An anonymous reader writes: Market research firms Canalys and Counterpoint Research have posted their 2019 global smartphone market share reports. Both reports say the biggest mover is Huawei, which, thanks to a whopping 16-17 percent annual growth, claimed the No. 2 smartphone vendor spot in 2019, behind Samsung and ahead of Apple. Both firms have similar global market share numbers for 2019, with Samsung around 20 percent, Huawei at 16 percent, Apple at 13 percent, and Xiaomi and Oppo around eight percent each. Counterpoint credits Huawei's success in its hometown of China for its success, saying, "This was the result of an aggressive push from Huawei in the Chinese market, where it achieved almost 40 percent market share." According to the firm, China makes up 60 percent of Huawei's shipments. "For what it's worth, Canalys has Q4 2019 as Huawei's first quarterly decline -- down seven percent from Q3 -- in two years, which it blames on the [Trump Administration's Huawei export ban]," adds Ars. "Together with the annual Apple Q4 surge thanks to the launch of a new iPhone, Huawei fell to third place again within that time period."

According to the Guardian, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had his phone "hacked" in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. From the report: The encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman is believed to have included a malicious file that infiltrated the phone of the world's richest man, according to the results of a digital forensic analysis. This analysis found it "highly probable" that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post.

The two men had been having a seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange when, on May 1 of that year, the unsolicited file was sent, according to sources who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. Large amounts of data were exfiltrated from Bezos's phone within hours, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Guardian has no knowledge of what was taken from the phone or how it was used. [...] The disclosure is likely to raise difficult questions for the kingdom about the circumstances around how U.S. tabloid the National Enquirer came to publish intimate details about Bezos's private life -- including text messages -- nine months later. It may also lead to renewed scrutiny about what the crown prince and his inner circle were doing in the months prior to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was killed in October 2018 -- five months after the alleged "hack" of the newspaper's owner.

Federal prosecutors in Brazil on Tuesday charged the American journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes for his role in the spreading of cellphone messages that have embarrassed prosecutors and tarnished the image of an anti-corruption task force. The New York Times: In a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday, prosecutors in the capital, Brasilia, accused Mr. Greenwald of being part of a "criminal organization" that hacked into the cellphones of several prosecutors and other public officials last year. The Intercept Brazil, a news organization Mr. Greenwald co-founded, has published several stories based on a trove of leaked messages he received last year.

Pine64 will finally start shipping the pre-order units of PinePhone Braveheart Edition on January 17, 2020. Fossbytes reports: A year ago, PinePhone was made available only to developers and hackers. After getting better responses and suggestions, the Pine64 developers planned to bring Pinephone for everyone. In November last year, pre-orders for PinePhone Braveheart Edition commenced for everyone. But due to manufacturing issues coming in the way, the shipment date slipped for weeks, which was scheduled in December last year.

PinePhone Braveheart Edition is an affordable, open source Linux-based operating system smartphone preloaded with factory test image running on Linux OS (postmarketOS) on inbuilt storage. You can check on PinePhone Wiki to find the PinePhone compatible operating system such as Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, or Sailfish OS, which you can boot either from internal storage or an SD card.

On Monday, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) discussed the idea of introducing "binding measures" that would require chargers that fit all mobile phones and portable electronic devices. The company that would be impacted most by this legislation would be Apple and its iPhone, which uses a Lightning cable while most new Android phones use USB-C ports for charging. ZDNet reports: The EU introduced the voluntary Radio Equipment Directive in 2014, but MEPs believe the effort fell short of the objectives. "The voluntary agreements between different industry players have not yielded the desired results," MEPs said. The proposed more stringent measures are aimed at reducing electronic waste, which is estimated to amount to 51,000 tons per year in old chargers.

