It has been particularly tough navigating the remote working landscape in the ongoing pandemic for a number of organizations and individuals. While apps such as Microsoft Teams have enhanced online collaboration, there is still work to be done. Now, Microsoft has announced that Teams apps built for meetings can now be utilized in Android and iOS.

Teams offers apps and activities like Kanban boards, actionable dialogs, and surveys to engage users between pre-, in-, and post-meetings experiences. This capability was announced for desktop PCs back in November, but was not available on mobile devices until today. Now, it is being rolled out for Android and iOS devices as well.

The mobile experience is similar to desktop. Meetings apps can be accessed from a tab before or after the meeting. If you want to interact with apps during the meeting, there is an in-meeting panel you can utilize for this purpose. Furthermore, Microsoft has introduced a new notification for all activities that take place during the meeting. You can click on "View" on the notification banner to drill down to granular details about the activity.

This parity with desktop will certainly please those who actively utilize their mobile devices for work. That said, Microsoft has cautioned that apps will need to be attached to the meeting via desktop by the organizer themselves. Furthermore, not all apps are available for mobile devices currently, but third-party developers will be optimizing their apps for mobile use on a rolling basis. Users looking to utilize this functionality can do so by updating to the latest version of Teams on Android and iOS - version 2021031702 and 2021032701 respectively.

Landmark deal will improve the coverage and speed of Verizon's 5G network

Ericsson and Verizon are expanding their long-standing partnership with the announcement of a new landmark $8.5bn multi-year agreement in which the Swedish network equipment vendor will provide the US telecom with its 5G solutions.

Through the deal, Verizon plans to accelerate the deployment of its 5G network throughout the US after first beginning its rollout of the next generation of mobile internet connectivity back in 2019.

President and head of Ericsson North America Niklas Heuveldop provided further insight on both companies' strategic partnership in a press release, saying:

“This is a significant strategic partnership for both companies and what we’re most excited about is bringing the benefits of 5G to U.S. consumers, enterprises and the public sector. We’re looking forward to working with Verizon to leverage solutions like Cloud RAN and our Street Macro, adding depth and versatility to 5G network rollouts across the U.S.”

Landmark deal

As part of the new $8.3bn agreement, Verizon will deploy Ericsson's 5G MIMO C-band, low-band and millimeter wave (mmWave) solutions to boost and expand its 5G Ultra Wideband coverage, network performance and user experience.

Ericsson's technology solutions, which include Massive MIMO, Ericsson Spectrum Sharing and Ericsson Cloud RAN, complement its Ericsson Radio System portfolio to support 5G services.

Verizon and Ericsson have worked together in the past and last year, Verizon was the first telecom to receive a commercial 5G mmWave Street Marco base station from Ericsson's US smart factory in Lewisville, Texas.

Verizon customers will soon see a performance boost as well as better coverage when using a 5G smartphone on its network and we'll likely hear more regarding the deal once the telecom begins rolling out Ericsson's equipment.

Market analyst firm Canalys has released its preliminary report on the global smartphone market. As per the latest data, Samsung has retained its numero uno position in the second quarter of 2021. However, the most interesting bit from this report is that the Chinese brand Xiaomi has surpassed Apple to become the world's second-biggest smartphone maker in terms of volumes.

The smartphone market, as a whole, shows a sign of recovery with 12 percent growth in Q2 2021. Samsung held onto its crown with a 19 percent market share. Xiaomi came in a close second with a 17 percent share owing to its whopping 83 percent growth. Apple slid down to the third spot with a 14 percent share and just one percent growth. The fourth and fifth positions were taken by BBK electronic's subsidiaries Oppo and Vivo with 10 percent share each. If you consider these companies as a single entity, BBK electronics claims the third position pushing Apple further down to a fourth spot.

It is worth noting that Xiaomi's inventory mostly belongs to the budget segment. Compared to Apple, Xiaomi's average selling price is around 75 percent cheaper. To boost its revenue, the Chinese brand will require its premium offerings such as the Mi 11 Ultra to fire along with its budget line-up. According to Canalys, Xiaomi's major sales boost came from Latin America, Africa, and Western Europe. Xiaomi's rapid growth can be attributed to Huawei's struggle caused by the US sanctions.

