In light of Facebook’s most recent and biggest scandal, Apple has often touted its more direct and human-curated system of screening apps that go into its app stores. While that does leave little room for malicious apps to get through, it does have one drawback. It subjects apps and developers to what may at times seem like whimsical standards. That’s … Continue reading
Even Airbnb can’t resist the urge to copy Snapchat, it seems. The home rental outfit is quietly beta testing a Stories feature in its iPhone app that (surprise!) lets you document your trips with photos and short videos. You can view the resulting…
Last year Andy Rubin’s smartphone company Essential launched their first smartphone, the Essential Phone. It was a game changer in the sense that it introduced the notch in full screen smartphone displays, something that we’ve seen other OEMs start to mimic in their designs as well.
However it seems that we might have possibly seen the last of the company and their mobile efforts. In a report from Bloomberg, they claim to have heard from their sources that Essential has cancelled its second smartphone which many expected to launch this year. In fact it was just last month that Essential was already talking about their second phone.
The report goes on to add that the company is also exploring the possibility of selling itself off, and has hired Credit Suisse Group AG to advise them on a potential sale. So far they have received interest from at least one suitor, although it is unclear as to who that might be. While Essential declined to comment on the company’s future, Rubin responded on Twitter with a post.
We always have multiple products in development at the same time and we embrace canceling some in favor of the ones we think will be bigger hits. We are putting all of our efforts towards our future, game-changing products, which include mobile and home products.
— Andy Rubin (@Arubin) May 24, 2018
It reads, “We always have multiple products in development at the same time and we embrace canceling some in favor of the ones we think will be bigger hits. We are putting all of our efforts towards our future, game-changing products, which include mobile and home products.” We suppose only time will tell as to what will become of the company, but in the meantime if the reports are true, would you miss them?
Essential Reportedly Cancels Its Second Phone, Might Sell Itself Off , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Smart speakers typically feature an always-on functionality which means that the speakers are always listening out for its trigger word, whether it be “Alexa”, “Hey Siri”, or “Hey Google”. Unsurprisingly there might be some users who are worried that these speakers could be recording their conversations, despite the fact that these companies claim that they don’t.
However those fears might have been proven true, according to a report from KIRO7 in which a family in Portland claims that their Amazon Echo device not only recorded their conversation, but also sent it to a random person on their contact list. The family had wired their entire home with Amazon Echo devices which they used to control various smart gadgets.
However one day they received a call from one of the husband’s employees who told them he received recordings of their conversation, which they managed to verify. The family then contacted Amazon in which one of Alexa’s engineers apologized repeatedly. Amazon also offered to “de-provision” Alexa’s communications feature which would allow the family to continue using the devices only for controlling their smart home gadgets, but the family refused and is seeking a refund, something that Amazon is apparently unwilling to do.
According to a statement made to Engadget, Amazon explained how this occurred. “Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like ‘Alexa.’ Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, ‘[contact name], right?’ Alexa then interpreted background conversation as ‘right’. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.”
This is actually not the first time Amazon’s Alexa has been accidentally activated. Last year during a news broadcast, several Alexa users reported that they were prompted to buy dollhouses from Amazon following comments made on TV. There was also the case from earlier this year where Alexa supposedly started to laugh at random when in reality it was accidentally triggered by certain phrases made to sound like commands.
Woman Claims Amazon Echo Recorded Her Conversation & Sent It To A Contact , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Several years ago when the iPhone 6 was first launched, many lauded Apple’s brand new design, although that quickly turned sour when it was discovered that the iPhone 6 had started to bend simply by being in the pockets of users. Apple had publicly maintained that this was not an engineering issue, but internal documents are now saying otherwise.
These internal documents, obtained by Motherboard, were part of a class-action lawsuit filed against Apple. However some of them were made public by US District Court Judge Lucy Koh in a recent opinion in the case, and based on the information that was made public, it appears that Apple was aware that the iPhone 6 was prone to bending.
The document reads that Apple’s internal testing discovered that the iPhone 6 was 3.3 times more likely to bend compared to its direct predecessor, the iPhone 5s. This was worse with the iPhone 6 Plus which was found to be 7.2 times more likely to bend, presumably due to it being larger.
It is also because that it is prone to bending that caused the “touch disease” where the phone’s touchscreen would suddenly stop working. However according to Koh, it was only in 2016 that Apple had quietly begun to reinforce part of the logic board that might have caused the problems.
Internal Documents Claim Apple Knew The iPhone 6 Was Prone To Bending , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
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