Google’s AI-powered version of Search, called Search Generative Experience, is getting some updates in the Google App and soon in Chrome. SGE will be able to summarize web pages and also show you definitions of words you may be unfamiliar with, Google said in a blog post Tuesday.
Google’s new “SGE while browsing” can be enabled in the company’s experimental Search Labs section. It’ll use Google’s AI to generate a bulleted list of key points from information on the page you’re browsing. The feature is available in the Google App on both Android and iOS, and Google says it’s coming to Chrome in the days ahead. Google says this will work on some of the web pages you visit when you click the “generate” button at the bottom of the Google App. You’ll also see a list of questions the web page answers and be able to jump to parts of the page with the relevant information.
Recently, some publishers, including The New York Times, have told Google and other services that their articles can’t be crawled to feed AI engines. It’s uncertain exactly how the “SGE while browsing” feature will work with news sites like the Times, though Google’s blog post notes that the feature won’t provide key points for content marked as paywalled.
Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The rapid rise of generative AI has, for the first time in a long time, created competition for Google in the information gathering space. Following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT late last year, Google was quick to expand and promote AI among its products. At Google I/O earlier this year, the company announced Search Generative Experience, which integrates AI-generated answers into results, among other features.
There’s been a glut of companies releasing AI-powered tools and products this year, and some analysts estimate that generative AI could add $4.4 trillion in value to the global economy annually. The technology is expected to reshape everything from the way we work to how we get information. As adoption of generative AI tools has exploded, critics have voiced concern about the possibility of built-in bias and the potential to use these tools to spread disinformation.
At the moment, Google’s SGE isn’t open to everyone and requires people to sign up. There’s no timeline on when this version of AI Search will go live to the public.
Other features coming to SGE include having definitions integrated into AI-generated results. For example, if you search for “what is the most common element on the periodic table,” in the AI-generated result you can hover your mouse over the word “proton” and a pop-up will appear with the definition.
SGE will also provide answers to how-to coding questions and suggest code for common tasks. Code will also be color-coded, making it easier to identify elements.
Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.
With plenty of recent grads heading off to college, retailers have unleashed a slew of back-to-school savings you can take advantage of right now. If you’re considering upgrading your laptop, now is a great time to make the leap. Best Buy has marked down several current MacBook models, with some starting as low as $750. Some of these deals are also being matched at Amazon and elsewhere.
Our favorite MacBook for students — Apple’s MacBook Air M1 — is down to just $750 right now. That’s $250 off what it lists for and $150 below the education discount offered at Apple. This entry-level model has a 13.3-inch display, Apple’s M1 chip, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of solid-state storage. Plus it gets up to 18 hours of battery life per charge, which is helpful for students and commuters who are often on the go.
For those looking for a more powerful processor, Best Buy has also discounted MacBook models featuring the M2 chip. The MacBook Pro M2, the latest model in the Pro line, is equipped with the same RAM and storage as the M1 model, as well as the same display size — but it does sport a faster chip and a fan to keep your computer cool. It’s marked down to just $1,099 right now. That’s a $200 discount. You can also score the MacBook Air M2, which comes with a 13.6-inch display, a faster chip and a better webcam over the M1 model at a $150 discount, bringing the price to $949.
All three models come with three months of Apple TV Plus and iCloud Plus storage, along with four months of Apple Music for free if you’re a new or returning subscriber. Additionally, Plus and Total members can snag an extra $50 off the M2 models mentioned above. And My Best Buy Total members also get up to two years of AppleCare Plus protection included on most new Apple purchases at Best Buy while maintaining an active membership.
Apple’s sleek, stylish and popular AirPods are some of our absolute favorite earbuds on the market. The new second-gen AirPods Pro are the most advanced pair in its lineup, but they can also be a little too pricey for most people at $249. If you’re looking for a more affordable alternative, you can snag the third-gen AirPods for a record-low price right now. Amazon currently has them on sale for just $140, which saves you $29 compared to the Apple price, and matches the all-time low price we saw during Black Friday last year.
