Google purchases HTC's Pixel team for US $1.1 billion

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

After weeks of speculation that Google would purchase HTC's smartphone business, we finally learn that the search giant has bought the Pixel team from HTC for $1.1 billion, while HTC will continue its own smartphone business. 

The team in question was the R&D team behind last year's Pixel and Pixel XL. This means around 2,000 people will move to Google. According to the agreement this grants Google a non-exclusive license for HTC's intellectual property. The deal is expected to be approved and closed by early 2018.

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Disabling Wi-Fi and Bluetooth from iOS 11’s Control Center doesn’t necessarily turn it off

Turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on iOS 11 is a pretty easy thing to do. Just swipe up and press two buttons in the Control Center. But according to Mashable, this doesn’t fully turn off these features anymore. Instead, it just disconnects you from existing Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections. So if you move to a new location or something, it’ll turn on again. To completely turn off these features, you’ll need to head to Settings > Wi-Fi and Settings > Bluetooth.

It might makes sense for Apple to keep these features on, especially with the increasing number of interconnected devices the company is selling. But it would’ve been good to be upfront about this. Some might not consider this a big deal but we have learned recently that hackers can gain access to your device via a Bluetooth flaw and we know how easy it is also to access your device via Wi-Fi. It might be worth your time to dig into your settings now.

Google might be closing purchase of HTC assets to boost hardware efforts

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Looks like Google might be thinking about getting back in the hardware business. This time, it’s being reported that Google is closing a deal with HTC to acquire the Taiwanese company’s hardware engineering assets, focusing on mobile. HTC is reportedly holding a town hall meeting on Thursday and if there’s truth to that, they might be discussing this deal. Not much is known at this point about which parts of HTC’s business Google plans to acquire. The Verge speculates they might leave the HTC brand for the company’s Vive and virtual reality business to use. As Evan Blass tweets, HTC is retaining its brand.

HTC has announced it was temporarily halting trading of its shares on the Taiwan stock exchange tomorrow because of the release of “material information,” which signals the announcement of something big.

Source: Bloomberg

Apple acknowledges Apple Watch Series 3 LTE issues before launch

The Apple Watch Series 3 which comes with its own cellular connection was launched last week and even demoed by enabling a phone call to a user paddle boarding in Lake Tahoe. Early reviews of the new Watch, however, seem to have uncovered some serious issues with its LTE connectivity.

Checking out the review of Lauren Goode of The Verge showed the reviewer having a difficult time getting Siri to work on cellular as well as not being able to make calls on the Watch which often had one bar of signal.

Not good for a product that promises to work independently from the iPhone and is specifically targeting runners and surfers who may not want to take their phones with them. LTE has other issues, including battery drain and (down to 30% by noon).

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