We are 13 days away from the Made by Google event on October 15th and leaks about the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL continue gushing out. We've already seen the official press renders and covered new functions which are possibly exclusive only to the Pixel 4 devices. One of the latest leaks to come out spills the beans on what's inside the Pixel 4 devices and what will be included in the box.
The report by 9to5 Google confirms mostly what we already suspected — both Pixel devices will be powered by the Snapdragon 855 SOC, come equipped with 6GB of RAM, have 64GB or 128GB of internal storage, feature OLED displays, carry two cameras on the back, and include the Titan M Security Module. Here is the leaked photo of the official spec sheet:
The only significant piece of information that wasn't spotlighted by the previous leaks is the mention of the "Pixel Neural Core" — it's likely a new camera-related marketing term that supersedes the previous "Pixel Visual Core" terminology. We'll know for certain come the 15th.
Also leaked was a list of items that'll be included in the box for the US Pixel 4: a 1-meter USB-C to USB-C cable, an 18W USB-C charger, a Quick Switch Adapter, a SIM tool, and a Quick Start Guide.
With such an influx of leaks coming out on an almost daily basis, we wonder if there will be any surprises left before the phones are officially unveiled on the 15th.
This photo was taken using Apple's new Deep Fusion process, which optimizes detail and minimizes image noise.
Apple
Deep Fusion, Apple's new image processing technique for the iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max, is now available as part of both the developers beta and public beta of iOS 13.2. Deep Fusion will only work with iOS devices running an A13 Bionic processor, which is currently only the newest iPhones.
When the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro were first announced in September, Apple showed off the new ultrawide-angle camera, Night Mode and an improved selfie camera, all of which represented a significant step forward for iPhone photography and videos. And now that they're in the wild, we've tested the new iPhone cameras and can confirm their improvements as well as the absolute enjoyment we feel using that ultrawide-angle camera. But there's one camera feature that Apple teased at its fall iPhone event that no one has gotten to try: Deep Fusion.
While it sounds like the name of an acid jazz band, Apple claims the brand-new photo processing technique will make your pictures pop with detail while keeping the amount of image noise relatively low. The best way to think of Deep Fusion is that you're not meant to. Apple wants you to rely on this new technology but not think too much about it. There's no button to turn it on or off, or really any indication that you're even using the mode.
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Right now, anytime you take a photo on an iPhone 11, 11 Pro or 11 Pro Max, the default mode is Smart HDR, which takes a series of images before and after your shot and blends them together to improve the dynamic range and detail. If the environment is too dark, the camera switches automatically into Night Mode to improve brightness and reduce image noise. With Deep Fusion, anytime you take a photo in medium to low light conditions, like indoors, the camera will switch automatically into the mode to lower image noise and optimize detail. Deep Fusion, unlike Smart HDR, works at the pixel level. If you're using the "telephoto" lens on the iPhone 11 Pro or 11 Pro Max, the camera will drop into Deep Fusion pretty much anytime you're not in the brightest light.
This means the iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max have optimized modes for bright light, low light and now medium light. And I'd argue that most people's photos are taken in medium- to low-light situations like indoors. The impact that Deep Fusion will have on your photos is enormous. It's like Apple changed the recipe of Coke.
At the iPhone event, Apple's Phil Schiller described Deep Fusion as "computational photography mad science." And when you hear how it works, you'll likely agree.
Essentially anytime you go to take a photo, the camera is capturing multiple images. Again, Smart HDR does something similar. The iPhone takes a reference photo that's meant to stop motion blur as much as possible. Next, it combines three standard exposures and one long exposure into a single "synthetic long" photo. Deep Fusion then breaks down the reference image and synthetic long photo into multiple regions identifying skies, walls, textures and fine details (like hair). Next, the software does a pixel-by-pixel analysis of the two photos -- that's 24 million pixels in total. The results of that analysis are used to determine which pixels to use and optimize in building a final image.
Here's another iPhone phone taken with Deep Fusion. Details like hair, beard hair, the sweater, the fabric of the couch and the texture of the wall are all optimized by the Deep Fusion process.
