HoFo Blog

2018 is shaping up to be a rough year for Huawei's U.S. operations. The Chinese company, widely recognized as the world's third largest smartphone OEM behind Samsung and Apple, was set to sell its Mate10 Pro through AT&T before that carrier backed out of the deal. Now they're about to lose another American retail partner; CNET reports that Best Buy will cease all sales of Huawei products over the next few weeks, and cancel any orders for new stock.

Americans, like Canadians, tend to finance their smartphone hardware through their carriers, so you could certainly argue that the fallout with AT&T was a bigger deal. Also, you can still buy Huawei phones unlocked through the likes of Amazon and Newegg. What you can't do with either of those online vendors, however, is see and handle your potential Huawei purchase on a physical store shelf.

Best Buy won't officially comment on their decision, but it almost certainly has something to do with security concerns expressed by the CIA, FBI and NSA over Chinese firms. Huawei, on the other hand, has lots to say:

In case you were wondering it's still business as usual for Huawei in Canada, though there have been some security concerns raised here as well.

Source: CNET, Globe and Mail

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If my timestamp doesn't work scrub ahead to the 34:46 mark for Wear OS—or watch the whole thing; I'm not your mother...

From The Web:

Smartwatches will continue to dominate wearables for quite some time

Report: Smartwatches will account for almost 40% of wearables shipped in 2022

Fitbits and other 'wearable' health monitors. Do they work?

Baselworld 2018: will we see new smartwatches this week?

Apple using secret US facility to develop MicroLED screens for Apple Watch

From The Forums:

Why no Stylo 3 Plus on Cricket?

prepaid carrier SIM kit only

AT&T Prepaid Undercutting Cricket With Miulti-Line Discounts, Tethering, Speed

This is crazy

Possible to get Unlimited Plus?

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It's been almost a week since Google officially rebranded Android Wear to Wear OS, and tech blogs are unimpressed. Today I'll highlight two recent editorials on the subject, one with helpful but misguided suggestions for Google, and the other with some shade-throwing that, quite by accident, pretty much nails what I believe to be Mountain View's master plan.

Android Central: Android Wear needs way more than just a Wear OS rebrand

AC's editorial has two recommendations for Google: overhaul Google Fit and make a Pixel watch.

While it's probably true that Google Fit is somewhat lacking for the hardcore fitness enthusiast, the article conveniently ignores the existence of third-party apps like Endomondo, Runkeeper, Strava and many more—all of which work with Wear OS. Google Fit is perfectly fine for the fitness dilettante, like myself.

As for a Pixel watch, that would be almost certainly be a gift from the heavens for Pixel zealots, and of no consequence to the wider addressable audience for wearables. Remember that Nokia-powered Android phones, barely available in North America, outsold their Pixel counterparts last year. Would a Pixel-branded smartwatch do any better? I don't see how.

Gizmodo: Google's Smartwatch Program Is a Mess, and a Name Change Won't Fix That

Gizmodo's anti-Ware OS screed spends a lot of time looking down its nose at Fossil Group and other traditional watch OEMs:

Well, there's certainly one thing that fashion brands know how to do: design a timepiece that doesn't look like a gadget. Looks are entirely subjective, of course, but put any of the aforementioned Asus, LG or Motorola smartwatches beside anything from a traditional watchmaker and you can immediately see which one was designed by an electronics company.

I've said this before and I'll say it here again: the future of Wear OS is under the hood of a Casio, Fossil, TAG Heuer or whatever your favourite watch brand happens to be. For the present, it arms these watchmakers with an alternative to the Apple Watch; for the future, it gives every watch-wearer to ability to see notifications on their wrist. The Wear OS rebranding is ultimately just marketing, and that's fine with me. It's a less-geeky way to pitch the tech under that pretty watchface.

Links: Android Central, Gizmodo, Wareable

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From The Web:

'Just A New Smartphone': Korean Consumers Showing Lukewarm Response to Galaxy S9

iPhone X production has met expectations, 'iPhone SE 2' not guaranteed to launch says analyst

Honor View 10 review: Huawei takes on OnePlus

The OnePlus 6 will probably look a lot like this

Super-fast, next-generation 5G wireless to get $200M research boost from governments

From The Forums:

Invalid SIM card on Tracfone Rebel 3

Verizon stands alone in silence on Rich Communications Services

S8+ Oreo and Wi-Fi calling

Verizon building cell towers inside church steeples

Best texting app for Tracfone purchased Samsung Galaxy S6

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Yesterday the governments of Canada, Ontario and Québec announced a public-private partnership to accelerate the development of 5G services in this part of the country.

