Articles by Muhammad Jarir Kanji

The Gmail integration is rolling out today, while the new layout will go live sometime this month.

What you need to know

Google Meet is getting a couple of new features.
Starting today, you can join a Meet video call right from Gmail.
Later in the month, the platform will roll out a 16-person grid layout for video calls that’s quite similar to Zoom.

As more people work online, demand for enterprise communication and videoconferencing apps has skyrocketed. And though Zoom has come out as the incidental beneficiary of this uptick, concerns about security and privacy on the platform have left the door wide open for competitors to swoop in and take the limelight away.

As Reuters reports, Google is planning on doing just that with a flurry of new feature updates to Google Meet in the coming months, as millions of institutions turn to the platform to continue operating in the social distancing era.

To start off, it’s rolling out Gmail integration for Meet (which just last week dropp…

The phone will sell for $650 stateside.

What you need to know

The Galaxy S10 Lite is finally making its way to U.S. shores.
The phone will be available for purchase starting April 17.
The retail price of the base model will be $650.

Having already made its way to European shores, Samsung’s Galaxy S10 Lite will soon cross the Atlantic and land in the U.S. The phone is slated to go on sale starting tomorrow for $650 (via 9to5Google).

You may only get the Snapdragon 855 powering Samsung’s last generation flagships for that price, but make no mistake, this phone is no slouch. Not only does it feature a respectable combination of a 4,500 mAh battery, 6GB of RAM, and 128 GB of storage, but it also boasts almost all of the same software features as the Galaxy S20, for $350 less. Add to that 6.7 inches of Samsung’s trademark AMOLED goodness, and you’ve got quite the competitive package on your hands.

It’ll go on sale at Samsung, Amazon, and Best Buy’s websites starting tomorrow. The c…

The exposed credentials are not the result of a breach but, rather, of what’s called a credential stuffing attack.

What you need to know

Nearly half a million Zoom accounts have been exposed and are being sold on the dark web.
The exposed credentials are not the result of an attack on, or a breach of, Zoom’s servers.
Instead, they’re the result of hackers trying credentials from previous leaks on users’ Zoom accounts to see if they work.

If you were already concerned about the myriad security issues plaguing the incidental beneficiary of our combined desire for a video conferencing service in light of the pandemic currently ravaging the world, here’s some more bad news: over 500,000 Zoom accounts are presently either on sale or being distributed on dark web hacker forums.

As Bleeping Computer reports, these are not the result of a breach of Zoom’s servers. The cause of their exposure is much simpler: what’s called a credential stuffing attack, a technique in which hackers aggre…

The tab is divided into two sections: New Releases and Moods & Genres.

What you need to know

Google is adding a new Explore tab to the YouTube Music apps.
The tab will replace the now-defunct Hotlist app as the one-stop-shop for music discovery.
New music will be divided between new releases and further broken down by genre.

Having already added a Lyrics section to the Now Playing tab and reorganized the library to make listening to your existing library a more pleasant experience, Google is now turning its attention to making discovering new music a little easier in the YouTube Music app. It’s aggregating music discovery into a new ‘Explore’ tab and sunsetting the previous ‘Hotlist’ section.

The tab will divide music into two categories: one dedicated to highlighting the latest releases and another that further breaks the options down by moods and genre.

New Releases will feature the latest popular albums, tracks and music videos, as well as brand new content suggested…

This is, seemingly, the first in a “new product roadmap.”

What you need to know

LG has revealed the name of its upcoming flagship.
The phone will be called ‘Velvet,’ as the company ditches its numbered naming scheme.
It’ll also feature a unique, ‘raindrop’ camera design.

After years of mostly being content with spitting out one midrange phone after another — even if they are consistently ranked as the best of the bunch — LG is finally turning its eyes back to the flagship segment. And it hopes to do so with a bang, a new design language and revamped specs included.

Having already shown some of the design of the phone, the company this week revealed the name of the phone it’s pinning its hopes on: Velvet. The name, it says, “is intended to evoke images of lustrous smoothness and premium softness, two key characteristics of the new phone.”

This will also mark a departure for the company’s overall naming scheme for its phones, “moving away from alphanumerical designations in …

Hangouts Meet met the same fate yesterday.

