By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
Intel is by a wide margin the world’s largest provider of Wi-Fi connectivity technology for PCs of all kinds – and it is a pretty good bet that they’re in the process of widening the gap to number two after releasing a couple of very useful new innovations at CES this week: For light/thin laptops Intel processor platforms now come with a powerful new connection manager as well as a proximity sensing feature based on Wi-Fi.
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This week at CES Intel announced availability of its thirteenth generation Intel Core™ mobile processor family and as always Intel keeps inventing new ways of improving the connectivity and general user experience: The Intel Evo™ processor category for thin & light laptops now includes a very useful and sophisticated new connection manager as well as an entirely new way of locking or waking up your laptop using proximity sensing over Wi-Fi.
New ‘Advanced Connection Manager’ combines Wi-Fi, 5G, Ethernet
Intel has excelled in connectivity performance management for a while (even winning the Wi-Fi NOW Award for Best Consumer Wi-Fi Device in December of last year) and now the company is taking the next step into full-on multi-interface, multi-standard connection management.
Intel’s new ‘Advanced Connection Manager’ (ACM) for Evo-powered PCs distributes applications, combines (aggregates) speeds, or switches to your best connection type across Wi-Fi, 5G, and Ethernet. The short video below nicely illustrates everyday use cases for ACM including how to manually select your preferred connectivity scenario or letting the system optimise it for you. The newly released ACM is part of the wider Intel Connectivity Performance Suite (ICPS) – for more about ICPS also read here.
Proximity sensing using Wi-Fi
Intel’s new proximity sensing feature is the first time we’ve seen Wi-Fi sensing technology being used by end user devices although the technology has been around for a while on the network side (read more here). In a nutshell Intel now uses Wi-Fi to sense when to lock or wake up your laptop – because it can sense when you approach or walk away from the device. Intel says the feature ‘Wi-Fi Proximity Sensing’ will be available on select Intel Evo or vPRO laptops also featuring Wi-Fi 6E connectivity.
Intel’s latest connectivity platforms support Wi-Fi 6E although the company continues to be widely active in testing and demonstrating next generation Wi-Fi 7 technology including multi-vendor testing with Broadcom. Intel say it expects Wi-Fi 7 technology to be made available during the second half of this year.
There are more Wi-Fi connectivity announcements from Intel in the pipeline at this year’s CES so watch this space. Finally: We’re delighted to announce that we will be featuring expert speakers from Intel at three of our Wi-Fi World Congress events this year including at our next event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
/Claus.