Google rolled out last month the ability to blur or replace video chat backgrounds in Meet on Android. At that time, the search giant vowed to expand the feature to iOS sometime in the future.

Today, the search giant made good on its promise as it announced the availability of the feature on Apple's mobile devices. You can now blur or replace your background with any image hand-picked by Google. This includes photos of office spaces, landscapes, and abstract backgrounds, among others.

On top of Google's recommended image, you can also set your own photos as your meeting background. This is in contrast to how the feature is implemented in Android, where you can choose only from Google's pre-selected images. That said, the Mountain View-based giant promised to add the ability to select your personal images as your background on Android soon.

The feature comes in handy if you want to customize your background or put your messy surroundings out of sight when videoconferencing. And like on Android, you will need to manually switch on the capability on iOS since it's turned off by default. You can head over to Meet's support page to learn how to enable the feature.

In terms of compatibility, the feature works only with iPhone 8 and up, iPad 5th generation and up, or iOS 12 and later. It's now available to all Workspace and G Suite Basic/Business customers as well as those who are using personal Google accounts.

Google announced Android 12 during its I/O conference in May, unveiling a major UI refresh called Material You, along with other improvements such as privacy-focused enhancements, and more. The firm has since released two betas, with the second beta bringing the adaptive accent colors shown off during the conference. Today, the firm is rolling out Android 12 Beta 3 that brings with it a few new features such as scrolling screenshots, auto-rotate improvements, and more.

Native support for scrolling screenshots has been a long-awaited feature in Android. While the search giant aimed to add it to Android 11, it decided against introducing the feature due to the experience being sub-optimal. Now, the feature is being added to Android 12 and it works as you'd expect. A new ‘Capture more’ button allows users to “extend” the screenshot, with the ability to also crop the image.

The company adds that it is introducing a new ScrollCaptureAPI for “apps and UI toolkits that are not using View-based UI or that use highly customized UI”. It adds that with Beta 4, it will be making more improvements to the feature, adding support for scrolling ListViews.

Another significant improvement made with Beta 3 includes improvements to auto-rotate. The feature now supports face detection, meaning the system can tell how the phone is oriented with respect to the users’ faces, allowing for reliable auto-rotation, without having to force the users to lock the orientation of the device. Some use cases that the firm lists include lying down on a couch or in bed, where users might want the display to remain in portrait mode.

For those curious, the company notes that the feature “lives within [their] recently announced Private Compute Core, so images are never stored or sent off the device.” Currently, the feature will be available for users running Beta 3 on the Pixel 4 or newer phones.

Beta 3 also brings improvements to search, thanks to a new “high-performance on-device search engine” called AppSearch. This allows apps to improve indexing structured data better, allowing for quicker results and more. You can read more about the AppSearch package here.

Other improvements being made with the third beta release include the ability for developers to tweak the position of the privacy indicators using the Privacy indicator APIs. This helps avoid the indicators from overlapping the content on the screen. The Camera and Microphone toggles can now be configured by enterprises depending on any specific requirements. There are also improvements for gaming, thanks to the GameMode APIs that help balance the performance of the device. Additionally, “play as you download”, as the name suggests, lets bits of a game be downloaded in the background during installation, letting users get to larger games quicker.

Lastly, the firm says that Beta 3 contains the final APIs that will ship with Android 12, with Beta 4 being one that will attain platform stability, meaning that all user-facing behavior will be finalized. You can head to the release notes and the linked documents to read through the entire changelog for Beta 3 here.

New phones, watches, earbuds, and a date: August 11th    

At its event at the Mobile World Congress 2021 today, Qualcomm took to the stage to unveil the Snapdragon 888 Plus (or Snapdragon 888+, depending upon your preference) 5G Mobile Platform. As the name suggests, this is an enhancement to the Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform announced in December 2020.

The focus this time appears to be around "AI-enhanced gameplay", with Qualcomm saying that the chipset uses the Adreno 660 GPU and Kryo 680 CPU with a clock speed of up to 3GHz, coupled with the sixth-generation Qualcomm AI Engine which provides 32 TOPS "AI performance". The latter is a 20% improvement over the Snapdragon 888.

