At an event in New York today, Google unveiled Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, its latest flagship smartphones. The Pixel smartphones have over the years set a new benchmark for photography prowess. So you can imagine that a lot is riding on what Google, which has in curtailed several of its hardware ambitions in recent quarters, does with the new Pixel smartphones. From a report: Google makes it a point that the majority of the primary features are the same between the Pixel smartphones, with the primary exception being the display and screen technology. That is the case this year as well, with the Pixel 4 featuring a 5.7-inch Full HD+ P-OLED display, while the Pixel 4 XL boasts a 6.3-inch Quad HD OLED screen. Both panels support a 90Hz refresh rate, though. Inside both handsets is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, and both smartphones boast 6GB of RAM. The handsets come in either 64GB or 128GB of built-in storage options, but there is no microSD card slot for expandable storage. There is a USB-C port for charging, and both handsets feature stereo speakers as well. The battery in the Pixel 4 measures in at 2800mAh, while the Pixel 4 XL has a 3700mAh battery tucked inside.

Meanwhile, around back, the real star of the show: the cameras. That's right, Google is bumping up the rear camera count to two. It starts with the standard 12-megapixel "Dual Pixel" camera, which is accompanied by a 16-megapixel telephoto lens. The rounded square camera housing also hosts a microphone and a flash. [...] And finally, the front-facing camera is equipped with a radar sensor that gives the handsets much more utility than previous models. It starts with true depth detection while using the front-facing camera to unlock the phone with a face unlock biometric feature. Google is also including a new "Motion Sense" technology, letting the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL support gestures for controlling media playback and more. The pricing for Pixel 4 starts at $799, while its bigger sibling begins at $899. Unlike previous Pixel smartphone models, the Pixel 4 and 4 XL won't offer their users the ability to upload unlimited photos in their original resolution and qualirty to Google Photos at no charge. Both the handsets, though, come bundled with a new voice recorder app that transcribes voice recording in real time for free, Google said.

In 2014 consumer expert and Silicon Valley startup founder Nir Eyal wrote Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. But five years later, the New York Times reports he's offering consumers a new book about how to resist those habits -- even while arguing that "addiction" is the wrong way to describe technology's hold on people: There was a problem, yes, but the thinking was all wrong, he decided. Using the language of addiction gave tech users a pass. It was too easy. The issue was not screens but people's own minds, and to solve the problem they had to look within. "If I call technology something that people get addicted to, there needs to be a pusher, a dealer doing it to you," Mr. Eyal said. "But if I say technology is something that people overuse, then it's, 'Oh, crap, now I need to do something about it myself....'" The solution he proposes in Indistractable is slow. It involves self-reflection. He argues that many times we look at phones because we are anxious and bad at being alone -- and that's not the phone's fault...

Mr. Eyal has written a guide to free people from an addiction he argues they never had in the first place. It was all just sloughing off personal responsibility, he figures. So the solution is to reclaim responsibility in myriad small ways. For instance: Have your phone on silent so there will be fewer external triggers. Email less and faster. Don't hang out on Slack. Have only one laptop out during meetings. Introduce social pressure like sitting next to someone who can see your screen. Set "price pacts" with people so you pay them if you get distracted -- though be sure to "learn self-compassion before making a price pact....."

"I got myself a feature phone that had no apps. I got on eBay a word processor, and all it does is let you type. I made my phone grayscale, which only ruined my pictures," he said. "I tried a digital detox, but I missed audiobooks and GPS...."
He also argues that getting hooked on social media isn't necessarily a bad thing. "For many people, social media is a very good thing and gaming is a very good thing. It's how you use it...." But he's also predicting a "post-digital" movement will emerge in 2020.

"We will start to realize that being chained to your mobile phone is a low-status behavior, similar to smoking."

"Attackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Google's Android mobile operating system that can give them full control of at least 18 different phone models," reports Ars Technica, "including four different Pixel models, a member of Google's Project Zero research group said on Thursday night." The post also says there's evidence the vulnerability is being actively exploited.

