FOX Sports GO has officially launched on the fourth-generation Apple TV. The app, previewed by Apple at WWDC 2016, has a split-screen interface that enables sports fans to watch up to four games at once, be it four MLB games or a combination of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey.
The app provides live streams of Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Fox Soccer Plus, Fox Deportes, and Fox College Sports, and selected events airing on Fox and its regional sports networks, based on your location and which channels you are subscribed to through your cable or satellite TV package. Coverage includes MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, NASCAR, UEFA Champions League, FIFA World Cup, UFC, and more. Subject to local availability, subscribers will also have access to full seasons of hometown MLB, NBA, and NHL telecasts.
FOX Sports GO requires authenticating with an existing cable or satellite TV subscription, with partnered networks including AT&T U-Verse, Bright House Networks, Cable One, Cablevision, Charter Spectrum, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Google Fiber, Midcontinent Communications, PlayStation Vue, Sling TV, Suddenlink Communications, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS, WOW!, and Xfinity TV.
FOX Sports GO is available now as a free download on the tvOS App Store.
Dropbox yesterday emailed users who have not changed their passwords since mid-2012 to inform them they will be prompted to do so the next time they log in.
The cloud storage firm called the action a "preventative measure" and said that there was no indication user accounts had been improperly accessed. Users who held passwords created after mid-2012 were not affected, said the company.
In a blog post explaining what prompted the step, Dropbox said it had learned about an old set of user credentials (email addresses plus hashed and salted passwords) that were stolen in an incident the company reported in 2012.
Based on our threat monitoring and the way we secure passwords, we don't believe that any accounts have been improperly accessed. Still, as one of many precautions, we're requiring anyone who hasn't changed their password since mid-2012 to update it the next time they sign in.
The incident is likely related to the huge LinkedIn hack which saw 117 million account credentials posted online. It's thought that hackers tried the login details on other websites under the assumption that some people use the same passwords across different online services.
Dropbox has taken the opportunity to urge its users to consider enabling two-factor authentication when signing in, and has warned about the risk of re-using the same password across multiple sites.
United Kingdom mobile carrier EE today announced that it would begin offering free six-month Apple Music subscriptions to new and upgrading customers. The carrier says that the offer is "coming soon."
The offer is available for iPhone and Android customers starting a new monthly phone contract or SIM only plan. To take advantage of the offer, customers must add it to their account within 30 days. After the six months, customers will automatically be charged £9.99 a month unless they cancel the subscription prior to the conclusion of the free trial.
To celebrate the offer, EE also unveiled a new ad starring actor Kevin Bacon and singer Britney Spears. Bacon dances to music on the street in celebration of getting free Apple Music until Spears appears to scold him for stealing her wardrobe and listening to her older songs.
Some carriers often decide to offer customers free trials of music services like Apple Music or Spotify to attract new customers or entice current customers into switching to newer plans. Australia's Telstra was the first carrier to offer free Apple Music subscriptions last August, when it gifted free 12-month subscriptions. More recently, Telstra switched the free 12-month subscription to a free six-month subscription. Similarly, Germany's Deutsche Telekom is planning to offer its customers a free six-month subscription to Apple Music in September.
The radically redesigned iPhone coming in 2017 will not feature a Home button, Bloomberg today confirmed in a wider report focusing on new mobile payment features coming to Japan.
Apple is already at work on a major redesign of the iPhone for 2017 that focuses more heavily on the display by removing the Home button, according to a person familiar with the matter.
According to past rumors, the 2017 iPhone, which may be called the iPhone 8, will feature a complete design overhaul with an edge-to-edge flexible OLED display that does away with the top and bottom bezels where features like the Touch ID fingerprint sensor and front-facing camera are housed.
Instead, the functionality of the Home button, including Touch ID, may be built directly into the display. Apple design chief Jony Ive is said to have wanted to build an iPhone that looks like a single sheet of glass for several years, and 2017, the year that marks the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, is when it will happen.
