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For recent years, Sony, has had a very limited selection of phones available globally. But even with a limited selection, company's track record for delivering Android updates hasn't been exactly a top notch. This seems to be changing.

Sure enough, Sony has been quite fast with providing Android 12 updates to its two hign-end phone series: Xperia 5 and Xperia 1 series. As per current Sony's Android 12 update status, Android 12 has been already released to year 2020 and year 2021 high-end models.

But originally company promised only one major Android update to its mid-priced phone series, Xperia 10. Now it seems that they've decided to opt for a better-than-promised update coverage. Sony's mobile phone division announced on its official Instagram account that both Xperia 10 II and Xperia 10 III are getting Android 12 "soon".

Alternative YouTube player for Android, YT Vanced, is being discontinued. The app has been loved by its users and is probably one of the most downloaded Android apps that cannot be found from official Google Play store.

As YT Vanced app offers pretty much everything you could wish for for a YouTube app, it is also truly hated by Google. YT Vanced removed all the video ads from the player, but also uses crowdsourcing to detect sponsored messages by YouTubers - and allows skipping those, too.

It also allows background playback, thus, making it a viable Spotify alternative in order to play music from YouTube on your phone, without forcing to keep the player visible.

And the list of enhancements YT Vanced offers over official YouTube app goes on and on: true dark mode, saving battery for OLED displays, better gestures, showing the dislike counts, etc etc.

As most of the YT Vanced's features blatantly violate Google's TOS for YouTube, the app has never been found from official Google Play store. Instead, you'd have to download the .apk directly from the developers' website.

But it seems that Google's long-reaching hand has finally gotten to the developers: YT Vanced announced on its official Twitter account that the project will be discontinued.

As Russia has been pushed to isolation after it attacked Ukraine and country is now considering ways how to deal with the new situation. As Russian society is heavily relying on Western technology, country has to decide how to overcome the situation where it doesn't have access to Western software, chips and more.

Even Russian heavy industry and many critical civilian corporations rely on Western software like databases, CRM systems and, obviously, Windows operating system. Some of those have open source alternatives available, but in order to quickly transition a sizable corporation from one platform (and set of enterprise software) to another one isn't a task that can be completed within a reasonable timeline.

Thus, Russian Ministry of Economic Development has laid out a plan on how to deal with the new situation. One of the proposed methods is to basically allow full-blown software piracy. It would allow using software from companies that don't do business with Russia anymore, whether the Russian user has a license or not. Proposal would make the use of such software non-punishable in Russian courts.

Today, at around 18:00 UTC, Spotify went burning down - globally. Users haven't been able to log in to the streaming service since the service interruption began.

According the DownDetector, a service that monitors thousands of websites and services, the problems started immediately at around 18:00 UTC and have been on-going since then.

Spotify status, according to DownDetector service

Motorola has announced their new flagship smartphone that carries the same name as the predecessor. The Edge+ moniker is an odd one, since the one main thing they've changed about the phone is the display flowing over each edge.

Nevertheless, the new and improved Edge+ seeks to challenge the large phone category recently occupied by Samsung's greatest, Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Motorola even has stylus support for the new Edge+, albeit an optional extra if you decide to go that route. That also means there is no internal slot for the stylus like on the Ultra.

Specs-wise we're looking at a Snapdragon 8 gen 1 powered Android with a 6.7 inch Full HD+ display that offers an up to 144 Hz refresh rate. In terms of RAM you can choose between 8 or 12 gigs, and the storage options range from 128 to 512 gigabytes.

Other features include stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support, a 4800 milliamp hour battery with fast charging, 15-watt wireless charging as well as reverse charging that can charge the optional stylus.

Camera system now offers a 50 megapixel default shooter and another 50 MP ultrawide camera. Third sensor on the back is a measly 2 MP for depth-sensing and isn't available for photos. This means that unlike most of its competitors it does not offer a zoom camera.

