Latest news

People love their iPhones. Not as much as they used to, but people still love their iPhones.

One of the things that they usually don't like, however, is the battery life. Controversies like the #batterygate didn't do much to help Apple's case either.

'Member? Apple admitted that it is throttling older phones so they could keep it lasting longer because of degraded batteries. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, but they didn't tell the users about it, until it was exposed and they had to.

Well, there's more bad news about Apple's battery practices. According to a British customer advocacy group Which?, as covered by Business Insider, Apple has been fooling customers with the battery life figures.

As they tested iPhones, a total of nine different models, and how long you could actually use them as a phone, the results were not even close to what Apple claims.

Among the models the new iPhone XR was the worst offender. Apple promises 25 hours of talk time but it only managed 16.5 hours. Apple is giving the phone more than 50% more talk time than it can actually manage.

Smartphones are getting better and better, but for a while now the sales volume has gone down. That's probably the reason many manufacturers are making their phones more expensive, to combat the declining quantity.

For some it is not necessary, namely Huawei. The controversial Chinese manufacturer has managed to grow their business among others struggling and the entire market posting -6.6% growth.

Apple has fallen very sharply, according to IDC's newest report. In fact it is leading in negative year-over-year change with -30%. Huawei has now passed the American giant by a huge margin by increasing the volume YoY just over 50%. That is insane in this market.

In 1Q18 Apple shipped 52.2 million iPhones while Huawei "only" managed 39.3 million. A year later the tables have turned, and more, with Apple dropping to 36.4 million and Huawei with 59.1 million shipped smartphones.

Huawei's 19% market share is a scary prospect for Samsung as well, who is leading the pack with 71.9 million units and 23.1% share of the market. Even they dropped 8.1%.

Huawei has managed this without getting into the competitive U.S. market, thanks largely to the governments' hostility towards the Chinese company's suspected spying.

The old magnetic strip of debit and credit cards is nowadays rarely used in most of the Western countries, having been mostly replaced by either contactless payments or chip-and-pin payments. Finnish bank S-Pankki has now introduced a line of debit and credit cards that are designed vertically rather than horizontally.

Reasoning behind the design change is that consumers mostly see their cards positioned vertically - either when stored with their phone flip-covers or when paid with chip-and-pin terminals.

The card itself is still the same, standard-sized bank card we all know, but the all the graphical design elements - including the numbers on the card - are positioned so that they're meant to be read when the card is positioned vertically.

S-Pankki is not the first one to do the switch, as some banks have introduced the portrait cards in past two years, too, such as Sterling Bank in the UK. But S-Pankki is one of the largest banks in Finland, whereas most other banks around the world to introduce portrait cards have been "new banks" rather than traditional, big banks.

Traditional 16 digit card number is split into four lines, each having four numbers. Card still has the old, black magnetic strip so the card can still be used in countries where chip-and-pin payments and contactless payments aren't the norm. More info from S-Pankki website (in Finnish).

The patent dispute between Apple and Qualcomm had all the right ingredients to become a decade long battle like the one between Apple and Samsung, but who knew a failure by a third-party would open this gridlock.

When Intel recognized that it couldn't make 5G chips for Apple, like they promised, Apple had to quickly figure out a new 5G partner. The problem was that they were fighting in the courtroom with the obvious partner, Qualcomm.

Apple had to settle the dispute and, as expected, it wasn't cheap.

According to Qualcomm's latest quarterly financials it is receiving at least $4.5 billion in the settlement. This doesn't include royalties with the new licensing deal.

The deal is a exclusive six-year licensing agreement with a two-year extension option where Qualcomm provides Apple's iPhones with modems. Apple is also developing their own modems in-house, so it remains to be seen how the company manages the development of their own modems and a lengthy deal with Qualcomm.

Revolutionary electric car company, Tesla, is looking for investments to continue operations as planned. The company is looking to raise another $2 billion from investors.

According to CNBC, Tesla is going to try and raise the money via convertible notes and new equity. $1.35 billion would come from convertible notes and $650 million from new equity.

Tesla is looking for investors and one of them is said to be company CEO Elon Musk. Musk has offered to buy around $10 million worth of stock, which is of course a drop in the bucket for both the entirety of the investment round, or Musk's 20% stake in the company worth over $12.5 billion.

Tesla has been burning through their cash deposits in a remarkable pace for couple years. Musk said in the quarterly conference call to shareholders that raising money is not a fix, but instead the company needs to be more efficient.

I don't think raising capital should be a substitute for making the company operate more effectively. I do think there is some merit to raising capital, but this is sort of probably about the right timing.

The controversial Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei is quickly climbing to the top of the smartphone market share worldwide, but they are hardly done.

