Mobile Devices - Page 11

As technology has become more adopted into our everyday lives, concerns about privacy and how invasive technology can be have grown, and for good reasons, as there have been numerous cases of companies behind popular pieces of technology abusing and violating consumer trust.

Given the heightened state of concentration on privacy in today's current climate, users are quick to make their concerns public, whether they are valid or not. The latest in these concerns comes from reports citing a few Reddit users querying the public about whether or not they have heard voices coming from their iPhones at random times.

The users both reported having heard unfamiliar voices coming from their smartphones, and when they checked if the voice could have come from a background application, such as a YouTube video, app, or web browser, they couldn't find any normal source for the audio.

Apple has rolled out a new security feature within iOS 18.1 that automatically reboots an iPhone if it is left inactive for a period of time, and the new feature is a real concern to law enforcement.

Reports indicate that law enforcement officials believed Apple rolled out a new update that enables iPhones to communicate between devices and switch each other off. However, that certainly isn't the case, and the reports of randomly rebooting iPhones can be traced back to an addition Apple made in iOS 18.1. According to security researcher Jiska Classen, iOS 18.1 added a security feature called "Inactivity Reboot," which automatically reboots the device after four days of inactivity.

Law enforcement has found this new feature particularly annoying as many iPhones are stored for evidence for extended periods of time before they are broken into for evidence. After an iPhone performs a reboot, it enters into what is called the Before First Unlock (BFU) state, which, according to reports, is a state that makes it much more difficult to unlock the device than After First Unlock.

Apple is poised to unveil an ultra-slim iPhone 17 Air in 2025, and now it looks like smartphone competitor Samsung will join with its rumored Galaxy S25 Slim smartphone.

We're hearing about the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim smartphone from Korean leaker "yeux1122" said in a recent blog post that the South Korean giant might launch the new ultra-slim Galaxy S25 Slim in April 2025. We're also being teased about the Galaxy Z Flip SE and Galaxy Z Fold 7 smartphones being unveiled at about the same time.

TheElec also reported a couple of weeks ago now that Samsung was considering making a slim Galxay S25 smartphone, so the Galaxy S25 Slim feels like the best name for it. Samsung beating Apple to the punch with an ultra-slim smartphone ahead of the iPhone 17 Air will be another move like the company did with its foldable smartphone range starting with the Galaxy Fold, and then into the Galaxy Z Flip family of foldables.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has sat down for a lengthy discussion on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, where he touched on the rumors that Tesla is developing a smartphone behind closed doors.

It has been long rumored that Tesla is developing a smartphone that will separate itself from the duopoly of operating systems, Android and iOS. However, these rumors have been just that, rumors, and have mostly been unfounded or simply murmurings. In fact, Musk has brought up the topic before as the Tesla CEO said in November 2022 that if Apple and Google decided to "boot" then-Twitter, and now X, from its respective app stores, Musk said there would be no other choice but to "make an alternative phone.

Now, on a recent episode of the JRE podcast, Musk was asked if there is any credibility to these rumors, or if he has ever considered making a smartphone. Musk responded quickly by saying, "No, we aren't doing a phone". When asked if he had ever thought about making one, Musk said, "We could do a phone. The operating system of a Tesla is Linux-based, but we have written a massive of software on top of that."

Apple has been blocked from selling its bread and butter product, the iPhone, and its multiple variations, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Industry.

According to reports, Apple has been officially blocked from selling iPhones domestically following its failure to abide by the 40% local content requirement for smartphones, which requires at least 40% of all parts within a product to be manufactured locally. The iPhone 16 has unfortunately fallen short of this requirement, meaning Apple Indonesia hasn't fulfilled the requirement of obtaining a local content certification and now, therefore, cannot sell the latest generation of iPhone.

At the moment, Apple has no manufacturing facilities in Indonesia, but since 2018, the company has been establishing developer academies throughout the country, in which they have invested approximately $101.8 million. Indonesia isn't a small region for Apple either, as the country has more than 350 million active mobile phones among its 270 million residents, meaning there could be quite a lot of potential iPhone customers waiting for the latest generation iPhone.

