IbizTech

Comments made by OnePlus CEO Pete Lau at Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona have cast doubt over the hopeful expectation that the next OnePlus flagship phone will have wireless charging. In speaking with CNET, Lau calls wireless charging “far inferior” to his company’s wired Warp Charge and the tone of the interview, via a translator, was apparently strong enough for CNET to conclude that the feature will definitely not be on the OnePlus 7. The sentiments expressed by Lau echo previous comments he’s made, saying that OnePlus won’t include wireless charging until it can be made as fast as the company’s wired charging, but fans of the brand will have been hoping to hear a different tune in the buildup to the company’s first release of 2019. I reached out to OnePlus, asking the company to confirm or deny the reported absence of wireless charging from its next flagship. What I received was something approaching an implicit confirmation: OnePlus reiterated its belief that the speed o

Specifically for videos that appeared on Musical.ly TikTok will pay $5.7 million to settle accusations that it violated children’s privacy law, the Federal Trade Commission said today. The short-form video app and social network is also being required to gain parental approval for users under 13 years of age, to comply with federal law. All videos previously uploaded by people under the age of 13 will be removed as well. The FTC alleged that TikTok “illegally collected personal information from children” by not obtaining their parents’ permission before they signed up, putting it in violation of COPPA — the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. COPPA dictates that any app or website targeted at children, such as TikTok (and its former app, Musical.ly), must ask children under the age of 13 to get parental consent to share personal information with an app or website. Nearly every social network and online service operating in the US asks users to agree to terms that prohibit ch

Not all screen protectors will work with the ultrasonic fingerprint reader, so Samsung is giving you one. Buyers of the new Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus will find a preinstalled plastic screen protector on their device when they unbox it beginning March 8th. Samsung has confirmed that it’s shipping the S10 with a protector on the display, meaning you won’t have to immediately hunt for something that’s compatible with the ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor on day one. Now, this is just your very basic screen protector — similar to what OnePlus does with their phones, if I had to guess — and it isn’t glass, so it’s bound to scratch over time. The included protector thus doesn’t have any sort of warranty on how long it’ll last. Samsung will sell extras of its first-party screen protector for $29.99, but the company doesn’t plan to bring it to Best Buy or carrier stores since they’ll likely be carrying other, similar options. The Galaxy S10E won’t have this screen protector

Only a few select channels will have comment sections enabled. YouTube will no longer allow the majority of channels featuring kids to include comment sections following a controversy over predatory comments being posted on videos of children. YouTube will temporarily remove comments from videos that feature minors in the coming months. Only a select few channels with children will be allowed to include a comment sections, but even that comes with a caveat: they’ll be required to monitor their comments for safety. “These channels will be required to actively moderate their comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior,” YouTube wrote in a blog post. YouTube also says it’s launched a better algorithm to let it automatically “identify and remove predatory comments.” The classifier is “more sweeping in scope,” according to the blog post, and will catch up to twice as many predatory comments from individuals. YouTube’s decision

HMD Global’s new Nokia 9 PureView — and all five of its rear cameras — may have just gotten announced at MWC 2019, but it’s hitting stores in the US really soon, with sales set to start March 3rd. To go with the launch, HMD is also offering a special limited time offer on the Nokia 9 PureView that will lower the price by $100 off the usual $699 price, bringing it down to $599 for the first week of sales. After March 11th, the price will go back up, which doesn’t leave a ton of time for customers to decide on whether they want to buy it. But if you’re planning on being an early adopter, the extra $100 off certainly can’t hurt. The Nokia 9 PureView’s standout feature is, of course, the quintuple camera array on the back, offering five 12-megapixel lenses that shoot at different exposures (three black and white, two color), for what the company promises is enhanced levels of detail that a single smartphone camera can’t capture on its own. The phone also has an in-display fingerprint

When listening in on podcasts, there are a host of options for how to tune in — Spotify, Apple Music, the website of a podcast. One of the most popular and best podcast apps, though, is Pocket Casts, which supports more platforms than many of its rival apps, and has more features to boot. Now Pocket Casts also has an Alexa skill, making it easier to listen in at home. To get started, add the Pocket Casts skill within your Alexa app and connect your Pocket Casts account to Amazon by logging in. Then say, “Alexa, open Pocket Casts.” From there, if you’re just getting started with Pocket Casts, Alexa will note that you’ve got nothing in the queue and no subscriptions so you’ll need to get your Pocket Casts account up to speed with subscriptions to your favorite podcasts. Unfortunately, there’s no way to browse podcasts through the Alexa skill. To ensure you’re not misheard, you can start commands by saying “Alexa, tell Pocket Casts.” But commands that don’t specify Pocket Casts can st

