Everyone’s a winner during Black Friday week, but in the tech news realm it’s been another week of winners and losers. Hooray for Android users, boo at Huawei.
News has been thin on the ground this week with the major tech firms keeping their powder dry until Black Friday is out of the way. There’s still some great Black Friday deals on offer for you too, except from the stingy so-and-sos at Nintendo.
One the mobile side, we’ve had rumours that Apple is just two years away from adding its own modems to iPhones (sorry again, Qualcomm), while a OnePlus 10 leak suggested it’ll be business as usual. Motorola might be the first to benefit from Samsung’s 200-megapixel camera sensor. Not Samsung then? Weird.
Celebs enjoyed a tech incursion this week. Adele scored a major win for Spotify users by persuading the streaming giant to ditch the shuffle button from album pages. But Keanu Reeves isn’t up for Neo or John Wick appearing in Mortal Kombat. Spotify and Netflix formed an alliance to serve those who can’t get enough of their favourite shows too.
But what about our winners and losers for the week?
Winner: Android users
This has been, in the main, a good week for Android users with news Google is FINALLY fixing the way it handles the reactions from iMessage users.
It’s been a bug bear for everyone who has ever been in a group message with users on both sides of the great OS divide because these reactions only work properly between iMessage users.
You know what I’m talking about, right? Those text interpretations of what iPhone users see as a heart, or a like, dislike, exclamation point or question mark. “James loved “Let’s meet at the pub at 7pm”” followed by “Eric questioned “Let’s meet at the pub at 7pm”” and “Thomas disliked “Let’s meet at the pub at 7pm””
This was a really unnecessary way for Google to mishandle the reaction with a text fallback that messed up the feed of iPhone and Android users alike.
Now Google has fixed it in a new version of its stock Messages app rolling out, that’ll present these reactions as emoji instead. Better late than never, Google.
Speaking of stuff Google should have done ages ago, there was another win for Android users this week, but it comes courtesy of DuckDuckGo’s Privacy Browser. A new feature, currently in beta, will help you prevent third-party apps across your phone sending your personal usage data to the likes of Facebook and Google.
It’s similar to Apple’s App Transparency Feature but actually shows you the results rather than simply requesting developers don’t share the data.
Loser: Huawei
This week brought another disaster for Huawei
It’s been a rough couple of years for Huawei hasn’t it? Between continued suspicion of its 5G infrastructure, having to spin off its successful Honor sub-brand, and the US trade embargo that’s shut it out of the Google Play Store and all of the good apps.
However, at least Huawei has a reliable app store replacement loaded with all the best apps that’s safe for people to use, right?
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The makers of the anti-virus software Dr. Web reckon that the Huawei App Gallery is littered with malware. It found a trojan lurking within 190 games available within the store. Lovely! And those apps have been downloaded 9.3 million times. Superb!
When users give the infected app the requisite permissions, it could then transfer all of their lovely personal information to a remote server. That includes mobile phone numbers, device location, network info, device specs and plenty more. Oh, and once all that’s done the app will just serve you ad after ad after ad. Sort yourselves out Huawei.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
