Latest news

Customs and Border Patrol has a lot of important duties, one of which is recognizing and seizing counterfeit products that try to circumvent the intellectual property rights.

It might not be as flashy as stopping a thousand pound shipment of heroine, but CBP does get their hands on a lot of illicit tech products. In this case that is exactly what they thought they had.

Instead they seized a shipment of very legit OnePlus Buds, wireless earbuds by the popular Chinese Android enthusiast brand. Not only did they mistake OnePlus headphones as counterfeit Apple AirPods, they posted this epic failure for all to see on social media.

From the tweet you can clearly see the original retail box with a OnePlus logo as well as the product name, UPC, et al.

It is strange to think that the CBP would even entertain the idea that these are a copy of AirPods. Sure, they are white and kind of similar, but if you have AirPods at hand, you can quickly see the difference.

More importantly, they aren't trying to copy Apple logo, name, or even product name.

This embarrassing mistake got even more hilarious when OnePlus USA tweeted a reply, "Hey, give those back!" with a smiley.

Nvidia is known as the top dog in graphics cards but not many realize what kind of a behemoth it in fact is. The company's market cap is about $320 which puts them ahead of giants like Walt Disney or Coca-Cola.

Now, the GPU and SoC maker has flexed its muscles and acquired the world's leading mobile chip designer ARM Holdings. ARM was bought from the Korean technology giant Softbank for around $40 billion.

Softbank acquired the company every smartphone maker, and user, depends on for $32 billion a few years back. Softbank will hold on to a just under 10 percent stake in the company.

The UK-based ARM Holdings is known for its ARM processors, an architecture used by nearly all smartphones whether it'd be Android of Apple-designed silicon. Even the upcoming non-Intel Macs are going to run ARM architecture.

This is a massive deal in the smartphone and mobile world where Nvidia has had trouble expanding to. This means that Nvidia enters, as the deal closes, the realm in a big way.

Nvidia has also suggested that it will offer ARM customers licensing deals with Nvidia hardware. It will be interesting to see what the two companies can come up together.

The controversial social media TikTok has been acquired by a company that not many even considered in the race. Oracle, the company behind MySQL, Java and other computer technologies, has bought TikTok's American operations, Bloomberg reports.

Microsoft was in talks with TikTok for a while, and the Chinese-owned social media even tried to sweet talk U.S. government into not having to sell its operations.

However, Trump administration didn't back down from forcing change in ownership for the U.S. operations to keep up the app available. The administration cited security concerns with Chinese government possibly intervening in TikTok's businesses and data.

And now we're at Oracle owning the teen-focused app with short videos of dancing and cute animals, what else.

Oracle is one of the largest technology companies on the planet but they are largely developing enterprise solutions, AI, cloud computing, and data technologies, not so much consumer products or apps.

Microsoft has confirmed what was leaked already earlier: both the Xbox Series X and Series S are heading to stores near you in November.

The $499 – as the Best Buy leak suggested – Xbox Series X and the discless and the smallest Xbox ever, $299 Xbox Series S, are slated for global release on November 10. If you insist that you get your hands on one of these as soon as possible, you can pre-order them starting 22, 10 days from now.

This also give Microsoft an indication of what type of volume is expected at the launch, and perhaps make them more prepared for the game-starved public.

Microsoft also has a monthly subscription offer in Xbox All Access, which allows you to get Xbox Series X as well as Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $34.99. A quick 1+1 tells us that this 24-month commitment will cost you a total of $840 in two years.

With the cheaper Xbox Series S, the same subscription goes for $24.99/mo or $600 over the two year period.

Motorola has announced the second version of the second coming of Razr. The new Motorola Razr 5G is based on the original, legendary, Razr and is the second version of this new era of folding displays.

As you might gather from the name alone, the single most important new feature of the device is 5G connectivity. This is made possible by the new Snapdragon 765G chip which powers the likes of OnePlus 8.

Motorola hasn't quite managed to fit all the highest end parts in the second version either, which is evident by the mid-tier, albeit higher mid-tier, chip. Same continues mostly throughout the rest of the specs, although there are improvements across the board over the predecessor.

The Razr 5G has 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage space, the battery is slightly bigger at 2800 milliamp hours, and the cameras have improved: a f/1.7 and 48 MP shooter (Quad Pixel taking 12 MP shots) in the back and a f/2.2 and 20 MP (QP @ 5MP) selfie camera in the shell.

