Apple today added a banner to its United States website, iTunes Store, and App Store asking customers to provide donations to individuals affected by the recent devastation from Hurricane Matthew. Like its usual relief efforts, all donations collected will go to the American Red Cross.
Donation tiers available include $5, $10, $25, $50, $100 and $200, and will be processed as normal iTunes or App Store purchases through a user's connected Apple ID.
Hurricane Matthew made landfall late last week, hitting the southeast coast of the United States and going on to ravage states like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. As of yesterday, more than 2 million businesses and homes were without power, and over 3,000 people have been placed in safety shelters.
Nearly six years after the legal battle over smartphone design similarities began between Apple and Samsung, the two companies are now about to take the case to the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday, October 11.
At stake is the outcome of how much of a combined $548 million patent infringement ruling Samsung will be required to pay to Apple (via Bloomberg).
That amount is taken from Samsung's total profit of the 11 disputed smartphones targeted by Apple in the trial, an amount which Samsung refers to as a "disproportionate" sum for the patent infringement accusations leveled at it by Apple.
The Cupertino company has remained adamant in regards to Samsung's "blatant copying" of various iPhone design features, still fighting to win the full $399 million reward (the case involves approximately another $150 million focused on Samsung's alleged infringement of Apple's pinch-to-zoom patent).
Specifically, Apple's design patents cover "the rounded corners of its phones, the rim that surrounds the front face and the grid of icons that users view." Last December, a federal court in San Jose ruled in Apple's favor, and Samsung appealed days later in attempts to avoid the $548 million reward payment to Apple. In Samsung's appeal, the company gave the court a metaphor centering around owing a car's entire profits to a rival company for infringing upon their cup holder design.
In urging the Supreme Court to take up the appeal, Samsung said the ruling was akin to awarding the entire profits on a car because of an infringing cup-holder. Apple rejects that analogy, saying that its patented features are more like the design of the entire car.
The issue now appears to be focused on the difference between the court determining if Apple's accusations cover individual components of patent infringement, or the entire product. In court records, Apple is said to "accept" that in some cases the patent owner can collect profits only "attributable to a particular component," not the earnings of the entire Samsung smartphone.
All the same, Apple said that Samsung "failed to show that the patented designs applied only to part of its phones" during the previous half-decade of court proceedings, so the latter company's defense of paying less for individual parts of the smartphone shouldn't be allowed to stand. According to lawyer Kannon Shanmugam, the case "has essentially now devolved into a dispute over what party showed what at trial and who bears the burden of proof."
In total the patent dispute amounts to nearly $550 million aimed at Samsung. The company has already paid the amount, but a clause stipulates the potential ruling in its favor requires Apple to pay back the money. Just last week, in a completely separate Samsung-vs-Apple lawsuit, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted Apple a $120 million win over Samsung concerning the company's slide-to-unlock patent.
According to Chicago patent lawyer Paul Berghoff, a clarifying decision on the specific amount owed by Samsung to Apple could be the ultimate "catalyst for a final settlement" in the long-running case.
“Sometimes once litigants have been battling for so long, what happens is they develop levels of enmity and distrust on both sides that make it very difficult to settle the cases,” he said. “Face-saving is a very real issue for all companies. It’s hard to get out of it once you’re in it.”
Interestingly, the case also marks the Supreme Court's first examination of a design patent dispute in 120 years, "which cover the ornamental look of an object rather than any functional aspect." Previously, the Supreme Court oversaw design patents in disputes focused on spoon handles in the 1870s and carpets in the 1890s.
Photography accessory maker Olloclip today introduced three new photo lens kits designed to fit the new iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus, giving iPhone users more ways to improve their photographs. The Core, Active, and Macro Pro lens sets offer macro, wide-angle, and telephoto lens options, and feature an updated Connect interchangeable lens system.
Like previous Olloclip lenses, the new iPhone 7 lenses fit precisely over the rear and front-facing cameras, quickly snapping into place. A hinged lens base swivels so it can be moved between both cameras, and it's able to work with screen protectors up to .5mm.