Unlike the AirPods Pro, these third-gen AirPods have an open design, so they don’t have active noise cancellation, but they still offer some serious improvements over the AirPods 2. The adaptive EQ attunes music to your ear shape, and the battery life has been bumped up to 30 hours total. They also have an IPX4 water-resistance rating.
It should be noted that deals on Apple devices rarely last long, and without a clear-cut expiration, there’s no guaranteeing how long this discount will be available. We’d recommend getting your order in sooner rather than later if you’re hoping to grab a pair at this price.
And if you’re in the market for a different pair, you can check out our full roundup of all the best earbuds and headphones deals for even more great bargains.
Running out of battery while away from a charger is nobody’s idea of fun but this bargain Anker magnetic battery pack can help with that for just $40.
The Anker 622 Magnetic Battery would normally sell for around $70 which makes this a saving of $30. You don’t need to do anything special to get that price, and there are as many as four different colors for you to choose from as well. Anker already makes some of the best iPhone power banks around, and this is no different. In fact, it’s more than a power bank because it can also double as a charging stand as well.
The Anker 622 Magnetic Battery comes in Dolomite White, Buds Green, Interstellar Black, Lilac Purple, and Misty Blue so you’re sure to be able to find one that fits your particular look and choice of iPhone finish. It’s compatible with the iPhone 14, iPhone 13, and iPhone 12 series of devices, and can be magnetically attached to them for easy charging. The foldable stand can also be used to turn this magnetic charger into a charging stand, making it perfect for propping up an iPhone while watching content.
The battery itself is thin enough to stay out of the way, measuring 0.5 inches (12.8 mm). The battery is charged via an included USB-C cable, and Anker throws in a 24-month warranty as well. And all of that is now available for just $39.99, although we don’t know for sure how long that will be the case. We’d suggest considering taking advantage of this deal now, while the going is good.
If you’ve been considering upgrading to a new phone, you won’t want to miss this deal. Google’s current flagship model — the Pixel 7 — is discounted at Amazon along with the Pixel 7 Pro and the budget-friendly Pixel 7a. This means you can save up to 25% on unlocked Google Pixel 7 Series phones right now. We don’t know how long this offer will last, so we recommend making your purchase sooner rather than later.
There are various discounts available across different models and configurations. You can grab the Pixel 7 Pro — which won an Editors’ Choice Award in 2022 and remains our favorite premium Android phone — for as low as $699 for the 128GB model. It sports a 6.7-inch screen, an upgraded triple camera and allows you to access Google’s VPN to help you maintain privacy and safety online.
For under $500 you can snag either the flagship Pixel 7 or the newest member of the 7 Series — Google’s Pixel 7a. The latter is down to $444. That’s a $55 discount. It has 128GB of storage, an improved camera over its predecessor and a 6.1-inch screen. And at 25% off, Google’s Pixel 7 has the biggest discount in the sale, coming in at just $449 for the 128GB model (save $150). At that price, it may be the better deal for budget-conscious buyers. You can also upgrade to the 256GB model for only $100 more.
Each of these phones offer a 24-hour battery and use Google’s Tensor G2 and Titan M2 chips. And for the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, Amazon is offering up to $401 in credit when you trade in your old device.
However, if you want to see what else is out there, check out our roundup of the best phone deals happening now.
Apple announced iOS 17 at its June keynote event, and the next iteration of the operating system is expected to include new features like Standby mode and improvements to apps like Messages when it’s released to the general public. But so far the tech giant has only said the update will be released in the fall, which isn’t very helpful.
I reached out to Apple about when it planned on holding its September event and when it was planning to release iOS 17 and the company didn’t respond. But here’s when I think Apple will release iOS 17 based on what I see in my crystal ball.
When is Apple’s September event?
Well, it’sā¦ in September. That’s as much as we know right now. Apple is pretty good about keeping secrets, and it hasn’t given a specific date for the event yet. But Bloomberg’s tech reporter Mark Gurman expects the event to be held on either Sept. 12 or 13, and I trust Gurman.
What makes you think iOS 17 will come out shortly after the event?