The eleventh major revamp of the Android mobile operating system was officially released this week, and here are new features at a glance.

Android 11 was released on September 8 without a release name of a popular dessert, since that practice was halted with Android 10. The new Android 11 logo accompanies this news item and references the film 'This is Spinal Tap' by depicting a dial turned up to 11.

Most of the changes for this iteration happened under the hood, affecting performance, 5G connectivity, security and so forth. Yet there are still revamps that will be very noticeable to users who upgrade when their device is eligible, or get Android 11 on a brand new device.

Here we will take a look at the primary feature changes:

Conversations Notifications
Notifications from all messaging apps such as the internal Messages app, WhatsApp, Messenger and so on, will be packed together in Android 11. This way your notifications for received messages will not be mixing in with "likes" or other kinds of notifications that pack the notification area.

Conversations can be marked as priority to make them more visible on screen, and also to bypass Do Not Disturb mode if it is activated.

Microsoft has finally officially announced the Xbox Series S. Most of the limelight is directed at the upcoming Xbox Series X but for a long time we've known that the Redmond giant has a secondary, more affordable gaming console in the development.

Now the Series S has been revealed, and the company has confirmed that it joins Xbox Series X at launch.

As expected, the Series S is a slightly less powerful, cheaper, and also, according to Microsoft, the smallest Xbox in history. It will retail for $299.

While it is much more inexpensive than one would imagine from a next-generation console, Microsoft promises next-gen performance.

Microsoft also announced the price of Xbox Series X. The bigger brother will retail for $499, which is just about what we've gathered from rumors and leaks.

We're still waiting from Sony, who've yet to announce PlayStation 5 pricing. It wouldn't be surprising if Sony would hit the same price points with their duo of next-gen consoles, the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition. That is what the previously mentioned leak also suggested.

Chinese manufacturer OnePlus is making a strong push towards the higher echelon on smartphone manufacturers with the latest models upping the specs, quality and price.

While OnePlus 8 series is still fairly new, we know that soon enough we'll get to experience another OnePlus phone thanks to the company's two model a year strategy.

The latter half of the year produces usually a slight upgrade over the first model of the year marked by the addition of T in the name. This years model is expected to be OnePlus 8T.

There's no word yet whether the company will announce both the mid priced OnePlus 8T as well as a truly flagship tier OnePlus 8T Pro. However, new leak reveals a lot about the former.

According to Android Central, we should expect an announcement late September or early October.

Specs-wise there's some nice upgrades to the current generation model. While the OnePlus 8T display is going to be the same size, refresh rate is going to be upped to 120 Hz, which is on par with OnePlus 8 Pro. There's no word on resolution but we'd guess it's going to remain Full HD+.

Nintendo has today announced quite the selection of Mario games for the Switch. Of course the Mario announcements didn't come out of the blue, it's all because of the 35 year anniversary of the original Super Mario Bros. released in 1985.

Mario Kart franchise will get a new take on the classic kart racing game. The new Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit combines remote controlled cars with mixed reality.

As the player you are controlling a remote controlled car with a camera around a virtual race track built in your home. The game will be available on October 16.

If you don't really understand how all of that works, here's the trailer.

Finnish WordPress developer company Seravo Oy has found a serious vulnerability in WordPress plug-in that is used by more than 700'000 websites globally.

Plugin, called WP File Manager, has a 0-day vulnerability that allows attackers to upload files to websites without authorization and execute code remotely on all WordPress instances that have the said plugin installed.

Basically utilizing the vulnerability, attackers can steal data, destroy sites or add their own code to websites, which could mine cryptocurrencies or distribute harmful code to website users' computers.

Both, the basic version of WP File Manager and also the paid-for version, WP File Manager Pro are affected. In total, these plugins have more than 700k active installations globally.

Developers were alerted of the issue and they released a updated version v6.9 that fixes the security problem. It is adviced to update WP File Manager to 6.9 or above - or uninstall it immediately.

More info: Seravo Oy press release

WordPress is by far the most popular publishing platform in the world, with millions of websites using it as their content management system and more.

As the relations between two huge countries, India and China, have been sour for most part of this year, the situation also has effects on digital world.

