Top 120 iOS Apps of 2018!

All of our favorite iOS apps to hit the App Store during 2018. Which app is your favorite?

Links to all the apps in this video

Apple

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Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon getting upgraded to Snapdragon Wear 3100

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor is making its way into another smartwatch.

The Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon is getting an upgrade to the Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset, the fashion brand recently announced. The original model launched in 2017 with a Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor, and so the upgrade to a Snapdragon Wear 3100 will help to give this upgraded watch a battery life boost, with Louis Vuitton saying it'll last for one full day and up to five more days if you use it just for displaying time.

The new version of the Tambour Horizon also boasts an improved screen with better definition than its predecessor. It's also got a day/night indicator around the rim of the watch that'll be visible even in ambient mode.

Louis Vuitton also touts that it's added a white ceramic option to the Tambour Horizon smartwatch.

While LV is happy to talk about the upgrades that it's made to the Tambour Horizon, it isn't ready to reveal when this upgraded model will launch or how much it'll cost when it does become available. Considering that the previous version cost $2,490, though, we wouldn't expect this new version to be easy on your wallet. Still, it's great to see more Snapdragon Wear 3100 watches getting announced, including high-end models for those that want a luxury smartwatch.

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Android through the ages: the history of Google’s smartphone OS

In the beginning there was Cupcake

2008, when pinch-to-zoom was a right reserved for iPhones and BlackBerrys were still the business, a new kind of smartphone hit the scene: the Android smartphone. 

Starting at version 1.5 for public consumption, Android was launched on the HTC Dream (known as the T-Mobile G1 in the US), a QWERTY keyboard-packing slider phone. Based on a modified version of Linux, Android offered something very different to the iPhone: freedom.

An open source Cupcake

Unlike iOS’s heavily policed, locked-down operating system, Android arrived with the promise of open source everything. Google made access to the Android Market (now called the Google Play Store) freely available, and users could even customize their home screens with widgets, offering in-app functionality from said home screen, no app opening needed.

With Android 1.5, codenamed Cupcake, a new way was born. 

Android 1.6: Donut

Is it an albatross? Is it a jumbo jet? No! It’s the Dell Streak!

Version 1.6 of Android, Doughnut was announced in 2009, and it’s the update we have to blame for today’s giant phones that don’t quite fit in normal-sized pockets.

While Android tablets hadn’t quite taken off by this point, Donut was a step ahead, laying the foundations for the ‘phablet’, and introducing support for more screen sizes than Cupcake.

Big screens ahoy!

The aforementioned 5-inch Dell Streak, for example, despite being small by today’s standards, was a veritable beast when it was launched, and it owed its big screen to advances Donut introduced. 

Other innovative features introduced in Android 1.6 included a text-to-speech engine, universal search and a more complete battery usage screen, so you knew which apps were draining your smartphone dry.

Android 2.0: Eclair

Who knew there was ever a time when you couldn’t have multiple Google accounts on your Android smartphone? We did! 

Eclair, named for the choux pastry French patisserie staple, remedied account limitations and more.

Multi-touch me

But multiple accounts wasn’t the highlight feature of Android 2.0 – oh no. Eclair finally introduced multi-touch to smartphones that weren’t made by Apple (although that created  something of a hoo-ha in itself.)

Take a picture, open it up, pinch to zoom… Android and iOS were in a two-horse race now, and Android was catching up.

Eclair also introduced Google Maps navigation, as well as additional camera modes, live wallpapers and Bluetooth 2.1 support.

Android 2.2: Froyo

Froyo, aka frozen yoghurt, is confectionary number four, and Android version 2.2. Loaded up on classic phones like the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the HTC Incredible S, it marked the point at which Android hardware started to feel more premium, finally doing justice to the OS inside – from Super AMOLED screens bettering the LCDs of iPhones through to excellent industrial design from the likes of HTC.

Get some Froyo on that hotspot

Version 2.2 also introduced a feature that could make Android phones more attractive than iPhones for the everyday user – Froyo’s most practical highlight was most definitely mobile Wi-Fi hotspotting.

While Windows phones had Bluetooth and USB hotspot tools before, the idea of using high-speed Wi-Fi tethering to share your phone’s (then blazingly fast) 3G data with a laptop or even another smartphone was vindication for Android fans the world over.

Apple would take a full year to get the feature onto iPhones, with many carriers still blocking iPhone tethering for some time to come. 

Android 2.3: Gingerbread

Android Gingerbread didn’t get a new look or feel compared to Froyo, but it did get a host of new features, including support for new sensors, including NFC. Other highlights included internet calling and a new download manager – but none of those were our highlights.

Copy, paste, catch up with Apple

Oh no – our highlight was the seemingly rudimentary and long-overdue copy and paste feature that was giving iPhones the text-editing edge over Androids for over a year: single word selection. 

Before Gingerbread, Android copying was clumsy, given the fact that only entire text boxes could be selected. 2010 saw Google closing the gap, with a long press over a word selecting just that word, and displaying a pop-up menu that included copy and paste options, just like we have on Android phones today. 

Android 3.0: Honeycomb

Remember the Motorola Xoom? No, not the Microsoft Zune – we’re talking about the Motorola tablet that introduced Google’s tablet version of Android, codenamed Honeycomb.

The most striking difference between it and any version of Android we'd seen before was the interface. Introducing ‘Holographic’ UI elements, Google went a bit Tron here – all illuminated lines, gradient halo highlights around objects – and while it didn’t look timeless, it did look cool.

On-screen navigation, the shape of things to come...

Android phones today seldom sport hardware navigation buttons; that’s to say, the back, home and recent apps buttons are in a navigation bar at the bottom of the screen on the biggest phones out now – the Google Pixel 3, Samsung Galaxy S9 and Huawei Mate 20 for example.

