Apple's next big product launch is nearly here. The company just sent invitations for an event on September 12th at 1PM ET / 10AM PT, where the company is expected to announce the iPhone 15 lineup and new Apple Watches. The Verge: The iPhone 15 lineup will probably be the star of the show. The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus are expected to look a lot like the iPhone 14 but with a couple of key differences. The notch at the top of the screen will apparently be replaced by the Dynamic Island that first appeared in the iPhone 14 Pro lineup. The Lightning port might also be replaced by a USB-C port, which could enable faster charging.

America's teens hate Android phones, according to a new article from the Wall Street Journal: Melissa Jones, a former teacher in Lebanon, Ind., observes that, among students, it's considered most important to own a new, up-to-date phone. And judging by the copious TikTok content that pits users of the two operating systems against each other — with Android most frequently the butt of the joke — many teens associate Androids with older technology, and older people, no matter how new the phone actually is.

"You're telling me in 2023, you still have a 'Droid?" says 20-year-old online creator Abdoul Chamberlain during a video posted in April. "You gotta be at least 50 years old." The video goes on to say that only parents have Androids, and despite the persistent claims from Android users that features like the cameras or battery life are better on the Android than the iPhone, Chamberlain refuses to get one. Other videos more somberly describe the experience of showing up to high school with an Android phone and being called "broke" or "medieval" by the poster's peers. Still more describe the feeling of being the lone Android user in a group chat of iPhone owners, shamed by texts which, when rendered in Apple's proprietary iMessage platform, appear in a revelatory bright green rather than the cool blue of messages sent between Apple devices.

Apple holds 57% of the phones market versus Android's 42% in the U.S., according to web traffic analysis site Statcounter. The data skews worse for Android when narrowed down to teenagers. According to a survey of 7,100 American teens last year conducted by investment bank Piper Sandler, 87% of teens currently have an iPhone, and 87% plan on sticking with the brand for their next phone.

But the stigma regarding Android phones is mostly an American phenomenon, at least to the degree to which it affects purchase habits. Worldwide, per the same Statcounter report, Androids represent the significant majority of all smartphones, holding a 71% share of sales compared with Apple's 28%.
Two years ago someone asked Reddit's "Ask Teens" forum, do teenagers really hate Android phones? But the responses were a lot more balanced.

"No," replied one (presumably teenaged) Reddit user. "Apple fanboys are just obnoxious, probably because they're knowingly getting scammed."

Apple has moved the "end call" button back to the middle of the screen in the newest developer version of iOS 17, released Tuesday. From a report: The move reverses a change that Apple had been considering over the summer, as CNBC reported last week. Previous beta versions of iOS 17 had moved the red "end call" button to the lower right-hand corner, as opposed to centered in the bottom half of the screen, where it had been for years. However, in the most recent developer beta, the end call button is centered vertically, in the middle of three buttons close to the bottom of the screen.

The judge overseeing Apple's "batterygate" iPhone throttling lawsuit has cleared the way for payments to be sent out. MacRumors reports: Apple in 2020 agreed to pay $500 million to settle the "batterygate" lawsuit, which accused the company of secretly throttling older iPhone models. The class action lawsuit was open to U.S. customers who had an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, or 7 Plus running iOS 10.2.1 or iOS 11.2 prior to December 21, 2017. [...] Apple ultimately apologized for its lack of communication and dropped the price of battery replacements to $29 through the end of 2018. iPhone owners eligible for a payout would have needed to submit a claim back in 2020, and submissions were open through October 6, 2020. Those who submitted a claim back then will be eligible for a payment, which will be around $65 per claimant.

Some iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro owners have complaints reminiscent of the bad old days of "batterygate," reporting that with less than a year of service on the clock, their phones are already reporting more battery degradation than expected. From a report: Sam Kohl of AppleTrack tweeted in July that his iPhone 14 Pro had already dropped to a maximum capacity of 90 percent, a much faster dropoff than previous iPhones he'd owned, and the thread shows many other people with the same experience. Kohl followed up with a video posted yesterday about the issue, saying it makes it hard for him to recommend the phone, especially considering how much it costs with a price of $999.

