ZTE announced availability of the Blade X smartphone Friday through Cricket Wireless. The $119 phone has a 5.5-inch HD display, Qualcomm Quick Charge, fingerprint sensor, 13-megapixel rear camera, 5-megapixel front camera and a 3,000 mAh battery, ZTE said.

Verizon performed well in Q3, but Q4 is likely to present additional challenges, Wells Fargo's Jennifer Fritzsche emailed investors Friday. “We expect Q4 will be more competitive in the wireless business with higher volumes and more switching activity, given the launch of the Google phone and iPhone X,” she wrote. “This will likely pressure wireless margins in the quarter as promotional activity ramps up.” Wells Fargo rates Verizon as “Market Perform” but believes the carrier “is moving in the right direction now that its unlimited plans have gained traction,” she said. The company reported quarterly results Thursday (see 1710190033).

Chinese smartphone maker Vivo, nudged out of the top five global brands in Q2 by Xiaomi, according to IDC (see 1708020031 or 1708020038), entered the Hong Kong market Friday with the launch of the X20 handset. The company plans to expand to Taiwan, Singapore, Russia and Africa markets, it said. Vivo phones are also sold in Thailand, the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Cambodia and Bangladesh.

Turning on existing FM radio functionality in iPhones would be easy for Apple if it wanted to, NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny blogged Wednesday. He said the company "has specifically chosen" not to offer FM functionality in the iPhone, having disabled the FM chips there, which also blocks app developers from offering FM apps. The company said it removed FM capability from its 7 and 8 series iPhones, but tear-down reports show the iPhone 8 contains a Broadcom 4357 chip family the manufacturer says includes an integrated FM radio core, Matheny said. Citing FM radio use after recent natural disasters, NAB urged the company to activate FM capabilities. At the NAB Show New York Wednesday, CEO Gordon Smith also urged Apple to activate the chips. Both NAB and Chairman Ajit Pai urged the company to activate the chip as a way to promote public safety (see 1709290002). Apple didn't comment.

Qualcomm’s labs in San Diego demonstrated the world’s first announced 5G data connection on a Snapdragon X50 5G modem chipset for mobile devices, the company said in a Tuesday announcement. The demo achieved 1 GB speeds and a data connection in the 28 GHz band, “driving a new generation of cellular technology forward while accelerating the delivery of 5G NR enabled mobile devices to consumers,” Qualcomm said. The company previewed its first 5G “reference design” to enable the testing and “optimization” of 5G technology “within the power and form-factor constraints of a smartphone.” The Snapdragon X50 5G NR modem family is expected to support commercial launches of 5G smartphones and networks in the first half of 2019, Qualcomm said. Meanwhile, it will work with Verizon and Novatel on 5G NR mmWave technology development and over-the-air field trials, the companies said in a separate Tuesday announcement, based on the 5G NR Release-15 specifications being developed by 3rd Generation Partnership Project -- the global 5G standard. "The companies plan to work together to help move the mobile ecosystem towards faster validation and commercialization of 5G NR mmWave technologies at scale, supporting a full-scale commercial network deployment before the end of the decade," they said.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai reassured the Disability Advisory Committee the agency is paying close attention to disabilities issues, and said an upcoming order cleaning up hearing-aid compatibility standards for wireless and wireline handsets will help. The FCC would impose HAC requirements on VoIP phones, he said. “The order also would require volume control on cellphones, something the community has requested for over a decade,” Pai said. “This would help ensure that people using hearing aids, as well as those without such aids, are better able to select cellphones that meet their communication needs.” The change will assist the growing population of seniors, he said. DAC approved a Technology Transitions Subcommittee resolution encouraging quicker adoption of real-time text to replace legacy text technology. In December, the FCC approved a common standard for the transition. The resolution encourages public safety answering points to adopt RTT and urges better coordination between PSAPs and carriers. The resolution also encourages public safety groups or the FCC to collect information on who is or isn’t making the move. Linda Mastandrea, new director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of Disability Integration and Coordination, said the Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands hurricane recovery is challenging because “we can have all the best technologies in the world available to us, but if we don't have the power to use them, they are pretty meaningless.”