Apple
Apple says that the entire process takes a second or so to happen. But to allow to you to continue snapping shots, all of the information is captured and processed when your iPhone's A13 processor has a chance. The idea is that you won't be waiting on Deep Fusion before taking the next photo.
The release of Deep Fusion comes just a couple weeks before Google will formally announce the Pixel 4, its latest flagship phone in a line renowned for camera prowess.
I should note that Deep Fusion will only be available on the iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max because it needs the A13 Bionic processor to work. I'm excited to try it out and share the results once the developer's version is out.
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Google has a password manager that syncs across Chrome and Android, and now the company is adding a “password checkup” feature that will analyze your logins to ensure they haven’t been part of a massive security breach — and there have been oh so many of those. Password checkup was already available as an extension, but now Google is building it right into Google account controls. And it’ll be prominently featured at passwords.google.com, which is the URL shortcut to Google’s password manager.
Your login credentials are compared against the millions upon millions of known compromised accounts that’ve been part of major breaches. Google says that it also monitors the dark web to some extent for collections of passwords — but most of the database that password checkup compares against comes from crawling the open web.
If your password has been included in a breach, Google will encourage you to change the affected password. Same goes for if Google sees that you’re reusing passwords, which is a terrible practice; everything should have a unique login. And of course, Google will also notify you of accounts using weak passwords that are on the easy-to-guess end of the spectrum. In the case of the extension, passwords were hashed and encrypted before being sent to Google:
Since Password Checkup relies on sending your confidential information to Google, the company is keen to emphasize that this is encrypted, and that it has no way of seeing your data. Passwords in the database are stored in a hashed and encrypted form, and any warning that’s generated about your details is entirely local to your machine.
One point I raised with Mark Risher, Google’s director of account security, is that consumers are increasingly being asked to store their passwords in several places at once. Apple has iCloud Keychain. Google has this. And then you’ve got 1Password, LastPass, and other dedicated third-party password managers. What’s someone to do? Pick a horse and stick with it? Or try to keep multiple password managers in sync? The potential for mismatches or having an old, incorrect password in one of these places is pretty high. Google doesn’t really have a great answer for this issue, but says that it supports importing passwords and will be working to make that process smoother over the coming months.
To coincide with Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Google partnered with The Harris Poll to check up on the password habits of people in the US, and the results are pretty worrying. Too many are still including items that a stranger could easily find out — like a birthday, pet’s name, etc. — in their passwords. And not enough people are talking advantage of extra security measures like two-factor authentication (only 37 percent of respondents are using it) and password managers (15 percent).
66 percent of those polled said they use the same password for more than one online account. And when it comes to sharing with a significant other, only 11 percent said they changed their Netflix (or other streaming service) password after a breakup.
Password reuse is the main thing Google is trying to discourage, because using the same password for multiple services could put you in a dire situation should one of them be compromised. If you’re not a fan of digital password managers, just write ‘em down somewhere at home. Even that’s a good option if you can keep prying eyes away since you won’t repeat the same password.
Enlarge/ Mmmmm, business-y. Don't expect to build your own Ryzen Pro 3000 system—the new chips are, sadly, only available to large OEMs.
AMD
Monday, AMD announced Ryzen Pro 3000 desktop CPUs would be available in Q4 2019. This of course raises the question, "What's a Ryzen Pro?"
The business answer: Ryzen Pro 3000 is a line of CPUs specifically intended to power business-class desktop machines. The Pro line ranges from the humble dual-core Athlon Pro 300GE all the way through to Ryzen 9 Pro 3900, a 12-core/24-thread monster. The new parts will not be available for end-user retail purchase and are only available to OEMs seeking to build systems around them.
Model
Cores/Threads
TDP
Boost/Base Freq.
