Matthew Wilson 8 hours ago Apple, Featured Tech News, General Tech
The European Commission has launched several antitrust investigations against Apple over the years, including a big investigation over iOS App Store policies and Apple’s 30 percent revenue cut. Now, Apple will reportedly face antitrust charges in the EU later this week.
According to Financial Times (via The Verge), the European Commission is set to issue antitrust charges against Apple this week. This follows an investigation that began in early 2020, following a complaint from Spotify in 2019. Spotify took issue with Apple taking a 30 percent revenue cut from subscriptions on iOS and if sources are accurate, the EU will indeed be siding with Spotify on that.
Specific actions that the EU will take against Apple still remain unclear, but we should hear more on that in the coming days.
This is the latest development in a long saga of antitrust complaints against Apple over the iOS App Store. Apple is also set to go to trial and defend itself against a lawsuit from Epic Games next month, a lawsuit that was brought about due to App Store policies and the eventual removal of Fortnite from iOS.
KitGuru Says: While the EU may charge Apple this week, we will likely see Apple embark on a series of appeals, so this could be far from the end of this story.
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Microsoft is launching its Office and OneNote apps on Amazon’s Fire tablets today. Both apps are available in Amazon’s Appstore, with the Office app combining Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single tablet app.
Microsoft is no stranger to Amazon’s Appstore, having previously published apps like Outlook, Xbox, and Xbox Game Pass for Fire tablets. This is the first time Office has appeared on Amazon’s tablets, though. Microsoft has essentially taken its Android Office app that’s already available on the Google Play Store and modified it to work on Amazon’s Fire OS — a forked version of Android.
Both the Office and OneNote apps will be available on Amazon’s Appstore in regions where Fire tablets are currently sold. Microsoft says it has timed the release of these apps to coincide with Amazon’s new Fire HD 10 tablet. The $149.99 Fire HD 10 has a thinner design, slimmed-down bezels, and better specs, and Amazon is also offering a $219 bundle with a 12-month subscription to Microsoft 365 in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, and Japan.
Recent Bose headphones and earbuds have come with a somewhat frustrating requirement: to use the accompanying Bose Music app, you needed to create an account. So if you wanted to, say, customize the noise cancellation of the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 or QuietComfort Earbuds, you’d have to make a Bose account just to access those important controls.
Now Bose is doing away with the needlessly annoying mandatory account. The update notes for the latest version of Bose Music on iOS say “when you set up your Bose headphones and earbuds, you can skip creating an account and get right to enjoying your product.” That’s the way it ought to be. (Bose previously had this help article up for customers with “privacy concerns regarding data collection and account information” — but acknowledged that headphone functionality would be “limited” for people who didn’t give in and use the app.)
Most headphone makers weren’t being nearly as pushy as Bose about making an account; you don’t have to create one to use apps from Sony, Sennheiser, Jabra, and so on. So I’m glad to see this change. Bose says customers can still create an account later from the settings menu if they wish.
The latest Bose Music also improves the experience for owners of the company’s speakers and soundbars “with faster and easier access to your product controls, favorites, and music services.” There’s also now a graphical EQ interface for the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700.
Legal services startup DoNotPay is best known for its army of “robot lawyers” — automated bots that tackle tedious online tasks like canceling TV subscriptions and requesting refunds from airlines. Now, the company has unveiled a new tool it says will help shield users’ photos from reverse image searches and facial recognition AI.
It’s called Photo Ninja and it’s one of dozens of DoNotPay widgets that subscribers can access for $36 a year. Photo Ninja operates like any image filter. Upload a picture you want to shield, and the software adds a layer of pixel-level perturbations that are barely noticeable to humans, but dramatically alter the image in the eyes of roving machines.
The end result, DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder tells The Verge, is that any image shielded with Photo Ninja yields zero results when run through search tools like Google image search or TinEye. You can see this in the example below using pictures of Joe Biden:
Before Photo Ninja, you get plenty of results from Google Image Search (top) and TinEye (below). Image: DoNotPay
After Photo Ninja, the image yields no results in reverse image searches. Image: DoNotPay
The tool also fools popular facial recognition software from Microsoft and Amazon with a 99 percent success rate. This, combined with the anti-reverse-image search function, makes Photo Ninja handy in a range of scenarios. You might be uploading a selfie to social media, for example, or a dating app. Running the image through Photo Ninja first will prevent people from connecting this image to other information about you on the web.
