HTC is still making phones and will launch a 5G smartphone this year

Do you remember HTC? Yes, it was the world’s largest Android smartphone vendor at one time. HTC has many firsts to its name, the most significant being that it was the first to launch an Android phone in the form of the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1. In recent years, however, it became a sorry spectacle. Its revenue declined continuously throughout 2016 and 2017. Google acquired part of HTC’s smartphone division for $1.1 billion in 2017, and the deal closed in 2018. HTC vacated the Indian smartphone market in July of that year. Its last flagship phone launch remains the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845-powered HTC U12+, which was launched in May 2018. In 2019, it made a deal with Indian smartphone vendors to use its name. It stopped selling phones in the UK due to a patent dispute, and the HTC Elevate community shut down in December 2019. The last “true” HTC phone launches to date were the HTC U19e and HTC Desire 19+, and the last HTC-branded phone launch was the budget Lava-made HTC Wildfire X. According to most observers, HTC essentially left the smartphone market to focus on other ventures such as VR in the form of the HTC Vive, but the company kept saying it wasn’t dead. In a strange turn of events, HTC’s new CEO, Yves Maitre, has now said in an interview that HTC is planning to launch a 5G phone this year.

Maitre is the new CEO of HTC since September 2019. He said that 2020 will be a year with many development opportunities in the Taiwan market, especially in 5G connected applications and the development of virtual visual content driven by 5G connected applications. HTC will invest more aggressively this year for two reasons. Firstly, it plans to launch its first 5G-connected phone, and secondly, it wants to invest in virtual vision applicatoins.

The interview didn’t go into more details regarding HTC’s first 5G phone and the expected time of its announcement, unfortunately. The United News Network did state that it’s expected that HTC will have a further cooperation with Qualcomm. The company will also launch high-end flagship phones first, apparently. However, the interview is unclear whether HTC will adopt a multi-device strategy compared to other manufacturers or launch a mid-range 5G phone. (If HTC wants to launch a 5G phone, it has multiple options. It can either launch a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865-powered flagship, or launch a Snapdragon 765-powered mid-range phone. It can even use one of MediaTek’s 5G Dimensity SoCs.)

There wasn’t anything else smartphone-related in the interview. HTC’s focusing on 5G and VR. Virtual reality and mixed reality are HTC’s topics of focus, as seen in the HTC Vive and the Vive Cosmos. AR will also be the future development focus for the company as the copmany wants to provide the best application solutions for such needs. HTC’s opinion about AR is that while many people are optimistic about AR applications, there are still many parts that need to be refined based on the development of the technology application. HTC will, therefore, think about the appropriate layout, and will not launch related applications too soon. VR will take priority. Finally, the new Vive Cosmos Elite, Vive Cosmos Play, Vive Cosmos XR, and Vive Sync are expected to be showed in San Franscisco in mid-March. They will be further displayed during GDC 2020, where content applications will be communicated with more game developers during the conference.

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Via: UDN

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Samsung says the Galaxy Buds+ multi-device feature only supports Galaxy phones with SmartThings installed

Last year’s Samsung Galaxy Buds were Samsung’s attempt to enter the truly wireless earbuds market, a market that had been popularized by the Apple AirPods. By most accounts, the Galaxy Buds were a success as they made Samsung one of the major players in this expensive and profitable market. The Galaxy Buds launched alongside the Samsung Galaxy S10 series. One year later, the company launched an upgraded variant of the earbuds called the Galaxy Buds+ alongside the Samsung Galaxy S20 series. The new Galaxy Buds+ have better battery life, better audio quality, and better microphones. At launch, Samsung even mentioned “multi-point” (multi-device) support for devices using Bluetooth 5.0, which would have been a major new feature addition. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. The Galaxy Buds do sort of have a multi-device feature, but as Droid Life discovered, it only supports Galaxy phones with the Samsung SmartThings app installed.

The Galaxy Buds+ can now be bought for $149. Droid Life tested their multi-device connectivity. The publication’s report starts by saying some people had noticed that Samsung had edited the Galaxy Buds+ product page to remove this sentence: “Multi-point connection is available for devices using Bluetooth 5.0.” No reviewer was able to figure out how to connect multiple devices to a pair at the same time, as it didn’t work between devices of different manufacturers. This indicated that Samsung had pulled back the feature, but after looking at the Galaxy Buds+ product page, Droid Life noticed it still had a section called “Switch Seamlessly,” where Samsung describes how the Buds+ “intuitively switches between two paired devices at once.” The example was “So you won’t miss a call on your phone while you’re using your tablet.” This made it seem that the feature still existed, contradicting the removal of the multi-point sentence.

