Browsing Tag: Mobile Smart Phones

Global investment firm KKR is betting on the pizza business — it just led a $43 million Series C investment in Slice.

Formerly known as MyPizza, Slice has created a mobile app and website where diners can order a custom pizza delivery from their local, independent pizzeria.

And for those pizzerias, CEO Ilir Sela said Slice helps to digitize their whole business by also creating a website, improving their SEO and even allowing them to benefit from the “economies of scale” of the larger network, through bulk orders of supplies like pizza boxes.

Sela contrasted his company’s approach with other popular food delivery apps that he characterized as aggregators. For one thing, Slice “anchors” your favorite pizzerias in the app, giving them the top spots and making it easy to place your regular order with just a few taps. And it will be adding more loyalty features soon.

“Our job is to make loyal customers even more loyal,” he said.

In addition, while there’s been services like Grubhub have faced criticism for their steep fees, Sela said Slice’s fee is capped at $2.25 per order, allowing pizzerias to get all the upside from large orders.

Of course, the environment for restaurants has changed dramatically in the last few months, thanks to COVID-19. But most pizzerias are already set up for takeout and delivery, and Sela said that more than 90% of the 12,000-plus pizzerias that work with Slice have stayed open.

He also pointed to the company’s Pizza vs Pandemic initiative, which raises funds for pizzerias to feed healthcare workers. The program has raised more than $470,000 and fed an estimated 140,000 workers.

“Local independent pizzerias have been feeding Americans across communities for decades and we are excited to put our resources behind Slice as they help to move these businesses online,” said KKR Principal Allan Jean-Baptiste in a statement. “Slice charges small business owners a fraction of the fees charged by food delivery apps and offers a suite of vertical specific solutions to solve the challenges faced by independent pizza makers.”

Slice had previously raised $30 million, according to Crunchbase. Sela said he’ll be using the new funding to bring on more pizzerias and continue building a “vertically integrated solution for the small businesses, in order to solve more and more of their challenges.”

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Slice, an online ordering and marketing platform for pizzerias, raises M

Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg is admitting that the short-form video service’s launch hasn’t gone the way he’d hoped — and he knows what to blame for its issues.

“I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Katzenberg said in an interview with The New York Times. “Everything. But we own it.”

Back in April, I actually asked Quibi executives about how they thought the worldwide pandemic and widespread social distancing measures might affect their launch. After all, an app designed to deliver videos under 10 minutes when you’re on-the-go seems less appealing when no one can leave their house (where you can just sit on your couch and watch Netflix).

“I’m looking to take small breaks more than ever before to stand up, walk around, go outside,” CTO Rob Post said at the time. “Our use cases are these in-between moments. Now more than ever, that use case is still present.”

Similarly, Katzenberg told The Times he’d hoped “there would still be many in-between moments while sheltering in place.” Instead, he argued that those moments are still happening, “but it’s not the same. It’s out of sync.”

How badly has the launch gone? Quibi says it has been downloaded around 3.5 million times, and that it currently has 1.3 million active users. That’s a significant audience, especially for a service that was only released a little over a month ago.

Still, Katzenberg admitted it’s “not close to what we wanted.” And the company is apparently adjusting its projections, which had called for the service to reach 7 million users and $250 million in subscriber revenue in its first year.

At least it sounds like Quibi is trying to learn and adapt. For one thing, the marketing has started to shift to promoting specific shows like a “Reno 911” reboot, rather than advertising the idea of Quibi itself. For another, the company said it will be adding TV viewing support for iOS users this week.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg blames coronavirus for the streaming app’s challenges

Smartphone shipments are reportedly beginning to see signs of life in China, after a sizable dip from the COVID-19 pandemic. New numbers from China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (a government-connected agency) point to a 17% rise in shipments for April, pointing to some recovery for the market.

The figure, from the China state-supported group, is virtually a mirror reflection of the 18% dip Canalys reported for Q1. COVID-19 was the primary culprit for those figures, through a combination of decreased spending among China’s phone-buying public and sizable supply chain constraints, as many Asian nations were on lockdown to slow the spread.

