WhatsApp Gets Fingerprint Lock Feature On Android

WhatsApp on Thursday announced the launch of Fingerprint Lock for Android. With the move, the Facebook-owned company is finally bringing biometric authentication to the Android app, with iPhone users enjoying both Touch ID (fingerprint recognition) and Face ID (facial recognition) since February this year. With the feature, Android users can now have the app lock automatically, and unlock only with their fingerprint. The move comes at a time WhatsApp is making headlines thanks to a recent hack, and its fallout including a lawsuit against spyware-maker NSO Group alleged to have made the hack possible.

Just like the Touch ID feature enabled for iPhone users, WhatsApp for Android users can now choose to lock the app – with their fingerprints as authentication to unlock it thereafter. Users can also choose how much time the app will automatically lock in, from immediately after closing, to after 1 minute, and after 30 minutes. Users will also be able to choose whether the content of their messages will be visible in notifications, including the sender of the message.

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Ranking: The Most Downloaded Application In The World

WhatsApp- Most Downloaded App Globally, TikTok Leads App Store Downloads in Q1 2019

Sensor Tower has released app-related data from its Q1 2019 Data Digest Report, and the most downloaded app worldwide in the first quarter was WhatsApp with more than 223 million new installs. On iOS, TikTok was the most downloaded app on the App Store with more than 33 million installs in Q1 2019, and it retained the top spot for the fifth quarter in a row. On Android, WhatsApp reigned with close to 199 million downloads from Google Play. TIkTok came in third on the Google Play list. Interestingly, four out of five apps in the overall most downloaded list are owned by Facebook.

Starting with the overall download numbers for Q1 2019 that includes all platforms, the report says that the top five apps manage to retain their rankings from Q4 2018. WhatsApp came in first with more than 223 million installs, and Facebook Messenger came in second with close to 209 million installs. TikTok comes in third, followed by Facebook and Instagram. This means four out five world's most downloaded apps in Q1 2019 are owned by Facebook.

Video editing app Biugo and photo editing app PicsArt entered the top 20 apps worldwide for the first time in Q1. Sensor Tower notes that this is because first-time users in India helped both apps achieve new install highs in the quarter. The top 20 list also includes apps like ShareIt, YouTube, Like Video, Netflix, Snapchat, Spotify, Hotstar, Uber, Twitter, and Amazon.

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Google Translate Adds Support for 13 New Camera Translation Languages

Back in June, Google Translate was able to run the more advanced Neural Machine Translations entirely offline on Android and iOS.

This visual translation feature allows users to point their phone at a menu, sign, or any other text in order to convert it.

Once the image has been analyzed, you can select any part to see the resulting translation as a pop-up.

As evident with Google Lens, visual search and translation is especially useful for learning more about objects in the physical world.

This feature is rolling out starting today, and will be available on Android and iOS over the next few days.

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Facebook Lite Now Being Tested on iOS as Well as Android

Facebook is currently testing a version of its slimmed-down Facebook Lite for iPhone. The app has previously only been available for Android.

Designed for people who want to minimize data usage, Facebook Lite helps in a couple of ways …

First, the app itself is just 5MB, using less data to download, and using less storage capacity on the device. (The difference is not, however, as great as Business Insider suggests: the 500MB they claim for the main app is a result of an App Store bug that saw the wrong app sizes reported.)

Once downloaded, Facebook Lite for iPhone is designed to use significantly less data, and consume less power. It is primarily intended for emerging markets where data is expensive relative to average in incomes.

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Facebook Will Not Remove Fake News - but Will 'Demote' It

Facebook says it will not remove fake news from its platform because it does not violate its community standards.

The social network is currently running an advertising campaign in the UK that declares "fake news is not our friend".

But it said publishers often had "very different points of view" and removing fabricated posts would be "contrary to the basic principles of free speech".

Instead, it says posts that it deems to be fake news will be "demoted" in the news feed.

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Pinterest Reinvents Itself as a Chatroom for Group Collaborative Projects

The latest update to the Pinterest app effectively turns it into a dedicated chatroom for collaborative projects ...

Plenty of people use Pinterest as a planning tool, especially with group boards, which have been used for everything from planning vacations to organising weddings.

Second, you couldn't just add a general comment - it had to be attached to a specific pin.


Now, group members can just leave a message in the activity feed to start a chat thread, which others can respond to.

That should make Pinterest's group boards more useful for starting and hosting discussions, rather than just generating ideas.

A previous major update, back in February, allowed users much greater flexibility in the way they organised pins, sections and boards.

