Android Apps Mining For Digital Currency Using Your Device Without Your Permission

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There are apps out there for both Apple and Android devices, that take the computing power of your device and put it to use when you aren’t. HTC recently announced the Power to Give app, which with a few tweaks of the settings, could be turned on only while charging and only while the screen is off. Then there are apps that you download that are using your devices computing skills for something different, mining digital currency.

Everything good in this world could be corrupted, and computing is one of them. Our devices have a power that can go without notice while charging or while we are asleep. HTC’s Power to Give app helps that by using your device to compute data for research in charitable efforts. However there are reasons they do it at certain times and essentially with your permission. The computing power can be over-heated, which causes the device to literally over heat, slow down, and the battery could drain noticeably faster. However, taking that idea, and assuming that while your device is charging, you most likely aren’t using it, is exactly what two apps did that kept them hidden while they used your device to mine digital currency. Though hiding it from you while charging doesn’t change the amount of bandwidth the process takes, nor would it prevent overheating.

These two apps were Songs, downloaded somewhere between 1 million to 5 million times, and Prized, which was downloaded 10,000 to 50,000 times. One of the biggest reasons these apps did things under the cover of you charging your device, was because they had no mention of the mining in the terms. The computing capabilities of a smart phone just aren’t made for such intense computing as mining according to Trend Micro Mobile Threats Analyst Veo Zhang.

The process of mining is even a lot for some PC’s, taking up a large amount of electricity and overheating CPUs and GPUs. Imagine what it would do to a smartphone’s computing system. Even worse news, there are plenty of apps that have done and are doing this currently. LookOut Mobile processed a report stating they have found similar apps mining for digital currency as well. These apps are quickly becoming the newest form of threat in the digital world and given their disguise, they are hard to spot. Some things to remember, if your data bill seems high, or data limits reached to fast, take a look at your bills, find out what exactly is going on, and stay aware. If you’re having battery issues, be sure to check out what is using up all of your battery, even while charging. Ask yourself, should these apps be taken that much battery? If not, we think you can live without an app called Songs. There is also the one thing you can remember, though they are mining digital currency from your device, it is not very fast. It is like finding a piece of a penny on the ground and searching for the rest of the pieces. Where they make their money, is in how many downloads they get, more downloads equals more penny pieces found.

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Phonejoy Bluetooth Game Controller Goes On Sale April 8th Starting At $69.99

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For all the android gamers out there, the search for the perfect gamepad for use with your android devices can be a time consuming task. There are many choices out there available and arguably some excellent options. One that I personally have been keeping a keen eye on though is the Phonejoy controller that was funded through Kickstarter. You may have seen at least one other controller like it on the market, the MOGA Play, as it holds a very similar design to that of the Phonejoy. The problem with the MOGA Play is that it only support iOS. Should we be distressed? Nope. Because the Phonejoy not only has a better design, it looks to feel more comfortable in the hand and it’s compatible with Android. The good news, is that the Phonejoy will finally become commericially available for all.

As of right now the controller is up on Amazon through a pre-order status which we have included the link to below, and the controller is expected to go on sale April 8th. So we’re only looking at about a week and a half out until we can grab one of these beauties. The Phonejoy has pretty much everything you could need in a mobile gamepad. It has two joysticks similar to the placement you’d find on an Xbox 360 controller, a D-pad, a set of left and right bumper and trigger buttons, your standard A,B,X,Y action buttons, and of course your start button.

The Phonejoy controller connects to your device through Bluetooth 4.0, and has about an 8 hour battery life before it needs another charge. To charge it you just hook up the included micro USB cable and plug in the a/c adapter, and the cable plugs into the controller on the top next to the R1 bumper. What’s nice about the Phonejoy too is that it’s small, about the size of a standard wallet,(pocket size says Phonejoy) but it expands to clamp your device in the middle between both left and right sets of buttons, and it expands up to the size of the Galaxy Note 3, so short of trying to squeeze your Nexus 7 in there and failing, you’ll be having quite a bit of luck fitting just about any device in there. The Phonejoy will be available in three different bundles starting at $69.99 for the basic package, which comes with the controller itself, a 1-year warranty and a 30-day return policy. The second bundle will run you $79.99 and comes with the controller, a soft pouch, the 3.5 mm audio adapter for use with headphones while you play, the micro USB cable and power adapter so you can charge while you play, and the warranty and return policy. The last package, will run you $89.99 and comes with all that other stuff plus the tablet kickstand and the travel case. If you love gaming on your mobile, this is one of the better options you could set yourself up with if not the best design on the market.

