Mobile Devices, Tablets & Phones News - Page 1

After a week-long preorder window, Apple has now made the new M4 iPad Pro and M2 iPad Air available to buy both online and at its retail store locations around the globe. Select third-party retail partners also have stocks right now, too.

The new iPads were both announced at last week's Let Loose event alongside the new Apple Pencil Pro and iPad Pro Magic Keyboard. Both of the accessories are also available to buy and are reportedly big upgrades over previous iterations of the Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard.

The new iPad Pro is undoubtedly the star of the show. Available in both 11-inch and 13-inch sizes and starting from $999, the new iPad Pro comes with the first OLED display ever used in an Apple tablet. That display allows for a peak HDR brightness of 1,600 nits as well as a peak SDR brightness of 1,000 nits. Apple calls the new display the Ultra Retina XDR and it offers improved colors and contrast alongside incredible brightness. For the first time, Apple is also offering a nano-texture display option for the new iPad Pro, albeit only available on the 1TB and 2TB storage configuration options. An additional $100 fee is required to upgrade to the nano-texture finish.

Apple only released the iOS 17.5 software update to the public yesterday but already some users are reporting that a somewhat strange bug is causing their old, deleted photos to reappear in the Photos app. The reports suggest that even deleting the photos again isn't enough to make sure that they stay deleted, too.

The problem has started to pop up across social media with MacRumors reporting on a Reddit post in which people have been detailing their experiences. One user says that four photos that were taken in 2010 have now popped back up and appear as if they were recently taken. Another user explained that a photo taken at a concert has recently shown up as if it was taken today.

There is currently no indication of why this is happening, but the age of some of these photos suggests that these aren't images that are being held in the Recently Deleted album within the Photos app. Photos normally wait there for 30 days after they were deleted before they are actually deleted properly, but given the age of some of the photos discussed in the Reddit thread, this issue appears to be more related to iCloud than anything local to the iPhone in question.

Apple CarPlay is a great way to enjoy some of your favorite iPhone apps and features while driving without taking your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road. It's an infinitely better approach than trying to use your phone in your hands or via something like an in-car phone holder because the car's entertainment system screen is always bigger and within reach. Now, Apple has previewed some new accessibility features that are going to make CarPlay even better and easier to use for everyone.

Apple has previewed a number of new accessibility features that are set to ship later this year, like as part of iOS 18 and other software updates that are expected to be announced next month. In the case of CarPlay, there are multiple new additions to look forward to including Voice Control, Color Filters, and Sound Recognition.

Sound Recognition will allow drivers or passengers who are deaf or hard of hearing to enable alerts and then be notified if car horns and sirens are heard by the iPhone. That could be a huge feature for people who worry that they will be in front of an ambulance without hearing its sirens, for example.

Suffering from motion sickness is nobody's idea of fun, especially if you have to travel in vehicles a lot for whatever reason. Thankfully, there are ways to help alleviate the symptoms of motion or travel sickness, and Apple has announced a new one specifically designed for iPhone and iPad users.

Rather than taking a tablet or using another approach, Apple has told users that it has a software fix for their very real-world problem. In a press release previewing new accessibility features coming to the iPhone and iPad later this year, Apple pointed out a new Vehicle Motion Cues feature that will help people deal with sickness while on the move.

Apple says that research has shown that motion sickness is commonly caused by a sensory conflict between what a person can see and what they can feel. For example, looking at a stationary object - like an iPhone or iPad - while feeling the motion of a vehicle can be enough to make some people feel unwell. To help with that, Apple's new Vehicle Motion Cues feature will use animated dots on the edges of the screen to represent the changes in motion. The idea is to remove that sensory conflict mentioned earlier.

If you're picking up a new M4 iPad Pro or a new M2 iPad Air, the chances are good that you intend to keep it for at least three years. That's what we're learning after a new report was published on the amount of time people like to keep their tablets.

The CIRP report looked at how often people choose to upgrade their iPad and the figures suggest that people are now keeping their tablets for longer than ever. The stats show that the largest group of people, around 40% of them, said that they hold on to their iPads for three years or more which is a notable increase over previous years. The group that keeps their iPad for between two and three years has also increased and is not 25%.