Both Huawei and Apple benefited from the rebound, though Reuters notes that the firm opted not to include an OS breakdown for the first time in a while, making it more difficult to parse market share.

Smartphone shipments have suffered across the board, along with countless other industries. A rebound for China’s market could be a bellwether for positive numbers for the industry moving forward — especially given the country’s close ties to the global supply chain. In spite of being the first country hit, China’s official figures for COVID-19 deaths have remained low, compared to countries in Europe and North America.

That’s likely due in part to some draconian measures used to stop the spread. Other countries (the U.S. in particular) may not be so likely to rebound from the pandemic, leading to a more protracted impact on the global market. 

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | China’s smartphone shipments are reportedly up for April, following COVID-19-fueled decline

It seems like only yesterday that we were all complaining about the boring uniformity of smartphone designs. In the last couple of years, companies have worked to offer some alternative through dual-screen devices, foldables and a slew of concept form factors — few of which have really gained much traction. 

Even so, the LG Wing (its codename for now) offers a strange new alternative to the push for more screen real estate. The likely concept device has surfaced through Korean Herald and ET News reports, showing a 6.8-inch screen that swivels up horizontally to reveal a square four-inch display below.

This is still in the concept/leak phase, though it’s not entirely without precedent from Camp LG. Notably, the manufacturer released a bunch of swiveling handsets over a decade ago, back in the days when phones still had buttons.

While the second screen would function as a keyboard some of the time, the versatility of the display offers interesting supplemental features, like editing or viewing supplemental content. The handset would also reportedly feature a processor in the Snapdragon 7 family and a triple camera setup.

Certainly it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility for LG to try something new. The company has performed its share of experiments in the past. Actually getting app developers to come along for the ride, on the other hand, is another issue entirely.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | The Wing is reportedly LG’s latest odd dual-screen smartphone concept

Spotify is expanding the capabilities of its parental controls on its Spotify Kids app, aimed at children ages 3 and up on a parent’s Spotify Premium Family plan. Before, parents could only select whether the child was directed to the experience for younger or older children. Now, they’ll be able to specifically block content from their child’s account when accessing the child’s listening history.

These features had been hinted at when Spotify Kids made its U.S. debut in March. At the time, Spotify said it heard from parents testing the app in other markets how they wanted to have even more control over the app’s included content. Though the company didn’t detail its plans then, it did say new features would involve allowing parents making more specific choices over what their child could stream.

Both new features are now included in the PIN-protected “Grown Ups” section, previously called the “Parental Settings.” Once there, a parent can select which child’s account they want to to update or view.

The Listening History option will allow them to view every track the child has streamed on the Spotify Kids app over the past three months. From here, a parent can also opt to select a track and block it by tapping the “block” icon next to the track in question.

These blocked tracks are then removed from the child’s account and can’t be streamed. However, parents can unblock the track further down the road if they choose, by accessing either the Listening History section or the Blocked Tracks section and tapping the red icon next to each track.

Spotify says these new features are the first step in many planned updates for its Kids application, which today includes more than 8,000 kid-appropriate songs, stories, audiobooks and sounds that are curated into 125+ playlists. Though the app is aimed at kids young and old, many children will age out of it around their tweens, despite its support for an “older kids” experience. That’s because kids have established some favorite artists and musical preferences by then, and the more limited catalog on Spotify Kids doesn’t deliver. Plus, the downside of hand-curation means newly emerging hits — like, say, those blowing up on TikTok — may not make an appearance on Spotify Kids until later.

While it makes sense that Spotify would focus more immediately on parental controls catering to parents of the younger children, in time being able to go the other direction — perhaps a whitelisting option or the import of pre-approved playlists — would be appreciated by parents of older kids.

