"They survived!" reports a local CBS news station, revisiting nearly two dozen students at Adelphi University who went a full week without their cell phones. schwit1 shares their report: It was part of a college course intended to break the powerful addiction of smartphones... an Adelphi University course called "Life Unplugged" where students did the unthinkable one week ago -- handed over their smartphones. "I'm freaking out, I could probably cry right now," one student said. It was a bold experiment to recognize today's compulsive relationships with ever present devices. Seven days later, "who's excited they're getting their phones back today?" Professor Donna Freitas asked.

Gone were the nerves and the shakes. "Everything is perfect right now. I'm having a lot better relationships... it's a stress free environment no pressure about social media," Jacob Dannenberg said.

"I think it's really refreshing and relaxing... I was able to fall asleep a lot easier," student Adrianna Cigliano.

They managed to find their way, even without GPS for a week. "I just had to take the same route everywhere," one student joked. They were also more productive. "Doing homework was 100 percent easier. I got it done faster, I was in the zone," Cigliano said.

Prof. Freitas says it's important for everyone to assess their addiction. "Are the conveniences worth it because the drawback are pretty significant," Freitas said. "The face that no one can focus, that my students can't sleep... They feel bad about themselves because of social media, the list goes on and on."
Their reunions with the phones "went sour quickly as endless notifications piled up," the article notes. "Oh my God this is so bad...!" they quote one student as saying.

"I just want to shut it off now....!"

After teasing it last month, Motorola has officially announced the successor to the Motorola Razr. The "razr," as it is called, "keeps the same general form factor but replaces the T9 keypad and small LCD with a 6.2-inch foldable plastic OLED panel and Android 9 Pie," reports The Verge. "It'll cost $1,499 when it arrives in January 2020." From the report: The new Razr is a fundamentally different take on the foldable phones that we've seen so far: instead of turning a modern-sized phone into a smaller tablet, it turns a conventional-sized smartphone into something much smaller and more pocketable. [...] The core of the phone is, of course, the display. It's a 6.2-inch 21:9 plastic OLED panel that folds in half along the horizontal axis. Unfolded, it's not dramatically bigger than any other modern phone, and the extra height is something that the Android interface and apps adapt to far better than a tablet-size screen. The screen does have a notch on top for a speaker and camera and a curved edge on the bottom, which takes a bit of getting used to, but after a minute or two, you barely notice it.

There's also a second, 2.7-inch glass-covered OLED display on the outside that Motorola calls the Quick View display. It can show notifications, music controls, and even a selfie camera mode to take advantage of the better main camera. Motorola is also working with Google to let apps seamlessly transition from the front display to the main one. There are some concerns about durability for the folding display, especially after Samsung's Galaxy Fold issues. But Motorola says that it has "full confidence in the durability of the Flex View display," claiming that its research shows that "it will last for the average lifespan of a smartphone." There's a proprietary coating to make the panel "scuff resistant," and it also has an internal nano-coating for splash resistance. (Don't take it swimming, though.) Motorola says that the entire display is made with a single cut, with the edges entirely enclosed by the stainless steel frame to prevent debris from getting in. Aside from the mid-range specs, like the Snapdragon 710 processor and "lackluster" 16-megapixel camera, seasoned reviewers appear to really like the nostalgic look and feel of the device. Did you own a Razr phone from the mid-2000s? How do you think the new model compares?

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: The Russian Parliament is debating a bill that will force all electronic equipment sold in Russia — such as smartphones, computers, and smart TVs — to ship pre-installed with apps from Russian tech firms. According to lawmakers, "the bill will protect the interests of Russian Internet companies and will reduce the abuse by large foreign companies, working in the field of information technology."

If the bill is approved, the Russian government will publish a list of electronic devices that will need to comply with this new law. Smartphones, tablets, computers, servers, and smart TVs are expected to be on the list. Devices that don't run a complex OS or custom software will be exempt. The government will also publish, per each device type, a list of Russian software that equipment vendors will need to include on devices sold in Russia.

The T-Mobile and Sprint merger hasn't been officially completed yet, but that hasn't stopped the "Un-carrier" from talking about what it will do with its newfound resources. T-Mobile announced today that it plans to launch the company's cheapest phone plan ever and roll out its 5G network starting December 6th. Gizmodo reports: Starting at just $15 a month, the new T-Mobile Connect plan offers unlimited talk and text plus 2GB of 4G or 5G data. Now admittedly, 2GB of data per month isn't all that much, but considering the T-Mobile's current least expensive plans start at $30 a month (and that's including a discount for having four lines), T-Mobile Connect could provide some much-needed savings for low-income families -- at least temporarily while it gathers all the goodwill it can muster in the merger process. Additionally, T-Mobile also teased two other new programs with its Connecting Heroes Initiative, which promises to give unlimited talk, text and 5G access to every first responder in the U.S. for the next 10 years. This includes public and non-profit fire, police, and EMS personnel. Then there's T-Mobile's Project 10 Million, which promises to handout 10 million hotspots to students across the country that will provide up to 100GB of free mobile data per year. With Project 10 Million, T-Mobile is hoping to give children and students greater access to broadband internet in order to make completing homework just a bit easier.