The iPhone display may also feature edges that are curved on both sides, similar to the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, and it is rumored to have a glass body, moving away from the aluminum that's been used for iPhones since the iPhone 5. Other features that may be built into the 2017 iPhone include wireless charging, an enhanced Taptic engine, and new biometric capabilities like iris scanning or facial recognition.
Apple is developing a version of the iPhone for Japan that includes one of Sony's FeliCa chips to enable contactless transit payments, reports Bloomberg.
FeliCa is a tap-to-pay format developed by Sony and built into cards that are used to access Japan's railway and bus system. FeliCa is faster than Apple Pay, allowing transactions to occur in a fraction of a second, which makes it suitable for use in a fast-paced transit environment. It's also able to store e-money that can be used at vending machines and cafes across the country.
Apple plans to work with several transit card providers to create virtual versions of FeliCa transit cards that can be stored in the Wallet app on the iPhone and used in place of a physical card.
The FeliCa chip will let customers in Japan store their public bus and train passes on their iPhones. Users would then be able to tap their phones against the entrance scanners instead of using physical cards. While the FeliCa chip is the standard technology underlying the service, there are several different providers of transit payment cards based on the type of transit and areas within Japan.
The addition of a FeliCa chip to the iPhone will help Apple make inroads into the mobile payment market in Japan, which is dominated by the standard. 1.9 million payment terminals in the country have already adopted FeliCa and FeliCa terminals saw 4.6 trillion yen ($46 billion) in transactions in 2015.
The FeliCa payment feature could be available as soon as next month, built into the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus that Apple plans to unveil in early September. Bloomberg warns, though, that Apple could potentially delay the feature's launch until next year should discussions with Japanese payment networks fall through.
Services like Siri, Cortana, and Alexa are being held back by a lack of advancements in digital microphone technology, reports Bloomberg, citing the opinions of several analysts.
While processors, camera sensors, and other vital iPhone components have evolved rapidly over the course of the last several years, the same can't be said for microphones. Digital microphones still have trouble focusing on filtering out background noise and clearly detecting faraway voices, impacting device listening capabilities.
With artificial intelligence growing in popularity, however, Bloomberg says manufacturers are scrambling to improve microphone tech.
"No doubt, there is an arms race," says Peter Cooney, an analyst at SAR Insight & Consulting. The big tech companies are thinking a lot more about mics than they have for the past few years. Since the 2012 launch of the iPhone 5, "microphone performance has not really improved that much," says Marwan Boustany, an analyst with research firm IHS Markit.
Apple and other companies who rely on microphones to deliver queries to smartphones and other devices are said to want technology improvements that will make them better able to distinguish voices from other sounds at longer distances.
In a recent interview, Apple SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi said that microphones have a big impact on Siri's ability to understand commands. "It's not just the silicon," he said. "It's how many microphones we put on the device, where we place the microphones. How we tune the hardware and those mics and the software stack that does the audio processing." He said Apple's expertise at combining hardware and software gives the company "an incredible advantage" over companies just working on AI with software.
In the same interview, Apple execs said Siri's capacity to interpret commands has reportedly improved greatly following the introduction of machine learning, but in practice, Siri still often fails to hear commands or misinterprets spoken words, mistakes that could perhaps be improved with better microphone technology in the future.
Siri has long been limited to iOS devices and the Apple Watch, but with the launch of macOS Sierra this fall, the personal assistant will expand to Macs. Siri also came to the Apple TV last fall with the launch of the fourth-generation set-top box.
A rare "Celebration" Apple-1 computer has fetched $815,000 in an auction hosted by charity auction site CharityBuzz, one of the highest prices an Apple-1 has sold for at auction. During the final minutes of the auction, bids reached $1.2 million, but it appears the last bid was pulled just seconds before the auction ended.
The "Celebration" Apple-1, so named by computer historian Corey Cohen, features a blank "green" PCB board that was never sold to the public and was not a part of a known production run.