In 2016, Huawei introduced their MateBook laptop. Last year they redesigned the device, and released the highly acclaimed Matebook X Pro.

Now they have decided to diversify their portfolio further by expanding to television manufacturing. According to Nikkei Asia Review, Huawei is developing a 5G-enabled TV with 8K resolution.

The first ever 5G TV is said to be unveiled later this year, and according to the sources it would enter the market this year as well. However, even if the reports are correct, it is not clear at all that the TV would be sold in the U.S. or even Europe.

Many of the Chinese manufacturers never enter the western markets, and some of them only bring selected products to the U.S. and Europe. This combined with current government's distrust of Huawei's devices could be detrimental to the TV's chances in the U.S., especially considering it's equipped with 5G.

Apple has revealed latest quarterly results, and as expected revenue went down from last year. However, figures weren't as bad as expected and the stock shot up slightly.

Last fiscal years second quarter ended with revenue of $61 billion and this year the figure dropped to $58. The revenue from iPhones took a fairly steep dive, although Services as well as wearable technology, like the Apple Watch and especially AirPods, mostly plugged the hole.

Services generated $11.5 billion in revenue, which is an all-time high for Apple. One service that is certainly responsible for much of that is Apple Music, which has gained fast inside the U.S. even though trailing Spotify by a hefty margin worldwide.

Apple also managed to grow iPad business once more, from $4 billion to just $4.9 billion, likely thanks to the new iPad Pro. Unfortunately Apple no longer reports unit sales.

The company also revealed that there are more than 1.4 billion Apple devices currently in use worldwide. According to CEO Tim Cook, the trade war between Chine and the U.S. calmed down, and the relationships have been improved greatly since last year.

Apple took a significant hit from complication with the trade policies between the two countries. Now at least Cook believes that the tides are turning, and it's already evident in their operations in China, although tariffs are still in place.

Facebook owns some of the world's most popular social media and communication channels, but haven't done much to improve their interoperability. This is about to change soon, as the company plans to allow sending private messages between its main messaging platforms: Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.

The feature was already rumored earlier this year, but it was finally confirmed at yesterday's f8 developer event. It is unclear how the interoperability would exactly work, as WhatsApp relies solely on phone numbers, while Instagram and Messenger require users to create their own accounts. Thus, to what "phone number" would WhatsApp user send a message to when wanting to contact a person who is only in Messenger.

Company didn't give a clear timeline for the change, but it wont happen soon - it seems that the next year is most likely timeline for the roll out.

Facebook has been tipping its toes with the massive dating app market recently with its Facebook Dating feature, available in handful of countries. Now, company is expanding that business by launching a feature called Secret Crush.

With Secret Crush, one can tag up to 9 of his/her friends as the ones who the user is interested in. To limit the scope, the people added to the Secret Crush list must be either user's friends or friends of the user's friends.

People added to the list wont know about the addition ever, unless they also add the user to their own list. If so, both users will receive a notification from Facebook about the match. According to Facebook, the feature, announced yesterday at the f8 event, wont change the way Facebook newsfeed works, i.e. the people you've added to the lis wont appear more frequently in your newsfeed than without the list.

Secret Crush is part of the Facebook Dating feature, which has been available only in select few countries, including Colombia and Canada. Now the service is expanding to 14 new countries, but yet to the U.S. or any of the Western European countries.

Feature itself is simply a "power to the user" feature - it could be automated, as studies have shown that Facebook actually knows about your love interests before you do.

Google's Chrome is considered to be among the safest browsers for a good reason. Google has spent copious amount of time providing users with the most secure browser they can make, and largely they've succeeded.

However, there are always going to be problems that haven't been taken care of and exploits that could happen at any given time. One of these is, what a software developer Jim Fisher calls the inception bar.

He has figured out a way to fool users with a fake address bar on Chrome for Android. People can usually rely on their address bar showing valid information, but with this exploit Fisher has managed to replace it fairly convincingly with a fake URL bar.

When you scroll down on Chrome for Android, the address bar slowly slides away, normally when you go back up it's waiting for you again at the top. With the exploit Fisher's bar appears at the top and won't be replaced with the actual one even when scrolled up.

There are, fortunately, a few ways to determine that you are indeed seeing a fake bar and not a real one. First, at least with this iteration of the code, it appears in the middle of scrolling down, which should raise some concerns.

If you aren't sure if this is indeed a fake bar still, you can lock and unlock the device to reveal the actual bar, after which the fake bar is shown below (pictured above).

Streaming music pioneer Spotify has grown with a stable and fairly rapid pace for years now, and there seems to be no stopping it. Not even Apple Music, with its massive investments, has even come close to pass Spotify's global leadership.

