Samsung Galaxy S20 , Jeff Bezos and the dark theme in WhatsApp: weekly summary

This week it turned out that it is not very difficult to hack the personal data of even a person like Jeff Bezos. All you need to do is to hack his WhatsApp, which also has its own 'holes'. But the messenger was marked with a dark theme, which is now available to some users who wish to use it. In addition, the latest data on the new Samsung Galaxy S20 appeared last week. It has some drawbacks, but it's still interesting to look at. There was other news as well. Let's discuss them in our traditional weekly news digest.

WhatsApp is convenient, but it also has its drawbacks.

New images of Galaxy S20 have appeared on the web. Not without drawbacks

Twitter – lixter from India Ishan Agarwal has published the official renders of the Galaxy S20. It's hard to say where he got them from. Perhaps on the local Indian social network or on the Chinese Weibo, but this is not as important as the presence of the renders themselves. Now we know everything about how the new Samsung products will look. And in truth, it's not that bad, but there are questions.

How good are the new S20s?

It's worth starting with what you liked. The Galaxy S20 Ultra looks great in my opinion due to the massive camera module. It makes the device expensive. Cameras, unlike iPhone 11 Pro, are neat and in line. I was especially pleased with the presence of 10x optical and 100x digital zoom. This was achieved thanks to the periscope camera developed by CorePhotonics. Previously, Oppo used a similar camera in its devices from the same manufacturer. One of these devices is the Oppo Reno, so for many such a camera will not be a revelation, if, of course, we consider that they will even know about the presence of a brand like Oppo.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra

My colleagues in the shop spoke negatively about the new look of the S20 Ultra, considering the device's camera too ridiculous and massive.

In truth, I have no idea how it could have been done so badly. This is really bad design. Even the ridiculous iPhone 11 Pro looks, in my opinion, much more interesting. All these massive cameras are something that smartphones shouldn't have. I don't understand why they are doing this. It's a phone, not a camera.

Renat Grishin, editor-in-chief Android Insider.ru

The head of i10, Mikhail Korolev, also expressed his opinion about the new Galaxy:

My colleague Renat said that the new ones iPhone externally are not ok. And I agree with him. Samsung is trying to step on the same rake now. They started with small rims, which people began to call 'islets', and now all this is turning into continents. Don't get me wrong, smartphones should look neat and aesthetically pleasing.

The author of the materials Ivan Kuznetsov did not stand aside, who entered into a local dispute in our working chat:

I don't like the S20 Ultra. And indeed the whole line. We are discussing new ones here iPhone, they are also strange. The trend for massive cameras seems superfluous to me, there are many things that can be changed in smartphones, but why disfigure cameras like that?

On the contrary, it seems to me that this is the only thing that might be pleasant in the new flagships. Plus, a 100x zoom is cool. I wonder what our readers think about this.

Samsung Galaxy S20

Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus

Okay, let's move on. If Ultra is still fashionable to argue, then with the S20 and S20 Plus everything is not so simple. It seems that they deliberately made the bezel of the cameras less attractive so as not to put them on a par with the S20 Ultra. In real life, all three devices will look better due to the fact that they will receive a glass case. The renders are of poor quality, so the glass effect is not observed.

Even so, it seems that even so, the S20 and S20 Plus will look as cheap as the new Galaxy A smartphones: Galaxy A51 and A71. At least, if someone said that these are budget line devices, it would be worth believing.

Samsung Galaxy S20

Now a little about prices. The company will likely sell both 5G device versions as well as regular 4G variants. According to rumors, the cost of the Galaxy S20 with 4G will start at 900 euros (this is about 62 thousand rubles), but 5G – the option will be estimated at 1000 euros (68 thousand rubles). The Galaxy S20 Plus will sell in Europe for $ 1,000, 5G – the version will cost $ 1,100. But for the Galaxy S20 Ulta, they will ask for $ 1,350. The Ulta version with 512 gigabytes of internal memory will cost 1,550 euros (106 thousand rubles).

