Everyone wants to kill the app. There’s a wave of companies building so-called app-less phones and gadgets, leveraging artificial intelligence advancements to create smarter virtual assistants that can handle all kinds of tasks through one portal, bypassing the need for specific apps for a particular function. We might be witnessing the early stages of the first major smartphone evolution since the introduction of the iPhone—or an AI-hype-fueled gimmick.

There’s the Humane Ai Pin, a wearable that can identify objects, take photos, and project information into the palm of your hand. It’s powered by a digital assistant that uses multiple large language models, such as ChatGPT, and it’s designed to reduce reliance on the smartphone.

At CES last month, Rabbit debuted the R1, a tiny gadget that can perform tasks you’d typically use a smartphone for, like ordering an Uber or booking a flight. Instead of hunting for an app and tapping on the screen multiple times, you can hold the push-to-talk button and command the R1 with your voice.

Now, at MWC 2024 (Mobile World Congress), Deutsche Telekom—T-Mobile’s parent company—unveiled a concept Android phone that can generate an interface as you speak to it, powered by large language and action models from Brain Technologies.

I also spoke with a new Lithuanian company called A Phone, A Friend, which is starting software development on a smartphone with a conversational digital assistant interface at its core to handle all your needs. These two companies don’t think traditional apps are going anywhere anytime soon, but they do believe the way we use apps needs an upheaval.

Speak Up

I watched as Jerry Yue, the founder of Brain Technologies, spoke into Deutsche Telekom’s concept phone—it began registering his words and generating an interface based specifically on his query. He asked the phone to find a flight for two on March 14 from San Francisco to New York, and the resulting interface offered multiple flights to choose from—not unlike what you’d find searching Google Flights. Yue was able to choose one, vet all the vital details, and close the transaction via Google Pay.

In another example, Yue asks the phone to find a gift for his grandma who cannot get out of bed. It generated an interface with several products within carousels, and each row had a brief explanation of why the product might be a good fit. He settled on the Kindle.

Yue then did a long-press on the product card to ask another query: "What is the screen made of?" The phone generated the answer as a paragraph of text below (notably with no sources), and when he then asked to watch unboxing videos, it added a row of YouTube videos on the topic.

This wizardry is reminiscent of Siri cofounder Dag Kittlaus' onstage demo of Viv way back in 2016, which was designed to be a conversational smart layer that let users interact with various services. His live demo also included asking by voice the digital assistant to book him a hotel room in Palm Springs. Clearly mighty impressed, Samsung snapped up Viv later that same year, and we've not really seen anything of it since.

You can get a pretty good glimpse of how Brain Technologies' tech works with its app, Natural AI, which it released in 2020. Yue says his company pioneered the large action models that can enable a digital AI assistant to execute tasks. Since the company had an early start, its AI can purportedly generate interfaces for more than 4 million functions it has trained since 2016. That should cover almost anything you can do on a computing device. “Instead of going to apps, apps come to you,” he says.

But Yue doesn’t think we’re moving away from apps just yet. That’s why this concept device is still an Android phone. If you don’t want to converse with the AI, you can access apps just like normal. The touchscreen isn’t going away either, and he believes this concept is the right combination of AI and a graphical interface.

Brain Technologies has apparently already received tremendous interest from other manufacturers, and Yue says it's the only AI company the Emerson Collective (Laurene Powell Jobs' venture capital firm) has invested in. It seems almost inevitable that we'll see its generated interfaces in more kinds of devices in the future.

“Everything is app-centric,” Yue says. “We’re trying to build a human-centric future. We’re trying to give people more power in this relationship. At the end of the day, whatever the next best interface is, wins.”

Sierra, a startup developing AI-powered agents to “elevate the customer experience” for big companies including WeightWatchers, Sonos, and SiriusXM, is of a similar view, stating that, in the future, a company’s AI version of itself will be just as, if not more, important as its app or website. “It's going to completely change the way companies exist digitally,” says Bret Taylor, who left his job as co-CEO of Salesforce to start Sierra.

Human After All

The founders of A Phone, A Friend—Tomas Ramanauskas and Tomas Dirvonskas—echoed the same sentiments on making phones more personal with the help of AI. “We think that AI gives an opportunity to humanize this relationship to actually make it more human instead of just this cold, transactional, attention economy kind of thing,” Ramanauskas says.

The duo’s vision is to make the smartphone your friend with the help of AI, though it sounds more like a personal assistant to me. The AI can remember what content you consume, so it can remind you where you left off on a podcast from a month ago. It can nudge you on things you’ve forgotten, like responding to a friend; it can learn your writing style and then write for you; it can tell you what your friends have posted online so that you’re not stuck doomscrolling before bed; it can even rewrite news headlines to make them less clickbaity. Most of these features will be powered by various large language models, like GPT-4.

