AT&T rolling out July 1 security patch to the Galaxy Note 5

AT&T is rolling out the July 1 security patch to the Galaxy Note 5. The update comes in at 22.6MB, and increments the build number to MMB29K.N920AUCS2BPG1 and the firmware version to N920AUCS2BPG1. The release notes mention that the build was compiled on July 4, and the patch itself contains fixes from the July 1 update and not those from July 5 (which will likely be rolled into the August update).

On the AT&T Note 5? Head into Settings > System > About device > Software update > Check for updates to initiate the download.

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These leaked photos show Sony’s next Xperia flagship in clear detail

Do you want to know what Sony’s next flagship smartphone will look like? Then cast your eyes above.

GSMArena has published super crisp photos of the “Sony Xperia F8331”, claiming they were slyly left behind in its tip box by a reader. If they are indeed legit, it’s obvious that Sony is going for a design that’s nothing like the Z lineup, though at the same time one might think of the new look as bland or maybe even predictable. It’s hard to say that for sure however until can get our hands on it and review it in full.

• Next Sony Xperia flagship: What’s the story so far?

We can see that the top and bottom of the phone are flat, and both sides of it are curved, while on the back there is a brush-metal finish and a fresh layout for the camera, including a dual-LED flesh. Also, at the bottom of the phone, there’s a panel, as well as a USB Type-C port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. As for the front, we can see front-facing stereo speakers and the NFC antenna.

The Xperia F8331 is thought to sport a slightly bigger 1080p screen than what the X Performance features, and it’ll offer 4K video capture on both the front- and back-facing cameras. That’s about all we can tell you for now. We don’t even know when the device will launch, but IFA is around the corner, and Sony is scheduled to attend, so a September launch could be plausible.

Stay tuned to Pocket-lint’s Sony hub for all the latest and breaking news in the meantime. Check out the gallery above, too, for a closer look at all the leaks.

• Best smartphones to look forward to in 2016
• What is Sony PlayStation Vue and where is it available?
• PlayStation Neo (PS4K) vs Project Scorpio

Get 6 IT certifications with the Essential CompTIA and Microsoft Windows Server Administrator Certification Bundle (96 per cent off)

CompTIA certifications are key to entering and excelling professionally, whether you’re interested in an entry-level job or a role at Fortune 500 companies.

If you’re interested in the IT sector, you can set yourself up for high-level IT success with six premium IT certification exam preparations, available in the Essential CompTIA and Microsoft Windows Server Administrator Certification Bundle. For a limited time, this collection is available at 96 per cent off from Pocket-lint Deals.

Through this collection of deep-dive courses, you’ll learn the fundamentals of computer technology, hardware, installing and configuring operating systems and beyond, preparing you to ace your certification exams with flying colors. Establish technical competency in networking administration and support through CompTIA’s Network+ N10-006, while also learning to install and configure Windows Server 2012 R2.

You will also gain essential prep for the Microsoft Exam 70-411, which will certify your ability to administer Windows Server 2012 R2 infrastructure in an enterprise environment. Moving on, you’ll learn to configure advanced services in Windows Server 2012 R2 infrastructure, rounding out your abilities with highly immersive training.

Establishing yourself as an IT professional with the skill set to fully administer a Windows Server will put you in a league of contention for some of the highest-level IT jobs on the market. Your bundle provides a full year of access to the course materials, provided by iCollege, a leading provider of online courses.

Get started today with the Essential CompTIA and Microsoft Windows Server Administrator Certification Bundle, now just £49.26 ($65) on Pocket-lint Deals.

NYC’s next subway cars have WiFi and USB ports built-in

The New York City subway system is gearing up for a major overhaul meant to bring a “modernized look and feel” to lighting, wayfinding and subway cars by the year 2020. At a press conference on Monday, Governor Andrew Guomo announced the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $27 billion, five-year plan to add 1,025 new subway cars, more informative digital screens, better security features and — most importantly for anyone who needs to get some work done underground – WiFi and USB charging ports in the cars and stations.

“People want to work, and they want their device to work 24 hours a day,” Governor Cuomo during the event at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn. “They don’t want to have to look up. There has to be WiFi, and there need to be charging ports.”

In addition to free juice and an internet connection, the new subway cars will sport “full color digital customer information displays,” as well as new digital ad space. On a practical level, the cars will offer wider doors to expedite boarding times and up to 750 of new cars will feature an open-ended design that allows for more passenger space.

Governor Guomo’s announcement also included plans to create a new, unified design standard for all subway stations, starting with some extensive renovations at 31 key stations across the city. Like the train cars, those stations will be getting amenities like WiFi, improved cellular connections and new digital signage with real-time updates at entrances and count down clocks on the platform – all while being careful to consider each station’s “architectural legacy.” If the first phase of renovations is successful, there are plans to upgrade another 170 stations in the future.