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Gboard Morse Input Rolling out to iOS as Google Releases New ‘Morse Typing Trainer’ Game

At I/O 2018, Google added Morse input to Android's default keyboard to improve accessibility for people around the world. Morse is now available in Gboard for iOS, while the Android version picks up several improvements.

Google has also released a Chrome Experiment game to teach the basics of Morse in under an hour.


Morse sequences appear in Gboard's auto-suggestions strip, with the app featuring an optimized layout that features two predominant characters and other keys for editing, like delete and space.

Besides keyboard entry, Google also developed a new Chrome Experiment that helps teach Morse code in "less than an hour."

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Twitter Begins Purging Millions of Users from Follower Counts

Twitter announced on Wednesday that it would begin purging suspicious and dormant accounts from users' follower counts.

It’s the latest step Twitter is taking to clean up its platform and promote what CEO Jack Dorsey calls “conversational health.”

Twitter users should see their follower counts decrease this week. The typical user will lose fewer than five followers, while large accounts could experience a “more significant drop,” Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head counsel, said in a blog post.

“Followercounts are a visible feature, and we want everyone to have confidence that the numbers are meaningful and accurate,” Gadde said.



The move also means a user’s influence will be better reflected on Twitter, since follower counts will be more accurate. Some of these accounts may have once belonged to actual people before being taken over by hackers.

However, the correction to users’ follower lists excludes spam bots, which Gadde said Twitter’s technology was getting better at identifying and quickly shutting down.

The adjustments to follower counts comes one week after Twitter disclosed that its technology was now capable of identifying more than 9.9 million potential spam accounts per week and shutting them down.

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Apple Watch Customers in England, India Credit Heart Rate Tracking as Life-changing.

WatchOS 4 added a new feature to existing Apple Watches last fall that has regularly been credited with saving lives: the ability to detect an elevated heart rate during a period of inactivity.

In England, The Independent reports: Kevin Pearson, a 52-year-old from Cockermouth in the north of England, was quietly sat reading a book and "minding my own business" when his watch alerted him to the fact that something was very wrong with his heart. After blood work and further heart rate monitoring, doctors said he definitely experienced an "event" and the same symptoms could be a sign of a heart attack.

And in Pune, GadgetsNow writes about an attorney who used her Apple Watch to realize her heart rate was too high during a stressful work incident: "Given the stressful conditions of my life, I decided to buy an Apple Watch to monitor my basic health. The Apple Watch kept notifying her to "take deep breath and relieve the stress" as her heart rate had shot up to 136 beats per minute, way above the normal mark."

Elevated heart rate detection works with watchOS 4 or later on Apple Watch Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3 (which excludes first-gen models).

Apple also offers a built-in meditation app called Breathe, offered on all models, that helps you focus your attention during a moment of deep breathing. Breathe also captures your heart rate during sessions and shows you your heart rate near the end of each session.

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Facebook to be banned in Papua New Guinea for a month.

Papua New Guinea will ban Facebook for a month while it identifies fake profiles and considers the website's effect on the country. Communication minister Sam Basil said users posting pornography and false information would be identified.

He also suggested the country could set up its own rival social network. Facebook has faced scrutiny following the Cambridge Analytica scandal and has been criticised over the way it has tried to tackle fake news.

Although only about 10% of people in Papua New Guinea have internet access, the country is proving proactive in its regulation of online services.

The government aims to use the month-long ban to analyse how Facebook is being used and prosecute those breaching the country's 2016 cyber-crime law.

Mr Basil told the country's Post-Courier: "The time will allow information to be collected to identify users that hide behind fake accounts, users that upload pornographic images, users that post false and misleading information."

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Samsung Galaxy S9 & S9+ in Select Regions Gain a Built-in Call Recorder.

With the latest security update that just rolled out to Galaxy S9 and S9+ users, Samsung included a new call recorder feature that's baked directly into the phone's default phone app.

It isn't available in the US, but only for handsets powered by the Exynos CPU that are sold in select foreign countries. As you can see from the screenshot below provided by the same Reddit user, the record button shows up alongside the rest of the in-call options.

As XDA-Developers notes, the new feature is arriving with the G960FXXU1BRE5 and G965FXXU1BRE3 updates in Russia, Switzerland, Spain, Romania, Netherlands, and the UK.

A record button shows up alongside the rest of the in-call options. When you initiate the feature, you will also see a recording notification at the top of your screen next to the current call time.

As it’s nearly impossible to only whitelist this type of functionality based on physical location, it’s unlikely for Samsung to enable this for everyone worldwide.

