ZDNet reports that Singapore is fighting the coronavirus with a new smartphone app named "TraceTogether". The app is able to estimate the distance between TraceTogether smartphones as well as the duration of such interactions. The data then is captured, encrypted, and stored locally on the user's phone for 21 days, which spans the incubation period of the virus. When needed in contact tracing, users will have to authorise the uploading of their TraceTogether data to Singapore's Ministry of Health, which then will assess the information and retrieve the mobile numbers of close contacts within that period of time.

Developed by Government Technology Agency (GovTech), alongside the health ministry, the app was designed to help speed up the contact tracing process and stem the spread of COVID-19, the government IT office said. GovTech said the current processed depended heavily on the memory of patients, who might not be ale to remember all close contacts or have the contact details and information of these individuals. The mobile app can plug the gaps and more quickly identify potential carriers, who then can monitor their health and take the necessary action sooner...

Data logs were stored locally on the mobile phone and contained only cryptographically generated temporary IDs. The data logs would be extracted only when needed by the authorities for contact tracing, it said.

Longtime Slashdot reader dbart writes: With the near ubiquitous use of smartphones in America, it's sensible to seize upon this resource to help with the coronavirus pandemic. Here's my take on a way to use smartphones to deal with the pandemic:

America does not currently have a good coronavirus test -- but they are in development. Once a test is available there should be a smartphone app ready to deploy immediately. The app should work like this: A person would be tested for the virus at a testing station and the results of the test would be entered into the app's database. The person could then go about their business, such as going back to work. Upon arriving at the place of work, the person would bring up the app on their smartphone. The app would display some information to identify the subject that was tested along with a barcode. The employer would then scan in the barcode with the app on the employer's phone which will check with the central database and report back the results of their coronavirus test and the recency of the test. The employer would decide whether to allow the person into the workplace. This could similarly be used to safely allow entry to a restaurant, airplane, theater, sporting event, etc. -- thus getting the economy functioning again.

I've only presented a rough sketch of my idea about this above and there's many nuances to how this should work. It's obvious that everyone should be tested frequently for this to be effective. This would require testing on a massive scale, but considering the damage happening to the American economy, such massive testing could easily be justified. A capability as described above would get the American economy restarted at the soonest possible time and would allow society to function until a vaccine is available. It would also be a very valuable asset to epidemiological investigators. If an app was designed with enough forethought it could be deployed internationally. I'm hoping to get not just a Slashdot conversation but a larger conversation started about the use of technology to defeat this virus. Perhaps there's a Slashdotter with the skillsets to make this happen who would like to take this on. If anyone has a contact at the CDC please forward this post to them to insure that technological solutions such as this are being considered.

HMD Global today unveiled its latest Nokia-branded mobile phones. "The Nokia 8.3 5G is the world's first global 5G phone, which means it supports bands in every country in which 5G is currently deployed," reports Android Police. "At the same time, the Nokia 5.3, 1.3, and a new roaming data plan from HMD also made their debut." From the report: Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G mobile platform, the Nokia 8.3 5G promised a future-proofed experience as it supports more 5G bands across the entire range (NSA/SA/DSS) than any handset currently on the market. It features a 6.8-inch FHD+ (2400x1080p) display with a hole-punch cutout for the 24MP selfie camera, but it's a shame to see the Nokia logo plastered on the chin. On the rear, there are four cameras including a 64MP main sensor with Zeiss optics complemented by a 12MP ultra-wide lens, plus 2MP depth and macro sensors. The fingerprint scanner lies within the power button on the side, while a USB-C port, 3.5mm headphone jack, and dedicated Google Assistant button are all onboard. Battery capacity is rated at 4,500mAh, and NFC is also included for mobile payments. The Nokia 8.3 5G starts at just 599 euros ($640) for the 6/64GB model, with an 8/128GB variant also available for 649 euros ($649) -- it'll go on sale in the summer. [The U.S. launch hasn't been announced yet, but the 8.3 is coming to Europe in summer 2020.]

