Apple introduced eSIM support on iPhone with iPhone XR and iPhone XS in 2018. However, while you can use a regular SIM and an eSIM simultaneously, there was no way to use two eSIMs simultaneously -- until now. iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro feature dual eSIM support for the first time. From a report: The new capability was confirmed by Apple on the iPhone 13 specs webpage. There, Apple says that iPhone 13 models support Dual SIM using both regular SIM and eSIM and "Dual eSIM," as the company calls it. If you check the webpage of the iPhone 12 or previous generations, only combined Dual SIM support is mentioned. These are the SIM support specifications for iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max: Dual SIM (nanoâ'SIM and eSIM), and dual eSIM support. During the event, Apple also mentioned that iPhone 13 models have support for more 5G bands, which should enable the new faster network in more countries.

Apple has officially announced the high-end part of the iPhone 13 lineup: the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. It's got a faster A15 Bionic chip, three all-new cameras, and an improved display with up to a 120Hz ProMotion high refresh rate display that can go as bright as 1,000 nits. The iPhone 13 Pro will start at $999, while the iPhone 13 Pro Max will start at $1099. Both will be available to order on Friday, shipping on September 24th. From a report: The OLED screens on both models are the same sizes as last year at 6.1 and 6.7 inches but with slightly smaller notches that should allow for more space in the iOS status bar. Apple says the phones have an all-new three-camera system. The ultrawide should offer better low-light photography, and the telephoto now goes up to 3x zoom, enabling 6x optical zoom across the three cameras. All three cameras now have night mode, and there's a new macro mode for photographing subjects at just 2cm.

Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot quotes Engadget: Hold off on purchasing that iPhone mount for your motorbike.

In a new Apple Support post first seen by MacRumors, the tech giant has warned that high amplitude vibrations, "specifically those generated by high-power motorcycle engines" transmitted through handlebars, can damage its phones' cameras.

As the publication notes, that damage can be permanent. A simple Google search will surface posts over the past few years by users whose cameras were ruined after they mounted their iPhone on their bike, mostly so they can use it for navigation.
MacRumors summarizes another Apple recommendation: for slower vehicles like mopeds and scooters "at least use a vibration-dampening mount to minimize the chances of any damage."

Engadget's suggestion? "Just use another GPS device to make sure you don't ruin a device that costs hundreds to over a thousand dollars."

The Guardian tells the story of "a viral sensation in the global underworld," the high-security An0m phones, which launched with "a grassroots marketing campaign, identifying so-called influencers — 'well-known crime figures who wield significant power and influence over other criminal associates', according to a US indictment — within criminal subcultures." An0m could not be bought in a shop or on a website. You had to first know a guy. Then you had to be prepared to pay the astronomical cost: $1,700 for the handset, with a $1,250 annual subscription, an astonishing price for a phone that was unable to make phone calls or browse the internet.

Almost 10,000 users around the world had agreed to pay, not for the phone so much as for a specific application installed on it. Opening the phone's calculator allowed users to enter a sum that functioned as a kind of numeric open sesame to launch a secret messaging application. The people selling the phone claimed that An0m was the most secure messaging service in the world. Not only was every message encrypted so that it could not be read by a digital eavesdropper, it could be received only by another An0m phone user, forming a closed loop system entirely separate from the information speedways along which most text messages travel. Moreover, An0m could not be downloaded from any of the usual app stores. The only way to access it was to buy a phone with the software preinstalled...

[U]sers could set an option to wipe the phone's data if the device went offline for a specified amount of time. Users could also set especially sensitive messages to self-erase after opening, and could record and send voice memos in which the phone would automatically disguise the speaker's voice. An0m was marketed and sold not so much to the security conscious as the security paranoid...

An0m was not, however, a secure phone app at all. Every single message sent on the app since its launch in 2018 — 19.37m of them — had been collected, and many of them read by the Australian federal police (AFP) who, together with the FBI, had conceived, built, marketed and sold the devices.

On 7 June 2021, more than 800 arrests were made around the world....
Law enforcement agencies ultimately saw An0m as a creative workaround for unbreakable encryption, according to the Guardian. "Why debate tech companies on privacy issues through costly legal battles if you can simply trick criminals into using your own monitored network?"