Graphics Compute Units
Ryzen 9 Pro 3900
12/24
65W
4.3GHz / up to 3.1GHz
n/a
Ryzen 7 Pro 3700
8/16
65W
4.4GHz / up to 3.6GHz
n/a
Ryzen 5 Pro 3600
6/12
65W
4.2GHz / up to 3.6GHz
n/a
Ryzen 5 Pro 3400G
4/8
65W
4.2GHz / up to 3.7GHz
11 CUs
Ryzen 5 Pro 3400GE
4/8
35W
4.0GHz / up to 3.3GHz
11 CUs
Ryzen 3 Pro 3200G
4/8
65W
4.0GHz / up to 3.6GHz
8 CUs
Ryzen 3 Pro 3200GE
4/8
35W
3.8GHz / up to 3.3GHz
8 CUs
Athlon Pro 300GE
2/4
35W
3.4GHz / up to 3.4GHz
3 CUs
From a more technical perspective, the answer is that the Ryzen Pro line includes AMD Memory Guard, a transparent system memory encryption feature which appears to be equivalent to the AMD SME (Secure Memory Encryption) in Epyc server CPUs. Although AMD's own press materials don't directly relate the two technologies, their description of Memory Guard—"a transparent memory encryption (OS and application independent DRAM encryption) providing a cryptographic AES encryption of system memory"—matches Epyc's SME exactly.
AMD Memory Guard is not, unfortunately, available in standard Ryzen 3000 desktop CPUs. If you want to build your own Ryzen PC with full memory encryption from scratch, you're out of luck for now.
AMD Memory Guard appears to be the only technical feature in "GuardMI" that wasn't already present in non-Pro Ryzen 3000 CPUs.
AMD isn't as explicit as it could be about "GuardMI"—but AMD Memory Guard appears to be the only feature not already present in regular Ryzen 3000 CPUs.
AMD
AMD supports Microsoft's platform-independent encryption, authentication, and security features.
AMD
AMD wants to make sure OEMs are paying attention to their feature parity—and superiority—with Intel vPro CPUs.
AMD
HP's EliteDesk 705 G5 Small Form Factor and EliteDesk G5 Mini will be among the first PCs to feature the new Ryzen Pro 3000 CPUs. The SFF desktop PC will be available with the Athlon Pro 300GE APU, the Ryzen 3 Pro 3200G, or Ryzen 5 Pro 3400G. The Mini offers the same selection, along with the Ryzen 3 3200GE and Ryzen 5 3400GE low-power variants.
People’s tastes and interests change. So why should our Google data histories be eternal?
For years, Google has kept a record of our internet searches by default. The company hoards that data so it can build detailed profiles on us, which helps it make personalized recommendations for content but also lets marketers better target us with ads. While there have been tools we can use to manually purge our Google search histories, few of us remember to do so.
So I’m recommending that we all try Google’s new privacy tools. In May, the company introduced an option that lets us automatically delete data related to our Google searches, requests made with its virtual assistant and our location history.
On Wednesday, Google followed up by expanding the auto-delete ability to YouTube. In the coming weeks, it will begin rolling out a new private mode for when you’re navigating to a destination with its Google Maps app, which could come in handy if you’re going somewhere you want to keep secret, like a therapist’s office.
“All of this work is in service of having a great user experience,” Eric Miraglia, Google’s data protection officer, said about the new privacy features. “Part of that experience is, how does the user feel about the control they have?”
How do we best use Google’s new privacy tools? The company gave me a demonstration of the newest controls this week, and I tested the tools that it released earlier this year. Here’s what to know about them.
How to auto-delete your search history
Most of Google’s new privacy controls are in a web tool called My Activity. (Here’s the URL: myactivity.google.com.)
Once you get into the tool and click on Activity Controls, you will see an option called Web & App Activity. Click Manage Activity and then the button under the calendar icon. Here, you can set your activity history on several Google products to automatically erase itself after three months or after 18 months. This data includes searches made on Google.com, voice requests made with Google Assistant, destinations that you looked up on Maps and searches in Google’s Play app store.
Which duration should you go for? It depends on how much you care about getting personalized recommendations.
