10 of the Best VPNs From 2019 That Are Still on Sale

Over the past year, digital privacy has regularly made the headlines. As a result, we are much better educated about how big companies and governments collect data. If you would like to keep your web history private or disappear completely online, using a VPN is a must. Here are some of the best providers from 2019, still with major reductions at the XDA Developers Depot.

Seed4.Me VPN: 3-Yr Subscription

This lightweight VPN keeps things simple while providing full protection. It offers full anonymity, with 30 servers to choose from and a selection of VPN protocols. Order now for $19.99 to get a three-year subscription covering unlimited devices, worth $107.55.

SlickVPN: Lifetime Subscription

With 125 gateways available and un-throttled speed, SlickVPN is perfect for regular travelers. The service protects your data with AES-256 encryption, and the company has a strict no-logging policy. Worth $1,200, lifetime subscriptions are now only $19.99.

The KeepSolid App Bundle Ft. VPN Unlimited

This bundle of four apps includes a two-year subscription to VPN Unlimited — one of the most popular services in the world. You also get the KeepSolid Private Browser, which encrypts and anonymizes your mobile web traffic. The bundle is worth $603.42, but you can get it now for $59.99.

Trust.Zone VPN: 3-Yr Subscription

Another great option for the privacy-minded, Trust.Zone VPN makes sure your browsing stays anonymous—even to Trust.Zone. Plus, you can install the software with one click for hassle-free use. For total security, the company keeps no logs and does not ask for your personal details. Normally $319.68, three-year subscriptions are now $69.99.

KeepSolid VPN Unlimited: Lifetime Subscription

This top-rated VPN is used by 10 million people around the world. It provides 400 servers in 80 locations across the globe, with fast connections, P2P support, secure encryption, and a choice of VPN protocols. Worth $499.99, lifetime service is now just $39.99.

BulletVPN: Lifetime Subscription

As the name suggests, BulletVPN offers impressive speed. Available on a huge range of devices, this service lets you unlock Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime Video, and many more sites. Normally $540, lifetime subscriptions are currently $39.

VPN.asia Lifetime Subscription

Combining AES-256 encryption and SHA-256 hash authentication, VPN.asia keeps your data locked down. This service supports P2P file sharing, and you can stream content via 40 servers in 30 countries. Order now for $49 to get lifetime protection on five devices, worth $1,296.

ZoogVPN: Lifetime Subscription

This innovative VPN supports most protocols, including the brand new IKEv2. It provides reliable service thanks to a network of cherry-picked servers, with zero logs and 99.9% uptime. Normally worth $710, lifetime subscriptions covering five devices are now $29.99.

Ivacy Lifetime Subscription

Want to keep your whole family secure? Ivacy protects 10 devices at the same time, including game consoles and routers. You can choose from over 1,000 servers around the world, with P2P support and military-grade encryption. Order now for $59.99 to get a lifetime subscription, worth $2,338.

NordVPN: 2-Yr Subscription

Offering double-encryption and access to 3,521 servers in 61 countries, it is easy to see why NordVPN has such great reviews. The service is fast and reliable, with no logs and a built-in kill switch to protect your privacy. You can pick up a two-year subscription now for $95.99, saving 66% on the standard price.

Prices subject to change

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Google releases OpenSK, an open-source 2FA security key platform

While Google has done a lot for mobile security, a little known fact about the company is that they love to dabble with security keys. The Titan line of security keys has full integration with your Android or iOS smartphone and can be used to authenticate your login to your Google account. Google has now launched OpenSK, an open-source project that will allow developers to create and build their own 2FA security key.

OpenSK, written in Rust, is simple as it supports both the FIDO U2F and FIDO2 standards. It follows the legacy of other open-source projects such as Solo and Somu, another set of open-source security key platforms. Google’s hopes are that developers and security key manufacturers alike will benefit.

By opening up OpenSK as a research platform, our hope is that it will be used by researchers, security key manufacturers, and enthusiasts to help develop innovative features and accelerate security key adoption.

With this early release, developers will be able to flash OpenSK on a Nordic chip dongle. The Nordic chip dongle supports all of the major features of FIDO2, such as NFC, Bluetooth Low Energy, USB, and a dedicated hardware crypto core.

