Samsung's "Galaxy XCover Pro" rugged smartphone includes a feature that all but disappeared from the market: a removable battery. "There are a handful of very low-end smartphones that still have removable batteries, but as a mid-ranger, this would be the highest-end removable-battery phone on the market," reports Ars Technica. From the report: It's hard to say if the XCover Pro is currently official or not. Samsung's Nordic division posted a CES press release that detailed the never-before-seen XCover Pro, complete with specs and pictures, alongside several other previously announced phones. A later update scrubbed all mention of the XCover from the press release. The release said the phone would be for sale in Finland on January 31 for $554, but since the release was pulled, it's unclear if that is still accurate.

Samsung Nordic listed the phone with a Samsung Exynos 9611 SoC, an eight-core, 10nm chip with four Cortex A73 cores and four Cortex A53 cores. This would make it a mid-range phone on par with the "Galaxy A" series. The phone has 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage that's expandable thanks to a microSD slot, and that sweet 4050mAh removable battery. The display design is... interesting. The display is a 6.3-inch 2400x1000 LCD, which is strange, as most Samsung phones use the company's OLED panels. Like most modern Samsung phones, this device also has a circular cutout in the display for the camera, and while this makes sense on devices with slim top bezels, the XCover's top bezel seems like it would have had plenty of room for a camera. As far as the "rugged" features go, the device features an IP69 water- and dust-resistance rating. There's also a push-to-talk button, side-mounted fingerprint sensor, two rear cameras (25MP + 8MP sensors), and a 13MP front sensor. Strangely, it appears to be running Android 9 Pie instead of the newer Android 10 OS.

A Vermont lawmaker has introduced a new bill that would ban the use of cellphones by anyone under the age of 21. From a report: State Sen. John Rodgers' proposal would punish anyone under the age threshold found with a cellphone with up to one year in prison, a $1,000 fine or both, news station WPTZ reported. Rodgers argued that young people are too immature to use cellphones, citing the role the devices play in fatal car crashes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Now that most smartphones don't have headphone jacks, there's no shortage of complaints about Bluetooth. This year at CES, the industry group in charge of defining the standard, the Bluetooth SIG, is introducing new features that should address some of them. Later this year, it will finalize new support for Bluetooth LE Audio, which is an umbrella term for a bunch of new features for Bluetooth devices. The new features include higher-quality audio, hearing aid support, broadcasting to many people, and working better with wireless earbuds. Unfortunately, as is the way with all industry specs, it will take some time for these features to make their way into consumer products. The old joke that "Bluetooth will be better next year" still holds true.

The feature that will likely affect the most people is the new "Low Complexity Communication Codec," or LC3. LC3 simultaneously reduces power consumption while increasing audio quality. Right now, the lowest common denominator for Bluetooth audio is the relatively old and relatively bad SBC codec, though many phones support Qualcomm's proprietary codec, AptX. In order to get SBC to sound good, you have to increase the bitrate, which increases power consumption. The Bluetooth SIG claims that, in its testing, users preferred the new LC3 codec, even at significantly lower bitrates. The group is also finally beefing up official support for Bluetooth hearing aids. It has worked in conjunction with a European hearing instrument association to ensure broad support in the coming years, including working with TVs and other devices. A new "broadcast" feature will theoretically allow an entire movie theater audience to use their Bluetooth headphones to tune in to the movie, although how exactly the pairing process would work is "TBD," the report says.

Bluetooth LE will natively support multistream audio, which "means wireless earbuds will be able to receive their own independent signal from a phone instead of having to communicate with each other," the report adds. "Multistream also will allow for easier sharing of Bluetooth audio among multiple users from the same source."

Apple on Wednesday said that its services business, which includes software for things like news, gaming, apps, music and video, had its best ever year in 2019. From a report: "2019 was the biggest year for Services in Apple's history. We introduced several exciting new experiences for our customers, all while setting the standard for user privacy and security," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services in a statement. In an effort to showcase its growth to investors, Apple released a slew of engagement numbers for several of its services products. It says: Apple News has over 100 million monthly active users in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada. Apple Music now offers over 60 million songs in 115 countries. Apple Podcasts offers over 800,000 shows in 155 countries. Apple Card and Apple Pay are accepted in more than 150 stadiums, ballparks, arenas and entertainment venues.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The encryption debate between Apple and the F.B.I. might have found its new test case. The F.B.I. said on Tuesday that it had asked Apple for the data on two iPhones that belonged to the gunman in the shooting last month at a naval base in Pensacola, Fla., possibly setting up another showdown over law enforcement's access to smartphones. Dana Boente, the F.B.I.'s general counsel, said in a letter to Apple that federal investigators could not gain access to the iPhones because they were locked and encrypted and their owner, Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani of the Saudi Royal Air Force, is dead. The F.B.I. has a search warrant for the devices and is seeking Apple's assistance executing it, the people said.