Officially, Apple says iPhone batteries should "retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles." The iPhone 15 series is expected to launch soon, and recent rumors have claimed those devices will see a battery size increase of 10 - 18 percent compared to current devices. He's not the only one seeing these kinds of numbers. Verge alum and Wall Street Journal senior tech columnist Joanna Stern wrote in her newsletter just this week that her iPhone 14 Pro is showing 88 percent battery capacity. Around The Verge, reports are mixed, with two 14 Pros down to 93 and 91 percent and another at 97 percent. In previous years, most haven't seen a drop in reported capacity until two years of use, at least.

"Owners of some older iPhone models are expected to receive about $65 each," reports SiliconValley.com, "after a judge cleared the way for payments in a class-action lawsuit accusing Apple of secretly throttling phone performance." The Cupertino cell phone giant agreed in 2020 to pay up to $500 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging it had perpetrated "one of the largest consumer frauds in history" by surreptitiously slowing the performance of certain iPhone models to address problems with batteries and processors...

According to the lawsuit, filed in 2018, reports of unexplained iPhone shutdowns began to surface in 2015 and increased in the fall of 2016. Consumers complained their phones were shutting off even though the batteries showed a charge of more than 30%, the lawsuit claimed. The lawsuit claimed the shutdowns resulted from a mismatch between phones' hardware, including batteries and processing chips, and the ever-increasing demands of constantly updating operating systems. Apple tried to fix the problem with a software update, but the update merely throttled device performance to cut the number of shutdowns, the lawsuit claimed... In a 2019 court filing in the case, Apple argued that lithium-ion batteries become less effective with time, repeated charging, extreme temperatures and general use. Updating software, Apple asserted in the filing, entails trade-offs. "Providing more features also introduces complexity and can reduce speed, and increasing features or speed may adversely impact hardware lifespan," the company said.

Consumer grief over the shutdowns and alleged throttling also led to a 2020 lawsuit against Apple by the State of California and Alameda and Los Angeles counties. Apple, admitting to no wrongdoing, settled the case for $113 million.
About 3 million claims were received, the article notes, and two iPhone owners who'd objected to the settlement lost their appeal this week, "removing the final obstacle to the deal..."

"The phones at issue in the case were iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, and SE devices running operating systems iOS 10.2.1 or later before Dec. 21, 2017, and iPhone 7 and 7 Plus phones running iOS 11.2 or later before that date."

The US Supreme Court let Apple keep its App Store payment rules in place for the time being, rejecting an Epic Games request that would have let developers start directing iPhone users to other purchasing options. From a report: Justice Elena Kagan said she wouldn't let a federal appeals court decision take effect immediately, as Epic had sought. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said earlier this year that Apple violated California's Unfair Competition Law by limiting the ability of developers to communicate about alternative payment systems, including purchases through the Epic Games Store.

Kagan, who gave no explanation, is the justice assigned to handle emergency matters from the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit. Kagan's rejection of Epic means Apple will get a reprieve from the 9th Circuit ruling, though perhaps only a temporary one. The appeals court put its decision on hold to give Apple time to file a Supreme Court appeal later this year, but the ruling will kick in if the justices refuse to hear the case.

The Nokia 130 and 150 are two new updated feature phones from Nokia that ship "with the form of an earlier generation of tech but the software of the current time," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The Nokia 150 is arguably the more worthy of the two; it comes in three colors and features a 2.4-inch QVGA display, a 1,450 mAh removable battery with up to a month of standby time, and a headphone jack for listening to music like we're still pirating it from the internet (though you can also tune in to the built-in FM radio, a feature you'd have to download an app to replicate on an iPhone). The rear-facing 0.3-MP VGA camera is as mediocre as it sounds; it's similar to the camera specs on an LG-made candybar phone I was carting around in 2008. You can save all your data on a MicroSD card and charge the phone with micro USB.

The Nokia 130 has the same size screen and removable battery, but it doesn't have a camera, which makes sense if you were looking at one of these as a secondary device. You probably already have a smartphone that takes satisfying photos. The Nokia 130 and 150 are rated IP52, making them resistant to dust and water but not entirely waterproof. And they both have physical buttons, including a full 12-key number pad, plus navigational buttons to get around the operating system, called Series 30+ or S30+. Nokia developed the software specifically for these entry-level devices, and it made sure to include a revamped Snake game. Nokia swears there are "hours of fun in store," which seems like marketing rehashed from its '90s glory days.