Funnily enough, we don’t have a mobile OS to thank for this – it was first introduced in Honeycomb, with the back, home and recent apps buttons displayed in the bottom-left of the home screen.

Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich

So long physical buttons, hello unified Android typeface!

Ice Cream Sandwich was probably one of the richest updates Android has seen. Available on the Galaxy Nexus and HTC One X, it brought an excellent in-gallery photo editor to the table, as well as a data limiter within the settings. 

The whole look and feel was refined, in line with Honeycomb’s design direction, and it delivered a much richer experience than Android 2.3..

Swipe to dismiss

In hindsight, probably the most pervasive feature introduced in this version was the swipe to dismiss gesture. 

While it had been used by other smartphone manufacturers before, getting Android users comfortable with this little swipe gesture ensured its rise to ubiquity.

Swipe to dismiss interaction has since, for example, shaped email and text message handling, influenced Windows 10’s touchscreen notification management, and is a fundamental component of everyone’s favorite dating app, Tinder.

Android 4.1: Jelly Bean

Jelly Bean was a tale of three parts: 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3.

4.1 was all about refinements. It took Ice Cream Sandwich and made it smoother, introduced improved support for multiple languages, and automatically resized widgets to fit your home screen.

Android 4.2 was a further refinement, this time polishing the look and feel, making for an excellent-looking tablet UI, showcased well on the Nexus 10, complete with Miracast wireless display projection support.

The final episode – Return of the Jelly Bean, if you will – was a corker for developers, giving them tools to improve UI smoothness, use the latest version of Bluetooth and restrict profiles on devices with multiple user accounts – handy for parents and businesses alike. 

Expandable notifications

Our Jelly Bean highlight? Dragging down with two fingers for expanded notifications. This feature gave users a peak into the details of their most recent updates. So, if your notification read '3 new tweets', a two-finger drag down would expand the notification and showcase who those tweets were from, with a snippet of the message itself. 

Simple, and still in Android today. 

Android 4.4: KitKat

Emojis on the Google Keyboard, lower RAM requirements paving the way for budget Android phones, and NFC security being bumped up to help make mobile payments a reality – all this and more was loaded inside the Android 4.4 KitKat update.

'Okay Google, will this ever catch on?'

But it was Google Now becoming a voice assistant that blazed the trail for today’s world of talkative phone assistants and smart speakers.

The always-on microphone and 'OK Google' command were introduced alongside KitKat in October 2013, harnessing the power of Google Search.

It paved the way for Apple's Siri, set to follow in June 2014, and the two-horse mobile OS race was about to splinter into separate smartphone and a voice assistant contests, with Google making the early running.

Android 5.0: Lollipop

Material Design, Google’s flatter interface that features fewer gradients and a cleaner look than Jelly Bean, debuted on Android 5.0. 

Support for 64-bit architecture was also introduced, helping Android achieve near-parity with desktop operating systems when it came to power potential, as was improved notification handling on lock screens.

Setting the scene for wearables

But the hidden gem within Android Lollipop was support for Bluetooth LE, or low energy. 

This feature meant that wearable technology could finally exist without draining your phone’s battery dry. With lower battery demands, Bluetooth LE also enabled manufacturers to create smartwatches and fitness trackers with low-capacity batteries, small enough to fit inside a device that looked good and which could be worn comfortably. 

Android 6.0: Marshmallow

Launching on the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, these Marshmallow devices introduced USB-C ports and fingerprint scanners to the Nexus line.

As for the software, app security was tightened up with element-specific permissions prompting users to grant access to apps that needed to use things like their camera, phone etc.

Android 6.0 also supported MicroSD card integration into internal storage - handy for phones with under 16GB storage, though this feature has since been removed.

Doze mode

For a second time in a row, a battery saving feature is our Android highlight.

If you left your Marshmallow phone unplugged and stationary for a period of time with the screen off, apps go into standby and Doze mode is activated

This saved battery power and cemented Android as the operating system to go for if you wanted the battery edge, with Android hardware packing higher capacity batteries than iPhones, and its software optimised to take advantage of them.

Android 7.0: Nougat

Quick app switching by double-tapping the recent apps key, gender and race-specific emojis, separate home and lock screen wallpapers… Android Nougat made things both more functional and more attractive, but it also borrowed something from Samsung.

Split-screen multitasking

Having introduced split-screen multitasking on its Note line, Samsung was ahead of the curve. Google lifted the experience, and made it part of stock Android 7 over a year later, allowing one half of the screen to be used for one app, and the other half for another.

Google did do some cool stuff with the feature – Android 7 offered split-screen handling of two Chrome tabs for example, and even supported dragging and dropping of an image file across tabs. 

Android 8.0: Oreo

Shiny new battery menus and notification dots on app icons – Android Oreo brought with it a slew of refinements to the UI, not to mention better storage management, with a new file browser and more granular storage control within the settings.

Floating videos are cool, right?

But the highlight feature everybody wanted, and never ended up using when it launched, was picture-in-picture, another feature introduced by Samsung and later adopted by Google for stock Android. 

This little floating video window showcases a video in your UI, so you can get on with Twitter scrolling without having to stop watching your favorite show.

While initially it was awkward to activate and, frankly, a bit useless, now it’s reaching fruition, with apps like Netflix, WhatsApp and YouTube having adopted support for it.

Android 9.0: Pie

We’re finally all caught up. Google’s 2018/19 build of Android, Android 9.0, aka Pie, is the freshest version shipping on the latest and greatest hardware, including the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL.

