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Android device  You thought you were completely disconnected from any location tracking by  Google  and your phone when you went into your phone’s location services and toggled them off, right? You’d be wrong! Hah…ha…haaa…ugh. According to a report from  Quartz , Google has been doing a bit of location tracking on Android phones even if you told them not to by turning off your phone’s location services. And we’re talking about any of the modern Android phones you might own, so yes, you are included in this conversation. Quartz  found that Google has essentially been pinging nearby cellular towers and retrieving that info through the Firebase Cloud Messaging service that manages push notifications and messages. Again, this is all still happening even if you have turned off location services on your phone. This collection of location via cell tower can happen over both WiFi and cellular data connection too, by the way. The data collected is encrypted, but the information still likely

Google Add Your Comment   After  several weeks  of  rumors ,  Google announced  this evening an “agreement” that will see HTC employees who worked on the Pixel join the Alphabet company’s hardware division. The deal is valued at $1.1 billion, while HTC will continue to run its smartphone business. In a blog post this evening, hardware chief Rick Osterloh announced that Google “signed an agreement with HTC” to “fuel even more product innovation in the years ahead.” This acquihire will see “a team of HTC talent” — pegged at around 100 engineers this morning — join Google’s hardware division. With this agreement, a team of HTC talent will join Google as part of the hardware organization. These future fellow Googlers are amazing folks we’ve already been working with closely on the Pixel smartphone line, and we’re excited to see what we can do together as one team. Osterloh specifically notes that the incoming team has already worked with Google on the Pixel lineup. Today’s deal al

    LG Mobile There are several reasons why a company like LG might finally decide to make the switch to an OLED display on their latest flagship. The move to a plastic OLED screen on the  V30  is, for many, one of the biggest deals about it, but what prompted LG to make the change? Daydream support could be one of those reasons, with Google’s Daydream VR spec requiring an OLED display, among other hardware components, in order to be supported. But that’s not it, even if the  V30 is LG’s first Daydream Ready phone . See also: LG POLED vs Samsung Super AMOLED LG POLED vs Samsung Super AMOLED Customer preference could also be the cause, with Samsung’s AMOLED screens largely  setting the standard  for what is considered a “good” screen on Android phones. But LG didn’t have any internal research or numbers to share with media, as most OEMs typically have when they introduce (or backtrack on) something new. LG Display’s increased P-OLED production capacity  and recent reductions in

Welcome to the 206th Android Apps Weekly! Here are the the headlines from the last week: Android Oreo will get non-root theming . A third party app called Substratum will include the feature. There are some caveats. You have to use a computer to make it work. It also breaks a bit of basic functionality. It’s nothing serious, though. It’s a bit unconventional. However, it’s one step closer to native theming on Android. Plus, Substratum is a fairly excellent app on its own. Telltale Games launched a huge summer sale this week . Included are four The Walking Dead games, both Minecraft: Story Mode titles, The Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, Guardians of the Galaxy, and others. The sale includes the base game as well as the season pass for those titles. That means you can get the whole game at a discount. It might be worth it for adventure game fans. Google is trying to help depressed people . They’re working with the National Alliance of Mental Illness to get people help. Google Searchin

Essential Phone Nearly 90 days ago,  Essential wowed the world  with their smartphone. It was supposed to  ship not long after that , but as everyone probably knows, that didn’t exactly happen. It’s taken a few months to iron the process out, but if you ordered an Essential Phone, you should be getting an email with tracking information very shortly.  That’s great news for Essential, and great news for early adopters and anyone considering buying the phone now that it’s available. It’s not so great that the launch will now be overshadowed by the  Galaxy Note 8  and the impending  iPhone 8 , both of which will likely command serious amounts of attention from reviewers and buyers, but maybe Essential managed to do something that will keep some of the spotlight. We’ll find out over the next month or so.

ckBerry has always placed a high priority on the needs of businesses, especially when it comes to security. All of the company's Android phones come with the 'DTEK' security suite, and BlackBerry has done a pretty good job of pushing out Google's monthly security patches. Now, BlackBerry may be looking to license its secure version of Android to other companies. According to a report from  The Economic Times , BlackBerry is calling its version of Android "BlackBerry Secure," and it includes all the security features currently shipping on its Android devices. The company's Senior Vice President, Alex Thurber, said, "We have a number of different contracts that we are working on right now. We expect some to be announced soon. We have an agreement with Optiemus for the India market for BlackBerry Secure." You may not have heard of Optiemus, but they are one of three companies licensing the BlackBerry brand to sell phones (the other two being TCL

This time, a leak occurred in the company Google – the public decided to show how Pixel 2, supposedly codenamed Walleye, will look, and also talked about the platform on which it will be built. If the novelty looks like it does on the render. Perhaps this is the main idea of ​​designers? The company has found the ideal form for itself, and only will change the filling and make only accurate design adjustments? Techno-spies reported that once again, users will be offered to buy  Google Pixel 2  with a 5-inch display or Pixel 2 XL with a screen of 5.5 inches. Novelties will receive the Snapdragon 836 platform, created according to the standards of 10-nanometer process technology, and will be expected to work on Android O. At the moment there is no information about the new platform from Qualcomm. But if it is in the plans of the chip maker, then almost certainly it will be an overclocked version of Snapdragon 835. By and large, the design of the second generation was decided not to ch

