Author: Feritter Owich

A bunch of older Samsung and Roku devices will no longer be able to access Netflix starting on December 1, 2019. Netflix has been around long enough officially that certain older devices will no longer be supported by the service by the end of the year. This will be the case for some Roku streamers and certain Samsung smart TVs that will be made obsolete by Netflix on December 1st. Samsung explains on its support website that technical limitations are to blame for the loss of Netflix. Due to technical limitations, Netflix will no longer be supported on some devices beginning…

WhatsApp finally rolled out the Fingerprint Unlock feature for Android users which adds an extra layer of security to your WhatsApp messages and media. This feature is similar to the fingerprint unlock feature that is used on phones and protects your chats or docs from getting snooped upon. The Facebook-owned messaging platform had already introduced the feature on iOS devices and finally rolled it out for Android users as well, making the announcement in a tweet. “Earlier this year, we rolled out Touch ID and Face ID for iPhone to provide an extra layer of security for WhatsApp users. Today…

Google Play Points is a program that was initially available on the Play Store in Japan and Korea. Its concept is pretty simple and works like a rewards program just for Play Store purchases and downloads. It is a strictly optional service that you can sign up for by heading over to the ‘Play Points’ section in the app’s hamburger menu. After which you will now earn Play Points for all in-app purchases, subscriptions, movies, television shows, books, audiobooks, and music purchases. Additionally, downloading some free apps will net you some additional Play Points. So far it’s done pretty well and encourages more…

It’s always exciting when we see someone daring to make a new top-tier tablet because the tablet market hasn’t been doing so well in recent years and not many companies dare to experiment with new products for the niche. Huawei this time around is giving a try with a new product for the tablet market by introducing the Huawei MatePad Pro. Initially, it was believed that the tablet would be named Huawei MediaPad M7. However, reliable leak master Evan Blass corrected that statement and claimed it’s the Huawei MatePad Pro. Some renders of the new Huawei tablet leaked around mid-October. These portrayed…

Along with the different settings for dark mode, WhatsApp will also introduce in-app streaming for Netflix trailers, as it had done for YouTube videos earlier. Currently, most of the world’s most popular social apps already have a dark mode, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, however, WhatsApp has noticeably stuck with its white and grey design despite the release of iOS 13 and Android 10, both of which have their own system-wide dark modes. Dark mode switches all of the glaringly white parts of the user interface to gloomier greys and pitch-blacks to make the experience easier on your eyes when using your smartphone late…

US restrictions may soon lessen the burden for American companies who count Huawei as a customer by getting a more permanent reprieve on selling to the Chinese tech giant. Huawei is the world’s largest telecommunications company, second-largest smartphone maker and a key customer for many US companies. The company says it purchased $11 billion in American products last year. Unfortunately, the company has become a tool in the larger US-China trade war, whereby Huawei has been accused of being a danger to US national security, earning it a place in a blacklist that restricts US companies from selling any product to…

Apple announced its Q4 earnings results for 2019 yesterday, top-lined by revenues of $64 billion, slightly higher than last year’s quarter: Services revenue grew sharply, while earnings from both iPhones and Macs fell somewhat below last year’s levels. In other words, Apple’s strategy to de-emphasize hardware sales and bet more on subscription services seems to be working. Back in July, Apple told analysts to expect Q4 revenues to be in the $61 to $64 billion range, with a gross margin between 37.5% and 38.5%. Ahead of the announcement, analysts expected sales of $63 billion, up only slightly from actual sales of $62.9 billion in…

CEO Jack Dorsey announced Wednesday that Twitter will ban all political ads, in a move that will increase pressure on Facebook over its controversial stance to allow politicians to advertise false statements. Twitter had previously implemented rules and restrictions for political advertising. The announcement comes as Facebook is embroiled in a controversy over its decision to exempt ads by politicians from third-party fact-checking and from a policy that bans false statements from paid advertisements. However, following the announcement. Twitter’s stock dropped more than 1% in after-hours trading. The move sets Twitter in stiff contrast to Facebook, which has received criticism from lawmakers and its own employees in recent weeks over its…

In case you hadn’t heard, Apple is releasing a new set AirPods today. They’re called the AirPods Pro, costing $249, and they deliver two new features to Apple’s headphone line. However, the AirPods Pro are not a replacement for the standard AirPods but as the name suggests, they are a more premium version of them. The main features here are active noise cancellation, a new water-resistant design and a few other unique and interesting features. These are the first AirPods to feature a noise-isolating design, with three sets of silicone ear tips that push into your ear canal, click into place…

At the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference, Samsung introduced a new rugged smartphone. The latest of Samsung’s field-ready devices, the Samsung Galaxy XCover FieldPro. The device is purpose-built, equipped with Push-to-Talk capability, and keeps information storage compliant and secure. Its features make it suited for use by a wide range of enterprise customers ranging from federal agencies and local precincts to transportation professionals, field service technicians, and more. The Samsung Galaxy XCover FieldPro comes with a 5.1-inch QHD display panel and runs on an Exynos 9810, the same chipset that powers the international variants of the Galaxy S9,…

