Mobile Devices - Page 34

If anyone who owns an iPhone wants to install an app today they have to do so via the App Store. It's been that way since the App Store was introduced, but things might be starting to change. That's after code found in the latest iOS 17.2 beta appears to show that Apple is getting ready to allow other companies to offer their own app stores.

The discovery, made by 9to5Mac, comes as Apple is being forced to open the iPhone to non-App Store apps in the European Union with the Digital Markets Act kicking into gear in March of 2024. By that time Apple has to have a solution for people who want to install apps via means other than the App Store and it now appears that iOS 17.2 is laying the groundwork for that to happen. It was previously reported that iOS 17 would bring sideloading, although that never happened. And while iOS 17,2's public release is unlikely to add it, it's likely that Apple is getting the underpinnings ready ahead of a future iOS 17.3 or similar update.

9to5Mac reports that a new public framework called Managed App Distribution has been added to iOS 17,2 which appears to give third-party apps the permission to install other apps, something that would be required for a third-party app store. The API goes further, allowing the management of downloading and updating apps while also checking whether a specific device is compatible with the app that is about to be downloaded.

When you look at the current iPhone lineup there is no denying that the iPhone SE is starting to look a little long in the tooth. The third-gen model still has a Home button and a smaller 4.7-inch display, but the fourth generation is now rumored to be getting a big upgrade that will instantly make it appear much more modern than any iPhone SE to date.

If the new report is correct, the updated iPhone SE will borrow heavily from the iPhone 14 and will in fact use a modified version of its chassis. That's the word according to a new MacRumors report that also claims that the move to the iPhone 14 chassis will signal the end of the familiar iPhone 8 shape that has now been around for a while.

Alongside the move to the iPhone 14 shape, the report claims that the fourth-gen iPhone SE will not have a Touch ID home button as expected, but will instead have Face ID. There have been rumors of the iPhone SE having a more modern look for a while now, but it was always assumed that Apple would put Touch ID into the power button as it has done with some iPads. That now seems unlikely, based on the MacRumors report.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is already a good-looking phone by most metrics and now it's about to get even more interesting to look at - although whether it's going to be nice to look at might be a different matter entirely.

That's the news after MSPowerUser reported that Samsung is setting off on a new collaboration with the French luxury fashion brand Maison Margiela. There was a Maison Margiela edition of the Galaxy Z Flip 4 last year and it now seems that the two companies are working together again. But while this will be sold as a Maison Margiela special edition of the phone, it appears it will be a standard Galaxy Z Flip 5 underneath a Maison Margiela-designed case.

The good news is that means that people who want rid of the Maison Margiela branding will be able to easily remove it should they want to.

It looks increasingly likely that 2023 is going to be the first year with no new iPad to date, but we can expect something very different from 2024 according to a new report. That report claims that every single aspect of the iPad lineup will get some attention next year, including one big update to the best iPad around.

That report comes via Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, writing in his weekly Power On newsletter, and claims that 2024 will see the entire iPad lineup refreshed in one way or another.

With 2023 being the first time since 2010 that we haven't seen a new iPad arrive, Gurman says that the company plans to refresh the entire lineup in 2024. He has previously said that the biggest update is likely to come to the iPad Pro lineup with new OLED displays likely to come into the mix. The recently announced M3 chip will also make an appearance in that update, making the best iPads even better.

If you're planning on picking up the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra when it is announced in January 2024, you're going to get at least one thing that will remind you of the iPhone 15 Pro whether you like it or not.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is set to be the next big flagship phone announcement when it debuts during an expected January 17 unveiling, but it's going up against the iPhone 15 Pro - the flagship that arrived in September of this year. Now, a new report claims that Samsung is set to borrow from Apple's design by making the Galaxy S24 Ultra out of titanium.

That's according to a new report by The Elec, backed up by X leaker @Tech_Reve. This also isn't the first time that we've heard suggestions that Samsung is looking into titanium, but the next part is new - Samsung only recently decided to go this route.

Apple has reportedly stopped signing the iOS 17.0.3 update, a move which means that users can no longer install it on their iPhones even if they want to. This comes after Apple released iOS 17.1 to the public recently and with iOS 17.2 now being beta tested. That update isn't expected to ship to the public until next month, however.

There is still an older version of iOS available for those who want it, however. Apple continues to sign iOS 17.0.2 which means that it can be installed on devices should their owner want to go that route. However, we'd always suggest using the latest version of iOS to ensure that you're using the latest versions of its apps as well as benefiting from the usual array of bug fixes and security improvements.

Those security improvements are often behind Apple choosing to stop signing older versions of iOS, for example. It wants to ensure that bad actors cannot choose to install an old version of iOS onto an iPhone in order to exploit a bug that might allow them to gain access to personal information. Apple often simply likes to block downgrading to prevent the potential for future jailbreaks based on security flaws, although jailbreaking isn't anywhere near as popular as it was in the early years of the iPhone.

