Microsoft takes on Google in the classroom with Flipgrid acquisition

Microsoft is looking to solidify its position in our classrooms, and to that end, has recently acquired Flipgrid, the video discussion platform currently utilized by more than 20 million teachers and students across the United States and beyond. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition is Microsoft’s latest attempt to improve its educational offerings. Recently, Microsoft has been updating its Office 365 for Education tools, and has also updated web versions of Office to be more collaboration friendly.

Indeed, the Flipgrid deal could help Microsoft compete more directly with Google, which is already well-loved by educators thanks to its cloud-based products and Chromebooks. Flipgrid, however, really could flip the script in favor of the Redmond-based tech giant. Flipgrid allows students to create short videos in the classroom or at home in order to participate in discussions, answer questions, or otherwise interact with their peers or teachers. Already, the platform is used in 180 countries, but with the Microsoft acquisition, Flipgrid will be free to use in schools, and anyone who has already paid for a subscription will be receiving a refund.

“We’re thrilled to see the impact Flipgrid has had in social learning thus far and look forward to helping them continue to thrive as part of the Microsoft family,” said Eran Megiddo, corporate vice president at Microsoft, in a news release. “We’re diligently committed to making sure their platform and products continue to work across the Microsoft, Google, and partner ecosystems to benefit students and teachers everywhere.”

Flipgrid prior to the acquisition had maintained a longstanding relationship with Microsoft. About 18 months ago, the two companies announced a partnership that allowed for Flipgrid to integrate with a number of Microsoft products, including Teams (which allowed Flipgrid users to chat with one another) and OneNote (which allowed users to take notes).

Even as Flipgrid joins the broader Microsoft team, the company will maintain its own brand. “Flipgrid has always been about the educator community. They are the source of our innovation and impact,” said Jim Leslie, Flipgrid CEO. “Now as a part of Microsoft, we have the opportunity to scale so we can support every educator across the globe as they empower student voices.”

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HP’s 145,000-core supercomputer is the most powerful ARM system ever built

Just shy of 2,600 dual ARM processor servers are packed into Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) new supercomputer, making it the most powerful system ever built using ARM hardware. Known as the Astra, the mammoth processing platform will be used to run simulations for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

While Nvidia may be busy pioneering new, miniature supercomputers powered by parallel computing graphics cards, HPE has been working on a new design constructed entirely of dual-processor ARM servers. The new Astra system is purportedly made up of more than 145,000 processing cores and has a far more efficient way of handling its memory.

At its peak, Astra is said to be able to offer 2.3 petaflops of performance, with memory that performs up to 33 percent faster than typical supercomputers of comparable size. That’s the key to the system, its memory performance. That’s what allows the system to handle vast quantities of data, which is its core focus — rather than some of the high-performance computing tasks given to more typical supercomputers.

This is all part of HPE’s push for more “memory-driven computing,” as the company calls it. First debuted as a concept in 2017, HPE has, with Astra, developed a system where each of its thousands of processors has access to a large pool of memory. That should massively reduce the latency typically associated with processors accessing the memory of their companion chips.

Astra certainly isn’t going to hold a candle to the recently unveiled IBM system, which has more than 9,000 22-core IBM CPUs and over 27,000 Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs (so that’s where all the graphics cards have been hiding). But the Astra should be perfectly capable of handling the tasks the NNSA has for it. Developed in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy, Astra will be used for nuclear research and running simulations for the NNSA’s Sandia National Laboratories.

At Sandia, the Astra supercomputer will be given a trial run to start with, but could ultimately be used to help manage the nuclear stockpile of the U.S. As Engadget highlights, Sandia runs many physics simulations on a daily basis and it’s hoped that Astra will be able to accelerate that. As a new style of supercomputer, its potential lies in redefining the types of high-performance computers used at such institutions and could mean that ARM-based supercomputers become far more common in the future.

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Motorola might be jumping on the foldable smartphone bandwagon

Let’s Go Digital

It looks like Motorola is the latest company to join the foldable smartphone race. The company has been awarded a patent for a flexible smartphone display.

First reported by Let’s Go Digital, Motorola’s patent shows a smartphone with an OLED display that folds in two places. While OLED displays can be very flexible, frequent bending can cause permanent deformations at the crease.