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein again cited law enforcement's inability to access users' devices and information due to encryption deployed by technology companies, in Friday remarks prepared for delivery at the Global Cyber Security Summit in London. It was his third such speech in just over a week (see 1710100028), promoting DOJ's idea of "responsible encryption," in which providers help law enforcement get access to information it needs in an investigation vs. "warrant-proof encryption" in which it can't get access to user data. "Competitive forces drive technology companies to resist cooperating with the government," he said in the remarks. The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized his previous speeches (see 1710110072).

The Apple iPhone 7, followed by the iPhone 7 Plus, outsold all other smartphones worldwide in the first six months of 2017, but shipment volumes declined vs. iPhone 6s models in the comparable period last year, said an IHS Markit report Tuesday. The smaller-screen 4.7-inch iPhone models ranked in the top positions in the first half of three consecutive years beginning in 2015, but their market share has continued to shrink, dropping from 10 percent in 2015 to 7 percent in 2016, and 5 percent in 2017, said IHS. Samsung’s Galaxy Grand Prime Plus came in third for the first half of 2017, followed by the iPhone 6s, Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. Samsung’s Galaxy S8 flagship series shipped in April, a month later than the series the previous year, it noted. Five Samsung models, four iPhones and one Oppo smartphone made up the top 10 smartphone models shipped from January through June. The number of smartphone models with more than a million shipments per month increased in first half 2017 to 22 from 17 last year, as OEMs looked to shore up product quality and boost profitability, said analyst Jusy Hong. She said more Chinese OEMs are selling outside of China, stepping up competition and generating more popular models. Eight handsets from Chinese manufacturers are among the 22 top-shipping models for the period: five from Oppo, two from Xiaomi and one from Huawei, IHS said. Samsung had 10 models that shipped more than 1 million units per month, and Apple had four.

Nearly 100 million iPhones are in the market with a deactivated FM chip, NAB responded Friday to claims attributed to Apple in some publications that iPhone 7s and iPhone 8s don’t contain FM chips and can’t be enabled to receive FM signals. That was a day after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai called on Apple to activate the FM chips in its iPhones to promote public safety (see 1709280060), NAB has commissioned quarterly “tear down” reports on smartphones since 2012, and says iPhones “built during that time, including the iPhone 7,” have “a chipset that includes support for FM radio,” said the trade group. Apple also sells the iPhone 6S, which has a deactivated FM chip, NAB said. "We encourage Apple to activate this feature on their future handsets so Americans can have access to lifesaving information during emergency situations.” Pai’s urging Apple to activate FM chips “could foreshadow further use" by the FCC chairman of his "bully pulpit to correct what he views as market inefficiencies without imposing additional regulation,” blogged Wiley Rein broadcast attorney Ari Meltzer, though Meltzer said he didn’t feel Pai departed from his previous stance that such decisions should be left to the market. NextRadio “thoroughly supports” Pai’s call for “more manufacturers, including Apple, to activate the FM chip” in their smartphones to promote public safety, said the Emmis Communications subsidiary and originator of the FM reception smartphone app in a statement: “The utility and urgency of having access to FM broadcasts has never been more apparent given recent weather emergencies.” Apple didn’t comment.

LG Electronics' flagship LG V30 and V30+ smartphones will be available at major carriers within two weeks, said the company in a Thursday announcement. The V30, with an OLED display, will work with Google’s Daydream View virtual reality headset, and the companies will announce a joint bundle promotion "soon" combining the phone, headset and content, said LG. Smartphone features include Google Assistant, MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) audio decoding, dual rear cameras, Bluetooth 5.0, fingerprint sensor and facial recognition and HDR10, it said. Prices weren't given.