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica: Exploits require little or no customization to fully root vulnerable phones. The vulnerability can be exploited two ways: (1) when a target installs an untrusted app or (2) for online attacks, by combining the exploit with a second exploit targeting a vulnerability in code the Chrome browser uses to render content. "The bug is a local privilege escalation vulnerability that allows for a full compromise of a vulnerable device," Stone wrote. "If the exploit is delivered via the Web, it only needs to be paired with a renderer exploit, as this vulnerability is accessible through the sandbox...."

Google representatives wrote in an email: "Pixel 3 and 3a devices are not vulnerable to this issue, and Pixel 1 and 2 devices will be protected with the October Security Release, which will be delivered in the coming days. Additionally, a patch has been made available to partners in order to ensure the Android ecosystem is protected against this issue."

The use-after-free vulnerability originally appeared in the Linux kernel and was patched in early 2018 in version 4.14, without the benefit of a tracking CVE. That fix was incorporated into versions 3.18, 4.4, and 4.9 of the Android kernel. For reasons that weren't explained in the post, the patches never made their way into Android security updates.

On Tuesday Purism announced their first Librem 5 smartphones were rolling off the assembly line and heading to customers. "Seeing the amazing effort of the Purism team, and holding the first fully functioning Librem 5, has been the most inspirational moment of Purism's five year history," said their founder and CEO Todd Weaver.

On Wednesday they posted a video announcing that the phones were now shipping, and Friday they posted a short walk-through video. "The crowdsourced $700 Linux phone is actually becoming a real product," reports Ars Technica: Purism's demand that everything be open means most of the major component manufacturers were out of the question. Perhaps because of the limited hardware options, the internal construction of the Librem 5 is absolutely wild. While smartphones today are mostly a single mainboard with every component integrated into it, the Librem 5 actually has a pair of M.2 slots that house full-size, off-the-shelf LTE and Wi-Fi cards for connectivity, just like what you would find in an old laptop. The M.2 sockets look massive on top of the tiny phone motherboard, but you could probably replace or upgrade the cards if you wanted...

[Y]ou're not going to get cutting-edge hardware at a great price with the Librem 5. That's not the point, though. The point is that you are buying a Linux phone, with privacy and open source at the forefront of the design. There are hardware kill switches for the camera, microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and baseband on the side of the phone, ensuring none of the I/O turns on unless you want it to. The OS is the Free Software Foundation-endorsed PureOS, a Linux distribution that, in this case, has been reworked with a mobile UI. Purism says it will provide updates for the "lifetime" of the device, which would be a stark contrast to the two years of updates you get with an Android phone.

PureOS is a Debian-based Linux distro, and on the Librem 5, you'll get to switch between mobile versions of the Gnome and KDE environments. If you're at all interested in PureOS, Purism's YouTube page is worth picking through. Dozens of short videos show that, yes, this phone really runs full desktop-class Linux. Those same videos show the dev kit running things like the APT package manager through a terminal, a desktop version of Solitaire, Emacs, the Gnome disk utility, DOSBox, Apache Web Server, and more. If it runs on your desktop Linux computer, it will probably run on the Librem 5, albeit with a possibly not-touch-friendly UI. The Librem 5 can even be hooked up to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and you can run all these Linux apps with the normal input tools...

Selling a smartphone is a cutthroat business, and we've seen dozens of companies try and fail over the years. Purism didn't just survive long enough to ship a product -- it survived in what is probably the hardest way possible, by building a non-Android phone with demands that all the hardware components use open code. Making it this far is an amazing accomplishment.

At its annual hardware event in Seattle, Amazon today announced Sidewalk, a new low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless protocol the company is developing to connect all of the IoT devices in and around your house. TechCrunch reports: Amazon argues that Bluetooth and WiFi don't have enough range, while 5G takes too much power and is too complex. "We came up with something that we call Amazon Sidewalk," Amazon's device chief Dave Limp said at the event today. "Amazon Sidewalk is a brand new low bandwidth network that uses the already existing free over the air 900 megahertz spectrum. We think it will be great for keeping track of things, keeping things up to date -- but first and foremost, it will extend in the distance at which you can control these kinds of simple, low-cost, easy-to-use devices.