Browder is careful to stress, though, that Photo Ninja isn’t guaranteed to beat every facial recognition tool out there. When it comes to Clearview AI, for example, a controversial facial recognition service that is widely used by US law enforcement, Browder says the company “anticipates” Photo Ninja will fool the company’s software but can’t guarantee it.
In part, this is because Clearview AI probably already has a picture of you in its databases, scraped from public sources long ago. As the company’s CEO Hoan Ton-That said in an interview with The New York Times last year: “There are billions of unmodified photos on the internet, all on different domain names. In practice, it’s almost certainly too late to perfect a technology [that hides you from facial recognition search] and deploy it at scale.”
Browder agrees: “In a perfect world, all images released to the public from Day 1 would be altered. As that is clearly not the case for most people, we recognize this as a significant limitation to the efficacy of our pixel-level changes. Hence, the focal point and intended use case of our tool was to avoid detection from Google Reverse Image Search and TinEye.”
DoNotPay isn’t the first to build this sort of tool. In August 2020, researchers from the University of Chicago’s SAND Lab created an open-source program named Fawkes that performs the same task. Indeed, Browder says DoNotPay’s engineers referenced this work in their own research. But while Fawkes is a low-profile piece of software, very unlikely to be used by the average internet consumer, DoNotPay has a slightly larger reach, albeit one that is still limited to tech-savvy users who are happy to let bots litigate on their behalf.
Tools like this don’t provide a silver bullet to modern privacy intrusions, but as facial recognition and reverse image search tools become more commonly used, it makes sense to deploy at least some protections. Photo Ninja won’t hide you from law enforcement or an authoritarian state government, but it might fool an opportune stalker or two.
The Android version of Google and Apple’s COVID-19 exposure notification app had a privacy flaw that let other preinstalled apps potentially see sensitive data, including if someone had been in contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19, privacy analysis firm AppCensus revealed on Tuesday. Google says it’s currently rolling out a fix to the bug.
The bug cuts against repeated promises from Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and numerous public health officials that the data collected by the exposure notification program could not be shared outside of a person’s device.
AppCensus first reported the vulnerability to Google in February, but the company failed to address it, The Markup reported. Fixing the issue would be as simple as deleting a few nonessential lines of code, Joel Reardon, co-founder and forensics lead of AppCensus, told The Markup. “It’s such an obvious fix, and I was flabbergasted that it wasn’t seen as that,” Reardon said.
Updates to address the issue are “ongoing,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in an emailed statement to The Markup. “We were notified of an issue where the Bluetooth identifiers were temporarily accessible to specific system level applications for debugging purposes, and we immediately started rolling out a fix to address this,” he said.
The exposure notification system works by pinging anonymized Bluetooth signals between a user’s phone and other phones that have the system activated. Then, if someone using the app tests positive for COVID-19, they can work with health authorities to send an alert to any phones with corresponding signals logged in the phone’s memory.
On Android phones, the contract tracing data is logged in privileged system memory, where it’s inaccessible to most software running on the phone. But apps that are preinstalled by manufacturers get special system privileges that would let them access those logs, putting sensitive contact-tracing data at risk. There is no indication any apps have actually collected that data at this point, Reardon said.
Preinstalled apps have taken advantage of their special permissions before — other investigations show that they sometimes harvest data like geolocation information and phone contacts.
The analysis did not find any similar issues with the exposure notification system on iPhone.
The problem is an implementation issue and not inherent to the exposure notification framework, Serge Egelman, the chief technology officer at AppCensus, said in a statement posted on Twitter. It should not erode trust in public health technologies. “We hope the lesson here is that getting privacy right is really hard, vulnerabilities will always be discovered in systems, but that it’s in everyone’s interest to work together to remediate these issues,” Egelman said.
SideQuest has launched an Android app that lets you do the same neat trick as its desktop app: sideload VR content from outside the official Oculus Store onto your Quest or Quest 2 VR headset. The free app, which releases today, lets you browse SideQuest’s offerings and transfer content over Wi-Fi or a USB cable. That means you don’t need a PC to install VR games, demos, and apps from SideQuest’s community.
