Apple, suffering from a global supply crunch, is now confronting a different problem: slowing demand. From a report: The company has told its component suppliers that demand for the iPhone 13 lineup has weakened, people familiar with the matter said, signaling that some consumers have decided against trying to get the hard-to-find item. Already, Apple had cut its iPhone 13 production goal for this year by as many as 10 million units, down from a target of 90 million, because of a lack of parts, Bloomberg News reported. But the hope was to make up much of that shortfall next year -- when supply is expected to improve. The company is now informing its vendors that those orders may not materialize, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

At the Snapdragon Tech Summit 2021 yesterday, Qualcomm introduced their new always-on camera capabilities in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, which is expected to arrive in high-end Android phones early next year. The company says this new feature will let users wake and unlock their phone without having to pick it up or have it instantly lock when it no longer sees their face. Even though Judd Heape, Qualcomm Technologies vice president of product management, said that the "always-on camera data never leaves the secure sensing hub while it's looking for faces," it raises a serious privacy concern that "far outweighs any potential convenience benefits," argues The Verge's Dan Seifert. From the report: Qualcomm is framing the always-on camera as similar to the always-on microphones that have been in our phones for years. Those are used to listen for voice commands like "Hey Siri" or "Hey Google" (or lol, "Hi Bixby") and then wake up the phone and provide a response, all without you having to touch or pick up the phone. But the key difference is that they are listening for specific wake words and are often limited with what they can do until you do actually pick up your phone and unlock it. It feels a bit different when it's a camera that's always scanning for your likeness.

It's true that smart home products already have features like this. Google's Nest Hub Max uses its camera to recognize your face when you walk up to it and greet you with personal information like your calendar. Home security cameras and video doorbells are constantly on, looking for activity or even specific faces. But those devices are in your home, not always carried with you everywhere you go, and generally don't have your most private information stored on them, like your phone does. They also frequently have features like physical shutters to block the camera or intelligent modes to disable recording when you're home and only resume it when you aren't. It's hard to imagine any phone manufacturer putting a physical shutter on the front of their slim and sleek flagship smartphone.

Lastly, there have been many reports of security breaches and social engineering hacks to enable smart home cameras when they aren't supposed to be on and then send that feed to remote servers, all without the knowledge of the homeowner. Modern smartphone operating systems now do a good job of telling you when an app is accessing your camera or microphone while you're using the device, but it's not clear how they'd be able to inform you of a rogue app tapping into the always-on camera. [...] But even if it's not found in every phone next year, the mere presence of the feature means that it will be used by someone at some point. It sets a precedent that is unsettling and uncomfortable; Qualcomm may be the first with this capability, but it won't be long before other companies add it in the race to keep up. Maybe we'll just start having to put tape on our smartphone cameras like we already do with laptop webcams.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: When a scammer wants to set up an account on Amazon, Discord, or a spread of other online services, sometimes a thing that stands in their way is SMS verification. The site will require them to enter a phone number to receive a text message which they'll then need to input back into the site. Sites often do this to prevent people from making fraudulent accounts in bulk. But fraudsters can turn to large scale, automated services to lease them phone numbers for less than a cent. One of those is 5SIM, a website that members of the video game cheating community mention as a way to fulfill the request for SMS verification.

Various YouTube videos uploaded by the company explain how people can use its service explicitly for getting through the SMS verification stage of various sites. The videos include instructions specifically on PayPal, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, and dating site Plenty of Fish. Instagram told Motherboard it is concerned by sites that suggest people can use services to bypass Instagram's measures to then abuse the platform. Instagram said it uses SMS verification to prevent the creation of fake accounts and to make account recovery possible. "We have many measures in place to protect against scripted account creation and block millions of fake accounts at registration every day," an Instagram spokesperson said.

Some online services don't allow users to perform SMS verification with VoIP numbers, presumably in an effort to mitigate against fraud. 5SIM's numbers, however, are just like ordinary phone numbers, the site claims. When people buy 5SIM's services, they must only use it for receiving texts related to an online account. "Different SMS will [be] rejected," the website adds. 5SIM also offers an API to automate parts of the service. 5SIM's rules say that customers are "Forbidden to use the service for any illegal purposes as well as not to take actions that harm the service and (or) third parties." The website also includes a denylist of words that its service may block. In an email to Motherboard, 5SIM said: "5sim service is prohibited to use for illegal purposes. In cases, where fraudulent operations with registered accounts are detected, restrictions may be imposed on the 5sim account until the circumstances are clarified. 5sim is used by those who want to get a discount or bonus, webmasters, SMM specialists, owners of business for advertising and increasing business loyalty."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Rights groups petitioned Israel's top court on Monday to repeal new COVID-19 measures that authorize the country's domestic intelligence service to use counter-terrorism phone tracking technology to contain the spread of the Omicron virus variant. Announcing the emergency measures on Saturday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the phone tracking would be used to locate carriers of the new and potentially more contagious variant in order to curb its transmission to others. Israeli rights groups say the emergency measures violate previous Supreme Court rulings over such surveillance, used on-and-off by the country's Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency since March, 2020.

