South Korea to spend $1.5 billion on 5G mobile network that’s ’1,000 times faster’ than 4G

South Korea, eager to keep its title as the world’s most connected nation, has announced that it will spend $1.5 billion (1.6 trillion won) on rolling out a next-generation mobile 5G network. What actually constitutes a 5G network is a bit nebulous at the moment, but the general consensus is that it would be somewhere between 10 and 1000 times faster than current 4G LTE networks, with download speeds in the region of 100-1000 megabytes per second — fast enough to download a TV episode or movie in a couple of seconds. The South Korean government hopes that by getting ahead of the curve, national chaebols such as Samsung and LG — which represent a significant portion of the country’s entire GDP — will have a competitive edge when other nations get around to rolling out 5G.

What exactly is 5G? That’s a very good question, and as it stands there’s no definitive answer. The ITU, the organization that defines telecoms standards, has only just started looking at the problem and is years away from a 5G specification. Right now, 5G is essentially a catch-all term for the next generation of very-high-speed mobile networks that are being developed by various research groups around the world. There have been very few actual real-world 5G tests. In mid-2013, Samsung set up a “5G” wireless link capable of 1Gbps (100MB/sec) over two kilometers (1.2 miles) — but there are scant few details on how Samsung actually pulled it off, and even fewer details of whether the test was actually applicable to mobile applications (it sounds like Samsung used a big van full of batteries and antennae).

If things move quickly, we might have a 5G standard by 2015 or 2016. The South Korean roadmap, following the government’s $1.5 billion investment, wants to see a trial 5G deployment in 2017, and a commercial service by the end of 2020. The main barrier to developing a 5G standard, though, is finding a suitable way of pushing gigabits of data through the air without interfering with other wireless services and without burning through the battery. (Read: World’s fastest wireless network hits 100 gigabits per second, can scale to terabits.)

Generally, as we’ve moved through the generations (1G, 2G, 3G, 4G), most of the speed boosts have come from utilizing larger swaths of bandwidth. LTE-Advanced, the fastest 4G spec out there, uses 100MHz of prime wireless spectrum (2G only used 200KHz by comparison). While we can rely on new MIMO and modulation tech to get us some of the way to 5G, we’re ultimately going to need more bandwidth — and, down in the cellular sweet spot (700-2100MHz) there just isn’t that much bandwidth available. As a result, 5G may have to use higher frequencies (30-90GHz) where there’s a lot more free space — but the millimeter wave frequencies have their own problems (they are very rapidly attenuated by obstacles) that will need to be worked around. (Read: The wireless spectrum crunch, illustrated.)

By spending  $1.5 billion on the project, the South Korean government hopes that it can give Samsung and LG, which own a huge portion of the worldwide smartphone market, a competitive edge when 5G is eventually rolled out in Asia, Europe, and North America. The government also notes that it would like to boost the country’s telecom infrastructure equipment industry, which so far only has 4.4% of the global market (peanuts compared to Samsung’s 30% share of the global handset market). If South Korea can beat the rest of the world to 5G by a couple of years, there could be a huge payout for the country’s hardware companies.

iOS in the Car video is improved navigation

It’s been over half a year since Apple announced iOS in the Car integrationwith over a dozen automakers, and we’ve not heard much from Cupertino about this feature since then. Today, a video leaked that shows off exactly what the interface currently looks like, and it’s quite promising. It’s still just an emulation running in OS X, but it does give us a solid idea of what we can expect from 2014′s in-dash user experience.

In this YouTube video, a developer named Steven Troughton-Smith walks us through the “iOS in the Car” interface with a build designed for iOS 7.0.3. While the build shown here is limited in scope, it does showcase some very valuable information. For example, it does support touchscreens and multiple resolutions, but it doesn’t support third-party apps or multitasking. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to have a virtual keyboard interface either. Instead, voice recognition will serve as the main form of input. Dictation is still handled in the cloud, so hopefully Siri won’t collapse under the pressure.

Of course, these are still early days for Apple’s in-car integration. The software shown in this demonstration is unfinished, and automakers still need to ship iOS-ready models. Even so, The Verge points to a very interesting screenshot provided by an iOS developer by the name of Denis Stas. In this screenshot, he shows the emulator running with the iOS 7.1 beta, and it looks substantially different. The user interface has been thoroughly polished, and the aesthetic better matches the look of Apple’s current UI motifs. If the rest of the software has seen as much work as the user interface, a public release might be in the cards in the next couple of months.

We know that traffic, directions, music, and messaging are all going to be available with Apple’s system, but what about third-party apps? Many of us spend hours in the car every single day, so customized apps and notifications would be welcome additions. It’s also worth noting that Apple’s lackluster mapping solution can’t be swapped out for Google Maps here, and that could turn off a number of wary travelers. If Apple wants iOS in the Car to gain traction in the long run, third-party apps are absolutely a must. How long will we have to wait for Apple to take the hint?

