Pre-installed malware has been discovered on another budget handset connected to Assurance Wireless by Virgin Mobile. ZDNet reports: Back in January, cybersecurity researchers from Malwarebytes discovered unremovable malware bundled with the Android operating systems on the Unimax (UMX) U686CL, a low-end handset sold by Assurance Wireless as part of the Lifeline Assistance program, a 1985 U.S. initiative which subsidizes telephone services for low-income families. There was no way to remove a pair of apps on the handsets which would install other software on the devices without the user's knowledge.

Now, Malwarebytes has uncovered another budget handset with similar security issues. The smartphone in question is the ANS (American Network Solutions) UL40, running Android OS 7.1.1. [...] In the same way as the UMX U686CL, two apps -- a settings app and wireless update app -- are compromised. However, these apps are not infected with the same malware variants; instead, Collier says the "infections are similar but have their own unique infection characteristics." The Settings app is detected as Downloader Wotby, a Trojan that is able to download apps externally. The researchers did not find any evidence of malicious apps in a third-party store linked to the software but noted this doesn't mean that malicious apps could not be added or find their way into the store at a later date. The WirelessUpdate app is considered a Potentially Unwanted Program (PUP) that is also able to automatically install apps without user permission or knowledge. While the app does function as an over-the-air updater for security fixes and as an updater to the operating system itself, the software also installs four variants of HiddenAds, a Trojan family found on Android handsets. Thankfully, Malwarebytes has instructions on how to stop HiddenAds infections.

Microsoft is forming a team internally under the Microsoft Devices division that will handle the development of the Android OS for Surface Duo going forward. Windows Central: According to my sources, up until now, Microsoft had contracted the OS work out to third-party vendors such as Movial, who had the expertise required to bring Android to life on Surface Duo. Movial is a software, services, and design engineering company that was working closely with Microsoft on Surface Duo during its prototype and development stages. Microsoft has now acquired the local operations of Movial in Romania, Taiwan, and the USA, and is bringing on-board all the Movial employees that were working on the Surface Duo as full-time employees at Microsoft.

Microsoft is not acquiring Movial as a whole. Movial will continue to operate as a standalone company, with employees at its headquarters in Finland remaining at Movial. SeeNews reports that Movial's Iasi office will become Microsoft Romania's fourth research and development center, as it on-boards 60 employees from Movial in that location.

Microsoft seems to be getting a kick out seeing users struggle to find Windows 10 features these days. After moving the Fresh Start feature in the latest version, 2004, and reducing the number of days Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education users can manually delay updates, the company is now experimenting with moving key Control Panel features, including System information, to Settings, Windows Latest blog spotted. From a report: It's a change that some long-time Windows users might not take to easily. If you're like me and have been using the Control Panel for decades, getting accustomed to this feature will be as arduous as unlearning a bad habit. To be fair, it's a bit redundant to have information on your system's specs located in three different places, not to mention all three don't show the exact same information. Currently, Windows 10 users can access hardware information about their PC in several places, but the main ways are: Control Panel > System and Security > System, and Settings > System > About, or by typing 'system information' into the search bar.

System and About show nearly the same info, what processor you have and how much RAM you have installed, for instance, except About will show you what version of Windows you have. System Information shows more detailed information about your PC, including your motherboard, GPU, and other hardware. Microsoft is trying to centralize this information, and moving forward, it seems likely that Control Panel will be killed off entirely.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The threat of ransomware may seem ubiquitous, but there haven't been too many strains tailored specifically to infect Apple's Mac computers since the first full-fledged Mac ransomware surfaced only four years ago. So when Dinesh Devadoss, a malware researcher at the firm K7 Lab, published findings on Tuesday about a new example of Mac ransomware, that fact alone was significant. It turns out, though, that the malware, which researchers are now calling ThiefQuest, gets more interesting from there. In addition to ransomware, ThiefQuest has a whole other set of spyware capabilities that allow it to exfiltrate files from an infected computer, search the system for passwords and cryptocurrency wallet data, and run a robust keylogger to grab passwords, credit card numbers, or other financial information as a user types it in. The spyware component also lurks persistently as a backdoor on infected devices, meaning it sticks around even after a computer reboots, and could be used as a launchpad for additional, or "second stage," attacks. Given that ransomware is so rare on Macs to begin with, this one-two punch is especially noteworthy.