While the plan is still in the proposal stage at this point, the MTA did manage to meet their goal of rolling out a new generation of WiFi-equipped buses on the streets of Queens earlier this year. And if the city’s LinkNYC smart kiosk plan stays on track, there will be a total of 4,550 WiFi public WiFi hot spots above ground by the year 2020 as well.

DJI drones will now get real-time wildfire alerts

DJI has added real-time wildfire alerts to its geofencing system to prevent drones from wandering into affected areas and hampering firefighting efforts. The company already upgraded its Geospatial Environment Online software earlier this month with the ability to auto-download temporary restrictions. This particular update, however, grabs wildfire info from AirMap, which gets its data straight from the Department of the Interior’s incident command system

AirMap is an app that gives drone pilots access to low-altitude navigational info. The wildfire alerts it gets from the US Department of the Interior is more up-to-date than the ones published by the Federal Aviation Administration. Wildfires tend to spread rapidly, and by the time the FAA’s notices go out, they’ve either reached other regions or are already extinguished.

If you’ll recall, the local government of California offered a $75,000 reward in 2015 to catch the drone pilots who flew their UAVs over three different forest fires. In one incident, authorities said the aerial firefighters spotted five drones flying over the area, forcing them to land their vehicles and causing a massive delay. This new feature will prevent that from happening again. Authorities can override temporary restrictions by logging into authorized DJI accounts, though, so first responders can still use DJI’s machines to assess affected locations.

Source: DJI

Apple Pay Now Available in France

Apple Pay today expanded to France, marking the availability of the payment service in a total of eight countries (via iPhoneAddict.fr). MasterCard and Visa credit and debit cards issued by Banque Populaire, Ticket Restaurant, Carrefour Banque, and Caisse d’Epargne can now be added to Apple Pay on eligible devices.

According to the Apple Pay France website, both Boon and Orange plan to add Apple Pay support in the near future, further expanding the availability of Apple Pay in the country.

Cards can be added to Apple Pay by tapping the “Add Credit or Debit Card” option in the Wallet app on a device running iOS 8.1 or later. Apple Pay works with the iPhone 6 or later or the iPhone 5 or later when using an iPhone paired with an Apple Watch. Apple Pay in apps is also available on iPads with Touch ID, including the iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, iPad mini 4, and both iPad Pro models.

Apple Pay is accepted at a wide range of retailers in France, including Bocage, Le Bon Marché, Cojean, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Fnac, Sephora, Flunch, Parkeon, Pret, and more. Apple Pay payments can also be made at any location that accepts contactless payment options.

Apple Pay is now available in the United States, the UK, China, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Singapore, and France, and Apple plans to expand the service to Hong Kong and Spain later in 2016.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay
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Plex rewrites its media streaming app for Windows 10

Plex users on Windows have been stuck with an old Windows 8 app for awhile now, but that changes today. The media streaming server’s desktop app has been completely rebuilt for Windows 10 as a Universal Windows app — giving users the same Plex experience across tablet, desktop and mobile platforms. Well, almost the same experience: Plex says it’s still working on the mobile release of the UWP app, but promises it will be along soon.

Naturally, this update bakes in a few Windows 10 specific features. Specifically, Plex for Windows now boasts Cortana support — and when the mobile version of the app does launch, it’ll use Windows Continuum: the feature that allows mobile apps to morph into their full-sized desktop apps when a Windows Phone is connected to a monitor and keyboard. The app also features a new UI, and support for Plex Hubs and discovery. Ready for an upgrade? Head to the Windows Store (the listing might not be updated yet, but if you install you will get the new version) or check out the source link below.

Source: Plex, Windows Store

Apple Music is changing: Here’s how it’ll better match songs, no longer add DRM to uploaded tunes

Apple Music is about to get better at matching and syncing songs you’ve already purchased in iTunes.

Apple’s music-streaming service, which launched last year, has a built-in feature that allows it to match songs in your existing iTunes library, but it doesn’t work as well as iTunes Match, a similar tool that Apple has long offered to customers who were willing to pay $25 a year for the service. Well, according to The Loop, Apple is finally addressing the problem via an update to Apple Music that will bring iTunes Match’s audio fingerprint technology, and it will finally allow all properly-matched, uploaded songs to download DRM-free.

OK, so we understand this is complicated. But put on your thinking cap, because we’ve explained everything in detail below, with the purpose of helping you comprehend what’s going on with Apple Music, as well as whether you should continue paying for iTunes Match.

First, what’s the point of iTunes Match?

In the early days of iTunes, you could rip purchased CDs with your Mac and then listen to them in iTunes.

When the iTunes Store came along some time later, it let you purchase songs for a set fee. It also let your ripped music and purchased music lived side-by-side inside the app. However, due to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), a technology that controls what you can do with the digital media and devices you own, you couldn’t do much with your purchased music in iTunes. Bummer.

