Nokia WILL Return in 2017 With Two New Android Phones: Specs, Hardware & Release Date Rumours

Nokia has confirmed that it will release two Android phones inside early 2017. Previous rumours pointed to a launch during Q4 2016, but this is no longer happening. Nokia will apparently announce the phones at MWC 2016 and a release will follow shortly thereafter.

There will be two models: a mid-ranger and a flagship handset. The latter of which is the one most people are interested in, as it is the phone that will go head-to-head with the likes of Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S8, which will get a release around the same time.

We're all familiar with Nokia. Together with other key phone manufacturers from the 90's (such as Motorola), the firm pretty much dominated the early mobile space, back before smartphones, and produced some of the most iconic feature phones in the industry; devices which are still much-loved and often used even today. With the emergence of smartphones, the likes of Nokia and Motorola took a back seat for a time, while Apple, Samsung, and others pretty much took over. Nokia took a gamble and got involved with Microsoft on the Windows Phone project, a gamble which ultimately didn't pay off and resulted in Microsoft buying up Nokia's smartphone division, as well as the exclusive rights to produce devices under the Nokia brand...until now, that is.

As of December 1, HMD Global has issued a new press release on the subject of its plans with Nokia in 2017. Amongst the details there is confirmation of new handsets arriving next year. The company stated that "new Nokia smartphones on Android‌ operating system [will be] available in H1 2017."

"Today marks a happy and important day for HMD. Nokia has been one of the most iconic and recognisable phone brands globally for decades. The excitement of re-introducing this much-loved, well-known and trusted brand to smartphone consumers is a responsibility and an ambition that everyone at HMD shares‌.

Driven by the extremely positive reception we have received since HMD was announced earlier this year, we are excited about building the next chapter for Nokia phones. We see this as a brilliant opportunity to solve real life consumer problems and to deliver on the quality and designs that the Nokia brand has been always known for. Our talented and passionate team is uniquely placed in this modern setup to deliver our promise of reliable‌, beautifully crafted and fun Nokia phones for consumers across the globe."

• HMD Global enters the market today, to create a new generation of Nokia branded mobile phonesthrough an exclusive 10-year brand licensing agreement
• Effective immediately, HMD will own the existing Nokia branded feature phone business, providing global market reach and scale 
• HMD Global leadership team announced; ambition to become significant player in the global smartphone market  
• Strategic partnership model with leading industry players and world-class expertise to bring the very best Nokia mobile phone experience to global consumers  
• New Nokia smartphones on Android operating system available in H1 2017 
Nokia has announced that its CEO, Rajeev Suri, will be speaking at a keynote at MWC 2017, alongside chief execs of major carrier networks and app and service developers. Meanwhile, Microsoft's CEO of its Asia-Pacific branch, James Rutherfoord, has gone on the record saying HMD Global - the firm which has acquired the rights to sell Nokia phones and is teaming up with Nokia itself - will launch multiple devices in 2016 and 2017.
On December 2 word has emerged that Google is "closely" involved with Nokia's new Android phones. The info comes via an article in Reuters, which was originally published featuring a comment about a "close partnership" between Nokia and Google for development of the new hardware, however, as Android Authority reports, the article has since been edited and the quotation removed for reasons unknown.

A phone that charges in second

 

A team of UCF scientists has developed a new process for creating flexible supercapacitors that can store more energy and be recharged more than 30,000 times without degrading

The novel method from the University of Central Florida's NanoScience Technology Center could eventually revolutionize

technology as varied as mobile phones and electric vehicles.

"If they were to replace the batteries with these supercapacitors, you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn't need to charge it again for over a week," said Nitin Choudhary, a postdoctoral associate who conducted much of the research published recently in the academic journal ACS Nano.

Anyone with a smartphone knows the problem: After 18 months or so, it holds a charge for less and less time as the battery begins to degrade.

Scientists have been studying the use of nanomaterials to improve supercapacitors that could enhance or even replace batteries in electronic devices. It's a stubborn problem, because a supercapacitor that held as much energy as a lithium-ion battery would have to be much, much larger.

The team at UCF has experimented with applying newly discovered two-dimensional materials only a few atoms thick to supercapacitors. Other researchers have also tried formulations with graphene and other two-dimensional materials, but with limited success.

"There have been problems in the way people incorporate these two-dimensional materials into the existing systems -- that's been a bottleneck in the field. We developed a simple chemical synthesis approach so we can very nicely integrate the existing materials with the two-dimensional materials," said principal investigator Yeonwoong "Eric" Jung, an assistant professor with joint appointments to the NanoScience Technology Center and the Materials Science & Engineering Department.

Jung's team has developed supercapacitors composed of millions of nanometer-thick wires coated with shells of two-dimensional materials. A highly conductive core facilitates fast electron transfer for fast charging and discharging. And uniformly coated shells of two-dimensional materials yield high energy and power densities.

Scientists already knew two-dimensional materials held great promise for energy storage applications. But until the UCF-developed process for integrating those materials, there was no way to realize that potential, Jung said.

"For small electronic devices, our materials are surpassing the conventional ones worldwide in terms of energy density, power density and cyclic stability," Choudhary said.

Cyclic stability defines how many times it can be charged, drained and recharged before beginning to degrade. For example, a lithium-ion battery can be recharged fewer than 1,500 times without significant failure. Recent formulations of supercapacitors with two-dimensional materials can be recharged a few thousand times.

By comparison, the new process created at UCF yields a supercapacitor that doesn't degrade even after it's been recharged 30,000 times.

Jung is working with UCF's Office of Technology Transfer to patent the new process.

Supercapacitors that use the new materials could be used in phones and other electronic gadgets, and electric vehicles that could benefit from sudden bursts of power and speed. And because they're flexible, it could mean a significant advancement in wearable tech, as well.