Misleading text messages claiming that President Trump was going to announce a national quarantine buzzed into cellphones across the country over the weekend, underscoring how rapidly false claims are spreading -- and how often it is happening beyond the familiar misinformation vehicles of Facebook and Twitter. From a report: The false texts spread so widely that on Sunday night the White House's National Security Council, fearing the texts were an attempt to spook the stock market as it opened Monday, decided to directly debunk the misleading claims in a Twitter post: "Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown." But by then the messages already had spread widely, as had similar ones both in the United States and Europe in recent days. Text messages, encrypted communication apps such as WhatsApp and some social media platforms have carried similarly alarming misinformation, much of it with the apparent goal of spurring people to overrun stores to buy basic items ahead of a new wave of government restrictions.

The one claiming that Trump was going to impose a national quarantine included the advice: "Stock up on whatever you guys need to make sure you have a two week supply of everything. Please forward to your network." In fact, authorities have warned against aggressive buying that could disrupt supply chains and fuel panic. Trump addressed the misleading text messages at an afternoon news conference Monday, saying, "It could be that you have some foreign groups that are playing games." On the possibility of a national quarantine, Trump said: "We haven't determined to do that at all. ... Hopefully we won't have to."

Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat quotes CNN: Robert Ross was sitting in his San Francisco home office in October 2018 when he noticed the bars on his phone had disappeared and he had no cell coverage. A few hours later, he had lost $1 millionâ¦

"I was at home at my desk and I noticed a notification on my iPhone for a withdrawal request from one of my financial institutions, and I thought, 'That's weird. I didn't make a withdrawal request,'" Ross recalled. "Then I looked back at my phone and I saw that I had no service...."

Ross was the victim of a SIM hack, an attack that occurs when hackers take over a victim's phone number by transferring it to a SIM card they control. By taking over his cellphone number, a hacker was able to gain access to his email address and ultimately his life-savings, Ross said in an interview with CNN Business...

An arrest was made in Ross' case, and the suspect has pleaded not guilty... He is suing AT&T for what he alleges was a failure by the company to protect his "sensitive and confidential account data" that resulted in "massive violations" of his privacy and "the theft of more than $1 million," according to the lawsuit.

According to a report from The Information, Huawei expects to see a 20% drop in sales of its Android smartphones during 2020, thanks largely to U.S. government restrictions on Huawei's access to American technology, including Google software. 9to5Google reports: "Huawei's overseas smartphone sales didn't collapse last year in part because the company could keep selling some of its old models that the Google ban didn't affect," reports The Information. "But this year, Huawei expects its shipments to fall to around 190 million to 200 million smartphones, according to these people." The 240 million figure in 2019 was thanks largely in part to the timing of the U.S. ban. Huawei's extremely popular P30 and P30 Pro smartphones still shipped with Google apps in most regions and, because they were launched before the ban took place, Huawei was able to continue updating the devices, even launching a slightly revamped variant to boost sales. This year will certainly be bleaker as Huawei won't be able to support Google apps on its P40 series, set to launch later this month. Other factors such as the coronavirus outbreak could only further have an impact on Huawei's sales this year.

JustAnotherOldGuy shares a tale for our time: "I was using an app to see how many miles I rode my bike and now it was putting me at the scene of the crime," said Zachary McCoy. Yep, that's all it took. Google's legal investigations support team emailed him to let him know that local police had demanded information related to his Google account. The man's lawyer dug around and learned that the notice had been prompted by a "geofence warrant," a police surveillance tool that casts a virtual dragnet over crime scenes, sweeping up Google location data — drawn from users' GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular connections — from everyone nearby.
NBC News reports: An avid biker, he used an exercise-tracking app, RunKeeper, to record his rides. The app relied on his phone's location services, which fed his movements to Google. He looked up his route on the day of the March 29, 2019, burglary and saw that he had passed the victim's house three times within an hour, part of his frequent loops through his neighborhood, he said. "It was a nightmare scenario," McCoy recalled. "I was using an app to see how many miles I rode my bike and now it was putting me at the scene of the crime. And I was the lead suspect.
McCoy's lawyer "pointed to an Arizona case in which a man was mistakenly arrested and jailed for murder largely based on Google data received from a geofence warrant. McCoy said he may have ended up in a similar spot if his parents hadn't given him several thousand dollars to hire Kenyon."