Apple said in a statement that it had given the F.B.I. all the data "in our possession" related to the Pensacola case when it was asked a month ago. "We will continue to support them with the data we have available," the company said. Apple regularly complies with court orders to turn over information it has on its servers, such as iCloud data, but it has long argued that it does not have access to material stored only on a locked, encrypted iPhone. Before sending the letter, the F.B.I. checked with other government agencies and its national security allies to see if they had a way into the devices -- but they did not, according to one of the people familiar with the investigation. "The official said the F.B.I. was not asking Apple to create a so-called backdoor or technological solution to get past its encryption that must be shared with the government," the report adds. "Instead, the government is seeking the data that is on the two phones, the official said."

"Apple has argued in the past that obtaining such data would require it to build a backdoor, which it said would set a dangerous precedent for user privacy and cybersecurity." Apple did not comment on the request.

Bluetooth will soon roll out some of its technology's biggest improvements in its nearly 20-year history. From a report: The new Bluetooth standard will be known as LE Audio and one of the biggest improvements it will include will be a feature called Multi-Stream Audio. Bluetooth is currently limited to streaming audio to just a single device. That's fine for portable speakers and headphones where both sides are connected with a wire, but for wireless earbuds, such as Apple's AirPods, your smartphone can actually only connect to one side. That earbud then has to forward the audio stream onto the one in your other ear, which requires some clever software tricks to ensure everything remains in sync. Multi-Stream Audio will solve that, as it will allow a single device, such as a smartphone, to stream flawlessly synced audio to multiple audio devices at the same time.

The most obvious benefit is that it will be much easier to make wireless earbuds work more reliably, without any audio lag issues. But the feature promises to also benefit those who want to use their wireless headphones with multiple devices at the same time, such as a tablet, phone, and a laptop, streamlining the process of switching between each audio source without having to go through an annoying disconnect/reconnect process each time. Bluetooth LE Audio will also make sharing a music stream with others possible. Users should be able to easily share audio from their smartphone with friends, as multiple sets of wireless headphones can be connected to a single source device at once, and each should receive the exact same audio stream in perfect sync with all the others. Further expanding on that idea is another new feature known as Broadcast Audio which allows a single audio source device to broadcast several audio streams to an unlimited number of wireless headphones, without any private pairing required.

Some app developers are concerned that frequent iOS 13 notifications will scare users away. From a report: "'Facebook' has used your location 107 times in the background over the past 3 days. Do you want to continue to allow background location use?" Such pop-up notifications are frequent for many iPhone users who have downloaded Apple's iOS 13. They arrive every few days for each app that tracks location while not in use and includes maps. Apple touted the new notifications as a way to make users more mindful of how much tracking goes on even when they aren't using their phones. Each notification gives users the option to let the app use their location data only when it is in use or if they agree for the app to track their locations at all times. Since iOS 13 was released in September, tens of millions of people have moved to block apps' ability to track their locations when not in use, according to an estimate from Location Sciences, a company that verifies mobile location data.

Some app developers, particularly the ones whose business models rely on being able to access users' locations at all times, are concerned that the iOS 13 notifications will hurt their apps' adoption. Seven of them signed an email to Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook addressing these concerns in August. The signatories included Life360, an app that lets family members track one another's location and can summon an ambulance immediately in the event of an auto accident, and Tile, a maker of tracking devices for items like wallets and keys. Both Life360 and Tile rely on constantly tracking all their users and compete with Find My, a preinstalled Apple app that helps users locate a lost iPhone -- and isn't subject to the same notifications. [...] Apple's iOS 13 location-tracking changes have hit the supply of mobile location data available for advertising and analytics, said Jason Smith, chief business officer of Location Sciences. He said the amount of location data gathered by apps while not in use had dropped by 70% since iOS 13 was released.

