MIT Technology Review obtained Prince's investor presentation for the "RedPill Phone," which promises more than it could possibly deliver. From the report: Erik Prince's pitch to investors was simple -- but certainly ambitious: pay just 5 million euros and cure the biggest cybersecurity and privacy plagues of our day. The American billionaire -- best known for founding the notorious private military firm Blackwater, which became globally infamous for killing Iraqi civilians and threatening US government investigators -- was pushing Unplugged, a smartphone startup promising "free speech, privacy, and security" untethered from dominant tech giants like Apple and Google. In June, Prince publicly revealed the new phone, priced at $850. But before that, beginning in 2021, he was privately hawking the device to investors -- using a previously unreported pitch deck that has been obtained by MIT Technology Review. It boldly claims that the phone and its operating system are "impenetrable" to surveillance, interception, and tampering, and its messenger service is marketed as "impossible to intercept or decrypt."

Boasting falsely that Unplugged has built "the first operating system free of big tech monetization and analytics," Prince bragged that the device is protected by "government-grade encryption." Better yet, the pitch added, Unplugged is to be hosted on a global array of server farms so that it "can never be taken offline." One option is said to be a server farm "on a vessel" located in an "undisclosed location on international waters, connected via satellite to Elon Musk's StarLink." An Unplugged spokesperson explained that "they benefit in having servers not be subject to any governmental law." The Unplugged investor pitch deck is a messy mix of these impossible claims, meaningless buzzwords, and outright fiction. While none of the experts I spoke with had yet been able to test the phone or read its code, because the company hasn't provided access, the evidence available suggests Unplugged will fall wildly short of what's promised.

[...] The UP Phone's operating system, called LibertOS, is a proprietary version of Google's Android, according to an Unplugged spokesperson. It's running on an unclear mix of hardware that a company spokesperson says they've designed on their own. Even just maintaining a unique Android "fork" -- a version of the operating system that departs from the original, like a fork in the road -- is a difficult endeavor that can cost massive money and resources, experts warn. For a small startup, that can be an insurmountable challenge. [...] Another key issue is life span. Apple's iPhones are considered the most secure consumer device on the market due in part to the fact that the company offers security updates to some of its older phones for six years, longer than virtually all competitors. When support for a phone ends, security vulnerabilities go unaddressed, and the phone is no longer secure. There is no information available on how long UP Phones will receive security support. "There are two things happening here," says Allan Liska, a cyberintelligence analyst at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. "There are the actual attempts to make real secure phones, and then there is the marketing BS. Distinguishing between those two can be really hard."

"When I worked in US intelligence, we [penetrated] a number of phone companies overseas," says Liska. "We were inside those phone companies. We could easily track people based on where they connected to the towers. So when you talk about being impenetrable, that's wrong. This is a phone, and the way that phones work is they triangulate to cell towers, and there is always latitude and longitude for exactly where you're sitting," he adds. "Nothing you do to the phone is going to change that."

The UP Phone is due out in November 2022.

Earlier this week, Samsung unveiled their new Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 -- two of the most refined and polished foldable smartphones on the market. However, what Samsung hasn't done (or any other phone manufacturer for that matter) "is make the case for why you'd actually want a foldable phone," writes David Pierce via The Verge. "And until it can explain why it's worth all the extra cost and tradeoffs, I'm having a hard time figuring out why you'd be willing to give up the phone you know and love to get one." From the report: What Samsung needs to do with the Galaxy Fold (and the rest of the industry will eventually need to do with their own foldables) is convince people that it's worth buying a phone that's more expensive, more fragile, and takes up more room in your pocket. Right now, the worst thing about foldables is that they force you to make significant sacrifices on the most important device you own: your smartphone. The new Fold 4 is a little shorter, about an ounce heavier, and about twice as thick as the Galaxy S22 Ultra. It's also $600 more expensive. The Ultra has a bigger battery, better camera specs, and a 6.8-inch screen that supports an S Pen. The Fold 4, when opened, is noticeably larger, but the candy bar phones still get plenty big. And Fold makes a lot of sacrifices for some more real estate.

