Twitter Lite now available in 45 countries

A year after its launch, Twitter Lite is now available for Android users in a total of 45 countries.

Twitter Lite was rolled out last year to provide a faster, data-friendly version of the app to those connected to slower 2G or 3G networks.

Twitter began testing the Lite app in the Philippines in September, and then expanded to 24 more countries by November. Now it’s broadening its availability to 21 more countries.

On Monday, Twitter announced that the app will be available in the Google Play Store for anyone in the following 45 countries: Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Serbia, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

Twitter Lite is aimed at those faced with expensive data plans, slow mobile networks or little storage space on their device. Designed to launch 30 percent faster, the app also offers key features — timeline, tweets, direct messages, trends, profiles, media uploads, notifications — with quicker navigation.

While smartphone adoption grew to 3.8 billion connections by the end of 2016, a vast number of smartphone users still rely on 2G —40 percent of connections in 2017, according to the latest report from GSMA.

Along with the increased availability, Twitter Lite has also received Push Notifications, Night Mode, Bookmarks, Threaded Conversations and Data Saver. These additional tools allow users to manage what is automatically loaded, what can wait and what can’t — all of which will contribute to saving energy, data and bandwidth.

Find out more at www.lite.twitter.com. The app is available to download from the Google Play Store. JB

source: technology.inquirer.net

Google tackles augmented reality, unveils new platform

Hot on the heels of Apple — which released its first-ever attempt at an augmented reality platform a few months ago at WWDC (“ARKit”) — fellow tech giant Google has now unleashed its own incarnation, for Android users.

The company, which boasts more than two billion active Android devices globally, on Tuesday unveiled a preview of its mobile-based AR platform “ARCore” for developers, which it hopes will bring “augmented reality capabilities to existing and future Android phones” around the world.

While Google has been developing the fundamental technologies that power mobile AR over the last three years with Tango, ARCore works without any additional hardware, which means it can scale across the Android ecosystem.

According to Google, ARCore will run on millions of devices, starting with the Pixel and Samsung’s S8, running 7.0 Nougat and above, with the company targeting 100 million devices at the end of the preview.

Find out more about ARCore through its site: https://developers.google.com/ar/. JB

source:  technology.inquirer.net

New Android bug discovered that can brick your phone

It's not a good week for owners of mobile devices running Google's Android operating system: a newly-discovered bug that could render your phone dead and unusable.

Security vendor Trend Micro said the vulnerability, when exploited, threatens to render the phone silent and its screen lifeless.

"This vulnerability is present from Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) up to the current version, Android 5.1.1 (Lollipop). Combined, these versions account for more than half of Android devices in use today," mobile threat response engineer Wish Wu said in a blog post.

Worse, Wu said the Android engineering team has yet to issue a patch even if it had been informed as early as May.

According to Wu, Trend Micro reported the vulnerability to Google May 15, and Google acknowledged the report as a "low priority vulnerability" on May 20.

Earlier this week, Motherboard quoted security researcher Joshua Drake as saying a texting bug may leave Android users prone to attacks from hackers.

Drake said the bug is found in an Android media playback engine called Stagefright.

"This vulnerability can be triggered while you sleep... Before you wake up, the attacker will remove any signs of the device being compromised and you will continue your day as usual—with a trojaned phone," Drake said.

Both bugs are related in that they are based on the way Android handles media files.

Trend Micro said the more recent bug can be exploited via a specially crafted MKV media file.

MKV files

Trend Micro said the newly discovered vulnerability can be exploited either via a malicious app installed on the device, or through a specially-crafted web site.

It said the malicious app The first technique can cause long-term effects to the device: an app with an embedded MKV file that registers itself to auto-start whenever the device boots would case the OS to crash every time it is turned on.

Nonresponsive device

Trend Micro said the bug, once exploited, can cause the device "to become totally silent and non-responsive."

"No ring tone, text tone, or notification sounds can be heard. The user will have have no idea of an incoming call/message, and cannot even accept a call. Neither party will hear each other.
The UI may become very slow to respond, or completely non-responsive. If the phone is locked, it cannot be unlocked," it said.

It also said this exploit could pave the way for ransomware.

"Further research into Android – especially the mediaserver service – may find other vulnerabilities that could have more serious consequences to users, including remote code execution," Wu said. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com