Google fined $6.8 million by Russian antitrust body
Russia’s antitrust body has slapped Google with a $6.8 million fine after ruling that the firm didn’t do enough to open Android up to other companies. Officials believe that the search engine has abused its dominant position by crowding-out domestic rivals like Yandex, commonly known as Russia’s Google. For instance, other firms aren’t able to pre-load rivals apps for navigation or search on Android devices that are certified ready for Google Play. It’s an accusation that Google denies and its representatives have already told the New York Times that it’s reading the charges “closely.”
Google isn’t a major player in Russia and a fine of $6.8 million is but a scratch for such a highly profitable firm. But these problems are beginning to mount up as antitrust regulators around the globe put the company in the firing line. In Europe, the European Commission is charging the company with abuse of its dominant position for similar reasons, saying that withholding access to Google Play for forked and AOSP versions of the operating system is unfair. Then again, it also has always seemed slightly weird that Google should be obliged to enrich its rivals at the expense of its own products — especially when it already maintains AOSP.
Via: NYT
Source: FAS
UK grants new powers to remotely block illegal prison mobiles
Mobile phones have to be one of the most valuable kinds of prison contraband, where they’re used for keeping in touch with loved ones all the way through to running criminal empires from behind bars. According to the UK government, close to 15,000 handsets and SIM cards were confiscated last year alone. But thanks to new powers granted to prison and police officers, they can now be disconnected remotely, removing the need to physically find the things to take them out of circulation.
The new measures are being provided through the Serious Crime Act, and as long as there is evidence linking a phone number to a prison mobile, officers can apply for a Telecommunications Restriction Order (TRO). Should that be granted, the appropriate network will be obliged to cut the number off, rendering it useless.
This power, the government says, will cut down on crime being orchestrated from within prisons without the need for complex blocking technology. Earlier this year, the first official confirmation that sophisticated Stingray tracking devices were being used in the UK came from the Scottish Prison Service, not that they were proving particularly effective in blocking mobile traffic.
One thing the government has neglected to mention is how officers are expected to go about gathering the evidence they need to apply for a TRO. It sounds like the type of information that may crop up as part of a targeted investigation of someone on the outside. Not a daily occurrence, in other words. Also, disconnecting SIMs doesn’t takes handsets out of action, and smuggling tiny bits of plastic into prison must be much, much easier than sneaking in the devices themselves.
Source: Home Office
BlackBerry DTEK50 review: Cheap, secure and better than expected
BlackBerry’s first Android phone was a curious, ambitious machine, so it’s funny that the company’s second turned out to be so … practical. The $299 DTEK50 is affordable from the get-go, lacks a physical keyboard and was basically tailor-made for corporations to buy in bulk. Seriously: BlackBerry has been pretty candid about the fact that this is a “fleet” device, a supersecure phone it hopes will attract companies trying to trick out their mobile workforce. BlackBerry is trying to pitch this to regular people too, though, and in the process, it’s hurling the DTEK into a crowded, crazy-competitive pool of midrange phones. Spoiler alert: It’s probably not for you.
Hardware
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you already know BlackBerry didn’t design the DTEK50 by itself. Instead, the company chose a reference design from TCL — the folks behind the Alcatel brand — that offered the level of performance it was after. That decision was… divisive, to say the least. CEO John Chen has long said that BlackBerry would stay in the hardware game as long as there was money in it, and by customizing an existing design, the company just saved heaps of money on product development. The flipside is that the finished device doesn’t really feel like a BlackBerry.
I’ll be the first to admit that sounds a little silly, but still, I was a little worried when I first heard the news. BlackBerry has historically taken pride in designing its devices, from pint-size beauties like the Pearl series to last year’s delightfully bonkers Priv. Pulling an existing design off a shelf and adding BlackBerry accents like a logo and a textured rubber back didn’t sit right with me at first, even though the company maintains it’s a pretty common practice.
Ultimately, though, it’s safe to say that these concerns only really matter to mobile wonks like me. Once I got down from my high horse, I was met with a device that’s respectably well built and even sort of handsome (in an understated sort of way). The company also says the DTEK50 is the thinnest BlackBerry ever, which helps explain the mediocre 2,610mAh battery squeezed in there. I’ll dig into that a little later; for now, just know that the DTEK50 manages to be very light without ever feeling cheap. Nice work, TCL.