It's not even clear to me that Samsung knows why you should make all of those sacrifices. On its website, one of the first selling points the company offers is that you can prop up the screen on a table by opening it halfway for watching or taking videos hands-free. Here in reality, we call that a kickstand, and this is an awfully expensive one. In this mode, you're also only using half the screen, which sort of defeats the whole purpose. So far, multitasking seems to be the foldable's one actual advantage. Open up your Galaxy Fold, and you can run two apps side by side or even three or four on the screen at once! This, I agree, is a delightful thing. Being able to use my browser and my notes app side by side or see my calendar and my email together is much better than constantly swiping between two full-screen apps. And seeing two pages at a time in the Kindle app is the best. And you know what? Big screens are just good -- good for games, good for reading, good for watching Netflix.

But these aren't just arguments for foldables; they're arguments for tablets. And so far, the arguments for Android tablets don't seem to be convincing many users. While Android has gotten better as a large-screen operating system, and the Fold 4's software being based on Android 12L is a good sign, too many apps that are "optimized" for foldables are actually just sticking a giant sidebar onto one side, which doesn't accomplish much. Others just streeeetch everything to fit the larger screen. Don't even get me started on how the vast majority of apps deal with Microsoft's approach of two separate screens attached with a hinge. Samsung has done an admirable job of wrangling all of Android's weirdness onto the Fold's screen, and in general, it's not that the Fold doesn't work; it's that there's nothing about the Fold that is dramatically better than the phone or tablet you might already be carrying around. And shoving them into a single device actually makes them both a little worse.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Samsung is introducing an interesting new feature for people sending in their Galaxy phones for repair: "repair mode." When shipping off your phone, you might want to do something to protect your data, and the new feature sounds like a great solution. It locks down your data, but not your phone. [...] While in repair mode, technicians can still poke around in your device and test everything, but they'll only see the default apps with blank data. When you get your device back, you can re-authenticate and disable repair mode and you'll get all your data back. The feature was first spotted by SamMobile, and Samsung has so far only announced the feature in a Korean press release; it is first launching in Korea for the Galaxy S21 (the S22 is Samsung's latest flagship phone). Repair mode can be turned on from the settings menu, and Samsung says (through Google translate), "You won't be able to access your personal data, such as photos, messages, and accounts," and anyone with the phone will "only use the default installed apps." Repair mode can be exited the same way, though you'll need to authenticate with a pattern, pin, or fingerprint.

76.6 million Americans were affected by last year's T-Mobile data breach, TechCrunch reports — and now in compensation they may have a few bucks coming their way.

T-mobile has announced a settlement of $550 million for affected customers (and the various attorneys bringing the consolidated class action lawsuits) — plus another $150 million "for data security and related technology." For now, the class defined by the settlement document is "the approximately 76.6 million U.S. residents identified by T-Mobile whose information was compromised in the Data Breach," with a little extra legalese for Californians, where class actions are handled slightly differently.

As is common in these giant lawsuits, lawyers take a huge bite and then the company must alert the class members they're owed money, so you can expect a postcard if you were a T-Mobile customer in August of 2021 (in the interest of full disclosure, I was). Then the money gets split up, depending on how many people respond and how much the lawyers take. The final settlement terms could be approved as early as December.

Chances are you won't even be able to cover a single monthly mobile bill with what you get, but these days a $9 check might be the difference between "dinner" and "no dinner" for quite a few people, so let's not mock these small sums — except that it's kind of insulting to have five serious breaches in as many years and all customers get is enough to order off the value menu.

Nvidia has just announced that GeForce Now is picking up support for 120fps gameplay on all Android smartphones, after previously limiting the functionality to only a few select models. 9to5Google reports: GeForce Now is a cloud gaming service that allows players to stream PC games from marketplaces such as Steam and the Epic Games Store, among others, to virtually any device. It's a great way to expand the gaming experience on your PC over to a mobile phone or your TV, or just to play games that your PC isn't powerful enough to run on its own. The service is free, but you can pay to get longer sessions and better quality.

