آسٹن میں قائم وینچر فرم 8VC، جس کی قیادت متنازعہ پالانٹیر کے بانی جون لونسڈیل نے کی ہے، نے اپنے پانچویں فنڈ میں 880 ملین ڈالر جمع کیے ہیں۔
میں ایک بلاگ پوسٹ آج شائع ہوا، Lonsdale – جو 8VC کے جنرل پارٹنر کے طور پر کام کرتا ہے – نے کہا کہ ان کی فرم کا مشن \”ایک ٹوٹی ہوئی دنیا کو ٹھیک کرنا ہے۔\”
اگرچہ اس نے یہ واضح نہیں کیا کہ نیا فنڈ کن صنعتوں کو ہدف بنائے گا یا اوسط چیک سائز کرے گا، لونسڈیل نے انکشاف کیا کہ 8VC اب \”6 بلین ڈالر سے زیادہ پرعزم سرمایہ\” کا انتظام کرتا ہے اور یہ کہ \”ہر مرحلے پر\” سرمایہ کاری کرنے کے ساتھ ساتھ خود کمپنیاں بنانے کا ارادہ رکھتا ہے۔ . انہوں نے یہ بھی بتایا کہ 8VC ٹیم 60 سے زیادہ افراد تک پہنچ گئی ہے۔
2020 میں، 8VC مشہور ہے۔ اپنا ہیڈکوارٹر منتقل کر دیا ہے۔ سان فرانسسکو سے آسٹن، ٹیکساس تک۔ اس وقت، Lonsdale ٹویٹ کیا کہ آسٹن تھا۔ SF کے مقابلے میں نظریاتی تنوع کا زیادہ روادار۔ انہوں نے مزید کہا: \”عموماً یہ ایک اچھا خیال ہے کہ عظیم ثقافت/موسیقی/کھانے وغیرہ کے لیے بائیں بازو کے زبردست ہپیوں کا ساتھ رکھا جائے … بلکہ وہ سب ریاست نہیں چلاتے۔\”
آج، اس نے لکھا کہ ٹیکساس کے دارالحکومت میں 8VC کا نیا ہیڈکوارٹر \”دنیا بھر کے کاروباریوں اور معماروں کے لیے ایک مقناطیس بن گیا ہے۔\”
خیال کیا جاتا ہے کہ فنڈ ہے۔ کے مطابق، اسٹارٹ اپس کے لیے ٹیکساس میں قائم سب سے بڑا وینچر فنڈ آسٹن اننو.
نئے فنڈ کے بارے میں Lonsdale کی پوسٹ نے ایک فلسفیانہ لہجہ مارا۔ انہوں نے لکھا، \”ہماری تہذیب کے سامنے بہت بڑے چیلنجز ہیں، یقینی طور پر، اور انٹرپرینیورشپ کو بھی چیلنجز درپیش ہیں۔\” \”لیکن بطور کاروباری، ٹوٹی ہوئی چیزیں مواقع پیش کرتی ہیں۔ اور جب ہم گہرائی میں دیکھتے ہیں تو ہم اپنے چاروں طرف حیرت انگیز تبدیلیاں ہوتے دیکھتے ہیں۔ AI کمپیوٹر کے اندر اور باہر کی دنیا کو تبدیل کر رہا ہے۔ جینومک انجینئرنگ اور نیا سائنسی علم خلیات کی دنیا کو تبدیل کر رہے ہیں۔ جدید مینوفیکچرنگ مشینوں کی دنیا کو بدل رہی ہے۔ نئے کاروباری ماڈلز، مراعات اور اختراعات ہیں۔ ہم اپنی صحت کی دیکھ بھال کیسے حاصل کرتے ہیں اس کو تبدیل کرنا۔ یہ ہماری چند سرحدیں ہیں۔\”
سالوں کے دوران، 8VC نے مختلف قسم کی صنعتوں جیسے کہ لاجسٹکس، لائف سائنسز، ہیلتھ کیئر، آئی ٹی انفراسٹرکچر، حکومت اور دفاع، مالیاتی خدمات، صارف اور انٹرپرائز میں سرمایہ کاری کی ہے۔ کے مطابق پچ بک، اس کے پاس ہے مجموعی طور پر تقریباً 500 سرمایہ کاری کی۔ اس کے درمیان پورٹ فولیو کمپنیوں Asana، Blend، Flexport، Hims and hers، Mammoth Biosciences، Elon Musk کی The Boring Company، Qualia اور Wish ہیں۔
بعض اوقات، لونسڈیل نے اپنی طرف اتنی ہی توجہ مبذول کرائی ہے جتنی کہ اس کی پورٹ فولیو کمپنیوں نے۔ پچھلے سال کے شروع میں، اس نے شہ سرخیاں بنائیں اور اپنی ٹویٹس کے بعد چند سے زیادہ پنکھوں کو جھنجوڑ دیا۔ \”ویک\” ٹیک تنوع کے بارے میں. دیگر تنازعات جن میں وہ الجھ گئے ہیں ان میں شامل ہیں۔ کے ساتھ تعلقات ختم پہلے سرمایہ کاری کرنے والے شراکت دار اور اسٹینفورڈ کے ایک سابق طالب علم کی طرف سے دائر کردہ ایک ہائی پروفائل مقدمہ جسے بعد میں گرا دیا گیا۔.
لونسڈیل، سیکرٹری آف ٹرانسپورٹیشن پیٹ بٹگیگ کی پیٹرنٹی چھٹی کے سلسلے میں بھی، ٹویٹ کیا 2021 کے آخر میں کہ \”اہم عہدے پر فائز کوئی بھی آدمی جو نوزائیدہ کے لیے 6 ماہ کی چھٹی لیتا ہے… ایک ہارنے والا۔\”
اس نے اکثر بعد میں ہونے والے ردعمل کے خلاف اپنا دفاع کیا ہے، یہ کہتے ہوئے کہ اس کے الفاظ کو غلط سمجھا گیا تھا یا سیاق و سباق سے ہٹ کر لیا گیا تھا۔
نیویارکر کے ایک مضمون میں اس ماہ پر آسٹن کی تبدیلی حالیہ برسوں میں لبرل گڑھ سے لے کر \”لبرل ازم کی نسبت آزادی پسندی کے قریب تر\”، لونسڈیل نے مضمون کے مصنف سے اپنے اپنائے ہوئے شہر کے بارے میں بات کی، اسے بتایا کہ اس کے جادو کا حصہ یہ ہے کہ سیاست پر سول انداز میں بات کی جا سکتی ہے۔
\”سان فرانسسکو میں،\” لونسڈیل کے حوالے سے کہا گیا ہے، \”جب میں کسی کے خلاف جاؤں گا، تو وہ اس طرح ہوں گے، \’تم ایک برے شخص ہو۔\’ تو ٹیکساس کے بارے میں ابھی بھی بہت صحت مند چیز ہے۔ مجھے واقعی امید ہے کہ ہم اسے اسی طرح برقرار رکھ سکتے ہیں۔
SEC فائلنگ کے مطابق، 8VC نے اپنا آخری فلیگ شپ فنڈ بند کر دیا۔ $640 ملین 2021 میں سرمائے کے وعدوں میں؛ اس نے حالیہ برسوں میں متعدد خاص مقصد والی گاڑیاں بھی اٹھائی ہیں، فائلنگز دکھائیں۔
آسٹن میں قائم وینچر فرم 8VC، جس کی قیادت متنازعہ پالانٹیر کے بانی جون لونسڈیل نے کی ہے، نے اپنے پانچویں فنڈ میں 880 ملین ڈالر جمع کیے ہیں۔
میں ایک بلاگ پوسٹ آج شائع ہوا، Lonsdale – جو 8VC کے جنرل پارٹنر کے طور پر کام کرتا ہے – نے کہا کہ ان کی فرم کا مشن \”ایک ٹوٹی ہوئی دنیا کو ٹھیک کرنا ہے۔\”
اگرچہ اس نے یہ واضح نہیں کیا کہ نیا فنڈ کن صنعتوں کو ہدف بنائے گا یا اوسط چیک سائز کرے گا، لونسڈیل نے انکشاف کیا کہ 8VC اب \”6 بلین ڈالر سے زیادہ پرعزم سرمایہ\” کا انتظام کرتا ہے اور یہ کہ \”ہر مرحلے پر\” سرمایہ کاری کرنے کے ساتھ ساتھ خود کمپنیاں بنانے کا ارادہ رکھتا ہے۔ . انہوں نے یہ بھی بتایا کہ 8VC ٹیم 60 سے زیادہ افراد تک پہنچ گئی ہے۔
2020 میں، 8VC مشہور ہے۔ اپنا ہیڈکوارٹر منتقل کر دیا ہے۔ سان فرانسسکو سے آسٹن، ٹیکساس تک۔ اس وقت، Lonsdale ٹویٹ کیا کہ آسٹن تھا۔ SF کے مقابلے میں نظریاتی تنوع کا زیادہ روادار۔ انہوں نے مزید کہا: \”عموماً یہ ایک اچھا خیال ہے کہ عظیم ثقافت/موسیقی/کھانے وغیرہ کے لیے بائیں بازو کے زبردست ہپیوں کا ساتھ رکھا جائے … بلکہ وہ سب ریاست نہیں چلاتے۔\”
آج، اس نے لکھا کہ ٹیکساس کے دارالحکومت میں 8VC کا نیا ہیڈکوارٹر \”دنیا بھر کے کاروباریوں اور معماروں کے لیے ایک مقناطیس بن گیا ہے۔\”
خیال کیا جاتا ہے کہ فنڈ ہے۔ کے مطابق، اسٹارٹ اپس کے لیے ٹیکساس میں قائم سب سے بڑا وینچر فنڈ آسٹن اننو.
نئے فنڈ کے بارے میں Lonsdale کی پوسٹ نے ایک فلسفیانہ لہجہ مارا۔ انہوں نے لکھا، \”ہماری تہذیب کے سامنے بہت بڑے چیلنجز ہیں، یقینی طور پر، اور انٹرپرینیورشپ کو بھی چیلنجز درپیش ہیں۔\” \”لیکن بطور کاروباری، ٹوٹی ہوئی چیزیں مواقع پیش کرتی ہیں۔ اور جب ہم گہرائی میں دیکھتے ہیں تو ہم اپنے چاروں طرف حیرت انگیز تبدیلیاں ہوتے دیکھتے ہیں۔ AI کمپیوٹر کے اندر اور باہر کی دنیا کو تبدیل کر رہا ہے۔ جینومک انجینئرنگ اور نیا سائنسی علم خلیات کی دنیا کو تبدیل کر رہے ہیں۔ جدید مینوفیکچرنگ مشینوں کی دنیا کو بدل رہی ہے۔ نئے کاروباری ماڈلز، مراعات اور اختراعات ہیں۔ ہم اپنی صحت کی دیکھ بھال کیسے حاصل کرتے ہیں اس کو تبدیل کرنا۔ یہ ہماری چند سرحدیں ہیں۔\”
سالوں کے دوران، 8VC نے مختلف قسم کی صنعتوں جیسے کہ لاجسٹکس، لائف سائنسز، ہیلتھ کیئر، آئی ٹی انفراسٹرکچر، حکومت اور دفاع، مالیاتی خدمات، صارف اور انٹرپرائز میں سرمایہ کاری کی ہے۔ کے مطابق پچ بک، اس کے پاس ہے مجموعی طور پر تقریباً 500 سرمایہ کاری کی۔ اس کے درمیان پورٹ فولیو کمپنیوں Asana، Blend، Flexport، Hims and hers، Mammoth Biosciences، Elon Musk کی The Boring Company، Qualia اور Wish ہیں۔
بعض اوقات، لونسڈیل نے اپنی طرف اتنی ہی توجہ مبذول کرائی ہے جتنی کہ اس کی پورٹ فولیو کمپنیوں نے۔ پچھلے سال کے شروع میں، اس نے شہ سرخیاں بنائیں اور اپنی ٹویٹس کے بعد چند سے زیادہ پنکھوں کو جھنجوڑ دیا۔ \”ویک\” ٹیک تنوع کے بارے میں. دیگر تنازعات جن میں وہ الجھ گئے ہیں ان میں شامل ہیں۔ کے ساتھ تعلقات ختم پہلے سرمایہ کاری کرنے والے شراکت دار اور اسٹینفورڈ کے ایک سابق طالب علم کی طرف سے دائر کردہ ایک ہائی پروفائل مقدمہ جسے بعد میں گرا دیا گیا۔.