The once-king-of-the-hill smartphone vendor, which had a terrible 2018, continued to bleed last year, according to financial disclosures it made on Monday. From a report: HTC reported revenue of 10,015 million TWD ($333 million) in 2019, down 57.8% from 23,741 million TWD ($789 million) it posted the year before, and whopping 87% below over $2 billion it grossed in 2017. As Bloomberg columnist Tim Culpan pointed out, Apple now generates more from selling AirPods in a fortnight than HTC clocks from selling each of its offering in a year. The drop in revenue comes as the Taiwanese firm scales back its smartphone business -- a sizable portion of which it sold to Google two years ago -- and focuses on virtual reality headsets and accessories. HTC has yet to disclose how much money it lost in the quarter that ended in December, but in the other three quarters last year, it lost 7.05 billion TWD ($234.4 million).

"First they came for our headphone jacks. Now, they're taking our ports," writes CNET: Reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has reported that the company is gearing up to remove the Lightning connector from the flagship iPhone released in 2021... Kuo predicts that having a totally wireless phone will help differentiate the flagship iPhone from all other models in the lineup. Having no physical ports mean iPhones will have less moving parts and it can improve water resistance or make more room for a bigger battery...

We've also seen other rumors indicating that Apple may bundle AirPods with the new iPhones, which makes sense if we get a portless phone. Apple would not be the first to experiment with a portless phone: Other companies have shown off concepts, like the Vivo Apex from earlier in 2019.

Apple will once again license technology from Imagination Technologies, the chip designer that used to provide graphics processors for the iPhone and iPad, the UK-based company announced today. The Verge reports: In a short statement posted on its website, Imagination said that it had entered into a multiyear license agreement with Apple, under which the Cupertino, California-based firm will have access to "a wider range of Imagination's intellectual property in exchange for license fees." Apple announced its split from Imagination back in April 2017 when it said that it would start designing its own graphics chips, and it would stop licensing the company's technology within two years. After the split was announced, Imagination expressed skepticism that Apple could design its own chips "without violating Imagination's patents, intellectual property, and confidential information."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Riding through a remote valley in Mongolia on the back of his motorbike, adventurer Jamie Clarke let the hum of the engine and the wind echo in his mind while his thoughts wandered. After several hours, he pulled over to shake off his helmet and take a look at the map. This was what he loved about adventuring -- the solitude, the landscape and the feeling of being in charge of your own destiny. But when his 18-year-old son pulled up right behind him on his own motorcycle, he had a different take on the long ride they had just finished. For him, being alone in his thoughts was novel and unsettling. "Oh my God, that was terrible! I can't be left with my brain like that!" But that was precisely why the two had decided to embark on this adventure together.

Mr Clarke, a lifelong skier, mountaineer and trekker, had felt like he was losing touch with his son Khobe, who was always on his phone at their home in Calgary, Alberta. He blames himself, partly. He has a smartphone just like everyone else, and he enjoyed playing games with his son on his Blackberry when he was small. [...] For a long time, he had dreamed of traveling across Mongolia on a bike. Now that his son was older, why not do it with him? About a year ago, he proposed it to Khobe. It wasn't an automatic hit. "I said no pretty quickly," Khobe says. "But it kind of turned into this fun idea it became such a thing of preparation that it was very exciting to go do it." Khobe got his motorcycle license and the two practiced longer trips. While his father has climbed Everest twice, Khobe had never climbed a mountain so he had to practice that, too. They left on July 28, and over the course of the next month travelled more than 2,200 kilometers (1,367 miles) across Mongolia by motorbike, horse and camel. "I think the whole time I was pretty consumed by missing my phone," Khobe says. "You realize how boring everything gets. When I'm bored I can just turn on YouTube or watch Netflix. What am I going to do, look at the stars and twiddle my thumbs?" But he also says getting to know his dad was worth it, especially the time they spent off the road in their tents or yurts just cooking and bonding. "I was surprised that when he's away from a work environment and family that he acts maybe closer my age," he says.

"It helped me see Khobe in a new way. I saw him as a kid who kept leaving his jacket on the table, not cleaning up the dishes," he says. "And I was able to see him step up to being a young man, and I was impressed by how well he was able to perform under pressure."

Dell is trying to make its laptops more attractive to iPhone users. From a report: The Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker said on Thursday it is releasing software that will let users mirror their iPhone's screen on Dell laptops. The feature will roll out in coming months as an update to Dell's Mobile Connect software, which added similar functionality for Android handsets in 2018. The update, will also let Dell users drag photos, videos and other files from their iPhone to their PC. The software requires the download of an iPhone app and works with Dell XPS, Inspiron, Vostro and Alienware laptops running Windows 10.