SideQuest’s storefront is full of games and apps that are worth trying. Some that I’ve enjoyed recently include Gorilla Tag, a free game that launched on SideQuest (now available via Oculus’ App Lab for early access titles) that’s gotten some well-deserved attention. You play as a gorilla, and you play tag, but the controls and graphical style make it unique and hilarious. Also, there’s a free, fan-made mod that moves your Doom 3 install in its entirety from your Steam folder to the Quest headset, with excellent VR controls and graphics that seem to rival what my colleague Sam Byford experienced in the PSVR version.
If you want to get started, this YouTube video below from the Cas and Chary VR channel walks through all of the steps. I highly recommend following along with the video, as the process is easy but not exactly cut-and-dry.
Compared to Oculus’ highly curated Store, SideQuest provides developers an alternative to seeking app approval from Oculus so they can more easily release free projects or list paid ones that link out to a third-party store like Itch.io or Patreon. Recently, Oculus launched App Lab, which lets developers distribute games through its platform but without a public store listing. You’ll find several of those linked within SideQuest as well.
If you have an Android phone and a Quest headset, this is a must-try and an easy way to get more use out of your VR headset.
Amazon is overhauling its tablet lineup today with new Fire HD 10 models alongside refreshed options for kids.
The $149.99 Fire HD 10 now looks much more in line with what you’d expect from a modern tablet, with a thinner design and slimmed-down bezels on all four sides. The RAM has been boosted by 50 percent to 3GB, and Amazon says the 1080p screen is brighter than before. It runs on what Amazon describes as a “powerful octa-core processor,” though it’s unclear what — if any — improvement this represents over the 2Ghz octa-core chip that failed to impress us in the last model.
Speaking of performance, Amazon is also introducing its “most powerful 10-inch tablet ever,” the Fire HD 10 Plus. This model has 4GB of RAM, a soft touch finish, and wireless charging, though again Amazon isn’t giving details on the processor. Like the Fire HD 8 Plus, there’s an optional made-for-Amazon wireless charging dock, this time made by Anker. The HD 10 Plus costs $30 more than the non-Plus model, at $179.99.
The Fire HD 10 Plus with keyboard case.
Amazon’s tablets aren’t normally associated with productivity, but the company is making a go of it with the new Fire HD 10 range. The tablets will be available in “Productivity Bundles” including Fintie-designed keyboard cases and a one-year subscription to Microsoft 365; the bundles start at $219.99 and the keyboards will cost $49.99 as standalone purchases. Amazon has also added a new split-screen multitasking feature to Fire OS.
As for the kids lineup, Amazon is introducing a whole new range of tablets called Fire Kids Pro. (Clearly, only the most professional kids need apply.) Available in 7-inch ($99.99), 8-inch ($139.99), and 10-inch ($199.99) versions, the Fire Kids Pro tablets have slim protective cases with built-in kickstands.
The Fire HD 10 Kids Pro.
Amazon says the Kids Pro’s home screen “looks and feels more like a ‘grown-up’ tablet,” and the browser has an option to provide “open but filtered” web access, with parents able to block or allow specific sites. There’s also an app store where kids are able to request app downloads that parents can approve later, and the tablets come with a year of Amazon’s Kids+ service for educational and entertainment content.
Amazon is also releasing a Kids Edition of the new Fire HD 10, which includes a “kid-proof” case, a two-year replacement warranty, and a year of Amazon Kids+. This model will sell for $199.99, and at launch Amazon is offering a 30-percent discount if you buy two of them.
All of Amazon’s new tablets will start shipping on May 26th.
For the first time, Spotify is letting podcasters on its platform offer subscriptions to their shows. The company announced its paid podcast subscription product for the US today, which will initially allow select partners who host their shows on Anchor to charge for content. Twelve independent shows, including Tiny Leaps, Big Changes and Mindful in Minutes, will offer bonus subscriber-only content, and NPR will launch ad-free versions of popular shows. A waitlist will open today, so podcasters can sign up to be included in the expanded rollout in the coming months, which will include international market availability. Notably, no Spotify-owned shows will go behind a subscription wall at first.
Podcasters won’t have to pay Spotify anything for the first two years. Creators will, however, have to cover the cost of transaction fees through Spotify’s payment partner Stripe. In 2023, Spotify will begin taking a 5 percent cut of total subscription revenue. That’s significantly less than Apple will charge; its new subscription service will take 15 to 30 percent of revenue. Podcasters have three monthly pricing options to choose from: $2.99, $4.99, or $7.99.