But all of this is hypothetical—they founded the company just this month and are starting development with a team of eight. There’s a concept design of a phone, but the plan is to first start with an app called A Radio, A Friend. It’ll act like a personal news tuner that lets you customize your news sources and the type of voice that delivers it. It can even suggest certain kinds of stories based on your mood.

A Phone, A Friend will be based on Android, like Deutsche Telekom’s concept, and it will have an “App Mode” that lets you directly access all your favorite apps—so you can still choose to browse Instagram if you want. “The smartphone—there's a lot of reasons why it's the central part of everything and it's almost impossible to replace. It doesn't seem in the near future that we will do away with smartphones,” Ramanauskas says.

Chat Time

The big players have already started transitioning into conversational AI. Google, for example, is swapping Google Assistant with the more powerful Gemini on Android. I sat down with Won-Joon Choi, head of the Research and Development Office at Samsung Mobile, who says Samsung is in the process of revamping Bixby.

Clearly not able to capitalize on the acquisition of Viv eight years ago, Samsung now plans to inject its stagnant, unloved assistant with generative AI and large language models. Choi claims that, as a result, users of this new pimped Bixby will be able to have more natural conversations with the assistant that should deliver more intelligent and helpful responses, and it’ll be able to complete tasks.

Whether this introduces any changes to the interface of its phones on the software or hardware—like how Samsung introduced the Bixby button when it first unveiled the assistant in 2017—is unclear. Choi says the technology is still in its primitive stage.

“There are a lot of new ideas right now with huge potential,” he says. “Whether the applications will be solely executed by the touch interface, or be in the form of an assistant that enables the conversation with people to execute the task—I think it’s too early for us to predict what the future will be, and what will be a dominating approach.”

None of these app-free devices have launched yet, but the Rabbit R1 is set to arrive in March, and the Humane Ai Pin in April—so we won’t have to wait long to see whether they truly spell the end for apps as we know them.

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The company said that Brave Leo for Android is going to be made available for all users on Brave 1.63 over the next few days. If you don’t see Leo yet, that’ll be because it’s being rolled out in phases over the next few days. To see if you have it, just open the address bar and look for the “Ask Leo” option once you’ve started typing.

To have Leo interact with web pages, just press the three-dot menu and then tap Leo to begin. You can learn more about Brave Leo from its product page.

Brave Leo lets you pick from three LLMs: Mixtral 8x7B, Claude Instant, and Llama 2 13B. For users on the free core tier, there will be rate limits that vary based on the model you choose (Llama has the highest rate limit). If you decide you need higher rate limits, there’s an option to subscribe to Leo Premium for $14.99 per month; this can be used on five devices.

One of the biggest issues with AI is privacy; many of them, like ChatGPT, store your inputs, unless otherwise instructed, for them to be trained on. Brave, as a privacy browser, is taking a different approach with Leo:

• Reverse proxy: All requests are proxied through an anonymization server so the request and user cannot be linked. Brave cannot associate the user request with their IP address.
• Responses discarded: Conversations are not persisted on Brave’s servers. Responses from Leo are discarded after they’re generated, and not used for model training. We do not collect identifiers that can be linked to you (such as IP address), and no personal data is retained by Brave-hosted AI models. If you select a model from Anthropic and submit Leo queries, that data will be processed by Anthropic for a period of 30 days, then deleted.
• No login or account required for access for the free version: Users do not need to create a Brave account to use Leo (they access their Premium account if they wish to use Leo across multiple devices however).
• Unlinkable subscription: If you sign up for Leo Premium, you’re issued unlinkable tokens that validate your subscription when using Leo. This means that Brave can never connect your purchase details with your usage of the product, an extra step that ensures your activity is private to you and only you. The email you use to create your account is unlinkable to your day-to-day use of Leo, making this a uniquely private credentialing experience.

Brave Leo is now available on all platforms except iOS. Users of Brave on iPhone needn’t worry, however, because the team is hard at work and says that Brave Leo for iOS will be ready in the coming weeks.

Source: Brave

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Beta testers can now set Microsoft Copilot as their default assistant app on Android.

(Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

What you need to know

• Some users can now set Microsoft Copilot as their default assistant app on Android.
• To set Copilot as your default assistant app, you have to have a beta version of Copilot installed.
• At the moment, Copilot is quite limited, as it can't perform tasks like taking a screenshot on your phone or integrating with the system in a meaningful way.

Microsoft Copilot will soon be able to be your default assistant app on Android. In fact, if you're running Microsoft Copilot beta, which doesn't seem to be listed in the Google Play Store, you can already set it as your default assistant app. The change was spotted by Mishaal Rahman on X (formerly Twitter).

As the functionality is in beta testing, it's limited at the moment.