Fastest growing phone brand in the world is currently Realme. Realme is a manufacturer that is owned by the same umbrella company that owns OnePlus, Oppo and Vivo, too.

Realme is currently pushing its way to Western European markets with affordable, yet feature-rich Android phones. Company uses its own Android skin, called Realme UI and has been slightly slow to make bold promises about its Android update policy in general.

But they recently clarified how they plan to deliver Android updates for their phones.

Here's the outline:

• Realme GT and Realme GT Pro series will get three major Android updates
• Realme GT Neo and Realme GT Master series will get two major Android updates
• "Number models", such as Realme 8, will get two major Android updates
• For everything else, such as Realme C series, Realme doesn't make any promises whatsoever, so phones might get only one Android update - or none at all.

• Realme phones that will get Android 12 update
• Realme phones that will get Android 13 update (in late 2022 or year 2023)

Google's search results page is arguably the most visited webpage in the world. Due its huge popularity and instant recognition value, Google has been reluctant to change its core appearance. Most of the visual elements of the results page have remained intact for more than two decades.

But as we found out recently, Google is now conducting a limited test on handful of users that would change one very specific thing on its search results page: the link colors.

Company has kept the results' colors in "standard webpage blue" since the searvh itself was launched, back in 1990s.

But with the new limited dark mode test, Google has changed the link color for results from that good olde blue to pale yellow.

Google announced today the first official developer preview of the upcoming Android 13 operating system. The release is meant purely for app developers and not for regular Android users.

The idea behind the developer preview release is to let developer community know what is coming up, so they can prepare their apps for the upcoming, actual release of the Android 13. Not all the new features are there yet - and it is bound be full of bugs and problems.

If you're adventurous, tho, you can download it and install it, provided you have a supported Google Pixel phone (Pixel 4 is the oldest Pixel to support Android 13). But we'd advise very strongly against that.

Anyways, this time around the visuals of the operating system aren't changing as much as they did when Google introduced Android 12. Android is simply taking its Android 12 -based Material You theming a step further, nothing else.

Privacy controls are now better: with various apps wanting to access your photos, you can actually choose which photos you want the app to have access to. So, in case of various social media apps, you don't have to allow them to go through all of your photos in order to upload a new selfie to your preferred social media.

Samsung now is promising to deliver four major Android updates to its most recent flagship phones.

It seems like a distant memory when back in, say, 2016, Samsung was ridiculed by Android enthusiasts by its lack of long-term support for its Android handsets. In past years, manufacturers like OnePlus and Nokia, managed to carve themselves a niche among tech enthusiasts with their promise for long support times and several major Android updates.

Since then, Samsung has totally changed its game. Last year, company committed to provide at three major Android updates to all of its higher-end handsets.

But today, Samsung is pushing the promise even further. For its flagship phones, Samsung now promises to deliver four major Android updates.

The promise includes today's Samsung Galaxy S22 series, but also last year's Samsung Galaxy S21 series and its recent foldable phones, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3. For other high-end phones, such as pricier A series phones, the three updates policy remains in place.

France has a long tradition of defending its own national culture and language, to the degree of paranoia. For decades now, it has been illegal to air more than a certain percentage of non-French music on radio stations or to show non-French shows on TV channels. As the tide of streaming services has hit the country, new ideas are needed.

One of them is currently debated by the French National Assembly (parliament) that proposes to ban the ubiquitous Netflix button from all TV remotes sold in the country.

Reasoning behind this is that "too easy" access to Netflix (and other American streaming services that have their own remote buttons, such as Disney+ and Amazon Prime) is harming France's TV channels. So, withouth the easy-to-access streaming button on smart TVs, people would simply sit back and enjoy local TV channels instead.

France has already made it harder for TV manufacturers to promote foreign streaming services: since January, 2022 all smart TVs must highlight French streaming services in their menus over other services.