Unlike last year’s premium Priv, we’re working with a midrange list of specifications: an octa-core Snapdragon 617 chipset with 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 405 GPU. Alas, there’s no physical keyboard this time; you’ll be typing your messages on a 5.2-inch, 1080p IPS LCD touchscreen. Flanking the display is a surprisingly capable pair of stereo speakers, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera and a notification LED up top. But don’t get too excited, BlackBerry loyalists: It only blinks white. Meanwhile, the DTEK50’s backside is home to a 13-megapixel camera (with phase-detection autofocus, no less) and a two-tone LED flash.
For a phone that’s so focused on security, it’s a little odd that the DTEK50 doesn’t have a fingerprint scanner. The reason is purely practical: BlackBerry had to keep costs down. That’s probably also why the DTEK50 comes with only 16GB of internal storage. (Thankfully, you can add up to 2TB of storage by way of a microSD card slot.)
What we got instead of said scanner is a convenience key that sits below the volume rocker on the phone’s right edge. The premise is simple, enough: You can set it to launch apps or perform specific actions like calling someone or turning on the flashlight. Alas, the convenience key isn’t always very convenient. It won’t work while the phone is locked — something its distant relative, the Idol 4S, does just fine — and you can’t use it to snap a quick photo or take screenshots. More important, that key sits where most phones have their power buttons, and it took me an entire week to get used to that tricky placement. (If you’d rather not reset your muscle memory, you can make the convenience key unlock the phone too.)
Display and sound
The Priv’s fancy, curved AMOLED panel obviously wasn’t going to make the jump into a midrange phone, but — surprise, surprise — the 5.2-inch LCD we got on the DTEK50 is pretty damned good. It runs at 1080p (that’s a pixel density of 424 ppi, if you didn’t feel like doing the math), making for plenty of crisp text and visuals. It lacks the sort of punchy colors and deep blacks we got from the Priv, but who cares? They’re accurate, and the screen and scratch-resistant glass covering it are laminated together, so viewing angles are great. (If the color temperature doesn’t do it for you out of the box, you can tweak it in the device’s settings.)
In fact, the only time the DTEK50’s display seems to fall short is when you look at it next to other devices that cost about the same. ZTE’s Axon 7 will cost only $100 more when it launches in the US in September, and it features a beautiful Quad HD screen. Would it have been nice to get a higher-res screen on the DTEK50? Sure. Would it have made any sense, considering BlackBerry is trying to sell these en masse to businesses? Not even a little.
The audio quality another pleasant surprise, given that BlackBerry has never paid much attention to it in the past. I always feel a little twinge of giddiness when a phone I’m reviewing has stereo speakers, and the DTEK50’s offer crisp highs and decent channel separation for immersive sound. Even better, the speaker setup is replicated on the phone’s back so the jams won’t stop even when the DTEK50 is lying face down. Still, they’re far from perfect: Most songs I tried sounded hollow. What’s more, the DTEK’s maximum volume isn’t terribly loud, though it’ll do fine for podcasts and YouTube videos. The DTEK50 also comes with Waves’ MaxxAudio tuner, but your mileage may vary. The app’s presets usually succeeded in making my songs sound different, but not necessarily better.
Software and security
Now that the company is willing to almost completely outsource hardware design and production, BlackBerry’s soul boils down to two things: software and security. Unless it nails both of those things, then, there’s little reason to buy into the company’s vision. As far as the former goes, there’s no point in hiding it: I dig BlackBerry’s take. Things haven’t changed dramatically since the Priv’s days — the company didn’t mess with Android 6.0.1 itself. Most of the same tricks are back and they still focus on getting things done fast.
Swiping up from the bottom of the screen, for instance, brings up shortcuts to the dialer, the Device Search app and BlackBerry’s Hub. Long story short, the hub acts as a one-stop shop for your messages, be they emails, BBMs, texts, Facebook messages or Viber pings. I typically prefer the rush of pseudo-productivity that comes with jumping in and out of multiple apps, but it didn’t take long to appreciate having a single place to triage all the stuff that flew into my inbox. (As a bonus, you can now download this app from the Play Store and use it on other Android devices too.)
