Latest Apple patents hint at 3D iPhone effects, flexible batteries, and more

It’s that time of week again! Last week we looked at patents related to an upgraded Apple Pencil, but now Apple has been awarded a fresh set of patents that may give us a few hints into what the company is working on — including patents related to flexible batteries, finding your way around a building, and creating a 3D effect on a 2D display.

Here is everything you need to know about Apple’s latest set of patents.

Flexible batteries

The first patent could help make give your iPhone a much longer battery life. The concept is that flexible batteries can not only be shaped to better fit into a phone, but they can also move depending on the movement of components inside of an iPhone. The flexible batteries are made up of battery cells placed along a flexible substrate, allowing the battery as a whole to bend as it needs.

It will be interesting to see how tech like this can be implemented. For starters, it could be used in standard iPhones to make the most out of the space available for extra battery life. But it could also be used in actual flexible devices, which might change shape depending on their use. Could we see this kind of technology in Apple’s rumored flexible iPhone? It’s certainly possible.

Helping you find doors

Have you ever arrived at your destination only to find that what seems to be the front door is locked — and you have no idea if there is another door around the building? That is what this patent aims to fix. While services like Google Maps and Apple Maps are largely limited to streets and roads right now, they are actively working on ways to bring mapping to the indoors — and Apple’s latest patent shows that includes being able to entry and exit points of a business.

The patent notes that positioning information could be gleaned from a number of different methods — including through GPS, the accelerometer, pedometer, and so on.

Creating a 3D effect on a display

While Apple is rumored to be working on devices like virtual and augmented reality headsets, it looks like the company also wants to make 3D effects a little more accessible to those that simply have an iPhone. To create the 3D effect, the phone would track the positioning of the user’s head — which can be done with the tech in the iPhone X used for Face ID. Using this positioning, the phone can change what the display is showing to make an object appear three-dimensional.

Creating a 3D effect could really help bring ARKit to the next level. ARKit is Apple’s first attempt at augmented reality, and it allows for developers to create AR apps for the iPhone.

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Under Armour: 150 million MyFitnessPal accounts were hacked

Under Armour

The Baltimore, Maryland-based athletic company Under Armour announced its MyFitnessPal exercise app was involved in a massive information breach, with upwards of 150 million user accounts potentially affected. Of the hacked data, the brand says only usernames, email addresses, and hashed password information was breached, so it appears (at this time) that no financial information was compromised — which could be seen as somewhat of a silver lining considering how prevalent hacks and breaches have become.

An Under Armour-affiliated application since 2015, MyFitnessPal is a diet and exercise program designed to not just track daily activity but also to motivate its users. The app had around 80 million users prior to its acquisition, but Under Armour’s already-established network of brand loyalists and gear supporters allowed it to grow to more than 165 million users.

Under Armour reports that it was alerted to the breach on March 25 — and that it occurred in February. Upon learning of its severity, the brand “quickly took steps to determine the nature and scope of the issue.” This includes notifying law enforcement, working with data firms to assist in the investigation, alerting its user base and asking for password changes, and monitoring any suspicious behavior. The brand said it strongly recommends any MyFitnessPal user to immediately change their password as a precautionary measure, even if they aren’t necessarily involved in the breach.

“Four days after learning of the issue, the company began notifying the MyFitnessPal community via email and through in-app messaging. The notice contains recommendations for MyFitnessPal users regarding account security steps they can take to help protect their information,” said Under Armour in a statement. “The company will be requiring MyFitnessPal users to change their passwords and is urging users to do so immediately.”

The statement goes on to recommend that users be aware of any solicitation for them to provide personal information and to avoid, at all costs, clicking on any links or attachments in suspicious emails. Under Armour also provided additional information about how to change a password and how to better safeguard user information, as well as a list of frequently asked questions surrounding the breach.

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Under Armour: 150 million MyFitnessPal accounts were hacked

Under Armour

The Baltimore, Maryland-based athletic company Under Armour announced its MyFitnessPal exercise app was involved in a massive information breach, with upwards of 150 million user accounts potentially affected. Of the hacked data, the brand says only usernames, email addresses, and hashed password information was breached, so it appears (at this time) that no financial information was compromised — which could be seen as somewhat of a silver lining considering how prevalent hacks and breaches have become.