لونسڈیل، سیکرٹری آف ٹرانسپورٹیشن پیٹ بٹگیگ کی پیٹرنٹی چھٹی کے سلسلے میں بھی، ٹویٹ کیا 2021 کے آخر میں کہ \”اہم عہدے پر فائز کوئی بھی آدمی جو نوزائیدہ کے لیے 6 ماہ کی چھٹی لیتا ہے… ایک ہارنے والا۔\”
اس نے اکثر بعد میں ہونے والے ردعمل کے خلاف اپنا دفاع کیا ہے، یہ کہتے ہوئے کہ اس کے الفاظ کو غلط سمجھا گیا تھا یا سیاق و سباق سے ہٹ کر لیا گیا تھا۔
نیویارکر کے ایک مضمون میں اس ماہ پر آسٹن کی تبدیلی حالیہ برسوں میں لبرل گڑھ سے لے کر \”لبرل ازم کی نسبت آزادی پسندی کے قریب تر\”، لونسڈیل نے مضمون کے مصنف سے اپنے اپنائے ہوئے شہر کے بارے میں بات کی، اسے بتایا کہ اس کے جادو کا حصہ یہ ہے کہ سیاست پر سول انداز میں بات کی جا سکتی ہے۔
\”سان فرانسسکو میں،\” لونسڈیل کے حوالے سے کہا گیا ہے، \”جب میں کسی کے خلاف جاؤں گا، تو وہ اس طرح ہوں گے، \’تم ایک برے شخص ہو۔\’ تو ٹیکساس کے بارے میں ابھی بھی بہت صحت مند چیز ہے۔ مجھے واقعی امید ہے کہ ہم اسے اسی طرح برقرار رکھ سکتے ہیں۔
SEC فائلنگ کے مطابق، 8VC نے اپنا آخری فلیگ شپ فنڈ بند کر دیا۔ $640 ملین 2021 میں سرمائے کے وعدوں میں؛ اس نے حالیہ برسوں میں متعدد خاص مقصد والی گاڑیاں بھی اٹھائی ہیں، فائلنگز دکھائیں۔
آسٹن میں قائم وینچر فرم 8VC، جس کی قیادت متنازعہ پالانٹیر کے بانی جون لونسڈیل نے کی ہے، نے اپنے پانچویں فنڈ میں 880 ملین ڈالر جمع کیے ہیں۔
میں ایک بلاگ پوسٹ آج شائع ہوا، Lonsdale – جو 8VC کے جنرل پارٹنر کے طور پر کام کرتا ہے – نے کہا کہ ان کی فرم کا مشن \”ایک ٹوٹی ہوئی دنیا کو ٹھیک کرنا ہے۔\”
اگرچہ اس نے یہ واضح نہیں کیا کہ نیا فنڈ کن صنعتوں کو ہدف بنائے گا یا اوسط چیک سائز کرے گا، لونسڈیل نے انکشاف کیا کہ 8VC اب \”6 بلین ڈالر سے زیادہ پرعزم سرمایہ\” کا انتظام کرتا ہے اور یہ کہ \”ہر مرحلے پر\” سرمایہ کاری کرنے کے ساتھ ساتھ خود کمپنیاں بنانے کا ارادہ رکھتا ہے۔ . انہوں نے یہ بھی بتایا کہ 8VC ٹیم 60 سے زیادہ افراد تک پہنچ گئی ہے۔
2020 میں، 8VC مشہور ہے۔ اپنا ہیڈکوارٹر منتقل کر دیا ہے۔ سان فرانسسکو سے آسٹن، ٹیکساس تک۔ اس وقت، Lonsdale ٹویٹ کیا کہ آسٹن تھا۔ SF کے مقابلے میں نظریاتی تنوع کا زیادہ روادار۔ انہوں نے مزید کہا: \”عموماً یہ ایک اچھا خیال ہے کہ عظیم ثقافت/موسیقی/کھانے وغیرہ کے لیے بائیں بازو کے زبردست ہپیوں کا ساتھ رکھا جائے … بلکہ وہ سب ریاست نہیں چلاتے۔\”
آج، اس نے لکھا کہ ٹیکساس کے دارالحکومت میں 8VC کا نیا ہیڈکوارٹر \”دنیا بھر کے کاروباریوں اور معماروں کے لیے ایک مقناطیس بن گیا ہے۔\”
خیال کیا جاتا ہے کہ فنڈ ہے۔ کے مطابق، اسٹارٹ اپس کے لیے ٹیکساس میں قائم سب سے بڑا وینچر فنڈ آسٹن اننو.
نئے فنڈ کے بارے میں Lonsdale کی پوسٹ نے ایک فلسفیانہ لہجہ مارا۔ انہوں نے لکھا، \”ہماری تہذیب کے سامنے بہت بڑے چیلنجز ہیں، یقینی طور پر، اور انٹرپرینیورشپ کو بھی چیلنجز درپیش ہیں۔\” \”لیکن بطور کاروباری، ٹوٹی ہوئی چیزیں مواقع پیش کرتی ہیں۔ اور جب ہم گہرائی میں دیکھتے ہیں تو ہم اپنے چاروں طرف حیرت انگیز تبدیلیاں ہوتے دیکھتے ہیں۔ AI کمپیوٹر کے اندر اور باہر کی دنیا کو تبدیل کر رہا ہے۔ جینومک انجینئرنگ اور نیا سائنسی علم خلیات کی دنیا کو تبدیل کر رہے ہیں۔ جدید مینوفیکچرنگ مشینوں کی دنیا کو بدل رہی ہے۔ نئے کاروباری ماڈلز، مراعات اور اختراعات ہیں۔ ہم اپنی صحت کی دیکھ بھال کیسے حاصل کرتے ہیں اس کو تبدیل کرنا۔ یہ ہماری چند سرحدیں ہیں۔\”
سالوں کے دوران، 8VC نے مختلف قسم کی صنعتوں جیسے کہ لاجسٹکس، لائف سائنسز، ہیلتھ کیئر، آئی ٹی انفراسٹرکچر، حکومت اور دفاع، مالیاتی خدمات، صارف اور انٹرپرائز میں سرمایہ کاری کی ہے۔ کے مطابق پچ بک، اس کے پاس ہے مجموعی طور پر تقریباً 500 سرمایہ کاری کی۔ اس کے درمیان پورٹ فولیو کمپنیوں Asana، Blend، Flexport، Hims and hers، Mammoth Biosciences، Elon Musk کی The Boring Company، Qualia اور Wish ہیں۔
بعض اوقات، لونسڈیل نے اپنی طرف اتنی ہی توجہ مبذول کرائی ہے جتنی کہ اس کی پورٹ فولیو کمپنیوں نے۔ پچھلے سال کے شروع میں، اس نے شہ سرخیاں بنائیں اور اپنی ٹویٹس کے بعد چند سے زیادہ پنکھوں کو جھنجوڑ دیا۔ \”ویک\” ٹیک تنوع کے بارے میں. دیگر تنازعات جن میں وہ الجھ گئے ہیں ان میں شامل ہیں۔ کے ساتھ تعلقات ختم پہلے سرمایہ کاری کرنے والے شراکت دار اور اسٹینفورڈ کے ایک سابق طالب علم کی طرف سے دائر کردہ ایک ہائی پروفائل مقدمہ جسے بعد میں گرا دیا گیا۔.
لونسڈیل، سیکرٹری آف ٹرانسپورٹیشن پیٹ بٹگیگ کی پیٹرنٹی چھٹی کے سلسلے میں بھی، ٹویٹ کیا 2021 کے آخر میں کہ \”اہم عہدے پر فائز کوئی بھی آدمی جو نوزائیدہ کے لیے 6 ماہ کی چھٹی لیتا ہے… ایک ہارنے والا۔\”
اس نے اکثر بعد میں ہونے والے ردعمل کے خلاف اپنا دفاع کیا ہے، یہ کہتے ہوئے کہ اس کے الفاظ کو غلط سمجھا گیا تھا یا سیاق و سباق سے ہٹ کر لیا گیا تھا۔
نیویارکر کے ایک مضمون میں اس ماہ پر آسٹن کی تبدیلی حالیہ برسوں میں لبرل گڑھ سے لے کر \”لبرل ازم کی نسبت آزادی پسندی کے قریب تر\”، لونسڈیل نے مضمون کے مصنف سے اپنے اپنائے ہوئے شہر کے بارے میں بات کی، اسے بتایا کہ اس کے جادو کا حصہ یہ ہے کہ سیاست پر سول انداز میں بات کی جا سکتی ہے۔
\”سان فرانسسکو میں،\” لونسڈیل کے حوالے سے کہا گیا ہے، \”جب میں کسی کے خلاف جاؤں گا، تو وہ اس طرح ہوں گے، \’تم ایک برے شخص ہو۔\’ تو ٹیکساس کے بارے میں ابھی بھی بہت صحت مند چیز ہے۔ مجھے واقعی امید ہے کہ ہم اسے اسی طرح برقرار رکھ سکتے ہیں۔
SEC فائلنگ کے مطابق، 8VC نے اپنا آخری فلیگ شپ فنڈ بند کر دیا۔ $640 ملین 2021 میں سرمائے کے وعدوں میں؛ اس نے حالیہ برسوں میں متعدد خاص مقصد والی گاڑیاں بھی اٹھائی ہیں، فائلنگز دکھائیں۔
Android was, predictably, everywhere at Mobile World Congress. At a show where Apple has no public-facing presence, Google’s mobile operating system is almost entirely ubiquitous. As in past years, the company also set up a sprawling outdoor booth between halls. This time, the focus was on interoperability and ecosystem.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a better person to speak on the subject than Sameer Samat; the former president of Jawbone now heads Android’s product and design team, as well as design and engineering for Google Play and Wear OS. We sat down with the executive on the third day of MWC to discuss Google’s consumer software plays.
Google’s Android booth at MWC 2023 in Barcelona. Image Credits: Brian Heater
Samat: People don’t just buy a phone anymore, they buy into an ecosystem.
TechCrunch: That’s been the case for some time.
Samat: It has, but on the Android side, having that full portfolio of devices is important.
You’re talking specifically about Google devices?
No. It’s not been the case that every major manufacturer has offered a full portfolio. I think that’s super important. It’s really important that those devices work well together. We’ve had this effort that we call “Better Together” for a while, and we’re working on a number of things that help these devices interoperate.
iOS is your main competition. That’s something Apple has done well for a long time. It’s a big part of why people buy their products. Do you look at what they’re doing when building out features?
From a consumer standpoint, it’s very clear that people have more devices in their life. The average U.S. household has 20-plus connected devices in their home. We hear feedback from consumers, and individual manufacturers have implemented these things. Usually on these things, some Android manufacturer has gone and done it first. The reverse happens a lot of times. Apple sees something they think is cool and copies it that way — always-on displays. The difference is: Can you do it widely across the ecosystem? Can you do it where you can cross pair between different devices from different manufacturers, and can you do it at scale.
People ask me for earbud recommendations. Nine times out of 10, I ask them who makes their phone. Manufacturers’ devices tend to work better with their own product.
There’s always opportunity for manufacturers to differentiate. I think that’s good and should remain. But I also think there are basics that need to be standardized, because it provides a level of choice to consumers that they appreciate and they expect in our ecosystem.
