In today’s letter: Peloton’s fancy schmancy new bike reviewed; Mark Zuckerberg friends politics; the fastest chargers for all your gadgets; Airbnb’s pandemic turnaround; and more. But first ...

It’s hard to know how much of a focus 5G was at Apple’s iPhone 12 event last Tuesday since, you know, the term was only uttered 70 times.

Let’s see here: “5G is the most exciting step yet.” “This all becomes real with 5G coming to iPhone.” “5G will bring a new level of performance for downloads and uploads.” Those are just a few quotes from Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, who along with other Apple executives and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg, waxed on about how 5G will unlock so much speed, it will usher in a new era of the iPhone. 

But will it? Where exactly is all this fast, life-changing, world-altering 5G? And if you find it, what will it do for our lives? Those are the questions I’ve been trying to answer in my annual 5G testing adventures. (Here’s this summer’s. Here’s last summer’s.)

Let me remind you of the three big conclusions:

1) 5G can mean different things. In the U.S., the millimeter wave networks are blazing fast, and were the focus of the presentation from Apple. But they don’t really work indoors. Then there’s the Sub-6 networks, which aren’t as fast but provide far wider indoor and outdoor coverage.

2) It’s hard to find fast 5G right now. For the really fast millimeter-wave coverage, the maps look like chicken pox, and a lot of the Sub-6 5G coverage just feels like 4G LTE. This is understandable—we had the same slow roll out with 3G and then 4G.

3) We don’t have any real use for 5G right now. When you actually find it, what are you doing with all that speed? Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, even Apple can’t seem to find a really convincing example of a 5G advantage, beyond downloading movies and TV shows really fast and playing games with very low latency.

On that final point, there’s real reason to be optimistic. The combination of 4G and smartphones unlocked everything from Uber to Instagram. When those networks first popped up, we couldn’t have dreamed of the applications we now take for granted. That’s what I believe Apple meant.

Still, don’t make 5G the driving factor behind your iPhone upgrade decision. Instead, look to the new design or the promise of even better photos. I’ll be reviewing the latest iPhone 12 models over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

—Joanna is the Journal’s senior personal tech columnist, and currently lives under a 5G tower.

And there’s more on Apple and 5G here:

👀Personal tech columnist Nicole Nguyen’s first impressions of the four iPhone 12 models

🌟 Comparing Apple’s full lineup: iPhone 12 vs. iPhone 11 vs. iPhone XR vs. iPhone SE

📶 New 5G iPhones Kick Off Poaching Season for Carriers

📱 Apple Reveals Four iPhone 12 Models With 5G Capability

👉 Apple Counts on 5G to Boost iPhone Fortunes in China

For more than a decade as he built Facebook into a global force, Mark Zuckerberg made it clear he didn’t care for politics. Early advisers strained to hold his attention in briefings about D.C. lawmakers, people familiar with the matter say, and he frequently said he would gladly leave the politics to others.

No longer. Mr. Zuckerberg is now an active political operator.

👉Read Deepa Seetharaman and Emily Glazer’s full report here.

More on Facebook this week:

• Facebook Has Made Lots of New Rules This Year. It Doesn’t Always Enforce Them

• How Twitter and Facebook Treated New York Post Articles as Possible Election Interference

Scrutinizing Speech: The chief executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google will appear before a Senate committee Oct. 28 to face questioning about their policies for moderating content on their internet platforms. 

Start Spending: Amazon’s Prime Day sales event propelled consumers to spend billions more online last week, kicking off an end-of-year shopping season that e-commerce is expected to dominate.

Socially Responsible: New York’s top financial watchdog said a dedicated regulator should oversee "systemically important" social-media platforms, following a successful cyberattack on Twitter during the summer.

Lumbering Recovery: The Silicon Valley area is also home to a less feted industry and it’s been hit hard: lumber. Big Creek Lumber, other timber companies across California struggle to navigate financial burden of repairing the fire-charred forests they rely on for logging.

As we endured month upon month of quarantine, the word “Peloton” became as ubiquitous to in-home exercise gadgets as Kleenex is to tissue, or Band-Aids are to boo-boos. For those who can afford them, swanky stationary cycles and treadmills that pipe live-streamed classes into our living rooms are a godsend during lockdown.

👉Read John Stoll’s full column here.

Tech workers fleeing the San Francisco Bay Area to work remotely amid the pandemic are facing a new reality: pay cuts.

Over the past several months, Covid-19 has shaken traditional notions of where employees can work. In Silicon Valley, which has a relatively high cost of living and an employee base with access to state-of-the-art remote-work tools, companies are devising plans for a future with decentralized staffs. In some cases, changes can include cutting salaries by 15% or more depending on where someone moves.

👉Read Katie Bindley and Eliot Brown’s full report here.

🎧 And listen to Katie on WSJ’s Tech News Briefing podcast here.

After years of shipping iPhones with a horribly slow charging brick, Apple has finally killed it. WSJ’s Joanna Stern kills it harder, then recommends the best fast chargers and wireless options from Anker, Aukey, Belkin and others.

🎬Watch Joanna’s video here. 

📖And read her full column here.

• The Man Who Speaks Softly—and Commands a Big Cyber Army (Wired)

• Made-for-Amazon Brand Names Are Getting Ridiculously Surreal (Slate)

• The Ad-Hoc Group of Activists and Academics Convening a “Real Facebook Oversight Board” (New Yorker) 

In May, after fighting to keep Airbnb from the brink of collapse, Chief Executive Brian Chesky started noticing signs of life in part of his business.

Urban residents were searching for vacation rentals in neighboring towns and cities, so they didn’t have to fly. People wanted to book entire homes, meaning Airbnb could gain from travelers shunning hotels and their shared spaces.

The upswing has put the home-sharing giant on a path to go public and report a third-quarter profit this year, according to investors, something that seemed all but impossible months ago.

👉Read Preetika Rana and Maureen Farrell’s full report here.

This week Senior Personal Tech Columnist Joanna Stern answers your questions about the iPhone 12 and how to best charge all your gadgets. Got a question of your own? Reply to this email or write to us at personaltech@wsj.com.

Note: Questions are edited for clarity and length.

Social distancing may change Halloween 2020 this year. But here comes the internet to the rescue. Matt Thompson, of Garden City, Mich., created a zip line to deliver candy from his front porch. He created a video explainer to show others how to build it. 

👉Read more from Anne Marie Chaker on how families are trying new ways to scare up Halloween spirit this year. 

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Brought to you by tech editor Robert Wall, tech news editor Bowdeya Tweh and personal tech editor Wilson Rothman. You can reach them by replying to this newsletter, and follow them on Twitter: @R_Wall, @bowknowsbiz and @wjrothman.