Qualcomm's senior vice president and general manager of mobile handset business Christopher Patrick had the following to say about the company's flagship chipset:

Snapdragon is synonymous with premium Android experiences. Our latest flagship Snapdragon 888 Plus 5G Mobile Platform will help deliver the premium entertainment, connectivity, and gaming experiences users deserve. We’re excited to see OEMs launch with products based on our highest performing platform.

The Hexagon 780 processor features a "fused architecture" which allows it to run multiple neural networks at once for a variety of use-cases. The chipset also sports a second-generation Qualcomm Sensing Hub which operates in an always-on status at a lower power for AI-assisted tasks. Given Qualcomm's ongoing investments in 5G, the chipset offers enhanced connectivity to the technology as well. On the imaging front, it offers the same Spectra 580 ISP which is capable of parallel processing with speeds up to 2.7 gigapixels per second, including support for 8K media encoding and decoding. Lastly, on the gaming side of the fence, it utilizes the Snapdragon Elite Gaming suite which offers 20% reduced touch latency, variable rate shading (VRS), and the ability to play games on 144Hz QHD displays. Importantly, drivers can now be updated without requiring a full OS update.

Multiple companies including Asus, Honor, Vivo, Motorola, and Xiaomi have stated that their upcoming premium handsets will utilize the Snapdragon 888 Plus 5G. These devices are expected in the third quarter of 2021.

Remember these?

It’s the year 2000. The world is breathing a sigh of collective relief after the catastrophic plane-plummeting effects of the Y2K bug fail to materialize. The PlayStation 2 launches, captivating gamers around the world. And I walk into school with swag levels I’ll never come close to achieving again, thanks to the mobile phone I’ve got in my pocket.

It’s a Nokia 8210, aka the mind-bogglingly miniature Charlie’s Angel phone. While it was originally a vivid red color, I’ve replaced the front and back covers with a textured basketball cover that looked and felt like the real deal. If anyone cares to look at the screen, they’ll notice that the “Orange” network logo has been replaced by an Xtreme “No Fear” logo instead. 

On the very rare occasion my phone rang, a crappy, monophonic rendition of Jumpin’ Jumpin’ by Destiny’s Child would emit from the speakers. I dread to think how much money I spent on this cavalcade of tackyness. 

If you’re reading this and connecting with me on a spiritual level, then this article will be a fuzzy, warm, and safe space, filled with the golden rays of comforting nostalgia. If, however, you’re from a more recent generation, and have stumbled upon this page accidentally in between shooting a new TikTok vid or looking for a way to earn more V-Bucks, then the following section will feel you with a mixture of confusion, disbelief, and pity for the generations that came before you. 

Either way, we hope you enjoy a look back at the way things were in the Before Times. No touchscreens, no color, and proprietary accessories as far as the eye can see. Welcome to the pre-smartphone world.

T9 predictive text

Long before the arrival of the onscreen full QWERTY keyboard, we had to make do with forging messages using the basic number keys. Each key had three letters, with the four last members of the alphabet living on the ‘9’ key.

If you wanted to write the letter ‘B’ for example, you’d have to tap the number 2 (the abc key) twice, to cycle through to ‘B’. While it sounds like a tedious, convoluted mess, most people would still swear by the speed and accuracy of it, thanks to the magical powers of the predictive dictionary, which lets you cycle through commonly likely words based on what you’ve typed so far.

If you were particularly good you could even send text messages to people without even looking at your phone, for extra bragging rights. 8-)

Instant facelifts covers

With modern smartphones mostly resembling boring rectangular slabs, the only way to really stand out from the crowd is to cover up your phone with a case. 

In the old days though, phones themselves had removable shells, letting you instantly and dramatically change the look without faffing around with any sticky skins or bulky cases. The cheesy, erotic 90s-fuelled ad above proves the point far better than our words ever could.

Replaceable batteries

Another benefit to having removable covers is the fact that you could easily swap out your battery for an instant 100% charge. Combined with the fact that handsets could last a week with heavy use without breaking a sweat, you could theoretically go travelling for a month with a few spare batteries and no charger in sight. 