The patent suggests Motorola will use heat to fight off damage to the OLED display caused by folding and unfolding the display. The company plans to place a heating element in the hinges of its smartphone that will increase the temperature of the display to counteract creasing and other damage caused by repetitive use.

In addition to using heat, the Motorola patent also uses movement to correct screen bend imperfections. The patent explains that the phone will automatically bend slightly in an opposite direction when heating the display to correct creases and other damage at the phone’s hinge points.

Motorola is, by no means, the first smartphone manufacturer rumored to be working on a foldable display. In 2015, rumors surfaced that Samsung was working on a device dubbed “Project Valley.” The project was ultimately scrapped, and images of an early prototype recently surfaced online.

Several major smartphone manufacturers are purportedly working on smartphones with foldable displays. Samsung’s Galaxy X has been the most talked-about device thus far and may be announced in 2019. The phone will likely serve as Samsung’s flagship and may sell for $1,800.

Apple is also reportedly working on a foldable iPhone scheduled for 2020. The handset is rumored to fold out to turn into an iPad, combining two of Apple’s most popular products into one device.

However, it looks like Huawei may beat both Apple and Samsung to the punch. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer is reportedly working on a foldable flagship to be announced later this year.

If Motorola does manage to make a foldable display, it won’t be the first such device to make it to the market. In 2017, ZTE released the Axon M, a bulky and buggy mess featuring two 5.2-inch displays connected by a hinge.

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Canon’s new large sensor is too big for you, but not for scientists

Canon may be rumored to be working on a full-frame mirrorless camera, but the imaging giant has already developed something even bigger — a CMOS sensor that is more than twice as large as an entire EOS camera. Canon recently shared how the largest high-sensitivity sensor yet, a 7.8-inch sensor that is 40 times the size of a full-frame camera, has helped scientists spot previously only theorized meteors. Canon announced the sensor’s development in 2010, but a recent report shows how scientists were able to use the large sensor and how that could lead to a better understanding of how life on Earth developed.

A typical full-frame sensor measures around 36 by 24 millimeters, or about 1.4 by 0.95 inches. Canon’s largest sensor is 20 centimeters or 7.8 inches on each side. That is the largest yet, Canon claims, but sensors aren’t likely to get much larger anytime soon. The silicon wafer used to build the light-sensitive sensor area is only 12 inches, with the 7.8 inch stretching the materials and manufacturing equipment to maximum capacity. If it were any larger and the sensor would require new, larger manufacturing equipment.

A size comparison between the new 7.8-inch sensor and a Canon EOS Rebel camera Canon

Larger sensors are capable of gathering more light, and while a 7.8-inch sensor would mean a camera too large to sling around your neck, the sensor has now been put to use for academic astrophotography. The sensor was recently used at the Kiso Observatory, run by the University of Tokyo. Because of the sensors light-gathering capabilities, the researchers were able to capture meteors not possible to spot with previous imaging equipment. Canon suggests that the equipment could help astronomers better understand meteors and even how they played a role in the development of life on earth.

Just how bright is the sensor? Canon says the sensor can shoot 60 frames per second video in only the light of a full moon. Along with scientific research from astronomy to nocturnal wildlife, Canon suggests that the sensor could also be used in security applications.

While the sensor’s size was previously announced, Canon’s latest report details real-world uses for such a large sensor, though those plans don’t include a giant EOS camera. The large CMOS sensor sits on Canon’s growing list of extreme sensor development, including a 250-megapixel sensor the company first shared in 2015.

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Adware posing as a private network client secretly takes screenshots

Adware stuffed into software you can freely download from the internet can secretly take screenshots of your desktop among other sneaky spyware-like capabilities. Dubbed as Zacinlo by Bitdefender, the adware first surfaced in 2012 and mostly targets Windows 10 PCs in North America. The adware was in its most “active” state at the beginning of 2018 since it emerged six years ago. 

Software you can download and use for free sometimes present free secondary software options during installation that you can use or decline. This secondary software is typically bundled to appease “sponsors” supposedly backing the free program you set out to download and install. Although free software can be good for your wallet, bundled software presented during installation could prove catastrophic.  

In this case, the adware poses as a free anonymous virtual private network (VPN) client called s5Mark you can install alongside the original software you intended to use. This VPN client provides a simple easy-to-read interface designed for non-technical web surfers. 