An Under Armour-affiliated application since 2015, MyFitnessPal is a diet and exercise program designed to not just track daily activity but also to motivate its users. The app had around 80 million users prior to its acquisition, but Under Armour’s already-established network of brand loyalists and gear supporters allowed it to grow to more than 165 million users.

Under Armour reports that it was alerted to the breach on March 25 — and that it occurred in February. Upon learning of its severity, the brand “quickly took steps to determine the nature and scope of the issue.” This includes notifying law enforcement, working with data firms to assist in the investigation, alerting its user base and asking for password changes, and monitoring any suspicious behavior. The brand said it strongly recommends any MyFitnessPal user to immediately change their password as a precautionary measure, even if they aren’t necessarily involved in the breach.

“Four days after learning of the issue, the company began notifying the MyFitnessPal community via email and through in-app messaging. The notice contains recommendations for MyFitnessPal users regarding account security steps they can take to help protect their information,” said Under Armour in a statement. “The company will be requiring MyFitnessPal users to change their passwords and is urging users to do so immediately.”

The statement goes on to recommend that users be aware of any solicitation for them to provide personal information and to avoid, at all costs, clicking on any links or attachments in suspicious emails. Under Armour also provided additional information about how to change a password and how to better safeguard user information, as well as a list of frequently asked questions surrounding the breach.

Editors’ Recommendations

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• Federal investigation into Equifax hack said to wither, even with more data exposed
• Save data, save money: How to reduce your data usage on Android or iOS

In the fight to protect your PC and privacy, Firefox is on the front line

Of all browsers, Firefox arguably has the longest history of keeping security at the front of its mind, both technically and philosophically. The browser’s parent company, Mozilla, is an active participant in many cyber-security initiatives; it filed suit against the FCC over net neutrality, eagerly adopted Do Not Track when it debuted, and has partnered with The Washington Post to improve online comments.

Dave Camp, Vice President of Engineering at Mozilla. Mozilla

Recent events of the last year have put a new, intense spotlight on security and privacy, as nearly everyone has been impacted by security issue recently – be it a processor security flaw or the breach of a major company, like Equifax.

This week’s column is an interview with Dave Camp, Vice President of Engineering, Mozilla at Firefox. We visited Mozilla’s Portland, Oregon office to discuss looming security threats, such as the Meltdown and Spectre flaws that impact Intel processors, and Facebook’s privacy debacle.

Digital Trends: Recent problems like Meltdown and Ryzenfall have made it seem there’s a hoard of security issues lurking in every device. As a browser developer, how do you respond to a problem like that, one that impacts hardware at a very low level?

Dave Camp: The first thing we do is when we hear these things, we figure out what we can do to quickly mitigate the problem. So, when we first found out about Meltdown and Specter, for example, the quickest thing we were able to do is just change the resolution of our timers so that it was harder for attackers to take advantage of that.

Browsers are in a unique position. We have to be the first line of defense.

Then we work with other browser vendors, we find fixes, we do our best to work around it, and we encourage users to upgrade – though with Spectre, that’s not always possible. We do our best to work with security researchers and other browser vendors to find fixes and roll them out quickly.

Browsers are in a unique position because it is our job to take untrusted code and run it on your machine. And so, a lot of times we have to be the first line of defense. Even if it’s the hardware vendor’s responsibility, we have a responsibility to our users to do what we can to mitigate these attacks.

Today, Mozilla blocked Firefox tracking with an add-on, which I thought was an interesting development. From an engineering perspective, how does an add-on like that function?

Firefox’s had a feature in our engine for a while called Firefox containers. What the containers do is they isolate things like cookies and sessions to a specific tab on a specific site. So, when you install a Facebook container it makes sure that any time you visit Facebook.com, it’s setting up new sessions and setting up new cookies.

It’s not sharing those cookies with other tabs. So, let’s say you navigate away from Facebook over to Food.com. If Food.com loads a Facebook plus one button, typically Facebook sees that cookie, can tie it to your login on Facebook, and can track you that way. Because this container scopes that down to just Facebook.com, when you go to Food.com and see a plus one button on Facebook, it doesn’t see that you’re logged in. It tries to keep separate applications separate so that they can’t see each other and prevent Facebook from getting information from that site.  

Is the container feature core to Firefox, or something only enabled by this add-on?

The browser has this functionality that’s not exposed to users. We’ve been trying different ways to expose it. Another add-on that’s just called Firefox containers lets you configure all this and figure out how you want to set up your containers.