Though ThiefQuest is packed with menacing features, it's unlikely to infect your Mac anytime soon unless you download pirated, unvetted software. Thomas Reed, director of Mac and mobile platforms at the security firm Malwarebytes, found that ThiefQuest is being distributed on torrent sites bundled with name-brand software, like the security application Little Snitch, DJ software Mixed In Key, and music production platform Ableton. K7's Devadoss notes that the malware itself is designed to look like a "Google Software Update program." So far, though, the researchers say that it doesn't seem to have a significant number of downloads, and no one has paid a ransom to the Bitcoin address the attackers provide. [...] Given that the malware is being distributed through torrents, seems to focus on stealing money, and still has some kinks, the researchers say it was likely created by criminal hackers rather than nation state spies looking to conduct espionage.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After years of repackaging the same basic smartwatch chip over and over again, Qualcomm has graced Wear OS with a modern smartwatch SoC. Meet the Snapdragon Wear 4100, a Qualcomm smartwatch chip that, for the first time ever, is faster than the previous chip. The Wear 4100 uses four 1.7GHz Cortex A53 CPUs built on a 12nm manufacturing process, a major upgrade from the 28nm Cortex A7s that every other Qualcomm smartwatch chip has been up until now. It's not the state-of-the-art 7nm process that Qualcomm's high-end chip uses, and the Cortex A53 is an old CPU design, but for Qualcomm, it's a major upgrade. Between the new CPU, the Adreno 504 GPU, and faster memory, Qualcomm is promising "85% faster performance" compared to the Wear 3100.

There are actually two versions of the 4100, the vanilla "4100" and the "4100+." The plus version is specifically for smartwatches with an always-on watch face, and like previous Wear SoCs, comes with an extra low-power SoC (based around a Cortex-M0) to keep the time updated and log sensor data (like step counts). Qualcomm is promising a better display image quality in this low-power mode, with more colors and a smoother display. There are also dual DSPs now, which Qualcomm says are for "optimal workload partitioning, support for dynamic clock and voltage scaling, Qualcomm Sensor Assisted Positioning PDR Wearables 2.0, low power location tracking support, and an enhanced Bluetooth 5.0 architecture." There are also dual ISPs with support for 16MP sensors (on a smartwatch?). As usual, connectivity options are plentiful, with onboard LTE, GPS, NFC, Wi-Fi 802.11n, and Bluetooth 5.

At WWDC 2020 earlier this week, Apple announced that it's moving Macs away from Intel processors to its own silicon, based on ARM architecture. To help ease the transition, the company announced Rosetta 2, a translation process that allows users to run apps that contain x86_64 instructions on Apple silicon. The Verge reports: Rosetta 2 essentially "translates" instructions that were written for Intel processors into commands that Apple's chips can understand. Developers won't need to make any changes to their old apps; they'll just work. (The original Rosetta was released in 2006 to facilitate Apple's transition from PowerPC to Intel. Apple has also stated that it will support x86 Macs "for years to come," as far as OS updates are concerned. The company shifted from PowerPC to Intel chips in 2006, but ditched support for the former in 2009; OS X Snow Leopard was Intel-only.) You don't, as a user, interact with Rosetta; it does its work behind-the-scenes. "Rosetta 2 is mostly there to minimize the impact on end-users and their experience when they buy a new Mac with Apple Silicon," says Angela Yu, founder of the software-development school App Brewery. "If Rosetta 2 does its job, your average user should not notice its existence."

There's one difference you might perceive, though: speed. Programs that ran under the original Rosetta typically ran slower than those running natively on Intel, since the translator needed time to interpret the code. Early benchmarks found that popular PowerPC applications, such as Photoshop and Office, were running at less than half their native speed on the Intel systems. We'll have to wait and see if apps under Rosetta 2 take similar performance hits. But there are a couple reasons to be optimistic. First, the original Rosetta converted every instruction in real-time, as it executed them. Rosetta 2 can convert an application right at installation time, effectively creating an ARM-optimized version of the app before you've opened it. (It can also translate on the fly for apps that can't be translated ahead of time, such as browser, Java, and Javascript processes, or if it encounters other new code that wasn't translated at install time.) With Rosetta 2 frontloading a bulk of the work, we may see better performance from translated apps. The report notes that the engine won't support everything. "It's not compatible with some programs, including virtual machine apps, which you might use to run Windows or another operating system on your Mac, or to test out new software without impacting the rest of your system," reports The Verge. "(You also won't be able to run Windows in Boot Camp mode on ARM Macs. Microsoft only licenses the ARM version of Windows 10 to PC manufacturers.) Rosetta 2 also can't translate kernel extensions, which some programs leverage to perform tasks that macOS doesn't have a native feature for (similar to drivers in Windows)."

