A siren will go off on nearly every smartphone in the UK on Sunday 23 April, the government has announced. From a report: The 10 seconds of sound and vibration at 15:00 BST will test a new emergency alerts system. The test had originally been planned for the early evening but was moved to avoid clashing with an FA Cup semi-final, which kicks off at 16:30. The government was also keen to avoid a clash with the London Marathon, which starts at 09:30 on that Sunday. The alert system will be used to warn of extreme weather events, such as flash floods or wildfires. It could also be used during terror incidents or civil defence emergencies if the UK was under attack. The minister in charge of the system, Oliver Dowden, said it would be used only in situations where there was an immediate risk to life. In most cases it will be targeted at very specific areas, rather than the entire country and, according to officials, may not be used for months or years.

An anonymous reader shares a report from the New York Post: A supposed glitch in the popular "Find My iPhone" app has been directing random strangers to the home of an unsuspecting Texas dad at all hours of the day, falsely accusing him of stealing their electronic devices.

[Software engineer] Scott Schuster told the local news station KTRK that he's been visited by close to a dozen irate people over the past few years, telling him that their missing phone had last pinged at his address. "[I] had to wake up and go answer the door and explain to them that I didn't have their device, and people don't tend to believe you," the dad of two told the outlet.
The Texas resident tells KTRK that his biggest concern was "someone coming to the house potentially with a weapon."

And the same station reports that local sheriff Eric Fagan "said he was so shocked and concerned that he informed his patrol units and dispatchers, just in case anyone called about the address." "Apple needs to do more about this," Fagan said. "Please come out and check on this. This is your expertise. Mine is criminal and keeping our public safe here in Fort Bend County." Fagan added that Apple doing nothing puts a family's safety in jeopardy. "I would ask them to come out and see what they can do. It should be taken seriously. You are putting innocent lives at risk," he said....

There have been other high-profile device pinging errors elsewhere in the country, with at least one that brought armored vehicles to a neighborhood. In 2021, body camera footage captured a Denver police SWAT team raiding the home of a 77-year-old woman in Colorado over a false ping on the app. Denver officers believed she had stolen guns connected to a car theft after tracking a stolen iPhone to her address using the Find My app. That woman later sued the lead detective.

ABC13 has tried contacting the software giant since Tuesday. Someone called back, so we know they are aware of the incident. Still, no one has said if they are going to fix the issue, or at the very least, look into the matter.

The Free Software Foundation certifies products that meet their standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy. And they put out a new "Respects Your Freedom" certification on Thursday for ThinkPenguin's free software gigabit mini VPN router, the TPE-R1400.

From the FSF's announcement: This is ThinkPenguin's first device to receive RYF certification in 2023, adding to their vast catalogue of certified devices from previous years. As with previous routers from ThinkPenguin, the Free Software Gigabit Mini VPN Router ships with an FSF-endorsed fully free embedded GNU/Linux distribution called libreCMC. It also comes with a custom flavor of the U-Boot boot loader, assembled by Robert Call, the maintainer of libreCMC and a former FSF intern.

The router enables users to run their network connection through a VPN service, helping to simplify the process of keeping their communications secure and private. While ThinkPenguin offers a VPN service, users are not required to purchase a subscription to their service in order to use the router, and the device comes with detailed instructions on how to use the router with a wide variety of VPN providers.

"We're pleased to see ThinkPenguin continue with their commitment to bringing out devices that put software freedom as their first priority under the RYF program. The release of this router shows that ThinkPenguin is committed to the privacy and freedom of their users," said the FSF's executive director, Zoë Kooyman....

"The latest version of ThinkPenguin's VPN router lets its users take advantage of gigabit per second Internet connections while protecting their rights and privacy," said FSF's copyright and licensing associate, Craig Topham.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: An Apple Store at the Alderwood Mall was burgled last weekend, with thieves infiltrating the location through a nearby coffee shop. According to Seattle's King 5 News, thieves broke into Seattle Coffee Gear, went into the bathroom, and cut a hole in the wall to get to the Apple Store backroom. The burglars were able to bypass the Apple Store's security system by using the adjacent coffee shop, stealing a total of 436 iPhones that were worth around $500,000.

According to Seattle Coffee Gear manager Eric Marks, the coffee shop is not noticeably adjacent to the Apple Store because of the way that the store is laid out. "I would have never suspected we were adjacent to the Apple Store, how it wraps around I mean," Marks told King 5 News. "So, someone really had to think it out and have access to the mall layout." Police were able to obtain surveillance footage of the theft, but as it is part of an active investigation, it has not yet been released. Nothing was stolen from the coffee shop, but it will cost $1,500 to replace locks and repair the bathroom wall.