Bloomberg looks back at what tech industry titans predicted would be happening "by 2020." - Here's what Huawei Technologies Co. said in 2015 predicting a "superphone" by 2020, according to ZDNet: "Inspired by the biological evolution, the mobile phone we currently know will come to life as the superphone," said Shao Yang, a strategy marketing president of Huawei. "Through evolution and adaptation, the superphone will be more intelligent, enhancing and even transforming our perceptions, enabling humans to go further than ever before." It's not entirely clear what that means, but it probably hasn't happened yet. In the interim, Huawei found itself in the middle of a trade war, and the Chinese company is focusing largely on mid-priced phones for its domestic market...

- In 2013, Elon Musk outlined his vision for a new "fifth mode of transportation" that would involve zipping people through tubes at speeds as fast as 800 miles per hour. Several tech entrepreneurs heeded Musk's call and went to work on such systems inspired by the billionaire's specifications. In 2015, one of the leading startups predicted a hyperloop spanning about 60 miles would be ready for human transport by 2020. Rob Lloyd, then the CEO of Hyperloop Technologies, told Popular Science: "I'm very confident that's going to happen." It hasn't. His company, now called Virgin Hyperloop One, has a 1,600-foot test track in California and hopes to build a 22-mile track in Saudi Arabia someday. Musk has since experimented with hyperloops of his own, and even he has had to scale back his ambitions. Musk's Boring Co. is building a so-called Loop system in Las Vegas, starting with a nearly mile-long track that consists of a narrow tunnel and Tesla cars moving at up to 155 miles per hour...

- It was barely two years ago when the maker of blowdryers and vacuum cleaners said it would sell an electric car by 2020. Dyson canceled the project this year, calling it "not commercially viable."
Other predictions include John McAfee's infamous 2017 prediction that one bitcoin would be worth $1 million by the end of 2020, "about three weeks before a crash would erase 83% of value over the next year."

And in 2012 Intel predicted that by 2020 we'd have computer chips that consumed almost no energy

Rog Srigley, writer who teaches at Humber College and Laurentian University, offered his students extra credit if they would give him their phones for nine days and write about living without them. "What they wrote was remarkable, and remarkably consistent," he writes. "These university students, given the chance to say what they felt, didn't gracefully submit to the tech industry and its devices." An anonymous Slashdot reader shares what some of them said: "Believe it or not, I had to walk up to a stranger and ask what time it was. It honestly took me a lot of guts and confidence to ask someone," Janet wrote. (Her name, like the others here, is a pseudonym.) She describes the attitude she was up against: "Why do you need to ask me the time? Everyone has a cell phone. You must be weird or something." Emily went even further. Simply walking by strangers "in the hallway or when I passed them on the street" caused almost all of them to take out a phone "right before I could gain eye contact with them."

To these young people, direct, unmediated human contact was experienced as ill-mannered at best and strange at worst. James: "One of the worst and most common things people do nowadays is pull out their cell phone and use it while in a face-to-face conversation. This action is very rude and unacceptable, but yet again, I find myself guilty of this sometimes because it is the norm." Emily noticed that "a lot of people used their cell phones when they felt they were in an awkward situation, for an example [sic] being at a party while no one was speaking to them." The price of this protection from awkward moments is the loss of human relationships, a consequence that almost all the students identified and lamented. Without his phone, James said, he found himself forced to look others in the eye and engage in conversation. Stewart put a moral spin on it. "Being forced to have [real relations with people] obviously made me a better person because each time it happened I learned how to deal with the situation better, other than sticking my face in a phone." Ten of the 12 students said their phones were compromising their ability to have such relationships. Peter: "I have to admit, it was pretty nice without the phone all week. Didn't have to hear the fucking thing ring or vibrate once, and didn't feel bad not answering phone calls because there were none to ignore." "It felt so free without one and it was nice knowing no one could bother me when I didn't want to be bothered," wrote William.

Emily said that she found herself "sleeping more peacefully after the first two nights of attempting to sleep right away when the lights got shut off." Stewart: "Actually I got things done much quicker without the cell because instead of waiting for a response from someone (that you don't even know if they read your message or not) you just called them [from a land line], either got an answer or didn't, and moved on to the next thing."

According to TV metrics company Nielsen, a whopping 88% of Americans stare at screens while staring at other screens. Nate Anderson from Ars Technica discovered the stat while combing through Mary Meeker's annual "Internet Trends" report: My attitude, when watching TV, is that a show you pay attention to precludes the use of phone or laptop; if you're using another screen, you're not actually watching the show. Pick better shows to watch, people! And then watch them! [...] I got to thinking about the ways in which we use television, and not all of them involve watching dark prestige dramas with 80+ Metacritic scores. Perhaps you're watching (ugh) live TV, either because you are a masochist or you love sports. (If you are watching baseball, perhaps it's both!) Picking up a smartphone during commercial breaks is arguably better than being bombarded with the consumerism of late-stage capitalism.