The Spotify Kids app is now live across 14 global markets, including as of today, Japan and Germany.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Spotify Kids app rolls out blocking, listening history features for parents

POCO, a brand that spun out of Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi earlier this year, today launched the POCO F2 Pro smartphone as it continues its new journey as an independent firm.

The POCO F2 Pro, like its two-year-old sleeper hit predecessor Pocophone F1 smartphone, punches above its price class. It features an all-screen 6.67-inch full-HD+ AMOLED display (with 2400×1080 pixels), in-screen fingerprint scanner, support for 5G, quad-core rear camera setup and a pop-up front camera that quietly tucks away when not in use. It also features a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The smartphone comes in two variants: one with 6GB of RAM and 128GB internal storage that is priced at €499 (roughly $540), and the other that features 8GB of RAM and 256GB internal storage that costs €599 (roughly $650).

Both the variants run Android 10 and are going on sale globally starting Tuesday through Gearbest and Aliexpress e-commerce sites. POCO said it will soon begin selling the POCO F2 Pro on Amazon, Lazada and Shopee among other e-commerce sites, including its official website.

The dual-SIM card-supported smartphone, a popular feature in several Asian markets, is powered by Qualcomm’s flagship octa-core Snapdragon 865 processor, coupled with Adreno 650GPU. POCO F2 Pro also sports what the company claims to be the largest vapor chamber in any smartphone to support LiquidCool, a technology that keeps the device cool even when a user is playing high-end games such as Fortnite and PUBG.

On the camera front, the POCO F2 Pro features a 64MP Sony IMX686 sensor, which serves as the primary camera, with a 13MP ultra wide-angle lens, a 5MP macro and one 2MP depth sensor. The pop-up camera, which serves as the selfie sensor, is a 20MP lens. The rear camera setup is capable of recording videos in 8K resolution at 24fps, and 4K in 60fps.

The POCO F2 Pro, which comes in Neon Blue, Electric Purple, Cyber Grey, Phantom White, houses a 4,700mAh battery with support for fast charging, and ships with a 33W charger in the box.

POCO listed a number of additional features that other flagship Android smartphones offer, such as support for HDR10+, display brightness of 500 nits, Corning Gorilla Glass 5 that protects the screen and an IR blaster. But its display lacks support for 120Hz refresh rate — as seen on OnePlus 8T Pro that makes viewing experience extra smooth.

POCO F2 Pro is the second smartphone from the company since it spun out of Xiaomi earlier this year. The company’s first product, called Pocophone F1, launched in 2018 and was well received by the market.

At the time of the launch, Xiaomi executives said they had big plans for the POCO brand but never launched anything afterward. During the period the company also saw a big departure when Jai Mani, a senior product executive, left the firm. Earlier this year, the company launched the mid-range POCO X2 smartphone in India.

POCO executives today shared little plans on what the future holds for the firm, but assured that they are here to stay. “We’re back. It’s been awhile, but we are back,” said Angus Ng, a product marketing manager at POCO.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Xiaomi spinoff POCO’s F2 Pro undercuts Android rivals with low price and flagship features

Google today launched an update to its Duo video chat app (which you definitely shouldn’t confuse with Hangouts or Google Meet, Google’s other video, audio and text chat apps).

There are plenty of jokes to be made about Google’s plethora of chat options, but Duo is trying to be a bit different from Hangouts and Meet in that it’s mobile-first and putting the emphasis on personal conversations. In its early days, it was very much only about one-on-one conversations (hence its name), but that has obviously changed (hence why Google will surely change its name sooner or later). This update shows this emphasis with the addition of what the company calls a “family mode.”

Once you activate this mode, you can start doodling on the screen, activate a number of new effects and virtually dress up with new masks. These effects and masks are now also available for one-on-one calls.

For Mother’s Day, Google is rolling out a special new effect that is sufficiently disturbing to make sure your mother will never want to use Duo again and immediately make her want to switch to Google Meet instead.

Only last month, Duo increased the maximum number of chat participants to 12 on Android and iOS. In the next few weeks, it’s also bringing this feature to the browser, where it will work for anyone with a Google account.