Apple last year argued that regulations to standardize chargers for phones would "freeze innovation rather than encourage it" and it claimed the proposal was "bad for the environment and unnecessarily disruptive for customers." Noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reckons Apple has a different idea in store: getting rid of the Lightning port and not replacing it with USB-C, which is a standard that Apple doesn't have complete control over. According to the analyst, Apple plans to remove the Lightning connector on a flagship iPhone to be released in 2021. Instead it would rely on wireless charging.

ZDNet's UK editor-in-chief Steve Ranger argues the end of Windows 7 "marks the end of the PC era, too." When Windows 7 launched, the iPhone and its app store were around but were still novelties, while the iPad hadn't arrived yet. If you wanted to get work -- or pretty much anything -- done on a computer, you needed a PC. Just over a decade later, the picture is much more complicated.

PC sales have been in decline for the last seven years; a slide which only ended with a small increase last year, largely because businesses needed to buy new PCs to run Windows 10, after bowing to the inevitable and upgrading. In many scenarios and use cases the PC has been superseded by the smartphone, the tablet or digital assistants embodied in various other devices. And it's not just the PC -- Windows is no longer the defining product for Microsoft that it once was.

That's not to say the PC is dead, of course: I'm typing on one now, and it will remain the primary device I use to do my job for the foreseeable future. Many office and knowledge workers will feel the same. But there are now plenty of other options: I could be using a tablet or dictating to my phone... And outside of work I barely touch a PC at all.

And even the definition of the PCs is getting blurry. PC makers have come up with a late burst of creativity that has delivered all manner of weird and occasionally wonderful new shapes and sizes. Microsoft's Surface is a PC that looks a lot like a tablet; Lenovo's X1 Fold is a folding screen that can be a tablet, or a mini laptop or a desktop. Folding and detachable PCs are now mainstream.

Samsung's "Galaxy XCover Pro" rugged smartphone includes a feature that all but disappeared from the market: a removable battery. "There are a handful of very low-end smartphones that still have removable batteries, but as a mid-ranger, this would be the highest-end removable-battery phone on the market," reports Ars Technica. From the report: It's hard to say if the XCover Pro is currently official or not. Samsung's Nordic division posted a CES press release that detailed the never-before-seen XCover Pro, complete with specs and pictures, alongside several other previously announced phones. A later update scrubbed all mention of the XCover from the press release. The release said the phone would be for sale in Finland on January 31 for $554, but since the release was pulled, it's unclear if that is still accurate.

Samsung Nordic listed the phone with a Samsung Exynos 9611 SoC, an eight-core, 10nm chip with four Cortex A73 cores and four Cortex A53 cores. This would make it a mid-range phone on par with the "Galaxy A" series. The phone has 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage that's expandable thanks to a microSD slot, and that sweet 4050mAh removable battery. The display design is... interesting. The display is a 6.3-inch 2400x1000 LCD, which is strange, as most Samsung phones use the company's OLED panels. Like most modern Samsung phones, this device also has a circular cutout in the display for the camera, and while this makes sense on devices with slim top bezels, the XCover's top bezel seems like it would have had plenty of room for a camera. As far as the "rugged" features go, the device features an IP69 water- and dust-resistance rating. There's also a push-to-talk button, side-mounted fingerprint sensor, two rear cameras (25MP + 8MP sensors), and a 13MP front sensor. Strangely, it appears to be running Android 9 Pie instead of the newer Android 10 OS.

A Vermont lawmaker has introduced a new bill that would ban the use of cellphones by anyone under the age of 21. From a report: State Sen. John Rodgers' proposal would punish anyone under the age threshold found with a cellphone with up to one year in prison, a $1,000 fine or both, news station WPTZ reported. Rodgers argued that young people are too immature to use cellphones, citing the role the devices play in fatal car crashes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Riding through a remote valley in Mongolia on the back of his motorbike, adventurer Jamie Clarke let the hum of the engine and the wind echo in his mind while his thoughts wandered. After several hours, he pulled over to shake off his helmet and take a look at the map. This was what he loved about adventuring -- the solitude, the landscape and the feeling of being in charge of your own destiny. But when his 18-year-old son pulled up right behind him on his own motorcycle, he had a different take on the long ride they had just finished. For him, being alone in his thoughts was novel and unsettling. "Oh my God, that was terrible! I can't be left with my brain like that!" But that was precisely why the two had decided to embark on this adventure together.

