The 2nd gen Moto G got Lollipop back in January, but that just wasn't written in cards for the 1st gen model here in the US. Folks carrying around that older device have been stuck on KitKat, waiting to get their hands on all the slick animations and material design they've been drooling over since last summer. Now, with Google I/O 2015 a week away, here we are. Motorola has announced an over-the-air update bringing Android 5.0.2.

At this point, you already know what to expect. You've had an entire year to get excited. So sit back, pour yourself something nice, and wait on the notification to come in. Or, you know, jam on the update button. Sometimes that works too.

Source: AndroidPolice

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According to new findings in Snowden's documents, the "Five Eyes" nations, which includes the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand planned to hack Google's mobile app store in order to infect Android smartphone users with malware.

The documents showing the project are dated between November 2011 and February 2012, so it's possible the intelligence agencies have succeeded in their goals, or at least they may have until Google implemented stronger security measures in 2013 when it found out its whole network was hacked by the NSA.

The agencies used a spying program called XKEYSCORE that seems to appear again and again in such revelations. This is a "passive surveillance" program that captures (mainly unencrypted) Internet traffic that passes through cables, which are tapped by the NSA and other Five Eyes agencies.

After the program identified which traffic represents user connections to Google's app store, the agencies could then use other programs such as IRRITANT HORN to break those connections and send their own malware to the agencies' targets. The malware, or "implants," would then grab sensitive information from smartphones such as emails, texts, web history, call records, videos, photos or other files.

It seems the main motivation for grabbing this kind of information was to avoid being blindsided in case an Arab Spring-like mass unrest happened again in the Middle East or Africa. This is why the agencies focused on Senegal, Sudan and the Republic of the Congo, at least at the time. However, the agencies also used the same programs to hack targets from France, Cuba, Morocco, Switzerland, the Bahamas, the Netherlands and Russia.

Within the same project, the agencies also managed to exploit some major vulnerabilities within Alibaba's UC Browser, a popular web browser in China and India used by half a billion people. The UC Browser was leaking information such as users' search queries, phone numbers and UIDs that can be used to track people, as well as location information protected by encryption that could easily be broken with publicly available tools.

Citizen Lab, a human rights and technology research group, contacted Alibaba last month, and the company has since fixed these security issues with an update launched on May 15. Alibaba said it has found no evidence that customer data has been leaked, although it's unlikely the surveillance of this data could have been detected.

According to Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert, this vulnerability could have been used by criminals as well, which makes the agencies' decision not to disclose the vulnerability reckless from a cybersecurity point of view.

"Of course, the security agencies don't [disclose the information]," Deibert said. "Instead, they harbor the vulnerability. They essentially weaponize it." Taking advantage of weaknesses in apps like UC Browser "may make sense from a very narrow national security mindset," Deibert added, "but it's at the expense of the privacy and security of hundreds of millions of users worldwide."

Last year, Snowden's documents also showed that the NSA likes to masquerade as Facebook servers in order to send malware to hack into the users' computers, so Google's app store isn't the only target of such kind. Both reports also deal with information that is a few years old, so more companies could be affected by this sort of attack.

Source : Tom's Hardware

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If you're into hidden object games, you are probably familiar with Artifex Mundi. This developer has a bunch of these titles in the Play Store, all of them with thousands of downloads/reviews and nearly perfect ratings. They're also rather pricey, but for the next two weeks you can get a good deal on the whole catelog from Artifex Mundi and contribute to charity thanks to the Humble Bundle.

I'll assume you have a basic understanding of the Humble Bundle by this point. What you need to know about this one is it's a three-tier deal, which Humble Bundle just started doing recently. You can pay anything to unlock Deadly Puzzles, Time Mysteries 1, and Clockwork Tales. Pay above the average sale price at the time of purchase and you'll get Demon Hunter, Grim Legends, Time Mysteries 3, and Time Mysteries 2. If you pay $9 or more, the third tier opens up with Grim Legends 2 and Enigmatis 2.