Loaded up with notch support, improved battery smarts and a revamped UI, complete with iPhone X-esque navigations, Android Pie is gearing Google smartphones up for their impending all-screen, bezel-free futures.

A side serving of social responsibility 

Digital Wellbeing is a suite of services available in Beta right now as part of the Android P update. Including elements like a dashboard to help you better understand your app usage, it’s all about using your phone a bit less, or at least a bit more mindfully.

Additional tools range from app limiters through to a grayscale mode to give your eyes a break, as well as a wind-down feature, to help you disconnect at the end of a working day. 

With Google having iterated over 14 versions of Android, servicing more than two billion users, it’s a fitting conclusion to the current chapter that the big G has shifted focus to Digital Wellbeing, given the operating system’s vast reach.

Q is for… ?

But what about the shape of things to come? Android 10 will likely drop in the second half of 2019, and we already know it’s coming to the new Essential Phone.

As for its name, the distinct lack of confectionaries beginning with the letter ‘Q’ is keeping everyone guessing. Keep checking in with TechRadar throughout 2019 for the latest updates on Android Q, and to find out more about Pie, read our Android 9.0 overview. 

• Brought to you in association with Nokia and Android One, helping you to make more of your smartphone. You can learn more about the new Nokia 7.1 here, and you'll find more great advice on getting the most from your phone here. 

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9 New Year's resolutions smartphone manufacturers should make

Some of you may be working on your 2019 resolutions. Want to try being vegan for a month, start doing to the gym again or stop stealing from the stationery cupboard at work because it's all getting a bit out of hand? Good for you.

But, as we all know - hand on heart - giant companies are citizens too. According to the 14th amendment, corporations are afforded some of the protections of personhood. So why shouldn't they have to make some New Year's resolutions too?

Here are the 2019 resolutions the smartphone giants should adopt. For their phones. For us. And for the world. Amen.

Stop assuming we can spend half our income on phones

One of the scariest developments in phones over 2018 was the flirting with the $1000/£1000 price boundary. Heck, Apple even sailed right across it with the iPhone XS Max.

How about we get real, and realize that most of us can't, don't want to, or really shouldn't, spend this much on a phone? Sadly, this one is likely to happen as your pledge to go to the gym four times a week, every week.

The latest news suggests we'll see even more expensive phones next year, with 5G models reportedly commanding a $300 premium over this year's priciest phones. 

For those willing to spend that much we ask: how fast do you need to stream YouTube videos, exactly?

Bring back the headphone jack (what did it ever do to you?)

Changes in mobile phone tech usually get us a bit excited. But the whole "ditch the headphone jack" thing? There's not much to excite there.

And why is it happening? You can make water resistant phones with headphone jacks, last time we checked those sockets don't cost $100 in parts, and claims phones can no longer fit them in seem deeply suspicious when the things didn't suddenly get smaller when jack sockets were wrenched out.

Some lobbyists from big headphone must have some dirt on the big phone-makers or something. Saying that, most phone-makers now make wireless earphones or headphones too. 

You won, we all bought wireless sets. Can we just have the jack back now?

Get over this glass obsession

For the past two years, phone makers have nailed glass designs. We've seen matte ones, super curvy ones. There are even phones, like the Google Pixel 3 XL, that you could mistake for aluminium from a distance.

It's time for an intervention. Phone companies need to get over this glass obsession in 2019.

Let's not just roll back onto the familiar combination of aluminium and plastic, though. There are other options out there in the world. The obvious one, as tried and tested as glass or plastic, is magnesium.

There are magnesium alloy tablets and laptops. And this metal is tougher and lighter than aluminium. And unlike glass it won't smash if you drop it on the sidewalk from the wrong angle.

Expandable storage for all

Phone developers can act like annoying live-in parents sometimes. Bear with us on this one.

Don't use something for a while and they quietly file it away into the bin while you're not looking. It happened to IR blasters, now headphone jacks and microSD card slots are in the great cleaner-upper's targets.

Granted, a lot of phones now have lots of storage. But with a half dozen flavors of apocalypse looming, you'll want a good amount of local content stored, loads of storage space and a solar charger handy. Well, unless we manage to scorch the sky, but a stack of 90s club classics and every episode of Friends won't get you too far then anyway.

Bring back the headphone jack. Bring back the microSD slot. The IR blaster can stay in the past, though.

Get over the notch obsession

We're over 18 months into the era of the notch. And phones like the Pixel 3 XL prove maybe it is time for something new. Or old, like no notch at all.

Remember when phones didn't have miniature trunks hanging down from the top of their screens? A half-desperate way to convince us our last phone was out-of-date and in need of a cab to eBay, or the dusty drawer in the spare room? 

Notches make it seem like your screen is bigger without actually making it more useful, as movies, games and articles don't flow around those lines.

But what will we actually get in 2019? The notch will still be around, but top phones will also use punch holes, which are like notches just large enough to fit around the front camera.

Don't forget security

Here's one for the Android phone makers. Android security updates are like taking a ten-minute meditation during busy weeks or forcing yourself to do exercise. You might not feel the difference from missing it once, but you'll be much better off in the long run if you stick to the plan.

Google releases monthly security updates for the Android platform. And how many phones actually get them? Hardly any, not regularly at any rate. Without these updates your mobile is more vulnerable.

Some phones are barely updated after launch, in any fashion. It's time to shape up. We do have to give a prop or two to Sony here, though. Often when we return to a Sony phone to write a feature, there are often a half-dozen updates to trawl through.

Discover camera enlightenment beyond 12MP

For years almost every top phone camera has used a 12MP sensor, usually one made by Sony. Sure, we know this approach works, and increasing resolution adds its own issues, caused by a shrinking of sensor pixels that reduces how much light a sensor gets to make up each pixel in the image.