Apple will expand ProMotion to the standard iPhone models in two years, according to Ross Young, CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants. ProMotion was first introduced on the iPhone 13 Pro models in 2021 and remains exclusive to Pro models for now. MacRumors reports: In a tweet today, Young provided a roadmap outlining various display-related technologies coming to future iPhones. Notably, the roadmap indicates that low-power LTPO display technology will be expanded to the standard iPhones in 2025, which Young said will enable ProMotion on these devices, allowing the display to ramp up to a 120Hz refresh rate for smoother scrolling and video content when necessary.

ProMotion would also allow the display to ramp down to a more power-efficient refresh rate. iPhone 13 Pro models can ramp down to 10Hz, while iPhone 14 Pro models can go as low as 1Hz, allowing for an always-on display that can show the Lock Screen's clock, widgets, notifications, and wallpaper even when the device is locked. All in all, the roadmap suggests that the so-called "iPhone 17" and "iPhone 17 Plus" will feature ProMotion, and likely an always-on display too. Young also claimed the "iPhone 17 Pro" will be the first iPhone to feature under-panel Face ID technology.

Dumb phones may be falling out of fashion on a global scale, but it's a different story in the U.S. From a report: Companies like HMD Global, the maker of Nokia phones, continue to sell millions of mobile devices similar to those used in the early 2000s. This includes what's known as "feature phones" -- traditional flip or slide phones that have additional features like GPS or a hotspot. "I think you can see it with certain Gen Z populations -- they're tired of the screens," said Jose Briones, dumb phone influencer and moderator of the subreddit, "r/dumbphones." "They don't know what is going on with mental health and they're trying to make cutbacks."

In the U.S., feature flip phone sales were up in 2022 for HMD Global, with tens of thousands sold each month. At the same time, HMD's global feature phone sales were down, according to the company. In 2022, almost 80% of feature phone sales in 2022 came from the Middle East, Africa and India, according to Counterpoint Research. But some see that number shifting, as a contingency of young people in the U.S. revert back to dumb or minimalist phones. "In North America, the market for dumb phones is pretty much flatlined," said Moorhead. "But I could see it getting up to 5% increase in the next five years if nothing else, based on the public health concerns that are out there."

France announced Friday it is banning the "recreational" use of TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and other apps on government employees' phones because of concern about insufficient data security measures. Reuters reports: The French Minister for Transformation and Public Administration, Stanislas Guerini, said in a statement that ''recreational" apps aren't secure enough to be used in state administrative services and "could present a risk for the protection of data." The ban will be monitored by France's cybersecurity agency. The statement did not specify which apps are banned but noted that the decision came after other governments took measures targeting TikTok.

Guerini's office said in a message to The Associated Press that the ban also will include Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, gaming apps like Candy Crush and dating apps. Exceptions will be allowed. If an official wants to use a banned app for professional purposes, like public communication, they can request permission to do so. Case in point: Guerini posted the announcement of the ban on Twitter.

During its State of Unreal keynote at GDC 2023, the company showed off new animation tools that make it possible to create realistic facial animations using only video captured from an iPhone. The Verge reports: Epic showed this off with a live demonstration featuring the actor behind the upcoming game Senua's Saga: Hellblade II. It was a short clip, with the actor speaking directly into the camera, but it appeared to be rendered both quickly and accurately. Even more impressive, the company then showed off the same animations captured onstage used to bring another MetaHuman character to life. The animator is launching this summer. Epic's MetaHuman Creator was announced in early 2021 to streamline the process of making more realistic human faces, body movements, and facial animations.

The European Commission has adopted a new set of right to repair rules (PDF) that, among other things, will add electronic devices like smartphones and tablets to a list of goods that must be built with repairability in mind. The Register reports: The new rules will need to be need to be negotiated between the European Parliament and member states before they can be turned into law. If they are, a lot more than just repairability requirements will change. One provision will require companies selling consumer goods in the EU to offer repairs (as opposed to just replacing a damaged device) free of charge within a legal guarantee period unless it would be cheaper to replace a damaged item. Beyond that, the directive also adds a set of rights for device repairability outside of legal guarantee periods that the EC said will help make repair a better option than simply tossing a damaged product away.

Under the new post-guarantee period rule, companies that produce goods the EU defines as subject to repairability requirements (eg, appliances, commercial computer hardware, and soon cellphones and tablets) are obliged to repair such items for five to 10 years after purchase if a customer demands so, and the repair is possible. OEMs will also need to inform consumers about which products they are liable to repair, and consumers will be able to request a new Repair Information Form from anyone doing a repair that makes pricing and fees more transparent. The post-guarantee period repair rule also establishes the creation of an online "repair matchmaking platform" for EU consumers, and calls for the creation of a European repair standard that will "help consumers identify repairers who commit to a higher quality."