Last year, the service picked up its RTX 3080 tier, which offers the power of the still-hard-to-find graphics card, but through the cloud. While it's a pricey option, it was quickly found to be the gold standard of cloud gaming thanks to minimal input latency, higher resolution, and faster refresh rate. It's that faster refresh rate that's boosting GeForce Now for Android players this week, with 120fps expanding to all Android phones with faster refresh rates. If your phone has a 120Hz display, you can now stream games at 120fps. The official list of supported devices can be found here.

Nvidia says that the expanded support will arrive "over the coming weeks" and that the experience could vary from device to device.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The Trump administration's immigration enforcers used mobile location data to track people's movements on a larger scale than previously known, according to documents that raise new questions about federal agencies' efforts to get around restrictions on warrantless searches. The data, harvested from apps on hundreds of millions of phones, allowed the Department of Homeland Security to obtain data on more than 336,000 location data points across North America, the documents show. Those data points may reference only a small portion of the information that CBP has obtained.

These data points came from all over the continent, including in major cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Denver, Toronto and Mexico City. This location data use has continued into the Biden administration, as Customs and Border Protection renewed a contract for $20,000 into September 2021, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed another contract in November 2021 that lasts until June 2023. The American Civil Liberties Union obtained the records from DHS through a lawsuit it filed in 2020. It provided the documents to POLITICO and separately released them to the public on Monday.

The documents highlight conversations and contracts between federal agencies and the surveillance companies Babel Street and Venntel. Venntel alone boasts that its database includes location information from more than 250 million devices. The documents also show agency staff having internal conversations about privacy concerns on using phone location data. In just three days in 2018, the documents show that the CBP collected data from more than 113,000 locations from phones in the Southwestern United States -- equivalent to more than 26 data points per minute -- without obtaining a warrant. The documents highlight the massive scale of location data that government agencies including CBP and ICE received, and how the agencies sought to take advantage of the mobile advertising industry's treasure trove of data. "It was definitely a shocking amount," said Shreya Tewari, the Brennan fellow for the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. "It was a really detailed picture of how they can zero in on not only a specific geographic area, but also a time period, and how much they're collecting and how quickly."

"The lock screen is about to change," writes CNET — both for iOS and Android devices. Apple's iOS 16 update, which launched in public beta on Monday, will bring more customization options and new widgets to the iPhone's lock screen when it arrives this fall. You'll be able to see more information quickly and apply stylistic effects to lock screen photos similar to the iPhone's Portrait Mode photography feature.... Like the Apple Watch, the new lock screen should make it easier to see crucial pieces of information without having to dig into apps or even unlock your phone.
And for Android phones: Glance, a Google-backed subsidiary of mobile ad tech company InMobi, also reiterated its plans to bring its lock screen platform to the U.S. [though the company also says there's "no definitive timeline."] And Google is reportedly planning to incorporate more bits of information into its own lock screen widget for Pixel phones.... Glance's lock screen will appear in the form of what it calls "spaces," which are essentially curated lock screens designed to fit specific themes. A fitness-oriented lock screen, for example, would show statistics such as calories burned and exercise goals alongside a music player. A news "space" would show headlines and the weather, while a music version could surface live concerts....

The TechCrunch report about Glance's US arrival sparked concerns that advertisements would be coming to the lock screen, too. Glance's business page shows examples of advertisers that have used its platform to reach potential customers on the very first screen they see when picking up their phone. Intel, Zomato and Garnier are among the listed case studies. But Rohan Choudhary, vice president and general manager of the Glance feed, told CNET the US version would be ad-free. "We are very clear that in the US, we will not have ads on the lock screen at all," he said....

The company says it plans to monetize its service through news subscriptions and commerce links from shopping platforms that are surfaced through Glance.
Glance's motto? "Transforming lock screens into smart surfaces."

"5G iPhones have been slapped with a sales ban in Colombia," reports Digital Trends, "due to a 5G patent infringement dispute between Apple and Ericsson... The ban affects the latest models, including the iPhone 12, iPhone 13, and the iPad Pro, which the court found infringed Ericsson's patent pertaining to 5G tech."