Apple might be secretive, but it’s also a little predictable.
For more than a decade, Apple has consistently held events every June and September. The company might have other special events in March (see 2022) or October (see 2021) but its June and September events happen every year like clockwork.
And after most of Apple’s September events, the company released the next iOS within the following week. In 2018, for example, Apple’s event was held on Sept. 12 (sound familiar?) and it released iOS 12 five days later on Sept. 17.
There have only been three years over the past decade where it took longer than a week for Apple to release the next iOS version — 2019, 2014 and 2013. Even in those instances, Apple still released the next iOS version eight or nine days after its September event.
The number of days between Apple’s September event and the release of the next iOS version has also trended downward over the past decade. In 2013, Apple released iOS 7 on Sept. 18, eight days after its Sept. 10 event, and last year Apple released iOS 16 on Sept. 12, five days after the company’s Sept. 7 event.
So my guess is Apple will release iOS 17 either five or six days after its September event this year.
What days of the week were past iOS versions released on?
All the iOS version updates were released during the week over the past decade. Apple released nine of the past 10 iOS versions between Monday and Wednesday and one iOS version on a Thursday. Apple hasn’t released an iOS version on Friday, Saturday or Sunday over the past decade.
Wednesdays and Mondays are popular days for Apple to release iOS versions, with four iOS versions being released on a Wednesday and three versions on a Monday. Apple also released two iOS versions on Tuesday. So it’s more likely that Apple will release iOS 17 on a Monday or Wednesday.
Look, just tell me when iOS 17 will be released
If Gurman is right and Apple’s event is held on either Sept. 12 or 13, and Apple releases iOS 17 five or six days later, we get a timeframe of Sept. 17-19.
However, Apple historically doesn’t release iOS updates during the weekend and Sept. 17 is a Sunday this year, so we can rule that day out. That gives us a potential iOS 17 release date of Sept. 18 or 19.
And since Apple has released past iOS versions on Monday more often than Tuesday, I’m predicting Apple will release iOS 17 on Monday, Sept. 18. You heard it here first.
For more on Apple, check out what iOS 17 features I’m excited about and how to download the iOS 17 public beta now.
The LG Gram 17 line has always been about combining productivity and portability, delivering a roomy 17-inch display that provides ample room to work in a trim, three-pound package. This year’s version adds the option for dedicated GeForce RTX 3050 graphics, which makes the Gram 17 a good fit for content-creation basics. The graphics boost adds some weight to the Gram 17 and somewhat shortens battery life, but the Gram 17 remains impossibly thin and light — and long-running.
Our gripes of past Gram models remain, though: The magnesium-alloy chassis feels a bit flimsy, and the price is a bit steep. The Gram 17’s thin enclosure certainly makes it a lightweight travel companion, but it’s not nearly as luxuriously solid-feeling as the aluminum chassis of an Apple MacBook Pro 16 or Dell XPS 17. The keyboard and touchpad are also negatively affected by the Gram 17’s extreme thinness. Priced at $2,300, our test model offers competitive processor performance for the price, but I’m of the opinion that any laptop north of $2,000 should offer a GPU from Nvidia’s current 40-series generation and not previous-gen RTX 3050 graphics. Given the tradeoffs it forces you to make, the Gram 17 is best suited for extremely mobile power users who desire a large-screen laptop in the lightest possible package.
The LG Gram 17 line starts at $2,000 for a system that features an Intel Core i7-1360P CPU, RTX 3050 graphics, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. Our $2,300 test system doubles the RAM to 32GB and the SSD to 2TB. Both models feature the same CPU/GPU combo powering a 17-inch nontouch display with a 2,560×1,600-pixel resolution, a tall 16:10 aspect ratio and a variable 144Hz refresh rate. The LG Gram 17 starts at 1,600 in the UK for a model with the same Core i7-1360P processor but integrated Intel graphics. An RTX 3050-based model is available in Australia for AU$3,599.
