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Windows has been the operating system of choice for computers almost since its inception but Microsoft has never managed to scale it down to lighter, smaller, and less powerful devices in the same way.

Whether it is Windows Mobile, Windows RT, or even the latest Windows 10 S for more portable computers, Microsoft's lighter OS offerings have never gotten popular.

Microsoft has a new ace up its sleeve, according to Petri.com.

This time around it is known as Windows 10 Lite, and according to the information it is designed from the ground up to dethrone Chromebooks as the go to cheap computers.

Windows 10 Lite is supposedly designed to run with low power, turn instantly on and be always connected in the same way as ChromeOS. It replaces Windows 10 S, which is upgradeable to full-fledged Windows 10.

There is no word on whether Windows 10 Lite is also upgradeable as well, but seeing that it doesn't support traditional Windows executables, only UWP and PWA apps, it seems obvious that it is a completely separate experience.

Also, it will likely not be sold separately. Only OEMs will have access to it for it to be pre-installed, which makes sense.

All the major smartphone events for the year are long gone, except for a Nokia event today in Dubai, so it is perhaps time to start focusing on next years early offerings.

Qualcomm agrees and has today announced new products that will land on many of the upcoming year's greatest smartphones.

At their Snapdragon Summit in Maui, the company is debuting the new top-of-the-line Snapdragon system-on-chip and other products.

The new Snapdragon 855 is, of course, Qualcomm's flagship product and will be heading to dozens of top notch Android smartphones next year. So what can we expect?

Well, first off Qualcomm calls it "the world's first commercial mobile platform supporting multi-gigabit 5G." In addition to supporting 5G it will improve AI performance up to 3x.

According to TechCrunch, Qualcomm is also designing a designated gamer version of the chip called "Snapdragon Elite Gaming", although other details are still not revealed.

Another interesting announcement out of Maui is a new ultasonic fingerprint sensor, which will likely be seen in the upcoming Galaxy S10, just like the new Snapdragon chip.

Ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint sensors are promising to be faster than last years in-screen sensors. In addition it should work even when the finger or display are dirty is the screen has a screen protector, TechCrunch reports.

One of the largest Q&A website in the world, Quora, has been hacked. The company has released a statement saying that an unauthorized entry was made an attained user information from the database.

A security breach by a malicious source resulted in leakage of information from approximately 100 million user accounts. That's a third of the websites 300 million user base.

According to the company, they've hired a security team to help them investigate the breach, informed the law enforcement, and are in the process of informing all affected users.

The leaked date includes personal information such as names, email addresses, encrypted (hashed) passwords, and data imported from linked networks when authorized by users.

The database that was breached also stored the questions, comments, answers as well as private messages.

Quora has logged out all affected users and reset the passwords for users that use password as an authentication method.

No social security numbers, credit card information or other extremely sensitive information were stored on Quora's databases.

Quora believes it has found the security hole but the investigation is still on-going.

Microsoft is taking big steps to renew Windows 10 and some of its core apps and functions. Updating the iconography of Office, and eventually entire Windows 10, is one of the most recent steps.

New updates, due next year, to PowerPoint on the other hand will bring new AI functions. This means that PowerPoint will support real-time translating.

Real-time translating is used to generate captions for slides from one language to another. You can use it also to turn your speech into caption in the same language.

To easily make a more inclusive presentation, you can switch the translation depending on the audience and thus use the same slides for different audiences.

Microsoft is also bringing the real-time translation and subtitling to Skype calls which might be an even more useful feature.

Real-time translating is said to arrive in January 2019, and it will land on both Windows and Mac, as well as the cloud version, Office 365.

Just a few years ago, in the eve of Windows 10, Microsoft made the decision to retire the good ol' Internet Explorer for a new and improved browser.

Windows 10 launched with this new Microsoft Edge browser, a completely new and revamped browser experience. Unfortunately not a lot of people were impressed as the adoption rate has been low enough for Microsoft to plan some radical reroutes.

According to The Verge, Microsoft is already developing a new browser to replace Microsoft Edge. The browser is known in dev teams as codename Anaheim, and is based on Google's Chromium.

Chromium is Google's open source web browser project which is the basis on the world's leading browser Google Chrome.

