Google has removed an Android app from the Play Store that was used to collect personal information from Belarusians attending anti-government protests. ZDNet reports: The app, named NEXTA LIVE, was available for almost three weeks on the official Android Play Store, and was downloaded thousands of times and received hundreds of reviews. To get installs, NEXT LIVE claimed to be the official Android app for Nexta, an independent Belarusian news agency that gained popularity with anti-Lukashenko protesters after exposing abuses and police brutality during the country's recent anti-government demonstrations. However, the app contained code to to collect geolocation data, gather info on the device owner, and then upload the data to a remote Russian server at regular intervals. [...] While there is no official link between the fake Nexta app and the Minsk government, this would hardly be the first time that a government would try to spy on its citizens in the midst of anti-government protests, in attempts to identify protest-goers.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're going to spend $1,000 on a phone, you might as well spend $2,000. And honestly, if you're going to spend $2,000, why not just go for it and spend $3,300? That seems to be a chief guiding principle behind the Samsung Galaxy Fold Z 2 Thom Browne edition -- a handset for those who want the priciest mobile device you can buy -- and then some. Samsung has been partnering with the high-end American fashion designer for a couple of devices now. The Z Fold 2 edition follows the release of the Thom Browne Galaxy Z Flip, which also cost an additional $1,100 over the price of the standard foldable. Further justifying the device's cost is the inclusion of a Galaxy Watch 3 and the Galaxy Buds Live -- neither of which ship with the standard Fold Z 2. And perhaps even more importantly, it's something you can lord over the heads of your slightly more frugal friends who only shelled out for the regular Fold.

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Comcast wants to turn the software running on its set-top boxes into an operating system for smart TVs, Protocol reported Friday, citing multiple industry insiders with knowledge of the company's plans. From the report: The company began pitching TV manufacturers on the idea in recent months and had some conversations on the subject at CES in January. It's unclear how far these talks have progressed, but the push underlines the growing importance of smart TVs as a major platform for the future of entertainment. At the center of these discussions has been Comcast's X1 platform, which the company built as an operating system for its own set-top boxes over the past decade. In addition to running on the company's cable boxes, X1 also powers Flex, the Roku-like streaming hardware launched by Comcast last year. Comcast has also for some time pitched X1 to fellow cable operators. Cox, for instance, runs X1 hardware and software under its Contour brand, and Charter executives have publicly acknowledged that the two companies have been negotiating a similar licensing deal.

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Google today released the alpha version of Jetpack Compose, its UI toolkit for helping developers "build beautiful UI across all Android platforms, with native access to the platform APIs." From a report: While an alpha release means it is definitely not production ready, Jetpack Compose promises to let Android developers build apps using "dramatically less code, interactive tools, and intuitive Kotlin APIs." The alpha release also includes new tools including Animations, Constraint Layouts, and performance optimizations. Android Jetpack, which Google launched at its I/O 2018 developer conference, is a set of components for speeding up app development. Think of it as the successor to Support Library, a set of components that makes it easier to leverage new Android features while maintaining backwards compatibility. Jetpack Compose, which Google first showed off at its I/O 2019 developer conference, is an unbundled toolkit meant to simplify UI development by combining a reactive programming model with Kotlin.

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An anonymous reader writes: After more than a year of development, Mozilla today launched Firefox 79 for Android, branded Firefox Daylight. Like with Firefox 57 Quantum, Firefox Daylight gets its own name as it marks "a new beginning for our Android browser." The new version is "an entirely overhauled, faster, and more convenient product." Firefox Daylight includes Enhanced Tracking Protection on by default, a new user interface, Mozilla's own mobile browser engine GeckoView, and a slew of new features. Mozilla is rolling out the new Firefox for Android globally, starting in Germany, France, and the U.K. today, and North America starting August 27.

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In the name of security and privacy, Google is taking away the ability for users to select third-party camera apps in Android 11, forcing users to rely on the built-in camera app. Android Police reports: At the heart of this change is one of the defining traits of Android: the Intent system. Let's say you need to take a picture of a novelty coffee mug to sell through an auction app. Since the auction app wasn't built for photography, the developer chose to leave that up to a proper camera app. This where the Intent system comes into play. Developers simply create a request with a few criteria and Android will prompt users to pick from a list of installed apps to do the job. However, things are going to change with Android 11 for apps that ask for photos or videos. Three specific intents will cease to work like they used to, including: VIDEO_CAPTURE, IMAGE_CAPTURE, and IMAGE_CAPTURE_SECURE. Android 11 will now automatically provide the pre-installed camera app to perform these actions without ever searching for other apps to fill the role. Google describes the change in a list of new behaviors in Android 11, and further confirmed it in the Issue Tracker. Privacy and security are cited as the reason, but there's no discussion about what exactly made those intents dangerous. Perhaps some users were tricked into setting a malicious camera app as the default and then using it to capture things that should have remained private. Not only does Android 11 take the liberty of automatically launching the pre-installed camera app when requested, it also prevents app developers from conveniently providing their own interface to simulate the same functionality. I ran a test with some simple code to query for the camera apps on a phone, then ran it on devices running Android 10 and 11 with the same set of camera apps installed. Android 10 gave back a full set of apps, but Android 11 reported nothing, not even Google's own pre-installed Camera app.

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An anonymous reader writes: Google today announced Chrome for Android's context menu will show "Fast page" labels for webpages deemed to have good performance. The label will be determined using Google's Web Vitals, an initiative the company announced in May to provide web developers and website owners with a unified set of metrics for building websites with user experience and performance in mind. Core Web Vitals, Google's attempt to spell out the metrics it considers critical for all web experiences, will measure a webpage's responsiveness and visual stability.

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Google today launched ChromeOS.dev, a new site that aims to help developers get started with building Android apps for the company's Linux-based operating system. With today's update, Google is also making it easier to build and test Android applications on Chromebooks. From a report: The new ChromeOS.dev site, which is available in English and Spanish for now, is meant to "help developers maximize their capabilities on the platform through technical resources/tutorials, product announcements, code samples and more," a Google spokesperson told us. As Google notes in today's announcement, in the last quarter, Chromebook unit sales were up 127% year-over-year in the last quarter, compared to 40% for notebook sales in general. To help Android developers do all of their work on a Chromebook if they so desire, Google now offers the full Android Emulator on Chrome OS to test apps right on their Chromebooks. The team also made deploying apps on Chrome OS (M81 and newer) much easier. Developers can now deploy and test apps directly without having to use developer mode or connect devices via USB.

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