AI is the next big thing in technology, and companies are implementing it into several services. Google, one of the largest AI companies, is going to plug generative AI into Gmail. Thanks to 9To5Google, we have a sneak peek of what it could look like.
Now, this was discovered during an APK breakdown done by the company. This means that you’ll want to take this with a grain of salt. This is hidden in the Gmail app version 2023.03.05.515729449. Since the company didn’t officially announce this, it could change or be taken away at any time.
Google could bring generative AI to Gmail
AI already plays a part in Gmail. The app uses it to give you reply suggestions. It can also autofill sentences for you to help you increase your workflow. While that’s neat, the search giant wants to take this to the next step.
Apparently, Google wants to give Gmail a ChatGTP-style email generator. Looking at the screenshots below, you’ll see a new button appear when you’re typing up a new message. The Help me write button will make a text field appear.
What you’re supposed to do is tell it what kind of email you want it to write. In the screenshot, we see that the user typed “Write a birthday email to Alex. He’s 23 now”. The screenshot doesn’t show the resulting message, but we can guess that the app will then generate a birthday message.
This seems like a handy way for people to use AI to type up emails if they’re having trouble wording them correctly. Most people probably wouldn’t want the AI typing up all of their emails for them. However, this could help give people ideas of what to write. That’s why the button is called Help me write not Write this entire email for me.
At this point, we don’t know when Google plans on bringing this to the public. We will keep you updated on this feature as more developments come out.
While YouTube TV has lost the MLB.TV add-on as well as the MLB Network, Fubo has added it to their offerings. Today, the company announced that it will offer MLB.TV as an add-on for its service. It’ll be available on Fubo as a $24.99 per month add-on. That’s the same price as MLB.TV would cost you if you were to buy it by itself.
With this addition, Fubo has become the streaming leader for MLB coverage this year. It already offered the MLB Network, MLB Network Strike Zone and most of the regional sports networks. Meaning that no matter what team you are a fan of, you’ll be able to watch their games on Fubo.
Fubo’s co-founder and CEO David Gandler said on the news, “With today’s MLB.TV partnership, Fubo now offers the most baseball coverage of any streaming company, on top of our already leading position for local sports coverage and our robust NFL and college sports packages.”
Fubo is continuing to hold the title of the best sports streaming platform
When Fubo debuted, it was positioning itself as the best streaming live TV platform for sports. It had a ton of sports channels and offers quite a few games in 4K. And now with today’s announcement, they are continuing to hold that title. For baseball fans, there’s no better option than Fubo right now.
Fubo isn’t cheap, it’s actually one of the more expensive streaming platforms out there, starting at $74.99 per month. But that does also include over 150 channels, and 1000 hours of cloud DVR space. Fubo also has a ton of great add-ons that make the service even better than ever.
If you’re looking to watch the MLB this season, then Fubo is the way to go. Luckily, they do offer a free 7-day trial, which you can sign up for by clicking here.
The developer of the Android botnet is rending out Nexus through a Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) subscription for $3000 per month.
A recent detailed technical analysis by Cleafy security researchers warns users about a new Android banking botnet called Nexus that was introduced by an individual on various underground hacking forums in January 2023.
The malware developer claimed that Nexus was entirely coded from scratch and that it could be rented out through a Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) subscription for $3000 per month.
MaaS is a business model employed by cybercriminals to rent or sell their malware to other parties, particularly those who lack the technical knowledge to develop their own malware. This model is widely used in the distribution of Android banking trojans, as malware authors leverage MaaS platforms to reach a broader audience.
Nexus is a banking Trojan that primarily targets banking applications installed on Android devices. Nexus contains all the main features to perform Account Takeover attacks (ATO) against banking apps from all over the world and cryptocurrency services.
It can perform overlay attacks, keylogging activities, and steal SMS messages to obtain two-factor authentication codes. Through the abuse of the Accessibility Services, Nexus can steal some information from crypto wallets, the 2FA codes of the Google Authenticator app, and the cookies from specific websites.
Nexus is also equipped with a mechanism for autonomous updating. It asynchronously checks against its C2 server for updates when the malware is running. If the value sent back from the C2 does not correspond to the one installed on the device, the malware starts the update process. Otherwise, it ignores the value and continues with all its routine activities.