Paid content on Spotify will be demarcated by a lock icon where a play button typically shows up. To unlock the show, potential subscribers will have to navigate to the program’s dedicated Anchor landing webpage. Podcasters can choose to point them to that link wherever they want — such as their show notes, episode descriptions, or bio. Basically, they want to put the link anywhere and everywhere to ensure people can find it.
Notably, though, Spotify won’t have a big subscribe button at the top of every podcast page, and you won’t be able to subscribe directly within the app. Those limitations could make it harder for podcasts to sign up new subscribers. (This also means Spotify won’t have to pay Apple for any subscriptions sold under its App Store terms.) Apple’s subscription podcasts, on the other hand, will let you subscribe from right within its app.
The Anchor backend will allow podcasters to choose the content they want behind a paywall.Spotify
Subscribers can listen to paid podcasts inside of Spotify or in a third-party app through a private RSS feed. Podcasters will not receive the names, email addresses, or any other personal information about their subscribers. Mike Mignano, head of podcaster mission, tells The Verge that Spotify is open to feedback and considering different ways to make that subscriber / podcaster relationship stronger.
“It’s crucial to our model that we explore ways for creators to connect deeper with their subscribers, so you can anticipate us to be sharing more in the space soon,” he says. Content also does not need to be exclusive to Spotify.
All of this means that, yes, NPR will be using Anchor as a hosting service for its ad-free Spotify subscription shows, like Planet Money Plus. Planet Money is already available on Spotify for free, as it is on other podcasting apps, but Planet Money Plus will be a separate show page where the paid content lives. Anchor hosting is still free to use, and Mignano says the company plans to keep it that way, meaning some podcasters might decide to operate a separate feed off of Anchor to provide paid content within Spotify.
As for why anyone would want to make this effort, Mignano emphasizes that Spotify takes no cut of revenue at first and only a small cut starting in 2023 and that having paid content built into Spotify means a better chance of having content discovered. If people search for a type of specific show, a subscription podcast could show up and gain a paid follower. He also suggests Spotify could curate suggestions of shows that people might want to pay to hear. He also says, because this can all go through Anchor, the subscriptions shouldn’t require extra work.
“I view this as additive and in no way as an additional, or burdensome, step on behalf of the creator,” he says.
That said, it’s the only way to get subscription content onto Spotify for the time being since the app doesn’t support private RSS feeds. If a podcaster already runs a subscription business elsewhere but wants to offer their paid content on Spotify, they’ll have to start using Anchor in addition to their usual hosting provider. This also means managing a separate backend system for analytics. Apple Podcasts also just announced its own proprietary subscription service that requires podcasters to use its backend to host paid content.
Along with the subscription news, Spotify also announced plans to eventually launch a way for podcasters who already run a subscription business outside Spotify to bring it into the app. It isn’t totally clear how this will work, and when asked whether Spotify will simply support private RSS feeds, which it currently doesn’t, Mignano says, “it’s new technology that we’re building now.” The team is working with select, but undisclosed, partners to make this work and will be detailing the technology in the future.
The company also provided an update on its ad marketplace and says, on May 1st, certain Anchor users will be able to make their show eligible to receive ads through Megaphone, the company’s other hosting service and ad marketplace provider. These ads can only be inserted through Spotify’s Streaming Ad Insertion technology, meaning that the ads these podcasters receive will only populate when their listeners are streaming through Spotify. (Anchor’s sponsorships feature, which encourages hosts to read ads for products and receive a portion of the revenue, still exists, however, and works across platforms.)
The bigger podcast players are becoming increasingly interested in owning all parts of the podcasting ecosystem. Apple has historically taken a mostly hands-off role in the space, which has still somehow resulted in Apple Podcasts being the dominant listening app, but it’s now interested in making money off podcasters by taking a cut of any subscription revenue made on the platform. Spotify is not only interested in selling ads, but also subscriptions, and companies like Amazon and Google also seem to be interested in the ad-selling portion of the business. Although RSS has fueled the industry’s growth, it’s increasingly seeming like podcasters will have to operate various feeds on various hosting services and platforms to build out a full business.
Microsoft Teams is down and experiencing an outage worldwide for many users. The issues started at around 6:30AM this morning, and are blocking connectivity for lots of Microsoft Teams users across Europe and Asia. Microsoft is aware of the issues and is currently investigating the route cause.
“We’ve confirmed that this issue affects users globally,” says Microsoft’s 365 status account on Twitter. “We’re reviewing monitoring telemetry and recent changes to isolate the source of the issue.”
