Browsing Tag: Mobile Smart Phones

ZTE’s U.S. government dealings have never been as high-profile as fellow Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, but it has had its fair share of scuffles. Last summer, the company got smacked with a $1 billion fine over sanction violations. All in all, 2018 was not a great year for ZTE here in the States.

It all amounted to a big blow for a manufacturer that was actually doing pretty good business selling mid-range devices in the largest smartphone market. With the Axon 10 Pro, it seems ZTE is finally done licking its wounds and is ready to try again here in the States, even as trade tensions continue to loom large in dealings between the two super powers.

I’ve got to say, it’s looking like a pretty solid device. The company seems to be positioning the product in the same sliver of the market that OnePlus has found a home. At $549, it’s a breath of fresh air in a world of $1,000+ flagships, without skimping on the design language or features. It’s doubly compelling given that OnePlus’s own prices have been creeping up a bit as well, as the company has pushed into more premium territory.

The device has a 6.47-inch display with a small camera notch up top and an in-screen fingerprint reader. There’s the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon chip on-board (855), paired with a a beefy 4,000 mAh battery. Around back are three cameras, including a 48-megapixel, a telephoto and a wide-angle. The headphone jack, however, is MIA.

With Huawei more or less out of the picture here in the States, maybe there’s some room for ZTE to thrive, after all. Of course, the company still has to contend with a shrinking smartphone market, just like everyone else.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | ZTE tries for a US return with an affordable flagship

You would, of course, be completely forgiven for not recognizing Oppo’s name here in the States. In its native China, however, the company is a powerhouse, regularly capturing around 20% of the world’s largest smartphone market and handily beating out more familiar names (here, at least) like Apple and Samsung.

India (the No. 2 global market) has been a pretty solid market for the company as well, generally landing itself in the top five. The Reno 2 was just announced for that country today, bringing with it some of the unique, boundary-pushing features that have become Oppo’s stock-in-trade.

Most notable here is the “shark fin.” That’s the in-house name for the triangular mechanical selfie camera that pops out the top. It’s a return feature and one a number of other manufacturers have implemented in some form, including the Oppo-connected OnePlus, which has a much stronger U.S. presence.

The other big thing here are the cameras on the other side. It’s a pretty impressive set up back there, including a 48-megapixel lens with optical image stabilization, wide angle lens and telephoto. At 5x hybrid, it’s a step down from the 10x Zoom the company launched a while back.

At Rs. 36,900, it’s priced at just over $500, putting it at the mid-range here in the States. I’ve been playing around with it a bit at our New York office, and it’s not a bad little phone — albeit a little bit chunky compared to some flagships. That’s not really a surprise at that price point. Nor is the continued inclusion of a headphone jack, which continues to be an important feature for markets like India.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Behold, the shark-fin selfie camera on Oppo’s latest

Hackers will soon be able to stress-test the Facebook Portal at the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest, following the introduction of the social media giant’s debut hardware device last year.

Pwn2Own is one of the largest hacking contests in the world, where security researchers descend to find and demonstrate their exploits for vulnerabilities in a range of consumer electronics and technologies, including appliances and automobiles.

It’s not unusual for companies to allow hackers put their products through their paces. Tesla earlier this year entered its new Model 3 sedan into the contest. A pair of researchers later scooped up $375,000 — and the car they hacked — for finding a severe memory randomization bug in the web browser of the car’s infotainment system.

Hackers able to remotely inject and run code on the Facebook Portal can receive up to $60,000, while a non-invasive physical attack or a privilege escalation bug can net $40,000.

Introducing the Facebook Portal is part of a push by Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, which runs the contest, to expand the range of home automation devices available to researchers in attendance. Pwn2Own said researchers will also get a chance to try to hack an Amazon Echo Show 5, a Google Nest Hub Max, an Amazon Cloud Cam and a Nest Cam IQ Indoor.

Facebook said it also would allow hackers to find flaws in the Oculus Quest virtual reality kit.

Pwn2Own Tokyo, set to be held on November 6-7, is expected to dish out more than $750,000 in cash and prizes.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Hackers to stress-test Facebook Portal at hacking contest

Insta360 has quickly established itself as the leader in 360-degree video capture, at least for the consumer market, and its new GO stabilized camera builds on that legacy and extends some of the tech it has built into the category of more traditional, non-360-degree footage.