"Repair is key to ending the model of 'take, make, break, and throw away' that is so harmful to our planet, our health and our economy," said Frans Timmermans, EVP for the European Green Deal, which aims to make the whole of EU carbon neutral by 2050. On that note, the EC proposed a set of anti-greenwashing laws alongside passing its right to repair rule yesterday that would make it illegal to make any green claims about a product without evidence. Citing the fact that 94 percent of Europeans believe protecting the environment is important, the EC said its proposal covers any explicit, voluntarily-made claims "which relate to the environmental impact, aspect, or performance of a product or the trader itself." Any such claims, like a laptop being made from recycled plastic, would need to be independently verified and proven with scientific evidence, the EC said.

The FCC has officially proposed, and voted unanimously to move forward with, a framework under which satellites can communicate directly with smartphones in a structured and useful way. From a report: The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, circulated earlier this month and formally voted on today, is essentially a complete first public draft of what the FCC hopes to accomplish by establishing rules and guidelines around this emerging area of communication. Apple already made the news with a dramatic rescue made possible by its new emergency satellite feature, and companies like Lynk and AST SpaceMobile are working on providing universally accessible two-way data anywhere in the world.

Qualcomm and Iridium are integrating the capability at the chipset level. T-Mobile and SpaceX have said they plan to test their own Starlink-based system this year, and plenty of others are looking to enter the fray. There's still the matter of how this space-based connectivity would integrate with existing systems. Our mobile networks run on very carefully defined frequencies so that phones and towers don't interfere with one another, including satellites, which have totally different frequencies and signal powers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission today finalized rules requiring mobile carriers to block robotext messages that are likely to be illegal. The FCC described the rules as the agency's "first regulations specifically targeting the increasing problem of scam text messages sent to consumers." Carriers will be required to block text messages that come from "invalid, unallocated, or unused numbers." Carriers must also block texts from "numbers that the subscriber to the number has self-identified as never sending text messages, and numbers that government agencies and other well-known entities identify as not used for texting," the FCC said. Carriers will have to establish a point of contact for text senders so the senders can inquire about blocked texts. The FCC already requires similar blocking of voice calls from these types of numbers. The order will take effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register, according to a draft of the order released before the meeting.

More robotext rules may be on the way because today's "action also seeks public comment on further proposals to require providers to block texts from entities the FCC has cited as illegal robotexters," the FCC said. For example, the FCC proposes to clarify that Do Not Call Registry protections apply to text messaging. The FCC said it's further proposing to close the "lead generator loophole" that "allows companies to use a single consumer consent to deliver robocalls and text messages from multiple -- perhaps thousands -- of marketers on subjects that may not be what the consumer had in mind." The FCC "will also take further public comment on text authentication measures and other proposals to continue to fight illegal scam robotexts." The FCC separately voted today to close another gap in its Caller ID authentication rules that target illegal robocalls. The rules already required phone companies to implement the caller ID authentication technologies known as STIR and SHAKEN. But the rules don't apply in every possible scenario, so the FCC has periodically strengthened them. In June 2022, for example, the FCC required carriers with 100,000 or fewer customers to comply a year earlier than these small carriers were originally required to. The FCC said in a statement: "The new rules will require intermediate providers that receive unauthenticated IP calls directly from domestic originating providers to use STIR/SHAKEN to authenticate those calls. Although STIR/SHAKEN has been widely implemented under FCC rules, some originating providers are not capable of using the framework. In other cases, unscrupulous originating providers may deliberately fail to authenticate calls. By requiring the next provider in the call path to authenticate those calls, the FCC closes a gap in the caller ID authentication regime and facilitates government and industry efforts to identify and block illegal robocalls."

Britain is to ban the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from ministers' and civil servants' mobile phones, bringing the UK in line with the US and the European Commission and reflecting deteriorating relations with Beijing. From a report: The decision marks a sharp U-turn from the UK's previous position and came a few hours after TikTok said its owner, ByteDance, had been told by Washington to sell the app or face a possible ban in the country. The UK government's announcement was made on Thursday by Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister, in the Commons. He said the ban was taking place "with immediate effect."

The decision follows a review of TikTok by government cybersecurity experts at the National Cyber Security Centre, and will cover ministers' and civil servants' work phones, but not their personal phones. "This is a proportionate move based on a specific risk with government devices," Dowden added. At least two cabinet ministers use TikTok. Michelle Donelan, the science and technology secretary, and Grant Shapps, the energy security and net zero secretary have an account on the app, which is used by millions of young people and many celebrities and influencers.