Google also launched a new ad for Duo. It’s what happens when marketers work from home.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Google’s Duo video chat app gets a family mode with doodles and masks

If you’ve ever been stuck using a health provider’s clunky online patient portal or had to make multiple calls to transfer medical records, you know how difficult it is to access your health data.

In an era when control over personal data is more important than ever before, the healthcare industry has notably lagged behind — but that’s about to change. This past month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published two final rules around patient data access and interoperability that will require providers and payers to create APIs that can be used by third-party applications to let patients access their health data.

This means you will soon have consumer apps that will plug into your clinic’s health records and make them viewable to you on your smartphone.

Critics of the new rulings have voiced privacy concerns over patient health data leaving internal electronic health record (EHR) systems and being surfaced to the front lines of smartphone apps. Vendors such as Epic and many health providers have publicly opposed the HHS rulings, while others, such as Cerner, have been supportive.

While that debate has been heated, the new HHS rulings represent a final decision that follows initial rules proposed a year ago. It’s a multi-year win for advocates of greater data access and control by patients.

The scope of what this could lead to — more control over your health records, and apps on top of it — is immense. Apple has been making progress with its Health Records app for some time now, and other technology companies, including Microsoft and Amazon, have undertaken healthcare initiatives with both new apps and cloud services.

It’s not just big tech that is getting in on the action: startups are emerging as well, such as Commure and Particle Health, which help developers work with patient health data. The unlocking of patient health data could be as influential as the unlocking of banking data by Plaid, which powered the growth of multiple fintech startups, including Robinhood, Venmo and Betterment.

What’s clear is that the HHS rulings are here to stay. In fact, many of the provisions require providers and payers to provide partial data access within the next 6-12 months. With this new market opening up, though, it’s time for more health entrepreneurs to take a deeper look at what patient data may offer in terms of clinical and consumer innovation.

The incredible complexity of today’s patient data systems

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Health APIs usher in the patient revolution we have been waiting for

A UK parliamentary committee that focuses on human rights issues has called for primary legislation to be put in place to ensure that legal protections wrap around the national coronavirus contact tracing app.

The app, called NHS COVID-19, is being fast tracked for public use — with a test ongoing this week in the Isle of Wight. It’s set to use Bluetooth Low Energy signals to log social interactions between users to try to automate some contacts tracing based on an algorithmic assessment of users’ infection risk.

The NHSX has said the app could be ready for launch within a matter of weeks but the committee says key choices related to the system architecture create huge risks for people’s rights that demand the safeguard of primary legislation.

“Assurances from Ministers about privacy are not enough. The Government has given assurances about protection of privacy so they should have no objection to those assurances being enshrined in law,” said committee chair, Harriet Harman MP, in a statement.

“The contact tracing app involves unprecedented data gathering. There must be robust legal protection for individuals about what that data will be used for, who will have access to it and how it will be safeguarded from hacking.

“Parliament was able quickly to agree to give the Government sweeping powers. It is perfectly possible for parliament to do the same for legislation to protect privacy.”

The NHSX, a digital arm of the country’s National Health Service, is in the process of testing the app — which it’s said could be launched nationally within a few weeks.

The government has opted for a system design that will centralize large amounts of social graph data when users experiencing COVID-19 symptoms (or who have had a formal diagnosis) choose to upload their proximity logs.

Earlier this week we reported on one of the committee hearings — when it took testimony from NHSX CEO Matthew Gould and the UK’s information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, among other witnesses.

Warning now over a lack of parliamentary scrutiny — around what it describes as an unprecedented expansion of state surveillance — the committee report calls for primary legislation to ensure “necessary legal clarity and certainty as to how data gathered could be used, stored and disposed of”.

The committee also wants to see an independent body set up to carry out oversight monitoring and guard against ‘mission creep’ — a concern that’s also been raised by a number of UK privacy and security experts in an open letter late last month.