They add that in response Apple is now suing Ericsson in Texas, "for damages that resulted from the ruling in Colombia, as well as any fines, fees, penalties, and costs that have been incurred because of it."

The site FOSS Patents notes that Colombia reached the "banning" stage less than six months after the beginning of "the current wave of Ericsson v. Apple patent infringement actions." ZDNet explains: The backstory here is somewhat complicated but can be boiled down to the following points:

- Apple used to pay Ericsson royalty fees for patented 5G technologies.
- Apple failed to renew the licenses when they expired.
- Ericsson sued Apple.
- Apple then sued Ericsson, claiming that the company was violating FRAND rules, the patents were standard-essential patents, and Ericsson's licensing fees were too high.

There followed a whole bunch of legal actions and counteractions, with both companies attempting to get sales bans on the other company's hardware....

This ban is likely no big deal for Apple given the small size of that market. The problem is several more lawsuits are making their way through various courts in various territories. And since Apple isn't disputing the validity of the patents, it's almost certainly opening itself out to bans being enforced in other countries.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fermion for sharing the news!

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Arizona passed a law making it harder to record police by limiting how close bystanders can be while recording specified law enforcement activity. [...] The new Arizona law requires any bystanders recording police activity in the state to stand at a minimum of 8 feet away from the action. If bystanders move closer after police have warned them to back off, they risk being charged with a misdemeanor and incurring fines of up to $500, jail time of up to 30 days, or probation of up to a year. Sponsored by Republican state representative John Kavanagh, the law known as H.B. 2319 makes it illegal to record police at close range. In a USA Today op-ed, Kavanagh said it is important to leave this buffer for police to protect law enforcement from being assaulted by unruly bystanders. He said "there's no reason" to come closer and predicted tragic outcomes for those who do, saying, "Such an approach is unreasonable, unnecessary, and unsafe, and should be made illegal."

This week, Kavanagh has succeeded in making close-range recording illegal in Arizona, with only a few exceptions. Perhaps most critically, the person involved in the police activity -- someone being questioned, arrested, or handled by police -- can record, as long as it doesn't interfere with police actions. The same exception extends to anyone recording while in a vehicle involved in a police stop. Additionally, anyone recording activity from an enclosed structure on private property still has a right to record police within 8 feet -- unless law enforcement "determines that the person is interfering" or "it is not safe" for them to be in the area. That caveat potentially gives police a lot of discretion over who can record and when.

Kavanagh said he decided to push for this change in Arizona law after some Tucson officers complained that bystanders sometimes stood a foot or two behind them while recording arrests. The state representative also told USA Today that his decision to set the minimum distance at 8 feet "is based upon 8 feet being established by the US Supreme Court as being a reasonable distance as they applied it to people entering and leaving abortion clinics when faced with protesters." Responding to critics who think citizens should be able to get closer to law enforcement activity, Kavanagh said, "The argument that filming from 8 feet away does not allow for a proper view of the scene is ridiculous." He cited impactful police brutality recordings that were recorded from further distances, including Rodney King (100 feet) and Freddie Gray ("clearly 8 to 10 feet away"). In 2017, a federal appeals court ruled that the First Amendment protects individuals' right to film police officers performing their official duties.

The ACLU says this law is a "chilling" use of the "public's most effective tool against police wrongdoing in violation of our First Amendment rights." ACLU staff attorney K.M. Bell added: "By limiting our ability to record police interactions, this law will undoubtedly make it even more difficult to hold police officers accountable for misconduct."

As of yesterday, Sprint's LTE network has been retired by its new owner, T-Mobile. That's along with Sprint's 3G CDMA network, which was shut down earlier this year, and what remained of T-Mobile's own 3G network, which enters retirement today. The Verge reports: It may come as a surprise that any part of Sprint's network was still operational so recently. In April 2020, T-Mobile officially took ownership of the company, including all of its spectrum and network towers, which would ultimately be repurposed for 5G. Sprint's 3G CDMA network was the first to go when T-Mobile started to shut down Sprint's systems in March. It had originally planned to sunset the network at the end of 2021, but after a heated debate over anti-competitive behavior during which Dish chairman Charlie Ergen called T-Mobile a Grinch, the date was pushed back.