The Core Lens Set, priced at $99.99, includes a 180 degree fisheye lens, a 120 degree 4-element wide-angle lens for landscape-style photos, and a 15x macro lens for getting close-up shots. Olloclip is also offering a bundle with the Core Lens that includes an Ollo Case, which is a case designed specifically to work with the lenses.
The Active Lens Set, priced at $119.99, includes a 2x telephoto optical zoom lens, which is able to further enhance the built-in zoom of the iPhone 7 Plus. It also includes an ultra-wide 155 degree lens, which Olloclip says gives an "action camera" field of view.
The Macro Pro Lens Set, priced at $79.99, features three different magnification levels: 7x, 14x, and 21x. According to Olloclip, its macro lenses feature edge-to-edge clarity, less pincushion distortion, and InstaFocus hoods for automatically getting the right depth to capture a clear image.
Each of the three lens sets include a wearable Pendant Stand to keep the lenses close at hand and to create a quick pocket-sized tripod.
All of Olloclip's lenses can be pre-ordered from the Olloclip website starting today. Shipments will start in early November, with the new lenses offered at Apple, Best Buy, and other major retailers around the world.
Google has announced that an update coming to its website browser, Chrome, will include an upgraded JavaScript engine to aid in reducing the memory usage on websites that were programmed using JavaScript (via CNET).
Planned for launch on December 6, Chrome 55 will see performance improvements predominantly if a device doesn't have much memory to start with (such as low-cost smartphones), and if a user runs Chrome with multiple tabs or other apps open at the same time.
Google's V8 JavaScript engine team said it has "significantly reduced the memory footprint of several websites," helping to improve performance on the browser. These websites include The New York Times, Reddit, YouTube, and others, and were all picked to gauge Chrome's specific enhanced performance features. The team discovered that Chrome used a total of 50 percent less of a device's RAM on average in comparison to Chrome 53, which updated in September to emphasize HTML5 content over Adobe Flash.
Most noticeably, the average V8 heap memory consumption of the mobile New York Times benchmark reduced by about 66%. Overall, we observed a 50% reduction of average V8 heap size on this set of benchmarks.
Another optimization introduced recently not only reduces memory on low-memory devices but beefier mobile and desktop machines. Reducing the V8 heap page size from 1M to 512KB results in a smaller memory footprint when not many live objects are present and lower overall memory fragmentation up to 2x. It also allows V8 to perform more compaction work since smaller work chunks allow more work to be done in parallel by the memory compaction threads.
As it moves forward with more updates to the web browsing software, the focus for the Chrome team appears to be on entry-level devices that have between 512MB and 1GB of RAM.
Still, users who are conscious about performance issues with multiple tabs and apps open -- or who own a system with a lot of memory -- are likely to see less of a difference with Chrome 55. Chrome is available to download for iOS, Mac, Windows, and Linux systems, and users should see the new performance-enhanced update on December 6.
Government ministers in the United Kingdom have been banned from wearing the Apple Watch to cabinet meetings over fears the device could be hacked, according to The Telegraph.
Several cabinet ministers reportedly wore the device to meetings while serving under former Prime Minister David Cameron, however new PM Theresa May has apparently banned the smartwatches over fears that they could be used by Russian spies as listening devices. One source told The Telegraph: "The Russians are trying to hack everything."
The Verge notes that the Apple Watch has been banned from Australian cabinet meetings as well. An advisor for the Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull said that more attention needed to be paid to communications security as an increasing number of devices, from glasses to running shoes, offered internet connectivity.
The bans follow serious concerns over the potential reach of clandestine state-sponsored hacker groups, after U.S. officials pointed the finger at Russian hackers following the release of confidential emails from the Democratic National Congress during the U.S. election.
Russian hackers have also been implicated in the release of private medical files of some of the world's most famous athletes. Smartphones have also been barred from the Cabinet because of similar worries that the devices could be used to listen in on meetings.
Apple Maps has recently been updated with new transit data for Melbourne, Victoria, allowing users to navigate the city with the addition of public train, tram, and bus networks.
Before the update, Sydney, and New South Wales as a whole, were the only areas in Australia with Transit information available.