"I didn't realize that by having location services on that Google was also keeping a log of where I was going," McCoy said. "I'm sure it's in their terms of service but I never read through those walls of text, and I don't think most people do either...."

The article also notes a Google filing last year reporting that the requests from state and federal law enforcement authorities incrased by more than 1,500 percent from 2017 to 2018, and then again by 500 percent from 2018 to 2019.

The latest "feature drop" for Google's Pixel line of Android phones includes the ability to "firmly press" on the screen "to get more help from your apps more quickly." If that sounds familiar, it's because it's a lot like iPhone's 3D Touch, which Apple stopped supporting in all of its 2019 iPhones. The Verge reports: "Firmly press" sets off alarm bells because it sounds a lot like the iPhone's 3D Touch, which enables different actions depending on how hard you press on the touchscreen. It was a beloved feature for some people because it gave faster access to the cursor mode on the iPhone's keyboard (I think long-pressing the space bar works fine for that, but I get that people love it). It's also gone on the latest versions of the iPhone -- Apple has seemingly abandoned it because the hardware to support it was too expensive/thick/complex/finicky/whatever. But now, it seems that Google has done the same thing for the touchscreen that it does with the camera: use its software algorithms to make commodity parts do something special. That is a very Googley thing to do, but not quite as Googley as the fact that there was virtually no information about this feature to be found anywhere on the internet beyond a speculative note over at XDA Developers.

After a few hours of back and forth, I finally got more details from Google. Here's what this feature does, according to Google: "Long Press currently works in a select set of apps and system user interfaces such as the app Launcher, Photos, and Drive. This update accelerates the press to bring up more options faster. We also plan to expand its applications to more first party apps in the near future." Essentially, this new feature lets you press harder to bring up long-press menus faster. In fact, Google's documentation for Android's Deep Press API explicitly says it should never do a new thing, it should only be a faster way to execute a long press. The answer to why it only works in certain apps is that a lot of Android developers aren't using standard APIs for long press actions. Because Android. Okay, but how does it work? It turns out my hunch was correct: Google has figured out how to use machine learning algorithms to detect a firm press, something Apple had to use hardware for.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: 5G connectivity. 8K video recording. A design that folds. These are some of the things you'll get in one of Samsung's newest phones -- but the privilege will cost you at least $1,000 for the most affordable device of the lot. If you want these next-gen features but aren't feeling the four-figure price tags, you could try LG's new phone: the V60 ThinQ. It supports the new mobile network, packs a camera sensor with 64 megapixels for 8K recording, and comes bundled (depending on where you buy it) with the Dual Screen attachment -- a case that adds a second screen to the phone, exactly like last year's G8X ThinQ. You get all of this and a headphone jack, something missing from all of Samsung's flagship phones, for a few hundred dollars less. (LG hasn't announced pricing yet, but the company says it will be priced in the ballpark of previous devices, so around $700 or $800.) "I only spent a few minutes with the phone, and while it's a compelling offer on paper, I'm not convinced the company has improved the areas where the V60's predecessors fell short," writes Wired's Julian Chokkattu. "The cameras are usually decent, but not as nice as what you get from Samsung, Google, and Apple; more megapixels doesn't guarantee better photos. The software still looks dated, and there's no sign of the phone receiving Android updates faster. There's no folding screen here, and while the second screen does turn the V60 ThinQ into a foldable phone of sorts, it comes at the cost of being bulky, heavy, and cumbersome -- and frankly a little ugly too."

Chokkattu also mentions the phone is massive, thanks to the "abnormally large 6.8-inch screen." Paired with the Dual Screen attachment and its 6.8-inch screen, you end up with a phone that's not very enjoyable to lug around. "It's great that the accessory is bundled with the phone, and that it gives you more visual real estate, but the experience still feels clunky," he writes.