A senior health ministry official said on Sunday that use of phone tracking would be "surgical" in nature, only to be utilized on confirmed or suspected carriers of the variant. The surveillance technology matches virus carriers' locations against other mobile phones nearby to determine with whom they have come into contact. Israel's Supreme Court this year limited the scope of its use after civil rights groups mounted challenges over privacy concerns. Further reading: Omicron Covid Variant Poses Very High Global Risk, Says WHO

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Component shortages have been wreaking havoc on the tech industry since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and smartphones are no outlier. Decelerated production schedules have given way to smaller stock and delayed launches. All of this has resulted in a decline in smartphone sales in Q3 of 2021 compared to Q3 2020, Gartner reported today. According to numbers the research firm shared today, sales to consumers dropped 6.8 percent. A deficit in parts like integrated circuits for power management and radio frequency has hurt smartphone production worldwide.

"Despite strong consumer demand, smartphone sales declined due to delayed product launches, longer delivery schedule, and insufficient inventory at the channel," Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner, said in a statement accompanying the announcement. The analyst added that the production schedules of "basic and utility" phones were more affected by supply constraints than "premium" ones. As a result, premium smartphone sales actually increased during this time period, even though smartphone sales overall declined. Still, shoppers were left with limited options, Gartner noted. Samsung ended up winning the greatest market share (20.2 percent), thanks to its foldable smartphones. Apple's quarterly market share (14.2 percent) was aided by new features in its iPhones, namely the A15 processor and improvements to battery life and the camera sensor. Gartner also pointed to interest in 5G.

Because of a "surprising and sudden request" from America's Federal Aviation Administration that's "based on unverified potential radio interference, a highly anticipated increase in 5G speeds and availability just got put on hold," writes the president/chief analyst of market research/consulting firm TECHnalysis.

But in an opinion piece for USA Today, he asks if the concern is actually warranted? [A]s soon as you start to dig into the details, the concerns quickly seem less practical and more political. Most notably, the plan to launch 5G services on C-Band frequencies has been in the works for several years and really took on momentum after the three big U.S. carriers spent over $80 billion earlier this year to get access to these frequencies. In addition, a report that the FAA cited as part of their complaint has been out for well over a year, so why the last-minute concerns?

U.S. government agencies are, unfortunately, known to hold grudges against one another, sometimes without real clarity as to what's actually involved, as appears to be the case here... Some 40 countries around the world are already using most of the C-Band frequencies for 5G (part of the reason the U.S. has fallen behind on the 5G front), and none have reported any interference with radio altimeters on planes in their countries, the wireless trade association CTIA argues on its website 5GandAviation.com. In addition, new filtering technologies being built into a somewhat obscure part of smartphones called the RF (radio frequency) front end, such as Qualcomm's recently introduced ultraBAW filters, can reduce interference issues on next generation smartphones.

All told, there are numerous reasons why the FAA's concerns around 5G deployment look to be more of a red herring than a legitimate technical concern. While it is true that some older radio altimeters with poor filtering might have to be updated and/or replaced to completely prevent interference, it's not clear that the theoretical interference would even cause an issue.
The article complains that the delayed expansion of bandwidth "could also delay important (and significant) economic impacts," since every previous change in cellular service levels "has triggered billions of dollars of new business and thousands of new jobs by creating new opportunities that faster wireless networks bring with them and 5G is expected do the same...

