J’accuse… ! Remember the unnamed third party that Microsoft had found to be abusing 3G data on Windows Phone 7? Secret’s out, and the culprit is none other than Yahoo Mail. According to a statement obtained by Microsoft guru Paul Thurrott, a fix is expected in the “coming weeks,” but in the interim, you can mitigate the pain by going into settings and choosing less taxing options for “Download new content” and “Download email from” — say, for example, “manually” and “the last 7 days,” respectively. At least now you know exactly at whom you should wag your finger.
A researcher at North Carolina State University is warning of an Android 2.3 security vulnerability that gives attackers access to your personal information, further proof that Gingerbread isn’t all sugar and spice (to be fair, that SMS issue has since been remedied). According to Xuxian Jiang, the bug allows malicious websites to access and upload the contents of a user’s microSD card, including voicemails, photos, and online banking information to a remote server. The flaw apparently resembles a similar bug in previous version of Android, thought to have been addressed with Gingerbread. However, as Jiang points out, that fix is easily bypassed. Apart from removing the microSD card, disabling JavaScript, or switching to a third-party browser, Android 2.3 users have little recourse in squashing the bug. The folks at eWeek reported that Google is working on a solution to the problem, but there’s no word on when we can expect to see an update.
Some percentage of Nexus S units in the field are afflicted with random reboots; there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to when it happens, how often it happens, or what causes it — but needless to say, a phone that could restart itself at any moment is not the best situation. After a few weeks of angry threads in the official Nexus S support forums, Google employee Ry Guy has chimed in with this encouraging tidbit:
“The initial results of our tests look very promising. At this rate we will most likely be rolling out an OTA to resolve this issue within one to two weeks. We really appreciate your patience as we do our final verifications on this fix before sending it out.”
So that’s a good thing — and in the meantime, we just hope you enjoy occasionally seeing the awesome Nexus boot animation by surprise.
There’s a story going around today about an alleged problem in the power management unit affecting Motorola’s first two dual-core smartphones — AT&T’s Atrix 4G and Verizon’s Droid Bionic — that leads to a hodgepodge of issues: overheating, weird RF fluctuation, the list goes on. Sounds like a tragedy in the making, doesn’t it? Worst yet, the PMU problem is said to be a “major unfixable flaw that will plaque [sic] it forever.” Bummer!
But let’s back up and consider the facts here. First, as best we can tell, the sources are two posters in a HowardForums thread, one of which doesn’t even have the information firsthand — he was allegedly given the news “by someone who is testing the devices.” Furthermore, there’s really no such thing as an “unfixable” bug; you might need to peel away several layers of software and hardware to fix an issue depending on how fundamental the flaw turns out to be, but engineers have proven time and time again that “unfixable” isn’t really in their vocabulary (white paint aside, of course).
Embarrassing SMS misdirect bug on your Android device? Nexus S owners should start checking their phones now for an over-the-air update that’s supposed to fix the problem. It’s being rolled out gradually, so just be patient if it’s not there yet. How will we know the problem’s gone for good? We’ll just assume so until we find out otherwise, in some unfortunate manner.
Tired of your Windows Phone 7 device sending and receiving random bouts of data? Well, Microsoft is, too — and they’ve started to reach some conclusions from that investigation opened a few days ago. Apparently, there’s a “third party” that’s responsible for the misbehavior, and Redmond’s already reached out to help ‘em make the necessary fixes; the story isn’t necessarily over, though, because they’re still “investigating additional potential root causes,” which we presume could involve the operating system itself. As for the third party, it seems a “small” number of customers are affected, which probably explains why it’s taken this long for the complaints to come to a rolling boil. Here’s the full statement:
“We have determined that a third-party solution commonly accessed from Windows Phones is configured in a manner that potentially causes larger than expected data downloads. We are in contact with the third party to assist them in making the necessary fixes, and are also pursuing potential workarounds to address the configuration issue in case those are needed. At this point in our investigation, we believe this is responsible for most of the reported incidents.
We are investigating additional potential root causes for the remainder of the reports.
A small (low single-digit) percentage of Windows Phone customers have reported being affected.
We are continuing to investigate this issue and will update with additional information and guidance as it becomes available.”