I told you MWC 2019 would be a show where things got weird, but even I didn’t anticipate a company being wild enough to build a phone with an 18,000mAh battery. But here I am, in awe of the mighty girth of the Energizer Power Max P18K Pop. France’s Avenir Telecom licenses the Energizer brand, and it makes the most of it with devices that push the boundaries of specs and sanity. This dark blue unit measures in at 18mm of thickness, according to Avenir’s spec sheet, but stacking it side by side with a more conventional smartphone, I’d say a more accurate articulation of its thickness would be about 3.5 iPhones. This phone is immense. Or is it technically a battery with a phone in it? An epic battery of such proportions had better last a long time, and Avenir promises a week’s worth of use, or two full days, 48 hours, of continuous video playback. That sounds conservative since we got a week from a phone with a battery measuring about half as large. The 6.2-inch LCD display of the

Startups do it. Amazon does it. And now even Fedex is doing it — experimenting with robots for short-range deliveries. Today, the company officially announced its new FedEx SameDay Bot, which it says could help make “last mile” deliveries more efficient. The SameDay Bot is battery-powered, has a top speed of 10 mph, and is autonomous, meaning it can steer itself around pedestrians and traffic using a combination of LIDAR sensors like those found in self-driving cars and regular cameras. FedEx says it will initially use the bot to courier packages between the company’s offices in its headquarters in Memphis (pending approval from local government). But if these trials are successful it wants to expand the service to other companies and retailers, eventually making robots a standard part of its same-day delivery service. The company says it’s currently in talks with firms including AutoZone, Lowe’s, Pizza Hut, Target, Walgreens, and Walmart to assess their need for this sort of ro

Two-factor authentication is a good way to add an extra layer of security to online accounts. It requires the use of your smartphone, however, which is not only inconvenient, but it can be a problem if your phone is lost or breached. Hardware security keys can offer an extra layer of security to password-protected online accounts and, in turn, your identity. They’re also not hard to install. Here’s how to set them up for your Google account, Facebook, and Twitter. Security keys connect to your system using USB-A, USB-C, or Bluetooth, and they are small enough to be carried on a keychain (with the exception of Yubico’s USB-C nano key, which is so small that it’s safest when kept in your computer’s USB port). They mainly use an open authentication standard called FIDO U2F. There is also an improved Fido2 standard, although not all the keys or applications use it. When you insert a security key into your computer or connect it wirelessly and press a button on the key, your browser iss

Blizzard’s team shooter Overwatch is hitting a major milestone today with the official unveiling of Baptiste, the game’s 30th hero. Baptiste is a support character described as a “combat medic” who uses an array of gadgets to aid his team in battle. That includes a device called an immortality field that prevents nearby allies from dying, healing grenades, and Baptiste’s ultimate ability, described as “a matrix that doubles the damage and healing effects of friendly projectiles that pass through it.” The reveal follows a few days of teasing, including a short trailer yesterday. Baptiste joins an ever-growing cast of characters for the colorful shooter; last year saw the addition of the well-armored engineer Brigitte, a Wild West gunslinger called Ashe, and everyone’s favorite hamster Wrecking Ball. According to lead hero designer Geoff Goodman, the concept for Baptiste started around the idea of a “gadget healer” character. “We were playing with various gameplay concepts aroun

Here’s a good reason to update to your latest version of Google Play Services: Android devices running version 7.0 and later can now log you into apps and websites without requiring you to type in a password. Using FIDO2, an open standard developed by the FIDO Alliance, the update instead uses your fingerprint or PIN to log you into various services. While complex passwords can be a secure method to keep your account safe, they are often long, hard to remember, and should be updated periodically (unless you use a password manager.) Two-factor authentication is helpful too, but can be annoying and difficult to access if you’re traveling internationally. With this update and certification, Google and the FIDO Alliance is hoping to move users toward even more secure methods like biometric data, which are difficult to steal and replicate. The standard also stipulates that your data is authenticated locally, so no private information is being transferred to the apps and services you’re lo

Facebook’s long-awaited Clear History tool, a privacy feature the social network says will let you wipe information the social network collects about you from third-party apps and websites, is now scheduled to come out later this year, chief financial officer David Wehner told the crowd at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. Wehner’s comments were first reported by CNBC this morning. The Clear History tool was promised in May of last year, just before the company’s F8 developer conference, and at that point was still just an idea designed to earn back lost user trust, BuzzFeed News reported in an investigation on Clear History’s rocky development published last week. At the time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the tool as working similarly to one’s browser history and a step forward in helping the company repair its image following the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal. “In your web browser, you have a simple way to clear your cookies and history.