The auction included an original Apple-1 ACI cassette board, pre-NTI, with Robinson Nugent sockets, a period correct power supply, an early Apple-1 BASIC cassette labeled and authenticated by original Apple employee Daniel Kottke, Apple-1 manuals, marketing materials, and Cassette Board schematics.
Unlike other Apple-1 computers that have fetched lower prices, the Celebration Apple-1 is not in working condition but could be restored to full functionality with minor tweaks. Cohen recommended against such restoration to preserve the board's uniqueness. "The Apple-1 board is a not just a piece of history, but a piece of art," he said.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak originally created and sold 175 Apple-1 computers during the summer of 1976, marking the launch of Apple computer, a company that's grown to be one of the largest and most influential in the world. Of those 175 machines, only 60 or so are still in existence, making them quite valuable to collectors.
Several Apple-1 computers have surfaced at auction over the past few years, selling for prices between and $365,000 and $905,000.
10 percent of the proceeds from the CharityBuzz auction will benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
While the Macintosh Plus was discontinued over 25 years ago, two developers have brought the old school machine back to life in the form of a Nintendo 2DS and 3DS.
The first developer, who uses the pseudonym TarableCode, managed to port the Mini vMac emulator to Nintendo 2DS and has since shared pictures and technical details of her homebrew accomplishment on video game community GBAtemp. The code for Mini vMac for Nintendo 2DS/3DS is available on GitHub.
The photo shows the Nintendo 2DS is running Macintosh System 7.5.3, retroactively called Mac OS 7, released in 1996. The 2DS's directional pad functions as arrow keys, while the L and R shoulder buttons are the mouse buttons, the Y button toggles the on-screen keyboard, and both the circle pad and touchscreen move the mouse.
A fellow homebrew enthusiast who uses the pseudonym LarBob Doomer has since uploaded a YouTube video that shows the emulated Macintosh Plus experience in action on Nintendo 3DS. In the video, he scrolls through a functional version of System 6, and opens apps, inputs text from the keyboard, and eventually powers off the device.
The practical applications of 20-year-old Mac software running on Nintendo 3DS are obviously limited, but the homebrew emulator is a unique proof of concept. In the past, developer Nick Lee similarly managed to get both Macintosh System 7.5.5 and Windows 95 to run on an Apple Watch.
Apple today released an iOS 9.3.5 update for the iOS 9 operating system, almost a month after releasing iOS 9.3.4 and a few weeks before we expect to see the public release of iOS 10, currently in beta testing.
iOS 9.3.5 is available immediately to all devices running iOS 9 via an over-the-air update.
iOS 9.3.5 is likely to be the last update to the iOS 9 operating system, introducing final bug fixes, security improvements, and performance optimizations before iOS 9 is retired in favor of iOS 10. iOS 9.3.4, the update prior to iOS 9.3.5, included a critical security fix patching the Pangu iOS 9.3.3 jailbreak exploit. iOS 9.3.5 features major security fixes for three zero-day exploits and should be downloaded by all iOS users right away.
According to The New York Times the three security vulnerabilities patched in the update were exploited by surveillance software created by NSO Group to jailbreak an iPhone and intercept communications.
In an overview of the exploits, security firm Lookout says NSO Group's spyware software, nicknamed "Pegasus," was highly sophisticated, installing itself through a link sent via a text message.
The exploit was initially discovered on August 11 after human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor received a suspicious link and sent it to Citizen Lab and Lookout. Had Mansoor clicked the link, it would have jailbroken his iPhone and installed "sophisticated malware" able to intercept phone calls, text messages, FaceTime calls, email, and more.
Pegasus is the most advanced attack Lookout has seen because it is customizable, can track a range of things, and uses strong encryption to avoid detection. Lookout believes "Pegasus" had been in the wild for quite some time before it was discovered, with some evidence dating back to iOS 7.
Citizen Lab and Lookout informed Apple of the vulnerabilities and the company worked quickly to implement a fix, patching the exploits in just 10 days.
