Microsoft Windows Phone by any other name: It's now 'Windows 10 Mobile'
The software maker is rebranding its mobile operating system as it tries to remind consumers of its once-dominant role in the market.
Windows 10's new Continuum feature will let smartphone owners use PC versions of apps like Word and PowerPoint, including a mouse and keyboard, just by plugging their devices into a monitor.Screenshot by Juan Garzón/CNET
Windows Mobile is back from the dead.
Microsoft is killing off its Windows Phone brand, which has languished in the mobile market for the last five years. In its place: Windows 10 Mobile, a reference to the original name of its smartphone operating system, Microsoft announced in a blog post Wednesday. The company started distancing itself from both Windows Phone and the Nokia brand of its Lumia phones last fall.
Windows 10 Mobile, due out this summer, will run Microsoft's so-called universal apps that are designed to work across all devices. The mobile OS will also make use of Microsoft's new Continuum feature that will automatically switch an app's layout when the phone is plugged into a PC monitor and communicating with a mouse and keyboard.
From 2000 to 2007, before the arrival of Apple's iOS and Google's Android, Windows Mobile was the world's most popular mobile operating system. It ran mostly on personal data assistants, or PDAs, that preceded modern-day smartphones.
Microsoft hopes its new operating system will recapture some of that glory, thanks in part to the software's ability to run on devices of all types and sizes. Executives want to have more than 1 billion devices running some version of the Windows 10 software by 2018. To help accomplish that aim, the company will offer the software for free to the vast majority of current PC, tablet and smartphone owners. Microsoft still hasn't revealed the software's exact release date.
"We designed Windows 10 to deliver a more personal computing experience across a range of devices. An experience optimized for each device type, but familiar to all," Tony Prophet, Microsoft's Windows marketing chief, wrote Wednesday. "Windows 10 will power an incredibly broad range of devices -- everything from PCs, tablets, phones, Xbox One, Microsoft HoloLens and Surface Hub."
Microsoft hopes its software won't just run on traditional computing products, but also ATMs and sensor-equipped appliances, cars and gadgets connected to the so-called Internet of Things.
Microsoft on Wednesday also revealed the various iterations of Windows 10. There's Windows 10 Home for average consumers, a more feature-packed version to be called Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Enterprise for businesses, and Windows 10 Education for schools and universities.
If the preset snooze options don't line up with your daily routine, you can change them. Read on to find out how.
Nicole Cozma/CNET
An update rolling out to the Inbox by Gmail app is allowing users to set a custom time and date for snoozed email reminders. But did you know that you can also adjust the preset time reminders in the app?
Let's say your day starts at 9 a.m., but the preset time for a morning reminder is 8 a.m. It can be annoying to get alerted early about a message that you're not ready to deal with. And the same issue may arise for your afternoon and evening schedules, since not everyone has the same workday hours. Here's how to change the preset times so you can easily snooze an email for the appropriate hour:
Note: Screenshots depict these steps on Android for easy viewing, but they can be done on the Web, too.
Main menu inside Inbox by Gmail.Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET
Step 1: Open the left-hand slide-out menu in Inbox by Gmail and choose Settings (near the bottom).
Settings menu for Inbox by Gmail.Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET
Step 2: Choose the account you want to change the preset values for.
Set the times that work for you.Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET
Step 3: Select Snooze settings and then adjust each to an hour that fits into your schedule.
Now you'll be able to instantly snooze a message without needing to fiddle with the time and date.
Photos and auto backup come to Google Drive for iOS
Learn how to auto backup your iPhone photos to Google Drive and how the updated app's photo features differ from those of the Google+ app.
Matt Elliott/CNET
The Google Drive app for iOS received a photo-centric update earlier this week. A new Photos folder lets you view photos you may have stashed on Google+, and a new auto-backup feature lets you back up the photos and videos on your iOS device. If you don't see the new Photos folder and auto backup setting, hang on -- Google says the features are rolling out over the next few weeks. The new photo features are useful for non-Google+ people, but if you are already using the Google+ app for iOS, then you've already had an ability to perform auto backups via Google+.
To turn on auto backup in Google Drive, head to Settings, tap on Photos, and then tap the toggle switch to turn on Auto Backup. You can choose whether photo uploads and video uploads will occur over Wi-Fi or a cellular connection or over Wi-Fi only. And you can select to perform full-size backups of your photos and videos.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
If you go the full-size backup route, then you'll send full-resolution photos and videos and they'll count against your Google Drive storage plan. If you run out of storage, Google will switch to what it calls standard-size backups. With the Full size backup setting off, you'll be able to store an unlimited number of photos. Standard sized photos are resized so that the longest edge is less than 2,048 pixels, while standard videos are made to be less than 15 minutes long with a resolution of 1,080p or less.