The Guradian's story was shared by jd (Slashdot user #1,658), who sees an ethical question. "As the article notes, what's to stop a tyrant doing the same against rivals or innocent protestors?"

Apple's next event, during which it will likely unveil its next slate of devices, including the seventh-generation Apple Watch and a new iPhone, is happening Sept. 14 at 10 a.m. PT, the company confirmed Tuesday. The event, like all previous ones over the last year and a half, will be held entirely online amid continued concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. From a report: Apple's invite includes the phrase "California streaming." It features a neon outline of the Apple logo set atop a silhouette of a mountain range. The company's flashy event is its most important of the year, setting its product lineup for the holiday shopping season. Last year, Apple held three major product releases in the second half, separating out announcements for its latest Apple Watches, iPads, iPhones and Mac computers. The releases helped propel Apple's sales and profit to their highest levels, setting new revenue records for the company's iPhones, iPads and Mac computers. It's unclear just what products Apple will announce and if it will repeat last year's tactic of holding multiple events throughout the second half. The iPhone 13 is almost assuredly going to make an appearance. The rumored Apple Watch 7 could as well.

"A security researcher has discovered malicious code inside the firmware of four low-budget push-button mobile phones sold through Russian online stores," reports the Record: In a report published this week by a Russian security researcher named ValdikSS, push-button phones such as DEXP SD2810, Itel it2160, Irbis SF63, and F+ Flip 3 were caught subscribing users to premium SMS services and intercepting incoming SMS messages to prevent detection. ValdikSS, who set up a local 2G base station in order to intercept the phones' communications, said the devices also secretly notified a remote internet server when they were activated for the first time, even if the phones had no internet browser...

All the remote servers that received this activity were located in China, ValdikSS said, where all the devices were also manufactured before being re-sold on Russian online stores as low-budget alternatives to more popular push-button phone offerings, such as those from Nokia.
But who's responsible, the article ultimately asks. The third party supplying the firmware? The parties shipping the phones? The vendors selling the phone without detecting its malware? Or the government agencies lacking a mechanism for collecting reports of malware...

Long-time Slashdot reader Nkwe shares an article about AT&T's "Flying COW" drones — their Cell (tower) On Wings drone technology that's helped restore cellphone service after Hurricane Ida and other natural disasters.

"The device is a cell site situated on a drone engineered to beam wireless LTE coverage across an area of up to 40 square miles." The weather-resistant drone can withstand extreme conditions, and its thermal imaging can help search and rescue teams find people in buildings, tree cover, and thick smoke... The drone has the potential to hover over 300 feet and is connected by a tether attached to the ground.

When someone texts, calls, or uses data, the signal is sent to the drone and transferred through the tether to a router. The router pushes information through a satellite, into the cloud, and finally into the AT&T network. The tether also provides constant power to the Flying COW via a fiber, giving the drone unlimited flight time.

Its flying capabilities allow it to soar 500% higher than a terrestrial Cell-on-Wheels mast, expanding how far the signal reaches, though more drones can be added to widen the coverage area. The drone is small and versatile, making it easy to set up, deploy, and move during rapidly changing conditions, like firefighters chasing a wildfire.

Qualcomm says it's figured out a way to deliver lossless audio over Bluetooth, yielding quality that should be indistinguishable from uncompressed sources. And it's calling it aptX Lossless, the next generation of Qualcomm's proprietary audio format. From a report: Taking a "systems level approach," was the key, the company says, as it's "optimized a number of core wireless connectivity and audio technologies, including aptX Adaptive, which work together to auto detect and scale-up and are designed to deliver CD lossless audio when a user is listening to a lossless music file and the RF conditions are suitable." So, yes, there are a few caveats, and you'll need new hardware to get the full aptX Lossless experience -- that goes for the device you're streaming from (a phone, for instance), as well as your listening device, typically a pair of headphones. Qualcomm says devices that support aptX Lossless are expected to be available in early 2022. Its key specs are: Supports 44.1kHz, 16-bit CD lossless audio quality
Designed to scale-up to CD lossless audio based on Bluetooth link quality
User can select between CD lossless audio 44.1kHz and 24-bit 96kHz lossy
Auto-detects to enable CD lossless audio when the source is lossless audio
Mathematically bit-for-bit exact
Bit-rate : ~1Mbps