“A Digital Contact Tracing Human Rights Commissioner should be responsible for oversight and they should be able to deal with complaints from the Public and report to Parliament,” the committee suggests.

Prior to publishing its report, the committee wrote to health minister Matt Hancock, raising a full spectrum of concerns — receiving a letter in response.

In this letter, dated May 4, Hancock told it: “We do not consider that legislation is necessary in order to build and deliver the contact tracing app. It is consistent with the powers of, and duties imposed on, the Secretary of State at a time of national crisis in the interests of protecting public health.”

The committee’s view is Hancock’s ‘letter of assurance’ is not enough given the huge risks attached to the state tracking citizens’ social graph data.

“The current data protection framework is contained in a number of different documents and it is nearly impossible for the public to understand what it means for their data which may be collected by the digital contact tracing system. Government’s assurances around data protection and privacy standards will not carry any weight unless the Government is prepared to enshrine these assurances in legislation,” it writes in the report, calling for a bill that it says myst include include a number of “provisions and protections”.

Among the protections the committee is calling for are limits on who has access to data and for what purpose.

“Data held centrally may not be accessed or processed without specific statutory authorisation, for the purpose of combatting Covid-19 and provided adequate security protections are in place for any systems on which this data may be processed,” it urges.

It also wants legal protections against data reconstruction — by different pieces of data being combined “to reconstruct information about an individual”.

The report takes a very strong line — warning that no app should be released without “strong protections and guarantees” on “efficacy and proportionality”.

“Without clear efficacy and benefits of the app, the level of data being collected will be not be justifiable and it will therefore fall foul of data protection law and human rights protections,” says the committee.

The report also calls for regular reviews of the app — looking at efficacy; data safety; and “how privacy is being protected in the use of any such data”.

It also makes a blanket call for transparency, with the committee writing that the government and health authorities “must at all times be transparent about how the app, and data collected through it, is being used”.

A lack of transparency around the project was another of the concerns raised by the 177 academics who signed the open letter last month.

The government has committed to publishing data protection impact assessments for the app. But the ICO’s Denham still hadn’t had sight of this document as of this Monday.

Another call by the committee is for a time-limit to be attached to any data gathered by or generated via the app. “Any digital contact tracing (and data associated with it) must be permanently deleted when no longer required and in any event may not be kept beyond the duration of the public health emergency,” it writes.

We’ve reached out to the Department of Health and NHSX for comment on the human rights committee’s report.

There’s another element to this fast moving story: Yesterday the Financial Times reported that the NHSX has inked a new contract with an IT supplier which suggests it might be looking to change the app architecture — moving away from a centralized database to a decentralized system for contacts tracing. Although NHSX has not confirmed any such switch at this point.

Some other countries have reversed course in their choice of app architecture after running into technical challenges related to Bluetooth. The need to ensure public trust in the system was also cited by Germany for switching to a decentralized model.

The human rights committee report highlights a specific app efficacy issue of relevance to the UK, which it points out is also linked to these system architecture choices, noting that: “The Republic of Ireland has elected to use a decentralised app and if a centralised app is in use in Northern Ireland, there are risks that the two systems will not be interoperable which would be most unfortunate.”

Professor Lilian Edwards, a legal expert from Newcastle University, who has co-authored a draft bill proposing a set of safeguards for coronavirus apps (much of which was subsequently taken up by Australia for a legal instrument that wraps public health contact info during the coronavirus crisis) — and who also now sits as an independent advisor on an ethics committee that’s been set up for the NHSX app — welcomed the committee report.

Speaking in a personal capacity she told TechCrunch: “My team and I welcome this.”

But she flagged a couple of omissions in the report. “They have left out two of the recommendations from my bill — one of which, I totally expected; that there be no compulsion to carry a phone. Because they will just be assumed within our legal system but I don’t think it would have hurt to have said it. But ok.

“The second point — which is important — is the point about there not being compulsion to install the app or to display it. And there not being, therefore, discrimination against you if you don’t. Like not being allowed to go to your workplace is an obvious example. Or not being allowed to go to a football game when they reopen. And that’s the key point where the struggle is.”