Late last week, President Trump tweeted that “the button on the iPhone was far better than the swipe.” As far as everyone is aware, Trump uses multiple smartphones. He sends his tweets from one iPhone, while voice calls are made from another handset. The ‘Button’ Trump is referring to is the Home button which was found in all iPhones launched prior to iPhone X. Since the iPhone X, Apple introduced its FaceID tech that gave the home button a miss and added a swipe feature. Plus with this particular complaint, Trump didn’t add any context to explain what it is that…

I recently hit a wall on my personal Gmail account when suddenly my inbox went quiet. After a few days of frustration, wondering whether I had suddenly been shut out of the platform, someone reached out via a different method of communication and told me that they couldn’t seem to get through to me on email. They wondered if I had randomly changed my email address, only to realise that I had hit my storage limit. “Sorry!!! I just had to delete a bunch of emails, I ran out of storage.” This is something you may have heard or may…

iPhone 5 owners have started being warned by Apple to update their devices from their current iOS version to iOS 10.3.4 by November 3 if they want to stay online. In July, Apple issued an update bringing some older models of iPhone and iPad to iOS 10.3.4, including the iPhone 5 with the release fixing an issue with GPS. A GPS time rollover issue started to affect products from other manufacturers equipped with GPS on April 6, but Apple’s affected devices are not impacted by the problem until just before midnight on November 3, 2019. The GPS time rollover issue will throw off features that…

Huawei Band 4 has, a similar design to the Honor Band 5i, colour display & plugs into USB for charging Currently organizing its 5G conference in Shenzhen China and after the official launch of its Mate X foldable phone, Huawei took the wraps off Huawei Band 4 and Huawei VR Glass, its much-awaited VR product. The Huawei Band 4 is an upgrade over the company’s older fitness trackers. While the Huawei VR Glass, which as the name itself suggests, is a virtual reality headset, the newest addition to its portfolio and will be driven by 5G connectivity down the road. Huawei Band 4…

Google has slowly but surely been refreshing its Messages experience. The last addition to the app in v5.0 was a dark theme that syncs with the system mode on Android 10, but the latest Google Messages beta, version 5.2, brings reminders so that you don’t forget to message your loved ones back. Many at times we receive messages that we check immediately but need to act on later, and when the notification is gone, you can’t snooze it to be nudged later. Often the recourse is to set a separate task or reminder in another app to jog your memory, which…

“Shot on iPhone” is one marketing machine that often irritates a number of photo and videographers, and the latest entry to the campaign series is a music video. Popstar Selena Gomez yesterday released a new song and video entitled “Lose You to Love Me,” and the entire video was shot in black and white using an iPhone 11 Pro. As noted by Billboard, the video was shot by well-known music video director Sophie Muller. As part of its ongoing “Shot on iPhone” series, Apple released a one-minute clip of the video but the full video is available on Gomez’s YouTube channel. However, it’s…

Just like everyone else with major resolutions, Apple’s got big plans for 2020. The company is set to introduce major new augmented reality initiatives next year with new 3D rear sensors for the iPhone and the likely debut of Apple’s long-rumoured AR headset product; Apple AR Glasses. These glasses are expected to synchronize with a wearer’s iPhone to display things such as texts, emails, maps, and games over the user’s field of vision. Apple AR Glasses may even come with a separate app store, which could make sense given how Apple uses different digital storefronts to dispense apps for macOS,…

The Mate X, Huawei’s much-delayed folding phone, is finally going on sale next month. This news was announced by the company at a launch event today in Shenzhen attended and reported on by Sina Digital. Unfortunately for anyone eager to be among its early adopters, Huawei’s Mate X won’t be available outside of China. At least, for now.  Initially, Huawei showed off the Mate X back in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This is where the foldable phone became an instant challenger to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold. However, Huawei has taken a different approach as compared to Samsung in designing its foldable phone. Rather than the device opening…

Dark mode is a feature that WhatsApp users have been crying for, and have been patiently waiting for the chat app to add support for it since September last year. In the year-long wait, dark modes have become more and more popular. Recently, pretty much every single app out there is introducing some kind of dark mode to the equation. The main reason behind this is that users tend to demand it because the logic behind dark mode has to do with the impact that the light of your smartphone can potentially end up making it difficult for you to…

Dark mode on different applications has become very popular in recent years, thanks to its ability to blacken interfaces, thus reducing the strain on your eyes and simultaneously saving your device’s battery life. Because of this, companies like Google and Apple began to release system-wide dark modes across their operating systems, whereby even app developers are updating their apps with their own dark mode takes. Google announced that a new dark mode was coming to Gmail late last month, at the moment, the search engine giant is finally rolling out dark mode for its Gmail app on Android and iOS devices. Here’s…