The $199.99 GO is truly tiny — it weighs less than an ounce and measures less than two inches tall and an inch wide. It’s tiny, and that’s ideal for the use case that Insta360 has in mind for this device — wearing it or mounting it virtually anywhere for capturing quick clips. The GO’s all about quick action grabs, with a 30-second cap on clip recording, which you trigger by pressing the lone control button on the device (a second press stops the clip, unless you let it run the entire 30 seconds).

GO’s design is clearly meant for social sharing, but its secret weapon — versus just using your smartphone or making use of other devices — is that it packs Insta360’s FlowState stabilization on board. This is the company’s digital video stabilization feature, which works to great effect in its Insta360 One X 360-degree camera for smoothing out footage so that even in intense action sequences it’s not nausea-inducing.

GO also features a magnetic body, which is designed to work in tandem with a variety of accessories, including backs for securing them unobtrusively to clothing, an underwater housing (the camera itself is IPX4 rated, which means essentially it’s protected from splashes but not meant to be submerged) and mounts for sticking to things like surf boards or vehicles. It can capture clips at a resolution of up to 2720 x 2720, but it crops the image to 1080p (at 25 fps) for export as a result of the stabilization tech.

Shooting modes include a standard 25 fps as mentioned, as well as a 30 fps time-lapse, which can record up to eight hours (which will output a 9-second video) and a hyperlapse mode that can shoot for up to 30 minutes to generate a five-minute video. It can capture photos, too, exporting square images at 2560 x 2560 resolution, or a number of landscape options reading down from there.

In addition to simplifying capture, the Insta360 GO also hopes to make editing and sharing much easier with its FlashCut auto-editing feature. This software tool uses “AI” according to the company, in order to find the best clips (you can even sort by category, i.e. “food”) you capture throughout the day and then stitch them together in a final edit. You also can fully tweak the edits it provides if you’d rather be a more involved creator.

The biggest limitation, based on just reading the specs and not having had a chance to test this out yet, is that the battery life is rated at around 200 clips per day, based on an average of 20 seconds per clip. But that’s including recharging the camera when not in use using the included Charge Case, which has 2.5 extra charges using its built-in battery. That and the recording limitation could prove challenging to anyone looking to create a lot of content with this camera, but on the other hand, it’s very easy to ensure you have it with you at all times — even when your smartphone isn’t nearby.At $199.99, the Insta360 GO isn’t exactly cheap — but it does include the Charge Case, a pendant with a magnet you can use to wear it around you neck, a stand, a clip for clothing and a sticky mount for putting it on most smooth surfaces. You also can laser-engrave it if you purchase it directly via Insta360’s website. But after some missed starts for this category, like the Google Clips camera, and earlier entrants like, the Memoto and Narrative Clip life-logging cameras, I’ll be curious to see if Insta360’s additional features help this gadget define a category.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Insta360’s tiny new GO stabilized camera could be game-changer for social video

Airship announced today that it has acquired Apptimize, an A/B testing company whose customers include Glassdoor, HotelTonight and The Wall Street Journal.

Formerly known as Urban Airship, the more concisely named Airship has built a platform for companies to manage their customer communication across SMS, push notifications, email, mobile wallets and more.

It says that by acquiring Apptimize, it can help customers test the impact of their messages. That means integrating Apptimize’s testing capabilities into the Airship platform, but the company says it will also continue to support Apptimize as a standalone platform.

“By combining Apptimize mobile app and web testing with Airship’s deep insight into customer engagement across channels, marketers and developers can focus innovation on the most critical areas while creating the seamless end-to-end experiences customers really want,” said Airship president and CEO Brett Caine in a statement.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Apptimize had raised a total of $18.6 million from US Venture Partners, Costanoa Ventures and others, according to Crunchbase.

Airship says it will be bringing over 19 Apptimize team members (a little less than two-thirds of the startup’s total workforce) across engineering, customer service and sales.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Airship acquires A/B testing company Apptimize

Surprise, Apple didn’t release yet another beta version of iOS 13. The company released the first developer beta of iOS and iPadOS 13.1 instead.