"You can now set the Microsoft Copilot app as your default assistant app on Android! However, it seems Copilot isn't taking full advantage of this, as invoking it just launches the main activity. It doesn't even automatically listen for input yet, nor does it use the APIs that would let it grab a screenshot of the current on-screen content," explained Rahman. "I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is working on these aspects, though."

In its present state, setting Copilot as your default assistant app essentially creates a shortcut to Copilot. The app doesn't start listening for a voice command by default. Copilot also lacks integration with Android, so it can't perform tasks such as taking a screenshot.

In its current state, Copilot cannot replace Google Assistant/Gemini, Alexa, or even Bixby Voice, at least in everyday use. Microsoft hasn't announced the functionality yet, so there's a good chance that it's in its early stages.

Microsoft Copilot vs Google Gemini

The death of Cortana as a digital assistant can still be felt through the limits of Microsoft Copilot.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

It's a shame that Cortana never worked out for Microsoft. If things had lined up differently, we may have seen Copilot gain access to smart devices and commands like Gemini has with Google Assistant (though that setup isn't perfect). While Copilot has a place on a computer, I think an assistant on your smartphone needs to be able to do more day-to-day tasks. I can't speak for anyone else, but I use my digital assistant to control my smart lights or start music while using Android Auto. I think Microsoft Copilot will be rather limited if it can never gain access to those types of features.

It will be interesting to see what Microsoft does with Copilot on Android. The tech giant is certainly capable of adding functionality expected from a digital assistant, but that isn't the current focus of Copilot.

Microsoft is eager to get Copilot into the hands of users. You can now summon Copilot with the push of a button on Windows 11. When Copilot first launched on Windows the tool could only perform a few system tasks. Microsoft has since expanded that list. In a recent Insider build of Windows 11, Microsoft added a wave of capabilities through integration with Power Automate Desktop.

One potential solution would be Microsoft Copilot working with another assistant. That's not an entirely foreign concept, since Cortana could work with Alexa at one point. But again, would that be viewed as a step forward by Microsoft?

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As reported by Android enthusiast Mishaal Rahman on its X (formerly Twitter) account (via Android Police) the Copilot Android beta app, with its new 27.9.420225014 version, is now available as one of several options users can pick for their Android default digital assistant app.

However, this new functionality has its limits, at least for now. The beta Copilot Android app cannot access the APIs that would be needed for it to take a screenshot of an Android smartphone or tablet display. It also doesn't listen automatically to audio commands yet either.

If you own an Android phone or tablet, and you can access the beta Copilot app from the Play Store, you can switch it over to be the default digital assistant by first going to the Settings menu on your phone. Then you can tap on the Apps selection, followed by the Default apps option, and then finally on the Digital assistant app menu selection.

So far, Microsoft has yet to post a public confirmation of this new feature in the Copilot Android beta app. It's possible the company is waiting until the feature is ready to be put in the non-beta version of the Copilot app before officially announcing that it has been added.

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What you need to know

• Microsoft recently replaced the Bing icon on its SwiftKey keyboard with the new Copilot icon.
• The change has already shipped for Android users, though iOS users will have to wait a while longer.
• The update ships with a Compose option that lets users generate text using the chatbot.
• You can find Image Creator from Designer in the emoji section, which can be used to generate fun emojis and more.

For a hot minute, the future of Microsoft SwiftKey seemed highly uncertain. This is especially after Microsoft announced its plans to get rid of the app on iOS by delisting it from Apple's App Store in 2022. However, Microsoft decided to withdraw from these plans shortly after and continues supporting SwiftKey on iOS. 

The tech giant has regularly pushed new updates and features to the app for Android and iOS users, including AI-baked capabilities. Did you know you can search the web and chat with Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) directly from the third-party keyboard? You can even use the AI assistant to text your girlfriend, too, as one of my colleagues (jokingly) shared. 

For a while, we've known that Microsoft is subtly branching away from the Bing brand. The company has rebranded most (if not all) of its products and services with the Bing name, including Bing Chat and Bing Image Creator. As such, it was only a matter of time before this change rolled out to Microsoft SwiftKey.

As some of you might have already noticed, Microsoft has replaced the Bing icon on SwiftKey with the new Copilot icon. This is especially true for Android users since the change started rolling out a few weeks ago. The update is expected to ship to iOS users soon. 

A consistent user experience across all platforms

(Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

If you've been dabbling with Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) for some time now, you should expect a similar experience on Microsoft SwiftKey. The new Copilot icon is lodged at the top-right corner of the virtual keyboard. As usual, tapping on the icon launches the service where you can make queries about a specific topic and get responses quickly. 

Additionally, it also ships with a Compose option. And yes, it's exactly as it sounds. It lets you leverage Copilot's capabilities to write messages. It's worth noting that you'll need to describe the kind of text you'd like the tool to generate. You'll also need to select the length, tone, and format it should follow. The update also ships with OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo for "more accurate responses."

