If you are on the verge of upgrading or getting a new smartphone, do you do it now or do you wait until the “latest and greatest” are available? This is a hard decision since there always seems to be something “greater” coming soon. To help you resolve this dilemma, consider the latest offerings from Google, Samsung and Apple—the Pixel 2 XL, Galaxy Note 8 and iPhone X. Because of the release dates for the Pixel 2 XL and iPhone X, CNET and other reviewers have found it difficult to test them against the fully-reviewed Galaxy Note 8. Nonetheless, here are some key factors to think about regarding each phone based on information gathered to date.

Screen Size

Consumer preferences and behavior are changing as content and connectivity stretch the size of screens. Mobile subscribers are streaming entertainment and using wireless data at an accelerating pace. Content is virtually unlimited and data bundles keep growing. These elements helped to drive the increase in screen size.

Slim bezels and screens that take up almost the entire face of the phone are in, and the combination is giving large-screen handsets a smaller footprint overall.

CNET used a screen-to-body-ratio calculator to find out which of the three phones gives you the most screen in the smallest package. The calculator uses the screen size, screen resolution, height and width to determine the percent of the phone face that makes up the display.

Pixel 2 XL

• 76.71 percent

Galaxy Note 8

• 82.76 percent

iPhone X

• 81.51 percent

Camera Technology

Camera quality is one of the main reasons people buy one phone over another. While CNET couldn’t  compare image quality among these phones yet, it did dig into the camera specs.

Notably, the Pixel 2 phones have one rear camera, not two. Google claims its tech is so good on the single 12.2-megapixel shooter it doesn’t need a second lens. It can achieve the same depth-effect portrait mode with one camera. Photography test site DxOMark gave the Pixel 2 camera its highest rating ever, at 98. The Galaxy Note 8 scored 94. DxOMark hasn’t rated the iPhone X yet.

Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone X stands out because its camera adds a dramatic portrait lighting effect to enhance depth-effect photos. This is a beta feature on the iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X.

The Galaxy Note 8, the first Samsung phone with dual cameras and portrait mode, has an effect that saves a wide-angle version of the image along with the telephoto portrait shot. As a result, you get both with the snap of a lens. The iPhone X and Pixel 2 XL will also save two versions of the image, but the exact format is yet to be tested.

Battery Life and Storage

The following battery life information for the Pixel 2 XL and iPhone X are figures from their respective companies. Galaxy Note 8 battery life information is based on CNET testing. As for storage, all three phones start at the 64GB level.

Pixel 2 XL

• Battery: 3520 mAh battery, up to 7 hours with a mix of talk, data and standby use
• Storage: 64GB or 128GB

Galaxy Note 8

• Battery: 3300mAh, 17 hours, 30 minutes (based on CNET testing)
• Storage: 64GB, 128GB (may vary by country and carrier)

iPhone X

• Battery: 2716 mAh, 21 hours talk time, 12 hours Internet use and 13 hours video
• Storage: 64GB or 256GB

Bonus Extras

Each phone has some unique qualities that could play a part in your decision.

Pixel 2 XL

• Squeezable frame launches Google Assistant and silences incoming calls
• Blends optical image stabilization and digital image stabilization to produce smooth video
• Auto-hotspot with Pixelbook laptop

Galaxy Note 8

• S Pen stylus comes bundled with the phone
• Curved screens with specialized shortcut software
• Headphone jack

iPhone X

• Face ID to unlock the phone*
• Portrait lighting mode
• Slow-sync camera flash

*According to Forbes, Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo says Apple has run into significant problems mass producing the ‘TrueDepth’ camera sensor the iPhone X uses for its Face ID facial recognition system. As a result, iPhone X availability will be extremely limited until 2018.

Cost

These phones start at the mid-$800 range and peak above the $1000 mark. Here are the full retail prices of the phones at launch:

Pixel 2 XL

• $849 (64GB) and $949 (128GB)

Galaxy Note 8

• AT&T: $950, Verizon: $960, T-Mobile: $930, Sprint: $960 (64GB)

iPhone X

• $999 (64GB) and $1149 (256GB)

If you are determined to get one of these new smartphones ASAP, you now at least have key information for making this decision. If you are a little more cautious, it might be worth waiting a couple months until the early-adopters have had a chance to use and share their experiences with the devices.