Wear OS/Android Wear seemed stagnant for a long time. There does seem to be a renewed effort around the Pixel Watch, however.
We were very early to the watch space. We helped pioneer a lot of things that went into smartwatches. At the beginning, the use cases weren’t very clear. There were a lot things that people wanted their watches to do. There was a view that maybe it was like a phone on your wrist. Over time what’s develop is a set of key pillars — use cases that the device is awesome at, and that will grow over time.
Health came in and completely dominated the conversation.
Health is important. The watch is one of the only electronics that you wear on your body, 24/7. With your permission, it has access to your vitals and these days, health is a big concern for all of us. Technology assisting us with that is very in line with our overall mission, and a lot of what our partners want to do for consumers. As we’ve honed that, there’s been an opportunity to refocus the platform. It started with our partnership with Samsung around this. For a while, they had done something different with their watches [Tizen OS]. We got back together and made an effort to restart that.
With Samsung, Wear OS suddenly has a lot more market share overnight.
Yeah. I think when you find the right market fit with those core use cases and you do it with the right hardware and a great partner like Samsung, it gives you an opportunity to get out there and show consumers what’s possible.
This is one category where Apple was extremely dominate in market share. After the recent updates, if you push Samsung to the side for a moment, are you seeing a lot more adoptions?
Yeah. There are a lot more people buying Wear OS devices, and there will be a lot more devices coming from other partners this year.
Smartphone sales were declining before the pandemic, and that trend has accelerated in the last few years. Will the decline continue to grow?
The market is definitely changing and reaching a new phase. I don’t know that year over year sales is quite the right way to look at this […] There will always be sales of new phones. But I think you’re now reaching the point where this is, for many people, it is their primary computing device. So, there are different and more interesting ways of looking at the market. I think in terms of what are you able to do with these devices? What does engagement look like? What are the services that you’re utilizing? And how is it integrated with other parts of your life? We talked about tablets and we talked about watches, but why are you getting a tablet or watch? It might be all about productivity for you or entertainment. That could be replacing the time you spent watching a big screen television or it could be that you’re using the watch for fitness. In some ways, the watch becomes like the new pair of running shoes. It’s like that promise to yourself that you’re gonna get in shape.
It’s aspirational.
So the real question is not as much for me how many phones are sold? But what is this technology meaning for people across the different aspects of their life? Sure. We need to look at the attachment of different devices. The second part is that devices are lasting longer.
Manufacturers painted themselves into a corner. If you spend $1,000 on a device, it’s probably going to last five years, and not the two or three that were set up by the carrier system.
I think it’s really important that these devices last a long time. We’ve done a few things on our side to support that kind of that. A lot of the top Android phone manufacturers are now offering their four years or five years of security and OS updates. And on top of that, we’ve retooled a lot of the platform and innovated around providing more frequent updates in between those OS updates.
Apple’s not selling many devices. I think they saw that coming and shifted their focus toward monetizing services. The Android revenue model is very different for every company that isn’t Google. They rely on your apps and services. What does the shift in monetization look like for them, now that they’re not selling as many devices?
It’s something a lot of them saw coming. I don’t think it was just Apple. We’ve been in the services business —
For much longer than you’ve been in the phone business…
Hardware is newer for us than services. We have a business model around people using our services. We partner with manufacturers. It’s not a secret that we share in that success. I think there’s going to be more of a movement toward models where devices themselves are sold more as a service. I think there’s a lot of innovative work going on in the carrier side to figure out how you buy a device for less up front, you use it and return it after a period of time and you get another device as part of your overall subscription.
Is Google still committed to Android Go?
Absolutely. The purpose of Android Go is to make sure that entry-level devices have a really high-quality experience. We built Android Go because we saw an opportunity to make sure that when you buy the device, even though it might be less expensive than other devices, that doesn’t mean the experience should be poor.
How bullish is Google on AR and VR?
I think we’re excited about the possibilities of AR and VR. We’re not strangers to the space. We’ve been pioneers there for a long time, and we’re seeing the next generation of the technology now. We’ll be right there with the industry participating in that.
Is there a role for Google to play in the metaverse?
The team that I run at Google is a platform provider. The great thing about the ecosystem is that there are a number of companies that have a vision of what they’d like to see happen. We have developers who like to participate. Where the platform can be relevant is in making sure that there is a way that developers can leverage their interest across different providers and ensure that the experience scales for them. I think the most important thing about AR and VR right now is just like watch. It’s making sure, as an industry, we come to the use cases that truly resonate as a consumer.
There are always regulator concerns around anti-competitive activities. Look at what’s going on in India right now. How much of a challenge are these sorts of laws and regulations for your team.
As a platform provider making technology that is important in people’s live, I think that governments around the world representing their citizens should be involved in looking at that technology carefully. We have a responsibility to make sure that we’re integrating that technology well into society. Different countries have different opinions on how that should work. I think it’s a constructive dialogue for the most part around the world where governments want to engage in that kind of discussion — what role should society play? We welcome that, and we should be engaged in that conversation responsibly. It takes time and is a new component of what we do today. Fifteen years or so ago, it wasn’t a big part of what we do. But it comes with the territory of playing an important role in what people do.
Will Google continue to aggressively push back against some of those decisions?
The important thing Google will do is continue to make products that we hope consumers will love. Of course, where we think that there are elements of policy where we can help educate, we will engage to do that in the right way.
The EU has been at the forefront of much of this digital legislations, whether it’s GDPR, USB-C or the right to repair. What has the climate been like when it comes to dealing with the European Union?
For tech in general across the world, whether it be the EU or any other country where tech is playing a big role in society, there are appropriate questions being asked about how that should happen. On the surface, one might try to say that’s a challenging environment. I prefer to think about it as what happens when technology in a particular area goes mainstream and becomes such an important part of life.
Democracies then look at it as how do we want this technology to interact with our citizenry, and what should that relationship be like. That’s a responsibility that we have to engage in that way. We have a very productive dialogue set of conversations with the European Commission and the EU on a number of things. We have a very productive dialogue with the equivalent organizations in Japan and Korea and a number of places. There are certain instances where we’re helping to educate on policy. There are certain instances where we may disagree, and we need to explain our position. There are certain places where there are laws, and we have to be compliant with those laws.
Google’s Android booth at MWC 2023 in Barcelona. Image Credits: Brian Heater
U.S. trade embargoes have kneecapped Huawei. How do those sorts of things impact you and your team?
We work with a lot of partners around the world, so it’s not a new thing to us that there are certain geopolitical events that occur that cause one or more of our partners to have a challenge. You mentioned U.S. government action, but take the pandemic, the supply chain challenges and how demand and supply become imbalanced. It’s a global world, and all of these things are interconnected. […] We want to support a healthy ecosystem. The good news is there are partners in lots of different geographies, and we work with all of them to try to make sure that they can build and be successful in the ecosystem. Obviously, we have some limits in how we can participate in China, and that’s fine. We have found ways to work with partners so that they can be successful.
Have you played with [Huawei’s] HarmonyOS?
I haven’t played with HarmonyOS and am not in the best place to give it a review.
It seems like they’ve made a lot of progress.
I think they probably have very smart folks working on that. We have a lot of respect for companies that can do that. That’s innovative. There’s a lot of competition. It’s always felt like a pretty vibrant ecosystem, whether it’s manufacturers building their own operating system or taking open source Android and building their own variant, which many companies have done. There’s a ton of competition.
You say there’s a ton of competition. There are some smaller players like Sailfish, but in terms of market share, no one can touch [Android and iOS].
I think there are plenty other competitive solutions, whether it be Fire OS from Amazon or the original Geophone that launched in India and has hundreds of millions of subscribers and didn’t run Android. You mentioned Harmony. In China, there are a number of variants of open source Android. There’s a lot going on, and I think for our part, it’s something we always have to make sure we’re delivering from a platform standpoint is useful and good. Android is open source. If someone wants to build their own version of it, they’re free to do that. So if someone wants to go and build their own versions of it, they’re free to do that. So we have to have compelling reasons technically, and in terms of consumer experience, why you should use the Android platform.
Android was, predictably, everywhere at Mobile World Congress. At a show where Apple has no public-facing presence, Google’s mobile operating system is almost entirely ubiquitous. As in past years, the company also set up a sprawling outdoor booth between halls. This time, the focus was on interoperability and ecosystem.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a better person to speak on the subject than Sameer Samat; the former president of Jawbone now heads Android’s product and design team, as well as design and engineering for Google Play and Wear OS. We sat down with the executive on the third day of MWC to discuss Google’s consumer software plays.
Google’s Android booth at MWC 2023 in Barcelona. Image Credits: Brian Heater
Samat: People don’t just buy a phone anymore, they buy into an ecosystem.
TechCrunch: That’s been the case for some time.
Samat: It has, but on the Android side, having that full portfolio of devices is important.
You’re talking specifically about Google devices?
No. It’s not been the case that every major manufacturer has offered a full portfolio. I think that’s super important. It’s really important that those devices work well together. We’ve had this effort that we call “Better Together” for a while, and we’re working on a number of things that help these devices interoperate.
iOS is your main competition. That’s something Apple has done well for a long time. It’s a big part of why people buy their products. Do you look at what they’re doing when building out features?
From a consumer standpoint, it’s very clear that people have more devices in their life. The average U.S. household has 20-plus connected devices in their home. We hear feedback from consumers, and individual manufacturers have implemented these things. Usually on these things, some Android manufacturer has gone and done it first. The reverse happens a lot of times. Apple sees something they think is cool and copies it that way — always-on displays. The difference is: Can you do it widely across the ecosystem? Can you do it where you can cross pair between different devices from different manufacturers, and can you do it at scale.
People ask me for earbud recommendations. Nine times out of 10, I ask them who makes their phone. Manufacturers’ devices tend to work better with their own product.
There’s always opportunity for manufacturers to differentiate. I think that’s good and should remain. But I also think there are basics that need to be standardized, because it provides a level of choice to consumers that they appreciate and they expect in our ecosystem.
Wear OS/Android Wear seemed stagnant for a long time. There does seem to be a renewed effort around the Pixel Watch, however.
We were very early to the watch space. We helped pioneer a lot of things that went into smartwatches. At the beginning, the use cases weren’t very clear. There were a lot things that people wanted their watches to do. There was a view that maybe it was like a phone on your wrist. Over time what’s develop is a set of key pillars — use cases that the device is awesome at, and that will grow over time.
Health came in and completely dominated the conversation.
Health is important. The watch is one of the only electronics that you wear on your body, 24/7. With your permission, it has access to your vitals and these days, health is a big concern for all of us. Technology assisting us with that is very in line with our overall mission, and a lot of what our partners want to do for consumers. As we’ve honed that, there’s been an opportunity to refocus the platform. It started with our partnership with Samsung around this. For a while, they had done something different with their watches [Tizen OS]. We got back together and made an effort to restart that.
With Samsung, Wear OS suddenly has a lot more market share overnight.
Yeah. I think when you find the right market fit with those core use cases and you do it with the right hardware and a great partner like Samsung, it gives you an opportunity to get out there and show consumers what’s possible.
This is one category where Apple was extremely dominate in market share. After the recent updates, if you push Samsung to the side for a moment, are you seeing a lot more adoptions?
Yeah. There are a lot more people buying Wear OS devices, and there will be a lot more devices coming from other partners this year.
Smartphone sales were declining before the pandemic, and that trend has accelerated in the last few years. Will the decline continue to grow?
The market is definitely changing and reaching a new phase. I don’t know that year over year sales is quite the right way to look at this […] There will always be sales of new phones. But I think you’re now reaching the point where this is, for many people, it is their primary computing device. So, there are different and more interesting ways of looking at the market. I think in terms of what are you able to do with these devices? What does engagement look like? What are the services that you’re utilizing? And how is it integrated with other parts of your life? We talked about tablets and we talked about watches, but why are you getting a tablet or watch? It might be all about productivity for you or entertainment. That could be replacing the time you spent watching a big screen television or it could be that you’re using the watch for fitness. In some ways, the watch becomes like the new pair of running shoes. It’s like that promise to yourself that you’re gonna get in shape.