According to the information gathered by The Verge, Microsoft doesn't have enough resources to keep developing the core functions of the browser including enhancing speed, and thus is looking into switching from proprietary tech inside Edge to Google's Chromium.

Once Microsoft's switch is done, assuming the rumors are correct, it will be a field day for web developers. Microsoft and Google sharing web engines will for sure make it easier to develop websites.

Sony has today launched officially its newest gaming console. No, it's not the PlayStation 5, instead it's, of course, the PlayStation Classic.

Sony revealed PlayStation Classic mid-September, and now couple months later it is ready to be released to the public. Today also marks the 24th anniversary of the original PlayStation, a perfect day for a PlayStation Classic launch.

The new mini console brings old school aesthetics from the nineties in a tiny package that holds 20 pre-installed games and includes two controllers.

Retro consoles have recently been super popular after the initial NES Classic in July 2016 from Nintendo.

Amazon, for example, sells the console for $99.

The games include Final Fantasy VII, Jumping Flash, R4 Ridge Racer Type 4, Tekken 3, and Wild Arms.

Microsoft has been working on revamping Windows UI and especially Office over the past months. Now the company has announced the new palette that will bring new color to the Office 365 icons.

The last the Microsoft updated the icons was in 2013, a couple years before Windows 10 launch. Now the software giant has updated the icons to reflect their new visual language better.

You'll still have a blue Word icon, a green Excel, and an orange PowerPoint, but simpler while still retaining the descriptive elements expressing what each application is used for.

The Office icons are just a beginning, says head of Office design at Microsoft Jon Friedman. The same design language will gradually find its way to all of Windows 10.

While Friedman doesn't give us a timeline, and he does say it's a huge undertaking and it has just begun, we can expect the new look to be introduced to other aspects of Windows 10 next and following year.

Obviously bringing all of Microsoft's products under the same design is the purpose eventually.

Hotel chain Starwood Hotels has released a statement today saying their database system was compromised. As a result, hackers have gained access to information of up to 500 million individuals.

Starwood Hotels, which is part of Marriott International, reports that the illicit entry to their systems was detected on September 10th, but after closer look it was revealed that the system might have been compromised for years.

The database vulnerability was abused first in 2014, and after years of access Marriott estimates that hackers have had access to information from up to 500 million individuals.

At least 327 million customer names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of births, genders, email addresses, Starwood rewards information, arrival and departure dates, reservation dates, communications preferences and even passport information were leaked.

Also encrypted credit card information was among the data leaked.

Marriot noted that it will be contacting all customers that were affected by email starting today.

Marriott bought Starwood Hotels in 2015 making it the world's largest hotel company. Starwood Hotels includes 11 hotel brands, including the likes of W Hotels, St. Regis, Sheraton, Westin, and Element.

Deutsche Messe, the organizer behind the computer expo CeBIT, has made the decision to no longer host CeBIT Hannover next year.

This means that IT trade show CeBIT's 33 year run has come to an end. According to a Deutsche Messe press release some parts of CeBIT will be integrated into Hannover Messe trade show and others organized by the same group.

The reason given for the cancellation of once thriving trade show was simply lack of attendance and space bookings.

For over thirty years CeBIT has been the home of computer and information technology innovation. The final CeBIT, for now at least, was in held June, 2018.

As soon as it was clear that Apple would be introducing a new cheaper iPhone, and this would be months before the actual announcement, people were quick to call it the next big thing.

Many, including some of us here at AfterDawn, were sure this was going to be a huge seller, perhaps even breaking records.

Just a month later rumors have suggested that this not actually be the case, but instead it was indeed the opposite. According to rumors Apple has had to reduce the production estimates, and that's not a good look.

The iPhone component manufacturers have also issued warnings for their quarterly results which has been taken to indicate bad iPhone sales.

Apple's stock has been in decline ever since the new iPhone XR launched late last month, and now it was time for Apple to try an rectify the situation.

Apple's Greg Joswiak has told in an interview with CNET that iPhone XR hasn't been the problem it has been portrait to be. According to Joswiak, the iPhone XR has "been our most popular iPhone each and every day since the day it became available."

Google has graduated their virtual mobile operator business from Project Fi to a more official sounding Google Fi.

