Apple tells iPhone users why their older phones are slowing down

Apple tells iPhone users why their older phones are slowing down Apple tells iPhone users why their older phones are slowing down 
                                                   

Apple is explaining publicly why some people might notice their iPhones slowing down.

The company confirmed on Wednesday that it has algorithms in place to help keep an iPhone running at optimal performance -- preventing it from shutting down entirely -- if there is an older battery inside that can't keep up with the required power.

Apple was responding to a backlash after reports on Reddit suggested that the company was purposefully lowering the clock speeds, or how fast the phone's processor runs, after a few years of use.

"Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices," Apple explained to CNBC. "Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components."

Apple said it introduced a feature last year for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to "smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions."

TechCrunch first reported on Apple's response.

Apple said that feature has been extended to the IPhone 7 and will be added to "other products in the future."

Apple had to release an update for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s last year after users reported that their phones were shutting down unexpectedly, even if the phone still showed there was juice in the battery.

The best smartphones and Android phones for any budget

You check your phone a dozen times a day. At least. It’s how you talk to your loved ones, devour box-sets, buy groceries, keep up with the world and even browse for next season’s wardrobe. In short, you don’t want to be stuck with a dud phone. These are the best mobile phones you can buy right now.
                                         

WIRED Recommends is your definitive guide to the best technology. Click here for more no-nonsense buying guides.

WIRED Recommends: Samsung Galaxy Note 8

Pros: Superb hardware
Cons: High price

Samsung has made phone buying easy for those who like Android and have a lot of money to spend. It may cost almost £900, roughly double the price of the original Note from 2011, but the Galaxy Note 8 is an almost faultless phone.

Its screen is a mammoth 6.3 inches across, but as the Note 8 has an ultra-widescreen display and almost no bulk around it, it’s surprisingly easy to handle. Apple’s iPhone 8 Plus is almost 4mm wider, despite its smaller 5.5-inch screen.

Like previous Note phones, a smart stylus turns the screen into a miniature graphics tablet. It may be the best feature you almost never use, but is just not found elsewhere.

The Note 8 also has one of the most versatile cameras going. There are two sensors on the rear, for lossless 2x zoom, and great optical image stabilisation in both lenses maintains good image quality even at night.

Best mid-range smartphone: Honor 9

Pros: Great value, advanced features
Cons: Little wrong with it at the price

Apple and Samsung smashed through the smartphone price ceiling in 2017. The Honor 9 is a reminder that spending £1,000 on a phone is completely unnecessary for most people.

At £390, it crams-in a rather unlikely amount of tech, beating what Samsung, LG and even the Moto series offer at the price. That includes a high-end CPU, 64GB of storage and a great 5.2-inch screen.

A dual rear camera also has a crack at the 2x lossless zooming the iPhone 7 Plus made mainstream in 2016. It’s not quite as effective, but at half the price we’re lucky to get such features at all. An ultra-shiny glass and metal finish completes the Honor 9’s successful impersonation of a £500-plus phone.

Its main issue is the OnePlus 5. While more expensive, that phone has a slightly better camera and a larger screen.

Apple sees its mobile devices as platform for artificial intelligence

Apple sees its mobile devices as a major platform for artificial intelligence in the future, chief operating officer Jeff Williams said on Monday.
                                           

Later this week, Apple is set to begin taking pre-orders for its new smartphone, the iPhone X which starts at $999 $1277) and uses artificial intelligence (AI) features embedded in the company's latest A11 chips.

The phone promises new facial recognition features such as Face ID that uses a mathematical model of a person's face to allow the user to sign on to their phones or pay for goods with a steady glance at their phones.

He was speaking at top chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's 30th anniversary celebration in Taipei, which was attended by global tech executives.

Williams said technological innovations, especially involving the cloud and on-device processing, will improve life without sacrificing privacy or security.

Williams said Apple's integration of artificial intelligence wouldn't be just limited to mobile phones.

Global tech firms such as Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, and China's Huawei are spending heavily to develop and offer AI-powered services and products in search of new growth drivers.

Softbank Group, which has significantly invested in artificial intelligence, plans a second Vision Fund that could be about $US200 billion in size, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Apple decided to have 100 per cent of its new iPhone and new iPad chips for application processors sourced at TSMC, and TSMC invested $US9 billion to bring up its Tainan fab in a record 11 months, he said.