The details here remain a bit vague, but Amazon says that you may be able to use Sidewalk to connect to devices that can be up to a mile away, depending on how the base station and devices are positioned. Amazon already sent out 700 test devices to households in L.A. to test the access points -- and once you have a lot of access points, you create a network with some pretty broad coverage. Amazon says it'll publish the protocol so that other device makers can also integrate it into their devices.

"Despite new initiatives by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and carriers, robocalls aren't on the wane," reports Forbes.

"Americans are still facing a scourge of 200 million unwanted robocalls a day, according to a report from Transaction Network Services (TNS), a major telecommunications network and services company. And nearly 30% of all U.S. calls were negative (nuisance, scam or fraud calls) in the first six months of the year, TNS said..." Nuisance calls jumped 38% from the third quarter of last year, while high-risk calls -- such as scammers targeting identity theft -- were up 28%, TNS said. And the FCC actually saw an 8% increase year-over year in consumer robocall complaints when comparing February-June 2019 to February-June 2018, as cited by TNS in the report. There is a limit to what major U.S. carriers can do. They are only a small part of the problem, TNS said. While 70% of all calls (normal calls and unwanted calls) come from major U.S. carriers, only 12% of the high-risk calls are from the big carriers. That means the problem lies with lesser-known providers...

A growing threat is robocall hijacking -- when a subscriber's number is hijacked by a bad guy -- doubling over last year's figure, TNS said. TNS estimates that 1 in 1,700 numbers were hijacked by spoofers in 28 day-period. In the last report the frequency was only 1 in 4,000. In one case of hijacking, a spoofer placed over 36,000 scam calls in a 3-day period according to the TNS report.

Another spoofing threat cited in the report is that of legitimate toll-free numbers of leading tech companies. Here, the scammer will claim there is something wrong with the victim's account at the company and try to get personal information.
You can stop getting robocalls with a "simple but very effective" solution, according to the article. Both Android and iOS phones have a "Do Not Disturb" option in Settings -- so just enable that for everyone except your own contacts.

"It's here! Purism announces shipment of the Librem 5," writes long-time Slashdot reader Ocean Consulting: Librem 5 is a landmark mobile device with a dedicated platform, runs PureOS Linux, and is the first mobile phone to seek hardware certification from the Free Software Foundation. Initially a crowd sourced funding campaign, the phone embraces principles of free software and user privacy. IP native communication is supported via Matrix. Privacy features include hardware kill switches for camera, microphone, cellular, wifi, Bluetooth and GPS.
"The Librem 5 phone is built from the ground up to respect the privacy, security, and freedoms of society," reads the site's official announcement. "It is a revolutionary approach to solving the issues that people face today around data exploitation -- putting people in control of their own digital lives."

They're adopting an "iterative" shipping schedule -- publishing a detailed schedule defining specific batches and their features with corresponding shipping dates. "Each iteration improves upon the prior in a rapid rolling release throughout the entire first version of the phone... As slots in a particular early batch free up, we will open it up for others in a later batch to join in, according to the date of the order."

Developers have come to accept that, without warning, Apple can make their work obsolete by announcing a new app or feature that essentially copies their ideas. Some apps have simply buckled under the pressure. The Washington Post: Clue, a popular app women use to track their periods, has risen to near the top of Apple's Health and Fitness category. It could be downhill from here. Apple plans this month to incorporate some of Clue's core functionality such as fertility and period prediction into its own Health app that comes pre-installed in every iPhone and is free, unlike Clue, which earns money by selling subscriptions and services in its free app. Apple's past incorporation of functionality included in other third-party apps has often led to their demise. Clue's new threat shows how Apple plays a dual role in the app economy: provider of access to independent apps and giant competitor to them.

Developers have come to accept that, without warning, Apple can make their work obsolete by announcing a new app or feature that uses or incorporates their ideas. Some apps have simply buckled under the pressure, in some cases shutting down. They generally don't sue Apple because of the difficulty and expense in fighting the tech giant -- and the consequences they might face from being dependent on the platform. The imbalance of power between Apple and the apps on its platform could turn into a rare chink in the company's armor as regulators and lawmakers put the dominance of big technology companies under an antitrust microscope. When Apple made a flashlight part of its operating system in 2013, it rendered instantly redundant a myriad apps that offered that functionality. Everything from the iPhone's included "Measure" app to its built-in animated emoji were originally apps in the App Store.