Apple has finally rolled out an iOS update that contains the first set of Apple Intelligence features, and here's how you can access them.

Apple has been criticized over its marketing of its latest iPhone generation, as the company touted the latest generation of devices as the vehicles for Apple Intelligence. However, when the iPhone 16 was released, there weren't any Apple Intelligence features available. Apple stated it was planning on rolling out Apple Intelligence features in stages, and we have just received the first stage with iOS 18.1.

If you are interested in trying out some of the new Apple Intelligence features, you will need to make sure you have a compatible device that is updated to the latest version of iOS. Firstly, you will need to have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, which means an iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max. Any devices below those models won't be eligible as they don't have the required hardware to run Apple Intelligence.

Apple's all-new, ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air is rumored with a single 48MP rear camera, 8GB of RAM for Apple Intelligence, its in-house A17 chip made on TSMC's new 2nm process node, and more.

In a new report from MacRumors, several credible sources over the last few months have claimed Apple is working on a redesigned, significantly thinner iPhone 17 smartphone for 2025. It's not yet known as the iPhone 17 Air, but I'm really digging the iPhone 17 Air name, so it'll be called that from now on out until Apple confirms the official name of its new ultra-thin iPhone 17.

We should expect the iPhone 17 Air to sport a 6.6-inch display, an Apple A19 processor made on TSMC's current 3nm process (the same used for the A18 Pro chip) according to a new research note from investment bank Haitong International, and analyst Jeff Pu. He also expects the iPhone 17 Air to feature an aluminum frame, FaceID, a single 48-megapixel rear camera, 24-megapixel front camera, and 8GB of RAM for Apple Intelligence.

Color e-ink displays have existed for a while. Still, this week, Amazon announced its very first e-reader with a color display - the new Kindle Colorsoft (priced at $279.99 USD), available for preorder today.

As part of the announcement, Amazon noted that creating a colorized Kindle required more than simply swapping out the traditional black-and-white display for a color one. "It uses an oxide backplane with custom waveforms for fast performance and a higher contrast on both color and black-and-white content," Amazon writes in the announcement.

The display includes custom nitride LEDs that enhance color and brightness without affecting image quality. Amazon adds that you can zoom in on images without "worrying about pixelation." The new technology also means that Amazon's new Kindle Paperwhite is the fastest yet, with 25% faster page turns.

Apple just revealed a new iPad mini in one of its lowkey launches (by which we mean - let's just bung a press release out there and have done with it).

This isn't the first time we've seen such an affair, and it won't be the last, no doubt. Of course, as you might guess, this one's being slipped out for a reason, namely because the new iPad mini - powered by an A17 Pro SoC - is more of a spec bump than anything else (which was what the rumor mill was saying all along, to be fair).

You get that new A17 Pro chip, and storage starts at 128GB (twice as much as its predecessor), plus the refreshed compact 8.3-inch tablet also comes with Apple Intelligence support on board, which means that the RAM for the entry-level model is now 8GB.

Apple first introduced the ability to shoot with the ProRes codec on the iPhone 12 Pro, but with the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, along with the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, owners can now shoot in Log.

Unfortunately, with these new and impressive codecs, iPhone owners are at risk of reaching capacity when shooting in higher resolutions, particularly at 4K. Dockcase has set out to remedy this problem by providing a simple NVMe SSD enclosure that can attach to the back of an iPhone via MagSafe.

The Dockcase Smart MagSafe M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure features 100W PD passthrough charging so you can keep your smartphone charged while on a shoot, support for up to 2TB of storage, a read-only mode, SSD health monitoring software, and power loss protection, which provides 3 seconds of power loss protection to ensure all data is correctly saving to the storage solution.

Apple is expected to release its highly anticipated foray into artificial intelligence, but just in Apple fashion they have rebranded the emerging software as "Apple Intelligence".

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who wrote in his recent Power On newsletter, Apple is slated to roll out iOS 18.1 on October 28, and within that OS update will be Apple Intelligence. For those that don't know, Apple Intelligence will be coming to the iPhone 15 Pro/Max and the entire iPhone 16 line-up. Unfortunately, devices older than that don't have the necessary hardware to process AI tasks at a speed that Apple is comfortable with releasing.