It’s aspirational.
So the real question is not as much for me how many phones are sold? But what is this technology meaning for people across the different aspects of their life? Sure. We need to look at the attachment of different devices. The second part is that devices are lasting longer.
Manufacturers painted themselves into a corner. If you spend $1,000 on a device, it’s probably going to last five years, and not the two or three that were set up by the carrier system.
I think it’s really important that these devices last a long time. We’ve done a few things on our side to support that kind of that. A lot of the top Android phone manufacturers are now offering their four years or five years of security and OS updates. And on top of that, we’ve retooled a lot of the platform and innovated around providing more frequent updates in between those OS updates.
Apple’s not selling many devices. I think they saw that coming and shifted their focus toward monetizing services. The Android revenue model is very different for every company that isn’t Google. They rely on your apps and services. What does the shift in monetization look like for them, now that they’re not selling as many devices?
It’s something a lot of them saw coming. I don’t think it was just Apple. We’ve been in the services business —
For much longer than you’ve been in the phone business…
Hardware is newer for us than services. We have a business model around people using our services. We partner with manufacturers. It’s not a secret that we share in that success. I think there’s going to be more of a movement toward models where devices themselves are sold more as a service. I think there’s a lot of innovative work going on in the carrier side to figure out how you buy a device for less up front, you use it and return it after a period of time and you get another device as part of your overall subscription.
Is Google still committed to Android Go?
Absolutely. The purpose of Android Go is to make sure that entry-level devices have a really high-quality experience. We built Android Go because we saw an opportunity to make sure that when you buy the device, even though it might be less expensive than other devices, that doesn’t mean the experience should be poor.
How bullish is Google on AR and VR?
I think we’re excited about the possibilities of AR and VR. We’re not strangers to the space. We’ve been pioneers there for a long time, and we’re seeing the next generation of the technology now. We’ll be right there with the industry participating in that.
Is there a role for Google to play in the metaverse?
The team that I run at Google is a platform provider. The great thing about the ecosystem is that there are a number of companies that have a vision of what they’d like to see happen. We have developers who like to participate. Where the platform can be relevant is in making sure that there is a way that developers can leverage their interest across different providers and ensure that the experience scales for them. I think the most important thing about AR and VR right now is just like watch. It’s making sure, as an industry, we come to the use cases that truly resonate as a consumer.
There are always regulator concerns around anti-competitive activities. Look at what’s going on in India right now. How much of a challenge are these sorts of laws and regulations for your team.
As a platform provider making technology that is important in people’s live, I think that governments around the world representing their citizens should be involved in looking at that technology carefully. We have a responsibility to make sure that we’re integrating that technology well into society. Different countries have different opinions on how that should work. I think it’s a constructive dialogue for the most part around the world where governments want to engage in that kind of discussion — what role should society play? We welcome that, and we should be engaged in that conversation responsibly. It takes time and is a new component of what we do today. Fifteen years or so ago, it wasn’t a big part of what we do. But it comes with the territory of playing an important role in what people do.
Will Google continue to aggressively push back against some of those decisions?
The important thing Google will do is continue to make products that we hope consumers will love. Of course, where we think that there are elements of policy where we can help educate, we will engage to do that in the right way.
The EU has been at the forefront of much of this digital legislations, whether it’s GDPR, USB-C or the right to repair. What has the climate been like when it comes to dealing with the European Union?
For tech in general across the world, whether it be the EU or any other country where tech is playing a big role in society, there are appropriate questions being asked about how that should happen. On the surface, one might try to say that’s a challenging environment. I prefer to think about it as what happens when technology in a particular area goes mainstream and becomes such an important part of life.
Democracies then look at it as how do we want this technology to interact with our citizenry, and what should that relationship be like. That’s a responsibility that we have to engage in that way. We have a very productive dialogue set of conversations with the European Commission and the EU on a number of things. We have a very productive dialogue with the equivalent organizations in Japan and Korea and a number of places. There are certain instances where we’re helping to educate on policy. There are certain instances where we may disagree, and we need to explain our position. There are certain places where there are laws, and we have to be compliant with those laws.
Google’s Android booth at MWC 2023 in Barcelona. Image Credits: Brian Heater
U.S. trade embargoes have kneecapped Huawei. How do those sorts of things impact you and your team?
We work with a lot of partners around the world, so it’s not a new thing to us that there are certain geopolitical events that occur that cause one or more of our partners to have a challenge. You mentioned U.S. government action, but take the pandemic, the supply chain challenges and how demand and supply become imbalanced. It’s a global world, and all of these things are interconnected. […] We want to support a healthy ecosystem. The good news is there are partners in lots of different geographies, and we work with all of them to try to make sure that they can build and be successful in the ecosystem. Obviously, we have some limits in how we can participate in China, and that’s fine. We have found ways to work with partners so that they can be successful.
Have you played with [Huawei’s] HarmonyOS?
I haven’t played with HarmonyOS and am not in the best place to give it a review.
It seems like they’ve made a lot of progress.
I think they probably have very smart folks working on that. We have a lot of respect for companies that can do that. That’s innovative. There’s a lot of competition. It’s always felt like a pretty vibrant ecosystem, whether it’s manufacturers building their own operating system or taking open source Android and building their own variant, which many companies have done. There’s a ton of competition.
You say there’s a ton of competition. There are some smaller players like Sailfish, but in terms of market share, no one can touch [Android and iOS].
I think there are plenty other competitive solutions, whether it be Fire OS from Amazon or the original Geophone that launched in India and has hundreds of millions of subscribers and didn’t run Android. You mentioned Harmony. In China, there are a number of variants of open source Android. There’s a lot going on, and I think for our part, it’s something we always have to make sure we’re delivering from a platform standpoint is useful and good. Android is open source. If someone wants to build their own version of it, they’re free to do that. So if someone wants to go and build their own versions of it, they’re free to do that. So we have to have compelling reasons technically, and in terms of consumer experience, why you should use the Android platform.
Android was, predictably, everywhere at Mobile World Congress. At a show where Apple has no public-facing presence, Google’s mobile operating system is almost entirely ubiquitous. As in past years, the company also set up a sprawling outdoor booth between halls. This time, the focus was on interoperability and ecosystem.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a better person to speak on the subject than Sameer Samat; the former president of Jawbone now heads Android’s product and design team, as well as design and engineering for Google Play and Wear OS. We sat down with the executive on the third day of MWC to discuss Google’s consumer software plays.
Google’s Android booth at MWC 2023 in Barcelona. Image Credits: Brian Heater
Samat: People don’t just buy a phone anymore, they buy into an ecosystem.
TechCrunch: That’s been the case for some time.
Samat: It has, but on the Android side, having that full portfolio of devices is important.
You’re talking specifically about Google devices?
No. It’s not been the case that every major manufacturer has offered a full portfolio. I think that’s super important. It’s really important that those devices work well together. We’ve had this effort that we call “Better Together” for a while, and we’re working on a number of things that help these devices interoperate.
iOS is your main competition. That’s something Apple has done well for a long time. It’s a big part of why people buy their products. Do you look at what they’re doing when building out features?
From a consumer standpoint, it’s very clear that people have more devices in their life. The average U.S. household has 20-plus connected devices in their home. We hear feedback from consumers, and individual manufacturers have implemented these things. Usually on these things, some Android manufacturer has gone and done it first. The reverse happens a lot of times. Apple sees something they think is cool and copies it that way — always-on displays. The difference is: Can you do it widely across the ecosystem? Can you do it where you can cross pair between different devices from different manufacturers, and can you do it at scale.
People ask me for earbud recommendations. Nine times out of 10, I ask them who makes their phone. Manufacturers’ devices tend to work better with their own product.
There’s always opportunity for manufacturers to differentiate. I think that’s good and should remain. But I also think there are basics that need to be standardized, because it provides a level of choice to consumers that they appreciate and they expect in our ecosystem.
Wear OS/Android Wear seemed stagnant for a long time. There does seem to be a renewed effort around the Pixel Watch, however.
We were very early to the watch space. We helped pioneer a lot of things that went into smartwatches. At the beginning, the use cases weren’t very clear. There were a lot things that people wanted their watches to do. There was a view that maybe it was like a phone on your wrist. Over time what’s develop is a set of key pillars — use cases that the device is awesome at, and that will grow over time.
Health came in and completely dominated the conversation.
Health is important. The watch is one of the only electronics that you wear on your body, 24/7. With your permission, it has access to your vitals and these days, health is a big concern for all of us. Technology assisting us with that is very in line with our overall mission, and a lot of what our partners want to do for consumers. As we’ve honed that, there’s been an opportunity to refocus the platform. It started with our partnership with Samsung around this. For a while, they had done something different with their watches [Tizen OS]. We got back together and made an effort to restart that.
With Samsung, Wear OS suddenly has a lot more market share overnight.
Yeah. I think when you find the right market fit with those core use cases and you do it with the right hardware and a great partner like Samsung, it gives you an opportunity to get out there and show consumers what’s possible.
This is one category where Apple was extremely dominate in market share. After the recent updates, if you push Samsung to the side for a moment, are you seeing a lot more adoptions?
Yeah. There are a lot more people buying Wear OS devices, and there will be a lot more devices coming from other partners this year.
Smartphone sales were declining before the pandemic, and that trend has accelerated in the last few years. Will the decline continue to grow?
The market is definitely changing and reaching a new phase. I don’t know that year over year sales is quite the right way to look at this […] There will always be sales of new phones. But I think you’re now reaching the point where this is, for many people, it is their primary computing device. So, there are different and more interesting ways of looking at the market. I think in terms of what are you able to do with these devices? What does engagement look like? What are the services that you’re utilizing? And how is it integrated with other parts of your life? We talked about tablets and we talked about watches, but why are you getting a tablet or watch? It might be all about productivity for you or entertainment. That could be replacing the time you spent watching a big screen television or it could be that you’re using the watch for fitness. In some ways, the watch becomes like the new pair of running shoes. It’s like that promise to yourself that you’re gonna get in shape.
It’s aspirational.
So the real question is not as much for me how many phones are sold? But what is this technology meaning for people across the different aspects of their life? Sure. We need to look at the attachment of different devices. The second part is that devices are lasting longer.
Manufacturers painted themselves into a corner. If you spend $1,000 on a device, it’s probably going to last five years, and not the two or three that were set up by the carrier system.
I think it’s really important that these devices last a long time. We’ve done a few things on our side to support that kind of that. A lot of the top Android phone manufacturers are now offering their four years or five years of security and OS updates. And on top of that, we’ve retooled a lot of the platform and innovated around providing more frequent updates in between those OS updates.
Apple’s not selling many devices. I think they saw that coming and shifted their focus toward monetizing services. The Android revenue model is very different for every company that isn’t Google. They rely on your apps and services. What does the shift in monetization look like for them, now that they’re not selling as many devices?
It’s something a lot of them saw coming. I don’t think it was just Apple. We’ve been in the services business —
For much longer than you’ve been in the phone business…
Hardware is newer for us than services. We have a business model around people using our services. We partner with manufacturers. It’s not a secret that we share in that success. I think there’s going to be more of a movement toward models where devices themselves are sold more as a service. I think there’s a lot of innovative work going on in the carrier side to figure out how you buy a device for less up front, you use it and return it after a period of time and you get another device as part of your overall subscription.
Is Google still committed to Android Go?
Absolutely. The purpose of Android Go is to make sure that entry-level devices have a really high-quality experience. We built Android Go because we saw an opportunity to make sure that when you buy the device, even though it might be less expensive than other devices, that doesn’t mean the experience should be poor.
How bullish is Google on AR and VR?