After announcing it back on October 17, Apple has today finally made the Apple Pencil (USB-C) available to buy. The cheapest Apple Pencil ever, you can now get your hands on this new stylus for just $79.

The lower price makes this an interesting option considering the original Apple Pencil as well as the second generation model remain on sale alongside it. In fact, this Apple Pencil borrows some of the features from both of those options while being compatible with every iPad that has a USB-C port.

The USB-C aspect is an important one, of course. While the original Apple Pencil has a Lightning connector and the second-generation model charges wirelessly, the new USB-C model has a USB-C port for plugging a cable into. That port lives beneath a sliding cover.

The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max were the first to debut the Action button when they were announced back in September. But Apple doesn't seem likely to rest there, with new reports suggesting that it intends to not only bring the Action button to non-pro models next year but also add an extra button to the mix.

That's according to a Weibo post by the previously-accurate leaker Instant Digital. According to them, there is a "great chance" that Apple will add an extra button below the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro's power button. To do that, Apple is expected to move the mmWave antenna from its current location to the other side of the iPhone.

It's also rumored that the new button will be a solid-state affair, meaning that it won't physically move. Instead, a vibration will be used to simulate the feeling of a click as was rumored for the iPhone 15 Pro's Action button initially.

Following a (now-fixed) bug that prevented the Weather complication from working correctly on Apple Watches, it seems that the same app is now struggling to comprehend what snow is on the iPhone.

The issue appears to crop up when people have the Apple Weather widget on their Lock Screen with the app displaying a generic folder icon rather than the one normally associated with snow. There doesn't appear to be a fix right now, nor do we know whether the problem can be fixed on Apple's servers or if the issue will require a software update for all afflicted iPhones.

Apple is yet to confirm that it is aware of this particular weather issue, but it's fairly easy to understand how this one slipped through the cracks. Apple is of course based in Cupertino, California, and its people are unlikely to have come across snow during their testing of the Weather app or iOS in general.

If you've been using your iPhone only for it to randomly stop receiving data over a Wi-Fi connection, you aren't alone. In fact, it's been a problem for a ton of people. So bad had things gotten that Apple seems to have taken note, and now it says that it's fixed whatever was going on under the hood.

That fix will be made available as part of the upcoming iOS 17.2 update that is currently in the hands of beta testers. In a note to those beta testers Apple confirmed that it has resolved the Wi-Fi issue that so many people reported across iOS 17 all the way through the iOS 17.1 update that was released to the public last week.

We've been running the iOS 17.2 beta for a few days and have yet to run into any of the Wi-Fi-related issues that have plagued our iPhones since the launch of iOS 17 in September. Whether or not that means the issue has been fixed for good or if we just haven't fallen foul of it for a while, only time will tell.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max changed the game when it comes to iPhone telephoto photography thanks to a new tetraprism lens design. That same 5x optical zoom capability is expected to come to the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max next year and now a new report claims that we should expect a redesigned lens as well.

That report, via the Economic Daily News, claims that Apple has plans for more advanced lens design which could equate to a thinner and lighter design - two things that are always going to be beneficial when you're putting a camera of this type into a smartphone.

The new updated glass element is thought to be more difficult to build while also costing more, something that could potentially lead to a price hike for next year's best iPhones.

Once upon a time, Google thought that it had a chance of getting Apple to preinstall its app on every iPhone that it sold. Perhaps unsurprisingly for anyone who knows Apple's stands on third-party cruft, that didn't happen.

The revelation comes after The Verge reported on the ongoing antitrust lawsuit between the United States and Google in which it was made public knowledge that Google CEO Sundar Pichai floated the idea of putting the Google Search app on every iPhone.

Apple did offer two Google apps in a similar way with the Google Maps and YouTube apps preinstalled on all iPhones that ran iOS 5 or newer. However, those apps were technically built by Apple and they were canned from iOS 6. And with Apple famously refusing to put any carrier apps on its iPhones despite Android phones often being full of them, it's a surprise that Pichai even thought that this request might have a chance.

If you didn't think that Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 5 could get any cooler, you were very, very wrong. That's something we now know after the company announced the Galaxy Z Flip 5 Retro, a phone that takes the popular foldable and turns it into an homage to the 2003 flip phone, the SGH-E700.

That SGH-E700 was a phone that became Samsung's first to feature a built-in antenna, which might seem like nothing in 2023. But 20 years ago it was a big thing, and while Samsung might not have been the first to do it, the move away from giant plastic antennas is always something to be celebrated. The Galaxy Z Flip might never have had an external antenna, but this retro model still gives us all the feels.

Samsung announced the new phone via a press release, saying that it will be a limited edition model and go on sale on November 1 in Korea, the UK, Germany, Spain, and Australia before going on sale in France a day later.

Intel's Meteor Lake processors are still some way off, and laptops with the 14th-gen chips inside won't arrive until mid-December - but we've just caught a glimpse of early product listings with purported pricing.