But it's now time for phone-makers to give up the burdens of 2018 and follow their 2019 bliss, as Gwyneth Paltrow might say when not trying to sell you an avocado enema.

It looks like this progress will happen in 2019 too. And once again it's mostly thanks to Sony. In July it revealed the IMX586, a 48MP sensor for phones.

To the camera traditionalist, this sounds like a bad idea. Tiny sensor pixels means bad low-light performance and dynamic range. However, we're in the era of computational photography, which effectively lets a phone bunch together several of these pixels to boost performance when light isn't perfect.

It'd likely take 12MP images, until you switch on the "Pro" mode and force the full-res capture, which could work brilliantly on a sunny day. And we can't wait to see what the big smartphone names do with it.

Cheap phones deserve color too

Remember a few years ago, roughly 45 years in smartphone terms, during good old days of Nokia Lumia phones? Bright and colorful they were. So cheery they'd put a smile on your face just to look at the cute little palm sized things. What happened to fun, affordable phones? 

Today just about the only phone that brings some of that bold color to the party is the iPhone XR. And if you think that's affordable, you're wrong.

Phone-makers are now pros at making sub-$200 phones seem like ones that would have cost $600 or more a few years ago. But it's time to bring the fun back with some bold shades that don't try to look like the equivalent a TV host's shiny suit. 

Make it bold, make it pastel if you like. Just don't make it all-black.

Use bigger batteries, please (again)

This resolution turns up every year. We still want phones that last longer, between charges. Break it down honestly and you'll probably find this is more useful than 5G, more useful than a slightly better camera or a phone that folds.

Oddly enough, it seems some phone makers actually listened to this one in 2018, and ended up making some real bruisers in the budget category like the Moto G6 Play. A phone that lasts longer is much easier to live with.

It's not necessarily about being able to spend four extra hours poring over Instagram and Twitter, but having the extra juice so you can forget about the thing, without worrying whether it'll have enough power left for some Spotify on the way home. 

The big names in phones need to swallow their engineering pride and let a phone get slightly thicker for reasons other than fitting in a crazy camera or some new hardware most will barely use.

• Folding phones: the future of the smartphone, or just another fad?

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Google in 2018: a retrospective

These days, it’s impossible to look anywhere in the tech world without seeing Google’s fingerprints. This was definitely still true throughout 2018 – even Microsoft conceded to Chrome’s web browser dominance. 

However, with all the news that’s constantly flying around the internet about Google, it can be hard to pinpoint the year’s most pivotal moments. That’s why we’ve decided to dive into Google’s biggest moves throughout 2018 – with a bit of a look at the future, as well.

Project Fi: all the networks

It was only a matter of time before Google launched its own cellular service – it’s been running Google Fiber, an internet service provider, in select cities for years now. Google Project Fi has technically been running since way back in 2015, but it blew up in a big way this past year. 

The way Project Fi works is that you’ll basically pay a flat $20 (about £15, AU$28) a month for all your regular cellular activities, like talking and texting. Then, you’re charged an extra $10 (about £8, AU$14) a month for each gigabyte of data you use. Heavy data users might notice that this would get expensive very fast, but Google put a cap on users’ bills in January, ensuring that users don’t have to pay more than $80 (about £62, AU$113) in a month.

It’s also reliable, as it essentially borrows signal from traditional carrier’s cell towers, like Sprint, T-Mobile and others. 

One of the things that has been holding Project Fi back over the last couple years has been the lack of compatible smartphones. Which is why it was such great news when, in November 2018, Project Fi opened up compatibility with Samsung and OnePlus smartphones – oh, and iPhones, too. 

But, what about Google Fuchsia?

We’ve been on the edge of our seats anticipating Google Fuchsia for years now, and, well, it’s still not out yet. That doesn’t mean we didn’t get closer to a possible release date for the one OS to unite them all. 

Right at the beginning of the year, Google was testing the experimental OS on the Google Pixelbook, with a build that anyone could download and run. It was definitely an early version of the operating system, but it did give users an idea of what Fuchsia would look like, should it ever release. 

But, things kind of got complicated from there. Back in July, we got a report that Google was on track to launch Google Fuchsia within the next five years. But, there was a catch: neither Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Chrome and Android lead Hiroshi Lockheimer had signed off on any road map for Fuchsia’s release. Instead, the Google executives referred to Fuchsia as an “open source experiment” rather than an official project. 

But, because Fuchsia is an open source experiment, we kept hearing about advances made in the OS throughout the year from security implementations to the search-centric interface. Here’s to hoping all of this leads to something more concrete in 2019. 

Some assistance, please

Smart speakers are everywhere these days, with Google, Amazon, Apple and more in a race to deliver the smart assistant for you and your home. In 2018, Google Assistant made waves. Google’s digital assistant was already capable of quite a lot, but after an update in October it’s capable of more than ever. 

That’s good news, because the Google Assistant is virtually on everything right now. Beyond every Android phone, it's on everything from new smart speakers, like Marshall’s Stanmore II and Acton II to Samsung’s next line of smart TVs.

Google is launching plenty of its own devices with its AI software, too, including the Google Home Hub, which goes head to head with Amazon’s Echo Show.

Google obviously has big plans for Google Assistant, and it wants the software running on as many devices as possible. And, if we keep hearing news about plans to bring personalized news feeds to smart speakers, we can’t wait to see what Google Assistant is capable of in 2019.

Pixel dense

Google doesn’t just make money by harvesting your browsing data and turning it into targeted advertisements, it also launches mobile and computing hardware. This year, we got two fantastic phones and a tablet. 

Back at its Made by Google event in October, the tech giant launched the Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL and the Google Pixel Slate. 