Hear that thunderous roar off in the distance, growing louder (and more frightening) as it persists? That is the sound of excited Android users emailing us to inform their fave gadget site that Google has just sent users an update to that little embarrassing SMS bug that we reported a while back. There seem to be two distinct issues: users have reported both opening one message to have a completely different message appear, and / or sending an text message to one contact yet having it delivered to another contact entirely. We need only say one word: sexting, to highlight just how dangerous this could be! Google promises us that a fix for these two issues are in the works. In the meanwhile, check out the e-mail below to read their response and work-around.
[Thanks Jon, and thanks to everyone else who sent this in!]
Hey, you — it’s January 3rd. You know, the day you’re supposed to return to work / school / life. And the day you’re supposed to catch a flight you’ve had booked for three months. And probably a day that you’re supposed to accomplish lots of other tasks. Unfortunately for you, you actually believed that your iPhone alarm would fix itself when today rolled around, but based on hordes of complaints seen on Twitter and Facebook, said fix is still hibernating. And thus, you’re still sleeping. Even here at Engadget HQ, we’ve seen iPhone 4 handsets not wake us as promised (on non-recurring alarms), so who knows when Apple will step up to the plate and address the issue. In the meantime, go ahead and set up a recurring alarm while gently crossing your fingers and toes. Or, you know, buy a battery-powered alarm clock off of your grandmother.
We’re not exactly sure of the cause of this fancy new issue affecting Apple’s super cool iPhone line of cellphones, but apparently you’ve got trouble come 1/1/2011. According to an explosive stream of frustration-filled tweets on the Twitter microblogging service, when the clock strikes midnight, one off alarms will cease to sing out. The issue sounds eerily similar to recent Daylight Savings Time trouble we witnessed back in November, although we saw both repeating alarm and single alarm failures.
So how can you fix this potentially life-ruining problem? Well until Apple patches its OS — and it’s currently unclear if this is just iOS 4.2.1 or earlier versions as well — you can simply create a recurring alarm at the time you need to be woken up, and then disable it once your dreams are completely ruined. We’re taking a deeper look into the issue and have contacted Apple — if we get more news, you guys will be the first to know. In the meantime, feel free to commiserate in comments, and… happy new year?
Update:9to5 Mac says that the bug will get fixed all by itself once the calendar hits January 3rd. We haven’t confirmed this, but if it turns out to be the case, that’s pretty good news. In less good news, the issue seems to be affecting iOS 4.1 and 4.0.2 as well.
Update 2: Apple responded to us on the issue, though they didn’t offer any surprises:
We’re aware of an issue related to non repeating alarms set for January 1 or 2. Customers can set recurring alarms for those dates and all alarms will work properly beginning January 3.
Pardon us if the headline is a little sensational, but this is one that we’ve personally experienced — and it’s not pretty. For at least the last couple versions, Android has been plagued with a couple extremely serious bugs in its text messaging subsystem that can ultimately end up causing you to text the wrong contact — even contacts that you’ve never texted before. There appear to be a few failure modes; the one we definitely experience on the Gingerbread-powered Nexus S involves being routed to the wrong thread when you tap it either in the Notifications list or the master thread list in the Messaging application, so if you don’t notice, you’ll end up firing a message to the wrong person.
More seriously, though, there’s also an open issue in Android’s bug tracking system — inexplicably marked “medium” priority — where sent text messages can appear to be in the correct thread and still end up being sent to another contact altogether. In other words, unless you pull up the Message Details screen after the fact, you might not even know the grievous act you’ve committed until your boss, significant other, or best friend — make that former best friend — texts you back. There seem to have been some attempts on Google’s part over the year to fix it; we can’t confirm that it still happens in 2.3, but for what it’s worth, the issue hasn’t been marked resolved in Google Code… and it was opened some six months ago.
This is akin to an alarm clock that occasionally won’t go off (we’ve been there) or a car that randomly won’t let you turn the steering wheel — you simply cannot have a phone that you can’t trust to communicate with the right people. It’s a deal-breaker. We’re pretty shocked that these issues weren’t tied up and blasted to all affected phones as an over-the-air patch months ago, but whatever the reason, we’d like to see Google, manufacturers, and carriers drop every other Android update they’re working on and make sure this is completely resolved immediately.
Want to see this fixed as much as we do? Scroll to the bottom of the Google Code page and hit “Vote for this issue and get email change notifications.”
Update: So Google’s changed the priority of the bug to “critical,” which we’d say is a solid start. They’re also asking people to simply star the bug rather than commenting on it — unless you’ve got constructive information to add that might help them reproduce the problem, of course. Thanks, everyone!