Droid Life reached out to Samsung for comment as this was supposedly one of the upgrades of the Galaxy Buds+. The company made the following statement:

“Galaxy Buds+ offers users a convenient way to transition across devices that are logged into the same Samsung account with the SmartThings app installed. This feature can be accessed in the media panel (by selecting Galaxy Buds+), and is only available on Samsung mobile devices running Android 7.1.1 or later.”

This means the Galaxy Buds+ can only perform a multi-device switch between two Samsung devices running Android 7.1.1 and newer, and the SmartThings app must be installed on both. SmartThings will enable the user to tap within the media panel on each device to move the Galaxy Buds+ connection between the two devices, and Droid Life was able to make this happen with a Samsung Galaxy Note 10 and a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip. For non-Samsung phones, the procedure remains the same: users must turn off the Bluetooth of the currently connected devices and then re-connect to the second device.

So it’s multi-device support indeed, but it’s not a useful feature for those users not having multiple Samsung devices. Those users who use multiple phones from different device makers will still have to move the device connection in the traditional way, which is why it made sense for Samsung to remove the incorrect sentence on the product page of the Galaxy Buds+.

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Source: Droid Life

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Google Assistant’s redesigned “Today” view has started rolling out

Google Assistant is the digital assistant that most people use on Android. It was released during Google I/O 2016, alongside some smart devices that can take advantage of it. So far, the Assistant has proven to be a worthy successor of Google Now. Despite the obvious superiority, there are some things that it can learn from its predecessor. For example, the “My Day” user interface, which was added in the Assistant nearly two years ago, is a resemblance to one of Google Now’s main features. It looks like the UI of this feature is getting updated and renamed to “Today.”

The update was first noticed by Max Buondonno on Twitter. He was able to access the new Google Assistant interface on the Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 XL. The updated UI looks cleaner and more up to date with Material Design standards as it introduces cards with drop shadows. Functionality wise, it doesn’t look like much has changed. The activity still displays information like weather, work commute, stocks, news, and reminders. To access the new “Today” view, all you have to do is trigger the Google Assistant and swipe up on the card.

I tried the latest stable and beta versions of the Google app on my Pixel 3 and I still can’t access the new “Today” UI, so I think it’s safe to assume that this is a server-side staged rollout. This is not the first time Google’s using this practice to test new features. There is no telling as to when this feature will be more widely available to Google Assistant users.

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Source: Twitter

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Smartphone skin maker “Slickwraps” got hacked and its customer data has been exposed

If you have ever purchased a skin from Slickwraps you may have received an alarming email today (be sure to check your spam folder). The email, titled “ATTN: ALL SLICKWRAPS CUSTOMERS,” explains that the company was hacked and thousands of users’ information is at risk. If that sounds bad (it is), it gets worse.

That email was actually not sent by Slickwraps, but by someone who was able to access the 377,428 email addresses from their customer database. All of this started when a Medium post by a security researcher on Twitter by the handle @Lynx0x00 went semi-viral. The Medium post (which at the time of publication has been suspended) explains how they were able to hack Slickwraps due to the company’s poor security practices. Lynx was able to gain so much access that they could have essentially “deleted their entire company.”

What’s more important to anyone who has purchased a Slickwraps skin in the past is that customer data was unprotected. Slickwraps eventually sent out an official email that claims that only names, user emails, addresses were exposed, but that passwords or personal financial data were not. This is evident in the first “ATTN” email that was sent, which included the recipient’s address and phone number (which Slickwraps does not mention).

A copy of the email that Slickwraps sent to its customers affected by the breach.

This statement implies that they were only informed of the breach today (February 22nd?), which is not true based on what was revealed in the Medium post. They also claim only information from users who created an account was compromised, but that also doesn’t appear to be true. Slickwraps has closed their databases and they are now partnering with an unnamed third-party cybersecurity firm to improve security.

Slickwraps says more details will follow, but for now, they recommend users reset their passwords. The damage, however, has already been done, both to customers’ personal data as well as to Slickwraps’ reputation. We highly recommend you read the archived version of the original Medium post here to see the entire story of how this unfolded. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the company.

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[Update 4: Checks Sent] Google and Huawei may pay up to $400 to owners of bootlooping Nexus 6P

Update 4 (2/21/20 @ 3:05 PM ET): Nexus 6P users are starting to receive their settlement checks from the bootloop lawsuit.