The Google Pixel 3 and its bigger cousin were the stars of the show, even if it didn’t look like a lot on paper. But, the Google Pixel 3 is more than the sum of its spec sheet, bringing an even better camera – when the Google Pixel 2 was already one of the best cameras in a smartphone. But, that’s not all – Google massively improved the camera software this time around, bringing around OLED displays, even if you’ll have to deal with a notch this time around.

Then there’s the Google Pixel Slate, Google’s answer to the Microsoft Surface Pro – but with much weaker hardware. It’s one of the first Chrome OS tablets on the market, with an optional keyboard cover that’ll set you back a whopping $199 (£189, about AU$280). Starting out with an Intel Celeron Processor, it’s by no means a powerhouse, but is does have its appeal as a media device for Google fans. We would have rather seen the Google Pixelbook 2, but, hey there’s always next year, right?

Conclusions

Google isn’t the easiest tech company to sum up at the end of the year, as a lot of its major moves are drawn out over time, rather than the product releases. However, Google kind of got a lot done this year, even if it’s not as tangible as Apple or Microsoft. 

The search engine, long the core of its business, keeps getting better and better, and is more mobile friendly than ever. And, with its expansion into ostensibly being a cellular carrier, Google has a lot to be proud of, and we can’t wait to see where Google is going to expand next. Because, 2018 went to further prove that Google’s movements aren’t as predictable as their peers. 

And, while there wasn’t much in the way of new hardware, the new Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL are genuinely some of the best phones to come out in 2018. We just wish the Google Pixel Slate could have been more impressive. There is plenty of potential for a great Chrome OS tablet, we’re just not there yet. 

Maybe in 2019 we’ll see a true follow-up to the Google Pixelbook that redefines what the best Chromebooks are capable of. We’ve been rooting for the Chromebook from the sidelines for a while now, and with the problems Microsoft is having with the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, we think there’s room for Chrome OS to steal some of the spotlight. 

This year seemed to see Google laying out a lot of groundwork for future work, and we think it’s going to cash in on this work throughout the next couple of years. We know we’re on the edge of our seats to see what becomes of Google Fuchsia.

from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://bit.ly/2EZyNcM

AT&T Power Drum battery pack leaks, will charge your iPhone and Apple Watch on-the-go

Portable battery packs are nothing new, with many manufacturers selling power banks in a variety of sizes to help you keep your smartphone charged up while you're on the go. However, AT&T is prepping a new power bank that could be pretty nifty for those in the Apple ecosystem.

The AT&T Power Drum has been leaked by the FCC and Wireless Power Consortium. This device has a built-in Apple Watch charger, letting you wrap your watch around the unit while it charges, as well as a Qi wireless charging pad for your smartphone on the top of the device. This means you can charge your Apple Watch and your recent iPhone (or any other Qi-enabled device) simultaneously.

According to the packaging for the device, the AT&T Power Drum offers up to 10W of output for devices that support it (the iPhone tops out at 7.5W) and up to 5W for the Apple Watch. The battery in the Power Drum itself is a 3000mAh pack. You recharge the AT&T Power Drum using microUSB, and there are LED charge indicators to let you know how much juice the battery pack has left.

The packaging for the AT&T Power Drum also mentions that the unit will sell for $99.99. There's no word yet on when it'll actually go on sale, but now that it's passed through the FCC and Wireless Power Consortium, the AT&T Power Drum's release could be near.

As we mentioned before, there's no shortage of battery packs available on the market, and you've been able to use them to charge your iPhone and Apple Watch on the go for years. What makes the AT&T Power Drum interesting is that it's a compact power bank that offers wireless charging for your phone and a built-in Apple Watch charger, meaning you won't need to carry cables around with you when you're using it. Because of that, this could be a nice accessory for those folks that have an iPhone in their pocket and an Apple Watch on their wrist.

AT&T

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Top 120 Android apps of 2018!

All of our favorite Android apps to hit the Play Store during 2018. Which app is your favorite?

Links to all the apps in this video

Google

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Google Duo now testing group calling and low light mode

Google introduced Allo and Duo at the same time, but while Allo is getting shut down, Duo is getting some new features.

Google Duo is gaining a new group calling feature and low light mode. Screenshots shared by Android Police give us an early glimpse at the features, revealing that group calling will support calls with up to seven people at once. You'll first need to create a group with the people you want on the call, then you can start a video call with them at any time. Unfortunately, you can't add anyone to a group during a call, but that may change in the future.

Meanwhile, low light mode is pretty much what it sounds like. When you're in a dark room, you'll see a pop-up asking if you'd like to enable low light mode. The feature "automatically adjusts your video in dark environments so others can see you better."

Both of these features appear to be in early testing right now, so they're not yet available in a setting toggle that you can just flip or anything like that. This leak does suggest that Google is getting closer to launching them to the public, though, so if you use Google Duo, you've got these new features to look forward to.

Google

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LG G7 ThinQ to get Android Pie update in Q1 2019

Because it's one of LG's current flagship smartphones, it's always been a question of when and not if the LG G7 ThinQ will get an Android Pie update. Now we've got a bit more info on the matter.

LG has revealed that it's planning to release the G7 ThinQ's Android Pie update in the first quarter of 2019. No other info on the release is available, but at least now we know that the LG G7 ThinQ's Android Pie upgrade will begin rolling out in the first few months of the new year.

One other detail worth mentioning is that this announcement was made by LG's Korean division, so the LG G7 ThinQ's Pie update will roll out there first. This rollout means that the update is complete, though, so hopefully we'll see the upgrade get released in other regions shortly thereafter.