Companies around the world are embracing what might seem like a radical idea: a four-day workweek. From a report: The concept is gaining ground in places as varied as New Zealand and Russia, and it's making inroads among some American companies. Employers are seeing surprising benefits, including higher sales and profits. The idea of a four-day workweek might sound crazy, especially in America, where the number of hours worked has been climbing and where cellphones and email remind us of our jobs 24/7. But in some places, the four-day concept is taking off like a viral meme. Many employers aren't just moving to 10-hour shifts, four days a week, as companies like Shake Shack are doing; they're going to a 32-hour week -- without cutting pay. In exchange, employers are asking their workers to get their jobs done in a compressed amount of time.

Last month, a Washington state senator introduced a bill to reduce the standard workweek to 32 hours. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is backing a parliamentary proposal to shift to a four-day week. Politicians in Britain and Finland are considering something similar. In the U.S., Shake Shack started testing the idea a year and a half ago. The burger chain shortened managers' workweeks to four days at some stores and found that recruitment spiked, especially among women. Shake Shack's president, Tara Comonte, says the staff loved the perk: "Being able to take their kids to school a day a week, or one day less of having to pay for day care, for example." So the company recently expanded its trial to a third of its 164 U.S. stores. Offering that benefit required Shake Shack to find time savings elsewhere, so it switched to computer software to track supplies of ground beef, for example.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: YouTuber JerryRigEverything regularly does destructive durability tests on phones, partly by attacking a device with a set of Mohs picks. These pointy metal tools that are calibrated to the Mohs scale of mineral hardness allow a user to determine the hardness of a surface by doing a scratch test. You start with the softest pick and work your way up the set until you find something that can scratch the surface you're testing. A modern smartphone with Corning's Gorilla Glass scratches at level 6 on the Mohs hardness scale. The Galaxy Z Flip features a first-of-its-kind flexible glass cover that Samsung calls "Ultra-Thin Glass." Until now, foldables have had to suffer through life with plastic display covers, which scratch easily, don't provide much protection, and just like a resistive touchscreen, feel bad to swipe around on, thanks to the squishy pliability of the display. With this new invention of flexible glass, the Z Flip promised a return to a hard, smooth, scratch-resistant display surface.

So how did the Z Flip fare against JerryRigEverything's Mohs picks? It scratches at level 2, the same level as the plastic-covered Galaxy Fold and Moto Razr. You can actually leave marks on the surface with a fingernail! This is not what Samsung was promising. Samsung sent The Verge a response to the video, reiterating that the display is actually "glass." "Galaxy Z Flip features an Infinity Flex Display with Samsung's Ultra Thin Glass (UTG) to deliver a sleek, premium look and offer an immersive viewing experience," Samsung told the site. "Samsung's first-of-its-kind UTG technology is different from other Galaxy flagship devices. While the display does bend, it should be handled with care. Also, Galaxy Z Flip has a protective layer on top of the UTG similar to Galaxy Fold." In Samsung's official Z Flip videos, the company shows a plastic "protective layer" going on top of the glass display. But as Ars Technica notes, this layer is not removable and JerryRigEverything's video shows that the underlying "glass" layer doesn't provide protection from punctures, either.

With that said, "One Twitter user cracked their Galaxy Z Flip on the first fold, possibly due to cold weather," reports Ars. "So we know it can shatter, at least."

A Slashdot reader shared a warning from the editor-in-chief at How-To Geek about a "shockingly convincing" scam: The scam text message says, "Your Verizon account security needs validation" and invites you to tap a link to "validate your account." Once you do, you end up at a phishing website that looks almost exactly like Verizon's real website. The fake website asks for your My Verizon mobile number or user ID and password. After you provide those, it'll ask for your account PIN. Finally, it requests all your personal details to "identify yourself."

For smishing scams, this is convincing work. The website looks real and authentic — if you don't look too hard at the address, which isn't actually Verizon's actual website... At the end of the process, the phishing website thanks you for providing your information and "redirects you to the home page." For maximum deception, the phishing website actually redirects you to Verizon's real website at the end of the process. If you don't look too close, you might be deceived into thinking you were on Verizon's website the whole time.