Sprint's LTE network followed later and was set to be officially retired as of yesterday, June 30th, 2022. Unlike the company's 3G network, which our former executive editor Dieter Bohn paid appropriate tribute to in his Sprint eulogy, there's not much of a reason to mourn its loss. Sprint was late to LTE after betting first on WiMAX, and as a consequence, its LTE network lagged far behind the competition by the time it was up and running. It was flat-out bad, actually.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The co-founder and CEO of Solana, Anatoly Yakovenko, had a Steve Jobs moment when he stood in front of an auditorium in New York City and announced the launch of Saga, an Android web3-focused smartphone. "This is something that I fundamentally believe the industry needs to do," Yakovenko said. "We didn't see a single crypto feature at the Apple developer conference 13 years after Bitcoin was alive." People will pull out their laptops in the middle of dates so they don't miss an NFT minting opportunity, Yakovenko joked. "So I think it's time for crypto to go mobile," Yakovenko added.

Saga aims to implement digital asset products and services, so users can easily transact with their cryptocurrency through the device, opposed to a laptop browser. In addition to the announcement of Saga, Yakovenko shared the launch of the Solana Mobile Stack, or SMS, which is a web3 layer for Solana built on the phone. SMS will consist of a number of products including a seed vault, a custody solution, a mobile wallet adapter, Solana Pay for Android and its decentralized application (dApp) store. It "provides a new set of libraries for wallets and apps, allowing developers to create rich mobile experiences on Solana," a press release said.

A number of crypto companies including FTX, Phantom and Magic Eden will partner with SMS and there is also a $10 million developer fund for people who build apps on it. "The builders are coming and they are higher quality than before," Raj Gokal, COO at Solana Labs said. "They're ready for the next leg of user growth." The $1,000 device will have 512 GB of storage with a 6.67-inch OLED display and is available for preorder with a $100 deposit and deliveries will occur in Q1 2023, Yakovenko said.

The percentage of U.S. adults saying they use their smartphone "too much" has increased markedly in recent years, rising from 39% when Gallup last asked this in 2015 to 58% today. Gallup News reports: This sentiment was strongly age-contingent in 2015 and remains so now; however, all age groups have become more likely to express this concern. Also, this belief is pervasive not only among 20-somethings; smartphone users aged 30 to 49 (74%) are nearly as likely as those 18 to 29 (81%) to say they are on their phone too much. This contrasts with 47% of those 50 to 64 and 30% of those 65 and older. As in 2015, there is little difference by gender in whether adults think they overuse their smartphone, with 60% of women and 56% of men now saying this.

The latest findings are from a self-administered web survey of over 30,000 U.S. adults conducted in January and February of this year, using the probability-based Gallup Panel. Nearly all adults who took the poll, 97%, report they have a smartphone, up from 81% in the 2015 survey. Even as Americans believe they use their smartphone too much, nearly two-thirds think their smartphone has made their life better -- 21% say it has made their life "a lot" better and 44% "a little" better. This has declined slightly from the 72% perceiving a net benefit in 2015. Only 12% say smartphones have made their life worse to any degree, although this is double the rate in 2015.

"As part of the design process for what ended up becoming GNOME 40 the design team worked on a number of experimental concepts," reports a blog post at Gnome.org's shell-dev blog, "a few of which were aimed at better support for tablets and other smaller devices."

"Ever since then, some of us have been thinking about what it would take to fully port GNOME Shell to a phone form factor." It's an intriguing question because post-GNOME 40, there's not that much missing for GNOME Shell to work on phones, even if not perfectly.... On top of that, many of the things we're currently working towards for desktop are also relevant for mobile, including quick settings, the notifications redesign, and an improved on-screen keyboard. Given all of this synergy, we felt this is a great moment to actually give mobile GNOME Shell a try. Thanks to the Prototype Fund, a grant program supporting public interest software by the German Ministry of Education (BMBF), we've been working on mobile support for GNOME Shell for the past few months.