The project is called ENCQOR, an acronym for "Evolution of Networked Services through a Corridor in Québec and Ontario for Research and Innovation", and will see an investment of $200 million CAD in public funds, matched by private sector partners CGI, Ciena, Ericsson, IBM and Thales. In return, our government is promising the creation of some 4,000 new jobs, with half of those permanent. Here's their millennial-friendly YouTube pitch:



Read more at the links directly below.

Sources: Mobile Syrup (1) (2)

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From The Web:

Apple AirPods: the audiophile review

People are accidentally setting off Apple’s Emergency SOS alert

You're paying too much for your smartphone, says MediaTek

Xiaomi Redmi 5A Review: Best smartphone below $100?

Oppo's new R15 will probably become the OnePlus 6, and yes, it has a screen notch

From The Forums:

A decade of growth for T-MOBILE. Stagnation and Losses for SPRINT

Att needs take firstnet serious

The Prepaid Battlefield

Autopay Discount Question

New Smart Phone Setup from Old Flip Phone Questions

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webOS, Palm, Inc.'s prescient gesture-based smartphone operating system that made its way to an HP tablet and on to an untold number of LG smart TVs, has been open-sourced. For the second time. The first open source edition came from HP itself back in 2011, and according to Wikipedia went nowhere fast. Cut to 2018 and LG, the current custodian of webOS, has just announced an open source edition of their own. Hopefully this community build has received an update or two since the last one.

My own personal skepticism aside, the world can always use more open source software, so I honestly don't see this as bad news. But why webOS specifically, and why now? Here's the killer quote from LG's CTO:

Somebody needs to give LG a lesson in recent history, I think.

Source: The Verge (1) (2)

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From The Web:

Android P: Our 5 favorite new features so far

Android P: Our 5 least favorite changes so far

These are the smartwatches that will get the Wear OS update

Apple releases iOS 11.3 beta 6 for iPhone and iPad

Big Telco hates "regulation," but they love their billions in government handouts

From The Forums:

New LTE study shows T-Mobile and Verizon are the only networks that matter any more

Galaxy S8 Unlocked + ATT Prepaid.. Conditional forwarding not working? Google Voice

Freedom Mobile now testing Band 13 in select markets

Port # Scam

My Account App Update txt?

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... And potentially led her into another one. But we'll get to that later.

"Beautiful prison" is how The Verge's Nilay Patel describes Apple's iMessage. It's fairly accurate; for iPhone users Apple's default messaging app is as robust and feature-rich as any other platform—so much so that there's little reason to look beyond it. Even worse, those poor unenlightened souls who choose Android are treated as second-class citizens on iOS.

Don't believe me? Consider my 18 year-old niece, as loyal to Apple as any other first world millennial, who has on at least one occasion condescendingly referred to her uncle as a "green text".

She's currently taking her gap year in southeast Asia, and recently finished her first leg in Japan. While in Tokyo and Kyoto we stayed in touch via SMS—her uncle has been to that part of the world more than once, after all—but lost contact when she got a local SIM card; her iMessage seamlessly switched to a data connection but me, the green text, got locked out.

And then something unexpected happened: she texted me from Taipei and asked if we could keep in touch using some other messaging platform. Now I hardly think of myself as the most interesting man in the world, but you cannot deny that it's a pretty big deal for a teenage Apple fangirl to step outside the protective cocoon of iMessage just to keep in touch with little ol' me.

Unfortunately I seem to have led her straight into another proprietary messaging silo, otherwise known as WhatsApp. Despite being another walled garden I think it's the solution that makes the most sense for her current situation; in fact, all the 21st century digital nomads that I know depend on it for communications across borders and carriers. So I'm taking this one as a victory, if only for getting an iPhone user to see value in something outside the confines of Apple's beautiful prison.

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From The Web:

Samsung ships out Sprint Galaxy S9s with Verizon SIM cards, chaos ensues

iPhone supplier Wistron accused of using ‘unauthorized components’ in iPhone 8 Plus production

Apple Must Explain Why It Doesn't Want You to Fix Your Own iPhone, California Lawmaker Says

Can we fix it? The repair cafes waging war on throwaway culture

A $1.6 billion Spotify lawsuit is based on a law made for player pianos

From The Forums:

Red pocket reseller on e-bay beware

Blu phones?