"It's not ready for commercialization," Jung said. "But this is a proof-of-concept demonstration, and our studies show there are very high impacts for many technologies."

In addition to Choudhary and Jung, the research team included Chao Li, Julian Moore and Associate Professor Jayan Thomas, all of the UCF NanoScience Technology Center; and Hee-Suk Chung of Korea Basic Science Institute in Jeonju, South Korea.

How safe is your smartphone?

How safe is your smartphone?Are you a victim of smartphone espionage?It is a fact that governments, the NSA, private organizations and individuals hack smartphones using malicious backdoors, phone apps, ATM skimming type software and wireless radio wave technology to gain illegal access to the unsuspecting smartphone user.Hackers can take over your smart phone by sending a text message with a photo or video attached. In 2015, over a billion Android phones were affected by this security flaw known as “Stagefright.” According to arstechnica.com a disparaging Qualcomm security-bug, leaves many phones open to attack. The fix is unavailable for most users, and many will probably never get it. “The flaw, which is most severe in Android versions 4.3 and earlier, allows low-privileged apps to access sensitive data that’s supposed to be off-limits, according to a blog published by security firm, Fire Eye, but instead, the data is available by invoking permissions that are already requested by millions of apps available in Google Play.”Unfortunately even with Apple’s strong encryption standards, even an iPhone user’s privacy is still at serious risk and exposure. According to digitaltrends.com the illegal exposure was possible from a security flaw in Signaling System 7 (SS7), a little-knownglobal network that connects all the phone carriers around the world. It’s known as the heart of the phone system. The bad news here is that it affects every phone on a cellular network, whether it’s running iOS, Android, or even Windows. Even if a user turns off location services on their phone, hackers would still be able to see the phone’s location via the network. “The theory is that the SS7 flaw is well known within the government, but it’s a hole that security agencies might not want plugged since it provides access to everyone’s phone.”    According to cracked.com, once your phone has been hacked, your cell phone tilt sensor can “sense” what you are typing on your computer. Your phone’s accelerometer can pick up information such as messages, chats and passwords just based on the distance from the keys to the phone and deduce which letters you type.      4. Any Smartphone with near field capabilities (NFC) can steal credit card information just by being near them. According to                         Cracked.com, “the program’s  creator, Eddie Lee, demonstrated the hack with his own phone at DefCon 2012, then released his simple           app on the Internet as a flashing ‘Fuck you, fix this!’ sign to credit  card companies.”“FREE CHARGING” Kiosks may use the same technology as ATM Skimming devicesto steal your private information, and data, or install a program on your phone to steal it later.       6. Ralf-Philipp Weinmann of the University of Luxembourg discovered that hackers infiltrate  your phone through the airwaves                            themselves, through fake cell phone towers,  completely bypassing your operating system and antivirus software to hack directly              into the radio processor. This fake cell phone tower tricks your phone into thinking you are connected to a network. Much like the       security flaw in SS7.Unsecure Wifi in restaurants, hotels, and airports allows the hackers to view everything you do while connected. On iPhones, a message will warn the user by saying the server cannot be verified.There may be a silver lining:According to John Marinho, vice president of Technology & Cyber Security at CTIA, the wireless association, which represents phone carriers and manufactures. “The U.S. has one of the lowest malware infection rate in the world thanks to the entire wireless ecosystem working together and individually to vigilantly protect consumers.”But is it really?Or is this just what they want us to think?According to PCWorld, Edward Snowden has created an iPhone case meant to kill surveillance efforts by hackers who attempt to find your location. You can’t just turn off your location in settings on an iPhone, hackers have found a way around this. Snowden warned, “The GPS, for instance, will still remain active on some handsets, like the iPhone. In the worst-case scenario, malware could also infect the handset to secretly send radio transmissions, he added.”Snowden’s iPhone case is designed to protect journalists from governments spying their locations. “Unfortunately, journalists can be betrayed by their own tools,” he added. “That may have happened in 2012, when U.S. reporter Marie Colvin was killed while covering the Syrian civil war.” A lawsuit alleges that the Syrian government assassinated her by tracking Colvin’s satellite phone communications to find her location.Robert Nazarian, from Digitaltrends.com shared critical information in an article dated April 2016. Nazarian says, “U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., a member of the House Budget Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, called for a full investigation into the SS7 issue and sent a Letter dated April 18, 2016, to Honorable Jason Chaffetz, Chairman, and Honorable Elijia Cummings, Ranking Member, of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.In the letter to Chaffets and Cummings, Lieu says:“ANYONE WHO KNOWS ABOUT THIS FLAW AND DIDN’T ACTIVELY TRY TO REMEDY IT SHOULD BE FIRED. WE CAN’T HAVE 300 SOME MILLION AMERICANS, AND REALLY THE GLOBAL CITIZENRY, BE AT RISK OF HAVING THEIR PHONE CONVERSATIONS INTERCEPTED WITH A KNOWN FLAW SIMPLY BECAUSE SOME INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES MIGHT GET SOME DATA,” HE SAID. THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.”Of course, Edward Snowden outed himself as the NSA whistleblower, because he thought the current NSA surveillance techniques were a threat to democracy, and many individuals agree with him and are in his corner. It was confirmed that the NSA has DEEP HOOKS in Big Tech, including real time access to the data of American citizens.George Orwell warned of big government overstepping their boundaries. In his book titledNineteen Eighty Four the term Big Brother is a fictional dictatorship used to refer to any ruler or government that invades the privacy of its citizens.In 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”Sure enough, Big Brother has figured out Big Tech hacking.Even if we try to stay one step ahead .