Galaxy S10e at the start of sales in Russia was estimated at 56,990 rubles, while in Europe it cost 779 euros. The phone has become more expensive by 120 euros, which is not so little. The 512GB version of the Galaxy S10 Plus was priced at 1299 euros last year. This year a similar Ultra will cost 1550. The difference is already 250 euros. It is not entirely clear what is the reason for the rise in price, given that smartphones look almost identical externally.

Every year, manufacturers raise the bar for flagship smartphones with the goal of being the best and offering the best and coolest to the market. But such a race has led to the fact that consumers simply do not have the money to afford the cheapest flagship for 900 euros. Even if we take into account that every year inflation in the world market is 1-2%, this should not lead to such a rise in prices. The global economy cannot weaken in a year to such an extent that Samsung increases the price of the base S20 by 120 euros.

Perhaps the company did this so that they did not compete with the Lite versions of the flagships. But in this case, it is not clear who will buy the flagships if no one can afford them due to their price.

Plus, the foldable Galaxy Z Flip, which will go on sale in early February, is expected to cost around $ 850, making it a more attractive option compared to the cheapest S20. Samsung shoots itself in the foot, no matter how strange it sounds.

It is interesting to know the opinion of the readers. How do you feel about new products from Samsung? Leave your comments below under this post and do not forget about our Telegram.

On Android it will be possible to run applications without installation. Straight out of the cloud

Despite the fact that users are gradually beginning to lose interest in processor cores, gigahertz and gigabytes, giving priority to other features of smartphones, no one wants to buy a frankly weak device. After all, he not only will not receive fresh updates, because the manufacturer will declare it insufficiently productive to pull out all the innovations, but it will not even be able to run more or less demanding games and applications. But thinking this way in the cloud era is, of course, a big mistake.

Cloud technology may soon replace iron

Canonical has announced a cloud platform for launching Android applications without the need to install them called Anbox Cloud. Unlike Quick Apps, which still downloads a small amount of data to the device in order to be able to launch a fragment of a program or game, Canonical's solution works exclusively with the cloud. In fact, it offers to run applications and games on remote servers and relay the picture to the user's device.

The ability to run applications in the cloud has been asking for a long time, but it may soon become a reality

By and large, there is nothing outstanding in this idea. Today, all streaming gaming services operate on this principle. Their creators decided that the speed of wireless Internet today is high enough to transmit a picture from remote servers to user devices. After all, not everyone has computers that could pull out the latest novelties of the gaming world, not to mention smartphones, on which even GTA V would hardly have gone without lags. However, Canonical has gone further and risks revolutionizing the mobile app market.

Anbox Cloud will allow developers to create mobile games and applications that require even more memory and a powerful processor to run them. But since they will still run on powerful Canonical servers, even owners of inexpensive devices who previously did not have such an opportunity can use them. But why then did no one think to do this earlier?

The fact is that cloud applications are rather poorly protected from third-party interference. However, Canonical's developers managed to solve this problem. To do this, it was decided to take the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS kernel and the container system, which creates an isolated environment for all applications that the server provides. As a result, it is no longer so easy to break this environment, because all data that is transferred to the remote connection is reliably protected by a kind of shell. But the main difficulty is the lack of equipment that can securely deliver data from the cloud application to the user.

Canonical is now partnering with Packet, a developer cloud infrastructure provider with the right hardware. However, for widespread adoption of a platform that allows you to run applications in the cloud, Packet is likely to be insufficient. Moreover, Canonical plans to implement this scenario not only for mobile devices, but also for computers. This, in fact, will make powerful hardware completely useless and, obviously, will lead us to a new cloudy future.

So far, the Canonical project undoubtedly looks like a utopia. It's hard to believe that yesterday we still spent a thousand dollars on flagship smartphones in order to be able to run advanced applications and games, and tomorrow we can buy any state employee for $ 50 and play RDR2, GTA V, and much more on it. After all, even if this idea is feasible, it is logical to assume that manufacturers of processors, memory and other components will strongly oppose the creation of such platforms that may well leave them bankrupt.

Can iPhone be hacked via WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a mega-convenient communication tool that is used by two billion people around the world. How it happened is hard to say. But due to the fact that the messenger had such a wide audience, the snowball effect worked, because of which new users literally stick themselves. After all, what's the point of switching to a more fashionable messenger, if all your friends stayed in it? That is why, for most users, the question of giving up WhatsApp is not even worth it. Founder Amazon Jeff Bezos once thought so. And completely in vain.