The Nokia 130 and 150 are primarily available abroad. Note that these two models have been around since 2016 and that this latest release is a part of the phone's upgrade cycle. The company, acquired by Finnish conglomerate HMD Mobile, has yet to reveal pricing. But previous generations started at under $50 after converting currencies. It's quite a deal compared to what you'd get with an aging, low-cost Android phone.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When Google announced that trackers would be able to tie in to its 3 billion-device Bluetooth tracking network at its Google I/O 2023 conference, it also said that it would make it easier for people to avoid being tracked by trackers they don't know about, like Apple AirTags. Now Android users will soon get these "Unknown Tracker Alerts." Based on the joint specification developed by Google and Apple, and incorporating feedback from tracker-makers like Tile and Chipolo, the alerts currently work only with AirTags, but Google says it will work with tag manufacturers to expand its coverage.

For now, if an AirTag you don't own "is separated from its owner and determined to be traveling with you," a notification will tell you this and that "the owner of the tracker can see its location." Tapping the notification brings up a map tracing back to where it was first seen traveling with you. Google notes that this location data "is always encrypted and never shared with Google." Further into the prompts, you can make the tracker play a sound, "without the owner of the tracker knowing," Google says. If you bring the tracker to the back of your phone (presumably within NFC range), some trackers may provide their serial number and information about their owner, "like the last four digits of their phone number." Google indicates it will also link to information about how to physically disable a tracker. Finally, Google is offering a manual scan feature, if you're suspicious that your Android phone isn't catching a tracker or want to see what's nearby. The alerts are rolling out through a Google Play services update to devices on Android 6.0 and above over the coming weeks. Google is working to finish the joint tracking specification "by the end of this year."

The company added: "At this time, we've made the decision to hold the rollout of the Find My Device network until Apple has implemented protections for iOS."

OpenSignal blog: While eSIM adoption in the mobile market has been arriving for some time, Apple's move to make eSIM the only option for iPhone 14 range in the U.S. is propelling the worldwide shift towards eSIM technology. Opensignal's latest analysis reveals a significant surge in the proportion of users switching their operator among those who use an eSIM across seven examined markets -- Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S.

The switch from physical to embedded SIM cards threatens to alter how consumers switch operators and encourages operators to adopt new tactics to retain and acquire users, for example operators can offer network trials from within an app that provisions an eSIM immediately. eSIM also means the risks to operators of dual SIM devices that have long been common in many international markets are arriving in operator-controlled markets too, such as the U.S. and South Korea. Even on smartphones sold by operators, eSIM support is usually present in addition to a physical SIM, making them dual-SIM devices.

Google added eSIM-support to the Pixel range in 2017, Samsung added eSIM support to 2019's Galaxy S20 flagship. While Apple first added eSIM to their phones in 2018 with the iPhone Xs, it switched to selling exclusively eSIM models in the U.S. with the iPhone 14 range in late 2022. South Korea is also a special case -- eSIM support for domestic customers only began in mid-2022, before this point it was only available to international travelers. Notably, Samsung responded by introducing eSIM to a selection of its flagship devices in the home market, which had not been previously available there.

Which is better: iPhone or Android? Instagram head Adam Mosseri weighed in on the topic earlier this week, reigniting a debate that has waged on since the dawn of smartphones. From a report: "Android's now better than iOS," Mosseri posted in response to tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, who had asked for people's best tech "hot takes." Mosseri didn't get into why he felt Android to be superior, but his use of the words "now better" implies that he may have previously felt Apple's iOS had the edge.

Gizmodo reports: Thousands of top Russian officials and state employees have reportedly been banned from using iPhones and other Apple products over concerns they could serve as surreptitious spying tools for Western intelligence agencies...

Russia's trade minister, according to a Financial Times report, said the new ban will take effect Monday, July 17. The move affects a variety of Apple products from iPhones, iPads, and laptops, and builds off of similar restrictions already put in place by the digital development ministry and state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec. Kremlin officials also advised staff working on Vladimir Putin's 2024 presidential re-election campaign against using a variety of US-developed smartphones over similar espionage conveners earlier this year...