The malware is distributed through a MaaS platform called “Nexus Botnet,” which allows attackers to customize and distribute the malware as per their needs. The platform offers various features, including control panel access, auto-update, and anti-analysis techniques, making it harder for security researchers to detect and mitigate the threat.
Despite its authors claiming that the source code was written entirely from scratch, some code similarity with SOVA, an Android banking trojan that emerged in mid-2021, suggests that they may have reused some parts of its internals.
This is what the malware developer has to say about the Nexus Android banking trojan (Image: Cleafy)
The SOVA author, who operates under the alias “sovenok,” called out an affiliate who rented SOVA previously for stealing the entire source code of the project. This event could explain why parts of the SOVA source code have been passing through multiple banking trojans.
Nexus also contains a module equipped with encryption capabilities which point towards ransomware. However, the company clarified that the module appeared to be undergoing development due to the presence of debugging strings and the lack of useful references.
“At the time of writing, the absence of a VNC module limits its action range and its capabilities; however, according to the infection rate retrieved from multiple C2 panels, Nexus is a real threat that is capable of infecting hundreds of devices around the world. Because of that, we cannot exclude that it will be ready to take the stage in the next few months,” the advisory concluded.
Samsung’s popular M8 Smart Monitor is on sale over at Amazon today, and it’s down to just $483.99. That does bring it down from its original price of $729.99, and is an all-time low. So if you’ve had your eye on this one, now is the time to grab it.
This is a 32-inch 4K monitor from Samsung. But what makes it smart? Well, it’s basically an all-in-one. Meaning that you can stream pretty much anything on this monitor, without using your computer. It has Samsung’s TV interface built-in, allowing you to watch content from Disney+, Apple TV+, Netflix, and so much more, right there on the monitor. It’s a pretty interesting concept, and has actually proven to be quite popular for Samsung.
A lot of Apple fans say that Samsung copied the iMac design for this monitor, which it does look very similar. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Who says your monitor can’t have some color? It does come in four colors. That includes daylight blue, spring green, sunset pink, and warm white. It also has an adjustable stand that is included, unlike Apple’s Pro Display XDR.
Another interesting tidbit about the M8 is that it does actually have a webcam built-in. It sits at the top of the monitor, and can be tilted to get the right angle for video calls, streaming and such.
It’s not a gaming monitor by any means, especially with a 60Hz screen here. But this is a good monitor to put into a living room that you might want to use for some work, and also use to watch some movies and TV shows. It kills two birds with one stone here. Which is definitely pretty nice to have.
You can pick up the Samsung M8 Smart Monitor from Amazon today by clicking here. This sale isn’t going to last long, so you’ll want to be quick here.
Google released Bard to the public this week, well sort of. You do need to get on Google’s waitlist and then be let in. Which Google did let in a good amount of people on Tuesday to check out its competitor to ChatGPT.
After Bard’s false start last month with Google’s bad ad for it – where it gave out false information – I was a bit hesitant about using Bard. I know Google has been working on AI stuff for well over a decade now, but it showed that Bard was far behind ChatGPT. Well, actually, It’s ahead of ChatGPT in some areas, and behind in others. Here’s what I mean.
When you ask Bard for stuff, it tells you how or why it came up with that answer
One thing that Bard does that I really like is, explaining why it gave you the answer it did. For example, we’ve been using ChatGPT to help with titles and tweets for our articles here at AndroidHeadlines. And if I ask Bard for a title idea for an article, it will give me a couple of options, and then explain why that is a good choice.
Or, when you ask it what is the best smartphone to buy, it’ll run down a number of options, then give the usual disclaimer of the best phone to buy will depend on your needs. Something that we say in every buyers guide and review, ourselves. Which is very much appreciated.
Now, if we move over to Math, when you ask Bard to solve an equation it will solve it, and then basically show its work. Which is pretty cool. In the example below, I asked Bard what 2+2-3 is. Obviously that’s a pretty easy equation and one that any of us can do in our heads. But as you see below, it solves it, then talks about PEMDAS and performs the equation.
There’s a Google it button after each response
Not that we expected Google not to add a search button to Bard, but this is pretty smart on their part. At the bottom of almost every response, you’ll see an option to “Google It”. Which will open a few search queries that you can click on.
