Chatbot support rolling out soon to the Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+ Messages app

Chatbot support will soon be coming to the Samsung Galaxy S9's default Messages app. So far this seems to only support AT&T devices, but it is very likely to be rolled out to more carriers and devices soon. This is a feature of RCS, which is the same technology behind Google's upcoming Chat service. We have obtained screenshots of the feature from the SamCentral Discord Server and XDA Recognized Contributor Venom0642.

Discord member KenC first noticed this last week when he updated to a leaked version of Android 8.0 with the May Security patch. What he found was that the chatbots allow you to communicate with a company to help with shopping, planning trips, receiving the news, checking into flights, and more. You can do all of this without the need for a separate app. AT&T seemed to have released this for some Samsung devices in March, but they have added more chatbots. It doesn't seem like any other carriers support this yet.

So far, this supports 1-800-Flowers Assistant, 385Scores, CNN, HereWeGo Chat, JustAnswers 24-7 Experts, SkyScanner, SnapTravel, Stye Inspire, and Walgreens. These all allow you to communicate with the companies for information or questions. All of these accounts are verified too so you don't need to worry about scammers when communicating with Chatbots.

Venom0642 was able to install the latest leaked build of Android 8.0 with the May security patch and gain access to Chatbots. He was able to talk to the CNN Chatbot and get us some screenshots below. The CNN bot allows you to request daily news on certain topics and also get messages with breaking news.

All of this seems like a great addition to RCS and we are excited to see what happens in the future. With Google's announcement of Chat, this feature could be rolling out to Google Messages soon also, though we won't know until that actually happens.

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Developers can now register .app domains for their apps

For years, people thought the web was the future, but that was before smartphones and native applications surged in popularity. There are definitely benefits to both sides of the coin. Websites can be viewed on a plethora of different devices using the same code, while native applications tend to perform faster as they're built for specific platforms. Google is invested in both technologies but they have just launched a new top-level domain (TLD) specifically for applications and application developers.

You're likely already familiar with other TLDs such as .com, .net, .org, and .edu. The availability of TLDs was restricted for years but has recently been expanding. We're currently at 1,543 top-level domains as of April of this year. This list of internet top-level domains covers everything from countries to jobs and virtually everywhere in between. Google has their own TLD with the recently launched The Keyword blog at blog.google and now they have announced that .app is their latest TLD that can now be registered.

The target audience for the .app TLD is solely for applications and the developers behind those apps. With popular TLDs becoming flooded by squatters, it can be difficult to get the correct domain name for a new (or old) application. Google has other plans too though, as they're also working to make security a prominent feature with this new top-level domain. A major change here is that HTTPS is required in order to connect to all .app websites as that will help to protect against ad malware and tracking injection by ISPs.

However, to safeguard against spying on open WiFi networks Google has said that .app will be the first TLD with enforced security made available for general registration. From now until May 7th the .app TLD is available for those who want to pay extra and secure the domain name they want. Then on the 8th of this month registrations will be available to the general public through the registrar of your choice.

Google has also created the get.app website for you to see who's already on .app and to help choose a registrar partner to begin registering your domain.

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Source: The Keyword

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WhatsApp founder leaves company amidst privacy disputes with Facebook

Facebook shocked the world when they ended up acquiring the popular messaging service WhatsApp for a whopping $19 billion back in 2014. This spawned a lot of speculation about why the social network would spend so much to own a free messaging service. The leading concern was about owning, using and/or selling user data. As pressure mounted, Facebook came through and announced they would be protecting this data by partnering with Open Whisper Systems and enabling end-to-end encryption. However, it's now become known that the co-founder of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, will be parting ways with Facebook as they attempt to use WhatsApp's personal data and weaken its encryption.

Even with the threat that Facebook would eventually start to use data from WhatsApp users, the messaging service continued to grow. In February 2016 it was revealed that WhatsApp had surpassed 1 billion monthly active users and then in July of 2017 it was announced the service now has over 1 billion daily active users. It was around this time when the company pushed out an updated privacy policy that revealed Facebook had plans on how it could leverage the vast amount of data that it could collect with the service.