Update 3 (1/24/20 @ 4:40 PM ET): Nexus 6P owners who filed a claim in the bootloop lawsuit should soon start receiving their settlement checks.

Update 2 (6/6/19 @ 9:15 AM ET): As promised, the claim period has begun for the Nexus 6P bootloop lawsuit and users can file a claim via the webpage linked below.

Update 1 (5/16/19 @ 9:50 AM ET): New details about important dates in the Nexus 6P bootloop settlement have been posted.

Some of you may remember an unfortunate page in the history of Android back in 2015-2016. Faulty chipsets caused a few devices to experience never-ending bootloops, or as we call it in the community, a “hard brick.” To this day, we still don’t know all the details on the exact issue with the devices. One of the most notable victims of the “great bricking” was the Nexus 6P, Google’s flagship device of the time. It was named as the best device of the year by many, but as you’d guess, it didn’t live up to the promise.

Nexus 6P XDA Forum

Unsurprisingly, the bricking of the devices were followed by a class action lawsuit, demanding Google and Huawei (the OEM which built the device) to reimburse the buyers of the Nexus 6P. It was then followed by a year of silence, after which we got the information that the court denied the motions from Google to dismiss the case. According to the newest information from The Verge, we may finally get the update to the situation.

The new proposed settlement gives Google and Huawei liability to pay up to $400 to each Nexus 6P user in the US who bought the device on or after September 25th, 2015. Google and Huawei have not admitted fault, but they have agreed to on the payout to finally settle the suit. Though, if you used the warranty exchange program to get the Pixel XL, you’ll only be eligible for reimbursement for up to $10. To get the reimbursement at its fullest, you have to submit a claim with the proper documentation.

As I already mentioned, you will only be able to get the reimbursement if you’re a citizen of the United States, as that’s where the lawsuit took place. Without proper documentation, you may only be eligible for up to $75. Keep in mind that the decision is not final, as the proposed settlement still needs to be approved by the court. The next, and probably final hearing, will take place on May 9th. We’ll make sure to update you with the results and the details.

Source: The Verge

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Update 1: New details

The Nexus 6P settlement is moving forward with some new details. The claim filing period is set to open up on June 7th. The deadline to submit a claim form is September 3rd, 2019. You may also choose to exclude yourself, which will allow you to keep your right to any other lawsuit pertaining to this case. If you feel particularly passionate about this case, you can even attend the court hearing on October 10th, 2019. We will update this story when the claim period opens up.

Source: Nexus 6P Settlement

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Update 2: Claim period open

As mentioned in the previous update, the claim period has opened today, June 7th. Nexus 6P owners can visit the webpage below to file a claim. During the process, you will be asked to provide documentation to prove you purchased the phone between September 29, 2015 and May 3, 2019. The file claim form will remain open until September 3rd, 2019.

Source: File Claim

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Update 3: Settlement Checks

The claim period for the Nexus 6P reboot settlement ended a few months ago and now the next step of the process has begun. Settlement checks for those who qualified will be distributed within 40 days of January 12th, 2020. Here’s the important part of the document:

Pursuant to the Settlement Agreement at paragraph 1.14, the Distribution Date for Settlement Payments to be made to Claimants by KCC shall be no more than 30 days following the Effective Date, which is January 12, 2020. Due to the volume of claims submitted, and the documentation required to verify certain claim groups, the amount of time required to review and process claims was greater than anticipated. KCC has almost completed review and processing of claims. KCC requires additional time to accurately process claims, including allowing class members who are eligible to participate to cure any deficiencies. Accordingly, the parties have agreed to extend the deadline to finalize this phase of the claims procedure.

Attached hereto as Exhibit A is the Third Amendment to the Settlement Agreement, executedby the parties, which extends the time for KCC to make final distributions to Claimants by 40 days. The parties will continue to complete the claims administration process in accordance with the Settlement Agreement and the Court’s final approval order.

Via: Reddit

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Update 4: Checks Sent

After a long-drawn-out process, Nexus 6P owners are starting to receive their settlement checks. Users in the Nexus 6P subreddit have reported on receiving various amounts via PayPal. The exact amount of money you will receive depends on the specifics of your situation. Some have received as little as $5.82 while others have gotten $29. If you qualified and filed a claim, now is the time to check your inbox to see if your check is waiting for you.