An anonymous reader shares a column: Back when there were rumors of Google building an operating system, I thought "Lol." Then I watched then-PM Sundar Pichai announce Chrome OS. My heart raced. It was perfect. I got my email through Gmail, I wrote documents on Docs, I listened to Pandora, I viewed photos on TheFacebook. Why did I need all of Windows Vista? In 2010, I predicted that by 2020 Chrome OS would be the most popular desktop OS in the world. It was fast, lightweight, and $0. "Every Windows and OS X app will be re-built for the browser!" I thought. Outlook > Gmail. Excel > Sheets. Finder > Dropbox. Photoshop > Figma. Terminal > Repl.it. All of your files would be accessible by whoever you wanted, wherever you wanted, all the time. It was obvious. Revolutionary. I haven't installed MSFT Office on a machine since 2009. Sheets and Docs have been good enough for me. The theoretical unlimited computing power and collaboration features meant Google Docs was better than Office (and free!). Then something happened at Google. I'm not sure what. But they stopped innovating on cloud software.

Docs and Sheets haven't changed in a decade. Google Drive remains impossible to navigate. Sharing is complicated. Sheets freezes up. I can't easily interact with a Sheets API (I've tried!). Docs still shows page breaks by default! WTF! Even though I have an iPhone and a MacBook, I've been married to Google services. I browse Chrome. I use Gmail. I get directions and lookup restaurants on Maps. I'm a YouTube addict. Yet I've been ungluing myself from Google so far this year. Not because of Google-is-reading-my-emails-and-tracking-every-keystroke reasons, but because I like other software so much more that it's worth switching. At WWDC, Apple shared Safari stats for macOS Big Sur. It reminded me how much Chrome makes my machine go WHURRRRRR. [...] I've given up on Google Docs. I can never find the documents Andy shares with me. The formatting is tired and stuck in the you-might-print-this-out paradigm. Notion is a much better place to write and brainstorm with people. The mobile Google results page is so cluttered that I switched my iPhone's default search to DuckDuckGo. The results are a tad worse, but I'm never doing heavy-duty searches on the go. And now I don't have to scroll past 6 ads to get the first result. DuckDuckGo's privacy is an added bonus.

At the WWDC 2020 keynote today, Apple unveiled WatchOS 7, adding sleep tracking features, shareable watch faces, a hand washing timer, and much more. CNET reports: WatchOS 7 adds much-anticipated sleep tracking features, including a Wind Down mode to help you get to bed on time. When you wake up, you'll see a visualization of your previous night's sleep, including periods of wake and sleep, and a chart showing weekly sleep trends. While the watch lacks a watch face store, the new software adds the ability to share customized watch faces and complications. If a shared watch face uses apps you don't have, you'll be able to download them easily. You can also easily share a face you've created yourself with a contact, or across social media.

In terms of health and fitness, WatchOS 7's Workout app adds support for four new workouts: core training, dance, functional strength training and cool down. The Activity app where you track your workouts will now be called Fitness, and will include a new Summary tab that gives you an easy way to see your activity history, workouts and trends, all in one view. With WatchOS 7, you'll be able to use Siri to translate several languages directly from your wrist. Like on iOS 14, in the Apple Maps app on WatchOS 7, you'll be able to see cycling-specific directions on your watch in some cities. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, WatchOS will use machine learning to determine when you start washing your hands, and sets a timer so you know you're getting the recommended 20-second wash.

At the WWDC 2020 keynote today, Apple announced that the company is going to switch from Intel chips to Apple's own silicon, based on ARM architecture. They also announced that iPad and iPhone apps will be able to run natively on ARM-powered Macs. TechCrunch reports: First, you'll be able to compile your app to run both on Intel-based Macs and ARM-based Macs. You can ship those apps with both executables using a new format called Universal 2. If you've been using a Mac for a while, you know that Apple used the same process when it switched from PowerPC CPUs to Intel CPUs -- one app, two executables. As for unoptimized software, you'll still be able to run those apps. But its performances won't be as good as what you'd get from a native ARM-ready app. Apple is going to ship Rosetta 2, an emulation layer that lets you run old apps on new Macs.

When you install an old app, your Mac will examine the app and try to optimize it for your ARM processor. This way, there will be some level of optimization even before you open the app. But what if it's a web browser or a complicated app with just-in-time code? Rosetta 2 can also translate instructions from x86 to ARM on the fly, while you're running the app. And if you're a developer working on code that is going to run on servers, Apple is also working on a set of virtualization tools. You'll be able to run Linux and Docker on an ARM Mac.

