Author: Anna Galvez

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Google Will Eliminate Play Store Apps That Don’t Comply With The New Call Log and SMS Policies

In October, Google adopted new, stricter, call log and SMS policies, and granted apps developers 90 days to bring their applications into compliance with the new regulations. Now, that period is coming to an end, so Google will eliminate all the Play Store apps that don’t comply with the new call log and SMS policies.

According to Google, the Internet giant decided to adopt stricter policies regarding call log and SMS permissions because some apps abused the function. In short, Google wants to protect users from potentially malicious apps and private data leaks.

“As previously announced and directly communicated to developers via email, we’ll be removing apps from the Google Play Store that ask for SMS or Call Log permission and have not submitted a Permissions Declaration Form. If you have not submitted a permissions declaration form and your app is removed, see below for next steps,” said Paul Bankhead, Director, Product Management at Google Play Store on Android Developers Blog.

Google Will Eliminate Play Store Apps That Don’t Comply With The New Call Log and SMS Policies

“Our new policy is designed to ensure that apps asking for these permissions [call log and SMS] need full and ongoing access to the sensitive data in order to accomplish the app’s primary use case and that users will understand why this data would be required for the app to function,” Paul Bankhead added.

Paul Bankhead also explained what Google would consider when reviewing a submission:

  • The likelihood that an average user would understand why this type of app needs full access to the data.
  • User benefit of the feature.
  • Importance of the permission relative to the core functionality of the app.
  • Risks presented by all apps with this use case having access to this sensitive data.
  • Availability of more narrow alternatives for enabling the feature.

According to Google, tens of thousands of devs have already resubmitted their apps to comply with the new call log and SMS policies. Those applications which do not meet the requirements, however, will be deleted from the Google Play Store.

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MX Player 1.10.35 Beta Rolled Out on Android With New Features and Bug Fixes

MX Player is the most powerful multimedia player on Android, packing advanced hardware acceleration, gesture control, and subtitle support, among other functions. Today, MX Player 1.10.35 Beta rolled out on Android with new features and bug fixes.

MX Player is a potent video player for Android smartphones, which boasts advanced hardware acceleration for better playback of videos, thanks to the HW+ decoder. It also is the first video player for Android to come with multi-core decoding, and according to various tests, MX Player is by 70% more performant on dual-core devices than on single-core ones.

In addition to all that, MX Player boasts gesture controls support so that users can zoom in, zoom out, and pan by just pinching the screen of their devices. Also, subtitles support gestures to move forward/backward, zoom in/zoom out to change fonts size, and so on.

MX Player 1.10.35 Beta Rolled Out on Android With New Features and Bug Fixes

MX Player is already an excellent app, and its popularity proves that statement. According to Google Play Store, more than 500 million users downloaded MX Player on Android, and about 7 million of these folks rated it with 4.5 stars out of 5.

Now, MX Player 1.10.35 Beta rolled out on Android with new features and bug fixes. According to the official release notes of the update, the Dark Mode is again available for Indian users of the app, while the standard file operations are at your fingertips thanks to MX Player’s new ‘More’ menu for local files. Also, MX Player added new Content Preferences menu under the Me tab, which is helping users get only the contents of their interest.

According to the official release notes of the new MX Player 1.10.35 Beta, the following bug fixes were implemented:

  • Background Playback issues on recent versions, fixed.
  • Quality switching issues on the online player were solved out.
  • Fixed the navigation bar issues on dark mode.
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WhatsApp Messenger 2.19.11 Beta Is Available With New Features

WhatsApp is a free instant messaging application, owned by Facebook since 2014, and which became the most popular app of its type. WhatsApp uses your mobile data (4G, 3G, 2G, EDGE) or WiFi, when available, to permit users to send/receive text or voice messages and initiate voice calls or video calls. Also, with WhatsApp, users can share documents, images, videos, and so on with their contacts. Now, WhatsApp Messenger 2.19.11 Beta is available with new features.

WhatsApp Features

WhatsApp is the most popular instant messaging application, and there are some excellent reasons for that. First, WhatsApp is entirely free to use as long as you have unlimited data plan or use WiFi connection to send messages and call your friends with WhatsApp. Secondly, WhatsApp is more than a messenger application, as it’s also allowing users to share files with their contacts.