Apple Intelligence, or the complete lack of it, has been a point of criticism in the recent launch of the iPhone 16 lineup, as much of Apple's marketing for the new generation of iPhone showed Apple Intelligence features that weren't available at launch. Apple clarified when the features will be released, saying Apple Intelligence will be rolled out in stages. As for iOS 18.1, according to reports, developers with early access to the operating system version have found it to be quite unstable, leading to app crashes and excessive battery drain.

Apple has finally released its iOS 18 update to the public where it has included a slew of new, big features for users, along with some other smaller features the company didn't highlight, or just glazed over during its presentation. 

One of those features is the new charging capabilities, and before you get ahead of yourself, Apple hasn't suddenly increased the speed of which your phone can charge. However, Apple has made charging your phone at maximum speed much easier, as a new feature within iOS 18 will inform the user if the charging cable they are using is providing the maximum charge. 

After updating to iOS 18, a user can open their Settings application and navigate to Battery; an alert will pop up informing the user they are using a slower charging cable. Additionally, a slower charging cable will be displayed in the battery graph as an orange line. Unfortunately, the feature isn't as informative as I would like because it's not immediately clear how slow a charging cable has to be to qualify for an alter or orange line in the graph. 

Apple has just unleashed its new iPhone 16 family, with its iPhone 17 family coming in 2025... but the iPhone 18 is when the company will use TSMC's bleeding-edge 2nm process node for its latest A-series processors.

In a new post on X, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo explained that all four iPhone 17 models will use the same 3nm chips in 2025, but there will be some iPhone 18 models that will use more advanced 2nm chips. I recently covered a story recently where Apple executives took a secret visit to TSMC to secure the very first batch of 2nm chips, which look to be going in (at least some) new iPhone 18 models.

Kuo posted: "The processors for 2025 iPhone 17 models will be made by TSMC's N3P process/3-nanometer technology. The processor for 2026 iPhone 18 models is anticipated to use TSMC's 2-nanometer technology. However, due to cost concerns, not all new iPhone 18 models may be equipped with a 2-nanometer processor".

At the beginning of August the Huawei CEO for Consumer Business Group was spotted on a plane holding the world's first tri-foldable smartphone. The following the month the device was officially unveiled, and I have managed to spend some time with it for a hands-on experience.

The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design is the official name of the device, and while I was in China I walked past a Huawei store where they had one available. This device is truly an impressive feat of engineering with its dual-hinge design that enables users to fold the Mate XT into three forms - triple folded (completely collapsed), unfolded, and completely unfolded. At each of these stages users will get a different screen size, with the triple fold rocking a standard 6.4-inch display that's then bumped up to a 7.9-inch display when unfolded, and then a 10.2-inch display when completely unfolded.

The above video shows each of these folding stages, and through my brief time holding the device I was truly impressed at the ease of the folding, along with the thinness of the device. Huawei designed the Mate XT with a shockingly thin battery that enables the device to be just 3.6mm thick, but still sport a 5,600mAh. However, due to the triple folding design when completely folded together the Mate XT Ultimate Design is a chunky 12.8mm thick, or half an inch.

Apple launches its new iPhone 16 family of smartphones today, but there's a leak for its next-gen iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Air smartphones that tease will feature 120Hz ProMotion displays.

Display analyst Ross Young from DSCC talked with MacRumors, teasing that the Apple iPhone 17 (standard) and ultra-slim thinner iPhone 17 Air smartphones will feature Apple ProMotion display technology: 120Hz goodness for everything. Right now, the standard iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro have 60Hz panels... which in 2024, isn't a good look when competing smartphones ship with 120Hz displays.

Apple introducing 120Hz ProMotion displays with its next-gen iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Air should boost sales, as the hype for the new iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max smartphones just isn't there this year.

Apple has a bunch of internal tweaks to its new iPhone 16 series smartphones, with some huge improvements inside of the new iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max smartphones revealed in a new teardown.

