Well, Waymo did it. It launched a self-driving taxi service before the end of 2018. This is, on the surface, exactly what it said it would do, and it didn’t even come down to the wire — it’s only Dec. 5. 

But a closer examination shows this isn’t what Waymo once promised eager would-be riders.

SEE ALSO: Waymo launches self-driving taxi service, but caveats abound

Basically, Waymo slapped a “launch” label to its already-existing early rider self-driving car service, started charging its select group of about 400 preexisting customers for rides, and is letting them talk about the experience and even bring a guest along for a ride.

A slick name for the service and a video showing all you can do with a computer in the driver’s seat gloss over an inconvenient detail: From a service standpoint, this is almost exactly what it was offering before. In its “how it works” post about the One app, Waymo writes it expects “to gradually roll out so even more people can ride with us.”

So instead of a truly public launch it’s only the invited early riders who get to ride the before-the-end-of-the-year service. And it’s only in the Phoenix area including the cities of Chandler, Tempe, Mesa, and Gilbert. And within those towns, only within geofenced areas.

The early riders were warned months ago that the service they were using for free would one day charge for schlepping them around town, and that day has come. Fair enough, but just because Waymo’s now accepting credit cards doesn’t mean this isn’t much more than a limited pilot.

Credit where it’s due: Waymo is the only company to have applied for a truly driverless testing permit in California and is also testing driverless rides in Arizona. It built its own Uber- or Lyft-like ride-hailing app, complete with a payment system. It’s tested more than 10 million real road miles in its vehicles. But these milestones don’t mean much for Wednesday’s announcement. 

The list of “howevers” is just as long, though. Safety drivers are still in the cars and remote operators will be monitoring rides as well. The true “public” doesn’t have access to the service. And the first-ever Waymo app isn’t even available in the App Store or Google Play for anyone but Google’s handpicked customers.

At best, Waymo took an incremental step towards a self-driving service. At worst, the Google-created company is duping us all. Nothing substantive has changed compared to what the company has been doing since April 2017, geographically and demographically. It’s still the same Phoenix suburbs with its wide, sunny streets and same people who are used to and know what to expect from a Waymo ride. Regardless of how Waymo is framing this, those unflattering reports from The Information and Bloomberg that questioned whether a full launch would happen before 2019 now look validated.

Bottom line: Waymo still isn’t ready for prime time. The cars can be slow to turn, hesitant in certain situations, and overly cautious. Local Arizona reporters who recently followed Waymo minivans for three days found the cars use “extreme caution in maneuvers” and often frustrate other drivers on the road. It’s certainly impressive what Waymo has achieved, but those achievements may be incompatible with today’s roads, and least in some situations.

Because of these shortcomings, Waymo wants to keep the less-than-perfect rides within the early rider crew. These are the people who know that the Waymo car is bad at changing lanes or can’t always handle the chaos of a busy parking lot.

Even watching a promo video for the new Waymo One service, the wording (“this is where we’re going”) and visuals carefully focus on what the service will eventually become: driverless, accessible, and as easy to use as any other ride-hailing app. 

Until then, however, Waymo One is just a new label for the same driverless promises, most of which are still a ways down the road. 

Qualcomm’s next-gen mobile chip, the Snapdragon 855, is official and will be looked back as a cornerstone to the 5G-ification of everything.

The world’s largest mobile chipmaker held back on sharing extensive details during the first day of its annual Snapdragon Technology Summit in Maui, Hawaii on Monday. But now the curtain’s been fully lifted and we know exactly how the tiny little chip will push mobile forward. 

TL;DR: Get ready for 5G, more AI, faster performance, improved gaming, and — what I’m personally most excited for — portrait mode-like 4K video recording where backgrounds are blurred out in real-time.

SEE ALSO: Samsung, Verizon will release 5G smartphone in early 2019

Some of you might be rolling your eyes and channeling your inner Ariana Grande with a “thank u, next” at the very news of a piece of silicon that’ll be embedded in a phone or tablet.

Yes, chipsets, like batteries and storage, aren’t exactly sexy tech topics. But they do matter — the innovations in the Snapdragon 855 directly affect what you’ll be able to do with a new device (assuming it’s not an iOS one).

1. First to access 5G data

Get used to hearing 5G a lot this year because it’s going to be tossed around by companies big and small (tech or not) a lot.

The commercialization for consumer 5G has been years in the making and 2019 will be the year when this new high-speed network becomes accessible for some people in select places.

Accessing 5G requires the right hardware with a modem capable of connecting to the new network. The Snapdragon 855 is the first mobile chip that’ll work with Qualcomm’s X50 5G modem, which supports Sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequencies.