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: iPhone X, Pixabay)

Will future growth in non-military drone use come mostly from hobbyists and event planners? This is not likely. Wireless companies are already finding ways to leverage the capabilities of these small aircraft.

AT&T and T-Mobile are using drones to perform aerial inspections of their cell towers. By using drones, these companies are able to conduct inspections in a more safe manner. They can also access parts of a tower that a human cannot reach. AT&T believes this will improve its customers’ experience by enhancing cell sites faster.

According to AT&T, future drone applications include flying COWs (Cell on Wings). Flying COWs could provide LTE coverage at large events (e.g., concerts or sports venues). They may even be able to provide coverage when a vehicle is unable to drive to a designated area.

In addition to AT&T using drones to enhance its network, its IoT team is developing solutions involving drones for its customers. More specifically, AT&T is researching how in-flight drones can use its LTE network to send large amounts of data in real time. This capability may benefit areas such as insurance, farming, facility, and asset inspections.

Not to be outdone, Verizon is testing drones for use in disaster response. At the end of January, Verizon participated in a 14-mile, drone flight at the Mississippi National Guard’s Camp Shelby. Verizon set up a cloud communications network so that everyone on the ground could observe the drone mission as it was happening and send messages to each other. For example, they could provide a warning via a mobile device if the drone was veering off course. According to Verizon’s chief innovation architect, Jeff Schweitzer, this sort of communications network would have been useful after Hurricane Katrina.

Besides disaster response, Verizon has been exploring drone use for agricultural purposes. It recently did a pilot project to monitor a grape crop at the Hahn Estate winery in Soledad, California.

Wireless companies are contributing to the growing use of drones. So, the drones you may see flying around may not be those of wedding videographers or teenage enthusiasts. They could be drones from AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon that are providing ways to better serve customers or help the community.

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: P1140970, Flickr)

The wireless industry is clearly investing in the “smart city” concept according to FierceWireless. Both Verizon and AT&T have teams dedicated to increasing dialogue between wireless players and city officials, with the goal of installing new technologies in metro areas that proponents say will make city life safer and more efficient.

Gartner, Inc. estimates that 1.6 billion connected things will be used by smart cities in 2016, an increase of 39 percent from 2015. “Smart commercial buildings will be the highest user of Internet of Things (IoT) until 2017, after which smart homes will take the lead with just over 1 billion connected things in 2018,” said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research vice president at Gartner.

Commercial real estate benefits greatly from IoT implementation. IoT creates a unified view of facilities management as well as advanced service operations through the collection of data and insights from a multitude of sensors. “Especially in large sites, such as industrial zones, office parks, shopping malls, airports or seaports, IoT can help reduce the cost of energy, spatial management and building maintenance by up to 30 percent,” added Ms. Tratz-Ryan.

Many major cities are seeing the value of building smart city infrastructure from the outset or looking for ways to re-purpose structures already in place to utilize smart city elements. In December, workers began installing the first LinkNYC access points in New York. These New York hubs are designed as an update to the standard phone booth, using upgraded infrastructure to provide gigabit Wi-Fi access points. The full network will install more than 7,500 public hubs throughout the city, each replacing a pre-existing phone booth.

Next City suggests that you can add San Jose, California to the list of places seeking “smart city” status. To connect info-collecting sensors and devices, the city will become one of the first in the U.S. with a wireless network specifically designed to power IoT.

The move won’t just link up city utilities. San Jose will make the network available, low-cost or free, to local developers to dream up their own applications.

The network, dubbed Starfish, is from Bay Area-headquartered Silver Spring Networks (SSN). Twenty-two million devices worldwide are already under SSN’s network blanket, which features banking-level security.

“Now that we’ll have a better web of connectivity, we’ll be able to deploy more sensors and then use that data to refine our services,” said Teri Killgore, San Jose’s civic innovation manager. “One of the problems we have as a city, and I know many cities have this, is we simply don’t have the fiber infrastructure that you would need for all of these great ideas where your infrastructure could talk to itself or talk to other infrastructure or talk to your management systems more effectively.”

That’s where Starfish comes in. Basically, it’s a wireless network in which every smart device hooked up to it serves as a signal relayer. Whereas cellular networks can become overwhelmed and slow down when too many users try to access the same tower, Starfish-connected devices create a web of relayers and receivers, allowing for much higher reliability and faster speeds.