Apple said on Thursday it will start offering independent repair shops parts, tools and guides to help fix broken iPhones. From a report: The new repair program allows big and small repair outfits to sign up and get access to parts for common out-of-warranty repairs, something that was previously restricted to Apple's network of authorized service providers. The move represents an about face for Apple, which typically encourages any repairs to be made by its authorized service providers and makes it difficult for users to replace aging or broken parts themselves. Additionally, the company has fought California's proposed right-to-repair bill, which would require companies like Apple to make repair information and parts available to both device owners and independent repair shops. Apple said the new program is free to join but that shops will be required to have an Apple-certified technician who has taken a preparatory course provided by the company.

Fairphone, the company that wants to get ethically-responsible smartphones into the hands of consumers worldwide, has unveiled the third iteration of its modular device. From a report: Fairphone 3, launched under the tagline, "The phone that dares to be fair," is available for pre-order now, and boasts some pretty decent specs that put it on par with more well-established devices. The phone runs Android 9, and comes with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 632 chip, which has helped make solid dual cameras a reality on mid-tier devices. It also runs the same camera system as the Pixel 3a XL, boasts 64GB internal storage (expandable with a microSD card), a fingerprint scanner, quick charge support and NFC, plus it crams in the ubiquitous 3.5mm headphone jack that many fear is not long for this earth. In a bid to cut down on e-waste it doesn't come with any accessories -- cables or earphones and such -- but who doesn't already have a draw full of those kicking about? In short, it packs a pretty respectable punch, with the added assurance that it's been built using as many conflict-free resources as possible and -- thanks to its modular construction -- is durable, repairable and upgradable. Fairphone is also the first smartphone company to integrate Fairtrade gold into its supply chain.

San Mateo High School administrators have instituted a new policy to lock up students' cellphones. "Each school day, nearly 1,700 students place their devices in a Yondr pouch that closes with a proprietary lock," reports NBC News. "School administrators unlock them at the end of the day." The goal is to help students focus on the teacher and other students. From the report: While administrators and teachers say they have already noticed a positive effect on students, the policy has elicited mixed reactions from researchers who argue its long-term effectiveness. Devices remain in the student's possession, but they aren't able to access them, the school said. The program was funded with a $20,000 grant. The pouches have been assigned to students at no cost, but losing one will cost the high-schoolers a $25 replacement fee.

Some technology experts feel the new policy is a step in the right direction and will curb distraction in the classroom. "Taking cellphones out of the classroom is a no-brainer," said Calvin Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. Students tend to perform worse when they have access to network connectivity in the classroom, he said. "The ability to be free of distraction and concentrate on things is increasingly valuable, so it's a good general function of our schools to be a place where our students get trained to keeping their concentration on one thing at a time," he added.

While many researchers have focused on the benefits of cutting out devices from the classroom, others worry about taking away something young people depend on. Larry Rosen, a research psychologist at California State University, said young people constantly check their phones to alleviate anxiety. They are anxious about staying on top of things, and that anxiety will build up if they are forced to ditch the devices cold turkey, he added. Taking away phones doesn't work for everyone, he argues. Instead, he believes "technology breaks" are a much happier medium.

Alphabet' Google has shut down a service it provided to wireless carriers globally that showed them weak spots in their network coverage, Reuters reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter, because of Google's concerns that sharing data from users of its Android phone system might attract the scrutiny of users and regulators. From the report: The withdrawal of the service, which has not been previously reported, has disappointed wireless carriers that used the data as part of their decision-making process on where to extend or upgrade their coverage. Even though the data were anonymous and the sharing of it has become commonplace, Google's move illustrates how concerned the company has become about drawing attention amid a heightened focus in much of the world on data privacy. Google's Mobile Network Insights service, which had launched in March 2017, was essentially a map showing carriers signal strengths and connection speeds they were delivering in each area. The service was provided free to carriers and vendors that helped them manage operations. The data came from devices running Google's Android operating system, which is on about 75% of the world's smartphones, making it a valuable resource for the industry. [...] Nevertheless, Google shut down the service in April due to concerns about data privacy, four people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Some of them said secondary reasons likely included challenges ensuring data quality and connectivity upgrades among carriers being slow to materialize.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Netflix thought I was four different people. I was being paid through an app to watch its trailers over and over again, racking up digital points I could eventually trade for Amazon gift cards or real cash. But rather than just use my own phone, I bought four Android devices to churn through the trailers simultaneously, bringing in more money. I made a small "phone farm," able to fabricate engagement with advertisements and programs from companies like Netflix, as well as video game trailers, celebrity gossip shows, and sports too. No one was really watching the trailers, but Netflix didn't need to know that. The goal was to passively run these phones 24/7, with each collecting a fraction of a penny for each ad they "watched."