The Intel Core i7-1360P processor is a member of Intel’s 28-watt P series that sits between the more efficient 15-watt U series and more performance-oriented 45-watt H series. It features Intel’s hybrid architecture with performance and efficiency cores; it has four performance cores, eight efficiency cores and a total of 16 processing threads. Combined with the RTX 3050 GPU and a generous 32GB of RAM, the Gram 17 offers balanced performance. When matched up against other content-creation laptops, its performance fell in between laptops — namely the Dell XPS 17 9730 and Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra — that feature power-oriented Core i7 H-series processors and newer and more powerful RTX 4050 or 4070 graphics, and the 16-inch Lenovo Yoga 7i that features a Core i7 U-series chip and integrated Intel graphics.
The M2 Pro-based, 16-inch MacBook Pro also proved itself faster on the cross-platform Geekbench 5 and 3DMark tests while also lasting longer on our battery drain test. The Gram 17 lasted longer than 11 hours in battery testing, which ought to get you through the longest of workdays (and it charges quickly, too). That said, the previous LG Gram 17 we reviewed in 2020 lasted nearly two hours longer. And even the Dell XPS 17 9730 and its high-powered Intel H-series CPU outlasted the Gram 17 on our battery test.
A 17-inch ultraportable
The matte-black Gram 17 offers a look that’s akin to the minimalist beauty of a Razer Blade laptop. Absent chrome accents and with minimal branding, the Gram 17’s design is decidedly understated. It’s also very thin and light at only 0.7-inch thick and 3.2 pounds. While the 2020 LG Gram 17 weighed just under 3 pounds, the 2023 version remains very lightweight for a 17-inch laptop. We consider the Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra to be light for its class, and it has a smaller 16-inch display and weighs 4 pounds. The 16-inch MacBook Pro weighs even more at 4.7 pounds.
The tradeoff for getting such a lightweight package is living with some flex of the magnesium-alloy enclosure. It’s just not as rigid as an aluminum body. The keyboard deck feels fairly solid, and most of the flex is in the thin lid behind the display. The thinness of the keyboard deck has more to do with the so-so typing experience than the slight amount of flex it has. The keys offer shallow travel with firm feedback. With a bit more travel, the keys would feel more tactile with a snappier response. The keyboard is roomy, though, and no keys are shortened or squished to accommodate the number pad.
The touchpad is wider than previous models and offers smooth gliding with its matte finish. As opposed to the keys, the touchpad offers too deep travel when clicking to the point of feeling mushy in the front corners.
The matte finish on the touchpad and elsewhere on the Gram 17 means the laptop is a magnet for fingerprints and smudges. Keep a cleaning cloth handy to keep the laptop looking pristine.
The 17-inch, 16:10 display is delightfully enormous. It’s taller than a traditional 16:9 widescreen display and is also an inch wider than 16-inch, 16:10 laptops that are growing in popularity. The 2,560×1,600-pixel resolution results in crisp text and images. And while the RTX 3050 doesn’t make it a gaming monster, its display is faster than the typical 60Hz panel with a variable 144Hz refresh rate that smooths out the appearance of fast-moving video and will keep up with you during Fortnite and other casual shooters.
The panel is rated for 350 nits of brightness, and my testing showed it’s even a bit brighter than that with a maximum of 390 nits. It offers more than enough brightness for most indoor environments, and I even found myself using it with the display brightness set to around 70% in my sunny breakfast nook.
The 1080p webcam produces a crisp, well-balanced image with accurate colors and skin tones. I experienced some graininess in low-light situations but nothing to the degree you’d get with a lower-res 720 camera. The webcam also has an IR sensor so you can use facial recognition for easy, secure logins. The laptop lacks a fingerprint reader, so the IR camera is appreciated.
The Gram 17 features a pair of bottom-firing speakers, which is usually strike one and strike two when it comes to laptop speakers. On larger models, in particular, manufacturers often find room for a quad array for fuller sound. And on many laptops, the speakers are positioned to fire forward from the front edge or upward from the top, which usually results in better audio. To my surprise, the Gram 17’s speakers produced well-rounded sound that filled my small office. They are definitely powerful enough for watching movies and shows and can even be used for some music playback as long as you keep your bass expectations in check.