HTC’s blockchain phone is getting several new apps today, which start to show us what the phone can really be good for. HTC is adding about 20 new apps, including a personal tracker that can sell your data for cryptocurrency, and it’s also partnering with Opera to allow users to make micropayments to sites. Previously, this phone’s major blockchain feature was the ability to trade and store CryptoKitties. The HTC Exodus phone now has access to a number of new decentralized apps (known as “Dapps”), which live in an app store that isn’t managed by any specific company, that specifically take advantage of the phone’s hardware. The most interesting addition is an app called Numbers, which tracks user data on walking, sleeping, driving, and more, then allows you to sell your own data to third parties. The app, which is made by a startup based in Taiwan, displays what type of data your phone can track, as well as a list of companies interested in that data. The Numbers app is aimed at br

Apple Music is coming to Google Home, according to Google’s own iOS app for managing its smart speakers. A MacRumors reader first noticed that the Google Home app now lists Apple Music as a service that can be integrated, although the ability is currently non-functional. This wouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given that Apple Music came to Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo devices late last year. Apple also announced at last month’s CES that it would be building AirPlay and iTunes support into a wide range of TVs to be released in 2019. Here’s how Apple Music appears in the Google Home app: Services are an increasingly important part of Apple’s business, and with Apple Music already available on Android, it makes sense for the company to bring it to as wide a variety of speakers as possible. Not everyone wants a HomePod or an Apple TV.

What does it take to beat Apple’s AirPods? Most headphone companies have landed on the idea that the answer is better performance, noise isolation, and battery life — but every time they’ve achieved that, they’ve done it at a higher price and with a much larger charging case. Samsung, Apple’s most direct rival in the consumer hardware business, is trying to win without compromise, introducing today the true wireless Galaxy Buds that will cost $129.99 starting March 8, or come bundled for free with Samsung’s new folding phone or preorders of the Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus. They’ll be €149 in Europe starting March 29. I got to see and touch (but not hear or wear) the Galaxy Buds ahead of their announcement today, and everything that Samsung presented made them look like a winner. Their pill-shaped enclosure is as close as anyone’s yet come to the AirPods’ unbelievably tiny bijou of a case. With six hours of battery life in the buds and a further seven hours in the case, the Galaxy Buds ta

Lenovo has created a portable USB-C monitor that could be a practical way of adding an extra screen to your laptop. We’ve seen a variety of portable monitors over the years, but most have been bulky and cumbersome. The big promise of USB-C for monitors appears to be finally arriving, and Lenovo’s ThinkVision M14 looks like a solid attempt. It’s a 14-inch IPS display (1920 x 1080) that weighs 1.3 pounds and attaches to a laptop via USB-C. Unlike Asus’ ZenScreens, Lenovo’s portable USB-C monitor doesn’t include a battery which means your laptop, tablet, or even phone is tasked with powering the display. Lenovo isn’t providing estimates on the power draw, but it shouldn’t be significant for this type of display. Lenovo is also offering an adapter to support power pass through so you can charge and power the monitor at the same time. I got a chance to try the ThinkVision M14 briefly at Mobile World Congress this week and I was surprised at its weight and thinness. Lenovo has managed t

BARCELONA: South Korea’s LG Electronics unveiled a 5G smartphone on Feb 24 with a dual screen, the latest handset maker to pitch a new design feature in an effort to revive flagging sales. The two screens on the new V50ThinQ work independently, so a user can watch a film on one screen while browsing the Internet on the other. LG, the world's No.7 smartphone maker, saw its sales decline by a quarter last year as Chinese rivals Huawei Technologies and Xiaomi grabbed market share in a slightly weaker global market. Both announced 5G phones in Barcelona on the eve of the Mobile World Congress, the telecoms industry's main annual get together, with Xiaomi pitching a US$680 (RM2,767) model and Huawei smashing the price ceiling with a US$2,600 (RM10,583) folding phone. Addressing those users, LG launched a second phone, the G8ThinQ, which can be unlocked without touching the screen. The handset instead uses light sensors to scan the veins in a user's hand or to recognise