Hobbyists and those looking to make a bit of money across the U.S. have been doing the same, buying dozens or hundreds of phones to generate revenue so they can afford some extra household goods, cover a bill, buy a case of beer, or earn more income without driving for Uber or delivering for Grubhub. The farms are similar to those found overseas, often in China, where rows and rows of phones click and scroll through social media or other apps to simulate the engagement of a real human. Every few months, a video of these Chinese farms goes viral, but in bedroom cupboards, stacks in corners of living rooms, or custom setups in their garage, American phone farmers are doing a similar thing, albeit on a smaller scale. Motherboard spoke to eight people who run farms of various sizes, most of whom are located in the U.S.

Have you ever been in a public place and hopped onto a public WiFi network? From a report: We conducted a survey of 1,195 US residents over the past two weeks asking about internet connectivity and one interesting trend stood out. 82% of respondents (980 total) said they connect to any freely available network while out in public. When asked about the security implications of such a decision, the majority of the respondents said they didn't think about such things, and that it wasn't a concern for them.

CNBC reports on the latest revelations from America's Federal Trade Commission about the tactics used by the robocall industry: In some cases, robocalls proliferate through programs that resemble multilevel marketing schemes, where business founders push robocall packages on "members" to spur quick growth. In one case, an organization known alternately as "8 Figure Dream Lifestyle," "Millionaire Mind" and "Online Entrepreneur Academy" enticed consumers to buy memberships to gain access to a "franchise-like opportunity" to sell the organization's "proven business model" or "blueprint for success" downstream. Members paid between $2,395 and $22,495 to join, and the business claimed they could earn $5,000 to $10,000 in the first two weeks, followed by similarly large sums...

The FTC also looked at an organization called Life Management Services, which allegedly netted $15.6 million from consumers who thought they were reorganizing their credit card debt through an interest rate reduction service... Another complaint, against a corporation called First Choice Horizon, outlines how the robocaller "under the guise of confirming consumers' identities" for an offer of "bogus credit card interest rate reduction services," further "tricked them into providing their personal financial information, including their social security and credit card numbers," according to the FTC... Another organization, called Media Mix 365, which generated "leads" for home solar energy companies, called a single number 1,000 times in a year and placed millions of nuisance calls to others, the FTC says... A company called Lifewatch was a prolific spoofer, the FTC said, sending calls to consumers' phones that looked like they may have been coming from familiar numbers or numbers within the same area code. The group sold a "free" medical alert system and fraudulently claimed the system was endorsed by the American Heart Association or AARP. On the calls, people were told that they wouldn't be charged for the product unless it was "activated," but their credit cards were charged immediately, the FTC said...

For consumers wondering what they can do about the calls, the first rule is always, "hang up, do not engage. If you see an unknown caller ID, don't answer." Consumers can report robocalls or violations of the Do Not Call registry to the FTC on its website.

Huawei is reportedly inviting Google Play Store developers to publish apps for the Huawei EMUI AppGallery, a month after it was reported that future Android handsets from the Chinese group won't support Google Play Store. From a report: An anonymous developer on Monday showed the email to XDA Developers, with Huawei apparently sending out invitations to join AppGallery and saying it has 270 million monthly active users across 350 million phones, and a community of 560,000 developers. "In order to guarantee a smooth usage of your app for our users, Huawei is committed to provide you with full support, to help you publish your app into AppGallery," the emailed invitation reportedly says. It also offers access to join the Huawei Developer portal for free, XDA Developers reported.

samleecole writes: Apple's AirPods are a tragedy. Ecologically, socially, economically -- they're a capitalist disaster. The opposite of AirPods, then, is this extremely punk pair of DIY wireless earbuds that someone on Reddit hacked together using an old pair of wired Apple headphones and some hot glue. "I started this project roughly two months ago when my friend got a new pair of AirPods for his birthday and I thought to myself, 'that's quite a lot of money for something I can make at home,'" Sam Cashbook, who is 15, told Motherboard in a Reddit message.