We're not expecting to complete every aspect of making GNOME Shell a daily driveable phone shell as part of this grant project. That would be a much larger effort because it would mean tackling things like calls on the lock screen, PIN code unlock, emergency calls, a flashlight quick toggle, and other small quality-of-life features. However, we think the basics of navigating the shell, launching apps, searching, using the on-screen keyboard, etc. are doable in the context of this project, at least at a prototype stage.

Of course, making a detailed roadmap for this kind of effort is hard and we will keep adjusting it as things progress and become more concrete... There's a lot of work ahead, but going forward progress will be faster and more visible because it will be work on the actual UI, rather than on internal APIs. Now that some of the basics are in place we're also excited to do more testing and development on actual phone hardware, which is especially important for tweaking things like the on-screen keyboard.
Their blog post includes a video showing "what this currently looks like on laptops" and then one showing it running "on actual phone hardware." And someone has also posted a video on Twitter showing it running on a OnePlus 6 smartphone.

The /e/OS-powered Murena One is the first smartphone from Murena that does its best to free you from Google without sacrificing too many core features. There are no Google apps, Google Play Services, or even the Google Assistant. It's all been replaced by open-source software alternatives with privacy-respecting features. ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports: Murena and Mandrake Linux founder Gael Duval was sick of it by 2017. He wanted his data to be his data, and he wanted open-source software. Almost five years later, Duval and his co-developers launched the Murena One X2. It's the first high-end Android phone using the open-source /e/OS Android fork to arrive on the market. The privacy heart of the Murena One is /e/OS V1. There have been many attempts to create an alternative to Google-based Android and Apple's iOS -- Ubuntu One, FirefoxOS, and Windows Mobile -- but all failed. Duval's approach isn't to reinvent the mobile operating system wheel, but to clean up Android of its squeaky Google privacy-invading features and replace them with privacy-respecting ones. To make this happen, Duval started with LineageOS -- an Android-based operating system, which is descended from the failed CyanogenMod Android fork. It also blends in features from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) source-code trees.

In the /e/OS, most (but not all) Google services have been removed and replaced with MicroG services. MicroG replaces Google's libraries with purely open-source implementations without hooks to Google's services. This includes libraries and apps which provide Google Play, Maps, Geolocation, and Messaging services for Android applications. In addition, /e/OS does its best to free you from higher-level Google services. For instance, Google's default search engine has been replaced with Murena's own meta-search engine. Other internet-based services, such as Domain Name Server (DNS) and Network Time Protocol (NTP), use non-Google servers. Above the operating system, you'll find Google-free applications. This includes a web browser; an e-mail client; a messaging app; a calendar; a contact manager; and a maps app that relies on Mozilla Location Service and OpenStreetMap. While it's not here yet, Murena is also working on its own take on Google Assistant, Elivia-AI. You can also run many, but not all Android apps. You'll find these apps on the operating system's App Lounge. [...]

There's still one big problem: the App Lounge still relies on you logging in with your Google account. In short, the App Lounge is mainly a gateway to Google Store apps. Munera assures me that the Lounge anonymizes your data -- except if you use apps that require payment. Still, this is annoying for people who want to cut all their ties with Google. The fundamental problem is this: Muena does all it can to separate its operating system and applications from Google, but it can't -- yet -- replace Google's e-commerce and software store system. As for hardware specs, the $379 Murena One features a 6.5-inch IPS LCD display, eight-core MediaTek Helio P60 processor, side-mounted fingerprint scanner, three rear cameras (48MP + 8MP + 5MP) and 25MP front camera, and 4,500mAh battery. It also features a microSD card slot for expandable storage and headphone port.