Transit directions became a helpful feature with the introduction of iOS 9, and has since expanded to be supported in 16 cities around the world.
Including Sydney, Transit directions can be found in Seattle, Austin, Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Montreal, Toronto, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. There are also a few dozen cities in China that include Transit directions in Apple Maps.
Samsung has halted production of its beleaguered Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after several replacement handsets reportedly caught fire and ended up with at least one person in a hospital.
On Monday, an official at a supplier for Samsung informed Korean Yonhap news agency of the decision, which is said to have been made in coordination with consumer safety regulators from South Korea, the United States, and China.
(Image: Shawn Minter)
The news is another hammer blow to Samsung's mobile division and its 2016 flagship device, as the company reels from a second round of exploding phone incidents indicating that the replacement handset program at the center of its global recall efforts has failed.
The decision came after all mobile carriers in the U.S. said they would stop issuing Note 7 devices following at least five reports of replacement handsets catching fire over the last five days.
On Wednesday, a flight from Louisville to Baltimore was evacuated while still at the gate because of a smoking Note 7. Saturday saw a Minnesota case involving a 13-year-old girl who said she felt a "weird, burning sensation" while holding her phone and suffered a minor burn to her thumb. "It felt like pins and needles except a lot more intense," she said.
Later the same day, a Kentucky man reported "vomiting black" after his Note 7 caught fire while he was asleep in bed, filling his room with smoke. "It wasn't plugged in. It wasn't anything, it was just sitting there," said the man, who later took himself to ER and was diagnosed with acute bronchitis.
Then on Sunday, another Note 7 bedside incident took place in Virginia. The phone "just burst into flames while on the night stand," said its owner. "I woke up in complete panic." By midday another device had caught fire on a table where a Texas family sat eating lunch together.
All the handsets in the incidents were replacements issued by Samsung, which the company had previously claimed were using batteries that are "not vulnerable to overheating and catching fire." Samsung has yet to explain what's going on with the replacement devices.
Rumors have suggested Samsung's Note 7 problems began after the company rushed the device into production after realizing the iPhone 7 would not feature major design changes, seeing it as an opportunity to one up Apple. Suppliers were pushed to meet tighter deadlines for an earlier launch, leading to critical oversights.
The supplier official who revealed the manufacturing halt this morning described the production as "temporarily suspended", however it is difficult to imagine in what circumstances Samsung would resume production of the Galaxy Note 7, which many observers will now consider a toxic brand.
Early speculation that iPhone 7 could experience an uptick in sales because of Samsung's woes seem increasingly likely. Samsung accounted for 27.8 percent of all smartphones shipped in Q1 2016, almost double Apple's 14.4 percent share, but a big part of Samsung's jump ahead was the early release of the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, while the much-anticipated Note 7 was Samsung's attempt to cater for the increasing popularity of larger-screen devices.
Update 1: Similar incidents of exploding replacement Note 7 phones have also been reported in Taiwan and South Korea.
Update 2: Samsung has said it is "temporarily adjusting the Galaxy Note 7 production schedule in order to take further steps to ensure quality and safety matters". The company said it hoped to provide an update within a month.
Three additional law firms have joined a class action lawsuit against Apple over an alleged defect that causes iPhone 6 Plus touchscreens to become unresponsive and fail.
Back in August, reports began appearing from iPhone 6 owners describing an apparently latent manufacturing issue that causes a flickering bar to appear at the top of the screen and the display to become unresponsive or less responsive to touch.
A week later, three iPhone 6 owners filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court of Northern California after their devices presented symptoms of the problem – dubbed "touch disease" by repair website iFixit – which Apple has yet to publicly acknowledge.
Yesterday, Motherboard reported that lawyers who filed the class action complaint earlier this fall have now signed on three additional law firms to support their case, while an additional class action lawsuit related to the issue has been filed against Apple in Utah.
Richard McCune, an attorney in the California case, said he has been contacted by 10,000 people asking to join the suit, which accuses Apple of violating the state's consumer fraud statutes, negligent misrepresentation, breach of implied warranty, unjust enrichment, and other consumer act violations.
