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LinkedIn 2018 Workplace Learning Report is out and loud – Where are the developers?

The LinkedIn 2018 Workplace Learning Report is out and takes the pulse of the current L&D trends.

The survey is based on the responses from 1,200 L&D or HR professionals, 400 people managers, 200 executives and 2,200 learners from North America, Europe, and Asia.

However, from a developer’s perspective, the results of the report seem… troubling. L&D and HR professionals, as well as people managers and executives, appear to pay a ton of attention on the development of soft skills of employees while the development of technical skills, as part of a company’s L&D program, seems of little significance. Let’s have a closer look at some of the results.

Source: What are the top priorities for your L&D programs in 2018? Linkedin 2018 Workplace Learning Report

Source: What are the most important skills for employees to learn from L&D? LinkedIn 2018 Workplace Learning Report

SEE ALSO: Hiring a developer? Challenge accepted!

Source: What are the most important skills for your direct reports to learn from L&D programs? LinkedIn 2018 Workplace Learning Report

The trend that is summarized in these results is that soft skills are the core focus of the L&D goals for 2018. This trend demonstrates a huge differentiation from the results of the 2017 Workplace Learning Report, where the summarized results presented the technical skills second in importance while the 2018 report hardly presents technical skills as part of the L&D programs.

No one can deny the importance of developing soft skills for your employees, such as communication and collaboration. However, placing the need to develop leadership assets among your employees makes the process of creating managers and leaders the most important task of L&D process; in fact, develop managers and leaders were ranked first among the main objectives for L&D strategies in the 2017 report. The trend seems to be growing in 2018.

But if companies put the biggest amount of their resources into L&D programs that focus on developing management and leadership skills, what will ultimately be there for managers to manage?

According to the survey, “talent developers are preparing their workforce for automation by naming ‘training for soft skills’ their #1 priority”; and it makes sense, right? You want your employees to be ready for the automation that DevOps brings as its core, therefore, you invest in the development of soft skills among your employees so that they have the knowledge to navigate the new age of company culture.

SEE ALSO: DevOps without automation is like peanut butter without jelly

But what about the actual developers; the people behind the development of these automations? Why don’t they enjoy that generous of a share of a company’s resources for the development of their skills, the technical skills to be more precise?

One could argue that technology overwhelms every aspect of our lives and especially corporate life; therefore, it is crucial that we put our emphasis on developing the human skills of employees. And I could not agree more!

However, this survey portraits the main objectives of companies’ Learning and Development programs and it would be unfair, to say the least, that people who wish to develop their technical skills and enhance their knowledge in their field of expertise do not have the same opportunities to take advantage of the company’s resources, just as employees with an interest in developing their soft skills have.

Especially when talking about DevOps, developers carry a huge part of the burden through the automation process and, as Yugal Joshi argued, “they’re not at all pleased with that and believe that they are being asked to address IT operations’ laggardness”.

Just to make it clear, this article does not aim to attack the results of the LinkedIn survey or any of the participants, for what it’s worth. I only wish to point out and highlight that the results presented in the survey could portray a worrying trend for developers, the importance and the appreciation of technical skills in corporate culture.

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Nubia X dual screen phone with dual cameras, fingerprint scanners unveiled in China with ~$473 starting price

