AfriTech's: 2017-01-15

Samsung confirm the leak of Galaxy s8

Recent leaks suggested this will be a design to die for, and now have both our best look yet at the Galaxy S8 and Samsung’s official confirmation. So let’s break them down…

First up Samsung has inadvertently confirmed the existence of the new phone and its ‘Galaxy S8’ name applying to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to register the new device. Needless to say, the application any particular “style, size, or color”.

But what Samsung couldn’t get around disclosing was the ‘Galaxy S8’ name itself. We’ve long expected the Galaxy S7 successor to be called the Galaxy S8, but given Samsung followed up the Galaxy Note 5 in 2015 with the Galaxy Note 7 in 2016 and there are doubts about what Apple will call the 2017 iPhone things are not always as simple as they appear.

Personally I blame Microsoft for this recent number jumping phenomenon after it leapt from Windows 8 to Windows 10 in 2015. Please no Galaxy S10 next year Samsung!

In addition to this - unless Samsung is returning to its 2015 three model release strategy - both the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Edge are shown to have curved ‘Edge’ displays. This would make the Edge name somewhat redundant for the larger model in my opinion (and edge displays do trigger accidental touches) by the duo will look fantastic.

In fact this is a look Apple is expected to copy with an ‘all curve display’ new iPhone later this year, and you can see why. It is also likely to lay to rest the notion that Samsung always copies Apple rather than the reality which is everyone steals from everyone.

So with the expected Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Edge release date getting closer, Samsung has the opportunity to lay down a marker in 2017. With an eye popping Galaxy Note 8 also on the horizon this could be an explosive year for Samsung, in all the right ways…

Social Media is not a Safe Place

After the early, exciting expository years of the Internet – the Age of Jennicam where the web was supposed to act as confessional and stage – things changed swiftly. This new medium was a revelation, a gift of freedom that we all took for granted. Want to post rants against the government? Press publish on Blogspot. Want to yell at the world? Aggregate and comment upon some online news. Want to meet people with similar interests or kinks? There was a site for you although you probably had to hunt it down.

The way we shared deep feelings on the Internet grew out of its first written stage into other more interactive forms. It passed through chatrooms, Chatroulette, and photo sharing. Today the most confessional “static” writing you’ll find on a web page is the occasional Medium post about beating adversity through meditation and Apple Watch apps and we have hidden our human foibles behind dank memes and chatbots. Where could the average person, the civilian, go to share their deepest feelings of love, anger, and fear?

Further, social media is no longer protected. As careless CEOs quickly discover saying the wrong thing in a “private” chat or deleting an errant does not mean someone won’t screencapture your rant. In fact social media has become an id and ego collector, a fly strip where all of our worst thoughts are captured permanently. We exhale in anger and chuff in frustration. We tell people to unfollow us if they don’t like what we’re saying and we turn neighborhood pages into political cesspools

In short social media is no longer a safe place. I don’t mean this in the politically correct sense but in the very mental and physical sense. Whereas the web was once a broadcast medium it is now a two-way or many-to-many medium. Our errant Twitter thoughts can make us targets and we often don’t know we’re being watched. Entire wars can break out online that have real-world consequences – see Pizzagate – and hoaxes flit through the memetic bloodstream like cancer, breaking down our defenses. A prominent writer and friend recently mused about what would happen if he posted some political rants. The first thing that leapt to his readers’ minds was the potential for SWATing and doxing and then an visit from the FBI. Then, as evidenced by the above CEO example, you get fired.

Social media has become a very real, very visceral, and very censorial force and it can now only worsen the human condition. It was once an experiment but that experiment is over. Like most things that calcify into the mainstream the joy of exploration is now gone, replaced by a grim determination to just get it over with. There is a reason so many startups are trying to break our social media habits. We are exhausted by the endless mantra of Twitter-Facebook-Instagram and we will go so far as to replace our app icons with dummy apps simply to stop ourselves from Tweeting.

Samsung start updating it's devices with Android 7.0 Nougat

Samsung announced preliminary plans back in October to start testing Android 7.0 on its latest devices. For the second year in a row, the company was mostly testing the waters early on, asking a select group of interested early adopters to test the update via its Galaxy Beta Program.
All these months later the almost-latest version of Google’s mobile operating system (the Pixel-esque 7.1.1 went live in December) is finally starting to arrive on Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge handsets. And now that the company’s got all that squared away, it’s going to go ahead and sprinkle a little more Nougat on a smattering of its other Galaxy devices at some point during first half of the year.