Let’s say you have been doing lots of Google searches on celebrities and movies. Google News will recommend news articles for you to read on those topics based on those searches. So if you’re steadfast about following celebrity and movie news, setting searches to delete after 18 months is probably a good option. If you’re more fickle about your interests, three months may be better.
If you’re the type who doesn’t care to get any personalized recommendations on Google products, you can simply disable search history from being retained in your account. Next to the Web & App Activity option, toggle the switch to the off position.
How to auto-delete your YouTube history
Image
CreditGoogle
New to Google’s privacy controls this week is the ability to auto-delete your YouTube history, which includes searches and the videos you’ve watched.
In the My Activity tool, click on Activity controls and look for the button for YouTube history. Click on Manage history and you will see a similar calendar icon, which lets you set YouTube history to delete after three months or 18 months.
How and when to use private mode and auto-delete in Google Maps
Image
CreditGoogle
Also arriving in the coming weeks is a so-called Incognito mode in Google Maps. Toggling this on lets you look up and navigate to destinations without creating a location history. It also prevents others from seeing your past searches.
To turn it on, open the Google Maps app and tap on the account icon in the upper-right corner. Then click Turn on Incognito mode.
This could come in handy in a few situations:
If you are meeting someone to discuss a sensitive business matter, Incognito mode will prevent the meeting location from being recorded.
Google Maps lets you constantly share your location with someone like your romantic partner. If you want your location to be kept secret, like when shopping for an engagement ring, you can turn on Incognito mode.
Let’s say you are driving and a member of your family is using the Maps app on your phone to navigate to a new address. Turning on Incognito mode will hide your past maps searches from that person.
Google now also includes an auto-delete option for location history. In the My Activity tool, click Activity controls, scroll to Location history and click Manage Activity. On the next page, find the icon shaped like a nut and then click Automatically delete location history. You can set data to self-purge after three months or 18 months.
For those who don’t want Google to create a record of their location history at all, there’s a switch for that. On the My Activity page, click Activity controls and scroll to Location history and turn the switch to the off position.
Just do it
In offering these privacy tools, Google is a step ahead of other internet giants like Facebook and Twitter, which don’t provide ways to easily delete large batches of dated posts.
Yet there’s no one-size-fits-all for how people should use Google’s privacy controls, since everyone has different lifestyles and levels of paranoia. To give an idea of how you can tailor these settings, here’s my personal setup:
I set my search history to auto-delete. I rarely use Google Assistant and don’t visit Google News, meaning I don’t benefit from personalized recommendations. But I’m often checking Google Maps, and it’s useful to have a recent history of those searches to revisit destinations. So I set Web & App Activity to automatically delete after three months.
I set my YouTube history to self-destruct. I go in and out of phases that involve cooking different types of foods, and I like it when YouTube surfaces new recipes based on recent searches. So I set my YouTube history to auto-delete after three months.
I set my location history to auto-delete, too. I use Google Maps regularly, and I go on big trips twice a year. It’s useful for me to let Google know where I have been recently so that its Maps app can load relevant addresses and remember places I have been. But it’s not useful for Google to continue to know that I went to Hawaii last month for vacation. So I set my location history to auto-purge after three months.
It’s difficult to imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to take advantage of Google’s auto-delete tools. There’s no practical benefit to letting Google keep a history of our online activities from years back. So don’t delay in wiping a tiny bit of your digital traces away.
(Reuters) - Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s newly launched Mate 30 devices have lost their access to manually install Google’s Android apps, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
FILE PHOTO: A new Huawei Mate 30 smartphone is pictured at the Convention Center in Munich, Germany September 19, 2019. REUTERS/Michael Dalder/File Photo
According to the report, security researcher John Wu published a blog post bit.ly/2p5d2Cu Tuesday that explained how users of Huawei's Mate 30 Pro were able to manually download and install Google apps, despite a U.S. blacklisting that prohibits the Chinese company from using American components and software.
But in the wake of the revelations, the Mate 30 devices, made to work on new 5G mobile networks, lost their clearance to manually install Android apps, as reported by a number of smartphone experts, Bloomberg said.
