Amazon Halts Sales of BLU Smartphones Over Privacy & Security Issues Motorola...

Amazon Halts Sales of BLU Smartphones Over Privacy & Security Issues Motorola... xda-developers Aug 2, 2017 1:00 AM • by Doug Lynch Amazon Halts Sales of BLU Smartphones Over Privacy & Security Issues Back in November of last year we reported on an issue concerning a BLU smartphone that had a controversial piece of software on them known as Adups. The original report came from KryptoWire who pointed out that the BLU R1 HD that was being sold by Amazon had this invasive software pre-installed on the devices. This software is from Shanghai Adups Technology Co. Ltd. and is said to be installed on over 700 million devices worldwide. For those unaware, Adups is very similar to a well known piece of software in the United States called CarrierIQ. CarrierIQ was advertised as a mobile diagnostic software suite, but recorded a ton of information about a person's smartphone. The list included capabilities such as SMS recordings, SMS transmission, IMSI, IMEI exfiltration, call log transmission, command injections and more. Adups' software suite does all of that and more. Source: KryptoWire At the time, BLU released a statement saying Adups wasn't supposed to be included in smartphones that were shipped in the United States. The company said they had a 3rd-party handling OTA updates and they simply "made a mistake". They assured us that a new OTA update was pushed out that disabled this software so no more information could be transmitted back to servers in China. Many had thought the issue was over and done with, but 9 months later and Amazon has decided to step in. While Amazon had been selling the BLU R1 HD as part of the company's Prime Exclusive smartphone collection, but the retailer was also selling a number of other smartphones from BLU. We're unsure if this Adups software is the reason why Amazon decided to halt sales of BLU's smartphones, but the company did say "security and privacy of our customers is of the utmost importance" and that BLU's phones would be unavailable from Amazon.com until the issue is resolved. If it is indeed because of Adups, then it's curious as to why it took Amazon 9 months to finally do something. BLU says they are in a process to review so they can get their devices reinstated on the Amazon website. Source: CNET Android Advices Aug 2, 2017 7:26 PM • by Karunakar Donthamshetti Motorola Moto G5s & Moto G5s Plus Smartphones Launched with Android 7.1 & 3,000mAh Battery Motorola has launched the Moto G5s and G5s Plus smartphones which are upgraded versions of Moto G5 and Moto G5 Plus and were introduced at MWC 2017. The Moto G5s phone priced at 249 Euros (approximately Rs. 18,800) while Moto G5s Plus variant costs at 299 Euros (around Rs. 22,500). Both devices would be sales starting from later this month in Europe (in the United States this fall). Both devices would be available in Lunar Grey and Brush Gold color options. Both smartphones packed with a latest Android 7.1 Nougat operating system and are Powered by a 3,000mAh capacity battery with turbo charging feature which can give up to 5 hours of battery power after 15 minutes of charging time. These two devices have a 32GB of internal memory and 3GB of RAM which also provides an external memory card slot up to 128GB via microSD card slot. They support dual SIM dual standby which accompanied by 4G LTE connectivity. Both Moto G5s & Moto G5s Plus devices come with an all metal unibody design with a slightly curved back panel and rounded edges around the display which make more comfort in hands. The duo phones are equipped with a fingerprint sensor embedded in a physical home button for unlocking the device, and antenna bands are placed top and bottom. Both phones are used the water-repellent nano coating technology and have Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection from scratches and minor drops. The Moto G5s sports a 5.2-inch FHD display which has a 424ppi of pixel density while Moto G5s Plus smartphone features a 5.5-inch FHD display with 401ppi of pixel density. Under the hood, the G5s packed with a 1.4GHz Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor coupled with Adreno 505 graphics while the G5s Plus device is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 octa-core 2.0GHz processor paired with Adreno 506 graphics. For photography, the Moto G5s phone comes with a 16MP rear camera PDAF, f/2.0 aperture and LED flash and has a 5MP front-facing camera. While the Moto G5s Plus device bears a 13MP dual rear camera with focus editor, f/2.0 aperture, 8x digital zoom for photos & 4x for videos and color balancing dual LED flash and sports an 8MP selfie shooter. Both devices can record slow-motion videos, but the G5s device camera shoots videos in 1080p, and the G5s Plus phone would record videos in Ultra 4K videos. This email has been sent by Froze ONE (isnanmm0@gmail.com). It is the potion result of 'Tech: Topic watch' from the dashboard 'Personal Dashboard', tab 'Tech > Android'. Turn off or edit this potion © Netvibes 2005-2017 | Terms of service | Privacy Policy Find Netvibes also on: Facebook Twitter Google+ Flickr

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