Facebook app on Android now supports HD video uploads

Image: Which.co.uk

By tech2 News Staff /  10 Dec 2016 , 14:22

Facebook has added support for uploading HD videos on its app on Android. While there is no official announcement, a report confirms that the feature has been added quietly. There is a new toggle in the app settings that allows users to upload HD videos.

The new HD video settings option has reportedly started rolling out to most users, in fact it is available in India as we have just confirmed with a few users here. Of course there are a few who haven’t, but they should get it very soon. The report also says that there are other new video features as well that have started appearing for some users but only in limited numbers. These include picture-in-picture video, the ability to download videos for offline viewing, and video viewing resolution options ranging from 72p all the way up to 360p.

Then there is a small but convenient option for notifications browsing. Two arrows are added when viewing an individual notification. With these arrows one can easily toggle between notifications without having to go back to the notifications top view.

These features are rolling out to Android users and gradually everyone should have them. It’s a safe move from Facebook to quietly roll out these new features rather than making official announcements as they can first test them out before launching all of them in an official app update. There is no info around the iOS app as of now, but probably Facebook will roll out these features for Apple users later.

Apple’s CarPlay is now available on 200 cars

By tech2 News Staff /  09 Dec 2016 , 18:50

It’s not breaking news, but yes Apple’s CarPlay infotainment system now officially supports 200 car models. The same was made evident on the tech giant’s website where Apple has listed the long list of cars that are CarPlay compatible which now includes 50 new entries according to 9to5mac.

The earlier list included 150 vehicles, and the new list also adds a couple of new 2017 models. The new list comprises of auto brands like Audi, Honda, Maserati, Kia, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, and Volkswagen. Apart from the regular cars, we also have a few exotics like Bentley Bentayga, the Ferrari GTC4Lusso, the exotic Lamborghini Centenario and the 2017 Porsche lineup as well. Also included in that list is the 2017 Jeep Compass which is undergoing testing in India and is set for production in India as well.

According to the same source, the list also includes some older or recently announced cars that will receive support for the same via firmware updates.

For those who have not been able to use either Google’s Android Auto or Apple’s CarPlay, Sony’s $500 dash will help you link your smartphone to both for a lot less.

Asus Z01HDA smartphone with dual-camera setup clears TENAA

By tech2 News Staff /  09 Dec 2016 , 18:37

Taiwan based smartphone and IT product maker Asus will be launching a new smartphone soon. The information comes from Chinese telecommunication authority TENAA where an Asus handset with model number Z01HDA. It could be yet another ZenFone 3 smartphone from Asus and considering the time period, it should be announced at CES 2017.

According to the listing, the smartphone will be running on Snapdragon 625 chipset and will sport a 5.5-inch Full HD display. Memory options include 2GB, 3GB, and 4GB, with storage coming in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. The dual-lens camera setup is clearly visible at the back and the handset’s Bluetooth SIG listing mentions 12.2MP+13MP . It also has the ZenFone 3 Zoom moniker, which means it could be an update to the ZenFone Zoom.

A 13MP unit is said to be on the front, while the battery is rated at 4,850mAh which is definitely huge. There is also a fingerprint scanner at the back and the smartphone will run on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box. Colour variants would include Navy Black, New Crafts Silver and Luxury Gold color options.

If the smartphone does become a reality, it will be the first dual-lens camera equipped smartphone from Asus. Also since the original ZenFone Zoom tried to bring a loseless zoom experience on a smartphone, we can assume that the purpose of the dual-lens setup on the upcoming smartphone would be to add digital zoom without any quality loss.

Deep dive into ZenFone 3 Max 5.2

  06 Dec 2016 , 15:58

The ZenFone 3 Max (ZC520TL) is part of the new ZenFone 3 series and the model with an incredibly-long-lasting, high-capacity 4100mAh battery that provides up to

• 30 days of standby time
• 20 hours of VoIP talk time on 3G
• 87 hours of music playback
• 15 hours of video playback

The ZenFone 3 Max’s high capacity battery gives owners freedom to use it for extended lengths without the need to charge it and even the ability to act as a fast charging power bank that can charge other devices with a current of up to 1.5A.

This latest addition to the ZenFone 3 series also sports a new full-metal, aluminum alloy body that houses its high-definition 5.2in IPS display. The display is surrounded by a slim, 2.25mm bezel that gives it a high 75% screen to body ratio – meaning that the bezel takes up only a quarter of its front facing surface area, giving users as large a screen for as compact a phone size as possible.

Although ZenFone 3 Max has such a high capacity battery, it weighs only 148 grams and is only 8.5mm thick, making it one of the lightest and most compact smartphones with a battery above 4000 mAh in capacity.

It also has a LTE Category 4 radio for fast mobile-download speeds up to 150Mbps.

Achievements

• The ZenFone 3 series model with the highest capacity battery
• At only 148 grams and is only 8.5mm thick, it is one of the lightest and smallest smartphones with a battery that is 4000mAh and above
• Its 75% screen-to-body ratio is also one of the highest among smartphones with a battery that is 4000mAh and above

Specifications

Premium Metal Design

The ZenFone 3 Max features a beautiful new aluminum alloy construction with design elements that add to its good looks and makes it more comfortable to hold.

Aluminum Alloy Body – The ZenFone 3 Max has an aluminum alloy body that is finished with a finely sandblasted matt surface and features gently rounded corners and edges. This premium material not only makes the phone look sophisticated, it is also makes it more durable.

Display glass with 2.5D contoured edges – The ZenFone 3 Max’s display glass has what is known as a “2.5D” contoured edges. Thus every smoothly rounded edges are a result of a highly precise manufacturing technique.The 2.5D contoured edges make the phone look even better, help the display glass fuse seamlessly into the diamond cut metallic chamfered edge, and adds to the comfort of holding the phone.

Diamond-cut Metallic Chamfered Edges – Surrounding the 2.5D contoured display glass edges of the ZenFone 3 Max is a special chamfered edge that was made using a diamond tipped cutting tool, and anodized to give it an attractive, shiny metallic finish. This chamfered edge not only makes the

Authorities arrest suspects in relation to cyber heist carried out in Russian Central bank

  09 Dec 2016 , 17:07

Russian authorities arrested a large number of suspects in May in connection with the recently revealed electronic theft of $19 million from accounts held at the Russian central bank, an official said on Wednesday. The bank said last week that hackers had this year used fake client credentials to steal money from correspondent accounts — used to handle transactions on behalf of another bank — at the Bank of Russia.

Banks around the world are tightening the security of their messaging and money transfer networks following a number of cyberattacks – most notably the use of stolen Bangladesh Bank credentials to send SWIFT messages requesting the transfer of nearly $1 billion from its correspondent account at the New York Federal Reserve. The hackers succeeded in transferring $81 million to four accounts in Manila.

Artyom Sychyov, deputy head of the Bank of Russia’s security directorate, said the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, had run a joint operation after the Russian heist, and that “a large number of people were arrested”. He declined to give further details – but on June 1, the FSB said it had, together with the police, detained some 50 people suspected of the electronic theft of 1.7 billion rubles ($27 million) from unnamed Russian financial institutions.

The FSB and Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to questions about whether this was the operation mentioned by Sychyov. Sychyov said the attack on the central bank had been confined to third-party correspondent accounts. “The payment system of the Bank of Russia cannot in any way be implicated,” he said.

The Bank revealed the attack in a sparse passage on page 37 of a 69-page financial stability report published last Friday. It said the hackers had broken into an electronic system that gives clients access to correspondent accounts held within the Bank. It said they had attempted to steal 2.87 billion rubles ($45 million), of which 1.67 billion was later frozen or recovered.

Since the report was published, central bank officials have declined to answer detailed questions. This week, the Bank of Russia moved Sergei Moiseyev, head of the department for financial stability, which was responsible for the report, to a new job as adviser to the bank’s governor on reform of the leasing industry. The bank did not respond directly when asked if Moiseyev’s removal was linked to the publication of the information about the cyberattack.

Reuters

The new Apple MacBook Pro offers much less battery life than claimed: Report

By tech2 News Staff /  09 Dec 2016 , 15:01

Apple’s new MacBook has earned more than its fair share of complaints since its launch. Apple’s “revolutionary” new device introduced the world to dongle hell and that alone has drawn more ire than any other issue with the device.

Folks, including ourselves, have complained about everything, from its exorbitant price to the lack of an SD card slot, USB port and even the much-loved MagSafe connector. One more complaint to add to this growing list comes in the form of a report on 9to5Mac.