Geekbench 5 (multicore)
MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2023)15,009Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra12,558Dell XPS 17 973012,355LG Gram 17 (2023)9,983Lenovo Yoga 7i (82YN-16IRL8)8,809
Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
The laptop offers a spare but useful selection of ports. There’s a pair of USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support on the left and a pair of USB-A ports on the right. You also get an HDMI port, a headphone jack and — in a nod to content creators — a miniSD card slot. Since the laptop charges via the USB-C ports, it would’ve been nice if LG split the two of them up between the left and right.
A buyer shopping for a 17-inch laptop is usually looking for a system for the home or office where it’ll stay and not make the trek back and forth between those two locations with any great frequency. The LG Gram 17 is unique in that it weighs just over 3 pounds — light enough for daily commutes without giving its owner a sore shoulder. And with an Nvidia RTX GPU, it holds some appeal to on-the-go content creators. Or students who might want to engage in some casual gaming. Just know you sacrifice some of the solid feel you would get with an admittedly heavier aluminum chassis for the increased portability.
Geekbench 5 (multicore)
MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2023)15,009Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra12,558Dell XPS 17 973012,355LG Gram 17 (2023)9,983Lenovo Yoga 7i (82YN-16IRL8)8,809
This summer’s collapse of President Joe Biden’s student-loan forgiveness plan serves as one more reminder of how expensive college can be, as if students need one. To get a running start on keeping within a budget this school year, retail giants Amazon, Best Buy Target and Walmart all have student deals intended to help you save money on groceries, tech, furnishings and other college essentials.
To take advantage of the deals, you’ll need to verify you’re a student, but that extra step is worth it if it means you get free grocery delivery, say, or a free subscription to a streaming service.
Here’s where to find the student deals giant retailers have this year in the run-up to the start of school. For more, here are our favorite student deals this year and our picks for best student laptops.
Amazon Prime Student
If you’re a college student and do any shopping on Amazon, it’s not hard to make a case for signing up for Prime Student. The first six months are free and then $69 a year for four years. (A regular Prime membership is $139 per year.) To join, you need to be a college student enrolled in at least one course at a college located in one of the 50 US states, Washington DC or Puerto Rico.
With a subscription, you get free one- or two-day shipping in eligible cities and regions, discounts at Whole Foods and a one-year Grubhub Plus membership for free food delivery.
If you get your textbooks from Amazon, you can find Prime-eligible sellers for faster two-day shipping. Unfortunately, you can no longer rent printed textbooks from Amazon.
Best Buy
Best Buy used to have a dedicated student deals program: After you enrolled in the program, you got access to exclusive student discounts on tech and other electronics, including Mac and Windows laptops, keyboards and mice, headphones and TVs. At some point in the last year so, however, Best Buy nixed its dedicated student program and instead groups deals into college-oriented collections: “Study Essentials,” “Dorm Room & Apartment,” “Apple” and so on.
The deals are still good — I found a Dell Inspiron laptop for what seemed to be the best price on the web — and a dedicated computer discount page for students has refurbished deals too. And you can sign up for a free My Best Buy membership account, which gets you free shipping.
Target Circle Rewards
Students can sign up for Target’s free Circle loyalty program, which lets you earn 1% cash back on all purchases and comes with personalized offers. Right now, students can get 20% off one qualifying purchase — handy if you want to furnish your dorm room or stock up on food before school starts. You’ll need to verify your status as a student to take advantage of the discount, which runs through Aug. 26. Exclusions include Apple products, phone contracts and unlocked phones and, maybe most disappointingly, the Barbie camper and houses.
Walmart Plus
Much like what Amazon does with its Prime paid subscription service, Walmart lets students sign up for its Walmart Plus membership for $49 a year or $6.47 a month, with a free 30-day trial. (For nonstudents, it’s $98 a year or $12.95 a month.) Students get everything included in Plus, such as free grocery delivery and free shipping, up to 10 cents per gallon off gas at nearly 14,000 stations and free subscriptions to Paramount Plus and Pluto TV. And you can scan items in the store and check out contact-free.
