The world we live in cannot survive without communication at its center. One medium, and perhaps the fastest one, of communication, is the mobile devices. Using mobile devices, we can communicate in any way want using various mobile apps that are available for this purpose such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, and a whole lot of such apps. Not only are mobile apps helpful in communication, but they are also used for diagnosing patients, setting alarms and appointments, playing games, and most importantly secure your mobiles as well.
Some apps will also teach you to make something in the shortest possible time, or even educate you on a particular topic you might be interested in. With time, as we keep on using these apps, we want more from them. So mobile app development companies in New York (as most of the mobile market is located there) are coming up with the new devices, and features added to the existing devices or apps.
Here are some of the latest news about the mobile apps that you happen to use almost on a daily basis.
1) Gmail for iOS Gets Image Blocking to Prevent Email Tracking: For users of iOS, Google has updated its Gmail app to prevent attached images from opening automatically. This would help the user as the sender would not be able to track when the email was opened. With this update, Google has placed the ball in the user’s court to allow or disallow the images from the opening. The update is already present on the AppStore as of 4-Sep-2019. In case the users are interested in activating this feature, they can go to Settings > User Account > Images > Ask before displaying external images. This feature has been included most probably as a result of a controversy in July when Twitter executive Mike Davidson drew the attention of the developers at Google that a subscription service was sending images to track the location and time of the when an email was opened.
Google has also come up with another update (only for G Suite users) that will notify all your contacts that you are away on a vacation. The feature is available in both the Gmail and Hangouts apps.
2) Telegram Said to Secretly Plan ‘Gram’ Cryptocurrency: You obviously have heard of Facebook launching a Cryptocurrency. Well, that’s old news. The new is that Telegram is secretly planning to launch ‘Gram’ Cryptocurrency before Facebook does. The Russian based service, it is learned, will make things much easier for the users than any of its predecessors like Bitcoin have ever done. In a leaked document Telegram said it wants to create a standard crypto-currency for the regular exchange of value. ‘Gram’ plans to even replace services such as VISA and MasterCard. While Facebook is planning to bring out Libra somewhere in 2020, ‘Gram’ might be seeing the light of day within another two months. If what we hear is right, Telegram has already collected $1.7 billion from an estimated 200 private investors via Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
The success of ‘Gram’ can be gauged from the fact that the investors are from Russia’s top Forbes 40 list, and not everybody could be investing until they were invited. The clock has started ticking for ‘Gram’ and may stop on 31st October. The owners have pledged to return the invested amount if the Cryptocurrency is not owned by the investors on 31st Oct 2019. Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, and all the messaging services that plan to launch their crypto-currencies in the near future will easily make their crypto-currency successful. Also, Telegram is already offering encryption services, so security is not a problem for this Russian organization. Buyers can rest assured that their money is in safe hands (and form)
3) WhatsApp Testing Audio Playback Feature in Notifications on iOS: Well, here is some news from one of the most loved apps, of all times perhaps. The WhatsApp team involved in providing updates for the iOS will now introduce a new feature that will be capable of playing audio in the notifications itself. The feature comes in the iOS beta 2.19.91.1 beta version. To have this feature in their mobiles, users will have to download the updated version from TestFlight. Once you have the updated app, ask someone close to you to send you an audio clip. Now try playing the audio in the notifications to confirm you have the option enabled in your phone. In case you have performed the above steps but find yourself nowhere new, then back up the chat history, and reinstall the app. If it still doesn’t activate the feature, check out your phone number. According to some the audio-only plays in the notification area if you have an odd phone number. That really is odd!!!
4) Yahoo Experiences Outage Across Its Services, Several Users Impacted: On Thursday, September 5, 2019, Yahoo suffered a major setback to its services. It was an outage that caused a big commotion amongst the Yahoo customer base. Even users who were using Yahoo Mail met the same fate. The Yahoo team responded instantly and the time this was being written, Yahoo was into fixing the glitch. Although Yahoo did not mention the number of users affected by the outage, a website has put it at four thousand users. Also, Yahoo Japan is stopping the auction of Ivory from November 1, on the county’s biggest illegal auction market. This it seems to be doing as Ivory being sold by Yahoo Japan is being smuggled out of Japan. Rakute and Mercari had banned the said sales two years back but Yahoo Japan had continued denying suggestions that the rise in the sale of Ivory was due to this trade.
5) Google Calendar’s ‘Working Hours’ Feature Gets an Update, Now Turned On by Default for All Users: Google, one of the mobile app development companies in New York, has come up with a new update that features the changes to the Working Hours. This feature will make it easier to manage the availability of the users during work hours. The feature was available earlier as well, but the Tuesday update makes it available by default. It does not have to be turned on manually by the users. Other users will come to know whether you are available or not depending upon your meetings and appointments. This feature will now warn the users who try to set up a conflicting appointment. So meetings will be scheduled that suit the interests of all the involved parties. As of now, the updated version is being made available to G Suite users only. Other users will have access to the feature in the coming few weeks.
Besides, Working Hours shows up in a grid view from now on. This is helpful as the colleagues who are scheduling appointments or meetings will be easily able to view when you are busy and when available. Once the feature is enabled on your devices, you can also adjust or disable it. Simply follow the path Settings > General > Working Hours, and you have your work done.
6) ZAO, Chinese Face-Swapping App Goes Viral, Sparks Privacy Concerns: A new Chinese app that just hit the market by the name of ZAO went viral by allowing its users to swap faces with sports stars, celebrities, and anyone they wanted to swap with. The instant success that the app gained was short-lived as the app came crashing due to certain privacy concerns. According to the Chinese Twitter-like app running by the name of Weibo, the servers of ZAO almost crashed as a result of the high surge in the user traffic. ZAO had become on Sep 1, 2019, the most downloaded free app in the Chinese iOS AppStore. Users who sign up with this app, take pictures, selfies of themselves and then choose the celebrities with whom to swap their faces. Not only does the app offer them almost all Chinese celebrities, but users can also choose to be Leonardo DiCaprio and Marilyn Monroe. These swapped pictures can then be shared with other apps too.
Just when everything seemed to be going fine, a group of users reported that they had to surrender their rights to their face to this app while signing up for it. Anyhow, ZAO was available for comments and said that they would look into the problems the users were facing. They promised that it was only a matter of time that the problems are taken care of. For those who might not have heard of this app, it comes from the creators of the dating app Momo that came in 2014 and later on shifted to live streaming service.
7) Realme XT to Launch its 64 Megapixel Camera Phone in India on Sep 13, 2019: What, over the past few months, just seemed to be a hype will turn out to be a reality for the Indian-users of Realme. Realme is launching its 65 MP Camera phone on 13 Sep. This makes the Realme XT the first smartphone ever to feature a 64 MP camera. Are you listening to One-Plus, iPhone, and Samsung? Realme is being priced very handsomely for everyone to afford it at Rs. 20,000 or under.
As for the specifications, it has a 6.4-inch full-HD Super AMOLED display coupled at the top with a water drop notch. It’s well protected on both sides by a Corning Gorilla Glass. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 712 SoC it comes in three variants – 4GBRam with 64 GB storage, 6GB Ram and 64 GB storage, and lastly 8 GB ram and 128 GB storage. Other features include – a USB type C-port, 3.5 mm headphone jack, and a fast-charging battery. To top it all, Realme might also be announcing the arrival of a Realme XT Pro model, but so far it is just only unofficial news. Wait till you hear the company announcing it.