As spotted by Windows Latest, Image Creator from Designer (formerly Bimg Image Creator) has been moved to the emoji section of the keyboard. You can use it to generate emojis and more.

It's unclear when the change will ship to iOS users, though it shouldn't be long (it's not available for me yet, even though I'm using the latest version of SwiftKey from the App Store). Microsoft SwiftKey already ships with Microsoft Editor, which can auto-correct up to 500 words at once and change the tone of your text. 

The Compose feature sounds like an awful load of work for someone looking to send a simple text. But I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Luckily, you can remove or hide the icon from your keyboard if you don't find it useful.  

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You're welcome.

Millions of AT&T customers across the US were unable to make or receive calls, send texts, or access the internet for much of Thursday because of a major outage that started Thursday morning, and we finally know why.

Thursday evening, AT&T said, "Based on our initial review, we believe that today's outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack."   

According to tracking site Downdetector, outages were first reported around 3:30 a.m. ET. Customers attempting to place a call were greeted with an error message saying "Cellular network not available." 

AT&T is the largest telecommunications company in the United States, accounting for a 47% market share of wireless subscriptions, or 241.5 million customers. 

While millions of customers couldn't text, call, or access 5G internet, some AT&T customers reported having text access.

After service was restored in the early afternoon, AT&T said: "We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future."

Enabling Wi-Fi calling reportedly fixed the problem for some, but many users (including myself) were greeted with a spinning wheel and an eventual error message when they tried to turn on this feature, leaving them disconnected still. 

The biggest concern was of course 911 emergency services. If you have text access, 10 states -- Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and South Dakota -- do allow citizens to text 911 in an emergency. 

Some Verizon and T-Mobile customers also reported issues, but those companies said their networks were fine, and these issues were most likely tied to customers attempting to reach someone on the AT&T network.

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Earlier this evening, AT&T posted another update with a very general, and also very vague, explanation of today's events:

Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack. We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve.

AT&T has not offered any more details on what happened to its wireless network. Many people speculated online that the cause of today's outage was indeed some kind of sophisticated hacker attack, but the company's statement tonight seems to push that theory aside.

However, that is not stopping the US government from looking into today's incident. Reuters reports that White House national security spokesperson John Kirby stated that both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were looking into AT&T's cellular outage. Kirby echoed AT&T's comment that this does not appear to be a cyber-attack.

In addition, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) posted on its X (formerly Twitter) account that its own Public Safety division was investigating the disruption. Hopefully, we will get a much more detailed explanation from AT&T about what happened and perhaps how the company will keep it from happening again.

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In a blog post, Google stated that most of the most popular features in its Pay app, such as setting up and managing a user's payment services and tapping to pay in retail stores that support this function, will still be available via the Google Wallet app. The company indicated that this particular app is used five times more than the Pay app in the US, so it looks like Google is making these changes to eliminate one app that just is not used much anymore.

If you still use the Google Pay app to manage your payment services, you will have until June 4 to transfer the balance of your funds to your designated bank account. The Google Play website will continue to work after June 4.

However, if you still use the Google Pay app to send, receive, or request money from others, the support shutdown of the app on June 4 will eliminate those features. Also, any offers or deals that were previously shown in the app are now available via Google's new deals section in Search.

The company claims that it will still make improvements in using Google Pay on the web for autofill features with its Chrome browser. In addition, it will expand the kinds of passes that can be stored in Google Wallet, including public transit passes.

Finally, this move to shut down the app is just for US users of Google Pay. Google still supports its Pay app in India and Singapore. Google says the Pay app will keep working in those markets and that it will "continue to build for the unique needs in those countries."

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It started around 3:30 in the morning on the East Coast, reports flooding in about an AT&T service outage. Customers complained across Reddit and X and logged their issues on Downdetector, a site that, well, detects when services go down.

The impact appears to be widespread; AT&T users from New York to Atlanta to Dallas claimed no signal, phones stuck in SOS mode. Multiple police departments, including in San Francisco, reported that some users were unable to contact 911 as a result of the outages. By 9 am ET, Downdetector was showing more than 72,000 AT&T outages across the US; the site’s baseline for AT&T service issues is 42.

“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning,” AT&T spokesperson Jim Greer said in a statement. “We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”

It’s not just AT&T’s customers, though. Every cell carrier on Downdetector showed spikes Thursday morning, including behemoths Verizon and T-Mobile. But both companies confirmed that there’s nothing wrong with their networks; the complaints are instead collateral damage, people trying to reach their AT&T contacts and not getting through.

“We did not experience an outage,” a T-Mobile spokesperson told WIRED over email. “Our network is operating normally. Downdetector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks.”

Similarly, a Verizon spokesperson said over email that “Verizon’s network is operating normally. Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier.”