Some Microsoft Teams users are reporting 401 error codes when attempting to access the service via the web, while others appear to see Teams and channels but are unable to send messages. Others may still be logged into the service, but Microsoft warns they “may experience degraded performance with multiple features” and that “any user could be affected by this issue.”
We’ve confirmed that this issue affects users globally. We’re reviewing monitoring telemetry and recent changes to isolate the source of the issue. More information can be found under TM252802 in the admin center.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) April 27, 2021
This is the second Microsoft Teams outage this month, following issues with the service at the beginning of April. Microsoft also experienced Teams problems for more than four hours last month, after an authentication change knocked out access to the communications app. Azure Active Directory also experienced issues as part of last month’s outage, alongside Office web apps, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and other Microsoft services.
It appears Microsoft’s service issues are limited to Teams this morning, with no other signs of Azure, Xbox Live, Office, or other services experiencing issues.
The European Commission will issue antitrust charges against Apple over concerns about the company’s App Store practices, according to a report from the Financial Times. The commission has been investigating whether Apple has broken EU competition rules with its App Store policies, following an initial complaint from Spotify back in 2019 over Apple’s 30 percent cut on subscriptions.
The European Commission opened up two antitrust investigations into Apple’s App Store and Apple Pay practices last year, and the Financial Times only mentions upcoming charges on the App Store case. It’s not clear yet what action will be taken.
Spotify has previously claimed Apple uses its App Store to stifle innovation and limit consumer choice in favor of its own Apple Music service. Rakuten filed a similar complaint to the EU last year, alleging that it’s anti-competitive for Apple to take a 30 percent commission on ebooks sold through the App Store while promoting its own Apple Books service.
Known as the “Apple tax,” this 30 percent cut has long been targeted by companies like Netflix and Spotify. Apple has defended its policies, arguing that the revenue it earns contributes toward the costs of maintaining the App Store and enforcing its content, privacy, and security guidelines.
Epic Games also filed an antitrust complaint with the EU earlier this year, as part of its ongoing dispute with Apple. The Fortnite developer has publicly criticized Apple’s App Store policies around distribution and payments, resulting in Epic attempting to circumvent Apple’s 30 percent cut on in-app purchases in Fortnite. Apple quickly removed the game from its App Store, and a legal battle is now in progress.
Despite Apple’s defense of its App Store, the iPhone-maker has already sought to ease pressure from regulators and developers with App Store policy changes over the past year. Apple now lets some video streaming apps bypass the App Store cut, and it has reduced its App Store commission rate to 15 percent for any developer that earns less than $1 million in annual revenue.
These changes alone haven’t been enough to ease the fears of EU regulators if the report from the Financial Times is accurate, and we’ll now find out later this week exactly how the European Union will respond to one of the United States’ biggest tech companies.
(Pocket-lint) – The Xiaomi Mi 11 range spans a significant spectrum from top-tier flagship, in the Mi 11 Ultra, to the standard Mi 11, down to the more entry level – which is where this, the Mi 11 Lite 5G, finds itself.
Despite plonking ‘Lite’ into its name, however, the Mi 11 Lite 5G really is not a low-power phone by any means. It’s just not as crazy-powerful as the upper echelons in the range. The second clue to that regard is the ‘5G’ aspect of the name – because, yes, there’s also speedy connectivity.
So if you’re not looking to spend a fortune on a phone, want 5G connectivity, and having a slimmer and easier-to-manage handset is high up your list of appeals, the Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite 5G ticks a lot of boxes. But then so do a bunch of competitors. So can this entry-level 5Ger deliver?
Design & Display
Display: 6.55-inch AMOLED panel, 90Hz refresh, 1080 x 2400 resolution
Finish options: Truffle Black, Mint Green, Citrus Yellow
Dimensions: 160.5 x 75.7 x 6.8mm / Weight: 157g
Side-mounted fingerprint scanner
No 3.5mm jack
Upon pulling the Mi 11 Lite 5G from its box we let out a rare gasp. Because, shown here in its apparent ‘Mint Green’ finish – it looks more ‘Bubblegum’ to us, which is the name for the non-5G variant – this handset looks really fresh and standout. Very dapper indeed.
That’s partly because Xiaomi has redesigned the range, so the Mi 11 Lite looks way more evolved than the previous 10T Lite version. Look at those side-by-side and the older model looks rather dated – it’s quite a stark difference. Yet there’s mere months between them in terms of release cycle.