BARCELONA, Spain: Huawei Technologies unveiled a US$2,600 (RM10,583) folding smartphone on Sunday which it said was primed for next generation 5G mobile connections, even as the United States campaigns to bar the Chinese company from such networks over security concerns. Huawei, the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor after Samsung, said it had taken the lead on developing phones for 5G – which promise super fast Internet speeds for consumers and businesses – because it was also involved in developing the networks. "This phone is not only for today for 5G but also for future 5G. On all the benchmarks you can see the performance, the speed is the fastest for 5G in the world," said Richard Yu, head of Huawei's consumer business group. Speaking ahead of the mobile industry's biggest global event, which kicks off on Feb 25 in Barcelona, Yu said the Huawei Mate X will have two back-to-back screens which unfold to become an eight-inch tablet display. Yu sai

A much-hyped network upgrade called "5G" means different things to different people. To industry proponents, it's the next huge innovation in wireless Internet. To the US government, it's the backbone technology of a future that America will wrestle with China to control. To many average people, it's simply a mystery. The technology is one of the issues expected to take center stage at the MWC mobile conference in Barcelona, Spain, this month. The interest goes well beyond engineers: In Washington, there are fears that China could take the lead in developing the technology and sell equipment that could be used to spy on Americans. What, exactly, is 5G wireless – and will you even notice when it comes online? What is 5G? 5G is a new technical standard for wireless networks – the fifth, naturally – that promises faster speeds; less lag, or "latency," when connecting to the network; and the ability to connect many devices to the Internet without b

NEW YORK: Several phone apps are sending sensitive user data, including health information, to Facebook without users’ consent, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. An analytics tool called “App Events” allows app developers to record user activity and report it back to Facebook, even if the user isn’t on Facebook, according to the report. One example detailed by the Journal shows how a woman would track her period and ovulation using an app from Flo Health. After she enters when she last had her period, Facebook software in the app would send along data, such as whether the user may be ovulating. The Journal’s testing found that the data was sent with an advertising ID that can be matched to a device or profile. Although Facebook’s terms instruct app developers not to send such sensitive information, Facebook appeared to be accepting such data without telling the developers to stop. Developers are able to use such data to target their own users while on Facebook.

All the tech in Back to the Future II looks pretty cool, but if we’ve learned anything over the past few years it’s that replicating its tech isn't easy. Hoverboards turned out to be exploding deathtraps that don’t even really hover, as just one example. And here’s another: In 2015, Nike made the movie’s "self-tying shoelaces" a reality, and released the Nike Adapt line the following year. Fast forward to 2019, and Nike's newly released Adapt BB smart sneakers are currently useless paperweights after a recent update bricked the shoes for Android users. The premise of Nike’s Adapt shoe was simple: as in Back to the Future, the shoe would tighten automatically when the wearer inserts their foot. Additionally, the app lets users customize the tightness of the fit and change the colors of the lights on the shoe. It’s a neat gizmo in theory. In practice, however, Adapt has the same weaknesses of every internet-connected object, namely, that they’re useless without th

Google's Material theme is slowly making its way onto all of its software products, with Gmail having got early treatment a while ago on its Web app. Last week, Google rolled out the theme for Gmail on Android, bringing a new look to the app following the new design language of the Material theme. Now, Google is rolling out a similar theme change even for its Gmail app on iOS, so iPhone and iPad users on Gmail will see the change on their apps starting this week. With iOS, the Gmail app is being updated as a server-side update, which means that users won't have to manually update the app to get the new theme. This also means that users will automatically receive the update even if they haven't updated to the latest version of the app. The new theme rolled out for Android smartphones and tablets last week, and is now making its way to iOS as expected. This change will take a few days to be visible for everyone using Gmail on iOS. The new Material theme does away with t

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has won the 2019 Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, beating out the likes of Incredibles 2, Isle of Dogs, Mirai, and Ralph Breaks the Internet for the Academy Award. The Spider-Man spin-off was expected to take home the prize, given the critical acclaim that has been showered on it since release, and its win last month at the 2019 Golden Globes. This is the first win for Sony Pictures Animation at the Oscars, which has been dominated by Disney and Pixar — the two were nominated here, as well — since the award's inception in 2001. Among other awards, Green Book won the Oscar for Best Picture and Alfonso Cuarón for Best Director. “Thank you, Academy and Sony. We share it with the cast and crew, there's 800 filmmakers who pushed boundaries and took risks, to make people feel powerful and seen,” producer Christopher Miller said in his acceptance speech at the 2019 Oscars. “So when we hear that somebody -- somebody's kid was watching th