The news isn’t all bad. AT&T confirmed that FirstNet, the first responder network that AT&T built out, is operating normally. And while it’s an imperfect substitute—or totally unusable, depending on where you are—Wi-Fi calling should suffice as a workaround for now. (To turn on Wi-Fi calling, go to your smartphone’s Settings, then Network & internet, then switch the Wi-Fi Calling toggle to on. Exact wording might vary depending on your phone model and operating system.)

Cell network outages happen with some frequency, and can stem from any number of causes. “Three things come to mind with major network outages,” says Erik Keith, senior research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence, “cyber attacks, fiber cuts at critical points in the network, and software or system upgrades that don’t go as planned or have unforeseen issues.”

In this case, the latter explanation seems the most likely, says Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, a network monitoring company. “It's quite unusual,” Madory says, noting that even within the same household some AT&T devices are affected while others aren't. “I'm guessing that they did some sort of intenral software push and it didn't agree with some subset of these devices, and they're having trouble reverting it."

While interruptions of this scale are rare, they do happen globally once or twice a year. Last month, Spanish carrier Orange España lost half of its network for hours due to a cyberattack. T-Mobile had a massive service interruption of this scale a year ago that it ultimately attributed to a “third-party fiber interruption issue.” That issue appeared more self-contained, though, than the ripple effects seemingly caused by AT&T’s problems.

As for when the AT&T outage might be resolved, it’s hard to say without knowing the underlying issue. By 11 am ET, DownDetector incidents had begun to taper off, although over 60,000 people were still reporting issues. Shortly thereafter, AT&T updated that it had made significant progress with the issue. “Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored,” Greer said in an emailed comment at 11:14 am ET. “We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers.”

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Apple is removing the ability to install home screen web apps from iPhones and iPads in Europe when iOS 17.4 comes out, saying it's too hard to keep offering the feature under the European Union's new Digital Markets Act (DMA). Apple is required to comply with the law by March 6.

Apple said the change is necessitated by a requirement to let developers "use alternative browser engines—other than WebKit—for dedicated browser apps and apps providing in-app browsing experiences in the EU." Apple explained its stance in a developer Q&A under the heading, "Why don't users in the EU have access to Home Screen web apps?" It says:

Addressing the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines would require building an entirely new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS and was not practical to undertake given the other demands of the DMA and the very low user adoption of Home Screen web apps. And so, to comply with the DMA's requirements, we had to remove the Home Screen web apps feature in the EU.

It will still be possible to add website bookmarks to iPhone and iPad home screens, but those bookmarks would take the user to the web browser instead of a separate web app. The change was recently rolled out to beta versions of iOS 17.4.

The Digital Markets Act targets "gatekeepers" of certain technologies such as operating systems, browsers, and search engines. It requires gatekeepers to let third parties interoperate with the gatekeepers' own services, and prohibits them from favoring their own services at the expense of competitors. As 9to5Mac notes, allowing home screen web apps with Safari but not third-party browser engines might cause Apple to violate the rules.

Apple warns of “malicious web apps”

As Apple explains, iOS "has traditionally provided support for Home Screen web apps by building directly on WebKit and its security architecture. That integration means Home Screen web apps are managed to align with the security and privacy model for native apps on iOS, including isolation of storage and enforcement of system prompts to access privacy impacting capabilities on a per-site basis."

Apple said it won't be able to guarantee this isolation once alternative browser engines are supported. "Without this type of isolation and enforcement, malicious web apps could read data from other web apps and recapture their permissions to gain access to a user's camera, microphone or location without a user's consent. Browsers also could install web apps on the system without a user's awareness and consent," Apple's FAQ said.

Despite the change, Apple said that "EU users will be able to continue accessing websites directly from their Home Screen through a bookmark with minimal impact to their functionality."

Apple previously announced that its DMA compliance will bring sideloading to Europe, allowing developers to offer iOS apps from stores other than Apple's official App Store.

Browser choice, security requirements

One browser-related change will be immediately obvious to EU users once they install the new iOS version. "When users in the EU first open Safari on iOS 17.4, they'll be prompted to choose their default browser and presented with a list of the main web browsers available in their market to select as their default browser," Apple's developer FAQ said.

Apple said it had to prepare carefully for the requirement to let developers use alternative browser engines because browser engines "are constantly exposed to untrusted and potentially malicious content and have visibility into sensitive user data," making them "one of the most common attack vectors for malicious actors."

Apple said it is requiring developers who use alternative browser engines to meet certain security standards:

To help keep users safe online, Apple will only authorize developers to implement alternative browser engines after meeting specific criteria and committing to a number of ongoing privacy and security requirements, including timely security updates to address emerging threats and vulnerabilities. Apple will provide authorized developers of dedicated browser apps access to security mitigations and capabilities to enable them to build secure browser engines, and access features like passkeys for secure user login, multiprocess system capabilities to improve security and stability, web content sandboxes that combat evolving security threats, and more.