Russian intelligence officials last month accused the US National Security Agency of hacking into thousands of Russian-owned iPhones and targeting the phones of foreign diplomats based in Russia... To be clear, Russian officials still haven't provided any clear evidence proving the alleged US conspiracy. Apple has also publicly denied the claims and recently told the Times it "has never worked with any government to build a backdoor into any Apple product, and never will."
The Financial Times got a skeptical response to that from Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia's Security Council and one of the country's fiercest hardliners. "When a big tech compan...â.âclaims it does not co-operate with the intelligence community — either it lies shamelessly or it is about to [go bust]."

Thanks to Slashdot reader dovthelachma for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Apple Insider: Apple's processor manufacturer TSMC says that it can't find enough skilled workers to open its Arizona facility on time, and mass chip production will have to wait until 2025. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) began work on a first factory in Arizona in 2021. Since then, the plant has seen safety concerns, complaints from TSMC about US taxation, and a claim that US staff don't work hard enough. Most recently, the company announced that it was sending more Taiwanese workers to the US to manage the final stages of making the plant operational. Now according to Nikkei Asia, that move has proven insufficient.

"We are encountering certain challenges, as there is an insufficient amount of skilled workers with the specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility," said TSMC chair Mark Liu. "Consequently we expect the production schedule of N4 [4-nanometer] process technology to be pushed out to 2025," continued Liu. The news comes alongside TSMC's latest earnings report, which shows that the firm's profits have fallen, though they are expected to recover when the iPhone 15 range launches. TSMC blames the results on a slow economic recover in China, and a downturn in the consumer electronics market.

Apple is quietly working on artificial intelligence tools that could challenge those of OpenAI, Alphabet's Google and others, but the company has yet to devise a clear strategy for releasing the technology to consumers. From a report: The iPhone maker has built its own framework to create large language models -- the AI-based systems at the heart of new offerings like ChatGPT and Google's Bard -- according to people with knowledge of the efforts. With that foundation, known as "Ajax," Apple also has created a chatbot service that some engineers call "Apple GPT."

In recent months, the AI push has become a major effort for Apple, with several teams collaborating on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. The work includes trying to address potential privacy concerns related to the technology. [...] Apple employees say the company's tool essentially replicates Bard, ChatGPT and Bing AI, and doesn't include any novel features or technology. The system is accessible as a web application and has a stripped-down design not meant for public consumption. As such, Apple has no current plans to release it to consumers, though it is actively working to improve its underlying models.

Apple is preparing to launch its first M3 Apple Silicon Macs in October, according to Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. 9to5Mac reports: Following the usually new iPhone launch event in September, where we are expecting the iPhone 15 and Apple Watch Series 9 and new Apple Watch Ultra, Apple is reportedly lining up new Macs for an October debut. Likely models include a new M3 iMac, M3 13-inch MacBook Air, and M3 MacBook Pro. For the M3 chip, we are expecting similar core counts to the M2 but with enhanced performance and efficiency thanks to the move to a new 3-nanometer silicon fabrication process.

It may seem weird for the first M3 Macs so soon after the M2 cycle wrapped up â" with products like the M2 Ultra Mac Studio and 15-inch MacBook Air only debuting last month â" but there has been much speculation that the latter parts of the M2 lineup were delayed due to supply chain issues. And while an M3 MacBook Air may be ready to go in October, M3 updates for products like MacBook Pro and Mac Studio are further out. Gurman does not specifically say Apple will hold an October event, or whether new Macs would arrive via press release. The decision on whether to hold a formal event has probably not yet been finalized, but you can imagine Apple would want to hold an event for a significant new Mac launch.

As unprecedented weather leads to increasing climate anxiety, there's a raft of different apps catering for every kind of forecast. From a report: Preoccupation with weather apps is commonplace in our current unsettled atmosphere. On social media there is almost as much chat about weather apps as there is about the weather: much of it is ire about inaccurate forecasts; some of it is from users who admit checking weather apps more than seems logical. There is still palpable grief, in the wake of the closure of the short-term weather prediction app Dark Sky, late last year, after its acquisition by Apple. In April, when Apple's weather app went down, there was such outrage that the temporary glitch became an international news story.