Meanwhile, peer closely enough at the screen and you’ll see the edge of a tab all the way on the right. Swiping on that opens the Productivity tab, where you’ll find a rundown of the day’s calendar events, unread messages, tasks that need completing and favorite contacts (you know, just because). Just like Samsung’s Edge UX, it’s easy to forget the feature even exists, but it’s handy when you do remember it’s there.
If that wasn’t enough swiping, you can view an app’s widgets in a pop-up window (as opposed to finding room for them on your home screens) by swiping up on them. It’s a neat touch that gives you extra context without having to fully open the app, but I never really use widgets in the first place. That swiping continues when you use BlackBerry’s software keyboard. Fan that I am of Google’s in-house keyboard, I love what BlackBerry has come up with: It’s perfectly sized, it’s precise and swiping up on word suggestions to complete messages is actually pretty fun. It’s easily one of the finest keyboards available on an Android phone, which is only natural considering the company that made it. Curiously, though, one of the BlackBerry’s neatest software touches didn’t make the leap here: You can no longer set a Picture Password, which is puzzling because it worked fine on the Priv.
Obviously, the DTEK50’s biggest selling point is security, and I haven’t dwelled on it until now is because it’s almost completely invisible to the person using the phone. You can’t tell that a hardware root of trust was baked into the phone during manufacturing, just like you can’t tell the phone is fully encrypted by default. The only real reminder that the DTEK50 is more locked down than most is the namesake DTEK app, which offers an at-a-glance look at how secure the phone is. But here’s the rub: DTEK is what you make of it. You’ll get a rating and a checklist of things that are or aren’t going well on the phone upon launch, but after you take basic precautions like setting up a PIN, the app mostly just says everything is excellent.
It’s when you dig a little further that DTEK’s value really becomes apparent — it outlines which apps have access to certain parts of the phone and counts up how many times those apps try to gain access. As of this writing, for instance, Facebook Messenger has tapped into my device’s contacts nearly 500 times. In certain cases, you can even see where you were when an app tried to gain access. More important, permissions can easily be revoked and apps can be quickly uninstalled from within DTEK, making it yet another one-stop shop for functions that would normally be buried in settings menus.
Camera
I wasn’t expecting much from the DTEK50’s 13-megapixel camera. After all, BlackBerry hasn’t had the best track record with imaging performance, and on at least one occasion it didn’t bother with a camera at all. It turns out that fretting was for nothing: The DTEK50 won’t win any photography awards, but both its main and front-facing cameras were respectable performers. That main sensor around back has a f/2.0 aperture lens and a phase-detection autofocus system; too bad it lacks the optical image-stabilization offered on last year’s Priv.
Even so, my photos contained plenty of detail, with nicely balanced colors in good lighting conditions. Don’t expect too much from the DTEK50 in low light; you’ll see grain and soft edges everywhere (even after the phone applies it multiframe low-light enhancements). I really shouldn’t have been surprised at the DTEK50’s performance here — midrange phones have become more impressive on all fronts, cameras included. That said, I still preferred the photos I took with the similarly priced Moto G4 Plus, which packs a 16-megapixel sensor and an additional laser auto-focus module.
BlackBerry still gets some credit for piecing together a good camera app, though. A shutter button lives on the right edge of the screen, with a handy exposure slider, mode selector and a panel of photo filter effects nearby for easy access. More serious photographers will get some mileage out of the included manual mode, which allows for finer control over focus, white balance, shutter speed, exposure compensation and ISO. It’s not the most polished camera app, but it’s enough to get the job done.
Performance and battery life
This is where things start to get hairy. The octa-core Snapdragon 617 (with four 1.5GHz cores and four 1.2GHz cores) is a well-known chipset at this point and has landed starring roles in phones like the fourth-generation Moto G line and the HTC One A9. For the most part, that combination of CPU cores and 3GB of RAM keep the DTEK50 running without issue. It’s certainly not flagship level, but launching apps, multitasking and generally just getting things done generally aren’t a problem. Graphically intense games sometimes threw the DTEK50 for a bit of a loop, but I could usually log plenty of time in Asphalt 8 with the visual settings cranked up before noticing any slowdown.