The Mate 30 is Huawei’s first major flagship smartphone launched last month, since U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration effectively blacklisted the company in mid-May, alleging it is involved in activities that compromise U.S. national security, a charge the company denies.
Wu wrote in the post a widespread method to install Google Services on newly released Huawei devices relies on undocumented Huawei specific mobile device management application programming interface, or MDM APIs.
“Although this “backdoor” requires user interaction to be enabled, the installer app, which is signed with a special certificate from Huawei, was granted privileges nowhere to be found on standard Android systems,” he wrote.
“The system framework in Huawei’s operating system has a “backdoor” that allows permitted apps to flag some user apps as system apps despite the fact that it does not actually exist on any read-only partitions,” Wu said.
This process let the Mate 30 phones to run popular apps like Google Maps and Gmail that otherwise would not be permitted, Bloomberg reported bloom.bg/2mSwsKg.
An easy-to-use app enabling the installation of Google apps and services on the Mate 30 Pro, called LZPlay, had emerged alongside the device’s release, however it has disappeared after Wu’s posting. Only Google is able to make that change through its SafetyNet anti-abuse check, the report said.
Google and Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr
(Bloomberg) -- One of Huawei Technologies Co.’s biggest trade war headaches has just gotten worse, as an unofficial workaround to the Trump administration ban on using Google apps and services has been quashed.
Security researcher John Wu published an illuminating post Tuesday that explained how users of Huawei’s Mate 30 Pro were able to manually download and install Google apps, despite a U.S. blacklisting that prohibits the Chinese company from using American components and software. The process allowed the Mate 30 Pro (along with the basic Mate 30) to run popular apps like Google Maps and Gmail that otherwise would not be permitted.
In the wake of Wu’s revelations, the Mate 30 devices lost their clearance to manually install Android apps, as reported by a number of smartphone experts. Only Google is able to make that kind of change through what’s known as its SafetyNet anti-abuse check.
“Although this ‘backdoor’ requires user interaction to be enabled, the installer app, which is signed with a special certificate from Huawei, was granted privileges nowhere to be found on standard Android systems,” Wu wrote on Medium.
Google declined to comment for this story.
An easy-to-use app enabling the installation of Google apps and services on the Mate 30 Pro, called LZPlay, had emerged alongside the device’s release, however it has disappeared after Wu’s posting. The researcher said in his findings that “it is pretty obvious that Huawei is well aware of this ‘LZPlay’ app, and explicitly allows its existence.”
Huawei said in an emailed statement it has had no involvement with LZPlay.
Huawei’s New Android Phone Lacks Luster Without Google Apps
Effectively, the change makes sure that the U.S. ban on Google services for the Mate 30 Pro is ironclad -- and many of the users outside of China who might have obtained or imported the device will now have only the bare Android-based Huawei user experience.
At the heart of Huawei’s problems is the Google Play Store, a system-level app that’s part of Google’s licensed bundle, which opens access to the full panoply of Android applications. With it on board, an Android device can more effectively compete with Apple Inc.’s iPhone and App Store, equipped with globally popular apps like YouTube, Instagram, Netflix and Spotify. Without it, no matter how great its specs and performance, an Android device is a tough sell for U.S. or European customers. The U.S. trade ban has been damaging to Huawei because it undercuts the company’s ability to compete in the premium smartphone market in Europe, which had been one of its growth drivers.
Huawei doesn’t have the same challenge in its native China because the government already bans most Google apps and services on all smartphones. Instead, Chinese users rely on Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat as the do-it-all super-app, plus a diversity of other sources for apps, games and entertainment, an ecosystem that’s developed in Google’s absence.
With the latest blow to the Mate 30 Pro, Huawei’s prospects for global smartphone sales dim even further.
(Updates with Huawei’s response in the 7th paragraph)
To contact the reporter on this story: Vlad Savov in Tokyo at vsavov5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Peter Elstrom, Colum Murphy
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
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