phone

Energizer has made a smartphone that is not surprisingly all about the battery. Though to be fair, it's got six times the capacity of some leading models. The few people who've seen the phone say it's bordering on impossibly big, but that it does ... provoke debate about the way phones suck up electricity. The Android-based handset is called the Energizer Power Max P18K Pop. It has a battery capacity of 18,000 mAh. To put that into context, it's three times more than a Motorola phone that's specifically marketed around long battery life. It's also around six times more than many flagship Android ... (view more)

Security researchers have warned a notorious piece of malware has returned to Android. It's in disguise, posing as a legitimate and popular VPN application. Researchers at the security firm Bitdefender have dubbed the malware as "Triout," which was ... first spotted last August. It's a particularly nasty piece of malware as it carries out multiple hostile acts. (Source: bitdefender.com ) These include recording phone calls, reading incoming SMS messages, taking pictures and videos, and collecting location data such as GPS coordinates. Triout is designed to operate without being detected ... (view more)

An extremely creative form of malware on Android devices uses motion sensors to help stay undetected. It's designed to combat one of the key methods used by malware scanning tools. Trend Micro says it found the malware hidden in two Google Play ... Store apps named "BatterySaverMobi" and "Currency Converter," which claimed to provide functions as their names suggest. (Source: arstechnica.com ) Once installed, the apps downloaded malware in the background, then used a fake system update message to trick the user into giving permission to install it. The malware, named " ... (view more)

A judge says police can't force a suspect to unlock a phone with a fingerprint or other biometric measure, including a suspect's face . It's the latest step in the way privacy laws interact with technological changes. This ruling came from a federal ... judge in a court in California and involved a review of a search warrant request. The case involved two suspects allegedly using Facebook Messenger to trying to extort a victim by threatening to publish an embarrassing video. (Source: gizmodo.com ) The police wanted permission to not only search a location where they believed they would find the ... (view more)

Reports which suggest that Samsung has made it impossible to delete Facebook from its smartphones turn out to be slightly overblown. In fact, the app isn't actually on the handsets in the first place. Many media outlets have followed up on a report ... by Bloomberg that was sparked by Internet forum complaints. Bloomberg cited the case of a man who, like many others, was surprised to discover that it wasn't possible to delete the Facebook app on his Samsung Galaxy S8. The app had been there from the day he first used the phone. (Source: bloomberg.com ) The man noted that it was only possible to ... (view more)

A hygiene company says the average smartphone is "seven times dirtier" than a toilet seat. People using them in bathrooms could be the cause. The company says it swabbed 50 phones with a device that lights up spots on a surface housing live ... bacteria. On average it found 1,479 such spots on a phone, compared with 220 on a toilet seat. Not all phones are equally icky however. Phones with a wipe-clean plastic covers had slightly fewer bacteria spots than the average handset. The worst offender was a phone in a leather case that doubled as a wallet and had nearly 17 times as many bacteria spots ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Nathan J. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently received an email stating that hackers have hacked my phone. As proof of their hack, they gave me the last 2 digits of my phone number. They claim to have uploaded spying software on my ... phone and have supposedly 'caught me' visiting raunchy websites. To keep this quiet, they are demanding bitcoin payment of $800 USD. How can they hack my phone like this? Can they hack my PC too? Should I be worried? " My response: This is yet another version of the same scam that is currently going around the Internet. Related: How to Fix: Hackers ... (view more)

Windows 10's next major update will add a couple of features to make life easier for people with an Android phone. Using text messages and accessing photos on the PC will be possible without having to touch the phone. The services are both in a new ... built-in Windows 10 app called Your Phone. However, to use the new features, phone owners will also need to install "Microsoft Apps" from the Google Play Store on their handset. (Source: 9to5google.com ) Typing Possible On Full Size Keyboard The messaging tool covers SMS text messages. Users will be able to see the latest batch of messages received ... (view more)

Samsung phone owners say they were shocked to discover photos from their phone were being sent to random contacts. An update to SMS text messaging appears to have caused the bug. One user says the entire contents of his photo gallery was sent to his ... girlfriend's phone via text message. His own phone had no record of the messages being sent and the first he heard of it was when his girlfriend asked him what was happening. Other users report similar issues, with no obvious pattern as to who received the images other than being in their contacts list. Reports suggest the problem is with the ... (view more)

Apple has been fined US $6.6 million after remotely disabling iPhones that had been repaired independently. Regulators ruled it was wrong to claim the phone owners have violated their repair warranties. The ruling came in a court case brought by the ... Australian Competitor and Consumer Commission. It's similar to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) but with a more emphasis on protecting consumer rights. The case stemmed from a 2016 software update that disabled "unidentified" touch sensors, a part of the phone screen. With the sensor disabled, it became impossible to use the phone as it ... (view more)