Tag Archives: Android malware

Weekly output: unlocked phones, headphone jack, foreign phones, Android security, smartphone trends (x2)

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I had a busy week in Barcelona at my fifth Mobile World Congress smartphone show, and in just a few days I head to Austin for SXSW. So I may need a little more time to flesh out my Flickr album from MWC.

2/27/2017: 3 ‘unlocked’ phones that might make your carrier unhappy, Yahoo Finance

My first file from MWC focused on a few phones that manufacturers will sell direct to consumers, not locked to any one carrier–a trend I applaud.

yahoo-mwc-2017-posts 2/28/2017: Sorry, Apple, the headphone jack isn’t going anywhere, Yahoo Finance

This post must have fetched the biggest audience of anything I did from MWC. The Verge’s Vlad Savov gave me a shout-out, and a Reddit thread on my story racked up more than 2,000 comments–about 70 times as many as people left after the piece itself.

2/28/2017: 4 new smartphones you can’t get in the US, Yahoo Finance

You’d think “is this phone coming to the U.S.?” would be a question any MWC show-floor rep could answer. You would be wrong.

3/1/2017: What you should and shouldn’t worry about in Android security, Yahoo Finance

Some enlightening conversations with security professionals led to this report. Key lesson: While you’re far safer sticking with Google’s Play Store, malware can sneak into it. And as a visit to the MWC exhibit of an Iranian app store reminded me, some parts of the world don’t get the Play Store at all.

cr-mwc-2017-recap3/2/2017: Best Smartphone Tech of 2017, Consumer Reports

I fired off an e-mail to my editor at CR in the middle of packing two Fridays ago, asking if he needed any sort of a wrap-up post from MWC. This wound up being the last thing I filed from the show floor, then the next morning I sent in a revision from my Airbnb addressing my editor’s comments before I headed to the airport.

3/4/2017: 4 changes coming to Android phones, USA Today

This shorter look at Android-phone trends went through two changes after posting: We corrected the headline so it no longer referred to five changes, then we fixed an errant reference to a Galaxy S3 on the show floor (it was a Galaxy S7 Edge). As is my practice, I called out those alterations in a comment.

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Weekly output: Android security, CES answers, SOPA, Web chat, interview

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This week was about a million times easier than my post-CES week last year–when two days after coming from Vegas, I was on the 7 a.m. Acela to New York to cover the introduction of the Verizon iPhone, followed by an 8 a.m. TV appearance the next morning. This time, I had time to linger at the State of the Net conference Tuesday and Wednesday (where I did a radio interview about SOPA that, sadly, doesn’t seem to be anywhere online) and edit, sort and caption my CES pictures into a semi-coherent photoset on Flickr.

1/15/2012: Security tip: Assess Android apps wisely, USA Today

The week’s summarizes the ways you can assess the quality of an Android app before installing it on the phone, then shares a lesson learned from my Christmas tech troubleshooting of an iPhoto problem on my mother-in-law’s computer.

1/18/2012: Why The Web Is Sick Of SOPA, Discovery News

Wednesday’s online protests provided a handy news peg to summarize the things I and many other Internet users hate about the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. One of them is the greedy, control-freak mindset behind these exercises in copyright overreach, as recently documented by News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch in a series of delusional tweets.

1/18/2012: CES 2012: Answers To Your Electronics Questions – Not All That You’ll Like, CEA Digital Dialogue

I’ve done a lot of CES recaps–including last week’s for Discovery–that focus on the new hardware on display at the electronics show. For this one, I opted to assess what sort of answers CES provided to some of the questions I hear most often about gadgets. Sorry, you won’t like the response the show coughed up about the future of smartphone battery life.

1/20/2012: Rob’s CES Recap, CEA Digital Dialogue

I did my first Web chat since my goodbye Q&A at the Post in April for CEA on Friday. (This was also my introduction to the CoverIt Live app I’ve seen used at many other sites.) About 10 minutes in, I realized how much I’d missed the experience–it’s good to be back in the saddle. The plan is to do these once a month at CEA’s site, although if there’s sufficient interest I wouldn’t have a problem with stepping up that frequency.

1/21/2012: January 21, 2012 — Kirk McElhearn, Daniel Eran Dilger, and Rob Pegoraro, Tech Night Owl Live

I was a guest on Gene Steinberg’s Tech Night Owl Live podcast. He interviewed me about Apple’s new iPad e-textbooks initiative (don’t put too much weight on my answers, since we spoke only an hour or so after the announcement and I hadn’t had much time to digest the details) and then my favorite political punching bag, SOPA. (This episode isn’t live on that page yet but should be sometime Saturday night. 1/22, 1:04 p.m. Now it is; I’ve added that link and corrected the title.)