Mr Clarke, a lifelong skier, mountaineer and trekker, had felt like he was losing touch with his son Khobe, who was always on his phone at their home in Calgary, Alberta. He blames himself, partly. He has a smartphone just like everyone else, and he enjoyed playing games with his son on his Blackberry when he was small. [...] For a long time, he had dreamed of traveling across Mongolia on a bike. Now that his son was older, why not do it with him? About a year ago, he proposed it to Khobe. It wasn't an automatic hit. "I said no pretty quickly," Khobe says. "But it kind of turned into this fun idea it became such a thing of preparation that it was very exciting to go do it." Khobe got his motorcycle license and the two practiced longer trips. While his father has climbed Everest twice, Khobe had never climbed a mountain so he had to practice that, too. They left on July 28, and over the course of the next month travelled more than 2,200 kilometers (1,367 miles) across Mongolia by motorbike, horse and camel. "I think the whole time I was pretty consumed by missing my phone," Khobe says. "You realize how boring everything gets. When I'm bored I can just turn on YouTube or watch Netflix. What am I going to do, look at the stars and twiddle my thumbs?" But he also says getting to know his dad was worth it, especially the time they spent off the road in their tents or yurts just cooking and bonding. "I was surprised that when he's away from a work environment and family that he acts maybe closer my age," he says.

"It helped me see Khobe in a new way. I saw him as a kid who kept leaving his jacket on the table, not cleaning up the dishes," he says. "And I was able to see him step up to being a young man, and I was impressed by how well he was able to perform under pressure."

Bloomberg looks back at what tech industry titans predicted would be happening "by 2020." - Here's what Huawei Technologies Co. said in 2015 predicting a "superphone" by 2020, according to ZDNet: "Inspired by the biological evolution, the mobile phone we currently know will come to life as the superphone," said Shao Yang, a strategy marketing president of Huawei. "Through evolution and adaptation, the superphone will be more intelligent, enhancing and even transforming our perceptions, enabling humans to go further than ever before." It's not entirely clear what that means, but it probably hasn't happened yet. In the interim, Huawei found itself in the middle of a trade war, and the Chinese company is focusing largely on mid-priced phones for its domestic market...

- In 2013, Elon Musk outlined his vision for a new "fifth mode of transportation" that would involve zipping people through tubes at speeds as fast as 800 miles per hour. Several tech entrepreneurs heeded Musk's call and went to work on such systems inspired by the billionaire's specifications. In 2015, one of the leading startups predicted a hyperloop spanning about 60 miles would be ready for human transport by 2020. Rob Lloyd, then the CEO of Hyperloop Technologies, told Popular Science: "I'm very confident that's going to happen." It hasn't. His company, now called Virgin Hyperloop One, has a 1,600-foot test track in California and hopes to build a 22-mile track in Saudi Arabia someday. Musk has since experimented with hyperloops of his own, and even he has had to scale back his ambitions. Musk's Boring Co. is building a so-called Loop system in Las Vegas, starting with a nearly mile-long track that consists of a narrow tunnel and Tesla cars moving at up to 155 miles per hour...

- It was barely two years ago when the maker of blowdryers and vacuum cleaners said it would sell an electric car by 2020. Dyson canceled the project this year, calling it "not commercially viable."
Other predictions include John McAfee's infamous 2017 prediction that one bitcoin would be worth $1 million by the end of 2020, "about three weeks before a crash would erase 83% of value over the next year."