Alongside the newest fiscal figures from Spotify, the company has revealed that they've surpassed the 100 million paid subscriber milestone. In December Spotify announced that they first went past 200 million total subscribers.

At this point there are more than 117 million users that are using the ad-supported tier.

Last quarter Spotify managed to also first time pull them up to a nice operating profit, but that wasn't meant to last. In the latest quarter they posted a 142 million euros ($158 million) loss. Even though it was backtracking by quite a bit, it still was an improvement to year ago.

While Apple hasn't given us official subscriber numbers for Apple Music in a while, they still have ways to catch up with Spotify globally. In the U.S., however, Apple Music has managed to overpass Spotify, thanks to its extensive investments and continuously running TV ads.

The companies are not only duking it out in the free market, but also in the bureaucracies of European Commission.

You know the feeling when you're at the office, working with your PC and your phone beeps about some incoming notification and you couldn't be bothered to find and open the phone? No worries, Microsoft has a solution for you!

Latest version of Windows 10, accompanied with the Microsoft's Your Phone app installed on your Android, can now bring all your Android notifications to Windows 10 notification area. This will help, especially with those mobile apps that don't have a web or Windows counterpart at all - SnapChat for example.

The feature relates to Your Phone concept the Microsoft launched last year. At first, installing a Your Phone app and connecting it to your Windows PC would allow one to browse through images and text messages stored in the phone via PC. Since then, the concept has evolved and nowadays, if your phone is in the supported devices list, you can actually mirror your entire phone to your desktop, in its own window.

Now, the latest version of Your Phone now also brings the Android notifications to Windows 10 and ties them into Windows 10's own notification area. The feature is already available to Windows Insider users, but should roll out to all of us in next couple of days. In order to get the notification mirroring, you need to have Android phone with Android 7.0 or newer and Windows 10 with at least version 1803 update available (released in Spring, 2018). More about the Your Phone and its notification mirroring can be found in Microsoft's blog entry. You can download the Your Phone app for Android here.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have come to a settlement in a case of Musk's Twitter use.

Last August, Musk ruffled the feathers of the SEC when he tweeted that he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 per share. The tweet pushed Tesla share prices up 13.3 percent, and the SEC accused Musk of violating secutiries laws.

Musk settled the lawsuit, stepping down as chairman of Tesla. He also said he would Tesla lawyers vet written communications with material information about the company.

However, in February, the SEC asked a federal judge to hold Musk in contempt after he tweeted about Tesla's production numbers. U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan declined to rule on the contempt motion and directed the SEC and Musk to settle it between themselves.

Musk and his lawyers deny that he had violated the original settlement, arguing that the settlement was too ambiguous for Musk to be held in contempt and that the tweet in question did not contain new information that was material to investors.

Now, the SEC and Musk have reached another settlement. If it is approved by the judge, certain tweets made by Musk will have to be submitted to lawyers to be vetted. This time the settlement is more specific on what kinds of statements will need to be approved by lawyers. Additionally, Tesla's board can seek preapproval about additional topics if they feel it is in the interest of the company's shareholders.

Sony's next generation PlayStation will not launch during the next 12 months, Sony has told the media.

Takashi Mochizuki, a Wall Street Journal reporter, revealed on Twitte that Sony will not ship the next gen PlayStation console any time in the next twelve months. This comes after the first details of the new console's hardware were revealed last week, and kills any speculation that Sony was aiming to put the new console on the market late this year.

It was also revealed that Sony's PS Now service has reached 700,000 users, averaging 40 percent annual growth.

Sony:
-No next-gen PlayStation launch over next 12 months
-PS Now has been ave. 40% annual growth since launch, now 700,000 users
-Much of Y31.1 billion (difference between past fy op vs this fy op outlook) to be invested to develop next PlayStation console

-- Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) April 26, 2019

The next generation PS5 has some significant hardware upgrades over the PS4 Pro. Capable of 8K graphics output, it also packs a GPU from the AMD Redeon Navi family that supports ray-tracing. It will also support 3D audio and pack a speedy SSD drive to reduce game loading times significantly.

Women using dating apps are more than familiar with the concept of receiving unsolicited pictures of male genitalia. To the point that one of the biggest dating app developers, a company behind Bumble, Badoo, Chappy and Lumen is developing a technology to block those.

Bumble, the parent company, is developing an AI-based solution that detects such pictures when users send them to other users. If detected, the picture will be blurred and the recipient will be alerted about the image. Recipient will have the ability to show the image, if he/she wants to, but also an ability to report the sender automatically to the company's moderators.

"The safety of our users is without question the number one priority in everything we do and the development of Private Detector is another undeniable example of that commitment," founder of the company said in a statement emailed to Mashable.

Feature, dubbed as "Private Detector", will roll out in June, 2018 to all Bumble's dating apps.