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Alleged ‘Motorola One Power’ Photo and Specs Leaked.

In April, Motorola announced the first devices in its 2018 lineup with the Moto G6 and E5. Recent weeks have seen a number of leaks about the Moto Z3 Play and today a new report reveals that the Lenovo-owned company is possibly planning an entirely new device and lineup.

According to Android Headlines today, the company is working on a device called the “Motorola One Power.” This device picks up where the X4 left off by being an Android One device as the logo on the rear suggests.

Beyond the overt “One” branding in the phone’s name, what’s notable is how this is not another “Moto” phone. The G6 and E5 this year already printed the “Motorola” workmark directly on the device, but the official names retained the shortened branding. It appears from the one image released today that the company is shifting to new lineups. Additionally, “Power” suggests more variants are on the way.

Meanwhile, the design also appears to be a departure from Motorola’s existing devices. The phone looks a lot like the iPhone X with curved edges and a flat back compared to the usual sloping rear that results in a nice hand feel.

The camera stack is no longer circular and centered, but rather vertical on the left-hand edge. There are two lenses with a flash in the middle, while there appears to be a fingerprint sensor that features the “M batwing” logo.

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Nokia Launches More Affordable Android Go, One Devices.

At MWC in February, Nokia announced a series of smartphones that range from Android Go to midrange and flagship Android One devices.

During an event in Moscow today, HMD Global launched devices for the lower-end of its portfolio that focuses on providing international audiences with pure Android and future updates.

Launched last October, HMD Global is refreshing the Nokia 2. With a 4,000 mAh battery, the Nokia 2.1 features a larger 5.5-inch HD display and Snapdragon 425 processor, 2GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage with microSD card expandability.

Nokia notes that the new processor results in 10% less power usage. The large battery that already lasts two days gains three hours of additional life as a result of these performance optimizations. Meanwhile, the polycarbonate design features stereo speakers for a focus on media consumption. An 8-megapixel rear-camera is complimented by 5-megapixel front-facer.

Like the Nokia 1 at MWC, it runs Android Oreo Go with the operating system and apps optimized for these low-power devices. It will be available this July for $115 in select markets.

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Triple-Lens Camera on 2019 iPhones Said to Enable 3D Sensing and Enhanced Zoom.

Apple will launch at least one new iPhone model with a triple-lens rear camera in 2019; citing a research note from Deutsche Securities analyst Jialin Lu.

Lu believes the triple-lens camera system will enable advanced 3D sensing via stereoscopic vision, with two of the sensors able to capture images of a single object from different angles. A triangulation method would then be used to obtain the distance between the iPhone and the object.

Like the TrueDepth system on the front of the iPhone X, the report suggests that the rear 3D sensing will be used for augmented reality purposes. The prediction lines up with a report from Bloomberg's Alex Webb, who last year said future iPhones will be equipped with rear-facing 3D sensing capabilities. Meanwhile, the third lens would likely have a longer focal length for enhanced zoom capabilities, according to Lu. 

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Some Facebook Users Are Getting A New Awesome WhatsApp Feature

  Facebook has added a new feature to the social media platform that now allows users to share information across to WhatsApp. Facebook owns the messaging service WhatsApp and has reportedly being looking for ways to monetise it since buying it in 2014 for $19 billion.

The new feature has appeared for some beta users of the Facebook app. There has been no official word on its general release.

Currently for most Facebook users the option to Share something comes from a drop-down menu with the options of Share, Share Now (Friends), Send as Message, Share on a friend's Timeline and Share to a Page.

The new option to appear on the Share drop-down appears as Send to WhatsApp.

This works by sending the link for whatever is being shared so the WhatsApp receiver sees that link which can be clicked to open on their device.

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Facebook Suspends 200 Apps in Data Misuse Investigation, Says They May Not Be Guilty

Facebook has suspended around 200 apps as part of the internal investigation prompted by data misuse by Cambridge Analytica ...

Reuters reports that the social network took the step after identifying apps which had access to 'large quantities of user data.'

The apps were suspended pending a thorough investigation into whether they misused any data, said Ime Archibong, Facebook's vice president of product partnerships.

Mark Zuckerberg said the social network will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before the company curtailed data access in 2014.

However, Facebook says that this doesn’t necessarily mean the apps did anything wrong.

The apps were suspended pending a thorough investigation into whether they misused any data, said Ime Archibong, Facebook’s vice president of product partnerships. [CEO] Mark Zuckerberg said the social network will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before the company curtailed data access in 2014.