Also, next month T-Mobile says it will turn on its nationwide 5G network on December 6th, which promises to bring 5G coverage to over 200 million Americans in more than 5,000 cities. That said, this 5G network won't have the combined resources of both T-Mobile and Sprint until sometime in 2020 when T-Mobile can integrate its mmWave and sub-6GHz spectrum with Sprint's mid-brand spectrum. Looking even further ahead, T-Mobile claims its new 5G network will offer 14 times more capacity than it could on its own, and that the combined T-Mobile/Sprint network will cover 85 percent of the rural U.S. within three years, and 90 percent coverage after six years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Google patched last month an Android bug that can let hackers spread malware to a nearby phone via a little-known Android OS feature called NFC beaming. NFC beaming works via an internal Android OS service known as Android Beam. This service allows an Android device to send data such as images, files, videos, or even apps, to another nearby device using NFC (Near-Field Communication) radio waves, as an alternative to WiFi or Bluetooth. Typically, apps (APK files) sent via NFC beaming are stored on disk and a notification is shown on screen. The notification asks the device owner if he wants to allow the NFC service to install an app from an unknown source. But, in January this year, a security researcher named Y. Shafranovich discovered that apps sent via NFC beaming on Android 8 (Oreo) or later versions would not show this prompt. Instead, the notification would allow the user to install the app with one tap, without any security warning.

The CVE-2019-2114 bug resided in the fact that the Android Beam app was also whitelisted, receiving the same level of trust as the official Play Store app. Google said this wasn't meant to happen, as the Android Beam service was never meant as a way to install applications, but merely as a way to transfer data from device to device. The October 2019 Android patches removed the Android Beam service from the OS whitelist of trusted sources. However, many millions of users remain at risk. If users have the NFC service and the Android Beam service enabled, a nearby attacker could plant malware (malicious apps) on their phones. Since most newly-sold devices have the NFC feature enabled by default, you'll have to disable Android Beam and NFC or update your phone to receive the October 2019 security updates if you want to protect yourself from this bug.

Senior government officials in multiple U.S.-allied countries were targeted earlier this year with hacking software that used Facebook's WhatsApp to take over users' phones, Reuters reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the messaging company's investigation. From a report: Sources familiar with WhatsApp's internal investigation into the breach said a "significant" portion of the known victims are high-profile government and military officials spread across at least 20 countries on five continents. The hacking of a wider group of top government officials' smartphones than previously reported suggests the WhatsApp cyber intrusion could have broad political and diplomatic consequences. WhatsApp filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Israeli hacking tool developer NSO Group. The Facebook-owned software giant alleges that NSO Group built and sold a hacking platform that exploited a flaw in WhatsApp-owned servers to help clients hack into the cellphones of at least 1,400 users. While it is not clear who used the software to hack officials' phones, NSO says it sells its spyware exclusively to government customers.

hackingbear writes: As reported by market researcher Canalys, Chinese tech giant and smartphone maker Huawei posted 66% annual growth, reaching a staggering 42% market share in China, which is the largest, albeit slightly shrinking, smartphone market in the world. A combination of keen pricing, technical innovation and patriotism has turned its strong domestic position into a dominant one, at the expense of Apple, whose market share has dropped to 5.1%, as well as other Chinese vendors such as Vivo and Xiaomi.

"Huawei is in a strong position to consolidate its dominance further amid 5G network rollout," Canalys commented. The Shenzhen tech giant knows that the impact of the blacklist is limited by unwavering support at home, where the headline loss of full-fat Android, its biggest international issue, has no impact -- Google's software and services are unavailable in China, while completely removing US-made semiconductors and components from its phones and networking gear.

"This could antagonize the U.S.," reports Engadget: After months of talk, the UK is reportedly close to letting Huawei into its 5G networks. Sunday Times sources claim Prime Minister Boris Johnson is close to allowing the Chinese tech giant into "non-contentious" parts of 5G service in the country. While there wasn't much elaboration on what that meant, past reports suggested these would be areas where the potential damage from Chinese surveillance (if any) would be limited.