The "touch disease" flaw is thought to be caused by the touchscreen controller chips soldered to the iPhone's logic board losing contact after a period of normal usage, because of Apple's failure to incorporate a metal shield. So far, Apple has refused to repair the out-of-warranty iPhones without charge when the defect manifests. Worse, replacement refurbished handsets costing owners $329 have reportedly shown symptoms of the same problem within days or weeks of being issued.
Motherboard claims five separate current and former Apple Geniuses have confirmed that Apple is aware of the problem but will not tell customers about it.
However, Apple's filed response to the most recent Utah complaint appears at least to signal a legal acknowledgement of the issue and the company's lawyers have requested an "extension of time to respond to the Complaint" and asked that the Utah and California cases be combined into one.
Given the similarity between the [Utah] and [California] actions, it would unnecessarily tax judicial resources if these actions were to proceed in separate class action lawsuits—especially where the [Utah] and [California] Plaintiffs purport to represent the same putative class of all consumers who purchased an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.
On Friday, McCune filed an updated lawsuit against Apple that includes several new plaintiffs and formally adds the three separate law firms to the legal battle. "Each of the firms (who had their own clients) brings strength to the case, including Stephen Larson of Larson O'Brien, who is a former Federal Judge," McCune told Motherboard. "With these firms working with us, we believe it gives us the best chance of obtaining a positive result in the case for the owners of the phones."
Several popular Android Wear devices like the Moto 360 and Fossil Q remain incompatible with the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, according to a report by The Verge.
Owners of the Android smartwatches have been able to use the devices with the iPhone 5 or later since Google added support for iOS back in August of last year.
However, as evidenced by a raft of complaints in an Android Wear discussion thread, the Moto 360 (2015), Moto 360 Sport, Tag Heuer Connected, Asus Zenwatch 2, and Fossil Q Founder are all unable to properly pair with the iPhone 7, with many users' watches hanging during the setup process.
Apple recently fixed some compatibility issues between Android Wear devices and iOS 10 with the release of iOS 10.0.2, but the reported problems with specific models of watch appear to remain. Google says it is aware of a "serious pairing issue" and is investigating a fix.
The Android Wear iOS app supports Google's Voice search and enables iPhone lock screen notifications to be mirrored on the watch faces. It also lets owners of the devices make use of services like Google Now and Google Fit, as well as the watches' Weather and Translate features. In addition, the app includes a handful of 'curated' watch faces for users to choose from.
Facebook yesterday announced the launch of a standalone iOS app that lets users of the social network directly access its "Events" features, which the company says have more than 100 million daily users.
Today we're announcing Events from Facebook, a new app we designed for event seekers who are passionate about keeping up with nearby events and finding things to do with their friends. Whether you're looking for something to attend this weekend or just wondering what's happening in your area, Events will help get you there.
The app offers a feed of events that are created or followed by users' Facebook friends, including any updates to events that users have confirmed they're going to, as well as those promoted by any commercial pages they follow.
Events can be searched based on time, location, and interest, and upcoming events can be browsed via an interactive map. To keep track of events, the app also offers a calendar view, to which existing Google and iCloud calendars can be added, so it's easier for users to make plans.
Facebook events is a free download for iPhone and iPad from the U.S. App Store, but availability in other regional stores remains patchy as of Saturday. [Direct Link]
AT&T is considering stopping all sales and replacements of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 due to ongoing safety issues, reports Bloomberg. Citing a person "familiar with the situation," Bloomberg says AT&T may halt sales as soon as today.
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint have all started allowing customers to exchange their Galaxy Note 7 devices for different smartphones such as the iPhone 7, but AT&T's full sales ban would go one step further, seeing the company cease offering "safe" replacement devices altogether.
Samsung first issued a recall of the Galaxy Note 7 in early September following dozens of reports of overheating, leading to batteries that explode and catch on fire. Many people who purchased a Galaxy Note 7 have reported injuries and property damage.
While Samsung has replaced more than one million Galaxy Note 7 devices with versions that are said to have batteries that are "not vulnerable to overheating and catching fire," at least one report suggests the replacement devices are also prone to problems.