When you swipe to the right on the Google Drive app to view the menu options, you'll see a newGoogle Photos item and not very many photo management features. It shows you a grid of thumbnails of the photos you've backed up, but you'll need to expand a photo and then tap the "i" button in the upper-right corner to delete it, move it, share it, and so on. There is no select feature that would let you quickly tap on multiple thumbnails to select them for removal, sharing or moving as you get with the Google+ app.
Google Drive's photos section lacks the Auto Enhance, Auto Awesome and face-tagging features of Google+. Google+ also gives you the option to start backing up all of the photos and videos on your phone or start backing up only those photos and videos taken after the feature was turned on. With Google Drive, it starts backing up your photos and videos as soon as you flip the switch to turn on Auto Backup.
Anyone can see the full-size version of your profile pic -- here's how to fix that.
Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
No matter how securely you've locked down your Facebook account, you can't make your profile pic and cover photo private.
Whatever Facebook's reasons for the policy -- maybe it's just so you could verify an acquaintance's identity before adding them as a friend -- it's long been a part of the social network. But as a privacy consolation, you used to be able to make your profile pic "unclickable," so that nobody, not even your friends, could click on the picture and see the full-size version.
This no longer does anything, really.Screenshot by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
Well, I have bad news. Facebook recently changed this privacy setting (without telling anyone, of course), and now your main profile picture is always clickable by anyone, even if they're not a friend. While strangers previously saw only a 160-by-160-pixel version of your profile pic -- large enough for them to determine if they knew you, but small enough to keep them from doing anything sketchy with it -- now they can see the whole thing.
I don't like this change, even though Facebook has added some privacy precautions (for example, if you set your picture to "Only Me," strangers won't be able to see likes, comments or photo data associated with the photo -- just the photo itself). So, if you want to keep your profile pics as private as they can be, here's what you need to do.
Step 1: Change your profile picture
One privacy precaution Facebook added is an updated cropping tool. Up until recently, the site's cropping tool didn't actually crop your profile picture, it just cropped your picture for the small version and displayed the full photo when you clicked on the thumbnail. Now, the cropping tool crops both your small photo and your full-size photo into a square (of two different sizes, of course).
An old Facebook profile picture, full-size, uncropped.Screenshot by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
Just be aware that if you're using a profile photo cropped with Facebook's old tool, people will still be able to see the full, uncropped image when they click on it. That could be a problem if you were strategically cropping something out. If that's the case for you, consider deleting the photo and uploading it again.
Step 2: Use a small photo
If you don't want your high-res photo splashed all over the Internet, crop and resize it prior to uploading it. Using an imaging tool such as Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Paint, crop your photo into a square and then resize it to 180 by 180 pixels.
Thwart online stalkers with tiny photos.Screenshot by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
When you upload it to Facebook, it will be just a hair larger than the small version of your profile picture, and when people click on it, they won't get a blown-up version.
Step 3: Change the individual privacy settings of your current and past profile pics
By default, all of your profile pictures are public. In other words, not only can strangers view the full-size version of your current picture, they also can flip and previous profile photos that you haven't deleted in their full-size glory.
To change this, open each profile picture and go to Edit, click the privacy button, and under Who should see this?, choose More Options and then click Only Me. You must do this separately for each photo in the album, including your current profile picture.
What strangers see if you don't have your profile picture set to "Only Me" privacy.Screenshot by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
If you leave your current profile picture set to Public, then strangers will be able to see likes, comments, captions, and other photo data, such as location and tags.
What strangers see if you do have your profile picture set to "Only Me" privacy.Screenshot by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
If you change it to Only Me, they will see just the photo and nothing else.
Samsung launches Artik chips for the Internet of Things
Samsung Electronics President Young Sohn says the products, which combine hardware and software, are a complete system for building devices that connect to the Internet.
Young Sohn, Samsung president and chief strategy officer, reveals the company's new Artik processors to power the Internet of Things.James Martin/CNET
SAN FRANCISCO -- Samsung on Tuesday revealed a new chip family to power the Internet of Things, putting it in more direct competition with Intel, Qualcomm and others in the quest to connect everything.
Young Sohn, the Samsung Electronics president and chief strategy officer in charge of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center, said the Artik line of processors combines hardware and software to help companies quickly and easily build Internet-connected devices. Alex Hawkinson -- CEO of SmartThings, a smart-home startup Samsung bought last year -- also unveiled the SmartThings Open Cloud to make it easier and faster for device makers and other companies to quickly create apps for the products.
There are three variations of Artik: Artik 1, Artik 5 and Artik 10, with each subsequent chip packing in faster processing and more complex capabilities. The chips will range from less than $10 to less than $100, Sohn said, and will be aimed at everything from simple trackers to drones and smart-home hubs. Both the chips and the SmartThings Open Cloud are available today to be used in new Internet of Things devices.