That said, the Mi 11 Lite 5G is only a little like other Mi 11 handsets in terms of design. The cameras are far different to the Ultra’s “megabump”, arranged in a really neat format that, although similar to the Mi 11, doesn’t protrude to the same degree from the rear.
The rear finish is good at resisting fingerprints too, which is a breath of fresh air (minty fresh, eh!), while the branding is subtle and nicely integrated.
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But above all else, it’s the Mi 11 Lite 5G’s thickness that’s its biggest take-away point. By which we mean thinness: because this handset is far slimmer than, well, pretty much anything we’ve used for months and months. We can’t think of a slimmer 5G smartphone. That, for us, has bags of appeal – it’s been really refreshing not carting a brick around in the pocket for the couple of weeks we’ve been using this phone.
Such a svelte design means the 3.5mm headphone jack has been binned, though, so it’s wireless connectivity only in that regard. But we can take that – it makes the design look more enclosed and complete anyway. There’s also no under-display fingerprint scanner here, with a side-mounted one in the power button a perfectly acceptable alternative – that operates speedily and we’ve got very much used to using it.
The display, at 6.55-inches, is still large despite the phone’s overall trim frame. It’s flat, with the phone body curving gently at the edges to make it really comfortable to hold. And there’s no teardrop notch to cry about this time around either – it’s a single punch-hole one to the upper corner, which is fairly inconspicuous.
That screen, an AMOLED panel, delivers on colour, brightness and verve, while a 90Hz refresh rate can deliver a little added smoothness to proceedings. There’s not a 120Hz option here – kind-of odd, as the 10T Lite did have that – but, really, most eyes aren’t going to tell the difference. We’d take the battery life gains every time instead, thanks.
Performance & Battery
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G, 8GB RAM
Software: MIUI 12 over Google Android 11 OS
Battery: 4250mAh, 33W fast-charging
Storage: 128GB/256GB, microSD
Speaking of battery, that’s the first thing we assumed would be poor in the Mi 11 Lite 5G – because of how slim it is. But how wrong we were. For starters the 4,250mAh capacity cell is pretty capacious – and in our hands was easily able to deliver 16 hours a day with around 25 per cent battery or more remaining.
That’s been irrelevant of what we’ve asked the phone to do in a given day. Strava tracking for an hour and an hour of gaming in the evening, in addition to hours of screen time, calls and so forth. It’s no problem for this device. Note, however, that we’ve been unable to locate a 5G signal area during testing – lockdown and all that – so whether that would adversely affect battery life is for debate. What we do see in the settings, however, is a 5G option to toggle the connectivity off when it’s not needed, to further extend battery life.
However, while battery life ticks along just fine, part of the reason is down to the rather hardcore software approach. Xiaomi’s MIUI 12 – skinned over the top of Google’s Android 11 operating system – by default has a lot of “off” switches selected. Seriously, MIUI is hell-bent on ensuring battery lasts and lasts – sometimes to the detriment of the experience and use of apps.
As such, you’ll need to investigate individual apps within the settings and permit them to self wake as and when they need, removing any automated battery restrictions from the important ones that you have and would, say, expect push notifications from. In the past we’ve had MIUI cause delays with notifications in other Xiaomi phones. In the Mi 11 Lite 5G, however, that’s been no problem whatsoever – perhaps because we’re so used to it and in setting the software in how we want to conduct our business; or, perhaps, because Xiaomi has sorted that issue out in an incremental update!
Otherwise the software is pretty robust. There are some oddities, such as an additional Xiaomi store as an addition to Google Play, but the two hardly interfere too much. And having copied over a bumper crop of apps, it’s clear to see that there are Xiaomi pre-install favourites and various not-needed staples – browsers, calendars, that kind of stuff – that just clogs up the home screen to start with, but is easily replaced with Chrome and your other favourites.
Regarding the phone’s innards, there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G platform handling proceedings, putting the Mi 11 Lite 5G one step down from the top-tier 800 series platform. Does that really matter? We’ve not found it to at all. From general user interface use, to app opening time, fluidity has been high throughout.
Besides, a 700 series chipset is more than good enough to run your more demanding favourites too. We’ve been plugging away at South Park: Phone Destroyer and PUBG: Mobile without hindrance, showing just how good the balance of power and battery life can be in devices such as this.