Apple wants to hire a programmer who knows about RISC-V, a processor technology that competes with the Arm designs that power iPhones, iPads and newer Macs. The company's interest emerged in a job posting for a "RISC-V high performance programmer" that Apple published Thursday. From a report: It's not clear exactly what Apple's plans are for the technology. Landing even a supporting role in an Apple product would be a major victory for RISC-V allies seeking to establish their technology as an alternative to older chip families like Arm or Intel's x86.

One of the RISC-V's creators is seminal processor designer David Patterson, and startups like SiFive and Esperanto Technologies are commercializing RISC-V designs. The job description offers some details about Apple's plans. The programmer will work on a team that's "implementing innovative RISC-V solutions and state of the art routines. This is to support the necessary computation for such things as machine learning, vision algorithms, signal and video processing," the job description says.

What if your smartphone or laptop started charging as soon as you walked in the door? Researchers have developed a specially built room that can transmit energy to a variety of electronic devices within it, charging phones and powering home appliances without plugs or batteries. Scientific American: This system "enables safe and high-power wireless power transfer in large volumes," says Takuya Sasatani, a project assistant professor at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Engineering and lead author of the new study, which was published this week in Nature Electronics. The room relies on the same phenomenon as short-range wireless phone chargers: a metal coil, placed in a magnetic field, will produce an electric current. Existing commercial charging docks use electricity from a wall outlet to produce a magnetic field in a small area. Most recent smartphones are equipped with a metal coil, and when such a model) is placed on the dock, the interaction generates enough current to power the phone's battery. But today's commercial products have a very limited range. If you lift a phone off the dock or swathe it in a case that is too thick, the wireless power transfer ceases. But if a magnetic field filled a whole room, any phone within it would have access to wireless power.

"The prospect of having a room where a variety of devices could just receive power anywhere is really compelling and exciting," says Joshua Smith, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the new study. "And this paper takes another step toward making that possible." In the study, the researchers describe a custom test room of about 18 cubic meters (roughly equivalent to a small freight container), which Sasatani built from conductive aluminum panels with a metal pole running down the middle. The team furnished the room with a wirelessly powered lamp and fan, as well as more prosaic items, including a chair, table and bookshelf. When the researchers ran an electric current through the walls and pole in a set pattern, it generated a three-dimensional magnetic field within the space. In fact, they designed the setup to generate two separate fields: one that fills the center of the room and another that covers the corners, thus allowing any devices within the space to charge without encountering dead spots.

By carrying out simulations and measurements, Sasatani and his co-authors found their method could deliver 50 watts of power throughout the room, firing up all of the devices equipped with a receiving coil that they tested: a smartphone, a light bulb and a fan. Some energy was lost in the transfer, however. Delivery efficiency varied from a low of 37.1 percent to a high of about 90 percent, depending on the strength of the magnetic field at specific points in the room, as well as the orientation of the device. Without precautions, running current through the room's metal walls would typically fill it with two types of waves: electric and magnetic. This presents a problem, because electric fields can produce heat in biological tissues and pose a danger to humans. So the team embedded capacitors, devices that store electric energy, in the walls. "It confines the safe magnetic fields within the room volume while confining hazardous parts inside all the components embedded inside the walls," Sasatani explains.

Apple's push to bring satellite capabilities to the iPhone will be focused on emergency situations, allowing users to send texts to first responders and report crashes in areas without cellular coverage. From a report: The company is developing at least two related emergency features that will rely on satellite networks, aiming to release them in future iPhones, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Apple has been working on satellite technology for years, with a team exploring the concept since at least 2017, Bloomberg has reported. Speculation that the next iPhone will have satellite capabilities ramped up this week after TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the phone will probably work with spectrum owned by Globalstar. That's led to conjecture that the iPhone will become something akin to a satellite phone, freeing users from having to rely on cell networks. But Apple's plan is initially more limited in scope, according to the person, with the focus on helping customers handle crisis scenarios.