Earlier leaks suggested that all four of the UK's largest carriers (EE, O2, Three and Vodafone) were using Huawei gear in their 5G networks. While they're aware of concerns that China might task Huawei with using equipment to spy on UK targets, they may also have strong business incentives to adopt Huawei gear. It could help them build more heterogeneous networks that are less likely to fail outright, and force telecom giants like Ericsson and Nokia to offer more competitive pricing.

The New Hampshire State House rejected the Digital Fair Repair Act earlier this week in part thanks to a representative who seems to think that cell phones are literally garbage that no one should bother repairing. From a report: The bill would have forced manufacturers such as Apple to share repair manuals and parts with independent repair stores. House members didn't kill the bill, but sent it back to committee for a year of interim study, citing security concerns and, in the words of Rep. John Potucek (R-Derry) the ubiquity, cheapness, and -- in his opinion -- disposability of new smart phones. "In the near future, cellphones are throwaways," Potucek said, according to New Hampshire Business Review. "Everyone will just get a new one."

That is, of course, the problem that right to repair is trying to solve. The new iPhone 11 costs between $699 and $1,349. And it can be hard to find one at the moment. Google's Pixel 4 costs between $799 and $999. Manufacturers seal smartphones to make it difficult to replace the battery and do basic repairs. Often, getting repairs through the company is so expensive that people simply purchase a new phone. Apple's repair monopoly is so dominant that it's the center of an investigation by the United States House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee.

"Kids are outsmarting an army of engineers from Cupertino, California," reports the Washington Post: And Apple, which introduced "Screen Time" a year ago in response to pressure to address phone overuse by kids, has been slow to make fixes to its software that would close these loopholes. It's causing some parents to raise questions about Apple's commitment to safeguarding children from harmful content and smartphone addiction.

When Screen Time blocks an app from working, it becomes grayed out, and clicking on it does nothing unless parents approve a request for more time. Or, at least, it's supposed to work that way. On Reddit and YouTube, kids are sharing tips and tricks that allow them to circumvent Screen Time. They download special software that can exploit Apple security flaws, disabling Screen Time or cracking their parents' passwords. They search for bugs that make it easy to keep using their phones, unbeknown to parents, such as changing the time to trick the system or using iMessage to watch YouTube videos.

"These are not rocket science, backdoor, dark Web sort of hacks," said Chris McKenna, founder of the Internet safety group Protect Young Eyes. "It blows me away that Apple hasn't thought through the fact that a persistent middle school boy or girl can bang around and find them."

Though people can still leave voicemail messages, "Some AT&T customers say they have not had access to their voicemail since the beginning of October," one local news site reported this week: An AT&T spokesperson sent the following statement to ABC11 about the issue: "We're aware that some customers may be having difficulty retrieving their voicemail due to a vendor server problem. We're in contact with the vendor as they work to fix it and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

ABC11 received several messages from frustrated AT&T customers.

"I have been told multiple times that it would be fixed the same day. Today I was told there is no estimated repair date. I don't know what to do. I am a psychologist and people who have mental health issues call me," one said. "They get my message and leave me a voicemail. There is no indication that I won't be able to access it."

"Voicemail is a crucial function on most people's devices. Having it down for weeks is unacceptable," another said. "If they don't fix this issue they will be losing lot of customers. I am been calling daily, but no result."
Slashdot reader amxcoder writes today that AT&T eventually cited their vendor's server issue back on October 9th in their help forum, and that in the 11 days since, "the problem appear to be spreading." After contacting Tech Support on October 20th, it appears that Level One tech support is not aware of the problem, and Level Two reports the problem is affecting Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Maryland, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee. However California and possibly other states seem to be affected as well.

Because AT&T is being tight-lipped about this outage, even to it's own customers that it is affecting, it's difficult to know how many customers this is impacting. No official statement is being sent to customers, nor are customers being updated on progress or given an ETA on resolving the problem. Some online chatter is wondering if AT&T is trying to keep this "under the radar" as long as they can because of something more nefarious, such as a data breach, hacked servers, or even ransomware. Anyone's guess is a good as another without official public statement from AT&T.

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: If you've been using Linux on DeX (aka Linux on Galaxy) to turn your Samsung phone into a PC, you'll need to make a change of plans. Samsung is warning users that it's shutting down the Linux on DeX beta program, and that its Android 10 update won't support using the open source OS as a desktop environment. The company didn't explain why it was shutting things down, but it did note that the Android 10 beta is already going without the Linux option...

Samsung is still committed to DeX, and recently enabled its desktop-style space on Macs and Windows PCs. However, it's clear that the dreams of fully replacing a PC with your Galaxy phone will have to wait, at least for now.

