Phone Hacks | Android | iOS | Latest News

Vivo Showcases the World’s First Smartphone with an In-Display Fingerprint Sensor We’ve been hearing about in-display fingerprint sensors for quite a while. Notably, Samsung was rumored to include an in-display sensor in the Galaxy S8 , but reportedly opted not to because the tech wasn’t ready. Vivo, though, has made real progress. In July 2017, the China-based company teamed up with Qualcomm to demo an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor — one of the first commercial examples of in-display fingerprint scanning. Then, in November, Synaptics announced its Clear ID in-display fingerprint sensors , and said a “top five” smartphone OEM would use it in 2018.  Some analysts predicted that the OEM was Vivo, and the company confirmed those suspicious at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show. “Today’s showcase of a ready-to-produce in-display fingerprint scanning smartphone featuring an optical fingerprint sensor is a big leap forward in bringi...

Samsung to Launch the Galaxy On7 Prime in India on Amazon in January Samsung used to dominate the Indian smartphone market, but the encroachment of the Chinese smartphone vendors in the country has changed things for the South Korea-based smartphone giant. Xiaomi, for instance, has experienced growth to the point where it’s now tied with Samsung for the top market spot, according to research firm IDC. Samsung, of course, is doing everything it can to protect its lead . In 2015, the company launched the affordable  Galaxy On smartphone series  in India in order to better compete with Chinese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and Samsung currently sells the Galaxy On5 Pro, the Galaxy On7 Pro, and the Galaxy On Max in India. Now, a report from  IANS  states that the company’s planning to launch a new device in the series, the Galaxy On7 Prime, in the country during the second week of January. The Galaxy On7 Prime will be an Amazon India exclusive , and will come with 3...

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ Oreo Beta Might End on January 15 The Android Oreo and Samsung Experience 9.0 beta for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, which kicked off in November 2017 , might finally be drawing to a close. On the Galaxy S8 subreddit Thursday, redditor  shivamchinu  posted a screenshot of an updated onboarding message in the Samsung Experience app’s  Notices  section. It contains new language that points to January 15, 2018 as the program’s end date. Source: Reddit We’ve yet to see a corroborating source, though. And even if the notice is  accurate, it isn’t clear whether it’s referring to the end of the beta program altogether, or the rollout date for new beta software (one of the newest releases,  beta 4 , hit devices on December 14). In any case, the beta’s progressing at a steady clip. Beta 4 of the Galaxy S8 and S8+’s Oreo update included a fix for flakey Bluetooth connections, excessive battery consumption, non-responsive ir...

Report: Google and Amazon Likely Lost Money on Smart Speaker Sales Over the Holidays There seems to be an ebb and flow when it comes to consumer tech, and nowhere is it more apparent than the smart speaker market, where Amazon and Google are competing for dominance. The competition’s fierce enough that neither’s afraid to forgo profits — according to a Reuters report, in fact, Google ended up losing money on the Google Home Mini and Amazon the Amazon Echo Dot  over the holidays. Both Amazon and Google took advantage of the holiday season to bolster sales. The Amazon Echo Dot and Google Home Mini were discounted to as little as $29 (from $50 and $35, respectively), which put them in “impulse buy” territory. But neither turned a profit — analysts estimate that the companies broke even or took small losses on sales. Analysts at ABI Research estimate that the Amazon Echo Dot’s bill of materials is about $31, and that the Google Home Mini’s p...

MTPwn Can Access Samsung Devices’ Storage Without Unlocking Them When it comes to Android phone security, one of the best-known platforms is Samsung’s Knox , a suite for Samsung phones aimed at enterprise. It’s considered one of the best on the market , but it isn’t impregnable, as a recently uncovered exploit showed. The exploit (SVE-2017-10086), which was fixed in the October 2017 security patch or  November 2017 security patch (depending on the device model) , leveraged a vulnerability in Samsung’s implementation of Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) that could allow an attacker to view all of a device’s files. It’s been nicknamed “MTPwn”, and it affects all Samsung devices running Android 4.4.x to Android 7.x. MTPwn allows a hacker to bypass the lock state of unpatched devices even if they’re in “charging” mode, and enable MTP access from a computer. How’s that possible? Affected devices run an MTP server when...

Report: AT&T to Begin Selling the Huawei Mate 10 in February The Mate is Huawei’s high-end flagship, and it’s the smartphone series on which the company focuses most of its attention. The China-based smartphone maker  launched multiple devices in the Mate 10 lineup earlier this year, and there’s been talk of  Huawei bringing the Mate 10 to U.S. carriers . Now, a new report claims that it’ll begin selling the Mate 10 in AT&T stores in 2018. Earlier this year, Huawei claimed that the Mate 10 would be able to beat out anything that Apple had to offer. But there was a problem: The company couldn’t get its devices on domestic carriers’ shelves. This month, though, Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s Technologies Consumer Business Group, confirmed that the Mate 10 would come to U.S. carriers in 2018. And just this week,  The Information reports that the Mate 10 will come to AT&T as early as February. That’s mostly a good thing. The Mate...

Install any Official or Unreleased OTA on Snapdragon Samsung Galaxy S8, S8+, or Galaxy Note 8 When it comes to over-the-air updates, Samsung tends to roll them out to its devices gradually instead of all at once — and that applies to different variants of the company’s phones and tablets. Take the  Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 , for example — there’s a U.S. and China model that packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, and an international model with an Exynos 8895 processor. In the U.S., Samsung sells unlocked models of the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ , and the Galaxy Note 8, but U.S. carriers also sell their own variants and approve every software update. All this adds to the confusion, and until recently, it was almost impossible for Samsung device owners users to manually install new and unreleased firmware. Thankfully, Redditor  thesbros  created a website that matches Snapdragon Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, and Galaxy Note 8 models with the corresponding Samsung fir...

Install any Official or Unreleased OTA on Snapdragon Samsung Galaxy S8, S8+, or Galaxy Note 8 When it comes to over-the-air updates, Samsung tends to roll them out to its devices gradually instead of all at once — and that applies to different variants of the company’s phones and tablets. Take the  Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 , for example — there’s a U.S. and China model that packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, and an international model with an Exynos 8895 processor. In the U.S., Samsung sells unlocked models of the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ , and the Galaxy Note 8, but U.S. carriers also sell their own variants and approve every software update. All this adds to the confusion, and until recently, it was almost impossible for Samsung device owners users to manually install new and unreleased firmware. Thankfully, Redditor  thesbros  created a website that matches Snapdragon Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, and Galaxy Note 8 models with the corresponding Samsung fir...