Beginning Friday, consumers who previously registered on Samsung.com to receive more information about the Galaxy Fold smartphone (see 1902200065) will be at the head of the line for an invitation to reserve the next-generation phone that’s due April 26 in select AT&T, T-Mobile, Best Buy and Samsung Experience Stores. Supplies will be limited, Samsung said Thursday. It describes the Fold as having a “tablet-like experience when you want it,” and being a smartphone “when you need it.” One of the wow factors of the hybrid device is the ability for content to move from the cover display of the folding device to the larger 7.3-inch tablet screen when the device opens. Samsung also pushed its Galaxy S10 5G, due next month. Preorders for the 5G handset will begin "soon," it said.

T-Mobile said it’s installing magenta-colored privacy cubes for customers in New York City, Washington, D.C., and its hometown Seattle. “You can use your smartphone in peace, even on the streets of some of the busiest cities in America,” it said Friday. Customers will need to use a new T-Mobile Phone BoothE app to access the booths. T-Mobile said initially the booths will be available at one location in each city, with limited hours.

Verizon Wireless is making available to customers a free version of the Call Filter service, offering “spam alerts and more,” the carrier said Thursday. Also this week, Verizon said it started to deploy Stir/Shaken (Secure Telephony Identity Revisited/Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) caller ID technology as part of its network interconnections. “Both tools will offer significant help for consumers who are consistently harassed by unwanted and annoying robocalls,” Verizon said. A full version of Call Filter costs $2.99 a month, per line, Verizon said.

Huawei delivered on its promise to “rewrite the rules of photography,” blogged IHS analyst Wayne Lam Tuesday, highlighting “first-to-market” features for smartphones in the P30 series launched Tuesday in Paris. Huawei is the first vendor to incorporate a folded optics design that enables lossless optical zoom photography in a smartphone, said Lam. The 5x periscopic design allows for the lengthy optical column to be fitted along the length of the larger P30 Pro chassis by essentially folding the optical path 90 degrees. The design allows the periscopic zoom lens to work with the primary 40-megapixel (MP), wide and time-of-flight cameras to produce a 10x hybrid zoom, he said. Other notable features: an electro-magnetic induction speaker, high-ISO sensitivity, 40-megapixel image sensor that captures 40 percent more light, enhanced depth sensing, low-light videos, 40-watt fast charging to 70 percent in 30 minutes and 15-watt Qi wireless charging. Huawei ranked second among global smartphone manufacturers last year, shipping 206.1 million units vs. Apple’s 204.7 million units and Samsung’s 289.9 million units; it’s on track to ship 226.8 million phones this year, said IHS. The excitement about mobile photography innovations is “good news for the smartphone industry,” struggling to surpass “stagnant sales forecasts,” said Lam. Huawei and Samsung are investing heavily in mobile photography improvements, while Apple has “arguably been left behind in the current design cycle.” Other “radical” mobile photography designs are coming to market, including one from Nokia’s (HMD)/Light.co with a five-lens, selectable depth-of-focus camera. “Ultimately, competition breeds better products,” and the next wave to mobile photography, including time-of-flight and other “novel” optical sensors, “should give the industry confidence that smartphone innovations have longer legs than the naysayers have proclaimed,” said the analyst. As for Huawei's future in the U.S. market, Lam said the company's success in Europe "helps limit the immediate impact of pressures the company faces from the United States government." Short term, there doesn't appear to be a solution to the situation in the U.S., he said, and Huawei will continue to focus on its existing businesses.

Kyocera bowed what it called a military-grade 4G LTE Android smartphone Friday. The DuraForce Pro 2 phone is FirstNet OK. Three cameras -- 13 megapixel rear, 5 megapixel front and a wide-view 4K action camera -- are rated for underwater operation, including watertight side keys, said the company. The phone is available on AT&T Next for $15 over 30 months, $169 with a two-year contract or $449.

Softness in demand for DRAM and NAND components, partly from the slowdown in global smartphone shipments, prompted Micron Technology’s decision to scale back production to reduce “elevated” inventories, said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on a Q2 call Wednesday. The excess inventory is “at good cost,” meaning there’s “no obsolescence issue,” he said. Next-generation “premium” smartphones introduced at Mobile World Congress “typically feature” 8 to 12 gigabytes of DRAM and 256 to 512 gigabytes of NAND, double the DRAM and quadruple the NAND of “current-generation” premium smartphones, he said. “These trends will likely cascade to lower-tier phones,” helping “re-ignite” smartphone unit sales beginning in 2020, he said. The smartphone market is spiraling toward its third straight year of declining shipments, reported IDC this month. Micron expects 5G to create a market opportunity “beyond mobile,” said Mehrotra. “We expect 5G adoption to create increased demand for memory and storage in IoT devices, wireless infrastructure and data centers.”

Global shipments of fingerprint sensors for smartphones are expected to reach 1.26 billion units this year and increase at a 10.3 percent compound annual growth rate through 2023, despite competition from facial recognition, which will gain wider adoption, said ABI Research Thursday. Top smartphone brands like Apple, Huawei, LG, Samsung and Xiaomi are driving market acceptance of facial recognition, and those apps will rise at a 26.9 percent five-year CAGR, it said. “End-users certainly have a lot of biometric upgrades to look forward to in the coming years.”

Verizon Wireless suffered an East Coast texting outage, the carrier tweeted in reply to customer complaints Tuesday morning. “Our technicians a fully aware we have a ton of customers that are being effected [sic], and we're working non-stop to get this matter resolved as soon as possible.” The problem appeared to end later that morning. Service is fully restored after Verizon “experienced an issue impacting texting services for some customers this morning,” a spokesperson emailed us. “Our engineers were able to identify and resolve the issue quickly.”

Motorola pushed three-day battery life Monday in its upcoming moto g7 power smartphone ($249), due to be available for presale Friday at Best Buy, B&H Photo and Motorola.com and in stores March 22 on Amazon.com. The moto g7 play ($199) will preorder on March 29, with release on April 5, it said, and claims a faster processor, 5.7-inch HD+ display and 13-megapixel rear camera. The moto g7, released earlier this month, is available at Best Buy, B&H Photo and Walmart for $299.

Samsung’s Galaxy S10 smartphone family trio hit Best Buy Friday with up to $650 back in enticements (up to $550 with trade-in, plus activation savings of $50 for Verizon, $100 for Sprint) or a buy-one-get-one offer with qualified activation, said the website. Verizon and Sprint offered a free Galaxy S10e (or $750 credit toward the S10 or S10+) with the purchase of any of the new S10 series phones; AT&T’s version of the BOGO deal tossed in a S10+ (or $1,000). Free extras include an AKG-tuned headset, USB-C and micro-USB connectors, screen protector and three months of SiriusXM Premier streaming. YouTube said Friday its Premium service will be offered free for four months with Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Tab S5e devices when those phones are available. Other Samsung Galaxy owners who activate a device through Feb. 29 can try YouTube Premium free for two months, it said.