How Tenor Aims To Get GIF-Sharing Onto Every Mobile Phone

Tenor isn’t as well known as some big-name GIF engine competitors like Giphy, which has raised about $150 million in venture funding to date, most recently at an estimated valuation of $600 million. However, Tenor now powers 300 million GIF searches daily (up from 200 million daily searches in February) through its mobile GIF keyboard and hundreds of integrations with communications apps like Apple AAPL +0.04%’s iMessage, Google’s smart keyboard app Gboard, Facebook Messenger, Twitter TWTR +0.91%, WhatsApp, LinkedIn LNKD +0%, Slack , Discord and Kik. Tenor, which launched on mobile, also says it powers more shares of the short, looping videos and animations than any other tool.
                                               

While GIFs were first invented three decades ago and popularized by websites like MySpace, Imgur, Tumblr and Giphy, they have only been readily available within mobile keyboards for about three years. Now, about 70% of Americans ages 8 to 64 years old (about 200 million people) know how to send a GIF, and nearly half of those consumers send at least one GIF per week according to consumer research firm Magid Advisors. Magid’s President Michael Vorhaus says it’s hard to precisely estimate how rapidly GIF-sharing can grow. However, in two to three years, Vorhaus says mobile shares of GIFs could grow by 1,000%, generating $1 billion or $2 billion in total annual advertising revenue.

Tenor says it can’t disclose usage figures specific to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Google because of the nature of its partnership agreements. However, Tenor says its standalone Tenor GIF Keyboard on iOS and Android generate nearly 20% of all Tenor-powered searches, with the typical user accessing their keyboard more than 50 times per month. In the past year, Tenor has doubled its headcount to 43 people, opened offices in Los Angeles and New York and launched its nascent advertising business, which began generating revenue earlier this year. (Tenor hasn’t disclosed revenue figures.)

Essential Phone: Bold, beautiful, very first-gen

There's so much to say about the big, brash experiment that is the Essential Phone, I almost don't know where to begin.
                                               

Let's back up for a quick minute, because this is important, too. The Essential Phone is the first device from a new company that's spearheaded by Andy Rubin, the guy who co-created Android and, from 2005 to 2013, was the face of Android at Google. So a phone launched by Andy Rubin is a really big deal, particularly when you have a field stacked with talent from entrenched players like Samsung (Galaxy S8 and soon, Note 8), Google (Pixel and soon, Pixel 2), LG (G6 and upcoming V30), Motorola (Z2 Force and Z2 Play) and Nokia (Nokia 8), just to name a few. How does it plan to pull this off?

Rubin's team thinks that the Essential Phone's modular accessories will appeal to Android enthusiasts who want to customize a high-end Android with swappable add-ons that physically attach to the phone. Although there's only one accessory so far, a 360-degree camera, Rubin and his team envision an ecosystem that includes a bunch of accessories and powerful software to support them. Essential also plans to launch an Essential Home speaker for the living room, which will work with the phone's accessories.

Overall, I'm finding this test unit really sleek and likable, but too stripped down in the camera department, with buggy software that makes the phone feel unpolished. Essential says that it's already addressed most of the bugs I found in this prefinal version of the phone software, and will update buyers' devices, especially the native camera and 360-degree camera attachment. Therefore, we'll withhold our final assessment until the phone is completely ready -- consider this a sneak peek, not the last word.

MOBILE PHONE TOWER FAIL

A VODAFONE spokesperson has revealed an 'interesting development' which was discovered as part of their investigations into the a mobile phone tower incident causing traffic chaos at Springfield.
                                         

Yesterday about 4pm part of a mobile phone tower came off and fell onto Sinnathamby Blvd.

Acting mayor Paul Tully said it's lucky 'no one was killed' in the incident.

Major traffic delays are continuing this morning after the piece of shrouding fell from the top of a 10-storey building at Springfield Central.

Initially believed to be a Vodafone tower, the service provider has now revealed the piece that fell was from an Optus tower located on the same building.

However it remains a Vodafone responsibility.

WINDS were nowhere near dangerous speeds when part of a mobile phone tower fell off a building in Springfield, Bureau of Metrology figures reveal.

A BoM forecaster told the QT this morning that Amberley only recorded maximum wind speeds of 42kmh.

BoM say at 4pm wind speeds closer to Springfield, at Archerfield, averaged around 30-40kmh at the time of the incident.

MAJOR traffic delays are continuing this morning following the collapse of a mobile phone tower from the top of a 10-storey building at Springfield Central.

The tower fell onto Sinnathamby Blvd late yesterday causing major traffic disruptions overnight and today with the road blocked in both directions.

Queensland Police say the incident occurred shortly after 4pm.

Ipswich acting mayor Paul Tully inspected the scene early this morning and said it was lucky no one was killed.

Hands-free devices, devious drivers lead to drop in mobile phone offences

Queenslanders are slowly but surely resisting the urge to look at their phones while behind the wheel, but one particular area in the south-east has been identified as lagging behind the rest of the state.
                                       

Figures from the Department of Transport and Main Roads showed the number of mobile phone offences recorded by police between 2012 and 2016 had dropped by 35 per cent over the five years.