There are usually more games added a week into each bundle, but I think this is already Artifex Mundi's entire catalog. At any rate, you've got two weeks to drop some cash on the bundle before it's gone.

Source: AndroidPolice

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If you've got a Find 7 or Find 7a phone from OPPO and you're itching for an official Lollipop ROM, head on over to the company's user forums. A beta version of Color OS 2.1, running on top of Android 5.0 code, has been posted for you to download. At the moment this edition of the software is not available via an over-the-air update, though that should be coming soon enough.

According to the post, this version of the misnamed ColorOS adds a redesigned interface and icon set. More relevant changes to the skin are the removal of a bunch of superfluous widgets and features, including something called "emoticon radar," in an effort to reduce size and increase performance. Whether they've succeeded or not is debatable; the ROM still weighs in at a Samsung-worthy 960MB.

 

OPPO warns that flashing the full ZIP in recovery will wipe all user data, so backup what you can before you pull the trigger. There are also some partition issues you'll want to check out on the forum post before updating. If all of that seems a little intimidating, maybe it would be best to wait for the official over-the-air update... even if it is several months late already. That's more than you can say for other OPPO phones.

Source: AndroidPolice

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Expectations are high for each update to Google's core apps on Android. After all, we know there are going to be a lot of new features announced at I/O in less than 2 weeks. Quite a few apps have recently gone through a Material refresh, and plenty of others have seen smaller changes as they slowly coalesce around the current design guidelines. That appears to be the story with the latest Google App update. The latest version finally enables full screen mode for Google Now on devices using custom launchers.

left: old version, right: new version

Prior to this release, users with the Google Now Launcher set as their default homescreen would see their Now stream with translucent status and navigation bars. However, people with any other launcher would see fully opaque black bars. The update changes this behavior so that the stream is always shown in immersive mode. Yes, it's a pretty simply change, but a lot of people have requested this for quite a while.

We've checked the Galaxy S6 to determine if 'Ok, Google' command is working everywhere again. Unfortunately, it still appears to be broken.

We're still poking around for more changes. If you stumble across anything worth calling out, let us know in the comments below.

Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.

File Name: com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox-4.6.10.19.arm-300407085-minAPI19.apk

Version: 4.6.10.19.arm (300407085)

MD5: cb63f33e4b39d22278276fdb36a98caa

• APK Mirror (arm)
• APK Mirror (arm64)

Source : AndroidPolice

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The Asus ZenFone 2 is one of the more interesting unlocked phones to be announced lately, and you can secure yours right now on Amazon. A few more US retailers now have product pages up, but it looks like it's just Amazon taking orders. The first round of orders will ship on May 20th.

Now that the Amazon listing is live, we can find out exactly which variants come in which colors. The 16GB version with 2GB of RAM comes in black or silver only. That one is $199, by the way. The $299 ZenFone with 64GB of space and 4GB of RAM can be purchased in silver, gold, or red. Both versions of the ZenFone 2 are GSM/LTE devices with support for all the bands you need for North American carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile (and any associated MVNOs).

The price and color availability should be the same on B&H, Newegg, and Groupon when pre-orders are up. Amazon does offer Prime shipping, though. Canada? Nothing yet on your end, but Canada Computers has a page up with broken "buy" buttons. So that's something, I guess.

Source:AndroidPolice

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Left: old, Right: new

Our long national nightmare is finally over—Google has updated Maps with a translucent status bar. No more will you stare at that flat black status bar and curse your life and everyone in it.

The status bar is plain gray on the main map interface, but it's blue in the areas of the app that use a standard action bar (i.e. local business listings and the settings). There very well may be some other changes lurking in Maps 9.9, but nothing is jumping out at us. It's possible we've simply been thrown off by the shocking addition of the translucent status bar. You'll need to be on Lollipop to see any difference, though.

I should note that readability of the bar is somewhat bad when there's a busy map on the screen. At least it's more consistent with Google's other apps. You can grab the update from APK Mirror below if you don't want to wait.