And in 2012 Intel predicted that by 2020 we'd have computer chips that consumed almost no energy

Rog Srigley, writer who teaches at Humber College and Laurentian University, offered his students extra credit if they would give him their phones for nine days and write about living without them. "What they wrote was remarkable, and remarkably consistent," he writes. "These university students, given the chance to say what they felt, didn't gracefully submit to the tech industry and its devices." An anonymous Slashdot reader shares what some of them said: "Believe it or not, I had to walk up to a stranger and ask what time it was. It honestly took me a lot of guts and confidence to ask someone," Janet wrote. (Her name, like the others here, is a pseudonym.) She describes the attitude she was up against: "Why do you need to ask me the time? Everyone has a cell phone. You must be weird or something." Emily went even further. Simply walking by strangers "in the hallway or when I passed them on the street" caused almost all of them to take out a phone "right before I could gain eye contact with them."

To these young people, direct, unmediated human contact was experienced as ill-mannered at best and strange at worst. James: "One of the worst and most common things people do nowadays is pull out their cell phone and use it while in a face-to-face conversation. This action is very rude and unacceptable, but yet again, I find myself guilty of this sometimes because it is the norm." Emily noticed that "a lot of people used their cell phones when they felt they were in an awkward situation, for an example [sic] being at a party while no one was speaking to them." The price of this protection from awkward moments is the loss of human relationships, a consequence that almost all the students identified and lamented. Without his phone, James said, he found himself forced to look others in the eye and engage in conversation. Stewart put a moral spin on it. "Being forced to have [real relations with people] obviously made me a better person because each time it happened I learned how to deal with the situation better, other than sticking my face in a phone." Ten of the 12 students said their phones were compromising their ability to have such relationships. Peter: "I have to admit, it was pretty nice without the phone all week. Didn't have to hear the fucking thing ring or vibrate once, and didn't feel bad not answering phone calls because there were none to ignore." "It felt so free without one and it was nice knowing no one could bother me when I didn't want to be bothered," wrote William.

Emily said that she found herself "sleeping more peacefully after the first two nights of attempting to sleep right away when the lights got shut off." Stewart: "Actually I got things done much quicker without the cell because instead of waiting for a response from someone (that you don't even know if they read your message or not) you just called them [from a land line], either got an answer or didn't, and moved on to the next thing."

According to TV metrics company Nielsen, a whopping 88% of Americans stare at screens while staring at other screens. Nate Anderson from Ars Technica discovered the stat while combing through Mary Meeker's annual "Internet Trends" report: My attitude, when watching TV, is that a show you pay attention to precludes the use of phone or laptop; if you're using another screen, you're not actually watching the show. Pick better shows to watch, people! And then watch them! [...] I got to thinking about the ways in which we use television, and not all of them involve watching dark prestige dramas with 80+ Metacritic scores. Perhaps you're watching (ugh) live TV, either because you are a masochist or you love sports. (If you are watching baseball, perhaps it's both!) Picking up a smartphone during commercial breaks is arguably better than being bombarded with the consumerism of late-stage capitalism.

Say you use your TV not as a way to consume compelling crafted content, but as background noise that helps you relax. (I highly recommend Sunday afternoon golf for this purpose.) Tooling around on a laptop while the TV plays in the background is now not quite so odd. Or perhaps you watch TV simply as a way to kill time. Perhaps you're in pain, or recovering from illness, or simply bored out of your mind. The goal is not necessarily to direct your full and undivided attention to the screen; it is to get through the day until something better comes along. Using a second screen here, too, makes sense. [...] Still, I can't shake the feeling that the majority of time spent using one digital device while another displays video content nearby is low-quality time, where we aren't really paying attention to what's on either screen and so are using the planet's resources, cluttering our lives with extra noise, and reinforcing our slavish devotions to screens for little to no benefit... Do you ever find yourself browsing your phone while watching TV? If so, can it be explained by one of Nate's reasonings?

