MacRumors

Sprint today at Mobile World Congress announced that its commercial 5G network will launch in May, starting in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and Kansas City. The carrier plans to expand service to Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Phoenix, and Washington D.C. in the first half of 2019.

5G coverage will initially be limited to select areas of each city:

At launch, Sprint's highly mobile, on-the-go customers can expect mobile 5G coverage ranging from nearly 30 square miles covering Midtown and lower Manhattan, to approximately 230 square miles spanning the greater Dallas Fort Worth area, for a total initial 5G coverage footprint of more than 1,000 square miles across all nine cities.

Sprint plans to build a nationwide 5G network in partnership with T-Mobile should the proposed merger of the two companies be approved.

Sprint said its first 5G smartphone will be the new dual-screen LG V50 ThinQ 5G unveiled at Mobile World Congress this week, followed by the HTC 5G Hub hotspot in the spring and the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G in the summer.

Sprint also announced that it will offer 5G service to Google Fi customers with a compatible device, but there is no timeframe for the rollout.

Sprint's network will operate on the 2.5GHz spectrum and use Massive MIMO radio equipment supplied by Samsung, rather than use millimeter wave technology. Sprint chief technology officer John Saw said the carrier saw speeds of 430 Mbps in one demo, according to The Verge, significantly faster than LTE.

Australians looking to take advantage of Apple's limited time iPhone XS and ‌iPhone‌ XR trade-up promotion should act fast, as the offer ends Monday, March 4 in Australia, according to an update to Apple's website.

As in the United States, Apple is offering higher trade-in values for select older ‌iPhone‌ models towards the purchase of a new ‌iPhone‌ XR or ‌iPhone‌ XS. The ‌iPhone‌ XR starts at $1,229 in Australia, for example, but customers can purchase the device for as low as $849 when trading in an ‌iPhone‌ 7 Plus until next week.

The promotion began in the United States in late November and expanded to Apple Stores internationally in late December.

Apple has been heavily promoting ‌iPhone‌ XR and ‌iPhone‌ XS trade-ins with a prominent banner on the homepage of its website, store signage, App Store editorials, emails to older ‌iPhone‌ users, and more since the smartphones launched last year.

In a letter to shareholders last month, Apple said it saw fewer iPhone upgrades than it anticipated last quarter, primarily due to greater-than-expected economic weakness in the Greater China region. Apple said making smartphone trade-ins at its stores easier is one step it would take to improve results.

No end date has been specified for the U.S. promotion as of yet.

Over the last month we've learned that Apple is readying an Apple News service that will provide access to paywalled news content and magazines for a monthly fee. As we understand it, Apple will keep 50 percent of all subscription revenue and the other half of the revenue will be split among publishers.

Apple is said to be launching the service in March, but despite magazine publishers reportedly already on board with the 50/50 revenue agreement, other reports suggest the company is having trouble negotiating financial terms with news-focused publishers.

A new report today by Digiday offers further insight into the struggle news publishers have been consistently facing on the platform, with some admitting monetization on ‌Apple News‌ "remains a slog." Many of the challenges boil down to their larger dependence on ad revenue and how ‌Apple News‌ is inherently incompatible with traditional online ad targeting sales strategies.

Ad revenue is bogged down by advertisers’ disinterest in the ad inventory that publishers are selling directly, and by remnant ad fill rates that many publishers describe as abysmal, even after a modest improvement to start the year, sources said. One source said their publication earned “low five-figures” every month from Apple News; another said they earned less than $1,000 per month.

According to sources that spoke to Digiday, publishers are having trouble selling ‌Apple News‌ ad inventory directly because of the platform's limited user targeting, which doesn't allow the use of third-party data or IP addresses, and an inability to reconcile current sales strategies that rely on programmatic advertising (something ‌Apple News‌ also prohibits).

One publisher source said that until the beginning of 2019, the fill rate on their remnant Apple News inventory was less than 20 percent, which was considered an "atrociously low" number that made it less lucrative than publishing through Google’s AMP format or even Facebook Instant Articles, which many publishers abandoned because of monetization issues.

