is beefed up 4G.  Indeed, AT&T plans to continue development on what they market as their “5G Evolution” product, which is currently available in 23 cities.

The carrier was clear in pointing out that they can accelerate their plans thanks to the 5G NR (New Radio) standard that was defined last month by the 3GPP.  That standard means that manufactures can start working on modems and chips sets and carriers will know what to expect and can build their networks.

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