The first alleged images of the rumored "budget" Pixel 3 have been leaked. The Pixel 3 Lite, as it is being called, looks very similar to the Pixel 3, although it features a plastic build construction, slower processor, and a headphone jack. 9to5Google reports: Just like the standard Pixel 3, there's a display that's roughly 5.56-inches in size, but this time it's an IPS LCD panel at 2220x1080 rather than an OLED panel. Obviously, there's also no notch to be seen on this alleged Pixel 3 Lite. There's a single front-facing camera as well as one speaker above that display, relatively thick bezels on the top and bottom, and a speaker along the bottom of the device as well.

Perhaps most interesting when it comes to the hardware, though, is that there's a headphone jack on the top of the phone. That's certainly unexpected since the Pixel 2 dropped the jack and Google hasn't looked back since. Tests from Rozetked reveal some of the specifications running this device as well. That includes a Snapdragon 670 chipset, 4GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. Previous reports have pointed to a Snapdragon 710. Battery capacity on this device is also reported at 2915 mAh and there's a USB-C port along the bottom. It is rumored to include the same 12MP and 8MP cameras found in the standard Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, which will be a huge selling point for the affordable phone market. The price is expected to be around $400-500.

An extensive testing session carried out by bank security experts at Positive Technologies has revealed that most ATMs can be hacked in under 20 minutes, and even less, in certain types of attacks. From a report: Experts tested ATMs from NCR, Diebold Nixdorf, and GRGBanking, and detailed their findings in a 22-page report published this week. The attacks they tried are the typical types of exploits and tricks used by cyber-criminals seeking to obtain money from the ATM safe or to copy the details of users' bank cards (also known as skimming). Experts said that 85 percent of the ATMs they tested allowed an attacker access to the network. The research team did this by either unplugging and tapping into Ethernet cables, or by spoofing wireless connections or devices to which the ATM usually connected to. Researchers said that 27 percent of the tested ATMs were vulnerable to having their processing center communications spoofed, while 58 percent of tested ATMs had vulnerabilities in their network components or services that could be exploited to control the ATM remotely.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) paved the way for improved GPS and location accuracy today, approving an order that will allow U.S. phones to access a European satellite system. The order allows non-federal consumer devices to access the European Union's version of GPS, which is also known as Galileo. The system is available globally, and it officially went live in 2016. By opening up access, devices that can retrieve a signal from both Galileo and the U.S. GPS system will see improved timing estimates and location reliability. The iPhone 8 was the first Apple product to support it. Other phone models from Huawei and Samsung support the system, too. "Since the debut of the first consumer handheld GPS device in 1989, consumers and industry in the United States have relied on the U.S. GPS to support satellite-based positioning, navigation, and timing services that are integral to everyday applications ranging from driving directions to precision farming," the FCC said in a release. Now, the U.S. system will be able to commingle with the European one, making the way for better reliability, range, and accuracy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Three U.S. Senate Democrats today asked the four major wireless carriers about allegations they've been throttling video services and -- in the case of Sprint -- the senators asked about alleged throttling of Skype video calls. Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent the letters to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, noting that recent research using the Wehe testing platform found indications of throttling by all four carriers.

"All online traffic should be treated equally, and Internet service providers should not discriminate against particular content or applications for competitive advantage purposes or otherwise," the senators wrote. Specifically, the Wehe tests "indicated throttling on AT&T for YouTube, Netflix, and NBC Sports... throttling on Verizon for Amazon Prime, YouTube, and Netflix... throttling on Sprint for YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Skype Video calls... [and] delayed throttling, or boosting, on T-Mobile for Netflix, NBC Sports, and Amazon Prime by providing un-throttled streaming at the beginning of the connection, and then subsequently throttling the connection," the senators' letters said.

A new report from the New York Times sheds some light on what happened inside Facebook last year as the company was fighting numerous scandals, including Russian interference and the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March. In addition to reportedly hiring a public relations firm to write dozens of articles critical of rivals Google and Apple, the social media company ordered Facebook executives to use Android phones, after Apple CEO Tim Cook criticized the company in an MSNBC interview for being a service that traffics "in your personal life." According to the report, the order came from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The Verge reports: In those comments made back in March, Cook dismissed a question asking him what he would do if he were in Zuckerberg's shoes dealing with the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal by saying, "I wouldn't be in this situation." Zuckerberg soon after retorted in an interview with Recode that he found Cook's comments to be "extremely glib," and that "I think it's important that we don't all get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you. Because that sounds ridiculous to me." While it's not clear how Cook's aggressive comments directly provoked Zuckerberg into issuing his Android-only order, it's still a rational decision to make Americans use Android. Android is the dominant operating system in many regions outside of the U.S., including South America, Europe, Russia, South Asia, and parts of the Middle East.