“We’re excited to collaborate with Google and the open source community on the new OpenSK research platform,” said Kjetil Holstad, Director of Product Management at Nordic Semiconductor. “We hope that our industry leading nRF52840’s native support for secure cryptographic acceleration combined with new features and testing in OpenSK will help the industry gain mainstream adoption of security keys.”

OpenSK is written in Rust and runs on TockOS for better isolation and cleaner OS abstractions. Rust has strong memory safety which can help protect against logical attacks, whilst TockOS offers a sandboxed architecture for better isolation of the security key applet, drivers, and kernel. If you’re interested, be sure to check out the link below.

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Source: Google | Via: AndroidPolice

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Apex Legends is still on track for mobile release

The rise of the Battle Royale genre has taken all platforms by storm. After stirring up a storm on PC, games like PUBG, Fortnite, and Call of Duty swiftly made their way over to consoles and mobile devices. On mobile, the genre blew up even further, with games like PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile creating a cult following. In order to cash in on the growing mobile market, EA also announced that it would be bringing its battle royale title Apex Legends to mobile back in May last year. Now, according to a recent report from PC Gamer, Electronic Arts is working with a partner in China to develop the mobile version of its popular battle royale game.

The report cites a statement from EA’s Q3 earnings call which reveals that the company is still going strong on its plans to bring Apex Legends to mobile and also release the game in the Chinese market. During the earnings call, EA’s chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen reportedly said:

“Rolling mobile out in China, you need to have a partner, and we’re—as we’ve said in the prepared remarks today—we’re working with a partner there, and we’re very excited about the opportunity … That partner is also helping us develop a mobile Apex for the globe—more to come on that in terms of timing.”

As of now, the company has released no concrete timeline for the game, but we expect to learn more when the development approaches completion. It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time EA has approached a Chinese developer to flesh out a mobile version of one of its AAA titles. The company has previously released FIFA Online 4 and Need for Speed Online which were both developed in partnership with Tencent. Interestingly, both PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile have also been developed under the Tencent umbrella.

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Source: PC Gamer

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Huawei overtook Apple to become the 2nd largest smartphone brand in 2019

Huawei is a company that has had a rocky history. Years ago, they were a relatively unknown player in the smartphone marketplace, with their popularity being mostly limited to their Chinese home market, but recently their popularity has risen to previously unthinkable levels. Each flagship the company put out was considerably better than the previous one, and their budget devices only serve to further improve on the company’s success. Yet, it’s no secret to anyone that the company was hit by harsh US sanctions earlier last year, which bar most US companies from engaging in business on Huawei.

Huawei phones through the second half of the year, in turn, looked a lot different than what they would have otherwise looked. They no longer carry any Google apps or services since the Trump administration forbids Google from doing business with Huawei. Despite this trade ban, though, the company has still managed to chug on forward and even keep building up market share. In fact, they have even managed to climb up to become the 2nd largest smartphone brand in 2019, jumping ahead of Apple in worldwide market share through the past year.

In order to put this better into perspective, here is a brief comparison of how the 4 biggest smartphone manufacturers have fared throughout 2019 in terms of sales and shipments.

Smartphone market share in 2018 compared to 2019.

Huawei

Huawei was probably the biggest surprise of 2019. As we said before, the company has been hit harshly by political sanctions, effectively barring the company from conducting any business with other US companies. Despite these sanctions, they have actually managed to climb in popularity, shipping just over 240 million units and growing up to become the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world with a 17% market share, just behind Samsung. This is partly attributed to massive growth in popularity in its home market, China, where these US sanctions don’t have as much effect — after all, phones there are already sold without Google stuff.

This is not to say that they didn’t have an effect, though. Huawei’s inability to bundle Google with their devices has left several of their key flagships, like the Mate 30 lineup and the Huawei Mate X, without a Western release at all. As such, global shipments dipped greatly, and so did global sales. They did surge as expected in China, though, so everything is going as well as they can go for Huawei in these circumstances. Given how Huawei is working on its own alternative to GMS called Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) and they even have an alternative OS in development, we might see Huawei launching their upcoming phones, such as the upcoming Huawei P40/P40 Pro, globally again in the short/long term, so these losses may perhaps turn around.