Frankly, the competition is heating up from all sides. Microsoft and Ford have been working together for years with Ford Sync, and Google is teaming up with Audi and Nvidia to move Android directly into the car market. Apple isn’t the only smartphone game in town, and automakers are even working to cut-out the need for smartphone integration with 4G-enabled cars. Apple certainly has its work cut out for it, and each day that goes by without an iOS in-car solution makes it even more difficult for Apple to reach new users. If iOS in the car has any hope for success, Apple needs to release it as soon as humanly possible.

Duke’s metamaterial superlens could finally allow for long-range wireless charging

Wireless power transmission is fantastic in theory — but in practice, due to some pesky laws of physics, the range of transmission is extremely limited. Yes, you can now charge your phone by putting it on a wireless power transfer plate, but that plate still needs to be plugged into the wall, and — more importantly — you still have to remember to put your phone on the plate. What would really make wireless power transmission (WPT) useful is if you could power a device´s that’s still in your hands or pocket. By using metamaterials, Duke University has discovered a way of wirelessly transmitting power over much greater distances, bringing us tantalizingly close to a utopian society where mobile devices never run out of battery.

Wireless power transmission, or more accurately resonant inductive charging, is not a new phenomenon. If you want to read about it in detail, we have an explainer that you should read. In short, though, inductive charging works like this: You have two loops of wire, you run current through one loop, and that current induces an resonant electric field in the other loop. This process, as you can imagine, isn’t very efficient — but if the loops are “tuned” to each other (like a radio antenna), and they’re aligned within a few millimeters, you might reach a transmission efficiency of 80% or so.

The big problem, though, is distance. The effective range of a WPT system is dictated by the diameter of the loop. At distances greater than the diameter, efficiency drops off very, very quickly. As you can imagine, for mobile devices such as your smartphone, there is a very finite size on the loop diameter. This is why you have to put your phone on a plate, rather than the plate beaming power across the room to the phone in your pocket.

Enter Duke University’s breakthrough, which uses a metamaterial superlens to create a WPT system that can transmit power up to 12 times the diameter of the two coils (which are 2cm in this case). A superlens (a lens that goes beyond the diffraction limit), by using materials with properties not found in nature (metamaterials), can circumvent the diameter-transmission-distance limitation. (Read: The wonderful world of wonder materials.) In this case, the metamaterial is fashioned out of lots of little copper loops (pictured above), arranged in a 3D pattern (top photo). If you want to read the math behind this metamaterial superlens, hit up the research paper (it’s open access): doi:10.1038/srep03642 – “Magnetic Metamaterial Superlens for Increased Range Wireless Power Transfer.”

Duke University’s metamaterial superlens, for long-range wireless power transmission

At just under a foot, we’re not yet talking about a system that can wirelessly recharge devices across a room, but it’s a big step in the right direction. If you had a 5cm loop in the back of your phone, and a matching metamaterial superlens transmission coil, the range would be 60cm, two feet. With some tweaking — different materials, better manufacturing, beamforming — perhaps the superlens can reach even farther. Who knows, maybe in a few years, coffee tables and office tables everywhere will be outfitted with wireless charging units that keep your phone, tablet, and laptop permanently charged.

Please, Microsoft, don’t put Windows XP to sleep on April 8 – the world isn’t ready yet!

On April 8 2014, almost thirteen years after it was first released, Windows  XP will finally breathe its last breath and die — officially, anyway. From that date, Microsoft will no longer support the inveterate OS, meaning instability bugs and security vulnerabilities will go forever unpatched. With Windows XP’s desktop market share still around 30%, and many enterprises still months or years away from upgrading to Windows 7/8, these unsupported and insecure machines represent a serious risk to the health and security of the internet and other high-tech infrastructure. If just a single zero-day vulnerability is found after April 8, it will never be fixed. There’s no telling what damage cybercriminals might sow with such an exploit.

It’s important to note that the Windows XP EOL/EOS (end of life/end of support) has been a long time coming. We’ve known since June 2008 that Microsoft would withdraw paid assisted support, security updates, and non-security hotfixes for Windows XP on April 2014. There will also be no further updates to online technical documentation. While this is obviously an issue from a security perspective, the larger issue is compliance — if you manage personal data (which is basically every big company), there are industry and federal regulations (PCI, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, etc.) that you need to comply with. Using a non-supported operating system, and thus dangerously exposing your client database to hackers, is a compliance no-no.

It’s hard to believe that 29% of PC users still see this when they turn their computer on.

According to Net Applications, Windows XP still had a 29% share of the desktop market at the end of December 2013. Realistically, most big western enterprises and institutions have probably already upgraded to Windows 7. The bulk of the 29% probably consists of China’s infamous love affair for pirated copies of Windows XP, and a lot of mom-and-pop desktops and netbooks. Windows 7 only came out four years ago, and the widely reviled Windows Vista came before that. When you factor in the slowing pace of the PC market, and the small performance gains from new hardware, it’s not hard to believe that there’s a bunch of Windows XP machines still floating around. (Read: PC obsolescence is obsolete.)