A new study has found that more than half of the top free mobile VPN returned by Play Store and App Store searches are from developers based in China or with Chinese ownership, raising serious concerns about data privacy. "Our investigation uncovered that over half of the top free VPN apps either had Chinese ownership or were actually based in China, which has aggressively clamped down on VPN services over the past year and maintains an iron grip on the internet within its borders," said Simon Migliano, Head of Research at Metric Labs, a company that runs the Top10VPN portal. ZDNet reports: The researcher says he analyzed the top 20 free VPN apps that appear in searches for VPN apps on the Google and Apple mobile app stores, for both the US and UK locales. He says that 17 of the 30 apps he analyzed (10 apps appeared on both stores) had formal links to China, either being a legally registered Chinese entity or by having Chinese ownership, based on business registration and shareholder information Migliano shared with ZDNet.

The expert says that 86 percent of the apps he analyzed had "unacceptable privacy policies." For example, some apps didn't say if they logged traffic, some apps appeared to use generic privacy policies that didn't even mention the term VPN, while some apps didn't feature a privacy policy at all. On top of this, other apps admitted in their policies to sharing data with third-parties, tracking users, and sending and sharing data with Chinese third-parties. Almost half of the free VPN apps also appeared to take the privacy policy as a joke, with some hosting the policy as a plain text file on Pastebin, AWS servers, or raw IP addresses, with no domain name. In addition, 64 percent of the apps also didn't bother setting up a dedicated website for their VPN service, operating strictly from the Play Store.

wiredmikey writes: Apple iPhone X, Samsung Galaxy S9 and Xiaomi Mi 6 smartphones were all hacked on the first day of the Pwn2Own Tokyo 2018 contest taking place this week alongside the PacSec security conference in Tokyo, Japan. Pwn2Own Tokyo 2018 participants earned a total of $225,000 on the first day of the event. On the second day, at least two teams will make additional attempts to hack the iPhone X and the Xiaomi Mi 6.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A recently discovered botnet has taken control of an eye-popping 100,000 home and small-office routers made from a range of manufacturers, mainly by exploiting a critical vulnerability that has remained unaddressed on infected devices more than five years after it came to light. Researchers from Netlab 360, who reported the mass infection late last week, have dubbed the botnet BCMUPnP_Hunter. The name is a reference to a buggy implementation of the Universal Plug and Play protocol built into Broadcom chipsets used in vulnerable devices. An advisory released in January 2013 warned that the critical flaw affected routers from a raft of manufacturers, including Broadcom, Asus, Cisco, TP-Link, Zyxel, D-Link, Netgear, and US Robotics. The finding from Netlab 360 suggests that many vulnerable devices were allowed to run without ever being patched or locked down through other means. Last week's report documents 116 different types of devices that make up the botnet from a diverse group of manufacturers. Once under the attackers' control, the routers connect to a variety of well-known email services. This is a strong indication that the infected devices are being used to send spam or other types of malicious mail.

schwit1 shares a report from Apple Insider: A woman from Schenectady, N.Y. accused of being the driver in a shooting used Apple's remote wipe feature to destroy evidence on her iPhone X that might have been related to the event. The iPhone was seized as evidence in the case, but police say that shortly after she triggered the remote wipe, an option available via Find My iPhone in iCloud. Normally the tool is intended for people with lost or stolen devices. The suspected driver, Juelle Grant, was arrested on November 2nd and charged with two counts of tampering with physical evidence, and one count of hindering prosecution. As Apple Insider notes, only one of the tampering counts is connected to the iPhone.

Microsoft has announced an agreement with Native Network to provide broadband internet access to nearly 73,500 people without service in rural communities in Montana and Washington. Great Falls Tribune reports: This is part of the Microsoft Airband Initiative, which aims to extend broadband access to 2 million people in unserved portions of rural America by July 4, 2022, officials said. Unused parts of the broadcast spectrum are used to help rural communities access the internet. Through the partnership, Native Network will provide affordable hybrid fixed wireless broadband internet access, including TV White Spaces, to tribes within Flathead Reservation in Montana as well as Lummi Nation and Swinomish Tribe in Washington. It will come to rural Americans through commercial partnerships and investment in digital skills training for people. Proceeds from Airband connectivity projects will be reinvested into the program to expand broadband to more rural areas, officials said. "Broadband is the electricity of the 21st century and is critical for farmers, small business owners, health care practitioners, educators and students to thrive in today's digital economy," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a news release. "We are excited about the partnership with Native Network which will help close the digital divide in rural Montana and Washington, bringing access to approximately 73,500 people within and around the tribal communities."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Sprint has been slowing traffic to Microsoft's internet-based video chat service Skype, according to new findings from an ongoing study by Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts. Among leading U.S. carriers, Sprint was the only one to throttle Skype, the study found. The throttling was detected in 34 percent of 1,968 full tests -- defined as those in which a user ran two tests in a row -- conducted between Jan. 18 and Oct. 15. It happened regularly, and was spread geographically across the U.S. Android phone users were more affected than owners of Apple Inc.'s iPhones. The finding is particularly troubling because Skype relies on Sprint's wireless internet network, but the app also provides a communication tool that competes with Sprint's calling services, the researcher added. "If you are a telephony provider and you provide IP services over that network, then you shouldn't be able to limit the service offered by another telephony provider that runs over the internet," David Choffnes, one of the researchers who developed the app used to conduct the survey, said. "From a pure common sense competition view, it seems directly anti-competitive."