Archibong said that the investigation was likely to run for some time.

There is a lot more work to be done to find all the apps that may have misused people’s Facebook data – and it will take time. We have large teams of internal and external experts working hard to investigate these apps as quickly as possible.

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Uber halts self-driving tests after pedestrian killed in Arizona

A female pedestrian was reportedly killed after being struck by an autonomous Uber vehicle in Arizona, according to ABC 15. In response, Uber has pulled all of its self-driving cars from public roads in the state as well as in the cities of San Francisco, Toronto, and Pittsburgh.

The crash occurred near Mill Avenue and Curry Road early Monday morning in Tempe, Arizona, the channel reports. The Uber vehicle was reportedly headed northbound when a woman walking outside of the crosswalk was struck. The woman was taken to the hospital where she later died from her injuries. Early reports suggested that she may have been a bicyclist, but that may not be the case.

“Our hearts go out to the victim’s family,” an Uber spokesperson told The Verge. “We are fully cooperating with local authorities in their investigation of this incident.”

Uber confirms that the vehicle was traveling in autonomous mode with a safety driver behind the wheel during the crash. That would make the pedestrian one of the first known victims of a crash involving a self-driving car.

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Instagram testing ‘quote-Storied’ feature with small number of users

  Instagram confirmed to TechCrunch that it is indeed working on such a feature and that it is currently being tested with a small subset of users.

"We’re always testing ways to make it easier to share any moment with friends on Instagram," the company said.

While such a feature has been available in a slew of third-party Instagram apps, it has never made its way to their first-party client. Many users simply screenshot the post and re-post it to their own feed as a way of sharing a post with their own followers. While not quite like Twitter’s quote-tweet feature, Instagram’s new secret project allows users to share posts within their Stories.

You can tap to change the design to highlight or downplay the post’s author, move and resize it within your Story post, and add commentary or imagery using Instagram’s creative tools.

Users can choose to not allow their Instagram posts to be “quote-Storied” in the settings, and only public posts can be quoted.

Instagram says that they don’t have a timeline on when this feature will be rolled out to everyone, or if it’ll make it beyond the small number of users. However, given the popularity of third-party apps that enable this functionality, Instagram will likely push out the feature sooner rather than later.

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Android P To Block Apps Built For Android 4.1 Or Lower Versions

Google playstore has over millions of applications and a lot of them wouldn't have been updated since the time of their release. Perhaps, many applications might not have been updated for years now. There are possibilities for the developers to have forsaken these apps or these apps are simple enough to work despite the updates being rolled out to android. The Android P update is believed to change this case.
As per a report by Android Police , it is believed that Android P will have a feature, which will let Google block applications built for the dated Android 4.1 Jellybean OS or lower from running. Apparently, the smartphones running Android P might mot run very old apps. If you are running any old apps on your smartphone, then you need to think if you should upgrade the device to Android P once the update hits your device.
While there is no clarity on why Android P will bring about this change and block the old apps from functioning, there is a possibility for the same to be aimed at reducing the security vulnerabilities or exploits. Many apps are functional could be prone to security vulnerabilities and these issues will be fixed with updates.
Another probable reason is that the old apps built for Android 4.1 Jellybean or older versions of the OS will not be optimized for the current-day smartphones with full-screen design, 18:9 displays, and other features. Anyways, we need to wait to get an official confirmation from Google regarding the Android P's support for the old and outdated applications.
Notably, Google is not the only company to put an end to supporting old and dated applications with the latest version of its operating system. Previously, Apple had mandated that developers update their applications to 64-bit in order to remain in the iTunes app store. Currently, Android P developer preview version is available and it is likely to be released to the compatible devices by the end of this year.

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Google Maps now lets you delve into your local planets and moons, too.

Google today announced a fun update to Google Maps that’ll allow you to virtually visit a dozen additional planets and moons in our solar system. The company has added to its lineup imagery of Pluto, Venus and several moons and also made it easier to find them in Maps. In total, Google Maps now features imagery of 16 celestial bodies.

It’s worth noting that while Google has long offered detailed imagery of Mars and the Earth’s Moon, these weren’t directly accessible from the Maps interface. So if you ever wanted to visit Enceladus, Dione or Iapetus, Saturn’s third-largest natural satellite, in Google Maps, your time has come.

To access this new imagery, you can either just zoom out from your terrestrial Google Maps view until you hit outer space — or you could just click on this link here. Once you’re done exploring all of these planets, you can also make a quick stop at the International Space Station, which recently joined Google’s Street View program.

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