I think we’re excited about the possibilities of AR and VR. We’re not strangers to the space. We’ve been pioneers there for a long time, and we’re seeing the next generation of the technology now. We’ll be right there with the industry participating in that.
Is there a role for Google to play in the metaverse?
The team that I run at Google is a platform provider. The great thing about the ecosystem is that there are a number of companies that have a vision of what they’d like to see happen. We have developers who like to participate. Where the platform can be relevant is in making sure that there is a way that developers can leverage their interest across different providers and ensure that the experience scales for them. I think the most important thing about AR and VR right now is just like watch. It’s making sure, as an industry, we come to the use cases that truly resonate as a consumer.
There are always regulator concerns around anti-competitive activities. Look at what’s going on in India right now. How much of a challenge are these sorts of laws and regulations for your team.
As a platform provider making technology that is important in people’s live, I think that governments around the world representing their citizens should be involved in looking at that technology carefully. We have a responsibility to make sure that we’re integrating that technology well into society. Different countries have different opinions on how that should work. I think it’s a constructive dialogue for the most part around the world where governments want to engage in that kind of discussion — what role should society play? We welcome that, and we should be engaged in that conversation responsibly. It takes time and is a new component of what we do today. Fifteen years or so ago, it wasn’t a big part of what we do. But it comes with the territory of playing an important role in what people do.
Will Google continue to aggressively push back against some of those decisions?
The important thing Google will do is continue to make products that we hope consumers will love. Of course, where we think that there are elements of policy where we can help educate, we will engage to do that in the right way.
The EU has been at the forefront of much of this digital legislations, whether it’s GDPR, USB-C or the right to repair. What has the climate been like when it comes to dealing with the European Union?
For tech in general across the world, whether it be the EU or any other country where tech is playing a big role in society, there are appropriate questions being asked about how that should happen. On the surface, one might try to say that’s a challenging environment. I prefer to think about it as what happens when technology in a particular area goes mainstream and becomes such an important part of life.
Democracies then look at it as how do we want this technology to interact with our citizenry, and what should that relationship be like. That’s a responsibility that we have to engage in that way. We have a very productive dialogue set of conversations with the European Commission and the EU on a number of things. We have a very productive dialogue with the equivalent organizations in Japan and Korea and a number of places. There are certain instances where we’re helping to educate on policy. There are certain instances where we may disagree, and we need to explain our position. There are certain places where there are laws, and we have to be compliant with those laws.
Google’s Android booth at MWC 2023 in Barcelona. Image Credits: Brian Heater
U.S. trade embargoes have kneecapped Huawei. How do those sorts of things impact you and your team?
We work with a lot of partners around the world, so it’s not a new thing to us that there are certain geopolitical events that occur that cause one or more of our partners to have a challenge. You mentioned U.S. government action, but take the pandemic, the supply chain challenges and how demand and supply become imbalanced. It’s a global world, and all of these things are interconnected. […] We want to support a healthy ecosystem. The good news is there are partners in lots of different geographies, and we work with all of them to try to make sure that they can build and be successful in the ecosystem. Obviously, we have some limits in how we can participate in China, and that’s fine. We have found ways to work with partners so that they can be successful.
Have you played with [Huawei’s] HarmonyOS?
I haven’t played with HarmonyOS and am not in the best place to give it a review.
It seems like they’ve made a lot of progress.
I think they probably have very smart folks working on that. We have a lot of respect for companies that can do that. That’s innovative. There’s a lot of competition. It’s always felt like a pretty vibrant ecosystem, whether it’s manufacturers building their own operating system or taking open source Android and building their own variant, which many companies have done. There’s a ton of competition.
You say there’s a ton of competition. There are some smaller players like Sailfish, but in terms of market share, no one can touch [Android and iOS].
I think there are plenty other competitive solutions, whether it be Fire OS from Amazon or the original Geophone that launched in India and has hundreds of millions of subscribers and didn’t run Android. You mentioned Harmony. In China, there are a number of variants of open source Android. There’s a lot going on, and I think for our part, it’s something we always have to make sure we’re delivering from a platform standpoint is useful and good. Android is open source. If someone wants to build their own version of it, they’re free to do that. So if someone wants to go and build their own versions of it, they’re free to do that. So we have to have compelling reasons technically, and in terms of consumer experience, why you should use the Android platform.
TechCrunch کی سب سے بڑی اور اہم کہانیوں کا راؤنڈ اپ حاصل کرنے کے لیے ہر روز 3 بجے PST پر آپ کے ان باکس میں ڈیلیور کیا جاتا ہے، یہاں سبسکرائب کریں.
کیا ہم نے آپ کو حال ہی میں بتایا ہے کہ ہم آپ سے محبت کرتے ہیں؟ ٹھیک ہے، ہم کرتے ہیں. مارچ کے لیے، اور بہار تقریباً آ چکی ہے۔ سانس لیں اور برف کی بو کو چیک کریں؟ اچھا آسمان، اس موسم کے ساتھ کیا ہو رہا ہے؟
بس اتنا ہو گیا، آئیے ٹیک نیوز کے ساتھ آگے بڑھتے ہیں۔ – کرسٹین اور حاجی
ٹیک کرنچ ٹاپ 3
یہ کچھ مزیدار کریڈٹ ہے: اگر آپ DoorDash اور کریڈٹ کارڈ کے انعامات کے پرستار ہیں، تو ڈیلیوری دیو کے پاس اب Chase کے ساتھ اپنا کو-برانڈڈ کریڈٹ کارڈ ہے۔ واقعی کچھ اچھے مراعات ہیں جو کارڈ ہولڈر ہونے کے ساتھ آتے ہیں، لیکن ہم اجازت دیں گے۔ عائشہ آپ کو مزید بتائیں.
ایلون مسک کا پسندیدہ دن: اس وقت تک جب یہ آپ کے ان باکس میں آتا ہے، یہ پہلے ہی ہو چکا ہو گا، لیکن آج Tesla Investor Day ہے۔ کرسٹن کس طرح دیکھنا ہے اور کس چیز کی توقع کرنی ہے اس کے بارے میں آپ کا اندرونی سکوپ ہے۔
کبھی نہیں سے دیر بہتر: Revolut کی 2021 کی سالانہ رپورٹ جاری ہے، اور اس وقت رومین لکھتے ہیں کہ 2021 کچھ عرصہ پہلے تھا، رپورٹ نے کمپنی کے لیے کچھ دلچسپ خبریں فراہم کیں، جن میں یہ بھی شامل ہے کہ یہ مالیاتی ایپ کا منافع کا پہلا پورا سال تھا۔ شیمپین کھولیں پاپ!
اسٹارٹ اپ اور وی سی
Rad Power Bikes صارفین کی مارکیٹ کے لیے الیکٹرک یوٹیلیٹی بائیکس کو مقبول بنانے پر مرکوز ہے۔ ربیکا رپورٹ کرتا ہے کہ کمپنی نے آج اپنی اگلی نسل کی RadRunner 3 Plus ای بائک لانچ کی۔ بہت سے نئے کارگو لوازمات کے ساتھ جو سواریوں کے لیے پالتو جانوروں کے ساتھ گاڑی یا گروسری لے جانا آسان بنا دیں گے جب وہ سواری کرتے ہیں۔
اوپر والے تعارف سے آپ کی توقع سے کم موٹر سائیکل مواد کے ساتھ آپ کے لیے ایک اور مٹھی بھر۔
پیاری سوفی: L-1 ویزا سے اپنی حیثیت تبدیل کرنے کے لیے میرے پاس کیا اختیارات ہیں؟
تصویری کریڈٹ: برائس ڈربن/ٹیک کرنچ
پیاری سوفی،
میں نے اپنے موجودہ آجر کے لیے STEM-OPT پر کام کرنا شروع کیا، لیکن میں H-1B لاٹری میں چار بار ہار چکا ہوں۔ شکر ہے، میرے آجر نے مجھے ایک بین الاقوامی دفتر میں منتقل کر دیا، اور اب میں L-1 ویزا پر واپس امریکہ آ رہا ہوں۔
میں نے اپنے ہم جماعتوں سے L-1 ویزا پر آجروں کو تبدیل کرنے کے قابل نہ ہونے کے بارے میں بہت سی شکایات سنی ہیں۔ میں خود کو اپنے آجر کے پاس مزید چھ سال تک نہیں دیکھ رہا ہوں، جو کہ میرے آجر کی داخلی پالیسی کی بنیاد پر گرین کارڈ حاصل کرنے تک کا تخمینہ وقت ہے۔
میری امیگریشن سٹیٹس کو تبدیل کرنے کے لیے میرے پاس کیا آپشن ہیں تاکہ میں ایک یا دو سال کے اندر امریکہ میں اسٹارٹ اپ پر کام کر سکوں؟
– مضبوط منتقلی
TC+ ٹیم سے مزید تین:
ٹیک کرنچ+ ہمارا ممبرشپ پروگرام ہے جو بانیوں اور اسٹارٹ اپ ٹیموں کو پیک سے آگے نکلنے میں مدد کرتا ہے۔ آپ یہاں سائن اپ کر سکتے ہیں۔. سالانہ سبسکرپشن پر 15% ڈسکاؤنٹ کے لیے کوڈ \”DC\” استعمال کریں!
Big Tech Inc.
