WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging services used by over 2 billion people worldwide. The Facebook-owned messaging platform regularly adds new features to its app, and WhatsApp tests them through its beta program before releasing them to the larger public. Similarly, WhatsApp is now working to replace “Archived Chats” with a new feature called “Read Later.” It is implemented with the Vacation Mode feature that permanently mutes the archived chats and prevents them appear in the default chat list.
As per the latest information, WhatsApp is going to release an improved version of “Archived Chats” in a future update, but with a new name. The company will replace Archived Chats with Read Later — the feature that will prevent notifications of new messages from archived chats. For sure, this is a feature of Vacation Mode that we had talked about a week ago.
WhatsApp Read Later Features
Image courtesy: WABetaInfo
Archived Chats in WhatsApp allows users to temporarily hide the conversations until a new message arrives. The messaging platform now wants to reduce the interruptions through the Read Later option. So, when a user turns this feature on, the new messages will be muted and stay in the Read Later section. However, if a user does not want to use this feature, he can turn it off from the settings. Read Later will appear at the top of the conversations list as a new persistent cell.
How does it work? When a user taps the “Read Later” option, he’ll see a new presentation banner thats explains the feature. WhatsApp explains that this feature will reduce interruptions. When new messages arrive from an archived chat, that chat will stay in the Read Later section, and users will not get any notifications. Though, users will have an option to disable the implemented Vacation Mode in “Read Later Settings.”
Image courtesy: WABetaInfo
Note that this feature is still under development and is not yet available for users. It will be available in a future update, but we don’t know the exact date yet.
Some melodies get stuck in your head and I know that this is the most irritating phenomenon as you can’t get it out. Called earworms, the easiest way to get it out of your head is to simply sing or listen to the original song. But only if it was that easy.
Shazam lets you find a song once you place your phone near the audio/studio recording. But since you can’t recall the song, you are stuck with its melody that you can hum only. Google introduced its Hum to Search feature in October 2020 and it literally was one of the best features from Google. No doubt the hummed tune is way different from an actual audio/studio recording. It lacks background instruments, vocals, lyrics, and other musical traits that help song recognition tools to find it from a huge database.
Google has pioneered its “Hum to Search” which is a fully machine-learned system. It lets users hum to search for any song by matching it with pre-existing melodies. The approach constructs a spectrogram of a song hummed for the model to work and matches it with the polyphonic (original) recording without the need of any intermediate recordings. This is what makes Hum to Search an efficient model to sift through an enormous database of songs to find a match.
Hum to Search: Background
A music recognition system converts an audio sample (sourced from an audio/studio recording). It converts it into a spectrogram (image below). The system then explores through its database of spectrograms trying to find a perfect match. However, hummed melodies lack information including lyrics, background score, and others.
Image Courtesy: Google Blog
The model requires to find a dominant melody from the hummed version and compares it with the corresponding audio recordings to find a match. The model has to cope up with noises, room reverberations, lack of background vocals and instruments, etc. Google demonstrated its song recognition skills with ‘Now Playing’ & ‘South Search’ in 2017. Instead of a server-based recognition, Google shifted to an on-device recognition system with deep neural network integration.
The Machine Learning Setup
Image Courtesy: Google Blog
Naturally, the first step was to alter the music recognition models to identify hummed recordings. A neural network is fed with inputs of both hummed/sung and recorded audio of the same song. The model then requires to produce embeddings that will be used for matching purposes.
The model produces embeddings with melodies of both hummed and recorded songs that are as close to each other. Unsurprisingly, different melodies in the same song would be completely different. The model is trained to ignore singing voices and musical instruments used. The model is then trained on this same principle. The last leg of the journey is simply referencing the embeddings of the hummed version to the embeddings of the recorded audio to find the match.
Training Data with Neural Network
The researchers at Google had to train the model to recognize the hummed version. They used a pre-existing dataset to train the system, and injected the dataset from SPICE which is a pitch extraction model. This enabled the researchers to alter the pitch of existing songs and generate melodies with discrete tones to mimic the hummed version. They further refined the system using the neural network. It was able to produce melodies with whistled and hummed tunes.