This is going to be better for more complex questions, that you want to do more research on than what Bard would provide. But it does make the experience a bit more seamless. I do wish that it could perform the search for me, in the same window. A bit more like what Microsoft has done with Bing AI, powered by ChatGPT.
ChatGPT will source its information, Bard doesn’t
As a writer and someone in running a tech publication, this is a big deal. Bard, when you ask it for some information, and then ask it to source it, it either tells you it can’t do that. Or it’ll say that it did the testing itself and it doesn’t need to source anyone. Tom’s Hardware found this out this week.
It caught Bard plagiarizing its own testing, and then when it was caught, Bard did apologize. But that’s a serious problem that Google needs to work on.
ChatGPT on the other hand, at least the version that is included in Bing’s search engine, does a good job at sourcing. Check out the screenshot below.
Using the same example from earlier in this article, “what’s the best smartphone to buy”, ChatGPT via Bing gives me four options with each one being sourced. In fact, this response has 15 sources, and it’s very easy to click on them and get more information. Sure Bard’s UI looks cleaner than this, but this is more functional and its not plagiarizing articles that writers spent hours (and sometimes days, or weeks) writing.
Since regular ChatGPT is using older information, almost two years old at this point, this doesn’t really apply to ChatGPT. But it does in Bing AI which uses ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is better for learning
A lot of the time when we are searching for something, we are looking to learn about a topic. Bard does a pretty bad job with that. While ChatGPT is actually really good at that. Bard will go into detail, but not nearly as much as ChatGPT.
When it comes to generating text, Bard is pretty good, but ChatGPT is still better. However, ChatGPT is limited to a certain number of characters in each response, so sometimes, you’ll need it to continue. Bard will just keep going. Now Bard is not always accurate with its facts, as we’ve found out. So you’ll still want to proofread and fact check any sort of text you generate from an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Bard.
Which is better?
At the rate that AI is moving right now, it’s really unfair to say which is better. OpenAI just recently announced GPT-4, which is only available to those that pay for ChatGPT Plus, so we haven’t been able to test it out yet. But it’s supposedly way better than the current ChatGPT, which was GPT 3.5. Bard on the other hand, this is Google’s first public release, even though you do need to get on a waitlist for it. It’s a pretty good first release, but there are things that need to be fixed here. Like having more accurate information in its responses, not plagiarizing articles, providing links to things, especially when asking about things you want to buy.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see both of these chat bots drastically change before the end of 2023. At the rate the pace of AI is going right now.
Motorola is planning to launch a new budget smartphone in the near future, the Moto G53s. This handset has surfaced on the Google Play Console, and not only confirmed its existence, but some of its specs too.
The Moto G53s is Motorola’s upcoming budget phone
Based on the Google Play Console listing, the phone will be fueled by the Snapdragon SM4350 processor, which is the Snapdragon 480 SoC. That SoC is expected to be backed by 4GB of RAM.
Android 13 will come pre-installed on the device, with Motorola’s MyUX on top of it. We still don’t know the phone’s display size, but we do know that the resolution will be 1600 x 720 (HD+).
That is basically all the information that was shared. Based on this, however, we can clearly see this will be an entry-level phone. It will be very affordable, and likely be geared toward specific markets.
It could resemble the Moto G53
When it comes to the design, well, that’s still a mystery. The Moto G53s could easily look a lot like the Moto G53, though. We’ll almost certainly get a flat display, with a centered display camera hole up top, or a waterdrop display notch, perhaps.
One or two cameras will sit on the back of the phone, while the “chin” below the display will be noticeable. That bezel will be thicker than the rest for sure, as it is on basically every other phone in that price segment.
The launch date is also still a mystery. The phone did appear on the Google Play Console, but that doesn’t mean it will launch in the coming days or anything of the sort. It will probably arrive in the near future, though. So, we’ll just have to wait for Motorola to fill in the blanks, as we don’t have much info at the moment.
If you’ve ever tried switching phones on Android, you know how much of a hassle it can be. While you can easily migrate your Google account data and apps between devices, transferring app data is often not possible. This can be frustrating since not all third-party apps support data migration, leaving you with the hassle of setting up all your apps again.
Now, to solve this problem, Chinese smartphone manufacturers Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo are collaborating to make transferring third-party app data easier when switching between their brands of phones. This means that Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo users can switch between devices without worrying about losing their app data or having to set up all their third-party apps again.