Facebook is a particular point of interest right now

Facebook is a particular point of interest right now, so we built this add-on out and customized it to Facebook so users know how to interact with it.

The core containers add-on that we’ve already published is pretty advanced and takes an understanding of what you want to do, so we just released this one that’s easy for Facebook.

Editor’s note: Firefox pointed us to a blog post that explains the feature in-depth.

How does Quantum fit into your efforts? On a performance level, it’s built for better use of multiple cores – but what does it do for security and privacy?

Firefox Quantum really represented this rethinking of how we build the browser and how we pay attention to performance. We don’t typically use the Quantum project as a release of security features, but we do have a security roadmap that runs alongside the Quantum project.

The major piece we have there is content process sandboxing. We kind of work with the operating system to say “this is not trusted,” so the OS can try and prevent the browser from compromising the system. It’s an extra layer of security around the security we’re trying to do within the browser.

As we work through our security program with the next year, we’re working to tighten up our sandbox to find more ways to get the operating system to help us be secure.

What do you think is the next major security issue that browser developers should, as a community, take on?

I think all browsers are going to have to spend significant time understanding the Spectre vulnerabilities. That is going to take a lot of work, and we spend a lot of time understanding how it works, and all the implications of it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Huawei sees strong rise in profit for 2017, despite U.S. opposition

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Following a lackluster 2016, Huawei’s star is on the rise, with the Chinese tech company enjoying a strong increase in sales over 2017.

2017 was a rollercoaster of a year for Huawei. The Mate 10 Pro was one of our favorite phones of the year, packing an amazing camera and exceptional battery life. The Chinese company also came third in overall smartphone sales for the last part of the year. Despite those victories, it has been continually hampered by an inability to break into the U.S. market, culminating in various U.S. carriers and retailers cutting ties with Huawei in early 2018, following paranoia over links to the Chinese government.

But is Huawei having the last laugh? The company’s profits rose 28.1 percent throughout 2017, taking the total profit to a very respectable 47.5 billion yuan ($7.3 billion). This comes in contrast to a slow period of growth in 2016, in which the company post an increase of just 0.4 percent.

The company also revealed it sold 153 million smartphones worldwide last year, and overall revenue rose to 603.6 billion yuan ($96.1 billion), a 15.7 percent rise on 2016. This growth seems mostly driven by the consumer side of the business, where revenues rose 237.2 billion yuan ($37.8 billion) — an increase of 31.9 percent on 2016.

Huawei looks set to capitalize on these gains by taking a hold of new tech as it emerges, and has increased funding for its research and development wing by 17.4 percent, pumping 89.7 billion yuan ($14.3 billion) into the next generation of mobile internet and other new technologies.

Huawei has recently launched its newest range of smartphones in the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro, and you can read our first thoughts on the P20 Pro. It comes with a world-first of three rear-mounted camera lenses, with incredible camera tech that recently earned it DxOMark’s highest ever camera rating on a smartphone. We’ll have to wait a bit longer to get an in-depth rundown of how well the rest of the phone fares, but based on the strong initial reception, Huawei may have introduced another winner. Unfortunately, you’ll struggle to get hold of it in the U.S., thanks to Best Buy backing off from Huawei’s phones, and U.S. carriers refusing to stock it.

Based are these U.S. companies shooting themselves in the foot? It seems U.S. consumers are the ones missing out the most.

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How to enable swipe-down notifications on the Galaxy S9

Stop struggling to reach the top of your screen.

The Galaxy S9 is an incredible phone that combines beauty and brawn, packing the latest and greatest specs into a relatively small and comfortable form factor. The curved glass feels great in the hand, and the modern 18.5:9 aspect ratio helps turn almost every inch of the phone into usable screen space.

There’s just one problem: that extra-tall aspect ratio makes the top of the screen hard to reach. That can be a big problem for usability, since the top of the screen is where all of your notifications and quick toggles sit. Luckily, it’s easy to set up quick shortcuts to pull down the notification shade without having to shift the phone around in your hand.

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• Access notifications with the fingerprint sensor
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Access notifications with the fingerprint sensor

One of the easiest ways to access your notification shade without reaching the top of the display is by swiping down on the fingerprint sensor. The gesture is disabled by default, but it’s simple to activate.

Open the Settings app.
Tap Advanced features.
Tap the switch next to Finger sensor gestures (blue means on).