Starfish can also support multiple applications at once, or be re-purposed for different uses over time. Silver Spring Networks CEO Mike Bell says that means city agencies can justify the cost of installing the network on energy savings alone. When other uses present themselves — like traffic signal timing — the city can build them onto the same network.

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: New York, Flickr)

When it comes to smartphones, what company do you look for if you do not want to pay the cost required for one made by Apple or Samsung? There is one company that is becoming a player in the U.S. market, but it is not a household name. This company is ZTE.

ZTE is quietly becoming a force in the U.S. by selling good enough phones at low prices—smaller prepaid smartphones for $30 and basic phones with QWERTY keyboards. The Chinese company’s products are among the cheap phones of choice for all of the big U.S. carriers except Verizon. ZTE claimed about 8 percent of America’s smartphone market in the second quarter of this year, says researcher IDC, up from 4.2 percent in the first quarter of 2014. That ranks the company fourth among smartphone makers overall, behind Apple, Samsung, and LG. “We came from nowhere, and now we are a solid force,” says Lixin Cheng, head of ZTE’s U.S. operations.

ZTE was best known in the U.S. for making network routers and switches for mobile operators. This changed in 2012 when the U.S. House Intelligence Committee issued a report warning that China’s intelligence services could potentially use ZTE’s equipment, and those of rival Huawei Technologies, for spying. While Huawei responded to this issue by moving out of the U.S., ZTE began concentrating on phones since U.S. officials indicated that phones were not a concern.

After starting modestly with small carriers such as MetroPCS, ZTE landed some of its prepaid phones in bigger carriers’ stores and expanded from there. Besides phone stores, its products are on sale at Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy. While the brand is not famous, it’s doing much better in the U.S. than Chinese powerhouses such as Lenovo, which has seen its share of the market drop from 5.3 percent to 3.1 percent since the first quarter of 2014. Chinese leader Xiaomi, which is focused on emerging markets such as India and Brazil, has avoided the U.S. to date.

ZTE’s next challenge in the U.S. will be translating higher sales into higher revenue. While its U.S. market share has nearly doubled since early 2014, revenue is up 4 percent, from $354 million to $369 million. That means ZTE has gained share only by making its phones cheaper, and it doesn’t have its home market as a safety net. The company is ranked eighth in China with just 3 percent of the market, down from 10 percent in 2012, according to researcher Canalys. The recent stock market drop has extracted 36 percent from ZTE’s Hong Kong-listed share price since its June peak, leaving its market value at $10.3 billion.

In July, ZTE introduced the Axon Pro, a higher-end phone selling for $450 on its website, Amazon.com, and EBay. It’s unclear whether customers will respond to the sleeker model, but Peter Ruffo, senior director for government relations at ZTE’s U.S. arm, says the campaign to change the company’s image will pay off eventually. “ZTE is taking the long view, and we are very patient.”

For more information, see Bloomberg.

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: Apple iPhone ZTE Grand and Huawei AscendMate, Flickr)

These smaller carriers include SpeedConnect and United Wireless. SpeedConnect is a wireless service provider started in 2002 that controls the 2.5GHz spectrum across the Great Plains and Midwest. SpeedConnect has worked with Huawei for approximately three years in deploying services its customers use with satellite TV offerings from DirecTV or Dish Network. SpeedConnect started working with Huawei before the national security issue arose, and its managing partner, John Ogren, indicated he has not seen any indications of the security problems mentioned in the news media.

United Wireless is a carrier that operates on the 700MHz and 1900MHz spectrums in the southwestern part of Kansas. It has also been working with Huawei for about three years. According to the wireless operations manager, Michael Laskowsky, United Wireless has never had any issues related to security. Laskowsky said that they considered the security issue, but they just believed that Huawei’s product fit their needs better than anyone else.

Although it has made headway with smaller, rural carriers in the U.S., Huawei is shifting its focus. In comments to the news media, Huawei’s CEO, Ren Zhengfei, mentioned that the company will spend more energy on European companies instead of continuing to try to overcome the security concerns of large U.S. companies.

For more information about Huawei, read this Bloomberg article or Reuters article

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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti