Pre-orders for the Nokia 6 cross the 250,000 mark on Chinese retail site JD.com

Image: JD.com

By tech2 News Staff /  13 Jan 2017 , 18:15

The Nokia 6, the first Android device from the Nokia brand’s current owner, HMD Global, has reportedly crossed 250,000 registrations on JD.com.

Given the popularity of the Nokia brand name even today, it’s hardly surprising that the device has garnered such interest. In terms of hardware, the device is underpowered in its price bracket. The phone is powered by a Snapdragon 430 chipset that’s supported by 4GB of RAM, after all.

Nokia does claim that the phone is exceptionally well-built for the price, offering up a body that’s machined from ‘6,000 series aluminium’, the same that Apple has used in its phones. The phone is listed at a price of 1,699 CNY (around Rs 17,000) in China and will not be available outside that country any time soon.

Recent leaks, however, suggest that the company is working on a flagship smartphone with flagship specs which it will likely unveil at MWC 2017 in Spain next month. This phone, dubbed the Nokia 8, is expected to feature a Snapdragon 835, 6GB of RAM, up to 128GB of onboard storage and a 24MP rear camera.

Since it is debuting at MWC, we expect that at least this device will see a global launch.

WhatsApp vulnerability allows spying on encrypted messages; privacy campaigners worried

By tech2 News Staff /  13 Jan 2017 , 17:50

WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in India. Globally it has over a billion plus users. WhatsApp is also one of the messaging apps to have end to end encryption. But according to a latest report in The Guardian, Facebook can read WhatsApp messages due to the way the end to end encryption protocol has been implemented.

A security backdoor which allows not just Facebook, but others as well to read the encrypted messages has been discovered in WhatsApp. Privacy campaigners have stated that this backdoor is a huge security threat to the freedom of speech. Also they have warned that government agencies could snoop in on conversations.

Ever since WhatsApp announced that it will be using end to end encryption, it has been used by a lot of activists, dissidents as well as people across different stratas of the society. WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol for implementing its end-to-end encryption. This protocol has been developed by Open Whisper Systems. In this security keys are exchanged between the users to guarantee that the communication is secure. This is to ensure that there can be no snooping, as you need to decrypt the message to read its contents. Till this point everything is fine.

But the report states that WhatsApp has the ability to force the generation of new encryption keys when users are offline. This is not known the to sender and the receiver of the message. The sender is then prodded on to resend the message using these new keys and send them again to the receiver for any messages that have not gone through, or you haven’t got any blue ticks, to indicate that the message has been delivered. The user does not have any advance warning or any chance to prevent sending such a message.

While the receiver is not aware of the change in encryption, the sender is notified only if they have opted-in for encryption warnings in the settings menu. This re-encryption and resending messages makes them vulnerable to be intercepted.

This is not to say that the Signal protocol is at fault. Far from it. The Signal app, endorsed by none other than NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, does not have this issue. If the recipient changes the encryption keys when offline, then the receiver will not get the message. Following which the sender will be notified of the changed keys. There will no automatic resending of the message.

Cryptography and research expert from the University of California, Tobias Boelter, discovered this backdoor, said that if the government asks WhatsApp to submit data, WhatsApp could grant access for messages where encryption keys changed. This could be used against anti-establishments activists or protestors. Boelter claims he had updated Facebook about the backdoor vulnerability back in April 2016, which Facebook dismissed as ‘expected behaviour’.

According to Boelter, this vulnerability could be used to snoop on not just individual messages but entire conversations. “WhatsApp server can just forward messages without sending the ‘message was received by recipient’ notification (or the double tick), which users might not notice. Using the retransmission vulnerability, the WhatsApp server can then later get a transcript of the whole conversation, not just a single message,” said Boelter.

According to Professor Kirstie Ball, founder of Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy, the existence of the backdoor is a ‘goldmine for security agencies’. “Consumers will say, I’ve got nothing to hide, but you don’t know what information is looked for and what connections are being made,” said Ball.

A WhatsApp spokesperson told Guardian that WhatsApp believes that people’s communication must be secure and private. The spokesperson pointed out that in WhatsApp’s Signal protocol implementation, there is a ‘Show Security Notifications’ setting (Settings > Account > Security) which notifies when a contact’s security code has changed. “We know the most common reasons this happens are because someone has switched phones or reinstalled WhatsApp. This is because in many parts of the world, people frequently change devices and sim cards. In these situations, we want to make sure people’s messages are delivered, not lost in transit,” said the spokesperson.

Twitter will livestream US President Donald Trump’s inauguration

Image: AP

  13 Jan 2017 , 13:43

Despite being excluded from the recently held Trump-tech meeting, Twitter will live-stream US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration here on 20 January.

“Twitter and PBS @NewsHour Partner to Live Stream Coverage of Inauguration Day 2017 #golive,” @TwitterComms tweeted on Thursday.

According to a report in CNET, the six-hour coverage would be anchored by Judy Woodruff and feature several correspondents and analysts commenting on the swearing-in of Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence on the steps of the US Capitol.

“Streaming public broadcasting’s thoughtful coverage on Twitter will allow more Americans to experience the inauguration and join in discussion around it,” Sara Just, Executive Producer, NewsHour, was quoted as saying by the report.

She called the transition of power to a new president a ‘powerful moment’ in America’s democratic process.

IANS

Flurry State of the Mobile report: Social media, messaging apps usage grew by 394 percent in 2016

By tech2 News Staff /  13 Jan 2017 , 13:34

Flurry, an analytics platform for apps from the Yahoo Developer Network has released its annual State of the Mobile report for 2016 and has some interesting insights. Flurry has been doing this since the last eight years.

The mobile app usage has grown by 11 percent on an average with social, messaging and sports related apps showing a growth in excess of 40 percent. Flurry has tracked around 940,000 apps across 2.1 bn devices and over 3.2 trillion sessions. Flurry defines app usage as “a user opening an app and recording what we call a “session,” as well as the amount of time spent in the application.”

Games, news and magazines, personalisation app categories saw a decline in terms of app usage, with music, media and entertainment showing a miniscule 1 percent rise.

The increase in the app usage of the social media and messaging apps has also led to the stupendous rise in the time spend on the these apps. Thanks to a 394 percent increase in the time spent on social and messaging apps, the average growth in time spent on apps rose by 69 percent. A lot of the credit for this goes to social media and messaging apps adding features such as voice calling as well as video calling on some.

Business and Finance and Sports, which are categories that are heavily time dependent, saw an increase in time spent by around 43 percent and 25 percent respectively. “We anticipate further growth in these categories as users continue to shift daily habits away from traditional media channels, i.e., watching live sports, market reports and the morning news on their TVs, to the apps on their phones,” said the report.

Gaming did not see a massive growth in 2016 thanks to the lack of popular titles. Pokemon Go was a star game of 2016 no doubt, but it also saw a consumer interest fading fast. Super Mario Run, which was released towards the end of the year, was not able to affect the overall numbers in the gaming apps. In fact, Super Mario Run, has itself been struggling to sustain the growth momentum that it had seen in the launch week.

Shopping apps saw a rise by 31 percent and according to this Adobe report, Amazon amassed 38 percent of the holiday sales transactions in the last two months of 2016.

In terms of device form factors, the phablets dominated the numbers, with Q4 2016 showing a 41 percent uptick over last year.

US court rules iPhone users can sue Apple for not allowing installation of apps outside the app store

Image: AP

  13 Jan 2017 , 08:21

iPhone app purchasers may sue Apple Inc over allegations that the company monopolized the market for iPhone apps by not allowing users to purchase them outside the App Store, leading to higher prices, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling revives a long-simmering legal challenge originally filed in 2012 taking aim at Apple’s practice of only allowing iPhones to run apps purchased from its own App Store. A group of iPhone users sued saying the Cupertino, California, company’s practice was anticompetitive.

Apple had argued that users did not have standing to sue it because they purchased apps from developers, with Apple simply renting out space to those developers. Developers pay a cut of their revenues to Apple in exchange for the right to sell in the App Store. A lower court sided with Apple, but Judge William A. Fletcher ruled that iPhone users purchase apps directly from Apple, which gives iPhone users the right to bring a legal challenge against Apple.

Apple declined to comment. The courts have yet to address the substance of the iPhone users’ allegations; up this point, the wrangling has been over whether they have the right to sue Apple in the first place.

But if the challenge ultimately succeeds, “the obvious solution is to compel Apple to let people shop for applications wherever they want, which would open the market and help lower prices,” Mark C. Rifkin, an attorney with Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz representing the group of iPhone users, told Reuters in an interview. “The other alternative is for Apple to pay people damages for the higher than competitive prices they’ve had to pay historically because Apple has utilized its monopoly.”

The case is Pepper et al v. Apple Inc., case number 4:11-cv-06714 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Reuters

Meet Opera Neon, the experimental browser that might replace your desktop

By Anirudh Regidi /  12 Jan 2017 , 19:09

Opera Neon is an alternative, experimental browser from Opera that wants to give us a glimpse into the future of computing.

It’s the design of Opera Neon that instantly catches your attention. While opening a traditional browser like Google Chrome or even regular Opera feels like you’ve opened an app, Opera Neon feels like a new interface for interacting with your computer. The only comparison that springs to mind is switching to, say, Unity Desktop after spending years in Gnome Desktop.

It feels like a desktop.

The whole UI is all bubbles. Speed dial is replaced with a handful of bubbles, each one representing a web page. New tabs show up as bubbles on the side of the browser and visual elements like progress bars are also bubbles.

Neon’s UI feels great. It’s visually pleasing and very distinct, especially after you come from the utilitarian efficiency of Chrome. I like the fact that browser tabs pop on the side rather than on top, it’s actually a more convenient place to put them, and in-browser split-screen modes, pop-out video playback and other such features are all nice to use.

My favourite feature is the snap-to-gallery feature. You tap the snap button on the browser, drag a box around whatever it is you want to capture and voila! A snapshot of the area you selected is automatically dumped in an easy-to-access tab. Better still, the image will also link to the source site, so a snapshot of a YouTube video will link to that YouTube video, for example.

I noticed that Neon took my desktop wallpaper as the browser background, this, and the overall design, add to the effect that you’re using a new desktop UI than something that is just a browser.

The large icons also mean that the UI is touch-friendly, so there’s no need to switch between desktop and tablet mode on devices like 2-in-1s.

All things considered, Neon is a great demo of what a browser can be.

It’s not as powerful as something like Chrome or Vivaldi (no extensions, tab and file management issues, etc.), but it’s a very pleasant, refreshing browser that I can see myself using while I laze about on the couch.

You can download Opera Neon here. Let us know what you think in the comments section below!

HTC announces U Ultra and U Play smartphones with HTC Sense Companion AI

By Anirudh Regidi /  12 Jan 2017 , 16:49

HTC has announced a new premium smartphone for 2017, with little by way of fanfare. Called the U Ultra, this latest device from HTC features a 5.7-inch display and HTC’s take on a virtual assistant, not to mention a second screen above the regular one. Oh, and it doesn’t have a headphone jack.

Starting with the screens, you get a 5.7-inch Super LCD 5 screen with a QHD resolution. Above it is a second, 2-inch screen with a resolution of 160×1040, which will be used to show contacts, reminders, music controls, etc.

The internals are made up of a Snapdragon 821, 4GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of onboard storage. MicroSD cards up to 2TB in size can be used to expand the storage.

The 64GB variant will come with Gorilla Glass 5 protection while the 128GB version will come with Sapphire glass. Sapphire glass is found over the fingerprint sensors on the iPhone and also on the Apple Watch. While it is more scratch resistant than normal glass, sapphire glass is also more brittle.

The rear camera is a 12MP UltraPixel 2 sensor that’s very similar to the one on HTC’s previous flagship, the HTC 10. The front camera, strangely enough, is a 16MP unit with a 4MP UltraPixel mode.

The rear camera can record slow-motion video up to 120fps at 720p. It can also record 4K video with “3D Audio” and “Hi-res audio”. The 3D Audio recording occurs via 4 microphones on the device while Hi-res audio is only limited to stereo recording.

The phone draws power from a rather underwhelming 3,000 mAh battery.

Connectivity comes in the form of USB 3.1 Gen 1 over a Type-C port, Bluetooth 4.2, dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac and NFC.

Alongside the HTC U Ultra, HTC also announced the HTC U Play, a device with a 5.2-inch screen (Full HD), 2,500 mAh battery, a Helio P10 SoC, 3GB or 4GB of RAM, 32GB or 64GB of storage and a 16MP rear camera. The front camera appears to be similar to the one on the HTC U Ultra. Internal storage can also be expanded by up to 2TB via a microSD card.

While connectivity options remain the same, USB connectivity is limited to USB 2.0 mode (over a Type-C connector), limiting data transfer speeds and functionality.

Disappointingly, the U Play comes with Android 6.0, but the flagship U Ultra at least ships with Android 7.0 out of the box.

HTC has dumped the all-metal aesthetic that it’s been using on its flagships for a while now. Instead, you get a glossy-surfaced all-glass finish that HTC calls ‘Liquid Construction’.

Besides the hardware and design, the phones come with some interesting features, not least of which is HTC Sense Companion, an onboard AI a la Google Now and Siri. The Sense Companion is different from AI like Google Now and Siri in that it’s meant to learn your habits and tune the phone’s behaviour accordingly. For example, HTC says the phone will learn your travel route and let you know when your phone needs to be charged.

The phone features voice recognition, so it can actually recognise your voice and respond to commands. Technology called USonic apparently analyses your ears and determines how best to modulate a headset for the best listening experience.

HTC’s trademark BoomSound speakers, which are only available on the U Ultra, feature HTC’s now standard tweeters-on-top and woofer-below configuration.

Pricing and availability details are unknown at this time, though The Verge reports that the device will sell for $749 in the US.