With gestures enabled, you can swipe down to open your notification shade, swipe down again to expand the quick toggles, or swipe up to collapse the panel.

Access notifications from the home screen

You can also access notifications directly from the home screen. By default, a swipe down on the home screen functions the same way as a swipe up, opening your app drawer, but with a quick tweak, you can make the gesture a bit more useful.

Press and hold on a blank space on your home screen.
Tap Home screen settings.
Tap the switch next to Quick-open notification panel.

That’s it! From now on, accessing your notifications and quick toggles on the Galaxy S9 should be much easier. Hopefully, with these tricks, you won’t have to shift the phone around in your hands as much to reach the top, minimizing the risk of dropping and breaking it.

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Does the notch add screen space or take it away?

The answer may depend on if you’re a glass-half-empty or half-full person.

After seeing a flood of notched Android phones at MWC, there’s been a lot of talk about the benefits and disadvantages of having a cutout in a phone’s display. The main idea is that by housing a phone’s various sensors and earpiece speaker into a notch at the top of the display, OEMs are able to further slim down bezels and fit a larger screen on a smaller body.

To say the notch has been met with some backlash would be a severe understatement. While the main goal is to create more screen real estate for the user, many view the notch more as an obstacle than an add-on, and find the small display strips to the sides of the notch (also known as “bunny ears” or “horns,” among other nicknames) largely useless.

Assuming a taller aspect ratio, a notch can add to a display’s overall usable vertical space.

I understand that sentiment. With a notch as wide as the iPhone X’s, there’s little room for notification icons in the system tray — especially with most notched phones moving the clock to the left side where notifications typically reside. There’s also less space to the right for system icons like WiFi and Bluetooth, meaning you may not be able to see certain information at a glance; on my iPhone X, for example, the battery icon is always in the upper-right corner, but I have to swipe down into Control Center to be able to check the actual battery percentage.

Maybe that’s why most Android OEMs are using much smaller notches than the iPhone X. The newly announced Huawei P20 Pro has just enough room in its notch for the earpiece speaker and front-facing camera — Huawei even took a moment to brag during the phone’s announcement about how small its notch is. Yes, really.

It’s come to this. pic.twitter.com/yP7cTdAdJZ

— Michael Kukielka (@DetroitBORG) March 27, 2018

Likewise, OnePlus has confirmed that the OnePlus 6 will feature a small notch, explaining that they see it as a means of adding screen space rather than taking it away, and I tend to agree with them. With enough room around the notch, you’re still able to allocate the very top of the display for notifications, all while gaining a bit of vertical real estate — at least, assuming a taller aspect ratio. Fortunately, we’ve already seen evidence that the OnePlus 6 will have a 19:9 display, which should easily make up for the notch.

It’s up to the user to decide whether the notch is a useful design trait or just an annoying gimmick — though a quick skim through the comments of my last notch-related article is all it takes to see that most Android users aren’t particularly fond of it. Maybe that consensus will start to shift as more people get their hands on notched Android phones in the coming year, and as Google builds native notch support into Android P.

For now, what are your thoughts? Does the combination of a notch and a taller aspect ratio equal out to more vertical space for you, or is it still simply a design nuisance? Will it even matter this time next year, with nearly every flagship moving to a notched design anyway? Sound off in the comments!

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Under Armour says data breach compromised 150 million MyFitnessPal accounts

Leaked data includes usernames, email addresses and hashed passwords.

Athletic apparel brand Under Armour announced that a data breach exposed details of over 150 million MyFitnessPal users. The leaked data includes usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords, but government-issued identifiers like social security numbers and driving licenses were not compromised as the app doesn’t collect that information. Similarly, credit card numbers were not leaked.

MyFitnessPal first detected the intrusion — believed to have occurred sometime in late February — on March 25, following which it started coordinating with law enforcement authorities and data security firms to understand the scope of the attack.

From the press release

The affected data did not include government-issued identifiers (such as Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers), which the company does not collect from users. Payment card data was also not affected because it is collected and processed separately. The company’s investigation is ongoing, but indicates that approximately 150 million user accounts were affected by this issue.

Four days after learning of the issue, the company began notifying the MyFitnessPal community via email and through in-app messaging. The notice contains recommendations for MyFitnessPal users regarding account security steps they can take to help protect their information. The company will be requiring MyFitnessPal users to change their passwords and is urging users to do so immediately.