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Blacklisted Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei is in early-stage talks with some U.S. telecoms companies about licensing its 5G network technology to them, a Huawei executive told Reuters on Friday. Vincent Pang, senior vice president and board director at the company said some firms had expressed interest in both a long-term deal or a one-off transfer, declining to name or quantify the companies.

"There are some companies talking to us, but it would take a long journey to really finalize everything," Pang explained on a visit to Washington this week. "They have shown interest," he added, saying conversations are only a couple of weeks old and not at a detailed level yet.

hcs_$reboot writes: Everyone in California will now receive earthquake alerts on their phones seconds before the ground begins to shake, giving residents up to 20 seconds of warning before shaking begins. Developed by seismologists at the University of California, Berkeley, the MyShake application (residents will need to download the app to receive the alerts in areas without cell phone coverage) is designed to alert the public when a magnitude 4.5 earthquake or greater has been detected and has been shown to be faster than other alert delivery methods. The wireless emergency alerts will be sent in the event of a more significant quake, magnitude 5.0 or greater. The system does not predict earthquakes. Rather, it uses numerous seismic stations to detect the start of an earthquake and light-speed communications to send the data to computers that instantly calculate location, magnitude, intensity of shaking and create alerts to be distributed to areas that will be affected. When the MyShake app was released back in 2016 it already detected over 200 earthquakes in more than ten countries.

A paper describing the early results gives a general idea of the app's success: "On a typical day about 8,000 phones provide acceleration waveform data to the MyShake archive. The on-phone app can detect and trigger on P waves and is capable of recording magnitude 2.5 and larger events. The largest number of waveforms from a single earthquake to date comes from the M5.2 Borrego Springs earthquake in Southern California, for which MyShake collected 103 useful three-component waveforms. The network continues to grow with new downloads from the Google Play store everyday and expands rapidly when public interest in earthquakes peaks such as during an earthquake sequence."

Motorola has sent out invitations to an event on Nov. 13, where the rumored foldable Razr phone could launch. CNET reports: Motorola said the evening event in downtown Los Angeles will feature the "highly anticipated unveiling of a reinvented icon." The save the date is a gif showing a device being folded and unfolded. "An original unlike any other," it reads, also displaying the numeric 11/13/19 date. According to the invitation, the event will feature special guests and musical performers, as well as "a journey through immersive experiences." "You're going to flip," Motorola's invite says. Motorola's Razr phone is rumored to have a foldable screen, but instead of opening out into a tablet, the phone could fold vertically to fit inside pockets. "It's also been reported that the phone will cost $1,500; measure 6.2 inches; run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 processor; come in white, black and gold; and have a 2,730mAh battery, 4GB or 6GB of RAM and 64GM or 128GB of storage," reports CNET.

dryriver writes: A study in the British Medical Journal that looked at 24 of the 100s of Medical apps available on Google Play found that 79% pass all sorts of user info -- including sensitive medical info like what your reported symptoms are and what medications you are taking in some cases -- on to third and fourth parties. A German-made and apparently very popular medical app named Ada was found to share user data with trackers like Facebook, Adjust and Amplitude for example. [Click here for the article in German.] The New York Times also warned recently about apps that want to retrieve/store your medical records.

From the conclusion of the study: "19/24 (79%) of sampled apps shared user data. 55 unique entities, owned by 46 parent companies, received or processed app user data, including developers and parent companies (first parties) and service providers (third parties). 18 (33%) provided infrastructure related services such as cloud services. 37 (67%) provided services related to the collection and analysis of user data, including analytics or advertising, suggesting heightened privacy risks. Network analysis revealed that first and third parties received a median of 3 (interquartile range 1-6, range 1-24) unique transmissions of user data. Third parties advertised the ability to share user data with 216 "fourth parties"; within this network (n=237), entities had access to a median of 3 (interquartile range 1-11, range 1-140) unique transmissions of user data. Several companies occupied central positions within the network with the ability to aggregate and re-identify user data."

Rwanda's Mara Group just released two smartphones, earning the company the title of the first smartphone manufacturer in Africa. Their grand ambitions are to help turn Rwanda into a regional tech hub. Fast Company reports: Rwanda President Paul Kagame has announced Africa's "first high tech smartphone factory," CNN reported. While smartphones are assembled in other African nations (Egypt, Algeria, and South Africa all have assembly plants), according to Reuters, those companies all import the components. But at Mara, they manufacture the phones from the motherboards to the packaging, which is all done in the new factory. Kagame made the announcement in a press conference on Monday in the capital of Kigali. The phones, called Mara X and Mara Z, are the first "Made in Africa" models. Both run on Google's Android operating system. While the company admits they are a little more expensive than other options, like the popular Tecno brand phones made by a Chinese-owned company, they hope customers are willing to pay a bit more for quality and Made in Africa pride.