New York City removed its last public payphone on Monday. The boxy enclosures were once an iconic symbol across the city. But the rise of cellphones made the booths obsolete. CNBC reports: The effort to replace public pay telephones across the city kicked off in 2014 when the de Blasio administration solicited proposals to reimagine the offering, the city's Office of Technology and Innovation said in a news release. Officials selected CityBridge to develop and operate LinkNYC kiosks, which offer services such as free phone calls, Wi-Fi and device charging. The city began removing street payphones in 2015 to replace them with the LinkNYC kiosks. There are nearly 2,000 kiosks across the city, according to a map from LinkNYC. The last public pay telephone will be displayed at the Museum of the City of New York as part of an exhibit looking back at life in the city before computers.

Eric Migicovsky, founder of smartwatch company Pebble and lover of small Android phones, decided to take matters into his own hands and "rally other fans of small phones together" to put pressure on phone manufacturers to consider making a small Android phone -- complete with all the premium features one could expect to find in a larger device. Essentially, what he wants is an iPhone Mini-sized phone running Android. Is that too much to ask?

Here's an excerpt from his manifesto (via smallandroidphone.com): My Dream Small Android phone Optimizes for only 3 things:

- Sub 6" display, matching size and design of iPhone 13 Mini
- Great cameras
- Stock Android OS

If you can hit these three bullets, you've built the perfect phone. Currently there are ZERO premium Android phones with less than 6" displays. No amount of money can buy one right now. Focus on these three bullets, all other specs are flexible.

Price: $700-800 (again, we have no alternatives so we should be willing to pay a bit more!) In a call-to-action, Migicovsky asks readers who agree with him to sign up on this page to help "convince a manufacturer to build us our dream phone." He adds: "If no one else makes one I guess I will be forced to make it myself, but I really really don't want it to come to that!"

The F.B.I. informed the Israeli government in a 2018 letter that it had purchased Pegasus, the notorious hacking tool, to collect data from mobile phones to aid ongoing investigations, the clearest documentary evidence to date that the bureau weighed using the spyware as a tool of law enforcement. The New York Times reports: The F.B.I.'s description of its intended use of Pegasus came in a letter from a top F.B.I. official to Israel's Ministry of Defense that was reviewed by The New York Times. Pegasus is produced by an Israeli firm, NSO Group, which needs to gain approval from the Israeli government before it can sell the hacking tool to a foreign government. The 2018 letter, written by an official in the F.B.I.'s operational technology division, stated that the bureau intended to use Pegasus "for the collection of data from mobile devices for the prevention and investigation of crimes and terrorism, in compliance with privacy and national security laws."

The Times revealed in January that the F.B.I. had purchased Pegasus in 2018 and, over the next two years, tested the spyware at a secret facility in New Jersey. Since the article's publication, F.B.I. officials have acknowledged that they considered deploying Pegasus but have emphasized that the bureau bought the spying tool mainly to test and evaluate it -- partly to assess how adversaries might use it. They said the bureau never used the spyware in any operation.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Spanish authorities have detected "Pegasus" spyware in the mobile phones of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles, the government minister for the presidency, Felix Bolanos, said on Monday. Bolanos told a news conference Sanchez's phone was infected in May 2021 and at least one data leak occurred then. He did not say who could have been spying on the premier or whether foreign or Spanish groups were suspected of being behind it.

"The interventions were illicit and external. External means carried out by non-official bodies and without state authorization," he said, adding that the infections had been reported to the justice ministry, and the High Court would be in charge of the case. [...] The European Union's data watchdog has called for a ban on Pegasus over allegations it has been abused by client governments to spy on rights activists, journalists and politicians.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: For most of the world, the common practice of "rooting" or "jailbreaking" a phone allows the device's owner to install apps and software tweaks that break the restrictions of Apple's or Google's operating systems. For a growing number of North Koreans, on the other hand, the same form of hacking allows them to break out of a far more expansive system of control -- one that seeks to extend to every aspect of their lives and minds. On Wednesday, the North Korea-focused human rights organization Lumen and Martyn Williams, a researcher at the Stimson Center think tank's North Korea -- focused 38 North project, together released a report on the state of smartphones and telecommunications in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a country that restricts its citizens' access to information and the internet more tightly than any other in the world. The report details how millions of government-approved, Android-based smartphones now permeate North Korean society, though with digital restrictions that prevent their users from downloading any app or even any file not officially sanctioned by the state. But within that regime of digital repression, the report also offers a glimpse of an unlikely new group: North Korean jailbreakers capable of hacking those smartphones to secretly regain control of them and unlock a world of forbidden foreign content.