LG also detailed new updates for the V40 ThinQ and G6. The LG V40 ThinQ will get a performance update in Q1 2019 that'll include features like a PentaShot feature for the camera and an alarm off function on holidays. Meanwhile, LG G6's performance update will bring improved voice call quality and better Talkback voice prompts for improved accessibility.

LG G7 ThinQ

LG

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EU to fund bug bounty program for top open-source software

The European Union will help cover the expenses of bug bounty programs for 14 open-source projects according to an announcement made by EU Member of Parliament Julia Reda.

The projects that will receive funding for their bug bounty programs are 7-zip, Apache Kafka, Apache Tomcat, Digital Signature Services (DSS), Drupal, Filezilla, FLUX TL, the GNU C Library (glibc), KeePass, midPoint, Notepad++, PuTTY, the Symfony PHP framework, VLC Media Player and WSO2.

The bug bounty programs are being sponsored as part of the third edition of the Free and Open Source Software Audit (FOSSA) project.

FOSSA was first approved by EU authorities back in 2015 when security researchers discovered severe vulnerabilities in the OpenSSL library a year earlier.

Third edition of FOSSA

In her announcement, Julia Reda highlighted the importance of free and open-source software, saying:

"The issue made lots of people realise how important Free and Open Source Software is for the integrity and reliability of the Internet and other infrastructure. Like many other organisations, institutions like the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission build upon Free Software to run their websites and many other things."

The first edition of FOSSA ran between 2015 and 2016 with a budget of €1m and a public survey was held which decided that Apache HTTP web server and the KeePass password manager would receive a sponsored security audit.

FOSSA 2 had a budget of €2m but its bug bounty program was limited to €60,000 for the VLC Media Player app.

Beginning in January, security researchers and companies can hunt for vulnerabilities in the 14 open source projects chosen for FOSSA 3 and report them to earn a monetary award.

Via ZDNet

• We've also highlighted the best open source software

from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://bit.ly/2GNeRMX

Major US papers hit by malware attack

The Los Angeles Times and several other major US newspapers, owned by Tribune Publishing CO such as the Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun, were hit by a cyberattack last weekend that led to major printing and delivery disruptions. 

According to a source with knowledge of the incident, the cyberattack, which led to distribution delays in the Saturday edition of The Times, Tribune, Sun and other newspapers, likely originated outside of the US.

Tribune Publishing first discovered the malware on its systems on Friday.

The West Coast editions of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times were also affected since they are printed on the same shared production platform in Los Angeles.

Distribution delay

Back office systems utilised to publish and produce newspapers were disrupted by the malware according to Tribune Publishing spokesperson Marisa Kollias who explained that the financial details of its customers were not accessed by hackers, saying:

“There is no evidence that customer credit card information or personally identifiable information has been compromised.”

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Katie Waldman revealed that the department is currently investigating the disruption caused by the cyberattack, saying:

“We are aware of reports of a potential cyber incident affecting several news outlets, and are working with our government and industry partners to better understand the situation.”  

Via Reuters

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New York police will use a drone to monitor tonight's New Year's Eve celebrations

There'll be something new soaring among the fireworks over Times Square during tonight's New Year's Eve celebrations: a police drone.

According to The Associated Press, cops plan to use a quadcopter to keep an eye on partygoers and help them respond to any trouble before it gets out of hand. It's the first time a drone has been used this way during the festivities.

Three, two, one...

Tens of thousands of people are expected to descend on Times Square to ring in 2019. Law enforcement officers aren't expecting any particular trouble, but the drone will give them an extra view of the action should anything untoward take place.

“That’s going to give us a visual aid and the flexibility of being able to move a camera to a certain spot with great rapidity through a tremendous crowd,” said John Miller, deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism.

A drone roaming freely in the dark could be dangerous, so the New York Police Department's craft will be tethered safely to a building and will never fly directly over the crowd. 

“Once it’s up in the air, it will probably be hard to see,” said the NYPD's chief of department Terence Monahan.

• The best drones you can buy today

from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://bit.ly/2EVSUc6

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A new Digital Cockpit in the 2019 VW Jetta is a sign of things to come

Photo credit: Josiah Bondy

One of the key tech trends with cars is that the ‘elite’ features usually found in luxury vehicles has trickled down to everyday passenger cars that are more affordable. Lane-keeping tech, adaptive cruise, and even blind spot monitoring were reserved for the upper echelon only, those who could afford a Mercedes-Benz, a BMW, or an Audi.

Ford started the break the mold when it introduced automated parking to the Focus, and even the 2019 Ford Fiesta – at a price of only $14,260 (about £11,000, AU$20,000) – now has lane-keeping tech.

Customization for all

The best recent example of that is the 2019 VW Jetta, a mid-sized sedan that costs $18,545 (about £14,000, AU$26,000) and went through a redesign recently.

A new Digital Cockpit borrows heavily from the Audi brand (which is part of VW). It’s a 10-inch display above the steering wheel, showing your speed, trip info, and other info typically found in this location, but allows you to customize what you can see using the View button on the steering wheel, switching to a digital readout for RPMs and speed, or showing a massive navigation map to help you find your destination. 

Photo credit: Josiah Bondy

Audi goes a major step further with a similar display. In the A4, for example, you can see a Google Earth map that shows the terrain around you as you drive, helping you spot a lake off in the distance or track the edges of a mountain range.

Nothing quite like that here, but the Digital Cockpit is a safety feature as much as a digital age perk. You can focus on the road ahead of you instead of glancing over at the center display, which can be distracting.

Photo credit: Josiah Bondy

What’s most interesting to me about the Digital Cockpit is that these customizations are going to become more and more common, and we’re going to see more and more extra displays in cars.