But that client is just a decoy. When the Windows 10 device owner runs the fake VPN client for the first time, it downloads the actual adware components along with a rootkit: Malware that resides at the root of your PC before loading Windows 10. There is also another component called an “updater” that receives instructions and makes updates to the adware and rootkit when needed. 

During installation, the adware will temporarily disable Windows Defender. It can also detect and temporarily disable antivirus solutions from 13 different providers including Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, Panda, Symantec, and more. The rootkit component is what scans the PC for an antivirus client in the initial installation stages and temporarily shuts them down so the remaining adware components download to the PC. 

The list of what Zacinlo can do is rather lengthy outside the screen capture component. It can stop processes in Windows 10 it deems as “dangerous” to its overall functionality. It can also inject custom JavaScript into secure HTTPS webpages visited by the device owner, re-direct web pages, send information about the desktop environment back to the hackers in charge of the campaign, uninstall and delete any Windows 10 service, and more. 

“We have identified at least 25 different components found in almost 2,500 distinct samples,” the security firm states. “While tracking the adware, we noticed some of the components were continuously updated with new functionalities, dropped altogether or integrated entirely in other components. This once again reinforces our initial assumption that the adware is still being developed as of the writing of this paper.” 

According to Bitdefender’s whitepaper, the winscr.exe component installed by the adware is what takes screenshots of your desktop. It can also send the hackers a list of the file locations of the applications that are set to run automatically when Windows starts and delete files used by processes and services. Other components in the adware’s payload include dataup.exe, regtool.exe, homepageoptimizer.exe, and more. 

The big red flag here is that despite infecting Windows-based PCs since 2012, the spyware won’t infest your PC unless you allow its installation. 

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Nestlé is building a ‘digital warehouse’ using robotics, autonomous vehicles, and A.I.

An example of a type of robotic equipment that will fill Nestlé’s “digital warehouse of the future.” XPO Logistics

Got the craving for a KitKat bar, but wish you didn’t have to get up to go to a store? In the future, it could be delivered to you, straight from the the warehouse. Nestlé is building its first-ever, fully digital distribution center that’s designed to speed up the delivery of Nestlé-branded products to consumers, such as KitKat, Maggi, and Nescafé. Located in Leicestershire, in the East Midlands region of England, the project is a joint venture with XPO Logistics, which will own and manage the facility.

“We will be able to be even more responsive for our customers across our brands, which include some of the most recognizable in the world,” said David Hix, Nestlé’s director of supply chain, in a statement.

The automated, 638,000-square-foot center, scheduled for completion in 2020, will rely heavily on robotics and autonomous vehicles, as well as “predictive data and intelligent machines to deliver one of the most advanced distribution management centers in the world,” according to the two companies involved. XPO will also use the facility to test new technologies and prototypes before implementing them in other XPO-owned facilities.

The “digital warehouse of the future” will be located in a transportation hub, with proximity to highways, an airport that handles many cargo flights, and an onsite rail freight terminal that leads to major ports. With a fully automated warehouse and access to several transportation options, Nestlé, the world’s largest food and drink company, would be able to deliver products faster and efficiently to consumers in the U.K., continental Europe, and beyond.

“The new East Midlands center will operate as both a think tank and a launch pad for XPO innovations, with far-reaching impacts on the way business is done,” said Richard Cawston of XPO Logistics Europe, in a statement.

XPO, one of world’s largest service providers for transportation and logistics, will also incorporate sustainable features into the building. In addition to LED lighting, the warehouse will use “environmentally friendly ammonia refrigeration, air source heat pumps for administration areas, and rainwater harvesting,” according to XPO, and the building itself will have minimal visual impact to the surrounding area.

Warehouse and distribution centers are increasingly becoming automated, using more and more robotics, smart sorting systems, and autonomous vehicles alongside human employees. While it would be a couple years until the Nestlé/XPO high-tech facility comes online, we can already look to Amazon’s highly automated fulfillment centers as examples of what we can expect.

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YouTube Music: Everything you need to know

YouTube is taking the reins for Google’s music strategy — and Early Access is available now.

Google’s music strategy has been fractured and confusing and falling behind for years, with Google Play Music being treated like an orange-haired stepchild, YouTube Music being ignored by some users and unheard of by the rest, and YouTube being a place where people of all kinds come to listen to music — both legitimately uploaded and not-so-much.