Improvements with Machine Learning
Image Courtesy: Google Blog
Google researchers made a few improvements in the machine learning behind Hum to Search using a triplet loss function. According to the model, embeddings are fed on the system. It detects melodies that are either too hard or too easy but doesn’t match with the input. Finally, it ignores different moledies.
Google has used several ways including augmentation, variations, and superpositions of the training data. The neural network helps in recognizing hummed or sung melodies with a higher accuracy rate. The model can recognize more than half a million songs already. It is constantly being updated adding more songs every day.
After adding the Calendar shortcut to Chat recently, Google has added one more feature to the service on Gmail. This feature will allow users to pin conversations and rooms in Google Chat for quick access. The company has added the “Pin” feature to Google Chat in Gmail on the web, and users can access the pinned conversations from the left navigation menu. It will make Chat conversations quick and easy to find.
The ‘pin conversations’ feature is very important for a messaging service to easily jump to important messages without having to find them in a long list. Pin feature sticks the particular conversation to the top of the list and saves a lot of user’s time. According to Google, “You can now pin a direct message or a room in Google Chat. This keeps that conversation at the top of your list view in Chat in Gmail.”
Google Chat Pin Feature Details, Availability
Image courtesy: Google Workspace Blog
The Google Chat pin feature in Gmail is available for both one-to-one and multiuser chats. Besides, users can also pin important rooms and stick them to the top of their Rooms list. Similar to Google Hangouts, which will now shut down completely, the pinned conversations will appear in a reverse chronological order. This means the latest messages will appear at the top of the pinned conversations list. Below the pinned chats, your recent conversations will follow.
Google has already started rolling out the Google Chat pin feature to its users from November 12, 2020, onwards. However, it may take 1 – 3 days for feature visibility for all users. Also, this feature will not have any admin control, says Google in its blog post.
How to pin a Google Chat conversation?
If you have received this feature on your account, then head over to Chat or Rooms in your Gmail on the web. Point a conversation you want to pin and then click on the three vertical dots to reveal the Pin feature. Just click the Pin below the “Mark as read” option, and you’re done.
After announcing the release of new unthreaded rooms last week, Google Chat is adding a new Calendar shortcut icon to the conversations compose bar. This will let users schedule meetings in Calendar directly from the Chat conversations. Google announced this new feature through a blog post on Thursday and shared how the new feature will work and look like. Just recently, we saw Google add a new feature to work Calendar that will allow users to view personal and work calendars together.
Google Chat and Calendar Integration on Android | Image courtesy: Google Workspace Blog
Compose bar lets users quickly add or take an image, see files in Drive, and start a call on Meet. Now, Calendar has also joined them as a new icon on the right.
How It Works?
When you tap on the new Calendar icon on your mobile, it’ll open the full Calendar app directly to the event creation field. Apart from this, it’ll also automatically add the people in that conversation as attendees. However, on the web version of Google Chat, the Google Workplace side panel will appear filled with the same information on the right.
Google Chat in Gmail on Web Shows Calendar Integration | Image courtesy: Google Workspace Blog
Currently, Google Chat is rolling out this feature to Chat in the Gmail app on Android and Chat for Android app. The new feature will come to Chat in Gmail on the web and Chat app for iOS in the coming weeks. According to Google, this feature will have a gradual rollout starting November 12, and it may take up to 15 days for feature visibility. The Google Chat-Calendar integration will come to Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains for all business and enterprise customers along with the G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits.
Google Workplace has announced through a blog post that Android 11 work profile will now allow users to view personal calendar events alongside the work events in the Google Calendar app. The work profile separates work apps and data from personal apps on an Android device. But from now on, when you use a work profile on your device with Android 11 or higher, you will see your personal and work calendars together. Last month, Google Calendar for web side panel got a Google Maps add-on for quick access.
“When it comes to your calendar events, however, it’s useful to be able to manage both work and personal events in a single place,” said Google in the blog post. “That’s why we’ve added support for viewing your personal calendars in your work Calendar app,” it added further.
Android 11 Work Profile Details, Release:
To use this feature, you need to enable the mixed calendar view so that it becomes available in Google Calendar. Once you enable this feature, the new feature will allow you to view your personal calendars alongside work events in the Google Calendar app. However, you won’t see the work events on the personal Calendar app. Also, the personal calendars on the work Calendar app will not be visible to co-workers and administrators unless you share them directly with the work account.