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HTC One M8 Mini On The Way According To Swedish Carrier

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With the HTC One M8 already released and a GPe device now available for purchase from the Play Store, it was only a matter of time before we started to see some leaks regarding a mini version of HTC’s new flagship this year. According to a carrier in Sweden called Telia, HTC will be releasing a mini version of the HTC M8 in the future. This information comes as a listing of devices that support HD voice for the Swedish carrier, so while this isn’t exactly a rock solid confirmation from the manufacturer themselves, it’s not too far fetched given the craze of mini phones and the fact that HTC released an HTC One mini last year. While we sit and wait for an official word from HTC we can at least speculate as to what sort of hardware this device could have if released.

Going off of last years HTC One mini, it’s likely we’ll see similar specifications that will improve the device over all but might not be a huge leap forward. Last years HTC One mini was carrying a 4.3-inch super LCD2 with 720 x 1280 pixel resolution. If HTC releases a mini M8, we could see the screen size sitting at perhaps 4.5 or even 4.6-inches, but the jump in size from the HTC One to the HTC One M8 was only 4.7-inches to 5, so it’s very possible that we won’t see any size increase over 4.6-inches. HTC could also choose to keep the screen size the same. Last years mini had a dual-core processor in it, and we could see an updated dual core in the new mini as well. The battery could get a bump to 2,000 or 2,100 mAh, or it could stay at the same 1,800 mAh battery that last years mini was carrying. Although if HTC decides to up the screen size just a tad the extra juice wouldn’t hurt. An M8 mini being in the works is just leaked information at this point, but, if you consider that @evleaks has mentioned recently that a mini version of the m8 was on the way, it sounds like more of a reality, and as we all know evleaks is usually the go to for leaks and rumors about upcoming devices because his information is always spot on. What do you think about the possibility of an HTC One M8 mini? Should the mini phones trend politely bow out or do you like that companies are trying to offer a smaller option to some consumers?

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Microsoft Office Suite For Android Is Now Free To Use

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Those of you who have perhaps considered using Microsoft’s Office suite for your Android devices, will be happy to know that the app for Android is now completely free to use on your smartphone. Microsoft Office is definitely a formidable office suite app except for one tiny little factor, to use the app you had to be a subscriber of the Office 365 service that allowed you to use the programs on your Desktop. That is no longer the case, and the app is completely free and allows access to all the programs and use of files. You can view, edit, and create Office documents on your Android devices without having to pay for the Office 365 sub fee, which makes a world of difference especially for the people that may have been on the fence about picking up the service for their computers.

The app actually looks to have a decent interface and should be able to provide anything you would need this type of app for, and it provides tons of features like cloud access to files in OneDrive and OneDrive for business. Word, Excel, and Powerpoint have all been optimized for use on smaller displays like phones, so the experience should pan out to be pretty decent. This could help Microsoft gain some users for the app since there are plenty of other useful apps out that don’t need sub fees, but another downside is that it is only compatible with smartphones and not tablets. Having such access on the go is still somewhat useful, but office apps like this just feel more at home on a tablet. It’s much easier to edit and create documents of all kinds with a larger screen, and if you really have to do some in depth creation with lots of typing you can hook up a bluetooth keyboard to take full advantage of the bigger display.

As of this very moment, you can download and install Office for Mobile on your device, but a sign-in is still required to access any of the apps features. We have included the Play Store link to get to the app for those who want to set it up while they wait for update to take place.

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LG Begins Rollout Of Android Kit Kat To The G Flex

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It’s time for LG’s GFlex to transition to Kit Kat with the rest of the devices that are already on this side of the pond. Many devices have been enjoying the benefits of kit kat for a while but some are still using the last version of Jelly Bean. While the kit kat update has started rolling out to some G Flex owners, there is one factor to take into account. Only G Flex users in Korea have started to see this update hit their devices over the air, the good news is that LG has made the software update official and begun rolling it out at home. This means those who own the GFlex can grab the firmware from the servers. It could also mean that we’ll see the update rolling out to many more GFlex owners in other regions within the next few weeks. If you use a GFlex, it’s time to start checking for updates on a regular basis if you want to get it as soon as possible.