Cashook started watching videos of people making their own AirPods, but mostly found people chopping the wires off of Apple headphones as a joke. He decided to take his own approach. He bought a hands-free bone conduction headset from eBay, and took apart the casing to reveal the electronics. Then, he desoldered the wires from the original speaker in the headset, and connected his old Apple earbud speaker to the headset's printed circuit board. Maybe a little uglier, but the headphones work well, he said. The set has buttons for power, pausing music, volume controls and skipping tracks, and the battery is rechargeable.

Valve's Steam Link app, which brings streaming games to your mobile device, is now available as a free download for iOS and Apple TV. The iOS launch comes nearly one year after Apple rejected the app due to "business conflicts." GameSpot reports: The Steam Link app promises to bring "desktop gaming to your iPhone or iPad." Users can pair a Steam controller or any MFI (Made-for-iPhone/iPad) controller to play games over a network connection provided they are on the same local network. The Steam Link app is effectively a replacement for the physical Steam Link device that Steam discontinued in 2018. Steam Link is already available on Android. As the Verge notes in their report, the biggest difference between the iOS and Android versions is that the iOS Steam Link app "doesn't allow users to purchase games from the Steam store, unlike on Android."

You can download Steam Link from iTunes here.

A new report from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) found that the average American video gamer is 33 years old, prefers to play on their smartphone and is spending big on content -- 20 percent more than a year ago and 85 percent more than in 2015. Reuters reports: The $43.4 billion spent in 2018 was mostly on content, as opposed to hardware and accessories. Of pay-to-play games, "Call of Duty: Black Ops III," "Red Dead Redemption II" and "NBA 2K19" took the top spots for most units sold but the list did not include free games such as "Fortnite."

Nearly 65 percent of U.S. adults, or more than 164 million people, play games. The most popular genre is casual games, with 60 percent of players gaming on their smartphones, though about half also play on personal computers and specialized consoles. Parents are limiting screen time for their kids and using video game ratings to screen content, and 87 percent of parents require permission for new game purchases, the study showed. Some 46 percent of all gamers are female, though they favor different kinds of games than men, particularly depending on age. The report also found that Gen Xers lean towards "Tetris," "Pac-Man," "Call of Duty," "Forza," and "NBA 2K," while baby boomers like "Solitaire," "Scrabble," "Mahjong" and "Monopoly."

"Free apps marketed to people with depression or who want to quit smoking are hemorrhaging user data to third parties like Facebook and Google -- but often don't admit it in their privacy policies, a new study reports..." writes The Verge.

"You don't have to be a user of Facebook's or Google's services for them to have enough breadcrumbs to ID you," warns Slashdot schwit1. From the article: By intercepting the data transmissions, they discovered that 92 percent of the 36 apps shared the data with at least one third party -- mostly Facebook- and Google-run services that help with marketing, advertising, or data analytics. (Facebook and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.) But about half of those apps didn't disclose that third-party data sharing, for a few different reasons: nine apps didn't have a privacy policy at all; five apps did but didn't say the data would be shared this way; and three apps actively said that this kind of data sharing wouldn't happen. Those last three are the ones that stood out to Steven Chan, a physician at Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, who has collaborated with Torous in the past but wasn't involved in the new study. "They're basically lying," he says of the apps.

Part of the problem is the business model for free apps, the study authors write: since insurance might not pay for an app that helps users quit smoking, for example, the only ways for free app developer to stay afloat is to either sell subscriptions or sell data. And if that app is branded as a wellness tool, the developers can skirt laws intended to keep medical information private.
A few apps even shared what The Verge calls "very sensitive information" like self reports about substance use and user names.