Camera bumps on smartphones may soon go away thanks to a team of researchers at the University of Utah who've developed a radically thin camera lens. Gizmodo reports: For comparison, the lens elements used in today's smartphone cameras, which gather and focus light onto a tiny sensor, are a few millimeters thick. It might not sound like much, but the best smartphone cameras use multiple elements, which quickly add up, resulting in a thin phone simply not having enough room to house all of them: hence the camera bump trend. But a team of electrical and computer engineering researchers at the University of Utah have succeeded in creating a new type of optical lens that measures just a few microns thick, or about a thousand times thinner and one hundred times lighter than what you'll find in smartphones today.

The lens the researchers created is actually made up of innumerable tiny microstructures, imperceptible to the human eye, and strategically positioned so that each one bends and redirects light towards a camera's sensor. When they're all working together, they produce the same results as a single curved element does. Manufacturing the lenses also required the team to develop a new fabrication process, a new polymer, and custom algorithms to calculate the shape and position of each microstructure. But the resulting lens can be completely flat, and made of lightweight plastic. If you've ever spent a day carrying around a camera with a big lens hanging off the front, you'll appreciate that benefit alone. The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2014 consumer expert and Silicon Valley startup founder Nir Eyal wrote Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. But five years later, the New York Times reports he's offering consumers a new book about how to resist those habits -- even while arguing that "addiction" is the wrong way to describe technology's hold on people: There was a problem, yes, but the thinking was all wrong, he decided. Using the language of addiction gave tech users a pass. It was too easy. The issue was not screens but people's own minds, and to solve the problem they had to look within. "If I call technology something that people get addicted to, there needs to be a pusher, a dealer doing it to you," Mr. Eyal said. "But if I say technology is something that people overuse, then it's, 'Oh, crap, now I need to do something about it myself....'" The solution he proposes in Indistractable is slow. It involves self-reflection. He argues that many times we look at phones because we are anxious and bad at being alone -- and that's not the phone's fault...

Mr. Eyal has written a guide to free people from an addiction he argues they never had in the first place. It was all just sloughing off personal responsibility, he figures. So the solution is to reclaim responsibility in myriad small ways. For instance: Have your phone on silent so there will be fewer external triggers. Email less and faster. Don't hang out on Slack. Have only one laptop out during meetings. Introduce social pressure like sitting next to someone who can see your screen. Set "price pacts" with people so you pay them if you get distracted -- though be sure to "learn self-compassion before making a price pact....."

"I got myself a feature phone that had no apps. I got on eBay a word processor, and all it does is let you type. I made my phone grayscale, which only ruined my pictures," he said. "I tried a digital detox, but I missed audiobooks and GPS...."
He also argues that getting hooked on social media isn't necessarily a bad thing. "For many people, social media is a very good thing and gaming is a very good thing. It's how you use it...." But he's also predicting a "post-digital" movement will emerge in 2020.

"We will start to realize that being chained to your mobile phone is a low-status behavior, similar to smoking."

"Attackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Google's Android mobile operating system that can give them full control of at least 18 different phone models," reports Ars Technica, "including four different Pixel models, a member of Google's Project Zero research group said on Thursday night." The post also says there's evidence the vulnerability is being actively exploited.

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica: Exploits require little or no customization to fully root vulnerable phones. The vulnerability can be exploited two ways: (1) when a target installs an untrusted app or (2) for online attacks, by combining the exploit with a second exploit targeting a vulnerability in code the Chrome browser uses to render content. "The bug is a local privilege escalation vulnerability that allows for a full compromise of a vulnerable device," Stone wrote. "If the exploit is delivered via the Web, it only needs to be paired with a renderer exploit, as this vulnerability is accessible through the sandbox...."

Google representatives wrote in an email: "Pixel 3 and 3a devices are not vulnerable to this issue, and Pixel 1 and 2 devices will be protected with the October Security Release, which will be delivered in the coming days. Additionally, a patch has been made available to partners in order to ensure the Android ecosystem is protected against this issue."

The use-after-free vulnerability originally appeared in the Linux kernel and was patched in early 2018 in version 4.14, without the benefit of a tracking CVE. That fix was incorporated into versions 3.18, 4.4, and 4.9 of the Android kernel. For reasons that weren't explained in the post, the patches never made their way into Android security updates.