Fifty per cent of US smartphone users regularly use weather apps; according to Statista, weather apps will make approximately $1.5bn in revenue in 2023, a leap from $530m in 2017. Jeremiah Lasquety-Reyes, a senior analyst for Statista, says this new weather app ecosystem is only going to grow, owing to the climate crisis, as well as a general trend towards "digitizing one's life and schedule." There are certainly plenty out there, catering to a variety of needs: more than 10,000 apps have the word "weather" in the title in Android and iPhone app stores.

An anonymous reader writes: A genuine picture taken on an iPhone was thrown out of a photography competition after the judges suspected that it was generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

Suzi Dougherty had captured a striking photo of her son with two smartly-dressed mannequins in an intriguing pose while visiting a Gucci exhibition. Happy with her creation, she entered it into a photo competition.

Dougherty didn't think much more of it until a friend showed her an Instagram post declaring her photo ineligible because the competition's organizers suspected it to be an AI image.

"I wouldn't even know how to do an AI photo," Dougherty tells The Guardian. "I'm just getting my head around ChatGPT."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The general trend of macOS releases over the past few years is that it has been moving closer and closer to the look and feel of iOS. The icons have become iOS icons, and their shape has become the iOS shape, and you can now use your iPhone as the Mac's webcam, etc. etc. This occasionally comes at the expense of other functionality (ask me how I feel about the new Settings menu), but it is the direction that Apple has clearly been heading in since (arguably) Big Sur. Every so often, other splashy features are announced (Stage Manager, Universal Control, Quick Notes) that I write a lot about and then never end up using ever again. So, good news for Continuity fans: that's basically what's going on with Sonoma. Ventura looked a heck of a lot like iOS, and Sonoma looks even more like iOS. I turned my office's Mac Studio on after installing the developer beta and thought, for a second, that I might be hallucinating my iPhone's lockscreen. It's remarkably reminiscent.

But in case that wasn't enough of an iPhone vibe for you, the other big update that comes with this public beta is that you can now put widgets on your desktop. Widgets! They intelligently tint based on the color of your desktop, and they're available for various Apple apps, including Safari, Contacts, and Podcasts. Now, this is neat. It also strikes me as one of those iOS carryovers that doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a computer. Personally, I find the benefit of widgets on iPhone largely to be that you glance at them while you're grocery shopping or waiting for the bus or whatever and don't have time to open the actual app. The use case for having them on a computer desktop is not as clear to me -- I don't have the occasion to quickly glance at my computer's blank desktop while doing something else nearly as commonly. I suspect that the primary impact of having widgets on the desktop is that it makes your Mac look a lot more like your iPhone. I have hope that third-party developers might figure out fun and exciting use cases for desktop widgets by the time Sonoma is fully released (but honestly, you never really know with that).

Tencent's WeChat said on Tuesday that iPhone maker Apple had opened a store on its social media platform, marking an expansion of the U.S. firm's retail channels in the world's second largest economy. From a report: The announcement by WeChat, China's dominant messaging app which also provides e-commerce, livestreaming and payment services, said users would be able to buy Apple products including iPhones, iPads and Macs from the store. The move by Apple comes as Chinese consumers increasingly turn to social media platforms such as WeChat and ByteDance's Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to shop.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: No one in the Android ecosystem can hold a candle to Apple's software support timeline for the iPhone, but there is one company that comes the closest: Fairphone. Following in the footsteps of the Fairphone 2, the Fairphone 3 is also getting an Android-industry-best seven years of OS support. Fairphone continues to run circles around giant tech companies that have a lot more resources than it does, and it's doing this even in the face of component vendors like Qualcomm dropping support for the phone's core components.

The company announced today that the Fairphone 3, which was released in 2019, has had its support extended to 2026, making for seven years of updates. The company also just released Android 13 for the Fairphone 3. Google's own 2019 phone, the Pixel 4, shut down support in October 2022. Fairphone strives to make sustainable smartphones, designing its products to be repairable and also offering replacement parts for sale online. Part of that sustainability mission is an absolutely herculean effort to keep the Android updates flowing, even when Qualcomm drops critical software support for the SoC. Fairphone says the Snapdragon 632 SoC in the Fairphone 3 was only supported up to Android 11, so continuing to support the Fairphone 3 meant doing the upgrades all by itself.