As with Amazon’s and Target’s student-discount programs, you’ll need to verify yourself before you can join.
For more, here are the best back-to-school deals under $100 and essential tech gadgets designed to make school work easier.
Apple’s ultrathin MacBook Air range of laptops were originally designed mostly for lightweight office or school work on the go. But as Apple’s own M-series processors have become more capable, so too have the MacBooks they’re in. I’m a professional photographer and video producer, and I’ve spent the past couple of months with the latest 15-inch M2-equipped MacBook Air, testing it out on photo shoots, both in my studio and on location. I’m impressed, and here’s why.
For me, its 15-inch display is the perfect balance between size and portability. It’s big enough to comfortably edit photos in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop without needing a bigger monitor. It offers plenty of screen space for all my tools, as well as providing ample room for video timelines when working with video in Premiere, away from my desk.
But the narrow display bezel and the laptop’s 11.5mm thickness means it’ll still slip into the laptop pouch of even my smaller camera backpacks. Sure, it isn’t the lightest Air ever made, but its 1.5kg weight is an acceptable addition for my spine to cope with when I’m out on shoots. Though it feels every bit as well put together as most of Apple’s gear, I do worry that the nice, deep, dusky blue of my test model could easily get scratched and scuffed over months or years of photoshoots. Still, I managed to avoid any major blemishes during my time with it.
With Apple’s M2 chip and 16GB of RAM, my test model was extremely capable for most uses. It handled all my photo editing in Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, importing 1,000-plus batches of raw photos from my CFExpress cards extremely quickly and showing zero slowdown as I navigated the library and batch-applied editing presets. For my work on location, this has been a real treat, being able to quickly back up my files after a shoot before I hit the road.
But I increasingly work in video and still imagery, both for CNET and on my own YouTube channel, and I found the Air capable of blitzing my edits in Premiere and DaVinci Resolve. I edited multiple 4K videos for my channel on this Air and imported my test Premiere project that utilized high bitrate, 4K C-Log video files, with effects and stabilization applied to all clips. I could scrub through and play back the project at full resolution without any issues, and export the final 4K file in a little over nine minutes — not bad, considering that the M2 Pro-equipped Mac Mini I tested recently did it in a little over seven.
Overall I found it to be an extremely swift machine, easily handling any of my professional editing needs for photos and 4K video production. Then there’s the battery life, which I found to be solid, barely dropping while importing and culling photos and generally allowing me to work on it without even needing to consider whether I’d get through my edits before needing to find a plug. And I haven’t even mentioned that it does all this with no fans whirring while I work.
So, it’s perfect? Well, no, and let’s address the elephant in the room: price. The 15-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,299, but that’s with only 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and if you’re using it for photo and video editing, you’ll blow through that in no time (the cards I use in my camera are 2TB). Opting for more RAM and storage always means a big jump in price for Apple devices. My choice, if I were buying one, would be the model with the max 24GB of RAM and 1TB storage, but that brings the cost just north of $2,000. My review model comes in at $1,499.
But that’s still cheaper than the base 14-inch MacBook Pro and a lot cheaper than the base 16-inch Pro, so I do think the Air represents relatively decent value here. Would I choose a Pro model instead? If money were no object, then sure, I’d maybe go for the 14-inch Pro with M2 Max chip, 64GB RAM and 2TB storage, and I’d laugh about the $4,000 price tag while I drove off into the sunset in my new Lambo.
But here in the real world, I’d need to think about what I actually need and how much that’s worth. I work out and about a lot, frequently editing in cars, trains, cafes or maybe just from my bed when I can’t be bothered getting up and sitting at my desk. Traveling light is crucial to my workflow. The 15-inch Air is ideal for this, and it’s more than powerful enough to plow through my photo and video edits without breaking a sweat. And against the lofty prices of the Pro line, even the $2,000 for the 24GB, 1TB configuration I’d recommend seems reasonable.