اگر آپ ایک خوشگوار پڑھنے اور ایک چیخ نکلنے کی وجہ تلاش کر رہے ہیں، تو اس سے آگے نہ دیکھیں زیکآج کا مضمون زیک نے مائیکرو سافٹ کے ایک نامعلوم سابق ایگزیکٹو سے بات کی۔ جس کو پوسٹ آفس میں ایڈریس تبدیل ہونے کے بعد اپنی زندگی کو بحال کرنے کے لیے بہت سی چھلانگیں لگانی پڑیں۔
ٹِک ٹاک نے بدھ کو کہا کہ 18 سال سے کم عمر کے صارف کے پاس ہر اکاؤنٹ میں آنے والے ہفتوں میں ڈیفالٹ 60 منٹ کی روزانہ اسکرین ٹائم کی حد ہوگی۔
خاندانوں نے چینی ملکیت والی ویڈیو شیئرنگ ایپ پر اپنے بچوں کے خرچ کرنے کے وقت کو محدود کرنے کے ساتھ جدوجہد کی ہے۔
ٹِک ٹِک کے ٹرسٹ اور سیفٹی کے سربراہ کورمیک کینن نے ایک میں کہا بلاگ پوسٹ بدھ کو کہ جب 60 منٹ کی حد تک پہنچ جائے گی، نابالغوں کو پاس کوڈ درج کرنے اور دیکھتے رہنے کے لیے \”فعال فیصلہ\” کرنے کا اشارہ کیا جائے گا۔ ان اکاؤنٹس کے لیے جہاں صارف کی عمر 13 سال سے کم ہے، والدین یا سرپرست کو 60 منٹ کی ابتدائی حد تک پہنچنے کے بعد 30 منٹ اضافی دیکھنے کا وقت دینے کے لیے موجودہ پاس کوڈ سیٹ کرنا یا درج کرنا ہوگا۔
سنو | \’ٹک ٹاک ٹکس\’ کا پراسرار معاملہ:
فرنٹ برنر25:47\’ٹک ٹاک ٹکس\’ کا پراسرار معاملہ
TikTok نے کہا کہ یہ بوسٹن چلڈرن ہاسپٹل میں تعلیمی تحقیق اور ڈیجیٹل ویلنس لیب کے ماہرین سے مشورہ کرکے 60 منٹ کی حد کے ساتھ آیا ہے۔
سوشل میڈیا پر نابالغوں کو کس چیز کا سامنا کرنا پڑتا ہے اور اس سے ممکنہ نقصان پہنچنے کے بارے میں طویل عرصے سے خدشات موجود ہیں۔ اے رپورٹ گزشتہ سال کے آخر میں جاری کی گئی تھی۔r نے مشورہ دیا کہ TikTok کے الگورتھم کمزور نوعمروں کو خود کو نقصان پہنچانے اور کھانے کی خرابی کے بارے میں ویڈیوز کو فروغ دے رہے ہیں۔
25 اگست 2022 کو جرمنی کے شہر کولون میں گیمز کام میلے میں ٹک ٹاک کی نمائش میں ایک وزیٹر تصویر لے رہا ہے۔ TikTok نے اعلان کیا کہ وہ اسکرین ٹائم ریکیپ کے ساتھ نوعمر اکاؤنٹس کو ہفتہ وار ان باکس اطلاعات بھی بھیجے گا۔ (مارٹن میسنر/ دی ایسوسی ایٹڈ پریس)
سوشل میڈیا الگورتھم کسی صارف کی دلچسپی کے عنوانات اور مواد کی نشاندہی کرکے کام کرتے ہیں، جسے پھر سائٹ پر زیادہ سے زیادہ وقت گزارنے کے طریقے کے طور پر بھیجا جاتا ہے۔ لیکن سوشل میڈیا کے ناقدین کا کہنا ہے کہ وہی الگورتھم جو کسی خاص کھیلوں کی ٹیم، شوق یا رقص کے جنون کے بارے میں مواد کو فروغ دیتے ہیں وہ صارفین کو نقصان دہ مواد کے خرگوش کے سوراخ سے نیچے بھیج سکتے ہیں۔
ٹِک ٹِک نے بدھ کو یہ بھی کہا کہ اگر وہ 60 منٹ کے ڈیفالٹ سے آپٹ آؤٹ کرتے ہیں تو یہ نوعمروں کو روزانہ اسکرین کے وقت کی حد مقرر کرنے کے لیے بھی ترغیب دینا شروع کر دے گا۔ کمپنی اسکرین ٹائم ریکیپ کے ساتھ نوعمر اکاؤنٹس کو ہفتہ وار ان باکس اطلاعات بھیجے گی۔
نوعمروں کے اکاؤنٹس کے لیے TikTok کی کچھ موجودہ حفاظتی خصوصیات میں 13 سے 15 سال کی عمر کے لوگوں کے لیے اکاؤنٹس کو بطور ڈیفالٹ پرائیویٹ سیٹ کرنا اور صرف ان اکاؤنٹس کو براہ راست پیغام رسانی کی دستیابی فراہم کرنا شامل ہے جہاں صارف کی عمر 16 سال یا اس سے زیادہ ہے۔
سنو | نوجوان، خبریں اور سوشل میڈیا:
چلو9:25ٹیک: نوعمر، خبریں اور سوشل میڈیا
TikTok نے تمام صارفین کے لیے متعدد تبدیلیوں کا اعلان کیا، جس میں ہفتے کے ہر دن کے لیے اپنی مرضی کے مطابق اسکرین ٹائم کی حدیں سیٹ کرنے کی صلاحیت اور صارفین کو اطلاعات کو خاموش کرنے کے لیے شیڈول سیٹ کرنے کی اجازت دینا شامل ہے۔ کمپنی لوگوں کی منصوبہ بندی میں مدد کے لیے نیند کی یاد دہانی بھی شروع کر رہی ہے جب وہ رات کو آف لائن رہنا چاہتے ہیں۔ نیند کے فیچر کے لیے، صارفین ایک وقت مقرر کر سکیں گے جب ایک پاپ اپ صارف کو یاد دلائے گا کہ لاگ آف کرنے کا وقت ہو گیا ہے۔
With a smart doorbell, your front door’s communication skills go from 1980s landline to 2023 smartphone. Combining a motion-activated camera with a microphone, speaker, and doorbell, a video doorbell sends alerts to your phone to show you who’s calling without you having to open the door or even be at home. Whether you’re curled up on the couch, hard at work in your office, or sunning on a beach in the Bahamas, a smart doorbell camera keeps you in touch with what’s happening on your doorstep.
I have tested more than 30 video doorbells, and while there’s no one-size-fits-all — like a smartphone, it’s a personal choice — I have thoughts on which are the best of the best and which work well for specific use cases.
If you\’re new to the world of video doorbells, read my rundown on what to look for in a video doorbell at the end of the guide. But my most important advice is that if you have existing doorbell wires, use them. Wired doorbells are generally cheaper, work better, and are more compact, so they also tend to look nicer. There’s more on why wired is the way to go further on, too.
If you have existing doorbell wires, use them
If you don’t have wires and don’t want to pay for an electrician, try using an AC power adapter (Ring and Google Nest sell their own; you can also find generic ones). But if all else fails, I do have a recommendation for a good battery-powered buzzer; just plan to pick up an extra battery when you purchase, or factor in removing it from your door every few months to charge it for a few hours.
Video quality: 960x1280p, 6x zoom, HDR / Smart alerts: Person, package, animal, vehicle and facial recognition ($) Aspect ratio: 3:4 / Field of view: 145 degrees diagonal / Power options: Wired / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz / Storage: Cloud and local / Subscription fee: $3.99 a month / Works with: Alexa, Google, SmartThings
$180
With 24/7 recording, facial recognition, reliable smart alerts, and some free video recording. Google’s newest wired doorbell is the best option for most people.
The Nest Doorbell Wired (2nd-gen) is the only video doorbell in this list that can record 24/7. This, along with good video quality, the ability to tell you who and what is at your door, and some free recorded video, make it the best doorbell overall for most people. It’s also the best video doorbell that works with Google Home. Its proactive package watch feature worked very well (it tells you when a package arrives and sends another alert when it’s gone), and I really like the ability to scroll through a continuous timeline view of everything that’s happened in front of my door. (This is very helpful for keeping track of my neighborhood possum!)
Unlike most of the competition, Google doesn’t charge you for smart notifications — it will tell you if it’s a person, package, possum (well, animal), or vehicle at your door for free. You also get free activity zones to cut down on unwanted notifications and three free hours of event-based recordings, thanks to its local storage and local processing. You can, in theory, use this doorbell without paying a subscription.
But three hours isn’t enough time to be particularly useful. And the $6 per month ($60 / year) Nest Aware subscription is expensive compared to single camera subs from competitors. It does cover all your Google Nest cameras for less than competitor multi-camera offerings and adds 30 days of event-recorded video storage, plus Nest’s excellent Familiar Faces feature that can tell you who is at your door, mostly reliably. If you want the 24/7 recording, however, you need to shell out $12 per month ($120 / year), but again this subscription applies to all Google Nest cameras you may have.
The Nest wired has four color options and more discreet branding than most doorbells.
The Nest Doorbell Wired is essentially the same as the Nest Doorbell Battery. It costs the same, has the same tech specs, and looks identical beyond a size difference. But there is one key hardware change: the Nest wired is a true wired doorbell, which means it runs directly off your existing doorbell wiring.
Because it\’s wired, it can record continuously, which the battery version can’t. The wired power also means it’s faster and more reliable. Plus, as with all true wired doorbells, it catches more footage at the beginning of each event (about three to four seconds) — thereby avoiding the back-of-the-head problem many doorbells suffer from. (Where the camera takes too long to wake up to catch the visitor as they approach.)
Specs-wise, it’s not the best on paper — the Arlo and Ring Pro 2 look better technically. But you do get 960 x 1280 pixel resolution and a 6x digital zoom. And video quality is very good, thanks to some digital trickery. A 3:4 portrait aspect ratio and 145-degree field of view meant I could see my porch from top to bottom and a fair amount from side to side.
On-device AI means the Nest is speedy at sending notifications and can deliver rich alerts to both your phone and watch. On iPhone, these are interactive, allowing me to press and hold the video to see a clip and activate one of the three pre-set quick responses. As long as it gets along with your Wi-Fi router, the Nest is also quick to call up live video. (In testing on an Eero network, it struggled to work reliably on the 2.4 GHz network, but when I switched to a Google Nest Wifi Pro router, it worked seamlessly).
There are a few quirks, there’s no reliable way to snooze notifications from the doorbell, and if you use any Nest speakers as indoor chimes, it\’s all or nothing; you can’t choose which one announces your visitor, not great if you have a Nest Mini in your kid’s nursery. It also doesn’t work with the Nest app, only the Google Home app, which is still cumbersome.
However, I\’ve been testing the new Home app and can confirm that it handles video much better. It also lets you use a doorbell press to trigger an automation — such as turning on a light in the hallway. You can sign up for the app’s public preview (which I strongly recommend doing).
Nest’s doorbells and cameras work with Nest Hub smart displays and speakers to show and/or tell you who is at your door and with Amazon Alexa smart displays to see and talk to your visitor. They also work with Samsung SmartThings, but there’s no native integration with Apple Home.
Video quality: 1536 x 1536p, HDR / Smart alerts: Person, package ($) Aspect ratio: 1:1 / Field of view: 150 degrees horizontal, 150 degrees vertical / Power options: Wired / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz / Storage: Cloud / Subscription fee: $3.99 a month / Works with: Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings
$250
The flagship Ring doorbell has the best video quality, good connectivity, and excellent motion detection. It works smoothly with Amazon Alexa, but is expensive, requires a subscription for most features, and doesn’t offer 24/7 recording.
The Ring Pro 2 is the best video doorbell money can buy, thanks to excellent video quality (1536p HD, higher resolution and brighter than Nest’s), an ideal square ratio for a full front porch view, speedy notifications, and impressively accurate motion detection (using three separate sensors — radar, video analysis, and passive infrared). It also has a nice slim design (just 1.9 inches wide and 4.49 inches tall) and multiple faceplate options to fit your decor.
It’s also the best doorbell that works with Amazon Alexa, but steer clear if you use almost any other smart home platform (the only other one it works with directly is Samsung SmartThings; integrating it into Apple Home can be done, but requires extra hardware and expertise that’s out of the scope of this guide).
The Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 has a compact design and the option of swappable faceplates for a different look.
A true wired doorbell, Ring Pro 2 has package and people alerts (no vehicles or animals — sorry, possum), color night vision, dual-band Wi-Fi, and smart responses (where your doorbell can talk to your visitor for you). The Ring app is excellent. There are pages of settings you can tinker with, and the timeline view to scroll through your recordings is the best by far.
The Pro 2 will work with existing doorbell chimes, plus Ring sells a plug-in Chime and Chime Wi-Fi extender that can help boost connectivity while providing a selection of fun doorbell tones. Of all the doorbells I test
ed, this had the best range and connectivity, and built-in, full-color pre-roll means you never miss any action.
Ring doorbell cameras can stream to Amazon Echo Show smart displays, and show the feed automatically if someone presses the doorbell.
As with a lot of doorbell cameras, the Pro 2 can use Echo smart speakers to announce when there’s somebody at the door. Ring doorbells can also automatically pull up a live feed of your doorbell on an Echo Show or Fire TV-enabled television when someone presses the doorbell. This gives you an instant video intercom in your home — a super handy feature.
The downside is the Pro 2 is expensive, and you will need to pay for the Ring Protect plan (starting at $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year for 180 days of video storage) to view recorded footage and get smart alerts. This also adds an extra six seconds of pre-roll video, which, in lieu of 24/7 recording (not an option on any Ring doorbell), provides plenty of time around motion events to catch all the action. The digital zoom is good, but not the best on offer (Arlo wins that race with a whopping 12x).
Video quality: 1080p / Smart alerts: none / Aspect ratio: 16:9 / Field of view: 135 degrees horizontal, 80 degrees vertical / Power options: Wired or battery / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz / Storage: Cloud or local with a Sync Module / Subscription fee: $3 a month / Works with: Amazon Alexa
$50
Blink’s Video Doorbell is among our favorites if you’re looking for one that’s budget-friendly and offers motion-activated recording and alerts, night vision, two-way audio, and up to two years of battery life.
The Blink Video Doorbell is the best option for a cheap doorbell with no ongoing fees. And while it works as a wired doorbell, it\’s also one of the best options for a battery-powered buzzer, as it can go up to two years on two AAs.