Earlier this week, a Southwest flight from Louisville to Baltimore was evacuated after a Galaxy Note 7 started smoking and caught fire, unusual because the device in question was a replacement smartphone that had been deemed safe by Samsung. Federal regulators are investigating the incident, which has reignited fears about Samsung devices.
According to rumors, Samsung rushed the Galaxy Note 7 into production in an effort to outshine Apple after hearing that the iPhone 7 would not feature major design changes. Suppliers were pushed to meet tighter deadlines for an earlier launch, which potentially led to critical oversights and has ended up costing Samsung millions in recall fees and replacements.
All customers who purchased a Galaxy Note 7 from one of the four major carriers can replace it with a different device, including those who have already exchanged their faulty Note 7 smartphones for versions that Samsung has declared safe.
Apple this week opened its first iOS Developer Center at the University of Naples Federico II's new San Giovanni a Teduccio campus, located in a coastal suburb east of Naples, Italy, and the company is already planning on expanding the initiative due to its popularity.
At an event celebrating the opening of the Developer Center that was documented by Italian site Maccitynet.it, Apple's vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives Lisa Jackson told gathered students about an upcoming iOS Foundation Program, designed to teach many more students about the fundamentals of iOS app development.
A shorter version of the longer course at the iOS Developer Center, the iOS Foundation Program will see Apple teaming up with "at least five universities" across the Campania region to offer a three to four week course in app development. Apple expects the iOS Foundation Program to be available to 800 students during its first year, expanding from there.
Jackson shared few details on the upcoming program, but said it is aimed at introducing students to the iOS ecosystem.
It's a great opportunity to magnify the wonderful beginning here. It's a great opportunity to work with students and teach across the region and advance our work and the work you're doing at the first academy in Europe.
With both the iOS Developer Center and the iOS Foundation Program, Apple is hoping to give students the skills and understanding they need to transition from the education they receive in school to actually developing an app. According to Jackson, it's important to Apple to "unlock the potential of young developers" and make sure the app economy is open to everyone by giving young people the "crucial skills and support" to get into app development.
Apple's first official iOS Developer Center opened to students yesterday, with 100 students able to attend starting this week and 100 additional students starting in three months. Apple had thousands of students apply for just 200 available spots, which is why the company is planning to team up with additional universities.
The nine month course will teach students how to write code and create apps for Apple's iOS devices. Thanks to scholarships created in partnership with the University of Naples, students will attend for free and will be provided with current-generation MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads.
While the iOS Developer Center and the iOS Foundation Program are limited to Italy at this time, it stands to reason that Apple could potentially expand the experience to additional countries should it prove successful. Apple has also recently introduced Swift Playgrounds, designed to help children and beginning coders learn to use the company's Swift programming language to develop apps.
For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with SanDisk to give MacRumors readers a chance to win a Lightning-equipped 128GB SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive, which has enough capacity to double the storage space on most iPhones and iPads.
The pocket-sized iXpand can be used to offload photos, videos, music, and other files plus it can transfer content between an iOS device and a Mac or PC using USB 3.0 transfer speeds. Available in 16, 32, 64, and 128GB capacities, the iXpand can back up a full photo library and has storage for everything else you might need.
With the accompanying iXpand app, you can view all of your media content right on the iXpand drive without needing to transfer it back to your iPhone. It supports a wide range of file types, so you can watch videos, listen to music, and view all of your photos.
We reviewed the SanDisk iXpand earlier this year and were impressed with its small, portable design and its ability to support a wide range of file types, but we thought the app could use improvement. Since that time, SanDisk has updated the app and fixed many of the issues, making the usage experience much better. It's now optimized for the iPad, no longer crashes, and has better playback support and controls.
SanDisk's 128GB iXpand, the largest it makes, is normally priced at $129.99, but three MacRumors readers will win one for free. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumorsFacebook page.
Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.
The contest will run from today (October 7) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on October 14. The winners will be chosen randomly on October 14 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen. Prizes will be shipped in mid to late October.