Samsung

Samsung remains at the helm of the smartphone ecosystem. The Korean company had a pretty successful 2019 where they saw slightly better numbers than they did during 2018, which is impressive since they were already pretty good to begin with. With a 20.9% market share globally and over 295 million units shipped, they are still the uncontested champion of the smartphone ecosystem. Samsung did a lot of things right last year, including the highly successful S10 and Note 10 lineups as well as the revamped Galaxy A-line and the foldable Galaxy Fold.

2020 should see improvements in this strategy including the S20 lineup, the Note series successors which are expected for the end of the year, as well as the upcoming Galaxy Z Flip, a rumored Galaxy Fold 2 and the continuation of new Galaxy A phones such as the Galaxy A51 and the Galaxy A71. This should all translate to similar numbers for the end of this year, hopefully.

Apple

Apple was also a company that saw steady growth in 2019, although in overall sales numbers, they fell through the cracks compared to Huawei, falling down to being the third biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world. Apple’s strategy varies very little year-on-year, and their 2019 lineup was almost identical to their 2018 lineup: the iPhone 11 succeeded the iPhone XR, the iPhone 11 Pro succeeded the iPhone XS, and the iPhone 11 Pro Max succeeded the iPhone XS Max — the only major variation being the naming strategy. As for actual numbers, the company shipped around 197 million units last year, seizing a 14% market share.

There is one small stat where Apple has the edge over Samsung and Xiaomi, though, and it’s the fact that they were number one throughout Q4 2019, shipping over 70 million units globally, as Samsung and Huawei shipped 68 million and 56 million respectively. This accounts for 18.9% of all smartphone sales by the end of the year. So while Samsung and Huawei still lead Apple in overall YoY sales, Apple does have the edge on QoQ growth. This year should see similar numbers, although a rumored release of the iPhone SE2/iPhone 9 could also give Apple a heavy boost as the phone would cater to a lower price point and be more affordable.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi is still sitting comfortably at 4th place just like in 2018, but growth, while definitely nowhere near the levels of the other smartphone manufacturers, did exist. The company captured over 8.8% of Q4 2019 market share, up from 6.9% in Q4 2018, accounting for a 2% increase — keep in mind that we’re talking at the global scale and millions of phones, and this increase means that, during Q4 2019, they shipped 7 million more phones than they did in Q4 2018. 2019 was a big year for Xiaomi as they saw noteworthy events, like the separation of the Redmi lineup into a Xiaomi sub-brand and the release of flagship-grade devices such as the Xiaomi Mi 9 and the Redmi K20 Pro, as well as mid-rangers such as the Redmi Note 7, Note 7 Pro, Note 8, Note 8 Pro, and the Xiaomi Mi A3, so this growth makes sense.

As Xiaomi further deepens and polishes this strategy, we fully expect these numbers to increase even more and more. We’ve already seen noteworthy events, such as their separation of POCO into an independent brand, take place this year, and we’re only 1 month into the year, so growth is fully expected going forward from now.

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Source 1: Canalys / Source 2: Strategy Analytics / Source 3: Counterpoint Research / Source 4: Kantar

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ASUS rolls out the Android 10 update to the ZenFone Max Pro M1

Asus is updating its nearly two-year budget phone to Android 10. The Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1, which launched in April 2018, is now receiving an Android 10 Beta in India and France. For a budget phone that’s not part of the Android One program, getting two Android platform updates is indeed great news. However, as the device owners would recall, this wasn’t totally unexpected at all. At the time of launch, Asus had promised to deliver two major Android updates including Android Q to the ZenFone Max Pro M1. The device received the first promised update in the form of Android 9.0 Pie back in April last year. And keeping its promise, Asus is now rolling out the second and final update to the device.

Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 XDA forum

The ZenFone Max Pro M1 update comes with version 17.2017.1911.407 and is 1.6GB in size. The Android 10 update brings along many exciting changes including a system-wide dark mode, full-screen navigation gestures, improved Digital Wellbeing tools with Focus Mode and parental controls, more control over app permissions, Live Captions and a whole lot more. You can learn more about all the new changes in Android 10 here.

You can sideload the Android 10 beta using the full OTA‌ zip given below. For those rocking custom ROMs, we also have a flashable ROM‌ zip that you can flash from TWRP. Installing a beta software requires a clean install so make sure to backup your data before you flash the update.

Download Android 10 beta for the Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1:

Full OTA package || TWRP flashable package

XDA Discussion Thread for the update

It’s unclear when the stable update will arrive but given the public beta is out now, we hopefully won’t have to wait for too long.