During this transition, Facebook got rid of its $0.99 per year fee while the co-founders of WhatsApp continued to protest against an advertising model to bring in revenue. Instead, the company thought a good compromise would be to let businesses create a profile and send messages to their customers. This is the goal of the newly launched WhatsApp Business service, but WhatsApp executives believe doing so would require some weakening of its encryption. However, it seems that Koum has been worn down with clashing opinions and also plans to step down from Facebook's board of directors.

It's also being reported that a number of WhatsApp employees are also feeling demoralized in their work environment and currently plan to leave the company in November. That will be the moment the employees will be able to exercise all their stock options under the terms of the Facebook deal. Koum says it's time for him to move on and focus on other pursuits, "such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on my cars and playing ultimate frisbee."

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Source: The Washington Post

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Here are five high-end Chromebooks in development to challenge the Pixelbook

Evidence is mounting that a new generation of Chromebooks will utilise high-end features not commonly seen in Chromebooks such as powerful CPUs, 16GB RAM, backlit keyboards, and high-resolution displays.

High-end Chromebooks are few and far between, with the Google Pixelbook being the lone device that is head-and-shoulders above the rest. Five high-performance Kaby Lake Chromebooks are currently in development that would bring competition to the Pixelbook for a much-needed refresh to the enterprise market.

When developing new Chromebooks, the Chrome OS developers speed-up progress by starting with a master board and then use variants of the board to create different flavours for different manufacturers. This is why you'll often see devices—like the education refresh we saw early 2018—come with similar specification sheets across the range. Manufacturers will sometimes source different parts (e.g. batteries from different suppliers), but the specification sheet will remain similar across that generation of Chromebooks.

We've been following a rather interesting "master board;" codename Nami. Everything about Nami and its different flavours point to high-end machines from Chrome OS's stalwart manufacturers. Here's what we know so far:

There are five flavours of Nami, developed under codenames: Akali, Nami, Pantheon, Sona, and Vayne. There are hints that Vayne is Dell's and Sona is HP's. The others are still a mystery. These five boards inherit some very interesting features from their parent board:

• • • Form factor: 360° convertible. Compared to the detachable announced by HP or the tablet by Acer, this is fairly vanilla for 2018 Chromebooks.
    • Screen: 2400×1600 panel, the same as what we've seen in the Pixelbook and the forthcoming HP x2. This could change for each variant, however, as the developers are working on just one engineering platform in these early days of development. [source]
    • CPU: Nami's variants will use high-wattage Kaby Lake chips, something we can infer from the fact that they have a fan profile to keep them cool. This means that these machines will be more powerful than their fanless counterparts. [source]
    • Memory: Based on Coreboot files, we'll have both 8GB and 16GB variants.
    • Keyboard: All variants except for Akali will have backlit keyboards.
    • Storage: At this stage, it looks like Nami variants could use either standard soldered eMMC or the faster and more expensive NVMe. It's too early to say for sure. [source]

No hint yet for stylus support, but that may come later. Beyond hard specifications, we can expect them to support Linux apps out of the box (it looks like all of the new Chromebooks like the HP x2 will). They will also have Wake on Voice support for Google Assistant [source].

The specifications point to an effort to fill the gap between the $550 Samsung Chromebook Pro and the $1000+ Pixelbook, and the number of devices in development mean more than a throwaway effort at prosumer devices. Google is steadily firming its grip in the education sector but has had little limelight in the enterprise sector.

The Lenovo Thinkpad 13 Chromebook, one of the latest enterprise Chromebooks, was released in 2016. Image source: Lenovo.com

The last enterprise Chromebooks launched in 2016 to little fanfare. But with Chrome Enterprise now on the scene, the Nami family could be another effort by Google to push into the enterprise space with enticing new hardware.

Release dates aren't confirmed. Development is still in early stages so we probably won't see them before Fall/Winter 2018, just as businesses start considering purchases to squeeze in before the end of the financial year. In the meantime, we'll continue tracking the exciting developments of Nami and friends.

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Honor View 10 Development Recap: New ROMs, Kernel, and Mods to try

Earlier this year the folks over at Honor announced the Honor Open Source Program for one of their newest smartphones, the Honor View 10. This was used as a way to give back the open source community while also providing ways to encouraged well-known developers to get their hands on the new device. Since then, we've seen a number of community developers start to work on the device. Today, we wanted to give you a development recap for the Honor View 10 that includes some new custom ROMs, custom kernels, and a couple of mods you should try out.