"While airplane safety shouldn't be compromised in any way, an overabundance of unnecessary caution on this issue could have a much bigger negative impact on the U.S.'s technology advancements and economy than many realize."

iOS 15.2 has been released today, bringing a new feature called Communication Safety in Messages that is able to detect and automatically blur nude images that are sent or received by children. It's one of several Child Safety features Apple announced over the summer. As MacRumors notes, it's "not the same as the controversial anti-CSAM feature that Apple plans to implement in the future after revisions." From the report: Communication Safety is a Family Sharing feature that can be enabled by parents, and it is opt-in rather than activated by default. When turned on, the Messages app is able to detect nudity in images that are sent or received by children. If a child receives or attempts to send a photo with nudity, the image will be blurred and the child will be warned about the content, told it's okay not to view the photo, and offered resources to contact someone they trust for help. When Communication Safety was first announced, Apple said that parents of children under the age of 13 had the option to receive a notification if the child viewed a nude image in Messages, but after receiving feedback, Apple has removed this feature. Apple now says that no notifications are sent to parents.

Apple removed the notification option because it was suggested that parental notification could pose a risk for a child in a situation where there is parental violence or abuse. For all children, including those under the age of 13, Apple will instead offer guidance on getting help from a trusted adult in a situation where nude photos are involved. Checking for nudity in photos is done on-device, with Messages analyzing image attachments. The feature does not impact the end-to-end encryption of messages, and no indication of the detection of nudity leaves the device. Apple has no access to the Messages.

Apple says it will back off its plan to break Face ID on independently repaired iPhones. Ars Technica reports: The company's often contentious relationship with the repair community was tested again when "unauthorized" iPhone 13 screen replacements started resulting in broken Face ID systems. A new report from The Verge says that Apple "will release a software update that doesn't require you to transfer the microcontroller to keep Face ID working after a screen swap." Screen replacements are the most common smartphone repairs. Apple included a new microcontroller in the iPhone 13's display that pairs each screen with other components in the phone. As iFixit reported, if a third-party repair shop replaced the iPhone 13 display, Apple would disable the phone's Face ID system. [...] After a wave of bad press, it's "crisis averted" for the repair community. It would be nice if this was never an issue in the first place, though.

Slashdot reader FlatEric521 tipped us off to an interesting story (from the News Service of Florida): When police responded in 2018 to a call about a shattered window at a home in Orange County, they found a black Samsung smartphone near the broken window. A woman in the home identified the phone as belonging to an ex-boyfriend, Johnathan David Garcia, who was later charged with crimes including aggravated stalking.

But more than three years after the shattered window, the Florida Supreme Court is poised to hear arguments in the case and consider a decidedly 21st Century question: Should authorities be able to force Garcia to give them his passcode to the phone?

Attorney General Ashley Moody's office appealed to the Supreme Court last year after the 5th District Court of Appeal ruled that requiring Garcia to turn over the passcode would violate his constitutional right against being forced to provide self-incriminating information... The case has drawn briefs from civil-liberties and defense-attorney groups, who contend that Garcia's rights under the U.S. Constitution's 5th Amendment would be threatened if he is required to provide the passcode.

But Moody's office in a March brief warned of trouble for law enforcement if the Supreme Court sides with Garcia in an era when seemingly everybody has a cell phone. Police obtained a warrant to search Garcia's phone but could not do so without a passcode. "Modern encryption has shifted the balance between criminals and law enforcement in favor of crime by allowing criminals to hide evidence in areas the state physically cannot access," the brief said.

Peloton, the makers of an internet-connected exercise bike, saw their stock price drop 35% overnight on Thursday, reports CNBC. "At least four Wall Street investment firms downgraded the stock following Peloton's dismal fiscal first-quarter financial report... Peloton's stock has fallen 63% year to date."

The company had cut its annual revenue forecast — by $1 billion — and lowered its projections for both profit margins and paying subscribers. Bloomberg reports: At best, Peloton currently expects to have 3.45 million connected fitness subscriptions by the end of the fiscal year. It had previously called for 3.63 million. And gross profit margin will be 32%, compared with an earlier forecast of 34%. All that will add up to a loss of as much as $475 million, excluding some items....

On a more upbeat note, the company hinted that it plans to launch new products in the coming weeks and months. Peloton has been working on a rowing machine and a heart-rate monitor that attaches to a wearer's arm, Bloomberg News has reported.
The article suggests Peloton's business was hurt by the end of lockdowns, supply-chain constraints, and the cost of freight. But they also point out another factor. "Like several other companies, Peloton also blamed Apple Inc.'s ad-related privacy changes, which have made it more difficult to target shoppers based on their interests." Apple's new Ad Tracking Transparency feature (or "ATT") now first asks users to deny or allow apps to track their activity for the targeted advertising which had apparently been boosting Peloton's business.