WhatsApp Rolling Out Feature That Allows You To Choose Who Can Add You In Groups Globally Nobody ever wants to be added on to random group chats without their permission, be it a wedding committee or a funeral fundraising group, we all like being accorded the courtesy of saying yes to being part of the group. However, this is a common feature in a number of messaging services. In April this year, WhatsApp started rolling out a much-anticipated feature; the ability to choose who can and cannot add you to groups. Unfortunately for most of us the feature was rolled…

iPhone Has Free Unlimited Original Quality Storage on Google Photos while the Pixel 4 Doesn’t Google Pixel 4 ‘s announcement was made but it came with some surprising news, it was revealed that it would be the first Pixel phone to not provide all users with free unlimited original-quality backups on Google Photos. However, in a strange twist, there’s a “loophole” that thankfully enables owners of newer iPhone models to get free unlimited original-quality storage in the Google cloud. How?It all has to do with the HEIC file format that newer iPhones running iOS 11 started shooting instead of JPEG since 2017. “Because iPhones…

YouTube has partnered with Merchbar to allow artists with an Official Artist Channel to ‘surface’ their official merchandise and vinyl alongside their videos. Merchbar is one of the largest music merchandise aggregator providers globally, carrying over 1 million items from 35,000 artists, and YouTube is rolling out another feature for musicians with ‘Official Artist Channels’ on its platform. YouTube has signed a deal with Merchbar which will see artists able to surface their official merchandise and vinyl alongside their videos. Official Artist Channels will display a shelf with the artist’s own branded merchandise, which can then be bought after clicking through to…

Launched on September 19th, iOS 13 has continued Apple’s impressive installation rate of a new version of the iPhone’s operating system. In just 26 days since its release, the mobile OS is now installed on half of all iPhones, and on 55% of iPhones launched in the last year according to Apple. Apple’s advantage over Google lies in its formula of making both the hardware and the software. The company does not shy away from comparing Android and iOS’ latest version user chart. iOS 13 has been a buggy affair with Apple pushing multiple update releases every few days with multiple fixes. But it’s…

Nearly 30 new movies and shows will premiere on the streaming platform starting November 1st. Food aside, one of the best things about the holidays is curling up on your couch with a blanket and watching Christmas movies! Well, Netflix is already getting into holiday mode as it recently announced a new list of holiday-themed titles coming to the streaming service. This definitely gives Christmastime lovers plenty of content to cuddle up and keep you entertained with on their lazy days. Aptly titled “It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Netflix,” the streaming service will premier 29 new movies and…

Huawei Technologies’ Q3 earnings results are out and they show that the company’s revenue jumped 24% in 2019’s first nine months, defying Trump administration sanctions to sustain growth in its pivotal smartphone business. Huawei was all but banned by the United States in May from doing business with American companies, significantly disrupting its ability to source key parts. Though the company was granted a reprieve until November, meaning it will lose access to some technology next month. So far the company has mainly sold smartphones that were launched before the ban. Despite all this, the world’s biggest maker of telecom…

Google has announced that it has banned Play Store apps with ‘deceptive or harmful’ personal loans where the annual percentage rate was 36% or higher, such as many payday loans. This is in the company’s aim to fight predatory loans better. A payday loan is a small short-term loan that is being used especially in emergency situations. In an unstable economy, such as the one in America, most people have to find various sources for money and payday loans are one of the simplest alternatives since they provide the funds they need right away. However, the fact that are short…

Back in 2016, Apple released the iPhone SE and brought refreshed specs in the chassis of the 2-year-old (at the time) iPhone 5s. Since that release, we’ve been hearing of the Se’s successor, the iPhone SE 2 which is finally coming in Q1 2020. This news comes from noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has previously reported on Apple’s plans for a ‘mid-cycle’ handset release in March that walks in the shadow of the iPhone SE promising high specs and a low price. The iPhone SE 2 is expected to feature the design of the iPhone 8, which means the larger curved style will be used, rather than the tightly paced and…

Apple’s iOS 13 launched last month, bringing a bevvy of new features, that includes a system-wide Dark Mode, redesigned Reminders app, two-times faster app loads, and smaller app updates to save storage on your iPhone. But Apple is far from done because it has started preparing its iOS 13.2 updates, which will bring more than 200 new emoji to the smartphone operating system. The new characters are part of the Emoji 12.0 standard from the Unicode Consortium. All these are decided by the industry at large, so that iPhone owners aren’t using a completely different set of emoji than those…

Oppo has launched the Oppo Reno Ace in China, the fastest charging phone on the planet. The Chinese brand says the Reno Ace which is the company’s latest flagship featuring top-of-the-line specifications like a 90Hz refresh rate display and Snapdragon 855+ processor, has a 4,000mAh battery that can be fully charged in just 30 minutes. Reno Ace features a 6.5-inch Full HD+ curved AMOLED display and unlike previous Reno devices, the Reno Ace features a water-drop notch at the top for the front camera. It also appears that some of the headlining aspects of the OnePlus 7T have also made…