Google voice forwarding number on account?

128K vs 256K TM1+ in China/S.Korea/Japan international data roaming

Phone with user replaceable battery?

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Spoiler alert: Spotify is the clear winner, at least for me.

I suspect that hardcore music enthusiasts who use Android will have already chosen their music streaming service; for anyone else thinking about which one is worth paying for, here's a summary of my own experiences with three popular apps.

Amazon Music
If you have Amazon Prime then you've also got Amazon Prime Music, the ad-free version of their streaming service. Their music catalogue seems fine, and the Android app can also cast to Android TV. Unfortunately their web player requires Flash, which tends to slow down my already taxed Chrome browser.

Google Play Music
If you want PC playback of your streaming music then Google is your obvious choice, with a web player that's optimized for Chrome and an Android app that effortlessly casts to Android TV. And if you wanted an ad-free YouTube experience then the paid version of Google Play Music would also be the obvious choice, as a subscription also includes YouTube Red. Unfortunately that perk is not yet available to those of us living in Canada.

Nonetheless, I took a 30-day free trial of Google Play Music, in the hopes that YouTube Red would one day make its way here. That would have been the end of the story, but my girlfriend suggested that I try out some other services before committing to GPM. That turned out to be some excellent advice.

Spotify
With some 70 million registered users Spotify is far and away the world's most popular music streaming service. They also offer a 30-day free trial, so I signed up with the intention of doing some A/B testing between Spotify and Google Play Music, and see if I could stump either one with a random music request.

The track that tipped the scales in favour of Spotify was this very random Japanese single that showed up in the girlfriend's YouTube feed. I'm guessing that it translates to The Futon Song...?



Bizarre, right? Anyway, Spotify has this track; Google Play Music does not. Advantage: Spotify. And then I discovered that Spotify also has native clients for Debian, Linux Mint and Ubuntu. Game over; Spotify wins.

Hopefully this little write-up will be of use to someone who's not yet decided on an Android music streaming service. Feel free to add your own insights and/or opinions directly below.

Play Store links: Amazon Music, Google Play Music, Spotify

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Back to regular mobile-related news tomorrow...

From The Web:

Fitbit Did What You Wanted and Basically Made a Pebble

First look: Fitbit Versa is a smartwatch that reaches out to Pebble fans

First look: Fitbit Ace is a fitness tracker for kids with a familiar look

Notification suggests Android Wear could be renamed 'Wear OS'

Smartwatch sales continue to grow, closing the gap on fitness trackers

From The Forums:

Coverage on LTE only devices (Intel iPhone 8/X)

Could Verizon Ever Become Bigger Than AT&!?

ATT prepaid plans + tethering or wifi hotspot? Prepaid vs PostPaid?

HSN Tracfone Phone With 1 Year Minutes/Text/Data Package Deal Question

RCS (Universal Profile) coming to T-Mobile in Q2-18

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This past January saw two potential emergencies; one of them turned out to be a false alarm and the other never came to pass. And how the public was alerted about each one was very different.

The threat of a tsunami to coastal areas of B.C. was real, but as the CBC reported, getting the word out to residents was a challenge, with authorities relying on a "patchwork" of local alert systems. In stark contrast, the missile alert warning pushed to mobile phones of Hawaiian Islands residents a week earlier was both efficient and effective. And also, thankfully, a mistake.

A more efficient and effective alert system will soon be available to Canadians, hopefully without the human error. It's called Alert Ready and is powered by a technology called WPA—not the WiFi encryption standard but Wireless Public Alerting. This type of WPA is not just branding for text messages sent to your phone from a central authority; they are actually push notifications sent to devices in a specific area using cell broadcast distribution. For a device to be compatible it must meet three requirements:

Compatible with 4G LTE networks;
compatible with Wireless Public Alerting (WPA);
connected to an 4G LTE network when the emergency alert is issued.

Bell, Rogers and Telus have all begun notifying customers about the new service, which is expected to start rolling out across their networks starting April 6th. More details at the links directly below.

Sources: Alert Ready, iPhone in Canada, Mobile Syrup

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From The Web:

YouTube app is finally getting a Dark Mode on Android and iOS

Apple Announces WWDC 2018 Set for June 4-8 in San Jose

Finland takes stake in Nokia to boost national ownership

President Trump signs executive order blocking Broadcom's acquisition of Qualcomm

Amazon issues recall for 6 different AmazonBasics portable power banks (fire hazard)

From The Forums:

AT&T, or a carrier that uses it? Need to know by Wed. (14)

LG Stylo 3 not available for BYOP

Simple mobile $25/ 3gig plan.

