Kphone announced an unlocked Android smartphone that’s due to hit the U.S. market in October. The company cited the growing popularity of unlocked phones, which it said provide the latest smartphone technology along with the flexibility to switch among networks with no termination fees. The first Kphone to be sold in the U.S. is the 5-inch K5, with Android 5.0, Corning Gorilla Glass, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor, a 13-megapixel back camera, 5-megapixel front camera and dual SIM card slots. The phone supports AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S., the company said. Pricing for the Kphone, made by Chinese smartphone maker K-Touch, will be "aggressive," according to a company spokeswoman, who said the U.S. phone retailer isn't ready to release pricing details.

A special meeting of the Finance Committee of the FirstNet board was rescheduled from Wednesday to Thursday starting at 1:30 p.m., said a notice on the authority’s website. The meeting, via teleconference, is to discuss FirstNet’s FY 2016 budget.

5G service revenue is expected to exceed $65 billion by 2025, said a report from Juniper Research Wednesday. Juniper said it estimates commercial rollouts of 5G will begin in 2020 and at least $25 billion will be invested during the next five years in 5G development, research and trials. But Juniper said it anticipates widespread 5G adoption won't occur until 2025, accounting for years of national spectrum licensing. Juniper said it found "a growing consensus" on the development of 5G standards, which include network speeds of at least 10 Gbps, 1 millisecond latency or less, improved spectral efficiency, lower energy consumption, better battery life and higher device density. 5G will "act as a catalyst" for a wide range of new experiences, including high-definition 4K-8K video, self-driving cars, advanced virtual reality and both data intensive and energy efficient applications, said the researcher. It expects more than 3 billion global 4G LTE connections by 2020.

Verizon Wireless and Flat Wireless jointly sought a protective order as both companies file data on a roaming complaint Flat filed against Verizon in June. The request was posted Wednesday in FCC docket 15-147. Flat, a Texas-based carrier, said in its June complaint that it uses CDMA and Verizon is the dominant CDMA operator in the U.S., but has been unwilling to offer roaming services at “just and reasonable” rates. Key data was redacted from the June filing.

New low-cost smartphones from Motorola will boast a feature called Turbopower, making them what is claimed to be the world's fastest-charging smartphones. Smartphones with Turbopower can run for 10 hours on a 15-minute charge, Motorola said. When connected to a new Moto X Style or X Play phone, the charger handshakes with the phone through the USB data wires and sends 12 volts. After partial charging is complete, the chargers steps down to 9 volts. Moto X Play will be available in late August, while Moto X Style will follow later in the year.

Most conspicuously “missing” in the smartwatch space is “a small-format women’s watch,” Martian Watch President Stan Kinsey told us. Martian is toying with introducing by 2016 smartwatches with form factors that do away with screen features, to salvage the haptic, vibrating-notification functionality that the company thinks many women will crave in a small smartwatch, Kinsey said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the industry tries to move the whole watch smaller,” he said of the smartwatch space. It would be to “differentiate as if to say, ‘You’re not wearing something in style if you’re wearing a big smartwatch,’” he said. Kinsey hopes Martian can showcase smaller-form-factor smartwatches for women at the January CES as a prelude to a market introduction by next spring. Home control is one of the many “wild cards” that may well guide the success of the smartwatch industry, Kinsey said.

Google challenged arguments by the Wireless Medical Telemetry Service Coalition (WMTS) and GE Healthcare (GEHC) that data presented to the FCC by NAB show problems with the TV white spaces (TVWS) database of concern to the medical community as the agency examines unlicensed use of TV Channel 37. The coalition and GEHC asked for additional technical rules to protect wireless telemetry use of the spectrum (see 1508030059). “Like NAB, GE Healthcare and the WMTS Coalition fail to identify even one instance of harmful interference from a TVWS device," Google said. “Indeed, as Google has previously revealed, the flawed NAB filing that GE Healthcare and the WMTS Coalition invoke focused on entries into TVWS databases that almost certainly reflect professional testing by hardware manufacturers, not misuse of devices by the rogue operators that GE Healthcare and the WMTS Coalition attempt to conjure.” The filing was posted Tuesday in docket 12-268.

New America’s Open Technology Institute and Common Cause discussed the "widespread concern in the unlicensed spectrum community about the incentive auction team’s recommendation to relocate broadcast stations in the Duplex Gap in certain key markets, including possibly Los Angeles,” they said in reports on a series of meetings with FCC officials to make their closing arguments on why the agency shouldn't put TV stations in the duplex gap. The groups met with Gary Epstein, chairman of the FCC Incentive Auction Task Force, and Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology, among other officials, said a filing in docket 12-268: “This could preempt mass markets for next generation Wi-Fi that leverages the unique propagation characteristics of spectrum below 1 GHz.” The public interest group representatives reiterated their concerns that leading chipmakers want access to a minimum of three unlicensed channels in every market to justify the investment needed to integrate the IEEE 802.11af standard for TV white spaces devices into Wi-Fi chips for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

Apple is driving smartphone makers’ push to high-resolution displays, said an IHS report. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus led growth in the low-temperature polysilicon thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (LTPS TFT LCD) category for smartphones, which grew by 31 percent to 251 million units in first half 2015 over the first six months of 2014, IHS said. IPhone displays were 52 percent of all LTPS TFT LCD smartphone display shipments for the period, it said. “Apple adopted wider displays with higher resolution in its latest iPhone series, which has helped spur demand in LTPS TFT LCD displays,” said analyst Hiroshi Hayase. Following Apple were Xiaomi, LG and Huawei with 6, 5 and 5 percent share each, said the industry research firm.

The FirstNet board plans a special meeting via teleconference Aug. 17, the authority said Monday in the Federal Register. A FirstNet spokesman said the meeting will cover the agency’s fiscal year 2016 budget, the subject of a special meeting this week of the Finance Committee (see 1507310035). The meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. until noon.