Google’s been amassing a new team to take on the music industry, from streaming competitors like Spotify to the record labels that control what music can appear on what platforms and how.

We’ve been waiting months for the shoe to drop and Google to reveal its new strategy, and now we know what that new direction looks like. YouTube Red is dead, and it’s being replaced by YouTube Music and YouTube Premium.

June 18, 2018 — YouTube Music is coming to 12 new countries

The rollout for the new YouTube Music has been anything but smooth, but on June 18, Google confirmed that the updated service is now live for everyone in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and South Korea.

YouTube Music is also expanding to 12 new countries, including Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom!

May 23, 2018 — Your locally owned songs from Google Play Music will transfer over to YouTube Music

Google wants all of its Play Music subscribers to migrate over to YouTube Music at some point in 2019, and to help make that process as seamless as possible, the company’s confirmed that some of Play Music’s best features will be coming to the new YouTube Music — the biggest of which is a music locker for storing copies of song you locally own.

This news was recently confirmed by Google to The Verge, with the Head of YouTube Music saying on Twitter that “Your collection, playlists and preferences from Google Play Music will be preserved at migrated to YouTube music for a soft landing.”

In addition to having a place to store music you already own, YouTube Music will eventually allow you to buy new songs that you can add to your collection.

The service starts at $9.99/month

Similar to every other streaming service, the new YouTube Music will offer a paid subscription of $9.99/month. For that price, you’ll get an ad-free experience when listening to your tunes, can have music videos play in the background, and download songs for offline listening.

The big difference with Google’s new plan, however, is that all of the non-music features included with YouTube Red will now cost extra.

For $11.99/month, you can subscribe to YouTube Premium and get all of the above features in addition to ad-free videos, the ability to play videos in the background and download them for offline viewing, and access to the growing collection of YouTube Original programming.

Existing YouTube Red subscribers are grandfathered into the old plan

Having to pay more for the same features is never an exciting proposition, but Google’s made sure to cater to those that are already subscribed to YouTube Red/Google Play Music.

If you’ve been a paying member for some time or sign up for the current service before the new YouTube Music + YouTube Premium changes take hold, you’ll be able to get all of the YouTube Premium perks for just $9.99/month instead of $11.99.

All-new apps are coming to mobile and desktop

If you’re already using YouTube Music, you’ll notice some big changes coming to the user interface. A “reimagined mobile app” is in the works, as is a brand-new desktop site. According to The Verge, both of these have been “designed specifically for music.”

Similar to what’s already offered in Play Music, Google will use AI to recommend songs and playlists based on where you’re at and what you’re doing. If YouTube Music detects you’re at the gym, it’ll suggest music to listen to that’ll help keep you moving. If it’s late at night and you’re home, you might be offered calm songs for unwinding.

There will be a bigger focus on YouTube Originals

YouTube Originals have paled in comparison to programming made by the likes of Hulu and Netflix, but this is another area Google’s hoping to improve.

It’s promised that YouTube Originals will offer “bigger original series and movies” spanning the genres of action adventure, drama, comedy, and reality shows. Along with the U.S., YouTube Originals will also feature content from the UK, Mexico, France, Germany, and others.

What’s happening to Play Music?

All of this is great, but what in the world is happening to Google Play Music? YouTube’s announcement says “if you use Google Play Music, nothing will change — you’ll still be able to access all of your purchased music, uploads and playlists in Google Play Music just like always.” However, I wouldn’t expect things to stay that way forever.

Google clearly wants YouTube Music to be the face that takes on Spotify and Apple Music, and having another service lying around that offers so many overlapping features will only create for continued confusion.

Play Music needs to be laid to rest in order for Google’s efforts with YouTube Music to truly pay off, and while that may not happen soon, I wouldn’t expect Play Music to still be kicking in a year’s time.

A mixtape full of promise

YouTube Music is built on a gold mine. YouTube is not only the most used video platform in the world, it might be the biggest catalog of professional, semi-professional, and amateur music available in the world. This isn’t the first time Google has tried to capitalize on this, but this time is different. They have gotten their act together and made us all a mixtape full of promises.

But can they follow through on them?

YouTube Music review: A mixtape full of promise

Getting started

YouTube Music is an adjustment from traditional music services — especially because it is based around video rather than audio — but thanks to the Google’s search prowess and downright uncanny predictions and recommendations, getting used to Google’s newest music service should be as painless as possible. And since it’s built around years of your YouTube history, YouTube Music already knows you better than you think.