Apple promises a “up to 10 hours iTunes movie playback” with the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and also specifies that the test was conducted on a “2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-based 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 512GB SSD and 8GB of RAM.”

As far as test systems go, that’s a bog-standard system to test on and a claim of 10 hours video playback is commendable.

When put to the test, however, 9to5Mac discovered that in practice, the battery life rarely crossed the 8-hour mark.

You can find the full details of the test setup on 9to5Mac, suffice to say that the test was run at 50 percent brightness and that the test MacBook Pro used a 3.3GHz Intel i7 (vs the i5 that Apple used) and 16GB of RAM.

A more powerful CPU does equal less battery life, but  it must be noted that both the CPUs in 9to5Mac’s reports are essentially the same, offering a 28W TDP and Intel Iris Pro 550 graphics. The only notable difference between the two comes in terms of clock speeds.

Given this information, one can expect the i7-based MacBook Pro to perform slightly worse than the i5-based MacBook Pro that Apple used, but only in light workload scenarios, like video playback on iTunes.

If the results are to be believed, the 13-inch MacBook Pro offers significantly worse (20 percent) battery life than Apple claims.

Yes, this is nit-picking at its finest. No manufacturer in our experience has ever precisely quoted battery life for their offerings and our regular workflows differ so wildly from laboratory tests that claimed battery life is nothing more than, well, a guideline.

The bigger problem here is that Apple is officially claiming less battery life than their 2015 MacBook Pro (12 hours of video playback), which uses the same CPU architecture used in the current MacBook Pros.

Here’s a Pro-tip, Apple: When it comes to battery life, less is never more.

Samsung rumoured to be working on an all-screen Galaxy S8

By tech2 News Staff /  09 Dec 2016 , 12:05

After the whole Note 7 debacle, Samsung’s mobile division is under tremendous pressure. It needs to bounce back with a device that will be far more interesting than the Note 7. While we have been hearing rumours about the upcoming Galaxy S8, the latest scoop reveals that the company might go in for a crazy-looking display.

According to a source, the Korean tech giant is planning on creating an all-screen front for the upcoming Galaxy S8. With that it will completely remove the physical home button as well.

By an all-screen design, we mean that the display on the smartphone will essentially be bezel-less offering a bigger screen real estate. As for the home button, it could be embedded in the lower section of the glass. It could very well look like the recently launched Mi Mixonly with a more curved finish. Of course, the display tech will be AMOLED, but it will be interesting to see how strong that glass covering the whole front would be. This rumour also goes in favour of a previous leak that said a 6.2-inch bezel-less variant is also in the works.

Expect Samsung to announce the smartphone around February and a launch date soon after that. Going back to the previous leaks, we can tell you that the smartphone could feature the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 as well as an Exynos based variant. RAM could go as much as 6GB with storage options going up to 256GB. Samsung could also say goodbye to the 3.5mm audio jack in favour of audio routing from a USB Type-C port.

Recently Samsung acquired audio company Harman and is expected to utilise their audio expertise to incorporate a high-end audio experience in new smartphones from next year.

US and UK spies tried accessing data from passengers’ mobile phones on commercial airline, says report

  09 Dec 2016 , 10:49

American and British spy agencies have tried to intercept data from passengers’ mobile phones on commercial airlines including Air France, French media has reported, citing documents from US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The French flag-carrier was an early target of the US National Security Agency and its British counterpart GCHQ as it was seen as a terrorist target and it carried out tests in 2007 on allowing the use of mobile phones on its aircraft.

“The use of mobile phones with Internet connections in the sky gave rise to the creation of specific programs at the NSA and GCHQ,” said Le Monde, which has access to Snowden’s archive in partnership with news website The Intercept.

While it is not normally possible to make phone calls on planes, some carriers allow passengers to connect to a cabin Wi-Fi, allowing them to use internet-based functions on their handsets.

In 2012, at least 27 airlines allowed passengers to use mobile phones on board, including British Airways, Aeroflot, Etihad, Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines.

But Air France was “such a symbol of the surveillance of communications on board airlines that the British spy agency used a drawing of one of their planes to illustrate how the interception worked.”

Asked about the British and American surveillance claims, Air France told Le Monde, “We are visibly not the only ones to have been targeted and we know absolutely nothing about these practices.”

According to the report, internal documents from the two agencies describe the results of the “impressive” programs – codenamed “Thieving Magpie” and “Homing Pigeon” – which allowed data to be collected “almost in real time”.

In order to spy on a telephone, all that was needed was that the aircraft be cruising at an altitude above 10,000 feet, the report said.

Secret aerial stations on the ground could intercept the signal as it transited through a satellite.

“The simple fact that the telephone was switched on was enough to give away its position, the interception could then be cross-referenced with the list of known passengers on the flight, the flight number, and the airline code to determine the name of the smartphone user,” the report said.

The mobile phone’s function could also be disrupted, it said, forcing the user to input their access codes and thereby allowing the British spy agency to intercept the information.

Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, leaked thousands of classified documents to the press in 2013 which revealed the vast scope of US surveillance of private data that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.

After fleeing his home in Hawaii, he now lives in exile in Russia where he has sought asylum.

Should he ever return to the United States, Snowden would be tried for espionage and other charges carrying up to 30 years in prison.

AFP

Microsoft Corporation announces new cloud console for Azure portal

By tech2 News Staff /  09 Dec 2016 , 10:36

Cloud services traditionally come with two standard interfaces. There’s either a web-based graphical interface or a command line terminal interface. In most cases users go with both but switching between them mean switching between applications and terminal interfaces, and in some device cases, it’s just not possible.

Well according to the latest blog from Microsoft, the software giant has come up with a solution.

The new Microsoft Azure Cloud Console comes with an integrated workflow, that allows users to build applications on Azure using graphical interface or command line tools. The shell is integrated into the portal so users can quickly drop into a command line experience, while simultaneously viewing their cloud resources in the graphical web interface.

This solves the common problem mentioned above and lets users work with devices like a mobile or tablet or places where command line tools aren’t installed.

This makes developing code a whole lot easier where there’s no switching involved.

The key features of this experience are:

• Automatic authentication to the command line tools from your existing web login
• All Azure command line tools, as well as relevant command line utilities pre-installed
• Personalised, persistent workspace that preserves your code, configuration and activity across cloud shell sessions.

“The terminal is a fully featured experience featuring not only the Azure command line tools, but also standard editors and tools you would expect. Further, the cloud shell preserves context for you,” writes Brendan Burns, Partner Architect in the blog. Moreover, files saved to disk are persisted in Azure’s cloud so users can resume where they left off in the next cloud shell session. Impressively, users need not even be on the same device or network to continue the session.

Drones could be used for transporting blood for transfusion in hospitals in rural areas, says study

Image: AP

  09 Dec 2016 , 10:02

Not just pizzas or groceries, drones can one day transport blood for transfusion to hospitals in rural areas — while keeping it safe and intact — in less time.

In what is believed to be the first proof-of-concept study of its kind, researchers from Johns Hopkins University have determined that large bags of blood products, such as those transfused into patients every day, can maintain temperature and cellular integrity while transported by drones.

Remotely-piloted drones are an effective, safe and timely way to quickly get blood products to remote accident or natural catastrophe sites, or other time-sensitive destinations.

“For rural areas that lack access to nearby clinics, or that may lack the infrastructure for collecting blood products or transporting them on their own, drones can provide that access,” says Timothy Amukele, assistant professor of pathology and the paper’s first author.

The new study examined the effects of drone transportation on larger amounts of blood products used for transfusion, which have significantly more complex handling, transport and storage requirements compared to blood samples for laboratory testing.

The team purchased six units of red blood cells, six units of platelets and six units of unthawed plasma from the American Red Cross, and then packed the units into a 5-quart cooler two to three units at a time.

The cooler was then attached to a commercial S900-model drone.

This particular drone model comes equipped with a camera mount, which the team removed and replaced with the cooler.

For each test, the drone was flown by remote control a distance of approximately 13 to 20 km while 328 feet above ground. This flight took up to 26.5 minutes.

The team designed the test to maintain temperature for the red blood cells, platelets and plasma units. They used wet ice, pre-calibrated thermal packs and dry ice for each type of blood product, respectively.

Following flight, all samples were transported to The Johns Hopkins Hospital where the team used the institution’s laboratories to check for any damage.

The team plans larger studies in the US and overseas and hopes to test methods of active cooling, such as programming a cooler to maintain a specific temperature.

The findings are forthcoming in the journal Transfusion.

IANS