With Apple's latest iPhone just around the corner, reports suggest that it will include support for satellite communications, which consumers could use when terrestrial-based 4G and 5G are not available. The one getting most of the glory: Globalstar, the once-embattled satellite company. From a report: Globalstar shares shot up more than 40% at one point today. Shares in satellite companies Iridium and AST SpaceMobile also rose, more than 9% and 4%, respectively. One report tracks to TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who, as MacRumors explained, discussed how the iPhone 13 lineup will feature hardware that is able to connect to low earth orbit (LEO) satellites, which could allow iPhone 13 users to make calls and send messages. The MacRumors report notes that the upcoming iPhone 13 supposedly features a customized Qualcomm X60 baseband chip that supports satellite communications; other smartphone brands reportedly are waiting until 2022 for the X65 baseband chip for turning on satellite communications functionality. While there are ample ways to support LEO connectivity in handsets, the bottom line is: The "simplest scenario" for providing LEO communications to users is if network operators work with Globalstar, according to the Kuo-based report. That raised some eyebrows, rightly so.

"T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert published an open apology to customers Friday after hackers stole more than 50 million users' personal data, including their Social Security numbers and driver's license information," reports NBC News: "The last two weeks have been humbling for all of us at T-Mobile," he wrote. "To say we are disappointed and frustrated that this happened is an understatement."

The incident is the fourth known breach at T-Mobile since 2018, and by far the largest. The full count of how many customers had their data stolen is unclear, but the company said last week it had identified more than 53 million affected customers, most of them on subscription plans. It also included an unspecified number of "prospective" users who are not T-Mobile customers...

It is unclear why T-Mobile was storing customers' driver's license information and Social Security numbers without encrypting them in a way that would make it difficult or impossible for hackers to see them even if they stole them. Jackie Singh, a cybersecurity consultant, said it was irresponsible on the part of T-Mobile, especially for hard-to-change sensitive personal data like Social Security numbers.

"It is frankly bizarre to learn that in this day and age, a major telco continues to store critical customer data in plain text," she said. "Offering two years of credit monitoring services doesn't change the fact that harm was done to their customer base."
NBC says they spoke to the person identified as the perpetrator by the Wall Street Journal, who told them last week that he'd planned to sell the information on more than 100 million users for a hefty profit.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile's CEO now says they're alerting affected users and have set up a hub for victim services. Beneath the words "NOTICE OF DATA BREACH," it adds the tagline "Keeping you safe from cybersecurity threats. What you need to know and how we're protecting you."

It's long been known that Google pays Apple a hefty sum every year to ensure that it remains the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Now, a new report from analysts at Bernstein suggests that the payment from Google to Apple may reach $15 billion in 2021, up from $10 billion in 2020. 9to5Mac reports: In the investor note, seen by Ped30, Bernstein analysts are estimating that Google's payment to Apple will increase to $15 billion in 2021, and to between $18 billion and $20 billion in 2022. The data is based on "disclosures in Apple's public filings as well as a bottom-up analysis of Google's TAC (traffic acquisition costs) payments." Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi says that Google is likely "paying to ensure Microsoft doesn't outbid it." The analysts outline two potential risks for the Google payment to Apple, including regulatory risk and Google simply deciding the deal is no longer worth it:

In an interview earlier this year, Apple's senior director of global privacy Jane Horvath offered reasoning for the deal, despite privacy concerns: "Right now, Google is the most popular search engine. We do support Google but we also have built-in support for DuckDuckGo, and we recently also rolled out support for Ecosia."

Passengers escaped an Alaska Airlines jet via emergency slides on Monday night after a malfunctioning smartphone filled the cabin with smoke. The Register reports: The pilot ordered the evacuation of flight 751 from New Orleans to Seattle after someone's cellphone started to spit out sparks and smoke just after landing. As the aircraft was still waiting on the tarmac at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for a gate, the slides were deployed and all 129 passengers and six crew made it out. The errant mobile was also stuffed in a bag to curb its compact conflagration. Two people, we're told, were taken to hospital.