Under Armour acquired the food and nutrition app back in 2015 for $475 million, and has seen its userbase nearly double over the last three years. If you’re a MyFitnessPal user, you should immediately change your password. To know more about the breach and the nature of the data compromised, head here.

The best PlayStation 4 games for kids

It’s time to get silly with adventures

So your kiddos are old enough to know that their controllers aren’t actually plugged while you were letting them pretend to play. Now what? You probably don’t want them playing your Overwatch game just so you can hear your heart audibly break when they plummet your score, so it’s time to get them some fun PlayStation 4 games of their own! Heck, even if you don’t have children these games are still pretty fun for adults!

• Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
• LEGO Worlds
• Just Dance 2018
• Rayman Legends
• Overcooked
• Minecraft

Crash Bandicoot N. Trilogy

We all remember what it was like to rip the plastic off of our brand new Crash Bandicoot game for the original PlayStation. After school we all spent hours on end beating the levels, looking for the secret floors and trying to collect all of the gem shards. Well now for as low as $33.49 delicious Wumpa fruits you can have the entire trilogy to pass down the legacy of defeating Dr. Neo Cortex before he can take over the world. Get your kids collecting all of those delicious Wumpa fruit to gain lives and spin their way to the top! You can even make it a family adventure and show them all the neat tricks you remember!

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LEGO Worlds

Any of the LEGO games are perfect for all ages. The stories and objectives are easy enough for your children to follow along to, and fun enough for you to want to plug in your own controller to play with them. That means this game isn’t just a perfect reward system for your child to earn time playing for their good grades, it’s also a great bonding experience. It’s hard to beat the price of $14.98 for a game that will go on and on like this one. Boost your child’s creativity by having them build their own world from the ground up with LEGO Worlds!

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Just Dance

Just Dance is perfect for getting some quiet time for yourself because the kids are entertained and know that they’re actually up and moving too. For $40.99 on Amazon you can find this wonderful title, full of the best music to get up and groove to. Not just that, but all of the fun and whacky rave style graphics are sure to get this party bumping. The multiplayer option makes this game great for when they have friends over as well.

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Rayman Legends

This side-scrolling platform game is sure to grab the attention of anyone. Much like Sonic your goal is to get to the finish line on the other side of the map, but instead of collecting coins you are saving fury friends from impending doom. For $23.99 on Amazon you can be the proud owner of Rayman Legends, which is the best Rayman game to date. Not only have they upped their gameplay and graphics, but not much can get you more pumped than running from bad guys to the tune of Black Betty by Ram Jam.

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Overcooked

Overcooked will always be on my list of some of the funnest family games to play when you’re looking for time to kill on game night. With only 3 control buttons this is a game that is super easy to get the hang of. Although the levels do get increasingly hard (even for a group of adults) the amount of fun you’ll have will triumph over any defeat. You can get this 4 player game for $19.99 on Amazon, and the fun won’t stop there. Although only 4 people can control characters on the screen, a 4th (or even 5th) person is always handy for calling out the orders from the top of the screen to help the process go by easier.

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Minecraft

For $34.99 you can add Minecraft to your PlayStation library as fun for the whole family. Although it’s a single player game there is a multiple save option available so everyone can have their own world to create. If your kids are old enough to creatively build their own world, but not quite old enough to battle the Enderman and zombies you can always set the mode to “Peaceful” so that they’ll be left alone to build. Minecraft might be low on the graphics scale, but the creators seem to always be adding new content like donkeys, horses, and botanical magic. Get the creative juices flowing!

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Tell us in the comments below which games you plan on getting, or which ones you already have gotten for your children!

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This $30 Syma drone deal is too good to let fly away

A purchase worth making.

Aside from a brief price drop to $59.99, this popular Syma drone has sold for $79.99 since its release. As part of a one-day deal at Amazon, you can pick one up for just $29.99 if you clip the $10 off coupon that is on the product page.

It has a built-in 720P camera for recording videos and taking pictures, and a real-time first-person view to allow you to see what it sees as you fly. Whether you are a beginner or drone pro, you’ll be able to easily fly it thanks to the auto-hovering feature and more. It comes with two batteries, allowing double the flying time, and it easily integrates with a mobile app to help you draw routes and more.

At this price, we don’t expect this deal to stick around for the whole day. Be sure to get one now, before it’s too late.

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