Drone manufacturer DJI today launched the Osmo+ camera, the company's first handheld gimbal with an integrated zoom camera that delivers "unprecedented stability and image quality for handheld still photography and video creation." DJI's new gimbal system is compatible with iOS and the DJI GO app [Direct Link] and packs in technology that the company compares similarly to its new Zenmuse Z3 zoom camera used in the Inspire 1 drone.
DJI's Osmo+ has a 7x zoom consisting of 3.5× optical and 2× digital lossless zoom when shooting with 1080p. These specs give the system a focal length ranging from 22mm to 77mm, all "without sacrificing HD quality," allowing for motion timelapse shots, advanced stabilization, and a powerful camera with the ability of capturing 4K/30fps video and 1080p/100fps in slow motion.
“The Osmo+ opens up entirely new capabilities for creators who love the Osmo’s ability to deliver crisp, sharp and detailed handheld imagery,” said Paul Pan, Senior Product Manager. “From action selfies to detailed panoramas to motion timelapses, the zoom features of the new Osmo+ once again expand the capabilities of handheld photography to push the limits of the imagination.”
Users can extend the arm of the Osmo+ to take advantage of a "moving selfies" feature, which takes crisp front-facing action shots after a quick triple tap of the trigger button. The camera also takes detailed panorama shots that blend nine separate photos into one, and long exposure photographs without the need for a tripod, thanks to its advanced stabilization ability.
DJI is selling the Osmo+ for $649.00 on its website, with a collection of accessories including a bike mount ($49.00) and universal mount ($25.00), to add extra equipment like a microphone or LED light to the camera.
The company also offers a warranty plan for the Osmo+, called Osmo Shield ($65), which doubles the device's warranty to two years with "unlimited maintenance (conditions apply) and one-time only accidental hardware damage coverage, including water damage." For more detailed specs of DJI's new Osmo+ camera system, check out the company's official website.
Australia's largest carrier Telstra has announced that all of its Go Mobile plans now include data-free Apple Music streaming as of this week, enabling customers to listen to songs and albums without tapping into their monthly data allowance. Telstra's FairPlay policy regarding unreasonable usage applies. In tandem, it continues to offer free six-month Apple Music subscriptions to new customers.
Telstra also now includes a three-month subscription to popular streaming services Netflix, Stan, and Presto on select mobile plans. Additionally, all plans include a free 200GB OneDrive cloud storage subscription, free and unlimited Telstra Air hotspot data, and a NRL and AFL 2016 Footy Season Pass.
Many carriers offer free subscriptions to services like Apple Music or Spotify to attract new customers. Telstra became the first carrier to gift Apple Music with a mobile plan when it offered a 12-month subscription for free last August. German carrier Deutsche Telekom is similarly planning to offer new customers six months of Apple Music service for free starting in September, according to a recent report.
When the six-month Apple Music subscription ends, Telstra will automatically charge customers $11.99 per month until the plan is canceled, but data-free streaming will continue. The carrier has posted an Apple Music FAQ with more information about the offer, including how to sign up.
WhatsApp has updated its terms of service and privacy policy to reflect that it will begin sharing select data with Facebook, including the phone number a user verifies during the registration process and the last time a user accessed the service. Facebook, which acquired WhatsApp in 2014, will use the information to provide better friend suggestions and targeted ads and offers to users of its own service.
By coordinating more with Facebook, we'll be able to do things like track basic metrics about how often people use our services and better fight spam on WhatsApp. And by connecting your phone number with Facebook's systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them. For example, you might see an ad from a company you already work with, rather than one from someone you've never heard of.
WhatsApp ensures that nothing users share on the service, including messages, photos, and account information, will be publicly shared onto Facebook for others to see. The updated terms and privacy policy also state that the new data sharing measures will help WhatsApp more accurately count unique users, fight spam and abuse, and improve the overall experience of its messaging service.