Overall, Apple said its DMA preparations have involved "an enormous amount of engineering work to add new functionality and capabilities for developers and users in the European Union—including more than 600 new APIs and a wide range of developer tools."

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This is not the first Windows Mobile concept the author has presented. About a year ago, they published a Windows 11 Mobile concept, which tried to merge Microsoft's desktop operating system with smartphones. The result turned out to be a weird mix of Android aesthetics, iOS widgets, and multiple Windows 11 UI bits.

Windows 12 does not exist publicly, but we already know where Microsoft wants to steer its desktop operating system and what UI changes it explores. Concept-makers took those ideas to their drawing boards and published a few neat and not-so-much takes on what Microsoft's next-gen Windows could look like, including its mobile adaptation.

While a Windows 11 successor could arrive in the near future in the form of Windows 12 or something else, it is safe to say that we will not see a resurrection of Windows Mobile any time soon. Sadly, a smartphone-sized taskbar with a Start menu button, Copilot, Task View, File Explorer, Microsoft Store, and other parts of Windows 11 is only possible in concept videos like this.

In a world dominated by Android and iOS, even a company that costs $3 trillion cannot compete with Apple and Google. Heck, even the Android-powered Surface Duo failed big time, unable to rival Samsung and other well-established players. Making smartphones is no longer a thing for Microsoft, which is now super-busy with adding AI stuff into every product possible, even into questionable things like Notepad.

With that said, it is probably time to let our failed Windows Mobile dreams go for good. Maybe they should start making concepts with Copilot integrated into the most absurd products and parts of Windows.

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The analyst company Canalys has revealed that Apple took the lead on smartphone shipments in Europe during the final quarter of 2023. It overtook Samsung, which had held the lead over Apple even in the final quarter of 2022, when their shipments were very close.

In third, fourth, and fifth place were Xiaomi, Motorola, and HONOR, with them not swapping places at all over the last several years. In the sixth position was Google, which had been tussling with HONOR but had been beaten for the last three quarters of 2023.

Year-over-year, in the fourth quarter, Apple increased its market share from 31% to 33%, Samsung went from 32% to 28%, Xiaomi fell from 17% to 16%, Motorola grew to 5% from 3%, and HONOR grew to 3% from 1%.

Commenting more on the situation in Europe, Runar Bjørhovde, Analyst at Canalys, said:

“High-end smartphones took a record share of the European market in Q4 2023. Almost 40% of smartphone shipments were priced at US$800 or higher.

 

The dominance of the high-end was mainly fuelled by strong iPhone 15 Pro demand alongside consistent Galaxy S-series volumes and a growing Google Pixel. Looking ahead, Apple will aim to capitalize on the impending refresh cycle.

 

This includes exploring new routes to market to enable consumers to buy iPhones, such as the bank-as-a-channel approach co-piloted with Santander in Spain. In Samsung's case, the premium S-series and foldable devices remain a priority, seeking to test a service-based subscription model.”

Something interesting to observe in the data is that Apple shipments also rose in the fourth quarter in preceding years, as they have done again in the fourth quarter, while Samsung’s shipments fell. However, Samsung tends to recover in the other quarters so the same could happen in 2024, we will have to wait and see.

Source: Canalys

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Apple has been exploring foldable display technology for several years as part of its research into new form factors. Early prototypes included iPhones that folded inward like a clamshell. Samsung, a key supplier for Apple, provided early foldable display samples as part of this testing process.

However, recent rumors suggest that Apple was not satisfied with the durability of Samsung's panels. Sources say that after just a few days of testing under Apple's lab conditions, iPhones with the foldable displays began to exhibit problems such as screen cracking. This fell far short of the best-in-class reliability Apple requires.

As a result, Apple has reportedly paused further development of a foldable iPhone for the foreseeable future. The company will not rush a foldable to market until the display technology can consistently pass its tests.

This is in line with previous reports that a foldable was not planned until 2024 or 2025 at the earliest. According to display firm Display Supply Chain Consultants, Apple "appears to be in no rush to enter the foldable smartphone market, and it may even take longer than [2025]."

Interestingly, the company's broader foldable device ambitions may not be completely stalled. Rumors suggest that Apple remains more interested in a foldable iPad format, which could involve a thicker design better suited to withstand the stresses of folding compared to a pocket-sized phone.

Earlier reports showed that it could be a notebook with a full-size keyboard when folded and an external monitor when unfolded, making it a dual-use product. So Apple seems pretty optimistic about the potential of the whole foldable display technology.

Source: Weibo (Chinese) via 91Mobiles

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Watching pirated movies on your iPhone just got a little harder. After climbing the charts of Apple’s App Store, the trendy Kimi app, with its collection of bootlegged movies, has just disappeared. Pretending to be a spot-the-difference vision-testing game, the widely downloaded app ranked above Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video in Apple’s charts this week for free entertainment apps before it was removed.