Speaking of the release, the feature has already started rolling out to Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains from November 11. It may take up to 15 days for the feature visibility for all users. Further, this feature will be available to all Business and Enterprise customers, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Non-profits.
As the feature is released already, you should start seeing your personal calendars in the work Calendar app on your phone. And if you still don’t see this feature available to you, you may have to wait for up to 15 days till it gets visible to you.
OnePlus latest announcements Nord N10 5G and Nord N100 are the OnePlus new mid-range segment smartphones that recently got announced in Europe and the USA just after the OnePlus 8T.
The upcoming budget-friendly smartphones will receive only one primary android update that is up to Android 11 only. OnePlus spokesperson confirmed to Android Central.
However, the company promised to provide two years of continuous security updates.
“The Nord N10 5G and N100 will receive one major Android update and a total of two years of security updates. The plan for these two devices aligns with industry standards for smartphones in more affordable price ranges. As always, we will continue listening to feedback from our users and looking for ways to improve the software experience for all OnePlus devices”
Smartphone manufacturers provide smartphones with two primary Android updates and three years of Android security updates. But it seems OnePlus has overworked itself by releasing so many smartphones this year that it won’t be able to provide the service needed to them.
This is the exact same strategy Motorola followed which led to its downfall. And OnePlus seems to follow that too.
On the contrary, the OnePlus 8T comes with Android 11 out of the box. And hence it’s a flagship it will continue the get the best service from the company.
This gives the impression that OnePlus is still focusing on its flagship phones more than the upcoming mid-range smartphones. Whereas, the other competitors are still providing the usual updates service.
Google Photos is one of the most popular media backup services on Android devices and is offered for free by Google since its launch five years ago. But the things will change soon as the company has now announced that it will end its free unlimited storage on Google Photos on July 1st, 2021. Google will now count every high-quality, backed-up media in the free 15GB storage that the company offers its customers. This revised Google policy will come into effect on June 1st next year; however, this will not affect the existing data.
Apart from Photos, the policy also comes with the changes to Google Drive. The company will also now count Google Workspace documents and spreadsheets against the same storage limit. Further, Google will also delete data from inactive accounts that are not logged in for at least two years.
Existing Backups Will Not Count Against the 15GB Cap
All media and documents uploaded to Google Photos before June 1st will not count against the free 15GB. So only photos uploaded after June 1st will start using the limited storage space of 15GB. Till then, users have enough time to decide whether to switch to another cloud storage or continue using Google Photos. If you don’t know, Google already counts the “original quality” photo backups in Photos against the 15GB cap but provides free unlimited storage for “high quality” photos and videos.
The new policy change takes away one of the service’s major selling points — the free unlimited storage. However, according to Google, 89% of the Google Photos users won’t hit the storage limit for at least three years. But when users begin to approach the cap, the company will send alerts and warnings to remind them. Additionally, the tech giant is also adding new storage management tools into Google Photos for users to keep a check on their storage space.
Google might be doing this change to get more people to sign up for Google One storage. This service allows users to manage their cloud storage and buy extra storage space on a subscription. Last month, we saw Google add a free VPN for Google One top-tier subscribers on Android. As per Google, more than 4.3 million Gigabytes are added across Photos, Drive, and Gmail every day. So, it looks like Google wants to limit this and charge a price for extra storage.
Researchers from Kaspersky found a new malware Ghimob. The newly discovered malware targets mostly financial, banking, and cryptocurrency apps.
By far this malware has stolen data from 153 android apps. The malware spreads through third-party app downloads and e-mails. Ghimob malware mimics popular android apps such as Google Defender, Google Docs, WhatsApp Updater, and many more to count.
The malware is said to be created by the same hacker of Astaroh Windows malware—Guildma.
How does Ghimob malware work?
For the malware to get into action, it requires to be installed. Once it is installed gains all the unnecessary permissions, the malware starts its work. It creates fake login pages of the apps that are already used by the user. After that, it sends all the information on the victim’s phone such as password, as well as the bank credentials to the hacker. And once the hacker gets all the details, he can randomly make transactions without the user’s consent.