Nubia x is the newest Nubia flagship phone that has been announced today through an unveil event in China. The USP of the phone is that it is equipped with two touchscreen displays, one on the front and the other one on the rear. Also, the phone is packed with topnotch specifications. Design and Display The Nubia X that features a pair of display sports a thin profile of only 8.4mm. Its dimensions are 154.1 x 73.3mm and it weighs 181 grams. There are two fingerprint scanners that are placed on the either sides of the smartphone. The company claims that it can unlock the smartphone in just 0.1 seconds. It is equipped 7000-series aviation grade aluminum frame. The backside of the phone features four-sided curved 3D glass rear. The front display measures 6.26 inches. The notch-less screen offers Full HD+ resolution of 2280 x 1080 pixels and a screen-to-body ratio of 93.6 percent. A layer of 2.5D glass is placed over the front display. The rear side of the phone is fitted with an OLED screen of 5.1 inches which delivers HD+ resolution of 720 x 1520 pixels. The secondary screen offers features like eye protection mode and Always on Display. Both screens offer an aspect ratio of 19:9. Chipset, Storage and Battery The Snapdragon 845 chipset powers the Nubia X dual screen smartphone. It comes with up to 8 GB of LPDDRX RAM and up to 256 GB of internal UFS 2.1 storage. For heat dissipation, Nubia has included multi-layer graphene cooling technology inside the device. There is no microSD card slot on the device. The 18W fast charging technology enabled 3,800mAh battery fuels the smartphone. With 5-percent battery life remaining in the ultra-low power mode, the smartphone can function for up to 3 hours. Camera, Software and Connectivity The Nubia X features f/1.8 aperture 16-megapixel + f/1.7 aperture 24-megapixel dual camera module. The dual lenses offer features like HDR, AI portrait mode, AI scene recognition,  dual pixel PDAF, 240fps slow-motion video recording, dual tone LED flash and for capturing brighter selfies, it features a large-size softlight LED. The Nubia X does not feature a selfie camera. The dual rear cameras of the phone can be used to capture top quality selfies. The rear-facing display can serve as a viewfinder while shooting selfie images. Hence, the company claims that the Nubia X could one of the best selfie capturing smartphones. The smartphone is shipped with Android 8.1 OS that is overlaid with company’s Nubia UI 6.0 X. The improved Nubia UI brings support for gesture-based navigation. There is a dedicated app on the device can help Nubia X users develop healthy eye habits through features like fatigue reminder, dark light reminder and so on. The AI dual-screen switching feature can seamless show the display contents of the front screen on the secondary display when the device is flipped.Also, while playing games on the main display of the phone in landscape orientation, users can use their fingers to access gaming functions on the left and right portions on the rear display. The Nubia X comes with connectivity features such as 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, USB and 3.5mm audio jack. Nubia X Pricing and Availability The color variants of the Nubia X smartphone are Deep Gray, Sea Blue, Black Gold and Blue Gold. The Chinese manufacturer will be starting with the reservations of the smartphone from 5 PM (local time) today through Nubia;s official website, Jingdong, Tmall, and Suning. Its sales will kick off from Nov. 5. Here is the pricing of the different variants of the Nubia X: 6 GB RAM + 64 GB storageColor Variants:Deep Gray, Black Gold – 3,299 Yuan (~$473)Sea Blue – 3,399 Yuan (~$487) 8 GB RAM + 128 GB storageColor Variants:Deep Gray, Black Gold – 3,699 Yuan (~$530)Sea Blue – 3,799 Yuan (~$545) 8 GB RAM + 256 GB storageColor Variants:Black Gold – 4,199 Yuan (~$602)Blue Gold – 4,299 Yuan (~$616) Nubia did not confirm on the international availability of the Nubia X dual screen smartphone at its launch event. What do you think about the amazing design, specifications and pricing of the Nubia X smartphone? Would you be interested in purchasing this device? Share us your views by posting your comments below.

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5G Smartphone 2019

OnePlus 5G smartphone set to debut in first half of 2019, CEO confirms 

OnePlus 6T The OnePlus 6T is barely out and the hype machine for the OnePlus 7 has already begun. The company previously announced that it’s going to launch one of the first 5G phones next year. It’s now confirmed that the device will be launching in the first half of 2019. OnePlus CEO Pete Lau didn’t actually say whether this 5G offering will be the OnePlus 7. He told Gadgets360 that the brand will have a “5G product” in the first half of next year. He gave a separate interview to The Verge where he stated that it’ll be first 5G smartphone in Europe. Lau also provided a little insight into what OnePlus’ lineup will look like next year. The 5G handset is going to coexist alongside the brand’s 4G LTE devices since 5G won’t be accessible worldwide in 2019. He specifically mentioned that it’ll be its own line of phones. This sounds like there will be a 4G OnePlus 7 and a 5G OnePlus 7. The US will probably grab the latter since the network standard should kick into action there next year and the company is paying a lot of attention to the market. It just joined hands with T-Mobile to sell the OnePlus 6T. Also Read: OnePlus 6T arrives with in-display fingerprint scanner, smaller notch, bigger battery T-Mobile has big plans for 5G, so a 5G OnePlus 7 makes sense for both brands. Lau says the company is interested in making a 5G device early in order to better understand what the technology is capable of and what it can offer to customers. He also cited demand from consumers, even though no one has tried out 5G yet. OnePlus is working closely with Qualcomm for its 5G smartphone, as it revealed on stage at the latter’s 4G/5G Summit 2018 last week. Samsung will be competing with it with for the 5G crown. The South Korean company is allegedly working on a 5G version of the Galaxy S10 which may or may not come out with the rest of its 4G family.

