It was the June solstice on Tuesday, which means summer is officially, astronomically speaking, here – and Scotland has seen a heat wave (which represents about 24 degrees Celsius for us!). Welcome to The Weekly Authority, the Android Authority newsletter with the week’s best Android and tech news. The 200th edition here features Pixel 7 Pro news, Samsung’s stock issue, a look inside the ASUS ROG Phone 6, and much more.
Popular news this week
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Samsung:
poco:
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Elsewhere:
Huge swaths of the internet were down on Tuesday during a Cloudflare outage, including Medium, Discord, Fitbit, Peloton, and DoorDash; within hours, everything was up and running again. Asus ROG Phone 6 images and specs appear online: here’s what we know about the July 5 launch. ZTE Axon 40 Ultra launched in the US: a flagship with an under-display camera. And Mediatek Dimensity 9000 Plus launched: The power level is (technically) over 9000 – phones, with the Dimensity 9000 Plus launching in Q3 2022. Meanwhile, the spiritual successor to Essential Phone is up for pre-order, shipping in early 2023. Plus, Xiaomi Mi Band 7 goes global for $52.
Meta aims to develop a VR headset that can pass a “visual Turing test”, i.e., create a virtual world indistinguishable from our own – and we’ve glimpsed future generations of Meta’s VR screens. , but you will never be able to try any of them. Instagram can now verify your age with your face with new AI technology. And Elon Musk continues to delay Twitter’s buyout and has three reasons why. Telegram Premium launched: here’s everything you need to know. Also: Reddit celebrated its 17th birthday on Thursday.
As cryptocurrency falls, prices for GPUs continue to fall, which is great news for gamers but more interesting for big data crunching and machine learning. Meanwhile, EVs now average over $60,000 as Tesla, Rivian, and Ford raise prices. Senators call for a common charger standard in the US. And spray-on plant coating could replace wasteful plastic food packaging, but it may be a while before we see it in use. Finally, you can nse your Chromebook tto access your Phone’s photos quickly.
Movies/TV:
It seems strange that the first airmail delivery occurred this week in 1946. On June 22 of that year, a jet aircraft from General Electric Air Research Lab in Schenectady, New York, took off as part of an Army Air Force demonstration, carrying a small amount of mail to Washington DC and Chicago. We say strange because today we are about to receive delivery by drone. Last week, Amazon announced that customers in Lockeford, CA, would be among the first to receive drone deliveries later this year. This is Amazon’s first time making drone deliveries available to the public. Drones can fly beyond the ine of sight, meaning they can operate outside the normal view of the drone pilot. The drones will deliver deliveries to customers in the city — with a population of 4,000 — for residents living within four miles of the planned drone facility.
However, these are bigger than your average drone:
Amazon’s drones are four feet wide, four feet high and can deliver packages weighing up to 5 lbs. It will cost Amazon $146k to build the current generation of drones, although it plans to reduce it to $60k for the next generation. The current generation of drones has a range of 5 km, but the next generation could triple that to 15 km. The size of these drones begs many people’s questions: How safe are drone deliveries?
Drone delivery safety
Not all residents of Lockeford are happy with the news. Some say drones are an invasion of their privacy. Others fear that they may startle livestock. Amazon says residents’ feedback will help shape Prime Air’s service and future scaling. But are they right to be concerned? As of May 2022, Amazon had eight drone crashes in the past year, one of which caused a wildfire in Oregon. This has reportedly led to clashes with FAA inspectors after Amazon moved alleged crash evidence and was slow in handing over data. Drones have injured people in the past — in 2015, a photography drone knocked a woman unconscious during the Seattle Pride Parade, and this was much smaller than Amazon’s drones, weighing less than 3 pounds. Research conducted by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the State University team reported that test drone models weighing more than 15 pounds had a greater than 50% risk of serious head and neck injuries if they fell on humans.
But there are also logistical issues to consider:
There is no safe landing area for parcels: porches are covered, backyards often house pets, and mailboxes are inaccessible to drones. Options include installing a drone delivery path or delivering in a secure “smart locker” that the recipient can access via a code.
Not to mention security:
Amazon needs to ensure its drones are impervious to hackers to prevent theft and ensure there is no risk to property, people, or even other aircraft. If drones are hacked or malfunction and fall from the sky, their size and weight can pose a serious risk.
Do Drones Save Amazon Money?
It costs Amazon about $4.50-$5.50 to deliver a package through third-party delivery partners or $3.47 per package through its logistics network. Drone delivery via Prime Air will cost $63 per package by 2025, according to internal projections by Business Insider. But Amazon is going for scaling here and plans to reduce these costs as more locations are added, and the number of drops to customers increases. So are drones the future of ecommerce delivery? If Amazon’s initial rollout is successful, you could get drone delivery faster than you think.
Technical calendar
June 26-July 3: Summer Games Done Quick June 28: HTC Log In To The Future launch event (Metaverse Phone?) July 5: Asus ROG Phone 6 launch @ 8 am ET July 12: Nothing Phone 1 launch @ 4 pm BST ( 11 AM ET). July 12-13: Amazon Prime Day. July 13: Launch Samsung Galaxy XCover 6 Pro and Galaxy Tab Active 4 Pro July 19: Stray lands on PS5, PS4, and PC July 28: Pixel 6a launch. August 10 (TBC): Samsung unpacked? (new Galaxy Foldables, Galaxy Watch 5 series?)