Honor View 10 ROMs

First up we have a preview build of CypherOS 6.0.0, which is considered to be an extension of AOSP. The goal of the developers is to maintain the purity of Android while also offering useful features for their users. These builds are updated and released weekly with new features, stability improvements, bug fixes, and more.

Another well known custom ROM now available for the Honor View 10 is another preview build but this time it is for the AICP 13.1 custom ROM. AICP is also known as the Ice Cold Project which started on the Desire HD back in 2012. The developers here use LineageOS as a base and then toss in some tweaks and features from AOSP.

The last custom ROM we'll be highlighting today is Cosmic-OS v3.1 – Universe, which is based on Android 8.1 Oreo and is currently in its 20th revision since release. The developers behind Cosmic-OS use AOSP as its base for this ROM and then they toss in some additional features while also working to improve both performance and battery life.

Honor View 10 Kernels & Mods

A very well known custom kernel has recently made its way to the Honor View 10 from XDA Senior Member eng.stk. Their kernel, known as blu_spark, for this device will work when running either EMUI 8.x or any Android 8.1 custom ROM. The kernel has an extensive list of features and changes including an FS fsync toggle, ARM enhanced performance, and battery patches, and more.

There are a couple of mods that we also wanted to showcase today with the first enabling a call recorder feature within the settings, Just flash the provided ZIP file within TWRP and you should see the setting option appear. There's also a mod (with an accompanying step by step guide) that shows you how to display your current data usage within the notification panel. This mod requires you to edit a certain file with root access and then change a line of code here before you can enable the feature in the device's settings application.

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TV or Tablet? Developer ports Android TV to the 18.4″ Samsung Galaxy View

Tablets can come in all shapes and sizes. Most tablets fall in the 7-10-inch range, but we've seen a few that push the boundaries. The Samsung Galaxy View is firmly in that discussion. This device has a whopping 18.4-inch display. You might think the size has more in common with a TV than a tablet. That's why XDA Recognized Contributor deadman96385 brought Android TV to the device.

Developers recently brought unofficial LineageOS 15.1 to the device. Now we're seeing LineageOS 15.1 TV, which is a port of Android TV. As you can see in the photos, this is the most recent version of Android TV with the revamped UI.

There are quite a few caveats if you're interested in this. First of all, Android TV was not designed for touchscreens, so you will need a Bluetooth controller. Netflix and Google Play Movies do not work, but you can sideload the phone version of Netflix. Casting to the tablet from other devices does not work. Check out the thread below for more issues and information.

Read more at the Samsung Galaxy View forum

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BLU Settles with the FTC Over Deceptive Privacy and Data Security Violations

Amidst all of the chaos surrounding ZTE and Huawei, another Android OEM is getting caught up in the mess. BLU has agreed to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), over allegations of misleading consumers and allowing a third-party Chinese company to collect personal details, such as text message contents and location information without knowledge or consent. When the news first came to light back in 2016, Amazon ceased sales of all BLU products until further notice.

As a result of the settlement, the company is now required to implement a "comprehensive data security program" to help prevent unauthorized access to consumers' personal information. They also must address security risks related to past and present smartphones in order to make amends. What's more, the company will be subject to third-party audits of their security every 2 years for the next 20 years. They must make sure to comply with record-keeping and compliance monitoring agreements during this time.

They had contracted the company ADUPS to issue security and OS updates, which took far more information than needed from consumers' devices. This includes text messages, real-time location data, call and text message logs with full telephone numbers, contact lists, and lists of applications used and installed. Not only that, but BLU was also accused of misleading consumers by falsely claiming that they limited third-party collection of data from users of BLU's devices to only information needed for software updates. If that's not bad enough, ADUPS software was often found to contain security vulnerabilities which further put consumer data at risk. BLU and its co-owner and President Samuel Ohev-Zion failed to implement appropriate security measures in order to ensure the complete safety of user data, and also failed to evaluate the security of these preinstalled applications.

Despite the ADUPS software being disabled on BLU phones through software updates in 2016, the company failed to adequately disable it on all of their devices. BLU continued to allow ADUPS to operate on its older devices without adequate oversight, meaning that many users of their devices were still at risk.

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Source: FTC

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