As a bonus, users will also be able to access a much larger library of apps. "Mac users can for the first time run iOS and iPadOS apps on the Mac," Apple CEO Tim Cook said. While the company didn't share a lot of details, Apple isn't talking about Catalyst, its own framework that makes it easier to port iOS apps to macOS. You should be able to download and run apps even if the developer never optimized those apps for macOS.

After 15 years, Apple will again transition the Mac to a new architecture. The company announced at its developer conference today that it will introduce Macs featuring Apple-designed, ARM-based processors similar to those already used in the iPhone and iPad. From a report: Tim Cook pegged this switch as one of the four biggest transitions the mac has ever had. Alongside the more to PowerPC, the move to Intel, and the transition to Mac OS X, ARM will be one of the biggest mac changes ever. Apple is promising "a whole new level of performance" with a "Family of Mac SoCs." The transition to ARM from x86 means that some apps will be native and some won't. For mac OS 10.16, Apple says that all of the Apple 10.16 apps are native ARM apps. Xcode developers can "just open their apps and recompile" to get an ARM binary. "Universal 2" is a new type of binary that will run on Intel and ARM macs. Microsoft Office and Adobe's creative suite (Photoshop) were demoed as native ARM apps. Final Cut Pro has an ARM version too, along with a features that run on the "Neural Engine" in the Apple SoC.

Apple says it wants to make sure users can run all their apps on their ARM mac, even if they aren't native. So, just like with the PowerPC-to-Intel transition, Apple is dusting off the Rosetta brand with Rosetta 2, which is now an x86-to-ARM emulator. This move has been predicted for years, as the upsides for Apple are clear. Cupertino has always valued tight integration of hardware, software, and services, but Macs have been outliers among Apple's products in their reliance on an outside party for the CPU. (iPhones and other Apple products do contain display panels, modems, and camera components made by other companies, though.) So far, Apple's chip division has excelled in every market it has entered. In the world of smartphones, the company's SoCs are easily a generation ahead of the best Qualcomm, Samsung, and Mediatek have to offer. Apple's most dominant smartphone showing is probably the iPhone SE, a $400 iPhone that will out-perform $1200 Android phones thanks to the A13 Bionic SoC.

"All the pieces are coming together for Microsoft to launch a direct competitor to Chromebooks..." argues an industry analyst writing for ZDNet: Since adopting the Chromium rendering engine, Microsoft Edge has featured virtually perfect compatibility with Chrome, right down to being able to install extensions from the Chrome app store. It's also enabled Microsoft to more easily support operating systems that Edge didn't previously support such as macOS and Linux. But now that Edge is working well, might Microsoft try to go after Chrome OS? While a "lite" version of Windows has been rumored for years, many of the other pieces are already in place or announced.

First, Microsoft has made no secret of how it covets the education market that has embraced Chromebooks. It has fought back with low-cost Windows notebooks from partners that are competitively priced with such devices but may lack Chrome OS' perception of simplicity and security.

Second, after years of having the web apps of office.com languish as Microsoft emphasized the PC versions, the online suite will be the first to take advantage of Fluid Framework, the company's open-source component framework that allows the embedding of applet functionality and collaboration into a range of container documents such as Edge pages. Third, while the idea of Microsoft limiting the opportunity for Windows developers on a platform might have been unthinkable years ago, times have changed. Many developers, Microsoft included, have made web apps mainstream. Outside of the Windows-boosting Surface team, Microsoft seems indifferent as to where you access its subscription-based client and cloud offerings.

Finally, Microsoft now has the cross-processor architecture support to take the battle to Google -- although, at least for now, it has exclusively focused on high-performance Qualcomm Snapdragon designs as opposed to Mediatek or Allwinner ARM-based chips in budget Chromebooks...

Microsoft's strongest competitive point would be the greater focus on privacy, one of the best reasons to use Edge versus Chrome today.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Mozilla has announced today that its highly anticipated VPN (virtual private network) service will launch later this summer, "in the next few weeks." The product has also been renamed from its original name of Firefox Private Network to its new brand of the "Mozilla VPN." The name change came after Mozilla expanded the VPN product from the initial Firefox extension to a full-device VPN, capable of routing traffic for the entire OS, including other browsers. Currently, the Mozilla VPN offers clients for Windows 10, Chromebooks, Android, and iOS devices. Mozilla said beta testers also requested a Mac client, which they plan to provide, along with a Linux app.