The conflict, says Edwards, is on the one hand you could argue what’s the point of doing digital contact tracing at all if you can’t make sure people are able to receive notifications that they might be a contact. But — on the other — if you allow compulsion that then “leaves it open to be very discriminatory” — meaning people could abuse the requirement to target and exclude others from a workplace, for example.

“There are people who’ve got perfectly valid reasons to not want to have this on their phone,” Edwards added. “Particularly if it’s centralized rather than decentralized.”

She also noted that the first version of her draft coronavirus safeguards bill had allowed compulsion re: having the app on the phone but required it to be balanced by a proportionality analysis — meaning any such compulsion must be “proportionate to a legitimate aim”.

But after Australia opted for zero compulsion in its legal instrument she said she and her team decided to revise their bill to also strike out the provision entirely.

Edwards suggested the human rights committee may not have included this particular provision in their recommendations because parliamentary committees are only able to comment on evidence they receive during an inquiry. “So I don’t think it would have been in their remit to recommend on that,” she noted, adding: “It isn’t actually an indication that they’re not interested in these concepts; it’s just procedure I think.”

She also highlighted the issues of so-called ‘immunity passports’ — something the government has reportedly been in discussions with startups about building as part of its digital coronavirus response, but which the committee report also does not touch on.

However, without full clarity on the government’s evolving plans for its digital coronavirus response, and with, inevitably, a high degree of change and flux amid a public health emergency situation, it’s clearly difficult for committees to interrogate so many fast moving pieces.

“The select committees have actually done really, really well,” added Edwards. “But it just shows how the ground has shifted so much in a week.”

This report was updated with additional comment

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | UK’s NHS COVID-19 app lacks robust legal safeguards against data misuse, warns committee

The UK may be rethinking its decision to shun Apple and Google’s API for its national coronavirus contacts tracing app, according to the Financial Times, which reported yesterday that the government is paying an IT supplier to investigate whether it can integrate the tech giants’ approach after all.

As we’ve reported before coronavirus contacts tracing apps are a new technology which aims to repurpose smartphones’ Bluetooth signals and device proximity to try to estimate individuals’ infection risk.

The UK’s forthcoming NHS COVID-19 app has faced controversy because it’s being designed to use a centralized app architecture. This means developers are having to come up with workarounds for platform limitations on background access to Bluetooth as the Apple-Google cross-platform API only works with decentralized systems.

The choice of a centralized app architecture has also raised concerns about the impact of such an unprecedented state data grab on citizens’ privacy and human rights, and the risk of state ‘mission creep‘.

The UK also looks increasingly isolated in its choice in Europe after the German government opted to switch to a decentralized model, joining several other European countries that have said they will opt for a p2p approach, including Estonia, Ireland and Switzerland.

France remains the other major backer of a centralized system for its forthcoming coronavirus contacts tracing app n the region.

Apple and Google, meanwhile, are collaborating on a so-called “exposure notification” API for national coronavirus contacts tracing apps. The API is slated to launch this month and is designed to remove restrictions that could interfere with how contact events are logged. However it’s only available for apps that don’t hold users’ personal data on central servers and prohibits location tracking, with the pair emphasizing that their system is designed to put privacy at the core.

Yesterday the FT reported that NHSX, the digital transformation branch of UK’s National Health Service, has awarded a £3.8M contract to the London office of Zuhlke Engineering, a Switzerland-based IT development firm which was involved in developing the initial version of the NHS COVID-19 app.

The contract includes a requirement to “investigate the complexity, performance and feasibility of implementing native Apple and Google contact tracing APIs within the existing proximity mobile application and platform”, per the newspaper’s report.

The work is also described as a “two week timeboxed technical spike”, which the FT suggests means it’s still at a preliminary phase — thought it also notes the contract includes a deadline of mid-May.

The contracted work was due to begin yesterday, per the report.