What you need to know

Google is renaming Hangouts Chat as Google Chat.
The change comes after the company similarly dropped the Hangouts from Hangouts Meet.
The consumer-oriented Hangouts app will keep its name, however, so the Hangouts brand isn’t quite dead yet.

When Google updated its support pages to remove the Hangouts from Hangouts Meet yesterday, we wondered if Hangouts Chat was also going to meet the same fate. Well, Google just confirmed today that it will and has officially renamed Hangout Chats as Google Chat.

Despite not releasing an official statement on its blogs, the company confirmed its plans for a rebranding to The Verge. If you head over to the Google’s support landing page and the page dedicated to the app, you can see the change is now in effect.

The rebranding effort is far from complete, though, because not only does the Play Store listing still refer to Hangouts Chat — the same is true of Google Meet, by the …

The feature is currently only available on the Photos web app, unfortunately.

What you need to know

Google is adding new ‘uploaded from’ and ‘shared by’ categories to images’ metadata in Photos.
As the names suggest, these bits of information can help you more quickly identify where an image comes from.
The change is only live in the Photos web app, however, with no word on when/if the iOS and Android apps will also get the feature.

If you’ve got an extensive photo library — and who doesn’t these days? — it might be hard to keep track of exactly where everything’s coming from. To help with that dilemma, Google has updated the ‘Info’ panel in Photos to show more two bits of information about each file.

These are ‘uploaded from’ and ‘shared by.’ As their names suggest, both pieces of metadata are designed to help you narrow down an image’s provenance with greater specificity.

The ‘uploaded from’ field shows whether the image was uploaded via an Android or iOS device, the web…

The number is +41 79 893 18 92.

What you need to know

The WHO is turning to WhatsApp as a way of disseminating the latest updates on the coronavirus.
The WhatsApp bot will also answer any questions you might have about the pandemic.
You can find the WHO at +41 79 893 18 92.

As fears around the coronavirus intensify, social media is abuzz with information pertaining to the virus. WhatsApp, often the primary vector for many disinformation campaigns, is now being used by the World Health Organization to set the record straight on COVID-19 (via GSMArena).

To receive updates on #COVID19 from WHO add this number— +41 79 893 18 92 to your contacts and send a @WhatsApp message. You’ll automatically be registered to receive updates and also have an option to ask for more information as shown below. pic.twitter.com/WXaGd88AGf— WHO Uganda (@WHOUganda) March 20, 2020

Add +41 79 893 18 92 to your contact list, and you’ll be able to meet the WHO’s WhatsApp bot. Sending it a text (you …

It’s a 189 MB download.

What you need to know

OxygenOS Open Beta 11 is now rolling out to OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro phones.
The update includes the March 2020 security patch.
It also contains a few fixes relating to the display and the keyboard.

Just a week after the company made OxygenOS Open Beta 10 available on the OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro, OnePlus is already rolling out its successor — to some users, at least.

The update doesn’t really bring any major new features. Instead, it focuses on quality control.

The changelog shows the company has fixed the frame rate issues that were previously spoiling screen recording for some users, and it has also optimized adaptive brightness for the display. Lastly, the phone won’t suddenly switch back to Gboard if you’re using a third-party keyboard like SwiftKey.

And, of course, the update also includes the latest security patch — the March 2020 one, in this case — which is always a welcome sight.

As with all of OnePlus’ software rollouts, t…

It’s already gathered nearly 2,300 signatures in a single day.

What you need to know

Some users are complaining about Samsung’s use of Exynos processors in its phones.
Calling these products “inferior,” the petition asks Samsung to abandon the lineup and use only Qualcomm’s SoCs in its phones.
In just a day, nearly 2,300 people have already signed up.

While Samsung may be proud of its capability to manufacture its SoCs in-house, its customers clearly aren’t satisfied with the product, especially considering the company’s decision to ship its flagships with different processors in different markets.

The South Korean giant generally uses its home-made Exynos processors for phones sold in Asia and Europe, while the U.S. market gets Snapdragon-powered phones. The difference in performance between the two variants can often be significant, and a new petition on Change.org is asking Samsung to stop selling its customers these “inferior” products.

It reads:

These parts are inferi…