Once in a while, though, the phone would start to stutter, even during pretty basic tasks, before eventually returning to normal. I didn’t see hiccups this frequently while playing with other 617-powered devices, though that’s not to say they were immune to the occasional slowdown. I could usually clear things up by closing all running apps, and I suspect at least sometimes the problem was caused by using the DTEK50 out in the summer heat. Thankfully, these issues didn’t crop up every day, and with any luck a post-launch software patch will help smooth things out a bit.
HTC One A9
AndEBench
5,758
16,371
7,505
7,570
Vellamo 3.0
2,741
2,819
3,461
2,585
3DMark IS Unlimited
9,529
9,851
19,200
9,076
GFXBench 3.0 Manhattan Offscreen (fps)
N/A
6.6
15
6.6
CF-Bench
59,170
60,998
56,206
61,789
The battery, meanwhile, has been awfully hit-or-miss. BlackBerry and TCL fitted the phone with a 2,610mAh nonremovable cell that typically saw me through a full workday and then some before giving up the ghost. That’s about 14 hours of pretty consistent, mixed use — my days involve lots of phone calls, emails, Slack messages and card-slinging in Hearthstone, for the record. That’s in line with what we’ve seen from other midrange phones, which makes the DTEK50’s lackluster performance in our standard video rundown test so surprising. The phone looped a 720p video with screen brightness set to 50 percent and WiFi connected for just under eight hours, putting it well below the LG G5 (with a similar size battery) and either of this year’s new Moto Gs. In fairness, that’s not exactly a natural use case — I don’t know many people who’d watch videos on their phones for eight hours straight — but it’s still sort of a let-down.
The competition
BlackBerry clearly wants to sell tons of DTEK50s to businesses, and among corporate buyers, the company’s storied brand and devotion to security might give the phone an edge. The thing is, BlackBerry is trying to sell these to regular people too, and on that front, the DTEK50 faces a much tougher fight. Consider this year’s Moto G Plus, an enhanced version of the fourth-generation Moto G that launched alongside it. For $299, you’ll get a phone with the same Snapdragon chipset as the DTEK50 but with more RAM (4GB), more storage out of the box (64GB), a better camera (16 megapixels), a fingerprint sensor and an almost-stock version of Android. Motorola’s tight focus has wavered a bit — there are more Moto models now than ever — but the brand can still put out an excellent cheap phone.
The problem is, you could do so much better if you’d be willing to spend just a little more cash. ZTE’s Axon 7 and the OnePlus 3 can be had for as little as $399, and they offer full-on flagship performance in impeccably built bodies. None of these options offer the same level of hardened security as the DTEK50, but if you’re dead-set on a BlackBerry, you could find a Priv online for around $300. It might be a little older, but the Snapdragon 808 chip inside it is still no slouch, and you’ll get a great physical keyboard, to boot.
Wrap-up
It’s been more than a week, and it’s still hard to judge the DTEK50. As a ploy to appeal to those crucial business customers, it’s brilliant. For them, the DTEK50 is a solid, not-very-expensive option with the security chops to put IT paranoiacs at ease. As a phone for regular people, though, the DTEK50 is a much a tougher sell. Make no mistake: The DTEK50 is a perfectly good handset, and I’ll always appreciate BlackBerry for trying to keep security in the front of people’s minds. Still, it takes more than that to make a smartphone great, and BlackBerry’s approach won’t be for everyone. Unless you’re a BlackBerry loyalist or you take your security very, very seriously, you’re better off setting your sights elsewhere.
Three’s Feel at Home roaming will soon cover most of Europe
Three’s Feel at Home perk lets subscribers use their regular minute, text and data allowances abroad at no extra cost. The inclusive roaming feature even covers several far-flung destinations including the USA, Australia and Hong Kong, but after adding Spain and New Zealand to the roster early last year, the list of 18 regions hasn’t grown any longer. From this September, however, Three is expanding Feel at Home to an additional 24 countries across Europe (for a new total of 42).