This is a curious move, as Apple doesn’t usually share beta versions of .1 updates before the release of major updates. What’s even more surprising is that Apple released new beta versions for watchOS 6.0 and tvOS 13.0 today.

Chances are that iOS 13.0 is pretty much done by this point. Usually, Apple releases major versions of iOS a few days after announcing the new iPhone — the press event will likely take place at some point in early September. The company might release iOS 13.0 a bit earlier than expected this year.

Apple removed some minor features in iOS 13 in early beta versions of iOS 13. As MacRumors spotted, many of those features are now back in the beta version of iOS 13.1. Those features include Shortcuts automations and the ability to share your ETA in Apple Maps.

It’s clear that Apple is trying to make iOS 13.0 as stable as possible, even if it means releasing some features a bit later this fall.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Apple releases first beta of iOS 13.1, indicating iOS 13 is nearly done

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1. Smartphone sales declined again in Q2, surprising no one

After years of growth, the smartphone market’s recent slide has continued in the second quarter of 2019, according to Gartner.

It’s not a huge decline — 1.7% year over year — but this could turn into an ongoing problem for manufacturers. And the biggest hit is coming at the high end of the market, as higher prices combine with longer refresh cycles and fewer compelling features.

2. Yelp will let users personalize their homepage and search results

If you’re a vegetarian, or if you’re a parent who’s usually looking for kid-friendly restaurants, you no longer have to reenter that information every time you do a search. Instead, you can enter it once and Yelp will prioritize those results moving forward.

3. Ron Johnson’s e-commerce startup Enjoy raises $150M, expands in U.K.

Through partnerships with other companies, including AT&T, Sonos, Google and now EE, Enjoy creates an online mobile store where customers can shop for devices and receive same-day delivery. They can also opt to have an Enjoy expert deliver the item and help them get set up, free of charge.

Fairphone 3 running Android 9 out of the box

4. Can Fairphone 3 scale ethical consumer electronics?

Fairphone, the Dutch social enterprise that’s on a mission to rethink the waste and exploitation that underpins the business of consumer electronics, announced its third smartphone today.

5. Facebook is working with HackerOne on a bug bounty program for its Libra cryptocurrency

Facebook is moving ahead with its cryptocurrency project, even as government regulators have called for the company to suspend it while they assess its legality.

6. The BBC is developing a voice assistant, code named ‘Beeb’

Why is a publicly funded broadcaster ploughing money into developing a voice assistant? A BBC spokesperson said the intent is to “experiment with new programmes, features and experiences without someone else’s permission to build it in a certain way.”

7. How to use Amazon and advertising to build a D2C startup

In-depth tips from VMG Ignite, a consultancy that’s worked with dozens of direct-to-consumer startups trying to both find product-market fit and achieve scale through Amazon and online advertising. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Daily Crunch: Smartphone sales decline again

At this year’s CES event, Hulu announced plans to trial an updated version of its user interface that would do away with the confusing landing page called “Lineup.” At the time, the company said it was considering both a “Hulu Picks” option or an “Unwatched in My Stuff” screen as a replacement for “Lineup.” Today, Hulu’s new interface is rolling out across iOS and Android devices, the company says, and “Lineup” is gone.

The Hulu interface launched in 2017 was not always well-liked — something Hulu had acknowledged after a complaint became the most upvoted item on Hulu’s customer feedback forums a couple of years ago. Users felt the interface was too difficult to navigate and the layout was confusing, among other things.

Some of Hulu’s challenges were around the fact that it was trying to merge an on-demand library with a live TV service, while also finding room to promote its original content.

But some of its other design choices were just odd — like its decision to make a single piece of content the main focus for many of its screens, for example. Meanwhile, its landing page “Lineup” never really made sense, either. Its name hinted at some form of personalization, but instead, it was more often filled with suggestions of what Hulu was promoting, like “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

The updated iOS interface ditches “Lineup,” and replaces it with “Hulu Picks.”

This is more clearly a collection of things to watch that’s curated by Hulu staff, rather than algorithmically derived by user viewing behavior.

However, the other landing page Hulu had been considering, “Unwatched in My Stuff,” is still available just a few swipes over.

While Hulu still gives a single piece of content the focus on its main screens on the iPhone, it’s now easier to see there’s more content available if you swipe down, as the top of the next item’s card is peeking up from the bottom of the screen.