The what and what? Don’t worry about the jargon. All you need to know is that the modem’s technologies could speed up cellular connectivity by up to 20x, according to Qualcomm. The modem’s capable of download speeds of up to 5 Gbps.

5G isn’t just going to make download and upload speeds faster. The infrastructure will enable more devices to be connected together thanks to the increased bandwidth support. Additionally, the boost in data capacity will mean less latency and fewer dropped connections; services and experiences such as streaming 8K video and 4K video games and high-res mobile VR that currently require a wired connection will be possible wirelessly over 5G.

Several phone makers, including Samsung and OnePlus, have announced plans to release 5G phones later this year. Early adopters will no doubt run to get a device with the X50 5G modem to access 5G.

But the 855 chip is really just the beginning. 5G adoption isn’t expected to ramp up until 2020, and you know the iPhone will play a major part in mainstreaming 5G. Still, 5G’s finally within real reach and it’s already shaping up to be glorious.

2. Even faster 4G LTE and WiFi

Not all devices will come with the X50 5G modem, though — it’s an option, not the default modem for the 855 chip. 

Most 855-powered devices will ship with a Snapdragon X24 LTE modem that’ll offer faster 4G LTE download speeds with up to 2 Gbps theoretical downloads.

Meanwhile, WiFi 6 support using 8×8 antennas will provide up to 2x faster WiFi performance compared to existing 4×4 antennas. Qualcomm says the 855 chip is capable of achieving data speeds of up to 10Gbps WiFi speeds.

Though 5G is meant to essentially replace WiFi, it’ll still be limited to select launch cities, and as a result of this ongoing rollout, WiFi will still be necessary. It’ll still take a few years for the 5G infrastructure to go up in more places and likely won’t be ubiquitous for the better part of a decade if 3G and 4G infrastructure timelines are any indications.

3. Up to 45% faster CPU and 20% faster graphics

No new chip is worth a damn if it doesn’t push performance higher and the 855 chip is no different. Qualcomm’s touting up to 45 percent faster processing performance from the 855 chip’s Kryo 485 CPU and up to 20 percent faster graphics performance with the Adreno 640 GPU compared to the Snapdragon 845 chip.

Android will of course run faster and smoother with the performance boosts, but game developers will get the most out of the new chip.

Qualcomm says developers will be able to create games with HDR for the first time, providing more color depth with over 1 billion shades of colors.

3D games can also look more detailed using “physically based rendering” to pull off more realistic textures and lighting effects, and better depth-of-field. These are all advanced features supported in the popular Unity 4 game engine.

Better graphics is always a plus for mobile gaming, but it’s not the only aspect that has room for improvement. With the 855 chip, Qualcomm’s created a “Snapdragon Elite Gaming” experience that ensures games measure up for things like lower latency and clearer and more responsive wireless listening.

4. Portrait mode-like 4K video

Portrait shots — the style of phone photography designed to simulate the look of a DSLR photo with a sharp foreground and a blurred background — have become quite popular on phones and tablets.

Different phones use varying techniques (i.e. iPhones use dual lenses and the Pixels use machine learning) to segment the background and foreground, but until now it’s only been possible with still photos.

The Snapdragon 855’s built-in Spectra 380 ISP (image signal processor) has what Qualcomm calls the world’s first CV-ISP (Computer Vision Image Signal Processor) capable of advanced computational photography and video recording.

Using computer vision, the chip can isolate and blur out an object or subject for video, effectively simulating a camera lens with a larger aperture (i.e. f/1.8) — all rendered in real-time at 4K resolution in HDR shot at 60 fps. 

It’s the first of its kind on a mobile device and sets the stage for more cinematic-quality video footage from handheld devices.

But won’t these files be massive? Not at all claims Qualcomm. Portrait photos and videos will be saved with the High Efficiency file format in HEIF and HEVC, respectively, first adopted by Apple’s iOS devices. 

These greatly compressed files are up to 50 percent smaller than JPEGs and standard MP4 videos. These smaller files don’t come at the loss of quality, though. It’s the opposite, actually. 

Qualcomm says the HEIF format stores all of the RAW data including HDR color, depth maps, animated GIFs, and collections of burst photos, and even multiple shots taken from phones with multiple cameras (i.e. wide angle, telephoto, and ultra-wide shots) all within a single file. Storing all of this data will give users more freedom to tweak and edit shots and videos after they’ve been shot.

5. Longer video binging and HDR10+

Qualcomm was the first to push HDR onto mobile with the Snapdragon 835 and now it’s pushing the video format further with HDR10+ playback — a first for mobile. Of course, devices will need to have a display capable of HDR, but most premium ones do.

More valuable in my opinion is support for the new hardware-accelerated H.265 and VP9 video decoding that’s used by many video streaming services like Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, Youku, etc.