T-Mobile is buying Mint Mobile, the budget-friendly mobile carrier that's partially owned by Ryan Reynolds. The Verge reports: In a post published on Wednesday, T-Mobile announced that the deal's valued at up to $1.35 billion and comes as T-Mobile looks to build out its prepaid phone offering. The acquisition should close later this year and involves a 39 percent cash and 61 percent stock purchase of Mint's parent company, Ka'ena Corporation. The price could change, however, as it depends on Mint's performance.

Once the deal closes, Mint founders David Glickman and Rizwan Kassim will join T-Mobile to continue managing the brand, which T-Mobile says "will generally operate as a separate business unit." Meanwhile, Reynolds will also remain a part of Mint's branding, as T-Mobile says he will "continue on in his creative role on behalf of Mint." "I never dreamt I'd own a wireless company and I certainly never dreamt I'd sell it to T-Mobile," Reynolds said in a tweet. "Life is strange and I'm incredibly proud and grateful."

As noted by T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert in a YouTube video posted on Wednesday, T-Mobile will retain the price of Mint's cheapest phone plan at $15 per month. The deal also includes Ka'ena's other companies, including Ultra Mobile, a prepaid carrier that offers international calling, and Plum, a wholesale wireless solutions provider. [...] By purchasing Mint, T-Mobile may be looking to claw back the customers it lost when it sold Boost Mobile to Dish as part of its merger with Sprint.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Google Pixel Fold could be available as soon as the second week in June, according to WinFuture's Roland Quandt. The reliable leaker tweeted on Tuesday that the phone will come with 256GB base storage and that you'll be able to get it in either a black / dark gray color or white. The foldable has been rumored for a long time, and there have been whispers that it would be announced sometime in the next few months. However, a January report from The Elec threw some cold water on that idea, saying that the screen wasn't even set to go into production until July or August.

Last summer, Elon Musk and T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert announced "Coverage Above and Beyond," a joint initiative that aimed to bring Starlink satellite coverage compatible T-Mobile devices. Now, SpaceX is getting ready to begin testing its satellite-to-cellular service. Engadget reports: During a panel at the Satellite Conference and Exhibition 2023, SpaceX VP of Starlink enterprise sales Jonathan Hofeller said the company had plans to "start getting into testing" its satellite-to-cell service this year. "We're going to learn a lot by doing -- not necessarily by overanalyzing -- and getting out there, working with the telcos."

Hofeller didn't specifically say which Telco SpaceX was working with, but the timeline certainly lines up with Musk's original vision for the T-Mobile partnership. [...] Either way, the panel seemed optimistic about the future of sat-to-cell technology. Lynk Global CEO Charles Miller said that satellite cellular service has the potential to be the "biggest category in satellite," and Iridium CEO Matt Desch sees cellular satellite service as just the beginning. "Satellite should connect everything everywhere," he said at the event, imagining the technology connecting to computers, vehicles and more.

Samsung's Galaxy smartphones now offer "Space Zoom," writes Apple Insider, a feature augmenting 3x and 10x telephoto cameras with digital zoom "aided by Samsung's AI Super Resolution technology."

But the resulting 100X zoom levels "appear to be more a feat of AI trickery than anything else," they conclude, citing an investigation by a Reddit user: That so-called Space Zoom could potentially allow users to photograph the moon, and many do. However, it may be the case that the level of detail in the moon shots may only be higher due to software shenanigans....

The user tested the effect by downloading a high-resolution image of the moon, then downsized it to a 170 by 170-resolution image, and then applied a gaussian blur to obliterate any final details of its surface. They then showed the low-res blurry moon at full screen on their monitor, walked to the other end of their room, zoomed in on the fake celestial body, and took a photograph. After some processing, an image of the moon was produced by the smartphone, but the surface had considerably more detail for the surface than the doctored source. The user reckons Samsung "is leveraging an AI model to put craters and other details on places which were just a blurry mess."

They go further to stress that while super resolution processing uses multiple images to recover otherwise-lost detail, this seems to be something different. It is proposed that this is a case "where you have a specific AI model trained on a set of moon images, in order to recognize the moon and slap on the moon texture on it."
The Reddit user has now posted an update: I photoshopped one moon next to another (to see if one moon would get the AI treatment, while another would not), and managed to coax the AI to do exactly that.... [O]ne moon got the "AI enhancement", while the other one shows what was actually visible to the sensor — a blurry mess....