Wide-angle (0.5x): 8MP, f/2.2, 1.12µm, 119-degree angle of view
Macro: 5MP, f/2.4
Single front-facing punch-hole selfie camera: 20MP, f/2.2
Buy a ‘Lite’ phone and you’re never going to expect too much from the cameras, right? However, Xiaomi has done a reasonable job here of balancing things out. For starters all three lenses are actually useful – there’s not a lens here for the sake of number count, like with so much of the competition.
The main 64-megapixel sensor uses four-in-one processing to output 16-megapixel shots as standard, which hold enough colour and detail. Even in low-light conditions we’ve found the quality to hold up fairly well, too, so this sensor delivers the goods.
It’s a shame that there’s no optical stabilisation on the main lens, because holding it steady – especially when shooting Night Mode shots – is tricky and can result in a little softeness in dim conditions if you’re not careful.
Pocket-lint
: Wide-angle – full shotWide-angle – full shot
The wide-angle, however, is a weaker sensor. It’s just 8-megapixels in resolution, can’t deliver the fidelity of the main one by any means, and displays some blur to the edges. That’s pretty common for wide-angle cameras, sure, but there are better iterations around. Still, there’s practical use from a sensor such as this, so it’s a positive to have it rather than not.
Last up out of the trio is a macro sensor. Now, typically, these are throwaway afterthoughts. But, actually, the one on this Mi handset is acceptable – probably because it’s a 5-megapixel sensor, not the 2-megapixel type that too many other budget handsets opt for. That means images are of a usable scale, and you’ll get a little extra something out of super close-up shots from this sensor. We doubt you’ll use it a lot, though, as it’s hardly a practical everydayer, plus its activation is tucked away in settings – but there’s fun to be had from it nonetheless.
What we like about the Mi 11 Lite 5G’s camera setup is that it’s not trying to oversell you a bunch of pointless lenses. It doesn’t protrude five miles from the back of the phone, either, delivering a neat-looking handset that, while hardly reaching for the stars in what it can do, is perfectly capable. And, compared to the likes of the Moto G100, for example, the Xiaomi actually has the upper hand in its image quality delivery.
Verdict
Although the Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite 5G looks and feels different to the rest of the Mi 11 family, there’s something refreshing about its design. It’s really slim, light, and that colour finish looks super. We can’t think of a slimmer, tidier-looking 5G handset – which makes this something of a unique proposition.
Despite being called a ‘Lite’ phone, it shouldn’t be seen entirely in that regard either. With the Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G handling everything, there’s ample power to keep that 90Hz AMOLED screen ticking along, for battery life to last surprisingly long – we didn’t expect it, given the trim design – and software that, if you tend to it with a bit of pruning from the off, has been more robust here than many other Xiaomi handsets we’ve seen in the recent past.
However, forego the 5G need, and there are lots of cheaper competitors that might also appeal, such as the Redmi Note 10 Pro. Similar grade handsets, such as the Moto G100, may also appeal – but, as far as we understand it, the Xiaomi undercuts that device’s price point, asserting its position as one of the top dogs in the affordable 5G market.
Also consider
Moto G100
A near-ish comparison in that there’s 5G and gaming-capable power for less than a flagship price. We prefer the Moto’s software, but the Xiaomi’s design has the upper hand in our view.
Apple now lets you add augmented-reality lasers, confetti, and more to your Clips videos, thanks to an update to the short-form video app. The feature, called AR Spaces, will let users with LIDAR-equipped Apple devices (so far, that’s the iPhone 12 Pros and iPad Pros from 2020 or later) add room-filling effects that can interact with walls and floors. (If you watched Apple’s April 20th event, you may have spotted a brief look at the update ahead of today’s release.)
You can get an idea of what this will look like in action with this GIF taken from Apple’s demo video.
The Prism and Dance Floor effects.Image: Apple
Apple says that the AR Spaces effects should work with the other effects built in to Clips, such as the animated stickers and emoji, if you want to add even more to your videos. The update to the app can be downloaded now from the App Store.
The Clips update is Apple’s latest experiment with AR, in which the company has a keen interest. The company released an AR experience tie-in for its show For All Mankind in February, and CEO Tim Cook discussed some of his thoughts about AR tech in an interview earlier this month. There are also rumors that Apple is working on a full-fledged AR / VR headset.