Getting started with YouTube Music

Going offline

Networks fail. Your plane says it’s going to have Wi-Fi, but nope. You get stuck in the car with your parents in the middle of nowhere, and you’re outside cell range, and the radio stations are nothing but static and muffled AM country. Having music to listen to when you offline is important, and when the music service you’re using is based around video — which eats data like nobody’s business — how you save your music for offline playback is even more important.

How to download music for offline playback in YouTube Music

Making the most of things

YouTube Music is “Early Access” right now, which means the service is essentially a beta and it is definitely buggy. While time and updates will fix some of those bugs, there are some things you can do to make the most of its current state.

6 tips and tricks for using YouTube Music

Can it dethrone Spotify?

Spotify has spent the last decade building up a loyal user base, building algorithms that few companies can even begin to touch, and building up a reputation as the best brand in streaming music. YouTube, however, is one of the most used sites on the internet, period, a selection you can’t find anywhere else — a selection that will be absolutely unbeatable in the future — and Google is bringing its best algorithmic game with YouTube Music.

It’s still early days, but YouTube Music will be enough to dethrone Spotify soon?

YouTube Music vs Spotify

Don’t overpay for it

There’s no real sugar-coating it: using YouTube Music as a free user on Android is crap. There are ads every 3-6 songs and you can’t leave the now playing screen, so it hogs your screen and your battery. YouTube Music is worlds better when you unlock its paid features. YouTube Premium is absolutely worth paying for.

YouTube Music Premium, however, is not.

For the love of Duarte, don’t buy YouTube Music Premium

Updated June 2018: We have expanded this guide to include links to the YouTube Music guides and how-to content since Early Access launched.

What is YouTube Premium? Everything you need to know!

The service costs $11.99/month and gives you access to a ton of stuff.

Back in 2015, YouTube Red launched as a way for people to get an even better YouTube experience than what was offered in the free version. For $9.99/month, YouTube Red gave you access to ad-free videos, all-new original shows, and much more.

YouTube Red is now being replaced by YouTube Premium, and for folks that are hardcore or just moderate YouTube users, it’s definitely worth checking out.

June 18, 2018 — YouTube Premium is finally launching!

It’s been over a month since Google first announced YouTube Premium, but starting June 18, the service is finally rolling out to replace YouTube Red in 17 countries around the globe.

YouTube Premium is initially rolling out to the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico and will then expand to additional markets. If you never signed up for YouTube Red and want to give Premium a try, Google’s giving away three months of the service for a limited time.

What’s included?

As mentioned above, YouTube Premium comes with a load of goodies that make its monthly fee well worth the asking price.

All of the old features from YouTube Red are here, including:

• Ad-free videos
• Play videos in the background
• Download videos for offline use
• Access to all YouTube Originals content

In addition to these perks, a YouTube Premium subscription also gives you full access to YouTube Music. With a YouTube Premium plan, you can use YouTube Music to listen to music without ads, let your tunes play in the background, and download songs/playlists for offline listening.

How much does it cost?

That’s all fine and dandy, but how much will you be paying for all this?

YouTube Premium costs $11.99/month, and you can cancel or change your plan at any time. However, YouTube now has a second, more affordable option you can check out called YouTube Music.

What’s the deal with YouTube Music?

For a cheaper $9.99/month, you can subscribe to YouTube Music. That monthly fee will allow you to listen to music ad-free, let songs play in the background, and download them so you can keep jamming even when you’re without an internet connection, but you won’t get any of the perks in the bullet list above.

If you subscribe to YouTube Music but decide you want to upgrade to YouTube Premium later on, you can make that change at any time.

You’ll access your tunes through the recently upgraded YouTube Music app, and while new features are in the works, it’s already pretty great in its current form.

Download: YouTube Music (free)

What if I was already subscribed to YouTube Red?

YouTube Premium is a pretty great deal, but old YouTube Red subscribers might think differently. YouTube Premium has all of the same features that were previously found in Red, but it now costs $2 more each month.

Thankfully, if you were previously subscribed to YouTube Red on or before May 21, 2018, you get access to all of YouTube Premium for YouTube Red’s old pricing of $9.99/month.