Try doing that at a weekend festival today, and you’ll be in the firm grasp of battery anxiety’s ruthless hands long before you’ve run out of cider.

Proprietary everything

It’s easy to look back on things with rose tinted glasses, but some things in the pre-smartphone world were rather annoying. Take chargers for example. The idea that you could share the same charging cable between different manufacturers’ handsets wasn’t even a distant pipedream — it seemed downright impossible. 

Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericcsson and others all had proprietary charging cables for their handsets, so if you were round a friend’s house and needed to juice up, you’d be out of luck unless they had the same phone. 

As phones developed the power to let you listen to music, they had their own specific bundled headphones too that would use all manner of strange connections rather than the normal 3.5mm audio jack we know (and miss) today. Today’s world of USB-C and Lightning ports is a dream in comparison.

ASCII emoticons

If the end of the previous paragraph looks like a random typing error then you’re too young to remember ASCII emoticons, the precursor to the modern emoji. Without fancy graphics available, humans conveyed their emotions via text using 100% organic characters and symbols. 

From the classic smiley and winky faces 🙂 😉 to disappointed expressions and even cute little animals <(^_^)>, the world of emoticons fuelled creativity, encouraging people to come up with more and more complex ways to express themselves.

Paying for (and creating your own) ringtones

Paying for ringtones seems like an utterly alien concept today, but back then we’d happily part with cash for horribly rendered versions of monophonic songs. 

When polyphonic ringtones came out (adding multiple channels of sound), our collective minds were blown. On certain models, you could even create your own ringtones with cryptic button presses, as the above video of a 2020 meme song demonstrates.

Replacing your Network with random images

Holsters

Back when phones weren’t too far off the size and weight of house bricks (think SIM cards the size of credit cards), people were forced to carry them around in hideously ugly belt holsters, like the world’s un-coolest six shooter. 

Thankfully when things began to slim down in the Nokia 3210 era, the only people still rocking ugly holsters were business folk, who wanted a fast-draw for all the important Business Calls that they were making and taking.

Snake

Originally debuting on the Nokia 6110, this simple pixellated time waster sucked people in with the most addictive gameplay in videogame history. 

Controlling a snake so that it can gobble up a tasty square with basic up, down, left and right controls, countless hours were spent staring at screens and fending off thumb cramps. 

You can keep your fancy modern Call of Zombies: #2Flossing4Furious 3D games, thank you very much. We prefer the mind numbing simplicity that this legendary title brings to the table.

Invincible handsets

If you drop a phone today, you’ve already worked out the staggering repair costs before the glass has even smashed on the tarmac. The phones of yesteryear, however, laugh in the face of concrete. 

Those indestructible 3310 memes you’ve seen floating around aren’t works of fiction — older handsets with their all-plastic build and tiny screens were practically indestructible, as long as they were kept from falling into water. Even then, you could try the bag of rice trick as a last resort, which would often bring your beloved phone back from the brink of death.

A new iPhone bug has come to light that breaks your iPhone's wireless functionality by merely connecting to a specific WiFi hotspot.

Once triggered, the bug would render your iPhone unable to establish a WiFi connection, even if it is rebooted or the WiFi hotspot is renamed.

A bug like this could be exploited by malicious actors planting rogue WiFi hotspots in popular areas to bork iPhone devices connecting to them.

This WiFi hotspot will bork your iPhone

This week, reverse engineer Carl Schou ran into an issue when connecting to his personal WiFi hotspot named:

On connecting to the hotspot, his iPhone's WiFi would be disabled, and every time he tried to enable it again, it would quickly turn off, even if he restarted the device or the hotspot name was changed:

"After joining my personal WiFi with the SSID '%p%s%s%s%s%n', my iPhone permanently disabled it’s WiFi functionality. Neither rebooting nor changing SSID fixes it :~)," tweeted Schou.

Schou told BleepingComputer that his experiment worked successfully on an iPhone XS, running iOS version 14.4.2.

Tests conducted by BleepingComputer on an iPhone running iOS 14.6 confirm an iPhone's wireless functionality would break after connecting to the strangely named wireless network.

