BardTech

The post Alexa is now available on 20,000 devices appeared first on BardTech . That large number comes courtesy of Amazon’s press event at IFA in Berlin this week. It’s an impressive jump, given that the company was only boasting around 4,000 the last time it reported a number at the beginning of the year. “Just this year,” exec Daniel Rausch told the crowd, as reported by CNET . “Alexa has sung Happy Birthday millions of times to customers, and she’s told over 100 million jokes.” That’s a lot jokes — at least one or two of them must have been good, right? Alexa confirmed the number with TechCrunch, noting that Alexa is on “20k+ devices you can control with Alexa, from 3500+ brands.” Amazon’s own devices only make up a small portion of the overall number, of course. There just aren’t that many Echo smart speakers, the Fire TV and Fire tablets. But the company has been making an extremely aggressive push to get the assistant on as many third-party devices as possible. In many ca...

The post Apple could introduce three devices with iPhone X design appeared first on BardTech . A new report from Bloomberg confirms previous rumors and lines up with Ming-Chi Kuo’s original report from November 2017. It sounds likely that Apple is going to introduce three new phones in September — an updated iPhone X, a bigger phone and a successor to the iPhone 8 with the iPhone X design. The updated iPhone X could be considered as an “S upgrade” with a better system-on-a-chip and better cameras. The phone itself could look exactly the same as the iPhone X you can buy today. But you can expect faster performance thanks to an updated A12 chip designed by Apple and manufactured by TSMC. The bigger device could feature a gigantic 6.5-inch display. It should have exactly the same features as the updated iPhone X — stainless steel edges, two cameras on the back, an OLED display, etc. This model could have two SIM slots in some countries to make it easier to roam in other regions an...

The post Hide the volume on-screen display on Windows 10 devices appeared first on BardTech . If you use a Windows 10 device with hardware volume buttons, a Surface by Microsoft for example or most laptops that run the operating system, you may have noticed that Windows displays a fixed on-screen display whenever you change the volume. Microsoft integrated the functionality in the Windows 8 operating system and kept it activated on Windows 10 devices. While some users may find the volume on-screen display useful, as it gives feedback when the volume up or down buttons are used on the device, others dislike the popup for a number of reasons. The biggest complaints that Windows users have about it are that it is displayed in a fixed position and that it cannot be disabled. The fixed position of the volume display means that it may be displayed on top of controls or information on the screen. There is little that you can do about this because you cannot modify the position of the d...

The post Google made a program to test security patch compliance on Android devices appeared first on BardTech . Security, mostly due to heavy software fragmentation, is one of the biggest issues with the Android ecosystem. Google’s own Pixel smartphones are the gold standard of secure Android smartphones, but Google doesn’t only want to secure their own devices. Google has introduced measures like Project Treble , worked to extend Linux kernel LTS from 2 to 6 years, introduced the Android Enterprise Recommended Program, and have even reworked their OEM agreements to start mandating regular security patches. But in an announcement posted today, the company has announced that they’ve been working on a new tool to make sure that smartphone device makers are complying with monthly security patch bulletins. At Google I/O, Google’s head of Android platform security, David Kleidermacher, announced that Google’s Android partners are required to push regular security updates. In the ...