In reviewing the 2019 Subaru Ascent recently, that was my first discovery: that there are four different screens in the car available to the driver, including the digital rear-view.

Total control

In the Jetta, the extra screen is handy because you can customize the settings. I preferred the view that showed me my speed in the lower right corner and my current music selection. (I tend to avoid using navigation in areas where I already know the route.)

The Jetta lets you customize the interior color, picking from 10 hues. You can also set the driver preferences for seat position and even climate control, save them under your own username and reactivate the settings in one click when you first jump in.

Photo credit: Josiah Bondy

In the near future, we might personalize things much further. Once we have multiple screens, we might decide to always show a camera view behind us, or choose one display that always shows your current music selection (along with a picture of the artist).

I could even see using a dedicated screen for showing a real-time camera pointing toward the back to keep an eye on the kids. And, for a vehicle that can pull cargo, a view of the trailer you’re towing.

Photo credit: Josiah Bondy

The driver is king or queen, and in the future, we’ll be able to customize every display to our own preferences – or disable them and just focus on the road ahead.

On The Road is TechRadar's regular look at the futuristic tech in today's hottest cars. John Brandon, a journalist who's been writing about cars for 12 years, puts a new car and its cutting-edge tech through the paces every week. One goal: To find out which new technologies will lead us to fully driverless cars.

from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://bit.ly/2LHpGiy

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The best Samsung Galaxy Note 8 deals in the January sales 2019

So the Galaxy Note 9 has been out for a little while, making the Note 8 old news. Right? Well that's what you would think. But the 2017 model is so incredible that it still performs just like a new model and not to mention it is so much cheaper than its successor. Samsung Galaxy Note 8 deals are definitely still well worth a look. And it's still getting cheaper!

When the Note 8 first came out, EE had deals locked down tight but now there is a pretty good spread across providers, Although EE still does have some of the very best deals on this device - what else would you expect from the UK's fastest network. Samsung Note 8 deals are now under the £900-mark in total over the two-year contract and can go as low as £750, and our clear Editor's Pick now offers 30GB of data a month instead of 20GB.

The Note 8 is not by any means a budget device, however. It's a absolutely massive  smartphone, not just in size but also in raw power. It's got the screen size and specification smarts to be a competitor to the highly praised iPhone X or iPhone's new massive iPhone XS Max and neither of those come cheap. But there are now some excellent Note 8 deals floating around. Check out our comparison chart and handpicked favourite Note 8 deals below.

Now we know some of you may have fiery memories of the Galaxy Note 7 in your head when looking at this device but leave those worries behind. Both the Note 8 and 9 have massively improved their batteries and you won't be facing overheating problems anymore. The Note 8 truly is miles ahead of the 7 in every way.

• Check out today's best Samsung Galaxy Note 9 deals to order
• These are the best mobile phone deals in the UK right now

Our top 5 best Galaxy Note 8 deals in the UK today:

Should I get the Galaxy Note 8 SIM free?

Are you determined to get the very best price? Always looking to see how you can trim a few pounds off your new favourite gadget? As you probably know, you can now pick up cheap SIM only deals for as little as £4 a month, which could make it worth buying a SIM and handset separately or if you're willing to pay a bit more, how about Three's unlimited SIM deal for £20

The Galaxy Note 8's RRP has dropped massively recently to £649. That is much cheaper than it used to be but you will still be putting up a big chunk of money upfront. Even if you get the cheapest SIM card (usually around £4 a month for 500MB data), that would still cost near to £800 over the two years. You're probably better cranking up the upfront cost in our price comparison chart above, imposing a low maximum for monthlies and finding a cheaper deal in the long run.

To get the best price on your new SIM free Galaxy, you can head to our cheapest unlocked Note 8 deals page.

Wondering what all the fuss is about? Well the fervour for the Note 8 is probably doubled due to the fact that the Note 7 was pulled from shelves soon after release. But it doesn't take more than one look at the Note 8 to see that it justifies the hype.

The huge 6.3-inch ‘Infinity Display,’ is gorgeous to look at, the 6GB RAM innards go like a train and there are two best-in-class rear cameras. It's expensive, but we think the Note 8 is worth it. 

Read TechRadar's full Samsung Galaxy Note 8 review

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K7 Antivirus Premium

K7 Computing may not have the profile of the big-name competition, but there's more to the Indian company than you might think: 25+ years of antivirus experience, VirusTotal and OPSWAT partners, a range of home and business products, and more than 20 million users around the world.

K7 Antivirus Premium is the starter product in the range, but don't assume that means it's short on features. There's antivirus, exploit protection, a firewall, device control, USB vaccination, basic system clean-up tools and a virtual keyboard.

• You can sign up for K7 Antivirus Premium here

There's also a notable omission, though, in the lack of any URL filtering. Many antivirus packages will try to detect and block access to malicious or phishing websites, but not this one.

Single user pricing is good, with the package costing a mere $25 for a one device, one-year license. Kaspersky Anti-Virus doesn't have all the functionality of K7 Antivirus Premium, but it's noticeably more expensive at $32.50 (£25).

Add users and years and it's a little different. A five device, two-year license for K7 Antivirus Premium is $100; an equivalent Kaspersky license is a near identical $104 (£80). K7 still looks like good value for the features you get, but the price advantages fade if you opt for a multi-user license.

If you're intrigued by the lengthy feature list and low price, a free 30-day trial gives you a risk-free way to find out more.

Setup

The K7 Antivirus Premium installer looked very simple, just a 'View EULA' link and an 'Install' button, with not as much as a 'choose your installation folder' option to get in the way. So, we tapped Install and watched as the setup window disappeared, and - didn't return. No 'Done' message, no 'Please reboot' advice, nothing at all.

