Daily Authority: 🗺 200MP & Wi-Fi 7

Good day! It seems the whole of Europe is getting some time off today, enjoy! Meanwhile, Computex is still in full-force.

Wi-Fi 7 is the news that interested me the most today. Wi-Fi 7 itself is not new, but MediaTek’s announced Filogic 380 and 880 platforms (Anandtech) mean we’re one step closer to consumer products.

• Announced at Computex, the Filogic 880 is made for the networking gear you set up in your home.
• The Filogic 380 is the silicon that will go into your smartphone.

As a refresher:

• Wi-Fi 7 operates on the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands.
• Offers a theoretical maximum speed of 46Gbps.
• Wi-Fi 7 is officially called IEEE 802.11be, so watch for the “be” on future hardware purchases.
• Wi-Fi 7 offers more bands that can handle more data.
• Wi-Fi 7 can connect to more devices simultaneously, which improves latency from network jams.

Bottom line, Wi-Fi 7 is multiple times faster than Wi-Fi 6, and has superior connectivity. When will we see consumer devices with Wi-Fi 7? Let’s see about getting Wi-Fi 6 into more homes first, shall we?

Speaking of cool tech that isn’t available yet…

Samsung wanted to remind the world that they’ve got a 200MP camera in the works, so they did an entirely internet thing, they took a cat photo.

• The 200MP Isocell sensor was attached to a development board.
• They had a whole team to ensure the best results.
• The final photo was printed on a poster…
• That poster measures 92ft across and 72ft tall.

We’ve long known that a 200MP camera was coming, and Samsung may not be the first to market, but the output is real, we’re pretty hyped for it. Here are some of the specs:

• 200MP = 201,326,592 pixels
• ChameleonCell pixel-binning can group four or sixteen pixels together.
• Pixel binning effectively provides 50MP with 1.28-micron pixels, or 12.5MP with 2.56-micron pixels.

Bored of the info? Enjoy Samsung’s big cat photo.

Roundup

🔋 Solving a problem that you shouldn’t have had in the first place, the Elebase puck is the portable charger you need for your Samsung Galaxy Watch 4.

🛑 Google is putting the brakes on the Pixel Fold, again, but is that a bad thing?

👴 New phones aren’t that bad these days, sounds like you would buy one.

🛠 Did you hear about the suitcases of gear needed to fix an iPhone?

🕶 Folks in London might soon catch a horde of Meta employees walking down the street wearing AR glasses. This is advanced R&D to enhance the glasses and further their Metaverse efforts. (Yahoo.com)

☎ LG may have ducked out of the smartphone business, but they’re going strong in the EV, AI, and pharmaceutical markets. (Korea Herald)

🦆 Twitter deal is heating up as existing executives and board members step down or step away from the company. (Zdnet)

🚀 The Boeing Starliner is safely back on the ground, successfully heading to the ISS and back. (Space)

🖥Consume some media on the recently announced realme Pad X, an 11-inch Android tablet with modest specs. (GSM Arena)

Throwback Thursday

Today in history, Google released Street View. The feature that let’s you enjoy a real-life view of many roadways across the globe is now fifteen years old.

• Google has mapped 102 countries and territories.
• Street View covers more than 10 million miles of the earth.
• Street View is available for roads, paths, trails, coastlines, underwater, for historic landmarks, and space. Yeah.
• The mapping feature is made up of over 220 billion images.
• To capture these images, they’ve used cars, bikes, camels, humans with backpacks, and more.

Learn more about Google Maps

To celebrate, Google is pushing out a little update to the mobile app.

• Travel through time! Explore the past by viewing older image sets in some areas.
• Google is also promoting their favorite iconic locations, such as the Eiffel Tower and Machu Picchu.

Street View is available inside of Google Maps and Google Earth. Check out the Street View Anniversary page for more details!

Off to play a little space and time game in Maps that I call “dude, where’s my car!?!”

Jonathan