Apple has just released macOS 11.3, alongside iOS 14.5. It’s probably worth updating your Mac to it as soon as you can — not only because it comes with some new features, including improvements for running iPhone and iPad apps on M1 Macs and updates to Apple Music and Podcasts, but it also fixes a major security flaw.
The update reportedly patches a vulnerability that allowed malware to bypass many of macOS’s built-in protections, like File Quarantine and GateKeeper’s opening dialog box. While Apple’s built-in anti-malware system could still block malicious programs if Apple were aware of them, enterprise software company Jamf did find evidence that the security flaw was being exploited by attackers.
Apple also details a slew of other security fixes that are included with the latest update on its security update page. Catalina and Mojave have received security patches as well, for those who haven’t yet updated to Big Sur.
Aside from security updates, one of the biggest new improvements in 11.3 (at least for owners of M1 Macs) is the ability to resize iPhone and iPad app windows. Apple’s also added keyboard, mouse, and trackpad support for games that are compatible with controllers.
The infinity symbol in the queue controls the Autoplay feature.
Apple has also added autoplay to the Music app — a feature which is either great or annoying depending on your mood. After you reach the end of a song or playlist, Apple Music will continue playing music that it thinks is similar (thankfully, it can be turned off if you’re just looking to listen to one specific song). The News and Podcasts apps also have redesigned pages to make them easier to use (with the former getting a reworked search feature — something that’s exciting to me, and possibly no one else).
The update also adds many of the features that are in iOS 14.5: the ability to track AirTags using the Find My app, new emoji and Siri voices, and support for the Xbox Series X / S and PlayStation 5 DualSense controllers. You can visit Apple’s site to see the entire list of updates and features.
Twitter is adding a new prompt to users’ timelines to help promote the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination effort, providing users around the world with the “latest vaccine info” in their particular country.
The new notice appears as a massive unmissable box at the top of users’ Twitter feeds on the iOS and Android apps, prompting users to “make sure you have the most up-to-date information on the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccinations.” (The prompt is so large that on my iPhone 12 Pro, it obscured all but a single tweet when I opened the app.)
Tapping that link takes you to a new Twitter event page with information about the vaccines, shown as a series of collected tweets from organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least in the US. The guide is broken up into several sections, into details on vaccine efficacy, potential side effects, advice for pregnant people, and more.
As COVID-19 vaccinations become more widely available, we want you to have access to the latest vaccine info in your country.
This week you’ll see a prompt in your timeline that links to sources about vaccine safety, efficacy, and news from public health experts.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) April 26, 2021
It’s the latest effort by a major tech company to help promote the COVID-19 vaccines and provide useful and accurate information to users. Facebook has recently added state-by-state vaccination information to its News Feed for US users, for example, while YouTube is running an ad campaign of PSAs to encourage people to get their shots.
Apple has begun rolling out iOS and iPadOS 14.5. The latest software update includes the new App Tracking Transparency feature, which lets users decide whether to allow apps to track their activity “across other companies’ apps and websites” for advertising purposes. A pop-up will now appear whenever apps are designed to share your activity in this way. Facebook has heavily criticized Apple over App Tracking Transparency, claiming that it presents “a false tradeoff between personalized ads and privacy.” The new option could have a detrimental impact on Facebook’s ad business.
Perhaps more important to day-to-day iPhone usage, iOS 14.5 also includes a very helpful and timely new trick: if you own an Apple Watch, you can set your iPhone to automatically unlock without requiring a Face ID match or passcode as long as Apple’s smartwatch is on your wrist. This is designed to make getting into your phone that much quicker while we’re all still wearing face masks so frequently throughout the day. Installing watchOS 7.4 is necessary for this feature to work; that update is also available as of today.
iOS and iPadOS 14.5 include a ton of new emoji with a focus on inclusivity. The update adds the ability to watch Apple Fitness Plus workouts on a TV with AirPlay 2. Apple’s Podcasts app is getting a new design and optional subscriptions. The latest video game controllers for the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S are now supported on the iPhone and iPad as of this update. And all iPhone 12 models will allow for 5G connectivity in dual-SIM mode in more countries. Starting with the 14.5 update, Apple will no longer default to a female-sounding voice for its Siri assistant. Instead, you’ll be prompted to choose your preferred voice during device setup. Apple has a post up with all of the miscellaneous improvements and additions.
iOS and iPadOS 14.5 is rolling out to iPhone and iPad users now; you can check the “software update” section in settings to begin the update process right away.
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