"The crew acted swiftly using fire extinguishers and a battery containment bag to stop the phone from smoking," a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines told The Register. "Crew members deployed the evacuation slides due to hazy conditions inside the cabin. Two guests were treated at a local area hospital." Airport officials, meanwhile, said "only minor scrapes and bruises were reported." It's unknown which device malfunctioned on this flight, but it makes us think back to the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco of 2016 that prompted Samsung to formally recall the smartphone after nearly 100 reports of them catching fire and spewing noxious black smoke. The Note 7 was also banned from aircraft in the United States under an emergency order.

If you plan on unlocking the bootloader to root your Galaxy Z Flip 3 or Galaxy Z Fold 3 -- Samsung's two newest foldabes announced earlier this month, you should know that the Korean OEM will disable the cameras. Technically, this has only been confirmed for the Galaxy Z Fold 3, but the Galaxy Z Flip 3 likely has similar restrictions. XDA Developers reports: According to XDA Senior Members [...], the final confirmation screen during the bootloader unlock process on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 mentions that the operation will cause the camera to be disabled. Upon booting up with an unlocked bootloader, the stock camera app indeed fails to operate, and all camera-related functions cease to function, meaning that you can't use facial recognition either. Anything that uses any of the cameras will time out after a while and give errors or just remain dark, including third-party camera apps.

It is not clear why Samsung chose the way on which Sony walked in the past, but the actual problem lies in the fact that many will probably overlook the warning and unlock the bootloader without knowing about this new restriction. Re-locking the bootloader does make the camera work again, which indicates that it's more of a software-level obstacle. With root access, it could be possible to detect and modify the responsible parameters sent by the bootloader to the OS to bypass this restriction. However, according to ianmacd, Magisk in its default state isn't enough to circumvent the barrier.

"According to addiction expert Dr Anna Lembke, our smartphones are making us dopamine junkies," reports the Guardian, "with each swipe, like and tweet feeding our habit..." As the chief of Stanford University's dual diagnosis addiction clinic (which caters to people with more than one disorder), Lembke has spent the past 25-plus years treating patients addicted to everything from heroin, gambling and sex to video games, Botox and ice baths... Her new book, Dopamine Nation, emphasises that we are now all addicts to a degree. She calls the smartphone the "modern-day hypodermic needle": we turn to it for quick hits, seeking attention, validation and distraction with each swipe, like and tweet. Since the turn of the millennium, behavioural (as opposed to substance) addictions have soared. Every spare second is an opportunity to be stimulated... "We're seeing a huge explosion in the numbers of people struggling with minor addictions," says Lembke.

That has consequences. Although we have endless founts of fun at our fingertips, "the data shows we're less and less happy," she says. Global depression rates have been climbing significantly in the past 30 years and, according to a World Happiness Report, people in high-income countries have become more unhappy over the past decade or so. We've forgotten how to be alone with our thoughts. We're forever "interrupting ourselves", as Lembke puts it, for a quick digital hit, meaning we rarely concentrate on taxing tasks for long or get into a creative flow. For many, the pandemic has exacerbated dependence on social media and other digital vices, as well as alcohol and drugs.

Addiction is a spectrum disorder: it's not as simple as being an addict or not being an addict. It's deemed worthy of clinical care when it "significantly interferes" with someone's life and ability to function, but when it comes to minor digital attachments, the effect is pernicious. "It gets into philosophical questions: how is the time I'm spending on my phone in subtle ways affecting my ability to be a good parent, spouse or friend?" says Lembke. "I do believe there is a cost — one that I don't think we fully recognise because it's hard to [see it] when you're in it...."

"It's very different from how life used to be, when we had to tolerate a lot more distress," says Lembke. "We're losing our capacity to delay gratification, solve problems and deal with frustration and pain in its many different forms."
The solution, according to the article, is dopamine fasts — "the longer, the better...to reset our brain's pathways and gain perspective on how our dependency affects us," eventually attaining the lost art of moderation.

In a 2015 video, PCMag's lead mobile analyst Sascha Segan showed off "One of the coolest phones at this year's CES."