Apparently Jeff Bezos will no longer use WhatsApp

Jeff Bezos' smartphone was hacked using a malicious file sent via WhatsApp, writes The Guardian. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, is believed to be the likely sender of the virus. This information is not confirmed, however, the newspaper's interlocutors, close to the situation, claim that everything was exactly like that. True, it is not yet very clear whether Salman himself knew that he was sending his interlocutor a secret hacking tool.

Communication with the Arab crown prince turned into big trouble for Bezos

The situation was as follows. In 2018, Bezos and Salman communicated via WhatsApp, and Salman sent his interlocutor a video that contained a hidden malicious file. After he got on Bezos's device, he immediately established a connection with the servers of his creators and within only a few hours sent them a colossal amount of confidential data of the entrepreneur stored in his smartphone. What exactly this data was is not specified.

A quick analysis of the problem showed that the infection of smartphones via WhatsApp occurs through a specially configured MP4 video. It got to the victim's device, after which it began to systematically send information to the buffer, this provoked its overflow and freeze, as a result of which it opened a backdoor for attackers to access the internal memory of the messenger and the infected device. All that remained for the hackers was to simply send all the data from the built-in storage to their servers, and then study it.

As it turned out, the backdoor could be opened not only in Android, but also in iOS, which endangered a huge number of users around the world. This was even confirmed Facebook, specifying that modifying files is, in principle, a very confusing phenomenon that even the most secure operating systems are unable to resist. Nevertheless, the developers reacted rather quickly and released an update with a bug fix.

But the irony of this story lies in the fact that information about a bug that allowed hacking users' smartphones via WhatsApp got publicly available only in November 2019, and Jeff Bezos was hacked back in 2018. It turns out that either the WhatsApp developers are so incompetent that their lack of professionalism led to the fact that such attacks were carried out without hindrance for a whole year, or WhatsApp is really a breeding ground for bugs and vulnerabilities, which is a real tracking tool for anyone who has sufficient qualifications. .

The WhatsApp beta for Android has a night theme. How to turn on

For a long time, the night theme was one of the key topics that users discussed and developers tried to implement. It seems that not even a week has passed without us writing about the possibility of changing the color scheme of the interface in the next application by transferring the design to dark tones. Surprisingly, it was these materials that were most popular with our readers, who, with genuine joy, rushed to activate the night theme at home. However, over time, this topic has exhausted itself and has ceased to interest well, almost everyone. Except for WhatsApp users.

WhatsApp finally has a night theme

Despite the fact that rumors about the appearance of the night theme in WhatsApp have been circulating for quite a long time, the developers have only now decided to implement it, and then only in the test version of the messenger. Most likely, the whole point is that the innovation is subject to additional tests with the participation of a wide range of users who may notice certain flaws. After all, contrary to popular belief, in order to implement a night theme into an application, it is not enough just to write it in its code, but it is necessary to redraw many interface elements that may not be seen against a dark background.

For now, the night theme is only available in the beta version of WhatsApp

If you can't wait to try out the night theme in WhatsApp for Android, you will have to install the beta version of the messenger, since the developers do not put any obstacles to it. This can be done in two ways: legal and not entirely legal. The first provides for mandatory registration in the beta testing program. To do this, you need to follow this link and confirm your participation, after which you will be offered a link to download a test version of WhatsApp from Google Play. True, be prepared for the fact that it will replace the release one and you will have to leave the program for castling back.

The second way is easier. It involves the banal installation of an APK file of a test version of WhatsApp, which the developers were able to isolate. It can be downloaded from this link. But here you also need to be prepared for the fact that its installation will replace the already installed messenger. And in order to return everything as it was, you need to remove the beta version and install the usual one from Google Play. This option is not much simpler than the first, but it requires the installation of a potentially unsafe APK file. Therefore, we recommend using the first one.