Without having to pay for anything or log in to any kind of account, iPhone owners could previously use Kimi to browse a wide selection of bootlegs for popular movies and TV shows. Many of the movies up for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars were on Kimi, at varying levels of quality.

Poor Things was included in a grainy, pixelated state, but a high-quality version of Killers of the Flower Moon was on Kimi to stream, although an intrusive ad for online casinos was splashed across the top. That definitely isn’t the viewing experience Martin Scorsese imagined for audiences. Not just limited to movies, viewers were also able to access episodes of currently airing TV shows, like RuPaul’s Drag Race, through the Kimi app.

Who was behind this piracy app? It remains a mystery. The developer was listed as “Marcus Evans” in the app store before Kimi was taken down, and this was the only app listed under that name, likely a pseudonym. WIRED was unable to reach Evans or anyone involved with the Kimi app prior to publication.

Apple is known for being meticulous and protective of its “walled garden” for safe-to-download apps, so it’s surprising to see a piracy streaming option, like Kimi, climb so high on the charts before being axed. Kimi received more than 100 user reviews in the App Store, many of which blatantly mentioned the free movies hidden within the app, and it had a four-star user rating. A representative for Apple did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

This isn’t the first a piracy app that has garnered tons of downloads in the App Store, though. In 2015, WIRED spoke with the developers behind Popcorn Time, a similar app. Security reporter Andy Greenberg wrote, “With Popcorn Time, the complexity of BitTorrent search engines, trackers, clients, seeds, decompression, playback, and storage is reduced to a single click.” It’s unconfirmed how Kimi was providing the streams, but the process of watching bootlegs was definitely simplified for users—just download the smartphone app and press Play.

The Kimi app’s saga is emblematic of a new resurgence in online piracy. A serious challenge for rights holders and movie and TV studios, piracy is once again on the rise. As streaming services crack down on shared passwords, and budget-conscious users search for cheaper entertainment options, the black market for bootlegs will likely continue to blossom.

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At the State of the Net Conference, FCC chairman said that he wants an investigation into Apple as he believes the company violated its Part 14 rules which talk about the requirements for any “advanced communications service”. The section focuses on the requirements for “access to advanced communications services and equipment by people with disabilities”. Furthermore, the section also talks about not allowing providers to add features that may impede accessibility.

Providers of advanced communications services shall not install network features, functions, or capabilities that impede accessibility or usability.

Carr says Apple violated that by offering green bubble SMS messages which “makes it difficult for people with low vision or difficulty with seeing from picking up those messages”. He further mentioned that Apple's different coloured bubbles are a "part of a broader set of walled garden practices that inhibit competition."

The FCC is yet to comment on the issues raised by Carr or confirm if the authority is looking into Apple. There is also no word on if the authority will officially open an investigation into Apple or if Carr was speaking as an individual and not the chairman of the FCC.

This is not the first time the Apple Beeper debacle has raised eyebrows. Back in mid-December, CBS shared a bi-partisan letter from Senators calling the Department of Justice to investigate if Apple had broken antitrust laws by shutting down Beeper Mini.

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Google shared in its blog post that there had been a rapid increase in fraud cases. The Global State of Scams Report for 2023 by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance revealed that around 78% of the survey respondents had experienced at least one scam in the past year. 45% of respondents highlighted that scams have increased in the last 12 months.

To address this issue, Google is partnering with the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) to launch a pilot fraud protection project. Initially, the first pilot will be for Android users in Singapore only.

The pilot project will detect any runtime permissions an app requests in real time when a user downloads it. It will look for requests like RECEIVE_SMS, READ_SMS, BIND_Notifications, and Accessibility.

These are common tactics used by scammers for financial fraud whenever an individual is sideloading applications on the Internet. The blog post notes:

“This enhanced fraud protection will analyze and automatically block the installation of apps that may use sensitive runtime permissions frequently abused for financial fraud when the user attempts to install the app from an Internet-sideloading source (web browsers, messaging apps or file managers). This enhancement will inspect the permissions the app declared in real-time and specifically look for four runtime permission requests: RECEIVE_SMS, READ_SMS, BIND_Notifications, and Accessibility. These permissions are frequently abused by fraudsters to intercept one-time passwords via SMS or notifications, as well as spy on screen content. Based on our analysis of major fraud malware families that exploit these sensitive runtime permissions, we found that over 95 percent of installations came from Internet-sideloading sources.”

 

Simply put, the pilot project aims to block any apps from being installed whenever any of these permission requests are detected. Google Play Protect will also issue a notification to the user informing them about the app.

Google clarified that the Singaporean government has tested out this pilot project against fraud protection. The capability will be rolling out on Android devices supporting Google Play.