In the age of social media, the snail-mail holiday photo card is taking on more significance. Permanent, physical photos stand out, and families are realizing they can be used to convey important life changes -- without having to put them into words. People are using the images on cards to signal major transitions, including divorce, illness and adoption. From a report: "The holiday card gives you a chance to put out the one version that you feel good about. It gives you editorial control," says Allen Adamson, co-founder of Metaforce, a branding and marketing consultancy. "And it has permanence. People hold on to them. They post them on refrigerators." The average person takes about 1,000 digital images per year, driven largely by cellphones, according to Keypoint Intelligence-InfoTrends. Sharing pictures with family and friends is the top reason people say they use social networks, according to an Adobe survey of about 4,000 people conducted in July. "Social media is this constant rolling letter," says Brad Kopitz, chief executive of Artifact Uprising, a Denver maker of custom photo gifts including cards. Sometimes, digital photos get lost in the shuffle, he says. The holiday card is a "pattern interrupt," he says. "It's like when you get a handwritten note in the mail. It's saying, 'You're part of my life and not just part of the digital noise.'" Fewer people are sending physical cards, making the ones that do go out more noticeable. Seventy percent of consumers said they planned to send greeting cards this year, down from 77% five years earlier, according to a National Retail Federation survey of nearly 8,000 adults conducted in October. That can give a printed card greater significance.

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Earlier this week the United States Navy banned the social media app TikTok from government-issued mobile devices, saying the popular short video app represented a "cybersecurity threat."

A bulletin issued by the Navy on Tuesday showed up on a Facebook page serving military members, saying users of government issued mobile devices who had TikTok and did not remove the app would be blocked from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet.

The Navy would not describe in detail what dangers the app presents, but Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Uriah Orland said in a statement the order was part of an effort to "address existing and emerging threats...." The U.S. government has opened a national security review of the app's owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co's $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly, Reuters first reported last month. Last month, U.S army cadets were instructed not to use TikTok, after Senator Chuck Schumer raised security concerns about the army using TikTok in their recruiting.

Motorola is slightly delaying its reimagined foldable Razr flip phone, citing an unexpectedly high demand. Android Police reports: Pre-orders were originally slated to begin on December 26th, ahead of the launch on January 9th, but it looks like we'll have to wait a little bit for our fancy blasts from the past. Motorola has stated that it doesn't foresee "a significant shift" from the original launch window, so hopefully the delay won't be too long. With the announcement of the delay coming at the eleventh hour, it might put a damper on some tech enthusiasts' holiday, but at least we'll avoid the mad rush that comes with under-supplying.

After months of negotiations, Congress approved a landmark bill on Thursday to stop the flood of illegal robocalls. The president is expected to sign it into law within the next few days. The Verge reports: The Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, or the TRACED Act, empowers the federal government with new abilities to go after illegal robocallers. Once TRACED is enacted, the Federal Communications Commission could fine robocallers up to $10,000 per call. It also would require major carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to deploy a new technology called STIR/SHAKEN into their networks, which will make it easier for consumers to know if they're receiving a call from a spoofed number.

The House voted overwhelmingly to approve the measure earlier this month, and Thursday's unanimous Senate vote means the bill only requires President Trump's signature to become law. Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) said that the bill should be signed into law within the "next week or so."

According to a new study published in Current Biology, the "night mode" on your phone could actually be worse for your sleep pattern. Scientists say the blue light, which is significantly reduced when night mode is enabled, could be telling our brain that it's night time because it resembles the colors of twilight. From the report: According to the study, brightness levels are more important than color when it comes to stimulating the body clock. However, when the light is equally dim, blue is more relaxing than yellow. This makes basic sense: daylight is yellow, twilight is blue, and sunrise and sunset are pretty reliable ways to tell your body clock what time it is. Of course, at this point, we only know it works on mice -- and mice don't have phones. "We think there is good reason to believe it's also true in humans," says Dr Brown, lead author of the study.