Some of the features that come along with the update are native to kit kat. This means the transparent status bar, as well as immersive mode. For LG specific features, GFlex owners will be able to access and use the Knock Code feature once they update. Knock Code is one of the more useful features we’ve seen added to LG devices recently, which allows users to secure their device with a slightly simple or complex sequence of taps on the display to wake up the device, and completely bypass the security code.

The changes on the LG website also mention enhancements made to the Bluetooth car-kit feature, which includes displaying the notifications to users when a message comes in and displaying music album covers when playing music within the feature. It’s good to see the kit kat update begin for some of LG’s more recent and popular devices, hopefully they’ll begin rolling it out to others as well. For those of you that are on a GFlex, will you be looking forward to this software update? Do you care about he changes like knock code or are you more interested in the immersive mode?

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Well Known Developer Chainfire Roots The Galaxy S5

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It never fails to amaze us how quickly the modding community gets on with Rooting and flashing these days. Chainfire, who is a well known developer and modder and has multiple apps on the Play Store, and is perhaps most well known for the app SuperSU, has already rooted the Samsung Galaxy S5. Normally we would think that achieving root access within a few days or a week of a smartphones release would be a quick turn around, but the Galaxy S5 isn’t even available to the public yet and already there will be a root option waiting for those that will be picking this phone up come April 11th.

To be completely accurate, the root is only for one specific model of the Galaxy S5, of which Chainfire admits that he thinks there will be many of, so we don’t mean to get the hopes up of everyone who will be getting this device on day one and will be looking to root it immediately. Fear not though, because there could very well be root access coming to those other models(or at least some of them) leading up to the launch date, or soon thereafter. The model that Chainfire was able to root is what he believes to end up being the most common international model, the SM-G900F. Chainfire didn’t actually have a Galaxy S5 in his possession, so although the root process started some time before today on this device, he mentions that he had lost access to his contact that tests root on pre-release devices due to other responsibilities they had of testing KNOX. All was not lost though as the wait for someone else with a Galaxy S5 that could test root came up today, and Chainfire was able to finish the process.

If you’re looking to get the information on this process so things can be ready to go when you get your device, you can find all the information through the XDA thread linked through Chainfires G+ post. He also has the direct link to the download so you can get straight to work if you’re so inclined. All of this was achieved via CF-Auto-Root. This is great news for the modding community, and for those that are eager to have a rooted S5 as soon as possible.

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Nexus 7 Also Appears to have a Three Day Old Build of Android 4.4.3

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We’ve heard that Android 4.4.3 is in testing, but now we’re seeing a newer build of Android 4.4.3 which is actually only about 3 days old. It’s build KTU83, which basically means that it was built on the 83rd day of this quarter which would be March 24th. By now we should all know how to decipher a build number, but basically the first letter is the version of Android. So in this case it means KitKat. The second letter is the branch, which we can’t really do much with. Then the third letter and the two numbers behind it stand for the date. The letter U is for Q1 2014, and the numbers correspond to the days in this quarter, which is 83 = March 24th. This new build is only four days newer than the last build of KTU79.

So what does this all tell us? Not much, other than the fact that Android 4.4.3 isn’t in the final testing stages just yet as they are doing more builds of Android 4.4.3. So hopefully this is the last one and we’ll see it pushed out soon. As I’m hearing a lot of people are having issues with the camera these days. Hopefully Google has actually fixed that this time around, although who knows at this point.

This build is reportedly running on a Nexus 5 as well, which prior to was running KTU79. So it’s also gotten the newer build. There’s no word on any new features in 4.4.3, but there’s likely just bug fixes and performance stability enhancements in this update, whenever it actually hits Nexus and Google Play Edition devices via OTA. How many of you are excited to get Android 4.4.3 when Google finally releases it soon? Let us know in the comments down below, also let us know what bugs you’d like for Google to fix.

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