The Blink lacks a lot of bells and whistles (no smart alerts or quick replies, only 1080p video, and a standard 16:9 aspect ratio), but the basics are here — motion-activated recording (with a max of 30 seconds), alerts, live view (with caveats), night vision, motion zones, and two-way audio. If you want to pay $50 (often less) to have a camera at your door and be done with it, get the Blink.
I only recommend buying the Blink with its wireless hub, the Sync Module 2.
The biggest selling point for Blink is the feature that makes its similarly inexpensive security cameras so attractive, up to two years of battery life on two AA lithium batteries. The company has developed a super energy-efficient chip that will power its cameras longer than any other doorbell I’ve tested. (I managed almost a year with very heavy use).
Uniquely for a battery-powered doorbell, the Blink can also be a true hardwired doorbell. When wired, it will activate an existing chime (something neither the sub-$100 Ring nor Wyze doorbells can do) and provide constant power — not just trickle charge. This means it can wake up faster than a battery-powered buzzer and catch your visitor as they arrive. Wiring also adds on-demand two-way audio and live view (otherwise, you can only see the stream if there’s a motion event at the doorbell or someone presses the buzzer.)
The lack of an on-demand live view on battery power would be a deal-breaker, but I only recommend buying this doorbell with its wireless hub, the Sync Module 2, which also facilitates on-demand live views plus adds free, local storage. (You can get a live view with a subscription, too, starting at $3 a month). The extra $35 for the Sync Module 2 should pay for itself compared to a monthly subscription, and for a total of $85, this is still less than Wyze or Ring’s similar offerings (you will also need a USB stick to store the videos on).
With the Blink you’re saving hundreds of dollars over some competitors
The Blink comes in white or black, and because it uses AA batteries, isn’t as huge as most battery-powered doorbells, making it a more discreet option.
It is a giant pain in the neck to install, however; make sure to follow the video instructions Blink provides closely to save a lot of frustration.
The biggest drawbacks are lower video quality and poor audio quality (it can be staticky, and it’s push-to-talk — not full duplex), short recording length, and no smart alerts, plus the app is a bit tricky to navigate. It also doesn’t work with Google Home, but it works great with Alexa, and you can see a live view on Echo Show devices and use any Echo speaker as an indoor chime.
Best video doorbell for any smart home platform
Arlo Essential Wired Doorbell
Video quality: 1536x1536p, 12x zoom, HDR / Aspect ratio: 1:1 / Field of view: 180 degrees horizontal / Power options: Wired / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz / Storage: Cloud / Subscription fee: $3.99 a month / Works with: Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, Apple Home (with an Arlo Hub)
$89
Arlo’s wired video doorbell has excellent video quality, wide smart home compatibility, extensive smart alerts, and a square aspect ratio for spotting packages. It suffers from some connectivity issues, requires a subscription for recorded video, and doesn’t have 24/7 recording but does include a pre-roll feature.
For users outside the Google or Alexa ecosystem or those who may be put off Ring due to its Neighbors app or controversial police partnerships (it’s worth noting you can opt out of both those), the Arlo Essential Wired Doorbell is a great choice. For less money and more features than the Ring Pro 2, Arlo’s video doorbell adds native Apple Home support and works very well with Google Home; Arlo’s is one of the few non-Google cameras you can view live feeds from in the Google Home app. It also works with Amazon Alexa. But note it doesn’t support HomeKit Secure Video, and you will need to pick up the Arlo SmartHub ($100) to integrate with Apple Home.
The Arlo has smart alerts for people, packages, animals, and vehicles, a handy square aspect ratio, and a 180-degree field of view that gets the whole porch. Plus, it has the same high video resolution as the Pro 2.
There is also a built-in siren for scaring off a package thief or neighborhood cat and a backup battery (it only lasts for a few minutes). Courtesy of its wired nature, it has a pre-roll that captures your visitor as they approach. Arlo’s wire-free option doesn’t have this and suffers from that back-of-the-head problem.
However, the Arlo is not as fast or reliable as the Ring Pro 2 or the Nest Doorbell Wired. It isn’t as quick to send alerts or pull up a video feed and struggled when placed farther from the router, in a spot where the Ring worked fine. If you don’t have a good Wi-Fi signal at your front door, the Arlo isn’t for you. And there is no option of a chime Wi-Fi extender as with the Ring Pro 2, and it only works over 2.4 GHz.
As with Ring, a subscription plan is pretty much a necessity since, without it, all you get is a live view. Starting at $3.99 a month paid annually ($4.99 monthly), Arlo Secure adds smart alerts, automatic geofencing to turn your camera off when you arrive home, 30 days of rolling cloud video storage, interactive notifications, quick responses, and activity zones. (Ring doesn’t charge for activity zones.) But there’s no option for 24/7 recording, which is available on Arlo’s non-doorbell security cameras.
Arlo’s doorbells cost less and offer more but aren’t as reliable
The Arlo is a nice-looking doorbell and comes in all-black or black with white trim. It works with your existing chime and can use Amazon Echo or Google Nest smart speakers to notify you of a visitor, plus Arlo sells its own plug-in chime with a choice of ringtones for $50.
Finally, a unique feature about the Arlo doorbell I really like is that when someone presses the button, the notification arrives like a phone call — as opposed to a pop-up. This makes it less likely you’ll miss a visitor, plus the doorbell will prompt them to leave a message if you do.
Best video doorbell without a subscription
Eufy Video Doorbell Dual
Video quality: 2K HD, 4x zoom / Smart Alerts: Person and packages, facia
l recognition Aspect ratio:4:3 / Field of view: 160 degrees horizontal / Power options: Battery, wired trickle charge / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz / Storage: Cloud / Subscription fee: none / Works with: Amazon Alexa, Google Home
$260
This battery-powered video doorbell features two cameras to catch both packages and visitors, as well as local storage, package alerts, facial recognition, and compatibility with Amazon Alexa and Google Home.
If you don’t want to pay any monthly fees but want a feature-packed doorbell that records footage for free, the Eufy Dual is the best — thanks to the addition of a second camera at the bottom to show the doorstep alongside the approach to your front door. But it’s very expensive.
Important Note:Eufy recently suffered some security vulnerabilities, which the company was not transparent about. We temporarily removed our recommendations while the company worked on a fix. While the security flaws appear to have been resolved, the company’s lack of transparency is something to consider before purchasing a Eufy camera. You can read more about the issues and Eufy’s solutions here.
A battery-powered doorbell (with the option of wiring to trickle charge the battery and use an existing chime), the Eufy Dual doesn’t charge for storing video on the included HomeBase 2 (16GB provides up to 90 days of clips). If you already have a Eufy HomeBase 2, you can buy the Dual for $200. If you There is a wired version, which is $50 cheaper, but we’ve not tested this model yet.
There’s no charge for smart alerts that spot people and packages, and innovative AI features are free, too. These include facial recognition and “Package Live Check Assistance,” which frames any packages in a blue box and collects recent events around the delivery for quick viewing, and an Uncollected Package alert, which has the doorbell check for packages at a designated time, alerting you if you forgot to pick something up.
However, as a battery-powered doorbell, the Dual has the same problem as others. No pre-roll footage means you may not see the person as they approach your door, only when they’re in front of it or walking away. But its onboard machine learning, AI-powered smart alerts, and motion detection that use both PiR and radar mean no false alerts. And those two cameras give you a blind spot-free view of your front door area, one in 2K and the other in 1080P.
Battery life is good, better than the Ring 4’s, lasting about three months based on my testing (it claims 3 to 6 months). But you must take the whole doorbell down to charge, which is a pain.
Video quality: 1080p / Smart Alerts: Person and packages, facial recognition Aspect ratio:16:9 / Field of view: 160 degrees horizontal, 84 degrees vertical/ Power options: Battery, wired trickle charge, solar / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz / Storage: Cloud / Subscription fee: $3.99 a month / Works with: Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings
$220
The Ring 4 is the best battery-powered doorbell, thanks to three low-powered cameras that capture full-color pre-roll footage. It works well with Alexa and can be wired to trickle charge the battery, but it doesn’t work with your existing chime and can be slow to pull up a live view.
If you have no choice but to rely on battery power, the Ring Video Doorbell 4 is my top pick. With good, clear 1080p HD video and the option of HDR, if your porch is backlit, night vision, and dual-band Wi-Fi, the Ring 4 has a lot to offer. However, there are two significant issues: the battery barely lasted a month in my testing, and its 16:9 aspect ratio gives you a wide, rectangular field of view that is too short to show your whole porch (as the Ring Pro 2 can).
Three low-powered cameras capture four seconds of color pre-roll footage
But, the reason it’s my top battery-powered pick is it’s the only one I tested that won’t miss your visitor arriving, thanks to three low-powered cameras that capture four seconds of color pre-roll footage. It also uses a removable rechargeable battery, so it’s easy to have an extra on hand to swap out. (Many other battery-powered models require you to take the whole thing down to charge).
The Ring 4 uses a removable, rechargeable battery.
The Ring 4 uses the excellent Ring app, and you can turn on snapshot mode to automatically take a picture every hour, 14 minutes, or five minutes for a better idea of what’s been happening at your door. You need a Ring Protect Plan for this and to enable people-only mode, which cuts down on unnecessary alerts. A subscription plan starts at $3.99 a month and adds 180 days of cloud storage for videos, plus useful rich notifications that show a snapshot of the video on your lock screen. This is helpful as the Ring 4 can take a while to bring up a live view (a problem with most battery-powered doorbells).
Free quick replies, which can be set to play automatically, are also handy. I recommend setting up the “Hi! We’ll be right there” to keep your visitor around a bit longer while you wait for the app to load. As with all Ring Doorbells, the Ring 4 can announce visitors on Echo speakers and automatically pull up a two-way audio/video call on an Echo Show. It won’t work with your existing chime unless you wire it (which also trickle charges it), but Ring sells a plug-in chime.
Video quality: 1200x1600p, HDR, 5x zoom / Smart Alerts: Person, packages, facial recognition Aspect ratio: 3:4/ Field of view: 178-degrees vertical, 140-degrees horizontal / Power options: Wired / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz / Storage: Cloud / Subscription fee: $0.99 a month, iCloud / Works with
: Apple Home
$250
The Belkin Wemo doorbell works with HomeKit Secure Video and detects people, packages, animals, and vehicles. It’s fast and reliable but there is no 24/7 recording and you need an Apple Home hub and iCloud plan for recorded video.
For a doorbell that works with Apple’s Home smart home ecosystem, the new Wemo Video Doorbell from Belkin is the best choice. Fast, secure, and with support for HomeKit Secure Video, the Wemo has a decent 1200 x 1600 HD video stream with HDR and a circular view that shows you the whole porch, although with a rather discombobulating fish-eye effect. But it’s better than the other good HomeKit option, the Logitech Circle View.
With rich notifications in HomeKit, you can talk to a visitor from your lock screen.
The Wemo is a wired doorbell (there are no battery-powered HomeKit options, although one from Aqara is coming soon), but it is easier to install than the Logitech. Both share the same simple software setup. (Thanks to relying entirely on the Apple Home app — there’s no compatibility with the Wemo app). The doorbell recognizes multiple motion events (people, packages, animals, and vehicles) and can also identify faces and announce exactly who is at the door on a connected HomePod or HomePod Mini. You do need one of these (or another HomeKit hub such as an Apple TV 4K) to use the Wemo, and adding in that cost makes this an expensive doorbell.
The Wemo is very, very quick. Button push to a notification to pulling up live video is under five seconds.
While daytime footage was good, night vision isn’t great, and I had some issues with it missing motion events and sending false alerts for people due to its reliance on pixel-based motion detection (others use PIR and radar detection). However, the Wemo was very, very quick, with the speed from a button push to a notification to pulling up the live video being under five seconds. It’s even quicker if you use the interactive notification on your device (through which you can talk to the visitor). And that speed makes up for some of its failings.