"What's important is these are smart machines that are going to make our lives better," Sohn said during a keynote address at Internet of Things World at San Francisco's Moscone Center.
CNET last week reported that Samsung planned to introduce new processors.
Samsung's new processors follow a similar push by Intel. The company in January revealed a processor platform for wearables, dubbed Curie. The button-size device includes a processor, Bluetooth low-energy radio, sensors and a dedicated engine to determine different sporting activity. It's also able to run for extended periods with a coin-size battery, or can be recharged. Such a minuscule chip could power wearables of different designs, from rings to pendants to clothes.
Curie, which is based on 32-nanometer technology, won't be available until the second half of the year, which gives Artik a lead.
Samsung has been making a big bet on the Internet of Things, the concept of using sensors and other technologies to hook just about anything you can think of into the Internet. Analyst firm Gartner predicts the number of networked devices will surge to 26 billion units by 2020 from about 900 million in 2009, turning formerly "dumb" objects into smart ones that can communicate with each other. IDC reckons the IoT market will hit $3.04 trillion that same year.
In August, Samsung acquired smart-home startup SmartThings to help with its push. SmartThings' technology helps consumers control their appliances from their smartphones, smartwatches and other devices, and it has been viewed as key to Samsung's smart-home and Internet of Things efforts.
Currently, about 19,000 devices that connect to SmartThings have been created by companies, and the platform supports more than 30,000 apps, Hawkinson said during a press roundtable at the keynote.
"Artik is only going to accelerate that," he said. "Part of that is not only the single device but the community and what you can do when you're connecting these things together."
During the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in January, Samsung, led by co-CEO Boo-Keun Yoon, vowed that all of the company's products would be built on platforms that are open and compatible with other products. Yoon said that 90 percent of its devices -- which range from smartphones to refrigerators -- would be able to connect to the Web by 2017. In five years, every product in the company's entire catalog is expected to be Internet-connected. Samsung last year shipped about 665 million devices across its mobile and electronics businesses.
Samsung Strategy & Innovation has been tasked with seeking new technology, partnerships and investments in hardware, generally with a longer-term view. Sohn, who launched a $100 million US investment fund for Samsung in early 2013, has seen his role expand in recent months to include oversight of more of Samsung's investments and its research and development. In total, Samsung has allocated more than $1 billion to fund US startups.
Artik is the second product to come from Sohn's innovation initiative in the past year. In May 2014, the group revealed new open software and a so-called reference design hardware to better measure certain health characteristics of wearables users, including heart rate and blood pressure. Its Simbandfitness band reference design -- a template describing how a particular technology should work -- incorporates a new sensor module that can be used in future wearables, while a cloud-based software platform called Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions, or SAMI, can collect sensor data from the devices for analysis.
As Samsung's core mobile business continues to struggle, the company is counting on its other businesses -- such as home appliances and semiconductors -- to boost its profits. Samsung is the world's biggest maker of memory chips and also manufactures application processors that serve as the brains of devices, including many of Apple's iPhones. The company's new Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smartphones use Samsung's Exynos applications processor instead of a Qualcomm chip, as well as Samsung-made flash memory and the wireless chip that connects the phone to 3G and 4G networks.
One of Samsung's new Artik processors is the size of a ladybug.James Martin/CNETSamsung's most advanced Artik chip uses the same technology as the company's smartphone processors, Sohn said.
"Everything's already crammed in, so why don't we take advantage of the technology developed for phones and make it available for [the Internet of Things]?" he said during the press roundtable.
Samsung brought customers on stage during the keynote Tuesday to talk about their plans with Artik and the SmartThings Smart Cloud. Yoon Lee, vice president of smart-home and digital appliances at Samsung Electronics, said the company will be using the new products in Samsung's upcoming devices.
"The vision that we have is because your life really revolves around connectivity, connectivity is really dictating how you manage your lifestyle," Lee said during the press roundtable. "We want our products to be inside your lifestyle, not outside your lifestyle. That said, we have lots of stuff to connect. ... What Artik will do is essentially cut off the development process because we can leverage and utilize what's already being produced."
And Boogio, a startup that can turn any shoe into a smart shoe for purposes such as rehabilitation, is using Artik 1 in the fifth generation of its device. Because Samsung has combined the chips, power management and sensors already, Boogio instead can focus on other features and get its products out faster.
Artik will "enable us to take our technology to the next level," Boogio CEO Jose Torres said. "Artik comes at a very critical time in our development cycle."
Along with Artik and the SmartThings Smart Cloud, Samsung also announced a $100,000 award for whoever can create the best idea to solve the California drought crisis. Samsung will present the award at its next developer conference, which has taken place in the fall for the past two years.