“When the cybercriminal is ready to perform the transaction, they can insert a black screen as an overlay or open some website in full screen, so while the user looks at that screen, the criminal performs the transaction in the background by using the financial app running on the victim’s smartphone that the user has opened or logged in to.” researchers at Kaspersky explain.
According to the reports, the malware has infected 112 apps from institutions in Brazil, 13 cryptocurrency apps, 9 international apps, 5 bank apps in Germany, 3 bank apps in Portugal, 2 apps in Peru and Paraguay, and one from Angola and Mozambique.
“Ghimob is the first Brazilian mobile banking trojan ready to expand and target financial institutions and their customers living in other countries. Our telemetry findings have confirmed victims in Brazil, but as we saw, the trojan is well prepared to steal credentials from banks, Fintech, exchanges, crypto-exchanges, and credit cards from financial institutions operating in many countries, so it will naturally be an international expansion.” says researchers from Kaspersky.
Kaspersky mentioned about the Ghimob malware on it’s official blog.
Samsung Joins Google’s Android Enterprise Recommended Program
Samsung recently announced that it will join Google’s Android Enterprise Recommended Program. Google’s Android Recommended Program basically aims to provide a high-level of security and business capability on selected android devices to enterprise customers.
It’s not the first time that such an IT company has partnered up with Google’s Android Enterprise Recommended Program. Other tech-giants like OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo, Lenovo, and many others are already a part of this program. But now Korean-tech giant Samsung has joined in too.
How Samsung devices will benefit from Android Enterprise Recommended Program?
“By joining the Android Enterprise Recommended program, we are making it even easier for enterprise customers to build a mobile experience that protects employees, keeps them engaged and enhances operational efficiency by meeting and exceeding Google’s standards for security, productivity and flexibility,” said KC Choi, EVP, and Head of Global Mobile B2B Team, Mobile Communications Business, Samsung Electronics.
Samsung devices running on Android 11 like Samsung Galaxy S20, Galaxy Note 20, Galaxy Tab S7, and Galaxy S7+ are going to be part of the Android Recommended Program. This will provide enterprise customers with more options that ensure consistent device performance, enhancesoperational efficiency by following Google’s standard for security, protects employees, and keeps them engaged at the same time.
Google also commented on Samsung’s participation in AER “Samsung’s participation in the program ensures Google’s customers have access to devices that offer outstanding security, efficiency, and productivity and we look forward to working together more in the future.” said David Still, Managing Director of Android Enterprise, Google.
In addition to that, enterprise customers will also be able to choose between Android zero-touch enrollment and Knox Mobile Enrollment.
After Google, now it’s Realme rolling out an update for Realme C3 devices in November. Realme has announced a new update for its C3 smartphones via OTA for the month of November. The update comes with an updated Android security patch to October 2020 with some other improvements and bug fixes. Earlier this month, Google had released a security update for the Pixel devices.
Realme C3 is a popular budget smartphone from the Realme that comes with a big 5,000mAh battery and a 6.5-inches display. The November update for this smartphone brings a lot of new features along with security improvements. The company has already pushed out the update for some random users on Monday and will roll it out for a broader range of C3 users in the coming few days.
Changes in New Realme C3 Update
The new update from Realme will have a staged roll-out and will come to more users in a few days after the company makes sure there are no critical bugs. This update comes with a UI version RMX2020_11.A.49 and a slew of new features to Settings. Here’s what the new update brings for you:
Image courtesy: Realme
The Realme C3 update for November comes with the latest Android security patch to October 2020. Realme has fixed some probabilistic freezing issue of Clone Phone and added a few new features to Screenshot. Users will now get a Scrolling screenshot feature in horizontal mode along with a toggle for physical button screenshot in the settings. Apart from this, the company has added a bunch of new features to Settings, including the Super power-saving mode. The other features include a toggle to display keyboard when opening the app drawer, an Icon pull-down gesture, and a From Sunset to Sunrise option for eye comfort. Realme has also added shortcuts at the bottom of Battery and Security settings.
In Albums, the update brings a new Create feature that enables video editing in Soloop and some bug fixes. Realme has already started releasing the update for some users, and if you haven’t received it yet, then you may have to wait for a few more days.