There is perhaps a more obvious truth to be drawn -- if your phone is telling you to switch to night mode, it is time to put down your phone. It is not the color of the screen that is keeping you awake; it is all the stuff your phone offers as an alternative to sleep at 2am. There is only one real night-mode switch: the off button.

According to a new report from research firm NPD, less than 10% of Americans are actually spending $1,000 or more on a smartphone. 9to5Google reports: The report was produced by research firm NPD and shows that while the media and brand focus is on the flagships such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 10, Galaxy S10, and iPhone 11 Pro, everyday Americans are less likely to spend their hard-earned dollars on these expensive trinkets. NPD does note in their report that this could be due to the rate of 5G adoption. Currently, 5G is in its early rollout stages in the U.S., with many regions simply not covered. 5G-enabled smartphones are thin on the ground and also come with the associated "early adopter" price-tags of well over $1000 in most cases -- although that isn't the case with products like the OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren edition.

Some buyers may simply be holding out until 5G becomes more affordable or viable before taking the plunge and opting for those $1000+ flagship smartphones. The report also highlights the significant difference in buying habits from region to region. NPD notes that those living in major cities such as Los Angeles and New York City are far more likely to spend over $1000 on a smartphone.

In addition to the flagship Snapdragon 865 processor, Qualcomm announced details about its other new chip, the midrange Snapdragon 765. "The 765 might actually be the more interesting of the two, thanks to its integrated 5G modem and its likely future of powering cheaper, midrange devices," reports The Verge. From the report: Right now, there's not a lot of 5G devices out there, and the ones that are around tend to be very expensive. The upcoming 865 might help with that. By default, it'll only work with the X55 5G modem, meaning every Android flagship with a Snapdragon 865 (i.e., nearly all of them) will, in theory, be a 5G phone next year. But even cheaper Android phones with Qualcomm's top processor tend to cost upwards of $750. 700-series chips, on the other hand, are found in far cheaper phones, like HMD's Nokia phones, which hit much lower prices.

It's a much lower barrier to entry for 5G than anything currently available, and it could be a big part of making the next-generation network accessible to more customers, not just those who are willing to shell out for the top phones. In fact, it's possible that the Snapdragon 765 will enable better 5G experiences than phones with the 865. That's because, unlike the Snapdragon 865, the 765 has a less powerful X52 modem. It's capable of lower speeds (maxing out at 3.7 Gbps, instead of the 7 Gbps the X55 is theoretically capable of). But it has a big advantage: that 5G modem is integrated directly in the 765 chipset, meaning it should offer improved power efficiency (and, therefore, battery life) than the X55, which is its own separate chip. It'll also support a wider range of 5G standards than the current X50 modem, with Qualcomm promising support for mmWave and sub-6GHz, standalone and non-standalone 5G, and TDD and FDD with Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) network types. Both the Snapdragon 765 and 765G, which features a new Qualcomm Adreno 620 GPU, are expected to come to market in the first quarter of 2020.

Roberto Escobar, brother of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar, has announced a foldable smartphone that is "very difficult to break" thanks to the screen's "special type of plastic." The Escobar Fold 1, as it is called, significantly undercuts Samsung's Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X with a price of only $349. Neowin reports: While all the foldable phones announced so far have a price tag of at least $1,500+, the Escobar Fold 1 will be available from only $349 which includes free shipping and a case as well. It will be sold unlocked and work on all compatible networks worldwide. This makes it cheaper than other non-foldable flagship smartphones available in the market right now.

The drug lord's brother has been able to price the phone so low by cutting out the middlemen like networks and retailers. He is also preparing to file a $30 billion class-action lawsuit against Apple for scamming people and wants the company to "give some of their illegal profits back to the people." Like the Huawei Mate X, the Escobar Fold can be unfolded to turn it into a tablet with a screen size of 7.8-inches. The expanded AMOLED display has a 4:3 aspect ratio and an FHD+ resolution. The design language is different from the Samsung Galaxy Fold which features two separate displays, one of which folds.