And tlhIngan (Slashdot reader #30,335) tipped us off to a larger trend, since Gizmodo reports that Peloton "isn't the only company that has pointed accusingly at Apple lately." When reporting its third quarter earnings at the end of October, Facebook (now called Meta) — which depends on targeted ads for almost 98% of its revenue — said that ATT had decreased the accuracy of its ad targeting. The feature also increased "the cost of driving outcomes" for advertisers, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg explained, and made it harder to measure those outcomes. "Overall, if it wasn't for Apple's iOS 14 changes, we would have seen positive quarter-over-quarter revenue growth," Sandberg said.

On Sunday, the Financial Times reported that ATT had cost Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube an estimated $9.85 billion in lost revenue in the second half of this year. That's an 87% increase year over year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A tweak to the iPhone's repairability that has been long prophesied and feared has finally come to pass, giving staggering new urgency for legislation that makes repair more accessible: The iPhone 13's screen cannot be replaced without special software controlled by Apple. This is a devastating blow to independent repair shops, who make the vast majority of their money doing screen replacements, and, specifically, make the vast majority of their money doing iPhone screen replacements. According to iFixit, replacing the screen on an iPhone 13 disables Face ID functionality. That's because the screen itself is paired to a small microcontroller attached to the display. Replacing a cracked screen with a new screen will disable this pairing, thus breaking a core piece of functionality in the phone. An authorized Apple repair tech can pair a new screen to an iPhone with the click of a few buttons using proprietary Apple tech. Everyone else will have a much harder time. "It is still possible to change a screen on an iPhone 13," notes Motherboard. "The difference is that in order to do so now, this microcontroller needs to be removed from the broken screen and resoldered onto the new screen (after the existing microcontroller on that screen is removed). Doing this requires microsoldering, which requires the use of a microscope and a highly skilled technician."

In an email to Motherboard, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens said: "This is a clear case of a manufacturer using their power to prevent competition and monopolize an industry. Society loses: small repair shops will wither and fade away and consumers will be left with no choice but to pay top dollar for repairs or replace their device."

According to Nikkei Asian Review, "Nintendo will only be able to produce about 24 million units of its popular Switch game console in the fiscal year through March, 20% below an original plan." From the report: Its production has been held up by shortages of semiconductors and other electronic parts amid strong demand for Switch, including for its latest version released on Oct. 8. Nintendo's trouble is a reminder of the far-reaching impact of the global supply crunch that has affected a wide range of industries from autos to electronics to machinery.

The Kyoto-based company originally planned on producing a record 30 million Switch units on the back of rising demand for computer games triggered by the COVID pandemic, which has forced people to spend more time at home. However, production bottlenecks quickly emerged around springtime for key components including microcomputers. The company concluded it would have to revise down production targets as it was not able to secure enough supplies. Nintendo's suppliers have already been notified about the production cuts.

Beginning next year, iPhone users who are in a car accident could have their phone dial 911 automatically. From a report: Apple plans next year to roll out a product feature called "crash detection" for iPhones and Apple Watches, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the feature. Crash detection uses data from sensors built into Apple devices including the accelerometer to detect car accidents as they occur, for instance by measuring a sudden spike in gravity, or "g," forces on impact. The feature would mark the latest move by Apple and its competitors to use motion-sensor technology to build safety functions into their devices. Apple introduced a fall-detection feature in its smartwatch several years ago that senses when wearers have taken a hard fall and dials 911 if they don't respond to a notification asking if they are OK. The company this year added a feature to the newest version of its iPhone operating system that assesses the walking steadiness of users. The timing of the new feature could change, or Apple could choose not to release it, people familiar with the company's development process said.

Apple has been testing the crash-detection feature in the past year by collecting data shared anonymously from iPhone and Apple Watch users, the documents show. Apple products have already detected more than 10 million suspected vehicle impacts, of which more than 50,000 included a call to 911. Apple has been using the 911 call data to improve the accuracy of its crash-detection algorithm, since an emergency call associated with a suspected impact gives Apple more confidence that it is indeed a car crash, according to the documents. The documents don't specify how Apple users are sharing information with the company so it can test its new crash-detection algorithm.

"The third time my 1999 Honda Civic was stolen, I had a plan," writes Washington Post technology reporter Heather Kelly. Specifically, it was a tile tracker hidden in the car, "quietly transmitting its approximate location over Bluetooth." Later that day, I was across town hiding down the block from my own car as police detained the surprised driver. When the Tile app pinged me with a last known location, I showed up expecting the car to be abandoned. I quickly realized it was still in use, with one person looking through the trunk and another napping in the passenger seat, so I called the police...