The new iPhone 16 Pro with its 6.3-inch display has a redesigned A18 Pro logic board, and a protection cover for the battery. REWA Technology did the teardown on Apple's new iPhone 16 Pro, with the two logic boards and batteries tweaked over the iPhone 15 Pro.

In the image above, we've got the A18 Pro on the left and the A17 Pro logic board on the right, where you can see that the new A18 Pro logic board inside of the iPhone 16 Pro being smaller, and more densely packed than its predecessor. The new part also sports a larger metal cover, which is most likely there to help with the thermals of the A18 Pro, which is made on TSMC's bleeding edge 3nm process node.

Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle has shot his latest movie -- 28 Years Later -- on Apple's older-gen iPhone 15 Pro Max smartphone with some attachments.

In a new report from WIRED, we're learning that the $75 million Hollywood sequel was filled on smartphones, with Boyle starting out his directing duties with 28 Days Later back in 2002 which saw the introduction of Cillian Murphy (his latest movie was Oppenheimer) and it was shot on a regular Canon XL-1 camera worth $4000.

28 Years Later wrapped production at the end of August, where up until now production details have been kept under wraps -- the big detail here is that it was shot on the iPhone 15 Pro Max smartphone. Staff were required to sign NDAs preventing the disclosure that 28 Years Later was shot on smartphones, but a single paparazzi shot out of 150 photos from July, shows a high-end camera that looks like a regular lens... but it's not: it's connected to a smartphone that's inside of a protective cage, according to a professional camera operator not involved with the movie telling WIRED.

Apple rolled out its new iOS 18 update, and unfortunately, some users downloading the iPad version are reporting that the update is bricking their device. 

iOS 18 hit every iPhone 14 and above on Monday, along with iPadOS 18, and it appears that Apple made some mistakes with its development of iPadOS 18. Shortly after the release of the iPad update users began taking to Reddit to report their iPad became unresponsive mid-update, leading to it shutting down and not turning back on. Another Reddit user reported their iPad was "completely bricked" after downloading the new update. 

Officially, Apple hasn't publicly commented on the anecdotal evidence that iPadOS 18 is causing problems for iPads, but the company has quietly pulled the update from M4 iPad Pros, which leads me to believe these iPads were the most affected by the update. MacRumors reports that not all M4 iPad Pro owners experienced these reported problems, and those who are affected are likely jumping over an OS version to iOS 18.

Apple just wrapped up its Glowtime event, where it showcased the latest generation of iPhone ahead of its release on September 20, and right after the event, we have a brand new Samsung S25 Ultra leak. Techtember is officially here!

Samsung's next-generation flagship smartphone will be the S25 Ultra, and reports currently point to January as the rumored launch date. Before the launch, leaker @OnLeaks and Android Headlines created renders of the upcoming smartphone based on previous rumors about its specifications. For example, the S25 Ultra is rumored to be just 219g, making it lighter than the iPhone 16 Pro Max at 227g and the S24 Ultra at 232g.

According to the renders, the S25 Ultra will have the same 6.8-inch screen size as the Samsung S24 Ultra, but will overall be a smaller phone at 162.8 x 77.6 x 8.2mm versus 162.3 x 79 x 8.6mm. TechRadar notes that while recent reports say the S25 Ultra will have the same display size as the S24 UItra, previous rumors suggested the S25 Ultra was going to have a bigger screen.

Huawei has just unveiled the world's first dual-hinged, triple-screen foldable smartphone with the introduction of the new Mate XT Ultimate Design... a new tri-foldable smartphone that starts from $2800. Check it out:

The new Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design features an inverse dual-hinge design that folds into a "Z" shape, allowing users to use the tri-fold smartphone in many different ways. The OLED display measures 6.4 inches when fully collapsing as a traditional single-screen smartphone, but when unfolded, the display folds out to a behemoth 10.2 inches (2232 x 3184 resolution) and can be folded into a 7.9-inch size. Impressive.

Huawei says that it uses an ultra-modern three-fold large screen that can be folded and unfolded freely, and its composite ultra-touch laminated structure makes it slim and strong. Huawei is using a new silicon-anode-based large-capacity battery, that is bloody thin: only 1.9mm with a capacity of up to 5600mAh inside of a slim body with long-lasting battery life.