Source: Reddit

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Over 400K private WhatsApp group invite links are exposed to search engines

WhatsApp is one of the most widely used messaging platforms on the planet. Just this month, the company announced they had passed 2 billion users. Like with other messaging platforms, WhatsApp group chats are a popular way to communicate with your family or groups of friends, colleagues, or Internet strangers. Users can invite others to private groups with the “Invite to Group via Link” feature and then share that link any way they’d like. If those invite links happen to be shared online, it looks like it’s alarmingly easy to find them with a simple search engine query.

Your WhatsApp groups may not be as secure as you think they are.

The “Invite to Group via Link” feature allows groups to be indexed by Google and they are generally available across the internet. With some wildcard search terms you can easily find some… interesting… groups. pic.twitter.com/hbDlyN6g3q

— Jordan Wildon (@JordanWildon) February 21, 2020

This design flaw was first reported by journalist Jordan Wildon on Twitter. He discovered that the “Invite to Group via Link” URLs were being indexed by Google and could be found with the right search terms. The group chat links use the “chat.whatsapp.com” base URL, which can be found on Google with the “site:” modifier.

Jane Manchun Wong, known for reverse-engineering apps, brought more attention to the situation. She found that Google has over 470,000 results when doing a simple site search for the “chat.whatsapp.com” URL. Many of these results are invites for private groups. Once a user joins a group, they can see all of the participants and their phone numbers. Obviously, this is a pretty big privacy issue as some of the groups out there are ones people may not want to be publicly associated with.

A misconfiguration by WhatsApp enabled ~470k Group Invite links to be indexed by search engines

It should’ve been `Disallow`ed with robots.txt or with the `noindex` meta tag

thanks @JordanWildon for the tip https://t.co/CJxjJ5qyfh pic.twitter.com/FrW1I9Y8vs

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) February 21, 2020

Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison, tweeted about the situation, saying: “Search engines like Google & others list pages from the open web. That’s what’s happening here. It’s no different than any case where a site allows URLs to be publicly listed.” He goes on to say there are tools for webmasters to prevent content from appearing in search results, which WhatsApp clearly needs to do to protect users of these groups.

This is not the fault of Google or any other search engine. As Jane and Danny pointed out, this is due to a lack of foresight on WhatsApp’s part. They should be using the “noindex” meta tag or “norobots.txt” to exclude the invite pages from appearing in search engines.

A WhatsApp spokesperson has released the following statement to Vice:

Group admins in WhatsApp groups are able to invite any WhatsApp user to join that group by sharing a link that they have generated. Like all content that is shared in searchable, public channels, invite links that are posted publicly on the internet can be found by other WhatsApp users. Links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website.

WhatsApp is saying that links shared publicly on the internet are searchable, but that’s handwaving the real issue here. This is not a case of people finding a few group chat links that were unwisely shared online. Thousands of group chat invite links are easily discoverable because WhatsApp is refusing to do anything to prevent search engines from indexing them. People shouldn’t be sharing these URLs online, but WhatsApp could solve the problem of them being so easily searchable.

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The new Google Assistant is starting to show up for G Suite users on the Pixel 4

The original Google Assistant was a Google Pixel-exclusive for many months from its launch in October 2016, until Google rolled it out for hundreds of millions of Android phones in 2017. Similarly, the new Google Assistant, which launched in October 2019 alongside the Google Pixel 4, remains a Pixel 4-only exclusive. It comes with new features such as continued conversations, making it feel far more like a human being. It’s integrated with the Chrome browser and can do many on-device tasks, including in third-party apps. It comes with a new minimal user interface and a trimmed size, but its availability is heavily limited as only Pixel 4 users are able to use it. What’s more, even that was limited as not all Pixel 4 users could use it. Those who used G Suite accounts didn’t have the new Assistant, as it was available only for personal Google accounts. Now, Google seems to be rolling out the Assistant for some G Suite users on the Pixel 4.

New Assistant UI.

The new Google Assistant has removed a few restrictions already. It no longer requires U.S. English, works with the Japanese language, and doesn’t require enabled gesture navigation now. The incompatibility with G Suite accounts still remains on paper as Google’s support page states that the new Assistant won’t work for users having a G Suite account for work or school. However, multiple users in the Android and Google Pixel communities have started reporting seeing the new Assistant even though they have one or more G Suite accounts on their devices. Not all users have got it yet as it seems to be another customary staged roll-out. Users that have got the new Assistant will be able to identify it thanks to its different user interface.

Google is expected to officially announce this soon. The more major piece of news would be when the company decides to expand the Assistant to more Android devices. It wouldn’t be surprising to see such an announcement at I/O 2020.

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Source 1: /u/HesThePianoMan | Source 2: /r/GooglePixel | Source 3: /r/GooglePixel

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