PlayStore Link

Source: AndroidPolice

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YouTube updates have been rolling out about every week or two for the last couple of months. Most of the changes haven't been very big, but they're polishing up little aspects of the app in notable ways. The latest version bump doesn't make a lot of changes, either, but it's continuing the trend of small but visible changes. A permanent Cast button has been placed in the action bar and there are updated icons in the privacy selector for uploads. A quick teardown also reveals that we might finally be able to choose to download just the audio track for offline playback, which should make it much easier to store music for the road.

What's New

Permanent Cast Icon

left: old version, right: new version

The first change should stand out almost immediately after starting up YouTube. A Cast button has been permanently affixed to the action bar, even if there's not a Chromecast or Android TV around. It's present in almost every screen of the app, except for Settings and the video upload workflow. If there's no Cast targets available, the icon will simply remain grayed out and doesn't respond to taps.

It's not clear if this is a bug or if the icon was intentionally made permanent. Perhaps Google wanted to avoid the experience of having the Cast button pop into existence a second or two after YouTube launched, or maybe this is just a branding decision to remind people that they should use their Chromecast more often. Whatever the case may be, I imagine many users without a Cast receiver of some kind are going to see the new icon as an obnoxious waste of space that takes up space that should belong to titles.

I hate to be the person that calls out design issues, but I think this might be getting a little over the top. Here's the Uploads screen, with 4 buttons stacked in the action bar.

New Icons For Video Privacy

left: old version, right: new version

If you're adding any content to YouTube through the Android app, you're going to see a slightly cleaned up privacy picker. The icons representing Public, Unlisted, and Private have been replaced with sharper looking and more communicative versions. The pop-up box has also been made a little larger for easier tapping, and the background color has also been turned from gray to white to up the visibility a bit.

Teardown

Disclaimer: Teardowns are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete evidence. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. There is always a chance that details may change or plans may be cancelled prior to the launch of a new feature discovered in a teardown. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced.

Upcoming: Audio-Only Downloads For Offline Playback

It looks like YouTube is about to add a new option to the Quality selector for storing content offline. There's a new string that suggests we'll have the option to grab just the audio track from a video, and leave the visual component behind. The name for the string matches the naming pattern for the current offline selectors, and the feature makes perfect sense, so there's not much guesswork here. The only question is how long we have to wait before this feature goes live.

new:

Audio Only

old:

360p
720p (HD)

This has been a pretty heavily requested feature, since music videos needlessly take up a lot of space when many people only want the audio to play back with the screen turned off. No doubt, this will make a lot of Music Key subscribers very happy.

For reference, these are the current options as seen in the Settings screen or while making a request to add a video to offline storage.

Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.

File Name: com.google.android.youtube-10.19.53-101953130-minAPI15.apk

Version: 10.19.53 (101953130)

MD5: 0adbd4c2bc25d4615b761cc2a05df927

• APK Mirror

Source : AndroidPolice

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Remember those baseballs that measured pitch speed with a little LCD screen right on the ball, the ones that only the rich kids on your little league team had? This is the modern, logical extension. For the last year, Adidas has been selling its Smart Ball, a soccer ball (or football, if you insist) with integrated sensors that can detect speed, spin, strike force, and flight time, and a Bluetooth radio to transmit all that data. Previously it was only compatible with the iOS app, but the company has finally released an app for the most common mobile OS on the planet. Took 'em long enough.

  

The app records data from the ball, but its primary function is a training aid. It will use the data it gathers to recommend improvements to your kicking technique, such as where to strike on your foot for a particular type of kick or shot. Integrated videos and diagrams break down the physics for beginners. Like a more conventional fitness app, data is recorded and saved in a personal log and shareable on social networks.

  

The Smart Ball app is free, but you'll need to spend a whopping $200 on the hardware itself if you want to take advantage of it, and that's before adding on various "smart" accessories.

Playstore Link

Source: AndroidPolice

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