What's the game? We didn't provide real Verizon account details, so we can't say for sure. The scammer will probably try to take over your Verizon account, order smartphones on credit, and stick you with the bill.

America's government "has reportedly acquired access to a commercial database that tracks the movements of millions of cellphones in the U.S.," reports CNET. "The data is being used for immigration and border enforcement, according to sources and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal."

Engadget's report on the news notes it's been going on "since at least 2017." The publication says the government bought the data from a company called Venntel, which in turn purchased it from a variety of marketing companies...

"This is a classic situation where creeping commercial surveillance in the private sector is now bleeding directly over into government," Alan Butler, the general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told the WSJ.
The American Civil Liberties Union told TechCrunch that it plans the fight the newly-revealed practice, arguing that the government "should not be accessing our location information without a warrant."

CNET adds that the data "is reportedly collected from apps for gaming, weather and shopping that ask users to grant them location access."

Xiaomi spin-off brand Poco has launched its successor to last year's head-turning Poco F1. The Poco X2, as it is called, is a high-performance, low-cost phone for the extremely competitive India market. It'll be available in India on February 11th; it's unclear if the phone will be released elsewhere. The Verge has the details: The X2 has a Snapdragon 730G processor, a 6.67-inch 20:9 1080p LCD screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 4,500mAh battery with 27W fast charging. The phone charges over USB-C, includes a headphone jack, and has a fingerprint sensor integrated into the power button. It's the first phone in India to feature Sony's new 64-megapixel IMX686 sensor, the successor to the 48-megapixel IMX586 that dominated the phone landscape in 2019, and that part is backed by an 8-megapixel ultrawide camera, a 2-megapixel macro module, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. There's also a 20-megapixel selfie camera with a 2-megapixel depth sensor housed in a hole-punch display cutout.

Due to a U.S. government ban on sales to Huawei, Google revoked its license for popular apps last spring (including Gmail and the Play Store). But this week Huawei executive Fred Wangfei suggested that even if that ban is lifted, Huawei would continue developing its own app ecosystem instead to avoid the possibility of future political complications.

The vice president of risk management and partner relations at Huawei later called those remarks "incorrect," while elsewhere Huawei issued a slightly different statement -- that "An open Android ecosystem is still our first choice, but if we are not able to continue to use it, we have the ability to develop our own." But BGR was already noting that Huawei "is ready to invest $3 billion this year to incentivize more than 4,000 developers to improve its Huawei Mobile Services system. Another billion is reserved for marketing purposes."

And Android Authority suggests Huawei should stick to its original statement. "Maybe it's time for Huawei to go all-in on Harmony OS and do what it can to bring a viable alternative to Android and iOS..."
If there's any company today that has the financial resources and raw talent necessary to bring in a viable third choice for smartphone operating systems, it's Huawei... Sure, it would be a long-term investment and there would inevitably be short-term losses as the company tries to find its footing and develop Harmony OS to have its own identity. But it would prevent something like the Huawei ban from happening to the company again as well as further the company's ambitions as not only a smartphone manufacturer but as a technology creator....

Huawei would have major difficulties in encouraging wide adoption of Harmony OS for one major reason: it's Huawei. The Huawei ban exists because the United States government doesn't trust Huawei and there are numerous (as yet unproven) accusations against the company related to espionage, IP theft, fraud, and even violations of international treaties... Huawei is already in a bad situation. It's going to need to dig itself out of the hole it's in regardless, so why not use this opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade and develop Harmony OS as a viable third option on the way?

Maybe the industry needs a shake-up... Maybe a new operating system is just the kind of fire OEMs need to turn the market around. Maybe a real, potent threat that the billions of people who use Android and iOS just might jump ship to something else would scare companies into taking some real risks.

As I said earlier, there aren't too many companies out there right now that could do this, but Huawei could.