The main reason to go with Wemo is for HomeKit Secure Video, Apple’s service that stores recorded video securely in your personal iCloud account. Additionally, video is processed locally on a HomeKit hub for the smart alerts, and only recorded video is sent to iCloud. However, there is no local storage option or 24/7 recording, and you have to pay for an iCloud Plus plan (starting at 99 cents per month) to view any captured clips.
All things considered, it’s the best option for an Apple Home-compatible video doorbell right now.
The Netatmo, Arlo, Logitech, and Wemo video doorbells are among the doorbells I’ve tested.
I’ve tested dozens of video doorbells, and one of the main reasons many popular models didn’t make the cut here is down to relying on battery power. If you can’t hardwire a doorbell, you will suffer from the back-of-the-head problems unless you pay more for the Ring Video Doorbell 4 with its extra cameras.
The standard Ring Video Doorbell (2nd-gen) misses those first few moments and has to be removed to charge, the same with the Google Nest Doorbell Battery, whose connectivity issues were also a major pain point in testing. The Wyze Video Doorbell Pro has some impressive features for its price point, and if you hardwire it, you do get pre-roll video, but it has a 5-minute cool-down period between recordings unless you pay for a subscription — an inexcusable amount of time that negates its offer of “free recording.” We also tested the Arlo Essential Video Doorbell Wire-Free, which does have a removable battery but doesn’t work with Apple Home, as its wired counterpart does, and takes too long to wake up to catch the visitor as they approach.
The Wyze Video Doorbell Pro has a 5-minute cool-down period between recordings unless you pay for a subscription.
As for other wired options, the Ring Video Doorbell Wired is a truly budget buzzer at just $60, but it won’t work with your existing chime and doesn’t draw the same amount of power from those wires as the Ring Pro, making it generally less reliable. Without HDR, its video quality is spotty, and its sister brand Blink just beats it to the Best Budget spot in terms of features — including better battery life and free local storage options. Although the Ring can record for longer than 30 seconds and has package detec
tion (but you have to pay for those features).
The Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell has some interesting features — including entirely local storage (to an included microSD card) and free person recognition. It also works with Apple Home (but not HomeKit Secure Video), but a weirdly narrow field of view and poor video quality let it down, that and the $300 price tag.
Other Apple Home options we tested include the Logitech Circle View Wired, which, while fast, is expensive, only works with Apple Home and frequently dropped off my Wi-Fi network.
There\’s a new breed of doorbells built into smart door locks. I’ve tested the Lockly Vision Elite and the Eufy Security S330 Video Smart Lock, and both are very expensive and work better as door locks than doorbells. But if you have a specific need for this device (i.e., you have nowhere else to put a doorbell camera), then they are useful for at least seeing up the nose of whoever is at your door, if not much beyond that.
There are a variety of video doorbell designs, but shades of gray and black are most common.
What to look for in a doorbell camera
Besides an attractive design, a good video doorbell camera needs top-notch motion detection, the option of smart alerts and motion zones, affordable (or free) options for storing recorded videos, good quality video with HDR to help if your doorway is backlit, and useful smart home integrations, such as viewing the live doorbell feed on a smart display.
It should also have some way of ringing inside your house (not just through your smartphone) and, ideally, can capture the space in front of your door from top to bottom so that you can see packages and people equally well.
Another important feature is how the doorbell is powered. My unequivocal recommendation is that if you have existing doorbell wires, use them. Buy a true wired doorbell camera, and you never have to worry about charging your doorbell. Plus, recordings will catch your visitor arriving, not just leaving. The main downside is that if the power goes out, you won’t get any recordings.
Most doorbells can be wired to existing doorbell wiring, but only true wired doorbells are powered by your home’s electricity. Battery-powered doorbells are just trickle-charged when wired.
Wired vs. wireless doorbell cameras: what’s the difference?
Wired video doorbells use existing doorbell wiring attached to a doorbell transformer and chime box to provide continuous power, so they don’t need to be recharged. Most won’t work when the power goes out, but some have small batteries to keep them going for a few minutes in the event of a power outage. If you don’t have existing wiring, you can use an AC power adapter (Ring and Nest sell their own; you can also find generic ones).
Battery-powered doorbells, also known as wireless doorbells (a misnomer, as all video doorbells connect wirelessly to the internet), are powered by a rechargeable battery. Because they don’t have continuous power, they have to wake up first when they detect motion before starting to record. This often results in a clip only catching the back of the person’s head as they walk away, which is not super helpful if you’re concerned about porch pirates. True wired doorbells don’t have this problem, and most will reliably catch all the action.
Many doorbells that advertise themselves as wireless and run on a battery can also be hard-wired to your existing doorbell wiring. But these are not “true” wired doorbells. Your home’s electrical power isn’t powering them. Instead, in almost all cases (Blink being the only exception), the battery is being “trickle charged” by the power from the doorbell wiring. This means that without any extra features, they simply don’t react as quickly as true wired doorbells. It’s science, people.
The Blink Video Doorbell has a 16:9 aspect ratio.
The Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 has a 1:1 aspect ratio.
What is aspect ratio on a doorbell camera, and why is it important?
Aspect ratio is arguably more important than video resolution when it comes to video doorbells. This spec tells you what shape of video you will get, whether it’s top-to-bottom or side-to-side, whether you’ll see your doorstep and the whole of the visitor, or just a head-and-shoulders shot. Common aspect ratios include 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, and 1:1.
Aspect ratios are always written with the horizontal number first. If the first number is smaller than the second number, then the image will be taller than it is wide, or “portrait orientation.” If the first number is larger than the second (as in 16:9), then the image will be wider than it is tall, or “landscape orientation.” If both numbers are the same, as in 1:1, it will be a square view.
My recommendation is to go for a square view when possible, but if you have a wide porch area — and would like to see people approaching from the left or right, as well as straight on — a 4:3 or 16:9 might suit you better.
Installing a wired video doorbell camera involves connecting a chime power kit to your indoor chime box to help power the camera.
Battery-powered doorbells are easy to install and generally just require screwing the mounting bracket to the area around your door. Some come with the option of tape strips, so you don’t even need to get out the screwdriver.
Wired doorbells require a bit more effort. And while you can ch
oose to pay around $100 for a professional to install it, if you have existing doorbell wiring, it’s a simple job.
Locate your indoor chime and connect the chime power connector that came with the doorbell (this helps to facilitate power to the new doorbell)
Remove your old doorbell
Attach the mount for your new doorbell using screws or double-sided tape (some have the option of an angled wedge to get a better view of the person in front of the door)
Attach the doorbell wires to the connector screws on the doorbell
Attach the doorbell to the mount, either with screws or by snapping it on
Turn the power back on
Pro tip: Before installing any doorbell, download the manufacturer’s app and check the instructions — some cameras need to be paired to the app before mounting them.
Photos by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
Update: Wednesday, March 1, 2023: Added new recommendations and a section discussing other doorbells we tested.
الفابیٹ کے ویمو نے اپنا جاری کیا ہے۔ اس سال برطرفی کا دوسرا دور، کمپنی نے TechCrunch کی تصدیق کی۔ جنوری میں ابتدائی کٹوتیوں کے ساتھ مل کر، سیلف ڈرائیونگ ٹیکنالوجی کمپنی نے اپنی افرادی قوت کے 8% یا 209 ملازمین کو چھوڑ دیا ہے۔
Waymo کے ترجمان کے مطابق، برطرفی – زیادہ تر انجینئرنگ کے کردار – ایک وسیع تر تنظیمی ڈھانچے کا حصہ ہیں جو \”مالی طور پر نظم و ضبط\” کی پیروی کرتا ہے۔ دوسرے لفظوں میں، کمپنی لاگت کو کم کر رہی ہے جہاں وہ اپنی ٹیکنالوجی کو تیار اور تعینات کرتی ہے۔ Waymo سیلف ڈرائیونگ وہیکل ٹیکنالوجی کو تجارتی بنانے کی راہ پر گامزن ہے، لیکن آگے کا راستہ طویل ہے، اور کمپنی ابھی تک اپنے آپریشنز کو فنڈ دینے کے لیے زیادہ آمدنی نہیں لا رہی ہے۔
Waymo کی برطرفی میں کٹوتیوں کے اضافے کے بعد حروف تہجی اور گوگل جنوری میں. حروف تہجی ہے۔ بہت سی امریکی کمپنیوں کے درمیان آنے والی کساد بازاری سے پہلے عملے کو کم کرنا۔ کچھ تجزیہ کاروں اور سرمایہ کاروں کا کہنا ہے کہ Waymo کی برطرفی محض ایک ڈاؤن مارکیٹ کی پیداوار نہیں ہے۔ کمپنی نے اپنی بنیادی کمپنی، اور سرگرم سرمایہ کار TCI فنڈ مینجمنٹ سے سنجیدہ سرمایہ کاری حاصل کی ہے۔ کہا نومبر میں کہ Waymo نے ابھی تک اس خرچ کا جواز پیش نہیں کیا ہے۔
مزید برطرفی کی خبر اسی ہفتے آئی ہے جب وائیمو نے مکمل طور پر بغیر ڈرائیور والی گاڑیوں کی جانچ شروع کرنے کے منصوبوں کا اعلان کیا تھا – جس کا مطلب ہے کہ پہیے کے پیچھے کوئی انسانی حفاظتی آپریٹر نہیں ہے۔ لاس اینجلس میں. اس کی روبوٹکسی سروس کو نئے شہروں تک بڑھانا Waymo کی کمرشلائزیشن کی حکمت عملی کی کلید ہے، اور اس طرح، اس کی سرمایہ کاری پر اچھا منافع فراہم کرنے کی صلاحیت ہے۔ اگرچہ، کمپنی اپنے کیش برن کو پورا کرنے کے لیے کافی ریونیو کمانے سے ابھی برسوں دور ہے۔
Waymo نے TechCrunch کو بتایا کہ کمپنی ایک مضبوط پوزیشن میں ہے جس میں آگے کا واضح راستہ ہے اور اس سے فائدہ اٹھانے کا ایک بے پناہ موقع ہے۔ ایک ترجمان نے Waymo کے بڑھنے پر توجہ دی۔ سان فرانسسکو میں آپریشن اور توسیع فینکس میں تجارتی آپریشن کمپنی کی اپنی سیلف ڈرائیونگ ٹیکنالوجی کو تیار کرنے، تعینات کرنے اور تجارتی بنانے کی صلاحیت کے ثبوت کے طور پر۔
![\"Google\'s](\"https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230227_083959.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230227_090644.jpg\")
![\"Read](\"https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/mwc-2023-banner.jpg\")
![\"بھولبلییا](\"https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/dear-sophie-immigration-maze-3.jpg\")
![\"ایک](\"https://i.cbc.ca/1.6760596.1677338492!/cpImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_780/visitor-taking-photo-of-a-tiktok-exhibition-at-gamescom-event-in-cologne-germany-in-august-2022.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:2040x1360/2400x2400/filters:focal(1064x590:1065x591):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24100829/226345_Nest_Doorbell_wired_JTuphy_0006.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:2040x1360/2400x2400/filters:focal(1020x680:1021x681):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23606487/jtuohy_220518_5259_0014.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:2040x1360/2400x2400/filters:focal(1099x479:1100x480):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23267909/jtuohy_220222_5043_0003.jpg\")
![\"Arlo’s](\"https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:2040x1360/2400x2400/filters:focal(1070x438:1071x439):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23267910/jtuohy_220222_5043_0004.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/374x134:1713x1257/2400x2400/filters:focal(1020x680:1021x681):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23242028/jtuohy_220209_5016_0013.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:2040x1360/2400x2400/filters:focal(1020x680:1021x681):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23267908/jtuohy_220222_5043_0002.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:2040x1360/2400x2400/filters:focal(1020x680:1021x681):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23226627/jtuohy_220125_5003_0013.jpg\")
![](\"https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/IMG_5618.jpeg?w=533\")