Updated at 9:35 a.m. PTwith additional details and partners, and 11:40 a.m. PT with executive comments from press roundtable.
Is Windows 10 the 'last version' of Windows? It doesn't matter
Talk of Windows 10 being the "last version" of the Microsoft operating system has been circulating for a year. What does this really mean? The answer: Not much.
Windows 10 is due to start rolling out around the middle of the year.Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET
As Microsoft made clear last year by skipping Windows 9 when going from Windows 8 to Windows 10, Windows version numbers are an arbitrary thing.
That's why all this talk about Windows 10, the upcoming version of Microsoft's operating system, being the "last version of Windows" is a "nothing to see here" moment.
Many of us Microsoft watchers had been saying that Threshold (Windows 10) would be the last major version of Windows for months, if not a year. (Windows 10 is due to start rolling out around the middle of the year.) Microsoft Developer Evangelist Jerry Nixon said the same thing last week at Ignite in a session titled "Tiles, Notifications and Action Center."
Cue the headlines claiming that Microsoft has now officially declared Windows 10 the end of the Windows trail.
As those who've been paying attention know, Windows 10 technically isn't the last Windows release. It might or might not be the last Windows release granted a new version number. But that's basically a branding decision.
Microsoft will continue to update Windows 10 with regular security updates, fixes and new features. Those who sign up for Microsoft's free Windows upgrade deals -- via which consumers running Windows 7 and 8 will get a free upgrade to Windows 10 -- agree as part of that deal to get all the updates to Windows 10 that Microsoft delivers pushed to them automatically.
(For those wondering what the "for the lifetime of the device" support statement means, in terms of the free Windows 10 upgrade deal, I asked Microsoft again last week for comment on this and was told the company isn't yet ready to disclose those particulars. I'll keep asking.)
Those who don't want all the updates, and want the option to stagger their delivery, can opt to go theWindows Update for Business route. Those who choose this option will have the choice of getting security fixes only. Also, despite headlines from last week claiming Patch Tuesday is now dead, this is not the case.
"Windows Update for Business can take responsibility for the timely distribution of security updates for customers for free. Customers that choose to distribute updates themselves will continue to receive the updates on the 2nd Tuesday of the month," said a Microsoft spokesperson when asked for an official denial regarding bogus reports of Patch Tuesday's demise.
Microsoft officials can opt at any time to call a set of updates to Windows 10 a new version. There are already at least three "bigger" sets of updates (that I've heard about from my sources) on the Windows 10 release timeline: An update this fall (possibly October), an update next spring and another in the fall of 2016. (The latter two are part of a wave codenamed "Redstone.")
Microsoft is unlikely to label any of these things Windows 11 or 12 or even lucky 13 because the company is trying to get its customers to understand its "Windows as a Service" positioning -- which, as my Windows Weekly podcast co-host Paul Thurrott notes, has already been the way Windows has been updated/serviced for a while now.
Microsoft also wants to try to get more Windows users on a single release, as evidenced by its"Windows 10 on 1 billion devices by 2018" goal.
Bottom line: Nobody panic. Windows 10 isn't the end of the road. Patch Tuesday isn't dead. Internet Explorer 11 will still be available with the desktop SKUs of Windows 10 for backward-compatibility reasons. (SKU, officially "stock-keeping unit," means version.) The words and positioning may be different, but especially for business customers, the Windows song remains largely the same.
Google Play now lets you preregister for upcoming apps and games
Sign up to preregister for a hot new game or app that's coming soon, you'll be the first to know when you can download it.
Google Play now lets users preregister for apps.Screenshot by Sarah Mitroff/CNET
Can't wait for a hot new app to appear in Google Play? According to a post over at Android Police, the Android app store now lets you preregister for forthcoming games and apps so that you'll be notified on your Android phone or tablet the second they're available to download.
The first app to get this honor is Terminator Genisys: Revolution, a game with no set release date or price quite yet. However, the app's landing page has all the other details you'd expect, including a video, screenshots and a description. The preregistration feature let the game's developer, Glu Mobile, advertise that the game is coming soon, before it's actually ready to play.
The downside is that because there's no release date or price, you'll never now how long you'll be waiting for that title to arrive or what it will cost when it does. What's more, there's no mention of device compatibility, so you won't know if the app will run on your phone or tablet or if it's available in your country until it goes live. In the future, I hope that Google lets developers add those details.The upside of this is that developers will be able to assure customers that their Android apps are in the works. So often today a popular new app shows up in the Apple App Store, leaving Android fans wondering if and when they'll be able to get their hands on it. A prime example is Twitter's Periscope, which is currently iOS-only, with no word on when it will show up in Google Play. Letting people preregister for an app sends a clear message that they will, eventually, be able to download it for their devices.
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