The list of compatible includes the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge and S6 edge Plus, Galaxy Note5, Galaxy Tab A with S Pen, Galaxy Tab S2 (LTE unlock), Galaxy A3, and Galaxy A8. More could be on the horizon, of course, but that’s the list for now.

Along with the standard array of feature improvements, the Galaxy Nougat upgrade also brings Samsung Pass, letting users log into sites and apps with their fingerprints, which mobile banking options arrive soon. Though the actual functionality of the app may vary from country to country, according the fine print.

Apple files a billion dollars lawsuit against Qualcomm

Apple is piling onto the lawsuit train just ahead of the weekend,

following in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s footsteps with a roughly billion-dollar suit against the San Diego-based mobile chipmaker.

Apple was specifically named in the recent FTC filing, which

accused Qualcomm of engaging in an anti-competitive

“no license, no chips” policy, which jacked up licensing fees on

patents and forced phone makers to pay more for using

competitors’ processors.

Qualcomm precluded Apple from sourcing baseband

processors from Qualcomm’s competitors from 2011 to 2016.

Qualcomm recognized that any competitor that won Apple’s business would become stronger, and used exclusivity to prevent Apple from working with and improving the effectiveness of Qualcomm’s competitors.

Apple’s own $1 billion suit accuses Qualcomm of charging for patents “they have nothing to do with,” citing TouchID, displays and cameras as categories where the component maker has allegedly stifled innovation by making licensing more costly.

Qualcomm built its business on older, legacy, standards but reinforces its dominance through exclusionary tactics and excessive royalties. Despite being just one of over a dozen companies who contributed to basic cellular standards, Qualcomm insists on charging Apple at least five times more in payments than all the other cellular patent licensors we have agreements with combined.

The suit follows a number of other international legal proceedings for Qualcomm across the world, including large fines in South Korea and China. We’ve reached out to the company for comment

Nigeria developer on that path of culture

You got see this, new crop of Nigerian developers is drawing on the dept of culture across continent to make distinctly African games. And hope it go through

Watch the video here

GOOGLE APPS MOBILE Android will now store Google searches offline

Google is rolling out an update for its Android app that makes it easier to search the internet with an inconsistent internet connection. Users can make searches when offline and the Google app will store them, delivering the results later (with an optional notification) when the devices gets signal again. As Google product manager Shekhar Sharad writes in a blog post: “So the next time you lose service, feel free to queue up your searches, put your phone away and carry on with your day. The Google app will work behind-the-scenes to detect when a connection is available again and deliver your search results once completed.”

Sharad also notes that the feature “won’t drain your battery”
and will only have a “minimal” impact on data usage.
Any pending searches will be stored in the Google app
itself under the Manage Searches option. Let’s hope the iOS Google app
gets a similar update some time soon.

Use Google's updated Switch tool to go from iOS to Android

Using Google Drive you can back up and sync your contacts, calendars and photos with ease.

Google has simplified the process for iOS defectors to switch
to Android without forfeiting the most important data on
a device: contacts, calendars, and photos.

Instead of connecting your iOS device to computer and going
through a series of steps, as the process used to require,
you only need the Google Drive account installed on
your iPhone and a Gmail account.

Here's how it works:

Install Google Drive on your iPhone.
If you already have it installed, open the App Store and ensure
it's up to date.
Launch Google Drive.
Tap on the Menu button.
Select Settings.
Select Backup.
Tap on each backup category to disable or tailor the data that's being backed up.
For example, for Google Photos you can select the backup quality.
Finally, tap on Start Backup.
The process will take awhile, especially if you have a lot of photos and videos
(and back up in original quality). You have to leave your phone connected to
a Wi-Fi network, leave the app open and your screen on.
I suggest starting the backup before you go to bed.

When you're ready to set up your Android device, sign into the same
Gmail account you used in the Google Drive app on your iPhone.
You contacts will be in the Contacts app sorted into a group labeled
with your iPhone's name, as will your calendar entries.
Photos will be in the Google Photos app.