Has anyone received the s9?

How to know the owner of the iPhone?

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It's what I did, anyway.

I found out via email yesterday that I was one of the 815,000 Canadian Uber users (along with some 57 million Americans) whose personal data was compromised. Here's an excerpt from the email I received:

Personally I'd have preferred to have my credit card number leaked rather than my email address and phone number, for the simple reason that my bank has much stronger protections in place against fraud than either my email provider or wireless carrier. Maybe that's just me.

What really stinks about this whole mess is that Uber didn't even want to notify affected Canadians at all. Mobile Syrup reports that the ride-sharing company was ultimately compelled to do so because of a February 28th ruling by the Alberta Privacy Commissioner. Uber plans to appeal that ruling, but there is a separate investigation being conducted by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

I don't expect every Uber user reading this to have the luxury of being able to delete their account; as a driver or passenger you might depend on the service. Fortunately I don't, but more importantly I no longer trust this company with my personal data.

Links: Mobile Syrup

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Note that today's video features Naomi Wu, who you may find either empowering or NSFW... Don't say I didn't warn you!

From The Web:

Vivo Apex Launched in China with Half Screen Fingerprint Sensing Tech, will be Mass Produced in Mid-2018

Nokia Smartphone Revival Is a Costly Adventure

Intel reportedly looking to buy Broadcom, which is trying to take over Qualcomm

FBI busts Phantom Secure CEO for selling secured BlackBerry phones to drug cartels

'Snitches Get Stitches': How Secure Phones for Criminals Are Sold on Instagram

From The Forums:

Verizon DURAXV on AT&T

Google voice forwarding/carrier call forwarding?

What is the cheapest way to get a US SMS Number?

EBay Sim Fraud?

Anyone else lose the $10 a month off promo

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With their users' credit cards already on file via the Google Play Store and Google Pay app, it only makes sense for the engineers in Mountain View to add peer-to-peer payment functionality to Android as well. But instead of doing this through a dedicated portal, they've chosen to implement this feature directly into the OS, through their own first-party software.

Last November Android Police reported on a new version of Android Messages, Google's SMS app. Among other things, the update included the ability to send and receive money through Google Wallet (since rebranded to Google Pay). Now, again according to AP, Google has built a redundancy of this feature directly into their contacts app. So far the feature is live for exactly one reported user in Canada, and unfortunately it's not me.

Using Google Pay, like PayPal , PayTM, or any other smartphone-based payments app of course requires that both the sender and recipient are registered users of the specific app in question. And while I can appreciate the convenience of these apps for sending money to family and friends overseas, for P2P payments within my own country I'm almost certainly going to go with an email transfer directly from my bank.

How about you?

Sources Android Police (1) (2)

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From The Web:

Millennials feel closer emotional bond to Apple than any other brand, says large-scale brand survey

Google and Huawei Will Face Class Action Over Nexus 6P Bootloop Issues

Rumors of Motorola layoffs swirl as future of Moto Z line potentially in jeopardy

U.S. appeals court in San Francisco will hear net neutrality appeal

Selfies distort face's appearance, plastic surgeons warn

From The Forums:

Wireless customer agreement updates?

Band 71 vs band 12?

Article about Sprints ridiculous equality claims

55+ plan price increase

Sims / bundles

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Famous phone leaker Evan Blass has, for the moment, turned his prying eyes to smartwatches and has come up with this, the Fitbit Versa. It's not the first time we've seen this newer, cheaper and less fugly version of the Ionic. Nine days ago Wareable posted a gallery of the then-unnamed device; they've since updated their post to include the new information from Blass.

Available in black, charcoal, rose gold and silver, the Versa will run the same Fitbit OS as the Ionic, but in a smaller and more female-friendly form factor. It will be water resistant to 50mm and, like the Ionic, will include an SpO2 sensor able to monitor sleep apnea once Fitbit enables that feature. The one thing it won't have on its spec sheet is GPS.

If you think the Versa bears more than a passing resemblance to the Pebble Time Steel you're not wrong. In fact, someone told Wareable that Pebble had a touchscreen watch in development before they were bought up by Fitbit.

The Versa is expected to go on sale this spring, and will almost certainly retail for less than the $300 USD Ionic.

Sources: Evan Blass via Android Police, Wareable

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