The other area where Windows XP still rules supreme is in legacy systems. For large institutions, such as banks, upgrading from a legacy (and often bespoke) system is time consuming, expensive, and dangerous. As a result, there are banks, airline companies, and other huge enterprises that still have back-end systems that are much older than Windows XP. Case in point: According to Bloomberg Businessweek, 95% of the 420,000 ATMs (cash machines) in the USA run Windows XP. Come April 8 2014, if a serious security flaw is found in Windows XP, the banks will be on their own to defend against increasingly high-tech criminals. (Read: ATMs running Windows XP robbed with infected USB sticks.) The banks do have plans to upgrade these machines, but it will take time — probably a few years, if not more.

It’s hard to get a fix on the total number of desktop PCs in the world, but it’s somewhere between one and two billion. At 29% of the desktop market share, a botnet of epic proportions could be fashioned if a suitable zero-day vulnerability was found. I guess we should be glad that Microsoft has an excellent reputation for taking down botnets, eh?

Anyway, the point is, if you have a friend or family member who’s still running Windows XP, help them upgrade to Windows 7 as soon as possible. In case you were wondering, Office 2003 also has the same EOL/EOS date — but unless you’re in the habit of opening random email attachments, it’s much less of a potential security risk.

Windows 9 coming in 2015

To distance itself from the Windows 8 snafu, Microsoft’s next major update — Threshold — will reportedly skip Windows 8.2 and jump straight to Windows 9. Windows 9 is expected to arrive in April 2015, with internal sources saying that Windows 9 will make good on many of the Windows 8 features that caused such cruel and unusual distress to Desktop users. The Start menu is expected to make its illustrious return, and you should be able to run Metro apps on the Desktop in windows. Microsoft is still on schedule to release Windows Phone 8.1 and a service/feature pack for Windows 8.1 at the Build conference in April.

This latest information comes from the ineffable and surprisingly handsome Paul Thurrott, who usually has pretty accurate sources when it comes to Microsoft leaks. We had previously heard about Threshold, but at the time we thought Microsoft would stick with the Windows 8 naming scheme. By moving to Windows 9, it definitely signals that Microsoft is looking to make drastic, significant changes. Windows 8 is almost completely characterized by the maligned Metro Start Screen. We would be surprised if Windows 9 did not change the primary interface in some way, so that it’s visually distinct from Windows 8 — so that users know that that it isn’t ewww Windows 8. Windows 9 might even boot straight to the Desktop, by default — at least on laptop and desktop PCs, anyway. (Read:How to bring back the Start menu and button in Windows 8.)

Windows 9 is also expected to feature Metro 2.0 — some kind of maturation of the current Metro design language that dominates the Windows 8 Start Screen and apps. It’s not immediately clear what Metro 2.0 will be exactly, but part of it appears to be the ability to run Metro apps in separate windows on the Desktop. Presumably, if Metro apps are going to be on the Desktop, they will also gain the ability to be controlled with a mouse and keyboard. (Navigating current Metro apps with your keyboard is unpleasant to say the least.) Windows 9 may also feature complete cross-platform app compatibility between Windows 9, Windows Phone 8.1, and the Xbox One — but really, it’s too early to tell at this point.

Steven Sinofsky, holding a Windows 8 tablet. The beginning of the end.

Thurrott’s other interesting tidbits revolve around April’s Build conference, which occurs a couple of weeks after the company finishes its huge internal reorganization. While the conference will be mostly focused on Windows Phone 8.1 and the Xbox One, there will apparently be a “vision announcement” for Windows 9 — something that we haven’t seen since 2003, whenMicrosoft unveiled Longhorn (which later became Vista). During Sinofsky’s rein, Microsoft’s Windows division has been incredibly secretive — this Windows 9 keynote probably won’t be quite as crazy and freewheeling as the olden days, but Microsoft hopes that it will enough to begin the process of healing the wounds left by Windows 8.

Of course, now that I mention Longhorn, it’s impossible to ignore the parallels between Vista and Windows 8. Both were victims of Microsoft's long and slow development cycle: Slow and bloated Vista arrived just as netbooks were taking off, and Windows 8 — though its heart was almost in the right place — was a couple of years too late. Hopefully the successor to Windows 8 will be as good as good as Vista’s successor. Microsoft kind of needs a miracle for Windows Phone 8.1, too — if you think that adoption of Windows 8 has been bad, it’s even more anemic on the smartphone side of the equation. The next 12-18 months will be very important for Microsoft: It must either field a compelling OS and ecosystem for smartphones and tablets, or it runs the risk of fading into consumer obscurity.