Sprint and LG announce a new 5G phone, Turkey looks to boycott iPhones, and California officials track welfare recipients with license plate readers.
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Up first, trending on Twitter – Spring and LG are planning to release a 5G phone together in the first half of 2019. Sprint’s director of product marketing spilled the beans in a recent interview with PC Magazine, and even confirmed that the device has moved passed the prototype phase and is already being tested. The phone will connect to Sprint’s 5G network on the 2.5 GHz frequency band. Sprint has promised 5G in nine cities during the first half of 2019. Motorola and Verizon recently unveiled a 5G add-on for the Motorola Z3 phone that is slated for release early next year.
Trending on LinkedIn – Turkey’s president has set his crosshairs on the Apple iPhone following an ongoing conflict with the U.S. over demands to release an American pastor held in Turkey and doubled tariffs on Turkish metals imports. In a recent speech, President Recep Erdogan claimed U.S. electronics would have sanctions placed on them, and that greater emphasis should be placed on Turkey’s own telephone brands. Erdogan concluded by saying “If they have an iPhone, there is Samsung on the other side.”
And lastly, on Reddit – A lot of chatter about how Sacramento County officials have been accessing license plate reader data, on a case-by-case basis, to track welfare recipients suspected of fraud. The story broke over the weekend in the Sacramento Bee, and revealed that welfare fraud investigators working under the county’s Department of Human Assistance have used the data for two years. People are pretty upset about the obvious privacy concerns as a person’s daily travels around town can reveal a lot of privileged information about them. It’s unclear how many, if any, cases of fraud were uncovered by using license plate data.
That’s what’s trending today. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Look for more of our content on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and more.