Existing WhatsApp users can choose not to share their account information with Facebook. On the iPhone app, before you tap "Agree" to accept the updated terms, tap on "Read," scroll to the bottom, and toggle the control. Users that agree to the updated terms also have an additional 30 days to opt out by going to Settings > Account > Share My Account Info and toggling the appropriate control in the app.
WhatsApp remains committed to providing private communications. All messages sent through the service are not stored on its servers, and end-to-end encryption has been in place since April on the latest version of the app. The updated terms and privacy policy do not affect these security measures.
In a new FAQ about its updated terms and privacy policy, WhatsApp says it will still not allow third-party banner ads on the service.
Popular video platform YouTube is reportedly seeking to greatly expand its social features with a new section called "Backstage," where users can share photos, polls, links, text posts, and videos to anyone subscribed to their channel (via VentureBeat). According to internal sources at YouTube, Backstage will launch in the fall both on the company's mobile apps and desktop. The initial soft launch will only be for "select popular YouTube accounts" and include "limited features," however.
YouTube's social expansion is believed to be in response to the popularity of services like Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter, which are increasingly improving their own video functionality -- particularly Facebook -- and pulling away users from sharing YouTube videos within each network. Posts shared on Backstage will curate in a reverse chronological order, and each user's content will be found next to the "Home" and "Video" tabs within a YouTuber's channel. Backstage posts will also be pushed to every subscription box, similar to any time a new video is posted, "making them highly visible to fans."
Backstage marks a pivotal shift for YouTube, whose sole focus on video and unsuccessful Google+ integration have left the door open for popular users to flock to competing services like Twitter and Facebook in order to better communicate with fans. By introducing new ways for users to converse, Backstage could reverse the historically one-way communication between stars and their fans. Video sharing and watching will remain the primary function of YouTube, but Backstage may help make YouTube a better place to talk about those videos, too.
It's not clear what will be initially available for the select users during Backstage's soft launch, but eventually YouTube wants to enable users to share both traditional videos and "Backstage-only" videos on the service. Although still unconfirmed, this could mean "more intimate" video-sharing abilities between users, potentially even ephemeral posts that disappear, similar to Snapchat and, now, Instagram Stories.
Down the line, the company wants to "spur new types of conversation" on the platform, allowing users to respond to Backstage posts with their own photos, videos, "and other types of comments." These response features are being referred to as "rich replies" by those close to the project. The company's goal is to keep YouTube watchers within its ecosystem to talk about videos, and not defecting to Twitter or Facebook to chat with friends, or even contact their favorite popular YouTuber. It wasn't mentioned whether Backstage would be exclusive to the company's premium paid YouTube Red subscription service or not.
The Backstage news comes at the same time of Apple's reported interest in creating its own video sharing app, with the hope of competing with existing social networks as well. YouTube's concerns undoubtedly stem from Facebook's focus on video, which began with a comment by CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier in the year, and has expanded into MSQRD integration, an entirely new app, and the testing of autoplay videos with sound in its iOS and Android apps.
Apple is working on its own social networking app, in the style of Facebook and Snapchat, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The company, "seeking to capitalize on the popularity of social networks," will focus on video in the new app, letting users record a video, edit it, apply a filter, add doodles, and then send it out to friends. Apple's goal is said to make the app quick and easy to use, with one-handed controls and an interactive process that includes shooting, editing, and uploading videos "in less than one minute."
Apple and CEO Tim Cook are said to be looking to its services business to continue to increase profit as its hardware sales slow down amid a modest update year for its flagship iPhone line. In order to "remain relevant" on the software side of things, the company wants to aim the new app at younger users who are spending 50 minutes a day on Facebook's family of apps (including Instagram and Messenger), and 30 minutes a day on Snapchat.