There are two laptops with Core Ultra CPUs inside which were listed by a Bulgarian retailer as flagged up on X (formerly Twitter) by leaker @momomo_us.

Both those models are next-gen Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 variants, a 14.5-inch (3K resolution) portable. They sport a hefty 32GB of RAM plus a 1TB SSD.

Apple is set to hold a new, streamed media event in just a few hours and the leaks continue as we get even closer to the big unveiling. Apple hasn't yet officially confirmed what it intends to show off, but the smart money is on a handful of Macs including laptops and desktops. Now, a new leak has added more fuel to that particular fire while also suggesting that there might be a surprise unveiling in the cards as well.

This latest leak comes via a MacRumors report which notes that new Chinese regulatory database filings suggest that batteries for new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros have been added, while a new battery for the Magic Keyboard also appears to have been added to the database. To clarify, these filings are actually extensions of existing ones which suggests that the batteries themselves aren't set to change.

All of this matches what we've been told to expect from Apple's 'Scary Fast' event, including the new Magic Keyboard with Apple expected to ditch Lightning and launch a new keyboard with a USB-C port on the back. But the real oddity here is MacRumors' report that claims Apple also resubmitted the iPad mini 6's battery as well.

If Samsung does announce the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 Plus, and Galaxy S24 Ultra in January of 2024 as we expect it to, a new leak claims that the three phones will all get a feature that some other flagships have had for a long time.

That feature, according to X leaker Ice Universe, will be the ability to view photos in HDR quality within photo albums for the first time. That's a feature that has already been available for some time on other handsets, including Samsung's big competition in the shape of the iPhone.

The leak, embedded above, claims that the feature will be similar to Google's new Ultra HDR feature. The news comes after a previous report suggested that the new phones will feature displays with an incredible 2,500-nit brightness which will make viewing HDR content particularly impressive.

When Apple launched the iPhone 14 devices last year they came with an Emergency SOS via Satellite feature that has the potential to save lives. It does that by giving people a way to contact emergency services even when they don't have cellular service and now it sounds like Samsung's next flagship phones are going to have a similar feature.

That's essentially been confirmed by Park Yong-in, CEO of Samsung's System LSI division, although he didn't specifically name-check the Galaxy S24. He did say that the company will support satellite services starting next year which surely means the Galaxy S24 lineup will benefit from it.

Samsung is strongly expected to announce the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 Plus, and Galaxy S24 Ultra during an Unpacked event in January of 2024 and it now seems increasingly likely that some sort of satellite communications feature will be part of the specification sheet.

Apple's latest flagship phones, the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Por Max, are both powered by the brand-new A17 Pro chip. The even newer Google Pixel 8 Pro features the equally new Tensor G3 chip, so which is faster? That's what YouTuber PhoneBuff set out to discover by putting both phones through their paces using so-called real-world tests.

Those tests consisted of opening the same apps on both devices and then timing how long it took. The result matches with the early Geekbench scores we'd seen - the iPhone 15 Pro Max used in the test toasted the Pixel 8 Pro. And then some.

Those Geekbench scores show that the iPhone 15 Pro manages a single-core score of 2890 and a multi-core score of 7179. Compare that with the Pixel 8 Pros single-core score of 1860 and multi-core score of 4442, and it perhaps shouldn't be all that surprising that it's Apple's phone that comes up trumps.

Apple has admitted that owners of the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max phones might find that they have an issue if they try and wirelessly charge them in some specific cars. The issue was first reported by some people not long after the new iPhones went on sale last month, but Apple has now posted a bulletin to its Apple Authorized Service Providers to warn that some people might have an issue.

That issue, it seems, is that the new iPhones might have a problem with a "small number" of wireless phone chargers that are built into some recent BMW and Toyota Supra models. The issue isn't so much that they won't charge, but that if they do they'll temporarily break the NFC capabilities of those iPhones. That issue could be a big one if you rely on your iPhone for Apple Pay, for example.

MacRumors says that there isn't any indication that Apple provided a specific reason for what's going on, but users report that after charging their new iPhones in those cars they receive an error stating that the device "Could Not Set Up Apple Pay" when trying to use it. The same issue would also likely affect other NFC-based features such as digital car keys and home keys.

Last month it was reported that a bug in iOS 17 was causing an important location services permissions setting to change of its own accord, with users having no way of knowing that it had happened without manually checking themselves. Now, it seems that the upcoming iOS 17.1 update will fix the issue for those affected.

The bug in question is related to the Significant Locations feature. That feature allows iOS to keep tabs on frequently visited locations and then use that data to recommend things like apps, photo Memories, and even predict traffic routing requirements.

In some instances, iOS 17 was re-enabling the feature even if people had explicitly disabled it previously. That's a privacy problem because some people might not want their location to be tracked in such a way for a variety of reasons. Apple has now acknowledged that there is indeed an issue, saying that the bug appears to be related to the Apple Watch. In particular, it seems to be that the Significant Locations setting is being reset for some people when they transfer an Apple Watch to a new iPhone or pair one for the first time.