Learning anything about the details of subversive activity in North Korea -- digital or otherwise -- is notoriously difficult, given the Hermit Kingdom's nearly airtight information controls. Lumen's findings on North Korean jailbreaking are based on interviews with just two defectors from the country. But Williams says the two escapees both independently described hacking their phones and those of other North Koreans, roughly corroborating each others' telling. Other North Korea -- focused researchers who have interviewed defectors say they've heard similar stories. Both jailbreakers interviewed by Lumen and Williams said they hacked their phones -- government-approved, Chinese-made, midrange Android phones known as the Pyongyang 2423 and 2413 -- primarily so that they could use the devices to watch foreign media and install apps that weren't approved by the government. Their hacking was designed to circumvent a government-created version of Android on those phones, which has for years included a certificate system that requires any file downloaded to the device to be "signed" with a cryptographic signature from government authorities, or else it's immediately and automatically deleted. Both jailbreakers say they were able to remove that certificate authentication scheme from phones, allowing them to install forbidden apps, such as games, as well as foreign media like South Korean films, TV shows, and ebooks that North Koreans have sought to access for decades despite draconian government bans.

In another Orwellian measure, Pyongyang phones' government-created operating system takes screenshots of the device at random intervals, the two defectors say -- a surveillance feature designed to instill a sense that the user is always being monitored. The images from those screenshots are then kept in an inaccessible portion of the phone's storage, where they can't be viewed or deleted. Jailbreaking the phones also allowed the two defectors to access and wipe those surveillance screenshots, they say. The two hackers told Lumen they used their jailbreaking skills to remove restrictions from friends' phones, as well. They said they also knew of people who would jailbreak phones as a commercial service, though often for purposes that had less to do with information freedom than more mundane motives. Some users wanted to install a certain screensaver on their phone, for instance, or wipe the phone's surveillance screenshots merely to free up storage before selling the phone secondhand. As for how the jailbreaking was done, the report says both jailbreakers "described attaching phones to a Windows PC via a USB cable to install a jailbreaking tool."

"One mentioned that the Pyongyang 2423's software included a vulnerability that allowed programs to be installed in a hidden directory. The hacker says they exploited that quirk to install a jailbreaking program they'd downloaded while working abroad in China and then smuggled back into North Korea." The other hacker might've obtained his jailbreaking tool in a computer science group at Pyongyang's elite Kim Il Sung University where he attended.

Anomaly Six, a secretive government contractor, claims to monitor the movements of billions of phones around the world and unmask spies with the press of a button. Reader BeerFartMoron shares a report: In the months leading up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, two obscure American startups met to discuss a potential surveillance partnership that would merge the ability to track the movements of billions of people via their phones with a constant stream of data purchased directly from Twitter. According to Brendon Clark of Anomaly Six -- or "A6" -- the combination of its cellphone location-tracking technology with the social media surveillance provided by Zignal Labs would permit the U.S. government to effortlessly spy on Russian forces as they amassed along the Ukrainian border, or similarly track Chinese nuclear submarines. To prove that the technology worked, Clark pointed A6's powers inward, spying on the National Security Agency and CIA, using their own cellphones against them.

Virginia-based Anomaly Six was founded in 2018 by two ex-military intelligence officers and maintains a public presence that is scant to the point of mysterious, its website disclosing nothing about what the firm actually does. But there's a good chance that A6 knows an immense amount about you. The company is one of many that purchases vast reams of location data, tracking hundreds of millions of people around the world by exploiting a poorly understood fact: Countless common smartphone apps are constantly harvesting your location and relaying it to advertisers, typically without your knowledge or informed consent, relying on disclosures buried in the legalese of the sprawling terms of service that the companies involved count on you never reading.