Microsoft at MWC 2019 on Sunday launched the company's second generation mixed reality headset – the HoloLens 2. The successor to the first generation HoloLens brings a tonne of improvements such as a better display, more comfortable design, improved gesture controls, and better performance coupled with higher power efficiency. The HoloLens 2 has been priced at $3,500 (around Rs. 2,49,000) and is now available for buyers in United States, Japan, China, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Australia, and New Zealand from the official Microsoft e-shop. The company also launched the Azure Kinect at MWC 2019, which is now on pre-order and will initially go on sale in US and China. Microsoft HoloLens 2 specifications The Redmond giant at its MWC 2019 launch event claims to have doubled the field of view on the second-generation Windows Mixed reality headset vis-à-vis its predecessor, a figure that now stands at 52-degrees while maintaining the holographic density of 47

Now that voice-controlled home assistants like Google Home and Amazon Echo have burrowed into millions of houses, the market has turned to accessories. This year at CES, dozens of companies announced Google Assistant- and Alexa-powered add-on gadgets, designed to extend your assistant's reach and smarten up your home one appliance at a time. But one of the most intriguing possible accessories actually takes the opposite approach; it puts your home assistant on a leash, and it's brilliant. The gadget is called "Project Alias," and was developed by hacker/designers Bjørn Karmann and Tore Knudsen. "We [wanted to show] how DIY and open source can be used to create ‘viruses’ for big tech companies," Knudsen explained to Fast Company. Inspired by fungi that feed off a host, Project Alias is a small, open-source device that sits atop your voice assistant and whispers static into its ears. The "parasite" is in turn trained to respond to your wake word

Google's Nest Secure home security device is meant to do what its name suggests: make homes safer. But, in a completely unsurprising turn, the device is now sparking privacy concerns. The tech giant failed to notify users that its home security device came equipped with a microphone, an oversight Google has called an "error," per Business Insider. The discovery was made sort of by accident. Earlier this month, Google notified users that Nest Guard (the alarm, keypad and motion-sensor component of Nest Home Secure) was now compatible with the company's Home Assistant voice-control function. However, to be compatible with a voice control feature, the device would need to have a microphone, and Google had never made mention of a mic embedded in the device. The company insists the mic wasn't meant to be a secret. "The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech specs," a spokesperson told Business Insi

Nokia's MWC 2019 launch event is scheduled to begin at 4pm CET (8.30pm IST) on Sunday, February 24. HMD Global is expected to launch a slew of smartphones at the event, if leaks are to be believed. The Nokia 9 “PureView” is anticipated to be the star of the show thanks to its flagship specs and five rear cameras that multiple leaks have hinted at. Other leaks have also suggested that the Nokia 4.2, Nokia 3.2, and the Nokia 1 Plus will be launched at this event. Here's how to watch the Nokia 9 PureView launch live stream. Nokia 9 specifications According to leaks, the Nokia 9 PureView will feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage. The Nokia 9 is expected to feature a 6-inch display along with an in-display fingerprint sensor. The Nokia 9 might feature 18W fast charging support too, and like all recent Nokia smartphones it's expected to be a part of the Android One program. The Nokia 9 is expected to have five rear cameras, with a 22-megap

Huawei on Sunday unveiled the new MateBook 14 and upgraded MateBook X Pro laptops ahead of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019. The company also announced the global availability for the MateBook 13 that was introduced at the CES 2019 last month. While the Huawei MateBook X Pro, like its last-generation, is targeted at consumers who prefer the best of laptop technology, the MateBook 14 and MateBook 13 laptops are intended for the mainstream consumers. All three laptops run on Windows 10. Huawei MateBook X, MateBook 14, MateBook 13 price Huawei says that the upgraded MateBook X Pro will be priced at EUR 1,599 (roughly Rs. 1,29,000) for the Core i5 + 8GB RAM model and EUR 1,999 (roughly Rs. 1,61,200) for Core i7 + 16GB RAM model. On the other hand, the MateBook 13 starts at EUR 999 (roughly Rs. 80,600) and goes up to EUR 1,399 (roughly Rs. 1,12,800) and the MateBook 14 will sell at EUR 1,199 (roughly Rs. 96,700) for the Core i5 model and EUR 1,499 (roughly Rs. 1,20,900). The availa