Despite the challenges, all the publishers who spoke to Digiday reported steady audience growth over the past year and more referral traffic from ‌Apple News‌ than Facebook. Getting articles in the Top News widget can drive "enormous" boosts in traffic, said one source. Another said that articles featured in the platform's content recirculation widget, which recommends stories for users to read next, can make a story one of the highest-read stories a publisher can share in a month.

Dampened excitement for ‌Apple News‌ among publishers is said to have pushed some to look at working with the platform in other ways not directly tied to monetization, such as how it can be used to encourage users to download podcasts, encounter paywalls, and convert readers to newsletter subscribers.

‌Apple News‌ is said to have around 90 million regular users, comprising nearly 70 million monthly unique users in the U.S. and 20 million international users. Regardless of the challenges in penetrating such a huge potential market, some publishers told Digiday they appreciate where Apple is coming from. "I respect Apple and that they believe in privacy," one source said. "It just makes it incredibly challenging to sell there."

Apple COO Jeff Williams spoke at Elon University on Friday, Feb. 22 and spoke of his history in joining Apple in 1998. The Times News covers his talk in detail. Williams also took questions from students in the audience. One student asked Williams if Apple had any plans to reduce prices considering the seemingly large margins on Apple products based on analyst reports.

Williams dismissed those reports, suggesting the actual cost of development isn't considered:

“The stories that come out about the cost of our products [have been] the bane of my existence from the beginning of time, including our early days,” Williams said. “Analysts don’t really understand the cost of what we do and how much care we put into making our products.”

He goes on to explain that to build the Apple Watch's activity tracker, Apple built a physiology lab with 40 nurses and 10,000 participants. Still, Williams conceded it's an area that they are paying attention to:

“It’s something we’re very aware of,” he said. “We do not want to be an elitist company. That’s not — we want to be an egalitarian company, and we’ve got a lot of work going on in developing markets.”

The Times News article goes on to cover Williams' talk about his reasons for joining Apple back in 1998, as well as how it feels to be part of a company that has been so successful.

Pricing on Apple's flagship phones has been cited as a factor in iPhone sales underperformance in the last quarter. Apple's flagship ‌iPhone‌ has increased in price over the years with the most recent ‌iPhone‌ XS Max starting at $1099.

Not to be outdone by Samsung, Chinese smartphone company Huawei today unveiled its own foldable smartphone at Mobile World Congress, the Huawei Mate X.

The Mate X uses what Huawei calls a "Falcon Wing" design with a stretchable hinge that allows the smartphone to transform from a 6.6-inch OLED smartphone to an 8-inch OLED tablet, making it bigger than Samsung's recently introduced Galaxy Fold.

Huawei designed the Mate X to fold in the opposite direction of Samsung's Galaxy Fold, so the display is visible on both the front and back of the device when collapsed down to smartphone view. The "wing" at the side houses the camera and allows the Mate X display to be notch free.

When folded, it measures in at 11mm thick, but when open, the device is just 5.4mm thick. There's a multi-lens Leica camera included, and the design of the Mate X allows for the front and rear cameras to use the one camera system for selfies and rear-facing images of the same quality.

The Leica camera system includes a 40-megapixel wide-angle lens, a 16-megapixel ultra wide angle lens, and an 8 megapixel telephoto lens. There's also a fourth camera that will be activated later.

Like Samsung, Huawei plans to focus on multitasking, allowing the Mate X to be used split screen. Samsung has developed an App Continuity feature that keeps the same app open regardless of whether its Galaxy Fold is open or closed, and Huawei could be planning something similar.

Huawei is equipping the Mate X with a 5G modem, which will allow it to connect with 5G networks for futureproofing purposes. Samsung's Galaxy Fold also offers a 5G option.

A fingerprint sensor is integrated into the power switch for biometric authentication purposes, and Huawei says that the Mate X features a 55W SuperCharge feature that lets the included 4,500mAh battery charge to 85 percent within 30 minutes.