YouTube Music has the potential to solve Google’s streaming conundrum

From Google to your phone: The life of an Android security update

Security patches aren’t simple updates that can go out as soon as they are written.

At the beginning of every month, Google releases the monthly Android Security Bulletin and starts to send updates to Pixel phones. It’s great that the company is transparent about what is going on and how things are being fixed even if you’re not the type of person who likes to read the source code.

There is a lot of work that goes into these patches before they are made public, and there is even more work involved before it comes to other phones — if it comes at all. Let’s take a look at how the sausage is made and try to have a better understanding of why the timeline for security patches is a little blurry.

First you fix Android

Android is a complicated beast. Over 5 million lines of code, it exists to help companies that make mobile products get up and running with a complete application platform including access to Google Play and other services. It’s not something that can be used as-is; these companies spend a lot of time trying to get Android tailored to merge into the other software they may be using to create a nice homogenized operating system.

Google has some rules about how this should be done should a company want to include its services, but manufacturers have a long leash on how the final product is built.

This code is where a security patch comes to life. Someone, be it a security researcher or just an average Joe, finds a flaw in a phone that could be used to lessen the device’s security layer. If that flaw isn’t something an OEM created, the Android team is tasked to find out what’s happening, why it’s happening, and how to fix it in the least disruptive way.

If a security flaw is found and it’s part of the base Android code, Google has to fix it then send it along to everyone else.

Often, the flaw isn’t something Google can fix. Like us, Google doesn’t have access to firmware from companies that make hardware like Qualcomm or LG. If the flaw needs to be addressed at the hardware level there is a good chance the company that supplies some of the components used will need to make changes first. If this is the case, those changes are forwarded to Google so that it can see what needs to be done to accommodate them in Android’s code.

These changes take time, especially if a hardware vendor is involved. There is patching and testing and more patching and more testing for each and every flaw addressed in a patch. Once Google is confident that they have a valid fix for a security flaw, every company who makes Android phones is given early access (at least 30 days before the patch is made public by Google) so they can get to work.

Phase two

This is where most of the work is done. Google may write and maintain Android itself, but the bulk of devices that use it are not made by Google. The ones that are — Pixel phones — are also included here. Google hardware is a customer of Android the same way Samsung or Motorola is.

The Samsungs and LGs of the mobile industry, which make a lot of changes to Android, have a lot of work involved when it’s time to merge a patch.

All of these companies get to work on a couple of things as soon as they have new code from Google. The first — and possibly most important — part is determining what part of the patch is not needed. And there are plenty of things in every patch a single company can freely ignore.

For example, if NVIDIA had to make changes that are pushed back into Android, no Samsung phones will need that part of the patch. A more extreme example would be the changes that BlackBerry or Samsung made that already address the problem in a different way. Finding out what’s needed and what isn’t can be time-consuming, especially when a company makes large changes to certain portions of the operating system. Google investigated accusations that OEMs were sending security patches that did not address some things they should have, and this is what it found.

Not every part of a patch is needed on every phone.

Once that’s done, the rest of the patch needs to be merged into a vendor’s custom Android code, then built and tested. The “built and tested” part can become a big headache if the patch can’t just be applied because it touches files that custom code is using or depends on. We see that a lot, too. Whenever Bluetooth or Wi-Fi is patched, whether it be the hardware or the software behind them, it will touch code that has been altered by a large OEM that makes a fancier operating system than “stock” Android. There are a lot of parts of Android that an OEM can touch.

Once the engineers at Samsung or another vendor get an operating system that boots up and runs, it needs to be tested. And tested some more. The testing may include getting network engineers from various carriers involved, as well as having Google and/or the manufacturer of any component back into the mix. It has to be right. A patch sent out to thousands and thousands of phones could potentially cripple a carrier’s network, eat up every user’s data cap, or even cause the phone itself to stop working. Anything of the sort is unacceptable and has to be found before it leaves the building.

The rollout

The company that made your phone, Google, and maybe your carrier work together to get a mass over-the-air update ready. If you’ve ever seen the URL that is used to download a patch, you’ll notice it has “Google” in the web address. That’s because the engine inside your phone that can fetch and process an OTA update is looking in a very specific place for a patch. It needs to know that the patch is 100% correct and signed by the right digital signature. It will check this again once the patch is fully downloaded.

