Hasta La Gadget!

There have been reports that suggests that Apple’s new iPhones will feature faster LTE speeds thanks to the use of new radios which will help the new iPhones get as much out of their connection as possible. For those who actually want to see those speeds themselves, the folks at iClarified have put together a video that shows the new iPhones in action.

The video compares the iPhone X against the iPhone Xs and Xs Max, although it should be noted that for the most part the iPhone Xs and Xs Max are essentially the same phone, save for the difference in screen size, so the speeds that both phones will be able to get should be more or less the same.

In the video above, it really demonstrates how much faster LTE is on the new iPhones. The iPhone X managed to cap out at 71.7Mbps, while the iPhone Xs managed 161Mbps, while the iPhone Xs Max managed 166Mbps. Like we said, the iPhone Xs and Xs Max are the same device so the difference in their speeds is probably just your typical fluctuation in the network.

Now this is by no means a definitive test as speed can vary depending on various factors, such as coverage, reception, network congestion, background downloads, and so on, but given the new radio tech in the new iPhones, they will be faster, but exactly how much faster will depend from person to person, and from network to network.

Test Compares LTE Speeds Between The iPhone X, Xs, Xs Max , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

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Blok.Party, the company the upcoming PlayTable game console, announced today raised $10 million in new funding. It’s also unveiling a big content partnership, where Blok.Party will create its own version of the popular board game Settlers of Catan.

I first wrote about Blok.Party and PlayTable earlier this year, when co-founder and CEO Jimmy Chen first laid out his vision to use blockchain technology to build a console that can recognize real-world objects (like figurines and cards), creating a hybrid between tabletop and video gaming.

The idea may have sounded a little abstract at the time, but it got a lot clearer when Chen dropped by the TechCrunch New York office to play a couple rounds of Catan with me.

I’ll admit that I hadn’t played in a while, but it was clear from the start that PlayTable saved us some setup time — instead of putting all the pieces of the physical board together, you play on a digital representation of the board. Most of the pieces are digitized too, and we used and traded our cards using smartphones. But there is a physical “robber” pieces, because Chen said this allows the robber’s movement to remain “a very visceral experience … that a digital version can’t ever capture.”

It may not be too long before you get to try this out for yourself, at least if you’re among the 100,000 pre-orders Blok.Party has received so far. Chen said the company will start shipping its first devices this fall.

He added that Catan, like many of the other games built for PlayTable, will be priced at around $20.

“For us, it’s not about trying to compete based on price,” Chen said. “We’re trying to compete based on experience.”

The new funding comes from crypto fund JRR Capital and other investors. Chen said the company will use the money to continue scaling the product, including further software development and building out the library of games.

At the same time, he emphasized that although Blok.Party is manufacturing the initial devices, his vision is to achieve real scale through partnerships with hardware manufacturers, who will build their own PlayTable consoles. Apparently, some of those discussions are already underway.

“Our strategy is to always have [our own] hardware program running to continually do research,” Chen said. “What I’ve discovered is that keeping a hardware program running is not that expensive. The expensive part is when you try to scale the program.”