The renegade mobile plan offers coverage on several regular carriers' networks while the customer get a straightforward payment plan.

Google Fi costs $20/mo for unlimited tests and calls, and another $10 for each gigabyte of data, or $1 per 100 MB for that matter, delivered in LTE speeds.

There's also a Bill Protection cap that ensures you'll never go above $80 as data is free after 6 gigabytes. Although Google will throttle (slow down) data after 15 GB.

Now all this was already there in Project Fi times, but now Google allows customers to bring their own phones to the platform. You will get the same great deal with predictable pricing and roaming-free 170 locations around the world.

However, some features are still only available to Designed for Fi phones, including of course Pixel phones. There might be still some restrictions even with unlocked phones, but you can check compatibility here.

The features only available to official Designed for Fi phones are:

YouTube has finally confirmed that it will be removing annotations from its platform altogether. The see-through floating boxes are going to be disappearing early next year.

The company has been pretty clear that annotations will be replaced entirely by better options. In fact already in March they announced that the usage of annotations had dropped significantly after the introduction of Cards and End Screens, and that they would be removed at some point.

Now the point has been settled. On January 15 all annotations will disappear. And yes, that means not only are you not able to add them to your videos but also all the ones currently in use will no longer be shown.

This will likely mean that millions of old videos where the presenter was previously pointing to floating box are to become a little bit sillier.

Then again the annotations have never really worked that well, especially in mobile, so all the better that we finally get rid of them.

Annotations are dead, long live Cards!

While Facebook seems to be the exact same platform it was year ago, tons of changes have been made to even the core functions.

One of the more drastic changes is the fact that Facebook is more proactive against hateful rhetoric, which seems to be today's social media trend. Unfortunately it often backfires as trigger happy moderators ban or even remove valid people or pages that have been targeted by mobs.

All in all, Facebook would probably want to backpedal control a bit, and a new feature might bring more control to users.

According to Jane Wong, Facebook testing a new feature which allows users to censor specific words, sentences or even emojis from their comments.

Comments would still be there, but only show to the commenter and his or her friends.

This would also allow pages, such as brands that are worried about their image, to moderate what kind of dirt will not show on their posts' comments.

At this point, however, the feature is just one of a million A/B tests Facebook runs on small numbers of people, so don't hold your breath yet.

The one Chinese manufacturer that has managed to penetrate into the heavily protected U.S. smartphone market is OnePlus.

It took a few years but the formerly very niche player has become a force to be reckoned with in both Europe and now in America.

Viral marketing, competitive prices, and, above all, excellent devices have made a nerdy startup close to being a household name. There are a few steps to achieve that though, and one of them might be powerful partners and colleborations with influential brands.

Previously OnePlus has partnered with Star Warsa among others, and but this time about OnePlus is announcing a new partnership that is perfect for its most recent flagship's slogan: Unlock the Speed.

OnePlus has released a video on Twitter portraying McLaren's treasured history in pursuing speed in racing, and announcing the partnership.

The company will hold a product launch, and announce likely the OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition, in McLaren Technology Centre, Woking, UK on December 11.

To further explaing the partnership, OnePlus has released this note about the companies' stories:

Ever after iPhone X, and actually a little bit before that, we've had to look at these horrible foreheads on our phones.

The notch originally became a thing with the Essential Phone, but soon after everyone was trying to squeeze in more display real estate by introducing a curved area of some sort for the front-facing cameras and sensors.

Now, there are worse offenders like iPhones and Pixels, and there are solutions that you might actually kinda like, including the new OnePlus 6T and its teardrop notch.

It seems to be undeniable though that no notch is better than even a small one, and some have even moved the camera to a pop-up slider to avoid a notch of any kind.

However, less moving parts is also immensely better than more moving parts, so those solutions might not be the answer.

So if you had to have the camera in the front but want to maximize the screen size, there is really only one solution, and Huawei is ready to reveal it.

The leaked imagine, the one above, is supposedly portraying just that, a round camera cutout in the display for the front-facing camera.

According to SamMobile, Huawei is not alone either. Samsung is planning on releasing a new higher mid-tier device called Galaxy A8s that might have a camera cutout as well.