The growth of Apple’s hardware business is slowing and Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is looking to the company’s services business, such as the App Store and iCloud storage, as a way to generate increased revenue. Apple has failed to successfully launch social-media services in the past, including an iTunes-focused social network called Ping in 2010. Now as Snapchat and Facebook’s Instagram and Messenger apps grow atop Apple’s iOS mobile operating system, Apple is seeking to create its own features to remain relevant, particularly for younger users.
One of the prototype designs for the unnamed app was said to record video in a square-shape, like Instagram, according to a group of people close to the project. The current plans for the app are to offer it as a download via the App Store, but the company could pivot and bundle its proposed social network directly into the existing camera app in iOS. To help bolster its features, Apple is using the same team that created Final Cut Pro and iMovie to develop the social network.
The app is being developed in the same Apple department that developed Final Cut Pro and iMovie software, according to the people. Apple hired Joe Weil, the former president of a New York-based video production company, to lead the vision for the project, the people said. Weil, who co-developed a video blogging app called KnowMe, joined Apple in December 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Ultimately, Apple hopes it can launch the new app sometime next year, but if it doesn't meet the company's expectations -- or if executives see potential problems, along the lines of Ping and Connect -- it could be scrapped.
Besides the proposed video app, Apple has also been working on "multiple social-related features" for iOS over the past year, none of which have launched. One proposed update includes consolidating every communication between a user and a specific contact on one screen, so "two friends could be able to see all text messages, e-mails, and social network interactions between each other in a single window."
No word was given on the launch of the social features not related to the video app, but a team within Apple that rules on the privacy implications of its software will ultimately decide when, and if, any of these experiences make it to a public release. As such, Apple's 2017 launch window for the video app could also be pushed back indefinitely. Still, it's interesting to see the company move to create its own social networking experience, instead of solely designing the hardware on which many people visit apps that may soon be its rivals, like Facebook and Snapchat.
Closer to a wide launch is the company's brand-new and revamped Messages application coming in iOS 10, which elevates the platform above a simple texting service thanks to the addition of features like handwritten messages, full-screen effects, photo doodling, and much more.
The first driverless taxi hit the roads of Singapore on Thursday, in a limited public trial taking place in a hi-tech business district in a western part of the country (via Reuters).
Developer nuTonomy invited a select group of people to download their ride hailing app and ride for free in its "robo-taxi", saying it hoped to get feedback ahead of a planned launch of the service in 2018.
"This is really a moment in history that's going to change how cities are built, how we really look at our surroundings," nuTonomy executive Doug Parker told Reuters.
The ongoing trial rides are taking place in Mitsubishi i-MiEv electric vehicles, with an engineer sitting behind the wheel to monitor how the system deals with the road and take control if necessary.
The company has partnered with the Singapore government on the project, and hopes to have 100 taxis working commercially in the Southeast Asian city state by 2018.
NuTonomy is one of several companies racing to launch self-driving vehicles, with new projects or alliances between automakers and technology firms being announced on an almost weekly basis.
Last week, Uber announced it would begin allowing customers in Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from within its ride-hailing app, while Ford announced plans to build a fleet of fully automated driverless cars for commercial ride-sharing by 2021. In June it was reported that Uber had held talks with Fiat Chrysler about a potential partnership involving self-driving car technology.
Apple has been the source of many self-driving automobile rumors since last year, but it's now thought the company's first entrance into the vehicle industry likely won't be autonomous, although later generations of its "Apple Car" would probably include the technology.
However, over the summer reports suggested that Apple is taking a "two-prong approach" to its car development, internally known as "Project Titan", and will focus more on creating its own autonomous driving system rather than manufacturing the vehicle.
The proposed system augments typical Touch ID verification by capturing and storing information about a potential thief after six fingerprint unlocking attempts have failed and the wrong passcode is inputted 10 times (after which a "cool down" period or a complete data wipe is activated, depending on user setting).
In another variation, a single failed authentication triggers the capture of fingerprint data and the device takes a picture of the user via the front-facing camera.