Qualcomm claims a whopping “up to 7x” power savings for streaming videos that are encoded with H.265 or VP9, which’ll let you watch more videos on a single charge — perfect for binging.

6. Richer and sharper AR and VR

Whether you care or not, Qualcomm and friends are still innovating mobile VR. Qualcomm says the 855 chip supports mobile VR in 8K resolution at 120 fps.

Supporting headsets with more pixels will make virtual worlds look even more lifelike by eliminating undesirable traits such as the “screen-door effect.”

Augmented reality will also get a boost from the 855 chip. Qualcomm envisions more realistic-looking digital objects that can be overlaid on top of reality, allowing for AR shopping to finally become a feasible experience.

7. Smarter and more responsive voice assistants

Another key pillar to the Snapdragon 855 is improved AI. The chip’s got a more powerful AI Engine capable of up to 3x the performance compared to the AI processing in the Snapdragon 845.

As more AI is sprinkled in phones, AI processing is ever more important, especially for voice assistants.

Nothing wrong with relying on the cloud to processing voice assistant requests, but increasing demands for privacy and responsiveness mean better on-device processing is necessary. The boosted AI processing in the 855 should allow for better noise suppression and echo cancellation, according to Qualcomm. 

In other words, the Google Assistant or Alexa should be able to hear you better when you call on them. And if they can hear voice requests better, they can more accurately decode it and get you the information you need without additional prompts.

8. More room for new device components

The tiny 855 chip is Qualcomm’s first 7-nanometer system-on-chip (SoC) and shrinks the silicon from the 845’s 10-nanometer architecture.

Why’s this important? A smaller chip means more room for other device components. Think more physical space for new features like additional cameras, in-display fingerprint sensors, larger batteries, bigger speakers… maybe even the return of the headphone jack (heh).

Jake Gyllenhaal, who once almost replaced Tobey Maguire in director Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, is now going to face off against Tom Holland’s friendly neighborhood wall-crawler.

The Brokeback Mountain star will join the Sony side of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe as the villain Mysterio. He’ll appear in the upcoming sequel to 2016’s Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Gyllenhaal all but confirmed the news in a post on his shiny new Instagram account on Wednesday:

SEE ALSO: Who’s who in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’

The Instagram video features Gyllenhaal reading an old issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, with a glaring cover that announces “The Return of the Man Called MYSTERIO!”

This will be Gyllenhaal’s first real comic book movie. He’s no stranger to big-budget blockbusters (The Day After Tomorrow) or geek-friendly adaptations (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), but Spider-Man 2 was the closest he ever came to participating in a big screen superhero story.

Precious little is known about the Homecoming sequel, probably due in large part to the cliffhanger ending in Avengers: Infinity War. There’s a big, unresolved story unfolding right now in the MCU and it’s not going to wrap up until Avengers 4 arrives in 2019.

That said, Mysterio is an unusual figure in Spider-Man lore. The fact that he’s involved at all raises a bunch of questions.

The most well-known version of the villain is the original. Special effects master and stuntman Quentin Beck had dreams of Hollywood stardom that never panned out, so he turned his attention (and his considerable skill at creating illusions) toward supervillainy.

Beck doesn’t possess any superhuman abilities. He relies instead on his expertise in the Hollywood technical arts coupled, a natural knack for hypnotism and spinning illusions, and a background in robotics and chemistry both. 

He’s a villain who relies more on brainpower than superpower. Beck frequently employs holograms and a hallucinogenic gas of his own design to create more of an even playing field when he squares off against superheroes. 

His costume memorably features a fishbowl-shaped helmet that swirls with gas, concealing his face. In those situations, Beck relies primarily on built-in sonar to “see” his way around. While the movie version will likely take some liberties, Mysterio’s iconic (and goofy-looking) helmet probably won’t be going anywhere.

Confirmation of Mysterio’s involvement in the Homecoming sequel does open up another possibility, however. Long ago, before Sony and Marvel joined forces, a Sinister Six project was announced. That project’s status is unknown now, but it may still be in the cards.

Sinister Six is a supervillain team that has frequently clashed with Spider-Man in the comics. Mysterio was one of its founding members, as was Michael Keaton’s Homecoming villain, Vulture. And notably, Homecoming‘s post-credits scene featured an imprisoned Mac Gargan — the human behind Spidey supervillain, Scorpion — hinting at friends on the outside who have a bone to pick with Spider-Man.

All of this is pure speculation for now. But we know Sinister Six has been in Sony’s movie plans before, and Mysterio’s arrival in the Homecoming corner of the MCU lays additional groundwork, on top of what’s already, for making it happen.