The bulk of the award, $98.7 million, was for the detection patent that the earlier panel said wasn’t infringed. The February decision also said the other two patents were invalid. […] That was a wrong decision, the court ruled Friday, because it relied on issues that were never raised on appeal or on information that was beyond the trial record.
The long-running lawsuit dates back to 2011, when Apple accused Samsung of infringing upon its now-retired slide-to-unlock feature, autocorrect, and a method of detecting phone numbers so they can be tapped to make phone calls, according to Bloomberg. The case is not to be confused with a similar Apple v. Samsung lawsuit related to accusations of older Galaxy smartphones infringing upon the iPhone's design.
The appeals court will argue that second case, also dating back to 2011, on Tuesday to determine how much Samsung should pay for copying the look and feel of the iPhone, according to the report. Samsung was originally ordered to pay Apple damages of $548 million, but it appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in December as a last-ditch effort to avoid paying the settlement.
In August, over 100 world-renowned designers, including Calvin Klein, Dieter Rams, and Norman Foster, filed an amicus brief in support of Apple in the lawsuit. The designers argued that a product's visual design has "powerful effects on the human mind and decision making processes," citing a 1949 study that showed more than 99% of Americans could identify a bottle of Coca-Cola by shape alone.
A new case might lead the FBI and Apple into another fight over security and privacy on smartphones, following a confirmation yesterday by FBI special agent Rich Thorton that the FBI has the iPhone of Dahir Adan in its possession (via Wired).
Adan was the culprit behind the stabbing of 10 people in a Minnesota mall in mid-September, and was eventually shot and killed by police. After the event, terrorist organization ISIS claimed credit for the attack on social media, but "no evidence has emerged to suggest ISIS had a hand in planning or executing the attack."
During a press conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota yesterday, Thorton confirmed that the FBI has Adan's iPhone and that it is locked with a passcode. According to the special agent, the organization is "still trying to figure out how to gain access to the phone's contents." The issue currently is that the model and version of iOS running on the iPhone is known only to the FBI. Following the launch of iOS 8 in 2014, any iOS device running the software is encrypted to an extent that no malicious outsider -- or even Apple itself -- can get into the iPhone or iPad.
“Dahir Adan’s iPhone is locked,” Thornton told reporters, “We are in the process of assessing our legal and technical options to gain access to this device and the data it may contain.”
Because of this, the deciding factor on whether or not the new issue could lead to another San Bernardino-related debate between Apple and the FBI hinges on the software and model of his iPhone (iOS 8 can run on iPhone 4s and newer devices). For now, Thorton said that the FBI is simply "assessing" its "legal and technical options" for ways to enter the iPhone and extract any potentially helpful data it might contain.
The San Bernardino case began much the same way, with the FBI ordering Apple to provide assistance in opening up Syed Farook's iPhone 5c because the company had the "technical means" to do so. A long battle between the two organizations eventually led to the Justice Department dropping the case against Apple, reportedly due to an anonymous source providing the iPhone's password to authorities.
During the controversy, everyone from former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates to President Obama chimed in on the issue. Throughout multiple interviews and quotes, Apple CEO Tim Cook remained adamant on the company's continuing stance for user privacy, calling the FBI's request for entering an iPhone "the software equivalent of cancer." Its implementation could lead to a slippery slope in terms of invasive technology in everyday smartphones, as pointed out by Apple executive Eddy Cue, and even a potential surveillance state.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
In the face of waning popularity, developer Niantic recently announced a few updates to Pokémon Go that aim to make the game easier for players, with a focus on training at friendly Gyms and capturing wild Pokémon (via Engadget). The updates are for "trainers of all levels," but they appear to mostly benefit newcomers who might have given up on the game prior to the changes.
The first update is a way to make it easier to catch rare Pokémon by incentivizing players to grind through common Pokémon. Through a "catch bonus," users will increase their chances of catching lesser-seen creatures every time they nab one that they've already caught a handful of times. These are tied to the game's existing medal system, so "for example, as you reach a higher tier for the Kindler Medal, your bonus to catch Fire-type Pokémon such as Charmander, Vulpix and Ponyta increases."