On the smartphone, this means you can see two items at a time. On iPad, you can see two rows totaling six cards on the app’s main screen when in landscape mode.

This same format applies not only to “Hulu Picks,” but also to neighboring screens like “Live Now,” “Unwatched in My Stuff,” “My Channels” and the genre-based sections like “Sports,” “News,” “TV,” “Movies,” “Kids,” “Hulu Originals” and others.

Only the “Keep Watching” screen retains the more traditional thumbnails.

This seems like a small change, but it goes a long way to increase the discoverability of Hulu content, as it reduces how many times you have to swipe to see more suggestions.

Other changes touted at CES, like adding expanded metadata next to content (genre, rating, year) or the ability to mark content as “unwatched,” haven’t made an appearance. (Plenty of items still lack a rating). The 14-day live TV guide mentioned at CES isn’t available on iOS, either.

Hulu didn’t publicly announce the launch of the iOS redesign, but did confirm it’s rolling out now, only to mobile devices. They said other devices will get the update “soon.”

Update: Hulu says the update is coming to Android as well now, but it’s only in A/B testing at present. The post has been updated since publication. 

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Hulu redesigns its mobile app for better discovery

Your iPhone is capable of some impressive feats of computational photography, and a new app created by developer Gabriel O’Flaherty-Chan shows one way all that power can be put to creative use. Emojivision lets you see the world as if it were made up entirely of emojis.

The free app (which induces an in-app purchase for $2.79 that unlocks more emoji packs) works by breaking down your iPhone’s camera sensor input to its color palette fundamentals, finding its nearest neighbor from a subset of emojis (organized thematically within the app) and then rebuilding the image with a filter that overlays the image, and that can run at 60fps, so you’d be hard-pressed to spot any lag between it and a real-time feed.

You can use the app to take selfies, interpret photos from your phone’s photo gallery or just mess around with resolution to see how finely detailed, or how abstractly and yet obviously emoji-based, you can get. This isn’t the app to go to if you’re looking for a hyper-realistic or clear visual interpretation of your face, but it is a fun thing to show your friends — and an impressive bit of software engineering, too.

O’Flaherty-Chan has created some noteworthy mobile software projects in the past — including when he managed to hack a fully playable version of Pokémon Yellow onto an Apple Watch. He’s currently working on building a gigantic real-time strategy game set within a procedurally generated universe – like a “No Man’s Sky” but with a focus on the RTS elements, which should make for a very compelling and evolving approach to gathering resources and expanding your empire.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Emojivision app turns your iPhone’s camera into a real-time emoji painting machine

PlaceIQ is announcing a strategic investment from Experian.

CEO Duncan McCall said the investment is part of a growth round that PlaceIQ raised after divesting itself of its advertising business (which is being taken over by Zeta Global). He declined to disclose the size of the round, or of the Experian investment.

“It’s a multi-year, strategic partnership, where we will work together to license data [to Experian], and they also proactively become an investor in the company,” McCall said, adding that this “coincided nicely with us divesting of our media business and raising a modest growth round.”

While Experian is best-known for credit reporting, this partnership involves its marketing services business. Under the deal, the Experian Marketing Services will incorporate PlaceIQ’s LandMark location data product into its broader suite of data and measurement tools.

“With the mindset that consumers need to be at the heart of every marketing strategy, brands and agencies need to find ways to reach them and deliver more relevant messages,” said Experian’s president of marketing services Kevin Dean in a statement.” We believe quality data and advanced technology underpin that entire approach, and our collaboration and investment with PlaceIQ reinforce our commitment to helping brands meet that expectation.”

Asked about the direction of PlaceIQ’s business going forward, McCall explained that the company started with a focus on selling location data, and now, it’s gone back to “being a data-only company again.”

“Of course, we would have preferred to have focused on just one business model all these years, but life’s not that simple,” he said.

In his telling, PlaceIQ had to expand into the ad sales business because the infrastructure didn’t exist at the time to incorporate that data into the ad-buying process. Now that the infrastructure is there, PlaceIQ can focus once more on selling location data, which can then be used for targeting on a broad range of ad-buying platforms.

According to Crunchbase, PlaceIQ previously raised a total of $52 million in funding.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Experian makes strategic investment in location data company PlaceIQ