In April of this year, one month after my car was stolen, Apple released the $29 AirTag, bringing an even more effective Bluetooth tracking technology to a much wider audience. Similar products from Samsung and smaller brands such as Chipolo are testing the limits of how far people will go to get back their stolen property and what they consider justice. "The technology has unintended consequences. It basically gives the owner the ability to become a mini surveillance operation," said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at the American University Washington College of Law...

Apple has been careful to never say AirTags can be used to recover stolen property. The marketing for the device is light and wholesome, focusing on situations like lost keys between sofa cushions. The official tagline is "Lose your knack for losing things" and there's no mention of crime, theft or stealing in any of the ads, webpages or support documents. But in reality, the company has built a network that is ideal for that exact use case. Every compatible iPhone, iPad and Mac is being silently put to work as a location device without their owners knowing when it happens. An AirTag uses Bluetooth to send out a ping with its encrypted location to the closest Apple devices, which pass that information on to the Apple cloud. That spot is visible on a map in the Find My app. The AirTag owner can also turn on Lost Mode to get a notification the next time it's detected, as well as leave contact information in case it's found. Apple calls this the Find My network, and it also works for lost or stolen Apple devices and a handful of third-party products. The proliferation of compatible Apple devices — there are nearly a billion in the network around the world — makes Find My incredibly effective, especially in cities. (Apple device owners are part of the Find My network by default, but can opt out in settings, and the location information is all encrypted...)

All the tracker companies recommend contacting law enforcement first, which may sound logical until you find yourself waiting hours in a parking lot for officers to address a relatively low-priority crime, or having to explain to them what Bluetooth trackers are.
The Times shares stories of two people who tried using AirTags to track down their stolen property. One Seattle man tracked down his stolen electric bike — and ended up pedalling away furiously on the (now out of power) bicycle as the suspected thief chased after him.

And an Ohio man waited for hours in an unfamiliar drugstore parking lot for a response from the police, eventually travelling with them to the suspect's house — where his stolen laptop was returned to the police officer by a man holding two babies in his arms.

Some parents have even hidden them in their childrens' backpacks, and pet owners have hidden them in their pet's collars, the Times reports — adding that the EFF's director of cybersecurity sees another possibility. "The problem is it's impossible to build a tool that is designed to track down stolen items without also building the perfect tool for stalking."

A Microsoft software engineer working on open-source technologies recently wrote that "you can find an open-source implementation for (almost) anything.

"But the mobile landscape is a notable exception." While there are some open-source success stories, Android being a massive one, only a handful of major companies rule hardware and software innovation for the devices we carry in our pockets. Together, Apple and Samsung hold over 50 percent of the world's market share for mobile devices, a figure that underscores just how few dominant players exist in the space. Numbers like these might leave you feeling somber about the overall viability of mobile open source. But a growing demand for better security and privacy, among other factors, may be turning the tides, and a host of inspectable, open-source solutions with transparent life cycle processes are emerging as promising alternatives....

Along with the open-source messaging app Telegram, Signal has garnered attention as a more privacy-focused alternative to apps like Facebook Messenger. The browser Chromium and the mobile game 2048 are other noteworthy examples, as well as proof that although open-source apps aren't the norm, they can be widely adopted and popular. For example, over 65 percent of mobile traffic flows through Chromium-based browsers...

Despite the many open-source technologies available to help build mobile apps, there's plenty of room to grow in the user-facing space — especially as more people recognize the value of having open-source and open-governance applications that can better safeguard their personal information. That growth isn't likely to extend to the hardware space, where the cost of building open-source implementations isn't as rewarding for developers or users — though we may start to see more devices that allow people to choose individual hardware modules from a variety of providers.
The article does cite the open source mobile hardware company Purism. And there's plenty of interesting open source software for mobile app developers, including frameworks like Apache Cordova (which lets developers use CSS3, HTML5, and JavaScript) and a whole ecosystem of open source libraries. But it all does raise the question...

Why aren't there more open source solutions for mobile devices?

Just a few days after releasing iOS 15.1 and iPadOS 15.1, Apple has seeded the first betas of iOS 15.2 and iPadOS 15.2 to developers for testing purposes, with the update adding promised iOS 15 features like App Privacy Report. MacRumors reports: App Privacy Report is one of the iOS 15 additions that Apple showed off at WWDC. It's a new privacy feature that's designed to allow users to see how often apps have accessed their sensitive info like location, photos, camera, microphone, and contacts across the last seven days. It's also set up to show which apps have contacted other domains and how recently they've contacted them so you can keep an eye on what apps are doing behind the scenes.