He's now written an article titled "How I Got Suckered by an (Alleged) $10M Phone Scam. The biggest mobile-phone mystery of the 2010s is finally coming to an ignominious end, as yesterday the U.S. attorney for Utah charged Chad Sayers, founder of entirely notional mobile phone firm Saygus, with conducting a $10 million fraud scheme. Saygus "had" a series of "phones" from 2009-2016 that existed as prototypes that the company took on trade shows and to press tours. There was never any real evidence of production runs. The U.S. Attorney now claims Sayers and associated took $10 million in investor money and lived on it without ever really planning to release a product. (I learned this via David Ruddock....)

The phone kept just...not happening. Sayers' genius was that he produced just enough prototypes to show off and kept them in a constant state of pre-sale... "DEFENDANT failed to disclose that device certification with Verizon expired in 2013 and was never renewed," the Department of Justice notes. A new version of the phone then popped up again in 2015, this one supposedly covered in Kevlar with 320GB of storage. Sayers flogged that prototype until early 2016, at which point he said it was coming "next month."

The Department of Justice says: "Between April 7, 2015 and January 10, 2017, DEFENDANT made at least 26 public statements on Twitter that its phone would be shipping 'this month,' 'this week,' or was otherwise launching, when in fact, it has never launched...."

Sayers kept going on press tours and buying expensive trade-show booths with prototypes of phones that would never hit the market, drumming up enough gullible mainstream press coverage (myself included) to presumably attract a continual stream of investors with his claim of being the next big thing.

"There is no simple answer to this question," argues an article at EE Times. At least, not yet...

Slashdot reader dkatana shares their report: For most industrial IoT applications, the question remains: Do I need 5G for my IoT connections? It depends on the connectivity, the devices, and many other factors. First, does the project need cellular connectivity? There are several wireless low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) using different radios that can be used without incurring the cost of cellular connections. Other wireless technologies such as LoRaWAN and Sigfox offer massive IoT connectivity for local and wide-area applications with low power consumption. For example, connecting hundreds or thousands of sensors in agriculture can be achieved over an existing Sigfox or LoRaWAN network. Those sensors usually do not require the bandwidth or enhanced security of cellular networks. Additionally, most cellular connections use licensed spectrum, which is additional cost carriers need to transfer to customers.

One reason to invest in 5G connectivity for IoT is that operators are shutting down legacy 2G and 3G networks worldwide. In the past 30 years, hundreds of thousands of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) devices have been deployed using 2G networks. Those are utility meters, alarm systems, and basic sensors that use SMS and GPRS/EDGE for communication. In 2017, AT&T announced that they will start shutting down 2G networks to free up the spectrum for LTE and the upcoming 5G radios. Additionally, Verizon Wireless phased out its 2G CDMA network in the US at the end of 2020; Sprint sunsetted its 2G CDMA network in December of 2021; and T-Mobile plans to sunset its 2G network in December of 2022.

The existing connections are now living on borrowed time.

Like 2G, many carriers are eager to sunset older 3G networks so that they can repurpose that spectrum to support 4G LTE and 5G.

"What seemed like a small update has, for some, turned into a huge headache," reports ZDNet: Over on Apple's support forum, there are several threads from users complaining that iOS 14.7.1 broke their iPhones, causing a "no service" problem where users are unable to connect to cell service. Ther">e are similar threads on Apple's developer forums as well.

While there doesn't seem to be a pattern to which phones are affected, I've seen reports of everything from the iPhone 6 to iPhone 12 affected, and the cause is clear — upgrading to iOS 14.7.1.
"Users are saying that restarting the phone, removing the SIM, and even resetting network settings didn't help," according to 9to5Mac (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader antdude).

Forbes reports the bug appears to happen when you lose your cellular connection and switch to WiFi calling, "so those living in areas with good reception may never see it. Of course, this scenario also helps to mask the scale of iPhones which might be affected." If you haven't upgraded to iOS 14.7.1 yet, this potentially crippling flaw could (understandably) put you off upgrading. The problem is that the release also contains a critical fix for a new zero-day security flaw...