It's literally adding in detail that weren't there. It's not deconvolution, it's not sharpening, it's not super resolution, it's not "multiple frames or exposures". It's generating data.

Here's an interesting bit of news out of Mobile World Congress: Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has been certified as the "world's first commercially deployable iSIM (Integrated SIM)." ArsTechnica: What the heck is an iSIM? Didn't we just go through a SIM card transition with eSIM? We did, but iSIM is better than eSIM. We'll explain, but the short answer is that iSIM is the next step in the continual march to reduce the size of SIM cards. [...] eSIMs are still a chip taking up space on your motherboard, and that's not ideal if you want to squeeze every square millimeter of space out of a phone. The next shrinking step is iSIM -- an Integrated Subscriber Identity Module. Rather than a chip on the motherboard, iSIMs are integrated directly onto the SoC. SoC (system on a chip) integration is the technology that makes smartphones possible. Instead of a thousand little chips for things like the CPU, GPU, RAM, modem, and a bunch of other things, everything gets packed into one single do-everything piece of silicon.

Individual chips require more space and power thanks to having to make motherboard traces to connect everything and having to deal with chip packages. Building everything in one chip, with the tiniest transistors you can muster, is the cheapest and most space-efficient and power-efficient way to do things, and now SIM cards are going to disappear into that big block of stuff. iSIMs will be measured in fractions of a millimeter, and as part of the SoC, they will continually shrink every year as chip process nodes hit ever-smaller nm measurements. It sounds like this is the endgame for SIM technology, and besides helping out phones, will be great for evermore space-constrained devices like smartwatches.

Google has begun the process of bringing Chrome's full Blink browser engine to iOS against current App Store rules, and now we have our first look at the test browser in action. 9to5Google reports: In the weeks since the project was announced, Google (and Igalia, a major open source consultancy and frequent Chromium contributor) have been hard at work getting a simplified "content_shell" browser up and running in iOS and fixing issues along the way. As part of that bug fixing process, some developers have even shared screenshots of the minimal Blink-based browser running on an iPhone 12. In the images, we can see a few examples of Google Search working as expected, with no glaringly obvious issues in the site's appearance. Above the page contents, you can see a simple blue bar containing the address bar and typical browser controls like back, forward, and refresh.

With a significant bit of effort, we were able to build the prototype browser for ourselves and show other sites including 9to5Google running in Blink for iOS, through the Xcode Simulator. As an extra touch of detail, we now know what the three-dots button next to the address bar is for. It opens a menu with a "Begin tracing" button, to aid performance testing. From these work-in-progress screenshots, it seems clear that the Blink for iOS project is already making significant progress, but it's clearly a prototype not meant to be used like a full web browser. The next biggest step that Google has laid out is to ensure this version of Blink/Chromium for iOS passes all of the many tests that ensure all aspects of a browser are working correctly.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple partner Foxconn Technology Group plans to invest about $700 million on a new plant in India to ramp up local production, people familiar with the matter said, underscoring an accelerating shift of manufacturing away from China as Washington-Beijing tensions grow. The Taiwanese company, also known for its flagship unit Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., plans to build the plant to make iPhone parts on a 300-acre site close to the airport in Bengaluru, the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka [...]. The factory may also assemble Apple's handsets [...], and Foxconn may also use the site to produce some parts for its nascent electric vehicle business.

The investment is one of Foxconn's biggest single outlays to date in India and underscores how China's at risk of losing its status as the world's largest producer of consumer electronics. Apple and other US brands are leaning on their Chinese-based suppliers to explore alternative locations such as India and Vietnam. It's a rethink of the global supply chain that's accelerated during the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and could reshape the way global electronics are made. The new production site in India is expected to create about 100,000 jobs, the people said. The company's sprawling iPhone assembly complex in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou employs some 200,000 at the moment, although that number surges during peak production season.

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week in Barcelona, OnePlus showcased a concept smartphone with liquid cooling technology, dubbed "Active CryoFlux." While the headset may never see the light of day, at least in its current form, it serves to show how serious OnePlus hopes to get about mobile gaming. From a report: A 0.2 square centimeter piezoelectric ceramic micropump moves the coolant up and down a pipeline near the rear of the device and around the massive camera array. The rear of the device is covered in a transparent material, showcasing the process as a kind of light show. It's a cool effect, and one that invariably shares comparisons to Phone (1), released by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei's Nothing last year. "A lot of young people like playing games," said OnePlus President and COO Kinder Liu. "Gaming plays an important role in their digital life, and in the future, we will continuously improve their gaming experience. Currently, we definitely engage with our users about gaming development. We are talking about how to improve the gaming experience, and in the future, we believe we will have more time to talk to them."