The company also highlighted some protocols for app developers. It suggested the developers make sure that the permissions their app requests are aligned with the Mobile Unwanted Software principles.

The apps should only ask for essential permissions needed for it to run smoothly. However, if a developer does face issues, they can refer to Google’s updated guidelines for Play Protect warnings. They can also file an appeal if the issue remains unresolved.

In October 2023, Google introduced a feature that prompted users to scan unknown apps to avoid fraud. The capability scanned the apps on a code level and if it found emerging threats, it would inform the user to take the appropriate action of not installing the application.

In the latest update, the enhanced fraud protection will automatically block malicious apps after scanning them.

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According to the analyst firm IDC, worldwide tablet shipments have declined 17.4% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2023 with total shipments reaching 36.8 million units during that period. For the whole year, shipments reached 128.5 million units marking a decline of 20.5% on the year prior and the lowest annual volume since 2011.

"With no significant improvements to the economy and consumers allocating their money to things beyond consumer electronics, tablets may not be very high on the priority list. Project delays and spending freezes have also led to purchase postponement through much of 2023," said Anuroopa Nataraj, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. "2024 is expected to show some rebound opportunities, provided the year is more economically sound. However, overall challenges remain in the tablet market, and technological advances around AI will likely focus more on the PC and smartphone for the next two years, but tablets will increasingly become part of that conversation."

Aside from 2023 being bad for the tablet market overall, it was also noticeably bad for Apple which lost around 7% of the market share after its fourth quarter shipments fell from 21.1 million to just 14.9 million. Its main competitors, Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, and Xiaomi all increased their market share while the Others category also declined but by less than 2%.

The biggest winner of these was Xiaomi which saw 35% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter and the biggest loser was Apple which saw a 29.3% contraction in shipments. The situation with Apple is pretty interesting because its affluent consumer base are typically the ones who have been able to keep up with purchases but it seems like they’re tightening the purse strings too.

When we look at the whole year as a whole, Apple did alright gaining 0.4% of the market share. Meanwhile, Amazon was hit hard with its market share falling from 9.9% to 4.2%.

Source: IDC

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According to the developer.apple.com website, iOS 17 is installed on 66% of all iPhones that transacted on the App Store as of February 4, 2024. 23% still run iOS 16, and the remaining 11% are on iOS 15 and older.

Apple also has separate stats for all the iPhones introduced in the last four years (iPhone 15, iPhone 14, iPhone 13, iPhone 12, and iPhone SE Series). As expected, iOS 17 is more popular in this segment, with 76% of all devices running the most recent versions. 20% of the recent iPhones are on IOS 16, and 4% on iOS 15 and older.

Judging from the official stats, iPad users are more reluctant to upgrade their tablets to the most recent iPadOS version. Only 53% of registered devices are on iPadOS 17, while iPadOS 16 has 29%, and 18% are on older releases.

As for the most recent iPads (released during the last four years), 61% run iPadOS 17, 29% run iPadOS 16, and 10% are on earlier versions. Interestingly, iOS 17 performs slower than iOS 16 one year ago, while iPadOS 17 outperforms iPadOS 16.

Apple has already released several feature updates for iOS 17 and iPadOS 17. The latest version, 17.3, arrived a couple of weeks ago, bringing iPhone and iPad users a new wallpaper, collaborative playlists in Apple Music, Stolen Device Protection with extra security measures, and more. You can check out what is new in iOS 17.3 in our dedicated coverage.

iOS 17 is available for all iPhones released in 2018 and later.

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As seen in Lance Adams' posts on X, users can access an "Extensions Beta" page. This page features popular Chrome-based extensions like Dark Reader, Global Speed, and uBlock Origin.

This brings Edge for Android in line with the desktop version, which has long supported a wide range of extensions, from ad blockers to productivity tools. It's a big step because it allows Edge users to enhance their mobile browsing with the same customizations they rely on for productivity and blocking distracting ads and trackers.

The new feature is currently hidden in the Edge Canary version 123 beta channel. It is expected to be released to beta testers by the end of February. So, Edge users can get a head start on customizing their mobile browsing by downloading the Canary version from the Google Play Store.

Since Chrome lacks official extension support on mobile, this gives Edge an early advantage if implemented smoothly. Google may feel pressure to respond in kind and open up Chrome to extensions on Android as well. However, there have been no announcements indicating plans to do so.

In addition to extention support, Microsoft Edge for Android and iOS has a new name. The company recently renamed its mobile browser from just "Microsoft Edge" to "Microsoft Edge: AI browser," clearly highlighting where it focuses most of its efforts nowadays.

In the meantime, Microsoft released Edge 122.0.2365.3 yesterday in the Dev Channel. It added a translate icon in the PDF toolbar and a "New" badge to the context menu to indicate recently added features. In addition, there are plenty of fixes and minor improvements across the browser.

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