In multiple tests attempting to connect to this strange SSID, our Wi-Fi settings would begin to function erratically, but all led to the same behavior - the breaking of our iPhone's wireless connectivity.

In some tests, connecting to the SSID would fail, but we could no longer access our regular wireless network.

Other tests led to the behavior described by Schou, where the iPhones Wi-Fi setting would be disabled, and we could no longer enable it again, as shown below.

The only way to fix our iPhone's broken Wi-Fi feature was to reset the device's iPhone network settings, which we describe how to do at the end of the article.

A bug like this is serious, considering malicious actors could plant rogue WiFi hotspots (needing no password) in popular areas to bork iPhone devices that connect to them.

According to users, the issue is unique to iPhones and does not appear to be reproducible on Android devices:

So I haven't done any homework on this bug / wouldn't even really know where to look but i'm guessing this is just an ios bug??
Old ass android had no issue connecting to and saving it both open and with wpa2. pic.twitter.com/ydegK7AR7x

— MobCat (@MobCat99) June 19, 2021

Likely a string formatting vulnerability

Other security researchers who saw Schou's tweet believe that an input parsing issue likely causes this bug.

When a string with "%" signs exists in WiFi hotspot names, iOS may be mistakenly interpreting the letters following "%" as string-format specifiers when they are not.

In C and C-style languages, string format specifiers have a special meaning and are processed by the language compiler as a variable name or a command rather than just text.

For example, the following printf command does not actually print the "%n" character but stores the number of characters (10) preceding %n into the variable "c."

The "%n" is merely a format specifier and not an actual text string. As such, the output of the following line will simply be "geeks for geeks," with no mention of "%n."

Some users have claimed previously inserting the relatively innocuous "%x" format specifiers in their WiFi SSID to avoid causing major issues for unsuspecting WiFi users.

When asked what was his motivation to name his WiFi hotspot with the funky string specifiers, the reverse engineer said:

"All my devices are named after format strings to f*** with poorly developed devices," Schou told BleepingComputer.

How to rescue your iPhone from this WiFi bug?

Although restarting your iPhone won't fix the issue, this bug is not permanent and can be fixed without resetting your entire device.

Instead, you can follow these simple steps to reset your iOS network settings to resolve the issue:

1. Go to Settings on your iPhone, select General.
2. Under General select Reset.
3. You will now be at the Reset screen, where you can reset various features of iOS or the device itself. 
   
   At this screen, select the 'Reset Network Settings' option and confirm you would like to continue when asked.

   

4. The device will now restart and reset all of your network settings back to factory default. Once it has restarted, enter your passcode, and you can reconfigure your Wi-Fi settings again.

BleepingComputer has reached out to Apple for comment before publishing, and we are awaiting their response.

Customers of the Three UK telco company are panicking as they receive a series of random phone calls due to an ongoing issue.

Likewise, outbound calls from customers are being routed to random strangers.

Three is the fourth-largest British telecom giant and Internet Service Provider (ISP) with 13.3 million subscribers as of 2020.

Three telecom customers flooded with random calls

As of a few hours ago, complaints of Three UK customers receiving a series of calls from random numbers have surfaced the internet:   

Another Three customer tweeted:

"My phone isn't connecting with others and then had a very random number ring. My son tried to ring my husband and, after ending the call, it connected 30 seconds later... hope you sort the gremlins soon," said Hilary.

When trying to phone a specific person, such as their partner, calls are being routed to random people or failing altogether.

Consequently, Three UK customers are receiving calls from random numbers in a series.

On top, some customers are conflating this ongoing issue with a "data breach," as their phone number is being exposed to random strangers, and vice versa:

"Serious data breach rerouting my number 2 strangers my partner has had about 30 numbers call her, 3 told us 2 not answer but we waiting results from doctors. I was calling my partner as school said sons inhaler expired and to contact Dr's," tweeted customer Matthew.

In response, Three UK denied this to be a data breach to all such customers:

"We understand your concern and apologise for the inconvenience, but this isn’t a data breach. Please end the call if this happens," said a Three representative.

Although many are convinced that it's a data breach:

Three UK has acknowledged the technical issue and is working towards remediation:

This is a developing story.