Oh, and sure, the latest Pro models have SD card slots to appease creatives. But those slots returned just as I — and no doubt many other pro shooters — upgraded all SD cards to faster CFExpress cards. Having that slot would simply be a redundant hole I’d rarely need, and I’d still need to carry a dongle.
For power video creators, editing feature films with huge numbers of 8K video tracks, effects and whatnot, then no, the MacBook Air isn’t going to cut it, at least not for full-time use. But professional photographers like myself who work largely in stills, with a bit of video production on the side — perhaps wedding photographers or event shooters who also want to offer video packages to their clients — will be well catered for with the 15-inch MacBook Air.
Verizon’s 5G network is getting a notable speed boost. On Monday, the wireless carrier announced that it has gained access to C-band spectrum it purchased back in 2021 four months ahead of schedule.
The valuable airwaves, which were previously expected to be fully available to the carrier at the end of the year after becoming partially available in 2022, will allow Verizon to greatly improve the speeds it offers to devices connected to its midband 5G network. When deployed, and connected to a compatible phone or device that’s subscribed to a proper plan, the carrier says its network will be able to deliver download speeds above 2 gigabits per second.
Verizon said this speed is based on areas where it has 161 megahertz of spectrum bandwidth available, which is the amount of bandwidth it is aiming to have available on average nationwide. In some areas where the carrier can take advantage of 200MHz of bandwidth, which is largely in mostly rural areas, those speeds could be even higher. Likewise, speeds could potentially be a little lower in areas where Verizon has less than 161MHz available, though it expects to have a “minimum 140MHz of total spectrum in the contiguous United States.”
A compatible wireless plan is still required to be able to use the C-band network, which Verizon calls “5G Ultra Wideband.” These generally are the carrier’s pricier wireless plans, such as its new Unlimited Plus offering, or older plans such as its Do More, Play More, Get More, Above or Beyond unlimited options.
As for devices, a software update is needed to be able to access the improved, faster connection. Verizon says that updates are in the works for existing products to be able to tap into the network upgrade, but it did not provide a list of which products will receive the update or when.
Devices as far back as Apple’s iPhone 12 and Samsung Galaxy S21 have supported the carrier’s C-band network, with Verizon including support for the spectrum in nearly all of the major devices it has sold over the past year. A carrier spokesperson confirmed to CNET that some phones have already received the update and can tap into the faster speeds, though a full list of updatable devices is still not known.
In its press release announcing the news the carrier says that once a device gets the software update “customers will start to see the effects of this dramatic increase in bandwidth in the immediate next few days and weeks.”
The carrier has made its C-band network available to 222 million people nationwide and has stated a goal of covering 250 million people with the network in 2024. Midband spectrum like C-band has long been viewed as a key piece of the wireless airwaves, thanks to its ability to cover large areas while also being able to offer faster speeds than 4G LTE and what is known as low-band 5G (what Verizon calls “5G Nationwide”).
Read more: Understanding 5G’s Many Names and Types
Beyond just boosting the speeds for current and future devices that connect to its network, Verizon says that with the added spectrum it will be able to offer 5G home and business internet in 47 new markets, as well as cover more homes in areas where its 5G home broadband product is already available. Like with its list of compatible devices, the carrier did not detail which markets would be added or when.
Previously used by satellite companies, Verizon spent nearly $53 billion on C-band spectrum in 2021 as part of a Federal Communications Commission auction that totaled a record $81 billion in bids. Last year it announced that it had reached deals with satellite companies that were using the spectrum to expedite the timeline for when it could receive some of the spectrum.
Rival networks AT&T and T-Mobile had similarly acquired some C-band spectrum as part of that 2021 auction, and AT&T has already deployed some of its C-band for its midband 5G network. It is unclear, however, if either carrier has similarly been able to gain access to the rest of their respective spectrum ahead of schedule or if they will still need to wait until later this year to be able to bulk up their 5G networks.
As part of the auction rules, the incumbent C-band holders need to finish clearing out of the spectrum by Dec. 5, 2023.
CNET has reached out to both AT&T and T-Mobile for comment and will update if they respond.
