smartphones

Fifty years ago, on April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, made the world's first cellular phone call. Back then, making a phone call from a mobile device was a major achievement - but now, smartphones have become an indispensable ... part of our daily lives. We use them not only to make calls, but also to stream movies, play games, and take professional-level photos. However, despite the advancements in technology, the basic shape and form of the smartphone has remained the same for over a decade. To stay relevant in the ever-evolving smartphone market, Motorola, along with other ... (view more)

A 3D printed model head fooled facial recognition security features on four Android phones. It's not exactly a practical blueprint for thieves, but does show the security of such features varies dramatically between handsets. Thomas Brewster of ... Forbes commissioned a 3D model of his head that combined data from 50 cameras. It cost him a little over £300, equivalent to around $375 USD. (Source: forbes.com ) Angle ...<a href="/news/10470/android-phone-security-duped-3d-printed-head" class="more-link">view more

Samsung Provokes Debate with Claims that Smartphones Are The Most Secure for Cryptocurrencies Last month, leading Samsung author Joel Snyder penned a blog post in which he made the bold assertion that smartphones encompass the best security for ... owning, trading and managing cryptocurrency. He put this down to the Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in which smartphones, and particularly those developed by Samsung, operate. A trusted execution environment (TEE) is a secure area of a processor found on smartphones (not PCs), originally developed in 2010 by Open Mobile Terminal Platform ... (view more)

Scammers used a computer code loophole to trick more than a million people into downloading a rogue Android app. The fake variant of WhatsApp appears to have been designed to distribute ads. The bogus app took advantage of the popularity of the ... genuine WhatsApp Messenger, which has been downloaded more than 60 million times on Google Play alone. It's a tool for exchanging messages with friends or groups over the Internet rather than eating into SMS text message allowances. Extra Space Went Unseen "Update What's App Messenger" was one of numerous bogus apps that tried to mislead users with ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Giselle' writes: " Dear Dennis, Recently my Windows 10 computer upgraded to the 'Creators Edition', and now the Windows 10 'Photos' app has magically replaced the 'Windows Photo Viewer'. I absolutely can't stand the 'Photos' app ... and I want Windows Photo Viewer back on my system! I have tried going to Control Panel -> Default Programs to change the settings but Windows Photo Viewer is nowhere to be found! Can you help? " My response: I also noticed that the Windows Photo Viewer went missing with the Creators Edition update. Windows Photo Viewer has been a staple in ... (view more)

T-Mobile is reportedly to let users on "Unlimited" data plans use 50GB of data a month before getting any slowdowns. That will be more than double the soft limit of rivals, though still won't satisfy some linguistic purists. At one point it was ... almost impossible to find an unlimited data deal on mobile devices, but a combination of competition and growing consumer demand as both tablet computers and streaming video become more popular has led the major companies to all offer an unlimited deal. However, there's still a limit of sorts, often called a "fair use policy." With each ... (view more)

AT&T is dropping overage charges for mobile data plans. Instead of charging extra fees, it will slow down the connections of users who exceed their monthly data allowance. The move is accompanied by a general price rise, though it will only ... affect new customers or those existing customers who choose to change plans. The change makes AT&T the last of the three biggest carriers to drop mandatory fees for customers who go over their monthly data cap, an issue that became even more important as truly unlimited data plans were phased out across the industry. T-Mobile dropped overage ... (view more)

The proportion of Americans with a broadband connection (such as cable or DSL) at home has dropped for the first time. The surprise trend appears to be down to cost and people using smartphones as their main way to get online. The revelation comes ... from the Pew Research Center, which regularly surveys the public on tech and communications issues. It found the percentage of people who say they have broadband at home is now 67 percent, down from 70 percent in 2013. (Source: pewinternet.org ) Broadband Use Falling Across The Board While that could be a statistical quirk, it's borne out by the ... (view more)

The majority of people in the world could be using the Internet within a couple of years according to new projections. The growth has largely been driven by cheaper and more widely accessible mobile Internet service. The figures come from the ... International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency. It says that in the year 2000, just 400 million people were online, around 6.5 percent of the world's population. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) Based on collating international figures, the ITU expects that figure to be 3.2 billion at the end of 2015. That equates to 43.4 percent of people, ... (view more)

AT&T will pay a $25 million fine after regulators held it responsible for thieves taking personal details of 280,000 customers. The breaches were said to have occurred around November 2013 and April 2014, with the FCC beginning its investigation ... around May of 2014. It's the biggest ever such fine in the communications industry. The stolen information included the customers' names, part or all of their social security numbers, and some details about their account. On its own, the data wouldn't be enough for criminals to immediately steal money from customer's bank accounts, but could ... (view more)