For years, Parallels has provided virtualization software so you could run full Windows installs on a Mac, but today they're tackling a new OS. From a report: The company just announced that it is partnering with Google to work on bringing full Windows application support to Chrome OS enterprise devices. That's a big deal for the many businesses out there that run various pieces of legacy Windows software -- or just any business that wants to run Microsoft's Office software natively. It could Chrome OS devices a lot more viable in a variety of workspaces that may have previously had to rely on Windows hardware, though of course that'll depend on how well it is implemented. How exactly this will work remains to be seen; Parallels only said that partnership would "seamlessly add full-featured Windows apps, including Microsoft Office, to Chromebook Enterprise devices."

For the last few years, Microsoft has given Windows enthusiasts the ability to opt in to early release "rings," with the choice to pick between "fast" and "slow" rings, as well as a relatively stable "release preview" option. Today, the company announced a major change to this program as it is moving to release channels, similar to what you're probably familiar with from most browser manufacturers. From a report: "We are transitioning and converting our current ring model, based on the frequency of builds, to a new channel model that pivots on the quality of builds and better supports parallel coding efforts," writes Microsoft principal program manager lead Amanda Langowski in a blog post today. She notes that the result of the ring-based system was that in the middle of 2019, for example, Windows Insiders were running builds from three different releases, depending on which ring they chose. "As we continue to evolve the way we release Windows 10 and the diversity of Insiders we serve is greater than ever, it is critical that Insiders have a flighting option that is tailored to their needs," she adds. "We believe the best way to do this is to shift focus from frequency to quality."

Security and software development company Quarkslab played around with Google's new Fuchsia operating system, which could one day replace Android on smartphones and Chrome OS on laptops. The researchers "decided to give a quick look at Fuchsia, learn about its inner design, security properties, strengths and weaknesses, and find ways to attack it." Here's what they concluded: Fuchsia's micro kernel is called Zircon. It is written in C++. [...] Contrary to every other major OS, it appears rather difficult to target the Zircon kernel directly. A successful RCE (Remote Code Execution) on the world-facing parts of the system (USB, Bluetooth, network stack, etc) will only give you control over the targeted components, but they run in independent userland processes, not in the kernel. From a component, you then need to escalate privileges to the kernel using the limited number of syscalls you can access with the handles you have. Overall, it seems easier to target other components rather than the kernel, and to focus on components that you can talk to via IPC and that you know have interesting handles.

Overall, Fuchsia exhibits interesting security properties compared to other OSes such as Android. A few days of vulnerability research allowed us to conclude that the common programming bugs found in other OSes can also be found in Fuchsia. However, while these bugs can often be considered as vulnerabilities in other OSes, they turn out to be uninteresting on Fuchsia, because their impact is, for the most part, mitigated by Fuchsia's security properties. We note however that these security properties do not -- and in fact, cannot -- hold in the lowest layers of the kernel related to virtualization, exception handling and scheduling, and that any bug here remains exploitable just like on any other OS. All the bugs we found were reported to Google, and are now fixed.

Again, it is not clear where Fuchsia is heading, and whether it is just a research OS as Google claims or a real OS that is vowed to be used on future products. What's clear, though, is that it has the potential to significantly increase the difficulty for attackers to compromise devices.

This year Stack Overflow's Developer Survey of 65,000 programmers found that Rust was their most-loved programming language -- for the fifth year in a row. To understand why, they interviewed the top contributor to the site's Rust topic. ("The short answer is that Rust solves pain points present in many other languages, providing a solid step forward with a limited number of downsides...") But Stack Overflow also reached out to the Rust core team, including Berlin-based developer Erin Power, asking about any barriers to entry, and why they think Rust was the survey's most-loved language. ("I think it's because Rust makes big promises, and delivers on them...")

And finally, they got responses from Stack Overflow users in their Rust chatroom and forums, noting "Rust users are a passionate bunch, and I got some fascinating insights along with some friendly debates..." Many current programming discussions revolve around whether to use a fast, low-level language that lets you handle memory management or a higher-level language with greater safety precautions. For fans of Rust, they like that it does both.... While some languages just add polish and ease to existing concepts, several users feel that Rust is actually doing new things with a programming language. And it's not doing new things just to be showy; they feel these design choices solve hard problems with modern programming...