Finally, the future for those who keep an iPad for just one or two years is now also 25% while only 10% of people keep an iPad for less than a single year, as you might expect.

Apple and Google announced they are teaming up to prevent users of both iOS and Android devices from being unwantedly tracked.

The two companies announced a new industry specification called "Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers" for Bluetooth tracking devices. This new specification will make it possible to alert iOS and Android users when one of their devices is being tracked, which is an effort by the companies to mitigate the misuse of devices such as Apple AirTag's being used nefariously. The new capability will be rolled out to iOS devices as part of Apple's iOS 17.5 update, and Google will launch the same feature on Android 6.0+ devices.

As for what iOS and Android users can expect to see when they are being unknowingly tracked, the newsroom post on Apple's website states, "users will now get an"[Item] Found Moving With You"alert on their device if an unknown Bluetooth tracking device is seen moving with them over time, regardless of the platform the device is paired with."

The Google Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, and 9 Pro XL aren't expected to be released until later this year but that hasn't stopped them all from leaking ahead of time. Google has long had a problem with leaks, but this is early even by the company's standards - we don't expect Google to officially unveil these devices until October.

Regardless, new images shared by Rozetked appear to give us a full look at what these new phones will have to offer, huge Pixel 9 Pro XL and all. The new phones are set to replace the current Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, adding the XL to the lineup. And that big phone is clearly a big phone as the image below shows - that's an iPhone 15 Pro Max that it's making look small, there.

Questions will obviously now be asked about how these phones have leaked but if we ignore that for a moment, we can probably all agree that these devices look good. The camera bar around the back doesn't cover the full width of the device, which isn't necessarily anything more than a potential marketing problem.

Apple has historically come out on top in terms of the company that makes the most satisfied customers in terms of the phone that they bought. In 2023 Apple just about beat out Samsung according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) but things have changed in 2024.

The new report, shared by the ACSI, shows that Apple and Samsung are now both tied for the top spot with 82% customer satisfaction. Google is in third with Motorola (Lenovo) in fourth spot. Both companies have a score of 77%, while all other manufacturers combined were only able to manage a score of 72%.

The report came after ASCI interviewed almost 12,500 consumers who were chosen at random between April 2023 and March 2024. In terms of iPhone owners, customer satisfaction increased slightly from 81% to 82% while Samsung saw its score leap from 80% to 82% year over year. Overall, smartphone satisfaction increased by 3% while Google was the only company listed to suffer a fall - down to 77% from 78%.

When the European Union forced Apple to allow third-party app stores on the iPhone, Apple suggested that its own App Store was key to ensuring that the company could keep its users safe. It's the same argument that it's used whenever the topic of the App Store and its payment processing systems has come under fire by lawmakers, and now the company has shared details that it believes help back up that stance. According to Apple, the App Store prevented $7 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions across a four-year time span.

The time span in question ran from 202 to 2023, Apple's press release says, with the transactions including more than $1.8 billion worth in 2023 alone. In the same period, Apple says, the company blocked more than 14 million stolen credit cards and more than 3.3 million accounts from transacting again.

The press release goes on, saying that in 2023 it rejected more than 1.7 million app submissions that failed to stick to the App Store's standards for privacy, security, and content. Apple also terminated almost 374 million developer and customer accounts and removed close to 152 million ratings and reviews over concerns that they could potentially be fraudulent.

After weeks of beta testing, Apple released the iOS 17.5 software update to the world yesterday, bringing with it a couple of new features related to the Apple News app and support for early warnings related to potential item tracker stalking. But while the update might have been lacking in terms of the sheer number of new features, it certainly made up for that in terms of the number of security fixes it implemented.

Apple has now published a new support document that details the new fixes that have been applied as a result of iOS 17.5 and there's quite a lot of them. In fact, there are no fewer than 15 new security fixes that will be applied when people install iOS 17.5 on their iPhones at home.

We tend to suggest that people regularly update their iPhones and other devices to ensure that they are running the latest software for a variety of reasons. One of those is compatibility, ensuring that you and your apps can make use of the latest APIs and whatnot. Another is to make sure you're using the latest and greatest versions of the apps that Apple ships by default, including Safari, Mail, and others.