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Verizon Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy Note 4 receive Stagefright patch

As countless manufacturers of Android devices line up to release patches for the “worst Android vulnerability in the mobile OS history,” as some researchers have described it, the Galaxy Note Edge and Note 4 on Verizon are next up.

The vulnerability patch for the Galaxy Note Edge was spotted on Verizon’s support site by Droid-Life, then owners of the Note 4 reached out to the site to share that their devices are receiving a security update as well.

Verizon’s support document for the Note Edge security update is comically short at only one page long — their software update PDFs are usually at least a couple of pages long. We haven’t seen a similar document for the Note 4 yet.

For those who don’t know, Stagefright is what researchers have named a vulnerability that can see malicious software delivered to a device through MMS text messaging and executed automatically, as most messaging apps on Android automatically download rich media sent via MMS, regardless of whether or not the receiver opens the message. Google’s Messages and Hangouts apps both include the ability to disable auto-fetching of MMS content, though, and it’s pretty easy to toggle off.

KitKat to drop Messaging app, integrate SMS and MMS into Hangouts?

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Android Police has screenshots suggesting that both SMS and MMS messaging are being integrated into Google Hangouts, with the standalone Messaging app likely to be dropped from KitKat (Android 4.4) – first on Nexus devices and later on others.

The screenshots claim to be from Hangouts 1.3. It’s just speculation that this will ship with KitKat – it’s possible that it may be released before or after. We have recently seen claimed screenshots of KitKat that include the Messaging app, but that isn’t inconsistent with the idea that it would be dropped from the Nexus first … 
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Google in talks to integrate Voice with carriers other than Sprint

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Up until now, only Android users on Sprint had the luxury of integrating Google Voice into their main cell service. Due to a partnership with Google last year, users can enable Google Voice on their existing Sprint number providing them with access to better rates on international calling, visual online voicemail, personalized greetings, and the ability to use one number across all devices. According to a report from Cnet, Google’s Group Product Manager for Google Voice Vincent Paquet confirmed the company is in talks with other carriers about integrating the service:

“We are having discussions with other carriers about this.. Sprint integration has worked really well.. We have, since Day One, had a steady stream of people signing up for it.


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