While the Galaxy Fold will be available in late April, Huawei's version won't go on sale until June or July. It's not clear if the Mate X will be available in the United States, but it is unlikely given Huawei's conflicts with the U.S. government.

There have been some rumors suggesting that Apple is exploring folding screen technology, and that multiple folding smartphones are coming to the market likely means this is something that the Cupertino company is looking into, but right now there are no rumors indicating Apple plans to actually release a foldable smartphone in the near future. It's not yet clear if the foldable smartphone trend will catch on and dictate the future of the smartphone industry or if it's a fad that will disappear a few years down the road.

Apple today shared another humorous ad promoting Depth Control on the iPhone XS, ‌iPhone‌ XS Max, and ‌iPhone‌ XR.

In the ad, a couple return home after spending the day out and get in bed. The man shows the woman a photo he took of her, and the woman then points out her coworker Alejandro in the background and says he is so funny. The man, who appears to be jealous, uses Depth Control to blur out Alejandro's face.

Former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, and if he were still alive, today would mark his 64th birthday.

Jobs not only founded Apple alongside Steve Wozniak in 1976 and directed the development of some of the first personal computers, but he also brought Apple back from the brink of failure even after being ousted from the company he created.

In the 2000–2010s, Jobs was responsible for not only saving Apple, but then building it into one of the largest companies in the world. The introduction of the iPod in 2001 and iPhone in 2007 represented industry-changing products that have sold hundreds of millions of units.

Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011, at the age of 56. Jobs had been suffering with complications related to pancreatic cancer in the years leading up to his death. Jobs has obviously affected the world with his contributions to Apple, and his death impacted us all. The article of his passing cites many reactions and photos from around the world.

Coincidentally, MacRumors shares the same birthday as Steve Jobs and was created on February 24, 2000. Today, the site turns 19 years old, and we are grateful for our dedicated readers, community members, and volunteers.

Update: Apple CEO Tim Cook has shared a tweet reflecting on how Steve Jobs would have loved Apple Park, the campus Jobs conceptualized before he passed away.

Android smartphone manufacturer Oppo has introduced a 10x optical zoom camera system that is said to be shipping in the spring. Engadget describes the system:

This will still be enabled by a triple-camera module, but now we know that from top to bottom, it'll start with a 48-megapixel high-resolution main camera, followed by a 120-degree ultra-wide camera and a stealthy periscopic telephoto camera. Together, these cameras cover a range of 16mm to 160mm, hence the 10x zoom rating.

Both the main camera and zoom camera come with optical image stabilization, and the phone interpolates between fixed zoom settings to provide continuous "optical" zoom from 1x to 10x.

Oppo allowed hands on time with prototypes of the device with early software. GSMArena and PCWorld provide some sample zoom shots from ultra-wide to 10x zoom.

Beyond the presence of the three cameras, the exact advantages to Apple's new system has not been fully articulated. The most concrete features described of the new camera system came from Bloomberg:

A third camera on the back of the 2019 iPhone will help the device capture a larger field of view and enable a wider range of zoom. It will also capture more pixels so Apple software could, for example, automatically repair a video or photo to fit in a subject that may have been accidentally cut off from the initial shot, according to the people familiar with the plans.

Apple's next generation 2019 iPhones are expected to launch this fall.

Reuters reports that Intel has confirmed it does not expect its 5G chips to be in consumer products until 2020.

Intel Corp executives said on Friday its 5G modem chips will not appear in mobile phones until 2020, raising the possibility its biggest customer, Apple Inc, will be more than a year behind rivals in delivering a device that uses the faster networks.

Intel's timeline is tied closely with Apple's product plans due to Apple's reliance on Intel chips for its iPhone modems. Previously a Qualcomm customer, Apple has been at odds with Qualcomm due to an ongoing legal battle between the two companies. In fact, Qualcomm has been reportedly unwilling to sell its chips to Apple because of the conflict.