“In order to bring users a better replacement experience, Xiaomi has reached cooperation with Vivo and Oppo. In addition to system data such as photos and contacts, Xiaomi has newly added support for migrating third-party application data from Vivo and Oppo phones, so you don’t have to worry about your chat records when switching phones,” read the Weibo blog post.
Exclusive to China
Unfortunately, there is a catch. The migration tool will only be available on phones produced for Chinese consumers, not on those made for the international market. Therefore, users outside of China may still have to set up their third-party apps manually when switching between different Android phones.
However, this is not the first time that these Chinese companies have worked together. In 2020, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo created a unified file-sharing solution that enables users to share files between phones made by these three brands.
They further expanded this cooperation by creating the Global Developer Service Alliance (GDSA), allowing developers to upload their apps to Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi’s app stores simultaneously.
While this news is exciting for Chinese users, there is still a long way to go before providing a reliable third-party app data migration process for Android users worldwide. Hopefully, Google will follow suit and make the switching experience more convenient for Android users.
Google seems to have picked up the pace with the rollout of the Immersive View feature for Google Maps. The new feature, which combines Street View with photorealistic 3D aerial imagery to let you virtually explore places like never before, is showing up for more people around the world. More importantly, more places have been mapped interactively in recent months.
Immersive View is available for more cities in Google Maps
Google originally announced plans to introduce immersive views for cities in Maps during its I/O developer conference in May of last year. In July, the company began the initial rollout with photorealistic 3D aerial views of around 100 popular landmarks around the world. You could check out places like the Empire State Building in New York City, Big Ben in London, Alcatraz in San Francisco, and Skytree in Tokyo in a whole new way.
In September last year, Google expanded the feature to more global landmarks. It added Acropolis in Athens, the Oracle Park stadium in San Francisco, and many others, with 3D aerial view support for almost 250 places in Maps. However, a true Immersive View of a whole city, with everything from restaurants and stores to traffic and parking lots available to explore immersively from your phone’s screen, was still missing. Finally, at its Search AI event in Paris last month, Google announced that the promised feature is rolling out.
The company said users will be able to explore London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo in an immersive way in the coming weeks. True to that, Reddit users recently confirmed Immersive View support for London. But that’s not it. Some users can also see the feature going live for Berlin. This suggests Google is gathering speed with the rollout. It plans to expand to Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence, and Venice more cities in the coming months (via). So watch out for it.
You might not want to explore this feature on mobile data
Immersive View on Google Maps requires an extensive amount of data and information about cities. This is likely why the company is taking so long to expand the feature globally. Meanwhile, as a user, keep in mind that the feature is extremely data-hungry. A Redditor recently pointed out that exploring cities in Immersive View consumes around 2GB of data in just 30 minutes. So if you’re on limited mobile data, you might want to connect your phone to an unmetered Wi-Fi network before diving into this whole new Google maps experience.
Nothing has announced its second-gen truly wireless earbuds, the Ear (2). These earbuds actually resemble the first-gen model a lot, in terms of the design, the case is noticeably smaller, though. They also have a number of improvements in tow.
The Nothing Ear (2) earbuds are official with familiar design and various improvements
These are, once again, made out of plastic, and have that see-through design that we’re used to when it comes to Nothing. Considering that the case is smaller, they now include a 485mAh battery, compared to a 570mAh one in the Ear (1) model. Nothing does say you’ll get better battery life, though, mainly due to an improved audio chip.
Speaking of which, the company promises up to 36 hours of total music playback without ANC, compared to 34 hours on the Ear (1). The standalone battery life has also been improved, claims the company, from 5.7 hours to 6.3 hours without ANC.
Nothing says you can get up to 8 hours of use with a 10-minute charge. Qi wireless charging is still supported (2.5W). There is a Type-C port for wired charging too, though, of course.
They come with an 11.6mm dynamic driver, and dual chamber design
The Nothing Ear (2) earbuds come with an 11.6mm dynamic driver, and dual chamber design. Bluetooth 5.3 is supported here, and the same goes for AAC, SBC, and LHDC 5.0 codecs. They also offer Hi-Res audio certification, and are compatible with Google Fast Pair, Microsoft Swift Pair, and offer the Dual Connection feature.