Feel at Home was already available in France, Spain, Italy and throughout Scandinavia, but from next month, pretty much the entirety of Europe will be covered. Roaming charges are due to be abolished across the EU next summer, you may recall, so Three is just kinda jumping the gun in that respect. Though whether Brits will still be able to take advantage of that when the UK eventually leaves the EU remains to be seen.
For now, though, any Three subscriber planning a late summer getaway in Europe should be chuffed with the expansion. Unless they didn’t consult their crystal ball and opted to save a few quid by taking out one of Three’s new, perkless Essential plans, that is.
New Feel at Home destinations: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Isle of Man, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Channel Islands, Guernsey and Jersey.
LG’s V20 will sound great… with wired headphones
Some portions of the technology industry would like you to think that smartphones without headphone jacks are the future. LG feels differently, and has teamed up with high-end audio firm ESS to bake in a 32-bit HiFi Quad Digital-To-Analog converter into the forthcoming V20. Unlike standard DACs, this model is promised to cut ambient noise in half and make your tunes sound as if you’re listening on some high-end separates. The bit that’s worth noting, however, is that this new-fangled audio prowess will only work if you’re rocking a set of cabled headphones.
If you’re unfamiliar, a DAC takes the music that’s been stored digitally and (wait for it) converts it into analog audio for piping into your ears. That’s reasonably easy for a smartphone because there’s some space and power to install a hardware DAC in the body for use with headphones. But Bluetooth audio gear has to process the digital signal locally, which means it has to carry its own DAC. That means that it’s got to be smaller, cheaper and less power-hungry than its smartphone counterpart. By making a big deal out of the V20’s wired audio capabilities, LG’s drawing a very public line in the sand against firms like Motorola and what Apple is presumed to be doing next month.
Google Docs finally adds multitasking tools for iPads
Google Docs, Sheets and Slides’ most recent iOS updates make them play a whole lot nicer with multitasking on iPads. The patch feels a little overdue at this point, but hey, we’ll take support for iOS 9’s tablet features like Split View and Slide Over whenever we can get ’em. Supported models include the iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 4 and both sizes of iPad Pro, and if the update hasn’t hit your device yet, that’s what the source links below are for.
Via: Apple Insider, The Verge
Source: iTunes (1), (2), (3)
You can now message President Obama on Facebook
President Obama is no stranger to social media, and now the leader of the free world is making it even easier to reach him on the world’s largest social network. In a Facebook post today, the White House announced you can now send them a note via Messenger, exactly as you might send a message to friend.
Of course, since this is the president we’re talking about, there’s actually one or two extra steps you’ll need to take to make sure your message gets though. Users hoping to send the President a note will need to head to Facebook.com/WhiteHouse or find the White House on the Messenger app to start a thread with the President’s new chat bot. After a fun fact (“The President reads ten of these messages every night.”), you’ll be asked to enter your message, confirm the text and then add your contact information. If you’re lucky, your message will get make it into the President’s batch of ten must-reads, just don’t try hitting him up on BBM.
Researcher finds huge security flaws in Bluetooth locks
Security research Anthony Rose just wanted to try out his Bluetooth range-finding setup. While wandering in his neighborhood, he noticed a lot of Bluetooth locks popping up and decided to do some sniffing of those “security” gadgets (read: capturing packets being sent between devices). “I discovered plaintext passwords being sent that anybody could read. I couldn’t imagine I was the only one that could see this,” Rose told Engadget following a presentation at last week’s Def Con security conference.
Rose then purchased 16 Bluetooth-enabled door locks. With the help of his partner Ben Ramsey, he found that across the board, security was either non-existent or seriously flawed. “I never imagined that I would come across 12 of the 16 locks that I bought having either no security or poorly implemented security,” Rose said.
Of those security-impaired locks, four of them sent plaintext-passwords. They were the Quicklock Doorlock, Quicklock Padloock, iBluLock Padlock and Plantraco PhantomLock. The QuickLock brand was especially troubling because Rose could change the admin password and lock out the user. The only way to reset it is to remove the battery which can only be accessed when the door it’s attached to is open.
