Spotify Android app will finally let you reposition songs in a playlist

IT’S HAPPENING!!! 🎉

Spotify is one of the world’s largest music streaming services, but despite this, its Android app isn’t quite up to snuff with its iOS and desktop counterparts. However, the company recently confirmed that it’s finally addressing one of the features Android users have been asking for the most — playlist re-ordering.

As it currently stands, you can use the Spotify Android app to create a playlist and add/remove songs to it. Unfortunately, if you want to change the order those songs appear in, you need to use the Spotify app on an iPhone or your computer.

This implementation is a big pain in the butt, but as noted by the Spotify Community Team for the app’s forums, this is changing:

We’re really excited to announce that the right folks are now working on this idea. An upcoming version of Android will see this feature initially released to a small number of users. We’ll post here again once we have more news to share.

It’s still unclear why a feature as simple as this wasn’t in the Spotify Android app from day one, but in any case, we’re still excited to hear that it’s something we’ll get to check out in the near future.

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Nioh 2 for PlayStation 4: Everything you need to know

Ninja Gaiden meets Dark Souls in this exciting sequel.

Nioh 2’s announcement couldn’t have started out any more epic, and it couldn’t have ended any more disappointing. We didn’t get much of a trailer or much in the way of info at its E3 2018 debut, but we can already begin to put the puzzle pieces together to learn what’s in store. Here’s everything you need to know about Nioh 2.

What is Nioh 2?

Team Ninja had a bit of a chip on their shoulders preceding the launch of the original Nioh. The company that was responsible for an all-time classic known as Ninja Gaiden hadn’t reached that level of brilliance since.

Nioh was the game they decided to make to shut all that noise up. It was an action RPG title that kind of married what they were known for in Ninja Gaiden with a more methodical fighting system akin to Dark Souls. Nioh 2, naturally, builds on that solid foundation.

The story so far

Details surrounding Nioh 2 are still scarce. The original game was set in Japan during the year 1600. It featured a fictitious story, though there were characters based on the real legends of old. It also featured Queen Elizabeth 1 and her country’s plight to control Spain.

The central plot device was Amrita, a mystical stone found in Japan. Anyone who can absorb the essence and harness the energy of the stone becomes powerful beyond measure. A pirate-turned-sailor-turned-explorer named William is eventually tasked with finding it for people who mean to use it for nefariousness.

As for the new game, we’re not sure where things will go from there. We do know that it’ll stay on the same narrative track, though William may no longer be the focal point of the story. If that’s the case, we can assume that much of the game will still take place in Japan.

Gameplay

The original Nioh combined the tight combat of Ninja Gaiden with Dark Souls-like nuance. That is, you have a stamina bar that’ll dictate how much punishment you can dish out on any given foe. You also don’t want to get hit by their attacks, because death comes about quickly and often at times. And yes, the game prides itself on unforgiving difficulty, and that won’t be changing in the sequel.

You’ll earn XP and new gear over the course of the game to make your character stronger, though, and you’ll be rewarded for your masochism with more rewarding death sequences.

Team Ninja says Nioh 2 will be a natural progression, meaning it’ll build on the first game while adding new gameplay systems, mechanics, and features to make it even more fun than it already was. In fact, they’ve professed that they were intentionally more reserved with the original game, but now that they’ve gotten a good foundation they’ll be taking the gloves off and going all-in for the sequel. We’re still not sure what that means, but it’s safe to expect a better game, period.

One thing we do know is that you’ll be able to customize your character this time around. You’ll be able to choose both your gender and race, as well as other customization options that haven’t yet been revealed.

When can you play it?

We don’t yet have a release date for Nioh 2, but we do know that a PlayStation 4 launch is confirmed. It may also be available for PC if the original release was anything to go by. Team Ninja is planning a demo for players to try out ahead of its launch.

PlayStation 4

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Why Android is vital to Microsoft’s software and services strategy

Android and is now a key player in Microsoft’s overall software and services strategy — and that’s a good thing for Microsoft.

When Microsoft announced that it was stepping away from its smartphone efforts, there were quite a few of us who were worried about how we’d continue to remain invested in Microsoft’s ecosystem without being able to carry Windows around in our pockets. But it ultimately allowed Microsoft to invest in bringing ecosystem synergy to more users than ever before.

Microsoft is embracing its own ecosystem on Android and iOS, and frankly, this is an amazing idea that is paying off well. No longer does Microsoft have to rely on Windows to ensure people to use its software and services on mobile devices. These services are now available wherever the user is, rather than Microsoft expecting the user to switch platforms to enjoy those software and services.

With Android in particular, Microsoft has an opportunity to finally realize its vision of total synergy across your PC and smartphone. Android has over a billion users, a large percentage of which likely use Windows. It’s wise of Microsoft to capitalize on this.