When it comes to active noise canceling, they can cancel out noise up to 40dB. ANC also adapts itself to the environment, and we’re looking at a frequency range of 5,000Hz here.
There are four Smart Adaptive Noise cancellation modes, High, Mid, Low, and Adaptive. The Transparency mode is also a part of the package, of course.
The earbuds themselves are IP54 certified
These earbuds are IP54 certified, while the case itself is IP55 certified. In other words, both are water resistant. There are also touch controls on the earbuds themselves, which allow you to control music playback, answer and reject calls, switch between ANC modes, and more.
The Nothing Ear (2) earbuds weigh 4.5 grams, per earbud. The case weighs 51.9 grams. The dimensions of each earbud are 29.4 x 21.5 x 23.5mm. The charging case measures 55.5 x 55.5 x 22mm.
The Nothing Ear (2) earbuds are priced at $149 / £129, and will go on sale starting on March 28.
In addition to announcing the Huawei Mate X3 foldable flagship, and the Huawei Watch Ultimate premium smartwatch, Huawei also launched its P60 series today. All of these devices got announced during a press event in China.
The Huawei P60, P60 Pro & P60 Art got announced as the company’s new flagships
Huawei announced three devices as part of the series, the Huawei P60, P60 Pro, and P60 Art. These three devices are very similar in many ways, but there are some differences between them. The ‘Art’ is the most premium one, actually.
The Huawei P60 and P60 Pro do look basically the same, but the ‘Art’ stands out with its odd–looking camera island, and different finish on the backplate. Let’s first see what are the similarities here.
They all have the same exact LTPO AMOLED display
All three phones do have the same 6.67-inch fullHD+ (2700 x 1220) LTPO AMOLED display. Its refresh rate goes from 1Hz to 120Hz on all three phones, while they offer a 300Hz touch sampling rate.
All three phones also have a centered display camera hole up top, and very thin bezels. All phones have three cameras on the back, but there are some differences between them we’ll talk about. The ‘Art’ also has a special backplate that reflects light in interesting ways, Huawei wanted to mimic the water here, in a way.
They also shared the dimensions, all three phones measure 161 x 74.5 x 8.3mm, but their weight is a bit different. The Huawei P60, P60 Pro, and P60 Art weigh 197, 200, and 206 grams, respectively.
The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC is also something they have in common, with 4G support. 5G is not on offer here due to the US ban, pretty much. The Huawei P60 and P60 Pro offer up to 512GB of storage, while the ‘Art’ goes up to 1TB. RAM info is still unknown.
The Huawei P60 series supports wired charging up to 88W, and up to 50W wirelessly
The Huawei P60 features a 4,815mAh battery, the same as the P60 Pro, while the P60 Art has a 5,100mAh unit. The Huawei P60 supports 66W wired charging, while the other two phones offer 88W wired charging. 50W wireless charging is supported on all three phones. And yes, a charger ships inside the box with all three phones.
IP68 certification comes with all three phones, as does Bluetooth 5.2. You will also find an in-display fingerprint scanner in all three phones, along with two nano SIM card slots. An IR blaster also sits at the top of all three devices.
Huawei’s XMAGE camera setup is included on all three phones, but there are differences
All three phones have the same main camera. A 48-megapixel unit with adjustable aperture (f/1.4-f/4.0 aperture, OIS). The Mate 50 Pro took the same approach, and the results were outstanding. The Huawei P60 and P60 Pro have a 13-megapixel ultrawide camera (f/2.2 aperture), while the ‘Art’ has a 40-megapixel ultrawide unit (f/2.2 aperture).
The Huawei P60 includes a 12-megapixel periscope telephoto camera (f/3.4 aperture, OIS, 5x optical zoom, 24.5mm, 13mm, and 125mm focal lengths, 50x digital zoom) for its third camera. The Huawei P60 Pro and P60 Art, however, have a 48-megapixel super-spotting night vision telephoto camera (f/2.1 aperture, OIS, 3.5x optical zoom, 24.5m, 13mm, and 90mm focal lengths, 100x digital zoom).
The Huawei P60 series will be coming to global markets
The Huawei P60 starts at CNY4,988 in China. The P60 Pro starts at CNY6,988, while the Hauwei P60 Art starts at CNY8,988. The Huawei P60 series will be coming to global markets, but we still don’t know which models exactly.