In yet other embodiments, the system can be configured by the user to enable or disable various triggers and scenarios in which the biometric capture protocols are activated. The patent also specifies how other data could be logged in the background to supplement the biometric capture, including time stamps, device location, speed, air pressure, audio data, and more.
Flowcharts illustrate different implementations of the security system.
After capture, the data is stored either locally on the device or sent to a remote server for evaluation, while purges of data are activated when the system determines that it is no longer required.
In suggested uses that are likely to be controversial, Apple describes how the server-side aspect of the system could potentially cross-reference the captured biometric and photo information with an online database containing information of known users. Currently, the fact that Touch ID fingerprint data is stored locally and not in a centralized database is considered to be a significant security benefit to users.
There's no reason to believe Apple will implement the forensic technology in an upcoming consumer product, but the patent does highlight Apple's continuing research into how to harden security on mobile devices beyond passcode screens and Touch ID.
Google today updated its iOS app of the same name, with increased support for 3D Touch on compatible devices.
The update expands on 3D Touch support originally introduced to the Google app in December, allowing iPhone 6s and 6s Plus owners to make more use of the devices' "peek" and "pop" gestures.
Deep pressing on a title or map in Google search results now offers a "peek" preview of the linked page, while pressing harder "pops" the page into fullscreen view.
Elsewhere, users can deep press on the "G" button to start a search from anywhere within the app. Users without a 3D Touch-supporting device can long press on the button instead for the same action.
Google for iOS can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Chinese mobile manufacturer Xiaomi announced a new smartphone today amid market research speculation that the Beijing-based company is struggling.
The successor to the popular Redmi Note 3, the new Note 4 has a unibody all-metal design with chamfered edges and a 5.5-inch 1080p curved-glass display.
The handset is powered by MediaTek's Deca-Core Helio X20 SoC (clocked up to 2.1GHz) and comes in 2GB/3GB RAM and 16GB/64GB storage capacity variants, with a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing one. The handset has a dual SIM slot with space for an SD card up to 128GB. A fingerprint scanner is also featured on the rear.
The Redmi Note 4 comes in silver, gold, and dark grey, while pricing is RMB 899 ($135) for the 16GB model and RMB 1199 ($180) for the 64GB device.
The smartphone goes on sale tomorrow in China, at a time when suggestions are emerging that the so-called "Apple of the East" is feeling the squeeze in an increasingly punishing mobile sector.
Between 2011 and 2015, Xiaomi managed to become the world's third largest smartphone distributor, competing with the likes of Lenovo, LG, Samsung, and Apple, but historically it has been difficult to know how many handsets Xiaomi sells because it doesn't release any data. However, global consumer technology researcher IDC recently estimated that its mobile shipments had fallen 38.4 percent in the April to June quarter of this year compared to 2015.
Information published by Counterpoint Research in April also showed the company's global market share shrinking, down more than 12 percent for Q1 this year compared to the same period last year. Xiaomi has disputed those numbers, and says that estimates from other research houses are more upbeat. In a statement given to the BBC, a Xiaomi spokesperson said:
We understand that different analyst firms have different calculation methods. There are many other third-party reports out there, including those by Strategy Analytics, Gartner and IHS that put our Q2 2016 numbers significantly above what IDC estimated, and those are much closer to our true sell-out number.
We are seeing very healthy demand, but also experiencing some challenges in the supply chain this year. We are ramping up and in June, we sold 6.94 million phones in just one month.
Two months ago, the company unveiled its first ever PC laptop, named the "Mi Notebook Air". Xiaomi has been forced to defend itself from copycat accusations in the past. Its devices have been publicly criticized for heavily borrowing design elements from Apple's iPhones and iPads and adopting marketing materials tactics similar to Apple's, leading Apple chief designer Jony Ive to call the company's antics "theft" and "lazy".
Dropbox yesterday emailed users who have not changed their passwords since mid-2012 to inform them they will be prompted to do so the next time they log in.
Services like Siri, Cortana, and Alexa are being held back by a lack of advancements in digital microphone technology, reports 