How France is going to force TV manufacturers to obey the proposed legislation is still somewhat of a mystery. Virtually all TV sets sold in France are the very same models that are sold in other European Union countries, too. Thus, in order to comply with the new law, manufacturers would have to make separate packaging - with crippled remotes - to French markets. Alternatively, manufacturers could remove the Netflix button altogether in entire Europe.

Probably the biggest online phenomenon of the winter 2021-2022 has been the small, but addictive online word game Wordle. Game has now been sold to The New York Times.

Wordle has been everything that modern online services tend not to be: it doesn't have a mobile app. It doesn't have any ads. It doesn't require any registration. It doesn't sell you anything. It doesn't even try to steal all of your time.

No. Instead, the game is available at its own own website.

As far as the gameplay goes: you have to guess an English-language five-letter word. And you have exactly six chances to guess the word.

That's it. You have exactly one word for each day. So, you can't get hooked on it for the entire day. You try the one word and wait for 24 hours to get the next one.

Game has been developed and maintained solely by a British developer Josh Wardle who now announced that he has sold the game to The New York Times magazine:

German regional court just dropped a total bombshell of a ruling today. Court decided that the way how virtually all modern websites function, is actually illegal under the European Union GDPR legislation.

And all this over a 100 euro fee.

Behind all the madness is a court case against an unnamed German website, a lawsuit filed by a single person. And because the website used a specific font.

The website had embedded the Google Webfont to its pages directly from Google Fonts' servers - just like appx. 50 million other sites do.

But how the Internet works, this also meant that the user's browser not only downloaded the website requested, but also the font needed to show the page as intended. And while the user had obviously given the permission to hand out his/her IP address to the website in order to be able to use it in the first place, he/she didn't give the consent to connect to Google servers (in order to get the font).

His browser - as it should - contacted the Google server in the background in order to get the font for the website. And obviously, any connection through the 'net will also reveal the users IP address. And according to the user, he/she had not given explicit permission to do that.

According to several user reports on Android Update Tracker, the Sony's year 2020 flagship model, Sony Xperia 1 II is slowly getting its Android 12 update.

At least users in Romania and United States have reported the stable Android 12 update so far, reports AndroidUpdateTracker's page for Sony Xperia 1 II. Sony doesn't participate in official Android beta program, so there's no beta update track available, like for many other phones.

The update wont be the last one for Xperia 1 II, as Sony has promised to deliver one more major Android update (Android 13, due to be made available this year by Google, most likely in September).

Sony's flagship for year 2020, still has impressive specs and can be considered one of the best camera phones, even now, in 2022.

Much-anticipated TV series based on Lord of the Rings franchise has finally gotten a name - and first trailer.

One of the most longed for Amazon Prime shows has been in production since 2017 when Amazon originally bought the rights to the J.R.R.Tolkien's iconic creations and announced its plans to make a TV series based on the LOTR world.

Today, Amazon finally released the first trailer - or teaser - for the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series. Show will be a prequel to the Tolkien's original Lord of the Rings book (and thus, to the movies made in 2000s).

The Rings of Power will be released on 2nd of September, 2022 and available to all Amazon Prime subscribers globally.

The trailer:

Pretty much every website in the world uses some form of analytics service to track its pageviews and usage. By far, the most popular solution for this is Google Analytics.

But now, Austrian data protection agency has made a decision against Google Analytics, stating very bluntly, that the service is illegal in European Union.

Why, you might ask?

Behind the decision is the European Union's tight privacy legislation called GDPR that protects European users and their data. Previously, European Union and United States had a mutual agreement in place that allowed tech giants like Google and Facebook to transfer their user data freely from continent to continent.

But back in August, 2020, everything changed, as the so-called "Privacy Shield" agreement was struck down by the European court.

In its decision, court ruled that United States can't provide same level of protection for European users as mandated by the GDPR. This is because the U.S. legislation allows American law enforcement agencies (NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, ..) pretty much a free access to all data stored within the U.S. soil. Now, that obviously is against everything that GDPR stands for and thus, the court decision.