If anyone knew that big phones were a menace, it was Steve Jobs. He vowed never to make a large phablet sized iPhone because he knew the consequences. Difficulty of gripping and use, as phones and their screens grow bigger but hands stay the same, and a nuisance to carry, because they occupy so much space in your pocket. However, that’s the past… because the average phone screen size today stands at roughly 6 inches, while the average human thumb is just 2.74 inches. Phone cases are so commonplace today that you’ll rarely see a phone without one. Their use goes beyond just protecting your phone now, as they act as stands, card-holders, external batteries, wallets, etc. In fact, they’re so commonly bought alongside phones, it makes perfect sense that they solve this rising problem of phones slipping out of your hands (and hitting you in the face when you’re checking Instagram in bed). As opposed to those obscenely ugly PopSockets or those hideous Ring Stands that do nothing but make yo

YouTube is a simple service with a lot of not-so-simple problems to it. It's easy for  YouTube  to frustrate users because beneath the cat videos and endless comment sections are a lot of features that can really make or break your experience. You thought you turned off Autoplay, but it still seems to be turned on when you're showing your family videos on the TV. You get notifications when people across the house are casting. Why? And more importantly, how do you end these annyoances? Here's how. How to control and stop someone casting from YouTube How to keep YouTube from Autoplaying when casting How to quickly skip forward or backward in a YouTube video How to change how far your double-tap to seek goes How to control and stop someone casting from YouTube By default, when someone casts content from YouTube (or most other apps) to a Chromecast, everyone else connected to the same router as at that Chromecast will receive a notification that allows them to control tha

Galaxy S8 has become one of the topmost flagships of the year 2017. In 2018, we will encounter with a new device having latest features, awesome technologies, stunning display- Yes. We are talking about The Samsung Galaxy S9. No doubt, Display of Galaxy S8 is amazing having a Super AMOLED screen, Corning Gorilla Glass 5 with a screen size of  5.8 “(146.5mm) and Quad HD + (2960 × 1440), 570 ppi, automatic brightness control,  adaptive color adjustment and luminance, color correction. Display of S8 + is 6.2 “(158.1 mm) Quad HD + (2960 × 1440), 529ppi. In the case of upcoming Galaxy S9, the body has a glossy appearance and display is large with edges present on all four sides with Corning Gorilla Glass 5. Processor: Galaxy S8 has a powerful processor Exynos 8895, 8 cores (4 cores to 2.35 GHz core 4 to 1.9 GHz), 64 bits, 10 nm, in some markets Model 835 available on Snapdragon. Galaxy S9 would have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 with Adreno GPU. Additionally, Exynos-8895 has matrix ARM Cortex

Following a  piece published about the design  of the Pixel and Pixel XL yesterday, Google is now directly soliciting feedback about the phone’s look.  In a post  on the Pixel User Community, Product Lead Krishna Kumar asks what Google got right, wrong, and how it could improve future devices… A big  criticism  of Google’s first wholly-made phone has been how similar it looks to the iPhone, although one aspect where the Pixel is notably different is its wedge-shape. Yesterday’s  CNET  piece  does go into particular depth about how avoiding an “unsightly” camera bump was a special area of focus. The wedge-shape ultimately allowed for a larger battery while also allowing the phone to rest flat on a surface. Additionally, we learned that the glass panel on the rear provides “more surface area to receive and send signals,” though Google did not mention why antenna lines are then still required. Noting the tradeoffs in any design, the Pixel Product Lead ends the post asking several ques

Tony Edward   http://www.gszon.blogspot.com.ng  By now the majority of searchers on Google are familiar with the Knowledge Graph box, which appears on the right side of the search results page and highlights information about various entities (companies, people, places, things and so on). In the past, I’ve written about how to both  obtain  and  optimize  a Knowledge Graph result. In my attempts to learn more and get a better understanding of Google’s Knowledge Graph, I’ve discovered some cool hacks and tricks. While these tricks do not have any significant practical implications, they can serve as a way to better understand how Google’s Knowledge Graph works, which can be used to optimize your personal or company Knowledge Graph results. Before getting into the tricks, let’s break down some important items. For the examples below, I used Donald Trump. Google Knowledge Graph API The  Google Knowledge Graph API  is a tool that can be used to get insight into your Knowledge Graph r

If you’re handing over your internet connection for free, don’t expect top-notch security. For individuals seeking extra privacy online or trying to access geo-blocked content, a virtual private network (or VPN) can seem like an ideal fix. VPN applications protect users by encryp        For individuals seeking extra privacy online or trying to access geo-blocked content, a virtual private network (or VPN) can seem like an ideal fix. VPN applications protect users by encrypting internet traffic and routing it through different countries. That makes it harder for hackers to intercept your connection, and can also fool Netflix into thinking you're in a different country. However, these programs can also pose a risk to users. A  new analysis  of nearly 300 Android VPNs found that 84 percent of those studied leaked users’ web traffic, 38 percent contained malware or malvertising, and 18 percent didn’t encrypt data at all. Three of the apps even directly intercepted traffic, allowing, f