Four other locks were prone to replay attacks (when validated data is played again or delayed in transmission). Those were the Ceomate Bluetooth Smartlock, Elecycle Smart Padlock, Vians Bluetooth Smart Doorlock and Lagute Sciener Smart Doorlock. Some of these locks even claimed that encryption was being used. Which really doesn’t matter if you can capture, store and later send out passwords.
Rose and Ramsey were also able to hijack the “encrypted” with “patented cryptographic solutions” of the Okidokey Smart Doorlock by changing the third byte in its unique key to 00. The lock gets confused and opens. The researcher contacted Okidokey and instead of replying to his email, the company shut down its site. But the doorlock is still available on Amazon.
He also found that the Danalock Doorlock had a hard-coded password and that the Mesh Motion Bitlock Padlock could be impersonated (known as device spoofing) with a Raspberry Pi that would trick the device’s cloud server to send out a password.
This is all extremely troubling when you realize that these pieces of technology are all that stand between a burglar and the inside of your house. With a long range antenna, some of these locks could be open from half a mile away. Someone trying to jimmy your front door would arouse suspicion. If that same person just walked up and opened the door, there’s a good chance neighbors would believe everything was above board.
Rose’s team only tested 16 locks. But the Bluetooth-enabled security market continues to grow which concerns Rose. “In most cases convenience their top goal because they’re trying to sell a product. Security usually ends up being a second thought in these cases,” he told Engadget. It’s equally worrisome that only one of the companies he contacted replied to his findings. He had expected at least half to get back to him.
The four locks that the team couldn’t hack were the Noke Padlock, Masterlock Padlock, Kwikset Kevo Doorlock and August Doorlock. But he did note that the earlier versions of the Kwikset could be opened by jamming a screwdriver into the keyhole, while another researcher at this year’s Def Con was able to crack the August.
Rose says he will continue testing not only Bluetooth door locks, but other connected devices as well. When asked if he’d seen any locks on the market he would add to his front door, Rose replied, “absolutely not.”
Source: Merculite
Snapchat’s racist yellowface filter lands it in hot water
Snapchat’s problems with racist image filters aren’t over yet, it seems. The messaging service tells The Verge that it has pulled a filter that was supposed to be anime-inspired, but came across as turning people into racist Asian caricatures — just look at the picture above if you need proof. Suffice it to say that the filter won’t be coming back.
Snapchat did act quickly to take the filter down. However, the incident raises some poignant questions. Why didn’t the company learn from the Bob Marley filter, which many (including us) said amounted to digital blackface? And how did Snapchat not see the problem coming when many of its employees are Asian? Although this wasn’t intentional racism, the incident suggests that Snapchat may need closer oversight of filters to prevent an uproar in the future.
.@Snapchat wanna tell me why u thought this yellowface was ok?? pic.twitter.com/sgpW4AFPsE
— grace (@tequilafunrise) August 9, 2016
Via: Dazed
Source: Mic, Grace (Twitter), The Verge
Alexa support coming to BMW’s ‘Connected’ assistant app
BMW first revealed its revamped “Connected” assistant app in March, and it will finally be available this month. As a reminder, it does a lot more than sync your phone and car, acting more like the love-child of Waze and Google Now. It can scan your device’s calendar and address book, then calculate the drive time to an appointment based on your route and real-time traffic data. After factoring the vehicle’s fuel or battery level, it will send a “time to leave” notification to your iPhone or Apple Watch.
All of that information, including addresses and arrival times, is automatically synced to your car when you get in, assuming it’s a ConnectedDrive BMW, Rolls Royce or Mini. Yes, other apps including Android Auto, Waze and others let you do most of those functions. But Connected, being integrated with the vehicle, also lets you lock and unlock your vehicle, flash the headlights to help find it, and turn on the AC before you get in, among other functions. Once you arrive, it’ll give you “last mile” walking or transit directions.
Later this year, BMW will join Ford as one of the few automakers with Alexa support. That’ll let you shout commands at an Echo to remotely execute door locking and other functions, or get info like your vehicle’s fuel or battery levels. BMW says that the app will arrive on iOS sometime in August, with the Alexa update coming later in the year. There’s no word yet on Android support.
Source: BMW
AIVAnet 