• To enable the night theme in WhatsApp manually, launch the messenger and go to the context menu;
• Open 'Settings' and find the 'Chats' section;

Left – light theme, right – night

• In the window that opens, go to the 'Themes' tab and activate the dark theme;
• On smartphones with Android 10, the night theme in WhatsApp will turn on when the system night theme is activated.

It is difficult for us to judge how comfortable the night theme is for perception. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but the dark colors of the interface make my eyes water and not only do not soothe them, but, on the contrary, only make it worse. Therefore, the only scenario in which the use of a night theme can be justified is energy savings. The fact is that AMOLED – screens practically do not apply voltage to those LEDs that are responsible for displaying dark colors, due to which the autonomy of the smartphone increases quite significantly.

Xiaomi a state employee wants to sell under the guise of a flagship

Xiaomi is known not only for its ability to produce extremely cheap smartphones, but also for real killers of flagship killers. So, on August 22, 2018, the company released the Pocophone Poco F1 smartphone. It was marketed as an unlinked phone Xiaomi. The company wanted to make a kind of analogue of the OnePlus line, which is owned by Oppo. And she did it, because the device was very popular in Russia. In the future, the company for some reason decided not to release new Poco smartphones and only now they started talking about it again, because a few days ago it officially announced its return to the market. Probably preparing for the release of Poco F2, which, let's say right away, will disappoint many.

Xiaomi a state employee wants to sell under the guise of a flagship

The problem is very simple, Poco F2 appeared on the Indian Bureau for Indian Standards (BIS) website. The device model (M1912G7BI) is the same as the Redmi K30 4G model (M1912G7BC and M1912G7BE). The differences in the last letter are related to the region where the device will be sold, but not to the device itself. The 'I' at the end means targeting the Indian market.

It is not yet completely clear which device in the new Poco lineup will become an analogue Redmi of the K30, however, most likely, we are talking about Poco F2. Redmi The K30 is powered by a Snapdragon 730G processor, a 6.67-inch FHD IPS display with a camera cutout, a 64MP camera, 6/8 GB of RAM, and 64/256 GB of internal storage. This is undoubtedly a budget gadget, which, although it received a display with a refresh rate of 120 Hz, at the same time has a number of disadvantages even in comparison with last year's Redmi K20. We've already covered why the Redmi K30 is a failing phone. Of course, it is also worth noting its good camera with the Sony IMX686 module, but its shortcomings, one of which is the IPS display technology, can become a serious problem for many consumers.

Even if we assume that we are talking about the Lite version, it is not entirely clear why we are slipping a phone that is already on the market. Surely Poco will be sold in Russia, so everything that is relevant for the Indian market will be relevant for ours. Poco F1 at one time was a full-fledged gadget that did not even outwardly repeat smartphones Xiaomi, but now we are offered under the guise of a smartphone of the Poco line some kind of budget phone with a bad screen. What for? Let's discuss this in Telegram.

Many people don't know, but the Poco F1 uses a full-fledged face scanner with an infrared sensor. The same technology is used by Apple and other flagship manufacturers in their phones, in the case of Redmi K30 they do not offer us anything like that. In addition, these two front cameras in Redmi K30, between which the black area is part of the screen and is only programmatically painted black, simply kill the whole picture. Many K30 owners note that at night, when the black background is more visible, these cameras stand out against the background of a software insert between them, which creates the feeling of using a cheap device, although it is difficult to call it very cheap.

Xiaomi sometimes makes good devices, but, as a rule, after a successful model, the new version turns out to be not so good in terms of value for money. For example, Redmi 5 after the release of Redmi 6 seemed more attractive, it had a more capacious battery, a Snapdragon processor (in Redmi 6 MTK) , and the frame of the device seemed much smaller than in Redmi 6. The situation with the K30 is similar to this one. And using the K30 as a next-generation device in Poco's lineup could cause a wave of anger towards Xiaomi.

It is clear that in this way she is trying to maneuver, getting as much profit as possible and taking advantage of the popularity of the Poco line, but this is not an ideal scenario. In place Xiaomi, we would offer much more interesting devices in the Poco line with a completely different design that would appeal to residents of the whole world, not just Chinese.

It is interesting to know your opinion. Share it in the comments to this publication.