The second addition will focus on training at friendly Gyms, allowing players to bring a total of six Pokémon into training instead of the current limitation to one creature. The game will also temporarily adjust the CP of the opposing Pokémon to your level "to generally match your Pokémon’s battle capabilities," making it easier for low-level users to boost their team's prestige at a Gym.
Basically, this will make it possible for lower level players to train Pokémon and get them into gyms at all. Under the current system, casual players stuck at lower levels or are just starting off can't do much to get a Pokémon into a friendly gym or snag the free bonus coins that are available as a result. It doesn't make it any easier to take the fight to other teams, but now even if you're at a lower level than other players in your area, you will have a reason to actually stop at gyms again.
Niantic didn't confirm when the updates would roll out, but the company did say they will be "coming soon." In late September, Pokémon Goended its reign as the highest grossing app in the United States App Store, which it held for 74 days. Other major updates have introduced a buddy system, but players are still waiting for trading, friend battling, a new generation of Pokémon, and the Apple Watch app announced at Apple's September 7 iPhone event.
Update: Pokémon GO version 1.11.2 is rolling out as of October 10.
"If a Sprint customer with a replacement Note 7 has any concerns regarding their device, we will exchange it for any other device at any Sprint retail store during the investigation window," a Sprint spokesperson told Recode.
According to Samsung, devices issued as replacements in its recall have been deemed safe because they use batteries that came from a different supplier to those that could overheat. However, reports of exploding Note 7 phones persist, which the company says it is looking into.
A Sprint representative said it is "working collaboratively with Samsung to better understand the most recent concerns regarding replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones".
Most carriers have encouraged their customers to exchange their first-generation Note 7 devices in exchange for either a refund or a replacement updated Note 7 handset, however Sprint is the first to allow all customers to return the replacement version as well, outside of standard return windows.
Samsung announced strong third-quarter earnings guidance to investors on Friday despite its exploding smartphone woes, thanks in part to the company's component and display panel business.
Samsung announced strong third-quarter earnings guidance to investors on Friday despite its exploding smartphone woes, thanks in part to the company's component and display panel business.
The Korean technology firm said it expects to earn $7 billion in operating profit for the three months ended September 30 – a 5.5 percent improvement from a year earlier – in a quarter that includes Samsung's recall of 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones.
The company's final earnings won't be released until later in October, but the profit preview demonstrates Samsung's ability to rely on other phone and PC makers to drive sales, and underlines the robustness of Samsung's diversified business model during difficult times.
The company is now the undisputed market leader in DRAM memory chips and next-generation 3-D NAND flash memory chips. Samsung also has a substantial lead over its rivals in sales of OLED panels, which are increasingly being adopted for use in smartphones. Currently, Apple's only supplier signed on to create OLED displays for the iPhone 8 is Samsung.
The exploding Note 7 debacle has dominated headlines recently, with a U.S. passenger plane being evacuated just this week when one of the phones began emitting smoke. Shares dipped 13 percent following initial reports of the widespread problem, which analysts estimate cost the company between $1 and $5 billion, not discounting significant damage to its smartphone brand. And yet shareholders' confidence in Samsung's semiconductor and display manufacturing have seen shares rebound into record territory.
Expectations for corporate governance changes have also fueled some of the recent gains, according to The Wall Street Journal. A day before Samsung's Q3 earnings preview, shares jumped 4.5 percent to a new record high after U.S. activist investor Elliott Management Corp. argued that Samsung was undervalued by as much as 70 percent.
After the release of its earnings preview, Samsung's stock increased by an extra 0.9 percent to finish above the 1,700,000-won mark for the first time in its history.
Nearly six years after the legal battle over smartphone design similarities began between Apple and Samsung, the two companies are now about to take the case to the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday, October 11. 
Google has announced that an update coming to its website browser, Chrome, will include an upgraded JavaScript engine to aid in reducing the memory usage on websites that were programmed using JavaScript (via 
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has 
A new case might lead the FBI and Apple into another fight over security and privacy on smartphones, following a confirmation yesterday by FBI special agent Rich Thorton that the FBI has the iPhone of Dahir Adan in its possession (via 