In 2009, Apple stopped selling music encumbered by DRM restrictions (no DRM means you could finally play your music files on as many Macs or PCs as you want, resulting in your music actually being yours). However, if you want DRM-free versions of music, you have to pay $.30 more per track or album. DRM-free tracks are also encoded at 256-kpbs, twice the bit rate of standard iTunes tracks.

So, not only can you play your files on as many Macs or PCs as you want, but they’re now higher-quality and thus make your ripped music sound way worse than their DRM-free counterparts in the iTunes Store. To solve all our woes, Apple began offering iTunes Match. For $25 a year, you can automatically upgrade any track in your personal music library that’s in the iTunes Store.

That means all your low-quality ripped music will be replaced in your iTunes library with higher-quality, DRM-free AAC tracks. Also, with your iTunes Match subscription, you can upload up to 100,000 songs from your library to iCloud Music Library, where you’re able ton stream and download them to up to 10 other devices. Voila! And that’s the point of iTunes Match, in a nutshell.

Wait – what is iCloud Music Library?

When you turn on iCloud Music Library, it looks at all your music on your Mac to see if any of those songs and albums are also available in the iTunes Store (if you’re an iTunes Match subscriber) or Apple Music’s catalogue (if you’re an Apple Music subscriber). If they are, it’ll match those songs, letting you download or stream higher-quality, 256-kbps AAC tracks on another device that doesn’t have your music locally stored.

If Apple can’t find a track from your library in its catalogues, it’ll still upload the original, possibly low-quality version of your track to iCloud Music Library, where you can re-download or stream it on a different device (it’s just been transcoded to work). That doesn’t mean you could use iCloud Music Library as a back-up service. For instance, until recently, if you deleted your ripped music on your Mac because it was matched to Apple Music’s catalogue and uploaded to iCloud, you couldn’t just unsubscribe from Apple Music.

That’s because Apple Music has a DRM layer, which we expand upon in a bit.

If you deleted the local copies of your ripped music on your Mac, you basically got rid of your original, DRM-free copies. And if you were only using Apple Music, your matched tracks suddenly had DRM on them. So, if you unsubscribed from Apple Music and tried to download your ripped music from iCloud, the newly-applied DRM prevented you from doing that. But Apple Music is changing how some of that works now.

It’s confusing, we know.

OK. So how is Apple Music changing?

Apple Music’s matching algorithm is more more reliable now, and it no longer DRM-locks uploaded copies of your own music.

We’ve already discussed iTunes Match, iCloud Music Library, and DRM-free music, so before we discuss how Apple Music is changing, let’s first dive into how the service handles its streaming music collection. Just like every other streaming service, it has a DRM layer in order to prevent you from getting a subscription, then downloading all the music you want to any device you own, and canceling your subscription.

Apple Music also has an iTunes Match-like feature that matches songs in your existing iTunes library. But it didn’t work as well as the iTunes Match. The Loop has reported that Apple is rolling out an update that’ll use iTunes Match’s audio fingerprint technology to better match the songs you’ve bought. Until now, Apple Music used a less accurate version of iTunes Match that leveraged metadata to pair tracks.

This often resulted in Apple Music pulling the wrong version of a song. For instance, Apple Music would sometimes replace a live version of a song with a studio version. That’s not going to be a problem any longer thanks to audio fingerprint. And if you had songs that were matched incorrectly, Apple Music will now rematch to the correct song, but it won’t delete any downloaded copies of songs you have in your library.

Apple Music is giving you the new version of iTunes Match for free. If you are a current iTunes Match subscriber and subscribe to Apple Music, you can ditch your iTunes Match subscription and get the same benefits. But that’s not all: this update also means that all matched songs will now download DRM-free, and the only tracks that’ll be DRM-restricted are those you didn’t upload to iCloud and directly downloaded from Apple Music.

What does this mean for you?

Not only is Apple Music’s matching algorithm going to be better, because it’s matching from audio fingerprints instead of metadata, but the tracks you upload to iCloud Music Library from Apple Music will no longer have DRM.

Any music you purchased or ripped from CDs will display in Apple Music as Matched or Uploaded without DRM applied to it.  So, if you accidentally delete your personal music on your Mac, you’ll still be able to re-download copies of those songs that are DRM-free. When you download your matched tracks on another device you own, it won’t disappear if you cancel Apple Music.

But any iCloud Music Library tracks you don’t have stored on a device will disappear. Also, tracks or playlists downloaded from the Apple Music subscription library will be DRM-restricted. You didn’t upload them to iCloud, nor do you even own them, obviously, and so they will disappear if you cancel your Apple Music subscription.

And finally, because Apple Music is integrating with iTunes Match to the max, you will no longer have to pay for both services. Apple Music subscribers are getting these iTunes Match features as part of their subscription.

When will the new Apple Music be available?

Apple is rolling the new Apple Music out to 1 to 2 percent of its users every day. The update will happen automatically. You’ll know it has arrived when you see “Matched” tracks instead of “Apple Music” in your iCloud Music Library.