Investment is key

Microsoft has always had apps available on rival platforms, but not in the way it does today. Windows users new to Android used to have no real reason to invest in anything Microsoft on Android. It made more sense for people to invest in Google’s ecosystem, which was already platform agnostic. But Google can only do so much in bringing synergy to its ecosystem across PC and phone. Microsoft, on the other hand, is in a unique position to make this experience truly great with features like Timeline, Cloud Clipboard, Cortana, and Your Phone.

On Android, Microsoft has a lot more freedom to dig its claws into the platform and integrate its software and services for better synergy with your PC. The Microsoft Launcher, for example, lets users share basically anything on your phone with a PC via “Continue on PC.” Photos or documents can be easily sent to your PC from your phone. Cloud Clipboard will also let you share copied content across devices, minimizing yet another barrier between your PC and phone.

With Timeline, users will be able to resume activities they started on either their PC or phone on any device that’s logged in with a Microsoft account. Everything from web browsing to Word documents will be curated by Timeline, and it will let users go back 30 days to resume content they were previously looking at or working on. Even Android apps can get involved, letting content be resumed across a Windows 10 app and an Android app, if the developer supports it.

The biggest tie-in will come in the shape of Your Phone, which will let PC users see what’s going on with their phone without even needing to pick up the phone in the first place. Your Phone will curate all notifications that come in and allow you to interact with them directly from your PC. It’ll even show you missed notifications so that you don’t ever have to lift your phone when working on a Windows device.

Vital synergy

Windows being able to talk to and interact with Android like this is super cool, and it is a vital part of keeping Windows relevant in a market that is dominantly mobile. Microsoft simply couldn’t afford to continue to expect users to switch to Windows phone if they wanted to experience Microsoft software and services anymore. Now, users don’t have to switch and can enjoy a better Windows 10 experience because of that.

There’s no real reason for anybody to use Outlook or Office on Android if there’s no ecosystem or synergy for the user to benefit from. Windows isn’t as relevant as it used to be, and the only way it can stay relevant is by bringing the best of Windows and Microsoft to Android.

Google and Apple both have their own ecosystems, and since they have their own mobile platforms, they are in a better position to tie in their ecosystems with users who use their phones. Google only really has leverage on the smartphone form-factor, however. Google can’t do much to make your phone work better with your PC, because it doesn’t have a PC OS that’s in use by a significant market.

Apple does have a PC platform, but it’s nowhere near as “popular” as Windows. Most Android users are also Windows users, meaning Microsoft is in a unique position. And that is a real opportunity for Microsoft.

What are your thoughts on using Android with Windows and the Microsoft ecosystem? Let us know in the comments.

Your “waterproof” phone … isn’t (IP ratings explained)

You only need to drop your phone off a boat, or into a puddle, or (yes) into a toilet one time to start yearning for a world in which all smartphones are waterproof. The good news: these days, many of them are at least water-resistant, because they’re tested according to a body of standards called the International Protection codes (think: IP68, IP57). The bad news: they’re probably not as resistant as you think.

Today on the MrMobile YouTube channel, we’ll learn how to decode IP ratings to find out how much water your gadgets can really handle – and because the liquid resistance is only half the story, we’ll delve into dustproofing as well. Finally, we bring in the Grand Marshal of Gear Destroyers himself, Zack from JerryRigEverything, to learn how these foreign intruders wreck your gadgets … and what you can do about it if they do!

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New RAMpage attack affects all Android phones released since 2012

RAMpage can access passwords, photos, documents, and more.

There’s a new security vulnerability, boys and girls. It’s called RAMpage and is the latest type of Rowhammer attack to hit the scene.

RAMpage was discovered by a group of eight academics across three different universities and the official research paper was published on June 28, 2018. It reads as follows:

RAMpage breaks the most fundamental isolation between user applications and the operating system. While apps are typically not permitted to read data from other apps, a malicious program can craft a RAMpage exploit to get administrative control and get hold of secrets stored in the device.

As for what kind of secrets RAMpage could access, the paper notes that “this might include your passwords stored in a password manager or browser, your personal photos, emails, instant messages and even business-critical documents.”

RAMpage targets the ION subsystem in Android which is a memory allocation driver that was first launched by Google alongside Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. However, even though Android’s the focus of the attack right now, it’s expected that RAMpage could also impact iOS devices, desktops, and more.

Because RAMpage targets ION, gadgets that use LPDDR2/3/4 RAM are all impacted. In other words, if your Android phone was released during or after 2012, it’s vulnerable to the attack.

The research going into RAMpage is still quite new, but now that a spotlight is being placed on it, hopefully we’ll see Google and other OEMs do their part to get devices patched up for users around the globe.

Read through the full research paper here