At its Android Developer Summit today, Google detailed plans to bake support for folding phones into the mobile operating system. One of the first Android phones to hit the market with a foldable display looks to be from Samsung with a launch date of "early next year." TechCrunch reports: "You can think of the device as both a phone and a tablet," Android VP of Engineering Dave Burke explained. "Broadly, there are two variants -- two-screen devices and one-screen devices. When folded, it looks like a phone, fitting in your pocket or purse. The defining feature for this form factor is something we call screen continuity."

Among the additions here is the ability to flag the app to respond to the screen as it folds and unfolds -- the effect would likely be similar to the response of applications as handsets switch between portrait and landscape modes.

Hungarian state's monopoly over national mobile payment services has been ruled illegal by the European Court of Justice. "The ruling would require the end of exclusive control over Hungarian mobile payments exercised since July 2014 by state-owned firm Nemzeti Mobilfizetesi Zrt," reports Reuters. "This exclusive operation 'is contrary to EU law,' the bloc's top court said in a statement."

"Even if the services provided under that system constitute services of general economic interest, their supply cannot be reserved to a state monopoly," the court added.

Samsung is one of the biggest smartphone makers to hold off on releasing smartphones with display notches. But at the company's developer conference today, Samsung confirmed that it's soon going to join in on the trend. "A slide during the keynote showed several notch designs that are almost certainly coming to Samsung-branded devices in 2019 and beyond," reports The Verge. From the report: Hassan Anjum, a director of product marketing at Samsung, took the stage to highlight Samsung's previous breakthroughs in reducing bezels and maximizing display size year after year. "We're going to keep going. The bezels are going to shrink even further," Anjum said. "We're going to push the limits with our new lineup: the Infinity U, V, and O displays. These are new concepts that are just around the corner, and I can't wait to tell you more about them."

Infinity U: This basically looks identical to the Essential Phone's notch design. It's a small half oval that cuts down into the top middle of the display.
Infinity V: Similar to Infinity U, but with four edges instead of a curved half-oval.
Infinity O: This is a full circular cutout of the display and not so much a "notch" the top edge of the screen. Still, it seems like an eyesore and it's hard to imagine reaction to this being very positive. What's gained by that little area of display above it? Asus seems to be exploring a similar idea for its ZenFone 6, and feedback has been overwhelmingly bad.
New Infinity: This looks to be a completely notchless display. Anjum didn't discuss this one onstage, and the technology isn't quite there to allow for this design just yet. That said, Samsung could be exploring the idea of a slider phone that would house the selfie camera and other components somewhere outside their usual location.

Apple is not in talks "at any level" to settle its wide-ranging legal dispute with mobile chip maker Qualcomm, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a source familiar with the matter. From the report: In the past, Apple used Qualcomm's modem chips in its flagship iPhone models to help them connect to wireless data networks. But early last year, Apple sued Qualcomm in federal court in San Diego, alleging that the chip company's practice of taking a cut of the selling price of phones as a patent license fee was illegal. The case is to go to trial early next year and has spawned related legal actions in other courts around the world. In July, Qualcomm's chief executive, Steve Mollenkopf, told investors on the company's quarterly earnings call that the two companies were in talks to resolve the litigation.

Google has pushed out the final "guaranteed" official software update for Nexus devices. According to Hot Hardware, the November update for both the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P "carries the final build number of OPM7.181105.004, running Android 8.1 Oreo." From the report: The last Nexus smartphones to launch from Google were the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, which debuted in late 2015. Under Google's three-year update policy, both smartphones have received two major Android releases (Android 7.0 Nougat in 2016 and Android 8.0 Oreo in 2017) along with three years of monthly security updates. The monthly security updates should have ended in September, but Google out of nowhere provided a two-month reprieve through November 2018.