However, the numbers showed the Gold Coast was a hotspot for drivers distracted by their phones, with the Queensland Police Service also having launched several initiatives in the area as part of a crackdown.

And one of Queensland's top cops remained sceptical of the results, saying he had been told that drivers were finding new ways to conceal their phones and still be able to look at it while on the road, including hiding their phone in their laps and constantly looking down.

He also believed more and more people having access to hands-free systems in their cars had contributed to the decrease.

In 2016, an estimated 0.58 per cent of the Gold Coast population was caught by police using their phone while driving, with the Sunshine Coast not too far behind on 0.48 per cent, Logan recorded 0.36 per cent and greater Brisbane equated to 0.29 per cent.

As a result, police had implemented a number of campaigns, including enforcement and education, in the Gold Coast area to curb the trend.

Despite work still needing to be done on the Gold Coast, the gradual decrease in drivers distracted by phones has been hailed as "a good trend" by police.

Assistant Commissioner Keating said this coincided with the introduction of double demerit for those drivers who committed two mobile phone offences within a year.

The information from TMR also revealed cyclists had been given tickets for using phones while out on the roads during the five-year period. The top areas included 108 riders in North Brisbane, 88 in Capricornia and 87 on the Gold Coast.

An art show on your mobile phone

If photographs could speak a thousand words, imagine what art inspired by them would do. Amita Talwar knew the idea had to be implemented for her annual fundraiser Art For Causes.
                                       

Amita Talwar selected 160 photographs from all the places she travelled to over the years and sent them to artists in and out of the country. This was a few months back, and now Amita is gearing up for her fundraiser with over 40-45 art pieces  inspired by her photos and close to 140 works by some of the senior artists such as Vaikuntam and Surya Prakash among others.

Take for instance artist A. Rajeswara Rao who was inspired by a photo that Amita clicked at Riga in Latvia. “I was intrigued by this photo,” he said. “People choose to click pictures with trending poses when visiting famous buildings, so I made one art piece where a woman is seen lifting up Riga. For the other work I superimposed the photo on a canvas and re-created an army camp scene. The painting shows a girl looking over the camp from her terrace and smiling.” Then you have artist Chippa Sudhakar who was inspired by the Banaras series and recreated that on a chair. Artists from across the country, brought to the show a mix of art such as Batik paintings and Madhubani art inspired by the photographs.

But not everything was easy as Amita faced some challenges too. “I found a little resistance from the senior artists who weren’t very excited about creating work inspired by my photos. That is understandable, so we made space for their original style as well. The younger artists were more flexible and took to the idea easily,” she explained.

“We created an e-catalogue; people who have registered with us will be sent one through WhatsApp. They can check the work there.”This way, the organisers don’t get into the hassle of getting a space to display, getting the art from the artists and in case the work is unsold, sending it back to them.

Design classic: the Nokia 3310 mobile phone

Smartphone screens may tremble at the sight of a marble floor but the Nokia 3310 relishes the challenge. Launched in September 2000, the name of the game with this brick-like device is durability. The 3310 harks back to a time when phone batteries would see you through a ski trip and not just a chairlift, and worries about WiFi were just three curved bars on a distant technological horizon.
                                       

Before Apple’s worldwide domination, there was Nokia, and the 3310 is probably the model that defines the Finnish company’s brand. It has a near-legendary status for its hardiness, which is ensured by a plastic faceplate that can be easily snapped off and (if desired) switched for something jazzier. The shell protects the T9 (“text on nine buttons”) keypad and encases the thick rubber on/off button at the top. Developed in the age before colour blasted on to phone screens, the original handset, which weighs 133g, featured an 84 x 48-pixel monochrome display. A much-loved and time-consuming element of the 3310 was Snake II, in which a long, striped snake, controlled via the keypad, navigates the screen in search of food.

Recently Nokia has been living in the sleek rectangular shadow of the smartphone but this year will see it re-release the 3310 almost 17 years after it hit the market.

The new model borrows many classic elements from its ancestor but is considerably less tubby at just 79.6g. The revamp boasts a colour display and a battery life of up to a month on standby. It will be available in matt or gloss colours at €49.

More than 100m of the original devices were sold worldwide and Nokia will be hoping that hipsters, who have shunned computers for typewriters and prefer Mason jars to water glasses, will today be looking for a more nostalgic approach to telecommunications.

Taking Payments on your Mobile Phone

Allowing customers to pay with a credit or debit card can help you improve customer satisfaction, operational efficiency at the point of sale and may even lead to an increased average order value. While fixed point-of-sale terminals may require upfront investments in hardware, software and service contracts that aren’t feasible for your business, mobile payments can empower you to take customer payments using the cell phone you already own.