Auto Call, the feature that lets call emergency services with a series of button presses, has been updated in iOS 15.2. You can now press the side button rapidly multiple times to initiate, or hold down the side button and the volume button together. There's now a longer eight-second countdown before a call is placed, which is up from the prior three-second countdown. Other features and/or changes include a new card-style appearance to Notification Summary and the Communication Safety feature. "Communication Safety is built into the Messages app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and it will warn children and their parents when sexually explicit photos are received or sent from a child's device, with Apple using on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments," reports MacRumors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Under Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, the Federal Communications Commission is seeking to create new rules targeting spam text messages. Like another recent proposed rulemaking from the agency, the policy would push wireless carriers and telephone companies to block the spam before it ever gets to your phone.

"We've seen a rise in scammers trying to take advantage of our trust of text messages by sending bogus robotexts that try to trick consumers to share sensitive information or click on malicious links," Rosenworcel said. "It's time we take steps to confront this latest wave of fraud and identify how mobile carriers can block these automated messages before they have the opportunity to cause any harm."

Today, Google has officially launched Android 12 for select Pixel devices. The Verge reports: It's available to install right now on Pixel 3 and up, including the Pixel 3A, Pixel 4, Pixel 4A, Pixel 4A 5G, the Pixel 5, and the Pixel 5A. It'll launch on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, as well. Android 12 will be coming later this year to Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices.

The most noticeable feature in Android 12 is the new Material You design, which lets you go a little deeper to tweak the look of the homescreen to your liking. It's more expressive than previous versions of Android, with tools to let you coordinate colors that can extend across app icons, pull-down menus, widgets, and more. Speaking of widgets, many of those have been updated to match the new look, and Google shared today that by the end of October, it plans to have over a dozen new or refreshed widgets available for its first-party apps. Google has published a blog post detailing more features available in this release, including the "Pixel-first" features like Material You.

For its 60th anniversary, Fisher-Price announced a special edition Chatter telephone that can make and receive real phone calls. Engadget reports: Before you start planning on where to display it at your home, know that it doesn't work as a landline unit. It connects to your iOS or Android phone via Bluetooth instead and has to be within 15 feet of your mobile device to work. You'll get nine hours of talk time on the Chatter phone on a single charge, and it comes with a speakerphone button. Other than the features that make it a working device, this Chatter for grown-ups looks just like its toy counterpart with its rotary dial, red handset and wheels. [...] You can get the fully functional Chatter for $60 exclusively from Best Buy's website, starting today until supplies last.

Pine64 today announced its latest Linux-powered device, the PinePhone Pro, an update to the original PinePhone which sees a more powerful device running mainline Linux (Manjaro in this case) on a mobile device that works as a cellphone and a desktop computer. Tom's Hardware reports: This combination of hardware and software makes the still slightly futuristic idea of confluence between mobile and desktop devices seem a step closer. Carry it around with you, and it's a phone. Plug it into a monitor, and it's a desktop PC. The KDE Plasma Mobile front-end adapts to the circumstances. Inside, it's much like any other phone, with a Rockchip RK3399S six-core SoC operating at 1.5GHz, 4GB of dual-channel LPDDR4 RAM, and 128GB of internal eMMC flash storage. It features a 13MP main camera sensor and a 5MP front-facing camera. There's a Micro-SD slot for expanded storage, and a six-inch 1440 x 720 IPS touchscreen. The PinePhone Pro is not a typical cell phone, rather the concept of convergence, the ability to use your phone as a computer is intriguing. Plug your PinePhone Pro into an external display and use it as a low-power desktop computer is something that has been attempted by a number of companies, including Canonical's attempt with Ubuntu Edge.

PinePhone Pro offers something that is missing from the majority of phones, privacy. A series of hardware DIP-switches, hidden under a rear cover, cut off access to the cameras, microphone, Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.1 chips, headphone jack, and LTE modem (including GPS) should you ever need to. The layout and Pogo Pins of the new phone are identical to the original PinePhone, so all existing accessories should work. Retailing at $399, the PinePhone Pro's makers are realistic about the challenges of putting desktop Linux on a mobile device, especially in an ecosystem dominated by iOS and Android.