Say you use your TV not as a way to consume compelling crafted content, but as background noise that helps you relax. (I highly recommend Sunday afternoon golf for this purpose.) Tooling around on a laptop while the TV plays in the background is now not quite so odd. Or perhaps you watch TV simply as a way to kill time. Perhaps you're in pain, or recovering from illness, or simply bored out of your mind. The goal is not necessarily to direct your full and undivided attention to the screen; it is to get through the day until something better comes along. Using a second screen here, too, makes sense. [...] Still, I can't shake the feeling that the majority of time spent using one digital device while another displays video content nearby is low-quality time, where we aren't really paying attention to what's on either screen and so are using the planet's resources, cluttering our lives with extra noise, and reinforcing our slavish devotions to screens for little to no benefit... Do you ever find yourself browsing your phone while watching TV? If so, can it be explained by one of Nate's reasonings?

As smartphones balloon in price, some pushing past $1,000, there is a debate between case haves and case have-nots. One side says it makes absolutely no sense to ferry such expensive gadgets unprotected -- especially one vital to modern living. From a report: Phone-case holdouts say their nervous pals are delusional, clinging to their bulky silicon prophylactics like a security blanket. Cases cause carelessness, they say, leading to phones dropped, slammed and stepped-on. Having no protective case "makes me pay attention," says Drew Davidson, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center. "I have friends that break every phone even though they have cases."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Federal regulators that want to let T-Mobile complete its acquisition of rival wireless carrier Sprint are pushing back on a collective effort by some states to block the deal. The $26 billion transaction was subject to federal approval by both the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. The agencies both blessed the deal, with the DOJ reaching a settlement in July and the FCC granting a green light in October. The deal also requires approval by regulators in several states, however. While about a dozen have in some way approved the deal or signaled support for the federal settlements, attorneys general representing 13 states and the District of Columbia filed suit to block the merger.

The FCC and DOJ on Friday submitted a filing [400-page PDF] in that case arguing that the deal is in the best interest of the U.S., and any nationwide injunction holding up the merger would block "substantial, long-term, and procompetitive benefits for American consumers." The argument, in large part, boils down to: trust us, we're the experts. "Both the Antitrust Division and the FCC have significant experience and expertise in analyzing these types of transactions and do so from a nationwide perspective," the agencies write. "Thus, their conclusions that the merger as remedied is in the public interest deserve appropriate weight in this remedy inquiry by this honorable court."

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Earlier this week the United States Navy banned the social media app TikTok from government-issued mobile devices, saying the popular short video app represented a "cybersecurity threat."

A bulletin issued by the Navy on Tuesday showed up on a Facebook page serving military members, saying users of government issued mobile devices who had TikTok and did not remove the app would be blocked from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet.

The Navy would not describe in detail what dangers the app presents, but Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Uriah Orland said in a statement the order was part of an effort to "address existing and emerging threats...." The U.S. government has opened a national security review of the app's owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co's $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly, Reuters first reported last month. Last month, U.S army cadets were instructed not to use TikTok, after Senator Chuck Schumer raised security concerns about the army using TikTok in their recruiting.

Motorola is slightly delaying its reimagined foldable Razr flip phone, citing an unexpectedly high demand. Android Police reports: Pre-orders were originally slated to begin on December 26th, ahead of the launch on January 9th, but it looks like we'll have to wait a little bit for our fancy blasts from the past. Motorola has stated that it doesn't foresee "a significant shift" from the original launch window, so hopefully the delay won't be too long. With the announcement of the delay coming at the eleventh hour, it might put a damper on some tech enthusiasts' holiday, but at least we'll avoid the mad rush that comes with under-supplying.

Apple has a secret team working on satellites and related wireless technology, striving to find new ways to beam data such as internet connectivity directly to its devices, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the work. From a report: The Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker has about a dozen engineers from the aerospace, satellite and antenna design industries working on the project with the goal of deploying their results within five years, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal company efforts. Work on the project is still early and could be abandoned, the people said, and a clear direction and use for satellites hasn't been finalized. Still, Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has shown interest in the project, indicating it's a company priority. Apple's work on communications satellites and next-generation wireless technology means the aim is likely to beam data to a user's device, potentially mitigating the dependence on wireless carriers, or for linking devices together without a traditional network. Apple could also be exploring satellites for more precise location tracking for its devices, enabling improved maps and new features.