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Thanks to XDA Member renda-l for the tip!

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Samsung opens up pre-order notifications for the Galaxy S20

Samsung typically allows customers to “reserve” their spot in line to purchase new devices. As the launch of the Galaxy S20 series approaches, Samsung has done just that. You can now sign up to be notified the instant the pre-orders open up for your preferred Galaxy S20 model.

To sign up, you will be asked to provide your first and last name, email address, and zip code. You will also be able to select your preferred carrier: unlocked, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, or US Cellular. Keep in mind that this isn’t truly a “reservation” to buy the device. It simply means you will be notified immediately when the Galaxy S20 pre-orders open, so be ready to put down some money.

Galaxy S20 Ultra XDA Forums ||| Galaxy S20+ XDA Forums ||| Galaxy S20 XDA Forums

One interesting tidbit of information from the reservation page: it says “Delivery by March 6.” That’s nearly a month after the Galaxy S20 devices will be announced at Unpacked, which is longer than Samsung’s typical wait period. We’re also expecting Samsung to reveal the Galaxy Z Flip at Unpacked, but that device will likely have a special pre-order process.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with the onslaught of news, we will be seeing the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+, and Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G. The Galaxy S20 and S20+ will have 5G variants. You can check out the full (rumored) specifications in the chart below.

Specification	Galaxy S20/5G	Galaxy S20+/5G	Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G
System-on-chip	Qualcomm Snapdragon 865/Exynos 990	Qualcomm Snapdragon 865/Exynos 990	Qualcomm Snapdragon 865/Exynos 990
Display	6.2-inch Dynamic AMOLED 3200×1440 120Hz @ FHD+	6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 3200×1440 120Hz @ FHD+	6.92-inch Dynamic AMOLED 3200×1440 120Hz @ FHD+
Fingerprint scanner	In-display Ultrasonic	In-display Ultrasonic	In-display Ultrasonic
Front camera	10MP IMX 374 Video recording up to 4K 60fps	10MP IMX 374 Video recording up to 4K 60fps	40MP Video recording up to 4K 60fps
Rear Camera	12MP wide 12MP ultra-wide 64MP 3x Zoom Video recording up to 8K 24fps	12MP wide 12MP ultra-wide 64MP 3x Zoom ToF Video recording up to 8K 24fps	108MP wide 12MP ultra-wide 48MP periscope telephoto: 10x optical zoom, 30x hybrid, 100x digital ToF Video recording up to 8K 24fps
RAM	12GB	12GB	12GB/16GB
Storage	128GB/256GB UFS 3 Micro SD card slot	128GB/256GB UFS 3 Micro SD card slot	128GB/512GB UFS 3 Micro SD card slot
Battery Capacity	4,000 mAh	4,500 mAh	5,000 mAh
Water Resistance	IP 68, 5 meters	IP 68. 5 meters	IP 68, 5 meters
Price	~$1000	~$1100	~$1300
Availability	Rumored March 13th	Rumored March 13th	Rumored March 13th

Source: Samsung

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Android Auto app adds an option to disable notification sounds while driving

Android Auto allows you to integrate your smartphone with your car, with the driver’s safety of paramount importance. While it’s great for allowing you to control your music, have navigation guidance, get weather reports, and more whilst driving, it’s not unheard of that it can distract a driver. Until now, for example, every time you received a notification you would hear it through your car’s speakers. That’s obviously of great annoyance if you’re trying to focus on driving, especially if you get a lot of notifications. In version 5.0.500224 of the Android Auto app, though, there’s finally an option to switch the sound from notifications off.

While this feature took a long time for Google to add, it’s not quite free of all distractions yet. Even when the sound is off, notifications will still show on your car’s screen until they are dismissed. According to some users, notifications are stuck on the screen even when the sound for notifications is switched on. Still, the feature is exactly what many had been requesting for a long time. No longer will your music be interrupted by an untimely notification, and nor should you be distracted by a constant binging of notifications while you’re driving if you don’t want that.

If you don’t have the feature yet, be sure to update to the latest version of the Android Auto application to give it a try. Hopefully, Google can fix the stuck notifications bug soon!

Android Auto - Google Maps, Media & Messaging (Free, Google Play) →

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Source: /r/AndroidAuto

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