An anonymous reader writes: Market research firms Canalys and Counterpoint Research have posted their 2019 global smartphone market share reports. Both reports say the biggest mover is Huawei, which, thanks to a whopping 16-17 percent annual growth, claimed the No. 2 smartphone vendor spot in 2019, behind Samsung and ahead of Apple. Both firms have similar global market share numbers for 2019, with Samsung around 20 percent, Huawei at 16 percent, Apple at 13 percent, and Xiaomi and Oppo around eight percent each. Counterpoint credits Huawei's success in its hometown of China for its success, saying, "This was the result of an aggressive push from Huawei in the Chinese market, where it achieved almost 40 percent market share." According to the firm, China makes up 60 percent of Huawei's shipments. "For what it's worth, Canalys has Q4 2019 as Huawei's first quarterly decline -- down seven percent from Q3 -- in two years, which it blames on the [Trump Administration's Huawei export ban]," adds Ars. "Together with the annual Apple Q4 surge thanks to the launch of a new iPhone, Huawei fell to third place again within that time period."

According to the Guardian, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had his phone "hacked" in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. From the report: The encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman is believed to have included a malicious file that infiltrated the phone of the world's richest man, according to the results of a digital forensic analysis. This analysis found it "highly probable" that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post.

The two men had been having a seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange when, on May 1 of that year, the unsolicited file was sent, according to sources who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. Large amounts of data were exfiltrated from Bezos's phone within hours, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Guardian has no knowledge of what was taken from the phone or how it was used. [...] The disclosure is likely to raise difficult questions for the kingdom about the circumstances around how U.S. tabloid the National Enquirer came to publish intimate details about Bezos's private life -- including text messages -- nine months later. It may also lead to renewed scrutiny about what the crown prince and his inner circle were doing in the months prior to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was killed in October 2018 -- five months after the alleged "hack" of the newspaper's owner.

Federal prosecutors in Brazil on Tuesday charged the American journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes for his role in the spreading of cellphone messages that have embarrassed prosecutors and tarnished the image of an anti-corruption task force. The New York Times: In a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday, prosecutors in the capital, Brasilia, accused Mr. Greenwald of being part of a "criminal organization" that hacked into the cellphones of several prosecutors and other public officials last year. The Intercept Brazil, a news organization Mr. Greenwald co-founded, has published several stories based on a trove of leaked messages he received last year.

Pine64 will finally start shipping the pre-order units of PinePhone Braveheart Edition on January 17, 2020. Fossbytes reports: A year ago, PinePhone was made available only to developers and hackers. After getting better responses and suggestions, the Pine64 developers planned to bring Pinephone for everyone. In November last year, pre-orders for PinePhone Braveheart Edition commenced for everyone. But due to manufacturing issues coming in the way, the shipment date slipped for weeks, which was scheduled in December last year.

PinePhone Braveheart Edition is an affordable, open source Linux-based operating system smartphone preloaded with factory test image running on Linux OS (postmarketOS) on inbuilt storage. You can check on PinePhone Wiki to find the PinePhone compatible operating system such as Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, or Sailfish OS, which you can boot either from internal storage or an SD card.

On Monday, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) discussed the idea of introducing "binding measures" that would require chargers that fit all mobile phones and portable electronic devices. The company that would be impacted most by this legislation would be Apple and its iPhone, which uses a Lightning cable while most new Android phones use USB-C ports for charging. ZDNet reports: The EU introduced the voluntary Radio Equipment Directive in 2014, but MEPs believe the effort fell short of the objectives. "The voluntary agreements between different industry players have not yielded the desired results," MEPs said. The proposed more stringent measures are aimed at reducing electronic waste, which is estimated to amount to 51,000 tons per year in old chargers.

Apple last year argued that regulations to standardize chargers for phones would "freeze innovation rather than encourage it" and it claimed the proposal was "bad for the environment and unnecessarily disruptive for customers." Noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reckons Apple has a different idea in store: getting rid of the Lightning port and not replacing it with USB-C, which is a standard that Apple doesn't have complete control over. According to the analyst, Apple plans to remove the Lightning connector on a flagship iPhone to be released in 2021. Instead it would rely on wireless charging.