Huawei has partnered with Amazon to bring its new phablet, the Mate 9, to the American market this week. The Chinese telecommunications company has also announced prior CES 2017 that its high-specced smartphone is arriving in the United States with the Alexa voice assistant as one of its key features. On Wednesday, Huawei released an official statement online to announce that the Mate 9 is launching in the U.S. on Jan. 6, Friday. The smartphone maker proudly stated that its device flaunts a beautiful design and performs impressively with its Kirin 960 chipset. It also boasted how the handset features machine-learning algorithm and SuperCharge technology. Huawei mentioned that it has worked hard to bring the industry-leading hardware to consumers.

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One of Huawei's biggest priorities when building its Mate 9 was shoehorning some handy machine learning features into to it. A machine learning algorithm designed to improve performance by finding the patterns in how you use the phone and allocating resources like RAM accordingly. Turns out Huawei's AI ambitions don't end there: a spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that the Mate 9 will receive a software update that brings Amazon's Alexa to that surprisingly slick phablet. We're not entirely sure of the timing yet, but we can confirm that the update will roll out in the US (obviously) and a handful of other markets. Either way, this is a big step for Huawei and for Amazon; the former gets to sell the first properly Alexa-enabled smartphone and Amazon gets the chance to forge a partnership with one of the biggest smartphone makers in China by volume.

Apple will invest $1 billion in a fund set up by Japanese telecom company SoftBank to finance new technology that could be used in the future, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. "We believe their new fund will speed the development of technologies which may be strategically important to Apple," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told the Journal . The SoftBank Vision Fund, which the Japanese company is hoping to launch next year, could be one of the largest global tech investment funds, with the potential size of the Fund going up to $100 billion. SoftBank itself expects to invest at least $25 billion. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund could become the leading funding partner, with its potential $45 billion investment over five years. The money will be used to finance new technology, such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, robotics, and connected devices.

At best, most consumers know Softbank as the Japanese phone carrier that owns Sprint -- but the company is much bigger than that. Softbank has its hands in robotics, smart vehicles, processors and more. It even invests in other companies, and recently set up the Softbank Vision Fund with the goal of pouring billions of dollars into promising start ups. Now that fund is getting another investor: Apple. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has pledged to invest $1 billion in Softbank's Vision Fund.

Intel doesn't want to get left behind in the next evolution of the mobile business. The chipmaking giant said on Wednesday it's launching a 5G modem chip, codenamed "Goldridge." Intel is emphasizing the modem's applications in areas outside of phones too, such as autonomous vehicles, drones and smart city sensors. "5G will enable billions of'things' to become smart through seamless connectivity, massive computing power and access to rich data and analytics stored at the edge of the cloud," wrote Aicha Evans, the head of Intel's communications and devices group, in a blog post about the 5G modem. Intel is expecting to sample the modem to customers in the second half of 2017 and go into production soon afterwards, an Intel spokeswoman said. Intel isn't the first company to announce a 5G modem.

Intel has a disastrous history with smartphones. It fumbled a chance to be in Apple's first iPhone, and then quit making its Atom smartphone chip to focus on modems. But the company is now set to ship a groundbreaking modem that will deliver data transfer rates many times faster than most wired internet connections. The chipmaker will start shipping its first 5G modem for testing in the second half this year. Beyond mobile devices, the modem could also be used in autonomous cars, servers, base stations, networking equipment, drones, robots, and other internet-of-things devices.

Intel has a disastrous history with smartphones. It fumbled a chance to be in Apple's first iPhone, and then quit making its Atom smartphone chip to focus on modems. But the company is now set to ship a groundbreaking modem that will deliver data transfer rates many times faster than most wired internet connections. The chipmaker will start shipping its first 5G modem for testing in the second half this year. Beyond mobile devices, the modem could also be used in autonomous cars, servers, base stations, networking equipment, drones, robots, and other internet-of-things devices.

Mobile chip designer Qualcomm has just detailed their latest processor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835. This new system on a chip is based on new 10 nanometre architecture and despite being 35% smaller than the 820, it packs in a staggering 3 billion ultra-efficient transistors. Qualcomm says as we move into an era where mobile computing means integration of their chips into smartphones, VR and AR heat mounted displays, IP cameras, tablets, mobile PCs and more, they need a chip that's better on battery. The 835 is faster but achieves that speed using 25% less battery power. Of course there's many components (mostly the screen) that sucks power from your phones battery, so don't expect a 25% increase in net battery life, but we'll take gains we're we can get them.

CES kicks off this week from Las Vegas, and PCMag will be there, wandering the floor, throwing some elbows for prime seats at press conferences, and getting you a hands-on look at all the tech that will be making waves in 2017. Here's what we expect to see. AT&T and T-Mobile both have major press conferences at CES. AT&T's presser is usually about connected devices and the Internet of Things rather than phones, but expect some details on 5G, as well. T-Mobile says it's having an UnCarrier announcement, which usually means some big service plan improvement. On the chipset side, the big news will undoubtably be Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, the mysterious 10-nanometer processor that will be in many flagship phones next year.