Besides, WhatsApp permits group chats, and it also comes with a web-based version that you can use on desktop PCs. Nonetheless, you don’t need to sign up on WhatsApp as you do on Facebook or Twitter for example. All you have to do is to enter your phone number, verify it within the app via SMS or voice call, and that’s all.

WhatsApp Messenger 2.19.11 Beta Is Available With New Features

WhatsApp devs are continuously updating the instant messaging app with new functions. These new features are at first coming to the WhatsApp Beta version so that the Beta tester can probe them and send feedback to the developers or report bugs.

Now, WhatsApp Messenger 2.19.11 Beta is live, and it comes with new features and several bug fixes and stability improvements. According to the official release notes, WhatsApp Messenger 2.19.11 Beta comes with the following additions:

  • When you receive a link to a video from places like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, you can now play it right within WhatsApp. With picture-in-picture, you can keep watching the video while you chat.
  • You can now reply to a group message privately in your 1:1 chat. Tap and hold a message in a group chat and select ‘Reply privately.’
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Microsoft Will Shut Down Windows 7 Support In Precisely One Year From Now

Despite the fact that Windows 10 is now the most prevalent operating system of Microsoft, Windows 7 is still popular among some users and in some regions of the world. However, if you’re now using Windows 7, you should consider upgrading to Windows 10 (would be useless to get Windows 8, obviously) because in precisely one year from now, on January 14th, 2020, Microsoft will shut down Windows 7 support.

That would mean that as of January 14th, 2020, Windows 7 users won’t get any new updates and security patches for their operating system. Thus, it would be smart to upgrade to Windows 10 before the before-mentioned date. Not only that Windows 10 is much better than Windows 7, but there are a whole bunch of programs, including games, that run smoother on Windows 10 or just don’t run on previous versions of the operating system.

Windows 7 rolled out in 2009, and it has been one of the most popular operating systems released by Microsoft since then.

Microsoft Will Shut Down Windows 7 Support In Precisely One Year From Now

At the end of 2018, according to some recent statistics, Windows 10 has begun to gain traction, surpassing Windows 7 in popularity. According to the data, Windows 10 is now holding a 39.2 percent of the desktop OS market, while Windows 7 comes second with 36.9 percent.

Nonetheless, Windows 7 is a very smooth operating system and less demanding than Windows 10. For that reason, among others, there are still many users out there using it. But that would soon change since they must upgrade to Windows 10 to be up-to-date with the latest security patches.

As we’ve already mentioned before, as of January 14th, 2020, in one year from now, precisely, Microsoft will shut down Windows 7 support. Therefore, you should upgrade your computer to Windows 10 before that date or, why not, get a new, more performant PC or laptop with Windows 10 pre-installed.

 

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Surface Book 3 Prototype Unveiled On Instagram By a Microsoft Executive

Ralf Groene, head of Industrial Design for Microsoft Devices, revealed the new Surface Book 3 prototype on Instagram. The unveiling of the device was well-received by the fans. In the image shared by Ralf Groene, we can see that the future Surface Book 3 boasts a detachable hinge, using a so-called “muscle-wire-based actuators” to detach the tablet from the base of the device by clicking a button.

“Early prototype of Surface Book muscle wire detach,” said Ralf Groene, the head of Industrial Design for Microsoft Devices, on Instagram.

“As you might expect, the device has a face only a creator could love; it has a 9-volt battery stuck into where the display should be located. That being said, this prototype was used to test the muscle wire detach mechanism for the Surface Book, according to Groene,” reported Thurrott, the tech news portal which was the first to talk about Surface Book 3 prototype unveiled by Ralf Groene.

Surface Book 3 Prototype Unveiled On Instagram By a Microsoft Executive

The fascinating design of the Surface Book devices helped Microsoft win a lot of praise from the fans who were not at all happy with the boring looks of Microsoft’s Surface Laptop gadgets.

We, therefore, hope that Microsoft would recover in 2019 with the upcoming Surface Book 3 device and other astonishing gadgets announced via a series of rumors, such as the so-called Surface Andromeda, Surface Januss, and Surface Centaurus.

Brad Sams from the Thurrott also added that, in his opinion, now, since Surface Book 2 is over a year old already, Microsoft would most likely announce the next Surface Book 3 somewhen in 2019, probably during the following few months, in the first half of the year. The most exciting thing to see would be the technical specs sheet of the future Surface Book, hoping that Microsoft will come out with a brand-new device, from A to Z, not with an update of the Surface Book 2.

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