If you bought your phone from a carrier, it has plenty of input during the entire life of a patch.

Your carrier may have some rules about when and who can download a patch once it’s live if their name is on the phone. Companies like Samsung or LG make custom versions of their most popular models for each carrier, which has plenty of input into how things are done. It should since its name is on the box. This can be frustrating, but it makes sense. If everyone in Pittsburgh (for example) who has a Samsung Galaxy S8 phone tries to fetch an 800MB patch at the same time, the network is going to crumble in spots. Your carrier will do anything it needs to do in order to keep the network alive.

Google also places a sort of hold on OTA rollouts. A specific number of users will receive a patch, and after a set amount of time, Google determines if those users had a good experience or a bad one. If all goes well, a larger number of users will get the patch in a second wave. This repeats several times before the floodgates are opened. Users who do not wish to wait for this final testing can manually download a patch through their device settings.

When it’s your turn and you gave your phone the green light to grab that file, it’s downloaded and then your phone takes control.

In your hands

A patch is downloaded to your phone and verified as being the right stuff. Older versions of Android have a dedicated cache, which is a section of your storage that has been divided off for things like an update file to live; things that are only temporarily on the phone. Phones that use Android’s seamless update feature (which should be most phones running Android Nougat when sold) “slip” the downloaded files into what are called slots. In either case, you need to have enough space for the OTA file to be extracted and worked on.

Phones with older versions of Android may have a dedicated cache partition that’s used during an update. It needs to be 2.5 times bigger in size than the OTA file you downloaded.

The OTA updater software in your phone is a part of Android. A script in the downloaded file tells it how to go about finding the files that need altered and it copies those files either into your device cache or into the designated slot. It then compares the original files on your phone with the files that have been downloaded. Some may be a simple swap — take file X from the phone and delete it, then replace it with file X from the OTA download. Others aren’t the full file and only contain small specific changes. The updater and installer software in your phone know what to do here.

Many files in Android, especially the applications and software libraries, are really a lot of files compressed into a special archive. You can take an APK file and change it to a .zip file and open it with Windows. Sometimes these archives need to be opened and portions of them need to be swapped with new versions downloaded for the security patch. That’s why you need that working space in your cache partition — that’s where these files are extracted.

A lot of files on your phone are really archives containing many files — including other archives of files. It’s complicated.

Once every file in the OTA update has been processed and changes made to copies of system files, it’s time to run the system with them. This happens when the phone asks you to reboot after it processes the OTA you received because there are often files that need to be patched but are in use while the phone is running. You may see a screen showing that there is work going on during the reboot or you may just see the Android logo. In either case, files are being checked, moved into place, and checked again. The old files are kept in the cache just in case there is a problem and you can’t boot with the new files.

All that’s left is for you to make sure everything is still just how you like it, and you have a newer date for the Security Patch version in the settings of your phone. Now you’re ready for the next update!

Android P

• Android P: Everything you need to know
• Android P Beta hands-on: The best and worst features
• All the big Android announcements from Google I/O 2018
• Will my phone get Android P?
• How to manually update your Pixel to Android P
• Join the Discussion

Hands-on photos show ‘Project V’ — a foldable Samsung phone that never was

It’s widely expected that 2019 will be the year Samsung finally launches the Galaxy X — its long-awaited foldable/bendable smartphone. Patents from years past have indicated Samsung’s been toying around with the idea of a foldable phone for some time, and thanks to a user on Twitter, we now have an idea of what one of those prototypes looked like.

Referred to as “Project V”, the above phone was being developed by Samsung between 2015 and 2016 as evident by the UI and clock widget on the home screen. Rather than being a phone with a bendable screen, Project V was similar to ZTE’s Axon M in the sense that it had two screens on the front and back.

Project V could be used like a regular phone, but using a hinge mechanism, the second display could be moved to the front for double the screen real-estate.

The photos show that Project V was a pretty chunky gadget, and although its construction isn’t quite as refined as the Axon M, it’s impressive Samsung had such a similar device ready to go about two years before ZTE.

Samsung’s Project V won’t ever see a proper release, but it’ll be interesting to compare this to the Galaxy X whenever it’s actually released.

Based on what we’re seeing here, are you glad Samsung canceled Project V or do you think you would have purchased it?

Samsung Galaxy X foldable phone: Rumors, Images, Details, and More!