Oppo demos 5G smartphone connection 

Oppo has announced completing a 5G connection using a mobile device in Australia, with the Chinese technology company saying this will provide the foundation for commercially launching 5G smartphones in 2019. Oppo said it is aiming to become the first company to release a 5G smartphone. "This latest test by the Oppo Research Institute is a significant milestone in helping the company achieve its goal," Oppo said. "The 5G internet connection was carried out on a pre-commercially available 5G smartphone, developed on the basis of an Oppo R15. It was customised with fully integrated 5G components, including a system board, RF, RFFE, and antenna." Oppo told ZDNet that the test was conducted in its Research Institute in a 5G communication protocol laboratory environment. The company is also "actively exploring" 5G use cases across virtual reality, augmented reality shopping, 3D video calls, and online gaming, it said. "5G technology has been discussed among consumers for quite a few years and we're looking forward to bringing the new technology to Australian shores. This is the first step in making 5G a reality," Oppo Australia MD Michael Tran added. During Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in Barcelona at the start of this year, ZTE also said that it would launch 5G devices in either late 2018 or early 2019, with smartphones, tablets, and customer premises equipment (CPE) already under development. "Ready for commercialisation, ZTE's 5G solutions are going to be launched soon," the company said in February. "As a pioneer in the 5G era, ZTE has made the rollout of its 5G solutions the core goal." Also working on a 5G phone for 2019 is LG, which announced in August that it is aiming to deliver a smartphone with Sprint following the launch of the United States carrier's 5G network at the beginning of next year. Sprint and LG said they would have more information on device specifications and exact timing of the launch at a later date. "LG has done tremendous work developing technical designs that enable us to be among the first movers in mobile 5G," Sprint CTO Dr John Saw said in August. "Today's announcement brings us one step closer to putting a beautifully designed advanced 5G smartphone in our customers' hands." Oppo is meanwhile also making the world's first phone with 10GB of RAM. The new model of Oppo's Find X will also come with 256GB of storage. Oppo is the world's fifth largest smartphone brand by shipments, behind Samsung, Huawei, Apple, and Xiaomi, according to IDC. Related Coverage OnePlus 6T announced with in-screen fingerprint scanner, dual rear cameras, and no headphone jack Rumors revealed all the details of the new OnePlus phone and today the OnePlus 6T was officially announced in NYC. The OnePlus 6T includes some new technology for the company while also doing away with something OnePlus fans have been enjoying until now. Windows Phone: Why Microsoft built this E Ink second screen for its Lumia 640 Sadly, you'll probably never get to buy one of these handy, second-display Windows 10 Mobile covers. Apple's new iPad Pro aims to keep enterprise momentum Apple's iPad Pro refresh will feature new specifications and design, but the real purpose is to keep the company's massive enterprise flywheel going. Ericsson and Fujitsu partner on 5G Ericsson and Fujitsu will combine their expertise across radio access and core network technology to offer 5G services and solutions across Japan and globally. Xiaomi phone shipments exceeded 100 million by October Despite its sluggish share performance, Xiaomi saw a notable smartphone shipment growth in 2018 as it completed its annual target two months ahead of plan. AT&T showcases disruptive potential of 5G with world's first mm wave browsing session (TechRepublic) At Magnolia Silos in Waco, TX, AT&T successfully conducted the first millimeter wave mobile 5G browsing session using a NETGEAR Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotspot. Trump unveils 5G spectrum memorandum (TechRepublic) Annual reports on spectrum plans, a spectrum strategy task force, a long-term National Spectrum Strategy, and technology R&D efforts have been commanded under a new US presidential memorandum. Mobile device security: A guide for business leaders (Tech Pro Research) Attacks against mobile devices are growing more widespread and more sophisticated, requiring companies to adopt new tools, strategies, and best practices to safeguard their data assets.

OnePlus plans on launching the first 5G phone in Europe in 2019 

OnePlus just announced the OnePlus 6T earlier this morning, but even so, the company's already hard at work on its successor. In an interview with The Verge, CEO Pete Lau confirmed that it plans on launching a 5G-capable phone in Europe as early as next year. Lau said, "We're very happy that our efforts with OnePlus will include 5G smartphones in the very near future." Furthermore, he also noted that OnePlus is working with carriers in Europe to make sure everything's compatible and that "We're confident we'll be the first 5G phone in Europe." Another interesting thing to note is that this 5G phone will live alongside OnePlus's other 4G LTE handsets. New OnePlus phones typically replace their predecessors, so this suggests that the 5G phone will be separate from the company's regular release schedule. Does that mean we'll get a OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 (5G) next year? Maybe something entirely different like what Apple did with the iPhone 8 and iPhone X? According to Lau, "It doubles the workload for us because it's an additional product. It will be its own line of phones." Are you looking forward to a 5G phone from OnePlus? OnePlus 6T review: 90% of the phone for 60% of the price