India has recently made it very clear that its attitude nowadays, especially with digital and consumer electronic products is that "everything that is made in China is bad". This has extended to digital products, such as games and apps. India just recently banned pile of Chinese apps from app stores available in India, including popular social media app TikTok.

Now, countryu has banned further 118 Chinese apps. One of those apps happens to be PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, an fps game that is currently the most popular app in India - and a huge success globally. Developer of the game is Chinese Tencent.

breaking: the Indian government has banned PUBG Mobile (Tencent) and 117 other Chinese apps

PUBG is the #1 app in India pic.twitter.com/HH3qacKNMu

-- Rod Breslau (@Slasher) September 2, 2020

Countries have recently locked horns again and again over border issues, power in Asia and more. The anti-China sentiment is rising in India.

Following many other countries' suit, Finland, launched today its official COVID-19 tracking application for iOS and Android platforms. App is called Koronavilkku (literally, coronavirus blink).

App, much like its many siblings in other countries, uses Apple's and Google's joint API that was created to track and trace novel coronavirus infections and alert about them.

Privacy?

App requires no registration or login details whatsoever and its privacy details were audited (link in Finnish) by Finland's National Cyber Security Centre, which found no privacy problems with the app.

App is anonymous and it wont pass any identifiable details of the user to the authorities, as its purpose is simply to alert the user if there user has been in close contact with a person who has COVID-19 infection.

How does it technically work?

To put it simply: through Bluetooth.

App doesn't use GPS or any other location data, but relies on close proximity of other Bluetooth devices.

Basically the app generates a random string for each device and distributes that data through Bluetooth data to other devices that have the same app installed - and vice versa. This random value is recreated every few hours to ensure privacy.

In a rather surprising move, Netflix has opened its service to be watched for free. Of course, this doesn't include everything Netflix has listed, but some of its hit series and original movies are now available for free.

There's no word whether the campaign is temporary one or permanent, but it is available globally as of now. Titles that can be watched for free include hits such as Stranger Things and Bird Box.

And no, registration is not needed in order to watch the titles. However, series have been limited to the first episode of each season, but movies can be watched in full.

Bird Box trailer

Free offering is available at here:

Netflix: Watch free

Obviously, the idea is to demonstrate how much good quality shows Netflix has and hope that people get hooked and subscribe to the service.

Smartphone design has followed one trend for a very long time. The design goal of smartphones pretty much ever since the very first iPhone has been to minimize gadgets distracting from the large touch screen display.

First it was mostly directed towards reducing unnecessary bezels, then displays started pushing towards selfie cameras creating either a notch or a hole for the camera, and home buttons were removed and fingerprint sensors were moved under the screen.

Inscreen fingerprint sensors are still developing and haven't hit the accuracy and speed of the regular ones, but it seems inevitable that nearly all, at least higher end, smartphones will move to that direction in the future.

Xiaomi, one of the world's largest smartphone manufacturer from China, has been working on a similar tech for selfie cameras. This would mean that the screen would be entirely undisrupted, and without a need of a motorized selfie camera that pops out when you need it, like on some Asus and OnePlus phones.

The technology is in its third generation already, Xiaomi says, and the company is now ready to start making the transition to production models. According to them, the first phone to feature this tech is expected next year.

OnePlus has been an up and coming smartphone maker for a few years now. At this point the company has grown to challenge even the likes of Samsung with its flagship phones.

The company's latest OnePlus 8 series offers high-end specs, but to keep up with their initial mission of providing affordable smartphones out compromises, first time ever, they had to announce a cheaper model alongside the flagship series.

However, the 399€ (there's no US release as of now) OnePlus Nord won't be the cheapest OnePlus for long. A new leak has detailed an upcoming OnePlus device that could retail for around $200.

Android Central has managed to get their hands on the specs sheet of what is called OnePlus Clover. There's nothing tremendously impressive about the specs of this cheap phone, except for one thing: the battery.

The battery inside the phone is massive. A 6000 milliamp hour battery is something you don't see often in smartphones. Pair this up with a 6.52 inch 720p screen and you've got a indisputable battery champ in the making.

Considering that it is nearly 50% bigger than in OnePlus 8 while having to power much less intensive hardware, this should provide at least a two-day battery life without breaking a sweat. It's, however, not going to feature OnePlus 8's market-leading fast charging tech but does offer 18 watt fast charging.