Stack Overflow user janriemer: "A quote from Chris Dickinson, engineer at npm, sums it up perfectly for me, because I have thought the same, without knowing the quote at that time: 'My biggest compliment to Rust is that it's boring, and this is an amazing compliment.' Rust is a programming language that looks like it has been developed by user experience designers. They have a clear vision (a why) of the language and carefully choose what to add to the language and what to rework, while listening to what the community really wants. There are no loose ends, it's all a coherent whole that perfectly supports a developer's workflow."
Stack Overflow's post also quotes Jay Oster, a software architect at the infrastructure-as-a-service company PubNub, who argues Rust "ticks all the boxes":

• Memory safe

• Type safe

• Data race-free

• Ahead-of-time compiled

• Built on and encourages zero-cost abstractions

• Minimal runtime (no stop-the-world garbage collection, no JIT compiler, no VM)

• Low memory footprint (programs run in resource constrained-environments like small microcontrollers)

• Targets bare-metal (e.g. write an OS kernel or device driver; use Rust as a 'high level assembler')"

He also describes Rust as "akin to wandering around in complete darkness for an entire career, and suddenly being enlightened to two facts:

• You are not perfect. You will make mistakes. Those mistakes will cause you a lot of problems.

• It doesn't have to be this way.

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: Texas Instruments' graphing calculators have a reputation as hobbyist devices given their program support, but they just lost some of their appeal. Cemetech has learned (via Linus Tech Tips) that Texas Instruments is pulling support for assembly- and C-based programs on the TI-84 Plus CE and its French counterpart, the TI-83 Premium CE. Install the latest firmware for both (OS 5.6 and OS 5.5 respectively) and you'll not only lose access to those apps, but won't have a way to roll back.

The company explained the move as an effort to "prioritize learning and minimize any security risks." It's to reduce cheating, to put it another way... While this could please teachers worried that students will use apps to cheat during exams, enthusiasts are unsurprisingly mad. This reduces the amount of control programmers have over their calculator apps.

An anonymous reader writes: Hackers have gained access to the core infrastructure of LineageOS, a mobile operating system based on Android, used for smartphones, tablets, and set-top boxes. The intrusion took place on Saturday night at around 8 pm (US Pacific coast), and was detected before the attackers could do any harm, the LineageOS team said in a statement published less than three hours after the incident. The LineageOS team said the operating system's source code was unaffected, and so were any operating system builds, which had been already paused since April 30, because of an unrelated issue. Signing keys, used to authenticate official OS distributions, were also unaffected, as these hosts were stored separately from the LineageOS main infrastructure. LineageOS developers said the hack took place after the attacker used an unpatched vulnerability to breach its Salt installation.

Microsoft is confirming today that it's planning to refocus Windows 10X on single-screen devices. "The world is a very different place than it was last October when we shared our vision for a new category of dual-screen Windows devices," explains Panos Panay, Microsoft's Windows and devices chief. From a report: "With Windows 10X, we designed for flexibility, and that flexibility has enabled us to pivot our focus toward single-screen Windows 10X devices that leverage the power of the cloud to help our customers work, learn and play in new ways." Microsoft isn't saying exactly when single-screen devices like laptops will support Windows 10X, nor when dual-screen devices will launch with the OS. However, Windows 10X will launch on single-screen devices first. "We will continue to look for the right moment, in conjunction with our OEM partners, to bring dual-screen devices to market," says Panay. Microsoft is reprioritizing Windows 10X for laptops and single-screen devices because of the coronavirus pandemic. The software maker has seen a 75 percent year-over-year increase in the time spent in Windows 10. More people are turning to using their laptops or PCs instead of a smartphone or tablet during the lockdowns we've seen worldwide to work or study.

joestar writes: Fairphone, the European manufacturer of mobile phones with a reduced environmental impact, has announced a partnership to offer /e/OS, the most "de-Googled" and pro-privacy Android OS, on their latest model Fairphone 3. An interesting move that reminds me of the recent introduction of the Google-free Huawei Mate 30. A pithy explainer of its "privacy by design ecosystem" -- and the point of "Android without Google" -- further notes: "We have removed many pieces of code that send your personal data to remote servers without your consent. We don't scan your data in your phone or in your cloud space, and we don't track your location a hundred times a day or collect what you're doing with your apps."

According to TechCrunch, the e/OS variant of the Firephone 3 ships from May 6, priced at just under 480 euros -- "a 30 euro premium on the Googley flavor of Android you get on the standard Fairphone 3." The report adds that existing owners of the Fairphone 3 can manually install /e/OS gratis via an installer on its website.