Task Manager didn't show any running installer, but the process didn't seem to have finished properly, either (there was no K7 shortcut on our desktop, nothing on the Start menu, no K7 icon in our system tray.) 

We rebooted, and a K7 icon appeared in our system tray. Unfortunately, it wouldn't respond to our left or right-clicks, just displaying a tooltip of 'Activation Pending.' After a few minutes, pop-ups asked us if we wanted to activate and update the package, but when we clicked 'yes please', warned us that the update had failed, and we should reinstall.

While this sounds easy, it really wasn't. Just as had happened in our last K7 review (though for different reasons), our first installation was broken. When we ran the installer again, it told us K7 Antivirus Premium was installed already and we should uninstall it; when we tried to run the uninstaller, it told us the process had failed and we should reinstall. Deadlock.

We went to work, finding and running K7's cleanup tool ourselves, cleaning our temporary folders, rebooting, closing all non-essential apps, trying K7's installer again, and - this time, we appeared to be in luck. We were prompted to enter our name and email address, and were told it was 'activating the product.'

Ten minutes later, when the 'activating...' message still hadn't gone away, we realized there was another problem, so closed the window and rebooted. This time, the K7 console refused to launch at all, telling us it couldn't find 'libcef.dll' (part of Chromium's Embedded Framework), and suggesting we reinstall.

So, we retraced our steps, uninstalled manually, re-ran the cleanup tool, wiped all our temporary files, rebooted, reinstalled, clicked Activate, provided our name, and this time, finally, were told activation was successful.

Checking out the K7 Computing folder revealed a relatively small installation, a little under 400MB. Most executable files were K7's own code, though we noticed a few relating to Chromium and Java. 

It's important that any antivirus can protect itself from malware, and right now K7 Antivirus Premium does this very well. We found processes and services were shielded from attack, files not easily deleted, and it seems malware won't have any quick way to disable K7's protection.

Features

K7 Antivirus Premium has an unusual interface which focuses more on your protection status than anything else. A large panel highlights details like the last update time, virus definition version and how long might be left on your subscription. The few action buttons – Scan, Tools, Settings – are tucked away at the edge of the window.

The program offers what looks like a familiar set of scan types in Quick, Complete, Custom and Rootkit, but this doesn't tell the whole story. When we ran a Quick Scan, it finished in a fraction of a second, apparently because it checked only 201 files. Other packages might take two, three, four or more minutes, but they're also considerably more thorough, covering running processes, loaded modules, startup programs, maybe system folders, installed applications and more.

The problem with this feeble Quick Scan is you're left with few other options. The Complete Scan might take too long if you've lots of data, and the Custom Scan isn't very configurable. You can specify one or more folders, but it won't remember those choices for next time, and you can't include other system areas (running processes, the Registry). As a result, you're usually left to either scan not enough files, or far too many.

Real-world scanning speeds were slower than usual, and detection rates were average at best. When we turned on spyware detection, K7 Antivirus Premium also picked up many files we would consider to be safe. A ‘clean automatically’ default setting means you don't get to decide how they're treated, either: the program removes them to Quarantine without further prompting, unless you turn the feature off.

K7 Antivirus includes a reasonably intelligent firewall. It sets up sensible automatic rules itself, so you're not hassled with endless "can process X go online?" queries, but experts can also add and edit custom rules as required.

K7 Antivirus Premium is unusual in having a device control system. You're able to disable USB, CD or DVD drives, for instance. It’s also possible to add password protection, prevent programs launching from those devices, or stop users copying files to them. 

A Tools tab bundles some much smaller functions. USB vaccination is probably the highlight, reducing the chance of a USB key becoming infected by autorun malware. A simple virtual keyboard might protect against keyloggers, and there are extremely basic cleaners for Windows and browser temporary files.

Browsing the Settings dialog reveals other interesting technologies and options, many not enabled by default. There's an Office plugin to scan all Word/Excel files opened by Office, for instance. We would expect those files to have been scanned already, but maybe checking them within Office brings some benefits. If you're interested, the plugin can be installed with a click.

Protection

We run simple detection tests on every antivirus we review, but these only give a general idea of what a package can do. To fully understand the big picture, we also check product ratings with the major independent testing labs.

AV-Comparatives' Real-World Protection Test measures the performance of eighteen top antivirus engines against the latest threats. The July-November 2018 report takes an average of 5 tests, and it placed K7 in 11th place. While that's a little disappointing, it's not a disaster, and shows K7 delivers similar results to several other big-name antivirus vendors. K7 Antivirus Premium ranked only marginally behind McAfee and Symantec, for instance, and it outperformed Panda, ESET, Emsisoft and BullGuard.

AV-Test's October 2018 Windows Home User report found K7 Total Security blocked 100% of known threats, but was marginally below average at protecting against 0-day attacks. The end result was a broad agreement with AV-Comparatives, as both labs placed K7 in the lower half of their rankings.

Could the company regain some credit by detecting and blocking our custom ransomware simulator, a threat it had never seen before? Nope: we launched the simulator, and K7 just looked on as it encrypted thousands of documents.

There was some good news in AV-Test and AV-Comparatives' performance tests, which measure the impact of security software on your system's speed. K7 has had some performance issues in the past, but not any more, it seems. AV-Test's April and October 2018 performance tests placed K7 in first and second place out of 18 contenders, effortlessly outperforming the competition.

Final verdict

K7 Antivirus Premium has some powerful extras – namely device control, and a smart firewall – but the core antivirus engine just isn't as accurate or reliable as it needs to be. Throw in the installation issues and lack of URL filtering and it's not a package we can recommend.

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from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://bit.ly/2urWD9U