Mobile device

• Android
• Smartphone
• Mobile phone
• Mobile device
• fingerprint sensor

Next year’s fingerprint sensors could fit into volume rocker buttons, guard against spoofing

Ben Lovejoy Feb 17 2016 - 5:30 am PT

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Synaptics has provided fingerprint sensors for a number of different smartphones, the HTC One Max among them, but Engadget says that it has a much sleeker version in the works.

Synaptics’ latest fingerprint sensor for mobile devices measures only 3.5 mm wide. It’s so thin and tiny, it can fit inside a volume rocker switch on the side of your smartphone or tablet.

The company says it has also found a way to prevent the use of fake fingerprints by a new algorithm that can distinguish live fingers from printed replicas.

We probably won’t be seeing the new reader make it into phones until next year, though, as Synaptics says mass-production isn’t due to start until the third quarter of this year. There’s as yet no word of which phone brands might be looking to include it.

We’re also expecting to see the company’s pressure-sensitive screens coming to some Android devices later this year.

Image for illustration only: 91mobiles.com

• Android
• Apps and Updates
• Facebook
• photos
• Mobile device

Add a beautifully illustrated cover art photo to your Facebook Event from Android

Tom Maxwell Aug 17 2015 - 11:42 am PT

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More than 75 million pages for private events were created on Facebook last year, and to keep its Events product growing the company is rolling out something that it believes will increase engagement for user-created events without much extra work on the part of the host: cover art themes.

If you’ve ever visited a group, event, or personal page on Facebook, you’ve seen cover art. The big photos which act as banners on these pages provide users with a little added personalization while keeping things within reason (*cough* MySpace *cough*). But at least in the case of events pages, it hasn’t been easy to add cover art from a mobile device — especially considering how the Events product is buried in a “More” menu within the Facebook app. And you have to find a good photo to use in the first place. With the addition of cover art themes to the Facebook app on Android, finding a beautiful, relevant photo to enhance your event is as easy as telling Facebook what the theme of your event is. The app will then present you with a pack of illustrations designed in-house and by outside designers.

The different cover art themes include everything from “Seasons,” which features illustrations of everything you might associate with the different seasons like summer and backyard BBQs, to “Recreation,” which within you might find an illustration of people jumping into a pool. There are 36 pieces of cover art to initially choose from, organized into categories like the aforementioned seasons and recreation. Facebook says it will periodically be adding new themes and illustrations over the coming months.

The big thing that Facebook wants to emphasize with the release of these cover art themes is engagement. The company says that it has found through feedback from users that adding a cover art photo to an event positively impacts the engagement (i.e. RSVPs) it sees. Launching this new Events product feature first on mobile makes sense simply because 55% of all Events activity (and most activity on Facebook period) happens from mobile devices. It’s Android and US-only for now, and will be coming to iOS soon.

• Android
• Samsung
• HTC
• Apple Inc.
• fingerprint

HTC One Max fingerprint sensor data left unsecured for apps to see

Cam Bunton Aug 11 2015 - 3:19 am PT

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A report from FireEye Labs (a security firm) reveals that some smartphones with fingerprint sensors aren’t as secure as we’d like them to be. The one device named specifically was the HTC One Max which was supposed to store fingerprint data in a secure enclave that no one could get to. Turns out, that wasn’t the case and any app could have potentially gained access to the fingerprint data and even recreated a bitmap image of the fingerprints stored. Thankfully, HTC fixed the gaping hole “in all regions” before the report went public.

FireEye shared images they managed to gain access to inside the HTC One Max, and cropped them to protect the identity of the owners. What you see to the left is just a small portion of someone’s fingerprint. Data obtained through the One Max’s supposedly ‘secure’ enclave. If there’s one small comfort to be taken from this, it’s that the HTC One Max isn’t the most popular phone around, and by now, it’s also relatively old. What’s more, HTC told The Verge that the flaw was only present in the HTC One Max, and doesn’t effect any of its other phones or devices.

While the One Max is the only device specifically named in the vulnerability report, the company does suggest devices from other manufacturers suffer(ed) with the same issue. What’s more, another issue present in a number of devices was a vulnerability which could potentially allow any app to interrupt the fingerprint scanning process as a user was using the sensor. If taken advantage of, this would see software with the ability to take fingerprint data as it’s being read, in real-time.

All devices mentioned (including the Galaxy S5) and others hinted at, have all be locked down since the vulnerability was discovered. When it comes to fingerprint data, we like to think that the information is being treated with paramount focus. Once someone gets your fingerprint data, there’s not a lot you can do about it. You can’t change it like a PIN, password or pattern.