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Qualcomm’s New Home Hub Platforms Bring Google Services to Smart Devices Smart devices (and smart home devices in particular) have grown increasingly popular in recent years. Amazon leads the pack with its Alexa virtual assistant, but faces tough competition from Google . The search giant released the newest Developer Preview of Android Things , its lightweight, Weave-enabled operating system design for home automation, in December 2017. And at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday, it teamed up with Qualcomm to announce two new Qualcomm Home Hub platforms that support Android Things. Qualcomm’s new Home Hub platforms are based on Qualcomm’s SDA624 and SDA212 system-on-chips (SoC), and they’re designed to help developers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) quickly and cost-effectively ship devices that tap Google services such as the Google Assistant . Qualcomm notes that smart home hubs, which come in a range of form factors and rely on cloud c...

Motorola and HTC Confirm They Don’t Throttle Older Devices Late last week, Apple admitted to throttling  the processor speeds of older iPhones as their batteries age. The behavior is intended to protect the phones’ electronic components, Apple claims, and to prevent them from shutting down unexpectedly. But Android manufacturers haven’t followed suit, and this week, Motorola and HTC became the first to confirm that they don’t slow down older devices. Those statements were provided to  The Verge, which reached out to a number of Android OEMs to see if they’d adopted Apple’s device-slowing practices. In addition to Motorola and HTC, the publication requested comment from manufacturers including Google, Samsung, LG, and Sony, but as of publication time, only Sony and Samsung have responded. A Sony spokesperson said the holidays would delay the company’s response, and a Samsung spokesperson said the company’s mobile team was “looking i...