Corporate Vice President of Cortana Javier Soltero is leaving the company after being in charge of Cortana for less than a year. "Soltero joined Microsoft when it bought at the end of 2014 Acompli, a mobile mail startup in San Francisco which he co-founded and led," reports ZDNet. "After joining Microsoft four years ago, Soltero spearheaded Outlook Mobile, then all of Outlook." Before being appointed to run Cortana in March of this year, he was the head of strategy for Office. From the report: Last month, Microsoft officials confirmed that Cortana was one of the technologies that management was moving from AI + Research to the Experiences & Devices team, which is under Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha. Microsoft is in the midst of trying to reposition Cortana from a standalone digital assistant to more of an assistance aide. Given the strong focus on home and work productivity by the Microsoft 365 and Office teams, officials seemingly decided it made sense for Cortana to be situated in that group.

I've heard Soltero is going to go back to doing entrepreneurial activities once he leaves by year-end. Perry Clarke is going to be working with Soltero on transition plans in the next couple of months, sources are telling me. Clarke has been with Microsoft engineering since 1996, when he led Exchange. He also has been a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer for the past several years. I've heard talk that Microsoft ultimately is looking to bring Cortana and Search together into a single engineering team.

OnePlus has made a name for itself selling devices that punch above the price class. The Chinese smartphone maker has also built a loyal fanbase by proactively reaching out to its users and incorporating the changes and suggestions they make in its product lineup. But as the company grows bigger and embarks on a new journey -- entering the United States -- it is increasingly turning a blind eye to its community. From a story: To get the whole picture, we have to look at all of 2018. OnePlus releases two phones per year, and it makes sure to hype these before each debut. This year was the same in this regard, except for the obvious fan backlash. I'm of course talking about notches and headphone jacks. In March, OnePlus cofounder Carl Pei tweeted that users should "learn to love the notch." The outcry was so great that Pei deleted the tweet. The OnePlus 6 of course launched in May with a notch. Earlier in March, Pei also tweeted his usual annual poll about headphone jacks. The OnePlus 6T, which started shipping in the U.S. on November 1 and will hit the rest of the world on November 6, has a smaller "teardrop" notch. But as you likely already know, it doesn't have a headphone jack. [...] It's a bizarre set of decisions given OnePlus has always prided itself on giving its fans exactly what they want. This year, OnePlus seems to be happily pushing its fans to Samsung, which at least for now still offers headphone jacks in all its phones and has completely ignored the ugly notch trend.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: For the last few weeks, I've been performing the same battery test over and over again on 13 phones. With a few notable exceptions, this year's top models underperformed last year's. The new iPhone XS died 21 minutes earlier than last year's iPhone X. Google's Pixel 3 lasted nearly an hour and a half less than its Pixel 2. Phone makers tout all sorts of tricks to boost battery life, including more-efficient processors, low-power modes and artificial intelligence to manage app drain. Yet my results, and tests by other reviewers I spoke with, reveal an open secret in the industry: the lithium-ion batteries in smartphones are hitting an inflection point where they simply can't keep up.

"Batteries improve at a very slow pace, about 5 percent per year," says Nadim Maluf, the CEO of a Silicon Valley firm called Qnovo that helps optimize batteries. "But phone power consumption is growing up faster than 5 percent." Blame it on the demands of high-resolution screens, more complicated apps and, most of all, our seeming inability to put the darn phone down. Lithium-ion batteries, for all their rechargeable wonder, also have some physical limitations, including capacity that declines over time -- and the risk of explosion if they're damaged or improperly disposed. And the phone power situation is likely about to get worse. New ultrafast wireless technology called 5G, coming to the U.S. neighborhoods soon, will make even greater demands on our beleaguered batteries. If you want a smartphone that excels in battery life, you pretty much have two options: Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 and Apple's iPhone XR. According to The Washington Post's tests, the iPhone XR and Note 9 topped the list with times of 12:25 and 12:00, respectively.

The tablet market has now declined year-over-year for 16 quarters straight. According to new estimates from IDC, "Q3 2018 saw an 8.6 percent year-over-year decline: 36.4 million units shipped worldwide, compared to 39.9 million units in the same quarter last year," reports VentureBeat. From the report: The only silver lining is that the Q3 2018 decline wasn't double digits again. While 2017 quarters only saw single-digit declines, Q1 2018 and Q2 2018 were in the double digits. The estimates come from IDC, which counts both slate form factors and detachables, meaning tablets with keyboards included. Apple maintained its top spot for the quarter, with Samsung and Amazon rounding out the top three. Huawei was the only company in the top five to ship more tablets than the year before. The top five vendors accounted for 68.4 percent of the market, up from 67.1 percent last year.