Here’s a closer look at what accepting payments on your cell phone entails and what terms to look for in a mobile payment provider:

Customer convenience

It’s estimated that by 2020, consumers will be more accustomed to paying on a mobile device than a desktop computer. Collecting customer payments on your cell phone demonstrates that you’re an innovative business that understands your customers’ lifestyles and their preferences. Incorporating mobile payments into your business’s payment processes also allows you to process customer payments at the exact moment customers want to buy, without requiring that they wait in a point-of-sale line, or invest more time into their visit at your store than they intend to.

Low fees

The fees you’ll pay to process mobile payments vary by provider and the transaction type. Fees may be slightly higher for “card not present” transactions, for example.However, many mobile payment providers offer a variety of plans that suit your business’s unique model and its expected card transaction volume.

Efficient electronic payments

Like fees, the amount of time a mobile payment provider requires in order to consider your credit and debit card sales “settled” varies, but many providers transfer the funds you’re owed from mobile sales (less applicable fees) electronically to your business bank account in no more than a few business days. This eliminates the need for you to deposit cash and checks at the bank, and can help make your cash flow processes more seamless.

Secure payment processing reduces your risk

There are some standard best practices associated with how sensitive customer payment data is to be handled by a business that comes into contact with it. For example, customer payment information should not be handwritten on paper and retained by any member of your team — even if payment-processing terminals are temporarily down, or the customer asks that you do so. When you have the support of a mobile payment provider that guarantees PCI-compliant processing, you gain the peace of mind that you can process customer payment transactions when, where and how the customer prefers — and always in a secure environment.

A fillip to Apple phone sales, while Samsung also grows

Apple is on a roll with phone sales surging in Australia, the US and UK in the fourth quarter 2016, according to new market research.
                                         

Figures by Kantar Worldpanel Comtech (KWC) show that in Australia, iPhones accounted for 44.9pc of sales, up 5.3pc compared to the same quarter in 2015. While Android remaining the leader with its share at 52.3pc, iPhone 7 was the best selling handset. It represented 17.9pc of smartphones sold in the three months to December.

There was good news too for Samsung. Despite the problems it faced with its Note 7, the Korean manufacturer marginally increased its share of the Australian smartphone market. It was 30.4pc, up 0.9pc compared to a year ago.

This was driven by strong sales of its premium Galaxy S7 device, the second best-selling smartphone in the fourth quarter making up 8.4pc.

While Samsung has come out of the quarter looking okay, it would have expected to do better had the Note 7 reached its original expectation.

The survey also found that China branded phones were starting to gain traction in the Australian market. Huawei made up 4.1pc, ZTE 2.5pc, and Oppo accounting for 2.1pc share of smartphone sales. All three have launched new models in the Australian market since the survey was done.

In Europe’s big five markets of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, Samsung was first, with Huawei second. In urban China, Apple couldn’t recapture first place, as Huawei continued to hold that spot, the survey found.

In the US, Apple had a great quarter, snaring almost 5pc of market share from Android. “In the US, iOS accounted for 44.4pc of smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2016, up from 39.1pc in the same period of 2015. Android took 54.4pc of sales, down 4.7pc points from 4Q 2015,” KWC says.

In the US, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus were the top sellers for the holiday period, netting their highest share since their release in mid-September, and representing 28pc of smartphones sold in the fourth quarter,” Ms Guenveur says.

KWC says Samsung’s Galaxy S7 flagship device, announced at Mobile World Congress 2016, was the third best-selling phone in the fourth quarter. The company’s decision to not announce the Galaxy S8 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month is not expected to have a large impact on sales.

Phone access makes health care easier

BECAUSE Bunbury woman Sandra Motteram could access her daughter Eliza’s health records on a phone, the four-year-old went through with a scheduled vaccination instead of having to make another appointment.

           

Ms Motteram visited the Bunbury Community Health Centre to find that the computer system was down, which meant medical staff could not access Eliza’s health records, requiring the pair to come back at a later date.
However, because Ms Motteram was registered for My Health Record she pulled up her daughter’s records on her phone, allowing her to receive the vaccination on the spot.
“It was really convenient at that time and everyone pretty much has a phone on them these days,” she said.
Community health nurse manager Marie O’Donoghue said it was “a particular glitch” which prevented the centre from accessing the records.
“It saved a lot of time, because children are often apprehensive when they come in for an immunisation at that age and Sandra had prepared her well, so it was important that we followed through on that,” she said.
Digital Health Agency chief executive officer Tim Kelsey said it was a good example of how the experience of health care was improved with vital information accessible on a mobile device.
“If you have your mobile phone with your information on it and you had an emergency, the treating clinician and the paramedic could know what your allergies were and medications you had,” he said.
“There are lots of reasons why we need to encourage people to participate in the My Health Record because it is better for them.”
In the South West, 57 organisations have registered for My Health Record and about 1400 Shared Health Summaries have been uploaded this year.