A new piece of malware, which is capable of infiltrating various specifications of Android-based devices, has seemingly hit a new low in terms of sheer malice. Once installed, the infected device is abruptly disabled, showing only a pop-up message that demands significant sums of money be parted with by the victim.
This year is being billed as pivotal in recent tech history for a variety of reasons. Some are touting it as the year of the smartwatch, while others have it down as the year of face-worn gadgetry thanks to the likes of Facebook-owned Oculus VR and Google Glass. But in the near future, it may also be remembered as the point at which smartphones became incredibly cheap, with chip maker ARM suggesting that in the next couple of months, an Android handset could break the sub-$20 mark.
One of major reasons why smartphone enthusiasts opt for Android over other mobile OSes like iOS and Windows Phone 8 is because of Android’s relatively open nature. It allows users to customize every facet of their phone while iOS doesn’t, even with powerful theming systems like DreamBoard and WinterBoard in place. Android enthusiasts are often heard installing “Custom ROMs” on their devices; these modified versions of Android OS are cooked up by passionate and dedicated developers in their free time and we’ve mentioned some of the most popular ones after the break.
The jury has finally reached a verdict in the round two of Apple vs Samsung trial and has found Samsung to have infringed on two out of five patents of Apple. As a result, Samsung has been ordered to pay Apple around 120 million dollars ($119,625,000 to be exact) in damages, a far cry from $2.2 billion which Apple asked for.
Last month, we reported on a piece of Android malware that turned Android devices into Bitcoin miners, and now, a security firm has highlighted a few more suspect apps over at the Google Play Store. Given the growing popularity of cryptocurrency, mobile devices were always going to be targeted in this way, but the frequency in which these attacks appear to be occurring will certainly be seen as cause for alarm.
The idea of having a projector built into a mobile phone has been around for a long time, although few have dared ventured into this arena. Remember the Pomegranate concept phone that made rounds of the internet sporting a projector unit? Or the rumored Mozilla device with the same capabilities? In reality, Samsung was one manufacturer back in 2012 that ventured with a smartphone carrying a projector with its Galaxy Beam Android smartphone, and while that showed that it can be done, it didn’t go much beyond that. Today, Samsung announced the successor to this unique device, in the form of Samsung Galaxy Beam 2 Android phone.
In a technology world dominated by behemoths like Apple, Samsung and HTC, it's always heart-warming when one of the smaller firms manages to get some attention. OnePlus is a prime example of a little guy doing potentially great things in the smartphone world, and its upcoming OnePlus One device has been getting quite a bit of attention amongst smartphone enthusiasts.
Android, or the associated open source project (AOSP), are technically derivatives of Linux, and hence, they natively work with any Linux-based system without requiring extra configurations. This holds true for any Linux variant, and even OS X, too, which shares a common base. However, for Windows – the most widely used PC operating system – things are little different. In Microsoft’s operating environment, everything is about drivers. Any hardware component that you have attached to your system, it will require proper drivers to be configured, whether it’s an internal piece of hardware or a peripheral. It’s not like this is something unique to Windows; it’s just that the latter requires more third-party drivers than its counterparts, and that’s where Android users share the same woes.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 is the electronics giant's latest and greatest smartphone, and has brought with it a myriad of exciting new features. As well as the fingerprint sensor, gold color configuration, heartbeat monitor and other such niceties, the device is also a great deal more rugged than its predecessor. Thanks to a more robust build quality that also renders the handset waterproof, the Galaxy S5 is a lot more rough-and-ready than its predecessor, although as you might imagine, it more than met its match when faced with the bullet of a .50 caliber sniper rifle.
It's an accepted fact that Apple changed the face of the smartphone industry with the introduction of the iPhone back in 2007, and even though it has only been seven years, it feels as though we've always been tapping home screen icons and gesturing our way through interfaces. Not only did the iPhone completely turn the market on its head, but Google's in-development Android interface - which didn't, at the time of the Apple smartphone's announcement, support touch input - also had to be completely re-thought.