That has left Apple reliant on Intel for its modem chips in the latest line of iPhones, though Apple has been exploring other vendors, and even working to develop its own chips. That plan, however, isn't expected to produce results until 2021, at least.

Apple waiting until 2020 to deliver 5G iPhones doesn't come as a surprise as previous rumors have said the same. This statement by Intel, however, does seem to confirm some of those previous rumors.

Apple's VP of Health Dr. Sumbul Desai recently sat down for an interview with MobiHealthNews where she discussed Apple's health products, the company's relationship with the FDA, the success of the ECG feature on the Apple Watch, and more.

On the topic of Apple's relationship with the FDA, Desai said that while Apple has a "good" relationship with the FDA, the FDA asked "hard questions" about the ECG feature in the Apple Watch, which received De Novo clearance in the U.S. ahead of its release.

Apple gets no special treatment from the FDA and undergoes the same scrutiny any other company does.

With regards to the FDA, we have been working with them for years and we have developed a relationship. ... So we have a good relationship with the FDA. However, they held us to task. I mean, they asked us really hard questions and, given the size and impact we had, were very critical of our products and making sure that we're doing the right thing and thinking about the user first and the customer's safety first -- which they should do.

On the ECG feature, which was added in the Apple Watch Series 4 and is available in the U.S., Desai said that customer stories "have been amazing." Cook has gotten a "number of letters" from people who were able to detect atrial fibrillation and get help earlier than they might have otherwise been able to.

Response from doctors has also been "pretty decent," but cardiologists are still working on the best way to handle that kind of data coming from patients.

In response to a question about ECG and another new health feature, fall detection, being targeted to an older demographic that may not own the Apple Watch, but Desai says that these features can help everyone.

With regards to fall detection, I know that was the immediate place that people took it, but if you look at the stats, falls are one of the most common reasons for people to go into the emergency room across all age groups. So you can imagine, and this has happened to me, going up on your step stool to try to get some flour or sugar, no matter what age group you're in, and having a fall. And that happens. And so we really built fall detection for everyone.

Atrial fibrillation is also a condition that "affects everybody," and Apple has received positive responses from younger people diagnosed with the condition that were able to get help.

Desai says that Apple is "very interested in the health space" and will "continue to do great work" in health. She agreed with Tim Cook's recent statement suggesting health is the area where Apple may ultimately have the greatest impact on mankind. Apple has a lot to share in the future, says Desai, and is still "in the first inning."

We think health is an area where we can have incredible impact and meaningful impact. And how do you not work in a space, at the scale that we're at, and not have impact? So that is what drives us. What drives us is hearing from our customers that we've had an impact in terms of their health and we've really moved towards thinking about how do we democratize data, health and education, and really democratize being well for everyone.

We're excited about the work we do and there's a lot of exciting things ahead, but we take it day by day. I think Tim has also said that we're in the first inning, and I think we all recognize that as well.

Desai's full interview, which is worth reading for anyone interested in Apple's health initiatives, can be found over at the MobiHealthNews website.

Apple maintains a photography tutorial section on its website for those interested in stepping up their iPhone photography, and it's regularly updated with new videos. Apple also uploads its ‌iPhone‌ tutorial videos to YouTube.

Apple this afternoon shared four new videos on YouTube that will eventually be added to the site, covering shooting with light and shadow, shooting using the rule of thirds, trimming video on an ‌iPhone‌, and shooting a time-lapse video.

Apple has been sharing these ‌iPhone‌ photography tutorials for well over a year, and the site has a collection of videos on capturing different types of photos, best editing practices, taking advantage of environmental factors like lighting, and more.

It's no secret that Facebook is harvesting incredible amounts of data on all of its users (and some that don't even use the service), but what may come as a surprise is just how detailed and intimate some of that data is.

A report from The Wall Street Journal takes a look at some of the apps on iOS that provide data to Facebook, with that info then used for advertising purposes.

Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor, for example, the most popular heart rate app on iOS, sent a user's heart rate to Facebook right after it was recorded in The Wall Street Journal's testing. Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker, which has 25 million active users, tells Facebook when a user is having a period or is intending to get pregnant.

Realtor.com, meanwhile, provides Facebook with the location and price of listings that a user viewed. With Flo in particular, it says it does not send this kind of sensitive data in its privacy policy, but then goes ahead and does so anyway.

Many of these apps are sending this data without "any prominent or specific disclosure," according to The ‌Wall Street Journal‌'s testing. Facebook collects data from apps even if no Facebook account is used to log in and even if the user isn't a member of Facebook.

Apps are sharing this data to take advantage of Facebook analytics tools that allow them to target their users more precisely with Facebook ads.

Apple does not require apps to disclose all of the partners that they share data with, and while certain personal information can be blocked, like contacts or location, more sensitive data, like health and fitness details, can be readily shared by these apps as there's no option to turn off this kind of data sharing.

Users can turn off Facebook's targeted advertising, but have no way to prevent apps from surreptitiously sending collected data to Facebook in the first place.

Facebook claimed that some of the data sharing The ‌Wall Street Journal‌ uncovered violates its business terms, and has asked these apps to stop sending information app users would consider sensitive.

The ‌Wall Street Journal‌ spoke to an Apple spokesperson, who said its App Store Guidelines require apps to obtain user consent for collecting data.

"When we hear of any developer violating these strict privacy terms and guidelines, we quickly investigate and, if necessary, take immediate action," the company said.

At least 11 out of the 70 apps tested by The ‌Wall Street Journal‌ were sending sensitive user data to Facebook, including six of the top 15 health and fitness apps. There's little end users can do, except for be wary of the apps they're choosing to download. Apple in the future could introduce more stringent guidelines and policy controls that would better put a stop to this kind of intrusive data harvesting.

The Wall Street Journal's full report, which is well worth reading, offers more detail on how it tested these apps and how some of the apps responded.

Apple plans to close both of its retail stores within the Eastern District of Texas in a few months from now in an effort to protect itself from patent trolls, according to five sources familiar with the matter.

Apple Willow Bend in Plano, Texas and Apple Stonebriar in Frisco, Texas, both located in the northern suburbs of Dallas, are expected to permanently close in mid April. One source said each store's final day of business will be Friday, April 12. Employees were briefed about the plans earlier this week.

To continue to serve the region, Apple plans to open a new store at the Galleria Dallas shopping mall in Dallas, just outside the Eastern District of Texas border. One source said the store will open Saturday, April 13.

Residency is also a factor in determining the applicable venue of a patent infringement lawsuit, but in May 2017, the Supreme Court shifted precedent by ruling that a U.S. corporation resides only in its state of incorporation. Apple is incorporated in California, not Texas, satisfying this clause.

The Eastern District of Texas has been a hotbed for patent litigation over the past few decades due to well-established rules for patent infringement cases, experienced judges, lower probability of cases being transferred to another district, and quicker jury verdicts, according to a SMU Dedman School of Law paper.

Patent infringement lawsuits against Apple will likely shift to U.S. district courts in Northern California and Delaware.

Fortunately, we're hearing that the plans, while inconvenient, are not too detrimental for employees. One source said Apple has offered employees opportunities to transfer to other stores, work from home for AppleCare, or severance to those who are not interested in working at another Apple location.

Apple has yet to publicly announce the plans. We reached out to Apple for comment late Thursday but have yet to hear back.

Update: Apple has confirmed the impending store closures in a statement issued to TechCrunch:

We're making a major investment in our stores in Texas, including significant upgrades to NorthPark Center, Southlake and Knox Street. With a new Dallas store coming to the Dallas Galleria this April, we've made the decision to consolidate stores and close Apple Stonebriar and Apple Willow Bend. All employees from those stores will be offered positions at the new Dallas store or other Apple locations.

Apple did not provide a specific reason for the store closures beyond consolidation.