We’ve reached out to Zuhlke for comment. Its website describes the company as “a strong solutions partner” that’s focused on projects related to digital product delivery; cloud migration; scaling digital platforms; and the Internet of Things.

We also put questions arising from the FT report to NHSX.

At the time of writing the unit had not responded but yesterday a spokesperson told the newspaper: “We’ve been working with Apple and Google throughout the app’s development and it’s quite right and normal to continue to refine the app.”

The specific technical issue that appears to be causing concern relates to a workaround the developers have devised to try to circumvent platform limitations on Bluetooth that’s intended to wake up phones when the app itself is not being actively used in order that the proximity handshakes can still be carried out (and contacts events properly logged).

Thing is, if any of the devices fail to wake up and emit their identifiers so other nearby devices can log their presence there will be gaps in the data. Which, in plainer language, means the app might miss some close encounters between users — and therefore fail to notify some people of potential infection risk.

Recent reports have suggested the NHSX workaround has a particular problem with iPhones not being able to wake up other iPhones. And while Google’s Android OS is the more dominant platform in the UK (running on circa ~60% of smartphones, per Kantar) there will still be plenty of instances of two or more iPhone users passing near each other. So if their apps fail to wake up they won’t exchange data and those encounters won’t be logged.

On this, the FT quotes one person familiar with the NHS testing process who told it the app was able to work in the background in most cases, except when two iPhones were locked and left unused for around 30 minutes, and without any Android devices coming within 60m of the devices. The source also told it that bringing an Android device running the app close to the iPhone would “wake up” its Bluetooth connection.

Clearly, the government having to tell everyone in the UK to use an Android smartphone not an iPhone wouldn’t be a particularly palatable political message.

One source with information about the NHSX testing process told us the unit has this week been asking IT suppliers for facilities or input on testing environments with “50-100 Bluetooth devices of mixed origin”, to help with challenges in testing the Bluetooth exchanges — which raises questions about how extensively this core functionality has been tested up to now. (Again, we’ve put questions to the NHSX about testing and will update this report with any response.)

Work on planning and developing the NHS COVID-19 app began March 7, according to evidence given to a UK parliamentary committee by the NHSX CEO’s, Matthew Gould, last month.

Gould has also previously suggested that the app could be “technically” ready to launch in as little as two or three weeks time from now. While a limited geographical trial of the app kicked off this week in the Isle of Wight. Prior to that, an alpha version of the app was tested at an RAF base involving staff carrying out simulations of people going shopping, per a BBC report last month.

Gould faced questions over the choice of centralized vs decentralized app architecture from the human rights committee earlier this week. He suggested then that the government is not “locked” to the choice — telling the committee: “We are constantly reassessing which approach is the right one — and if it becomes clear that the balance of advantage lies in a different approach then we will take that different approach. We’re not irredeemably wedded to one approach; if we need to shift then we will… It’s a very pragmatic decision about what approach is likely to get the results that we need to get.”

However it’s unclear how quickly such a major change to app architecture could be implemented, given centralized vs decentralized systems work in very different ways.

Additionally, such a big shift — more than two months into the NHSX’s project — seems, at such a late stage, as if it would be more closely characterized as a rebuild, rather than a little finessing (as suggested by the NHSX spokesperson’s remark to the FT vis-a-vis ‘refining’ the app).

In related news today, Reuters reports that Colombia has pulled its own coronavirus contacts tracing app after experiencing glitches and inaccuracies. The app had used alternative technology to power contacts logging via Bluetooth and wi-fi. A government official told the news agency it aims to rebuild the system and may now use the Apple-Google API.

Australia has also reported Bluetooth related problems with its national coronavirus app. And has also been reported to be moving towards adopting the Apple-Google API.

While, Singapore, the first country to launch a Bluetooth app for coronavirus contacts tracing, was also the first to run into technical hitches related to platform limits on background access — likely contributing to low download rates for the app (reportedly below 20%).

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | UK eyeing switch to Apple-Google API for coronavirus contacts tracing — report